OF the processes in vogue among the English for the acquisition of Indian slaves, the most productive was that of warfare.¹ With the exception of the Pequot War and King Philip’s War in New England, the Indian wars in the English colonies were confined to the south, and there the greatest number of Indian war captives were enslaved.

     After the Indian massacre of 1622 in Virginia, there was published in London, in the same year, a tract entitled “The Relation of the Barbarous Massacre in Time of Peace and League, treacherously executed by the native infidels upon the English, the Twenty-second of March, 1622, published by Authority.” The general trend of the tract is to show the good that might result to the plantation from this disaster. Number five of the possible results reads: “Because the Indians, who before were used as friends, may now most justly be compelled to servitude in mines, and the like, of whom some may be sent for the use of the Summer Islands.”²

     The policy advocated by the tract was carried out in succeeding

Indian wars in Virginia. The accounts of a certain Thomas Smallcomb, lieutenant at Fort Royal on Pamunkey, who was probably killed in the war with Opechancanough, show him possessed at the time of his death, 1646, of several Indian slaves.¹ It seems probable that these slaves were captives in war. After his rebellion, 1676, Bacon sold some of his Indian prisoners.² The rest were disposed of by Governor Berkeley.³

     From the beginning of the colony, the settlers of Carolina were in trouble with the Indians. In September, 1671, war was declared against the Kussoe, a tribe on the southern frontier who posed as allies of the Spaniards, and who vexed the Carolina settlers with petty depredations. The Kussoe were quickly defeated, and the prisoners sent to be sold out of the colony, unless ransomed by their country men.⁴ During the war with the Stono Indians in 1680, the captive Indians were brought to Charleston and sold by Governor West to the traders in the colony to be carried to the West Indies as slaves.⁵

     The breaking out of the war of the Spanish Succession in 1701 gave Governor Moore a chance to attack the Spanish Indians, capture and sell them under the excuse of the rules of war. Therefore, in 1702, he led a force of militia and Indians against St. Augustine, burned the city,

and carried off, as slaves, whatever Indians he could obtain from the Spanish Indian villages along the way.¹ A second attack on St. Augustine was made by Moore in 1704, with the purpose of destroying missions and carrying off slaves.² An advance into the territories of the Apalachee resulted in the destruction of several missions, and the capture of more than a thousand Indians, some free, some slave.³ Nearly all the Apalachee were distributed as slaves among the Carolina settlers.⁴ The enslavement of Indians, indeed, was carried on wholesale. A letter to the proprietors, July 10, 1708, states that “the garrison of St. Augustine is by this war reduced to the bare walls, their cattle and Indian towns all consumed, either by us in our invasion of that place, or by our Indian subjects . . . they have driven the Floridians to the islands of the cape, have brought in and sold many hundred of them, and maybe now continue that trade, so that in some five years, they’ll reduce the barbarians to a fearless number.”⁵ In 1708, Colonel Barnwell of South Carolina made an expedition to the Appalachian province of Florida. It is thought that this was the time when Captain Nairn of South Carolina, with a party of Yamasee Indians, advanced to the vicinity of Lake Okechobee and brought back a number of captive Indians as slaves.⁶ A similar expedition

of Colonel Palmer in 1727 against the Yamasee resulted in the destruction of many Indian towns, the slaughter of many natives, and the carrying off of great numbers to Charleston as slaves.¹

     As the result of the three expeditions sent by South Carolina from 1702 to 1708 against the Yamasee, Apalachee, and Timucua of northern Florida, there was carried back to Charleston, for sale as slaves, almost the entire population of seven towns, in all, some 1400 persons.² The captives taken in 1715 when the Yamasee and Creek Indians made a foray upon the South Carolina frontier, were sold as slaves. Mr. Johnston, a South Carolina missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, in his letter to the Society, December 19, 1715, states: “It is certain many of the Yammousees and Creek Indians were against the war all along. But our military men were so bent upon revenge, and so desirous to enrich themselves by making all the Indians slaves that fall into yr hands . . . . that it is in vain to represent the cruelty and injustice of such a procedure”.³

     Throughout the Tuscarora War in North Carolina, Indian captives were retained or sold as slaves.⁴ At the beginning of military operations, following the Indian massacre of 1711, the friendly Indians agreed to help the English against their enemy upon promise of a reward of six blankets for each man killed by them, and the usual price

of slaves for each woman and child delivered as captives.¹ During the course of the war several hundred Indian allies were used by the English,² and these allies took advantage of the opportunity to obtain large number of Indian captives to sell to the slave traders of the time.

