Test
Article
‘‘No Beggars amongst Them’’: Primitive Accumulation, Settler Colonialism, and the Dispossession of Narragansett Indian Land
Michael Warren Murphy1
Abstract This article explores historical processes of land dispossession through an in-depth case of the Narragansett Indians of present-day Rhode Island. Using an eventful historical methodology, I uncover three primary mechanisms, each temporally situated, that dispossessed the Narragansett tribe of their land: violence, debt, and state governance. I proceed by first considering Narragansett life before the incursion of settler colonialism. Following this brief exploration, I turn to an analysis of both the historical events and processes that dispossessed the Narragansett of their land. This analysis contributes to the literature on empire and colonialism, as well as theoretical debates on primitive accumulation and settler colonialism, by exploring and identifying the mechanisms by which primitive accumulation operated within a specific settler-colonial context. In the end, I argue that sociology must expand ana- lytically and conceptually to include indigenous experiences of ongoing dispossession in order to end the disciplines complicity in the elimination of the native.
Keywords dispossession, land, settler colonialism, Native Americans
1 Department of Sociology, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
Corresponding Author:
Michael Warren Murphy, Department of Sociology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
Email: mwm@brown.edu
Humanity & Society 2018, Vol. 42(1) 45-67 ª The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0160597616664168 journals.sagepub.com/home/has
Reflexive Statement
Growing up in Rhode Island, you are taught that the relations between Roger
Williams (viewed as the founder of Rhode Island) and the indigenous peoples of
this region were amicable. This notion never quite sat well with me, given the fact
that indigenous people were invisible, despite having many towns, cities, beaches,
and roads named after various words from their language. I couldn’t help but
wonder what happened to the Narragansett Indians. If relations between colonists
and indigenes were so friendly, why have most people never met a person of Narra-
gansett descent? Why don’t most people know about their history? After moving
away for my undergraduate studies, and eventually coming back to the region for
graduate school, I finally gained the tools (and opportunity) needed to explore this
history as related to broader processes of dispossession and the establishment of a
settler-colonial society. This article is a part of a broader project to bring silenced,
invisible, and neglected histories into sociology, particularly the histories of dis-
possession and enslavement, at the dawn of a racialized modernity.
Introduction
Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, the English theologian
Roger Williams sought solace in the wilderness first in the company of the Wam-
panoag and a year later within the territory of the Narragansett Indians. Prior to his
banishment, Williams made a living trading with the native peoples of ‘‘New
England,’’ and over time came to know their language and customs better than
any other English colonist. In 1643, he published a book called A Key into the
Language of America: Or, An Help to the Language of the Natives in that Part of
America, Called New England. It contained more than just translations of impor-
tant words and phrases; A Key was one of the first ethnographic accounts of Native
Americans in the region and contained insights into the culture of the Narragansett,
ranging from their household and familial organization to their agricultural
practices.
Writing about the Narragansett, Williams (1866) observed that there were ‘‘no
beggars amongst them’’ (p. 58). Once the most powerful and respected native
nation in Southern New England, by 1880, the Narragansett had lost most of their
land and autonomy. Prior to colonization, in the late sixteenth and early seven-
teenth centuries, the tribe is estimated to have been between 35,000 and 40,000
people strong, with territory that extended throughout most of what is now Rhode
Island and into parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts (Geake 2011; Simmons
1986). Within three centuries, the Narragansett in Southern New England was
reduced to less than 500 people fighting not only to maintain their cultural
heritage and identity, but their lives. Although eventually the Narragansett would
regain some of their political sovereignty and land in the late twentieth century,1
exploring their historical experience of dispossession offers insight into the social
46 Humanity & Society 42(1)
logics and mechanisms that eventually pauperized one indigenous group of
people by displacing their relationship to the land in the broader process of
settler-colonial expansion. Although aspects of my analysis are particular to the
Narragansett, their story is a part of the larger process in which white settlers
from Europe sought, and succeeded, in establishing a new society in a ‘‘new
world.’’2
Recently, Geisler (2013) writes about the process of Native American disposses-
sion in his article ‘‘Disowned by the Ownership Society: How Native Americans
Lost Their Land.’’3 He argues against the view of legal historian Stuart Banner
(2005) that Indians lost their land mostly through purchase and market forces than
through violence and coercion. Geisler (2013) instead proposes ‘‘Indians in America
lost their land through coercion muted by market-like negotiations on some occa-
sions and coercion without pretense on others’’ (p. 3). The present study intervenes
in this discussion by offering an in-depth historical case study of an early North
American settler colony. Contra Banner (2005) and I too argue against the view that
Native Americans chose to sell their lands more from market pressures than coer-
cion, problematizing the choice to sell in the first place. Here, I consider why the
Narragansett would come to sell their land in the first place, and argue that coercion
(whether direct or indirect) and structural constraints associated with settler coloni-
alism are central to understanding the historical process of dispossession, despite
what on the surface might appear as market mechanisms. I find violence, debt, and
state governance, along with the power of the law and its enforcement, as the
principal mechanisms underlying the indigenous loss of land (as summarized in
Figure 1).
•Displacement of Native population through overt violence •Forced onto reservation area in 1708 •Event: King Phillip's War and The Great Swamp Massacre in 1675
Violence
•Slavery frees land and labor as punishment for unsettled debt •Narragansett forced to sell land to pay for debts owed to colonists •Event: King Tom sells Tribal lands in 1759
Debt
•State officials decide it is best to make citizens of Tribe members removing state protection and land privileges
•Event: Detribalization and State purchase of remaining land in 1881
State Governance
Figure 1. Mechanisms of dispossession.
Murphy 47
Methodological Note
Today, ‘‘method’’ and ‘‘methodology’’ are used rather interchangeably in the social
sciences. This has caused confusion about the meaning of both. To clarify, I use
method to refer to the tools and techniques of data collection and analysis, whereas
methodology refers to the epistemological and ontological assumptions that guide
my approach to the research. Methodology, therefore, is about the theoretical
assumptions that inform the researcher throughout the process, while methods are
about the means by which data are collected and analyzed.
My orientation toward social research is fundamentally interpretive in the
sense articulated by Reed (2011). Arguing against a conceptualization of inter-
pretive sociology simply as description, standing in opposition to realism as
explanation, Reed (2011) posits ‘‘methodologies are ‘interpretive’ precisely in
so far as they guide us toward [ . . . ] meaning-reconstruction, whereby social
mechanisms are finally comprehended in their concrete, sometimes vicious power
because the meanings that form them are brought to light’’ (p. 161). Although this
article is ultimately interested in the causal pathways, or mechanisms, through
which native peoples lost their land and autonomy, understanding the historically
situated system of meaning upon which colonists and indigenes acted is of central
importance.
Additionally, Sewell (1990, 1996, 2005) and Abbott (1984, 1990, 2001) both
highlight the importance of events for a robust historical sociology. Overall, my
analysis engages with eventful temporality in that I ‘‘recognize the path dependent,
causally heterogeneous, and contingent nature of temporality, [and] put the question
of how structures are transformed or reconfigured by [meaningful] social action’’ at
the core of my inquiry (Sewell 1990:24). Historical sociologies are important pre-
cisely because they situate phenomena within their sociotemporal context, and pay-
ing attention to the eventfulness of social life has aided in the performance of a
robust analysis.
