Runaway Ad From The Boston News-Letter Thesis

The colonization of the Americas wrought havoc on the Indigenous population through disease, enslavement, war, land theft, and more which echo in the source. The source to be examined in this essay is a Runaway Ad from the Boston News-Letter, dated April 19, 1708. The ad was placed to advertise a reward for finding three runaway slaves from Kingston, Rhode Island who had left the prior winter. The group was made up of an Indigenous man, woman, and child, indicating the three were an example of a slave family. This source, though short, provides insight into the bonds of slave families in the English colonies, the sexualization of Indigenous women, and the partial integration of Indigenous people in English colonial society. Slave families

Enslaved families were not always traditional, with a married man and woman and their biological offspring. Instead, it could be slaves of any gender forming familial bonds, and incorporating small children into these families regardless of relation. Within the Runaway ad, the slaves are described as being John Ame, his ‘squaw’ Mary, and a child of about two years old. Squaw, though an ethnic slur in contemporary society, is an Algonquin word meaning woman or wife, and colonists used it in both the proper and insulting way. Thus, it is clear John Ame and Mary had some kind of relationship, and were possibly married, but there is no further clarification as to whether this was the case. Additionally, it is not likely the two would have married in the church, and so if they were married it would have been in a way that the English

The sexualization of Indigenous women perpetrates a stereotype of women who mature at a younger age and are not only sexually active, but sexually provocative. Within this document the effects of sexualization are first seen by the calling of Mary as a ‘squaw’, a term that at this time would have had sexual connotations to the colonists reading the Boston News-Letter. Today, this term is recognized as an ethnic and sexual slur, but in the Algonquin language, ‘squaw’ could either mean a wife, or a woman with whom a man had a romantic or sexual relationship. The use of this term when describing Mary’s relationship with John implies the two had a sexual, if not romantic, relationship. Additionally, this term also ignores any marriage the two may have had, as the author is consciously choosing to not call Mary John’s wife. But the sexualization within the document is not only applied to Mary. When describing the two-year old traveling with John and Mary, she is described as a ‘woman child’. This was another conscious decision that depicts a young Indigenous girl as being ‘mature’ for her age, suggesting that unlike English girls, this child is closer to the age of majority. This also implies that she is closer to the age of sexual availability, ignoring that she is still a toddler. Lastly, when describing Mary, the choice was made to describe