King Phillip (BELOW) 
Rhode Island's history is full of important people and interesting stories.
The Indians that live here come from five tribes of the Alogonquin Indian family. The Narragansett is the most numerous tribe, along with the Niantic, Nipmuck, Pequot, and Wampanog.
Miguel de Cortereal, the Portuguese navigator, was the first to sail Rhode Island's coast in 1511. Verrazano explored Narragansett Bay for France 13 years later. This may have been when Rhode Island received it's name, as Verrazano wrote that it resembled the island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean Sea. Another story says that Adrian Block, a Dutch navigator, called is Roodt Eylandt (meaning "red island") because of the red clay on the shore.
Rhode Island's colonists would not be here had it not been for the large Puritan group that left England in the early 1600s. They founded Massachusettes, where they followed the King's orders but changed church rules without punishment. Roger Williams, a Puritan minister, left England with his family in 1630. When he got to Boston-the main city in Massachusettes-he noticed that the colonists were demanding that everyone follow their Puritan beliefs. When Williams expressed his disagreement with this lack of freedom, he was threatened with deportation and fled to Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island. He founded the city of Providence on the land he was given by Indians, and allowed people of all religions, or those of no religion. The Puritans tried to take over Rhode Island, but Williams convinced Charles I to give him a charter to become a colony in 1644. Even the hostile Puritans wouldn't threaten another colony that was protected by the king of England.
Rhode Islanders had always had good relations with the Indians. For some reason, in 1675-76, the King Phillip's War started when the relationship between colonists & Indians declined. With the help of disease, the Indians were defeated, and now are somewhat secluded in their own section of the land.
Now, many people are coming to Rhode Island for religious freedom, to escape the Church of England. You can join them in this beautiful British colony.
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