Finally, in terms of methods, the historical analysis of colonial documents
from the Rhode Island Historical Society and the Rhode Island and Providence
Plantations State Archives forms the core of the research presented here.4 These
documents, spanning from 1636 to 1880, consist of meeting notes of the general
assembly, correspondence between British colonial authorities in England and the
settlers in North America, colonial legislation, land deeds and transactions, peti-
tions, and governmental reports. As a single case study, my aim is to illuminate
how ‘‘general social forces take shape and produce results in a specific setting’’
(Walton 1992:122). By investigating how the Narragansett people lost their land,
my aim is to attend to how the broader social force of settler colonialism as it
took form in the context of New England and more specifically Rhode Island,
thereby generating insights that might serve as the basis for further comparative
analyses.
48 Humanity & Society 42(1)
Theorizing Dispossession: Primitive Accumulation, Settler Colonialism, and How the Indians Lost Their Land
Before moving forward, it is important to establish the theoretical basis upon which
this article rests. While colonialism and empire have long been of sociological
concern, interest has certainly fluctuated over the years (Go 2009). The literature
has considered the many political economic aspects of empire (Alavi 1972; Arrighi
2007; Boswell 1989; Eisenstadt 1993; Go 2007), while others have studied the way
in which Western notions and practices are evaluated and incorporated within the
colonial context (Go 2006; Lo, Bettinger, and Fan 2006; Prasad 2006). While highly
productive, this literature has failed to fully engage with colonialism in the North
American context.5 Settler colonialism, as a distinct colonial form worthy of socio-
historical analysis, is only recently gaining some interest in American sociology
(Glenn 2014; Steinman 2015).
Within the sociological canon, Marx’s writing on primitive accumulation stands
out as an obvious starting point to think about the dispossession of indigenous
lands.6 In Capital, Volume One, Marx writes:
The so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical
process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears as primi-
tive, because it forms the pre-historic stage of capital and of the mode of production
corresponding with it. (1978:432)
It is clear from Marx’s writing on primitive accumulation, offered in opposition to
the idea of primary accumulation of Adam Smith, that he viewed this historical
dispossession as a variegated process that ‘‘in different countries, assumes different
aspects, and runs through its various phases in different orders of succession, and at
different periods’’ (p. 434). Given Marx’s definition of primitive accumulation and
the stipulation that it plays out differently across contexts, the historical disposses-
sion of the indigenous peoples of North America can be thought of as one of many of
primitive accumulations that took place in the ever-expanding realm of early west-
ern capitalist development. The task in this article is to trace that process as it played
out in one case in North America, linking them explicitly to the settler-colonial form.
Like primitive accumulation, colonialism takes different forms. Colonization in
North America took a distinctive form commonly referred to as settler colonialism.
What makes settler colonialism distinctive is precisely the fact that it entails the
permanent settling of a foreign group on land already occupied by various indigen-
ous peoples (Veracini 2010; Wolfe 2006). Recently, Evelyn Nakano Glenn (2014)
has argued for the necessity of a settler colonialism framework for a historically
grounded and inclusive analysis of racial formation in the United States that moves
beyond the black/white binary. For Glenn (2014), settler colonialism was (and is) a
race–gender project in that white colonists harnessed conceptions of race and gender
to construct a hierarchy of human beings. In this hierarchy, the white male colonists
Murphy 49
stood above women, the indigenes, and African slaves, laying claim to landed
property and the coercion of labor.
For the purposes of this article, I consider primitive accumulation and settler
colonialism to be theoretically and historically linked. The processes of disposses-
sion that characterize settler colonialism are at the same time processes of primitive
accumulation in the sense that the dismantling of indigenous sovereignties and
relationships to land form the basis upon which white European capitalist accumula-
tion are built. There would be no American industrial revolution, for instance,
without the acquisition of American Indian lands and resources necessary for capi-
talist production. It is therefore crucial that scholars consider primitive accumulation
and the settler-colonial form in tandem, carefully tracing the mechanisms of dispos-
session that alienate indigenous people from their land, in turn providing the foun-
dations upon which a racialized, gendered, and class-based society can be built and
maintained. As Yellowknives Dene scholar Glen Sean Coulthard (2014) argues, ‘‘we
should see [primitive accumulation] as an ongoing practice of dispossession that
never ceases to structure capitalist and colonial social relations in the present. Settler
colonialism is territorially acquisitive in perpetuity’’ (p. 152).7
In How the Indians Lost Their Land, legal historian Stuart Banner (2005) writes
that ‘‘there is not sharp distinction between voluntariness and involuntariness’’
(p. 3). For as Banner puts it, ‘‘At most times, and in most places, the Indians were
not exactly conquered, but they did not exactly choose to sell their land either’’
(p. 4). What is most problematic about this argument is that it does not take seriously
the structural constraints imposed on the natives of North America through English
settlement. In examining how Native Americans lost their land, one must take
seriously the structural transformations that the indigenous people had to contend
with upon the arrival of an ever-growing foreign population. For as Patrick Wolfe
(2013) so eloquently puts it:
Land is settler colonialism’s irreducible essence in ways that go well beyond real
estate. Its seizure is not merely a change of ownership but a genesis, the onset of a
whole new way of being—for both parties. Settlers are not born. They are made in the
dispossessing, a ceaseless obligation that has to be maintained across the generations if
the Natives are not to come back. (Wolfe 2013:1)
When waves of Europeans began to flood present-day New England beginning in the
seventeenth century, they came with the intention to stay. Most importantly, as
Wolfe points out in the above passage, their seizure of indigenous land, whether
through deed or violence, must be viewed in the context of ‘‘a whole new way of
being for both parties’’ (2013). In thinking about the dispossession of the Narragan-
sett Indians (and the indigenous peoples of the entire North American continent), it
is of paramount importance to consider the wider context of settler colonialism in
which these dispossessions take place. Settler colonialism should not, however, be
seen as an event of the past but as an ongoing structure (Wolfe 2006). As Glenn
50 Humanity & Society 42(1)
writes, ‘‘The logic, tenets, and identities engendered by settler colonialism persist
and continue to shape race, gender, class, and sexual formations into the present’’
(Glenn 2014:57).
My analysis contributes to the literature on empire and colonization, as well as
theoretical debates on primitive accumulation and settler colonialism, by exploring
and identifying the mechanisms by which primitive accumulation operated within a
specific settler-colonial context. In doing so, my aim is to show that primitive
accumulation is an on-going feature of settler colonialism rather than a single event
that lays the stage for later capitalist development. The analysis proceeds by first
considering Narragansett life before the incursion of settler colonialism. Following
this brief exploration, I turn to an analysis of both the historical events and processes
that dispossessed the Narragansett of their land. Each section represents a major
historical event or series of smaller events. I begin this section with a reflection on
the initial colonial expansion of English settlers into Narragansett territory and the
preliminary legal structures set in place by colonial government that first imposed
limitations on the Narragansett way of life. What emerges from my analysis is a
pattern of dispossession characterized by mechanisms with varying degrees, and
forms, of coercion.
