A History of the Narraganset Tribe of Rhode Island by Robert A. Geake

Author:Robert A. Geake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2012-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Seeking Fertile Ground

Like the wars before, the American Revolution brought a disruption and loss to the Narragansett that were to have a profound impact on the tribe. The squaw sachem Esther died during the war, and the upstart son, George, keen on joining the American forces, was felled by a tree before even that dream was realized. That tragedy was echoed throughout the tribe, as the death or disappearance of so many young men left many widows and unsupported elderly among the population. Facing little more than the bleak prospect of further poverty on their own rapidly diminishing lands, many Narragansett chose to leave Charlestown and other Rhode Island communities.

In 1775, a significant number of Narragansett Christians had joined displaced peoples from other Algonquin tribes and moved to what would become the community of Brothertown. As the reputation of that community grew, other Narragansett followed.

John Niles, brother of Samuel, had served on the tribal council for some years and married a wife named Jerusha, who bore him three children. One, named John, who was attending Ebenezer Wheelock’s Christian school, left to join the Second Connecticut Regiment at age seventeen and a Rhode Island regiment a year later in 1781.110 However, by 1796 the family had removed to Brothertown, receiving two lots on which to begin their new life.

In 1799, John Hammer, a “prisoner for Debt which arose from his purchasing a horse which he lost by “Death,” petitioned the Smithfield Friends Meeting to help him and a number of other Narragansett move to Oneida, New York. The meeting approved the gift of more than $200 to pay off the Narragansett debts and assist with their move.111

This slow exodus lasted for several generations, as we find an article from the Providence Journal of August 14, 1843, that records a meeting held in the church amid the large annual August gathering and attended by Commissioner Potter as “the General Assembly had been informed that a number of the tribe wished to have liberty to sell their lands and emigrate…their land here was poor and exhausted; the land at Green Bay, where their brethren were, was of the most exuberant fertility.”

Deacon Sekatur, the successor of Samuel Niles as the church’s leader, was among the few who spoke out against the ongoing exodus. The deacon told the Narragansett who were intent on leaving that “if they were only industrious and temperate, they could get along here as well as the whites.”

By the time of the deacon’s plea, though, a serious migration had already occurred. In January 1833, a report by the commissioner to the state assembly provided a list of 199 Narragansett residing in Charlestown and 50 or more names of the people “who were supposedly absent.” This, of course, was not the whole of the tribe; there were simply fewer families in Charlestown to speak of other relatives in other places.

A later report, issued in 1839, described the assembly’s growing viewpoint of the remaining Narragansett:

The state of morals among the Indians has,

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