Early Slavery

We are told in schools that the colonists settled in New England and encountered Native Americans. Little is discussed about the enslavement and selling of Native American Indians nor was the subject of slavery mentioned as well. Like every other state in the colonies, Massachusetts played a role in the production of slave labor and the selling and purchasing of African American people as discussed in a lecture held by dean Gerzina in March. (2017) In fairness to the understanding of urban development this section will discuss the role of slave labor or indentured servants in the valley. This practice contributed to urban development and became an alternative labor force the colonists came to depend on. Such examples of slave records have

Keeping up with the global demands of agricultural goods from the Valley, cheap labor for the production of tobacco was important in order to keep cost down and profits up for the plantation owner. However due to mono cultural growing practices, the soil nutrients were negatively impacted by these practices. Slavery for the Puritans was rationalized through theories agreed upon by the likes of Adam Smith and John Lock as they found ways to justify the possession of slaves. Yet in their creation of othering, making humans equal to animals or object, settlers considered these people savages and found critical fault with the religious practices of the enslaved. As tensions built around religious indoctrination elsewhere in the colonies African American religious ceremonies and observation became another rational objectification of these nonwhite people. This provided colonists the justification they should be considered savages like suggested about the Native Americans who once occupied the land. Such justification gave colonialists means to validate the enslavement first of the Native Americans and later people from the Caribbean islands and Africa. As towns began to expand boundaries, the land purchasing of sections outside Springfield became a common, John Pynchon continued to clear land and sold parcels to new incoming settlers.

This form of governance was capable of determining a person’s value in society, including the process of dehumanization on religious ground. Slavery and the production of slave labor can be traced to the very foundations of the church establishments. In an article by Romer in (2004-5) the inner workings of town establishments and the direct correlation of slaves in the Valley are described. He describes how many, if not most, of the “important people” of the Connecticut Valley, (many of them graduates of Yale and Harvard), owned African slaves. In his research Romer he describes the town of Deerfield, “by the mid-1700s in the town of Deerfield, on the main street had a total population of about 300, of whom 21 were enslaved African Americans. The slaves, who belonged to 12 different families, made up 7 percent of the total population.” Another account recalls, John Williams, Deerfield’ s first permanent minister, owned two slaves who were killed in the 1704 raid on Deerfield by the French and American Indians.” (Romer p1) John’s son Stephen would follow in his father's footsteps, attended college at Harvard, after escaping the French Indian war of 1675 and later became the town’s minister in the town of Longmeadow. Like his father who lost slaves during the war and later purchased new slaves, Longmeadow minster as incorporated slave