Seekonk

The Seekonk River flows toward the head of Narragansett Bay, where the Narragansett and neighbouring peoples lived before English settlement. In 1636 Roger Williams, banished from Massachusetts for his religious views, crossed the river and founded Providence on land obtained from the Narragansett sachems Canonicus and Miantonomi. He named the settlement for the providence he believed had brought him to safety and established a community with freedom of worship.

The relationship between the settlers and their Indigenous neighbours was tested during King Philip's War. After colonial forces attacked the Narragansett in 1675, fighting spread across southern New England. In March 1676 Narragansett warriors burned Providence, including Williams's home. The town was rebuilt, and its merchants later took part in the Atlantic trade. By the eighteenth century Providence businesses were connected to the trafficking of enslaved Africans, as well as to the production of rum and other goods for the trade.