Overall, my analysis illuminates the various mechanisms through which the
Narragansett lost their land: violence, debt, and state governance. For analytic
clarity, I discuss each individually and where possible as connected to an historical
event. However, each mechanism is deeply connected with the others. Slavery, for
example, was a consequence for unpaid debt but was also certainly bound to
violence.
‘‘No Beggars amongst Them’’: The Political and Economic Organization of Narragansett Society Prior to Invasion
As noted in the introduction, Roger Williams observed in the early seventeenth
century that within the Narragansett community ‘‘there [were] no beggars amongst
them, [and] no fatherless children unprovided for’’ (1866:58).8 The significance of
this observation rests in the fact that within a century, the Narragansett would see
their way of life decimated incrementally as the English presence increased. Here,
I briefly explore Narragansett political and economic organization before British
colonization began to take a major toll.
The tribe had a simple division of labor between men and women but also in
terms of craft. As Roger Williams notes, ‘‘They have some who follow only making
of Bowes, some Arrowes, some Dishes, and the Women make all their earthen
Vessells some follow fishing, some hunting’’ (p. 180).9 Women were in charge of
planting crops and collecting edible plants, while men did most of the fishing,
hunting, and trapping.
Throughout the indigenous societies of the region, there was no institution of
private landed property, as all land within a given territory was open for communal
Murphy 51
use (Bragdon 1999; Merchant 1989). Sharing was the central norm governing eco-
nomic relations. For instance, Williams states that:
whomsoever commeth in when they are eating, they offer them to eat of that which they
have, though but little enough prepar’d for themselves. If any provision of fish or flesh
come in, they make their neighbors partakers with them. (1866:45)
Political organization was centered on a central chief or sachem. In addition to the
central sachem, ‘‘They ha[d] also particular Protectors, under Sachims, to whom
they also carry presents, and upon any injury received, and complaint made, these
Protectors will revenge it’’ (p. 164). Sachems were determined by blood and ances-
try. Much of the historical record until the early eighteenth century presents the
political power concentrated in two sachems at once, usually one elder and one
younger. It is revealing that although the sachems ‘‘ha[d] an absolute Monarchie over
the people; yet they [would] not conclude of ought that concernes all, either Lawes, or
Subsides, or warres, unto which the people are averse, and by gentle perswasion [sic]
cannot be brought’’ (p. 164). In this sense, it seems that though the Narragansett were
organized in a system of chiefs, vested with final authority, these leaders would not
make decisions that were against the general will of the tribe. This is an important detail
considering that later in Narragansett history disputes would emerge around decisions
that certain sachem’s made about land. Colonization would come to change the entire
political culture of the tribe. In this sense, it seems that though the Narragansett were
organized in a system of chiefs, vested with final authority, these leaders would not
make decisions that were against the general will of the people (Bragdon 1999).10
‘‘Why Come the Englishmen Hither?’’ Colonial Expansion into Narragansett Country
Roger Williams (1866) wrote, ‘‘This question they [the Narragansett Indians] oft put
to me: Why come the Englishmen hither?’’ (p. 87). This is precisely the question that
needs to be addressed in writing about how the Narragansett, or any other Native
American tribe, lost their land. Settler colonialism in North America meant that the
English came to the continent to stay. It meant that every time the Narragansett
provided the colonists with the right to use land (which the colonists viewed as a
transfer of all rights of ownership), the colonists had no intention of ever ceding it
back. In this section, I explore the initial colonial expansion into what was Narra-
gansett country (and present-day Rhode Island) in the seventeenth century.
The first important land transaction was made in the spring of 1636, when Roger
Williams obtained a tract of land lying between the Pawtuxet and the Pawtucket
(Seekonk) rivers, on which he founded to the town of Providence with a few of his
followers. There was a short period of peace between the native inhabitants and their
new white neighbors, and this is evident in the large tracts of land that were
exchanged in the period just after settlement (Chapin 1931).
52 Humanity & Society 42(1)
From the perspective of a group of people trying to establish themselves in a
foreign land, gaining mastery over that land was of utmost importance. It cannot be
forgotten that when the English colonists made their way to North America, histor-
ical enclosures of common lands had already been underway in England for almost
100 years (Wordie 1983). This meant that the English settlers in North America were
more than familiar with political and economic organization around private property
(Cronon 1983). When the English colonists established themselves in North Amer-
ica, they sought to create the same political economic arrangements present in their
motherland.
Settler colonialism meant creating restrictions, and political arrangements, that
the Narragansett had never been subject to before. The earliest law on the historical
record with direct reference to the ‘‘Indians’’ was passed by the general assembly in
Portsmouth in 1640 setting into law the first recorded restrictions of indigenous
agency. It limited where the Narragansett could light fires and hunt and trap wildlife.
The law also states:
that upon their trading and bargaining, having agreed, they [the Indians] shall not
revoke the said bargaine or take their goods away by force, and that they shall not
be Idling about nor resort to our howses, but for trade, Message, or in their Journeys.
(Bartlett 1856:107)
As with most of the laws written in these early days of the colony, it is impossible
to tell how many people were actually prosecuted for violation. Nevertheless, the
fact that the laws were written at all is telling of the growing tension and conflict
between the colonists and the native people of the region
While they signal conflict to the observer of history, these laws might have meant
little to the Narragansett early on without the necessary enforcement mechanisms.
For instance, the historian Henry Dorr (1985) noted, ‘‘wherever one of them fou[n]d
among the white settlements, a field uncultivated, he had no hesitation in planting
his corn with a mere ‘squatters’ title’’ (p. 169). However, as the number of colonists
increased (with increased legal authority given to them by the King Charles II of
England), the colonial government increasingly used the law to restrict Narragansett
behavior with the force necessary to carry out punishment. In this regard, the law
began to threaten more severe punishment. For example, in 1657 and 1659, laws
were passed ‘‘‘that no Indians sit down to inhabit in this Neck’’’ (p. 199) and
additionally ‘‘restricted the damage by Indians, stealing and pilfering, and their
injuries to cattle, fences, fruit-trees and ‘corne houses [by] impos[ing] severe penal-
ties no less, in some cases, than the sale of offender into slavery in another colony’’’
(p. 201). As discussed in a later section, the threat of slavery was real and many
Indians residing in the area became slaves through legal means.
Whereas the Narragansett once moved freely within their given territory hunting,
fishing, and planting as need be, the laws of colonists with their concomitant punish-
ments, limited the freedom of the native Rhode Islanders and heightened tensions
Murphy 53
between the two groups. The Narragansett could not foresee the harsh restrictions on
their agency that would ensue by warmly welcoming the English and by allowing
them to use their land. Furthermore, the fact that the colonists sought to control the
behavior of the Narragansett is telling of their intent in settling in what is now known
as New England.
