The Mayflower, Slavery & Race
(G.E. Long photo: The site of King Phillip's death in 1676.)
Sharif's invitation inspired me to share some perspective I've gained while reading Nathaniel Phlibrick's book Mayflower (New York: Viking, 2006). Philbrick presents the voyage of the Pilgrims as essentially one looking for a place to be left alone. However, they landed in a region peopled by a multitude of native tribes with their own politics and traditions.
Because of the hardships the Pilgrims underwent (imagine arriving in frigid New England foodless in November!), they were forced to develop relationships with the adjacent tribes. They allied with the Pokanoket leader, Massasoit. They traded with, and occasionally fought with or allied with, other tribes over the years that followed. There were of course diverse voices within the Pilgrim settlement, from mercenary Miles Standish, whose first reaction to any situation was to strike first, to Edward Winslow, who became the consummate peacemaker. Like any other group, the Pilgrims did not speak with a single voice.
The oft-forgotten King Phillip's War (1675-1676) was fought between the sons of the Pilgrims on one side, particularly Governor Josiah Winslow (son of Edward), and "King" Phillip, son of Massasoit, on the other. The primary issue was land; the children of each had grown up believing that their claims were superior. Though Philbrick makes a case that Phillip tried to avoid war, it seems clear that his young warriors wished to fight as much as the English settlers did.
What ensued was a devastating and horrific conflict in which both sides killed men, women, and children, tortured captives, and took slaves. Some sources list 800 English colonists and 3,000 natives killed. Philbrick suggests that the native population had been reduced through war, starvation, and disease from 30% of the population of New England to only 15%— a 50% casualty rate. The economic costs to the settlers lasted a hundred years and caused the loss of the precious independence they had journeyed and died for (they shortly received a royal governor).
At the beginning of the war, the English settlers considered all natives to be the enemy, which forced many sachems to go to war who would have preferred peace. But as the war ground on, the English changed their tune. They began to ally with some tribes in order to gain victory over others. Racism, it seems, was no more practical for the children of the Pilgrims than it had been for their parents.
Philbrick also paints the actions of the English against a background of slavery that I was unfamiliar with: the sale of large quantities of Irish into slavery. One website suggests that the first recorded sale of this nature occurred in 1612, even before England's involvement in the African slave trade. "By 1637 a census showed that 69% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves..." Puritan Oliver Cromwell expanded the practice, which continued through the end of the 18th century. "[F]rom 1600 to 1699, far more Irish were sold as slaves than Africans." This was partly because Irish slaves were much cheaper to purchase.
According to Philbrick, the natives also had a tradition of keeping enemy prisoners, especially women and children, as slaves. But, unlike the English, they kept these slaves as personal household servants— and frequently ransomed them. Many English kept as slaves by the natives eventually returned to their homes. Native slaves, on the other hand, were sent by the English to Bermuda as a more permanent solution.
Slavery in practice in the 17th century (as distinct from those selling Irish and Native Americans into slavery) appears to have been an economic relationship not based on race. In the West Indies, "There was no racial consideration or discrimination, you were either a freeman or a slave..." Racial overtones would come later, and particularly in the U.S. where virtually all slaves were Africans and virtually all Africans began as slaves. In the U.S., racism against people of African origin, Native Americans, Chinese, Irish, etc. appears to originate in distinctively economic concerns.
King Phillip's War gives us a window into the thinking of our early ancestors. It shows us pigheadedness, shortsightedness, and greed— characteristics we have not left behind. And indeed the need for land led to many of the conflicts with (and much of the deception of and discrimination toward) native American tribes across the continent.
Yet King Phillip's War is but a two-year episode, though a devastating one for both sides, in a century marked predominantly by cooperation and trade. The history of our ancestors shows us not only instances of violence and greed, but of tolerance and compassion as well.
On the subject of Irish slavery, I just read a book of early Puritan stories, compiled from news accounts of the day. One dealt with two Irish boys who were carried off from their farm in Ireland to be slaves in New England. When they were teens they took their case to the Colonial courts (but lost their bid for freedom, in large part because the pilgrims feared insurrection among their many Irish slaves). One great problem was that Irish "indentured servants" (read "kidnapped slaves") could not initially protest their captivity because they did not speak English and were primarily very young boys kidnapped during nighttime raids by English sailors from slave ships.
On a somewhat related tangent, I read that within several generations of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of the british isles, the Anglo-Saxon y genes were widespread throughout Britain, corroborating historical theories that the Anglo-Saxons overpowered and "ethnically cleansed" the earlier inhabitants who were Celts.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/2076470.stm
Since the Germans, their children the English, and their grandchildren the Americans (in part) have gone forth to essentially do much the same thing throughout the world, I do wonder sometimes if there is an "jerk" gene for world domination in our collective gene pool.
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That is interesting-- I have never heard a mention of Irish slavery in early New England.
There are two important distinctions to be made. The first is between slavery and indentured servitude-- they are not the same. The latter was finite and the individual had some (limited) rights. The former was permanent and treated the individual as property to be bought and sold-- a slave had no rights. Many of the folks who arrived in the colonies in the 17th century were indentured servants-- by choice, by necessity, or by force.
The second distinction is between the Pilgrims and the Puritans-- they also were not the same. The Pilgrims were a distinct religious sect who believed in separation from England in order to set up the ideal society. In practice, they were more tolerant of others (mostly by necessity). The Puritans were crusaders who sought to change everyone around them, and frequently executed those of different beliefs. Ultimately the Pilgrims were bankrupted by King Phillip's War, and Plymouth Colony was absorbed into Puritan Massachusetts.
As for ethnicity and genes, the Vikings, who pillaged most of the known world, took over England more than once and lived there for several hundred years. William the Conqueror, though born in Normandy and commonly called a Norman, was of Viking descent (his grandfather invaded Normandy). I wonder how many Viking genes we have? That might explain something, too.
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I'll try to find that book. The distinction between slavery and indentured servitude is probably more like a spectrum and less delineated. I've read about some apprenticeships being indentured. In the case of the Irish boy slaves, the boys were kidnapped and sold for much longer than the normal 7 year periods, often double -- as an inducement to purchase, since they were "so small and did not speak English." That approaches pure slavery in my understanding. With luck, they lived long enough to be free, although the future they could look forward to at that point (being Irish, and poor) was meager.
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I think it's important to remember that life was short and uncertain for everyone in those days. There were few protections and rights. More than half the original Pilgrim settlers died in the first two years. We cannot consider either slavery or indentured servitude by today's realities.
The Royalist answer to a problematic people was genocide-- in Ireland, in the Scottish highlands, in Wales, and later for Native Americans in the 18th century (a policy arguably adopted by certain American presidents). The Puritan answer, enslavement, was supposed to be more humane. Slavery's undeniable economic benefit surely had no bearing on its implementation. (Yeah, right.)
Even some Puritans, like King Phillip's War commander and adventurer Benjamin Church, despised both approaches. When the war broke out, he immediately tried to negotiate peace with uninvolved sachems-- and though he was overruled by Plymouth authorities, his early efforts later put him in a position to make peace with some of the hostile tribes.
That said, is the distinction between indentured servitude, with its hope for freedom, and slavery, which had none, merely academic?
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