GLC@lunch with Jason Mancini and Silvermoon LaRose: “The Narraganset Chief, or the Adventures of a Wanderer”: Recovering an Indigenous Autobiography

Jason Mancini (Executive Director, CT Humanities) and Silvermoon Mars LaRose (Narragansett Indian Tribe, Tomaquag Museum, Exeter, Rhode Island)

This talk will introduce Jason Mancini and Silvermoon Mars LaRose’s book project, “The Narraganset Chief, or the Adventures of a Wanderer,” a recently recovered autobiography written by a Native American mariner and published anonymously. “The Narraganset Chief” should be considered as part of the American abolitionist literary genre. Registered as a publication on June 15, 1832, “The Narraganset Chief” emerged—seemingly without much fanfare—between the establishment of the New England Anti-Slavery Society (January 1, 1832) and the New York Anti-Slavery Society (January 1, 1833). While it chronicles the “wandering” life of the author, the book relates his earliest experience of racism and discrimination, and later, his participation on a slave ship in which living enslaved people were thrown overboard to avoid capture by an anti-slaving patrol. The speakers will discuss the original narrative, woven together with archival research and historical context to illuminate the lives and experiences of three generations of one family from 1760 to 1832.