Mapping the Native American Diaspora: Regional and Transatlantic Trafficking in the Early Modern Atlantic

In early August, 1676, a force of English and Indian soldiers led by Captain Benjamin Church captured Philip’s wife Wootonekanuske and his nine-year-old son. A well-documented debate among the Puritan clergy ensued regarding the fate of the captive boy. Some acknowledged that colonial bloodlust demanded his execution while others argued against his execution. The debate over Philip’s son’s future continued after the death of his father in mid-August, and it dragged through the fall and winter. It was not until March 1677 that the boy’s fate was finally decided when he was sold out of the colony as a slave. Philip’s nameless son was just one of hundreds of Native Americans sold into slavery as a result of the war. This paper will explore how this boy and hundreds of other Native Americans who surrendered or were captured during the Pequot and King Philip’s wars were trafficked into slavery, becoming part of an Indian diaspora in the early modern Atlantic world.

I use traditional archival sources—letters, petitions, chronicles, journals, ledgers, colonial laws, and court records—and digital humanities methodology—GIS mapping—to illustrate how captive Native Americans were increasingly diverted from indigenous captors into English networks of human trafficking. This forced migration led to an indigenous diaspora that placed Native Americans well beyond the grasp of their families and communities, and even more traditional indigenous captors who desired them as servants, slaves, or potential kin. This Native American diaspora not only devastated local indigenous peoples but provided much needed capital for private individuals and colonial governing bodies involved in expanding settler colonial projects.