R.I. prof: Roger Williams had dark side

PROVIDENCE, R.I., Oct. 20 (UPI) -- A Rhode Island College professor says he wants to set the historical record straight on the state's hero, Roger Williams.

Julianne Jennings, 48, a member of the Cheroenhaka Nottoway tribe in Virginia, has urged the Rhode Island Department of Transportation to install a plaque in downtown Providence, R.I., to provide what she says is a more accurate, darker picture of Williams and American Indian life during the mid-17th century, The Providence Journal reported Tuesday.

"We have to stop the lying," said Jennings, an adjunct professor of anthropology at Rhode Island College and co-author of "A Cultural History of the Native Peoples of Southern New England: Voices from Past and Present."

Jennings said the iconic Williams was more than merely an American statesman, trader and lover of religious freedom. Relying on 17th-century letters and town hall records she concluded Williams was a slave trader and a coldblooded killer of Indians during the Pequot War.

She said Williams sent Indian prisoners to the Caribbean, Portugal, Spain and Africa, where they were sold as slaves.

Rhode Island author and historian J. Stanley Lemons told the newspaper it was "just plain wrong" to call Williams an Indian hater.