Content: (music) (As the Jingle fades away), introduce Stacks: The Study of History – Season One: The Hidden History of Colonial America - Episode 02: The Native American Slave Trade in Early Colonial America

Segment: Welcome

Time Allotted: 2-5 Minutes

Content: Welcome scholars, historians, and history lovers to Stacks: The Study of History. I am your host, Jeni Kirby. I am a historian and graduate student at Southern New Hampshire University. What is presented here is my own research and does not have any affiliation with SNHU or other institutions. In today’s episode: 02 The Native American Slave Trade in Colonial America, I will discuss how this trade formed, how the Puritans become involved, and how their involvement pushed African Slavery. Thus, I will discuss how this trade transformed Early Colonial America. As always, viewer discretion is advised.

Break: 15 seconds - Segment: Recap from previous episode:

In the last episode, I discussed the Pequot War, how it began, and why it caused a shift in trade dominance, power, and wealth. The Puritans and English used the killing of one white man, Captain Stone, to force the Pequot into submission by demanding that they pay the colonist in wampum, fur, and to allow them to punish the Pequot warriors responsible for Captain Stone’s death.When the Pequot only paid a portion of their demands and refused to give up their warriors into the hands of the colonist, the English and Puritans decided to take matters into their own hands.Small skirmishes began to take hold.Retaliation between both sides caused many deaths, damages, and insecurity. When the Pequots attacked the English fort, Fort Saybrook, the colonist decided that they had enough with “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” and began forming alliances with Pequot enemies, such as the Mohegan, Narragansets, and Niantics.

On the dawn of May 26, 1637, the Puritans and English with their Native American allies, breached Fort Mystic, which was a fort, owned and built by the Pequot tribe, and aggressively attacked the sleeping an unsuspecting Pequots. The Europeans hacked and shot men, women, and children with swords and guns, and set fire to wigwams, burning the Indians alive. This aggression was never seen before through the eyes of the natives. For the first time, they witnessed Medieval brutality.

After the slaughter, the Europeans left Fort Mystic and ran into 103 fleeing Pequots. They attacked those as well. For the ones that survived this attack, the colonist made into slaves. The men were sold to trading companies in the Caribbean areas and the women and children they kept for themselves. As a result, the colonist and Puritans began to dive into another part of the trade, which I call the Native American Slave Trade. When we return, I will discuss how the Native American Slave Trade was formed, why it was used among the tribes, and why it was important for the Puritans and other Europeans to utilize the trade for their own benefits.

Break 15 seconds: Segment: What was the Native American Slave Trade and How did it Form? (Music 15 seconds).

Time Allotted: 15-30 minutes

Welcome back listeners, as mentioned before the break, I will discuss how the Native American Slave Trade was created and how it was used between European and Indian settlements.It should be noted that slavery was a global institution. Historians trace it back to Southern and Northern America, across the sea to Western and Eastern Europe, to Asia, Middle East, and Africa, from Biblical times to Post-Modern times, what we call The Sex Slave Trade. Every society, throughout the human experience, participated in slavery.[1] So how did Early Colonial slavery form and become part of the fur and wampum trade?

Between the years of 1630 – 1730, the fur and wampum trade increased, but it began to decline when wampum was no longer used as a currency between the colonists. This was around 1731. But at its height, Europeans began to heavily trade with Native Americans. Europe demanded more wampum and furs. Indians did not understand why these strange men wanted more wampum, but they were happy to supply them with the shells. As for the Indians, trading with other Native American tribes, wampum belts continued to be used as a sign of peace. Yet, through the trading of Europeans, Indians were soon demanding metal goods, which revolutionize their society. As the Europeans demanded for more wampum, the Indians demanded more metals. Many women would use metal bells in their ceremonial dress. These small bells made a sweet jingle sound, and the Jingle Dance was born. Today, the Jingle Dance is still performed at Powwows throughout the nation. Along with these small bells, both men and women would use metal pieces like fishhooks as earrings. Metal pots were also in high demand. For the women, metal tools reduced the workload of wampum, sewing, and metal pots replaced clay pots and reduced the workload of clay pot making. Along with this demand, the Indians demanded muskets, shot, and balls. At the head of this trade was the shaman.[2]

