By Robert A. Geake
The John Potter Family on display at the Newport Historical Society.
In June of 1637, a cargo of 40-50 captives from one of the last engagements in the Pequot War landed in Providence. The captive’s ship had left Pequot harbor bound for Boston, but the Captain had chosen for some reason to forgo the journey around Cape Cod, and let the captives be taken overland from Rhode Island.
As the enslaved were herded in shackles to the carts and wagons that would take them from the port, Roger Williams was witness to the scene. He noticed an Indigenous boy among the women and children being taken away and quickly wrote out a letter that he gave to one of those guarding the captives to give to Governor John Winthrop on their arrival.
“I am bold (if I may not offend in it) Williams wrote “to request the keeping and bringing up one of the children. I have fixed mine eye on this little one with the red about his neck, but I will not be preemptory in my choice, but will rest in your loving pleasure for him, or any etc.[1]”
Williams received word in July from Winthrop that the Governor would comply with his wishes, and the minister returned word to him at the close of the month:
“sir, I desire to be truly thankful for the boy intended. His father was of Sasquakit where the last fight was: and fought not with the English as his mother (who is with you and 2 children more) certified me. I shall endeavor his good, and the common good, in him. I shall appoint some to fetch him: only I request that you would please give a name to him[2]”.
Modern Williams scholar Glenn LaFantasie tells us that this boy’s name was likely Will, a name later mention in Williams letters as “my native servant’. It is possible that he was the son of a Pequot sachem, citing an early 1660’s account of
“that memorable storie of the young Indian prince or Sagamores sonne whome Mr. Williams educated]”
It is entirely possible then, even probable, that this Indigenous boy was the first enslaved person to set foot on the shore of Cocumscussoc.
There persists a question however, as to whether Williams had more than one Indigenous servant. In the coming months after acquiring this boy, he would continue in his role as a mediator between Winthrop and the Narragansett, as well as with Connecticut authorities over what to do with the remaining Pequot refugees. It would be likely then that he came often to Cocumscussoc or points further south to bring messages, or exchange points of negotiation.
In letters written during this time, he does mention his servant “Will” who appears to have helped gather information for him. He is also sent to Winthrop and introduced as “This native, Will, my Indian servant”, indicating that the Governor had no prior introduction to him, and had certainly not named him. ]Furthermore, it is clear this Indigenous adult is not “the little one” he sought to raise and educate.
This seems to indicate that Roger Williams had at least two Indigenous servants in 1638[3].
He would soon write to Winthrop that the boy he had in his household was the son and brother of a woman and boy the Massachusetts governor had taken for his own household.
But these two prominent men of New England were not alone. In his book Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America, Oxford University historian Pekka Hamalainen tells us that Massachusetts Bay approved the first slave law in the English Atlantic in 1641 “partly to clarify the status of hundreds of Pequot captives in colonial households[4]”.
In the aftermath of the Pequot War, the long-standing English tradition of enslavement of young boys in particular, began in British North America.
European nobility across the Continent had long displayed their social status and prestige in the form of large households of servants. From 1570, enslaved Africans had been brought into Great Britain with the intent of using them as domestic servants. By the first half of the 17th century, such households held a handful of black pages, with a distinct preference for young boys.
“Brought back to be pets and playthings, these child slaves were compelled to wear collars inscribed with their owner’s name, and typically were dressed in expensive costumes or livery as a statement of wealth and status. Indeed, it became a convention of aristocratic portraiture to include a black child so dressed[5]”.
As the century progressed, it became fashionable for titled and propertied families to have one or two slaves; especially as English planters in Barbados sent sons back to be educated in England, attended by black boys, a yearly contingent of African servants who became iconic fixtures at some of the country’s most prestigious schools.
Most subjects of the British Empire in Colonial India made do with Indigenous servants, the luxury of an enslaved African was a privilege only for those “European gentlemen of fashion”, who could afford to purchase an enslaved boy imported from Bourbon, or Mauritius, or from the slave market in Calcutta[6].
