Ebony and Ivy

by Craig Steven Wilder

  11. Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 155–59; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 376.

  CHAPTER 1: THE EDGES OF THE EMPIRE

  1. This was not the first time that Europeans gave Native Americans as gifts. In March 1493 Christopher Columbus returned to Lisbon with Indian prisoners and advice for the king and queen on enslaving the indigenous peoples of the Americas. As early as 1500 Bristol merchants had brought home three men from Newfoundland. French sailors seized a woman and a child in 1567 and brought them to Zeeland. In 1576 Captain Martin Frobisher took an Inuit man to London, where the prisoner committed suicide. A year later Frobisher returned to Bristol with a young Inuit woman called Arnaq, her infant child, Nutaaq, and a young man named Kalicho. In 1584 English adventurers presented Manteo and Wanchese, two men from coastal Carolina, to Elizabeth I, whose reign saw the spread of public spectacles involving American Indians. By 1603, the year of her death, Londoners watched two Powhatans from Virginia row the Thames in canoes. Kidnapped Indians worked as guides and interpreters for colonial proprietors such as Walter Raleigh, of Virginia and Guyana, and Ferdinando Gorges, director of Maine. Tisquantum from Patuxet (Plymouth) was a victim of serial kidnappings. He was the fabled Squanto in the Pilgrim Thanksgiving story. After the 1603 ascendance of James I over Scotland, England, and Ireland—the grandfather of Sophia of Hanover—such “exotic souvenirs” were regularly exchanged. James’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, had a “Red Indian” theme for her marriage. In 1616 Pocahontas arrived in London as a dignitary, marking a shift in the perception and treatment of Native delegations. Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (Boston: By the Society, 1920), XX:99–100; Alden T. Vaughan, Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500–1776 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1–112; Robert Zemsky, Merchants, Farmers, and River Gods: An Essay on Eighteenth-Century American Politics (Boston: Gambit, 1971), 102–4; Susi Colin, “The Wild Man and the Indian in Early 16th Century Book Illustration,” in Christian F. Feest, ed., Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 5–29; Oliver Dunn and James E. Kelley Jr., trans., The Diario of Christopher Columbus’s First Voyage to America, 1492–1493, Abstracted by Fray Bartolomé De Las Casas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 394–95; Luis N. Rivera, A Violent Evangelism: The Political and Religious Conquest of the Americas (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1991), 93–98; William C. Sturtevant and David Beers Quinn, “This New Prey: Eskimos in Europe in 1567, 1576, and 1577,” in Feest, ed., Indians and Europe, 61–112, 113n; Dagmar Wernitznig, Europe’s Indians, Indians in Europe: European Perceptions and Appropriations of Native American Cultures from Pocahontas to the Present (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007), esp. 1–5; William Bradford, Of Plimoth Plantation, 1620–1647 (Boston: Wright and Potter, State Printers, 1898), 114–23; James Rosier, A True Relation of the Most Prosperous Voyage Made This Present Yeere 1605, by Captaine George Waymouth, in the Discovery of the Land of Virginia: Where He Discovered 60 Miles Up a Most Excellent River; Together with a Most Fertile Land (London: George Bishop, 1605); Thomas Gorges to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, 19 May 1642, in Robert E. Moody, ed., The Letters of Thomas Gorges: Deputy Governor of the Province of Maine, 1640–1643 (Portland: Maine Historical Society, 1978), 94–95; Walter Raleigh, The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a Relation of the Great and Golden City of Manoa (Which the Spaniards Call El Dorado) … (London: Robert Robinson, 1596); Paula Gunn Allen, Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat (New York: HarperCollins, 2004); Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004); 107–58; Christian F. Feest, “Pride and Prejudice: The Pocahontas Myth and the Pamunkey,” in James A. Clifton, ed., The Invented Indian: Cultural Fictions and Government Policies (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1990), 49–52.

