Narragansett Friendship, Roger Williams, and Religious Freedom in America Artwork

90 Second Narratives

90 Second Narratives is a podcast featuring engaging true stories told by trained historians. Each episode includes a short story interwoven with expert analysis of the story’s historical significance. The concise length and storytelling format of the episodes make history accessible, dynamic, and entertaining. The subjects of the stories are diverse—spanning the globe and ranging from the pre-historic to the modern age. While individual stories stand alone, the episodes in each season are linked thematically and combine to offer comparative perspectives that illuminate connections from across the human experience. Every episode also includes recommendations for further reading. 90 Second Narratives provides a novel way to hear historians share the wonders of the past in their own voices.

All Episodes

90 Second Narratives

Narragansett Friendship, Roger Williams, and Religious Freedom in America

September 27, 2021 • Sky Michael Johnston • Season 9 • Episode 2

“Historians point to the year 1648 as a watershed moment in the development of religious tolerance in Europe. In that year, the Peace of Westphalia brought an end to the Thirty Year’s War—one of Europe’s grimmest chapters of religiously-inflected violence…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Sky Michael Johnston.

For further reading:
Michael Warren Murphy, “‘No Beggars amongst Them’: Primitive Accumulation, Settler Colonialism, and the Dispossession of Narragansett Indian Land,” Humanity & Society 42 (2018).

John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty, New York: Penguin Books, 2012.

90 Second Narratives
Season 9: “Friendship”
Episode 2: “Narragansett Friendship, Roger Williams, and Religious Freedom in America”

Sky Michael Johnston:

This is 90 Second Narratives, the podcast that brings you “little stories with BIG historical significance.” Thank you for joining me today. I’m the host and today’s storyteller, Sky Michael Johnston. We are currently in Season 9 with the theme of friendship. My story today is, “Narragansett Friendship, Roger Williams, and Religious Freedom in America.”

* * *

Historians point to the year 1648 as a watershed moment in the development of religious tolerance in Europe. In that year, the Peace of Westphalia brought an end to the Thirty Year’s War—one of Europe’s grimmest chapters of religiously-inflected violence. The agreement granted Europeans unprecedented levels of religious freedom.

At the same time that Europe was on its circuitous, and bloody, path towards religious freedom in first half of the seventeenth century, across the Atlantic, the road to religious tolerance was similarly fraught with detours. British colonialists in North America tried to preserve religiously exclusive communities, even by the means of persecuting dissenters. Roger Williams was a Puritan minister from England who found himself on the wrong end of persecutorial zeal in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635. When tensions formed between Williams and his fellow Puritans and when he spoke out against the punishment of religious dissent and against the confiscation of Native American land, Williams was banished from the colony himself.

At this time, Williams was saved by the friendship that had been extended to him by the local Narragansett population, the aboriginal people of the region. Among the Narragansett, Williams experienced tolerance and freedom that was not offered in Massachusetts. And with Narragansett support, Williams founded Providence and then Rhode Island as places of religious freedom in the American colonies which soon attracted persecuted individuals and communities from many different locations.

In a tragic irony, Narragansett Indians were only to enjoy the freedom they helped establish for a short while. Even during Roger Williams’ own lifetime, steady incursion by settlers precipitated King Philip’s War and the Great Swamp Massacre which killed many Narragansett. Survivors were sold into slavery or fled to places as far away as New York and Wisconsin.

When the United States was founded roughly a century later, the principle of religious freedom was enshrined in its founding documents. But that end was not all a guaranteed outcome of colonial practices and governance. Narragansett friendship created the conditions for a successful colonial experiment with religious tolerance even before the Peace of Westphalia was reached in Europe. The spark of religious freedom secured in Rhode Island went on to become a defining value of the United States. The Narragansett people played a vital role in that process.

* * *

If you are interested in learning more about this chapter in North American history, see Michael Warren Murphy’s 2018 article, “‘No Beggars amongst Them’: Primitive Accumulation, Settler Colonialism, and the Dispossession of Narragansett Indian Land,” published in the journal, Humanity & Society. For a closer look at Roger Williams, see John M. Barry’s book, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty. It was published in 2012 and is available from Penguin.

Thank you for listening. Please come back next Monday for another story about friendship.