King Phillip’s War11 and the Great Swamp Massacre 1675
As tensions rose in present-day Rhode Island between colonists and Natives, con-
flicts were arising in the neighboring Massachusetts Bay Colony. These conflicts
culminated in the declaration of war between the Wampanoag Indians and the
colonists residing in Massachusetts. The English and Wampanoag Indians had long
been suspicious of each other. King Phillip, or Metacom, was often fined and
summoned to meet with the authorities of the colony in Massachusetts, and he
suspected the English of murdering his brother. In 1675, the colonial government
asked the Wampanoag to give up their weapons. Also, in this year, three Wampa-
noag were tried and executed for the murder of a Christian Indian who had been an
informant to the English authorities. Enraged, the Wampanoag raided the town of
Swansea and other outbursts of violence followed. The so-called First Indian War
was underway.
In the colony of Rhode Island, the period of peace and mutual exchange between
the colonists and natives had long been over as evidenced by a letter from Roger
Williams to the authorities in Massachusetts asking for weapons. He wrote:
We are informed that tickers [guns] have rarely been denied to any English of the
country; yea, the barbarians (though notorious in lies) if they profess subjection, they
are furnished; only ourselves, by former and later denial, seem to be devoted to the
Indian shambles and massacres. The barbarians all the land over, are filled with artil-
lery and ammunition from the Dutch, openly and horridly, and from all the English
over the country (by stealth). I know they abound so wonderfully, that their activity and
insolence is grown so high that they daily consult, and hope, and threaten to render us
slaves, as they long since (and now mostly horribly) have made the Dutch. (Bartlett
1856:324)
This letter makes clear the concerns that the colonists living in Rhode Island had
about the Narragansett and the tribes in the area as well as the growing tensions
between the colonists and the indigenes.
More than five years before Massachusetts’ colonial authorities asked the
Wampanoag to give up their weapons, the Rhode Island authorities had asked the
Narragansett to do the same. In May 1667, it was ordered by the general assembly:
[ . . . ] that Thomas Willmott, of Secunk [Seekonk], hath informed the Council now
sitting, of such deportments of the Indians, especially Philip, which giveth great
54 Humanity & Society 42(1)
occasion of suspicion of them and their treacherous designs. It is therefore ordered, that
the Indians residing upon this Island shall be forthwith disarmed of all sorts of arms,
and that the Captain and militarie officers meeting with any Indian armed, they are
authorized to seize the arms [ . . . ] And it is ordered, that if in Rhode Island, or in any
other towns, any Indian shall be taken walking in the night time, he shall be seized by
the watch and kept in custody till morning, and brought before some magistrate, which
said magistrate shall deal with him according to his discretion, and the demerit of the
said person so offending. (Bartlett 1856:193)
Before the conflict had exploded in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, suspicions were
mounting in Rhode Island, and the consequences for the Narragansett were serious.
The order of the executive committee would again limit the freedom and autonomy
of the Narragansett for fear of their collusion with their indigenous neighbors. These
fears were not without warrant, however.
When the war between the Wampanoag and English began, the authorities of the
colony in Rhode Island and Providence Plantations urged the Narragansett for their
support. Ninigret, the head sachem of the time, heeded the call of the English
informing them of King Philip’s activities. However, the sachem had no control
over the lesser sachems and their support for Wampanoag. Many years prior to this
conflict, Miantonomo, a prominent leader of the Tribe, argued that the native people
of the region should band together to fight off the white invasion:
But the English having gotten our land, they with sithes cut downe ye grass, and with
axes fell the trees; their cowes and horses eat ye grass, and thr hogs spoyl our clam-
banks, and we Shall all be starved: therefore it is best for you to doe as wee, for wee are
all the Sachems from East to West [ . . . ]. (Rubertone 2001:79)12
It is known that many of the lesser sachems of the Narragansett like, Pessacus and
Canonchet, harbored many fugitive Wampanoag and rarely gave them up to author-
ities as agreed in treaty (Geake 2011). It is unknown just how many Narragansett left
their territory to fight in the war before the Narragansett were fully entrenched in the
conflict.
Eventually, colonial officials charged the tribe with harboring Wampanoag fugi-
tives and decided to take action. Troops from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and
Connecticut were sent to where the Narragansett were residing in a swamp in
present-day southern Rhode Island, where they attacked Narragansett people in what
it today known as the Great Swamp Massacre. Here, hundreds of elderly men,
women, and children were killed and their wigwams torched. The Narragansett
found themselves actively engaged in the war. Calamity and violence would ensue
in New England until the end of the war in 1676 with the defeat of the indigenous
people. The conflict with the colonizers had significantly decreased the numbers of
Narragansett such that the decimated tribe integrated with the Niantic forming a new
Narragansett tribe with far less power. Between 1660 and 1710, more than 200 new
Murphy 55
townships were established in New England (Geake 2011). While according to
Chapin (1931), ‘‘the able bodied [Narragansett] men had been reduced from 2000
to 200’’ (p. 91). Table 1 shows the population of the colony in 1708.
In addition, another barrage of laws was passed restricting Narragansett auton-
omy, including curfews and consequences for holding weaponry, and for the first
time the settlers were the majority with the power to enforce their rules. Many were
sold into slavery and sent to the Caribbean, while others simply left the area and
went to settle among other tribes in New York and the Midwest.
This historical event forever changed the social structures by which the Narra-
gansett exercised their agency. Having lost a substantial portion of their population
in the long and violent conflict with the English colonists from the surrounding
colonies in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, the Narragansett were
no longer in a position of power. From this point forward it would be complete farce
to talk about the Narragansett as having chosen to sell land to white colonists. As
Marx once wrote, ‘‘Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new
one’’ (1977:436).
Ninigret II and the Creation of a Reservation in 1709
By the turn of the seventeenth century, the Narragansett would lose much of their
land and autonomy as a result of the violent conflict with the English colonists. After
the war, the period of the lone ‘‘wandering Indian’’ began, and the skirmishes and
alcohol-related incidents that ensued led the victorious colonists to pressure indi-
genous people to gather onto reservations (Geake 2011). The historian Robert Geake
(2011) purports that the pressure on Ninigret II, then leader of the tribe, was such that
in 1709, ‘‘he and his council willingly agreed to give Providence Plantations all
remaining Narragansett land in exchange for such a reservation in Charlestown that
Table 1. Population in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in 1708.
Towns Freemen Militia White
Servants Black
Servants Total Number of Inhabitants
Newport 190 358 20 220 2,203 Providence 241 283 6 7 1,446 Portsmouth 98 104 8 40 628 Warwick 80 95 4 10 480 Westerly 95 100 5 20 570 New Shoreham 38 47 0 6 208 Kingstown 200 282 0 85 1,200 Jamestown 33 28 9 32 206 Greenwich 40 65 3 6 240 Totals 1,015 1,362 56 426 7,181
Source. Bartlett (1856, Volume II).
56 Humanity & Society 42(1)
included the area where tribes had lived since the gathering with the Niantic’’
(p. 55). However, the reservation did little to protect the tribe from exploitation and
expropriation of land. Colonists bought land and wood from Ninigret II at low
prices, and in 1713 the Colony intervened by passing an act that prohibited purchase
of land or wood from the tribe without license.
