Lost Tribes and the Devil's Army: The Changing Role of Native Americans in the Puritan Imagination

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts In History University of Regina

by Geoffrey Lyle Loken Edmonton, Alberta January 2010 Copyright 2010: G. L Loken Library and Archives Bibliothfeque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l'6dition

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••I Canada UNIVERSITY OF REGINA

FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH

SUPERVISORY AND EXAMINING COMMITTEE

Geoffrey Lyle Loken, candidate for the degree of Master of Arts in History, has presented a thesis titled, Lost Tribes and the Devil's Army: The Changing Role of Native Americans in the Puritan Imagination, in an oral examination held on November 27, 2009. The following committee members have found the thesis acceptable in form and content, and that the candidate demonstrated satisfactory knowledge of the subject material.

External Examiner: Dr. Lee Ward, Department of Political Science, Campion College

Supervisor: Dr. Yvonne Petry, Department of History, Luther College

Committee Member: *Dr. Robin Ganev, Department of History

Committee Member: Dr. Dawn Flood, Department of History, Campion College

Chair of Defense: Dr. Jeanne Shami, Department of English

*Participated via teleconference ABSTRACT

Contact between cultures has been a major part of human history, and has been the source of much conflict. When the worldviews and histories of two cultures meet, it creates an opportunity for both learning and confusion as preconceptions are challenged or confirmed. When the Puritans settled the

Massachusetts Bay region they brought with them a distinct cultural narrative that shaped their understanding of the world. The hundred years that followed was marked by significant changes to the way that Puritans described their purpose in

North America, and seemingly inconsistent attitudes toward the local tribes.

Rather than allowing the presence of Native Americans to challenge their sense of purpose and meaning, the Puritans used their presence to reinforce and justify colonial efforts. By placing varying emphasis on elements of millenarian thought and Biblical typology the Puritans were able to extensively justify their

presence in North America, as exemplified in their changing policies toward

missionary efforts and wars with local tribes. This thesis examines Puritan writing

in order to understand the cultural narratives that dominated their thought

throughout the seventeenth century, and considers how those narratives

changed in order to adapt to new pressures on the colony. Puritan thought was

versatile enough to adapt to new challenges, and reinforced their presence in

North America by placing it within a divine narrative. Native Americans were used

to justify and support the community, rather than being allowed to threaten or

challenge the beliefs of the colonists.

Understanding the versatility of Puritan thought helps to explain the

i process of colonization and the subjugation of Native Americans. It also places their interaction with Native Americans in the context of trans-Atlantic struggles.

As the colony's power grew the colonists were increasingly able to exploit Native

Americans to justify their own position in North America, and adapted their sense of purpose and meaning to allow for expansion over land formerly inhabited by those tribes. Throughout the seventeenth century Puritan attitudes shifted in order to defend themselves against adversity across the Atlantic, dissent within the colony and the struggles of colonization. The Puritans' cultural narratives adapted to their situation and the pressures placed on them, and the results of those changing attitudes were readily apparent in their relationships with Native

Americans.

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis would not have been possible without the supervision and support of Dr. Yvonne Petry. I attribute the completion of this thesis to her patience and encouragement and cannot imagine having completed this work without it. I would also like to thank Dr. Robin Ganev and Dr. Dawn Flood for sitting on the thesis committee and offering critical and constructive feedback toward the completion of this work. Without that feedback, this thesis would not have had the direction or polish it does now. I am proud and grateful to have received such assistance, and hope the product of this labor is pleasing to everyone that has contributed their time and efforts toward it.

I would like to express gratitude to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and

Research of the University of Regina and Luther College for awarding me teaching assistant positions that made funding this process possible. Similarly, I must thank the Department of History for awarding me the Bernard Zagorin

History Scholarship. Without the funding opportunities provided by these institutions I never could have completed this work.

