Delta Podcast Transcript
Introduction
Paul Musgrave: Welcome to Final Examination, a podcast that looks at the end of the world. I’m Paul Musgrave, and I’m a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst. Over the past semester in the Fall of 2018, four teams of students have researched, reported, and produced stories about how people have dealt with the end of the world right here in Massachusetts.
In this episode, Nate Reynolds and Abby McDonough take us to Ponkapoag to answer the question: Why did a civilization of Christian American Indians that coexisted with English
Puritans disappear in the eighteenth century?
ACT I: CANTON GHOST STORY / EXPOSITION
Nate: Most children enjoy hearing ghost stories… But rarely do they enter one themselves.
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1 Original composition by Mike Orlando, Greg Fournier, Kathrine Esten, and Deepika Singh. Stephen Turley and Mark Nannery were only twelve years old when they uncovered the secret of a two hundred year-old Indian burial ground beneath their quiet Massachusetts town. These children accidentally shed the first light in centuries on a society once engulfed in war, indoctrinated by its leaders, murdered by its sworn protectors… and forgotten in history… until now.
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The date - September 13, 1969…The place - Canton, Massachusetts.3 A mystery had been brewing in the town for some time. A year earlier, a resident’s dog had sauntered home carrying a human skull in its mouth that the Canton Police attempted to trace to no avail...4Until two young boys stumbled upon the answer on that fateful September day. Stephen Turley and Mark
Nannery were exploring an abandoned gravel pit in the neighborhood behind Burr Lane when they found an ancient-looking clay pipe embedded in the ground.5 Intrigued, the twelve-year old boys dug further, excitedly shifting through the dust and sand. What they found next was not formed out of clay: they were bones…real, human bones. First a jaw, then a leg. By the time
Stephen found his father, the local elementary school principal, to show him what they had discovered, every kid in the neighborhood was digging in the gravel for whatever they could find. When archaeologist Dena Dincauze and her team arrived at the sight four days later, parts
2 Mike Koenig, "Bird In Rain Sounds," licensed under an Attribution 3.0 License. 3 The boys were on Burr Lane, “a small road, more of a dirt driveway off Pleasant Street.” 4 In 1968, a Canton resident was “shocked” to see his dog return with a human skull. Police Chief Daniel Keleher “knew it would be impossible to locate the rest of the body given the provenance of the dog’s mouth.” 5 The pipe, which is stained from tobacco use, has a small set of marker initials saying it was made by R. Tippet. Three generations of the Tippet family, from Bristol, England, were pipemakers in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. This pipe was made sometime between the years 1660 and 1722. of two skeletons had already been unearthed in the pit. 6 7 Dincauze was able to fit the Canton boys’ mysterious discovery right into place in Massachusetts history. Unbeknownst to their gleeful searching, the children had unearthed a story of the end of a world that was entombed underground decades before the American Revolution.
The remnants discovered in Canton belonged to an eighteenth-century American Indian named
Simon George. During George’s lifetime, the town of Canton was known as Ponkapoag, organized by English settlers in their early colonial history as a place to convert American
Indians to Christianity.8 Simon George died in 1739 as one of the last members of the Praying
Indians, a society where the English peacefully coexisted with Massachusetts Natives who adopted Christianity as their own religion.9 If this world was once so prosperous, why was the
Ponkapoag burial ground discovered in Canton left unmarked and forgotten? What happened to the Praying Indians?
We’ll find out after this message from our sponsors.
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6 By September 17, lead archaeologist Dena Dincauze arrived on the site. “The children had removed parts of two skeletons,” she recalled in a later interview with the Canton Citizen, “and members of the Massachusetts Archeological Society had already examined one part of a body in place.” 7 Lead archaeologist Dena Dincauze’s records on the excavation are included in her papers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Dincauze was a UMass lecturer specializing in the prehistoric archaeology of eastern and central New England. 8 The leaders of Dorchester, Mass. were asked to “lay out” land for the Ponkapoag plantation were tribal leaders could be controlled and acclimated to the “ways of the white man…. it was important to save these souls, to gather up all the Indians he taught to practice Christianity, and move them to one place under the watchful eyes of their guardians so that they could practice the ways of a Christian.” 9 http://www.thecantoncitizen.com/2014/03/20/true-tales-burr-pt1/ 10 Original composition by Mike Orlando, Greg Fournier, Kathrine Esten, and Deepika Singh. ______
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Abby: We’d like to thank the Commonwealth Honors College at UMass Amherst for participating in our podcast. The Commonwealth Honors College is a community of scholars that provides an inclusive and diverse environment for students who are passionate about their studies. Alongside the vast resources of a large, public research university, the Commonwealth
Honors College offers immersive courses in all fields of study, and provides students a personal and hands-on space to prosper through smaller, discussion-based classes. Admission to the honors college is open to incoming first-year students, current UMass students in their first two years of study, and transfer students from other universities. To learn more, follow the
Commonwealth Honors College on twitter @UMassCHC, online at www.honors.umass.edu or visit the Bloom Advising Center on the second floor of the honors college building.
