“We, as a tribe, will rule ourselves”:

Mashpee’s Struggle for Autonomy, 1746–1840

Daniel R. Mandell

On May 21, 1833, the Mashpees agreed to tell Massachusetts Governor Levi Lincoln that “we, as a tribe, will rule ourselves, and have a right to do so; for all men are born free and equal.”1 This was the opening salvo in the Mashpee revolt of 1833, launched by the tribe to regain political and religious autonomy at a time when most white New Englanders believed that Indians had vanished from the region. The revolt generated intense public interest for several months, was settled peaceably between the state and the Mashpees, and was then generally forgotten. Over the past two decades, various books and articles have reminded us of this important event, and of the key role played by the Pequot Methodist minister William Apess.2 Accounts rarely note, however, that the revolt was not a singular incident arising from immediate, unique grievances. Instead, it was the final push in a long series of Mashpee efforts to regain control of their community, and it reflected the growing tendency of surviving southern New England Indian groups to seek more autonomy.

When in 1746 Massachusetts appointed white guardians to manage each Indian reservation in the province, the Mashpees protested. They ultimately took their objections to the King in London and won a large measure of self-government in 1763. Twenty-five years later, Rev. Gideon Hawley persuaded the state legislature to reimpose the guardianship, giving him daily management of the Indian community. A decade-long struggle ensued, in which the Mashpees increasingly targeted Hawley’s ecclesiastical and legal rule as the nucleus of their subordination to non-Indian gentry. Their campaign drew on long-standing concerns about communal control and became particularly heated with the meteoric rise of a Baptist church in Mashpee headed by an Indian minister, Thomas Jeffers. Unsuccessful in their efforts against the elderly Hawley, after his death the Mashpees tried again to regain their autonomy in 1807 and 1817, still with little success. The Indians finally regained their right to “rule ourselves” with the revolt of 1833, which joined political, economic, and religious concerns within the community, and successfully meshed with the political and intellectual climate of southern New England.

Mashpee, established by Plymouth colony authorities in 1665 for Christian Wampanoags, gradually attracted Natives of the Cape from neighboring areas as the Anglo-American population there increased. The reserve boasted outstanding hunting, fishing, and clamming, abundant timber, and salt marsh hay for cattle, and was sufficiently isolated so that Anglo-Americans rarely intruded. By the mid-eighteenth century, many men worked in the growing whaling trade and women made and sold crafts to neighboring whites. Their minister was Solomon Briant, who led the community and kept the Wampanoag language alive even though he was occasionally forced onto long whaling voyages to support his family. Briant also helped to lead Mashpee’s effort to regain its autonomy.3

The Massachusetts General Court had, in 1746, extended to all Indian communities the guardianships that had gradually been created for particular Native groups in the province. Guardians were Anglo-American gentry, usually lawyers or businessmen, who were appointed by the Governor and Council. They were given the power to handle all legal and financial matters on behalf of the community, including the allotment of lands and other resources to Indians and their families, leasing “excess” land to white farmers, and selling timber and other resources to support the poor and elderly of the community.4 Provincial leaders took this measure because, after decades of dealing with fraud and trespass, they believed that Indians, like orphans and other minors, were incapable of dealing with the dominant legal system. But the Mashpees found that these imposed officials “do [us] more hurt than good.” The community’s own rules were increasingly flouted as “our wicked neighbors have advised young men & others not to submit to our Rules & orders because we had no power to make them.” Until 1746, the Mashpees had managed to maintain a relatively high level of cohesion and autonomy that allowed them to keep their own language, leadership, and communal rules, while incorporating Christianity, English dress and speech (and for a few, reading and writing), and many other elements of the dominant culture. But the imposition of the guardians’ rule presented a new threat to the community’s culture, identity, and stability.5

Mashpee and the other surviving Indian villages had based their hard-won stability and autonomy on their ability to retain sufficient communal resources—fish, wood, fields, and pasture—to provide subsistence and a little surplus for market. The guardians were a fundamental threat to this system. Most felt that they needed to “optimize” a community’s resources in order to gain the most capital for the community’s account. In Mashpee that meant renting the best planting fields and meadows to white farmers, selling the right to fish from the Mashpee River to whites, and barring the Indians from taking more than a minimal amount of timber or fish from the commons. The Mashpees feared that their fields and rivers would be ruined and noticed that their young men were leaving to go whaling because the guardians had left them insufficient land. Practicing their traditional way of caring for the elderly and the poor, in which the able-bodied donated labor and supplies to keep the assisted within their own homes—a very different system than that practiced by Anglo-Americans—would also become more difficult if not impossible. The Mashpees therefore embarked on a campaign to regain their autonomy. In midst of this struggle, they were visited by the Rev. Gideon Hawley.

