THE process of obtaining Indians by kidnapping was common to the early English explorers in America, as well as to those of Spain and France. In 1498, the expedition of Sebastian Cabot brought back to England three natives from the New World.¹ Lord Bacon states that two of the Indians “were seen two years afterward, dressed like Englishmen, and not to be distinguished from them”.² The Cabots had set off, promising to bring home heavy cargoes of spices and oriental gems. They returned with empty ships and with nothing to relate concerning the sought-for land of Cathay. Their expedition had not reached its desired destination, but some of the natives would serve as proof of another land discovered, and would, perhaps, provoke sufficient interest to assure the fitting out of a second expedition.³ These Indians were not destined for the slave markets, and were probably kept as curiosities.

     England still hoped to find the northwest passage to the Orient. In 1576, Frobisher made another attempt in that direction. He desired to take away some token as proof of his having been in the New World, and, as it was supposed the Indians had destroyed or stolen three of his men who were lost, he decided to take some savages captive by luring them to trade. In this way one was captured, but died on reaching England.¹ A similar instance occurred on the second voyage in 1577. Frobisher planned to seize several Indians, bestow gifts upon them, and send them to their own people, hoping thus to win the friendship of the natives, after keeping one of them as interpreter. An attempt was made to seize two, but one escaped. As a companion for this man, an Indian woman was afterward captured. Frobisher attempted to trade these captives for some lost Englishmen, but was unsuccessful;² so it is probable that they were carried to England. The relation of the third voyage, 1578, mentions a similar man and woman, but the narrator does not state whether these were the same two taken on the second voyage, carried to England, and brought back to America on the third voyage, or two others taken on the third voyage. These Indians provoked much curiosity and comment in England, and pictures of them were made for the queen and others.³

     The search for the northwest passage was continued by Captain George Weymouth in 1605, under the patronage of Lord Popham, and Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Weymouth reached the coast of America at the mouth of the present Penobscot River in Maine. By making presents to the Indians and by treating them kindly, he induced five of them to come on board his ship. These five Indians were kidnapped

and carried to England, along with their canoes and the personal belongings which they had with them at the time of capture. There appears to have been no feeling of opposition shown to such an act. Three of them were presented by Weymouth to Gorges, and two to Popham.¹ Gorges declared that “this accident must be acknowledged the means under God of putting on foot and giving life to all our plantations”.² Weymouth did not propose to obtain financial profit by the sale of these Indians any more than did his predecessors, Cabot and Frobisher. His immediate purpose was probably to please his patrons by a curious gift, and doubtless he shared the purpose of Gorges and Popham of learning from them the resources of their native land, and by instructing them, to have them fitted to act as intelligent guides and interpreters in some future expedition. His instructions required that he treat the Indians kindly so that they might prove friendly to future settlements.³ The treatment of the captives in England was evidently kind. Gorges kept his Indians in his family three years and obtained from them the knowledge he desired. The Indians were shown to the curious, perhaps for money, and it has been held that one, after death, was exhibited for an admission price.⁴

     Captain Edward Harlow, under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, visited America in 1611, and at “Monhigan Island” seized three Indians who had come on board to trade. One of these escaped and incited his friends to revenge, so Harlow proceeded southward and from the islands in the vicinity of Cape Cod kidnapped three others. With these five Indians he returned to England.¹

     Though in the cases cited the Indians taken by the English were probably not destined to actual slavery, yet instances are not wanting in which they were taken for that purpose. The profit to be derived from the sales in the slave markets was tempting. Just before sending out the expedition of 1614, Captain Henry Harley brought to Gorges a native of the island of Capawick² (Martha’s Vineyard.) This Indian had been captured with some

twenty-nine others by a ship from London and taken to Spain for sale as a slave. The sale failed wholly or in part, and some of the Indians were brought to England and shown as curiosities as the other Indians had been.¹ Gorges, though he had sanctioned the act of Weymouth, condemned the action of the captors of this group of Indians, for he feared the Indians of America would be unfriendly to colonial enterprise.

     The London ship above mentioned was one commanded by Thomas Hunt, and formed part of Smith’s expedition for the carrying of fish, furs and oil from New England to Virginia and Malaga. Smith took the first ship to Virginia and left Hunt to take the other to Spain with a cargo of dry fish. But a cargo of slaves seemed to offer greater gain than one of fish. Twenty-seven Indians were taken captive off the Massachusetts coast and sent to Spain. Among this number was Tisquantum (called Squantum by the English), who had formerly been captured by Weymouth, and who had been returned to America. Some of the Indians were sold in Spain for £20 apiece. By the interference of some monks the further sale of the Indians was prevented, and Squantum, at least, was carried off to England. When Gorges sent out Captain Hobson to America two of Hunt’s captives accompanied him, but, on arrival, they escaped and so aroused their friends that a settlement by Hobson was prevented. This feeling of suspicion and hatred toward the English must have found expression, if it had not been prevented by the deadly pestilence of 1616 which weakened the Indians of New England, and by the intercession of Squantum who proved a firm friend of the

