Indentured Indigenous Children

July 22, 1676

As the number of captive Indigenous people grew in the summer of 1676, Plymouth Colony began to contemplate how to “manage” the influx of captives in a way that best served their Colonial community.

On July 22, 1676, Plymouth officials resolved that captive Indigenous children would be indentured by the colony to English households as servants. Technically, indentured servitude was a specific period of service which would have typically expired at the colonial age of majority - eighteen for girls, twenty-one for boys - during which time the child would serve in the household. In general, these contracts often stipulated some form of education or training in a trade or European domestic responsibilities, religious education in the church of their indenture holder, and that the servant was to receive one good suit of clothes for their body upon the expiration of the indenture.

In the specific contracts of the children indentured by Plymouth Colony in 1676, Colonial officials required that the indenture holder “provide y^t [that] the children bee religiously educated & taught to read the English tounge [sic].” (1) Published as part of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts records in 1916, these indentures included the names and ages of the children, who they were indentured to (and sometimes where), and, if available, the name of their parents or other kin and which tribe they were part of.

Among the indentured were “A boy & two Girls to Mr Jerimiah Shepard of Rowley, a boy named Absolom his father of the same name late of Manehage aged about ten yeares. To him a girl sister to the Lad named Sarah aged eleven yeares. These [illegible] of Naticke. To [Shepard] another girle aged about 8 yeares her named Jane her father & mother dead [sic]”

1. A list of the captive Indigenous children indentured to English households was documented by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, originally published as a colonial memorandum dated August 10, 1676. See “A list of the captive Indian children who, in 1676, were distributed among Massachusetts households.” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Vol. 19, Transactions, 1916-1917. December Meeting, 1916.