Mary Kittamaquund

Mary Kittamaquund (c. 1634–c. 1654 or 1700), daughter of the Piscataway chieftain Kittamaquund, helped establish peaceful relations between English immigrants to the Maryland and Virginia Colonies and their native peoples.

After Jesuit missionary Rev. Andrew White healed his son in 1639, Kittamaquund converted his family to the Catholic faith. Two years later, he sent his seven-year-old daughter, renamed Mary at her baptism, to be raised by Governor Leonard Calvert and his sister-in-law Margaret Brent. Kittamaquund wanted the English colony's leaders to educate Mary so she could communicate between the two cultures, and solicit their help against hostile tribes. Margaret Brent and her other unmarried sister Mary Brent were probably religious women, affiliated with the Mary Ward society, because they never married yet remained high status within the Maryland colony. The Mary Ward society was associated with the male Jesuit religious order, which was itself controversial at the time.

Trading and religious conflicts, including the religious wars resuming in England, shaped Mary Kittamaquund's life. In late 1644, in Governor Calvert's absence, Margaret Brent had allowed her 38-year-old brother Giles to marry Mary Kittamaquund, though she was just 10 or 11 years old at the time. According to various reports. Calvert was either in England with his brother soliciting support for the Maryland colony, or collecting debts and hiring soldiers in Virginia to protect it. In any event, during his absence, on February 14, 1645, raiders led by Protestant sea captain and merchant Richard Ingle and his ally Virginia fur trader William Claiborne burned the Catholic chapel and other buildings at St. Mary's City and tried to destroy the new colony. The previous year, during Governor Calvert's absence, Giles Brent had briefly jailed Ingle for treason against King Charles I. When Ingle returned, he carried letters of marque and reprisal against the king's supporters issued by the Protestant Parliament. The Ingle/Claiborne raiders also raided and burned houses of Catholic settlers on Kent Island, which had begun competing with Claiborne's former post there (which burned down in 1631 but had been rebuilt) and another of his posts at Palmer's Island. In April, Ingall and Claiborne sailed back to England with both Jesuit priests, the provincial secretary and Giles Brent all as captives and in chains.

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