by Jill Lepore
During King Philip’s War these three terms were sometimes used interchangeably. Increase Mather wrote that on June 7, 1676, the English “came upon a party of Indians not far from lancaster, and killed seven of them, and took nine and twenty of them Captive: some of which not long since had English Captives under them. Thus did they that had led into Captivity, go into captivity.”42 The twenty-nine Indian “captives” taken that day (some of them Rowlandson’s own former captors) were almost surely sold into foreign slavery or, if children, placed into service with an English family. The “captivity” they would have experienced differed dramatically from the “captivity” Mary Rowlandson experienced. Yet, if they didn’t always maintain distinctions between their terms, the English in New England maintained distinctions in their minds. English people owned themselves; Indians did not. Ultimately, Indians could be enslaved, while English people could not. But this racialized distinction had a gendered dimension as well. In its most common usage, captivity meant being held against one’s will and kept in confinement, usually temporarily; but a captive, especially a male captive, still possessed a will. Slavery, on the other hand, meant becoming the property of another human being, completely divested of freedom and personal rights. Even if Joshua Tift told the truth, he failed to exonerate himself because he was, in effect, unredeemable. For standing by idly while his “master” shot at English soldiers, Joshua Tift was either a traitor or a slave; either way, he was no Englishman.
III
JAMES PRINTER WAS no Englishman either, but he, too, might have claimed to have been taken “captive” (and not been believed). In early November 1675 three hundred Nipmuck Indians arrived in Printers town of Hassanemesit—not with the violence with which they would later assault Lancaster, but with much the same intention: acquiring captives. Like Mary Rowlandson and Joshua Tift, James Printer was given a choice. If the people of Hassanemesit would “go with them quietly,” the Nipmucks “would spare their lives; otherwise they would take away all their corn, and then they would be famished.” While Rowlandson chose captivity and Tift begged for his life, Printer had the option, it seemed, of refusing to go along with the Nipmucks, and simply fleeing to the English when provisions ran out in Hassanemesit. But this, alas, was a false choice. By the time the Nipmucks arrived in Hassanemesit, the Massachusetts authorities had already removed hundreds of Christian Indians to islands in Boston Harbor and shipped hundreds more Christian and enemy Indians out of the colonies to be sold as slaves in the West Indies and other places within English dominion. “If we do not kill you,” the Nipmucks rightly argued, and “you go to the English again, they will either force you all to some Island as the Natick Indians are, where you will be in danger to be starved with cold and hunger, and most probably in the end be all sent out of the country for slaves.” Printer and his townspeople had a choice, then, between captivity among the Indians and confinement on a barren island in Boston Harbor (which might in turn lead to perpetual slavery in a far more remote land). As Daniel Gookin later reported, “many of them at last were inclined, in this strait, of two evils to choose the least, as it to them appeared, and to accompany the enemy to their quarters.” In defense of the Hassanemesits, Gookin pointed out that “perhaps if Englishmen, and good Christians too, had been in their case and under like temptations, possibly they might have done as they did.”43 Mary Rowlandson could not have said it better.
Within days of the Nipmucks’ confrontation with Printer and his townspeople, Captain Daniel Henchman reported finding Hassanemesit a hauntingly empty town.44 He was not convinced, however, that the Christian Indians had been “captivated” and claimed there were “no signs of an enimy that had been there; but a flight of Indians, i fear, real or feined, by apples, corn, nuts and other things lying up and down.”45 On the other hand, authorities in Boston seem to have become gradually convinced that the Christian Indians had in fact been taken captive. In a letter written November 6, the Massachusetts Council reported that the Hassanemesit Indians had been taken by the Nipmucks—“whether with their consent or without their consent we are not certayne”—but on November 16 the Council seemed less ambiguous, informing Captain Appleton that “a considerable party of [Nipmucks] have appeared (within this 14 dayes) in the Nipmoke country, and have surprised and carried away or slayne about 180 men women & children of the praying indians that lived at & were confyned unto a place called Hassanemesit.” And, in a letter written a week later, Boston authorities used even more forceful terms, reporting that the Hassanemesit Indians had been “seased & carred away.”46
Whether the Christian Indians of Hassanemesit were truly “captivated” or whether they joined the Nipmucks willingly is certainly subject to debate, but before attempting any conclusion we would do well to first consider the options they were faced with. If James Printer had refused to go with the Nipmucks and instead fled to the English for protection, he might well have been shot during his travels eastward. In August 1675 Captain Samuel Moseley, widely known as the cruelest captain in the colonial army (he had once ordered an Algonquian woman to be “torn to peeces by Doggs”), had accused Printer and fourteen other Christian Indians of the murder of seven colonists at Lancaster on August 22. Moseley’s evidence was entirely circumstantial, and a single confession had been elicited from one of the group only after he had been tortured and threatened with death, but public sentiment against Christian Indians was so strong that Moseley was able to bring the case to trial. On August 30 Moseley brought James Printer and fourteen other Christian Indians into Boston, “pinioned and fastened with lines from neck to neck.”47 In September Printer lingered in a Boston prison until he and his companions were brought to trial, at which point all but two of the accused were declared innocent. Even then,
Some men were so violent that they would have had these Indians put to death by martial law, and not tried by a jury, though they were subjects under the English protection, and not in hostility with us; others had received such impressions in their minds, that they could hardly extend charity to the jurors and magistrates that acquitted them.48
A lynching was narrowly averted, and for coming to the defense of the accused, Daniel Gookin and John Eliot were themselves threatened.49
James Printer, in other words, was well acquainted with the colonists’ vigilante justice. And on August 30, the very day that Printer and the other accused Hassanemesit Indians were marched to Boston, tied neck to neck, the Massachusetts Council issued an order declaring that all Christian Indians be forthwith confined to their towns, “for security of the English & Indians in amity with us”—and, surely, to prevent exactly the kind of depredations of which the Hassanemesits stood accused. If a wayward Indian happened to be shot, “the Council do hereby declare that they shall account themselves wholly innocent, & their blood, or other damage by them sustained will be upon their own heads.”50 If Printer had chosen to flee from the Nipmucks when they arrived in Hassanemesit in November, he could have been killed in the woods and no one would have had to answer for his death.
