The Name of War

by Jill Lepore

  The colonists’ inability to tell the difference between “good” and “bad” Indians led the Massachusetts Council to award a brass medal to some Christian Indians who had served the English. On one side of the medal was engraved an Indian woman, much like the Indian on the Massachusetts colony seal; and on the other, the words, “At A COUNCIL, Held at Charlestown, June the 20th, 1676, In the present Warr with the Heathen Natives of this Land, they giving us peace and mercy at there hands. Edward Rawson.” A hole in the top of the medal suggests that the Algonquian who owned it wore it on a string around the neck, probably for years.

  A brass medal given to Christian Indians as a reward for service. Courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, New York

  If the idea that “there’s no such thing as a good Indian” has a history, surely this chapter in the story of King Philip’s War plays a part in it. For the colonists there seemed to have been literally no way to know which Indian was a friend and which a foe, except by the mark of the medal. (Nathaniel Saltonstall lamented that the English “cannot know a Heathen [Indian] from a Christian [Indian] by his Visage, nor Apparel.”)32 More than the terrified petitions and harrowing tales, the Christian Indian medal suggests the colonists’ difficulty in discriminating between Indian allies and enemies, a discrimination that must have seemed irrelevant to colonists who believed that all Indians had become preying Indians.

  II

  IN AUGUST 1675 John Eliot sent a letter to the governor and Council of Massachusetts, voicing his strident opposition to the sale of Indians into foreign slavery. One of his objections was practical. He argued

  That the terror of selling away such Indians, unto the Hands for perpetual slaves, who shall yeild up themselves to your mercy, is like to be an effectual prolongation of the warre & such an exasperation of them, as may produce, we know not what evil consequences, upon all the land.

  In making this argument, Eliot was joined by the only other colonist to protest Algonquian enslavement.33 In September 1675 William Leete, deputy governor of Connecticut, wrote to the colony’s governor, John Winthrop, Jr., and warned that the harshness of the punishment combined with its indiscriminate application was likely to exacerbate the war. Indians working for the English, Leete reported, rightly

  plead … some difference betwixt such [enemy Indians] as are taken by them, & those that so have surrendered themselves to mercy, especially sundry of them being of their blood relations & affinity, whome to surrender for slaughter or forraigne captivity, doth run hard against the graine of nature.

  As Leete argued, “in so difficult a time, actuall murderers excepted,” it was better to determine “some expedient of a placide composition for those captives, then by an over vigorous & hasty attempt to inforce their delivery of them in hostile wise, least the cuntry should be more enflamed.”34 Leete’s and Eliot’s prediction that enslaving Indians would exacerbate the war was borne out: fear of foreign slavery compelled Christian Indians like those at Hassanemesit to consider joining the enemy, and the knowledge that surrender could well lead to perpetual servitude led enemy Indians to fight longer than they might have otherwise.35

  But the bulk of John Eliot’s argument was essentially a moral protest and, in that regard, entirely singular. First, he declared that “this usage of them is worse than death,” and that death was the proper (and more merciful) punishment for the most dangerous Indians: “To put to death men that have deserved to dy, is an ordinance of God, & a blessing is promised to it.” Next, Eliot reminded the Massachusetts authorities that the colony’s charter required “the indeavour of the Indians conversion, not theire exstirpation.”36(Here he echoed Roger Williams’ 1654 warning that the fate of New England lay between two extremes: on the one hand, “the Glorious Conversion” of the Indians, and on the other, “the Unnecessary Warrs & cruell Destructions” of them.)37 Eliot asserted that his own attempts at converting the Indians had been effective and suggested that “To send them away from the light of the gospel, which Christ hath graciously given them, unto a place, a state, a way of perpetual darknesse, to the eternal ruine of theire soules, is (as I apprehend) to act contrary to the mind of Christ.” Having been charged by God and by the king of England with the care of the Indians’ souls, the colonists would fail their mission miserably if they were to sell those same Indians into foreign slavery:

  Gods command is, that we should inlarge the kingdom of Jesus Christ, Esay 54.2. enlarge the place of thy tent, it seemeth to me, that to sell them away for slaves, is to hinder the inlargment of his kingdom. how can a Christian soule yeild to act, in casting away theire soules, for when, christ hath, with an eminent hand provided an offer of the gospel?