Hawley, a 1749 Yale graduate, had taught at an Indian boarding school in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and then became a missionary to the Oneida village of Oquaga until the Seven Years’ War forced him to flee to Boston.6 In 1756, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, an English missionary society administered by Boston elites, sent Hawley to visit Mashpee for six weeks. Hawley later wrote that he was “disinterested” when the Indians asked him to stay and that their appearance “struck me with a gloom,” but when SPG offered him an extremely high salary if he would remain for a decade, he agreed to stay and help Briant.7 He also remembered that the Indians were “very uneasy” under their guardianship, but that he “did not much intermeddle” at the time.8 As time went on, however, he would increasingly “intermeddle” in Mashpee affairs until, as an elderly man in the late 1780s, he became the focus of their anger and frustration. Much of the resulting controversy would stem in large part from his conservative belief in hierarchy and deference, his racial attitudes, and his curmudgeonly personality.

When the Mashpees’ petitions to the General Court brought no relief, they decided to take their complaints to a higher authority, the King of England. In the early spring of 1760, Reuben Cogenhew, Mashpee’s schoolmaster, embarked on what turned out to be a long and epic journey. He traveled to Rhode Island and boarded a vessel destined for London, but the captain instead took the Mashpee emissary to the West Indies, intending to sell him into slavery. Although the plan failed when the ship wrecked on Hispaniola, Cognehew and the others were picked up by a British man-of-war, whose captain was quite happy to impress the entire lot. When the ship put in at Jamaica, Cogenhew somehow managed to talk his way into an audience with the British Admiral. He not only persuaded the Admiral to free him, but also to give him passage on a ship to England. By the end of June, just a few months after leaving home, the Mashpee ambassador was pressing his case to George III. Given the British government’s increasing desire to tighten control of the North American empire it had just won, it is not terribly surprising that Cogenhew’s complaints that the Massachusetts legislature and its agents were acting improperly received a sympathetic hearing. The Board of Trade ordered Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard and the provincial legislature to look into measures of relief for the Mashpees.9

The Board’s orders arrived in Massachusetts that fall, around the time that Cogenhew returned to the colony. In response, Governor Bernard asked the legislature to modify the law—not to grant Mashpee autonomy, but to institute measures that would prevent debts, such as imposing corporal punishment instead of fines in civil court cases.10 The legislature responded by sending a delegation to Mashpee to make an inquiry. At this point, Hawley supported the Indians’ call for autonomy, and the committee upon its return to Boston reported favorably on the change.11 But the resolution that actually passed the General Court instead supported the prevailing system, noting that “such of the Indians as are sober and virtuous are convinced of [its] necessity.” Cogenhew immediately left to plead the Indians’ case to Bernard, but without success, as the gentry in the towns surrounding Mashpee threw their weight against any additional autonomy for the Indians.12

Finally, in June 1763, the Mashpees persuaded the legislature to allow them considerable self-rule. They were permitted to manage their resources as other towns and to hold annual meetings to elect officers, although instead of selectmen they were to choose five overseers—two of whom had to be whites—who held considerable power over legal matters such as land allotments and leases, fishing and timber regulation, indentures, seamen’s contracts, and the ejection of vagrants or trespassers. The Indians were also required to choose Englishmen for the offices of district clerk and treasurer. In an effort to regulate the influence of immigrants to Mashpee—a matter that would become increasingly significant in the 1780s—the right to vote was restricted to proprietors, who were defined as the children of a Mashpee mother or father, and only proprietors could gain access to the community’s commons. As one of the two overseers, Hawley praised the new government: he noted that the Mashpees settled disputes peacefully instead of suing in court, that a growing number were staying home to farm, and that more were attending services.13

But the Mashpees who had fought so doggedly for self-rule found the overseers, including Hawley, annoyingly authoritarian and expensive. The first note of contention appeared in April 1766, when some Mashpees complained about the “exorbitant fees” charged by the officials.14 Relations steadily worsened, and a year later Hawley asked the legislature for “further regulating” of the Indians, while Cognehew called a community meeting to choose delegates to Boston—probably to lobby against the minister’s request.15 This emerging controversy occurred, of course, in the wake of the Stamp Act crisis, which also involved suspicions about the nature and cost of governmental “fees.” But in April 1771, Hawley told a friend on the Governor’s Council that good relations had been restored with the Mashpees, and that his “difficulty with them” was “owing to the spirit of the times.”16

