For what seems like the hundredth time, Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas takes a seat opposite a group of lawmakers in room 313 in the State House.
The trappings are regal: leather chairs bite into a plush burgundy carpet. Heavy gold drapes frame two windows. A dark oil portrait of an old governor -- William W. Hoppin, 1854-1857 -- stares out from a gilt-edged frame.
A college dropout and former janitor, Thomas is flanked by the flashy Harrah's executive Jan Jones, a Stanford graduate and a former mayor of Las Vegas, and the rumpled Gary Loveman, a former Harvard professor who now runs Harrah's, a Fortune 500 company and the nation's third-largest casino operator.
Thomas, as usual, is immaculately dressed. His dark blue suit fits snugly over his broad shoulders. His white shirt front is bisected by a shiny blue tie.
They are here to pitch a casino in West Warwick. By their projections, unlucky gamblers will generate $114 million for the state in the first year and $20 million annually for the Narragansett tribe. In 20 years the tribe would buy Harrah's Narragansett Indian Casino.
Facing a handful of senators, Thomas says, "We've been at this quite some time."
In fact, the tribe has been seeking a casino or bingo hall since Thomas was first elected to the tribal council 14 years ago.
Governors, judges and lawmakers have stymied various proposals for high-stakes gambling operations in Providence, West Greenwich, West Warwick and on the tribe's own land in Charlestown. At the same time, the state's reliance on other kinds of gambling -- from lottery tickets to video slot machines -- has soared.
The tribe has watched in frustration as other Indians, notably the nearby Mashantucket Pequots, reap millions from gambling. High-stakes poker games and clinking slot machines would mean jobs and money for the Narragansetts, many of whom live in poverty.
Thomas says lawmakers and the public don't appreciate the tribe's need to be self-sufficient. "Part of it is bigotry. Part of it is protecting what you have."
The quest has thrust both Thomas and the ordinarily private Narragansetts into the spotlight. Since becoming chief in 1997, Thomas, 43, has toured clanging casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, lobbied lawmakers in State House hallways, and met with two governors. He's schmoozed with business owners and blue-collar voters, appeared in newspaper ads and taken calls on talk radio.
But Thomas makes no speeches today. He defers to Loveman and leaves the room to the watch the proceedings from a TV in the hall.
"Too many photographers," he explains.
At 6-foot-4 and 230 pounds, the Indian leader has been described as a ringer for the pro wrestler and action star The Rock. The comparison is apt. One of the chief's heroes is Muhammad Ali, one of the greatest fighters of the 20th century.
When Ali was 12, he reported the theft of his bike to a police officer. The officer shrugged. Learn to fight for yourself, he said.
Thomas watches as Sen. J. Michael Lenihan, questions Loveman about his company's relationship with the Narragansetts.
Do you really need them? he asks.
"It makes the project much more compelling to the residents of the state," says Loveman.
Before the testimony winds down, Thomas heads for an elevator. Tomorrow, the critics -- business owners and officials of the state's two gambling facilities, Lincoln Park and Newport Grand -- will speak.
Thomas knows what they will say. A new casino will steal customers and cash from their money-making companies.
Inside the elevator, Thomas puts on a pair of sleek sunglasses.
"Hey chief," asks a young man, "when you gonna run for governor?"
Thomas shakes his head. "Not me," he says. "I'm running for my life."
As a boy in South Kingstown, Matthew Thomas did not dream of being chief. He wanted to be a construction worker, a basketball player -- even a state trooper.
"I grew up contemporary," he says.
The youngest of 11 children, he sometimes shared a bedroom with three or four brothers, and wore their cast-off clothes. On Christmas morning, they unwrapped their gifts: Maxwell House coffee cans filled with cookies.
His father, a brick layer, worked on big projects such as the Holiday Inn on Route 1, or the Westerly police station. When the work slowed in the winter, he fished. It wasn't always enough to feed a big family.
"We prayed for storms so we could go on the beach and get clams to make chowder," says Thomas. At the dinner table, he could hear his mother's stomach growl; she ate last.
