Pequot War – Feminism and Religion

When I offered to write the FAR post for Thanksgiving a month ago, I had no idea how difficult I would find that task to be. I suppose I had a different vision of what these days would be like. I had no idea how heartsick and wordless I would become in the wake of a second and even more bizarre and dangerous Trump presidency. It hardly feels like a time for celebrating a national holiday.

Thanksgiving in the United States and the colonies before has gone through several iterations – from the mythologized feast of the Puritan colonists in Plymouth, Massachusetts with the indigenous Wampanoag following the successful corn harvest – corn the Wampanoag had taught the Puritans how to plant after half of them had starved to death the previous winter; to George Washington’s Thanksgiving proclamation giving thanks for the successful ratification of the US Constitution; to Abraham Lincoln in 1863 acceding to Sarah Josepha Hale’s 36-year quest to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday — “to heal the wounds of the nation.” Goddess knows we could use that now, but it seems farther out of reach than ever.

Lesser known is the proclamation of a day of thanksgiving by the Massachusetts Bay Company to celebrate their defeat of the Pequot nation following the Pequot Wars of 1636-1638 in which most of the Pequot peoples were killed or enslaved, giving rise to many indigenous peoples observing Thanksgiving as a National Day of Mourning.

When I wrote about Anne Hutchinson as America’s first feminist theologian a few years ago, I mentioned that I had a Sackett ancestor living in Boston at the time, who might well have been a follower of Hutchinson. That branch of my family tree has since been shown to be false. Recently, while looking into the branch that replaced it, I discovered that in 1637 my 9x great-grandfather William Wodell was required to turn in all of his guns and other weapons because he had been “seduced” and led into “dangerous errors” by a Mr. Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson.

In 1643 William Wodell was charged with “heresy and sedition” in relation to “blasphemous errors.” He was convicted and banned from Boston. He retreated to property he had purchased in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, which had been founded by the Hutchinsons and others fleeing persecution in Boston. Wodell became a respected member of the Quaker community in Portsmouth, holding a number of important public offices before his death some 50 years later.

My happiness at finding an ancestor whose convictions I could admire, was to be short-lived. The next morning, I discovered that in 1677 the respected Quaker William Wodell bought a 6 year-old Indian girl who had been captured in King Phillip’s War. Indian women and children were captured and sold as slaves during both the Pequot War (1636-1638) and King Phillip’s War (1675-1676). Some of those captured were sent to the West Indies, while others were purchased by English colonists. Continue reading “Quaker Ancestor Buys 6 Year-Old Indian Captive by Carol P. Christ”