  2. Boston’s Latin School opened in 1635. Lorenzo J. Greene, “Slave-holding New England and Its Awakening,” Journal of Negro History, October 1928, 496–97. The college was under its 1642 organization, which included the governor among the overseers. Obituary for Andrew Belcher, Boston News-Letter, 4 November 1717; Henry F. Jenks, Catalogue of the Boston Public Latin School, Established in 1635, With an Historical Sketch (Boston: Boston Latin School Association, 1886), 41–43; Harvard University Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates, 1636–1920 (Cambridge, MA: By the University, 1930), 13, 141; Michael C. Batinski, Jonathan Belcher, Colonial Governor (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), 167–70.

  3. John Langdon Sibley, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1881; Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1996), IV:446–48; Zemsky, Merchants, Farmers, and River Gods, 99–128; entries for 13 October 1748 and 24 September–7 May 1755, “The Minutes of the Proceedings of the Trustees of the College of New Jersey,” vol. I, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University.

  4. The college in Cambridge (Newtown) was renamed Harvard in 1639. Yale was founded in Killingsworth (Clinton), Connecticut, in 1701, removed to Saybrook in 1707, and then relocated to New Haven in 1716. The College of New Jersey was founded in Elizabethtown (Elizabeth), New Jersey, in 1746. It was moved to Newark the following year, and then relocated to Princeton in 1756. Donald G. Tewksbury, The Founding of American Colleges and Universities Before the Civil War with Particular Reference to the Religious Influences Bearing upon the College Movement (New York: Teachers College, 1932), 32–33; Frank B. Dexter, “The Removal of Yale College to New Haven in October, 1716,” Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society (New Haven: For the Society, 1918), IX:70–89; entries from the founding of the Collegiate School to its removal to New Haven, “Yale University Corporation and Prudential Committee Minutes,” 2–23, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

  5. John Tate Lanning, Academic Culture in the Spanish Colonies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1940), 3–15; Discurso del Licenciado Julio Ortega Frier, Rector de la Universidad de Santo Domingo, Pronunciado en el Acto Académico Celebrado el 28 de Octubre de 1938 con Motivo del Cuarto Centenario de la Erección de la Universidad (Santo Domingo: Listin Diario, 1938), 3–9; Antonio Valle Llano, La Compañía de Jesús en Santo Domingo durante el Período Hispanico (1950; Santo Domingo: Academia Dominicana de la Historia, 2011), 51–75; Sergio Mendez-Arceo, La Real y Pontificia Universidad de Mexico: Antecedentes, Tramitacion y Despacho de las Reales Cedulas de Ereccion (Mexico: Consejo de Humanidades, 1952), 13–39; Alberto Maria Carreño, La Real y Pontificia Universidad de México, 1536–1865 (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1961), 13–39; John J. Martinez, Not Counting the Cost: Jesuit Missionaries in Colonial Mexico—A Story of Struggle, Commitment, and Sacrifice (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2001); Luis Martin, The Intellectual Conquest of Peru: The Jesuit College of San Pablo, 1568–1767 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1968), 1–6, 25–31; La Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos: IV Centenario de la Fundacion de la Universidad Real y Pontificia y de Su Vigorosa Continuidad Historia (Lima: 1950), 7–31; David Rubio, La Universidad de San Marcos de Lima durante la Colonización Española (Madrid: Juan Bravo, 1933), 7; Luis Antonio Eguiguren, Catalogo Historico del Claustro de la Universidad de San Marcos, 1576–1800 (Lima: Progreso Editorial, 1912); Instituto Colombiano para el Fomento de la Educacion Superior, La Educacion Superior en Colombia: Documentos Basicos para Su Planeamiento (Bogota, 1970).

  6. Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 98–103; Edward Gaylord Bourne, Spain in America, 1450–1850 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1904), 269–73; Jesús Guanche, “Cuba en el Tráfico Esclavista Transamericano y Caribeño a Través de las Denominaciones de Procedencia,” 57–73, in La Ruta del Esclavo (Santo Domingo: Comisión Nacional de la Ruta del Esclavo, 2006); Marta Espejo-Ponce Hunt, “Co
lonial Yucatán: Town and Region in the Seventeenth Century,” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1974, 91–98; Mathew Restall, The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 26–33; Herbert S. Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 28–33.