I am deeply grateful for all of the support I have received throughout this process. It has been a long and often arduous journey and I could not have done it without assistance

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER

1: "They Shall Dwell in Their Own Place": Puritan Theology as it Shaped Their Encounters With Native Americans 10

2: "Sinful and Miserable Estates": Contact, Puritan Colonists and

Native Americans 38

3: "Perfect Children of the Devil": Armies of the Devil and Lost Tribes 85

CONCLUSION 123

BIBLIOGRAPHY 128

iv INTRODUCTION

The Puritans responsible for the founding of the Massachusetts Bay colony had frequent interactions with the local Native American tribes, ranging from cooperation and missionary work to minor conflict and all-out war. Many of those encounters were shaped by the belief structure of Puritanism, a religion with roots in the doctrine of Calvinism and the Protestant Reformation. The perspective of the Puritans that traveled from England to Massachusetts Bay was significantly shaped by early modern theories of science, religion and philosophy.

They understood mechanical causality within a framework of religion; natural events and occurrences were given meaning in the context of providential theory and religious typology. The Puritans understood natural events to exist both mechanically and within the framework of divine meaning. Everything was translated in the context of piety and Providential theory, including the actions and existence of Native Americans. Specifically, the inward-looking tendency of

Puritanism encouraged stability within the community by understanding the actions of Native Americans as indicators of divine approval or displeasure. It stripped Native Americans of their own autonomy or significance and allowed

Puritans to convert, battle, ignore, or profit from them as necessary. The precise nature of that relationship changed according to the needs of the colony and by the end of the seventeenth century culminated in the subjugation or destruction of many of the tribes in the area. Theology, culture and power were inseparably connected in the Puritan colony and affected every aspect of life in the settlement, invariably supporting and justifying the existence and expansion of

1 2 the Massachusetts Bay colony.

In 1620 separatist Pilgrims founded the Plymouth Colony in New England,

and in 1629 a group of Puritans came from England and founded the

Massachusetts Bay colony. Between 1630 and 1640 roughly twenty thousand

Puritans crossed the Atlantic to the New World in what would later be called the

Great Migration.1 The Great Migration began with the Winthrop fleet crossing the

Atlantic and was the first step in what they described as a providential journey

from England to a new promised land. In order to understand their new home,

the Puritan colonists described North America in terms of typology, the

theological belief that the world was constructed of types and anti-types already

established in scripture. To Puritan typology the New World was a waiting place

or a promised land.2 Their tendency to understand the world in a typological

framework allowed the Puritans to understand what would otherwise have been

an entirely alien environment. While their translation of their new environment

may have eased the relocation of the Puritans it played a more complex role in

their relationship with the local tribes.

This thesis examines the way Puritan ideas about Native America

changed throughout the seventeenth century, from the founding of the colony to

the end of Metacomet's War and the beginning of the Salem witch crisis. The

thesis focuses particularly on the Puritan colonists of the Massachusetts Bay

area, members of the Great Migration under their first governor, John Winthrop,

Virginia DeJohn Anderson, New England's Generation: The Great Migration and the Formation of Society in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge University Press: 1992), 78. 2Francis J. Bremer, Shaping New Englands: Puritan Clergymen in Seventeenth-Century England and New England (New York: Twayne, 1992), 25. 3 and the successive generations that followed until the end of the seventeenth century. Believing that Protestant reforms made in the Church of England were insufficient, the migrants were committed to Puritan doctrine and dedicated to creating an ideal community in North America. Unlike the separatist Pilgrims of the Plymouth colony, the Puritans were determined to bring about reform in the

Church of England. Their commitment to reform forced the Puritans to construct their identity in opposition to the Church of England, and to demonstrate their significance on both sides of the Atlantic. In its first generation the colony was relatively homogeneous in its dedication to Puritan ideas regarding government and religion.3 The gradual erosion of that conformity became a cause of anxiety for Puritans in later generations.

