By
Tapan Muhkerjee and J. John (Sunny) Wycliffe

EXTENDED ABSTRACT

Prior to the twentieth Century few Indians sailed West from their homes in the Asian subcontinent.  According to then prevailing Hindu socio-religious strictures, crossing of the “black water” was considered extremely inauspicious.  Not surprisingly, nearly all of the early arrivals to America bore Christian names. The first recorded FIRST arrival is attributed to an unnamed man “from Madras”, who was seen on the streets of Salem, Massachusetts, by Reverend William Bently.  The minister described the man in his diary on December 29, 1790.  He was a servant to John Gibaut of Salem.  At Madras, they had boarded the Calcutta bound Salem brig. Henry on March  25, 1790.  During the year 1789-1790, John Gibaut was trading along the Coromandal and Malabar coasts as mate of another Salem vessel Sultana which was sold at Madras.  From Calcutta Henry sailed to the West Indies where Gibaut and the servant changed to a Salem bound schooner.  This man’s home in India is not yet known.  He probably spent the winter in Salem and left with Gibaut on the ship Astrea which sailed under Gibaut’s command for the East on Mary 17, 1971.

Quite a few boys and young men from the East Indies and India were brought to the Colonies as indentured servants or slaves.  This research is presently concerned with the  movement of Indians to the English Colonies in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia.  There was virtually no direct voyage between India and the English Colonies in America.  The East Indians were first brought to England.  Subsequently, they were transferred to America either by sale of their indentures or by the masters themselves.  A preliminary search has revealed the following cases:

1. John Adams, age 17, indentured in England for Maryland for 8 years of bondage on January 17, 1719. 

2. Thomas Banks, age 19, indentured in England for Virginia for 4 years of bondage on February 20, 1720.

3. Samuel James, age 20, indentured in England for Maryland for 4 years of bondage on February 20, 1724

4. Anthony Adams, an “East Indian from Scotland” was indentured in Philadelphia to Thomas Mullen of Philadelphia for 6 years on September 20, 1745

5. Joseph Green, age about 18 years, a native of Calcutta, under the advice of his friend and countryman John Jordan assigned himself as an apprentice to William Richardson of Middletown, in the Bucks County, Pennsylvania on May 13, 1788 for 3 years to learn the “Mysteries” of farming

6. John Bally, age about 15 years, an East Indian, was listed as a slave to James Boland, a Philadelphia merchant to be freed and indetured for 2 years starting June 8, 1796

It is almost certain that further research will reveal more names.  The authors were informed by Mr. Francis G. Huchins of Boston, Massachusetts, about an Indian from Bombay who was living in the American Indian Township of Mashpee in the Cape Cod area of Massachusetts in 1787.  The Reverend Gilden Hawley, minister of the Congregational Church, and Manager of the Settlement, wrote a letter to William Lane, Secretary of the Congregational Church in Boston on July 18, 1787.  He wrote, “ in the late and present distressing day this Mashpee has been an asylum for the poor natives and their connections, which are become exceedingly various and mixed for instance…an East Indian, a native of Bombay married to one of our families.”  Presumably, the Reverend meant an American Indian or a Mullato woman.  The Hawley papers or the Congressional Church records do not show any other mention of this man.  As Hawley’s letters and subsequent activities showed his knack for excess, one has to be careful in wholly trusting the statement.

The line between slavery and indenture was difficult to maintain for the dark skinned Indians.  There is a moving account in a petition dated around 1790, by James Dunn who came to Savannah, Georgia in October 1774 as an indentured servant to one Mr. Homes of England.  He was named “Mondery” by his Indian parents who indentured their ten year old son to a Mr. Brown, mate of an East India Company vessel, “to learn me to read and write.”  In England, his indenture changed hands, finally he was bound to one Mr. Homes for 11 years.  Homes brought Dunn to America and they moved from place to place in Georgia, Florida and South Carolina.  When Homes died in 1781, Dunn was passed on to the widow.  According to Dunn’s petition, the executors of his master’s will took the seals off his indentures and, hiding them in a towel, ordered him to burn the towel.  Dunn was able to determine that these were his papers but could not do anything to stop the destruction.  When his time was up, he asked for his freedom.  The executors told him that they knew nothing or never heard anything about it.  Dunn first complained to one official and failing, went to the wharf to enquire about ships coming from England.  The executor heard about this and punished him by imprisoning him in the “sugarhouse”.  Subsequently Dunn was sold to another man.  It is not known where the Dunn petition was filed and what action taken, if any.