     In an attack on an Indian fort in 1711, thirty-nine women and children were captured and disposed of in the settlements as slaves.³ The two chief expeditions during the war were those of Colonel Barnwell, who was sent by South Carolina in January, 1712, and of Colonel Moore in January and February, 1713. Colonel Barnwell’s expedition took two hundred Indian women and children prisoners.⁴ The expedition of Colonel Moore virtually ended the war by capturing the fort in which the Tuscarora had taken refuge.⁵ Nine hundred men, women and children were killed or taken prisoners.⁶ In both expeditions the allied Indians secured as many as possible of the captured Indians whom they took along with them to sell as slaves in Charleston,⁷ and they still further increased their supply of slaves by attacking the peaceful Indians along the route of their return to South Carolina.⁸ During the course of the war more than seven hundred Indians were sold into slavery.⁹

     The earliest of the slave-producing wars in New England

was that with the Pequot in 1637. The war consisted of two battles: the Mistick Fight, and the Swamp Fight. In the first of these two events, but seven captives were taken.¹ In the second, the Swamp Fight, about one hundred and eighty captives were taken.² Two of the sachems taken in the Swamp Fight were spared, on promise that they guide the English to the retreat of Sassacus. The other men captives, some twenty or thirty in number, were put to death.³ The remaining captives, consisting of about eighty women and children, were divided. Some were given to the soldiers, whether gratis or for pay does not appear. Thirty were given to the Narraganset who were allies of the English, forty-eight were sent to Massachusetts and the remainder were assigned to Connecticut.⁴ The women

and girls of the Massachusetts captives were distributed among the towns.¹ It seems probable that Connecticut made a similar disposition of its share of the captives regardless of sex.² The male children among the Massachusetts captives were ordered by the Massachusetts general court, 1637, to be carried to the Bermudas by William Pierce, and sold there as slaves,³ The shipload of Indians, however, consisting of fifteen boys and two women was taken by Captain Pierce to the West Indies, instead of to the Bermudas, and disposed of at the island of Providence.⁴ One Pequot seized near Block Island was sent to England.⁵

     It is possible that this single cargo of women and children

was not the only one sent to the islands at this time. A letter from the Company of Providence Islands, replying from London, July 3, 1638, to letters from authorities on the island, and directing that special care be taken of the “cannibal negroes brought from New England,”¹ and a second letter written in 1639, when the company, fearing the danger that might arise from too large a number of negroes on the island, suggested that the negroes be sold or sent to New England or Virginia,² may possibly have been called forth by a further purchase of Indians, or by an exchange of negroes for them.

     By the time of King Philip’s War, 1675-1676, the colonists were well accustomed to the sending of Indian captives out of the country, and to the use of them in their homes.³ The policy followed toward the Indians captured in this war was the same as that shown in the Pequot War. The captives were either exported for sale in the European or West Indian slave markets, or were retained in servitude in the colonies. In the beginning of the war, Captain Mosely captured eighty Indians, who were retained at Plymouth. In the following September, one hundred and seventy-eight were put on board a vessel commanded by Captain Sprague who sailed from Plymouth with them for Spain.⁴ In this same year, 1675, Indians, probably from the coast of Maine, were landed as slaves at Fayal, one of the Azores.⁵ Again in 1675, fifteen Indians were

captured and sent to Boston, “tied neck to neck, like galley slaves.” Much against the will of the populace they were given a trial. All were finally acquitted except two who were sentenced to be sold out of the country as slaves.¹ During the years 1675 and 1676, one finds mention of the sale of Indians in Plymouth in groups of about a hundred,² fifty-seven,³ three,⁴ one hundred and sixty,⁵ ten,⁶ and one.⁷ From June 25, 1675 to September 23, 1676, the records show the sale by the Plymouth colonial authorities of one hundred and eighty-eight Indians.⁸

     In the Massachusetts Bay colony a similar disposal of captives was accomplished. On one occasion about two hundred were transported and sold.⁹ There is extant a paper written by Daniel Gookin in 1676, one item of which is as follows: “a list of the Indian children that came in with John of Packachooge.” The list shows twenty-one boys and eleven girls distributed throughout the colony.¹⁰

     With the close of the war after Philip’s death, many of the Indian chiefs were executed at Boston and Plymouth, and most of the remaining chiefs with their captive followers were sold and shipped off as slaves outside the colonies.¹¹ Those transported were carried to various parts

the Spanish West Indies, Spain, Portugal, Bermuda, Virginia,¹ and the Azores.²

     Not all the Indians whose lives were spared were transported.³ Generally the men, rather than the women and children, were thus disposed of, though such was not always the case. One finds instances, like that of Philip’s wife and son,⁴ when women and children were transported, and other instances when grown male Indians were retained in the colonies and sold to the colonists.⁵