If John Thomas caught his sons relaxing on a Saturday, he put them to work. A decorated World War II veteran, "he was old school," Thomas says. "If you were cutting up and fell and cut your lip, he would say, 'I have no sympathy for you. If you hadn't been acting foolishly, you wouldn't have hurt yourself.' " Still, he hugged his kids at bedtime.
Thomas was 11 when his parents divorced. Two years later his father died, and Matt grew quiet. His father was tough even in death. His gravestone says, "When I am gone, sing no sad songs for me."
Living with his mother, Margaret, Thomas threw himself into basketball at Narragansett High School. But he didn't fit in. He fought with students who called him "nigger," and did not go to his senior prom.
"It was not my world," he says.
For his senior quote in the 1980 yearbook, Thomas chose this message: "Be yourself and get treated for what you are."
After a year at Community College of Rhode Island, Thomas dropped out. He was no longer the best basketball player on the court; his grades were just average.
"College was not for me," he says. "I wanted to work."
His oldest brother, Eric, was working with other tribal members to win federal recognition for the Narragansetts. His oldest sister, Mary Jane, also worked for the tribe.
Thomas could "hear the passion in their voices" at the dinner table. But their salaries were tied to iffy government programs; they got no benefits.
So Thomas took a job at his old high school, as a second-shift janitor.
Once he had bragged about having superhuman jumping powers on the court. Now he swabbed toilets and wiped graffiti from the lockers near the gym.
His friends kidded him about getting a "white man's job" in a school department where few Indians worked.
But the job offered steady pay, health benefits and a pension. A month later, Thomas married Beth Bourne, a Narragansett Indian, at the home of Wallace Hazard, a Christian minister. Friends and family crowded into the South Kingstown house. They may have thrown rice, says Thomas, but there was no honeymoon. "We couldn't afford it."
In 1985, they bought a $60,000 house facing Route 2 in Charlestown. The second floor and basement were unfinished.
Thomas switched to the town's Parks and Recreation Department a few years later, so he could spend more time with his wife and three new kids.
"He was a pretty private guy," says Jay Winter, his supervisor. "He was always a good worker, very loyal. He didn't complain."
In the winter he plowed streets. In the summer, when tourists jammed the seaside town, he cut grass, marked the town's ball fields and even refinished the tall wooden Indian in Sprague Park.
Staring at the ocean, he remembered his youth, spent on the town beach. And he remembered that once, the coast had belonged to the Narragansetts.
Thomas occasionally attended tribal council meetings, but had never taken great interest in tribal politics. He had grown up with muscle cars, the Beatles and Motown, and Star Trek. He liked the logical, unemotional Spock.
But a split within the tribe drew him in.
"It was horrible," he says.
Two groups were locked in a bitter battle for control of the tribe throughout the 1980s.
On one side were those who identified themselves as traditional, wanting to preserve the tribe's ancient ways and limit its dealings with the non-Indian world. They also wanted to open a bingo hall.
The other faction, including Christians and Providence Indians, favored working more closely with state and local lawmakers. Many opposed gambling, which some people, including Thomas, saw as the main issue in the conflict.
The rift became so great that, at one point, each side elected its own chief and council. In court, they charged each other with mismanagement and theft.
Thomas sided with the traditional group. But at the end of the day, he says now, both sides were wrong. Both groups had good ideas, and the split only hurt tribal members, he says.
He ran for council in 1988 and lost, but won a seat two years later. He became first councilman in 1994.
The work load was heavy. Chief George Hopkins, fighting diabetes and Alzheimer's disease, asked Thomas and others to do the tribe's business. In 1994, Thomas went to Washington -- twice -- to oppose an effort by then-Gov. Bruce Sundlun to restrict Indian gaming.
Such a move, Thomas told Sen. Daniel Inouye, would "strip the tribe of its rights and would set up a two-tier structure of Indian tribes across the nation . . . those which can do casino gaming and those which cannot."
