Description
Book SynopsisIn Brethren by Nature, Margaret Ellen Newell reveals a little-known aspect of American history: English colonists in New England enslaved thousands of Indians.
Trade ReviewLast fall, National Geographic and PBS touted their respective TV series about the first Thanksgiving as new and historically accurate interpretations of the European colonization of New England. But neither 'Saints and Strangers' nor 'American Experience: The Pilgrims' dared to go where Margaret Ellen Newell has gone in her most recent book, Brethren by Nature, a meticulously researched account of American Indian slavery during the Colonial period in New England.
-- Tanya H. Lee * Indian Country Today Media Network *
Newell has done an excellent job of combing through court recordscorrespondenceand other materials to reconstruct details large and small and to uncover the stories of enslaved people and their enslavers... [A] testament to her careful scholarship and indeed a central part of the story of Indian slavery in New England.
-- Daniel K. Richter * New England Quarterly *
Newell recovers the stories of individual Indian people caught up in a system of unfree labor that contributed to New England's prosperity, linked the region to slave economies in the Atlantic and Caribbean, and played an important role in the racialization of society. Brethren by Nature is an important book about Indians in New England; it is also an important book about New England.
-- Colin G. Calloway * Media Reviews *
Newell's achievement represents some of the best new research within the historiographies of Native America, slavery, and colonial New England. Never losing sight of the enslaved themselves, Brethren by Nature places the travails of indigenous nations and individuals at the heart of colonial slavery. With this outstanding work, Newell shakes the 'city on the hill' to its very core.
-- Max Flomen * American Indian Culture and Research Journal *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Problem of Indian Slavery in Early America1. "Davids warre": The Pequot War and the Origins of Slavery in New England2. "I doe not see how wee can thrive untill wee gett into a stock of slaves": Slavery in the Puritan Atlantic World3. "Indians we have received into our houses": Pequot War Captives in New England Households4. "Such a servant is part of her Master's estate": Acculturation, Resistance, and the Making of a Hybrid Society5. "An Indian to help in the work": The Importance of Indian Labor in the New England Economy6. "We sold...47 Indians, young and old for 80£. in money": Enslavement in King Philip’s War7. "As good if not better then the Moorish Slaves": Law, Slavery, and the Second Native Diaspora8. "Free men subjects to the king": The Search for Enslavable Indians in the Northeast and Southeast9. To be sold "in any part of ye kings Dominyons": Judicial Enslavement of New England IndiansEpilogue: Indians and the Origins of American Slavery—and AbolitionismAbbreviations
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