Events › Origin Stories: The Pequot War and Indigenous Enslavement in New England

Listen as award-winning historian Margaret Newell reveals how New England slavery began with the Pequot War and the enslavement of Indigenous people. She will be joined by Michael Thomas, member of the board of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center and former chair of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Council and and Rashad Young, Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation to share their perspectives on the Pequot War and the consequences of slavery.

This important talk by Newell reveals the origins of New England slavery in the Pequot War - a violent conflict from the first years of the Massachusetts colony in which the colonists took the first step establishing slavery for both Indigenous and African peoples. Michael Thomas of the Museum’s Board and Rashad Young will add their perspective as members of the Pequot Nation.

The Pequot War shaped the law and practice of slavery in New England in fundamental ways. English adventurers/explorers kidnapped and trafficked Native inhabitants of New England before 1630. But the practice moved into a new, much more intensive stage in the summer of 1637 with the outbreak of the Pequot War, the first major conflict between English and Indigenous peoples in the region.

Many scholars have explored the causes and consequences of the Pequot War but, as documented in Margaret Newell's groundbreaking book, Brethren by Nature, enslavement of Indians quickly became a key goal of that war - one reflected in military orders, troop movements, the treatment of civilian non-combatants, and in the treaty that ended the conflict.

This makes the Pequot War a crucial event in the history of New England slavery, affecting Indigenous peoples across the region and shaping African slavery. Indeed, and contrary to common belief, Indigenous enslavement became ubiquitous.

Colonial governments distributed Pequot captives to ministers, soldiers, and magistrates. The governor’s “Mansion House” and nearby Cole’s Tavern in Boston housed Pequot slaves, as did many harbor islands. Boston and Salem authorities punished Native runaways, built a slave pen, and used Pequot men and boys as a commodity to enter the lucrative Caribbean trade. Massachusetts Bay’s 1641 legal code, drafted in the wake of the war, included a law of slavery and legalized enslavement of captives.

Individual colonies adopted “slave codes before slavery” that affected both free and enslaved Indians, creating a constant threat of enslavement. The Pequot War demonstrated a destructive side of colonial settlers’ actions that many Native American groups would experience, one that included displacement, violence, family separation, and theft of labor and resources.

Margaret Newell is the distinguished arts and sciences professor and professor of history at Ohio State University. She is the author of Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists and the Origins of American Slavery (Cornell University Press, 2015; paperback 2016) and From Dependency to Independence: Economic Revolution in Colonial New England (Cornell University Press, 1998; paperback 2015). She won numerous awards for Brethren by Nature, including the Peter Gomes Memorial Prize, Massachusetts Historical Society, and the James A. Rawley Prize for best book dealing with the history of race relations in the United States, Organization of American Historians. Brethren by Nature was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, an Andrew Mellon Fellowship at the Huntington Library and a fellowship at the John Nicholas Brown Center. She has also received awards for her articles.

She is currently working on three books, one provisionally entitled Undergrounds Before the Age of Rail: Escaping Slavery and Helping Slaves Escape in Colonial America, about which she'll be giving a presentation for the Partnership of Historic Bostons in winter 2024.

To purchase Brethren by Nature - which we can't recommend highly enough - click here.

This talk is being presented in conjunction with the Partnership of Historic Bostons and will be live-streamed and recorded, and posted on historicbostons.org and their YouTube channel.

Accommodations: To request a disability accommodation and/or language services, please contact: Diane, 617-536-5400-x4115 or research@bpl.org as soon as possible. Please allow at least two weeks to arrange for accommodations.