The Death of Sarah Hopewell: The Intersection of Colonial Law and Indigenous Jurispractice

In the spring of 1704, Joseph Belding (or Belden) of Wethersfield attended a meeting of the Hartford County probate court and exhibited an inventory of the estate of his tenant, Sarah Hopewell, “an Indian woman late of said Wethersfield,” deceased. Belding's meticulous inventory, in which he painstakingly recorded every morsel of fish bone fertilizer and every thread of yarn, amounted to less than a month's labor for a typical colonial farmer. One might be tempted to assume that it was the practice of colonists in New England to be thorough in inventories. Historians have praised the value of estate inventories for their attention to detail, and the probate coverage in Connecticut was especially thorough and free of wealth bias.1 It was not common practice, though, for colonists to record the inventories of Native people, even those who lived among them. Such estate administrations were rare. When Sarah Hopewell died intestate, her landlord could have tossed her meager belongings into the bottom of a well, cleaned out the dwelling, and moved on without suffering any consequences from the probate court. Instead, he spent two years getting the estate through probate and distributed its tiny residue to beneficiaries.2The law went to work on the estate of Sarah Hopewell, but if one were to see this as simply the workings of English colonial law, one would be mistaken. What happened to Sarah Hopewell's estate was a result of the mixing of English and Indigenous jurispractice.3 Sarah Hopewell's life was lived in the hybridized world of both Indigenous and English legal norms, and her death was no different. The colony's approach to Indigenous legal matters was complex, the outgrowth of a Puritan approach to legal reform and two bloody wars.The Pequot War of 1637, which began in part with an unprovoked settler attack in Wethersfield upon the Wangunk grandsachem Sequin (also known as Sowheage) and his people, upset the expectations of both colonial and Indigenous leaders. Angered by the attack, the Wangunk sought help from the Pequot, who launched a subsequent attack upon the Wethersfield colonists in retaliation. After the brutal war's end in 1638, in which the Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut colonies, with the help of Narragansett and Mohegan warriors, defeated the Pequot, the English began their gradual attempt to regulate all Native-colonist relationships.4 In 1650, the Connecticut Colony enacted a statute that dictated the relationship between the colony and the Native Tribes. Indigenous people who lived in or near English settlements had to declare their sachem, or chief political leader, so that the sachem could then pay the colony for any “trespasses as shall be committed by any Indian.” In particular the colony took away a defense in the event Indians were accused of killing livestock; if they claimed it was done by strangers, they had to be able to say by whom and hand him over. If the English hurt Indigenous people, the colony agreed to compensate them, either by making the individual pay or by paying from the treasury if the individual could not pay.5During King Philip's War (1675–76), the Wangunk living at Nayaug (South Glastonbury) were placed under the “government” of Owaneco, the eldest son of the Mohegan sachem Uncas. Several Wangunk leaders were held hostage, among them Turramuggus, the sachem of Pyquag (Wethersfield) and Massecup, the son of the Narragansett sachem Miantinomi and Wawarme, daughter of the Wangunk sachem Sowheag.6 After King Philip's War in 1676, the Native peoples’ relationships with the New England colonial governments changed. In the spring of 1678, the Shetucket River Valley became a receiver of men, women and children known as “the surrenderers.” The Native families at Shetucket were Nipmuck, Wangunk, Podunk, Narragansett, Niantic, and others, some Christians from praying towns established by the Rev. John Eliot before the war. They came into the valley as both prisoners—because they were not free to leave—and refugees, because they were unsettled by the war and unable to return home. They huddled into a makeshift settlement known simply as Shetucket. It was not a natural village, and as the Surrenders poured in, they were met by their new, self-appointed overseers, James Fitch and Owaneco. In his report concerning the twenty-nine men and their families who came in, Fitch told the governor and assistants of Connecticut that the people of Norwich had consented to allow the surrenderers to remain at the prison settlement for a year.7 It would become ten.According to Linford Fisher, “surrenderers often found themselves subjected to similar treatment as enemy Indians,” which included being sold abroad, resettled away from their homelands, bound in servitude, or having their children removed and raised by the English.8 Connecticut gave amnesty to surrenderers who gave up their arms and willingly submitted. Native people had hunting, fishing and planting rights in the reserve at Shetucket. Margaret Newell argues that “Connecticut was the