On a sun-drenched time successful June 2018, a pistillate successful accepted Native regalia dropped a ample wreath of flowers into the Atlantic Ocean. The interaction jostled escaped a fewer petals earlier the ellipse of blossoms dilatory drifted distant connected the luminescent bluish Bermudian swells. All of the 1 100 oregon truthful radical gathered were silent, each absorbed by their ain thoughts. In its departure, the wreath commemorated the travel of enslaved New England Native Americans to the land astir 4 100 years earlier.
Within an hour, the somber commemoration by the oversea turned into a vibrant two-day intertribal powwow. Representatives from the Narragansett, Wampanoag, and different nations successful New England mingled with Bermuda Natives connected St. David’s Island arsenic they participated successful dancing, feasting, and communing. Men and boys fulfilled accepted roles astir a ample circular drum, beating it rhythmically. Dancers successful brightly colored moccasins, robes, and headdresses shifted from 1 ft to the different successful a enactment astir the ample grassy abstraction encircled by tents. The odor of fry breadstuff and stew wafted done the air, and for hours the singing and drumming drifted skyward arsenic the angiosperm wreath dilatory caught a existent and slipped retired of show into the unfastened sea.
Native American powwows are important taste celebrations, but this 1 successful Bermuda memorializes events often hidden successful American history: the large-scale enslavement of Indigenous radical and the simultaneous taking of Native land. The ancestors of the Bermuda powwow attendees were portion of this buried and intertwined history.
The stealing of Native Americans and their homelands is not conscionable a broadside communicative successful the expansive play of American history. It is the cardinal stream that connects each different streams.
Nearly 4 100 years earlier, New England puritans hunted down good implicit 1 1000 Pequots, Wampanoags, Narragansetts, Nipmucs, and individuals from different nations and shipped them to Bermuda, Barbados, Spain, Mexico, and different planetary destinations. This took spot during and aft 2 wars betwixt the puritans and section Indigenous populations. The archetypal was the Pequot War successful the 1630s, successful which puritans tried to wholly exterminate the Pequot nation. The 2nd was King Philip’s War successful the 1670s, which was a monolithic uprising successful effect to the harms of colonialism. During and aft some wars, puritans utilized large-scale enslavement of Native peoples to bolster their labour unit and assistance wide onshore for assemblage settlement.
Native peoples successful New England and Bermuda kept live their household histories and stories passim the centuries, adjacent erstwhile assemblage documents suppressed oregon omitted these connections. In Bermuda, enslaved Native Americans from New England and different regions yet intermarried with enslaved and escaped Africans. After British emancipation successful 1834, galore of their descendants settled connected St. David’s Island, successful the bluish portion of the archipelago. There they continued to work, connect, and intermarry into the twenty-first century, and they stay to this day.
When St. David’s Islanders and New England Natives started exploring this shared past successful the precocious 1990s, they realized a captious reunification was taking place. Starting successful 2002, the reconnection powwows similar the 1 I attended successful June 2018 person served arsenic a meaningful mode for Natives successful some New England and Bermuda to bring unneurotic what the unit of colonialism tore apart. As Nives Filice, whose ancestors were enslaved and sent to Bermuda, told maine implicit luncheon successful the superior metropolis of Hamilton, “Reconnecting with radical successful New England plugged a spread that I didn’t adjacent cognize existed….When I archetypal stepped ft connected Mashpee Wampanoag tribal lands [in Massachusetts], I instantly felt a spiritual connection, similar I was home.”
This publication uses the conception of stealing to recognize Native Americans’ experiences of losing kin and land—something I gleaned from galore conversations with Native American collaborators and friends. Scholarly penning astir slavery successful the Americas—which has mostly centered connected Black enslavement—has emphasized its economical worth successful gathering plantations, wealth, and American capitalism. But Native Americans experienced slavery arsenic stealing of relatives, arsenic a assemblage loss, and it was ever intermingled with the stealing of their onshore and disregard for their sovereignty. From their perspectives, stealing people, whether for enslavement oregon by forcing children into boarding schools, and seizing land, successful wars oregon done removals, represented tangible assemblage losses arsenic portion of a longer-term battle connected their precise existence.
Although mostly erased from nationalist consciousness, Indigenous enslavement was a colossal improvement that spanned the full Americas, ensnaring an estimated 3 cardinal to 6 cardinal Indigenous radical betwixt 1492 and 1880 from Canada to Brazil. In the country that aboriginal became the United States, arsenic galore arsenic 600,000 Native Americans were enslaved during this period, with galore much stolen from families into the twentieth period done boarding school, fostering, and adoption programs. In comparison, astir 530,000 enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to North America (excluding Mexico) done 1865.
These numbers uncover a shocking truth: American forefathers and foremothers enslaved Native Americans successful astir the aforesaid numbers arsenic they imported enslaved Africans. Enslaved African-descended radical aboriginal came to officially outnumber enslaved Natives done reproduction arsenic good arsenic the erasure of Native Americans from the records erstwhile individuals from the 2 groups intermarried. Still, Native slavery was acold much salient and agelong lasting successful American past than we person realized.
The enslavement of much than a fractional cardinal Indigenous men, women, and children wrong the boundaries of what is present the United States is astir unthinkable due to the fact that it defies what we person been taught astir some American past and slavery. The accepted communicative of American slavery goes thing similar this: After Columbus “discovered” the Americas, the Spanish enslaved Native Americans successful the Caribbean and South America until 1542, erstwhile it was outlawed and they alternatively started importing enslaved Africans. When the English landed successful Jamestown successful 1607, colonists archetypal utilized achromatic indentured servants but soon began importing enslaved Africans successful 1619. This inaugurated the transatlantic African enslaved trade, which lasted until 1808, erstwhile it was banned by Congress. Black slavery expanded successful the South until the American Civil War, erstwhile it was legally terminated by the Thirteenth Amendment successful 1865.
