In 1524, it was sighted by Giovanni da Verrazzano who named it Luisa after Louise of Savoy, the Queen Mother of France. He described Luisa as “about the bigness of the Island of Rhodes” and in truth, they are shaped very similarly. When the founders of Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations surveyed the land, they thought that Aquidneck Island was the place referred to by Verrazzano–possibly because in 1614, it was charted by the Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, after whom it is named. At the time of the arrival of the Europeans, it was occupied by a branch of the Narragansett people who called the island “Manisses.” English settlers from the mainland first arrived in 1661, when the island was part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The island became part of the colony of Rhode Island in 1672. A Dutch map of 1685 clearly shows Block Island, indicated as Adrian Block Island (“Adriaen Blocks Eylant”).