only colony that made a sustained effort to distinguish Indian ‘surrenderers’ from ‘captives.’”9 Newell concluded Connecticut hoped to create a “hybrid society within the confines of English town life” for re-educated surrenderers.10Sarah Hopewell resided in the colonial town of Wethersfield, which had been the Wangunk village of Pyquag. She lived among the Wangunk people, whose loyalties during the Pequot War and King Philip's War were never above suspicion in the colonists’ minds. Some Wangunk women worked in colonial homes, and Indigenous women and girls were farm laborers on settler properties in the Wangunk homelands.11 Sarah Hopewell, however, lived on her own in a rented dwelling. Her unique background and circumstances made her a liminal figure in a period of great transition.In the early eighteenth century as now, New England in springtime was wet, though its winters were colder and snowier. Rains fell hard, melting large snowfalls and leaving the ground saturated. The rains often began in February, followed by hard freezes and then by more rain in March.12 The alluvial Connecticut River underwent periodic flooding, especially during the Spring thaw. On March 24, 1704, someone found the body of Sarah Hopewell in the upper end of the Wethersfield meadow, part of the 3,500 acres of meadow that extended from Hartford to Glastonbury.13 An inquest was assembled to identify the body, and the coroner's jury included a number of the town's distinguished gentlemen. They also established the cause of death: she had drowned. The minutes of the Court of Assistants note that until the jury examined the body, her identity remained unknown.14 How she was identified, they did not say. It might have been by facial recognition, by her clothing, or by marks or tattoos.15 Whoever found her was perhaps unacquainted with her, or possibly decomposition had begun. Two days after the inquest, Joseph Belding paid six shillings and seven-and-a-half pence to a Wangunk man named Naneceat to bury her.16 Where Naneceat took her corpse, the record does not say.Quick burials were customary. No mention was made of a funeral, and no money allocated for it among the list of debts, but persons of rank had them. When Sarah Onepenny the Elder died in 1713, her sons had to sell land to pay for her funeral. When Ann, the “Queen Dowager of the Monahagan (Mohegan) Indians,” died in 1774, she too received a funeral “in a Manner suitable to her high Rank.”17 Those women were sunksquaws, women associated with chiefly status who “wielded significant political authority” and who were above the station of Sarah Hopewell.18 Female colonists were sometimes buried quickly and without fanfare or funerals. Gershom Bulkeley's wife, from a family of substantial means, was interred at sunset just one day after she passed away in Wethersfield.19 There are indications that Sarah Hopewell was a well-connected woman and that her poverty-stricken circumstances were an artifact of her standing in the colonial world rather than the Native world.Although Naneceat, the man who buried her, was paid for his services, he likely also had a personal connection to Sarah Hopewell. He was almost certainly the son of Nanico, a man who had lived near the Ben Hollister farm in the Red Hill section of what is now Glastonbury, a place the Native people called Nayaug. The site is on a terrace perched above the east bank of the Connecticut River.20 To the colonists, the area was part of Wethersfield until 1690, when it separated.21 The Nanico family may have lived in traditional dwellings (“wigwams”), but more likely lived in log or frame homes. Nanico died in 1693, when he was left lying unconscious on the ground by a colonist who struck him.22 He had a son, Masheapooh, as well as a daughter, Tahamisk, and grandson, Panhackshun. Only a short time before Sarah Hopewell's death Nanico's descendants had been named as heirs in the probated wills of Pampenum, the sunksquaw of Thirty Mile Island.23The family was well known to the colonists. Samuel Kircombe, the man who attacked Nanico, was arrested and put on trial. Colonists testified to the state of Nanico's health at that time. Goodwife Mary Harris, the wife of Walter, knew Nanico had been under the weather before the fatal encounter because he had told her that he had been sick.24 This exchange of information between Native people and colonists was not unusual in a community where Native people exchanged goods with English housewives.25A jury found Kircombe guilty of “not having the fear of God” in him and striking Nanico, which may have led to his death. They fined him ten pounds, eight of which went to the colony and two to Nanico's family. Kircombe also had to pay Nanico's family “twelve good Coats of duffel, each two yards.”26 The punishment, which appears to us now as inadequate justice, shows colonial accommodation to the Indigenous principle of reciprocity by compensating harm through gift-giving.27 A representative for Kircombe delivered fourteen coats (two more than ordered) to Nanico's family in keeping with the tradition of most northeastern Native polities. They “accepted the same and