Freedom and Conflicts Over Class, Gender, and Identity: The Evolving Relationship Between
Indians and Blacks in Southern New England, 1750-1870
Daniel Mandell
Assistant Professor of History
Truman State University
March 3, 2016
When African slaves began arriving in large numbers in New England after 1700, they
often found Indians already living as unfree laborers in the same town; some even ended up in
the same household. Members of both groups served as slaves, servants, and unskilled free
laborers in rural villages and port towns. Their status and demographics as well as some aspects
of their native cultures were quite compatible: many developed close friendships or married, and
by the outbreak of the Revolution the two peoples seemed well on the way to forming a common
“people of color.” But after 1790, subtle but noticeable distinctions emerged between Indian and
African American cultures; these differences would generate conflicts within Indian tribes even
as intermarriage and other connections continued to develop. The distinctions grew out of the
efforts of many African American leaders earn a better place for their people in the new
Republic, which included the embrace of values and practices that clashed with Native needs and
traditions, particularly women’s leadership, community management of resources, and
maintenance of the tribe rather than assimilation. By 1850, tribes that had struggled to maintain
their communities felt threatened by the embrace by blacks of liberal values including
individualism, privacy, competition, and civil equality.
During the eighteenth century, many individuals of African and Native ancestry in
southern New England forged social and family relationships across ethnic lines. While one
1
cannot generalize about African cultures from this period, nor indeed even more than guess
about the customs of those who came to New England, West African and Eastern Woodland
peoples may have shared similar traditions of animism, chiefdoms, and clan or village-based
landholding.1 Among the unwilling immigrants, such traditions may have grown in importance
by the mid-eighteenth century as more slaves were brought directly from Africa. By the 1740s,
Africans, Indians, and some whites were participating together in the annual "Negro election
festivals” that took place in many port towns and rural areas.2 African Americans who fled
slavery for a short spell of relief or final freedom find refuge in Indian communities.3 And a
growing number of Indians and African Americans found enough commonality to readily form
couples and create families.
These exogamous marriages were shaped by complementary demographic imbalances, as
censuses of Indians in southern New England between 1765 and 1774 show about 60 percent
more women than men, and those of slaves or blacks show the reverse.4 Many New England
villages held only a few blacks and Indians, and even in the region’s emerging cities many mixed
couples formed. For example, in Providence in 1728, Aaron, a slave of African ancestry who
belonged to Joseph Whipple, married Sarah Muckamugg, a Nipmuc from Hassanamisco who
was a domestic (possibly indentured) in the household of Whipple’s son John.5 Later accounts
by white observers indicate that intermarriage between Indians and Africans became common
after 1750.6 By 1792, Natick minister Stephen Badger found it "almost impossible to come to
any determination" of the number of Indians remaining in his congregation, for they "are
intermarried with blacks, and some with whites; and the various shades between these, and those
that are descended from them."7
2
Indians and blacks were also brought together by their shared legal and social status,
created and reinforced by Anglo-American racial prejudices. For example, in 1703, the Rhode
Island Assembly required "any negroes, or Indians, either freemen, servants, or slaves" walking
the streets after nine at night to carry "a certificate from their masters" or to be accompanied by
"some English person of said family." Similar measures existed in Massachusetts, New
Hampshire, and other colonies.8 In 1706, Massachusetts banned marriages between whites and
blacks, and in 1786 added Indians after slavery officially ended in the state; Rhode Island passed
a similar measure as slavery ended.9 And of course both Indians and Africans—creoles and
natives—were treated in nearly identical ways in servitude. While African Americans may have
been more deeply ensnared in permanent slavery, a very percentage of Indians in the region—
perhaps a majority—were forced into servitude for many years. Many Indian children were held
for up to two decades as indentured servants, and like blacks (and very poor whites) could be
forcibly taken from poor parents and given to white families by town authorities.10 Not
surprising, by the Revolution most white New Englanders perceived Indians and Africans within
the region in analogous ways. Such perceptions became more significant with the rising tide of
Indian-African American intermarriage.11
Within Anglo-American New England lay another micro-world of small Indian
communities, ranging in size from 100 to 4,000 acres, with anywhere from a few families to
about 350 people. Indians in the region operated their reservations in ways that reflected colonial
innovations and aboriginal traditions. Individuals, including women, could lay claim to and
enclose land for crops and pass it to their children, although the lands of those who lacked heirs
reverted to the community. Pastures and woodlands were managed in common and assigned to
households on a yearly basis, and any resident could, at any time, cut needed firewood and
3
building timber from the commons, hunt game, fish in the reserve's rivers and ponds, and take
clams along its seashore.12 The reserve represented community, culture, and a sacred past.13
These traditions were, ironically, upheld by laws that barred the sale of Indian lands to outsiders
and by guardians appointed by the legislatures.
African Americans who married into these communities benefited from access to their
spouses’ kinship networks, the tribe’s land and resources, and freedom for their children; some
even had their freedom purchased by their wives.14 Initially, Indians lacked the racial prejudice
of Anglo-Americans, and viewed marriage with outsiders regardless of skin color as a way to
gain new knowledge and power. But that began to change in the last quarter of the century, as
some began to try and check the rising rate of exogamous marriage.15 These efforts may have
been driven by existing tribal conflicts over power and land, as among the Mohegans who were
divided by a century-old lawsuit that tried to reclaim land and challenged their traditional ruling
family, the Uncases. In May 1773, the anti-Uncas faction led by Samson Occum agreed that the
children of those who married "Negroes" would have no tribal rights; their opponents denounced
this agreement and tried to discredit Occum and the others as foreigners and blacks.16 This and
other battles were also clearly shaped by the long rise of African slavery and Anglo-American
racism, as the leaders struggled to distinguish themselves and their people by employing (without
any sense of irony) the language of race. When Occum and his allies established the pan-tribal
Brothertown, in Oneida territory, they barred “Negroes” and banned marriages with "persons of
negro blood."17
Since most exogamous marriages involved Indian women and “foreign” men, gender
became intermingled with race and power in these emerging conflicts. Brothertown’s founders
limited the rights of women as well as blacks. The thirty-one Mashpees who complained in 1788
4
of "Negroes & English, who, unhappily, have planted themselves here, hath managed us, and it
is to be feared . . . will get away our Lands & all our Privileges in a short time," were all men.