After a 40-hour work week for the town, Thomas conducted tribal business at night and on weekends. Worn out, he did not seek a third term in 1996.
When Hopkins died late that year, however, Paulla Dove Jennings asked Thomas to run for chief.
"I asked him three different times over several months if he was going to run," remembers Dove Jennings, now a member of the tribe's economic development committee.
"He said 'No, it's too stressful. I have a wife and children.' I was disappointed, so I said, 'if you don't run, I will.' "
She did, and insists she "ran hard." But when Thomas changed his mind and announced his candidacy, she voted for him.
At 36, Thomas was the youngest elected chief since Colonial times.
As a homeowner, family man and former councilman, "he was a good role model for the next generation," says Regina R. Reckling, a cousin and a council member at the time.
But he was more than that, she adds.
Both she and Thomas can trace their ancestors back to King Tom, an early Narragansett chief who sold Indian land to retire his debts, and to Canonicus, who gave Roger Williams land to found Providence.
"People like to say we're descendants of a royal family," says Reckling, who spent years tracing her family's roots. "We're not. We're members of a royal family."
"I thought I could make a mark," Thomas says. "I thought I could take the tribe to the next level."
He is, he says, the tribe's first modern chief.
Traditionally, tribal leaders were older men who performed their duties in a part-time manner, often from home. Hopkins, his predecessor and mentor, was a carpenter who lived in Randolph, Mass., and died in a nursing home.
"Hopkins was old fashioned," Thomas says. "He did not like dealing with the press. He didn't like the business end or the outside."
But by 1997, the outside was rushing in.
The tribal government had become more complex since the Narragansetts won federal recognition in 1983. It had a budget of several million dollars, new departments and programs to run, and a growing staff. It needed a CEO.
Across the state border the Mashantucket Pequots, who had expanded from bingo to the Foxwoods Resort Casino, planned to build a new hotel with a $500-million loan from Fleet bank. Meanwhile, the state was challenging every gambling venture the Narragansetts proposed.
"The tribe saw the direction the world was going in," Thomas says.
He became the first full-time chief executive of the sovereign Narragansett nation, working from a cramped office in the tribe's dowdy administration building, a former restaurant and bar on Route 2.
There was no heat, he says. "There were holes in the floor. Animals came in."
Thomas heads a government that, in some ways, has hardly changed in 400 years. The tribe has always been ruled by sachems, medicine men and women, sub-chiefs and council elders. When the tribe incorporated in 1934, leaders rejected official titles like chairman and vice chairman, opting to keep the traditional positions.
Thomas frequently meets on Fridays with the medicine man, Lloyd Wilcox. They talk about casinos, cultural events "and maybe bass fishing," Wilcox says.
On weeknights, he meets with the tribal council's nine members. His role is primarily to approve their decisions, and to break tie votes. He also advises the council, just as the medicine man advises him.
Though the modern council meets around a conference table in the administration building, sensitive issues are sometimes still discussed in the old way -- across a night fire in the woods.
Former councilwoman Reckling recalls that members aired their grievances and then "hugged each other."
Some problems, however, became public.
A 1999 federal report criticized the tribe's handling of money it had received for housing development. After spending $3.2 million, the tribe had no habitable units, and $1.8 million in contracts were undocumented, the report said.
Responding in its own report, the tribe's housing committee blamed several administrators, including Thomas, and some government officials. The committee said Thomas, who had just become chief, "was green and did not know any better."
One of the authors was Mary Jane Banfield, the chief's sister.
Thomas sued Banfield and other committee members for slander.
In a tribe many Narragansetts call family, Thomas and his sister still do not speak.
By seeking redress in federal court, Thomas broke a tribal taboo. Members generally keep their conflicts within the tribe.
Their deeply guarded privacy extends to virtually every aspect of tribal life. Non-Indians are not welcome at tribal meetings, and many members distrust lawmakers and the press.
"The fear is that when we explain what we do, it gets taken away and dissected," says Thomas.
Like any leader, Thomas has his critics.
