PEARLS AND PEQUOTS: Of How Native American Indians Ended Up in Bermuda At About the Same Time Shakespeare was Producing The Tempest At Britain’s Globe Theatre.
By Marc Frucht
University Of Connecticut,
Anthropology 3027
“Safely in harbor / Is the King’s ship; in the deep nook where once / Thou call’dst me up at midnight to fetch dew / From the still-vexed Bermoothes, there she’s hid / The mariners all under hatches stowed / Who, with a charm joined to their suff’red labor.â€
(The Tempest i.2.)
On Feb 14, 2002 St. David’s Islanders announced plans for their first ever Reconnection – Native American Indian festival on their island off the coast of Bermuda.
This event would not only celebrate “the Island’s rich and unique ancestry,†but it just might’ve redirected a part of world history. These islanders are descendents of enslaved, indentured and impressed people from 17th Century southern New England and they formed a committee that organized what quickly took on a life of its own in a sense, with annual gatherings in both Ledyard, Connecticut, St. David’s Island; and now it’s even set off cross cultural communications between the two of them which is only now filling a historical void many centuries old.
In 1976 anthropologist Ethel Boissevain visited the Mashantucket Pequots on their reservation before a research trip she was taking to Bermuda hoping to find out with more certainty what did happen to Mohegan, Pequot and Wampanoag people sold into slavery in 1637. The Pequots she met with were very enthusiastic about her research and gave her a message to pass on to their relatives on the island if she met them: “Invite them to come back and join us here.†(Hauptman 79)
Boissevain’s interviews and published work had been instrumental in setting in motion what has now become not just annual festivals but family gatherings complete with new religious traditions.
“I think what they were looking for was never completely lost,†said Paula Peters shortly after that first ceremony, “it was just wearing different regalia.â€
Bermuda‘s famous Gombey Dancers, as it turns out, bear a striking resemblance to Fancy Dancers at modern day Pow Wows and adult Kachinas in contemporary Hopi ceremonies. Some will carry tomahawks, bows and arrows and wear peacock feathers in their hats. The rhythms and beats were easily recognizable by the Mystic River drumgroup who was visting in Bermuda and helping host in Ledyard months later.
Two circles were formed, one with our New England family in an outer circle and one with the St. David’s Islanders in an inner circle. After a moving and emotional ceremony, with Mystic River (a drum group from the Mashantucket Pequot reservation) drumming a soothing welcome song, we joined in one big circle. We were [smudged] with smoke from white sage, given Wampanoag-grown tobacco to add to the ashes, and we approached the fire one by one. In doing so, we called on the spirits of the ancestors to join us and to bless us. We were not alone in Dark Bottom that day. Silence was heavy in our ears. It felt as if nature had stopped breathing. No one could speak for a long period of time, and gentle weeping could be heard around the entire circle. Our ancestors were truly there with us. (Leiker)
The edge of the horizon could be seen from Dark Bottom, and as we glanced toward the ocean, all of us seemed to share the same feeling in our hearts — that our ancestors had crossed that ocean, having been taken away from their families in shackles as slaves, leaving behind what was left after a bitter, no-single-cause, no-simple-answer Pequot War and King Philip War, leaving their homes, charred bodies, their customs, their ancestral lands, smoldering villages, misunderstandings, personal ambitions and cultural differences — all of which contributed to the conflict in the 1600s of those unnecessary wars. The voices of our ancestors were weeping in our ears. After 375 years we were together in person and in spirit for the first time. The moments turned into minutes before anyone could speak or move away from the circle of life. (Leiker)
“Can they reconstitute a tribe like powdered milk – just add water and stir?†Peters asks. Not in the sense that they may join the rolls of North American tribes. Those links appear to be lost forever. But certainly they can incorporate the new with existing culture to enhance their already rich community. As displaced Indians, they can establish themselves as a band, develop rules of organization and a mission that defines and preserves their unique identity. (Peters)
Five generations from the slavery that oppressed Native Americans in Bermuda for nearly 200 years before emancipation, many St. David’s Islanders live well and free and could have let the legends of Wampanoag royal families fade into obscurity. They could have allowed the assimilation process to do its work and meld them into the world population like so many millions of others. But they knew they were different, and different for a reason. (Peters)
They were related to British Colonial America; and not just because they live and work almost exactly half way between Virginia and Spain either. They are directly descended from people forcefully relocated from places like Mystic, Connecticut and Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Think back almost 400 years to a time prior to King Philip’s war. Bermuda “was uninhabited,†according to Jean Foggo Simon, “when it was discovered in 1609 due to a shipwreck of the “Sea Venture” commanded by British Admiral Sir George Somers.â€
The Admiral,
was on his way to the colony of Virginia with settlers and supplies. Sir George Somers was caught in a hurricane and separated from the other 8 ships, wrecking on Bermuda’s reefs. There were birds, an abundance of turtles and wild pigs found on the island.