About this time, Narragansett men developed a "very bitter feeling" against blacks when a
noticeable number of the tribe’s women married African American men.18 This was probably
one reason why Rhode Island in 1792 limited Narragansett “citizenship,” including the right to
vote in tribal council elections, to men with a Narragansett mother or father—but not those with
“Negro” mothers.19 And while such marriages were rare on Martha’s Vineyard before 1790, by
the turn of the century men from Chappequiddick and Christiantown were very concerned about
“their Females Marying Negroes whom they did not wish to have any right to their lands,” and
some from Christiantown filed lawsuits between 1805 and 1813 to stop such marriages.20
After 1800, the rising tide of freedom created a gap between Indian and African
American cultures and gave rise to two distinct though connected communities. While many
people of color continued in servitude, particularly indentured children, and limited
emancipation laws kept many African descendants in slavery, the emergence of a free black
community was undeniable. The slave population in southern New England declined from about
10,000 in 1775 to about 3,500 in 1790.21 Perhaps the most noteworthy characteristic of this
emerging free black community was its urbanity. Most African Americans in the region already
lived in port towns, particularly Boston, Newport, New Haven, and Providence, but with
emancipation many who had lived in rural villages with white households joined them. In 1795,
Jeremy Belknap told a Virginian correspondent that former slaves in Massachusetts "have
generally, though not wholly, left the country, and resorted to the maritime towns. Between
1790 and 1800 the black population of Boston rose 53 percent; between 1790 and 1820, it
5
increased 125 percent.22 But freedom and new opportunities did not mean social and economic
independence; in Providence, for example, it was not until 1810 that a majority lived in blackheaded households.23
These urban communities soon established charitable organizations and churches that
stressed their African roots.24 In the early 1780s, blacks in Newport formed the Free African
Union Society as a self-help fraternity to “improve” themselves and their community; when they
invited those in Providence to form a chapter, they addressed their letter "To All the Africans in
Providence." In 1787, Prince Hall in Boston formed the African Masonic Lodge to provide
firewood and food for needy blacks; members paid weekly "sick dues" to create a fund for those
unable to work. In 1796, members of Boston's Africa Society swore to "watch over each other in
their Spiritual concerns . . . and to live soberly, righteously and Godly, in this present world."25
Ten years later, the Society could meet in the new African Meeting House, which they shared
with the year-old African Baptist Church. And in 1820, when the Providence African Union
Meeting House became the first black church in the city, its dedication drew some of the most
prominent whites in Rhode Island.26 These organizations required their members to conduct
themselves in ways that mirrored the emerging Anglo-American virtues of sobriety, punctuality,
and industry, and they labored to inculcate those values in the black community. Many also
sought to leave America and return to Africa.27 This meant that the children of mixed marriages
who were active members of the black community also had to commit themselves, publicly and
privately, to "African" organizations.
During the 1820s, community leaders increasingly stressed their people’s intimate
connection to American culture and history, including entrepreneurship and gender roles.28 By
1830, New England blacks celebrated Emancipation Day or Haitian Independence (and tried to
6
participate in Fourth of July parades) instead of Negro Election Day, and rejected returning to
Africa.29 Churches and schools became more important, and chose names that stressed their
American nature; in 1837, the Boston African Baptist Church became the First Independent
Baptist Church of People of Color of Boston "'for the very good reason that the name African is
ill applied to a church composed of American citizens."30 Beginning in 1830, annual meetings of
the American Society of Free Persons of Color brought together delegates from African
American communities in eleven states, forging a national network and identity that emphasized
“the virtues of prudence, frugality, and purity.”31 Ministers, businessmen, and writers urged their
compatriots to work hard, establish their personal and community independence, and support and
protect their women.32 They urged women to stay at home and become guardians of the family,
even though economic and social discrimination forced black wives to work. African Americans
were not simply trying to emulate Anglo-American virtues, for blacks could not assume that they
would soon be accepted as equal members of New England society. Instead, the evolution of
these standards should be seen as part of the process of forming a free but separate community
which would be as inclusive as possible, move closer to the dominant culture, and help black
leaders forge beneficial relations with Anglo-American elites.33
These urbane, patriarchal, market-oriented values marked a deepening divide between
African American and Indian communities. After the Revolution, Native groups remained
closely connected to their rural ancestral lands, even as many men and women left for long
periods to work in cities or on whaling ships. The mixed subsistence economy on tribal reserves,
featuring hunting and cattle raising, farming and fishing, communal landholding and family
allotments, and most notably the power of women to claim land, farm, and vote, formed the
greatest surviving marker of Indian culture at the turn of the century. Native craft traditions
7
become more significant as Indians found a growing market in the region for their baskets, mats,
and other goods. These communities generally defended themselves and their reservations by
reinforcing social and cultural boundaries in ways that emphasized birth, residence, and
behavior. Full members with rights to communal resources included the descendants of those
already recognized as Indians, those raised in any Indian enclave, and individuals who
demonstrated their support for the community. Strong barriers barred the sale of land and
resources to outsiders, and traditions of witchcraft and hostility to selfishness remained strong,
discouraging changes such as intensive farming. Surviving stories underscore how community
standards continued to condemn acquisition and the values of capitalism.34
Probably the most distinctive marker of surviving Indian groups in southern New
England was their communal land holding and management of resources, and the role that
women played as gatekeepers for their communities.35 Christiantown on Martha’s Vineyard told
the Massachusetts legislature that "the land we hold as joint Tenants in common, so long as the
Individuals, thereof remain thereon, beyond the memory of Man to the contrary." Their