     Not only were the Indians who themselves engaged in the war sold as slaves at home and abroad, but the wives and children of the captive males were also seized and consigned

to slavery. In 1677, the Massachusetts general court ordered that the Indian children, boys and girls, whose parents had been in hostility with the colony or had lived among its enemies in the time of the war, and who were taken by force and given or sold to any of the inhabitants of the colony, should be at the disposal of their masters or their assignees.¹ In the case of a certain Praying Indian, who withdrew from the English side and joined the Indian enemy, not only himself, but his wife and children were taken prisoners and held as slaves until redeemed by Eliot.² The same policy was followed in Plymouth. A case in point is that of the chief, Popanooie, whose wife and children were retained in the colony as slaves, while he himself was transported and sold into slavery.³

     Both Plymouth and Massachusetts made a distinction between the children of those Indian enemies who were taken by force, and those who voluntarily gave themselves up to the colonial authorities. The children of the latter were to serve as slaves only until twenty-four years of age. The term of service of the former was not specified.⁴ Neither Rhode Island nor Connecticut transported Indian slaves to the West Indies. Both colonies, however, retained Indian captives of King Philip’s War, but only for limited periods of time, not for life. During the war numerous bands of the Indians surrendered to the English at Providence

and Newport. The sentiment of the colony against enslaving Indians, here, as in Connecticut, the result of Quaker influence,¹ had already been shown. So, in accordance with the spirit already expressed, it was voted by the town of Providence, August 14, 1676, to appoint a committee of five persons to dispose of the Indians there.² The town agreed to abide by the action of the five men.³ The committee decided to sell the Indians in the colony for a term of years; one-half the proceeds of the sale to go to the captors, and the other half to the public treasury. The length of service was to depend upon the Indians’ ages. Those under five years were to be simple bondsmen till thirty; all above five years, and under ten, till thirty-eight; above ten and under fifteen, till twenty-seven; above fifteen and under twenty, till twenty-six; such as were above thirty, seven years. Several receipts signed by this committee show that such sales occurred.⁴ A few days before, the Rhode Island companies had brought in forty-two Indian

captives. These, and all other Indian prisoners held at the time, were sold into service in the colony for a period of nine years.¹ The Indians thus sentenced did not become actual slaves according to the strictest interpretation of the term, since the persons who acquired them purchased only their services for a stated period of time, and not for life. Their condition is better explained by the term “involuntary indenture.”

     During King Philip’s War Connecticut suffered nothing on its own soil from hostile Indians. In consequence the number of captive Indians enslaved was small, and only infrequent mention is found of these captives. A certain amount of the booty which the Connecticut troops assisted in taking fell to their lot, and among this booty were some of the captive Indians. An interesting record of such a slave is found in the account book of Major John Talcot (1674-1688) which includes his accounts as treasurer of the colony during King Philip’s War. On opposite pages of the ledger occurs the following account (54-55): “1676. Captain John Stanton of Stonington, Dr., to Sundry Commissions given Captain Stanton to proceed against the Indians by which he gained much on the sale of captives”. “Contra, 1677, April 30. Per received an Indian girl of him, about seven years old, which he gave me for commissions on the other side, or, at best, out of good will for any kindness to him”.²

     In consequence of the small number of Indian captives enslaved in the colony, none was transported by colonial action. The privilege of thus getting rid of undesirable and troublesome Indian slaves by selling them out of the

colony, was, however, conferred upon individual owners, when, May 10, 1677, the general court decreed: “for the prevention of those Indians running away, that are disposed in service by the Authority, that are of the enemy and have submitted to mercy, such Indians, if they be taken, shall be in the power of his master to dispose of him as a captive by transportation out of the country”.¹

     During the Indian wars in Virginia Governor Berkeley himself in a letter, 1668, to Robert Smith, militia commander in the Rappahannock country, not only proposed that, with the consent of the council of war, a war of extinction be waged against the northern Indians, but also suggested that the colonial government defray the expenses of the undertaking by the disposal of the women and children.² Smith submitted Governor Berkeley’s letter to the Rappahannock court for approval. In rendering their decision, the justices declared that the conduct of the northern Indians, notably the “Doagges” and the neighboring Indians, justified the taking of severe measures against them; and accordingly advised “with the assistance of Almighty God, by the strength of our northern part, utterly to eradicate [them], without further encroachment than the spoils of our enemies”.³

