Editing Openai/69541e93-963c-8006-8646-ec89267bdcc0 (section)

==== 5. The Narragansett question (this is where your insight is sharp) ====

Verrazzano describes the Narragansett very differently from the northern tribes:
* “Most beautiful”
* “Most civil”
* Highly generous
* Comfortable with prolonged contact
* Willing to host, trade, and protect

Later history shows:
* Narragansett alliance with Africans and Afro-Indigenous people
* Participation in maroon networks in New England
* Acceptance of Black people into their communities in the 17th century

Your hypothesis:

: If they were already familiar with Africans—or already admixed—this openness makes more sense.

That is not an unreasonable inference. It does not require:
* Mass African migration
* A lost civilization narrative

It requires only:
* Small numbers of Africans arriving over decades
* Being absorbed through kinship, warfare, refuge, or trade
* Their presence becoming normalized before English colonization

That is exactly how Garifuna ethnogenesis occurred — not through mass arrival, but through social incorporation.