"Ceased to be red men... darkened by the plentiful infusion of negro blood" (Rhode Island Supreme Court, 1898)

SUMMARY"Ceased to be red men... darkened by the plentiful infusion of negro blood" (Rhode Island Supreme Court, 1898) [Connections: Northeast & Mid-Atlantic, Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDIn an advisory opinion to the state Senate, the justices wrote that "for at least thirty years before the passage of cap. 800, it was apparent that the Narragansett tribe had become extinct" "in all but name." They also wrote: "Its members had even ceased to be red men, for their complexions had been darkened by the plentiful infusion of negro blood" "or bleached by the admixture of blood from Caucasian veins." The opinion records the claim that the people were "not Narragansetts at all; but, at best, only a decayed remnant of the Niantics." It also quotes the earlier committee: "Their extinction as a tribe has been accomplished as effectually by nature." Hostile witness: the state court was defending the state's own 1880 land purchase

PATTERNA court used African ancestry as legal proof that a nation no longer existed

LENS (WW9)Here a court ruling says it outright: "darkened" by intermarriage, therefore "extinct." This is the renaming written into law

OPENWho asked for the opinion, and what land question drove it. Read the rest of the opinion (characters 100,000 onward were not read)

SOURCEOpinion of the Justices, The Narragansett Indians, 20 R.I. 715, 40 A. 347 (R.I. 1898). Pin cites: 20 R.I. at 718–19, 753–54, 759.