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Nate: To understand how the Praying Indian world ended, we must go back in history. My name is Nate Reynolds.
Abby: And I’m Abby McDonough. We’re here to help guide you through the true story of the Praying Indians of Massachusetts. It is a tale of conflicting cultures, interests, and armies: it is a tale of the end of a world.
ACT TWO: BACKGROUND ON THE PRAYING INDIANS
Nate: Before we start, we’ll take a moment to acknowledge the terms we’re using. When referring to the general, non-European population of indigenous descent, we’ll use the term
“American Indian.” While this term does have colonizer roots, it is consistent with academic literature. Additionally, “American Indian” has been positively reclaimed and redefined in the modern era. When possible, we will use specific tribal names or self-assigned titles. The term
“Praying Indian” is used in reference to the specific society of Christian American Indians in
Massachusetts during this time period.11 12 13
Abby: The classical story of English settlers and American Indians in Massachusetts is a familiar one, wrought with bloodshed, sickness, betrayal, and death. However, it fails to recognize a small faction that lived a very different history.
11 “Indigenous Peoples in the United States represent more than 550 distinct tribes...Such diversity makes a universally agreed upon, general racial label for these populations difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.” p. 3 12 “[American Indian] is commonly used by many Indigenous Peoples in the United States, even today. It is the legal definition of these Peoples in United States law.” 13 The Native American Journalist Association reporting guidelines state that American Indian and Native American may be used interchangeably - only in cases to describe “two or more individuals of different tribal affiliations.” Otherwise, preferred tribal names should be used. Arriving in 1620, Massachusetts Bay colonists introduced many new concepts to the area -
Christianity, new weapons, and perhaps most devastatingly, disease14. The surviving American
Indians were viewed as an unknown and dangerous entity by the European colonists who had their own disparate languages, religions, and culture. In an effort to assimilate American
Indians, the General Court of Massachusetts passed an “Act for the Propagation of the Gospel amongst the Indians” in 1646.15 The Christianization campaign was led by Massachusetts
Puritan settlers and was supported by the Massachusetts and British governments, along with prominent institutions such as Harvard University.
In 1650, Harvard University established the Harvard Indian College. It initially began as a fundraising effort for the broader University, but it was a school entirely dedicated to the education of American Indian youth. American Indians did not have to pay for tuition and housing, so long as they studied the Gospel. It was the hope of the Harvard Indian School and its supporters that graduates would go on to spread the word of the Christian gospel in their
American Indian communities.16
However, true Christianization could not occur until the Bible was translated. This was a difficult task, as hardly any Puritans spoke the languages of the American Indians they viewed as
14 Diseases that Europeans had developed an immunity to proved devastating to the Native population, and by 1640 some tribes declined in population by over 90%. See Salisbury, Neal. "The Indians' Old World: Native Americans and the Coming of Europeans", The William and Mary Quarterly, 1996. 15 The English government dedicated more than 12,000 pounds sterling in the cause. 16 The founding Harvard Charter of 1650 dedicates the institution to "the education of the English & Indian Youth of this Country in knowledge: and godliness." savages. One man felt that it was his “God-given duty”17 to convert American Indians to
Christianity, and he began to translate the bible into one of the most common Native languages,
Algonquin.18
This man was John Eliot, a Puritan pastor and missionary. In 1646, Eliot was called to New
England Native communities, and he founded the first Praying Town in the area of Natick, MA.
