Canonicus - A sachem of the Narragansett, who treated the Pilgrims at first with great arrogance.  he is remembered as the haughty chief who sent Governor Bradford a bundle of arrows tied in a snake's skin, which was a challenge of war.  Governor Bradford sent the skin back filled with gunpowder and bullets.  The superstitious Indians took this for some fatal charm and passed it from village to village until finally they sent it back to Plymounth as a token of peace.  After that Canonicus was a friend of the whites.  the chief, who lived on Canonicus Island, opposite the site of Newport, Rhode Island, died in 1647 at the age of eighty two.
 

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