promised friendship to Said Kircomb for the future. And the Said Kircomb having also Satisfyed and paid what is due to the Master of the Gaol, he was released from prison.”28 The Nanico family was probably like many Indigenous families in southern New England, “neither fully integrated into English society nor fully traditional in their identities or worldview.”29When Naneceat buried Sarah Hopewell, he may have followed the customs of his ancestors, or he may have followed the ways of colonists or something in between. Douglas Winiarski found that many Wampanoag people who had converted to Christianity maintained hybrid mortuary practices. They positioned the bodies in the grave with the head facing south, but they did not bury the body in the fetal position as they would have before conversion. Instead, bodies were stretched out. Grave goods were still included, but they changed from beads and arrowheads to bells and other items of English manufacture.30 At the Red Hill site in Glastonbury, Connecticut, archaeologists later discovered the buried remains of Indigenous people from the Early Woodland period, including one woman about fifty years old, who were placed in the traditional “fetal position” with red ochre in their graves.31 One person's head was pointed east, with the face positioned to the south.32 This positioning of the corpse was often used in later periods by Indigenous people and been found in the Woodland period in Sarah Hopewell may have been interred in just a who was probably the same as Naneceat, was one of the heirs to whom Belding distributed the of Sarah Hopewell's to in the probate appears in as her estate was and Sarah Onepenny he received a When each of them was Joseph a and to to an this Joseph could have been a Wethersfield Joseph is more the of the sachem and governor of the Pequot, The Pequot man named Joseph was the for a to the Wampanoag at on a to in 1713, gave her high The family was and the on the could be Indigenous in the of the of lived to the of and Sarah Onepenny resided at on one of the Wangunk Sarah Onepenny the was and her was the a of the of Thirty Mile Sarah Onepenny the Elder land about of where Sarah Hopewell's body was found in the of Sarah the was Turramuggus, the sachem of the Wangunk who resided in the Wethersfield area for most of his Turramuggus, the Onepenny and had all in the land in Wethersfield, and the Wangunk village of Sarah Hopewell no she maintained to the was one of two Wangunk probably and The was a of the sachem who a number of Rev. the in a to He the Indians was a family for in the It was on the English by an Indian called and a of many years was in her in this have been them on persons where the most English have not been The to which was an of the that English to as or he died in in where he is and may have lived into his to the colony's when a died without a sons and were to of their eldest sons received a If the died without and When a without died intestate, the state could the it could the that did not with Sarah Hopewell's she died without any living in the English It may be that Connecticut Colony for a of when it distributed her estate to who may have been Sarah Hopewell's or Hopewell was a woman without a known at a time when Native people were so Her death a was Niantic, and Joseph who was Pequot, was of Her the was Hopewell, an Indigenous man who was the only to be a in received in and in not as an but rather as a Her and are a In a town of Connecticut, as that he came from a Native settlement in Connecticut, but this is because of his early in It is his came from The Hopewell, an English that many of the of from England to New England, but it is also his was a of an is the Massachusetts for for He may have been the of the of Connecticut, near the Indigenous town of a Some for the in the by the people, and it is Hopewell was probably in the perhaps in the The Hopewell made two to New in in a he had at with of a in up and a Native woman named also known as In then the of Rev. gave in for had to and when to she was to the made no When left for England in to become one of he may have released from her or she may have the of in the and on was recorded in the of One was in with the New He was with colonists, he would them on the The by his him up but gave him a to to He was unable to who would up his but the of his status and about their in a Native man with the of they might have a him to and him to New Colony in and moved to where he became an of the The town him a and acres of was not in but she was with her She gave to Sarah on A years after to the family left for sold his to and In they had a daughter, and he a in In March was and a for him and his The family was into and in the in and removed to He later and died in in his in was still known as the later in were on the Hopewell until when was in with She was her own on and to shillings a to the at or before the of March or upon body, when Court and pay of which is Such between English men and Native women were not common in Connecticut, but between colonists and Indigenous women were less years later on at Wethersfield, Hollister and “an Indian or were