Rhode Island Online Web Directory
RiOnline.org
History
of Rhode Island:
Primitive
people of Asiatic origin, mistakenly named "Indians" by
Columbus, were the first inhabitants of present-day Rhode Island.
Archaeological evidence indicates their presence in this area more
than eight thousand years ago.
European
contacts with Rhode Island and its coastline have been claimed for
several explorers, including medieval Irish adventurers sailing in
skin-boats called currachs, Norsemen or Vikings (who were once
thought to be builders of the Newport Tower), and the daring
Portuguese navigator Miguel Corte-Real, who allegedly carved his
name and a series of symbols into Dighton Rock in the nearby
Taunton River. None of these visitations has been substantiated
beyond reasonable doubt, though each has its scholarly supporters.
Therefore, the 1524 voyage of Italian navigator Giovanni
Verrazzano stands as the first verifiable visit to Rhode Island by
a European adventurer.
Verrazzano
made his famous trip, searching for an all-water route through
North America to China, in the employ of the French king Francis
and several Italian promoters. After landfall at Cape Fear, North
Carolina, about March 1, 1524, he proceeded up the coast to the
present site of New York City to anchor in the Narrows, now
spanned by the giant bridge which bears his name. From there,
according to his own account, he sailed in an easterly direction
until he "discovered an island in the form of a triangle,
distant from the mainland ten leagues, about the bigness of the
Island of Rhodes," which he named Luisa after the Queen
Mother of France. This was Block Island, but Roger Williams and
other early settlers mistakenly thought that Verrazzano had been
referring to Aquidneck Island. Thus they changed that Indian name
to Rhode Island, and Verrazzano inadvertently and indirectly gave
the state its name.
Natives
who paddled out to his ship off Point Judith were so friendly that
Verrazzano sailed with their guidance into Narragansett Bay to a
second anchorage in what is now Newport harbor. He remained for
two weeks while his crew surveyed the bay and the surrounding
mainland, noting the fertile soil, the woods of oak and walnut,
and such game as lynx and deer. Their observations on the dress
and customs of their hosts, the Wampanoags, were also most
revealing. In early May 1524 Verrazzano departed to press on in
vain search for a Northwest Passage to the Orient.
For
ninety years following Verrazzano's visit, most European voyagers
to North America unsuccessfully sought that elusive Northwest
Passage or productively fished the Grand Banks off Newfoundland.
In either case, their travels kept them far to the north of the
Rhode Island coast. Not until 1614 were other significant
visitations to Rhode Island made and recorded. In that year John
Smith of Virginia fame explored and charted the New England coast
and bestowed upon this region its name, while Dutch mariner
Adriaen Block, en route to the Hudson River, visited Block Island
and immodestly named it for himself.
From
1620 onward, settlers from nearby Plymouth Colony and the colony
of Massachusetts Bay (established 1628) ventured into the
Narragansett region to trade with indian tribes. Finally, in 1635,
Rhode Island got its first white settler -- William Blackstone, an
eccentric Anglican clergyman who built a home near Lonsdale on the
banks of the river which came to bear his name.
Blackstone
and others who followed him found the area inhabited by several
Indian tribes. The largest of these was the Narragansetts. These
natives were part of the Algonquin family of Indian nations, a
loose network of related peoples whose habitat stretched from what
is now southern Canada to present-day North Carolina. Before the
establishment of the permanent white settlements in New England,
the Narragansetts occupied the area of Rhode Island from Warwick
southward along Narragansett Bay to the present towns of South
Kingstown and Exeter. The rest of Rhode Island was populated by
other Algonquins, some friendly, some bitter enemies of the
Narragansetts.
The
Wampanoags were undoubtedly the Narragansetts' prin cipal rivals.
Their sphere of influence extended throughout much of the eastern
shore of Narragansett Bay and included Bristol Neck, portions of
southeastern Massachusetts, Pawtucket, and parts of Lincoln and
Cumberland. At the apex of their power well as territory within
the present bounds of Providence and Warwick.
The
Nipmucks, a weak tribe by comparison with the Narragansetts and
the Wampanoags, maintained a tenuous foothold in the northwesterly
corner of the state. Initially tributaries of the Wampanoags, the
Nipmucks by 1630 came under the yoke of the expanding
Narragansetts, a fate that also befell two subtribes in the
Warwick area, the Cowesetts and the Shawomets.
On
the southern coast the Niantics populated much of what is now the
towns of Charlestown and Westerly. II appears that they were
driven out of Connecticut by the warlike Pequots sometime late in
the sixteenth century. The Pequots -- who took their name from an
Algonquin word meaning destroyer -- continued their expansion
eastward, and in 1632 they engaged in a bitter war with the
Narragansetts for control of the area just east of the Pawcatuck
River in Westerly and Hopkinton.
Anthropologists
have estimated the Narragansett Population at about seven thousand
persons when the first white settlers arrived. This estimate also
includes the Niantics, who were related to the Narragansetts by
marriage and shared the same customs and language. These Indians
subsisted on farming, fishing, and hunting. Roles were strictly
defined in Algonquin society, and the women decidedly had the
worst of it. Besides childbearing, females were responsible for
planting, harvesting, toting of material possessions when the
village moved on a seasonal basis, preparation of food,
shellfishing, utensil manufacture, and the erection of wigwams
(the bark huts of the Indians). Men, on the other hand, performed
the far less strenuous duties of fishing and hunting, and they
spent a good deal of time in recreational activities.
The
Narragansetts and Niantics lived in compact villages that were
composed of families who shared a kin relationship. Village
leaders, sometimes called subsachems or petty sachems, answered to
a higher authority. For the Narragansetts, the ultimate
governmental leadership rested in the hands of two men, called
chief sachems, who claimed an exalted status by virtue of royal
blood. When Roger Williams founded the town of Providence,
canonicus and his young nephew Miantonomi reigned as the two chief
sachems of the Narragansetts.
Snug Harbor Rhode Island
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Admission to Statehood: May 29, 1790
Area: 1545 sq.mi, 50th Land 1045 sq. mi., 50th Water 500 sq.mi., 41st Coastline 40 mi.,19th Shoreline 384 mi., 20th
Area Code: 401
Bird: Rhode Island Red
Border States: Regional List Connecticut Massachusetts New York (water border)
Constitution: 13th State
County Profile: 5 Counties:
Bristol
Kent
Newport
Providence
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