Swindler Sachem: The American Indian Who Sold His Birthright, Dropped Out of Harvard, and Conned the King of England

by Jenny Hale Pulsipher

Overview

Indians, too, could play the land game for both personal and political benefit

According to his kin, John Wompas was “no sachem,” although he claimed that status to achieve his economic and political ends. He drew on the legal and political practices of both Indians and the English—even visiting and securing the support of King Charles II—to legitimize the land sales that funded his extravagant spending. But he also used the knowledge acquired in his English education to defend the land and rights of his fellow Nipmucs.

Jenny Hale Pulsipher’s biography offers a window on seventeenth-century New England and the Atlantic world from the unusual perspective of an American Indian who, even though he may not have been what he claimed, was certainly out of the ordinary. Drawing on documentary and anthropological sources as well as consultations with Native people, Pulsipher shows how Wompas turned the opportunities and hardships of economic, cultural, religious, and political forces in the emerging English empire to the benefit of himself and his kin.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300214932
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	06/19/2018
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Jenny Hale Pulsipher is associate professor of history at Brigham Young University and author of Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

A Note on the Text xiii

Introduction 1

1 "The Place of Their Desires": Hassanamesit 9

2 "Prask That Was Wife to John Wompas": The Pequot War and the Enslavement of Ann Prask 31

3 "To Bee Trained Up Among the English": John Wompas and the Civilizing Project 50

4 "My Proper Right & Inheritance": John Wompas and the English Land Market 85

5 "I Cherish a Desire to Be at Sea": John Wompas and the Maritime Atlantic 110

6 "New England Hath Lost the Day": John Wompas Protests to the English Crown 129

7 "Hee Had Lost a Great Many Men in the Warr": The Nipmucs and Ann Wompas in King Philip's War 157

8 "The English Did Wrong Them About Their Lands": The Political Awakening of John Wompas 176

9 "Royall Protection": John Wompas, Subject Status, and the English Crown 203

10 "One Piece of Land to Cling on To": The Hassanamisco Reservation 224

Appendix 1 Land Transactions of John Wompas and Ann Prask Wompas, 1662-1679 255

Appendix 2 People and Places Connected to John Wompas 262

Chronology of Key Events 267

Notes 271

Index 353

Editorial Reviews

Pulsipher has done remarkable work in archives on both sides of the Atlantic to reconstruct the life of John Wompas, and in doing so, she sheds new light on the dispossession of New England Indians and the strate- gies they used to survive the onslaught of colonization”—Timothy J. Shannon, American Historical Review

Winner of the 2019 Norris and Carol Hundley Prize, sponsored by the American Historical Association- Pacific Coast Branch (PCB-AHA)

“Pieced together from scraps of evidence from dozens of archives, Jenny Pulsipher’s startling story of John Wompas is a tour de force of historical imagination and reconstruction.”—Richard Lyman Bushman, Gouverneur Morris Professor of History Emeritus, Columbia University  

"In an act of archival wizardry, Jenny Hale Pulsipher has recreated the life of John Wompas, a trans-Atlantic traveler and one-time Harvard student whose personal experiences reveal how one remarkable Nipmuc took control of his life in the midst of never-ending challenges. Swindler Sachem expands our understanding of indigenous New England in unexpected ways."—Peter C. Mancall, author of Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson—A Tale of Mutiny and Murder in the Arctic  

"No one knows the archives of New England colonialism better than Jenny Pulsipher. Only she could recover the story of John Wompas, who got the last laugh on his many foes."—Daniel K. Richter, University of Pennsylvania  

From the Publisher

"No one knows the archives of New England colonialism better than Jenny Pulsipher. Only she could recover the story of John Wompas, who got the last laugh on his many foes."—Daniel K. Richter, University of Pennsylvania
 

Daniel K. Richter

"In an act of archival wizardry, Jenny Hale Pulsipher has recreated the life of John Wompas, a trans-Atlantic traveler and one-time Harvard student whose personal experiences reveal how one remarkable Nipmuc took control of his life in the midst of never-ending challenges. Swindler Sachem expands our understanding of indigenous New England in unexpected ways."—Peter C. Mancall, author of Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson—A Tale of Mutiny and Murder in the Arctic
 

Peter C. Mancall

“Pieced together from scraps of evidence from dozens of archives, Jenny Pulsipher’s startling story of John Wompas is a tour de force of historical imagination and reconstruction.”—Richard Lyman Bushman, Gouverneur Morris Professor of History Emeritus, Columbia University
 

Richard Lyman Bushman