William Apess was the perfect person to lead the nonviolent Mashpee Revolt of 1833, an uprising against the Massachusetts government. The commonwealth had controlled the tribe’s lands, but not to the tribe’s benefit.
William Apess (from his autobiography)
Apess (who occasionally spelled his name Apes) was born in 1798 in Colrain, Mass., of Pequot descent. He had a tumultuous family life. His abusive grandmother raised him until the age of five. He was then removed from the home and placed with the Furman family as an indentured servant.
Apess worked for the head of the Furman household as a cooper, and the Furman family saw to it he had six years of schooling.
Despite his kind treatment by the Furmans, Apess’ childhood was a mixed bag. He moved on from the Furman family to live with a Connecticut judge. Later he worked as a household servant for a retired general. The Furmans were Baptists, his later homes Presbyterian, and Apess chafed at the rote repetition of prayers.
Methodism
Frustrated by his indentureship, Furman ran off and joined the army at 15. Later he worked as a laborer in upstate New York. All the while, he grew closer to Methodism. He attended camp revivals, and found inspiration in the spontaneity and fervor of the services. The Methodist meetings were open to all races, an additional appeal.
Apess also wrestled with his own demons. He had a mischievous side and liked to drink, a weakness he worked to control. With the encouragement of friends, he took up public speaking and began ‘exhorting’ at church services. He grew into a full-blown preacher, much in demand.
A Methodist revival meeting around 1839
A Son of the Forest
In 1829, now in his early 30s, Apess published his autobiography: A Son of the Forest. It paints a picture of a matured preacher, and one sensitive to injustice. He talks about the elders in the church hierarchy who placed barriers in his way. And he takes umbrage that the army never paid bonuses promised to soldiers, himself included.
He also analyzes his own upbringing. For example, he writes, he supposes the reader will say, “What savage creatures my grandparents were to treat unoffending or helpless children in this manner.”
But, he writes, that treatment had a cause: the whites.
…[B]ecause they introduced among my countrymen ardent spirits; seduced them into a love for it, and when under its baleful influence, wronged them out of their lawful possessions — that land where reposed the ashes of their sires.
Not only that, he wrote,
…[B]ut they committed violence of the most revolting and basest kind upon the persons of the female portion of the tribe, who until the arts, and vices, and debauchery of the whites were introduced among them, were happy, and peaceable, and cheerful, as they roamed over their goodly possessions.
As a result, the Mashpee scattered.
…[And] now, many of them are seen reeling about intoxicated with liquor, failing to provide for themselves or families, who before were assiduously engaged in supplying the necessities of those depending upon them.
By 1829, Apess was ripe for a confrontation. In the Mashpees reservation on Cape Cod, he found his perfect battleground.
The Mashpee Revolt
Apess had heard rumor that the Mashpees, who numbered several hundred, were in difficult straits and that the tribe was unhappy with the way the state administered its reservation. As he worked his way through Massachusetts, preaching, he began forming a plan. He would go investigate the circumstances of the Mashpees himself. Though a Pequot, he felt kinship with the Mashpees.
Upon arriving in Mashpee, he quickly learned the truth of the rumors. The state overseers allowed the Mashpees’ neighbors to steal from tribal lands. The overseers collaborated with local sea captains and others to cheat the Indians out of pay. The overseers also reached an agreement with white families who took in Indians that they would not educate the children.
And the Congregational minister assigned to the town, funded and overseen by Harvard College, neglected the Indians. Instead, he preached to the small group of white people who attended his church. Rev. Phineas Fish was taking hundreds of dollars in aid intended for the Mashpee and keeping it.
An Indian Methodist minister who could read and write, was well schooled in the ways of the government and held a jaded view of the way whites had treated American Indians was the perfect match to put fire to the Mashpee revolt.
Mashpee. Image courtesy Google Maps.
Declaration of Independence
Apess offered to assist the Mashpee if they wished, but only if they voted to accept him into their tribe to give him standing. The tribe accepted him.
Apess then helped the tribe shape its demands and drafted what amounted to a Mashpee declaration of independence. To the government, the tribe sent three resolutions:
Resolved, That we, as a tribe, will rule ourselves, and have the Constitution; for all men are born free and equal, says the Constitution of the country.
Resolved, That we will not permit any white man to come upon our plantation, to cut or carry off wood or hay, or any other article, without our permission, after the 1st of July next.
And finally:
Resolved, That we will put said resolutions in force after that date, (July next,) with the penalty of binding and throwing them from the plantation, if they will not stay away without.
Harvard, Too
To Harvard, the tribe sent three additional resolutions:
First,
That we will rule our own tribe and make choice of whom we please for our preacher.
Second,
That we will have our own meeting house, and place in the pulpit whom we please to preach to us.
And third,
That we will publish this to the world; if the above reasons and resolutions are not adhered to, and the Rev. Mr. Fish discharged.
The Old Indian Meeting House in Mashpee.
The Mashpee Revolt Takes Shape
When July rolled around, the tribe put its plans into action. A neighbor named William Sampson approached tribal lands and loaded a cart with wood when Apess approached him with six others – Joseph, Jacob and Nicholas Pocknett, Aaron Keater, Charles D. Grasse and Abraham Jackson. They informed him he could not take any wood. Then they unloaded his cart and sent him home.
News of the incident spread quickly. The tribe’s enemies characterized the Mashpee Revolt as a threat of violent uprising. The governor then sent a contingent of negotiators to Mashpee to meet with the Indians.
Apess explained their grievances. The governor’s men urged the Mashpees to have patience. They would present their case to the government. But then Apess and the six men who stopped the theft of wood were arrested and charged with riot, assault and trespass.
Apess was offended at the suggestion that he and the Mashpees would use violence against the government.
The plight of the Mashpee received a sympathetic airing in Massachusetts newspapers, and for a time it appeared real change was coming. The state did release some of its control over the Indian lands and returned self-governance to the tribe. But laws designed to protect Indian property from neighboring towns were rarely enforced.
Harvard remained steadfast in its support of Rev. Phineas Fish, and he continued preaching to the white congregation he had assembled.
Demons
As for Apess, he did a short stint in jail for his part in the protest. His sense of anger at the treatment of the Indians grew. In his account of the protest: Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts, he wrote:
Many and many a red man has been butchered for a less wrong than the Mashpees complain of.
In 1836, Apess’ growing fervor for the Indian cause took center stage when he delivered a Eulogy of King Philip. In it, he praised the Indian leader, likening him to George Washington.
Apess’ personal demons, however, continued to plague him. His struggles with alcohol contributed to the breakup of his family and debts cost him his Massachusetts’ property. His frequent drunkenness cost him the support of his friends. By 1839 he had relocated to New York City, and he died there that year.
Images: Old Indian Meeting House By Swampyank at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18002569. This story about the Mashpee revolt was updated in 2022.
