Editor's note: Jason Mancini addressed a local history group March 19th about his research on Indians, maritime labor and communities of color in the region. Excerpted below is a portion of his research paper, which served as the basis of this address. In his research, Mancini demonstrates that in order to survive as a community, the Pequot people had to find ways to live, work and stay connected to others beyond the reservation.
By Jason Mancini
Some of the earliest accounts documenting the Indian experience of the maritime world emerge in the court records and runaway advertisements during the eighteenth century. These are among the very few records available to highlight the ways in which Indians began to both adapt to and resist English institutions.
The Treaty of Utrecht, which ended Queen Anne's War in 1713 and terminated inter-colonial conflicts between the French and English, also transformed the power structure between the English and Indians in the region.
As Indian people were increasingly alienated from their lands and subject to English law, they actively renegotiated their existence within Anglo political, economic, and religious structures in order to maintain the connections to family and community that had existed unrestricted only a little more than a generation earlier.
As the century progressed and their depth of experience increased, Indians developed a clearer understanding of English legal and economic systems. With this, Indians began to gain some control over their lives and livelihoods.
Indians throughout the region were engaged in numerous court cases involving land loss and encroachment, trials for theft, murder, and breach of service (runaways). In the first quarter of the eighteenth century, they also appeared as jurors of inquest. Consequently, Indians became better equipped on their own or with the assistance of white overseers to take matters into their own hands.
The experiences of one Pequot mariner
On July 17, 1710, Peter Wayamayhue, a Pequot Indian "Whoe Served Aprentesship with Leutt: John Faning of Grotton," indentured himself with the permission of his mother and her husband, "Onest Will," to Major John Merrett and Mrs. Mercy Raymond of Fishers Island for a period of two years.
The terms of the agreement stipulated that Peter would be permitted two weeks out of the year to "wisiett [sic - visit] his mouther and other relations" on the mainland. On his return to Fishers Island early in his second year of service, he encountered a man-of-war sloop entering Long Island Sound under the command of Lieutenant Daniel Allyn. The crew of the vessel beckoned him to come onboard, which he did. One of the men then "turned his canoo adrift" and they continued on their voyage, effectively terminating Peter's indenture.
Two and a half years later, on January 1, 1713, while in Boston, Peter Faning, "an Indian man late of New London," in the company of several seamen, became very drunk on "Slip and punch" and indentured himself as a mariner's apprentice to Daniel Allyn Jr. for a period of three years.
Shortly thereafter "in May 1713 he did Run away and absent himself from his sd master…& his service." His whereabouts were unknown for nearly three years, at which time he appeared in Groton on March 27, 1716 and provided a sworn statement before a local Justice of the Peace.
This occurred only after the sheriff of New London was "required to attach ye goods or Estate…and for want yr of to take ye body of ye sd Peter Fannen and him Safely to keep so yt you may have him before ye County Court."
These narratives bear a strong resemblance to one another and they should. Peter Wayamayhue and Peter Faning were the same person. As the defendant in both lawsuits, it might be easy to cast Peter as a victim of a harsh, indifferent, and discriminatory labor market and accompanying colonial legal system. But Peter had three things working in his favor: an alias, an apparent willingness to violate his contractual obligations, and a seaman's knowledge and mobility.
The experience of Peter Wayamayhue, alias Peter Faning, provides insight to the ways Indians and other people of color were adapting to and resisting a power structure that attempted to place them near the margins of Anglo-American society.
This paper first argues that, in an era of dispossession and diminishing autonomy on the land, Indian mariners, as a class of transient laborers, rapidly learned to use Anglo-American structures and institutions to establish for themselves a degree of power and personal freedom.
Second, by the end of the eighteenth century as the number of Indian mariners increased, military and customs records indicate that they had articulated maritime-based social networks that included other men of color.
Through most of the nineteenth century, this allowed Indians both to maintain and adapt traditional inter-community dynamics. Third, as Indian men moved more fluidly between the land and sea and between the region's land-based indigenous enclaves, they were often gone from their homes for years at a time. In their absence, Indian women, who anchored these communities to the land, formed relationships and families with Indian and non-Indian mariners alike.
The elaboration of these social networks at sea facilitated and contributed to the development of multiracial, multiethnic communities of color on the land. These groups appeared on Indian reservations and, increasingly, in surrounding areas off of the reservations as mariners or their female relatives were now capable of acquiring freeholds with a seaman's earnings.
Drawing from W. Jeffrey Bolster's examination of the presence, experiences, and lives of black mariners, Marcus Rediker's insights into the development of maritime labor systems and social world of mariners, and Daniel Vickers social history of mariners as they seamlessly moved between the land and sea interacting with family and friends, this paper focuses on the Indian communities of eastern Long Island Sound and the customs district for the port of New London, Connecticut. It is here that a new model for maritime ethnohistory emerges. The port of New London was located within 22 miles (as the crow flies) of six Indian communities; four in Connecticut - Mohegan, Western Niantic, Mashantucket Pequot, and Lantern Hill Pequot, one in Rhode Island - Narragansett, and one in New York - Montauk (Map 1). Arguably, this consortium represents and anchors one of the densest concentrations of Indian people in the northeast. Living not just on reservations, but throughout the surrounding towns of southern New England and eastern Long Island, many Indian men gravitated towards New London for work.
(c) Copyright Pequot Times, April 2008. All rights reserved.
2007
Framed against the sky, the lone tree on a knoll represents
Mashantucket, the "much-wooded land" where the Pequots hunted and
kept alive their identity as an independent people. Displayed on the
knoll is the sign of Robin Cassasinnamon, the Pequot’s first leader
following the 1637 massacre at Mystic Fort. The fox stands as a
reminder that the Pequots are known as "the fox people."
Pequot basketweave pattern.
A gift from the Winged Ones, feathers
carry prayers to the Great Spirit.