"I know there are people who hate my guts," he says. "It comes with the territory."
Some urban Indians say Thomas has not done enough to make programs and money available to tribal members who live outside Washington County.
And some traditional Indians don't think he's militant enough, and call him an "Uncle Tomahawk," he says. But you have to be patient, something Chief Hopkins taught him, he says.
"In Indian Country, if you're not a patient person, they're going to defeat you."
But typically, the complaints stay within.
Says Nancy Padrone, a former tribal secretary involved in the tribe's bitter split in the '80s: "When push comes to shove, we stand with our backs to each other, together."
One critic keeps a picture of Thomas on his desk. "He's my chief," he explains.
For many Narragansetts, the tribe's 1,800 acres of thick forest, cedar swamp and deep ponds are a refuge from the white world. It's where Thomas goes for peace of mind and inspiration.
His father is buried there, behind the Narragansett Church near a sacred spring.
Granite ridges jut from the earth, pushed in place by glaciers. Coastal breezes, up from the ocean three miles away, drift through the cedars and pines.
The undisturbed woods sit in the center of a town crowded with pricey houses and subdivisions. Yet the plink of a fishing line hitting the water is all that can be heard from the edge of School House Pond.
Deep in the woods is Baby Crying Rocks, an outcropping of stones half hidden by trees. The boulders, left behind during the last ice age, were once used by the tribe to kill infants with defects, Thomas says.
Imperfect children would have made poor hunters, farmers or warriors.
"If a child was born deformed or retarded, we would smash their heads against the rocks," says Thomas. "That's considered barbaric. But we had to be strong. That's the reality of it."
Stepping from his blue Durango, Thomas trods the dirt path that winds through the tall pine trunks.
Nailed to a nearby tree is a yellow sign featuring the tribe's symbol: a sacred pipe, the North Star and a sun with pointed rays. The signs appear along Routes 1 and 2, defining the tribe's boundaries. It's unclear, however, if the sun is rising or setting.
"We've never said which it is," Thomas says. "It's a matter of interpretation. We like things that way. It keeps you guessing."
Somewhere along the way, someone gave Thomas some advice.
Read the newspaper every day. Do that and you can talk to anyone.
Thomas didn't stop with newspapers; he studied federal gaming laws, state and federal court cases, and briefs on tribal sovereignty.
He prepared for news conferences by rehearsing with Guy Dufault, the tribe's longtime lobbyist.
"We did a lot of Q & A," says Dufault, who quizzed the chief in his Warwick office. "He took the time to study the issues in depth. He had a thirst for knowledge."
As a referee, Dufault had seen Thomas play basketball in high school and college.
"He was a bruising forward, usually brought into a game as some kind of enforcer. He was tough to get around," says Dufault, who always kept an eye on Thomas. "Many of the attributes I saw in the '80s -- a hard-nosed approach, loyalty to the team and a never-quit attitude -- are evident in his work for the tribe."
Even as a first councilman, Thomas signaled the tribe would not quit.
"We're down but we're not out," he told reporters in 1994, after voters rejected a casino in West Greenwich.
"We've had to fight for everything that is rightfully ours for 300 years, and we'll keep fighting."
In 1996, during Thomas's brief hiatus from tribal office, Sen. John Chafee authored a last-minute rider on a federal budget bill that forced the Narragansetts, unlike many tribes, to seek voter approval for high-stakes gambling on their land.
Thomas learned about it on the nightly news. He smashed a chair against the wall; his dinner went flying.
Elected chief a year after the Chafee rider, Thomas quickly showed a knack for rough-and-tumble politics.
He blasted then-Gov. Lincoln Almond in the press after the governor told the tribe to get voter approval for a casino -- then vowed to block it. And he rapped the anti-casino governor for accepting $1,100 in campaign money from the Rhode Island Greyhound Owners Association.
By early 1999, the tribe was unveiling its eighth high-stakes gambling proposal in eight years, this time for a casino in West Warwick, backed by its longtime business partner, Capital Gaming International.
