The Praying Indian Figure in the Eliot Tracts, 1643–1675 Author: Lea Kröner

‘Indian Brethren in English Clothes’: The Praying Indian Figure in the Eliot Tracts, 1643–1675 Author: Lea Kröner DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/GHSJ.2018.192 Source: Global Histories, Vol. 4, No. 1 (May 2018), pp. 66–83 ISSN: 2366-780X Copyright © 2018 Lea Kröner License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Publisher information: ‘Global Histories: A Student Journal’ is an open-access bi-annual journal founded in 2015 by students of the M.A. program Global History at Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. ‘Global Histories’ is published by an editorial board of Global History students in association with the Freie Universität Berlin. Freie Universität Berlin Global Histories: A Student Journal Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut Koserstraße 20 14195 Berlin Contact information: For more information, please consult our website www.globalhistories.com or contact the editor at: [email protected]. MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY SEAL, 1629 ‘Indian Brethren in English Clothes’: The Praying Indian Figure in the Eliot Tracts, 1643–1675 LEA KRÖNER Lea Kröner received her B.A. in History from Freie Universität Berlin and is currently enrolled in the Master’s program Global History at Freie Universität and Humboldt-Universität zu Ber- lin. In 2016, she spent a semester at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she focused on Indigenous history. Her main research interests include the history of early and modern North America, as well as colonial and missionary history. This article focuses on the Eliot Tracts, a collection of eleven documents published in London between 1643 and 1671 that describe missionary work by the British among the natives in New England. Written by John Eliot, Thomas Shepard, and other missionaries, these tracts constitute the most detailed and sustained record of early British missionary work in the New World and serve as an important counterpart to earlier accounts by French and Spanish missionaries. Drawing on methods of discourse analysis, this article examines how Puritan missionaries described the converted natives of New England—the so-called Praying Indians—in the Eliot Tracts. It shows that the figure of the Praying Indian was constructed as a response to economic, theological, and political pressures within a transatlantic colonial context: New England’s mission rhetoric generated not only support from observers in England and was essential in order to stimulate donations, but also provided a necessary redefinition of the colony’s purpose in the context of the English civil wars. In addition, it allowed the Puritans to redefine their relations with the natives in terms of Christian benevolence and countered accusation about a lack of missionary zeal among the British settlers. Introduction One of the reasons the Massachusetts Bay Company gave for colonizing New England was the obligation to convert its native inhabitants to Christianity. The Massachusetts Bay Colony’s charter of 1629 had granted the Governor and his deputies the authority to establish laws whereby our said People, Inhabitants there, may be soe religiously, peaceablie, and civilly governed, as their good Life and orderlie Conversacon, maie wynn and in- cite the Natives of Country, to the Knowledg and Obedience of the onlie true God and Savior of Mankinde, and the Christian Fayth, which in our Royall Intencon, and the Adventurers free Profession, is the principall Ende of this Plantacion.1 1 Francis Newton Thorpe, “The Federal and State Constitutions Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the States, Territories, and Colonies Now or Heretofore Forming the Unit- ed States of America.” Compiled and Edited Under the Act of Congress of June 30, 1906 67 68 Lea Kröner The colony’s seal, which depicted a native figure pleading with the English to “come over and help us,” further reinforced this claim. Nevertheless, during the 1620s and 1630s, the Puritan settlers devoted little effort to the proselytization of the Algonquian-speaking people of that region, focusing instead on expanding their towns and farms. Effective missionary work in New England only began in October 1646, when Puritan minister John Eliot began preaching to a local Algonquian community and thus paved the way for a missionary program. In order to raise funds for this work in New England and to publicize it as part of the fulfillment of the colony’s charter, a number of tracts were published in London between 1643 and 1671. These consisted of different documents, ranging from letters describing the missionaries’ work, and accounts of observers and commentators from both England and the colonies to records of the confessions of natives, and a multitude of dedications. The tracts were not treated as a coherent sequence as they appeared and quality of the original publications varied widely. Today, these works are collectively known as the Eliot Tracts because Eliot not only published the majority of them but was also most