Puritan accounts described Native Americans in a number of diverse, and often contradictory ways. They described the tribes in the Massachusetts area as friends and allies as often as savages and tools of the devil. Descriptions varied but all shared one commonality - they were formed in the context of the Puritan colonists' providential world view. Fitting Native Americans into their providential

narrative served to reinforce Puritan identity and sense of mission while creating

internal stability, but in doing so stifled the voice and perspective of the local tribes. As such, it encouraged a form of cultural imperialism that eventually threatened the lives, autonomy and beliefs of the tribes. In the decades

immediately following its founding, the Massachusetts Bay colony was fragile and still developing the infrastructure and power base necessary for survival. During

3lbid„ 1-3. 4 those first decades, the Puritans informally negotiated a somewhat mutual relationship with the Native Americans. In the colony's early years the Puritans were occupied with the struggles involved in founding the colony and they made

little attempt to expand their territory. As the colony's strength grew they began to more aggressively seize land and resources, stressing their relationship with

local tribes. The colony faced two major wars in the first century of its existence, the Pequot War from 1636-1637 with the local Pequot tribe, and King Philip's, or

Metacomet's War, from 1675-1676. Metacomet's War was a conflict with the

Wampanoag Confederacy over colonial expansion, which had begun to be an

issue toward the middle of the seventeenth century. Puritans' tendency to

understand Native Americans only within the context of European history and

Christianity allowed the Puritans to enter the conflict without challenging their

cultural assumptions or religious beliefs. The hostility of Native Americans was

understood in terms of a providential battle and not as a competition for power

and resources.

Throughout the seventeenth century the Puritans were engaged in

ongoing revaluations of their purpose in North America and their own history there. The first generation of Puritan colonists believed that they had left England

on a providential journey, to establish a community based on Puritan doctrine, a

remnant that would be protected from their troubles in Europe. They believed that they were saving a remnant of the true church, and were making the sacrifices

implicit in their journey in order to live in a manner prescribed by Puritan doctrine.

The Puritans believed that they were the elect, chosen for deliverance by 5 Providence. The role of Native Americans and millenarian sentiment grew toward the second half of the seventeenth century, while the importance of the colony as a sustained fragment of the Puritan church waned. To the Puritan colonists of

Massachusetts Bay there was no distinguishing between secular or spiritual motivations, or between history and prophecy; all elements formed a dynamic relationship. The relationship between a Puritan sense of history and religion meant that Native Americans could not be considered in their own context, as to do so threatened the Puritan sense of doctrine and history. To the Puritans, new experiences had to fit into a divine narrative and the only text for that narrative was scripture. Christian doctrine taught that all mankind came from a common ancestry and geolographical source, and the Puritans believed themselves to be central in providential history. The idea that a human culture could exist in isolation, apart from Europe and Christianity was impossible for the Puritans to understand.

In its early years the colony was dedicated to preserving a remnant of the true church in the wilderness. They placed themselves inside the context of a divine war, and believed that the Church of England had failed to fully reform.

Puritan theologians understood Native American attacks to indicate a divine judgment on the colony. Similarly, to the Puritan theologians the assistance or cooperation of Native Americans could have been a divine blessing. The Puritans were convinced that they held a special role in Providence, with special obligations. They were constantly concerned about conformity to doctrine within their community, and insistent that they live in a manner prescribed by scripture. 6 Puritans' reliance on providential theory encouraged them to explain disaster and conflict in a structure of omens and typological meaning and as such they

interpreted crisis as punishment for failings within the community, either a breach of covenant or a decline of piety. Therefore, attacks from Native Americans and other external sources were dealt with as natural events with a spiritual significance. The actual causes of the attacks were less important to the Puritans than their possible religious or typological significance.

The colonists of Massachusetts Bay were not interested in expansion until the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, a conflict between Protestants

under Oliver Cromwell and the English state. The English Civil War contributed to

extensive changes in the sense of purpose and organization of the colony. By

reforming England's church, the English Civil War challenged the significance of the Great Migration, and in doing so challenged the Puritan identity as members

of the elect. The Massachusetts Bay colony Puritans were forced to reexamine

their own significance and history. As the situation in England changed with the

beginning of the English Civil War the Puritan colonists were unable to justify

their journey entirely as a preserved remnant of the church. The changing

transatlantic dynamics, combined with increasing pressure on their community

from other sources, led them to revisit their attitudes toward Native Americans.