     During Bacon’s rebellion in 1676, the assembly at his instigation declared the enslavement of Indians for life to be legal, and made provision for granting captive Indians to soldiers as a partial inducement to volunteer.⁴ This act was repealed by the general act setting aside all the acts of this assembly that sat in 1676 under the rule of Bacon.⁵

But it was again revived by the assembly of 1679 called by Deputy-Governor Chicheley.¹ Legal enslavement of Indians was prohibited by implication rather than by the terms of the act of 1691.² But the North Carolina Indian troubles in November, 1711, once more brought the old law forward, and captive Indians belonging to tribes at war with the English were directed to be transported and sold, those capturing them to have the money of the sale.³

     It will be noted that, though in the case of Virginia, as in that of the other colonies, the disposal of the Indians captured in war was sanctioned by the colonial government, the action of the Virginia government in the matter ended with that sanction. By the acts of 1643⁴ and 1658,⁵ the colony lost the right to possess servants. Therefore, the government during the Indian wars decreed that the captive Indians were the property of their captors who were entitled to the proceeds of their sale.⁶

     In the case of Maryland is found another colony in which the government intended that Indian captives taken in war should be sold for the benefit of the colony. At the time of the Puritan ascendency the Indians began to be troublesome.⁷ The Nanticoke of the Eastern shore began a war upon the settlers. March 29, 1652, on petition of the settlers, the general assembly attempted to pass a militia act. An expedition was planned, and a levy of troops

made.¹ The captive Indians were to be sold. But the government never had a chance to carry out any such sale, for the Puritans of Anne Arundel County refused to make their levies, and the expedition had to be abandoned.²

     During the Tuscarora War in North Carolina, one again finds an instance of a colonial government taking possession of the captive Indians, selling them as slaves, and depositing the proceeds of the sales in the colonial treasury. At the breaking out of the war Governor Hyde instructed the agents whom he sent to South Carolina to ask for military aid to represent to the colonial authorities there “the great advantage that may be made of slaves, there being many hundreds of them, women and children; may we not believe three or four thousand”.³ The colony, indeed, found the disposal of the captives to be as profitable as had been hoped. The promised reward of slaves as pay for services rendered brought the desired Indian allies. On one occasion, Tom Blount, chief of a tribe of friendly Indians in the area of disturbance, in making arrangements with the colonial government for an attack on a certain tribe, specified that his warriors receive payment in captives, and failing these, in other commodities.⁴

     The journals of the North Carolina council for June 25, 1713, show negotiations between acting Governor Pollock and the council for the purchase of a number of Indians for shipment to the West Indies.⁵ It was sometimes a problem

to provide for the captured Indians; consequently in the same year the assembly chartered a private sloop to carry away captives brought by friendly Indians.¹

     In South Carolina, the Indian captives taken in the early war with the Kussoe were sold as slaves by governor and council with the sanction of the proprietors, who, though they had forbidden the enslavement of Indians in the temporary laws sent out to Governor Sayle in 1671, were nevertheless the first to grant the privilege of selling Indian captives from Carolina to the West Indies, as the cheapest means of “encouraging the soldiers of the infant colony”.² Accordingly, when war broke out with the Stono Indians in 1680, Governor West, taking advantage of the precedent already established and the expressed sanction of the proprietors for such an action, offered a price for every Indian that should be taken and brought to Charleston,³ and obtained the funds he needed for defense by selling the Indians to the traders.⁴ The plan proved successful, so successful, in fact, as to arouse the jealousy of the proprietors, for West appropriated some of the profits for his own benefit. The proprietors sanctioned the sale of Indians taken in actual warfare for the benefit of the colony, which meant for their own benefit. Their title to the colony rested upon the claims of England to this territory by right of conquest.⁵ The Indians were the captives and the conquered people of that conquest. By

the rules of war the conquered people were at the mercy and disposal of the conquerors, and since the proprietors found more profit in selling than in killing the captive Indians, they naturally resented West’s taking their profits for other purposes.

