Defending and Defrauding the Indians

Abstract

As Jenny Pulsipher recounts, the mid-seventeenth-century Nipmuc Indian John Wompas familiarized himself with both Native and settler concepts of land tenure, distribution, and sales, becoming adept at switching opportunistically between them in his career as a speculator and (untrustworthy) intermediary. Wompas emerged out of a world where Natives used English law to defend their land rights, while colonists deployed Indian law to deny those rights. He outstripped his contemporaries in his skill at drawing on his Native identity to obtain land, then manipulating English law to sell and record this land, and later switching to Indian norms to evade obstacles put in his way by colonial authorities. By drawing on both Native and English legal practices, Wompas aimed to make land transactions intelligible to both sides, thus increasing the chances that sales would be accepted.