The Niantic (Nehântick or Nehantucket) are a tribe of Algonquian-speaking American Indians who lived in the area of Connecticut and Rhode Island during the early colonial period.

The tribe's name Nehântick means "of long-necked waters"; area residents believe that this refers to the "long neck" or peninsula of land known as Black Point, located in the village of Niantic, Connecticut.

The Niantics spoke an Algonquian Y-dialect similar to their neighbors the Pequots, Mohegans, and Narragansetts in New England, and the Montauks on eastern Long Island.

[2] They crafted shell artworks but did not create too many projectile points, showing similar shared culture extending from southern Connecticut to Long Island to Martha's Vineyard.

[3] By the time European settlers arrived in southern Rhode Island in 1636, the Niantic and Narragansett peoples were closely related, both in terms of sociopolitics and family groups.

Following King Philip's War (1675–1676), the Narragansetts were reduced in population from 5,000 to a few hundred, while Eastern Niantics were largely spared due to Ninigret's neutrality during the conflict.

In the 1720s, a more concentrated, organized effort began, but success was largely limited to those Eastern Niantics who had been taken as household servants and slaves by European families.

"[6] Following the American Revolution, numerous Eastern Niantic families fled west and joined the Brotherton Indians in New York and eventually Wisconsin.

[4] Those that remained were often seen by political leaders as separate from the white community but also not as Indigenous, resulting in Niantics being listed as "Black" or "Negro" in Rhode Island town records, a reclassification that would make it difficult for them to maintain their claim on their ancestral lands.

[11] In the 1930s, Niantics attended a gathering at Mashapaug Pond in Providence, Rhode Island that also included Narragansetts, Nipmucks, Wampanoags, Passamaquoddys, and Misquamicuts.