Indian debt became such an extensive problem in the colony that in 1718 an act
was passed that protected the Narragansett from being sued for debt citing their
exploitation as impetus for such a law:
Whereas, several persons in this colony out of wicked, covetous and greedy designs,
often draw Indians into their debt, and take advantage of their inordinate love of rum,
and other strong liquors, by selling the same to them, or otherwise to take advantages,
by selling them other goods, at extravagant rates, upon trust, whereby said Indians have
been impoverished, to the dishonor of the government. (Bartlett 1856:30)
The efficacy of such an act can be evaluated based on its ability (or lack thereof) to
counter the insurmountable debt that the Narragansett would come to face and the
lengths they would have to go to get from under it. Despite the colony’s seemingly
good intentions to protect the remaining destabilized Indian population, the interests
of the colonists would rule out any such benevolence.
Debt, Slavery, and Dispossession
In his book Debt: The First 5000 Years, David Graeber (2011) describes how
throughout history debt has been used as a means of justifying violence:
If history shows anything, it is that there’s no better way to justify relations founded on
violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of
debt—above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it’s the victim who’s doing
something wrong. (p. 5)
When it comes to the history of land dispossession and the impoverishment of the
Narragansett Indians, I would argue that Graeber’s argument holds true. Debt served
two primary functions in colonial Rhode Island. First, it provided a means to attain
free/low cost labor through a system of debt-induced servitude. Second, debt pro-
vided the means by which colonists could attain land from the Narragansett.
As early as 1659, the colony in Rhode Island legislated that slavery be used as
punishment for criminal offense and the settlement of debt:
It is therefore by the authority of the present Assembly enacted and established, that if
any Indian or Indians have, or shall at any time feloniously take away the goods,
monies, cattell, or other things that amount to the vallew of twenty shillings or more,
according to white peage, six a penny; or if any of the Indians or any Indian shall spoyle
or damnify the cattell, fence or fruite trees, corne house or other goods of any of the
Murphy 57
English, or other inhabitantinge, sejournige or beinge within this jurisdiction, the
damage whereof amountige to the vallew afresayd; and being done wittingly, willingly
or insolently, the sayd offender beinge an Indian or Indians, shall be apprehended [ . . . ]
And being convicted of any offence aforesaid, the sayd Indian or Indians beinge not
able presently to procure and pay and discharge all the damages, costs and restitutions
by law due, to be done and made; it shall be lawfull for the judges of the court where
such tryall is, to condemn sucha offender or offenders to be sold as a slave to any
forraigne country of the English subjects. (Bartlett 1856:413)
Years after this first slavery law was passed, another was enacted stating, ‘‘[n]oe
Indian in this Colony be a slave, but only to pay their debts or for their bringing up,
or custody they have received or to performe covenant as if they had their country-
men not in warr’’ (Bartlett 1856:535).
Following King Phillip’s War, many Narragansett were forced into slavery both
within the colony and abroad on account of these laws. Some were sent to planta-
tions in the West Indies while others were sent to work on the burgeoning plantations
in Rhode Island (Geake 2011). Census records show an upward of 223 slaves in
Providence, Warwick, and South Kingston alone, and a generation later still as much
as 193 listed on these town registries (Geake 2011).
The price for each Indian slave varied, but they were altogether worth less than
African slaves. During this period of slavery, the Narragansett often intermingled
with other slaves of African descent, producing many mixed race offspring referred
to as ‘‘mustees.’’ Geake (2011) writes:
These mustee generations of the Narragansett often grew up in slavery. If they were not
born in a master’s house and added to the property, they were dropped on the doorsteps
of estates, farmhouses or even meetinghouses by free Narragansett women who were
often impoverished and sometimes shamed by their relatives for their interracial
unions. (p. 62)
On the plantations (and dairy farms) located throughout the colony, Narragansett
slaves and indentured servants ‘‘toiled as farm laborers, shoveling the stalls,
driving the cattle to pasture or cleaning the main house, [while] black slaves were
given all manner of skilled jobs to perform’’ (Geake 2011:67). The Narragansett
laboring as slaves and indentured servants meant that they had no claim to any
land. To be a slave meant that you were someone’s property and therefore could
not have any of your own. Narragansett enslavement, therefore, opened land to
colonial ownership by essentially dehumanizing the indigenous peoples of the
area under the guise of debt.
King Phillip’s War left the Narragansett with little more than land and labor to
cover the debt that many found themselves in. In the cases in which slavery was not
sanctioned as punishment for debt, land was sold in order to settle accounts. Even the
leaders of the tribe found themselves in debt and had to sell land to settle them. In
58 Humanity & Society 42(1)
1759, the sachem known as King Tom petitioned the colony to sell some land to pay
debt and was granted permission to do so. However, this upset many Narragansett
living on the reservation lands because they claimed that he was selling too much. In
response, the colony passed an act in 1763 that prohibited the sale of any further
land. Yet in the sachem’s death a few years later, colonists accused him of having
outstanding debts, and more land was sold to settle them. In response, members of
the tribe wrote to the general assembly calling for the protection of their remaining
land:
That some of our late sachems, through extravagance and indiscretion, had heretofore
run themselves largely in debt; and for the discharging those debts, we have consented
to the sale of the greatest part of the most valuable lands belonging to the tribe; so that
there now remaineth but a small tract, compared with what they once possessed; and
that they have remaining only one small piece of Fort Neck, by which they can get to
the salt waters, from which they fetch great part of the support of themselves and
families. [ . . . ] We therefore humbly petition this Honorable Assembly, to pass an act,
to secure to the said tribe, forever, as well the said small part of Fort Neck, as all the
other lands now of right belonging to them; and that the same be not, for the future,
liable to the payment of debts. (Bartlett 1856:214)
The general assembly conceded, passing a bill protecting the remaining Narragansett
lands in the South. Ironically, it would be the state of Rhode Island that would take
the remainder of their land a century later.
No Race, No Land: The Detribalization of the Narragansett
Despite the general assembly’s efforts to protect the Narragansett from losing any
further land, the political economic arrangements of settler colonialism, which
entails the perpetual dispossession of the original inhabitants of the land, forced
many poor members of the community into debt with little way out but to sell their
land or labor. Land disputes became common as land transactions between the
Narragansett and the white colonists increased. In 1879, the then leader of the Tribal
Council, Gideon Ammons, petitioned the state of Rhode Island to assign a commit-
tee ‘‘to investigate their affairs in reference to the encroachment of the whites upon
the tribal lands, and whether it was better to continue the tribe as a tribe or enfran-
chise them, and how it was best to proceed’’ (Adams, Carmichael, and Carpenter
1880:24).
Testimonies from members of the tribe reveal that an overwhelming majority
were against becoming citizens. As Joshua Noka, a member of the Tribal Council,
powerfully proclaimed:
Now, for me as an individual to ask to be a citizen, under the present existing circum-
stances, I don’t see anything that would be interesting to me. For a colored man to be
Murphy 59
citizen, he will remain about the same as at the present time. He is merely brought out
in a position like this: a chance to vote for somebody, but he can’t expect to ever to be
President of the United States, or an Attorney-General. It makes no difference how well
he is qualified, he can’t be put into a jury box, to be drawn as a common juror, or
anything of the kind but if you have a got a cesspool to dig out, put him in there. But to
be put in a position whereby men shall be recognized as men in the position, and he is
not found. Now what would be the object[ive] in throwing off the tribal authority and
come out and be called a citizen, with nothing to do as a colored man? (Adams et al.