guardian, who also oversaw Chappequiddick on the east side of the island, told the legislature
that his charges held their land in common, and that "when one died the land devolved upon the
whole."36 Mashpee and Gay Head, the two largest Indian groups in Massachusetts, had similar
systems, based on aboriginal customs that clashed with Anglo-American ideologies of private
property. Men who married into these communities were "strangers" and "foreigners" and could
gain access to community resources only through their wives. These women, and any Indian
woman whose husband was absent (as many were, on whaling voyages), had the right to claim
and use land, a residue of aboriginal customs and contrary to Anglo-American law. Even among
the Narragansetts, where after 1792 only men could vote, women could claim and hold
8
communal property.37 They could speak and vote in community meetings. Indian petitions were
usually signed by women as well as man, sometimes in nearly equal numbers. Thus Indian
women had political powers that they were not allowed in the outside world, and indeed as
exogamous marriages and whaling voyages increased they gained more authority within their
communities.38
While African American leaders preached unstinting labor, frugality, stability, and
individual improvement, distinctive Indian work habits emphasized sharing, migratory labor (by
preference or from need), and the support of kinship networks.39 On reservations such as
Mashpee and Gay Head, Indian men and women raised cattle and crops, hunted, and fished in
ways that reflected aboriginal roots as well as Anglo-American ways. Since by 1800 most
Indian men spent much of the year (if not several years) at sea, women were in charge of the
fields, and raised animals and crops for subsistence and local exchange. While many Indian
households owned domestic animals, they still rarely used manure.40 Of course, many Natives
could not accumulate capital because they were locked in servitude, suffered from discrimination
and poverty, and lived in rural subsistence economies. And Indians did not reject the
marketplace: after all, they worked as mariners and laborers, sold timber and fish, and rented
grazing land to white farmers. Native women were famous for making and peddling baskets and
other crafts throughout the region.41 But Indian customs were clearly contrary to modern
capitalism, as exemplified by Gay Head’s sale of clay from its famous cliffs to manufactures of
ceramics. By the early 1820s the tribe was selling at least 150 tons each year, dividing the
proceeds equally among all men and all women who helped to dig and load the clay, and through
1850 consistently charging $2.75-$3.00 per ton, despite the great depression of 1837.42
9
Tribal communities also continued to be sustained by unique traditions and folklore. In
part this culture was maintained by churches led by Indian ministers; in some congregations like
those on Nantucket, members continued to pass a pipe in fellowship, combining ancient customs
with Christian concepts. But at the same time, there was a noticeable shift in some Indian
churches that illuminated links with African Americans. Between 1790 and 1805 in Gay Head,
the Baptist meeting led by the part-Indian minister Thomas Jeffers, recently arrived from
Mashpee, supplanted the Congregational church led by Zaccheus Howwoswee. Jeffers preached
and led prayers in English, whereas the Howwoswee had insisted on the exclusive use of the
Wampanoag language and orthodox decorum.43 This change may have been driven by the rising
rate of exogamous marriages and declining use of the Native language, common trends
throughout the region, driven in part by the high rate of indentured servitude among Indian
children.44 Between 1792 and 1823, Gay Headers with tripartite ancestry—Indian, black, and
white--increased from 5 to 38 percent, those with partial African ancestry increased from 10.7 to
24.8 percent, and “full-blooded” Indians decreased from 68.9 to 20.8 percent.45 While Indian
churches maintained some unique rituals and discrete networks, some like Gay Head’s Baptists
also developed links to the region’s broader plebian arminian religious culture.46 Those human
and cultural links were facilitated by the continued service of most Indian men on whaling
vessels, where they met many African Americans and men of many nations and races. Indian
mariners sometimes returned from long voyages with “foreign” shipmates who wound up
marrying Native women and staying on the reserve.47
Not surprisingly, racial rhetoric continued to be wielded as a weapon in some Indian
communities, exacerbated by the sharpening white prejudice that accompanied emancipation as
well as the widening cultural chasm between Indians and blacks. In 1811, in an effort to regain
10
power in Gay Head, Howwoswee and a few supporters complained to the legislature that
“Negroes and mulattoes have taken our concerns out of our hands.”48 In May 1819, a majority
of Mohegans told the state that they “Do not want the mongrells mollattoes Negroes nor Africans
to have any of our lands.” One year later, nineteen members of the tribe complained about "the
corruption of the pure Mohegan blood with that of other nations particularly Negros. . . . Their
manners, habits & feelings are so different that they cannot endure to live together." They asked
for a law barring "Negros, mulattos or other people of color," including the children of mixed
marriages, from any share in tribal lands. Fourteen years later, when a prominent local politician
tried to get Rhode Island to eliminate the Narragansetts’ separate legal status and liquidate their
reserve, the tribal council blamed their supposed bad habits on "furron Neagros" who had
married into the community and were "lazy and thieveish, also, which makes trouble in the
Neighbourhood."49
While such racist hyperbole was unusual, and probably driven by the need to appeal to
white prejudices, it does seem clear that the marriage of an Indian woman and an African
American man represented a potential clash between the father's culture, which emphasized
patriarchy and individualism, and the mother's culture, which gave a woman and her community
greater power. African American communities and their members were clearly distinguished
from Indian groups and their members by how they lived and what they did. African Americans
worked in cities and small towns as wage laborers or owned small businesses, particularly
barbering and catering; very few operated farms. While individuals continued to cross this
cultural gap to marry into Indian groups, their potential threat grew as African American
communities solidified and adopted new social norms. The tensions that could erupt within
mixed families would have been even more intense when the Indian daughters of an African
11
American man reached the age when they could vote in community meetings and claim pieces of
communal land: rights which the father was denied as a foreigner. In the outside world, of
course, daughters and wives were subservient to the patriarchal head of the family.