As the century progressed the Puritans became more interested in missionary work and there was increasing support of millenarian theories that showed the

significance of their efforts. The Puritans attempted to prove their importance by

drawing attention to the possible millenarian significance of the colony and the 7 work of the missionaries amongst the local tribes.

The period that followed the English Civil War was characterized by the gradual end of the first generation of colonists and the rise of jeremiads, a sermon style that warned of the coming apocalypse and decried the moral and spiritual laxity of the colony. The Puritans believed that they had failed to fulfill the divine covenant implicit in the colony's founding, and were certain that the colony's troubles were a punishment for impiety. The intensity of the Salem witch trials was in part due to the anxiety Puritans experienced surrounding the threat of apostasy within their community. The trials closed the seventeenth century, taking place during a period in which the colony faced pressure and conflict on several different fronts. When faced by attacks from Native Americans, a crisis of meaning, and an erosion of conformity within the colony, the Puritans searched their own community for possible spiritual failings that may have provoked divine punishment. There was a great deal of concern that the colony's troubles may have been brought on by the actions of the colonists, and that concern dominated Puritan thought as the century ended and the witch crisis began. The events in Salem reflected the Puritan anxiety concerning conformity and piety within the community, and the tendency to turn their gaze inward when attacked.

Without entirely ignoring natural causality, Puritans responded to attacks from

Native Americans by scouring their own community for failure. In that regard the witch trials were related to Puritan attitudes toward Native Americans, a consequence of the pressures of the time. The focus of this work is the interaction between cultural groups, the ideas that shaped those attitudes, and 8 the evolution of those ideas throughout the seventeenth century and until roughly

the beginning of the witch trials. The trials closed the seventeenth century and

began a new phase of Puritan history.

The clash of cultures between Native Americans and Puritan colonists

provides an opportunity to study the worldview of those involved, their adaptation to new experiences, and the contact of cultures. As a case study it focuses the

lens of inquiry on colonialism and contact, asking, how did the beliefs of the

Puritans shape their encounters with Native Americans? To what extent did their

unique system of beliefs influence their attitudes toward Native Americans upon first contact, and how did that relationship develop thereafter? The belief

structure of the Puritans who undertook the Great Migration was versatile enough to adapt to the pressures of the colony, and accommodate their relationships with

other groups. The Puritans showed remarkable shrewdness in their ability to

adapt to circumstances, and a seemingly sincere desire to understand the world

and themselves through self-examination.

Through their own history, typology and doctrine the Puritans brought to the New World a coherent system of thought and a narrative through which they

understood the world. Puritan encounters with Native Americans were not characterized by deliberate greed, malice or deliberate genocide. Initially war, cooperation, and even the absence of Native Americans were understood in the context of providential meaning. With Native Americans weakened by plague and conflict, the Puritans were in a position of power in the New World, one that was cemented following their victories in Metacomet's War. By silencing the voice of 9 Native Americans, Puritan thought perpetuated misunderstandings and conflicts

while creating greater internal stability in the colony. In every form encounters

with Native Americans were used to contribute to a Puritan sense of mission,

strengthen their purpose and identity, and encourage stability.

The first chapter of the thesis reviews the primary and secondary literature

most significant to a study of race in the seventeenth century Massachusetts Bay

colony. Following that overview I briefly examine the necessary background and

history of the colony and Puritan thought. The second chapter details the early

years of the colony and initial reactions to the wilderness and Native Americans.

The final chapter looks at how beliefs changed as the needs of the colony

changed, ensuring that Native Americans would continue to reinforce Puritan

identity and providential narrative. Throughout its length the thesis will consider

the relationship between Puritans and Native Americans and the development

and changes in meaning. The clash of cultures that took place during

colonization was both a conflict and an informal negotiation of power. In the early

years of colonization, Puritan thought allowed a relatively unaggressive stance

regarding the local tribes and their expansion. As the Puritans became more

established in the colony, their thought changed to encourage a more aggressive

attitude of cultural imperialism. Although never holding explicitly imperialist

motives, Puritan thought developed in the colonial situation in a manner that not only allowed, but demanded aggressive cultural imperialism. The culture and power relations of the colony were entangled, and the ideas of Puritan theology supported the community, and extensively justified its existence and expansion. CHAPTER ONE

