Indigenous Peoples of Rhode Island

United States Rhode Island  American Indian Research  Indians of Rhode Island

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Additional information regarding the Indians of Rhode Island needs to be added here.

Tribes and Bands of Rhode Island
The following list of American Indians who have lived in Rhode Island has been compiled from Hodge's Handbook of American Indians... and from Swanton's The Indian Tribes of North America. Some may simply be variant spellings for the same tribe.


 * Narragansett
 * Niantic Eastern
 * Nipmuc
 * Pequot
 * Wampanoag

American Indian Place Names In Rhode Island: Past &amp; Present by Frank Waabu O'Brien, Ph. D.

Reservation
From the mid-1800s, the official policy of the United States government toward the American Indian was to confine each tribe to a specific parcel of land called a reservation. Agencies were established on or near each reservation. A government representative, usually called an agent (or superintendent) was assigned to each agency. Their duties included maintaining the peace, making payments to the Native Americans based on the stipulations of the treaties with each tribe, and providing a means of communication between the native population and the federal government.

Sometimes, a single agency had jurisdiction over more than one reservation. And sometimes, if the tribal population and land area required it, an agency may have included sub-agencies.

The boundaries of reservations, over time, have changed. Usually, that means the reservations have been reduced in size. Sometimes, especially during the later policy of "termination," the official status of reservations was ended altogether.

The following list of reservations has been compiled from the National Atlas of the United States of America, the Omni Gazetteer of the United States of America , and other sources. Those reservations named in bold are current federally-recognized reservations, with their associated agency and tribe(s). Others have historically been associated with the state or are not currently recognized by the federal government.


 * Narraganset: