|
Capital: Providence
Flower: Violet
Tree: Red Maple
Bird: Rhode Island Red
Song: "Rhode Island's It for Me"
Fish: Striped Bass Mineral:
Bowenite
Fruit: Rhode Island Greening
Apple
Nicknames: The Ocean State,
Little Rhody
Entered Union: May 29, 1790
|
It is unclear how
Aquidneck Island came to be known as Rhode
Island, although there are two popular
theories.
The explorer
Giovanni da Verrazzano, in 1524 noted the
presence of an island near the mouth of
Narragansett Bay, which he likened to the Greek
island of Rhodes. However, subsequent European
explorers were unable to precisely identify the
island that Verrazzano had named. Nevertheless,
the Pilgrims who later colonized the area
assumed that Verrazzano's "Rhodes" was
Aquidneck.
A second theory
concerns the fact that Adriaen Block, during his
expeditions in the 1610's, passed by Aquidneck,
described in a 1625 account of his travels as
"an island of reddish appearance" (in
17th-century Dutch, "een rodlich Eylande").
Historians have theorized that this "reddish
appearance" resulted from either red autumn
foliage or red clay on portions of the
shore. |
