(Above) A mural on the east-facing wall of 32 Custom Hose Street in downtown Providence by artist Gaia entitled “Still Here,” funded by The Avenue Concept, depicts Lynsea Montanari, a member of the Narragansett tribe and an educator at the Tomaquag Museum in Exeter, Rhode Island, holding a picture of Princess Red Wing, a Narragansett/Pokanoket historian and educator who founded the museum sixty years ago.
“Princess Red Wing” was born Mary E. Glasko on March 21, 1896 in Sprague, Connecticut. Her mother was a Pokanoket and her father was a Narragansett, and she is related to prominent Indians in American history such as Simeon Simons, who fought with George Washington, and Metacomet, who is more notoriously remembered for King Philip’s War against colonists invaders of New England in the 1670s. [Click on photo on the right to enlarge]
Red Wing was the co-founder and editor of The Narragansett Dawn tribal newspaper which was published from 1935 to 1936. She became Squaw Sachem of the New England Council of Chiefs in 1945, a position which allowed her to preside over sacred ceremonies and festivals
She preserved their history by founding the Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum in Rhode Island. From 1947 to 1970, she served as a member of the Speaker’s Research Committee of the under secretariat of the United Nations. (Right) The seal of the Seven Royal Tribes of the Pokanoket Nation.
Read more about her in this 1980 article in the Christian Science Monitor.