New England Bound

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to enslavement, violence and sexual violence, suicide, and racial slurs.

In 17th-century New England, English colonization of America and the relatively new transatlantic slave trade worked together in a “deadly symbiosis” (10). As English Protestants established colonies in New England and elsewhere, they sought profits by expanding their territories and working their new land. This necessitated labor, which the English gained by enslaving African and Indigenous people. Between 1620 and 1640, 20,000 English people emigrated to the New England region, establishing communities such as Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, New Haven, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

Warren argues that scholars of this era have overlooked the significant Indigenous influence on these early colonies; Indigenous people were trading partners, enslaved people, and warring enemies to the English colonists. Indeed, the first account of enslavement in New England involves a Patuxet Indigenous man named Squanto. English captain Thomas Hunt kidnapped Squanto and several other Indigenous men in 1614, some of whom he later sold into slavery in Spain. As colonist John Smith later noted, this enslavement prompted hatred and suspicion from local Indigenous people, who had previously been friendly to the English newcomers.