Swindler Sachem
WARNING
You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com
The American Indian Who Sold His Birthright, Dropped Out of Harvard, and Conned the King of England
Jenny Hale Pulsipher
View Inside
Format: HardcoverPrice: $35.00
Our shopping cart only supports Mozilla Firefox. Please ensure you're using that browser before attempting to purchase.
Indians, too, could play the land game for both personal and political benefit
According to his kin, John Wompas was “no sachem,” although he claimed that status to achieve his economic and political ends. He drew on the legal and political practices of both Indians and the English—even visiting and securing the support of King Charles II—to legitimize the land sales that funded his extravagant spending. But he also used the knowledge acquired in his English education to defend the land and rights of his fellow Nipmucs.
Jenny Hale Pulsipher’s biography offers a window on seventeenth-century New England and the Atlantic world from the unusual perspective of an American Indian who, even though he may not have been what he claimed, was certainly out of the ordinary. Drawing on documentary and anthropological sources as well as consultations with Native people, Pulsipher shows how Wompas turned the opportunities and hardships of economic, cultural, religious, and political forces in the emerging English empire to the benefit of himself and his kin.
According to his kin, John Wompas was “no sachem,” although he claimed that status to achieve his economic and political ends. He drew on the legal and political practices of both Indians and the English—even visiting and securing the support of King Charles II—to legitimize the land sales that funded his extravagant spending. But he also used the knowledge acquired in his English education to defend the land and rights of his fellow Nipmucs.
Jenny Hale Pulsipher’s biography offers a window on seventeenth-century New England and the Atlantic world from the unusual perspective of an American Indian who, even though he may not have been what he claimed, was certainly out of the ordinary. Drawing on documentary and anthropological sources as well as consultations with Native people, Pulsipher shows how Wompas turned the opportunities and hardships of economic, cultural, religious, and political forces in the emerging English empire to the benefit of himself and his kin.
Jenny Hale Pulsipher is associate professor of history at Brigham Young University and author of Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England.
“Pieced together from scraps of evidence from dozens of archives, Jenny Pulsipher’s startling story of John Wompas is a tour de force of historical imagination and reconstruction.”—Richard Lyman Bushman, Gouverneur Morris Professor of History Emeritus, Columbia University
"In an act of archival wizardry, Jenny Hale Pulsipher has recreated the life of John Wompas, a trans-Atlantic traveler and one-time Harvard student whose personal experiences reveal how one remarkable Nipmuc took control of his life in the midst of never-ending challenges. Swindler Sachem expands our understanding of indigenous New England in unexpected ways."—Peter C. Mancall, author of Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson—A Tale of Mutiny and Murder in the Arctic
"No one knows the archives of New England colonialism better than Jenny Pulsipher. Only she could recover the story of John Wompas, who got the last laugh on his many foes."—Daniel K. Richter, University of Pennsylvania
“Pulsipher has done remarkable work in archives on both sides of the Atlantic to reconstruct the life of John Wompas, and in doing so, she sheds new light on the dispossession of New England Indians and the strate- gies they used to survive the onslaught of colonization”—Timothy J. Shannon, American Historical Review
Winner of the 2019 Norris and Carol Hundley Prize, sponsored by the American Historical Association- Pacific Coast Branch (PCB-AHA)
ISBN: 9780300214932
Publication Date: June 19, 2018
Publication Date: June 19, 2018
384 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
16 b/w illus.
16 b/w illus.