After he was able to successfully translate the bible into Algonquin, which was printed at the
Harvard Indian School, Eliot began to preach more frequently in these Praying towns, and was received peacefully.19 As Eliot once wrote:
John Eliot: “It is to come then unto them, to teach them to know God, and Jesus Christ, and call upon his name. For whereas there did use to be gaming and much evil at those great meetings, now there is praying to God, and good conference, and observation of the Sabbath, by such as are well minded.”20
Abby: Following Natick’s initial success, the second praying town of Ponkapoag was settled in 1654. In these Praying Towns, the Christianized American Indian population could live, worship, and assimilate to English culture. They disregarded old hunter-gatherer ways of life,
17 Eliot “gave his strength and his money, and faced danger and perils and death, with the quiet, undaunted spirit of the early martyrs.” He once said, "God stepped in and helped, for I considered that word of his, 'endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ.'" For more information, see De Normandie, James. “John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians.” The Harvard Theological Review, vol. 5, no. 3, 1912, pp. 349–370. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1507287. 18 Traditionally, missionaries would teach American Indians English as a prerequisite for conversion. Eliot’s effort to translate the bible into Alogonquin, the language of the Massachusett, made it possible to spread Christianity more effectively in the adult population. See Gray, Kathryn N. “John Eliot and the Praying Indians of Massachusetts Bay: Communities and Connections in Puritan New England.” Bucknell University Press, 2013, pp. 121-149. 19 See Brooks, Lisa. “Our Beloved Kin,” Yale University Press, 2018, pp. 79. 20 https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A66681.0001.001/1:3?rgn=div1;view=fulltext along with traditional dress ceremonies, cultural activities, and means of education. Anything that was deemed traditionally “Indian” was seen as savage, and was not permitted in Praying
Towns. Praying Indians were afforded a relatively high level of freedom, and were able to self-govern.
Nate: So, John Eliot seems like a nice guy. But what we need to understand is Eliot’s motive - why did he want to Christianize Native people so badly?
Abby: Well, John Eliot wished to ‘civilize’ the American Indians - but he was not a champion of their culture. In a letter to Major-General Humphrey Atherton, a town leader of nearby
Dorchester, Eliot petitioned for the establishment of the Praying town Ponkapoag, writing,
John Eliot: Though our poore Indians are much molested in most places in their meetings in way of civilities, yet the Lord hath put it into your hearts to suffer us to meet quietly at
Ponkapoag.21
Nate: Why would the Praying Indians want to work with a man who deemed their society uncivil?
Abby: Well, the reason is simple: initial mutual benefit. American Indians who converted to Christianity and began the process of assimilation were able to survive more easily. Their
21 See Henkel, Jacqueline M. “Represented Authenticity: Native Voices in Seventeenth-Century Conversion Narratives.” The New England Quarterly, vol. 87, no. 1, 2014, pp. 5–45. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43285052. societies were already decimated from disease, their language was being eradicated, and their means of livelihood were quickly deemed uncivilized and irrelevant by wealthy colonists. One
Praying Indian who lived in Natick, Ponampam, wrote of his experience in 1656:
Ponampam: While my Father lived, and I was young, I was at play, and my Father rebuked me, and said, we shall all die shortly….That same Winter the pox came; all my kindred died, only my
Mother and I lived….All those daies I sinned, and prayed to all gods, and did as others did, there
I lived till the Minister came to teach us.22
Abby: Compared to the ways that English colonists treated non-Christianized Indians, the Praying Indians were much better off. This is not to say that the Praying Indians were lucky; they had to watch their culture be erased, and they were not allowed to mourn the loss of their previous world, for fear of punishment from the colonists. Still, while non-Praying Indians were given blankets from the Colonists that were purposely infected with smallpox, Praying Indians could attend school and govern themselves. And while non-Praying Indians watched their villages and settlements burn to the ground at the hands of the colonists, the Praying Indians were invited to start their own settlements in the prosperous Southeastern Massachusetts region.
For a short time, the colonists and the Praying Indians were able to coexist in this sort of
“in-between” state - until war struck.
