To provide defense against these sporadic attacks, the early settlers erected a series of forts in the area. Wood's Fort guarded the Forks-of-the-River just downstream from Newport, and McCoy's Fort and Whitson's Fort defended the area to the south.
The Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun, with most of the remaining mass contained in Jupiter.
A geologist may feel assured that the earth is billions of years old since most astronomers believe that the solar system is billions of years old. However, an astronomer may feel confident that the solar system is billions of years old since the majority of geologists accept this for the age of the earth.