The shipwreck led to British colonization in 1612. When the British
captured Native Americans during their period of attempted colonization up and down the coast of America, some were shipped to Bermuda as slaves. These captives were taunted with insults and name-calling because of their differences in language, customs, food and skin color. (Foggo)
Many New England Indians were disappeared in the early 1600s and there weren’t many specifics as to where they would end up to live out their days. Some accounts simply say “Caribbean Islands†but many people living at St. David’s Island have known for many generations that they’re related somehow to Indians in New England. Some believed it was upstate New York because the slave masters often referred to their ancestors as ‘Mohawk.’
For more than half the next century slaves were being shipped from what is now Southern New England to places as far away as Bermuda, England, and Australia on a fairly regular basis. These captures, impressments and enslavements continued right on past the timeframe known today as King Philip’s war. Here’s one battle raging at about the same time Natick Nipmuc people were being rounded up and forcefully moved to Deer Island. (Oral histories show that they too feared any number of them might also be moved onto other ships headed for Bermuda.) (Eliot 22)
Many of the Pequots not in the fort during the conflagration were captured, killed in skirmishes, or executed in the months that followed. Others were enslaved, assigned to the “protection†of colonists or to Indian leaders – Uncas, the Mohegan; Miantonomo, the Narragansett; or Ninigret, the Eastern Niantic – or sold into slavery and sent to Bermuda and the West Indies. (Hauptman 76)
Native American slaves arriving in Bermuda as cargo were listed simply as “Indian man” or “Indian woman,” along with the dollar amount they would be sold for, and they were originally called Mohawks as a generic term. But there is no current evidence that any Mohawks were enslaved on the islands. Did “Mohawk†just mean Indian? How did that happen?
Definition 3 of the Oxford English dictionary says, “Used by mistake for Amuck I. Obs.1772-84 Cook’s Voy. (1790) I. 288 Most of our readers have heard of the Mohawks, and these [the Indians of Batavia] are the people who are so denominated, from a corruption of the word amock.†(OED Mohawk)
Unfortunately earlier origins of this word would be anybody’s guess. Madge Hunt who has lived on St David’s Island all of her life, says, “I can remember as a child they would say, ‘There goes that little Mohawk from St. David’s.'” (Peters)
Author William S. Zuill interviewed a Bermudian who has worked with the St. David’s Islanders “in their area,†and it was suggested “the idea of Mohawk origin may be the result of a joking relationship which came about in the 1940’s. (Boissevain 6)
The first Indian traveling to Bermuda may have been indentured or employed although his or her living conditions were not described in much detail.
Ever since the first Indian landed in Bermuda in 1616 to dive for pearls a number of Pequots and Mohicans were brought into the colony. They were introduced in sufficient quantities to significantly alter the appearances of many Negroes [sic.] through interbreeding, many of today’s Bermudians possessing facial features which provide strong evidence of the Indian influence three hundred years ago. (Smith 23)
Not only does this show the greed and avarice involved during the Colonial era of British Imperialism, but also illuminates the deliberation employed in constructing concepts of nationality and race rather than ethnicity while further performing “husbandry†on other human beings as if they were so much livestock.
