Dominique Williams looks out on Bermuda’s turquoise waters. Waves lap against the shore.
When she stands here, on St. David's Island in eastern Bermuda, she thinks of her ancestors and the generations of family members who came before her.
"I think of the struggles that they went through when they came here to Bermuda, when they were taken away from their actual homeland, brought to this small island," she said.
Centuries ago, Williams' ancestors arrived on these shores as captives. They were Native Americans, enslaved in New England by Europeans and trafficked to Bermuda on ships.
In Bermuda, stories were passed down through the generations. Bermuda Natives knew their ancestors were taken from a far-away place.
At the same time in New England, in stories passed down through the generations, Native peoples knew their ancestors had been taken to a far-away place.
For centuries, they were separated by an ocean. But they knew their loved ones were out there.
Only in the past -decades have Native peoples in New England and Bermuda found each other – a reconnection centuries in the making.
Now they're together again.
Taking Natives from the land
It's an almost-unknown chapter in American history, nearly erased from U.S. textbooks: Native American slavery.
Native slavery in the Americas began in the late 1400s and surged in New England after two wars against Native peoples in the 1630s and 1670s.
In the 1630s, the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the emerging colony of Connecticut wanted to expand into Pequot territory. The Pequot Nation was one of the most powerful nations in the region. When the Pequots resisted, New England colonists – with Native allies – waged a genocidal war to exterminate the Pequots. The Pequot War (1637-1638) led to the enslavement of hundreds of Natives.
King Philip’s War, also known as Metacom’s Rebellion (1675-1678), was a brutal conflict in southern New England between colonists and a group of Native nations. It's considered one of the deadliest wars per capita in American history. Hundreds of Natives were enslaved
Scholars estimate that around the year 1700, there were as many enslaved Natives as there were enslaved Africans in colonial New England.
Scholars are only beginning to grasp the scope of what happened.
Ultimately, slavery became a business – a business that helped early colonies pay back debts and fund new settlements, said Mack Scott, a Brown University historian and citizen of the Narragansett Tribe in Rhode Island.
"New England’s economic system is built within the slave trade," Scott said. "And this lasts until after slavery is over in the United States.
Slavery was also tied to stealing Native land.
"And it's extremely effective," Scott said. "You’re pushing people out of the centers that you want to be in."
Natives from Northeastern tribes were captured, bought and sold. And after the Pequot War, Pequots were also enslaved by other tribes.
Women and children were typically enslaved in New England households. But men could be shipped overseas, sometimes traded for enslaved Africans.
Colonists upended Indigenous peoples’ connection to land that, for thousands of years, was central to Native identity.
"Native people were extremely afraid of being enslaved, more so a lot of times than dying," Scott said. "Because if you are enslaved and you’re taken from your land, you’re not going to be buried in this place. You’re not going to have those connections to your ancestors and to your children in the future.
"This was very scary for Indigenous peoples."
Enslaved Natives were sent to a variety of destinations, including the Azores, Tangier, France, Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, even Mexico. And Bermuda, an archipelago about 800 miles south of New England and 600 miles east of North Carolina.
-Bermuda was first colonized in 1609. When settlers arrived they found an uninhabited island. Soon after, it became a bustling center of the Atlantic slave trade. European vessels would stop on their way to the Caribbean.
Once in Bermuda, most enslaved Natives were sent to St. David’s Island. In this remote spot, a unique culture was born. Enslaved Natives intermarried with enslaved and free Africans and Europeans.
A mysterious princess story
Through the centuries, Dominique Williams’s family passed down stories, generation to generation. The tale of a princess was a favorite, and held a special air of mystery.
"Possibly that there was some Indigenous woman who was the wife of a sachem or a chief," Williams said. "She and her son were brought to Bermuda. So I remember hearing all of these stories."
An ocean away in New England, David Weeden grew up hearing the same stories about Bermuda. Weeden, a citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe in Massachusetts, learned the name of the princess: Wootonekanuske, wife of a renowned Wampanoag chief. His name was Metacom, also known as King Philip. When Metacom was killed, his wife and family were sold into slavery. But no one knew what had happened to his family.
"One of the variants of the story is that his family were sent to the Caribbean," Weeden said. "And Bermuda was mentioned as a place where they ended up."
But there are limited historical records of enslaved people imported to Bermuda. Those that exist can be misleading. That’s one reason why Native slavery is so hidden. For example, Indigenous people were often misidentified as Black.
And in Bermuda, colonists called all Native peoples Mohawk.
"And repeated it over and over, generation after generation, until the people themselves believed they were Mohawk for a period of time," said Michael Thomas of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation. "To steal people from their place and their people is one thing. To purposefully prevent them from reconnecting or even understanding who they are is a different level of inhumanity."
'We are somebody'
Through the years, Bermuda Natives had lots of questions about where they came from. That included Williams' mother, Lottie.
"Growing up, we knew we were somebody, but we didn’t know who we were," she said.
Lottie Wiliams remembers being mocked and teased.
"They would call you names, but you know, you’re children, OK, well, fine," she said. "But as you got older and start to get educated … "
Her voice trails off and she starts to cry.
"We are somebody."
When oral histories alone couldn’t answer questions of their origin, people from St. David’s began searching the island’s archives. They found scattered clues hidden in shipping records, maps, paintings and letters.
One example is a letter from 1902 written to American historian Edward Everett Hale. The writer says when her father was a boy in the early 1800s, a formerly enslaved woman told him she was descended from King Philip, the Wampanoag chief who was married to the princess.
Fast forward to the 1990s. The Bermudian Native community was ready for answers, but didn’t think they’d find them on the island. So a group of elders made an unannounced trip to the Mashantucket Pequot reservation in eastern Connecticut.
David Weeden happened to be driving through the reservation on a sunny, hot day and saw the elders walking along the side of the road.
He offered them a lift.
"We started to have a conversation," Weeden recalls. "They told me why they were here. I told them that my father would be really interested and his name is Tall Oak."
His father, Everett "Tall Oak" Weeden, was leading the search for Native peoples who’d disappeared into the Atlantic slave trade.
"And from there, the rest is history," David Weeden said.
Carrying on the journey
That chance encounter is now a favorite story shared by families in Bermuda. Dominique Williams believes it was more than chance.
"You’re telling me you just stumbled upon somebody on the side of the road?" she said. "But that’s the universe. That’s Creator trying to bring it back for us."
In 2002, Northeast Native communities traveled for the first time to Bermuda to meet their lost tribe and hold a powwow. Years later, they continue to reconnect, as recently as this past August in Connecticut.
All say finding family has been transformational. It brings Lottie Williams a sense of peace.
"My mother used to tell we children, 'Remember. You are somebody. You’re related to somebody. So carry on that journey.'"
Dominique Williams thinks about the stories passed down through the generations on St. David's Island in Bermuda – stories that hinted at a connection to a far-away place.
And now she's able to have a more complete picture of something that her ancestors could only dream about -- a better sense of who they are.
"They fought for us to know about it," she said. "That's why it's still in our stories, in our oral histories. They wanted it to be known for people like me, their descendants, way way way into the future.
She said younger generations are on a mission to learn more about their past. They're learning songs and dances. The reconnection allows them to carry on that journey – a journey started by their ancestors.
"It's just this overwhelming feeling," she said.