  7. African students attended San Pablo in the sixteenth century and the faculty even made attempts at codifying and teaching African languages, but the protests of leading Spanish families soon drove black people from the student body. By the eighteenth century colonists and clergy had elaborated racial barriers, including purity tests, at all of the colleges and universities in New Spain. Martin, Intellectual Conquest of Peru, 36–70; Frederick P. Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524–1650 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974), 90, 230–32, 245, 269, 312–13; Kendall W. Brown, “Jesuit Wealth and Economic Activity within the Peruvian Economy: The Case of Colonial Southern Peru,” The Americas, July 1987, 26–41; Nicholas P. Cushner, “Slave Mortality and Reproduction on Jesuit Haciendas in Colonial Peru,” Hispanic American Historical Review, May 1975, 178, 180–99; K. V. Fox, “Pedro Muniz, Dean of Lima, and the Indian Labor Question (1603),” Hispanic American Historical Review, February 1962, 63–68; Lanning, Academic Culture in the Spanish Colonies, 38–42; Rivera, A Violent Evangelism, 90–112, 180–95.

  8. Henry Warner Bowden, American Indians and Christian Missions: Studies in Cultural Conflict (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 75–78; Rev. P. F. X. De Charlevoix, History and General Description of New France, trans. John Gilmary Shea (New York: Francis P. Harper, 1900), II:55–90; J. M. Le Moine, “Jesuits’ College, Quebec,” Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, October 1878, 58; Daniel Royot, Divided Loyalties in a Doomed Empire: The French in the West from New France to the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007), 20–23; A. J. Macdougall, “Classical Studies in Seventeenth-Century Quebec,” Phoenix, Spring 1952, 6–21; Samuel Eliot Morison, Samuel de Champlain: Father of New France (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 216–17; David Hackett Fischer, Champlain’s Dream: The Visionary Adventurer Who Made a New World in Canada (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), 345–478; Thomas Guthrie Marquis, The Jesuit Missions: A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness (Toronto: Glasgow, Brook, 1916), 44–67; Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1867), 167–68; Nöel Baillargeon, Le Séminaire de Québec sous L’Épiscopat de Mgr de Laval (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1972), 4–88.

  9. Earlier in the century, a free African Portuguese man, Mathieu da Costa, served as interpreter for the governor of Acadia, Nova Scotia, to the Micmac nation. There is a disagreement over whether Olivier Le Jeune was sold or presented to Father Le Jeune. David Geggus, “The French Slave Trade: An Overview,” William and Mary Quarterly, January 2001, 119–38; Robert Harms, The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 32–41; Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History, 2nd ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), 2–6; Paul Le Jeune, Brief Relation of the Journey to New France, Made in the Month of April Last by Father Paul le Jeune, of the Society of Jesus (Paris: Sebastian Cramoisy, 1632), in Reuben Gold Thwaites, Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (Cleveland: Burrows Brothers, 1897), V:62–63; Morison, Samuel de Champlain, 216–17; George Hendrick and Willene Hendrick, Black Refugees in Canada: Accounts of Escape During the Era of Slavery (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), 4.

  10. Brett Rushforth, “‘A Little Flesh We Offer You’: The Origins of Indian Slavery in New France,” William and Mary Quarterly, October 2003, 777–808; Le Jeune, Brief Relation of the Journey to New France, 70–73; James Cleland Hamilton, “The Panis—An Historical Outline of Canadian Indian Slavery in the Eighteenth Century,” Proceedings of the Canadian Institute, February 1897, 19–27; Francis Parkman, France and England in North America: A Series of Historical Narratives, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1877), IV:388; James Cleland Hamilton, “Slavery in Canada,” Transactions of the Canadian Institute 1 (1889–90): 102–8; H. Clare Pentland, Labour and Capital in Canada, 1650–1860 (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1981), 1–2; Brett Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), esp. 9–10.

  11. Scott Mandelbrote, “All Souls from Civil War to Glorious Revolution,” in S. J. D. Green and Peregrine Horden, eds., All Souls Under the Ancien Régime: Politics, Learning and the Arts, c. 1600–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 60–65; Thomas Richards, The Puritan Visitation of Jesus College Oxford and the Principalship of Dr. Michael Roberts, 1648–1657 (London: Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1924); G. B. Tatham, The Puritans in Power: A Study in the History of the English Church from 1640–1660 (Cambridge: University Press, 1913), 93–197; Rebecca Seward Rolph, “Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and the Puritan Movements of Old and New England,” Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, Department of History, June 1979, esp. 321–26.