1880:32)
Here, Noka communicates his awareness of the structural constraints that would
have prevented him and members of his tribe from enjoying the liberties associated
with citizenship. He is aware of his own racialized social location as a ‘‘colored
man,’’ in a settler society built for white men.
Only one member of the tribe, Sam Congdon, testified in opposition to the
majority held opinion that citizenship and the abolition of tribal relations would
be good for the tribe because to him the Tribal Council took advantage of their
position of power to make a profit at the expense of the tribe’s landed property. Yet
overall, there was an acknowledgment among members of the tribe that citizenship
would be detrimental to the well-being of tribal members and would result in the
further loss of land. As Daniel Sekater puts it:
And I can’t see for my life wherein we shall be benefitted any more than we are the
present time by coming out as citizens under the present circumstances. We have now
here a little mite of property that belongs to the Narragansett Indians, conveyed to them
by their foreparents, and it belongs to them; and it does seem to me that they ought to
have the handling of it as they see fit. There is the Indian cedar swamp, whereby many
in this tribe are benefitted by it. I am not so much as many are. If they want any wood,
fencing stuff, or shingles, they can go in there and cut it; and there are a good many of
them that now do, and perhaps would, own land against the white people, and they
would compel them to fence some places; and there are very few that could do it, and
their land has got to be forfeited; and I can’t see that citizenship is going to do them any
good. (Adams et al. 1880:38)
Despite the trepidation of most of the Narragansett, the committee decided it best
that tribal relations between the state and tribe be abolished. In the words of the
committee tasked with the investigation:
We learn that there is not a person of pure Indian blood in the [T]ribe and that charac-
teristic features, varying all the shades of color, from the Caucasian to the Black race,
were manifest in the several meetings of the Committee. Their extinction as a [T]ribe has
been accomplished as effectually by nature as an Act of the General Assembly will put an
end to the name. There will evidently be a feeling of regret when the name of a [T]ribe so
long known in the history of our State passes from existence. (p. 6)
60 Humanity & Society 42(1)
As outlined in the resolution, the state paid members of the tribe a total of US$5,000
to compensate for the public lands that they lost in becoming citizens.13
As a historical event, the state government’s decision to detribalize the Narra-
gansett should be thought of as the final event in a long series that divorced the
Narragansett from their land and means of production. It would take 80 years, and
plenty of litigation, to regain status as a tribe and a minutia of the land the Narra-
gansett once claimed sovereignty over.
Eclipsing Indigenous Sovereignty and Autonomy, One Land Grab at a Time
This article has elucidated three primary mechanisms that divorced the Narragansett
from their land each temporal situated. Violence, first, depleted the Narragansett
population and helped to eventually relegate the remaining group to a section of land
in present-day South County. The violence associated with King Phillip’s War
created a situation of dependence, in which borrowing from colonists was the only
way that the Narragansett remaining in the region could survive. The steady invasion
of settlers, with their hankering for land, slowly eclipsed indigenous sovereignty and
autonomy by limiting Narragansett agency with coercive practices.
Debt, then, served as a means of severing the Narragansett from their lands by
making slaves out of members of the tribe on the hand, and on the other, by
forcing them to sell their land to settle accounts. Settlers established their own
political economy on the land carved out of Narragansett territory. With this new
political economy, based upon private property and market relations, the Narra-
gansett had little choice but to exchange land and labor in order to survive.
Colonists, in turn, created their own sovereign territory on lands acquired through
this process of dispossession, receiving statehood with the ratification of the U.S.
Constitution in 1790.
State governance served as the final mechanism to dispossess the Narragansett of
their ancestral land by declaring them citizens and stripping them of tribal authority
and protections that tribal status entailed. Following a trope common to settler-
colonial contexts—that of the disappearing Indian—state officials argued that the
Narragansett had been effectively eliminated through their intermixing with other
races and therefore were no longer entitled to rights and protections as a sovereign
nation of native people. Making the Narragansett citizens entailed dissolving their
last bit of territory.
Dispossessing the Narragansett, whether through violence or contract, was
always an act of coercion. Although Banner (2005) asserts, ‘‘the idea of a spectrum
bounded by poles of conquest and contract [ . . . ] in understanding how the Indians
lost their land’’ (p. 4), the case of the Narragansett in Rhode Island clearly demon-
strates how the law served as a means through which the Native Americans could
lose their land. Perhaps more than anything, the case of the Narragansett reveals that
the distinction between conquest and contract is a false one. Banner further alleges,
‘‘At most times, and in most places, the Indians were not exactly conquered, but they
Murphy 61
did not exactly choose to sell their land either. The truth was somewhere in the
middle’’ (p. 4). Yet this assertion only makes sense within a logical framework that
distinguishes between conquest and contract. In this study of how the Narragansett
lost their land, I’ve shown that contract has been used as a means of conquest since
the beginning of European settlement in the region. Distinguishing between contract
and conquest obfuscates the fact that the primary means by which the Indians lost
their land is coercion often veiled in the language of contract and legality.
How the Native Americans lost their land is part of a larger story in which
capitalist expansion divorced people from their land and their labor. In present-
day Rhode Island, the indigenous Narragansett people were alienated from their
land, simultaneously creating a class society where there had been none before.
As Walter Rodney (1974) once asserted, ‘‘When one society finds itself forced to
relinquish power entirely to another society, that in itself is a form of underdevelop-
ment’’ (p. 224).
Conclusion: Unsettling American Sociology
This article has centered on the historical experience of one group of Native Amer-
icans as entrée into exploring the social forces of settler colonialism that perpetually
relegate this continent’s original inhabitants to the margins. By focusing on colonial
history from the perspective of the dispossessed, I believe that my analysis has
opened up alternative ways of thinking about the rise of America’s racialized,
gendered, and classed social system from the subaltern standpoint. After all, the
United States, as a settler-colonial society, was built upon—and is maintained
through—the perpetual erasure of indigenous sovereignties through dispossession
(Byrd 2011). As the Geonpul scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2015) argues:
[T]he question of how anyone came to be white or black in the United States is
inextricably tied to the dispossession of the original owners and the assumption of
white possession. The various assumptions of sovereignty, beginning with British
‘‘settlers,’’ the formation of individual states, and subsequently the United States, all
came into existence through the blood-stained taking of Native American land. The
United States as a white nation-state cannot exist without land and clearly defined
borders; it is legally defined and asserted territorial sovereignty that provides the
context for national identifications of whiteness. In this way I argue that Native Amer-
ican dispossession indelibly marks configurations of white national identity. (p. 51)
Increasingly, scholars are pointing our attention to the settler-colonial present, as it
continues to shape American social configurations of power and privilege, includ-
ing but not limited to racial and gender formations (Glenn 2014; Veracini 2015;
Wolfe 2016). Emphasizing the United States as a settler society forces us to rethink
the white–black binary in which sociological scholarship on race, for example,
typically operates.
