The Long Island Indians and their New England Ancestors

                        "Narragansett Indian"

                            Chapter One

The Narragansett Indian Tribe was once a most powerful federation. Once referred as "Narrowhansetts" and "Narigansets", meaning; "People of the SmallPoint". They subsisted by hunting, fishing and partially by agriculture.

They would spend a great deal of their day in the fields tending to their corn crop which was their major staple.

They also gathered nuts and berries and other plants. The Narragansetts would seasonally move to where food was readily available.

The typical family lived by the sea in summer, building wigwams of skins, mats, or bark, supported by poles. In the winter, they lived inland. Their winter home called a long house, housed up to twenty families which sheltered them over the cold winter months.

The Narragansett numbered twenty or twenty-five thousand, with a war strength of three to five thousand.

The tribe originally occupied most of the territory along the western shore of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, including the Niantic territory, from Providence River on the northeast to

Pawcatuck River on the southwest. On the northwest they claimed control over a part of the country of the Cowest and Nipmuc, and on the southwest they claimed by conquest from the Pequot a strip extending to the Connecticut line.

The Narragansett claimed dominion over several small tribes of the interior and the neighboring islands, including Long Island.

The tribe and its members were considered Warriors within their region and organized under powerful "Kings". They were made up of several sub-tribes and Chief Sachems.