The Wars

By The Harbor February 21, 2026

The Pequot War

The earliest records of slavery in Massachusetts date to the Pequot War of 1637 — just years after Puritan settlement. The institution first appeared “clearly and distinctly in the enslaving of Indians captured in war.”1

On May 26, 1637, more than 600 Pequots were massacred at Mystic Fort. Approximately 200 survivors were distributed among the Mohegan and Narragansett, forced into colonial households, and “a small group transported as slaves to Bermuda and the West Indies.”2 In July 1637, after the final tally, the colonists recorded: “We have now slain and taken in all about 700.”

  • George H. Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts (New York Historical Society). ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

  • Jace Weaver, The Red Atlantic: American Indigenes and the Making of the Modern World, 1000-1927 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 61. ↩ ↩ ↩

    • The Desire

    The ship Desire, built at Marblehead in 1636, became the instrument of deportation. Captain William Pierce loaded 15 Pequot boys and 2 women aboard, bound for Bermuda. He missed Bermuda and delivered them to Providence Island off Nicaragua instead.1

    The Desire returned seven months later carrying cotton, tobacco, salt, and African slaves — completing a triangular trade that sent American Indians to Caribbean plantations and imported African slaves to New England. The template was set.

  • Winthrop’s Journal; Michael L. Fix, “The Captivity of the Pequot Women and Children after the War of 1637,” New England Quarterly 73 (March 2000). ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

    • Cannibal Negroes

    When the Pequot captives arrived in the Caribbean, the Providence Island Company directors in London issued a specific order: “Special Care to be taken of the cannibal Negroes brought from New England.”1

    Cannibal Negroes. From New England. These were Pequot Indians — taken in Connecticut, shipped on the Desire, and relabeled on arrival. The “cannibal” justified the enslavement. The “Negro” erased the origin.

  • Sainsbury’s Calendar, 1574-1660; Kurimeo Ahau, Pt. 5 — The Real Slave Trade // Pequot, American Indians Enslaved and Labeled “Cannibal Negroes”. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

    • The Fairest and Largest

    Colonial officers distributed Pequot women like property. Captain Stoughton wrote to Governor Winthrop requesting “the fairest and largest that I saw amongst them” — a woman he had already clothed and desired “for a servant.”1

    Lieutenant Davenport requested another by her identifying marks: “one, a small one, that has three strokes upon her stomach.” The language said “servants.” The reality was something else entirely.

  • Winthrop Papers; Kurimeo Ahau, Pt. 5 — The Real Slave Trade. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

    • King Philip’s War

    Forty years later, King Philip’s War in 1675-76 produced a second wave of mass deportation. The war was waged “in large measure to perpetuate slavery,” creating captives who could be legally enslaved under colonial law.1

    Wampanoag, Narragansett, Nipmuc — the indigenous people of southern New England were killed, captured, and shipped. Some went to Bermuda. Some went to Barbados. Some went to Jamaica. Some went to the slave markets of Tangier.

  • Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian; Berner J. Lis, “Forging New Communities: Indian Slavery and Servitude in Colonial New England 1676-1776” (Wesleyan University, 2012). ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

    • Charleston

    Charleston was the main export hub for Indian slaves.1 In the Carolinas, the same machine ran south. During the Stono War of 1680, “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.”2

    Between 1702 and 1708, three South Carolina expeditions carried back to Charleston for sale “almost the entire population of seven towns — in all some 1,400 persons.” The Apalachee were nearly eliminated: “nearly all the Apalachee were distributed as slaves among the Carolina settlers.” Alan Gallay estimates 51,000 southern Indian slaves were captured before 1715.3 “Indian slavery was not peripheral in the history of Native America, but central to the story.”4

  • Jace Weaver, The Red Atlantic: American Indigenes and the Making of the Modern World, 1000-1927 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 271. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

  • Allman Wheeler Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times Within the Present Limits of the United States (Columbia University, 1913). ↩ ↩ ↩

    • The Natchez

    The Natchez were deported wholesale to Haiti. About 450 of the tribe — including the Great Sun, the Little Sun, and several principal war chiefs — were captured and brought to New Orleans. Women and children were kept as plantation slaves. The leaders and more than 400 captives were shipped to Cape Français, Haiti, and sold to the planters.1

    An entire nation, loaded onto ships and sold in the Caribbean. Listed as what? Not Natchez. Not Indian. Not American.

  • Allman Wheeler Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times Within the Present Limits of the United States (Columbia University, 1913). ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

    • The Business Model

    Every war produced slaves. Every treaty produced land. The wars weren’t failures of diplomacy — they were the business model.1

    Manufacture a conflict. Win the war. Enslave the survivors. Ship them out. Take the land. Repeat. Pequot War, King Philip’s War, Tuscarora War, Yamasee War, Stono War. Different decade, different tribe, same pipeline. “War captives supplanted the randomly snatched Natives… shipped to Europe, Barbados, Bermuda, Curaçao, and Trinidad. Descendants of these wayward Indians can be found living in these places to this day.”2 The people went south and east. The land stayed.

  • Allman Wheeler Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times Within the Present Limits of the United States (Columbia University, 1913). ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

    • Three or Four Thousand

    Governor Hyde of North Carolina instructed his agents to emphasize “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.”1

    Three or four thousand people. From one colony’s wars. Deeds used the language “Negros, Indians and other slaves” — all in one category. By 1764, the codified Barbados laws stated that all regulations “regarding Indians, one should see slaves.” Indian wasn’t even a separate legal category anymore. It had been absorbed into the system entirely.

    1. Governor Hyde correspondence; Kurimeo Ahau, Pt. 17 — From Indigenous American to African American / POWs not ADOS. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

    2. Jace Weaver, The Red Atlantic: American Indigenes and the Making of the Modern World, 1000-1927 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 62. ↩ ↩ ↩

    3. Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), cited in Weaver, The Red Atlantic, 271. ↩

    4. Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade, cited in Weaver, The Red Atlantic, 270. ↩

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