     By the time of the wars in the early eighteenth century, the power of the proprietors was broken, and the assembly, took charge of the matter of disposing of captives in war. An act passed September 10, 1702, provided that the Indian slaves taken by the Yamasee and the other Indian allies on the expedition to St. Augustine in 1702, should be bought only by a committee of four named by the assembly. The slaves would then be disposed of to help meet the expenses of the expedition.¹ But the committee neglected to carry out its instructions, and another act of May 8, 1703, provided that the slaves taken on the expedition might be bought by anyone, and the Indian allies be thus encouraged.²

     That all the Indian captives taken on the second expedition to St. Augustine in 1704 were not sold as slaves was due to an order of the assembly expressed through the governor.³ Moore lamented this fact, as the plunder of his men, which he estimated should have been £100 to a man, would thus be much diminished. That he still hoped with the governor’s assistance “to find a way to gratify them for the loss of blood”, may mean that he had not yet given up the idea of selling those Indian captives whom he called “free”.⁴

     As a part of the preparation for self-defense made by South Carolina in 1707 and 1708, acts were passed giving the commanding officer of any expedition the power of commissioner to buy all prisoners of the Indian enemy above the age of twelve years that should be taken captive by the white forces or the Indian allies. The slaves so bought were to be delivered to the public receiver, who was directed to pay for them not to exceed the sum of £7 for every Indian, and then to ship them to the islands of the West Indies for sale, or to dispose of them within the colony for the use of the public to any person who would enter into bonds, with the penalty of £200, not to send or carry any slave so bought to any place within the province, or to the northward thereof. Any white person refusing to sell such slave to the commanding officer, must dispose or the slave himself, as before described, within the space of one month, or forfeit the same to the receiver for the use of the public, to be disposed of as aforesaid.¹ In 1715, however, the law was changed so as to read that all Indian enemies captured should be handed over to the public receiver for the use of the public, the receiver to sell such as slaves to those who would pay the highest price, and who would promise to export them from the colony within the period of two months after the sale.²

     During the French and Indian War, the Cherokee Indians began hostilities with the English. North Carolina, in the provisions made in 1760 for raising troops against them, offered to anyone who took captive “an enemy Indian” the right to hold him as a slave.³ By the treaty concluded by South Carolina with the Cherokee at the close of the war, it was provided that the captives on each

side should be given up. The North Carolinians, however, followed the policy advocated in 1760, and the Indians accordingly retaliated by carrying off two white girls from South Carolina to Pensacola, and demanded, before releasing them, that those of their own people held in captivity should first be given up.¹

     In both of the New England Indian wars discussed, the disposal of the captives fell under the immediate jurisdiction of the respective colonial governments, and was carried on either by the general court, as in the case of Massachusetts, or by a council of war which was a committee of the general court, as in the case of Plymouth. Though during the Pequot War Connecticut sent no Indians to the West Indies, still it was customary for the government to sell them out of the colony during the period following the war. This appears from a law passed in 1656 by the general court, forbidding such sale outside the boundaries of “the other three colonies”, without the consent of the authorities of the plantation “under the penalty of £10 for each default”.²

     The attitude of the New England colonial governments,

so definitely expressed during the Pequot War, was continually shown from that time until King Philip’s War. During that period, 1636-1675, New England was the scene of constant intertribal Indian difficulties between the Mohegan and Narraganset tribes. Because of the danger resulting from these disturbances, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven entered into confederation for mutual defense, under the name of the United Colonies of New England. The articles containing the terms of the intercolonial agreement, drawn up May 19, 1643, expressed the same spirit that was shown during the Pequot War, for they provided that “the whole advantage of the war . . . , whether it be in lands, goods or persons, shall be proportionally divided among the said confederates”.¹

     Continued disturbances led the commissioners of the United Colonies to prepare for a campaign against the Narraganset Indians in 1645. Captain John Mason was put in command of the forces raised. In keeping with the provision of the articles already mentioned, his commission, dated July, 1645, concluded thus: “what booty you take or prisoners, whether men, women or children, you may send to Seabrook fort, to be kept and improved for the advantage of the colonies in several proportions answering to their charges, etc.”²

     During King Philip’s War the various New England governments, with Massachusetts and Plymouth in the lead, again took charge of the disposal of the captive Indians. Various methods were adopted to convert their Indian captives into a source of immediate revenue. One was to sell them outright outside of the colonies, or, on occasion, within the colonies, and thus replenish the exchequer,

and, so far as might be, defray the expenses of the war. At a meeting of the Plymouth Court in 1676 to consider the disposal of more than a hundred captives, the conclusion was reached, “upon serious and deliberate consideration and agitation” concerning them, “to sell the greater number into servitude”.¹ A little later, in the same year, several more were sold.² In each case the colonial treasurer was ordered to effect the sale for the benefit of the colony. A fiscal report of Plymouth for the period from June 25, 1675, to September 23, 1676, gives among the credits the following, which relates to the sale of the one hundred and eighty-eight Indians already mentioned: “By the following accounts, received in, or as silver, viz.: captives, for 188 prisoners at war sold, £397 13s.”³