ACT THREE: KING PHILIP’S WAR / PRAYING INDIAN DECLINE
22 See Henkel.
Nate: The end of the Praying Indian world began with one of its earliest members. John Sassamon was an American Indian from Natick whose intelligence had caught the eye of John
Eliot. Sassamon taught Eliot his Native language, was appointed as a schoolmaster to teach fellow Praying Indians about Christianity, and served as an interpreter between the American
Indians and colonists. 23 In December 1674, Sassamon warned the colonists that Wampanoag chief Metacomet, also known as King Philip, was meeting with other American Indian tribal leaders to plan an attack on the English.24 A month later, Sassamon was found dead in the icy waters of a local pond. The colonists arrested and executed three Wampanoag men for the crime
25 26 27 - But it was too late to stop the brewing war…
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On June 24, 1675, the Wampanoags and their allies led the first attack on the English town of
Swansea, officially starting what would become one of America’s bloodiest conflicts: King
Philip’s War.29
23 Sassamon briefly attended Harvard Indian School alongside John Eliot, Jr. See Brooks, pp. 79. 24 See Kawashima, Yasuhide. “Igniting King Philip’s War: The John Sassamon Murder Trial,” University Press of Kansas, 2001, pp. 70-85. 25 Three Wampanoag men, Tobias, Wampapaquan (son of Tobias), and Mattashunnamo, though they persistently denied their guilt, were arrested. See Kawashima, pp. 100-101. 26 The Sassumon murder trial featured a jury of 12 colonists and six Indian jurors, pulled from Praying Indian communities. The six Praying Indians were meant to supplement the regular English jurymen “to healp to consult and advice with, of, and concerning the premises.” See Kawashima, pp. 107. 27 On June 8, 1675, Tobias and Mattashunnamo were hung. The rope around Wampapaquan’s neck snapped, and, in an attempt for pardon, claimed the other two men had committed the crime and implicated Philip in the murder. One month later, following the start of the war, Wampapaquan was executed by firing squad, despite hanging being the only sanctioned form of capital punishment in the New England colonies. See Kawashima, pp. 110. 28 Damiano Baldoni, "Cassiopea," licensed under an Attribution 4.0 License. 29 On June 20, a war party of Pokanoket Wampanoags attacked the settlement of Swansea, beginning a five-day siege that killed several settlers and razed the village.
There was a massive amount of destruction across New England. Today, it remains one of the bloodiest conflicts in American history: one in ten soldiers on both sides are estimated to have been killed.30 And in the midst of this battle between Colonists and American Indians were the
Praying Indians.
Abby: Where did their loyalties lie? Was John Eliot able to convince the Praying Indians to trust the colonists?
Nate: John Eliot had tried but failed to convert King Philip to Christianity, and as a result, the Praying Indians were not safe during the war from American Indians sieging Puritan towns.
Neither were they fully trusted by English. In October 1675, just four months after the start of the war, the Massachusetts General Court ordered that all Praying Indians from Natick be removed and sent to Deer Island, a small island off the coast of Boston.31 In the eyes of the colonists, this prevented a potential alliance between the Praying Indians and their non-Christian counterparts.32
30 https://connecticuthistory.org/americas-most-devastating-conflict-king-philips-war/ 31 “...the Natick Indians had been carried away in horse-drawn carts in the middle of the night, then taken by canoe down the Charles River, past the Indian College, and loaded on shops to cross the fierce windy harbor.” For more information, see Brooks, Lisa. “Our Beloved Kin,” Yale University Press, 2018, pp. 225. 32 The extreme policy of containment ordered that “all the Natick Indians be fortwith sent for, & disposed of to Deer Island...a place appointemd for their present abode.” In the same order, the magistrates forbid the presence of Indians in Boston, unless under guard. For more information, see Brooks, Lisa. “Our Beloved Kin,” Yale University Press, 2018, pp. 219. However, Deer Island was a death sentence for hundreds of Praying Indians. They were not given food or clothing and were forbidden from hunting, lighting fires, or tearing down trees on the island.33 Eventually, Praying Indians from other Massachusetts towns were also interned, and they occupied the island for about a year. In the cold Massachusetts winter, conditions on
Deer Island were unbearable.34 At one point during King Philip’s War, John Eliot, now in his
70’s, attempted to row out to the island to deliver food and supplies. However, his boat was intercepted by colonists.35 In war, it was no longer politically convenient for the Puritans to stand behind Eliot’s mission. Christianity could no longer protect the Praying Indians from being associated with the larger Native population. By the time John Eliot personally paid for the removal of the Praying Indians from Deer Island, over half had perished in the cold.36
ACT FOUR: CULTURAL DECLINE AND THE END OF THE WORLD
Nate: Even for survivors, the Praying Indians’ days were numbered following the tragedy of Deer Island and the general destruction of King Philip’s War. The politically advantageous pact reared by John Eliot between the English and the American Indians had grown into a unique world over fifty years…and now this world was ending.