Outside Indian villages, the children of mixed marriages faced a wider range of social
pressures: white perceptions, laws, and economic discrimination; African American
expectations; their tribe's behavioral and cultural standards; and the sometimes conflicting
desires of family and friends. At the same time, such individuals also faced unique choices of
identity and affiliation. They lived in African American neighborhoods and were seen by whites
and blacks as part of that community, but many also maintained kinship, social, and cultural
connections with other descendants of their tribe. Some "dropped out" of those connections for
years or even generations, but their children or grandchildren might decide to reclaim their
Native heritage and connections.50 Black communities could also retain group memories of
Native roots. For example, in May 1822, the leaders of “New Guinea,” the black neighborhood
on Nantucket, sought assistance from the SPG for a teacher or minister, telling the missionary
organization that “there are among the coloured people of this place remains of the Nantucket
Indians, & that nearly every family in our village are partly descended from the original
inhabitants of this & neighboring places.”51 Thus Indian descendants living in the region present
an often-confusing mélange; some were clearly Indians, others African Americans, while still
others maintained dual identities.
Regardless of where or how one lived, the divide between Indians and African Americans
should be seen not as a barrier, but a range of behaviors, kinship networks, and community
definitions along a moveable, malleable fence. This evolving ethnic boundary was far less rigid
than the larger racial barrier created between whites and people of color—a barrier that was
12
sometimes bridged by class.52 Black mariners and laborers usually lived in distinct, raciallymixed neighborhoods, rarely joined “colored” temperance societies, fraternities, or churches, and
were notorious for drinking, playing music, and dancing in unlicensed nightclubs. The jeremiads
preached by Maria Stewart and others show that many African Americans did not conform to
emerging middle-class Anglo-American moral standards.53 Certainly their families could not
enter the Cult of Domesticity; indeed, the percentage of black households headed by women rose
from 15 percent in 1820 to over 25 percent by 1850.54 And some Indians wanted to live closer to
the American mainstream. William Brown wrote that his Narragansett grandmother married an
African American men "in order to change her mode of living. . . . The Indian women observing
the colored men working for their wives, and living after the manner of white people, in
comfortable homes, felt anxious to change their position in life."55 Nor did Indian groups refuse
to try new ways. Beginning in the 1820s, Mashpee, Christiantown, and Chappequiddick
established temperance societies, invigorated their schools, adopted landholding in severalty; by
1848, state officials characterized the Chappequiddicks (and other tribes) as “chaste . . .
temperate . . . and comfortable, not inferior, in dress, manners, and intelligence, to their white
neighbors."56
Yet the distance between Indian and Anglo-American values remained wide. Allotments
were sought or adopted primarily because the legal fiction allowed communities to more easily
defend increasingly scarce resources against foreigners and outsiders who sought more land or
authority, or against emigrants who sought to sell tribal land. Key resources such as berries, fish,
and basket-making materials were still held and managed in common, and women retained their
authority and voice in community matters.57 Indian women continued to enter into informal and
multiple marriages even as whaling declined in importance.58 Sacred sites and stories of
13
witchcraft and ghosts remained strong within Native communities. Perhaps much of the
perceived reform lay in the eyes and prayers of white observers. Or perhaps some of the customs
that had marked Indian ethnic boundaries now rested on ground that was uncertain or contested.
Some traditions became even more significant as symbols of the community’s culture as African
Americans increasingly embraced the dominant culture of individual, masculine competition in
the marketplace. Gay Head's leader at mid-century, Zaccheus Howwoswee, told an official that
his people were "jealous of the influence of foreigners, having had much trouble with some of
those who have intermarried with their women and settled amongst them." By contrast, Indians
from other groups were accepted as full members of their new communities.59
Substantive Indian fears about African American “foreigners” may have grown at midcentury as the sudden interest of many white American elites in civil and social equality offered
blacks better opportunities outside Indian villages. Between 1845 and 1865, despite America's
rigid racial ideology, blacks with the assistance of white reformers won a growing measure of
civil equality in New England. Railroads, schools, and other public places were desegregated,
and even Harvard College and Medical School accepted black students. While divisions did
emerge among African American leaders between those who embraced the promise of rapid and
complete integration, and those who sought to maintain separate schools as the best way to
maintain and improve their community, the overall shift in legal and social paradigms seemed
unstoppable.60 Those who supported equal rights for blacks felt that individuals within Indian
communities should likewise be treated as whites under the law.61
Following the Civil War, the gap between African Americans and Indians became
particularly apparent as state politicians, moved by a strange mixture of racism and
14
egalitarianism, removed from all but a few Indian groups the legal distinctions and restrictions
that had helped preserve their autonomy and land.62 Although African American leaders did not
comment on this issue, they espoused the values of competitive capitalism and patriarchal
families. At least some who had married into Indian villages supported detribalization because
they saw more opportunities and higher virtues in the “outside” world. Their Indian wives and
daughters could vote in community meetings or claim pieces of communal land; as foreigners,
they were denied these rights. But outside the Indian village, men of all colors could vote and
own property, and their daughters and wives were subservient. Patriarchal landholding in
severalty was the primary goal of African Americans who supported detribalization, and it was
also the primary threat to the traditional social and cultural constructs tied to Indian
landholding.63
After 1790, freedom despite continued limitations allowed black Americans to forge
families, communities, institutions, and a better life. They made emerging Anglo-American
concepts of property, virtuous labor, and gender roles significant goals to freedom and dignity.
While intermarriage created kinship between people of African and of Native descent, the
growing divergence between African American and Indian concepts of property, identity, and
gender roles made the gap wider. While individuals continued to cross between groups and to
forge connections that transcended such concerns, conflicts could and did occur even as both
peoples of color faced prejudice and racism in the larger world. The same gap between Natives
and African Americans would reappear a century later, during the 1960s, when blacks fought for
civil and economic equality (and a small minority sought a separate African nation) while Indian
activists tried to shore up tribal boundaries and their political, cultural, and social separation from
America.
