Thread by @karlajstrand

Second panel at today's #Indigenous History Conference is on colonization in America and features Lisa Brooks (Abenaki), Marjorie O'Toole, Tyler Rogers (Narragansett), and Jason Mancini. #indigenoushistory @Plymouth_400

Lisa Brooks: What true history is buried beneath the narratives? It is emerging through the work of many people, including those we've heard this weekend. Discusses Weetamoo of the fertile land of the Pocasset in Wampanoag Territory.

Brooks: Native women planted fields in the area, they were leaders. Colonizers tried to say the lands weren't settled but they were. King Phillips War was one against women and their planting fields.

Brooks: John Foster's 1677 map was what the colonizers wanted the land to look like but it wasn't what it really was. Europeans kept expanding the deeds, their forts, until they were sitting in women's planting fields. Women protested this.

Brooks: Metacom and Weetamoo met with John Easton about the conflicts in the area that led to the war. The English kept encroaching on the Native lands. Weetamoo created a sanctuary instead of being neutral as the English wanted her to.

Brooks: Awashonks was another woman leader at the time. Weetamoo was able to lead her family to sanctuary during King Phillips War among their kin. Kept avoiding colonial forces by sheltering with network of Native women.

Brooks: Alliances of Native nations were born from this assault on planting fields, fishing waters, etc. by the English. Many were killed or enslaved during/after the war (including Weetamoo and Metacom) but many survived by seeking refuge among kin.

Marjorie O'Toole: Sakonnet is SW corner of Plymouth Colony. Sakonnet people were somewhat protected for about 50 years from colonization, disease, encroachment, enslavement, etc. because of its distance.

O'Toole: Sakonnet had about 500 warriors then, population about 2k people. Size was another reason why English hesitated to encroach. Sakonnet heard about kidnappings and slavery during Pequot War. Heard they were being taken to Caribbean and ships returned with Africans.

O'Toole: Slavery was here before English arrival. But it was small-scale. European practice was solely based on profits and grew exponentially. Native communities fought against this style of slavery.

O'Toole: During King Phillips War and Pequot War, men and teen boys were shipping as slaves to Caribbean and women were enslaved locally. Another way to clear land for settlement. Sakonnets tried to protect themselves by allying with Benjamin Church.

O'Toole: Threatened by B. Church that they would end up like the Pequots if they didn't agree to do what he wanted. Said he would protect them but he was an official enslaver for the colony. Decided who and how long local people could be enslaved.

O'Toole: After King Phillip's War, we see Sakonnet people listed as inventory but it's unclear whether they are enslaved for life, for a term, or indentured. Difference being slavery for a term and indenture would eventually end.

O'Toole: After King Phillip's War, Church threatened Sakonnets again with slavery if they didn't serve in his continuous military campaigns. There are records of Church selling Native peoples.

O'Toole: Enslavement gradually ends in New England but it remained okay to enslave distant/Southern Indians. Indigenous women helped to end slavery in New England. Men could marry a free Indigenous woman and she could buy his freedom. Children would also be free if mother was.

O'Toole: Children of free Indigenous women were often indentured though, even though they technically couldn't be enslaved. Many resisted indenture and would secure freedom for themselves.

Tyler Jackson Rogers will discuss Indigenous women in settler colonial New England. History is recursive and nonlinear (Brooks) and resistance and women's roles is prime examples of this.

Rogers: Women continually refuse(d) "gift" of colonization. They transform our understanding of Indigenous uprisings from large, masculine armed rebellions. Women were often enslaved in domestic spaces and rebelled individually in those spaces.

Rogers: 1738 uprising in Boston thwarted before it occurred- Wampanoag people planned for months to resist English occupiers. Launched attacks by land and sea to kill as many as they could. Threat of revolt wasn't unusual.

Rogers: African and Indigenous peoples led many rebellions across the Atlantic world in the 1700s. New England colonists were anxious of constant threat of uprisings from Indigenous peoples.

Rogers: Colonists became increasingly dependent on Indigenous labor domestically and in whaling, etc. so threat grew. Women coerced into unpaid domestic and reproductive labor. Resided under same roof as enslavers. Their rebellion more often individual instead of collective.

Rogers: Indigenous women planned and committed arson, poisoning, infanticide, escape. Indigenous women continually refused colonial oppression. Colonialism remained precarious. Even rumored rebellion became part of the Native tradition of resistance.

Rogers: Rebellions didn't just end after the 1600s. And it certainly wasn't just men who rebelled, women must be centered in these attempts. In feminized spaces of labor, rebellion was complex and led by women.

Rogers tells the story of Patience Sampson. Illustrates the importance of critical, skeptical evaluation of whitewashed, biased narratives of slave experiences. Hers wasn't a story of redemption (as some primary sources would have us believe) but one of rebellion.

Rogers: Threat of rebellion, by women especially, was a constant fear within colonies. Indigenous resistance goes far beyond the period we hear most about. And Indigenous women were more at the center than previously considered.

Rogers: Women planned resistance and rumored planned resistance to scare colonists. They were intentional, complex, rebellious, strong. Must be centered in our future historical examinations for true and complete narratives.

Jason Mancini is up next. How did Indigenous communities survive in Indian Country of what is now called New England during time from Pequot War up to through building of casinos? Characterized by dispossession.

Mancini: As Europeans came to possess land, environment was completely changed. Native peoples had to find new ways to live. Wars also greatly effected Indigenous populations. Loss of men who fought, demographics change drastically through 18th century.

Mancini: Enslavement also realigned demographic balance in Native communities. First time peoples from four distinct areas came together socially and sexually and produced mixed-race people.

Mancini: How are they categorized? How do they realign their own citizenship especially in the absence of land? Different types of belonging and citizenship occurred.

Mancini: Creation of reservations began in Pequot community in 1700s. As this occurs, poverty increases, in part due to numbers of men decreasing due to war, enslavement, death, etc. By end of 1700s, Indians are no longer counted in federal census.

Mancini: 1700s/1800s Indigenous peoples begin to move, participate in maritime labor. Begin to use colonial structures and legal systems to gain freedoms, autonomy, agency. Maritime labor was one example.

Mancini has used Google Earth and crew lists/logbooks to track paths of Indigenous peoples on this voyages.

1800s- New opportunities begin to emerge off of reservations. Indians begin purchasing land as freeholds to protect homelands.

Mancini: Late 19th, early 20th c - Shifting economies and growing urban neighborhoods among Indigenous peoples.

O'Toole: Married Englishwomen couldn't hold land in their own names but there are records of free Indigenous women who did.

Mancini: Evolution of land ownership into 1750s when women were acquiring land and efforts to maintain collective lands.

Brooks: Stories of women continuing to hold land collectively and attempts to break this up in mid to late 19th c.

Another fantastic panel! Thanks to all. More resources mentioned:

- Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery by Margaret Ellen Newell

- Akomawt Educational Initiative akomawt.org

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