by Jill Lepore
82Depositions of Edmond Rice and Abraham Gale before the Massachusetts Council, June 19, 1676, Mass. Arch. 30:204b.
83Deposition of John Partridge before the Massachusetts Council, June 19, 1676, Mass. Arch. 30:205b. Edmund Randolph’s account is also revealing here: “With many such reasons, but whatever be the cause, the English have contributed much to their misfortunes, for they first taught the Indians the use of armes, and admitted them to be present at all their musters and trainings, and shewed them how to handle, mend and fix their muskets, and have been furnished with al sorts of armes by permission of the government, so that the Indians are become excellent firemen. And at Natick there was a gathered church of praying Indians, who were exercised as trained bands, under officers of their owne; these have been the most barbarous and cruel enemies to the English of any others. Capt. Tom, their leader, being lately taken and hanged at Boston, with one other of their chiefs” (Randolph, “Short Narrative”).
84Gookin, “Historical Account,” 476-77.
85William Nahauton to the Massachusetts Council, September 22, 1675, Mass. Arch. 30:176. In addition to serving as a missionary and later testifying at John Sassamon’s trial, Nahauton had served with the English as a soldier in the war (Massachusetts Council to Josiah Winslow, April 21, 1676, NEHGR 41 [1887]: 400-401).
86Daniel Gookin to the Prison Keeper in Boston, September 22, 1675, Mass. Arch. 30:176a.
87Eliot accompanied Tom to his execution (“Rev. John Eliot’s Records,” 413, emphasis mine). Five Christian Indians also petitioned for the release of Captain Tom, his wife and two children, and another family in prison. The Massachusetts Council refused to release Captain Tom, insisting on his guilt, but agreed to spare his wife and children (Gookin, “Historical Account,” 527-29).
88The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674-1729, ed. M. Halsey Thomas (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1973), 1:18. Mary Rowlandson also recorded Captain Tom’s fate, noting, “Another Praying Indian was at Sudbury fight, though, as he deserved, he was afterwards hanged for it” (Soveraignty, 353). The author of True Account was more sympathetic, writing, “On the 22d of June, was Executed at Boston Captain Tom, alias Watasocamponum, and another with him. This Captain Tom was taken by our Indian Scouts, having been with the Enemy this last Winter; they both dyed (as is to be hoped) penitent, praying to God not like the manner of the Heathen” (5).
89Mather, Historical Discourse, 9.
90Massachusetts Council to the Indian Sagamores, March 31, 1676, Mass. Arch. 68:193. Probably during this same mission, Dublett succeeded in bringing Joseph Tukapewillins wife back, at which time she, too, was presumably sent to Deer Island. Their son, however, had died (Gookin, “Historical Account,” 502-3). Tom Dublett is also known as Tom Nepanitt or Neppanit.
91True Account, 2.
92Sam Quanohit and Kutquen with Peter Jethro as scribe to the Massachusetts Council, April 12, 1676, in Gookin, “Historical Account,” 508.
93Ibid.
94Rowlandson, Soveraignty, 352. Conway was also known as Tatatiquinea.
95James Printer to the Massachusetts Council, April 27, 1676, Mass. Arch., Hutchinson Papers, 2:282; and transcribed in Henry S. Norse, Early Records of Lancaster, Massachusetts, 1643-1725 (Lancaster, 1884), 111-12.
96Massachusetts Council to Indian Sachems, April 28, 1676, Mass. Arch. 30:201a.
97Rowlandson, Soveraignty, 354-58.
98Of Printers return, the author of True Account wrote, “A Revo’ter he was, and a fellow that had done much mischief, and staid out as long as he could, till the last day but one of a Proclamation set forth” (5). See also Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1:18.
99Mather, Brief History, 172-73; see also Hubbard, Narrative, 1:249.
100Hutchinson, Warr in New-England Visibly Ended, 105. James Printer to the Massachusetts Council, April 27, 1676.
101Thomas Whalley to John Cotton, July 18, 1676, Davis Papers, MHS. Harris, A Rhode Islander Reports, 74.
102Massachusetts Council to Daniel Gookin, July 3, 1676, Mass. Arch. 30:207.
