On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. Over the weeks that followed, Americans gathered in town squares, churches, coffeehouses, and taverns to hear it read aloud.
They heard “that all men are created equal.” They also heard the Declaration’s last grievance against King George III, which charged the King with bringing “the merciless Indian Savages” down on the inhabitants of the frontiers. That line was read aloud too, in every town, to every crowd.
Alongside the War for Independence that Americans fought in on the East Coast, there was a second Revolutionary War being fought on the western edge of colonial British America, where early Americans enslaved Indigenous people in order to dispossess them of their land.
Linford Fisher, author of Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History, and Lorén Spears, executive director of the Tomaquag Museum, join us to investigate this once-hidden history and what it reveals about the American Revolution.
About the Show
Ben Franklin’s World is a podcast about early American history.
It is a show for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.
Episode Summary
Linford Fisher is a professor of history and the faculty director of the Center for Digital Scholarship at Brown University. He has research expertise in the cultural and religious history of colonial North America and the Atlantic World. He’s also the author of Stealing America: The Hidden History of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History.
Lorén Spears is an enrolled Narragansett tribal citizen and the executive director of the Tomaquag Museum. She is an author, artist, and curator who was recently inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame. Together, Lin, Lorén, and their tribal partners helped build Stolen Relations, a collaborative digital database that documents the lives of enslaved Indigenous people.
-
- Why stealing people and stealing land were not two separate practices but one process
- How the American Revolution opened what Fisher calls a permissible space for captive raiding on the western frontier
- How Dawnland nations weighed which side to take during the Revolution
What You’ll Discover
- The Declaration of Independence’s overlooked grievance against Indigenous people
- The scale of Indigenous enslavement in early America
- How Linford Fisher arrived at his estimate of more than half a million enslaved Indigenous people
- The archival sources that document Indigenous enslavement
- How the Stolen Relations project was built with tribal collaboration
- What it means to decolonize an archive
- The difference between a name unknown and a name once known
- How Indigenous enslavement differed from African chattel slavery
- The connection between Indigenous enslavement and land dispossession
- English colonial experimentation with Indigenous enslavement in the seventeenth century
- How the American Revolution expanded the practice of Indigenous enslavement
- How Native nations weighed neutrality, alliance, and survival during the Revolution
- Indigenous and African-descended service in the First Rhode Island Regiment
- The Treaty of Paris and the continuation of Indigenous dispossession
- Native survivance, from St. David’s Island in Bermuda to the Dawnlands today
Links to People, Places, and Publications
- Linford Fisher
- Lorén Spears
- Tomaquag Museum
- Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas
- Linford D. Fisher, Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History
- Linford D. Fisher, Sheila M. McIntyre, and Julie A. Fisher, Reading Roger Williams: Rogue Puritans, Indigenous Nations, and the Founding of America—A Documentary History
- Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America
- Robert A. Geake and Lorén M. Spears, From Slaves to Soldiers: The 1st Rhode Island Regiment in the American Revolution
- The Declaration of Independence
- Silvermoon LaRose, cover artist, Stealing America
- Dawn Spears, cover artist, Stolen Relations
- Ella Wilcox Sekatau, Narragansett elder and ethnohistorian
- Transcript
1776 in Context
How and why do you think we should incorporate this largely forgotten history of Indigenous enslavement into our commemorations and memories of the American Revolution and the founding of the United States?
Complementary Episodes
🎧 Episode 139: The Other Slavery
🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America
🎧 Episode 264: The Treaty of Canandaigua
🎧 Episode 323: American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder
🎧 Episode 367: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 1
🎧 Episode 368: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 2
🎧 Episode 406: Threads of Power: How Haudenosaunee Women & Fashion Shaped History
Support Our Work
Love what you hear on Ben Franklin’s World?
Support the show and help us keep history accessible, independent, and deeply researched. Make a tax-deductible donation at benfranklinsworld.com/donate.
Request a Topic
📨 Topic Request Form
📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.com
When You’re Ready
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter
👩💻 BFW Listener Community
🌍 The History Explorers Club
Take the Quiz
🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)
👉https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quiz
Connect
🦋 Liz on Bluesky
👩💻 Liz on LinkedIn
🛜 Liz’s Website
Listen!
Enjoy the Podcast? Follow it!
| 
Say Thanks
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
💚 Leave a rating on Spotify
* All book links are for the Ben Franklin’s World Bookshop, the official affiliate bookstore of Bookshop.org. By purchasing a book with our affiliate links, you help support this podcast.
Ben Franklin’s World is a production of Clio Digital Media. To advertise on Ben Franklin’s World, contact liz@benfranklinsworld.com.