Charlestown's Native People — from Ninigret to the Street

A register of the Narragansett people of Charlestown, Rhode Island as the town's own records name them — the sachems' deeds of 1700–1771, the census of 1774, the military census of 1777, the Indian Council books of 1839–1865, the roll of 1880–84, the sale of the reservation in 1882–84 — and the land, followed deed by deed from Ninigret's hand to a street address today. Published for Indigenous Peoples' Day, 12 October 2026, by Like Yesterday from the Perry Machine's reading of the records.

1. The land, in three movements

The sachems' conveyances, 1700–1771 (76 instruments)

Charles, George and Thomas Ninigret, with the Colony's committee of trustees after 1745; behind every one stands the reserved tract of 1709, about 64 square miles carved out of the ~130,000 acres Ninigret quit-claimed to the Colony on 28 March 1709.

The tribe's own sales, 1772–1881 (87 instruments)

The tribe and its council as grantor under the State's oversight.

The reservation sold, 1882–1895 (45 deeds)

After the Act of 1880 "to abolish the tribal authority and tribal relations of the Narragansett tribe of Indians" the State sold the reservation in lots; many went to the families of the tribe — William H. Perry's three lots of 22 August 1882, Hazard Perry's four of 21–24 November 1882. The index for these years is being completed; this list grows as it lands.

2. The census of 1774

Charlestown counted 217 households, 1241 whites, 517 Indians, 68 blacks. The Indians of the tribe were counted in one line as "Indians, Various"; 36 households carried Indians under a named head.

Source: Bartlett, Census of the Inhabitants of the Colony of Rhode Island, 1774 (census_1774).

3. Named as Indian, Black or Mulatto in Charlestown, 1777–1860

The 1777 military census (men 16–60) named every Indian; the federal censuses from 1790 gave "all other free persons" a column and no race. These are the names the enumerators wrote.

1774 104 names

1777 80 names

1790 18 names

1800 19 names

1810 5 names

1820 6 names

1830 17 names

1840 13 names

1850 36 names

1860 10 names

Source: Mildred Chamberlain, The Rhode Island 1777 Military Census; Bartlett 1774; Ancestry-indexed federal censuses 1790–1860 (minority_census_v1).

4. The Indian Council books, 1839–1865

The town kept the Narragansett Indian Council's records (FamilySearch film 007650036, pp. 444–518). 385 names appear; each line below is the concordance's one-sentence reading of a page where the name stands, the way Cruden reports a passage.

5. The roll of 1880–1884

The final roll of the tribe drawn by the State's commissioners — 301 persons, by family.

Source: Final List of the Members of the Narragansett Tribe Entitled to a Share of the Purchase Money, 1881 (1880 roll of 302 extended to 324); transcription: Dennis N. Partridge, Access Genealogy, 2015, https://accessgenealogy.com/native/1881-narragansett-tribal-list.htm

6. The land today

The State's deeds of 1882 to William H. Perry (lot 3, lot 7) and Hazard Perry (lot 23, lot 24) describe the land by the lot numbers of the State's plat of the Indian lands, not by a road. Those plat lots have not yet been laid on the town's modern parcel map; that mapping is the next step. What the record does carry forward: the assessor's cards (gis.vgsi.com/CharlestownRI) give every parcel its ownership history by book and page back to the 1950s, and the Deed Walker follows each instrument from the sachems' deeds forward as far as the citations and the index reach - one hop at a time, with the page images beside the text.

native_register_v1_2026-10-09 · built 2026-10-10 18:36:01 · the Perry Machine, Zara. Corrections and additions: [email protected].