The Courage of Sarah Noble

As the real Sarah Noble, upon whom the text is based, traveled to Connecticut with her father in 1707, the text is set in this time and place. The United States of America did not yet exist, and the 13 colonies in what would become the US were controlled by England. The first colony of Virginia was established in 1607, and the white population of the colonies grew rapidly throughout the 17th century, dislocating myriad Indigenous groups already residing there. Thus, in the text, John Noble and Mistress Robinson discuss the sale of land in Connecticut from the Schaghticoke people to white European colonists, and the peace between the Schaghticoke and the English seems possible because the Schaghticoke were paid fairly for the land and promised continued fishing rights. In the decades following Sarah’s journey, however, a 2500-acre reservation for the Schaghticoke peoples, whose land was carved up into New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, was established in the Connecticut colony. Though that reservation is one of the oldest in the United States, it shrunk to just 400 acres due to illegal sales of land conducted by white Americans in the 19th century.