33 Inhabitants on the island depended on digging for “spring shoots” and “hope for harvest from the sea.” For more information, see Brooks, Lisa. “Our Beloved Kin,” Yale University Press, 2018, pp. 291. 34 The Praying Indians faced harsh ocean winds and nor’easters that covered the island with snow, which, combined with the lack of shelter, led to death by freezing. For more information, see Brooks, pp. 225-226 35 https://postalmuseum.si.edu/indiansatthepostoffice/mural16.html 36 It’s important to question whether John Eliot was attempting to help the Praying Indians because he genuinely cared for them, or because their extinction would have signified a complete failure in his life’s religious and political mission. King Philip’s War had a devastating cultural impact on Puritan society’s view of American
Indians.37 Puritans were less agreeable to John Eliot’s cordial offer of assimilation in the wake of massive death tolls and property damage in a war against Natives: destruction that would be felt for years after the conflict.
This reignited divide had tangible effects in the political support for Christianization programs, including the Harvard Indian College. Once promised to be the flagship institution for
Christianizing the Praying Indians, the school closed its doors in 1670 and the building was dismantled in 1698.38 But the experiment had already backfired; only five Native students had ever enrolled at the school and three of these five had fallen victim to the deadly epidemics that wiped out over 75% of the local Native population in this time.39 John Eliot’s Christianization experiment collapsed before his eyes.
Abby: In addition, American Indian property within Praying Towns was continually being seized by the English. As settlers rapidly increased in population in the 1700’s, they gained control of more and more land from the descendants of Wampanoag, Nipmuc, and other tribes.
For example, a deed from Natick Massachusetts, John Eliot’s original Praying Town, signed in
1760 by three American Indian women: Leah Chalcom, Esther Sooduck, and Hepzibeth Pegun, shows the transfer of 31 acres of land to prominent English colonist Ephraim Bacon.
37 The violence of the conflict was contrary to virtues of civility and godliness that were important to both the Puritan faith and English society. In order to reconstruct their own self-image, much of the blame for the war was publicly redirected towards the Natives and relations with Praying Indians only grew weaker going forward. 38 https://www.peabody.harvard.edu/node/480 39 It is estimated that 75–90% of the local Native population succumbed to smallpox and other disease epidemics. Three of the five Indian College students were among the casualties. Accumulation of land and continued English population growth created an environment where the remaining Indians of former Praying Towns were met with poverty and driven into debt.40
As their territory vanished, a generation of Christian American Indians who had just established a world for themselves had nowhere else to go.
Nate: It is in these final chapters of the Praying Indians that Simon George of Ponkapoag lived, on one of the last apple orchards in town still owned by Natives. By the 1730’s, Ponkapoag orchard property, once leased out by the American Indians, was largely seized and controlled by the English. Simon George died in 1739 and was buried on his own property…where the neighborhood kids of Canton would stumble upon his bones 240 years later. The property was then inherited by a man named Jacob Wilbur, who was also buried behind the orchard. Wilbur’s wife, Mary, was the last Ponkapoag Native to own the property. Living until 1852, Mary Burr not only outlasted Wilbur and her second husband Seymour, but lived to see Ponkapoag and the
Praying Indian world decline into nonexistence. On her grave in Canton Center reads: “Like the leaves in November, so sure to decay, Have the Indian tribes all passed away.”41
Abby: Or did they? After this break, we’ll go to Natick to find out.
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40 Deed from Natick History Museum 41 http://www.thecantoncitizen.com/2014/03/20/true-tales-burr-pt1/ 42 Original composition by Mike Orlando, Greg Fournier, Kathrine Esten, and Deepika Singh. ______
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ACT FIVE: PRAYING INDIANS TODAY: NATICK MA
Abby: We’re here in Natick, Massachusetts, at the Natick Historical Society Museum. As the first Praying Indian town, Natick is an important place to visit in order to learn about the end of the world of the Praying Indians. To give some context, the museum is located in the Bacon
Free Library, in the center of Natick…named after the same Bacon family from the deed that we mentioned earlier who gained control of American Indian property. The library is located at 58
Eliot Street, down the street from the Eliot Church.43
The Natick Historical Society Museum currently has about 35 artifacts, and several relate to the
Praying Indians. The largest and most noticeable artifact is the desk of the Indian minister,
Daniel Takawampbait. We’ll hear from the director of the museum about the importance of this desk, and the relevance of the other Praying Indian items in the possession of the Natick
Historical Society.
Niki Lefebvre: So, my name is Niki Lefebvre, and I’m the director of Natick Historical Society, which was founded in 1870, and we’ve held a museum, which we now call the Natick History
Museum, in this building, the lower level of the Bacon Free Library, since 1880.