15
1
Kathleen J. Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 1500-1650 (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1996); Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two
Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1998), 100-104;
William D. Piersen, Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in
Eighteenth-Century New England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 74-86.
MORE sources ON AFRICAN CUSTOMS.
2
Joseph P. Reidy, “’Negro Election Day’ and Black Community Life in New England,
1750-1860,” Marxist Perspectives (Fall 1978): 102-14; Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 190-93;
Robert J. Cottrol, The Afro-Yankees: Providence's Black Community in the Antebellum Era
(Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1982), 23.
3
Virginia Gazette, June or July 1768, clipping in Segel, Pierce, Montrosso Collection,
Martha’s Vineyard Historical Society, Edgartown, Mass. Timothy H. Breen, “Making History:
The Force of Public Opinion and the Last Years of Slavery in Revolutionary Massachusetts,” in
Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections on Personal Identity in Early America, eds. Ronald
Hoffman, Mechal Sobel, and Fredricka J. Teute (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1997), 81-82; James O. Horton and Lois E. Horton, In Hope of Liberty: Culture,
Community and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997), 39.
4
Daniel Mandell, Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern
Massachusetts (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 128-32; Anon., "Number of
Indians in Connecticut . . . January 1, 1774, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections
16
(hereafter MHSC) 10 (1809), 117-18; Anon., "The Number of Indians in Rhode Island. . . Taken
Between the 4th of May and the 14th of June, 1774," ibid., 119.
5
Mandell, "The Saga of Sara Muckamugg: Indian and African American Intermarriage in
Colonial New England," in Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History,
ed. Martha Hodes (New York University Press, 1998), 72-90.
6
Capt. Jerningham and Benjamin Bassett, Esq., “Report,” MHSC, 1st ser., 1 (1790), 206.
7
Stephen Badger, "Historical and Characteristic Traits of the American Indians in
General, and those of Natick in Particular," MHSC, 1st Ser., 5 (1798), 43.
8
John Barlett, Records of the Colony of Rhode Island (Providence, 1860), 5: 270, 3: 492-
493; Acts and Resolves . . . of Massachusetts, vol. 13, 1741-1747, (Boston: Wright & Potter,
1905), Acts of 1744-45, chap. 176, Feb. 2, 1745; Lorenzo Greene, The Negro In Colonial New England
(New York: Columbia University, 1942),
134-142; Boston Selectmen's Minutes, 1736-1742 (Boston:
Boston Record Commissioners, 1890), 241-42; Boston Selectmen's Minutes, 1769-1775 (Boston:
Boston Record Commissioners, 1892), 45.
9
"An Act to prevent clandestine Marriages," section 5, The Public Laws of the State of
Rhode Island . . . January, 1798 (Providence, 1798); Act of June 22, 1786, in Laws of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, From November 28, 1780 . . . to February 28, 1807, 3 vols.
(Boston: Thomas and Andrews and Manning and Lorring, 1807), 1: 324.
10
David Silverman, "The Impact of Indentured Servitude on the Society and Culture of
Southern New England Indians," New England Quarterly 74 (2001): 625-28; Ruth Herndon,
Unwelcome Americans: Living on the Margins in Early New England (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); Margaret E. Newell, “The Changing Nature of Indian Slavery in
New England, 1670-1720,” in Reinterpreting New England Indians and the Colonial Experience,
17
eds. Colin Calloway and Neal Salisbury (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2003), 10636; Mark A. Nicholas, “Mashpee Wampanoags of Cape Cod, the Whalefishery, and Seafaring’s
Impact on Community Development,” American Indian Quarterly 26 (2002): 169-79; Ann Marie
Plane, Colonial Intimacies: Indian Marriage in Early New England (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 2000), 120-23.
11
Daniel Mandell, “Shifting Boundaries of Race and Ethnicity: Indian-Black
Intermarriage in Southern New England, 1760-1880," Journal of American History 85 (1998):
466-501. For example, in 1786, Connecticut newspaper reports on the murder of six-year old
Eunice Strickland by thirteen-year old Hannah Occuish described Occuish as, alternately, a
Negro, an Indian (Pequot), and a mulatto. July-December 1796, The [Norwich, Conn.] Courier;
Connecticut [New London] Gazette Henry A. Baker, History of Montville, Connecticut,
Formerly the North Parish of New London From 1646 to 1896 (Hartford, Conn: Case,
Lockwood & Brainard, 1896), 117-18. Three decades later, an English visitor traveling between
Plymouth and Sandwich met a woman who seemed “in her willingness to talk, and cheerfulness
of temper,” as well as her appearance, “almost more negress than Indian." She discussed "the
condition of her nation (for it is thus the Indians always denominate their communities) in that
language of submission to the evil that is inevitable, and of enjoyment of the good that offers,
which appears to me to characterize the negro; but proclaimed herself an Indian, at the same
time." Edward Kendall, Travels Through the Northern Parts of the United States in the Years
1807 and 1808, 3 vols. (New York: I. Riley, 1809), 2: 47.
12
Mashpee petition, July 1788, in documents relating to Ch. 38, Acts of 1788, Passed
Legislation, Mass. Archives (hereafter MPL); Gideon Ammons, testimony 30 July 1879, in
Dwight R. Adams, George Carmichael, Jr., and George B. Carpenter, Report of the Committee of
18
Investigation; A Historical Sketch and Evidence Taken, Made to the House of Representatives at
its January Session, A. D. 1880 (Providence, 1880), Appendix B, 31-32; Conn. Archives,
Indians, 1st Ser., vol. 2, 312ab; Joseph Thaxter and Frances Peters to Massachusetts General
Court, 26 Dec. 1823, no. 9419, documents relating to Unpassed House Legislation, Mass.
