 Williams secured a title from the Narragansett Indians around this time and named the settlement Providence Plantations, cultivating it as a refuge for religious dissenters, as he himself had been exiled from Massachusetts Bay.Providence Plantation was an agricultural and fishing community, though its lands were difficult to farm and its borders were disputed with Connecticut and Massachusetts.An Indian coalition burned Providence to the ground on March 29, 1676, during King Philip's War, one of two major Colonial settlements burned.