American History – June 2019

66 AMERICAN HISTORY

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Narragansett Indians and to his (generally jus-

tified) reservations about those who most con-

sistently and powerfully opposed Williams’s

immigrant cohort and the Narragansetts.

Warren shows how ethnic conflict shaped

17th century New England, at times coming to

the fore and impelling many of the period’s

more severe injustices and atrocities. He clari-

fies that ethnic conflict ultimately was a sec-

ondary factor in early European encounters

with Native Americans that saw colonists and

Native Americans angle to enlist “foreign” allies

against rivals of their own races.

Unlike most commentators, Warren observes

that Native Americans were often happy to

welcome Europeans when tactically useful.

Less unusual but of equal importance is the

fact that colonists and Native Americans often

were willing to treat internecine enemies as

ruthlessly as they did outsiders, with the

dreadful exception of certain colonists’ taste

picking fights

with puritans

God, War and

Providence: The

Epic Struggle of

Roger Williams and

the Narragansett

Indians against the

Puritans of New

England

By James A. Warren

Scribner, 2018; $30

“In America, they have a feast to celebrate

the arrival of the Pilgrims,” English essayist

G.K. Chesterton wrote of Thanksgiving. “We

should have a feast to celebrate their depar-

ture.” Had the Puritans quit Plymouth and

sailed home, the Narragansett might well

have inaugurated an annual celebration,

motivation for which Warren, author of Amer-

ican Spartans, amply chronicles.

God, War and Providence is iconoclastic

without being simplistic. Warren easily could

have delivered a 17th century take on Dances

with Wolves. Instead he depicts a complex of

shifting alliances and rivalries enmeshing no

less than a dozen European colonies and

native tribes, each acting at least as a semi-in-

dependent power and interacting with one

another in every direction.

Only occasionally does Warren’s commend-

able grasp of nuance yield to his sympathy for

Rhode Island’s early colonizers and for the

Welcome, Stranger

Roger Williams meets

Narragansetts as he

alights ashore after

being booted from

Massachusetts.