"They Shall Dwell in Their Own Place"1

Puritan Theology as it Shaped their Encounters with Native Americans

When the Puritans founded Massachusetts Bay in the beginning of the seventeenth century, they understood themselves to be preserving a true church in the wilderness, with the hope of one day reforming the Church of England. In the first decades if Puritan writers discussed the local Native American tribes it was to express curiosity with their literal scriptural origin. Distracted as they were by the necessity of survival and their own sense of mission, the first generation of

Puritans in Massachusetts Bay did not often directly engage in conflict with

Native Americans. The Puritans maintained a relatively pragmatic relationship with the local tribes, and kept their distance as much as possible. Their relationship with Native Americans was reflected in the Puritans' intellectual beliefs, and in those early years they often described Native Americans as indicators of the will of Providence.2 Puritan authors frequently expressed the belief that the local tribes could reflect the will of Providence by aiding or punishing the colony. The early years of the colony were characterized by a tendency to understand the local tribes in the context of a providential drama, largely as heathens, gentiles, and indicators of divine will.

Throughout the last fifty years, many of the sources discussing colonial attitudes toward Native Americans have been highly critical of the Puritans.

1John Cotton, God's Promise to his Plantation (London: William Jones and John Bellamy), 13. 2The term Providence is distinct from God, as it was developed in Calvinist theology and suggests the sinfulness of humanity, the supreme authority of divinity, and the direct hand played by God in predestined history. 10 11 Typical of such trends, Francis Jennings' The Invasion of America depicts colonists as rational imperialists, and their relationship to Native Americans as exploitative and coercive.3 Such criticisms of colonialism became common in the latter half of the twentieth century, and though well-meaning they often failed to account for the full complexity of colonial relationships. Neal Salisbury's Manitou and Providence described colonial history in terms of dichotomies, most often with Native Americans on the losing end of exchange.4 While Salisbury and his contemporaries contributed enormously to the study of colonialism, their work did not fully express the dynamic relationship between the tribes and colonists. The traditional understanding of colonial dichotomies fails to properly represent the complexity of the colonial period, or the intellectual and political changes that the colony itself underwent during its first hundred years. In the early years of

Massachusetts Bay, the colonists were occupied with the necessity of survival, and relationships with the local tribes were fairly mutual. It was as the power of the colony and its need for resources grew that the colonial forces became increasingly coercive and heavy-handed with the local tribes.

The colonial situation was neither simple nor static, and it would be erroneous to characterize the Puritans as either benevolent missionaries or rational imperialists. The attitudes of the Puritans changed as the colony grew and as their relationship with the Atlantic world changed. The theology and perspective of the Puritans often reflected the demands of their immediate

3Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (New York: Norton, 1976). 4Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans and the Making of New England, 1500-1643 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). situation. Works such as James Holstun's A Rational Millennium have dealt

extensively with the role of millenarianism and theology in Puritan thought.

Holstun's work focuses on the importance of millenarianism to Puritan intellectual

thought and the community and in doing so demonstrates some of the complexity

of the colonial Puritan world view.5 Much like Holstun, Theodore Dwight

Bozeman examined the religious thought of the Puritan colonists, but chose to

downplay the influence of millenarianism on it. In "The Puritans' Errand into the

Wilderness Reconsidered" Bozeman criticizes Miller's understanding of Puritan

theology, and suggests that rather than millenarian the Puritan colonists

understood themselves as realizing a true, historic church. The essay argues

convincingly that the Puritans' sense of purpose and self was significant to their

history and identity.6 In order to understand the events that took place around the

Massachusetts Bay colony it is important to realize that their understanding of the world and their own place in it developed throughout the history of the colony,

placing variable emphasis on millenarianism and other facets of Christian theology.