The medicine men of the Early Colonial period held much more power than the chiefs. These men were the powerhouses of the chieftains. They utilized what they wanted through prayer and signs, to twist and turn chieftains in the direction that the medicine men wanted. Normally, they manipulated their medicine or visions to lead the chiefs down the path that benefited the medicine men. This meant if the shaman saw that they could benefit from the European goods, then the medicine man would influence their chief’s decision to participate in trade and war. By the time the Revolutionary War hit, the power of the shaman declined. But during the Early Colonial period, their influence was taken without question, and they held more power than the chief. [3]

Once the Europeans began to arrive, the shaman became key players in the political arenas of North America. They lost their control after the Pequot War. The chieftains blamed them for the loss, and because of the increase in European numbers, the shaman could no longer negotiate with the Europeans.The Europeans saw that they no longer had to keep the peace, because they outnumbered their Native American neighbors. They also understood that they were the dominating force, and they did not have to negotiate with the Indians anymore. In their eyes, they had the Native Americans by the necks.[4]

As a result, the Europeans had enough numbers to overthrow Native power and become the dominating force of the fur and wampum trade. In 2012, Scott Weidensaul, an ornithologist and naturalist, wrote a book called The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America. Weidensaul argues, “This and other frontier wars did not break out along predictable cultural or racial fault lines; they were, in the words of one historian, violence ‘not between strangers [but] between people who had become neighbors, if not kin.’”[5] By 1690, Indians and Englishmen were kin to each other.

Many had “country wives” scattered throughout Indian country, in addition, to a legally married spouse (white or Indian) back in the settlements.This practice was not confined to lowly traders; Sir William Johnston, New York’s powerful Indian agent, maintained a Mohawk “housekeeper” in addition to his wife, although the polygamous Iroquois understood the reality of the situation perfectly. [6] Thus, the number one cause of Indian and colonial conflict was economy not racial division.[7] So what drove economic division? Answer, the fur and wampum trade, which opened the door to the Indian Slave Trade.

With the high demand for human beings, the Indians in the New World took it upon themselves to supply the Europeans with their demand. “By 1715, it is estimated that the Carolinians and their native allies had enslaved up to 51,000 Indians.”[8] The Indians slaves were forced to work on plantations or were sold for profits to the West Indies.[9] Weidensaul then argues that this supply and demand was brought on through survival tactics by the Europeans. For instance, “A single slave might bring as much in English goods as a winter’s worth of deerskins.”[10] It is here that the fur and wampum trade opened the door for Native American slavery.

What was a radical change was the idea of a global slave trade, linking Native slave catchers deep in the interior of the American Southeast with middlemen in Carolina, sugar plantations in the West Indies, farmers and storekeepers in Boston, and manufactures in England, who made the highest-quality trade goods available in the New World.[11]

Thus, Europeans began to use it to gain necessary furs, such as beaver pelts in order to survive the deadly New World winters.[12] From this development, Europeans, from Southern America to Northern America, began to make clear racial distinctions between themselves, Indians, and Africans.[13] They realized that Indians and Africans were different from their own culture, language, society, and were quite foreign in their beliefs and lifestyles. These culture differences led the distinction that those that cultivated and owned land, were the dominant species. Seeing that the Africans and Indians as primitive, savage, uncivilized, or uncultured, the colonist saw themselves as the dominant species or race. As a result, the treatment of Indian slaves was horrific. After the Pequot War, the majority of Pequot men were shipped off to Bermuda, while the women and girls were divided among the English as slaves.[14]

At this time, Africans were not being brought over as slaves. The colonist, in North America, utilized the Pequot War to gain Indian slaves. They divided the Pequot women and children for themselves. In 1997, Dr. Michael L. Fickes, a history professor at University of California, Los Angeles, wrote a journal article called “‘They Could not Endure that Yoke:’ The Captivity of Pequot Women and Children after the War of 1637.”[15] In 2000, this article was published through The New England Quarterly.[16] Fickes argues:

As the [Pequot] war wound to a close and prisoners were taken, they were sent into the custody of their enemies, both Algonquian and white.The fates of hundreds of Pequot women and children who were forcibly seized by New England colonists during that war in 1637 tell us a great deal about the differing cultures of Native Americans and white settlers in seventeenth-century New England.[17]