English in arranging a treaty with the Indians.¹ Hunt’s act was done entirely on his own responsibility and without the knowledge or sanction of Smith who denounced it as a vile deed, since it ever afterward kept him from trading in those parts.²

     The evidence of kidnapping in the southern colonies seems very meagre. The existing records deal chiefly with other modes of obtaining Indians for slaves. There were undoubtedly many cases of kidnapping pure and simple, if we may judge by the general attitude of the colonists toward the Indians; but kidnapping, considered as distinct from any sort of warfare, was not a suitable means of producing the number of Indians needed or desired by the Carolina colonists. Trade and war were more prolific means, and hence were more largely used. Kidnapping was a process of obtaining slaves suited only to a locality, or to an occasion when but few Indians were desired.

     Yet certain incidents show the custom was practiced here as elsewhere. An event of 1685 is probably only one of many such which occurred on the southern coast and in the interior at the time of the Indian disturbances in that section, before war had actually begun. In that year a vessel from New York kidnapped four Indians in the locality of Cape Fear, North Carolina, and carried them to

New York for sale.¹ That there was a certain amount of kidnapping carried on in the other southern colonies, as Virginia and Maryland, is shown by the colonial legislation regarding the matter, which will be discussed later.

     It has been seen that it was customary to enslave Indian captives taken in war, and that certain colonial governments even allowed the seizure of peaceable Indians in time of war, lest they join with the warring Indians. The distinction between kidnapping, pure and simple, and seizures made in time of war, was too delicate to be always observed, and was open to abuse by unscrupulous persons desiring to obtain Indians for sale. Nowhere is this more clearly exemplified than in the New England colonies. Here, as in the south, kidnapping was carried on by the frontier people who were generally rough and lawless. Along with indifference to the rights of the Indians, fraudulent practices in trade, and refusal to sell them arms and ammunition on the slightest suspicion that the weapons might be used against the whites, the kidnapping of Indians, and the selling of them as slaves in the West Indies were all numbered among the causes of King Philip’s War.²

     With the opening of King Philip’s War the custom was continued. The Maine Indians were about to join those in Massachusetts when, through the efforts of Abraham Shurt of Pemaquid, and by means of promises made to right their wrongs and treat the native fairly in the future, the union with the Massachusetts Indians was prevented, and assurances of friendship were exchanged with the English. Rumors were soon spread abroad, however, that the Indians were possessed of arms, and were forming a conspiracy against the colony. The government became

alarmed and issued a warrant to General Waldron of Cocheco (Dover, New Hampshire) “to seize every Indian known to be a man slayer, traitor or conspirator”. Waldron took it upon himself to issue general warrants for this purpose. These warrants fell into the hands of unprincipled men who set about using them to immediate advantage. A vessel was fitted out at Pemaquid and a crew organized for the purpose of kidnapping Indians for sale abroad. Shurt remonstrated with the leaders of the proceeding and warned the Indians of their danger. But the plan succeeded, at least in part. A vessel off Pemaquid, commanded by one Laughton, succeeded during the winter of 1676 in capturing several Indians, and carrying them abroad for sale. The Indians complained of this action, but the only satisfaction they obtained was more offers of friendship and the promise that means should be taken to return their captured friends to them.¹ Waldron was indicted by the grand jury for surprising and stealing seventeen Indians, carrying them off to Fayal in the vessel Endeavor and selling them there, but was acquitted. John Laughton, captain of the vessel, was also indicted for the same offenses, found guilty by the Court of General Sessions, and fined £20.² More pressing matters engaged the attention of the authorities for some time, and no further attention was given to this event.

     Not even Pennsylvania was free from the custom. In 1710, the Indians manifested some uneasiness, and when the governor sent a committee to learn their wishes they returned eight wampum belts which represented their requests.

One belt signified, so the Indians explained to the committee, that their old women desired the friendship of the Christians and Indians of the government, and the privilege to fetch wood and water without danger and trouble; another, that their children might have room to play and sport without danger of slavery. The young men begged that they might be granted the privilege to hunt without fear of death or slavery; and the chiefs desired a lasting peace that thereby they might be secured against those “fearful apprehensions” they had felt for several years.¹ A similar complaint was made by the “Senoquois” to Lieutenant-Governor Gookin. The Indians asserted that one Francis La Tore had taken a boy from them and had sold him in New York, and requested the lieutenant-governor to inquire about him.²

     Whether or not actual kidnapping of the natives occurred in New York, at least the Indians were familiar with the custom as practiced by the whites. The following is a case in point. When the Moravian missionaries first visited New York, early in the eighteenth century, the whites, in order to counteract the influence of Rauch, one of these missionaries who was working at the Indian town of Shekomeka east of the Hudson River, told the Indians of that section that the missionary intended to seize their young people, carry them beyond the seas and sell them into slavery.³