Archives (hereafter MUHL); Mashpee to Mass. General Court, 1792, MUHL no. 1643; Hawley
to legislature, 1797, MUHL no. 2397; Report of investigating committee, 16 Jan. 1796, in MPL
Ch. 48, Acts of 1795; Josiah Fiske, Report to Mass. Governor, Indian Guardian Accounts and
Correspondence (hereafter MIGA), box 2, file 1, Mass. Archives; Herring Pond guardian report,
1844, no. 1698 MUHL.
13
D. L. Child, H.Stebbins, and D. Fellows, Jr., “Report [on the condition of the native
Indians and descendants of native Indians, in this Commonwealth],” Mass. House Reports no. 68
(Boston, 1827), 12; John Milton Earle, "Report to the Governor and Council Concerning the
Indians of the Commonwealth under the Act of April 6, 1859," Mass. Senate Reports no. 96
(Boston, 1861), 6.
14
Gideon Hawley to James Freeman, 2 Nov. 1802, Hawley Papers, MHS; Kendall,
Travels Through the Northern Parts, 2: 179; Daniel T.V. Huntoon, History of the Town of
Canton, Norfolk County, Massachusetts (Cambridge: John Wilson and Son, 1893), 32.
15
In December 1765, Edward Drake told Joseph Fish that the Narragansett council had
assembled a list of 73 families in the tribe, plus "considerable Number of mixtures as melatoes
and mustees which the tribe Disowns, and Sundry families of Indians which properly Belongs to
other tribes." William S. Simmons and Cheryl L. Simmons, eds. Old Light on Separate Ways:
The Narragansett Diary of Joseph Fish, (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1982),
21-22.
19
16
David W. Conroy, "In 'Times' Turned 'Upside Down': Race and Gender Relations in
Mohegan, 1760-1860," paper delivered at the Old Sturbridge Village Colloquium on Early New
England Society and Culture, Sturbridge, March 1995 (in Daniel R. Mandell’s possession), 1-3;
idem., "The Defense of Indians Rights: Willliam Bollan and the Mohegan Case in 1743,"
Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 103 (no. 2, 1993), 395-424; Mohegan
agreement, 12 May 1773, William Samuel Johnson Papers, vol. 3, docs. 72-73, Connecticut
Historical Society; Zachary Johnson and "principal [Mohegan] Indians" to Connecticut
Assembly, 1774, Connecticut Archives, Indians, 1st Ser., vol. 2, 320a.
17
Samson Occum to Richard Law, 5 Dec. 1789, Occom Papers, Connecticut Historical
Society, quoted in Conroy, "In 'Times' Turned 'Upside Down'," 31, also generally 9-10, 13-15;
xxxiii-xxxiv, 32-33, 39; James Axtell, "Dr. Wheelock's Little Red School," in Axtell, The
European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (New York,
1981), 87-109; William DeLoss Love, Samson Occum and the Christian Indians of New England
(Boston, 1899), 302.
18
William J. Brown, The Life of William J. Brown of Providence, R.I. (1883; Freeport,
1971), 10. Brown’s maternal grandmother, Alice Prophet, married an African and purchased his
freedom in the 1770s. Similarly, Mary Fuller, the maternal grandmother of Eleanor Eldridge—
an African American who gained fame as a virtuous entrepreneur in early nineteenth-century
Providence--was said to be a Narragansett who used part of her tribe’s "great landed
possessions" to purchase and free her enslaved African husband, Thomas Prophet. Fuller died in
1780, supposedly 102 years old. Frances Green, Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge (Providence: B.
T. Albro, 1839); idem, Elleanor's Second Book (Providence: B. T. Albro, 1839).
20
19
“An Act for regulating the Affairs of the Narragansett Tribe of Indians, in this State,”
Feb. 1792, Records of the State of Rhode Island, 1784-92, X (Providence, 1865), 476. In the
1880 detribalization hearings, tribal council member Gideon Ammons told the Rhode Island
commissioners that the state had passed this measure primarily to protect slavery. "When that
regulation was made there were slaves sent to Rhode Island, and you people wanted the benefit
of the children. If a nigger woman said she had a child by an Indian, she would claim the child.
That was what that was put in for." Rhode Island, Report of Commission on the Affairs of the
Narragansett Indians Made to the General Assembly at its January Session, 1881 (Providence,
1881), 60.
20
Mashpees to Massachusetts General Court, July 1788, in MPL, Acts of 1788, Ch. 30;
Benjamin Allen to Massachusetts General Court, 29 Dec. 1845, documents relating to Unpassed
Senate Legislation (hereafter MUSL), no. 12207, Mass. Archives.
21
Horton and Horton, In Search of Liberty, 81-83. Precise numbers are impossible to
determine because free blacks tended to avoid (and were sometimes ignored by) census takers,
and apparently some whites still owned slaves in Massachusetts where it was illegal, and had
every reason to lie about it. Of course it was very easy to tell the census taker that a slave was an
indentured servant. John Wood Sweet, Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in the American North,
1730-1830 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 248-49.
22
Belknap to Tucker, 21 April 1795, in "Judge Tucker's Queries Respecting Slavery, with
Doctor Belknap's Answers," MHSC, 1st ser., 4 (1795), 206; Horton and Horton point to the high
mortality rate among blacks during this period as a result of their urbanization; In Hope of
Liberty, 88-89.
23
Cottrol, Afro-Yankees, 48.
21
24
Horton and Horton, In Hope of Liberty, 178-79; James O. Horton and Lois E. Horton,
Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North (New York:
Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1979.
25
William Robinson, ed., The Proceedings of the Free African Union Society and the
African Benevolent Society; Newport, Rhode Island, 1780-1824 (Providence, 1976); Horton and
Horton, In Hope of Liberty, 125-27; Laws of the African Society, Instituted at Boston, Anno
Domini, 1796 (Boston 1802).