Although Puritan thought was organic and developed extensively in the first century of colonization its foundation was built on a few relatively stable

ideas and principles. In order to properly understand the Puritan mindset Avihu

Zakai's Exile and Kingdom grounds the colonists in the context of the Protestant

5James Holstun, A Rational Millennium: Puritan Utopias of Seventeenth-Century England and America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 6Theodore Dwight Bozeman, "The Puritans' Errand into the Wilderness Reconsidered," The New England Quarterly, Vol. 59 No. 2 (June, 1986): 231-251. 13 Reformation, which melded prophecy and secular history.7 The Protestants

understood the study of history and the study of biblical prophecy to be

inseparable; to many all history was the history of scripture as it moved toward

the fulfillment of prophecy. In his discussions of sacred space, Zakai suggests

that rather than inventing the founding myth, Puritans revisited their own history

and focused on elements already expressed within it. According to Zakai,

millenarianism and the idea of the elect's special role were always present in

Puritan history, though the importance of those ideas changed as time went on.8

The intersection between Puritan thought, colonialism and millenarian theory is

important to understanding the early history of the Massachusetts Bay colony,

and Zakai's work extensively discusses their sense of themselves as members of

the elect. The concept of the elect was adopted from Calvinist theories of

predestination that taught that a certain group of elect were predestined to be

saved, while the unregenerate would suffer damnation. The Puritans were

consistently concerned with their place in history, and their role in the world. As

David Scobey discusses in his article, "Revising the Errand" the Puritans

frequently examined, and reinterpreted their own history. Scobey demonstrates that while the Puritans always believed themselves to be the elect, their interest

in millenarianism and missionary work was subdued in the first decades of the

colony.9 Those ideas took new life as new challenges and pressures forced the

?Avihu Zakai, Exile and Kingdom: History and Apocalypse in The Puritan Migration to America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 8lbid. sDavid Scobey, "Revising the Errand: New England's Ways and the Puritan Sense of the Past," The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 41 No. 1 (January, 1984): 3-31. Puritans to reconsider the meaning of their journey. Zakai's and Scobey's works complement each other, and suggest that the Puritan understanding of the world was an organic process, subject to interpretation and revision. In response to the various pressures placed on their community, the Puritans searched for meaning in the world around them, in scripture, and in their own history, and attempted to create a coherent narrative with the results.

Despite the importance of Puritan thought and theology, they were not the only factors influencing the colony's relationship with local tribes. Scholars have extensively studied economics, power, exchange and the relationships between

Native American and European cultural groups in the colonial period. Callaway's

New Worlds For All exists in a literature of cultural exchange between Native

Americans and Europeans, amongst authors who increasingly see mutual benefit in the exchange of technologies, labor and ideas that took place.10 Often these works take an ethnographic approach, as in the case of Salisbury's Manitou and

Providence, or Axtell's The European and the Indian. Axtell's work celebrates the idea of dynamic cultural frontiers and suggests that in their contact with each other; both cultures encountered conflict and cooperation that shaped their own culture. Axtell's analysis is important for demonstrating that particularly in the early years of the colony, exchange was not unilinear, the Massachusetts Bay colony and the local tribes had to negotiate power, and both stood to benefit or suffer from one another's presence.11 Though the colonial forces often

10Colin Callaway, New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). 11 James Axtell, The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North 15 overpowered the local tribes, the colony's first decades were dominated by more mutual relationships than found in later years. As the colony became more powerful and its need for resources grew, the scales tipped against the Native local tribes and by the end of the seventeenth century colonial European dominance was solidly established.

Encounters between Native Americans and Puritans took place in the context of the colonial relationship with England and developed in response to changes overseas. Developments in England were in part responsible for the

Puritans' revisions of their own history, changing priorities and sense of purpose.

That sense of purpose and religious mission was readily apparent in Puritan sermons and doctrine. Tying those elements together, Francis Bremer's Shaping

New Englands is a discussion of piety, religious authority and Puritanism in

England and New England. Bremer's work focuses on two critical factors in New

England: the role of the Atlantic World and England's relationship with the colony, and the importance of religion in New England. Both elements were enormously significant to Puritan thought in the seventeenth century, and shaped their interactions with the world. 12 Recent literature has established that the Atlantic context was essential to Puritan identity and purpose, and dialogue between the two continents was constant throughout the Massachusetts Bay colony's history.