  12. James I, 26 February 1615, and Archbishop Tobias Matthew, 26 April 1616, in Paul Walne, “The Collections for Henrico College, 1616–1618,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, July 1972, 259–66; Lyon Gardiner Tyler, The College of William and Mary in Virginia: Its History and Work, 1693–1907 (Richmond: Whittet and Shepperson, 1907), 3; Alexander Whitaker, Good Newes from Virginia: Sent to the Counsell and Company of Virginia. From Alexander Whitaker, the Minister of Henrico in Virginia. Wherein Also Is a Narration of the Present State of that Countrey, and Our Colonies There. Perused and Published by Direction from that Counsell. And a Preface Prefixed of Some Matters Touching that Plantation, Very Requisite to Be Made Knowne (London: Felix Kyngston, 1613); Robert Hunt Land, “Henrico and Its College,” William and Mary Quarterly, October 1938, 459–87.

  13. “By His Maiesties Counseil for Virginia,” 6, “A Note of the Shipping, Men, and Provisions Sent to Virginia, by the Treasurer and Company in the Yeere, 1619,” 3, “Orders and Constitutions, Partly Collected Out of His Maiesties Letters Patents, and Partly Ordained upon Mature Deliberation, by the Treasuror, Counseil and Companie of Virginia for the Better Governing of the Actions and Affaires of the Said Companie Here in England Residing. Anno 1619 and 1620,” 13, 36–37, all in A Declaration of the State of the Colonie and Affaires in Virginia: With the Names of the Adventurors, and Summes Adventured in that Action (London: T. S., 1620); see the 26 May 1619 order of the Virginia Company relating to the Henrico college, in R. A. Brock, ed., Abstract of the Proceedings of the Virginia Company of London, 1619–1624, Prepared from the Records in the Library of Congress by Conway Robinson (Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1888), I:6–9, 50n–51n; Land, “Henrico and Its College,” 469–98; John S. Flory, “The University of Henrico,” Publications of the Southern History Association, January 1904, 40–52; Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: Norton, 1975), 98; Tyler, College of William and Mary, 3–6; The History of the College of William and Mary from Its Foundation, 1660, to 1874 (Richmond: J. W. Randolph and English, 1874), 34; Edward D. Neill, Memoir of Rev. Patrick Copland: Rector Elect of the First Projected College in the United States, A Chapter of the English Colonization of America (New York: Charles Scribner, 1871), 15–21, 81–82; H. C. Porter, The Inconstant Savage: England and the North American Indian, 1500–1660 (London: Duckworth, 1979), 434–50.

  14. Land, “Henrico and Its College,” 469–98; Neill, Memoir of Rev. Patrick Copland, 15–21, 81–82; Patrick Copland, Virginia’s God be Thanked, or A Sermon of Thanksgiving for the Happie Successe of the Affayres in Virginia This Last Yeare. Preached by Patrick Copland at the Bow-Church in Cheapside, before the Honorable Virginia Company, on Thursday, the 18. Of April 1622. And Now Published by the Commandment of the Said Honorable Company. Hereunto are adjoyned some Epistles, written first in Latine (and now Englished
in the East Indies by Peter Pope, an Indian Youth, borne in the Bay of Bengala, who was first taught and converted by the said P.C. And after baptized by Master John Wood, Dr. in Divinitie, in a famous Assembly before the Right Worshipful East India Company, at S. Dems in Fan-Church Streete in London, December 22, 1616 (London: I.D., 1622); J. Frederick Fausz, “The Powhatan Uprising of 1622: A Historical Study of Ethnocentrism and Cultural Conflict,” Ph.D. diss., Department of History, College of William and Mary, 1977; Harry Thomas Stock, “A Résumé of Christian Missions Among the American Indians,” American Journal of Theology, July 1920, 369.