  Nor should the colonists consider profiting from such trade, for, as Eliot warned, “to sell soules for mony seemeth to me a dangerous merchandize.”38

  On the whole, Eliot cared not so much for the lives or liberty of captured Indians but for the salvation of their souls, a salvation that could only be achieved if the Indians remained, dead or alive, among the Puritans in New England:

  If thei deserve to dy, it is far better to be put to death, under godly governors, who will take religious care, that meanes may be used, that thei may dy penitently. to sell them away from all meanes of grace, when Christ hath provided meanes of grace for them, is the way for us to be active in the destroying their soules, when we are highly obliged to seeke theire conversion, & salvation, & have opportunity in our hands so to doe.

  Finally, citing the bad example of the Spaniards “in destroying men & depopulating the land,” Eliot maintained that “the Country is large enough, here is land enough for them & us too. p. 14.26. in the multitude of people is the kings honor.”39

  In making this argument, Eliot followed closely the writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas, the Spanish Dominican friar who had written a defense of the Indians conquered in Mexico that was later published in England as “Spanish Cruelties.” In 1550 Las Casas, along with other scholars, theologians, and jurists, was summoned by Charles V to Valladolid, Spain, to debate the legitimacy of waging war against and, in particular, enslaving the native peoples of the Americas.40 At Valladolid a great debate emerged between Las Casas and the royal historian Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, a debate that, at heart, centered around the issue of whether it was lawful to wage war against the Indians before converting them to Christianity so that, once subjected to Spanish rule, their conversion could be more easily accomplished.

  Sepúlveda declared Spain’s war against the Indians both lawful and necessary and, among his reasons, asserted that the rudeness of the Indians’ natures obliged them to serve the more refined Spaniards. In making this point, Sepúlveda relied on Aristotle’s theory of “natural slavery,” by which people of barbarous customs are considered slaves by nature.41 Referring, largely, to the Aztecs (whom he had never seen), Sepúlveda cited the Indians’ cannibalism, idolatry, and savagery as evidence of their barbarous nature. “How can we doubt that these people, so uncivilized, so barbaric, so contaminated with so many sins and obscenities … have been justly conquered by such an excellent, pious, and most just king as was Ferdinand the Catholic and as is now Emperor Charles, and by such a humane nation which is excellent in every kind of virtue?” The Aztecs were to the Spanish, Sepúlveda declared, “as children are to adults, as women are to men. Indians are as different from Spaniards as cruel people are from mild people.” Among the badges of civilization that the Indians lacked, Sepúlveda offered a list that would come to characterize New Englanders’ perceptions of the deficiencies of Algonquian culture. The Aztecs, Sepúlveda argued,

  lack letters and preserve no monument of their history except certain vague and obscure reminiscences of some things in certain paintings. Neither do they have written laws, but barbaric institutions and customs. They do not even have private property.42

  Rebutting Sepúlveda, Las Casas argued that missionaries must be the vanguard of colonization and that it was
unlawful to wage war before attempting to convert the Indians. Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery, according to Las Casas, did not apply to the Indians in America, since they were not barbaric in the sense Aristotle required.43 Moreover, Las Casas rejected Aristotle, “who was ignorant of Christian truth and love,” because his theory of natural slavery seemed to imply that God had intended half of humanity to be enslaved to the other. “He who wants a large part of mankind to be such that, following Aristotle’s teachings, he may act like a ferocious executioner toward them, press them into slavery, and through them grow rich, is a despotic master, not a Christian.” Or, as Las Casas put it succinctly, “Good-bye, Aristotle!” As a missionary Las Casas most especially mourned the loss of potential converts that accompanied the enslavement of the Indians: “The results of such a war are very surely the loss of the souls of that people who perish without knowing God and without the support of the sacraments, and, for the survivors, hatred and loathing of the Christian religion.”44 More than a century later John Eliot would rephrase this argument, modifying it only slightly by adding a Protestant twist: “To send them away fro the light of the gospel, which Christ hath graciously given them, unto a place, a state, a way of perpetual darknesse, to the eternal ruine of theire soules, is (as I apprehend) to act contrary to the mind of Christ.”45