So, this is one of our most important objects, it’s the pulpit desk of Daniel Takawampbait. And Daniel Takawampbait was an Algonquin Indian and he was the first among the Indians to become an ordained minister trained by John Eliot and this desk is what he used to deliver and prepare his sermons and what’s really interesting about it is this sort of mix of styles that you see, you can tell that is inspired by a European style pulpit but it’s got a lot of interesting details, almost featherwork, on the sides and on the feet, and we do know that it was made by two Algonquin Indians (we don’t have the names), but it’s a really interesting piece because it sort of captures the story of what happened here in Natick here in 1651 with sort of European people and ideas sort of converging with local Indigenous people and their ideas…
Abby: The fact that the desk of the first ordained Indian minister is now held in the Bacon Free Library is somewhat incongruous, but not unexpected. The Bacon Family is an example of one family that began the process of taking land from the Praying Indians in Natick.
43 https://www.natickhistoricalsociety.org/ Niki: The Natick historical society has a number of deeds which are evidence of the way that land was transferred from Native people living in this area to English and other European people who accrued lots of land - the land of the town - over the course of the eighteenth century….
Abby: It’s no surprise that Praying Indians were not able to preserve their own history. We have to commend those who are working to preserve the history today, such as the directors of Massachusetts historical societies, the Harvard Peabody Museum, and cultural societies. However, preserving history is not always enough. We wanted to find out more about how people in Natick today view the Praying Indians, and whether or not the world of Natick can even remember that part of their past.
Niki: So I would say that Natick residents not only know about the history of the settlement of this town, but a lot of them feel quite proud of the history of the town as one of the praying settlements established by John Eliot…it’s sort of hard not to know; we’re in the John Eliot historic district, the sort of seal is all over the place in Natick, and as far as the historical society is concerned our most popular programs have to do with the Praying Indians and people are very eager to learn anything they can about it and I do think I came to the historical society fairly recently and I think that as proud as Natick is of this heritage I think we also have a lot more to learn as far as different perspectives on what the Praying settlement meant to anybody who was connected to it, to Native people and European-descended people and those of us who live here now and have inherited this heritage.
Abby: It seems as though the legacy of the Praying Indians is remembered by some citizens of Natick, but not all. A world can still end and be remembered, and in the course of our research, we have concluded that the world of the Praying Indians did end. Though there are still some celebrations of the history and remembrance events, we could not find substantial evidence to suggest that the world of the Praying Indians is ongoing. There is a memorial on Deer Island, which is now a large wastewater treatment plant. There are a few - not many - cultural groups and church services now and then, including a traditional Praying Indian wedding ceremony that was performed in 2015, at the Eliot Church in Natick. We also learned that there is a Praying Indian group based in Natick; however, the members of that group are not necessarily descendants from John Eliot’s established Praying Indian community. Additionally, the group has not been active since 2015, and we were not able to contact them. And of course, there are a few historical relics, the majority of which are located on Eliot Street, in a library deeded to the town by the family that once took land from Praying Indians. And Simon George’s bones, fatefully discovered by two white children, are now located at the Peabody Museum, on the
Harvard University campus.
The story of the Praying Indians is a story of religious conversion, cultural transformation, and political manipulation. It’s easy to think that John Eliot and other colonists encouraged the establishment of Praying Towns in order to help American Indians survive. However, it’s more likely that Praying Towns were a way for colonists to politicize the existence of American
Indians. Initially, Praying Indians could use their Christianization and assimilation as a means of survival, but when difficult times began, such as the King Philip’s War, it was clear that their
Christianization could not save them. Their world ended, and their subsequent mark on
Massachusetts history is noticeable but faint. Faint, because their world ended, but noticeable, because a world ended can still be remembered.
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44 Original composition by Mike Orlando, Greg Fournier, Kathrine Esten, and Deepika Singh.
Credits
Paul Musgrave: This episode of “Final Examination” was hosted by Nate Reynolds and Abby McDonough. It was edited by Mike Orlando and produced by Greg Fournier. The material was researched by Deepika Singh and Kathrine Esten.
Special thanks go to Niki Lefebvre and Marya Van't Hul from the Natick Historical Society, the
UMass library staff, notably Lisa di Valentino, the Commonwealth Honors College, and the
UMass Amherst Political Science Department.
The original score for this podcast was composed by Mike Orlando. Guitar was played by Greg
Fournier, saxophone by Kathrine Esten, and violin by Deepika Singh. Greg Fournier and Mike
Orlando provided additional vocals.
This podcast was produced by students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as part of
Political Science 390, a course on The Politics of the End of the World led by Assistant Professor
Paul Musgrave. It is licensed under a Creative Commons No Derivatives 4.0 International license.
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