Only a month after the battles of Lexington and Concord, Solomon Briant died, and Hawley perceived another opportunity to increase his influence in the community. While Hawley sought to claim what he saw as his rightful, unrivaled authority, the Mashpees never embraced him as Briant’s successor. The minister never recognized, let alone explained that failure, but no doubt it was in large part because he was a “foreigner,” had already generated conflict within the community, and was quite open about his desire to “Anglicize” the Indians. Considering the timing and subsequent events in Mashpee, another reason may have been Hawley’s opposition to the war. In December 1776, he told a missionary official that “it is not for me to justify one party or the other: both are to blame,” and “shewed as much displeasure against [Patriot recruiters] as I could with propriety but was menaced for it.”17 But while the missionary confidently claimed that his Indians “have not a disposition to take up arms,” Mashpee men showed an eagerness to help the Revolution (or perhaps a desire to fulfill warrior traditions, or their need of a salary) and flocked to enlist.18 No wonder that the number attending Hawley’s sermons shrank, although when he asked for a reason members of the congregation politely replied that they lacked decent clothing.19 Although the military records are incomplete, they indicate that 25 to 50 Mashpee men died in the war; considering that Hawley recorded just 39 male heads of households in June 1776, this represented a devastating loss. No Mashpees wrote during the war to explain their support for independence, although their 1795 petition—written by a white lawyer but expressing Mashpee views (see below)—trumpeted that they had hoped to win their rights by joining the “early martyrs to the Cause of this Country” on “the crimsoned fields of battle.”20

While the Mashpees fought alongside their white neighbors for liberty and independence, the upheaval of the Revolution hardened Hawley’s belief in the need for hierarchy and laid the groundwork for further conflict between the Indians and their minister. Before the war, noticeable numbers of Mohegans, Narragansetts, Naticks, and Wampanoags from the Cape Cod area had moved to Mashpee; this never bothered Hawley. But at the end of the war, he complained to friends that that growing numbers of poor whites and blacks “have encroached upon this territory.”21 In part, Hawley’s concerns were racist, for he (like other Anglo-Americans) suspected that an increase in this population would have harmful moral and behavioral effects—although he had also had some very positive things to say about the children of black-Indian marriages.22 More significant in the minister’s mind was the challenge to order, religion, and his authority that newcomers both within and outside of Mashpee represented.23 In addition, non-Indian residents of neighboring towns were buying or stealing land, wood, and fish from the Indians. Perhaps as a result, new conflicts emerged within the community. In early 1783, eighteen Mashpees signed a letter protesting that the elected Indian overseers—not the white officials—were giving away or selling wood to outsiders. In response, Hawley and another white official tried yet failed to obtain special powers to eject non-Indians and prevent the illegal cutting of wood on the reserve.24

The clash between Mashpee autonomy and Hawley’s desire for order became increasingly acute following the eruption of populist politics and religion in Massachusetts after 1785. This crisis had its foundation in New England’s troubled economy and in the political system that kept the Boston-centered merchants and lawyers entrenched in power, and continued to maintain public funding for churches and Harvard College. In 1786, the agrarian revolt known as Shays’s Rebellion evoked the spirit of 1775 for some, but drove conservatives like Hawley into a frenzy of fear. The movement for reform was, moreover, wider and deeper. The number of Baptists increased, as did their influence, and they were joined by many “orthodox” believers in their push for democratizing measures and a wider divide between church and state.25 The townspeople of Sandwich, Mashpee’s neighbor, strongly supported the more radical aspects of the Revolution, continuing a long history of dissident religious and political activity that horrified Hawley.26 It was in this tumultuous, fearful atmosphere that the minister asked the legislature, in May 1788, to pass new laws that would give him tighter control of Mashpee. He told the General Court that, while the 1763 body of regulations worked well for awhile, “it no longer continues to answer any good to my Indians; it being too popular & ineffectuous—It has lost its power—and the Indians will never elect the most suitable men.”27 In response, the state repealed the 1763 law and reimposed a system of rule by three appointed guardians, including Hawley and two men from Barnstable, Rueben Fish and Captain John Percival.28

The Mashpees’ reaction to the new regime was mixed, pointing to conflicts within the community and in nearby towns. In July 1788, twenty-four Mashpee men signed a petition submitted by Hawley, echoing the minister’s fear of immigrants while calling the new law “a very disagreeable constitution” and saying that it was “mortifying to be under Guardianship and considered minors.” Yet they did not seem angry at their minister, asking that, if they must have guardians, they be “men of the first characters for religion and learning, abilities integrity & honor”—i.e., like Hawley.29 The issue of “character” arose in response to a nasty conflict among whites in the area, for Percival, a Baptist, had challenged Hawley’s honor and authority, and the minister in turn tried to get the captain thrown off the board of guardians.30 Gentry from nearby towns supported Hawley and expressed their fear that “men of no religious principles who make it their business to ridicule the Scriptures & the Christian religion” might govern the Indian community.31 Percival was backed by other whites from the same towns—and by a large group of Mashpees who asked him to represent them before the legislature.32 Shortly thereafter, the minister submitted another Mashpee petition warning of “pretended petitions” from “Negro trespassers” who backed Percival. No “real Proprietors” were dissatisfied with the guardianship, Hawley’s supporters told the assembly, “but those who are deceivd with false stories from our enemies.”33 Among those who signed this petition, most would stand by the minister in subsequent conflicts. Factions were forming in Mashpee, with Hawley representing and fueling the dissension that grew from indigenous concerns but also reflected outside issues. Indeed, the language in their petitions hints at the manipulation of Mashpee proprietors by various white factions.

