Simeon Simons

The Narragansett Indian Tribe has a yearly powwow in August, and I have attended several times over the years. The 350th annual powwow was held as I began researching for my book, so I went. It began with a beautiful ceremony, but I quickly felt like an intruder in a sacred sanctuary.

To be clear, the event was open to the public and well planned. The vendors were happy to see us and sell us their goods, and the shuttles to and from the parking area played drum and flute music to set the tone for the event. The emcee was a gentleman named Hiawatha Brown, and he deftly mingled stories from tribal history with announcements about where to find first aid. Everyone was welcoming. It was no one’s fault that I felt like an outsider, other than the fact that I was actually an outsider infringing on the traditions of an ancient people.

Men, women, infants, and elders all strolled around us in traditional regalia, and we sat in our folding camp chairs, listening to the singing and drums, and trying not to be in the way. 

My mind wandered to the story of the Great Swamp Fight, a massacre of mostly Narragansett women, children, and elders, perpetrated by the colonists at the Narragansetts’ winter residence deep in a nearby swamp. The Narragansett men were mostly absent, having gone to fight in the King Philip's War, and left their families in relative safety, in the thick woods of the Great Swamp.

White soldiers from the Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and Connecticut colonies surprised the unsuspecting families in the night and burned the encampment to the ground. Roughly 100 Narragansett men were killed, but between 750 and 1000 women and children were killed. A further 300 Narragansett people were captured and sold into slavery. A total of 70 soldiers between all four colonies were killed in the fight.

I have been to the Great Swamp Fight monument several times. It's a mile hike into the woods to get to it at the approximate site of the massacre. The monument is a rough granite obelisk surrounded by four stones, each engraved with the name of one of the colonies. Since it was erected by the white ancestors of the colonists in the early 1900s, it should have been an apology, a plea for forgiveness, a cautionary tale about racism and colonization. Instead, it was self-congratulatory, the colonists’ ancestors patting themselves on the back for having successfully united to overwhelm the sleeping families. 

In the hundred or so years since the monument was built, the Narragansett people have reclaimed the space. In the 1930s, Princess Red Wing, Narragansett-Wampanoag historian and scholar, began holding yearly ceremonies at the monument. In 2021, the title to the 5 acres on which the monument sits was transferred to the Narragansett Tribe.

Modern Narragansett people leave woven baskets, purple wampum, bundles of sage, and other offerings. I am not a spiritual person, and these items are not a part of my heritage, but I can feel the significance. The stones no longer mark a celebration. It is solemn and heavy, and the weight of 1000 Narragansett deaths hangs over the place. I am an outsider there, too, but it’s easier to stay and sit with the knowledge of a brutal history in a place like that. It exists for that purpose.

A powwow is a celebration whose heaviness is based on tradition and culture, not war and death. It’s moving, but for a different reason, and feeling that weight, I knew I didn’t want to spectate like it was a play for my benefit.

As we sat there, waiting for the processional of tribal dignitaries to make its way into the circle, I thought about why I felt I was the right person to tell the story of Simeon Simons, descendant of Massasoit and Metacomet, ancestor of Princess Red Wing. For what reason do I think I should take on writing this book, other than that no one else has yet? 

He is not my ancestor. They are my people. It’s not my story to tell. 

It is very much within my wheelhouse, however, to hold white historians accountable for allowing Simons to be left out of so many books about Washington.

I am a nerd of considerable caliber, which you will learn if you stick with me on this journey. I have read many history books about the Revolutionary War, and about Washington in particular. So far, only one has mentioned Simeon Simons in passing, and that was Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy by Nathaniel Philbrick. The author researched this book during the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd. While I have read and enjoyed several of Philbrick’s books, it’s hard to know if he would have made such a point to address race or the existence of a Native American bodyguard without the racial reckoning of that time. Even Hamilton, Lin Manuel Miranda's wildly popular musical about the Founding Fathers, which specifically cast people of color in every role, did not even mention Simeon Simons, an actual person of color who traveled with them in real life. I don't imagine that Miranda intentionally left him out, but he did base the play on the history he learned in Ron Chernow's book, Alexander Hamilton, which, predictably, does not mention Simons.

I feel so let down by these historians. Is it not a betrayal of my trust in their education and expertise that such an interesting person has been excluded from the lexicon of the Revolutionary War? How could we allow such an important figure to be forgotten? What else am I not learning that I should be? I can't tell you about Simeon Simons. Not only do I not possess the heritage that gives context to his life and his story, but there just isn't much documentation remaining about him. I can tell you about his military peers, whose lives were meticulously documented, the village that he called home, the political climate during his life, the people he knew, and the places he spent time.

It's not enough, but it's something.