Bassett insisted Ona return to Virginia and “used all the persuasion he could” but Ona “utterly refused to go with him.”22“A Slave of George Washington,” Benjamin Chase, Auburn, NH, December 1846. He even promised that the Washingtons would free her once she returned to Virginia, to which she replied “I am free now, and choose to remain so.”23“Washington’s Runaway Slave,” Granite Freeman, T.H.A., May 1845.

They believed they had treated her like a daughter and felt betrayed by her departure. Ona, on the other hand, said “she did not want to be a slave always, and she supposed if she went back to Virginia, she should never have a chance to escape.”13“A Slave of George Washington,” Benjamin Chase, Auburn, NH, December 1846.

Her friends in the free black community had already carried her belongings to the port and they were waiting for her when she arrived at the docks.

Given Ona’s enslaved status, any white man could sexually assault her without punishment and she may have feared for her safety in a new household with a disreputable owner.9Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (New York: 37INK, 2017), 95-97. Show Me More

Ona may have been tempted to pursue her freedom during the early years of Washington’s presidency, but there were severe consequences for such an act.

Much like George’s enslaved manservant, coachmen, and postilions, these individuals wore fancy livery because their uniforms needed to reflect the president’s wealth and status; Ona’s clothing was an extension of Martha’s status. Accordingly, Tobias Lear, Washington’s household manager, documented regular purchases of textiles for dresses, bonnets, stockings, and shoes for Ona.

But Ona certainly met her father and likely had some relationship with him given his extended stay, which was not always the case for enslaved children. Ona also knew her siblings.

Ona gave two interviews about her life and escape to freedom. While the newspapers did not print the interviews verbatim, the quotes are rare examples of a formerly enslaved person describing their experiences in their own words. Few enslaved workers left written records, let alone participated in interviews with reporters.

Ona worked as Martha’s enslaved housemaid for the next seven years before running away.

Ona probably lived with Betty in a small cabin near the mansion house, completing simple chores, helping her mother with easy tasks in their cabin, or playing unsupervised with other enslaved children.2Mary V. Thompson, “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret”: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon (Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 2019), 158-67.

Later that October, Columbus sighted Cuba and believed it was mainland China; in December the expedition found Hispaniola, which he thought might be Japan.

In recent decades, Native Americans and other groups have protested the celebration of an event that resulted in the colonization of the Americas, the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade and the deaths of millions from murder and disease.

Upon arriving in the Bahamas, the explorer and his men forced the native peoples they found there into slavery.

Columbus finally realized he hadn’t reached Asia but instead had stumbled upon a continent previously unknown to Europeans.

But throughout its history, Columbus Day and the man who inspired it have generated controversy, and many alternatives to the holiday have proposed since the 1970s including Indigenous Peoples' Day

. The call for understanding North American colonization in Atlantic, fully continental, and global contexts probably cannot decisively dissoci-ate colonial America from the origins of the United States.

The history of nations is important and this one did emerge from a specifi c experience of colonialism

It isn’t suffi cient to specify “ colonial North America, ” either; there were multiple colonial regimes on the continent at any one time.

Today, the very term “ colonial America ” conjures scare quotes; both words in the phrase are fraught, and together they invoke contradictory and politicized, yet vitally important notions about the American past.

The teleology not only offends histor-ical sensibilities, but also diminishes the rich, complex, and violent period when multiple European nations colonized North America