A visionary and independent thinker, Roger Williams (c. 1603 – 1683) was warned by the Puritan authorities in Massachusetts Bay Colony to refrain from spreading his “new and dangerous opinions.” Williams’s “opinions” did not sit well with many of his neighbors for several reasons. First, he believed that “Natives are the true owners” of the land in the New World. Williams had made a point to learn Native languages and cultivate strong relationships with the Wampanoag sachem Massasoit and the Narragansett sachem Canonicus, and he accused colonists of making unfair deals with the Wampanoags and Narragansetts in order to acquire their lands. Second, Williams took issue with the Puritans’ insistence on forcing community members to worship. He believed that a person’s faith should not be a matter of the state and that he/she should not be persecuted for it. When Williams refused to back down, the authorities in Massachusetts Bay ordered him to leave the colony.

Banished and alone in the dead of winter, Williams made his way through Plymouth Colony and, in 1636, he eventually settled on land given to him by the Natives he had befriended. Grateful for his good fortune, he named the place “Providence”, believing that God’s providence had led him to this spot. There, joined by a group of followers from Massachusetts Bay, Williams founded a community where all could think, worship, and act in accordance with their own conscience without fear of persecution by the government. This spiritual and intellectual haven to some was considered a hotbed of heresy to others.

Congress authorized the creation of the National Memorial on the site in 1965, and the 4.5-acre park opened to the public in the 1980s.

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At the crest of Smith Hill, once pastureland for a sleepy colonial town, sits a marble giant, the Rhode Island State House. Designed by the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White, responsible for the design of the Boston Public Library (1895) and renovations to the White House (1902), the domed building fitted in white Georgia marble was built (1895-1904) during a period of industrial prosperity for Rhode Island. In fact, thanks to the successes of textile, machine-tool, and jewelry manufacturing, to name only a few, Rhode Island emerged as one of the most prosperous states in the nation at the turn of the twentieth century. The State House stands as a testament to that wealth.

Inside the State House, a Royal Charter Museum showcases the Colonial Charter granted in 1663 by King Charles II of England. The Charter represents the first official sanctioning by a monarch of a colony that guaranteed religious liberty. In addition to the Charter, the Museum also displays materials that tell the fraught story of early relations between Rhode Island’s indigenous people, the Narragansetts, and English colonists. These materials include the original deed to Providence secured by Roger Williams and signed by Narragansett sachems Canonicus and Miantonomo. Thanks to his friendship with the Narragansett leaders, Williams would claim that, unlike other colonial land deals, “It was not price or money that could have purchased Rhode Island. Rhode Island was purchased by love.” Many assume that the statue atop the State House dome depicts Williams. However, the gold-covered bronze figure actually represents Rhode Island's Independent Man, embodying the spirit of freedom of thought and action that Williams espoused.

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Eleanor Dove’s recipe for Raccoon Pot Pie was so beloved, so well-known, that it is now preserved in the Congressional Book of Records, according to her great-granddaughter. Eleanor and her husband Ferris Dove, both members of the Narragansett tribe, opened the Dovecrest Restaurant on this site in 1963 as a steakhouse. They soon began serving more traditional Narragansett foods based on recipes from Eleanor’s father. People came from all over the country to try the Dovecrest’s buffalo steak, rabbit stew, succotash, venison, and especially johnnycakes--the best in the world, as a 1981 New York Times article concluded. After several decades of culinary success, the Dovecrest Restaurant closed and the Tomaquag Museum took over its space. Today, museum visitors learn about Indigenous ways of fishing, hunting, and agricultural practices on the same spot where they used to eat johnnycakes. Many of the foods Rhode Islanders consider unique to the Ocean State’s heritage date from before the arrival of Roger Williams and other European colonists. Indigenous peoples, like the Narragansett, Wampanoag, and Nipmuc, had complex foodways that continue to influence Rhode Island cuisine. Although the Dovecrest Restaurant no longer exists, curious cooks can recreate Eleanor’s Quahog Chowder from the recipe below. Clam chowder can be a contentious topic around these parts. While the so-called New England version is creamy and thick, the Manhattan version is tomato-based. Rhode Island clam chowder, on the other hand, more closely resembles the Dovecrest’s--a clear broth, rich with salt pork, potatoes, and local quahog clams. Since dairy and tomatoes did not exist in New England prior to contact with European settlers, one might say that the Dovecrest Quahog Chowder is indeed the most Rhode Island of them all.

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Native peoples had already lived on the land near Mashapaug Pond for many centuries when Roger Williams arrived in Providence in 1636. The pond’s very name comes from two Algonquin words: ‘massa’ and ‘pug’, meaning ‘large standing water’. In Pre-Contact time the pond provided local Narragansett, with a wealth of resources. Families built weetooash, or temporary dome-shaped homes, on the shores of the pond for summertime usage as they fished in the pond and gathered plants and herbs from its sandy banks. Nearby, gardens of squash, corn, melons, and sunflowers flourished. Along with daily lifeways such as hunting, fishing, gathering the Narragansett enjoyed the pond for community celebrations that included storytelling, dancing and drumming.

Although native families were displaced from around the pond as Providence’s Euroamerican community expanded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, some of them managed to retain their connection to the land. Tall Oak Weeden, who shares both Pequot and Wampanoag ancestry, recalls visiting family members who lived near the pond. In the early twentieth century, his great-grandfather had moved from Connecticut to Providence, settling in the ethnically diverse community of West Elmwood. Beautiful cherry trees and small gardens once filled the neighborhood, and in their free time, his family members enjoyed fishing and ice skating at the pond. The Pond Street Baptist Church served as an important space for the Native American community to come together. To Tall Oak Weeden, “It was like the Indian town reconstituted itself in a sense, from the original Indian town that was there that the settlers felt needed to be moved.”

By the 1960s, new development, such as the Huntington Expressway Industrial Park, again forced Native American families away from the pond. The Pond Street Baptist Church relocated, and the neighborhood of West Elmwood, where African American, Native American, and Euroamerican families had lived side by side, was bulldozed. Contamination of the local environment, through Gorham’s pollution and storm water runoff, also had a direct impact on Native American families’ ability to interact with the pond.

Mashapaug Pond continues to be an important site of memory for the Indigenous community including the Narragansett, Wampanoag and other local tribes of the southern New England region. The Rhode Island Indian Council and the Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum serve as important spaces for community life and cultural preservation keeping these memories alive through programs, exhibits, books and other cultural education opportunities. As such, memories of the community’s connections to Mashapaug Pond are preserved. The name of the pond, and nearby street names such as Niantic, Algonquin, and Narragansett, serve as testimony to the deep connections that Native Americans have to the region.

In September of 1936, the editorial in Narragansett Dawn, a monthly publication by and for the Native American community of Rhode Island, ended with the statement: “Rhode Island Knows Now - THE NARRAGANSETT STILL EXISTS!” Although weetooash no longer dot the shores of pond and the lush gardens are gone from the vacant lots in West Elmwood, the Narragansett presence still exists near Mashapaug Pond as well.

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