closely associated with the missionary project.2 While some of the early tracts were published independently, most of them were collected and printed by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England (later known as the New England Company) established by the English Parliament in 1649 to support missionary work in New England. The Eliot Tracts constitute a detailed account of early British missionary work in the New World and serve as an important counterpart to earlier accounts by French and Spanish missionaries. Despite their social and political importance for the role of New England in the transatlantic context of British colonialism, they have received relatively little attention from scholars. The most notable excep- tion is Richard W. Cogley’s John Eliot’s Mission the Indians before King Philip’s War (1999), which offers an overview on Eliot’s missionary work among the natives with an emphasis on his theological writings.3 Worth mentioning is also William Kellaway’s The New England Company 1649–1776 (1962). Interpret- ing the British sources relating to the New England mission, this work presents a detailed account of the organization and administration within the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.4 Older works, such as Alden T. Vaughan’s New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620–1675 (1965), often had a tendency (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1909). Accessed August 16, 2017, http:// avalon.law.yale.edu/17th century/mass03.asp. 2 Michael P. Clark, “Introduction”, in The Eliot Tracts: With Letters from John Eliot to Thomas Thorowgood and Richard Baxter, ed. Michael P. Clark (Westport: Praeger, 2003), 1–52. Clark was the first to publish these eleven works together in 2003; the majority of these works have not been reprinted since the nineteenth century. 3 Richard W. Cogley, John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians before King Philip’s War (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1999). 4 William Kellaway, The New England Company 1649–1776: Missionary Society to the Ameri- can Indians (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1962). GLOBAL HISTORIES VOLUME IV MAY 2018 ‘Indian Brethren in English Clothes’ 69 to exclude missionaries from the expansionist policies of New England and to portray their motives as benign and honorable.5 Around ten years later, historians like Francis Jennings, Neil Salisbury, Robert J. Berkhofer, and James Axtell con- tested Vaughan’s thesis and situated the Puritan missionaries in a broader context of British colonialism in New England.6 Even later, Dane Morrison and Jean M. O’Brien focused on the native perspective on the missionary project. Morrison’s work A Praying People (1995) shows how the Massachusett tribe experienced conversion and stresses native agency; whereas O’Brien’s Dispossession by De- grees (2003) focuses on how the native community in Natick resisted colonialism and defended its lands.7 Beginning around 2000, literary theorists like Kristina Bross and Hilary Wyss have also turned their attentions towards the Eliot Tracts. While these works demonstrate the importance of adding literary analysis to the historical approach, Bross and Wyss primarily focus on a later period and largely ignore the early years of the missionary project.8 This article then aims at uncovering a part of this overlooked history by exam- ining how Puritan missionaries described the converted natives—the so-called Praying Indians—in the Eliot Tracts. I follow Kristina Bross and James Holstun in their assessment that we have to “understand Indian mission policy as fun- damentally constructed in relation to Puritan theology rather than simply as a product of Indian and English contact”.9 The figure of the Praying Indian then, I argue, was constructed in a similar way in response to economic, theological, and political pressures within a transatlantic colonial context: The construction of the Praying Indian figure helped to win the favor of an English audience (rather than a New English one) and was essential in order to stimulate further donations for the missionary project. In addition, it allowed the Puritans to redefine their rela- 5 Alden T. Vaughan, New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620–1675 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1965). 6 Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975); Neal Salisbury, “Red Puritans: The ‘Praying Indians’ of Massachusetts Bay and John Eliot,” The William and Mary Quarterly 31, no. 1 (1974): 27–54; Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500–1643 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); Robert F. Berkhofer, The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York: Knopf, 1978); James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cul- tures in Colonial North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). 7 Dane Morrison, A Praying People: Massachusett Acculturation and the Failure of the Puritan Mission, 1600–1690 (New York: Peter Lang, 1995); Jean M.

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