On the other hand, Printer might have made it safely to an English town, in which case he would have been taken away and confined to Deer Island in Boston Harbor within days of his arrival. On October 13 the Massachusetts authorities had ordered that all Indians from the praying town of Natick be removed to Deer Island, and the evacuation of other praying towns soon followed.51 (Plans to confine Christian Indians had been considered almost as soon as the war began; in September the minister of nearby Mendon proposed that the Hassanemesit Indians be ordered to build a fort in Mendon and to move there with their families as soon as their corn crop was harvested, though the plan was never executed.)52 Most Christian Indians in the newer, more western praying towns (“being but raw and lately initiated into the Christian profession”) had already joined the enemy; now, those who had remained loyal to the English, residents of the fourteen “old” praying towns, were to be indefinitely confined.53 Fear of the misery of Deer Island inspired Chri
stian Indians in Wamesit to leave the colony entirely and to “go towards the French.” In a letter explaining their decision to abandon their town, the Wamesits wrote, “As for the Island, we say there is no safety for us, because many English be not good, and may be they come to us and kill us…. We are not sorry for what we leave behind, but we are sorry for the English have driven us from our praying to god and from our teacher.”54
When the Nipmucks came to his town in November 1675, James Printer could not have known exactly what fate would have awaited him on Deer Island, but he had his own recent experience of English confinement to call to mind, and he had probably heard rumors about the condition of the Indians on the island, and, then too, it would have taken little imagination to conclude that things would only worsen over the winter. Printer would have been right in expecting the worst.
Those Indians who tried to escape from Deer Island could be killed, while others were illegally taken from the island and sold as slaves. When John Eliot met with a group of Natick Indians on the shores of the Charles River just before they were to depart, he “comforted and encouraged and instructed and prayed with them, and for them,” but many were afraid that “they should never return to their habitations, but be transported out of the country.”55 On November 3 the General Court, referring to “sundry Indians (that have subjected to our government)” who had been placed “upon some islands for their and our security,” proclaimed “that none of the sayd indians shall presume to goe off the sayd islands voluntarily, uponn payne of death” and “that if any person or persons shall presume to take, steale, or carry away either man, woe-man, or child of the said Indians, off from any the said islands where they are placed, without order from the Generall Court or council, he or they shall be accounted breakers of the capitall law printed & published against man stealing.” The Court’s orders, however, often proved ineffectual. Even though the Court had stipulated that provisions be “sent downe to Deare Island, so as to prevent their perishing by any extremity that they may be put unto for want of absolute necessaries,” the hundreds of Indians on the small island had few resources with which to feed and shelter themselves for the winter, and the provisions they received were inadequate.56 By the end of November the Deer Island Indians’ condition was so bad that the Massachusetts Council grudgingly appointed two colonists to “take care that none of the Said Indians do desert the Island nor are injured by any persons Indians or English nor that they suffer for want of necessarys.”57 In December, when Gookin and Eliot traveled to the island “to visit and comfort the poor Christian Indians,” they found about five hundred starving men, women, and children; “the Island was bleak and cold, their wigwams poor and mean, their clothes few and thin.”58
Outside of Gookin and Eliot, however, there was little sympathy for the plight of the Indians confined to Deer Island. Not a few colonists believed confinement was too good a treatment for Indians, Christian or not. Even Christian Indians who served the English as soldiers were believed by many to be disloyal. Mary Pray, for instance, complained that “those Indians that are caled praying Indians never shut at the other Indians, but up into the tops of the trees or into the ground; and when they make shew of going first into the swamp they comonly give the Indians noatis how to escape the English.”59This suspicion had been vindicated by Tift himself, who informed his interrogators that “if the Monhiggins and Pequts had bene true [to the English] they might have destroyed most of the Nahiggonsiks, but, the Nahigonsiks parlied with them in the beginning of the [Great Swamp] Fight so that they promised to shoote high which they did and kild not one Nahigonsik man except against their Wills.”60 If Christian and allied Indians fighting alongside English soldiers were disloyal, Christian Indians living with enemy Indians were thought to be far worse. To punning Puritans, praying Indians had now become “preying Indians.”61