     Records of similar events are found in Massachusetts Bay. On November 4, 1676, the magistrates and deputies adopted a report of a committee of the general court providing for the selling abroad of several Indians.⁴ Again, on September 16, 1676, the general court passed an act for handing over the disposal of certain captured Indians to the council. The general court expressed the opinion that such of them as had shed English blood should suffer death. The inference concerning the remainder is that they were to be sold.⁵

     A second method of paying debts by the use of captive was to direct the treasurer of the colony to dispose of a certain number of Indians, and turn the proceeds to the account of a certain individual in whose debt the colony stood; or to give a certain number of Indians to such a

person, usually with the stipulation that the Indians be at once sold out of the colony. An instance of the first kind occurred in Plymouth, October 4, 1675, when the general court voted with “reference to such emergent charges that have fallen on our honored governor, the summer past, the court have settled and conferred on him, the price of ten Indians of those savages lately transported out of the government”.¹ The second method is illustrated by a later act of the Plymouth court, August 24, 1676, when, along with ten Indians ordered by the court to be delivered to Captain Benjamin Church and Captain Anthony Low for transportation out of the colony, one Indian was ordered “to be at the disposal of Henry Lilly, which he receives in full satisfaction for his attendance at this court”. This Indian, like the others, was to be transported.² How far the receipts from the sale of captives went toward meeting the expenses of the colony is not known. It must, however, have been but a short way, if one is to judge by the condition of the colonial exchequer at the time and the expedients adopted by the colonial government to obtain money to defend the frontiers and meet the other expenses of war.³

     Still a third way was to grant the captured Indians directly to those who took them prisoners, as a bounty for their capture. The Massachusetts act of 1695, which, along with the rewards for killing Indians,¹ conferred on the soldiers for their own use all plunder and provisions taken from the enemy, appears to have been the earliest relinquishment by the provincial government of its sovereign right to prisoners and captives.² In the later laws liberal premiums were continued for scalps, and volunteer captors of Indians were, by the law of 1706, granted the benefit of captives and plunder.³ A law of 1703 provided that the governor and council, in the absence of the general assembly, possessed the power to pay for Indian captives under ten years

old the sum of £3, and stated that they could use the Indians thus obtained, either for the redemption of English captives among the Indians, or else they could sell them across the sea.¹ Another law of the same year granted the regular forces the benefit of the sale of all Indian prisoners under the age of ten years taken by them to be transported out of the country, the profits of the sale to be shared among the officers and men of the company engaged, proportionally to their wages. All volunteers were, likewise, to have the benefit of all Indian prisoners under the age of ten years by them taken.² By such legal action Massachusetts was in reality putting a premium on slave catching.

     The colonial governments not only sold the Indian captives themselves, but sometimes authorized their military commanders so to do. On January 15, 1676, the governor of Massachusetts issued instructions to Captain Benjamin Church to go against the Indians, and to distribute among his men the plunder and captives according to such agreement as captain and company might make. The instructions read: “And it shall be lawful, and is hereby warranted, for him to make sale of such prisoners as their perpetual slaves; or otherwise to retain them, as they think meet (they being such as the law allows to be kept)”.³ On August 28, 1676, also, the governor of Plymouth wrote to the governor of Rhode Island that Captain Church had been chosen and authorized by Plymouth “to demand and receive of the governor of Rhode Island” all the captive Indians, and to guard and conduct them to Plymouth, or to sell and dispose of them, as he chose, to the “inhabitants or

others for terms of life, or for shorter times, as there may be reasons”.¹

     No exception to this custom of enslavement was made in the case of the Praying Indians. During the course of the war several of these Indians, “through the harsh dealings of the English”, and because of neglect to provide them with “sufficient shelter, protection and encouragement”, joined the warring Indians.² Such of these Indians as were taken in arms were declared by the Massachusetts general court to be in rebellion, and were tried and sentenced, some to be killed, but the most of them to be transported and sold as slaves.³

     Captives were also retained as slaves in the colony, especially the women and children. For instance, in 1675, in return for the privilege granted by Mr. Shrimpton of Noddle’s Island to quarter one hundred Indians upon that island free of charge, the general court of Massachusetts ordered five Christian Indian prisoners to be delivered to

him to be employed on Noddle’s Island, “he returning them to the order of the council”.¹