But that communicative is glaringly incomplete. Stealing America dramatically expands this past by tracing Indigenous enslavement and onshore dispossession passim the afloat scope of American history. This wider communicative spans 5 centuries from the archetypal enslavement of the Caribbean Lucayan and Taíno successful 1492 to the Indian Child Welfare Act successful 1978, which dilatory halted the stealing of tens of thousands of Native children done adoptions. As Alexis Moreis (Chappaquiddick Wampanoag) has noted, “When we are talking astir Native American slavery, it ever involves dispossession.” There is not a clip oregon spot successful American past erstwhile these intertwined stealings were not viscerally present. And yet this publication is not a broad Native American past of the continent, nor is it a elaborate past of the United States. Rather, it tugs connected the circumstantial threads of Indigenous slavery and onshore loss, demonstrating their centrality to and ubiquity successful each colony and state, successful each epoch of American history.
This centuries-long saga is 1 of some persistent colonialism and Indigenous resilience. A immense diverseness of Indigenous peoples crossed the continent person recovered ways to negociate and past the waves of invading Europeans and Americans from 1492 to the present. This resilience has manifested successful galore forms. Powerful Native nations and smaller communities resisted and constricted assemblage aggression done diplomacy, alliances, petitions and tribunal cases, and wars of resistance. Stolen and enslaved Indigenous radical formed caller networks of kinship; learned caller skills and languages; retained memories of family, kin, and rituals; and, done it all, continually plotted to instrumentality home.
Colonization contained twists and turns. Native leaders and nations did not spot themselves arsenic universally connected the aforesaid “side” arsenic different Indigenous peoples and against each Europeans. Faced with overseas invasions, they made choices for endurance and sovereignty that look unexpected from a modern perspective. In immoderate instances, Indigenous nations played astonishing roles arsenic collaborators with English merchants to behaviour the large-scale enslaved commercialized of Native peoples, including successful the Carolinas, Utah, and adjacent Central America. As Narragansett student Mack Scott has noted, “Native Americans had their ain histories, networks, goals, and purposes isolated from European invaders.”
This treble theft was cardinal to the origins, growth, and eventual occurrence of the English colonies and the United States—not conscionable initially but passim each of American history.
Although Stealing America focuses connected the past of Indigenous slavery and onshore loss, this past besides often intermingles with the communicative of African slavery. These are not competing histories since astatine times they link and overlap. Nor does focusing connected Native slavery minimize the weighty value of Black slavery successful US history. The harm and dislocation caused by Native enslavement and dispossession are portion of a broader, layered, and “multidirectional” trauma successful American past that involves Native Americans and African Americans, arsenic good arsenic Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, refugees, immigrants, and different historically marginalized populations. These injustices besides coalesce with innumerable humanities and modern planetary histories of genocide and displacement. Such stories, on with the unthinkable resilience of populations harmed by colonialism, request to beryllium told and understood to beforehand justness and healing. And yet this peculiar past of Indigenous enslavement and onshore theft successful American past has been truthful obscured that it merits its ain telling.
The stealing of Native Americans and their homelands is not conscionable a broadside communicative successful the expansive play of American history. It is the cardinal stream that connects each different streams, coursing done the scenery of this country’s past similar the muddy, serpentine Mississippi, which bisects the continent and allows everything astir it to flourish. Native American enslavement was not conscionable the “other” slavery, simply adding to the labour excavation of the colonies and yet the United States. Instead, enslaving Native Americans furthered colonization successful a much fundamental, two-pronged way. Stealing and enslaving Native Americans from coveted lands was stunningly effectual since it provided colonists with labour and onshore astatine the aforesaid time. The nonaccomplishment of Native individuals led to the destabilization of Indigenous household units and full communities. This diminished tribes’ abilities to support demographic and captious assemblage presence, making them easier to control, remove, oregon adjacent legally terminate, oregon truthful colonists hoped.
This treble theft was cardinal to the origins, growth, and eventual occurrence of the English colonies and the United States—not conscionable initially but passim each of American history. It is simply a almighty but overlooked process that has helped the United States go the superpower it is today.
How so? The fiscal spot and geographical dispersed of the American colonies and the United States emerged from stolen onshore and enslaved labor. Native Americans were forced to supply both. Fertile lands afforded the capableness to turn export crops that supported farmers and made plantation owners fabulously wealthy. Forests delivered lumber to physique ships and barrels for transporting goods that allowed the United States to go a planetary trading power. A scenery teeming with deer, beaver, and buffalo provided boatloads of pelts and hides that sold for millions of dollars successful Europe. Land itself was a commodity, representing wealthiness and fiscal stability; for centuries, owning it allowed achromatic men to vote.
Without stolen Native lands, determination would beryllium nary American capitalism and nary nineteenth-century fabric kingdom; nary homesteading unreserved and propulsion for the idiosyncratic location ownership truthful cardinal to the American dream; nary majestic nationalist parks, which inactive are ineffable to Native Americans; and nary premier waterfront locations for twenty-first-century fiscal and taste centers similar New York City, Miami, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
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From Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery successful U.S. History by Linford D. Fisher. Copyright © 2026. Available from Liveright Publishing Corporation, an imprint of W.W. Norton & Company. Stealing America has been shortlisted for the 2026 Cundill History Prize.
English (US) ·