Lisa Brooks

Now, that was an issue.

To quote from Lisa Brooks' Our Beloved Kin, "Was she, Weetamoo, a captive, a prisoner owned to the English, or a neighboring leader who could expect sanctuary? Was she a woman in need of protection, or a persuasive diplomat striving towards alliance in war? Had Weetamoo so transcended gender boundaries in her actions that she was considered one of Philip's men? Did the covenant require that the Narragansetts deliver up the women and children who had come from Pocasset, regardless of indigenous relationships and protocols?" This was all made way more complicated because of indigenous kinship networks.

Many Pocasset and Narragansett were related, and that was why Weetamoo and the Pocasset had arrived.

In September 1675, the colonists and the Narragansett met at Wickford.

If the colonists were willing to treat their own Indian subjects like that, what would they do to those who had actively resisted them? Canonicus and those around him were becoming less and less convinced of the colonists' sincerity.

If they handed Weetamoo and the Pocasset over to them, would they be condemning their friends and family to a lifetime of slavery? Nevertheless, on the eighteenth of September, Canonicus' son signed a treaty in Boston, promising to hand over all of Philip, Weetamoo, and Awashonks' people who had taken refuge with the Narragansett.

Lisa Brooks suggests he'd had little choice.

If he'd refused, he might have expected to join the unfortunates locked away in Massachusetts prisons and ships.