I am re-posting this piece I wrote one year ago because it is not only always relevant, but it feels even more urgent to me in the midst of the unfolding settler-colonial genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza. This essay is about the documentary proof of my descent from colonial settlers who carried out atrocities not unlike those being perpetrated by the state of Israel today. History is repeating itself, and it will keep repeating itself as long as capitalism, white supremacy, and colonialism persist in our world.
Reckoning with this history also means acknowledging the ways my ancestors’ actions have harmed their descendants. I am not claiming some kind of twisted victimhood as way of worming my way out of responsibility for their legacy. It means that they have saddled me with a debt that I can never fully repay, and that debt has left me bereft of connection to collective cultural memories and connection to land. The world they created would condemn me to existence as a robotic, parasitic, colonial dominator who subsists on theft and violence. That is not who I want to be, and I don’t believe that has to be my destiny or the destiny of any settler descendant. Identity is as malleable as humans are diverse. But getting free of that curse isn’t something I can do on my own. I need to fight in solidarity with the colonized to abolish the regime that claims me, that has saddled me with that curse of separateness.
In the midst of the apocalyptic events in Palestine I am heartened by the global response of everyday people. The Palestinians have always resisted, but this time, they are leading all of us in a new intifada that has truly gone viral. I feel the echoes of my ancestors’ atrocities in Israel’s actions today, but I also feel desperately hopeful that this wave of resistance will bring fundamental change that might, just might, inflict fatal wounds to the settler colonial project. That will set me free, too.
This year I somewhat unilaterally informed my family that I would not be observing Thanksgiving in any form on November 23. For the past couple of years I have coupled familial feasting with various acknowledgments, including payments to tribal communities directly impacted by my ancestors’ actions. But I just can’t choke down turkey and stuffing while Gaza is being bombed. Our family’s compromise is to enjoy the turkey and stuffing on another day.
[Note: the Truthsgiving event mentioned below is happening again this year, additionally benefitting Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness. It is a virtual event, and you can register here.]
Tomorrow, 11/24/22, I will be celebrating Truthsgiving by running four miles with a whole crowd of friends to benefit Rising Hearts, Renew Earth Running, and the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe in Massachusetts. The run will be about education and reparation: educating myself about the genocidal truth behind the Thanksgiving holiday, and supporting the efforts of Indigenous peoples to protect their sovereignty and regain their stolen lands. This year my Truthsgiving education has been about tracing my personal, ancestral connection to the events commemorated on this third Thursday of November.
My research has caused me to read up on the biggest war you’ve never heard of, the colonial war known as King Philip’s War, which was fought across so-called New England in 1675-1676, a generation after the foundation of Plymouth Plantation in 1620. It pitted the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and Plymouth, against a confederacy of Indigenous tribes led by the Wampanoag sachem Metacomet (a.k.a. “King Philip”). I call it an “apocalyptic” war because 1) it broke the back of Indigenous resistance to the theft of their lands in southern New England, and 2) the magnitude of suffering, death, and destruction it caused. More people died per capita in the war than any other war in colonial/US history, and almost no town or settlement was left untouched.
My family research has me thinking this war was a family affair. My ancestors who fought were first and second-generation settlers who were trying to push out the boundaries of the lands they held. Their population was growing and they needed land for their sons and sons’ sons to inherit and settle. They showed themselves willing to get land by any means necessary.
In the name of truth, I am listing below the ancestors I know of who participated in King Philip’s War. My list includes names, how I’m related to them, and any details I know about their role in the war. I list the more (in)famous names first because there is a lot of information available about them. Some I have little more than the name and two dates.
Several include references to the Great Swamp Massacre. This event, more commonly referred to as the Great Swamp Fight, occurred on December 19, 1675 in what is now South Kingstown, Rhode Island. It was the largest engagement of the war, in which the combined forces of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Plymouth attacked a Narragansett fort in the Great Swamp. The colonists took heavy losses in the assault, but once they breached the walls of the fort they set fire to the town inside. Historians do not know the exact number of Narragansett people killed, but it was likely thousands. The killing was indiscriminate and destroyed food stores the people needed to survive the winter, resulting in disease and starvation. My ancestors commanded two of the three regiments engaged (Connecticut and Plymouth).
I’m not sharing this list as an act of public self-flagellation. I’m sharing it because it’s important to know the truth of how I got where I am. And, quite honestly, I’m doing it to challenge other white people to dig into their family histories. White privilege has actual flesh and blood names and dates and places attached to it, and I just so happen to be descended from people who did what they did very publicly and left a long paper trail. Most of my ancestors weren’t famous. Most of them weren’t rich and powerful. Not all of them came to Turtle Island voluntarily. But my rich, famous, and powerful ones played a disproportionate role in creating the world we’re taught to celebrate on Thanksgiving day, and some of them are the actual individuals we celebrate. All of us live in the world they created, even if our fortunes have melded together in the ensuing centuries.
Without further ado, this is my most up-to-date list of ancestors who participated in King Philip’s War:
Major William Bradford (10th Great-Grandfather): son of Plymouth Plantation founder Gov. William Bradford (11th Great-Grandfather). He led the Plymouth Colony regiment at the Great Swamp Massacre.
Constant Southworth (11th Great-Grandfather): half-brother to Maj. William Bradford. He played a major, deliberate role in causing the war. He was a land grabber, using all means, legal and extralegal, to steal land from Indigenous communities for expansionist, speculative, and profitable ventures.
Colonel Benjamin Church: 10th Great-Granduncle by marriage. Was the first great “Indian fighter” in white settler America. He wrote a memoir about his exploits in King Philip’s War that, for some reason, modern historians depend on rather uncritically (sarcasm intended). He was responsible for the death and beheading of Metacomet. He fought in two other colonial wars you’ve never heard of: King William’s War and Queen Anne’s War.
Major/Governor Robert Treat (10th Great-Granduncle) – Commanded Connecticut Colony regiment at the Great Swamp Massacre.
Captain Isaac Johnson (11th Great-Grandfather): Killed in action at the Great Swamp Massacre
Lieutenant Henry Bowen (10th Great-Grandfather): Son-in-law to Captain Isaac Johnson, took command at the Great Swamp Massacre after Capt. Johnson was killed.
Nathaniel Loomis (10th Great-Grandfather): Commanded the Windsor Troop of Horse.
Joshua Holmes (10th Great-Grandfather)
William Williams (10th Great-Grandfather)
John Spalding (11th Great-Grandfather)
Captain George Barbour (11th Great-Grandfather)
Captain Joseph Sill (8th Great-Grandfather)