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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: [email protected]

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.

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