CHARLESTOWN -- Eleanor Dove MacKenzie decided at 14 that she wanted to marry a Narragansett Indian. She narrowed the field to two boys, first cousins to each other and more distantly related to her.
The boys pledged their hearts to Eleanor at the Narragansett powwow that August, amid the pounding drums and whirl of fancy shawl dances on the tribe's ceremonial grounds in Charlestown.
Jay Carter shared a cup of water from the sacred spring with Eleanor. Thawn Harris gave her a gold ring with a T on it.
Eleanor had shed the deerskin dress she wore for dance competition for a miniskirt and half-shirt, she recalls.
"You're trying to find someone," she says.
Though both boys declared their intention to marry her, Thawn won Eleanor's affections in the end.
WHEN ELEANOR began dating, her grandmother cautioned her about the choices ahead.
"She made it very clear she wanted me to marry native," Eleanor says. "It's important to continue our people."
They already tried to eradicate us; why eradicate ourselves? warns the soft-spoken Eleanor Dove, for whom Eleanor was named.
Fear of assimilation and bitterness over the course of history infuse the Narragansett community. The "Europeans" now largely own the beaches, ponds and forests their ancestors roamed. Through the centuries, their line has been diluted through intermarriage with whites, blacks and other tribes.
Eleanor Dove set criteria for her granddaughter: wed Indian first, but preferably Narragansett, as she had done. Falling in love with a Lakota Sioux could take a young Indian far from home.
Other relatives heeded the warnings more loosely. The Dove family is a blend of Narragansett, white, Chocktaw, Cherokee and black, with skin tones varying from pale white to dark brown.
Eleanor's own father, from whom her mother is now divorced, is white.
The Doves identify themselves as Narragansett first, but recognize that matters of the heart are often beyond one's control.
ROMANCE TOOK ROOT early for Eleanor and Thawn, both 25.
Eleanor remembers Thawn taunting her during childhood games. Their relationship shifted in seventh grade, when she wore her dark hair down instead of tied tightly in a ponytail one day. She had caught Thawn's eye, only to later spurn him at a Pequot powwow.
But the couple persevered, and married weeks after their graduation from Chariho High School. Eleanor wore a white dress, with her hair done up for the service at the Hope Valley Baptist Church. Her godfather sang the couple an Onondogan honoring song at the reception at the Meadow Brook Inn; glasses were raised.
Today they have two sons, Sherente and Nkeke, and live at the edge of the tribe's lands in Charlestown. Their family includes Thawn's 8-year-old daughter, Lynsea, who lives in South Kingstown but spends many afternoons at their home.
LIFE FOR THE HARRISES balances Indian ways with the so-called modern world.
Thawn works for the Narragansett tribe as a conservation officer, and recently took a second-shift job in the deli at Wal-Mart to help pay off debt.
Eleanor attends the University of Rhode Island, where she is six classes away from a bachelor's degree in history, with the help of tribal scholarships. She is taking a break from her studies to stay at home with the children.
They strive to keep their heritage at the forefront while teaching their children to succeed in wider society.
A turtle-shell rattle Thawn made for Eleanor sits above the wide-screen TV the family watches Survivor on most Thursday nights. Sherente handles a drum effortlessly, but is easily absorbed in Blue's Clues. He celebrated his fourth birthday at Chuck E. Cheese's, and sleeps with a tiny pair of moccasins hanging above his bed.
Their house, one of a dozen in a well-ordered subdivision off Kings Factory Road, appears as any other two-story home in middle-class America. A shiny Chevy Avalanche sits in the driveway. A plastic cabin and jungle gym decorate the back yard.
But in shopping for a home, Thawn and Eleanor insisted it border the tribe's 1,800 acres in Charlestown. The Narragansetts' cedars and pines are a baseball's throw from their back deck and barbecue grill.
The woods beyond the back lawn are familiar to Thawn, who grew up just a few miles south on the same road. He's spent his life following the trails that spiderweb the tribe's land. He easily identifies the mushrooms springing from the soggy earth and the hawks soaring above the treetops.
"I never want to leave Kings Factory Road. Ever," said Thawn. "There's nothing to me that's better. Our ponds are right here, our family."
In some senses, the Narragansett community in Charlestown reflects the villages Giovanni da Verrazzano encountered in 1524. While tribal members no longer live in houses framed with bent saplings and covered with woven mats, extended family often share a home.
Dawn Dove, Nakomis to her grandchildren, lives downstairs from Eleanor and Thawn. Eleanor's sister, Loren Spears, her husband, also a Narragansett, and their three children live around the corner. Cousins, aunts, uncles and brothers occupy worn, rambling houses that line the tree-shrouded curves of Kings Factory Road.
