God, War, and Providence: The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England
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Overview
The tragic and fascinating history of the first epic struggle between white settlers and Native Americans in the early seventeenth century.
A devout Puritan minister in seventeenth-century New England, Roger Williams was also a social critic, diplomat, theologian, and politician who fervently believed in tolerance. Yet his orthodox brethren were convinced tolerance fostered anarchy and courted God’s wrath. Banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, Williams purchased land from the Narragansetts and laid the foundations for the colony of Rhode Island as a place where Native American and English cultures could flourish side by side, in peace.
As the seventeenth century wore on, a steadily deepening antagonism developed between an expansionist, aggressive Puritan culture and an increasingly vulnerable, politically divided Native American population. Indigenous tribes that had been at the center of the New England communities found themselves shunted off to the margins of the region. By the 1660s, all the major indigenous peoples in southern New England had come to accept English authority, either tacitly or explicitly. All, except one: the Narragansetts.
In God, War, and Providence, James A. Warren explores the remarkable and little-known story of the alliance between Roger Williams’s Rhode Island and the Narragansetts, and how they joined forces to retain their autonomy and their distinctive ways of life against Puritan encroachment. Deeply researched, “Warren’s well-written monograph contains a great deal of insight into the tactics of war on the frontier” (Library Journal) and serves as a telling precedent for white-Native American encounters along the North American frontier for the next 250 years.
“A riveting historical validation of emancipatory impulses frustrated in their own time.” —Booklist (starred review)
A devout Puritan minister in seventeenth-century New England, Roger Williams was also a social critic, diplomat, theologian, and politician who fervently believed in tolerance. Yet his orthodox brethren were convinced tolerance fostered anarchy and courted God’s wrath. Banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, Williams purchased land from the Narragansetts and laid the foundations for the colony of Rhode Island as a place where Native American and English cultures could flourish side by side, in peace.
As the seventeenth century wore on, a steadily deepening antagonism developed between an expansionist, aggressive Puritan culture and an increasingly vulnerable, politically divided Native American population. Indigenous tribes that had been at the center of the New England communities found themselves shunted off to the margins of the region. By the 1660s, all the major indigenous peoples in southern New England had come to accept English authority, either tacitly or explicitly. All, except one: the Narragansetts.
In God, War, and Providence, James A. Warren explores the remarkable and little-known story of the alliance between Roger Williams’s Rhode Island and the Narragansetts, and how they joined forces to retain their autonomy and their distinctive ways of life against Puritan encroachment. Deeply researched, “Warren’s well-written monograph contains a great deal of insight into the tactics of war on the frontier” (Library Journal) and serves as a telling precedent for white-Native American encounters along the North American frontier for the next 250 years.
“A riveting historical validation of emancipatory impulses frustrated in their own time.” —Booklist (starred review)
- Title: God, War, and Providence: The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England
- Author: James A. Warren
- Publisher: Scribner
- Print Publication Date: 2024
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 333
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781501180439, 9781501180422, 1501180428, 1501180436
- Resource ID: LLS:9781501180439
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-21T17:20:33Z
James A. Warren is a historian and foreign policy analyst. A regular contributor to The Daily Beast, he is the author of God, War, and Providence: The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England; American Spartans: The US Marines: A Combat History from Iwo Jima to Iraq; and The Lions of Iwo Jima: The Story of Combat Team 28 and the Bloodiest Battle in Marine Corps History (with Major General Fred Haynes, USMC-RET), among other books. For many years, Warren was an acquisitions editor at Columbia University Press, and more recently a visiting scholar in American Studies at Brown University. He lives in Saunderstown, Rhode Island.