In February, after the attacks on Medfield and Lancaster (where Mary Rowlandson was “captivated” by Indians believed to include the former Christian Indians of Hassanemesit), several colonists contemplated taking revenge against the Christian Indians on Deer Island. As Daniel Gookin reported, “This intelligence of burning Medfield coming to the General Court, and so soon after the burning of Lancaster, occasioned many thoughts of hearty and hurrying motions, and gave opportunity to the vulgar to cry out, ‘Oh, come, let us go down to Deer Island, and kill all the praying Indians.’ “62 At about the same time, in mid-February, there was a rumor that the Indians themselves were planning an escape off the island, after which they were expected to return to Boston and “make Boston especially the magistrates pay deare for sundry hours they have been kept there.”63 On February 22 a group of nervous Bostonians petitioned the Council urging stronger measures against all Indians, enemy or not, and that the Christian Indians be removed to “some place farther more from us.”64
Responding to rumors of possible assaults and escape attempts, the General Court convened a debate on the fate of the Indians on Deer Island on February 23. As Gookin reported, “Some would have them all destroyed; others, sent out of the country; but some there were of more moderation, alleging that those Indians and their ancestors had a covenant with the English about thirty years since, wherein mutual protection and subjection was agreed.” The records indeed revealed such an agreement, made in 1644, which the Court decided to abide by.65 (Meanwhile, for his advocacy of the Indians on Deer Island, Gookin was threatened with death. On February 28 three Englishwomen heard Richard Scott call Gookin “an Irish Dog, that was not faithfull to his country, the Sonne of a whoare, a Bitch, a Rogue, God confound him & God rott his Soul, saying if I could roast him alive, I would.”66Soon afterward, a note signed by “the Society A.B.C.D.” and probably authored by Scott was posted in Boston calling Gookin a traitor and warning him “to prepare for deathe.”67) Finally, on February 29, 1676, the Massachusetts Council, “having seriously considered the state of the Indians now Confyned to deare Island,” issued a four-part order. This stipulated, first, that “a guard of six or eight English men” be posted to ensure that no Indians escaped the island; second, that these guards put all the Indians to work, “some to spining, others to breaking up land to plant on, others to gett fish & clams”; third, that the colonists who owned Deer Island and other islands used to confine the Indians (these included Long Island, Potuck Island, and the Brewster Islands) be compensated for the use of their land; and fourth, that Captain Daniel Henchman, the officer in charge of the island, ensure that the Indians “live soberly & religiously.”68
The condition of the Indians living on the islands, however, continued to deteriorate. In March Henchman reported to the Council that “the said Indians are in great distress for want of food for themselves [and their] wives & children.”69 By early May the Massachusetts Council, “considering the present distressed condition of the Indians at the island, they being ready to perish for want of bread, & incapacitated to make provission for the future, doe order, that there be a man with a boate provided, who, with some of the Indians, shallbe imployed in catching of fish for theire supply.”70 Several weeks later, those Indians on the island who had survived the winter were finally released. Daniel Gookin reported that “God was pleased to mollify the hearts and minds of men towards them, little and little; partly by the true reports brought to the General Court, of their distressed estate, and the great unhkelihood they were to plant or reap any corn at the Islands … and the General Court then sitting passed an order, giving liberty to remove them from the Islands.” Their “deliverance” may have been, as Gookin claimed, “a jubilee to those poor creatures,” but more than half of the Christian Indians confined to Deer Island had died during the winter, and many no doubt were too sick to enjoy their liberty for long.71
IV
WITH THE FATE that might have awaited him at Deer Island in mind, then, James Printer did not flee to the English when the Nipmucks came to Hassanemesit in November 1675, only to be released weak and starving the following May. But his brother,
Joseph Tukapewillin, eventually did.72Tukapewillin, the minister of Hassanemesit, at first went along with the Nipmucks when they came to the town that fall, but after several months of captivity, he planned his escape. In February 1676 Tukapewillin met with a Christian Indian named Job Kattenanit, a preacher from Magunkog, who had been employed by the English to serve as a spy among the Nipmucks. With several other Indians, Kattenanit had been temporarily released from confinement on Deer Island to undertake an especially dangerous mission.73 (Among the information Kattenanit supplied to the English was a warning of the February 10 attack on Lancaster, though it came too late to save Mary Rowland-son and her family.)74 While Kattenanit was in Nipmuck territory, he spoke to Joseph Tukapewillin, and the two men arranged to meet in a designated woods later in March, when Tukapewillin would escape with his wife and children, bringing with him Kattenanit’s own children, who, according to Kattenanit, were also being held captive among enemy Indians. Returning to Boston, Kattenanit petitioned the Massachusetts Council for permission to rescue his family from captivity, declaring,
in my jorny I found my 3 children with the enimy together with some of my friends; that continue their fidelity to God & to the English & do greatly mourn for their condition & longe desire to returne to the English.75