AS A CHILD, Thawn played deejay in a makeshift basement bar as Narragansetts drank until they stumbled. Fights erupted; tears were shed. By age 6, Thawn had made up his mind to take another path.
Thawn and Eleanor's house is alcohol-, drug- and smoke-free, they say.
"We're committed to walking the red road of sobriety," Eleanor said. "The only way to protect them is by example."
Thawn's brothers Hunter, 20, and Hombre, 18, are following his lead. Tattoos of golden eagle feathers encircling a buck head mark the brothers' right shoulders, a tribute to their bond and their brother Leonard.
In 1983, before the younger two were born, 15-year-old Leonard was shot to death by another teen in a Kings Factory Road house.
Eleanor holds a belief shared by many Narragansetts that most native people can't take a drink without becoming alcoholics. Some call liquor the Indian exterminator, used by Europeans to weaken tribes and steal their land.
Statistics kept by the federal Indian Health Service put the alcohol-related death rate among Native Americans at about 49 per 100,000, nearly seven times the rate of the overall U.S. population.
Statistics also show that Native Americans, with a median household income of $22,813, are the poorest population in Rhode Island. More than half of the Native American children in the state live in poverty, compared with 17 percent of children overall, according to Kids Count 2003.
Poverty within the tribe is evident in the tents, trailers and dilapidated houses that line Kings Factory Road. Soaring rental and house prices have left some tribal families homeless.
TRADITION, spirituality, and education are the couple's tools against the poverty and addiction that surround them.
Eleanor, whose Indian name is Clear Water, brings dance and storytelling to the marriage. Thawn -- Golden Eagle from the Fire of the South -- carries hunting, fishing, clamming and his family's craft, stone masonry.
"It's all right here in this home," Thawn says.
They gave their sons traditional names. Sherente's middle name, Mishitashin, means storm to recall the violent thunder and lightning at his birth. The baby, Nkeke Waupianoohom -- "Otter Wind Song" -- is named in honor of Thawn's cousin who died at 3 of spinal meningitis. Songs travel on the wind, as does Nkeke's memory, the Harrises say.
After giving birth, Eleanor buried the placentas in her backyard to ensure that her children would always be drawn home.
DAYS IN THEIR household begin and end with the words katapatush and kowammaunsh, "I thank you" and "I love you."
The Harrises teach the children Narragansett words taken from Roger Williams' A Key into the Language of America, one of the earliest written accounts of native people. They must rely on Williams' work because the Narragansett did not have an alphabetic form of writing before the arrival of Europeans.
Ashaunt, or lobster, was the first word spoken by Lynsea, whose Indian name is Loving Sea.
But Thawn and Eleanor say they will not send their children to the Native American school Eleanor's sister opened last September in Arcadia Village. They recognize the role it plays in preserving native ways, but the boys will attend Charlestown Elementary School. Lynsea goes to Matunuck Elementary School.
"We believe that the only way they'll make it is to be exposed," Thawn says.
THIS SPRING, Thawn and Eleanor taught family dance classes to about 20 Narragansetts in the tribe's community center. They will use the steps at socials, in which family and friends gather for food, games and stories, and at powwows.
Thawn alternately drummed on a polished turtle shell, and played CDs on a boom box in the corner of the room.
"If you're going to dance, dance hard," the couple urged.
Sherente dipped his head low during the turkey dance, pretending to peck for corn. His once-spiraling red hair sits close to his head. He took scissors to his curls last fall when the family returned from Disney World, bringing his mother to tears. Narragansett boys traditionally wear their hair long, as a sign of their spirit, but his mother has agreed to keep his hair short.
"He likes to be like papa," she says.
Lynsea whirled a purple and red shawl with gold fringe during the fancy shawl dance, which evokes a butterfly's metamorphosis from the cocoon. One at a time, the dancers entered the circle, mimicking the transformation with their shawls extended over their outstretched arms.
Still too young to join in, Nkeke wandered in and out as his parents and cousins did the duck and fish dance. He made his way around the room, testing out each rattle and dance stick, his hair tied in a tiny ponytail.
SOCIAL LIFE for the Harrises -- like many tribal families -- revolves around family. Eleanor considers her mother, sister, grandmother and aunt her closest companions. Thawn enjoys shellfishing and hunting with his brothers. It is not uncommon for four generations to share a meal, games, and laughter.
"Our best friends are each other," Eleanor says.
Tribal members revere their elders, such as the Dove family's matriarch, Eleanor Dove. Many recite a philosophy that they must plan for seven generations to come.
