Slavery of Native Americans

Beginning in 1675, English settlers in Brookline legally enslaved Native Americans. Hidden Brookline identified seven Native Americans – Tounnaguin, John Indian, George, William, Great David, Reube and Hawkins, who were sold into slavery by two Brookline residents, Lancelott Talcott and Joseph Smith.

“I never intended to research Native Americans in Brookline. Since the first slavery in this area were of Native Americans, if I wanted to look at slavery of Africans, I had to start with the slavery of Native Americans,” Brown said.

Talcott and Smith bought the seven men from the Crown during King Philip’s War between the English settlers and Native Americans in New England, Brown said.

“[White settlers had] been bothered by [Native Americans], scared by them, but now they were downright afraid because this was such a terrible war and so many people were killed. They saw that [the Native Americans] were much more powerful; it took several years for them to win,” Brown said.

Driven by this fear, the Crown determined that to resolve the risk associated with Native American presence in New England, they should send the enslaved out of the colonies, according to Hidden Brookline.

“Where was the best place to send them? Into slavery in the Caribbean, and so you would buy Native Americans from the Crown and then ship them and resell them in the Caribbean and make a profit,” Brown said.

For two enslaved Indigenous men in Brookline, their wives were faced with the decision of whether to be enslaved in the Caribbean with their husbands or remain in the colonies. One decided to go with her husband while the other chose to stay behind, Brown said.

“The one who chose to be enslaved with their husband probably didn’t know two important things. One, there was a good chance she would be sold separately. And the second would be that the average life expectancy for enslaved in the Caribbean was six, seven years, because the enslavers found that it was cheaper to buy more people than to care for the enslaved so they would live longer,” Brown said.

Also during King Philip’s War, Gilmore said the colony enacted the Indian Imprisonment Act, which prevented Native Americans from entering Boston (which included Brookline at the time).

“Although not enforced in modern times, the law was not repealed until 2004,” Gilmore said.

Hidden Brookline gathered records of Native Americans who lived in Brookline up until the 1800s, which included mixing between Native Americans and enslaved Africans. They also found multiple sources that affirm that three Native American children died in a fire on the Muddy River.

One example of Indigenous people and enslaved Africans mixing includes Mr. Cleveland, who Brown said was an enslaved ironworker in Dorchester when he bought his freedom, relocated to Brookline, married a Native American woman and raised children.

“When he moved to Brookline, he insisted people call him Mr. Cleveland,” Brown said. “No enslaved people had last names. They were known by their first names, and their first names were given by their enslavers.”

According to Brown, because the children of Native American women were seen as belonging to the woman, Mr. Cleveland’s children and grandchildren “ended up in an ambiguous status.”