“Set Us Free”: Mashpee Wampanoags, African Americans, and Their Struggle for Freedom

In the same decade that African Americans in Massachusetts gained widespread freedom from slavery, the Wampanoag people living on their own land in Mashpee, Massachusetts, lost some of their freedom. Although they had long been subject to colonial government’s authority, Mashpee Wampanoags had considerable self-rule and elected their town officials from 1763 to 1788. However, Massachusetts decided that Mashpee should be supervised by unelected white overseers and guardians in 1788. During the eighteenth century, free African Americans also began moving to the Mashpee area and marrying into Wampanoag families. As Mashpee Wampanoags and African Americans became more acquainted with each other, they increasingly shared their unique political, social, and religious experiences as the community fought for autonomy.

This paper examines the experiences and meanings of freedom and the political networks and religious institutions that developed out of the convergence of Mashpee Wampanoags and African Americans. For most African Americans, their relatively new freedom was focused on choosing where to live, growing and protecting a family, and making a living. For Mashpee Wampanoags, the fight to regain recently lost freedom focused on individual and communal property rights and self-governance. In 1792, Mashpee Wampanoags petitioned the legislature “to set us free by restoring to us our good Liberty,” and petitioning continued for decades. Coalitions of petitioners built a network that included African Americans and Afro-Wampanoags who joined the calls for freedom. The fight for autonomy was also waged along religious divides, and some Black and Indigenous people rejected the white-led Congregational church in favor of a Baptist church under their control. The fight for autonomy of this Indigenous and multiracial community culminated in the so-called “Mashpee Revolt” of 1833.