26
Horton and Horton, In Hope of Liberty, 142-43; Julian Rammelkamp, “The Providence
Negro Community, 1820-1842,” Rhode Island History 7 (1948): 20-33.
27
Horton and Horton, In Hope of Liberty, 169-93; idem, Black Bostonians, 91; petition of
“a number of African Blacks,” 4 January 1787, MUHL no. 2358; petition of Africans, 16
January 1798, MUHL no. 4730; Robinson, ed., Proceedings of the Free African Union Society.
28
Rev. Hosea Easton of Hartford and William Wells Brown of Boston: Hosea Easton, A
Treatise on the Intellectual Character, and Civil and Political Conditon of the Colored People of
the U. States and the Prejudice Exercised Towards Them (1837; New York, 1987); William
Wells Brown, The Rising Son: Or, The Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored Race
(1874; New York, 1970); Nell, Colored Patriots, 34, 18-28, 101-10, 112-44.
29
David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American
Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 327-47; Horton
and Horton, In Hope of Liberty, 187-88, 200-201.
30
Minutes of the Boston Baptist Association, 1828 (Boston, 1839), 14, quoted in Horton
and Horton, Black Bostonians, 91.
22
31
Elizabeth R. Bethel, The Roots of African-American Identity: Memory and History in
Free Antebellum Communities (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 137, and see generally
131-37.
32
Between 1831 and 1833, Maria Stewart, the foremost black female speaker and writer
in New England, called for her people to be good business people, and "to promote and patronize
each other. . . . Possess the spirit of independence. The Americans do, and why should not you?"
The first issue of the black newspaper Mirror of Liberty, July 1838, in announcing "What are We
Doing," told readers that "education and morals are the tenets by which Society and the
community measure their moral strength and progress." .
33
Maria Stewart, "Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality," in Maria Stewart,
America's First Black Woman Political Writer; Essays and Speeches, ed. Marilyn Richardson
(Bloomington, 1987), 38; "What are We Doing!," Mirror of Liberty, July 1838, 1; James O.
Horton and Lois E. Horton, "Violence, Protest, and Indentity: Black Manhood in Antebellum
America," in James Horton, Free People of Color: Inside the African Amerian Community
(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 86, 95; James Horton, "Freedom's Yoke:
Gender Conventions Among Free Blacks," ibid., 102, 107-108, 116.
34
William S. Simmons, Spirit of the New England Tribes: Indian History and Folklore,
1620-1984 (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1986), 168-71, 268-69.
35
Mandell, Behind the Frontier, 90-92, 205-206. On the concept of ethnic markers, see
Frederik Barth, "Introduction," Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of
Cultural Difference (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1969), 36-37.
36
Christiantown petition, 1824, MUHL no. 9419; Joseph Thaxter to Mass. legislature, 26
Dec. 1823, ibid.
23
37
Rhode Island, Report of Committee on Narragansettt Indians, to the House of
Representatives, at its Jan. 1880 session (Providence, State Printers, 1880), 19.
38
Gay Head petition (11 men and 21 women), 1785, MPL Ch. 4, Resolutions of 1785;
Christiantown petition (7 men and 4 women), 29 Jan. 1805, MPL Ch. 84, Acts of 1804;
Chappaquddick petition (17 men, 23 women, and 4 indeterminable, 24 May 1810, MUSL no.
4093; Yarmouth Indian petition (15 men and 17 women), 14 Jan. 1829, MUSL no. 6568.
39
Ebenezer Skiff, Gay Head, to Baylies, 3 Feb. 1823, Misc. Bound Docs., MHS; John
DeForest, History of the Indians of Connecticut, From the Earliest Known Period to 1850
(Hartford: William Jason Hamersley 1851), 420; Rhode Island, Report of the Commissioner of
the Narrangansett Tribe of Indians, Made to the General Assembly at its January Session, 1858
(Providence, 1858), 6; ibid., Report of the Committee of Investigation; A Historical Sketch and
Evidence Taken, Made to the House of Representatives at its January Session., A. D., 1880
(Providence, 1880), 29, 45-46.
40
Josiah J. Fiske, Mashpee, to Governor Levi Lincoln, Boston, June 1833, MIGA, box 2,
41
Ann McMullen, "Talking Through Baskets: Meaning, Production, and Identity in the
file 1.
Northern Woodlands," in Basketmakers: Meaning and Form in Native American Baskets, eds.
Linda Mowat, Howard Murphy, and Penny Dransalt, (Oxford: P. H. Rivers Museum, University
of Oxford, 1992), 24; Frank G. Speck, Eastern Algonkian Block-Stamp Decoration: A New
World Original or an Acculurated Art (Trenton: Archaeological Society of New Jersey, 1947);
De Forest, History of the Indians of Connecticut, 443-445.
42
Gay Head resolution, 1 April 1815, Mass. Governor’s Council Files, box 22. See also
Ebenezer Skiff to Frederick Baylies, 3 Feb. 1823, Misc. Docs., MHS; Albert C. Koch, Journey
24
Through a Part of the United States of North America in the Years 1844-1846 (Carbondale, Ill.,
1972), 19-20, 24-25; F.W. Bird, Whiting Griswold, and Cyrus Weekes, "Report on Condition
and Circumstances of Indians Remaining Within this Commonwealth," Mass. House Reports no.
46 (Boston, 1849), 21.
43
David Silverman, “Conditions for Coexistence, Climates for Collapse: The Challenges
of Indian Life on Martha’s Vineyard, 1524-1871” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University,
2000), 287, 315-17; Elisha Clapp, Sandwich, to Jedidiah Morse, Charlestown, 22 July 18, Misc.
Bound Docs, MHS.
44
Silverman, "Impact of Indentured Servitude,” 659-63.
