A collaborative and interdisciplinary effort to tell the story of Harvard’s first Indigenous student describes how the memory of this history has been passed down in Narragansett oral tradition; how academic scholarship has overlooked and now recovered this information in the documentary record; and how recentering this story may cast fresh light on political and diplomatic tensions in the period leading up to King Philip’s War. Click here for a 51-minute presentation posted on March 30, 2026 by the American Philosophical Society.

New information from the documentary record confirms Narragansett oral tradition concerning the beginnings of English colonial missionary-educational work in the seventeenth century.

A previously untranscribed note by Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop describes four Narragansett and Niantic children at Harvard in 1646, at least one of whom received some formal education, well before the official founding of the Harvard Indian College in 1656, and preceding the Massachusett, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag students academic scholarship previously known to have studied at Harvard.

The presentation is moderated by Ruth Rowler and includes Wanda Hopkins, a citizen of the Narragansett Indian Tribal Nation; Alan Niles, a Lecturer on English at Harvard University; and Mack Scott, a historian, educator, and member of the Narragansett Indian Tribe.