Such was business there, that when the British government issued the 1789 Proclamation banning the importation of Africans, slave traders in the city turned to breeding slaves for the market from the stock of Africans on hand. As an enslaved African cost as much as ten times an indigenous boy, it was a profitable business.
By the late 17th century, Indian males were also popular in England, being imported there under similar circumstances as “pages”. Historian Rozuna Visram has identified a 1672 painting as a portrait of the first “Indian page” in England. As the fashion for orientalism grew in Great Britain, Indian domestics became “much prized for their exotic charm, with all its associations of luxury and splendor. As with their fellow enslaved Africans, they were sometimes depicted wearing slave collars.
By 1772 as steps were taken to curtail the importation of African slaves, the use of Indian domestic servants increased. Despite their being highly prized in households, many were mistreated. The notices of runaway Indian servants recorded by Visram reveal that they dealt exclusively with Indian “boys”.
When Warren Hastings, the Governor General returned from his posting in Bengal in 1785, he brought two adolescent Indian boys with him, and four maidservants for his wife whom she soon dismissed.
Chinese servants also became briefly popular with the privileged households as trade with East Asia and China increased the flow of exotic goods to Britain. It became fashionable then for such households to have a Chinese boy servant or “houseboy” though these were not chattel slaves like the African and Indians of households, but held in “debt-bondage”, or indentured servants who would eventually earn their freedom.
Perhaps for this reason, by 1790 the trend had taken a sharp decline as negative views of Chinese workers, such as “lazy, unproductive, …childlike, and immature” among other slurs began to circulate.
The early American colonies relied almost exclusively upon Indigenous labor, with just a handful of planters bringing African slaves into New England from the West Indies in the 17th century.
Richard Smith Jr. was one of them. He brought several enslaved laborers in his two ships from Barbados to Cocumscussoc. His probate inventory after his death in 1692 lists among his property “five Negro children and an old Negro woman[7]”. He also owned two adult enslaved men.
By 1670, In order to sustain indigenous servitude, the colony of Rhode Island would use the matriarchal tradition of indigenous people by decreeing that enslaved status would be inherited through the mother.
Within the decade, those Indigenous people remaining from the costly war the Pokanoket confederacy had waged against the English were taken into enslavement. Some were placed on trial and executed, others, mainly women and children, became the new, exotic “Indian Princesses” that now waited on wealthy families. But as with the previous war, many others were purchased by farmers, craftsmen, and urban dwellers in want of domestic servants.
Both Massachusetts and Plymouth sold their Indian captives into perpetual slavery, both inside and outside their borders[8]. In Rhode Island those who “had stayed behind” while Providence was burned met beneath a tree beside the river where they had established the town and voted to sell their captives to traders in the West Indian trade. According to historian James Arnold, who transcribed the town’s records, Williams’ son Robert transported the slaves on his sloop to Cocumscussoc, where they were held in cages and sold for bushels of corn and “fatt sheepe[9]”.
The remaining Narragansett, or at least those not already in servitude were on paper, protected from the fate of their indigenous allies. An act passed in the remaining months of the war declared that “…noe Indian in this Collony be a slave, but only to pay their debts or for their bringing up, or custody they have received, or to performe covenant as if they had been countrymen not in war”.
Town “agents” throughout the colony were “Imposed and empowered to dispose of Indians and place them out as apprentices”. Town governments also bound free indigenous people if they were likely to become a burden to the community.
Slavery thus increased exponentially through this form of indenture. Though the colony had ostensibly outlawed enslaving native Americans, it utilized a code of law to bring an overwhelming majority of indigenous people before the bench based upon one crime or another.
Early laws strove quickly to prevent the sale of liquor, guns, and powder to indigenous peoples. They forbade them form visiting the village at night, or for loitering in people’s houses. Those early records also show the colony’s uneasy interaction with indigenous peoples, many hired as laborers in the towns and villages, but always suspect.