103Though the English used the word “head” to refer to scalps as well as actual heads, it is usually clear from the context that a “head” carried off is a scalp, but a “head” erected on a pole is an actual head. Saltonstall, writing of a man who brought home “two Indian Heads,” added, in parentheses, “(i.e., the Skin with the hair on it)” (Saltonstall, Present State, 30). As William Harris explained, “some of the men of Swansy wear kild, And theyr heads (to Say) the Sculpes (that is) the skin & hayre of the top or crowne of the head flead of, as they use of all they kill (if they have time) to cut it rounde: & tear it of: & carry away.” Such scalps were “Sure signes of whome they have kild of both cects [sexes]; as formerlly foreskins of males” (Harris, A Rhode Islander Reports, 28). On the other hand, when Roger Williams wrote that Indians “are much delighted after battell to hang up the hands and heads of their enemies,” he was referring to actual heads (Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America [Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1973], 132).
104Derounian, “Publication, Promotion, and Distribution,” 245. Printer continued working at the press into the eighteenth century. In 1683 John Eliot, working on a new edition of the Indian Bible, lamented that “we have but one man, viz. the Indian Printer, that is able to compose the sheets, and correct the press with understanding” (quoted in Drake, Book of the Indians, 2:51). In 1682 and 1685 his name appears on land deeds (James Printer et al. to the Massachusetts Council, February 2, 1682, Mass. Arch. 30:265; James Printer et al. to the Massachusetts Council, May 27, 1685, Mass. Arch. 30:300). And Printer’s name appears for the last time on an imprint of a work from 1709. See also Diary of Samuel Sewall, 2:625.
105Rowlandson, Soveraignty, 322.
106Frank Mott, Golden Multitudes: The Story of Best Sellers in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1960), 303. See also Derounian, “Publication, Promotion, and Distribution,” 239-61.
Chapter 6 • A DANGEROUS MERCHANDISE
1“Wootonekanuske” has been commonly accepted as the name of Philip’s wife, but it was only first asserted in 1841 by Samuel Gardner Drake (Book of the Indians [Boston, 1841], 3:13). I have not found any contemporary evidence to support Drake, though his data regarding seventeenth-century names are usually reliable. George Howe claimed Philip’s wife was named “Nanuskooke” (Mount Hope: A New England Chronicle [New York: The Viking Press, 1959], 58). Current-day Wampanoag tradition asserts that Philip’s son was named “Metom” (Ann McMullen, personal communication, August 17, 1992), though I have found no seventeenth-century evidence to that effect. It may be a corruption of the nineteenth-century romantic term for “Metacom,” “Metamora” (see Chapter 8).
2Mather, Brief History, 189.
3John Leverett to All People, September 12, 1676, mss. bound, MHS. Josiah Winslow to all Christian People, August 9, 1676, Stewart Mitchell Papers, MHS.
4Josiah Winslow to all Christian People, August 9, 1676.
5Samuel Arnold and John Cotton, September 7, 1676, MHSC, 4th ser., 8 (1868): 689.
6Increase Mather to John Cotton, October 20, 1676, MHSC, 4th ser., 8 (1868): 689.
7James Keith to John Cotton, October 30, 1676, Davis Papers, MHS.
8John Cotton to Increase Mather, March 9, 1677, MHSC, 4th ser., 8 (1868): 232.
9See Douglas Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1958; reprint, East Orleans, Mass.: Parnassus Imprints, 1992), 224-28. In July 1677 the wife and children of at least one other notorious Indian, Popanooie, were also sold into slavery, though it seems that only Popanooie himself was sent out of the country (PCR 5:243-44).
10Almon Wheeler Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times within the Present Limits of the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1913), 138-43. Observations of Indians being sold into slavery early in the war include Saltonstall, Present State, 30.
11CCR 2:297.
12PCR 10:401.
1
3MCR 5:72. The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674-1729, ed. M. Halsey Thomas (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1973), 1:18. James Oliver to unknown, January 26, 1676, NEHGR 39 (1885): 379.
14When Josiah Winslow sent Benjamin Church on an Indian-hunting mission on August 28, 1676, he empowered him to “demand and receive of the Governor and Authority of Rhode island, all such of our Indian Enemys, whether Men, Women, or Children, as whilst our fforces were abroad ranging, the adjacent Parts of our Collony, in Pursute of the said Enemyes, were received by, and are entertained upon the said Island. And having received them, he is ordered to guard and conduct them to Plymouth aforesaid and alsoe impowered to sell and dispose of such of them” (Josiah Winslow to the Governor of Rhode Island, August 28, 1676, transcribed in “Record of a Court Martial Held at Newport, R.I. in August, 1676, for the Trial of Indians charged with being engaged in Philip’s Designs,” in A Narrative of the Causes … with other Documents, 15-16).
