Newport, RI

In the wake of the Pequot War in New England in 1637, seventeen Indians -- fifteen boys and two women -- were ordered to be sent out England by Massachusetts officials. Hundreds of captives had been taken English Puritans as a result of the colonists' triumphs in battle at Mistick Great Swamp. Subsequently, many Pequot men were put to death, while were divided up among the soldiers, given to the Narragansetts, or assigned the Connecticut or Massachusetts colonies. The seventeen women however, were placed on board the Salem-built craft of Captain Pierce marked for sale in the remote Atlantic island of Bermuda. For some reason, tain Pierce missed his landing and continued on to the West Indies. Once Pierce deposited his cargo on the tiny Puritan outpost off the coast of at Providence Island where, by a stroke of the Providence Island Company's pen, the rebel Pequots were transformed into "cannibal negroes," condemned to serve out their lives in slavery in Anglo-America's first true slave society.