62 Humanity & Society 42(1)
When critical sociologists of race like Joe Feagin (2001) assert that ‘‘Native
Americans have not played as central a role in the internal socioracial reality of the
colonies or the United States as have African Americans’’ (p. 207), they uninten-
tionally contribute to the collective misremembering of the indigenous presence
throughout the history of this country. What these scholars fail to recognize is that
from the vantage point of white settlers, the American Indian was always meant to
disappear, whether through the genocidal wars against them or their forced assim-
ilation into settler society. African Americans, on the other hand, originally property,
were racialized such that their blackness remained in perpetuum, congealing their
place as an exploitable labor force. By emphasizing the racialization of blacks as
more central to the constitution of socioracial reality in the United States, we become
complicit in indigenous erasure, while simultaneously limiting our understanding of
racial domination and the possibilities of overcoming it. We must recognize the
different, but interrelated, experiences of racialized others as united by the logics
of white supremacy and possession. To overcome, we must form antiracist solida-
rities based upon the wide range of historical relationships that colonialism itself has
created (Wolfe 2016).
Sociology, therefore, must reconsider the place of indigenous experiences in
shaping the racialized, gendered, and capitalist social system that we live in today,
and the ongoing dispossession of indigenous territory should be our analytic starting
place. If not, we as sociologists will continue to be complicit in the historical aphasia
of indigenous peoples’ dispossession, further aiding in the settler-colonial project of
eliminating the native. It is my hope that this article moves the discipline in the right
direction.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
Notes
1. The Narragansett tribe received federal recognition on April 11, 1983, after submitting a
15-volume petition to the Department of Indian Affairs in 1979.
2. To read more about this history from the indigenous perspective, see Dunbar-Ortiz’s
(2014) An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.
3. Geisler (2013) analysis begins much later in the historical process of settler-colonial
invasion.
4. In the process of conducting historical research, I also interviewed a present-day leader,
educator, and preserver of Narragansett history to understand the indigenous point of
view on colonization.
Murphy 63
5. Sadly, this is true of the sociological literature at large, which has not given due attention
to questions pertaining to Native American colonization and dispossession. In a recent
debate in the journal Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Fenelon (2015) rightly critiques
sociologists’ continual erasure of indigenous peoples’ experiences in discussing race and
racialization.
6. This concept would later be adapted by many different social scientists, including the
Marxist geographer, David Harvey, who later refers to it as an accumulation by dispos-
session (see Harvey 2003). Also, see De Angelis (2004), Di Muzio (2007), and Federici
(2004), for other scholars engaging with the concept.
7. Importantly, Coulthard (2014) argues that in addition to stripping the concept of primitive
accumulation of its rigidly temporal and normative undertones, we must also recognize
that though primitive accumulation is violent, it can operate beyond the use of physical
force. He argues:
Seen from this angle, settler colonialism should not be seen as deriving its reproductive force
solely from its strictly repressive or violent features, but rather from its ability to produce
forms of life that makes settler-colonialism’s constitutive hierarchies seem natural. (p. 152)
8. Throughout this article, I have chosen to leave quotations in their original orthography,
despite the significant changes in spelling and grammar that have occurred since the time
that they were originally written.
9. Historical quotations are presented in their original historical parlance and orthography.
10. This is an important detail considering that later in Narragansett history disputes would
emerge around decisions that certain sachem’s made about land. Colonization would
come to change the entire political culture of the Narragansett.
11. Also known as Metacom’s War. For a more in depth history of the war, see Schultz and
Tougias (2000).
12. Miantonomo, however, was killed in a conflict between the Narragansett and the Mohe-
gan Tribe of Connecticut.
13. This money was split among those who could prove Narragansett heritage, which was not
an easy feat, given the state’s reluctance to admit that the Narragansett were a distinct race.
References
Abbott, Andrew. 1984. ‘‘Event Sequence and Event Duration.’’ Historical Methods 17:192-204.
Abbott, Andrew. 1990. ‘‘Conceptions of Time and Events in Social Science Methods.’’
Historical Methods 23:140-50.
Abbott, Andrew. 2001. Time Matters: On Theory and Method. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press.
Adams, Dwight R., George Carmichael, and George Carpenter. 1880. Narragansett Tribe of
Indians: Report of the Committee of Investigation; A Historical Sketch and Evidence
Taken, Made to the House of Representatives, at Its January Session, A.D. 1880. Provi-
dence, RI: E.L. Freeman & Co, Printers to the State.
Alavi, Hamza. 1972. ‘‘The State in Post-colonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh.’’ New
Left Review 74:59-81.
64 Humanity & Society 42(1)
Arrighi, Giovanni. 2007. Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-first Century.
London, UK: Verso.
Banner, Stuart. 2005. How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Bartlett, John Russell. 1856. Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Planta-
tions, in New England. A.C. Greene and Brothers, State Printers. Retrieved September 15,
2014 (https://openlibrary.org/books/OL23328932M/Records_of_the_Colony_of_Rhode_
Island_and_Providence_Plantations_in_New_England).
Boswell, Terry. 1989. ‘‘Colonial Empires and the Capitalist World-economy: A Time Series
Analysis of Colonization, 1640-1960.’’ American Sociological Review 54:180-96.
Bragdon, Kathleen J. 1999. Native People of Southern New England, 1500-1650. Paperback.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Byrd, Jodi A. 2011. The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism. Minneapo-
lis: University of Minnesota Press.
Chapin, Howard M. 1931. Sachems of the Narragansetts. Providence: Rhode Island Historical
Society.
Coulthard, Glen Sean. 2014. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of
Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Cronon, William. 1983. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New
England. New York: Hill and Wang.
De Angelis, Massimo. 2004. ‘‘Separating the Doing and the Deed: Capital and the Contin-
uous Character of Enclosures.’’ Historical Materialism 12:57-87.
Di Muzio, Tim. 2007. ‘‘The ‘Art’ of Colonisation: Capitalising Sovereign.’’ New Political
Economy 12:517-39.
Dorr, Henry C. (1885). The Narragansetts. Providence: Rhode Island Historical Society.
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. 2014. An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Boston,
MA: Beacon.
Eisenstadt, S. N. 1993. The Political Systems of Empires. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Feagin, Joe R. 2001. Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations. 1.
Paperback ed. New York: Routledge.
Federici, Silvia. 2004. Caliban and the Witch. New York: Autonomedia.
Fenelon, James V. 2015. ‘‘Critique of Glenn on Settler Colonialism and Bonilla-Silva on
Critical Race Analysis from Indigenous Perspectives.’’ Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 2:
237-42. doi:10.1177/2332649215598158.
Geake, Robert A. 2011. A History of the Narragansett Tribe of Rhode Island: Keepers of the
Bay. Charleston, SC: History Press.
Geisler, Charles. 2013. ‘‘Disowned by the Ownership Society: How Native Americans Lost
Their Land: Native American Enclosure.’’ Rural Sociology. Retrieved November 29, 2013
(http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/ruso.12028).
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 2014. ‘‘Settler Colonialism as Structure: A Framework for Comparative
Studies of US Race and Gender Formation.’’ The Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1:54-73.