As with other indentured servants who came from England and Europe the Indian servants were assimilated in the general populace.  The dark skinned Indians, in all probability, married black women.  The assimilation of the East Indians in the Afro-American society was also detected in the twentieth century.  The trickle of East Indians who illegally entered the country during the three decades of exclusion under the “barred zone” law (1917-1946), drifted to the northern industrial cities like Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago.  In the early fifties, one of the authors (Tapan Mukherjee) met a number of such illegal aliens in Detroit who had married black women and lived among the segregated black communities.

There are seemingly insurmountable difficulties in tracking down Indian immigrants who before 1900.  The primary source in the 17th and 18th centuries are generally incomplete, unclassified, and scattered over many places.  In some cases, the records were lost due to fire or unscientific preservation.  Information on non-white indentured servants or non-black slaves is particularly scanty.  Past research on this subject mainly center on white Irish, English, and German immigrants.  The first Census of 1790 lists only the names of the heads of families.  The place of birth was included in the census from 1850.  Christian names create further difficulty in separating the East Indians.  Even though a law was passed in 1790 to keep records of arriving passengers, it was not followed diligently till the late 19th century.  For example, there was one Sing, whose first names was not entered, arrived at Philadelphia on board the ship Ganges from Calcutta and Canton on March 31, 1806.  Philadelphia was the home port of Ganges and she regularly sailed to Calcutta and Canton.

The most famous “first” from India in the 18th century, however, did not belong to the human species.  In late November of 1795, Captain Jacob Crowninshield purchased a two year old elephant in Calcutta, at a price of $450 figuring that he will have no trouble selling the beast for good profit.  At that time exhibition of animals was a big attraction in America.  Jokingly, Crowninshield wrote to his brothers on another ship on the high seas, “I suppose you will laugh at the scheme, but I do not mind that, (I) will turn (an) elephant driver.  If it (scheme) succeeds I ought to have the whole credit and honor too.  Of course, you know it will be a great thing to carry the first elephant to America.”  The Captain’s letters and journal of the voyage contain little notice of the elephant’s experience of crossing the “black water.”  The ship with the elephant arrived at New York’s lower bay on April 11, 1796, exactly 128 days after they left Calcutta.  The elephant made an instant sensation in New York, then a bustling city of 45,000.  The elephant was sold for $10,000, double the price the adventurous captain expected.  Jacob Crowninshield, however, did not turn into an elephant driver.  Instead, he became the nation’s Congressman in 1802.  During the Jefferson administration, he was offered the post of the Secretary of Navy which he declined due to ill health.  The elephant, as a center piece of travelling circus, entertained the Americans for next few years before she died in a freak accident.  She was the inspiration of a number of popular children’s stories.  Even in death this Indian elephant drew American attention; a scientific paper was written about the elephant’s anatomy.

The flow of Indian migration dwindled sharply after the stoppage of indentured labor and strong anti-slavery movement in the last decade of the 18th century.  During the Civil War a group of Parsees from Bombay wrote a letter to President Lincoln offering substantial aid for the war effort in exchange for permission to migrate to the United States.  The offer was politely declined.  American attention to India was sharply accentuated by the stormy arrival of Swami Vivekananda in 1893.  Less known, however, was the earlier visits of Pratap Chandra Majumder, a Brahmo missionary who was a favorite of the New England Unitarian intellectuals.

(Dr. Tapan Mukherjee, Director, Engineering Research Centers , National Science Foundation, Washington, DC.  Mr. Sunny Wycliffe, Co-Chair, Golden Jubilee Celebration of The Asian American Citizenship Act and former National Secretary of the Indian American Forum for Political Education.  They both live in Maryland, USA)