To many Narragansett Indians, the upcoming trial of seven tribe members accused of fighting with state police officers as they raided a tribal smoke shop is the continuation of centuries of mistreatment at the hands of Rhode Island leaders.

“The governor and the attorney general are trying to show the tribe who daddy is,” says Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas, one of those facing charges. “It’s just never stopped.”

To state prosecutors, the tribal members are merely criminal defendants and should be treated like any other citizens charged with a crime.

“[W]e view the defendants and we’re treating the defendants the same way we’d treat anybody else charged with these crimes," said Michael J. Healey, spokesman for the attorney general, adding “It has nothing to do with ‘showing them who’s boss’ and everything to do with treating them the same as every other defendant who’s come into the system.”

The trial, set to start with jury selection Wednesday, pits leaders of Rhode Island’s only federally recognized tribe against the state in the latest showdown in their ever-strained relationship.

The Narragansetts trace their roots in the region back 30,000 years and pride themselves as a warrior nation that other tribes once turned to for protection.

Wars with the colonists and disease brought by the Europeans decimated the tribe’s ranks in the 1600s. Most of its leaders were killed or fled, its land stolen or sold in questionable deals. The state legislature voted in 1880 to no longer recognize the tribe.

But a few Narragansetts continued to meet, and the tribe regained 1,800 acres in the heart of Charlestown in 1978. Five years later, it won federal recognition, establishing it as a sovereign nation within the state of Rhode Island.

Soon began a continuing quest for gambling revenue. As the neighboring Mashantucket Pequot tribe grew wildly wealthy with the success of Foxwoods casino, the Narragansetts watched Congress pass legislation that stripped the tribe of federal Indian gambling privileges on its land. The Narragansetts would have to seek state and voter approval for any high-stakes gambling plans. It was the breakdown of their casino efforts that spurred the tribe to open a smoke shop on South County Trail on July 12, 2003. Shortly after state lawmakers ended their legislative session without agreeing to put a gambling question on the ballot, the tribe began brisk cigarette sales from the roadside store, selling at bargain rates because they were not charging Rhode Island taxes. Tribal leaders said they were exercising their right to self-government.

What followed were 48 hours of fruitless negotiations that ended with state police executing a search and seizure warrant at Governor Carcieri’s order just after lunchtime on a sweltering July 14. The raid descended into a violent, and widely televised, confrontation in the dusty parking lot that left eight Narragansetts, including Thomas, under arrest and at least eight state troopers and Indians injured.

The criminal cases were on hold for more than three years as federal courts determined the extent of the state’s jurisdiction over the tribe’s 1,800 acres in Charlestown. The criminal cases were resurrected by the attorney general’s office in fall 2006 after the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a ruling that the state can enforce its laws on the Narragansetts’ settlement lands.

Pretrial hearings eventually led to a ruling in August by Judge Susan E. McGuirl that Governor Carcieri could be called by the defense to testify about his July 2003 order to raid the smoke shop. The governor’s appeal of that ruling brought the state Supreme Court into the case.

But, before ruling on the Carcieri matter, the high court took the unprecedented step of ordering the parties to mediate a resolution of the criminal charges. Although objecting to the unexpected directive to submit the case to mediation, the state’s representatives attended several unsuccessful mediation sessions. The court ruled the day after talks broke down late last month that the governor did not have to take the stand.

The state wanted an admission of guilt by all those charged.

“There’s not and there shouldn’t be one set of rules for the Narragansetts and one set of rules for everybody else. It’s about simple fairness,” Healey said. “That’s the principle that’s at stake here and that [Attorney General Patrick C.] Lynch has been fighting to uphold from the start.”

Thomas and two other tribal council members facing charges said they were willing to enter Alford pleas in which they would not admit guilt but would concede they could be found guilty at trial. The rest would plead not guilty. That proposed agreement, Thomas says, was intended to recognize that the raid was an ugly day in Rhode Island history for which both sides bore responsibility. The state would have had a plea from the tribe’s chief sachem, he says.

“Our sachems were killed by colonists,” he says. “They can’t kill me today. Now they’re tearing me down with laws.”

From his perspective, the entire episode was driven by the fear that the tribe would cut into tax revenue and an unwillingness of the state to recognize the tribe’s sovereign status. “It’s all about money,” he says. “It’s all about an attorney general and governor who think the tribe is less than …,” he says, not finishing the sentence.

He spoke of frustration that federal judges who were appointed at the recommendation of the late Sen. John Chafee decided the issue of what authority the state police had on the tribe’s land. Chafee also sponsored the law that said federal Indian gambling law did not apply on the tribe’s land.

“If you look at history, they put laws in place just to battle us,” Thomas says.

In the state’s view, the tribal members want to operate as if they are above the law.

“They singled themselves out as people to whom the rules don’t apply,” Healey says. “They set up a smoke shop and sold cigarettes tax-free. I guess they thought that retailers across Rhode Island, including hundreds of ma-and-pa shops, were suckers for playing by the rules and bothering to pay taxes. And now, four years later, they still think the rules don’t apply to them. It’s ridiculous.”

The governor’s office says it has left the criminal cases to Lynch’s office and the courts.

“This is a case that is before the Rhode Island court system and must be decided by the courts, the defendants and the attorney general. The governor has no role in that process,” said Carcieri’s spokesman, Jeff Neal.

He added: “I would note Governor Carcieri’s representatives participated enthusiastically in the mediation process that preceded this trial and were willing to consider a large range of mutually agreeable solutions.”

And so now the case will be decided by a jury.

kmulvane@projo.com