to for to was the son of John and he was years at the time of the trial. In Harris, the of Mary who had testified in Nanico's inquest, to by a on acres of lived near Indigenous people, and the encounter that him in court may have been the result of a a or a had a with the On he was arrested and fined for as the at with the and a It is who the woman In Hopewell was Her family was In Wethersfield, the woman was Sarah would have been about to years in would have been about until her death in did Sarah in the of a court. She was just years when she it appears was deceased. only Sarah had a probated life in her She had and as for and and She and a for and that she either was or that she perhaps from the to on clothing, and It appears she may have had a in which she sold Her personal included and some Indian and fish She had a of for her own or to be sold is She also had a perhaps for to see they in their In all it was only a the and eighteenth it was not for Indigenous women to be in the of colonists. Sarah Hopewell, though, was and not in as her had Native women in the colonial period and into the century also and for colonists’ they were their as they from town to Sarah Hopewell, on the other was a and with a home. Native women in their traditional in Connecticut were but they also worked with their in a They with the and were with both and alluvial made to is some that Sarah had a on the fish in the inventory, she probably did not She does not to have had a farm in the meadow where she and she was probably to items rather than Hopewell appears to have never had a or Her life to that or this from her unusual status or her own is hard to English women remained under the of their or those men and as an Native woman living in an English she may have been to to those It is also her Indigenous placed her in a liminal position between colonial and the women who lived in Native or on New England towns had a of to for those without or for those who were not under the of but Sarah was a woman who to be for her own as her was the Sarah had to a or but he was who her was a significant legal did not in any Indigenous if the inventory is as it appears to In a would have been from the high and of and Sarah had and other but is no mention of or or the so often found in There were no all of the were either or Her and may have been Native or English and likely were though was not was also She and a and a a with on her and on her There is no of the or beads by other Native women among her She did a a of that other Native women may have as well, as it appears in other inventories. a who died in left similar as Sarah Hopewell though she had more of women did not in the colonial period, but did their English was from England or including Sarah a inventory of that included and personal Sarah goods in and of less that that and of Native people into Belding began the probate of Sarah Hopewell's he was years and mention in the of the town and colony a man of He had a in the town of Wethersfield, as well as of other including land and the He land in the meadow in which Sarah Hopewell before Nanico's he and up his with Native people and what he knew about them be known but he lived people who had Indian as well as Native When Belding was a Mary and Joseph moved to Mary had been during King Philip's Her was the in Wethersfield in but died after they Mary a of her in and to in the town until she passed away in at Belding also would have known of the on the family of Belding or who moved from Wethersfield wife and children were in the Indigenous attack on in Samuel of who up for a short time in Wethersfield, still in the Indian and that took place during his Hopewell was not an Indigenous woman living in a though it could that from a of the colonial was she an part of as one might from the of of the of Wethersfield Connecticut, to mention Her and her to Native made her a figure of to her own was living in a She English and had not she used with as a woman who had no man or for her, Sarah Hopewell may have been to colonial clothing, or she may have in this world with money or her life that of a English The of Sarah Hopewell English is that in the colonial record after her she appears more than all the of the Indigenous in Sarah Hopewell, in the colonial record her was It is only if the colonial is as that her is a Sarah Hopewell's had an Indigenous known to the colonists. It is likely Sarah but not what it Her to have been the Native people the families of Nanico, Sarah and who all had in the Wangunk from to Pyquag Nayaug and Mile and as well as with the Sarah Hopewell may have been Niantic, in the part of her her were with the the probated before in all had a connection with either or the Onepenny and the Onepenny family had a with her she was in the meadow, perhaps or other Her body was by an Indigenous Naneceat, for Her estate was distributed to Native people, all of whom were in their Indigenous The death of Sarah Hopewell is the death of an Indigenous woman in the Wangunk village of Pyquag. she was called by an English in a town with an English her Indigenous identity is in the of recorded at her death.