Thomas outlined the plan for local officials and business leaders in a function room at Evelyn's Villa, saying afterward that "the reception was like no other we have ever experienced.
"It was so refreshing to have a productive, open dialogue with the people of this community."
The chief and the tribe campaigned hard. They sponsored a "thank you" fish-and-chips dinner at the Portuguese Holy Ghost Society two days before a nonbinding local referendum, and Thomas wrote a commentary piece.
"Our ancestors reached out to the colonists to help them through their difficult early years," he wrote. "Now more than 300 years later, we are reaching out to the people of West Warwick to strike up a partnership that could spell tremendous benefits for all."
Voters supported the casino by a 2-to-1 margin.
Afterward, Thomas entered the Portuguese Holy Ghost Society hall while the Rocky theme played. But the tribe took a hit in the next round.
The plan lost some momentum when the tribe terminated its partnership with the financially ailing Capital Gaming, and spent several months negotiating with prospective investors. With their new partner, Boyd Gaming of Las Vegas, the Narragansetts came back with a more ambitious proposal.
Legislators killed a bill to put it on the November 2000 ballot.
Two years later the tribe again sought to get its casino proposal on the ballot. Lawmakers instead created a Gaming Study Commission to consider "the desirability of further gaming" in Rhode Island.
Boyd pulled out of the partnership, saying the study would block any casino plans for at least a year.
Behind the scenes, the tribe fielded offers from other investors.
Thomas lunched in Manhattan with Donald Trump, who "showed the most interest" but wanted "too big a cut" of the tribe's profits.
Harrah's flew Thomas and the council to Las Vegas. In the end, he said, Harrah's offered the best deal.
In January 2003, the state Lottery Commission approved nearly 2,000 new video slot machines at Lincoln Park and Newport Grand Jai Alai.
"Outrageous," Thomas fumed. With the tribe's casino proposal on hold while lawmakers studied gaming issues, non-Indians were getting the state's blessing to expand.
"They keep changing the rules on us," he said. When it comes to state promises, "call me Doubting Thomas."
Meanwhile, the tribe was working on another idea.
Tax-free smoke shops were the next-biggest money makers for tribes after casinos. And the Narragansetts were talking to the biggest Indian shops in the Northeast.
Drivers started noticing a trailer on Route 2, with a wooden ramp and a covered sign. In May, Thomas confirmed the rumors: the tribe was about to open a shop on tribal land.
Governor Carcieri quickly objected, saying that selling tobacco without collecting state taxes was illegal. Thomas agreed to meet with the governor, and as a courtesy, to delay the opening.
His obligation as chief sachem, he said, was to help his tribe. "As most Rhode Islanders are aware, we have been thwarted at every attempt made to bring economic self-determination to the tribe."
The decision to sell tax-free tobacco "was not undertaken lightly," he said. But the tribe needs to be self-sufficient, he said, "and we will aggressively pursue this path."
Thomas and Carcieri had met several times in the months since the governor took office to talk about potential tribal business ventures. Thomas had even given the governor a pair of wampum cufflinks, despite the governor's vehement opposition to a casino. Their relationship was about to be severely tested.
Carcieri toured the reservation with Thomas in June, saying he had no "magic solutions" but wanted "to get a sense of the economic stress" the Narragansetts were facing. It was the first visit by a governor in the 20 years since the tribe's federal recognition, and Thomas was appreciative.
But little came of the meeting.
Then the General Assembly adjourned without passing a casino bill.
On July 12, the Narragansett Smoke Shop opened for businesss.
"I don't know what the temperature in hell is this morning, but we can't wait for it to freeze over," Thomas told a reporter. Facing a possible $1.5-million cut in federal funding, the tribe had to take care of itself.
Smokers flocked to the tiny store. In just two days, with little advertising, the tribe raked in $17,000 in gross sales. Tribal members were ecstatic.
Carcieri, who was in Cincinnati celebrating his grandson's birthday, talked to Thomas by phone several times over that weekend. He and other state officials insisted that the tribe must collect state taxes, even on its own land.
