The Right to a Name: The Narragansett People and Rhode Island Officials in the Revolutionary Era

Abstract

Drawing on oral tribal history and written town records, we argue that an oppositional relationship existed between native people and Rhode Island town leaders in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Authorities viewed native people most often as the poor of the town, whose lives required official management. Further, these officials redesignated native people as Negro or black in the written record, preparing the way for tribal extinction. Native people, in contrast, often maintained a sense of their identity, understood that local government sometimes conflicted with their own best interests, and maneuvered around the system to their own advantage.

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