When the Europeans set fire to Fort Mystic, which was a Pequot fort, Fickes argues that “While the colonial soldiers made a concerted effort to return to a policy of mercy after Mystic, they applied it only to women and children and held firmly to their belief that the Pequot men deserved ‘severe justice.’”[18] Through this belief, the Europeans executed about “twenty-two” men and enslaved thirty-three women and children.[19] Some of these women and children were sold to other Indian tribes, while some were sold among the colonists.[20] After the Pequot War, Fickes estimates that “319 Pequots were captured by the English.”[21] Even though the colonist believed that the Pequot men deserved bondage, they had no issue in abusing the Pequot women and children. Indian slave women were punished with the branding iron at the back of a shoulder for running away or by being raped.[22] Their work ethic, labor, or the reason they ran away was not explained. What happened to the Pequot males is anyone’s guess. Historians are not even sure if they even made it to Bermuda. We speculate that they did an all died from exposure, harsh labor, torture, starvation, and disease.

According to Fickes, “Forty-six lists, from 1620-1638, show that there were more men than women.”[23] He further states, “The colonist apparently believed that Pequot women and their children could be trained to provide excellent service to help spare the overtaxed Puritan wife.”[24] Looking at how the Indian slave trade impacted Indian culture, Fickes states, “The colonist proceeded to split apart numerous Pequot families after the war.”[25]

Through these mistreatments, Indian and European tensions increased. “Pequot captives who attempted to escape immediately after their capture were branded.”[26] Unlike Weidensaul, Fickes points out that the Pequots had difficulty in communicating and understanding the tasks that they were ordered to complete. “The duties like milking a cow, mending a stocking, or churning butter would have been new to most, and even those tasks European and Indian women had in common – such as transporting a baby or preparing corn – were performed differently."[27] These divisions caused a great deal of pain and suffering to the enslaved Pequot women, who did not understand English culture, language, or the objects used in daily English colonial life.

Michael Guasco, a historian and a Doctrine of Philosophy, studies, researches, and teaches early American history, American Revolution, and the Atlantic World at Davidson College. In 2007, he wrote, “To ‘Doe Some Good Upon Their Countrymen:’ The Paradox of Indian Slavery in Early Anglo-America,’” in a historical journal called Journal of Social History. Through this source, Guasco shows how the Europeans treated their Indian slaves. He argues that the English attacked the Pequot nation, not for economic trade reasons but for racial-superiority reasons. “English America routinely consider race to be an issue that cannot easily be separated from the labor regime that came to define the New World.”[28]

In the wake of the Pequot War in New England in 1637, seventeen Pequot Indians—fifteen boys and two women—were ordered to be sent out of New England by Massachusetts officials. Hundreds of captives had been taken by the English Puritans as a result of the colonists' triumphs in battle at Mistick and the Great Swamp. Subsequently, many Pequot men were put to death, while others were divided up among the soldiers, given to the Narragansetts, or assigned to the Connecticut or Massachusetts colonies. The seventeen women and boys, however, were placed on board the Salem-built craft of Captain Pierce and earmarked for sale in the remote Atlantic island of Bermuda. For some reason. Captain Pierce missed his landing and continued on to the West Indies. Pierce deposited his cargo on the tiny Puritan outpost off the coast of Nicaragua at Providence Island where, by a stroke of the Providence Island Company’s pen, the rebel Pequots were transformed into ‘cannibal negroes,’ condemned to serve out their lives in slavery in Anglo-America's first true slave society.[29]

The Pequot Indians had two major forts or stockades: The Majestic and the Mystic. These forts were built in a spiral ring with hidden front and back entrances. To enter or leave, individuals had to proceed in a single file. If invaders found the secret entrances, then they would be hacked to death, one by one. Not one tribe ever tried to attack the Pequots at their own forts, that is not until the English arrived. At the attacks of these forts, the colonist easily found the hidden entrances. The Europeans build and understood the engineering of secret rooms and passageways. They were quite common during the Medieval and Renaissance periods, which carried over into the colonial period. Through their knowledge and experience, combined with the fact that these were primitive forts or stockades, the men could easily guess and find these entrances.