15Samuel Shrimpton to Elizabeth Shrimpton, July 8, 1676, photostats, MHS.
16Daniel Gookin to the Massachusetts Council, January 18, 1677, Mass. Arch. 30:235.
17Paine declared that “the Indians Conceive that I betrayed & Sould them” (John Paine to the commissioners of the United Colonies, undated, Further Letters on King Philip’s War [Providence: Society of Colonial Wars, 1923]). For another deposition related to Paine’s petition see James Sweet (and other Narragansett Indians) to the Massachusetts Council, October 10, 1675, Mass. Arch. 30:180.
18William Waldron to the Massachusetts Council, August 24, 1676, Mass. Arch. 30:213a. Waldron claimed he was innocent and petitioned for his release, but at least as of August 24, 1676, the Council refused to grant his request. See also George H. Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts (New York: D. Appleton, 1866), 47-48.
19Church, Entertaining History, 119.
20For references to the trial of captured Indians see Farther Brief and True Narration, 4. In meting out punishment, a stay of execution, at least a temporary one, might be gained if the captured Indian had information to offer (see, e.g., John Lake to the Massachusetts Council, September 15, 1676, Mass. Arch. 30:221b).
21John Easton served as one of the judges in Quinnapin’s trial (“Record of a Court Martial Held at Newport,” 176). On Weetamoo’s fate see Richard LeBaron Bowen, Early Rehoboth (Rehoboth, Mass.: privately printed, 1945-50), 3:79-80.
22Order of the Massachusetts Council, August 7, 1676, Mass. Arch. 30:209. On surrenders in the summer of 1676 see also Harris, A Rhode Islander Reports, 60-62.
23MCR 4:115.
24CCR 2:297.
25PCR 5:204-5. Wotuchpo’s name is also rendered as Tuchpo.
26On the sale of surrendering and Christian Indians see Gookin, “Historical Account,” 449; Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery, 38-42; Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times, 143-44.
27William Nahauton to the Massachusetts Council, July 3, 1676, Mass. Arch. 30:207a. Nahauton and others made a similar request regarding a young Indian boy named Peter (Natick and Punkapoag Indians to the Massachusetts Council, c. 1676, Mass. Arch. 30:222).
28Anthony and James to the Massachusetts Council, July 19, 1675, Mass. Arch. 67:220.
29Massachusetts Council to Daniel Gookin, August 28, 1676, Mass. Arch. 30:214.
30Richard Waldron to Daniel Gookin, November 2, 1676, NEHGR 43 (1889): 290.
31Order of the Massachusetts Council, November 23, 1676, Mass. Arch. 30: 228a. Richard Waldron to Daniel Gookin, November 2, 1676.
32Saltonstall, Present State, 33. See also Farther Brief and True Narration, 4.
33John Eliot to the Massachusetts governor and Council, August 13, 1675, PCR 10:451-52. Benjamin Church, too, later claimed to have opposed slavery (Entertaining History, 52).
34William Leete to John Winthrop, Jr., September 23, 1675, MHSC, 4th ser., 7 (1865): 578-80.
35News of the practice of selling Indians into foreign slavery must have traveled fast in the native community. In September 1677 English captive Quentin Stockwell observed Nipmuck Indians from Wachusett spreading news of the sale of Uncas’ men (“Narrative of the Captivity of Quentin Stockwell” in Samuel Gardner Drake, ed., Tragedies of the Wilderness [Boston, 1846], 63).
36John Eliot to the Massachusetts governor and Council, August 13, 1675.
37Roger Williams to the commissioners of the United Colonies [?], October 5, 1654, PCR 10:438-42.
38John Eliot to the Massachusetts governor and Council, August 13, 1675.
39Ibid.
40My discussion of the debate at Valladolid relies on Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians: A Study in Race Prejudice in the Modern World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1959), especially Chapters 4 and 5.
41See Aristotle, Nichomaen Ethics.
42Quoted in Hanke, Aristotle on the American Indians, 47.