     It is very probable, as Gookin asserts, that instances are not lacking in which some of the Praying Indians were sold as slaves under accusations which were false.² Such happened also in the case of other Indians. Their promises were not considered sincere by the colonial authorities, for a result of the war was an intense hatred and suspicion of all Indians.³ The Praying Indians were sufficiently numerous to be a dangerous factor, and the colonial authorities intended to give them no chance to gain the advantage.⁴

     Whatever may have been the number of enslaved Indian captives retained in Massachusetts, that number was sufficiently large to cause some uneasiness on the part of both authorities and people. On July 22, 1676, the general court of Plymouth confirmed an act of the council of war declaring that, because of the danger to the peace and safety of the colony incurred by having Indian captives residing

there, no male captive above the age of fourteen years of age should reside in the colony; and that, if any such captive above that age was then resident in the colony, he was to be disposed of out of the colony before October 15, 1676, or be forfeited to the government.¹ It is not likely that the act was rigorously enforced during its brief existence. Exceptions to the law were doubtless made by the court from time to time.²

     Another act of similar tenor was passed March 29, 1677, when the Massachusetts council in an order, the preamble of which shows much alarm on the part of the people, decreed that no one within the colony should thereafter buy or keep, more than ten days after the publication of the council’s decree, any Indian men or women already bought, above the age of twelve years, without allowance from authority. A fine of £5 and the forfeit of the Indian or Indians concerned were fixed as a penalty for violation of the law.³ Toward the end of the year Plymouth still

further extended governmental supervision of captives by decreeing, March 5, 1678, that no one was to buy the children of the captive Indians taken during the late war, “without special leave, liking and approbation of the government of this jurisdiction”.¹

     The seizure of Indians by authority of the colonial governments, and their subsequent sale, were not always above suspicion. At the time of the Narraganset troubles, in 1646, Plymouth gave legal sanction for the seizure of peaceable and unsuspecting Indians whose tribes were at peace with the English.² A second instance of the same character occurred during King Philip’s War shortly after the destruction of Dartmouth in 1675. The Dartmouth Indians had not been concerned in the burning of the town, so the whites entered into negotiations of peace and friendship with them, and the captains of the resident militia and the Plymouth forces sent thither promised them protection. But through other influences they were conducted to Plymouth, and, by order of the council, August 4, 1675, they were sold and “transported out of the Country, being about Eight-score Persons”.³ On September 2, 1675, the council

took similar action in the case of “a parcel of Indians lately come into Sandwich, in a submissive way to this colony”. They were adjudged to be “in the same condition of rebellion”, and were condemned, fifty-seven in number, to perpetual servitude.¹

     A fourth, and far more notable instance of bad faith on the part of the English, occurred at Cocheco (Dover, New Hampshire) during the Indian difficulties in that section, contemporaneous with and following King Philip’s War. Major Waldron was in command of the local garrison, and had gathered about him four hundred Indians, about two hundred of whom were refugees who had fled there for protection after the death of King Philip, which Waldron had promised them. The depredations of the Androscoggin Indians at Casco and the devastation of the settlements on the Kennebec caused the Massachusetts government to send a military force into that locality, with orders to seize all southern Indians wherever they could find them. In obedience to this order the leaders of the Massachusetts troops wished to seize the Indians at once, but Waldron hesitated to break his promise and proposed a stratagem to avoid disastrous results. His suggestion was followed, and all the Indians were disarmed and made prisoners, September 7, 1676. The “strange Indians”, or those who had come from the south, two hundred in number, were retained and sent to Boston. Seven or eight who were convicted of having shed English blood were condemned to death; the rest were sold into slavery in foreign parts.²

     Toward the close of the war orders were given by certain of the New England colonies to the constables to seize all Indians remaining in the colonies after a specific date. All who had been concerned in the death of a colonist or the destruction of property were to be summarily executed. Those who remained friendly or had finally assisted the English, were allowed to retain their lands and continue their regular life. The others were to be sold by the treasurers of the various colonies for the benefit of their respective governments.¹

     The locating of those Indians that remained after the war, and the necessity of maintaining order, resulted, 1677, in the government of Massachusetts settling the groups of Indians, Praying as well as unconverted, in various localities, and the distribution of some to “remain as servants in English families” where they were to be taught and instructed in the Christian religion. Both the captive male Indians and their families were held as slaves. Massachusetts and Plymouth limited the time of servitude of the children of “friendly Indians”, or those who surrendered and assisted the English, to the time when they should become

twenty-four years of age.¹ The time of service of the children of the warring Indians was not so limited.