Once they entered these forts, the Pequot were burned and hacked to death with swords and muskets. They were even burned alive in their own homes. For those that could escape, they went through the back entrances and fled to the swamps. Here, about 100 or so women and children, with a hand-few of wounded warriors, waited in safety. Yet the English quickly spotted the fleeing group and were captured with little resistance. In 2002, Alan Gallay, a historian and professor, who teaches American history at Western Washington University wrote a book called. The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717.[30] Gallay argues, “South Carolina’s colonization in 1670, the South’s Native Americans were in the midst of vast political, social, and cultural changes that had begun in the fifteenth century with the collapse of many Mississippian chiefdoms.”[31] Furthermore, Gallay explains why and how the Indian slave trade was a cultural institution that transformed to an economic profit for survival. “For southern Native Americans, capturing other Native Americans was a way to obtain European trade goods.”[32] As a result, Gallay figures that the “Indian slave trade also exposed southern people to a new ideology of group identity – race.”[33]

As shown throughout this episode, the Native American slave trade was the trading and bartering between Indians and Europeans. But as shown in episode 01, the colonist became more confident in their dominance when their numbers began to increase. Their conquering natures took hold through greed. To gain prosperity and influence in the New World, they attacked the most aggressive tribe, The Pequots. This was a military strategic move that benefited the colonist greatly. After annihilating the Pequots and dividing the survivors between themselves as slaves, there was nothing standing in their way. As a result, they became the top traders in the fur and wampum trade. Thus, neither the Native Americans nor colonist saw pigmentation as a reason for the Pequot War. The wampum and fur trade, which eventually added white and Indian slaves in the mix, created capital and influence in the region. Who was going to outperform the competition? At the time, it was anyone’s guess. Eventually, culture clashes increased leading up to King Philip’s War. But still, race never became a factor until much later. Gallay states, “The English settlement at Carolina played an inordinately influential role in the region, an outgrowth of its colonists’ skills in manipulating and negotiating with native peoples but owning more to the strength of the English empire.”[34]

It should be noted that as the English sought to gain dominance in the New World, the Native American tribes sought to replenish their numbers. As more and more Europeans came to the New World, smallpox ravaged the Native American tribes. It was so massive that historians refer it to biological genocide. Several tribes were completely wiped out by smallpox, warriors set out to replenish their numbers through Indian raids and the slave trade. For the Indians, slavery was not built for dominance or status, it was built around the need to survive. However, raiding became a huge ordeal for the colonist, especially during King Philip’s War. When we return, I will recap on what I already discussed and explain the topic for episode 03.

Break: 15 seconds – Recap and enter into the conclusion

Segment: Re-Cap and Conclusion

Time Allotted: 2-5 minutes

Content: Looking back, the Indian slave trade was introduced through the fur and wampum trade by the Indians. Indian slavery was already established in the New World, through the Indian tribes, but it was not until the Pequot War that colonist gained their own Indian slaves.This was not wrong in the Indians eyes.What disturbed them was witnessing European brutality at Fort Mystic and Majestic: the burning of human beings alive and the disregard of the lives of women and children. After the Pequot War, the Indian Slave Trade transformed because the colonist demanded more slaves. Thus, the fur and wampum trade increased through the demand of slavery. However, as King Philip’s War draws near, tensions increase between the colonist and Indians. Through King Philip’s War, the fur and wampum trade transformed itself into a brutal affair. Colonist wrote about the brutality of the Indians. These individuals did not admit to their wrong doings, pointing only their fingers at the Pequots and Narragansett tribes.

Still racism did not become an issue until the 1760s. Thus, the fur and wampum trade created an economic gain through supply and demand, which caused the Indian slave trade to grow in epic proportions. In conclusion, the transformation of the Indian slave trade began with the fur and wampum trade and not through racism. By the time racism took shape, the Indians of North America were already seeing a diminishing impact on their way of life. Thus, as more Europeans came to the New World, the Indian saw their way of life getting shorter. As a result, the Indian slavery was formed and created through economic and survival patterns, and the English took advantage of the entire trade, adding to their demand for slaves. However, Indians began to witness European brutality through war and slavery. Indians did not torture their slaves with branding irons and other medieval like torture devices. As a result, Europeans taught the Indians this brutality, not directly, but through learned behavior from witnessing and experiencing European aggression. From this, the New World began to shift and turn into a English colony ruled by Medieval thought, not just for Indians but for the white women and children as well.