45
Moses Howwoswee, 1792 census, Misc. Doc., MHS; Frederick Baylies, “The Names
and Ages of the Indians on Martha’s Vineyard, Taken About the 1st of Jan. 1823,” for the SPG,
in New England Historic and Genealogical Society manuscript collections (uncatalogued),
transcript by Jerry Anderson (my thanks to Mr. Anderson); Silverman, “Conditions for
Coexistence,” 386-88.
46
Mark S. Schantz, Piety in Providence: Class Dimensions of Religious Experience in
Antebellum Rhode Island (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), 45-77.
47
Earle, "Report . . . Concerning the Indians,” 34.
48
New Bedford Gazette, 21 Nov. 1811, in Segel, Pierce, Montrosso Collection.
49
Benomi George et al. to Connecticut Assembly, May 1819, doc. 86, vol. 1, 2nd ser.,
Indians, Connecticut Archives; Uncas et al., 1820, Rejected Bills, Connecticut Archives;
Narragansett Council, May 1834, Narragansett file, Rhode Island State Archives, Providence.
50
On different cultural conflicts arising among Indians elsewhere from cross-racial or
ethnic marriages, and in particular the problems or tensions faced by the children of these
25
marriages, see William G. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic (N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1986), 31, 68-71, 76; Joel Martin, Sacred Revolt: The Muskogees'
Struggle for a New World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991), 79-83, 103-108. For a more complex
world in which intermarriage was woven into the fabric of cross-cultural communications and
social constructions see Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in
the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 60-75, 21415
51
Essex Boston, Betty Boston, and Jeffrey Summons to Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel (SPG), Boston, 17 May 1822, SPG Records, box 1, Peabody-Essex Institute, Salem. My
thanks to Nathaniel Philbrick for sending me a transcript of this document.
52
Karen V. Hansen, A Very Social Time: Crafting Community in Antebellum New
England (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994), 18-32 and passim. Hanson details the
problems with using Marxian concepts of class when trying to dissect and understand social
connections that involved gender, race, and other issues in a pre-industrial culture. But class
considered as a social and cultural phenomenon, as discussed (for example) by E.P. Thompson,
The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 1963) makes a great
deal of sense in understanding the structure of early American society, including social and racial
categories.
53
Horton and Horton, Black Bostonians, 30-36; Shane White, Somewhat More
Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770-1810 (Athens, University of Georgia
Press, 1991), 179-94. But they also considered themselves African Americans, and in the 1850s
were heavily involved in organized efforts to rescue fugitive slaves from courthouse hearings.
26
54
Horton and Horton, In Hope of Liberty, 86. Hansen, in A Very Social Time, found that
“in the antebellum period and after, black women constructed their own ideal of black
womenhood. Their ideal included an ability to make a living, cleverness, tenacity, and a strong
commitment to the family." (19)
55
Brown, Life of William J. Brown, 10.
56
Bird, Griswold, and Weekes, "Report on Condition [1849],” 7.
57
Ibid., 7, 21, 23, 26-27; Charles Marston, “Report of Mashpee Commissioner,” 1837,
MUSL no. 10212; Marston, “Report of Mashpee Commissioner,” 1838, MUSL no. 10422; Earle,
“Report to the Governor and Council [1861],” 32, 49-50, 68-69; Zaccheus Howwoswee, Gay
Head, to John Milton Earle, 15 Aug. 1859, folder 3, box 2, Papers of John Milton Earle,
American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.; Kevin McBride and Suzanne Glover,
"Community Structure and Land Use Patterns Among the Gay Head (Aquinnah) Wampanoag,"
Gay Head Wampanoag History Conference, 1992; Kevin McBride, "Historical Archaeology of
the Mashantaucket Pequots, 1637-1900, a Preliminary Analysis," in The Pequots in Southern
New England: The Rise and Fall of an American Indian Nation, eds. Laurence M. Hauptman and
James D. Wherry (Norman, 1990), 111-12; Jack Campisi, "The Emergence of the Mashantucket
Pequot Tribe, 1637-1975," in ibid., 126-28; Adams, Carmichael, and Carpenter, Report of the
Committee of Investigation . . . 1880, 20, 30, 35, 41.
58
Connecticut, Report of the Commissioners on Distribution of Lands of the Mohegan
Indians (Hartford, Conn., 1861), 7; Earle, “Report to the Governor and Council [1861]”; various
correspondence in Earle Papers, AAS. Similar sexual relations existed among the Senecas in
western New York, even in the twentieth century; Nancy Shoemaker, "The Rise or Fall of
Iroquois Women," Journal of Women's History 2 (1991): 48-52.
27
59
Zaccheus Howwoswee, Gay Head, to John Milton Earle, 27 Jan. 1860, folder 3, box 2,
Earle Papers.
60
Scott Hancock, “The Elusive Boundaries of Blackness: Identity Formation in
Antebellum Boston,” The Journal of Negro History 84 (1999): 115-29; Horton and Horton,
Black Bostonians, 73-74.
61
Nell, Colored Patriots, 17, 112-13, 117, 144; 1843 Mass. Acts 4; Charles Slack et al.,
House Committee on Education, “Report on Public or District Schools,” March 17, 1855,
Massachusetts House Reports 167 (Boston, 1855); 1864 Mass. Acts 12; 1865 Mass. Acts 650;
Horton and Horton, Black Bostonians, 42-74, 92-95, 118-27.
62
Kazuteru Omori, “Race-Neutral Individualism and Resurgence of the Color Line:
Massachusetts Civil Rights Legislation, 1855-1895,” Journal of American Ethnic History __
(2002): 32-51.
63
This was particularly clear in Mashpee. See Massachusetts, Committee on Indians of
the Commonwealth, “[Report to the] House of Representatives, June 3, 1869 [on Marshpee
hearings],” Massachusetts House Reports no. 502 (Boston, 1869); Ann Marie Plane and Gregory
Button, "The Massachusetts Indian Enfranchisement Act: Ethnic Contest in Historical Context,
1849-1869," Ethnohistory 40 (1993): 594, 597-99, 606.
28