Narragansett people
The plantations were established along the Providence River with the main settlement at Providence in 1636 by Roger Williams, Dr. John Clarke and a small band of followers who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony to seek freedom of worship, and two paramount chiefs ("sachems") of the Narragansett people, named Canonicus and Miantonomi, granted them a sizable tract of land. The settlers adopted a covenant which stressed the separation of religious and civil affairs. Williams purchased Pawtuxet on the north side of the Pawtuxet River from the Narragansett sachems in 1638. He sold the land that same year to William Arnold and William Harris for the price of a cow.