In early 1789, the legislature agreed to change the law, replacing the three guardians with a five-member board of overseers having extensive authority. The board was empowered to appoint one or more persons as guardians, who would carry out their policies and act as their legal agents.34 Hawley was one of the five appointed overseers (Percival was not), and at their first meeting the board selected two guardians and chose Hawley to be their treasurer.35 Hawley’s religious and political authority would make him the target of Mashpees trying to regain their autonomy. Although the new system caused the minister to feel more secure, opposition to him swelled over the next decade, as his dogmatic insistence on secular and religious hierarchy increasingly clashed with emerging “doctrines of liberty and equality” in Mashpee and the surrounding region.36

In November 1789, a group of Mashpees protested to the overseers that they were poor and needed help that Hawley would not provide.37 The complaints had little effect, so a year and a half later, twenty-one Indians complained to the legislature about Hawley’s overbearing behavior and demanded “the old Constitution and our Liberty.” Their protest pointed to the connections between social, political, and religious concerns: “[W]e do not want his Conduct in our affairs we wants nothing at all that is his own he has Conducted in such manner that we have left his meeting entirely and never want to hear him preach nor even to see his face in our place any more.” Hawley “discourages us” in “spiritual and temporal” affairs, which included their ability to “injoy our property.” The Mashpees wanted political and economic liberty, including the right to hold and sell resources.38 Levi Mie, for example, testified that in 1786 he had obtained the rights to a large wood lot, cut, split, and shipped five cords to Nantucket, and found the venture so profitable that he decided to stop cutting and hold the rest “for my children.” But that future was destroyed when Hawley sold 120 cords from the lot and kept the funds for the Mashpee treasury.39 Hawley fought back with a series of letters that blamed the protests on a few “designing men” from Mashpee and neighboring towns and emphasized that his authority as overseer was critical to keeping order.40

Their initial efforts rejected, in May 1792 Mashpee protesters again petitioned the legislature “to set us free By restoring to us our good Liberty and that we may injoy our o[w]n property again.” They were angered by Hawley’s violation of social and land management traditions, for “if any our near kindred dies [Hawley] takes their interest and hires it out and the Nearest relation Cannot have it.” In addition, these Mashpees linked the expense of the overseers’ administration to their oppression and begged the legislature “to restore us our Liberty” to choose their own people as officers and therefore reduce expenses.41 The Mashpees’ protests could be read alternately as individual (concerning his right to hold and pass on resources to his children) and as communal (concerning their rights as Indians against the arbitrary authority of an outsider, Hawley).42 Mashpees and other Indian groups in the region had, by the mid-eighteenth century, developed a land management system that combined aboriginal and Anglo-American traditions. In July 1788, they had told the legislature that “we are tenants in common, all our lands being undivided, but our improvements are in allotments.” They could not legally sell land to outsiders without the permission of the legislature. But the sale of resources or lease of land was quite legal and did not require the approval of a cranky Gideon Hawley.43

When their 1792 effort also failed, the Mashpee activists hired a prominent young attorney, Nathaniel Freeman Jr., to draw up a petition seeking the restoration of their autonomy and to represent them before the legislature in any subsequent hearings.44 The resulting document connected Mashpee’s complaints with America’s Revolutionary ideals and the Indians’ sacrifices during that conflict:45

