Bibliograph

Brethren by nature, New England Indians, colonists, and the origins of American slavery, Margaret Ellen Newell

Type

Label

Brethren by nature, New England Indians, colonists, and the origins of American slavery, Margaret Ellen Newell

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Brethren by nature

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

950929510

Responsibility statement

Margaret Ellen Newell

Series statement

Cornell paperbacks

Sub title

New England Indians, colonists, and the origins of American slavery

Summary

In Brethren by Nature, Margaret Ellen Newell reveals a little-known aspect of American history: English colonists in New England enslaved thousands of Indians. Massachusetts became the first English colony to legalize slavery in 1641, and the colonists' desire for slaves shaped the major New England Indian wars, including the Pequot War of 1637, King Philip's War of 1675-76, and the northeastern Wabanaki conflicts of 1676-1749. When the wartime conquest of Indians ceased, New Englanders turned to the courts to get control of their labor, or imported Indians from Florida and the Carolinas, or simply claimed free Indians as slaves. Drawing on letters, diaries, newspapers, and court records, Newell recovers the slaves' own stories and shows how they influenced New England society in crucial ways. Indians lived in English homes, raised English children, and manned colonial armies, farms, and fleets, exposing their captors to Native religion, foods, and technology. Some achieved freedom and power in this new colonial culture, but others experienced violence, surveillance, and family separations. Newell also explains how slavery linked the fate of Africans and Indians. The trade in Indian captives connected New England to Caribbean and Atlantic slave economies. Indians labored on sugar plantations in Jamaica, tended fields in the Azores, and rowed English naval galleys in Tangier. Indian slaves outnumbered Africans within New England before 1700, but the balance soon shifted. Fearful of the growing African population, local governments stripped Indian and African servants and slaves of legal rights and personal freedoms. Nevertheless, because Indians remained a significant part of the slave population, the New England colonies did not adopt all of the rigid racial laws typical of slave societies in Virginia and Barbados(Continued)Newell finds that second- and third-generation Indian slaves fought their enslavement and claimed citizenship in cases that had implications for all enslaved peoples in eighteenth-century America. (Publisher)

Table Of Contents

Introduction : the problem of Indian slavery in early America -- David's warre : the Pequot War and the origins of slavery in New England -- I doe not see how we can thrive until wee get into a stock of slaves : slavery in the Puritan Atlantic world -- Indians we have received into our houses : Pequot War captives in New England households -- Such a servant is part of her master's estate : acculturation, resistance, and the making of a hybrid society -- An Indian to help in the work : the importance of Indian labor in the New England economy -- We sold 47 Indians, young and old, for 80£ in money : enslavement in King Philip's War -- As good if not better then the Moorish slaves : law, slavery, and the second native diaspora -- Free men subjects to the king : the search for enslavable Indians in the Northeast and Southeast -- To be sold in any part of ye kings dominyons : judicial enslavement of New England Indians -- Epilogue : Indians and the origins of American slavery and abolitionism

Classification

Creator