The following list shows generally (and somewhat specifically when possible) just who these Colonial Native Americans were who got shipped to St. David’s Island as slaves.
1640 “A number†of Pequots and “Mohicans†arrived.
1645 Captain Wm. Jackson, “the victorious general†brought “many Indians and Negroes captured from the Spanish.
circa
1642 Captain B. Preston brought 30-40 Indians “who were born free and taken by deceipt” There is no indication of their place of origin. Judging by the date these may have been Pequot refugees rounded up after the massacre in Mystic, Connecticut in 1637.
after
1650 About 80 “Pequot Massachusetts Bay Indians†were sent to Bermuda and purchased by Captain Whit of St. David’s Island.
1676 After King Philip’s death “most of the rest were shipped off for slaves to Bermuda and other parts” This shipment probably included the widow and young son of King Philip.
Undated — A family in their canoe off the New England coast were picked up by a slave ship and taken to Bermuda and sold as slaves. Their tribal origin is unknown. (Boissevain 106)
Here Ethel Boissevain says she assumes Mahican was “the tribe reported as ‘Mohicans’ arriving in 1640. She also assumes “Mohegan was not the tribe since the Mohegans supported the English in colonial wars.†I would point out however that it is possible for some of them (if not many) to have been impressed by the Britain’s Navy just like they’d done to poor and middle class whites all over Long Island sound those years. If their work as seamen did not please their British captors at any time their punishments could include being dropped off on prison ships or slave ships if not thrown right overboard to their deaths. So some Mohegan people may even have been sold into slavery right alongside Pequot and Wampanoag people; or at least it should’t be completely ruled out just because of their political affiliations. England was not exactly consistent with whom they remained allies or enemies.
If someone owned a St. David’s Island Pequot person he or she might keep enough social distance to simply dismiss their ethnic background as “Mohawk;†and that might happen even more often with a Mohegan family, since the two names sound so similar.
Mohican, Mohegan, a. and sb. Also Mohigon, Mohickon, Mohiccon, Mohigan, Moheecan; also in renderings of the native form, Muhhekaneew, Mahicanni, Mo-hee-con-neugh. [From the native name.]… B. 1. One of a warlike tribe of North American Indians of the Algonquin stock, formerly occupying the western part of Connecticut and Massachusetts. (OED Mohican)
Not every Indian who arrived in 17th Century Bermuda lived under slavery, including two Virginia women who came sometime between 1619 and 1622 to marry locally. But relations on the Islands were often quite tense among the various different ethnic groups.
There were also “abortive†slave revolts on the Island throughout the 17th and 18th centuries; with some of the years of these listed as follows: 1629, 1656, 1673, 1730 and 1761. (Zuill 92-93)
Children of slaves could be born free under certain circumstances as early as the mid 17th Century and there were occasional emancipations of adults over the next century. The remaining people still enslaved on St. David’s Island were soon emancipated in 1834 under the authority of a law entitled “An Act for Extirpating all Free Negroes, Indians, Mallatoes such as have been Slaves.” In one account their Chief Justice said the following:
Your name is George Hammett, you came in the brig Enterprise, as a slave, and it is my duty, (understanding that you were kept on board that vessel against your will) to inform you that in this country you are free, — free as any white person. (Smith 288)
One could assume that there would be many more differences than similarities between St. David’s Islanders and New England Indians. You would think contemporary American Mohegans, Pequots and Wampanoags have more knowledge of their tribal identity, through both oral and written histories. But keep in mind many contemporary New England Indians were also held back from their own history by what is commonly referred to as “The last Indian” or “vanishing Indian†syndrome. While Bermudas’ “imported slaves were cut off abruptly and completely from their cultures,†(Boissevain 112) New England Indians who weren’t killed, impressed or shipped out to sea were being moved from reservation to ever smaller reservation; leaving any survivors to lose some of their own roots right there where they come from because of everything from generational forgetting to fighting off the misinformation of historically inaccurate epic feature films such as “Last Of The Mohicans†based on harmfully fictitious books by authors James Fenimore Cooper.