The petition termed the current regime “an infringement of that freedom to which as men they were justly entitled.” As in previous protests, this petition focused on two Mashpee grievances: that they were not allowed “the miserable privilege of choosing our own Masters,” and that they “cannot alienate a single inch of our Land, nor indeed enjoy it, as the Government have undertaken to modify, & apportion it as they think proper.” This last concern was particularly prominent: they charged “those who forge our shackles” with removing all “incentives to industry or improvement.” As in the past, Hawley tried to discredit the petitioners as “ignorant Indians” who “will never arrive to the knowledge of their true interests” and in any case “know not the purpose of petitions or papers.”46 But the legislature took the petition seriously and, on June 11, 1795, appointed an investigating committee to hold extensive hearings at Mashpee In the time between the Freeman petition and the committee hearings, religion joined politics and economics as a source of conflict. Thomas Jeffers, an ordained Baptist minister of Wampanoag or Massachusett ancestry, moved to Mashpee and quickly mounted a significant challenge to Hawley. This religious conflict became an extension of the more secular Mashpee concerns. In his testimony to the committee, Hawley blamed the growing opposition on a Barnstable white man who was “preaching up the doctrines of liberty and equality” among the Indians “to bring them to his side in Politicks and to the Baptist side in religion.” The weary minister concluded by emphasizing that his authority was a dam against anarchy: “They need an umpire or Superintendent.”47 But in fact, Jeffers, not a Barnstable white, had become an important rallying point for Mashpee efforts to regain religious as well as political autonomy. In January 1796, the Indians submitted another petition, emphasizing that they rejected Hawley: “we not chusing his ways of Worship, we do not hear him, we Rather chusing to Worship the devine being in the Bapptist Order.” Many more Mashpees signed this petition than had approved previous complaints: fifty-five, compared to the second-highest count of twenty-nine in July 1788. Particularly remarkable was the sudden involvement of Mashpee women in the struggle, for among the signatories were twenty-two women, compared to only three in the 1792 petition. Clearly, Hawley’s religious and political rule had become quite unpopular in Mashpee, perhaps even temporarily overcoming the community divisions hinted at in the 1788 petitions.48

But again Hawley and his allies managed to persuade the legislators that the Mashpees were incompetent and would be easy prey for manipulative newcomers, although the committee did note that the minister “was inadequate” and was not a teacher “on whose preaching they can consciously attend.” The committee recommended few substantive changes except to remove the treasury from Hawley’s control and saw no need to reduce the overseers’ powers.49 Hawley viewed this as a vindication of his rule. Six months later, at his request, the legislature passed a law that gave the overseers the power to eject “vagrant poor” who lacked proper residency.50 By midsummer, Hawley felt certain that all but a few Mashpees had deserted Jeffers, but he was either boasting or willfully blind.51 In 1798, Jeffers would leave to revive the Baptist congregation at Gay Head, and another part-Indian minister, James Freeman, would take his place.52 Until the end of his life, on October 3, 1807, Hawley would regularly write letters that confidently described his unchallenged authority over his flock and reported that the Baptist congregation was “coming to nothing.” Yet in 1799 Freeman led another campaign to overturn the guardianship, complaining “that [the Mashpees’] property is placed in the hands of certain commissioners and guardians and praying for relief in their civil and religious concerns.”53 But that effort also failed, as the power and connections held by Hawley were sufficient to bar any change.

Mashpees waited until two months after Hawley died to mount another effort against the 1789 regulations. Their petition, signed by about fifty men and women, began by echoing previous declarations of their sacrifices fighting for the Revolution and their disappointed expectations that they would be given their rights after the war: “At the commencement of the late revolution, when a high sense of civil liberty and the oppressive policy of an arbitrary Court, roused the citizens of America, to noble and patriotic exertions in defence of their freedom; we anticipated the time, when a liberal and enlightened philanthropy, would extend its vie[w] and its influence to the increase of Liberty & social happiness among all races and classes.” Moved by “these sensations,” many Mashpees fought for the Revolution; half of the men “fell victim in the cause of their Country and of Liberty,” including many of the signatories who “can exhibit the traces of wounds.” But they were bitterly disappointed that the promises of the Revolution were still unfulfilled. “How could we conceive it possible that a people who were exhibiting such illustrious proofs of their attachment to freedom & so enlarged ideas of civil Liberty and of the orig[ins] and design of Government, that they should not respect those rights in others which they contended for themselves?”54

The petitioners, as in past campaigns, compared the 1763 regulations granting self-rule with the 1788 and 1789 laws, noting that “By the former we had the privileges in part of choosing our Masters, By the latter even this small portion of Liberty is taken away.” Unlike previous efforts, however, this petition was careful not to impugn or assail their guardians. “We do not mean to object to the personal character, integrity, or conduct of any of the present board of overseers”—which of course no longer included the deceased Hawley. Instead, the Mashpees focused on the high costs of the system (fees for five overseers, two guardians, a treasurer, secretary, constable, and timber agent) and the difficulties that members of the tribe often suffered because several of the overseers lived at great distances in other counties. Religion was not even mentioned in the petition. The prickly, authoritarian Hawley was dead, and his passing seemed to temper much of the bitterness that the Mashpees felt towards the guardianship system and to cause the Mashpees to adopt a more practical and less confrontational approach in their efforts to regain autonomy.55