     Since King Philip’s War was never carried into Connecticut territory, the problem of disposing of Indian captives never assumed the same importance there as in Massachusetts, and the Connecticut government did not export its captive Indians. On October 23, 1676, as a measure intended to induce the surrender of the warring tribes and so hasten the conclusion of the war, the general court ordered that all Indians who surrendered before January 1, 1677, should not be sold out of the country as slaves. The measure, however, permitted their use as temporary slaves in the colony. They were to receive good usage in the service of those to whom the council might dispose of them, and after ten years, all over sixteen years of age, on certificate of good behavior from their masters regarding their good service during that period, were to have their liberty and be allowed to dwell in the colony and work for themselves, provided they observed English law. If the master should refuse such certificate, then the Indian could apply to the authorities and have his case decided. The council was given power to lengthen the term of servitude if it should see cause, but could not shorten it. All Indians under sixteen years of age were to serve until twenty-six years of age.²

     At a meeting, November 24, 1676, the Connecticut council decided upon its method of procedure. A committee was appointed to meet at Norwich on the second Wednesday of the following December to “dispose and settle all

surrenders according to order”. All Indians expecting to have the benefit of the declaration must then and there appear. After that time all those who had shown hostility to the English were excluded from the privilege and were to be dealt with as enemies, as were also those who should hide or harbor them. The notice of the council’s action was to be sent among the various Indians of the colony. The instructions of the committee appointed directed them, among other things, to take all young and single persons of all sorts to put into English families to be apprentices for ten years. After that they were to be returned to their parents on proof of their own and their parents’ fidelity. Otherwise they were to be sold into slavery. The general court appointed certain persons in each county to receive and distribute these Indian children proportionally, and to see that they were sold to good families. Those counties which had already had some share of the surrendered Indians and captives or which had too many Indians already, were not to receive as many as the other counties.¹

     The Rhode Island authorities also limited the bondage of Indians to a period of years. On May 18, 1652, the colony passed a law “that no black mankind or white” should be “forced by covenant, bond or otherwise, to serve any man or his assignees longer than ten years, or until they became twenty-four years of age, if they be taken in under fourteen, from the time of their coming within the limits of the colony; and at the end of the term of ten years, they were to be set free, “as the manner is with English servants”.²

Either the framers of the law intended that Indians be included under the terms “black mankind or white”, or else the subject of Indian slavery had not yet attracted the attention of the law makers at this time. Probably the latter is the true explanation of the omission of the term “Indian” from the act, though at a later time the same restriction of service was applied to Indians without legislation.

     On March 13, 1676, the general assembly convened at Newport and discussed the Indian situation. An order was given that “no Indian in this colony shall be a slave”, save only for debts, covenant, etc., “as if they had been countrymen not at war”.¹ But Rhode Island did not avail itself of every opportunity to retain captive Indians. On one occasion the assembly voted, June 30, 1676, to send back to Plymouth a number of Indians whom Roger Williams had sent there, because they believed the Indians rightly belonged to the northern colony.² Again, on August 23, 1676, the government held a court martial for the trial of some Indians whom the Rhode Island troops had captured. Several of these Indians were sentenced to death for crimes against the English. Others were freed. None was retained in the colony.³

     The assembly made an earnest effort to prevent the indiscriminate and unfair sale of Indians not taking part in the war, by forbidding during its session in August, 1676,

that any Indians be brought into the colony without permission of the governor and two assistants, under penalty of a fine of £5 and the forfeit of such Indian or Indians. The sum of the fine and the forfeited Indians were “to return to the treasurer of each town”. All persons were declared to be entitled to half the produce of the Indians whom they might legally bring to Newport. The other half was to go to the treasury. If such an amount was not paid in, the said Indians were to be forfeited to the treasurer of the colony. It was also forbidden to carry any Indian away from the colony without a permit from the governor, deputy-governor or two magistrates, upon penalty of the forfeiture of £5. All acts, orders, commissions, verbal orders, etc., which had been issued by town councils, councils of war, private orders of officers and “other ministers of justice”, which related to Indians, were declared legal by the assembly.¹

     Such action as that referred to in this measure was taken at a town meeting in Portsmouth, March 8, 1675. The meeting, fearing that the holding of Indian slaves might prove “prejudicial”, ordered that all persons of the town having any Indian slave of either sex should be given but one month to sell and send such out of the town, and that no inhabitant after that time should buy or keep an Indian slave under penalty of £5 fine for each month thus holding such a slave, the amount of the fine to be paid to the town treasurer.²