Naiganset

The Naiganset, or Narragansetts, were an Algonquian people who held the country west of Narragansett Bay. Their name is usually explained as people of the small point. Having escaped the epidemics that emptied neighboring coasts after 1616, they were the strongest tribe of southern New England when the Pilgrim settlers arrived.

In 1636 the sachems Canonicus and Miantonomi sold land to Roger Williams, who founded Providence Plantations. Miantonomi was captured and killed by the Mohegans in 1643.

In King Philip's War their neutrality ended with the Great Swamp Fight of December 1675, when colonial troops burned their fortified town and killed hundreds. After the spring offensive of 1676 failed, the survivors were sold into slavery or merged with the Eastern Niantics. A remnant kept its identity under the Ninigret sachems through the eighteenth century.