  No verdict was offered by the judges assembled to evaluate the arguments of Sepúlveda and Las Casas in 1550, but the debate itself, and especially the writings of Las Casas, however papist, exerted a tremendous influence over John Eliot, who, like Las Casas, opposed slavery because it led to the destruction of the Indians’ souls. In 1550, while the debate at Valladolid raged, Charles V suspended all expeditions to the New World, but in New England in 1675, no such interruption of King Philip’s War or of the sale of Indian slaves accompanied Eliot’s petition to the Massachusetts governor and Council. There is no evidence to suggest that Eliot’s petition even sparked a debate among the Council members.46 Of all the contestations for meaning and morality in the war, the question of slavery would seem most likely to cultivate debate, yet Eliot’s letter stands alone in its declaration of moral outrage.47

  For Las Casas and for Eliot, the question of Europeans’ right to enslave Indians hinged on their potential for conversion, the redeemability of their souls. For Sepúlveda, it was a matter of the barbarousness of their customs, including their lack of letters. But for New England’s civil magistrates, their right to enslave enemy Algonquians turned on the justness of the war itself. In New England, legal precedent for the enslavement of Indians had been established in 1641, in a document known as the “Body of Liberties.” There, colonists celebrating their own freedom had declared that “there shall never be any Bond-slavery, Villenage or Captivity amongst us, unless it be lawful Captives taken in just Wars.”48 In decreeing that “lawful Captives taken in just Wars” could be legally sold into slavery, the Massachusetts authorities obligated themselves to demonstrate the justness of any war whose captives they wished to enslave. (Thus, in 1645, when it seemed as if a war with the Narragansetts was imminent, Emmanuel Downing wrote to John Winthrop, “If upon a Just warre the Lord should deliver them into our hands, wee might easily have men and woemen and children enough to exchange for Moores.” Downing relished the possibility, adding, “I suppose you know verie well how wee shall maynteyne 20 Moores cheaper than one Englishe servant.”)49

  While the colonists justified their war in many ways, the particular justification upon which enslavement rested was most fully expressed in the certificates Governors Leverett and Winslow sent on board Thomas Smith’s Seaflower.

  Boston in the Mattachusetts Colony of New-England

  To all People unto whome these prsente may come, John Leverett Esq. Governor: greeting &r: Bee it known, and manifest that whereas Philip an heathen Sachem inhabiting this Continent of New-England, with others his wicked complices and abettors have treacherously and perfidiously rebelled against and revolted from theire obedience unto the Government our Sovereign Lord his Majesty of England Scotland ffrance and Ireland, here Established in and other of our confederate Colonies, unto which they had willingly Subjected themselves & have been protected by and enjoyed this priviledge of the English Laws, having entred into a solemn League and Covenant with the Authority of the sd Respective Colonies, and have without any just cause, or provocation given them, broken their League and Covenant, which they had often renewed, and contrary thereunto have taken up arms, used many acts of hostility, and have perpetrated many notorious barbarous and execrable murthers, villanies and outrages both upon the persons and Estates of many of his sd Maties Subjects in all the sd Colonies; without giving any account of their controversys and refusing (according to the manner of civill nations) an open decision of the same by Treaty or the Sword: and Whereas many of the sd Heathen have of late been captivated by the Arms of his sd Maties Subjects, and been duly convicted of being actors and Abettors of sd Philip with sd inhumane and barbarous crueltys murder, outrages and vilainies. Wherefore by due and legall procedure the sd heathen Malefactors men, women, and Children have been Sentenced & condemned to perpetuall Servitude and by speciall Li-cense Seventy of the sd Malefactors are transported in ths Ship—Sea-fflower-Thomas Smith Comander to be made Sale of in any of his sd Majesties Dominions or the Dominions of any other Christian Prince. In Testimony whereof I the sd Govr have Signed this prsent with my hand and caused them to be Sealed with the publique Seal of the aboue written Colony this twelfth day of Septembr … Annos Dm. 1676.