Native American screen actors would work so hard at strategic storytelling techniques for instance, wearing Plains regalia and expression of Pan-Indianist philosophies such as using phrases like “Hau Kola†(Lakota for Hello Friend) and “treat the Earth as your Mother†hoping more positive energy will thrive and take root; while at the same time each and every one of these actors were portrayed in the wider context of the movies’ plots as a “unique symbol of all that is best and finest in the fast disappearing race.†(Deloria 213) Those who don’t die off or fully assimilate seem to vanish into some kind of obscurity through antiquity; similar to what Madge Hunt described with her quote “’There goes that little Mohawk†we’re forever stuck with Hollywood telling us, “Look at that cute little Indian brave raising one hand with all his stoicism to say ‘How!’ to any who pass him by.â€
Luther Standing Bear sums up these struggles fairly well too. “I determined that, if I could only get the right sort of people interested, I might be able to do more for my own race off the reservation than to remain there under the iron rule of the white agent.†He worked for the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch which was a traveling show much like the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Shows. They were similar in that some accurate portrayals were carefully treated, yet always in the context of each of these people who will soon be the “last of his kind.†(Deloria 75)
Seven years have passed since the first annual festival, and almost 400 years since the first southern New England Indian boy discovered pearls under the sea near there. It has also been 28 years since Boissevain asked the following:
Now that schooling and literacy is universal in Bermuda and since United States television is dominant there, it is interesting to speculate to what extent some Bermudian Indian descendants will take interest in their areas of origin and make efforts to communicate with fellow tribal descendants in New England. (Boissevain 113)
Hopefully Ethel Boissevain got to enjoy an awareness that just such speculation was answered many different ways by so many different people during the summer and fall seasons of 2002 in Bermuda and Ledyard. A December 22, 2002 New York Times Obituary says that she died at 89 November 29th of that year while still teaching anthropology at CUNY in Ithaca.
Post Script:
In Slavery in Bermuda Smith had written a little bit about a few occasions when unfree people were shipped between Bermuda and Ireland also. None of it seemed directly related really; but I bring this up because some of them may very well have come from New England before ending up in Bermuda for all we know.
Here’s just one of the entries: 1650, “an unknown number of Irish war prisoners, defeated by Cromwell, were imported for a 7 year penal indentured service term. (Smith 23)
Works Cited
Boissevain, Ethel. “Whatever Became of the New England Indians Shipped to Bermuda to be Sold as Slaves?” Man In The Northeast 21 (1981): 103-114.
Deloria, Philip. Indians in Unexpected Places (Cultureamerica). Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006.
The Eliot Tracts: With Letters from John Eliot to Thomas Thorowgood and Richard Baxter (Contributions in American History). Praeger Publishers, 2003.
Foggo Simon, Jean . “St. David’s Indian Committee.” Rootsweb Ancestry. 2003. 14 Dec. 2008. <http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bmuwgw/stdavidislanders.htm>
Hauptman, Laurence. The Pequots in Southern New England: The Fall and Rise of an American Indian Nation (Civilization of the American Indian Series). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.
Leiker, James n. The First and the Forced: Essays on the Native American and African American Experience. Ed. Kim Warren. Lawrence: University Of Kansas, 2007. 14 Dec. 2008 <http://www.shiftingborders.ku.edu/Hall_Center_CD/All-in-one-books/First/First_binder.pdf>.
“Mohawk.” Def.3. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.
“Mohican.” Def.1. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.
New York Times 22 Dec. 2002, sec. Obituary.
Peters, Paula . “Finding a link that was never really lost.” Cape Cod Online. 14 Jul. 2002. 28 Nov. 2008. <http://archive.capecodonline.com/special/tribeslink/findinga14.htm>.
< http://archive.capecodonline.com/special/tribeslink/emissed14.htm>.
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest (Signet Classics). Signet Classics, 1998.
Smith, James E. Slavery in Bermuda. Vantage Press, 1976.
Zuill, William. The Story of Bermuda and Her People. Macmillan Caribbean, 1999.