Roger Williams, A Life In Indian Country: An Ethnographic Study of Roger Williams National Memorial

Silverman, David; Fisher, Julie

This ethnographic study documents the historic relationship between Roger Williams and Native peoples as well as the contemporary values and beliefs Native peoples have regarding Roger Williams and the present-day Roger Williams National Memorial. Its sources include historic documents, archaeological site reports, and ethnographic interviews with historically minded tribal members. The chapters examine: • Historical relationships between Roger Williams and Native peoples, especially the Narragansett and Wampanoag, and how they changed over time. It also compares these relationships with those of other neighboring English and Native polities. • Roger Williams’s role as an intermediary and interpreter in relations between Native Americans tribes and other New England colonies. • How the story of Roger Williams and Native people illuminates the larger history of colonial-Indian relations. • Contemporary Native American associations with Roger Williams National Memorial. • The legacy of Roger Williams from a tribal perspective Key findings of the study: 1. This study addresses the ancient history of indigenous people in the Narragansett Bay area preceding the arrival of the English and Roger Williams. This history had a lasting legacy that shaped the entire colonial era. 2. The report also emphasizes the frequency and consequence of interaction between the English colonists of Rhode Island, on the one hand, and Wampanoag and Narragansett Indians, on the other. Roger Williams was particularly active in this regard as a trader, diplomat, political liaison, interpreter, and bilingual scribe. Williams’s daily life, including his life in Providence, was connected to his indigenous neighbors, and indigenous people’s lives were deeply affected by Williams. 3. Williams’s regular interactions with his Wampanoag, Narragansett, other indigenous neighbors impacted his thinking in variety of ways. Most notably, Native politics influenced his early decision to abandon Christian missionary work, contrary to the widespread assumption that he continued his evangelical outreach throughout his life. 4. Opinions about Roger Williams were divided in his own time and they remain so today. The tribal perspectives discussed here are diverse. They reveal both consensus and disagreements about Williams and his legacy. An important common point of agreement is that our sense Williams and his times would benefit from consideration of Williams’s interactions with Native people, particularly local Indian leaders. 5. Roger Williams’s reputation as a “Friend of the Indians” is problematic. Though Williams aided some Native people at certain moments in time, he was an inconstant ally. He always believed in the superiority of English society, which he considered civilized, over Indian society, which he judged as savage and barbaric. Coming to terms with his legacy includes reckoning with the bloody breakdown of English-Indian relations in King Philip’s War, and Williams’s sale of Native war captives as slaves. 6. The history of Williams’s relations with indigenous does not properly conclude with Williams’s death. It has a long afterlife in the Native peoples’ struggles with colonialism and fights for their sovereignty through the centuries up to the present day.