  —JOHN LEVERETT,

  September 12, 1676

  Leverett’s and Winslow’s slave certificates were intended to guarantee the legality of the means by which the Indians had been enslaved, and that guarantee, in turn, rested on establishing the justness of the war itself. To that end the two governors made three important points:

  1. Philip and his allies had once “willingly Subjected themselves” to the king of England, “having entred into a solemn League and Covenant” with his colonies in New England.

  2. They had since “treacherously and perfidiously rebelled against and revolted from theire obedience” to the king by taking up arms and attacking his subjects.

  3. They had resisted all efforts at negotiation, diplomacy, and treaty, having failed to give “any account of their controversys and refusing (according to the manner of civill nations) an open decision of the same.”50

  To demonstrate the Wampanoags’ subjection to the king of England, Leverett referred to the leagues of covenant that Philip and, before him, Massasoit had signed. In the most recent of these covenants, signed in 1671, Philip and his people had “formally submitted ourselves and our People unto the Kings Majesty of England, and to the Colony of New Plimouth.”51 (Leverett simply cited these covenants, but several printed accounts of the war reproduced them in full.) In betraying this covenant, Leverett argued, Philip and his “wicked complices” had “rebelled” against a government to which they had previously pledged their “subjection,” and now practiced “many notorious barbarous and execrable murthers, villanies and outrages.”52 Implicitly, Leverett also denied the possibility of native sovereignty in his choice of words, since only subjects “rebel” while true nations wage war.53

  Yet in this very argument there lies a critical contradiction. On the one hand, Philip and his allies were said to be sovereign peoples, competent, though unwilling, to engage in negotiation and diplomacy with other nations. On the other hand, Philip and his allies were declared subjects of the king of England, with all the rights and responsibilities such subjection affords. (This ambiguity, over whether Indian peoples are sovereign or subjected, would lie at the heart of Indian-white relations in the colonies and later the union, until the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia in 1831, in which John Marshall would assign Indians the unique status of “domestic, dependent nations.”)54 Moreover, it is unclear whether either of these statuses legally justified the Indians’ enslavement by th
e standards of the day. If Philip and his allies were truly treasonous subjects of the king of England, execution, not enslavement, was their proper punishment. And if sovereign, surely they could not be consigned with such equanimity to the ultimate unsovereignty of chattel slavery.

  The two conditions of sovereignty, by European standards, were authority and possession. As the sixteenth-century Spanish friar Francisco Vitoria had articulated it, the question of whether Indians had sovereignty or “dominion” rested on whether they “were true masters of their private chattels and possessions, and whether there existed among them any men who were true princes and masters of the others.”55 (Vitoria died in 1546, or else he, too, would surely have been invited to the debate at Valladolid in 1550.) While Vitoria determined that the Indians of New Spain satisfied both of these conditions, English colonists in New England were, at first, far more ambivalent about Indian sovereignty and, later, certain that it was an impossibility. Regarding possession, the English typically considered Indians to be homeless nomads who could not own land since they did not “improve” it, while at the same time believing those same Indians could legally sell their land to eager English purchasers.56 Meanwhile, some early English observers recognized Indian “authority” in the form of an established, hierarchical government (Vitorias “true princes”), and were quick to identify sachems as monarchs: “For their governors they have kings, which they call saggamores, some greater and some lesser, according to the number of their subjects.”57 Others, however, disagreed, arguing that “their sagamores are no kings, as I verily believe, for I can see no government or law amongst them but club law; and they call all masters of ships sagamores, or any other man that they see have a command of men.”58 In the end, the colonists’ evaluation of Indian sovereignty was merely an extension of their thinking about Indian possession: Indians were only sovereign enough to give their sovereignty away.