Once again, neighboring whites were actively involved in the Indians’ efforts. James Freeman, the state senator for Sandwich (not the part-Indian minister who confronted Hawley), became the Mashpees’ patron: he may actually have written the petition (considering its flowery and erudite language), presented it to the legislature, and arranged for several other men from Sandwich to witness the Indians’ signatures and make depositions testifying to the Mashpees’ situation and concerns. Freeman also may have helped organize or lead the Sandwich town meeting of December 9, 1807, which urged the legislature to heed the Mashpee petition and reduce the number and expense of the Indians’ overseers.56 In response, the Mashpee overseers, including Hawley’s son, Gideon Hawley Jr., quickly maneuvered to forestall any changes. In January, they collected seventy-eight Mashpee signatures (of both men and women) on a petition supporting the current system. The document accused conniving whites from neighboring towns of collecting signatures, such that “some of our brethren have been influenced by promises of reward and other improper motives, to subscribe their names to said petition.” It emphasized the absence of debt in Mashpee, as well as the availability of schools, decent medical care, and other benefits of the current regime and noted that most of the community was “contented and happy.” Not only was the current regime relatively inexpensive, the petitioners countered, since most of the offices were actually shared among the overseers, but it contained checks on fraud that would not exist in a more streamlined system. The nearby Herring Pond community also sent a petition, signed by thirty-eight men and women, which opposed changes in the guardianship system, noting that fewer guardians would lessen their confidence in the system and diminish safeguards against fraud and trespass.57

While the opposing petition highlighted conflict among the Indians—perhaps because Hawley could no longer serve as a lightning rod—it was apparently riddled with fraud. Zaccheus Pognit, a Mashpee proprietor, testified that the overseers, aided by several Mashpees, had used pressure and deceit to obtain the signatures. John Fish and Lemuel Ewer of Sandwich, the two men who had witnessed the signatures of those asking for reforms, echoed Pognit’s charges. Benjamin Burgess of Barnstable lodged similar complaints about the Herring Pond petition. Fish also emphasized that the Indians “have always appeared to be disatisfied [sic] with the act of 30 Jan. 1789 and complained of their deplorable situation. . . . their wood was very much diminished & cut off and that the great sums raised thereby were in a great measure consumed by the expensiveness of their government.”58 Such evidence, the support of prominent whites, and the relatively modest nature of the Mashpees’ request were persuasive. For the first time since 1763, the Indians’ plea for reforms was successful. In March 1808, the legislature reduced the number of overseers from five to three and granted them the power to appoint one guardian.59

While those asking for reforms passed over the issue of religion, the controversy did retain a religious component that, as in the past, echoed the Mashpees’ social and political concerns. Those who had bitterly opposed Hawley were prominent in the renewed campaign, while the petition against changes included the comment that, when Hawley died, “we not only lost our religious teacher, but our father and friend, who preached to us by his example as powerfully, as by his exhortation.” At their request, the overseers now sought “to supply his loss, by providing for us an exemplary teacher in the principles of Piety, Religion & Morality.”60 That summer, the SPG sent a Congregationalist minister, Elisha Clapp, to preach in Mashpee for several months. After he left, four Mashpees wrote to ask the organization for another, permanent orthodox minister, “lest the Itinerant Preachers of different denominations, who are traveling about in this part of the Country, should distroy our harmony & bring us to nothing.” The initial signatory on this petition, Solomon Francis, had been identified by Pognit, Fish, and Ewer as a leader of the effort to garner support for the overseers.61

Mashpees struggles to regain autonomy ushered in a period of renewed confidence among Indians in southern New England. After 1800, and particularly between 1815 and 1835, Indian communities increasingly demanded an end to guardianships or became quite willing to ask the legislature to replace particular individuals. Their protests became sharper, more insistent, and demanding of self-rule. Gay Head, Chappequiddick, and Christiantown, all on Martha’s Vineyard and connected to Mashpee by kinship networks, sought autonomy or the replacement of incompetent guardians.62 In 1819 and 1820, the Mohegans in Connecticut sought the right to nominate their guardians or at least the authority to determine who truly belonged to their community.63 During this period, the Mashantucket Pequots protested their overseers’ actions in ways that demonstrated that they considered the officials, at least to some degree, to be their agents rather than the state’s.64 Despite the Indians’ initiatives, state officials continued to believe the Indians incapable of acting in a properly virtuous, responsible manner.

As might be expected, the Mashpees did not rest with their partial victory but continued their campaign for self-determination. In June 1817, nine men, including Levi Mie and others who had opposed the late Reverend Hawley, asked that the tribe be allowed to choose their own overseers and that the number be reduced to two—essentially a return to the 1763 regulations. While they asked for these deeper changes, their complaints echoed the more modest 1807 petition. They emphasized the increasing amount of meadow leased and wood cut by the three guardians, their rising debt, the officials’ refusal to show their accounts, and the resulting moral harm to the Mashpees and costs to the state: “We formerly had our Children schoolled When we Chused our Overseers ourselves, but now we cannot have a school for them, We wish to know what becomes of all our money, that we cant have now privelege of that, that is really or own. We are informed that there is money drawn out of your treasury to repair our Meetinghouse, but we are asured that if we could have the same Regulations we formerly had when we had but two Overseers and that of our own chusing wee should be able to build our own Meeting house without going to your States treasury for it.”65

The legislature again dispatched an investigating committee to Mashpee, which returned a report that stressed the “diversity of opinion” among the Indians:

The investigators agreed with the last view, arguing that “To give the Right of choosing their own overseers” would “place them in the hands of the worst of all of the community’s men, whose objects would be entirely selfish.” They also rejected Indian complaints that the overseers were too expensive and told the legislature that the guardians’ only failure was that “the administration of the government had been always too lax.”66 Yet the legislature did replace the three with two others, meeting one of the complainants’ demands. On the other hand, the overseers were also granted the power to bind out anyone who, in their judgment, was a “habitual drunkard and idle” for up to three years’ service, and to give the income to his family. In addition, the officials were also put in charge of regulating how Indians could cut timber, even for their own uses.67 Apparently little had changed in the perceptions and attitudes of Anglo-American elites—or in the lack of consensus among Indians about the degree to which they could manage complete autonomy while protecting their lands.

New pressures developed in Mashpee in the 1820s as the children of those who had opposed Hawley returned from whaling to settle down and raise families. They found the guardians’ repressive control irritating and harmful to the community. Daniel Amos told the committee investigating the 1833 revolt that dissatisfaction had grown during the previous decade as the guardians refused to account for their actions, provide any additional powers to those who wished to help their community, or allow enterprising individuals to claim additional resources.68 Mashpee’s minister, Phineas Fish, whom Harvard had appointed as Hawley’s successor in 1811, was also infuriating. Fish was not only white, but was a liberal, intellectual Unitarian, whereas the Mashpees had embraced the evangelical antinomian Baptist faith in the 1790s. Avoiding Fish, the Indians instead went to Daniel’s brother Joseph, who began preaching there and at Chappequiddick and Gay Head around 1825 and received Baptist ordination in 1830. “Blind Joe” Amos fit into Mashpee’s tradition of Indian Baptist ministers. By 1833, Fish’s congregation consisted almost entirely of white families living in or near Mashpee, and Amos’s congregants grew increasingly angry that the white minister refused to let them use the meetinghouse and that his salary was paid by Harvard College’s Williams fund for Indian ministers.69

Open revolt began with the arrival in Mashpee of the itinerant Pequot Methodist preacher William Apess.70 Apess attended services at the Indian meetinghouse and, as he later wrote, was shocked to find only whites in the congregation. Apess became angry when he found Fish not only unconcerned with the lack of Indian participation in the church, but also utterly unsympathetic to the notion of granting the Mashpees more political and economic autonomy. Apess was probably not really surprised by Fish’s attitude, however, considering his own longstanding struggles with white racism. He preached a few days later to his Indian brethren on “the soul harrowing theme of Indian degradation”—arising out of white oppression and racism—and triggered a series of community meetings in which the Indians discussed their problems and considered solutions.71

On May 21, a large body of Mashpees agreed to adopt Apess in order to give him the authority to press their case, to petition the governor for redress of their grievances, and to petition Harvard to discharge Fish and instead support the Methodist minister. The appeal to Gov. Levi Lincoln not only declared that the Mashpees would “rule ourselves,” but informed him that on July 1 they would flout the authority of their guardians by preventing white men from cutting or taking wood from Mashpee. The petition to Harvard emphasized their alienation from Fish and that minister’s ineffectiveness, and ended with the resolution that “we will rule our own tribe and make choice of whom we please for our preacher.” Ten days later, two Mashpees traveled to Boston and left the governor’s petition with his office. On June 25, after waiting in vain for a reply, they convened a meeting, elected officers including Daniel Amos as president, and agreed to post their May resolves in the surrounding towns. They also sent notices of dismissal to their guardians, insisting that they surrender all Mashpee funds and accounts, and to Fish, demanding that he abandon his home in Mashpee and surrender the key to the meetinghouse.72