Segment: Closing/ Conclusion

Time Allotted: 2-5 minutes

Content: In the next episode, I will discuss the ways that European women were treated by their European men, and how their lives changed drastically in the New World. I will then go into the politics that led up to King Philips War. This will bring us to Jamestown, Pocahontas, and other colonies in the New World, where I will discuss the trends and patterns of Native American culture, society, and the colonist themselves.

Segment: Outro

Time Allotted: 1-2 minutes

Content: (Closing Music) You may visit jenikirbyhistory.com to access my research, episode content, and bibliography of Native American Slavery.While there, be sure to check out my history blog about socialism, and store. Fill free to subscribe to the site to receive new updates and content. Remember, Research. Learn. Discover.

[1]Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2006), 110, 130, 163, 168-169, 188, 206.

[2] Philbrick, Mayflower, 168, 193, 206, 343.

[3] Philbrick, Mayflower, 178-180, 182, 220.

[4]Philbrick, Mayflower, 261, 277, 309.

[5]Scott Weidensaul, The Frist Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America (New York, NY: Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2012), xvi.

[6]Weidensaul, Frist Frontier, 304.

[7] Weidensaul, First Frontier, 225.

[8]Weidensaul, Frist Frontier, 225.

[9]Weidensaul, Frist Frontier, 230.

[10]Weidensaul, Frist Frontier, 230.

[11]Weidensaul, Frist Frontier, 230.

[12]Weidensaul, Frist Frontier, 232.

[13] Weidensaul, Frist Frontier, 232.

[14]Weidensaul, Frist Frontier, 144.

[15] Weidensaul, Frist Frontier, 144.

[16]Weidensaul, Frist Frontier, 144.

[17]Michael L. Fickes, “They Could Not Endure That Yoke:” The Captivity of Pequot Women and Children after the War of 1637,” The New England Quarterly 73, no. 1 (March 2000): 59, accessed April 1, 2019, https://msu.edu/~ottevaer/interactive/fickes.pdf.

[18]Fickes, “Pequot Women and Children,” 59.

[19]Fickes, “Pequot Women and Children,” 59.

[20]Fickes, “Pequot Women and Children,” 59-60.

[21]Fickes, “Pequot Women and Children,” 61.

[22]Fickes, “Pequot Women and Children,” 59.

[23]Fickes, “Pequot Women and Children,” 59.

[24]Fickes, “Pequot Women and Children,” 63.

[25]Fickes, “Pequot Women and Children,” 70.

[26]Fickes, “Pequot Women and Children,” 71.

[27] Fickes, “Pequot Women and Children,” 72.

[28]Michael Guasco, “To Doe Some Good Upon Their Countrymen:” The Paradox of Indian Slavery in Early Anglo-America,” Journal of Social History 41, no. 2 ( 2007): 390, accessed May 17, 2019, https://eds-b-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=6&sid=23384b74-6609-495e-9b04-bf62119038ab%40sessionmgr104.

[29]Guasco, “Indian Slavery in Early America,” 389.

[30]Guasco, “Indian Slavery in Early America,” 389.

[31] Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 17.

[32] Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade, 17.

[33]Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade, 17.

[34]Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade, 5-6.

Bibliography

Primary Sources:

Gardener, Lion. Relation of the Pequot Warres (1660). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1038&context=etas. 1901.

Kephart, Horace. Captives Among Indians: First-hand Narratives of Indian Wars, Customs, Tortures, and Habits of Life in Colonial Times. MCMXV: New York, NY, 1915. Kindle.

Books and Articles:

Fickes, Michael L. “‘They Could not Endure that Yoke:’ The Captivity of Pequot Women and Children after the War of 1637.” The New England Quarterly 73, no. 1 (March 2000): 58-81. Accessed April 1, 2019. https://msu.edu/~ottevaer/interactive/fickes.pdf.

Gallay, Alan. The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.

Guasco, Michael. “To ‘Doe Some Good Upon Their Countrymen:’ The Paradox of Indian Slavery in Early Anglo-America.” Journal of Social History 41, no. 2 (Winter, 2007): 389-411. Accessed April 1, 2019. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25096484.

Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2006.

Usner, Daniel H., Jr. Indians, Settlers, & Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783. Chapel Hill, NC: North Carolina University Press, 1992.

Weidensaul, Scott. The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, & Endurance in Early America. New York, NY: Houghton Miffin Harcourt, 2012.