The threat of indenture or enslavement was common for those indigenous individuals considered more “troublesome” by the Court. As John A. Sainsbury noted in his study of Indian Labor in Early Rhode Island,
“many Indians…became servants to the English involuntarily, as the result of judicial processes. Servitude as a punishment for felony was commonly employed in the colony. Because Indians could rarely pay cash or goods in lieu of service, they were especially vulnerable to this form of punishment[10]”.
The majority of Indigenous cases as one might expect, involved theft and debt. Often these crimes were closely related as indigenous families lived hand to mouth even in communities of opportunity. In 1647 the General Assembly passed an “Act for the more speedy trial of such Negros and Indians as shall be found purloining and stealing[11]”.
Debt had long been a tool of European rulers and settlers, a lesson learned well and applied by later generations to indigenous laborers and domestic workers.
“Anglo-Americans… used many Indian children as servants, as parents indentured their children to cancel debt, because they could not support another mouth, or because indenture offered their children a way to adapt to the new culture. In 1760, the Mashpee minister Gideon Hawley complained that “there is scarcely an Indian boy among us not indentured to an English Master.[12]”
For many years, abuse of this system of indenture went on unabated. In 1730, Rhode Island recognized the existence of “those evil-minded Persons in this Colony, of a greedy and covetous Design” who sold goods to the Indians at extravagant prices to draw them into debt, kept them bound by presenting bills for custody and clothing, for the meals they ate while in service.
An act by the legislature declared that “noe Indian shall be bound as an apprentice or servant…without the consent of two Justices of the Peace, or Wardens of this Colony”.
Town governments also passed bans on the importation of Indians, in large part, to keep the indigenous population down.
The indenture of Indigenous people in the Colony continued well into the 18th century, as the census of 1774 shows. What is striking within the figures are the number of young indigenous boys listed as “males under 16 living with white families”, showing their greatest numbers in South Kingstown, Warwick, and Tiverton. Some 149 boys in total lived in households throughout Rhode Island.
In addition, 104 females under the age of 16 also worked for white families, with an additional 283 adult Indians indentured as workers in Rhode Island households[13].
These numbers are poignantly illustrated by records culled from the South Kingstown Town Council meetings. In October 1772, the Council voted that
“Barry a mustee Boy be bound to Silas Niles Jr. until he arrive at ye age of twenty one Years to be Dismisd in Common form he being 8 years & 6 mont[h]s & 4 days of age. And it is also voted that Sarah a mustee Girl daughter to betty Will, be bound to sd Silas Niles Jr. until she arrives t ye age of 18 years[.] She being aged 11 years and 11 Days in Common form as afores[ai]d”.
In September 1774, the Town Council decreed that
“Wheras James Reed a mustee boy so Called is now A Charge to his Town upon which it is voted that ye said James Reed be bound out to Peleg Babcock until he is 21 years old”
As late as 1780, the Council bound over children of indigenous mothers to white masters:
“Voted that Ceaser a Mustee Boy son to an Indian Woman Named Jenny Gould be bound an apprentice to John Watson (son of Jeffry) unti he arrives to the age of twenty One Years[,] said Master is to dismiss him with a new Suit of Cloaths throughout from Head to foot”.
As early as 1704, Thomas Allen of Swansey purchased “one Negro Boy” named Felix from Benjamin Allen of Rehoboth.
This group of masters also included men like John Potter who preferred to have at least one black boy as his property. He chose to have him portrayed with his family on canvas serving tea in 1740. As with his predecessors, these masters believed that purchasing an enslaved boy, or indenturing an indigenous adolescent would produce a reliable, loyal, and obedient servant.