At one point Thomas said he would close the store if the governor dropped his opposition to the casino. Carcieri refused and on Sunday Thomas told a team of state officials, "I'll see you in court."
Monday morning, Thomas wore a white short-sleeved dress shirt and a tie to the shop.
That afternoon, about 30 state troopers stormed onto the property with a search warrant.
Tribal members resisted. On the dirt lot, troopers and Indians pushed and shoved each other. At the entrance to the store, Thomas grabbed a trooper from behind while Councilman Hiawatha Brown stiff-armed the officer, a hand at his throat.
Eight Narragansetts were arrested, including Thomas, who was pushed to the ground.
Charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer, Thomas spent several hours locked up in the state police's Hope Valley barracks.
That evening, a bruised Thomas spoke to tribal members gathered at the smoke shop.
"The state made a huge mistake today and that will be proven," said Thomas, who likened the raid to the civil rights struggles between blacks and police in the South. "The state ignores the federal status of the tribe."
"Throwing Matt to the ground was like throwing the president, or the governor, or the Pope to the ground," says Dove Jennings, who was behind the counter at the time of the raid. "It devastated our people."
But Thomas was calm. "He earned my respect," says Dove Jennings. "He worked very hard to hold down the anger. He's really shown the true qualities of a chief."
Thomas, described as a "quiet boy" by his aunt Marie Reels, became a symbol of Indian resistance.
Footage from the melee appeared on national television. The raid drew fire from civil rights groups, Indian tribes and Rhode Island sympathizers, who signed a petition supporting the tribe. The NAACP later gave Thomas its most prestigious award for fighting for his people.
A unity rally on tribal grounds attracted several thousand Indians and other sympathizers.
In the weeks after the raid, Thomas was interviewed on television, on radio shows and in the press.
"I'm going to defend our property," Thomas told WHJJ radio listeners. "It's like outside forces coming into the United States or your home."
On the second day of committee hearings, Thomas paces outside room 313 while one casino opponent after another appears on the hall TV.
Newport Grand CEO Diane Hurley questions the numbers provided by Harrah's.
Tim O'Reilly, president of the corporation that owns the Newport Yachting Center and other businesses, says, "We feel very threatened by this proposed casino."
Craig Sculos, the general manager of Lincoln Park, says his business would
be hit hard by a new casino. Sculos peppers his 30-minute speech with Rhode
Island icons: the Cardi brothers, the Red Sox, Salty Brine, stuffies.
Tribal Councilwoman Bella Noka, standing in the hall, shakes her head.
"Who can love Rhode Island more than the Narragansetts?" Noka says. "This behavior has been passed on from generation to generation. If we were any other people, it would have been a done deal."
The chief and Dufault have moved down the hall to the rotunda, where they lean against the balustrade and talk quietly.
Their conversation ends, and Thomas studies the mural that arches high overhead across the dome like a celestial vision.
He hates the scene, painted shortly after World War II. He wishes he could paint the Indians out.
Wrapped in a cape, Roger Williams, the founder of Providence, strikes a stately pose as he faces a group of natives.
But two nearby Indians -- presumably the sachems Miantonomi and Canonicus, Thomas' ancestor -- are waving in an exaggerated manner, as if they are in a beauty pageant.
"It's insulting," Thomas says.
It's dishonest, too, he says. It captures an all-too-rare moment in Rhode Island history, when Europeans and Indians lived peacefully by the sea.
Some tribal members have suggested the state repaint the scene, to depict the real story.
That canvas would show a bleak day in December 1675, when a Colonial army massacred hundreds of Narragansett elders, women and children, and forced others into hiding or slavery.
It would show Sachem Miantonomi warning other tribes that if they did not band together, the English would force them from their lands.
It would depict the summer day in 1883 when state officials gathered at Fort Ninigret and declared that the tribe no longer existed.
Or it might picture the modern chief of 2,700 Indians attending yet another casino hearing.
Thomas looks up from his musings.
"We're at a very crucial place in our history," he says.