43Bartolome de Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, trans., ed., and annotated by Stafford Poole (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974).
44Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, 26, 40.
45John Eliot to the Massachusetts governor and Council, August 13, 1675.
46Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery, 36-37.
47On the lack of principled objection to the enslavement of Indians in New England see David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 176-77. The colony of Rhode Island did declare, on March 13, 1676, that “no Indian in this Collony [shall] be a slave” (RICR 2:535), but Yasuhide Kawashima has rightly pointed out that Rhode Island’s antislavery legislation was not effective (Yasuhide Kawashima, “Indian Servitude in the Northeast,” HNAI 4:404-6); and, in August 1676, Rhode Island’s Council oversaw the sale of “slaves” for terms of nine years (RICR 2:549).
48Elizabeth Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1935), 3:4. The Body of Liberties also allowed for “such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us, and such shall have the Liberties and christian usage which the Law of God established in Israel concerning such persons doth morally require” to be enslaved. In 1670 the word “strangers” was dropped, but if that measure was taken so the order would more fully include Indians, it need not have been. As it stood, the Body of Liberties also included a catchall phrase: “Provided this exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by Authority.” See also Jordan, “The Influence of the West Indies on the Origins of New England Slavery,” 243-50. The Body of Liberties only retroactively legalized a practice that had already begun: In 1638 Indians captured during the Pequot War had been shipped to the Caribbean and exchanged for African slaves. See Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times, 109-11, 123-25; Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery, 4. See also George Francis Dow, Slave Ships and Shipping (Salem, Mass.: Marine Research Society, 1927), 267. Another kind of precedent existed as well: Indians convicted of heinous crimes might also be sold into foreign slavery. In 1674, for example, an Indian convicted of rape and sentenced to life was instead “subjected to 10 years slavery” in the West Indies (MCR 5:25).
49Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade, 3:8 (emphasis mine). Winthrop no doubt did know “verie well” how advantageous it might be to exchange troublesome, rebellious Indians for African slaves. The next year, the commissioners of the United Colonies declared that “because it will be chargeable keeping Indians in prisone, and if they should escape they are like to prove more insolent and dangerous after, that upon such seazure, the delinquent or satisfaction be againe demanded … or if it be denyed, that then the magistrates of the Jurisdiccon deliver up the Indians seased to the party or parties in-damaged, either to serve, or to be shipped out and exchanged for the Negroes as the cause will justly bear” (quoted in Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts, 31-32).
50In citing a “solemn League and Covenant,” Leverett and Winslow were not alone. This covenant�
��a treaty signed by Philip’s father, Massasoit, in 1621 and renewed by Philip himself in 1662 and 1671—assumed a prominent place in the colonists’ public writings about the war; several published narratives summarized or reproduced these treaties within their pages (e.g., Saltonstall, Continuation, 68-71). Their self-consciousness in doing so is well represented in a passage from A Farther Brief and True Narration:
It may be of some remark to let the World know that in the year 1621 on the 21 of March Massasoit (alias Woosamequen) acknowledged himself voluntarily in open Court at Plymouth to be a Subject to King James…. And August sixth 1662, this very Philip, our most turbulent and implacable Enemy, again renewed the acknowledgement of himself as a Subject to our King that now is, and his Heirs and Successors Kings of England…. The Original Instruments Signed with their own Hands, and the chief of their Men, still remain on Record in the Register of the Court of New-Plymouth (12).
51Hubbard, Narrative, 1:54-55.
52Similarly, William Harris maintained that “Phillip did openly Rob & kill the Kings Subjects,” thereby committing “high treason” (A Rhode Islander Reports, 20).
53And a rebellion, according to Hugo Grotius, was not only against the laws of war but also against the law of nature (De Jure Belli Et Pacis, trans. Francis W. Kelsey [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925], 139).
54The Cherokee Nation v. The State of Georgia, 30 U.S. 1 (1831).
55Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings, ed. Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 239-44.
56When the colonists wanted to establish the legitimacy of their own land ownership, they nonetheless “bought” property from the Indians. Indians, then, could be considered “proprietors” when they signed a deed documenting the purchase or transfer of lands, but at no other time. For a fuller discussion of English ideas about Indian possession see Chapter 3.
57Francis Higginson, New-England’s Plantation (London, 1630; reprinted in Alexander Young, ed., Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay [Boston, 1846]), 256.