They are bound by common blood, however distant, and refer to each other as cousin. Elder Narragansetts easily tick off family lines.
"I guess you can pretty much say to anyone 'hey, cuz,' " Dawn Dove says.
Eleanor and Thawn found in tracing their genealogy one night that they are distant cousins not only to each other, but to their children.
"If you do the math, we're sixth, seventh cousins," Thawn says.
THEIR LIFE is a blur of celebrating births, birthdays, and holidays. The Strawberry and Green Bean Thanksgivings, Nickomo and the Harvest Festival mark the seasons. Add to that Christmas and Easter. The Harrises celebrate them all.
The family observes the pagan aspects of Christian holidays -- "We love the beautiful Christmas tree and the giving of gifts" -- but they consider themselves traditional.
Christmas presents for 42 people overflowed from behind the couple's bed this past holiday season, yet they find their faith in the stars, moon, trees, fire and water. Their landscape is alive with spirituality.
Nature is always close at hand. Blue jay and woodpecker feathers peek from boxes wedged under their bed. Plucked from dead birds found at the roadside and catalogued in plastic bags, the feathers will make regalia for dance competitions and social events.
Hen-of-the-woods mushrooms picked on tribal land and preserved in a peppery oil sit on the kitchen shelf. Scallops dug from coastal ponds and venison rest side-by-side with corn dogs in the freezer.
THAWN TRIES to transmit his passion for the natural world to his children and tribal teenagers being groomed as leaders. With the majority of Narragansetts living outside South County, skills such as shellfishing, hunting, and tanning hides could be lost.
About 20 Narragansett teenagers from the tribe's leadership program joined Thawn shellfishing at Quonochontaug Pond one morning last summer. They rolled up low-hanging pants, slipped off their shoes, and dug for quahogs and mussels. Some waited on the shore, disliking the ooze of sand under their toes; others submerged themselves up to their necks, at home in the clear water.
Thawn guided them in feeling for hard shells clustered around marsh grasses in the salt pond. The boys competed for the largest clams, dropping their harvest into plastic grocery baskets. Million-dollar houses, many owned by people from New York and Connecticut, towered at the shoreline.
The group ate the steaming shellfish in the Harrises' backyard, talking of a Wampanoag powwow coming up. They erupted into laughter as Thawn mimicked Narragansett tribal leaders' dance steps.
THE DOVES are of the turtle clan, known for its storytelling. Eleanor shares tales handed down from her grandmother, mother and aunt.
The stories are a mix of fable, family lore and history, meant to convey values and morals and to deepen understanding. They span from creation to the injustices the Narragansetts feel Europeans and the state have dealt their people.
Multiple tribal members often recite the same story virtually verbatim. The tales are repeated again and again, weaving themselves into everyday life.
The state police raid on the Narragansetts' smoke shop last year has added to recent lore. As Eleanor recalls the day, her voice rises, her eyes widen and her mouth hardens.
Eleanor and her mother were searching for a parking space outside the store when the state police approached. Thawn, who was on duty, was among the tribal members who tried to stop the troopers from coming onto the Narragansetts' land. Arms outstretched, he attempted to fend them off.
Sherente watched from the car as his father was arrested and taken away to the police barracks. His father was released hours later, but Sherente couldn't shake the fear that his dad had died. The child had to be soothed of his night terrors for months, his mother says.
THROUGH THEIR TALES, Thawn and Eleanor encourage perseverance, thanksgiving and courage in their children. A favorite is the creation story.
Many moons ago, Cautantowwit pulled a great cedar tree up from its home in the clouds. Through that hole, the creator looked down on the vast water world below. He decided to send his daughter there to live.
The creatures were frightened as she fell toward them in a stream of light. But Grandmother Turtle explained to them that it was Sky Daughter on her way to their world.
The animals worried that she could not survive without fins and gills.
Grandmother Turtle instructed them to dive deep, deep into the water to retrieve a bit of soil to make Sky Daughter a home.
The graceful loon and the giant whale tried, but couldn't dive deep enough.
Finally, a muskrat, so tiny he could fit in the palm of a hand, wanted a try.
How could a very small muskrat accomplish such a task? the animals asked.
The muskrat gave thanks in the four directions before taking his plunge. He dove deep, deep, deep down. When he resurfaced, the tiny animal was dead, but clenched in his paw was a bit of earth.
The animals rubbed the soil into Grandmother Turtle's shell and gave thanks to the muskrat.
The shell began to grow. There, Sky Daughter landed and began a family that grew into the Narragansett nation.
Today, Eleanor says, all Narragansett children know that when trees whip side to side and the ground trembles, it's simply Grandmother Turtle stretching her shell.