Go, Julian. 2006. ‘‘Postcolonial Theory.’’ Pp. 452-54 in The Cambridge Dictionary of
Sociology, edited by B. S. Turner. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Murphy 65
Go, Julian. 2007. ‘‘Waves of American Empire, 1787-2003: US Hegemony and Imperialistic
Activity from the Shores of Tripoli to Iraq.’’ International Sociology 22:5-47.
Go, Julian. 2009. ‘‘The ‘New’ Sociology of Empire and Colonialism.’’ Sociology Compass 3:
775-88.
Graeber, David. 2011. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House.
Harvey, David. 2003. The New Imperialism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Lo, Ming-cheng, Christopher P. Bettinger, and Yun Fan. 2006. ‘‘Deploying Weapons of the
Weak in Civil Society: Political Culture in Hong Kong and Taiwan.’’ Social Justice 33:
77-104.
Marx, Karl. 1977. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Moscow, Russia:
Progress.
Marx, Karl. 1978. The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd ed. Edited by R. C. Tucker. New York:
Norton.
Merchant, Carolyn. 1989. Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New
England. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. 2015. The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous
Sovereignty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Prasad, Srirupa. 2006. ‘‘Crisis, Identity, and Social Distinction: Cultural Politics of Food,
Taste, and Consumption in Late Colonial Bengal.’’ Journal of Historical Sociology 19:
246-65.
Reed, Isaac. 2011. Interpretation and Social Knowledge: On the Use of Theory in the Human
Sciences. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Rodney, Walter. 1974. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, DC: Howard
University Press.
Rubertone, Patricia E. 2001. Grave Undertakings: An Archaeology of Roger Williams and the
Narragansett Indians. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Schultz, Eric B. and Michael J. Tougias. 2000. King Philip’s War: The History and Legacy of
America’s Forgotten Conflict. Woodstock, VT: Countryman Press.
Sewell, William H. 1990. Three Temporalities: Toward a Sociology of the Event. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan. Retrieved September 15, 2014 (https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/
bitstream/handle/2027.42/51215/448.pdf?sequence¼1).
Sewell, William H. 1996. ‘‘Historical Events as Transformations of Structures: Inventing
Revolution at the Bastille.’’ Theory and Society 25:841-81.
Sewell, William H. 2005. Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Simmons, William Scranton. 1986. Spirit of the New England Tribes: Indian History and
Folklore, 1620-1984. Hanover, Germany: University Press of New England.
Steinman, Erich W. 2015. ‘‘Decolonization Not Inclusion Indigenous Resistance to American
Settler Colonialism.’’ Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 2:219-36. doi:10.1177/
2332649215615889.
Veracini, Lorenzo. 2010. Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. Houndmills, UK:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Veracini, Lorenzo. 2015. The Settler Colonial Present. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
66 Humanity & Society 42(1)
Walton, John. 1992. ‘‘Making the Theoretical Case.’’ Pp. 121-37 in What Is a Case?
Exploring the Foundations of Social Inquiry, edited by C. C. Ragin and H. S. Becker.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Williams, Roger. 1866. A Key to the Language in America. Providence, RI: Narragansett
Club. Retrieved September 15, 2014 (http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/
search.asp?id¼1660).
Wolfe, Patrick. 2006. ‘‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.’’ Journal of
Genocide Research 8:387-409.
Wolfe, Patrick. 2013. ‘‘The Settler Complex: An Introduction.’’ American Indian Culture and
Research 37:1-22.
Wolfe, Patrick. 2016. Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race. Brooklyn, NY:
Verso.
Wordie, J. R. 1983. ‘‘The Chronology of English Enclosure, 1500-1914.’’ The Economic
History Review 36:483.
Murphy 67
<< /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /None /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Gray Gamma 2.2) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Off /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages false /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.1000 /ColorConversionStrategy /LeaveColorUnchanged /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams true /MaxSubsetPct 100 /Optimize true /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveFlatness false /PreserveHalftoneInfo false /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings true /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts true /TransferFunctionInfo /Apply /UCRandBGInfo /Remove /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile () /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages false /ColorImageMinResolution 266 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages true /ColorImageDownsampleType /Average /ColorImageResolution 175 /ColorImageDepth -1 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50286 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterColorImages true /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.40 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.76 /HSamples [2 1 1 2] /VSamples [2 1 1 2] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 266 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Average /GrayImageResolution 175 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50286 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages true /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.40 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.76 /HSamples [2 1 1 2] /VSamples [2 1 1 2] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 900 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Average /MonoImageResolution 175 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50286 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects false /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox false /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier (CGATS TR 001) /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName (http://www.color.org) /PDFXTrapped /Unknown /CreateJDFFile false /Description << /ENU <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> >> /Namespace [ (Adobe) (Common) (1.0) ] /OtherNamespaces [ << /AsReaderSpreads false /CropImagesToFrames true /ErrorControl /WarnAndContinue /FlattenerIgnoreSpreadOverrides false /IncludeGuidesGrids false /IncludeNonPrinting false /IncludeSlug false /Namespace [ (Adobe) (InDesign) (4.0) ] /OmitPlacedBitmaps false /OmitPlacedEPS false /OmitPlacedPDF false /SimulateOverprint /Legacy >> << /AllowImageBreaks true /AllowTableBreaks true /ExpandPage false /HonorBaseURL true /HonorRolloverEffect false /IgnoreHTMLPageBreaks false /IncludeHeaderFooter false /MarginOffset [ 0 0 0 0 ] /MetadataAuthor () /MetadataKeywords () /MetadataSubject () /MetadataTitle () /MetricPageSize [ 0 0 ] /MetricUnit /inch /MobileCompatible 0 /Namespace [ (Adobe) (GoLive) (8.0) ] /OpenZoomToHTMLFontSize false /PageOrientation /Portrait /RemoveBackground false /ShrinkContent true /TreatColorsAs /MainMonitorColors /UseEmbeddedProfiles false /UseHTMLTitleAsMetadata true >> << /AddBleedMarks false /AddColorBars false /AddCropMarks false /AddPageInfo false /AddRegMarks false /BleedOffset [ 9 9 9 9 ] /ConvertColors /ConvertToRGB /DestinationProfileName (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /DestinationProfileSelector /UseName /Downsample16BitImages true /FlattenerPreset << /ClipComplexRegions true /ConvertStrokesToOutlines false /ConvertTextToOutlines false /GradientResolution 300 /LineArtTextResolution 1200 /PresetName ([High Resolution]) /PresetSelector /HighResolution /RasterVectorBalance 1 >> /FormElements true /GenerateStructure false /IncludeBookmarks false /IncludeHyperlinks false /IncludeInteractive false /IncludeLayers false /IncludeProfiles true /MarksOffset 9 /MarksWeight 0.125000 /MultimediaHandling /UseObjectSettings /Namespace [ (Adobe) (CreativeSuite) (2.0) ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfileSelector /DocumentCMYK /PageMarksFile /RomanDefault /PreserveEditing true /UntaggedCMYKHandling /UseDocumentProfile /UntaggedRGBHandling /UseDocumentProfile /UseDocumentBleed false >> ] /SyntheticBoldness 1.000000 >> setdistillerparams << /HWResolution [288 288] /PageSize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice