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The Exchange of Body Parts in the Pequot War

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The Exchange of Body Parts in the Pequot War meanes to "A knitt them togeather": The Exchange of Body Parts in the Pequot War Andrew Lipman was IN the early seventeenth century, when New England still very new, Indians and colonists exchanged many things: furs, beads, pots, cloth, scalps, hands, and heads. The first exchanges of body parts a came during the 1637 Pequot War, punitive campaign fought by English colonists and their native allies against the Pequot people. the war and other native Throughout Mohegans, Narragansetts, peoples one gave parts of slain Pequots to their English partners. At point deliv so eries of trophies were frequent that colonists stopped keeping track of to individual parts, referring instead the "still many Pequods' heads and Most accounts of the war hands" that "came almost daily." secondary as only mention trophies in passing, seeing them just another grisly were aspect of this notoriously violent conflict.1 But these incidents a in at the Andrew Lipman is graduate student the History Department were at a University of Pennsylvania. Earlier versions of this article presented graduate student conference at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies in October 2005 and the annual conference of the South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century comments Studies in February 2006. For their and encouragement, the author thanks James H. Merrell, David Murray, Daniel K. Richter, Peter Silver, Robert Blair St. sets George, and Michael Zuckerman, along with both of conference participants and two the anonymous readers for the William and Mary Quarterly. 1 to John Winthrop, The History ofNew England from 1630 1649, ed. James 1: Savage (1825; repr., New York, 1972), 237 ("still many Pequods' heads"); John Mason, A Brief History of the Pequot War: Especially Of the memorable Taking of their Fort atMistick in Connecticut In 1637 (Boston, 1736), 17 ("came almost daily"). There are several have more a historians who given trophy exchanges than passing glance. See James Axtell and William C. Sturtevant, "The Unkindest Cut, orWho Invented no. Scalping?" William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 37, 3 Quly 1980): 451-72; Axtell, "The inNatives Moral Dilemmas of Scalping," and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins ofNorth America (New York, 2001), 259-279. Evan Haefeli examines trophies' place within two different "cultures of violence" in an essay on a contemporary Dutch Indian war. See Haefeli, "Kieft's War and the Cultures of Violence in Colonial in America," Lethal Imagination: Violence and Brutality in American History, ed. Michael A. Bellesiles (New York, 1999), 17-40. Jill Lepore analyzes the meanings embedded in severed for body parts both cultures during King Philip's War, though she emphasizes display rather than exchange. See Lepore, The Name of War: King William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, Volume LXV, Number 1, January 2008 4 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY more than a footnote. were a kind of just macabre They strange negotia tion, a cross-cultural conversation rendered in flesh and blood. to Algonquian Indians often exchanged wartime trophies affirm alliances, whereas the English decapitated enemies and displayed their heads to establish dominance. Because body parts were symbols of acts were a political relationships in both cultures, these of giving way for the two peoples to express and mediate their different notions of saw as authority. Narragansett sachem Miantonomo described what he to a war the function of such exchanges when he began plot against a English and Dutch colonists in 1642. At meeting with his coconspira tors,Miantonomo told them that "when the designe should be putt in to execution he would kill an Englishman & send his heade & handes near Longe Hand," and the Indians of Long Island and those the Dutch this would be a meanes to knitt them should do the same, "& togeather." Miantonomo's how could rela phrase aptly suggests body parts represent note tionships. Anthropologists that exchanged objects symbolize and thoughts and values, define the flow of power within societies, foster between and receivers. between cultures in expectations givers Exchanges particular deserve close attention because different peoples attach multi and sometimes to the same ple conflicting meanings things.2 American Philip's War and the Origins of Identity (New York, 1998), 148, 173-80, 190, in New T. 303 n. 103. Discussing the bounties for wolves' heads England, Jon Coleman made connections between colonists' and Indians' uses of human parts and their uses of animal parts. See Coleman, "Terms of Dismemberment," Common no. 1 place 4, (October 2003), http://common-place.dreamhost.eom//vol-04/no -oi/coleman/coleman-2.shtml. 2 "Relation of the Plott?Indian," in Collections of theMassachusetts Historical These and hands are Society, 3d ser., 3: 161-64 (quotation, 164). heads, scalps, prime Nicholas Thomas calls mate examples of what anthropologist "entangled objects": so rial artifacts of colonial encounters that are invested with many meanings that cannot a cultural context. See they be located within single Thomas, Entangled Material and Colonialism in the Objects: Exchange, Culture, Pacific (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 1-23. Several other thinkers have also influenced this article, including Commodities in Cultural Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Perspective R. "A New (New York, 1986), 3-63; Christopher L. Miller and George Hamell, on Contact: Cultural and Colonial Perspective Indian-White Symbols Trade," no. 2 Laurier Journal of American History 73, (September 1986): 311-28; Turgeon, an no. 1 "The Tale of the Kettle: Odyssey of Intercultural Object," Ethnohistory 44, Van Settlement: (Winter 1997): 1-29; Cynthia Jean Zandt, "Negotiating in Atlantic North Colonialism, Cultural Exchange, and Conflict Early Colonial David America, 1580-1660" (Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1998); Murray, Power in Indian-White Mass., Indian Giving: Economies of Exchanges (Amherst, Value and Material 2000); Fred R. Myers, ed., The Empire of Things: Regimes of Heads: Culture (Santa Fe, N.Mex., 2001), 3-61; Regina Janes, Losing Our Beheadings Heads in Literature and Culture (New York, 2005), esp. chap. 5, "African and Imperial D?colletage: Beheadings in the Colonies," 139-75. EXCHANGE OF BODY PARTS IN THE PEQUOT WAR 5 At first heads, hands, and scalps conveyed simple messages about trust were natives and power that understood by and newcomers, strengthening their partnership during the campaign against the Yet such communications obscured Pequots. any pidgin many secondary about what the meanings, causing disagreements exactly exchanges sym some bolized. In the years following the war, Indians became disillu sioned with their alliance with colonists, arguing that it was built on of cultural sameness and that the were violat faulty assumptions English its fundamental terms. These demonstrate the ing exchanges peculiar of frontier at this in the colonization character relationships early stage of New a at a moment when England. By attempting military conquest they could not yet assert cultural hegemony, colonists dealt with Indians in that were at once and ways aggressive accommodating.3 When reading descriptions of the English spectacle of drawing and quar to tering and the Algonquian ritual of torturing captives, it is tempting 3 In the voluminous historiography of the Pequot War, few scholars have as a emphasized cultural accommodation major feature of the English victory, to out though that appears be changing. Jenny Hale Pulsipher points the large in degree of negotiation and flexibility the early stage of Indian-English relationships in war were a New England and argues that the years after the 1637 turning point. See unto Same Pulsipher, Subjects the King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England (Philadelphia, 2005), 8-36. More typical is the debate between Hirsh Karr Adam J. and Ronald Dale about the English incineration a on of Pequot village the Mystic River. Hirsch posits that English frustration with to resort to a new the Indians' military tactics caused the colonists ruthless form of frontier whereas Karr to was not a combat, insists that the decision burn the village saw as novel tactic; instead, it reflected how the colonists the Pequots illegitimate enemies. Despite their differences, both scholars emphasize "drastic cultural imbal to ances" and "the failure establish reciprocity between the military cultures of the English Puritan forces and the Pequots." See Hirsch, "The Collision of Military in New no. Cultures Seventeenth-Century England," Journal ofAmerican History 74, 4 (March 1988): 1187-1212 ("drastic cultural imbalances," 1209); Karr, "'Why Should You Be So Furious?' The Violence of the Pequot War," Journal of American History no. to 85, 3 (December 1998): 876-909 ("failure establish reciprocity," 909). Much on war a of the literature the builds from debate between the self-confessed puritan hater Francis and the reluctant Jennings puritan apologist Alden T. Vaughan. See 2 Vaughan, "Pequots and Puritans: The Causes of theWar of 1637," WMQ 21, no. (April 1964): 256-69; Vaughan, The New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620?167$ (Boston, 1965), 93-154; Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, and the Cant Colonialism, of Conquest (New York, 1975), 177-227; Vaughan, and Puritans: The Causes of War of *n "Pequots the 1637," Roots ofAmerican Racism: on Essays the Colonial Experience (New York, 1995), 177-99. The most detailed treat ment to is Alfred A. War date Cave, The Pequot (Amherst, Mass., 1996). Other major interpretations include Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, and the Europeans, Making ofNew England, 1500?1643 (New York, 1982), 166-239; Laurence M. "The War and Its in Hauptman, Pequot Legacies," The Pequots in New an Southern England: The Fall and Rise of American Indian Nation, ed. 6 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY conclude that the two traditions of human butchery were essentially so alike. But doing obscures the vast differences between the social structures of the two peoples and ignores how violent acts can be shaped by larger cultural contexts.
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