Ninigret, Sachem of the Niantics and Narragansetts - by Julie A Fisher & David J Silverman (Paperback)

About the Book

In the first biography of Ninigret, Julie A. Fisher and David J. Silverman assert that he was the most influential Indian leader of his era in southern New England.

Book Synopsis

Ninigret (c. 1600-1676) was a sachem of the Niantic and Narragansett Indians of what is now Rhode Island from the mid-1630s through the mid-1670s. For Ninigret and his contemporaries, Indian Country and New England were multipolar political worlds shaped by ever-shifting intertribal rivalries. In the first biography of Ninigret, Julie A. Fisher and David J. Silverman assert that he was the most influential Indian leader of his era in southern New England. As such, he was a key to the balance of power in both Indian-colonial and intertribal relations.Ninigret was at the center of almost every major development involving southern New England Indians between the Pequot War of 1636-37 and King Philip's War of 1675-76. He led the Narragansetts' campaign to become the region's major power, including a decades-long war against the Mohegans led by Uncas, Ninigret's archrival. To offset growing English power, Ninigret formed long-distance alliances with the powerful Mohawks of the Iroquois League and the Pocumtucks of the Connecticut River Valley. Over the course of Ninigret's life, English officials repeatedly charged him with plotting to organize a coalition of tribes and even the Dutch to roll back English settlement. Ironically, though, he refused to take up arms against the English in King Philip's War. Ninigret died at the end of the war, having guided his people through one of the most tumultuous chapters of the colonial era.

Review Quotes

Ninigret adds layers to a crucial period in regional and early American history, and it invites future conversations about cross-cultural power brokers and the nature of indigenous authority and adaptation in the midst of English settler colonialism.

--Christine DeLucia "The New England Quarterly"

Ninigret, Sachem of the Niantics and Narragansetts sheds powerful new light on a major figure and the tumultuous world he helped to shape. It is a must-read for anyone interested in colonial and/or Native American history.

-- "American Historical Review"

[T]he authors, convinced of the sachem's importance, follow every possible path in the materials and have produced a volume of great insight and historical ingenuity.... These historians succeed in their task, almost more than the limitations in their material should really allow.... This work deserves a wide audience, one interested in native biography, native-imperial interaction, and the tactics, strategies and deployment of political and military power in the seventeenth century.

--Christopher Bilodeau, Dickinson College "History: Journal of the Historical Association"

Fisher (graduate student, Univ. of Delaware) and Silverman (George Washington Univ.)... provide an excellent study of the region's politics and diplomacy from the Pequot War to King Philip's War. They carefully detail Ninigret's role as a skillful leader who forged strategic and often shifting alliances during this period.The authors' meticulous examination of diplomacy and war is accompanied by a wealth of insight into Native American society and culture. This book makes an important contribution to understanding early New England and Native American history, and reveals Ninigret as an active and skillful agent in shaping the history of the period. As such, this book takes its place as essential reading for scholars of 17th-century New England. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

--J.C. Arndt "CHOICE"

This book is a sympathetic political and diplomatic biography of an important sachem who has rarely received adequate historiographical attention. It is an important contribution to our understanding of Indian diplomacy in southern New England between the Pequot War and King Philip's War. Students of colonial New England will find the nuanced understandings of Native community and kinship networks illuminating, and scholars of early America at all levels will discover in its pages a model for a Native-centered interpretation of on-the-ground colonial diplomacy.

--Linford D. Fisher "William and Mary Quarterly"

This is a good book about an extremely difficult and important time in the history of this country. Buy it and read it. I am very grateful to the authors for having written it.

-- "Northeast Anthropology"

This volume's unique contribution is a reinterpretation that puts Indians at the center of how we look at the politics and conflicts of New England in the seventeenth century. It not only shows diverse interests among Indians, but as a corollary, highlights diversity among the English as well. The evidence is substantial and convincing, and the authors have thankfully added Ninigret to the woefully short list of Indians from the colonial era whom we can say that we know in some detail Fisher and Silverman's biography is written as crisply and clearly as the complicated and ambiguous story will allow. The first chapter especially would make an excellent introduction to eastern Native societies and early colonial contact for undergraduates.

--Jonathan DeCoster "Itinerario"

About the Author

Julie A. Fisher received her PhD in history from the University of Delaware and is currently consulting with the National Park Service's Roger Williams National Memorial site. David J. Silverman is Professor of History at George Washington University and the author of Red Brethren: The Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians and the Problem of Race in Early America, also from Cornell, and Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha's Vineyard, 1600-1871.