At this point, Governor Lincoln sent Josiah Fiske to investigate. Fiske arrived on July 1 to find the Indians “in a state of open rebellion against the laws of the Commonwealth” and the surrounding inhabitants on edge over the Indians. The Mashpees had, as promised, stopped a group of whites from removing timber that the guardians had previously sold. They had also entered the meetinghouse by climbing through a window and changed the locks, taking possession of the building. Fiske called a meeting on July 4 that drew nearly a hundred Mashpees, many carrying muskets. With Daniel Amos presiding, the Indians reiterated their grievances and Apess pressed the commissioner to end the guardianship immediately. Fiske later told the governor that the Methodist minister’s apparent purpose was “to establish in the minds of the natives a belief that each generation had a right to act for itself”—suggesting a link between Apess and the ideas espoused by Thomas Jefferson.73 Over the next few days, tempers began to cool as Fiske toured the reserve, met many Mashpees, and gained their trust on behalf of the governor. On July 6, the Mashpee council agreed to table their measures until the forthcoming legislative session would allow them to press their demands before the General Court.74 This last, ultimately successful Mashpee campaign to gain independence exhibited similarities to other social reform movements of the 1830s, and like those efforts was driven by a rising generation. But the Mashpee revolt shows continuity rather than change, for its proponents were the children and grandchildren of those who had fought against Hawley and the guardianship, and their goals remained the same.75

Apess and the Mashpees skillfully managed the subsequent phase of their campaign. In August, they contacted William Hallett, lawyer, editor of the Boston Advocate, then a leader of the Massachusetts anti-Masonic Party and later of the region’s Democratic Party; Hallett provided the Mashpees with essential publicity and other assistance.76 In mid-January 1834, the young President Daniel Amos, the elderly Deacon Isaac Coombs, and William Apess traveled to Boston to press their case. The city was primed for the Indians, having just celebrated the visit of a group of Penobscots and Edwin Forrest’s renowned performance in Metamora, the play that mourned the death of King Philip, disparaged the Puritans who drove him to war, and romanticized the supposed extinction of the Indian.77 The Mashpees heard their petition discussed in the House and on January 21 spoke to a special evening assembly attended by many of the legislators, during which they emphasized that the guardianship was “retarding their improvement, and oppressing their spirits” by discouraging industry, entrepreneurship, and moral reforms including temperance.78 Four days later, William Lloyd Garrison published an account of the Mashpee complaints and condemned the Indians’ special legal status, which included limits on land sales to whites, as “the chains of a servile dependence” that removed “all motives for superior exertions.”79 The Mashpees and Hallett further displayed their political savvy by publishing articles and letters that accused New Englanders of hypocrisy in fighting for Cherokee rights while denying the same to the Mashpees.80 Their opponents were few and subdued, and tended to blame the Indians’ unrest on Apess.81 The Mashpees’ tactics and the justice of their request, the absence of a strong opposition, and the shift in politics and culture in the region made the Indians’ final victory seem easy. In March 1834, the legislature abolished the guardianship and made Mashpee a district with the power to elect selectmen and other town officials. The new law did set up a white commissioner and treasurer to advise the Mashpees and manage their financial affairs, but there was little doubt that the Indians had won their political and economic autonomy.82

The battle to oust Fish lasted longer. The Mashpees viewed the church as their historic community center, resented that non-Indians now dominated worship there, and saw little difference between their rights to political and religious autonomy. Already alienated from Fish, they were angered by his condescending, racist petitions against their effort to gain independence. In 1836, the Mashpees asked Harvard to give them half of Fish’s salary to pay a minister of their choice; Harvard agreed, and the Indians chose E. G. Perry, an ordained Baptist minister, as their missionary and schoolmaster. Joseph Amos continued to minister to the Indian groups on Martha’s Vineyard as well as at Mashpee. One year later, a Mashpee meeting unanimously voted to dismiss Fish but he still refused to leave or to share the meetinghouse with Perry.83 Finally, in July 1840, after the legislature made Mashpee an independent parish, the Baptists went into the church and forced Fish out.84

Between 1746 and 1840, the Mashpees struggled to regain their autonomy from unwanted, arrogant, interfering Anglo-American officials in order to protect their resources and reinforce or rebuild community institutions. Their effort drew from two sources: the Indians’ desire to maintain their community against the destructive forces of colonialism, and the intellectual and cultural ferment of the early Republic, with the decline of deference, the emergence of democratic politics and culture, and the widening separation of church and state. After fighting and dying for the Revolution, the Mashpees found the period’s political rhetoric meaningful and useful in their efforts to regain their own liberty. Just as significant to those efforts was the growing evangelical movement that swept New England at the end of the century with a new egalitarian message for all believers, for the Mashpees’ primary targets were their white ministers.85 The community’s efforts can be viewed as part of, if not partial inspiration for, the growing demand by other southern New England Indian groups to reclaim a measure of sovereignty. But the most significant lesson is that the Mashpee Revolt of 1833–34 was not an isolated or unique incident. Instead, it must be seen as the culmination of a century-long effort by the Indians to regain control of their own community.