     Events in New York illustrate another phase of Indian kidnapping. During the war between Spain and the United

Netherlands prizes were occasionally brought by privateers to New Amsterdam from the Caribbean islands and the Spanish Main. Part of the cargoes of these vessels consisted of kidnapped Spanish Indians. Their presence in the colony was considered undesirable and their seizure generally unfair, for they were in some cases of Spanish¹ as well as Indian blood. After peace was declared between Spain and the Netherlands, 1648, hostilities still continued between Spain and France. To privateers flying the French flag, New Amsterdam was a neutral port where captive negroes and other prize goods were sold. Among these negroes was sometimes found a Spanish Indian. In 1692,² and again in 1699,³ laws were passed to suppress privateering. But, despite these laws, the practice was adhered to, and the number of free Spanish Indians held in New York increased. A petition to the governor of New York, in 1711, shows a free Indian woman, a resident of Southampton, kidnapped and sold as a slave in Madeira, from whence she was returned by the English consul to New York.⁴ This instance illustrates the work of pirates also.

     Mention is frequently found of Spanish Indians in other colonies, especially in New England. Cotton Mather records buying a Spanish Indian and giving him to his father.¹ Mayhew mentions the death of Chilmark, a Spanish Indian brought from some part of the Spanish Indies when he was a boy and sold in New England.² The New England and other newspapers contain frequent mention of Spanish Indian runaways and Spanish Indians for sale in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania.³ The Boston News Letter of July 31, 1704, and October 28, 1706, mentions both negro and Indian slaves taken off the coast of New Spain by privateers fitted out in South Carolina. It may be that the so-called Spanish mulatto kidnapped by a privateer, sold in the colony of Pennsylvania and freed by the council in 1703, was a Spanish Indian.⁴

     Considering the prevalence of piracy and privateering during the colonial period, it seems probable that there were not a few Spanish Indians brought to the different colonies in this way and in the cargoes of negroes from the West Indies and Brazil, whose existence in the colonies was never brought to the attention of the colonial authorities.⁵

     “Kidnapping of Indians was contrary to express statute in most, if not in all the colonies, and to the law of nations as generally recognized in the international intercourse of Europeans with heathen and barbarian nations.”¹ There was considerable legislative action in the different colonies intended to check the practice, which had, however, but little effect. In some of the colonies laws were passed intending to put an end to the practice by providing fines and penalties for the kidnapping of Indians. In other colonies legislative or executive action dealt, not with the custom in general, but with certain specific events which aroused attention or were brought by some one concerned directly to the notice of the legislative body or the executive. One thing is apparent throughout all the legislation on this subject: the absence of any particular sympathy for the Indian himself. In some cases the Indian was only included incidentally or by implication in a general law which made no specific mention of him. In other cases laws against kidnapping were passed because of the effect that kidnapping might have on the Indians within or surrounding the colony. In short, the motive was the desire for self-protection dictated by fear of disastrous results, rather than by any humanitarian feeling.

     It has been seen that kidnapping concerned two classes of Indians, those taken in English territory, and those taken in Spanish territory and brought to the English colonies. Colonial legislation and executive action included both classes.

     The Virginia act of 1657 aimed directly at the stealing of Indian children by Indians who had been hired by the English. All such stolen children were to be returned to their own tribe within ten days, and five hundred pounds of tobacco were to be paid by the offending party to the informer of such kidnapping.¹

     In 1672, the council of Maryland forbade the carrying of a certain friendly Indian out of the colony without special license from the governor.² In 1692, for the sake of preserving peace with the neighboring Indians, a law was enacted forbidding any one to “entice, surprise, transport, or cause to be transported, or sell or dispose of any friendly Indian or Indians whatsoever, or endeavor or attempt so to do, without license from the governor for the time being,” and offering a reward to any informer of such an event.³ The same law was reënacted in 1705.⁴

     Article ninety-one of the Massachusetts Body of Liberties of 1641 provided that no one except captives taken in just wars etc. should be held as slaves in the colony.⁵ In 1649, the Body of Liberties was reënforced by a law decreeing: “If any man stealeth a man or mankind, he shall surely be put to death.”⁶ Some attention was given to enforcing this law, for the records show an occasional imprisonment for stealing Indians.⁷ On July 4, 1667, the

governor of Barbadoes sent back to Massachusetts two Indians that had been taken to England and then carried to Barbadoes and sold as slaves. In an accompanying address to the governor and assistants of Massachusetts he promised to rectify all such abuses that might come under his jurisdiction.¹ But in spite of laws and precautions the practice of kidnapping continued throughout the colonial period.

     Other colonies followed the example of Massachusetts in making man-stealing a capital crime. New Jersey, in 1675,² and New Hampshire, in 1679,³ enacted similar laws. Just how far the laws were intended to relate to kidnapped Indians is a matter for conjecture. They were in all probability intended to apply to the stealing of negro slaves, and there is nothing in their content to show that they were intended to relate also to the stealing of free Indians.