Most children brought into slavery among New England’s plantations would have been finely skilled in some domestic chores by the time they had become adolescents. The preference for a young boy was in that English precedent of a houseboy to tend to the Master’s personal needs during the course of a day, whether it be polishing his boots, laying out his greatcoat and walking stick, retrieving his hat, and countless other tasks; among tending, when needed, to his personal hygiene.
Merchant John Bannister of Newport made several voyages to the West Indies between 1747 and 1749 when he purchased one or two slaves to bring back to New England. He first purchased “a Negro boy named Fortune” from Surinam when he encountered the schooner Success and then later sold the same boy to Samuel Aborn in Connecticut for fifty pounds profit.
During this same period, it became popular for women of the Narragansett gentry to do the same, in choosing a young girl who would be trained to be a personal maid.
Merchants like Bannister provided them with young girls, as he advertised in the Boston Post as among “the finest cargo of negro men, women, and girls ever imported into New England[14]”.
As the generations of slavery increased, masters and mistresses could more easily choose from among those children born into their household of enslaved people.
At Cocumscussoc, both Daniel (1693-1757) and Lodowick (1725-1804) Updike had ample enslaved women and children with which to conduct this practice.
Listed in the Inventory after his death in 1757 are Lillie, {along with her “unnamed child”), and another enslaved woman named Sue, along with three other children, two year old Paul, a two and a half year old girl named Robie, and Bridget, who had been baptized as an infant in 1751 by Rev. James MacSparren; an indication that she was a favorite of the mistress of the house, and perhaps chosen to be “brought up” as her personal servant.
Lodowick Updike is described in the memoirs of his youngest son as living the life of a gentleman farmer, “remarkable for his hospitality…his house a noted asylum for the distressed”. The children of the house, Daniel Sarah, and their siblings were educated at home by the best tutors. By all accounts, Lodowick II may have been too extravagant, even as he maintained the plantation during a time of great change in the colony and the rapid decline of slavery in New England. Near the end of his ownership of Cocumscussoc his sons had to take responsibility for his debts, and Daniel helped to run the remaining farms[15].
A recent gift from the South County History Center of a walking stick of Lodowick Updike’s seems to epitomize the extent of luxury that a man like Updike was accustomed to living. A mahogany walking stick, topped by an exquisitely inscribed gold knob embodies the spirit of a man clinging to tradition. It is not difficult then, to imagine him accompanied to his carriage by a young black boy dressed in fine livery.
[1] Lafantasie, Glenn Correspondence of RW Vol. 1 pp. 88-89
[2] Ibid
[3] Williams would later adopt a Dutch boy he found in the woods between Plymouth and Seekonk named Will Clauson. He raised the boy as “his servant” in Providence and gave him means to support himself as a young man.
[4] Hamalainen, Pekka Indigenous Continent:The Epic Contest for North America Liveright Publishing 2022 p. 151
[5] Lowrie/Martinez Creating the Houseboy: Early Asian Influence on European Cultures of Domestic Service p. 28
[6] Ibid.
[7] Dunay, Neil Timeline of Slavery at Cocumscussoc Courtesy of the Cocumscussoc Association Archives
[8]Sainsbury, John A.
[8] Sainsbury, John A. Indian Labor in Early Rhode Island The New England Quarterly Vol. 48, No. 3 Sept. 1975 p. 382
[9] Arnold, James A. Records of the Colony of Rhode Island Vol. 3
[10] Ibid. p. 378
[11] Rhode Island State Archives, accessed 10/11/22
[12] Middleton/Smith ed. Class Matters: Early North America and the Atlantic World University of Pennsylvania Press 2008 pp. 52-53
[13] Sainsbury, John A. Indian Labor in Early Rhode Island Appendix, NEQ Vol48 N0. 3 p. 393
[14] Geake, Robert A. New England Plantations: Commerce and Slavery History Press 2021 p. 66
[15] See Geake, Robert A. A Cocumscussoc Reader for the transcription of the daybook kept by Daniel Updike in 1796.