Local activist demands answers

Narragansett Times

By BRETT WARNKE

NARRAGANSETT--Richard Vangermeersch has compiled and is distributing a book of thirty five historical and literary readings on Canonchet, the Narragansett Tribe, and Canonchet Farm. He is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting, and current treasurer of the local advocacy group Friends of Canonchet Farm. Recently, he helped initiate the URI College of Business 75th anniversary and initiated the RICPA's 100th anniversary gathering. This year he has gone through the trouble of compiling readings about the Narragansett Indians from the past 300 years.

What does he hope to accomplish?

Specifically, he wants a memorial to the Narragansetts at Canonchet Farm, a review of the "innocence of Rhode Islanders during King Philip's War," a dialogue between historically interested groups, and to determine whether or not a part of Canonchet Farm was once considered a holy site.

Vangermeersch has intensified his advocacy, publishing a book of readings, speaking at the Peace Dale Library, and attended last month’s Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council meeting to support state archaeologist Paul Robinson’s desire to further excavate a pristine Native American village discovered on private property.

"The history of the Narragansetts needs a strong collaborative effort between tribe historians and non-tribe historians. I hope my new collection spurred such interests," he wrote in the introduction to his self-published collection Canonchet, The Narragansetts, and Canonchet
Farm: A Collection of Annotated Readings. The collection includes older readings by Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper and contemporary writers like Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Mayflower.
King Philip's War (1675-6) is the bloody beginning of Vangermeersch's research. "I wonder how many people in Rhode Island are aware of the importance of King Philip's War, Canonchet, and the Narragansetts in U.S. history." Vangermeersch asked.
The conflict ended decades of collaboration between settlers and Indians nearly one hundred years before Thomas Paine coined the term “The United States.” In the 1670s after the 20,000 natives (4,000 of which were Narragansetts) were surrounded on all sides by colonial settlements, the settlers formed the "United Colonies." In 1675, led by the militantly anti-Indian Josiah Winslow of the Plymouth colony, the settler army fell on the besieged Narragansetts in their winter forest encampment near West Kingston. The fort itself was a "palisaded village" or a "stockade" in the words of Benjamin Church, who wrote notes after he was wounded in the
fight.

According to John Brown, the Narragansett Tribe’s current Education Director, the Great Swamp Massacre left three hundred warriors dead, three hundred and fifty captured, and between 300 and 1,000 women and children dead. 68 English were killed or died of their wounds and 150 recovered.

“Our tribe is still living the legacy of that cold, bleak December night.”

Vangermeersch's compilation is comprised of historical and literary writings about topics that are prickly, a history that was brutal, and ethnic relationships that are unhealed. He found a 1925 obituary for Ezbon S. Taylor from the Narragansett Times. Taylor died in 1925 and was considered an expert on the Narragansett Tribe but his book about the Narragansetts was never published and has never been found.

Taylor writes in a 1921 article, "In going up Beach Street you cross the foot bridge that goes into the grounds of Canonchet [Farm]...you will find twin rocks standing erect on sort of table rock. They are called 'Squaw Rocks.' They mark the spot of a great Indian massacre which must have taken place before or at the time of the Great Swamp Fight about 1675. I sincerely trust that they be preserved and a fitting tablet be placed thereon to perpetuate the memory of the once famous and powerful tribe of Indians--the Narragansetts and Niantics--which were treated as one and the same nation at one time holding jurisdiction over most of the state of Rhode Island, numbering about 4,000 men, the friends and allies of our fathers."
Vangermeersch has taken up the struggle where Taylor left off. At this week's Town Council meeting he suggested that John Miller be approved as the honorary Town Historian. And recently, Vangermeersch won a small victory at Canonchet Farm. A clearing was cut through the tangle of thorny bushes surrounding a cluster of glacial erratics, what Vangermeersch calls, and “strange rocks."

For years, the rocks have been covered with leaves, and hidden by underbrush and second growth but now that they are cleared Vangermeersch has questions: "Is this a holy site? The site of a historically documented massacre? How did these rocks get here? They are laid out like an amphitheater and it seems as if they have been strategically placed. But, honestly, we don't know yet."
The Narragansett Tribe has had no shortage of negative press in recent years. Recent hopes for the right to build affordable housing on portion of Charlestown property collapsed this month despite an intense lobbying effort by the tribe’s Chief Sachem, Matthew Thomas. In 2006, too, the tribe made headlines regarding a ballot question for a casino in Charlestown. The tribe backed the proposal but it was rejected by voters. And in 2003, state police raided a tax free smoke shop opened up by the Narragansett Tribe.

Vangermeersch says he has felt the air drained from a room when he raises issues about Rhode Island's history and the Narragansett Indian tribe.

"I'm not talking about smoke shops and casinos, I'm talking about burial grounds and holy sites...but sometimes people hear what they want to hear." Vangermeersch sees the recent money issues as having a toxic influence on relations between the tribe and local townspeople. "Trying to talk about this history is so difficult. There has been three hundred and thirty five years of continual distrust. What people who live in Rhode Island don't know is that things are not better for the tribe now than they were," Vangermeersch said.

Evidence of the history is all around South County, pieces of it appear like clues in an unsolved crime. There are the rocks in Canonchet and in South Kingstown on Tower Hill. There is Bull's Garrison marker where Jireh Bull's home was burned by Native Americans in Dec. 1675. There is also a statue, standing between Narragansett Beach and the Towers. The
eight foot carving, believed to be the Narragansett leader Canonicus, stands alone in Memorial Square. Looking down Vangermeersch shook his head in disappointment, "There should be a label here. How are people supposed to put this history together?"

Ideally, Vangermeersch would like to gather representatives from the Tomaquog Museum in Exeter, Narragansett's town officials, representatives from the Narragansett Tribe, the Friends of Canonchet Farm, state archaeologist Paul Robinson, a representative from the Museum of Primitive Art and Culture, and faculty from URI, Brown, and Rhode Island College for a dialogue. The topics would be various, but interpreting Rhode Island's past for the public would be Vangermeersch's main goal.
"There are people who know more than I know but they're not participating," he said. He laughed with a bit of despair and said, "We're getting there. This is what slow progress looks like." Later, he admitted, "I just can't do this on my own and it is taking more time than I thought to get people together on this issue."