Even more important than actual journeys between the two was the impact of

England on the sense of purpose and identity of the colonists of Massachusetts

Bay. Their relationship to England was important to the Puritan worldview, and

America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). 12Bremer, Shaping New Englands. 16 throughout the seventeenth century their identity developed to accommodate

changes in that relationship.

Puritan theology and identity in the seventeenth century was enormously

shaped by their economic and political circumstances. The colony existed during

a turbulent period for English Protestantism, and that tension came to shape their

theology and identity. One of the most recent and exciting works to engage ideas

of an Atlantic World and the relationship between the New World and Europe is

Jenny Hale Pulsipher's book, Subjects unto the Same King.™ Pulsipher engages

the Puritan experience in North America and breaks down the traditional

dichotomies, particularly between Native Americans and European colonists.

Instead of a racial conflict, Pulsipher describes the colonial situation as a crisis of

authority for the Puritan colonists. The clash between the Native American and

Puritan cultures in North America happened in the context of transatlantic and

internal struggles for legitimacy and authority. Their struggles shaped the Puritan

colonists' sense of self and their relationships with others. Pulsipher's work is

primarily concerned with Metacomet's War and placing the experience of Native

Americans within Atlantic power struggles.14 The conflicts and politics in North

America were part of an ongoing relationship between the Puritans and England.

Pulsipher argues convincingly that changes in local relationships were the result

of changing Atlantic relationships. The idea of a crisis of authority and the Atlantic

context are essential to understanding the Puritan colony.

13Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 14lbid. As important as the colony's authority and Atlantic context are it is equally important to understand the role that missionary work and religious typology played in the lives of the colonists. Kristina Bross' Dry Bones and Indian Sermons touches on critical themes concerning "Praying Indians."15 The term Praying

Indian was popularized in the seventeenth century, and referenced Native

Americans who had been Christianized through missionary efforts. Bross is interested in the same transatlantic world discussed by Pulsipher, but specifically considers the impact of biblical typology on the conversion of Native Americans.

She examines the use of allegory and typology in Puritan thought and how they shaped attitudes regarding Native Americans and their conversion. The book convincingly demonstrates that the thought of the members of the Great

Migration was heavily influenced by biblical narratives, and those narratives were what the colonists turned to in order to understand new experiences. Bross examines John Eliot's "Indian Dialogues" and the captivity narrative of Mary

Rowlandson for her primary sources, rather than the sermon transcripts often

relied on for studies of Massachusetts Bay.16 Rather than focusing on conversion as Bross does, this thesis examines the impact of Puritan thought on their relationships with Native Americans during the early years of colonization and the development of those ideas throughout the seventeenth century. While

Bross' focus is somewhat different, her work has been significant in shaping this thesis.

15Kristina Bross, Dry Bones and Indian Sermons: Praying Indians in Colonial America (New York, Cornell University Press, 2004). 16lbid. 18 There has been a great deal of research devoted to Puritan tendencies toward typological thought, doctrine, and use of allegory. Works that synthesize

Puritan typological thinking and attitudes toward Native American are much less frequent. David Lovejoy's essay, "Satanizing the American Indian," is excellent in that regard, particularly documenting the connection that Puritans found between the Native Americans and the devil.17 Lovejoy's work discusses the problem of

Native American origins, and the search for understanding in biblical stories, including the belief that they were one of the lost tribes of Israel from Hebrew scripture. Theological speculation and scripture are central to the work, which relies heavily on the speculations of Joseph Mede and his contemporaries. As a scholar and theologian, Mede was extremely influential on Puritan thought and interested in millenarianism. Lovejoy's article compares Protestant to Catholic reactions, and considers Plymouth, England, and Massachusetts Bay. Lovejoy situates the quest for meaning in Massachusetts Bay in the context of their relationship to Catholicism and Protestantism. The attitudes of Native Americans toward race and colonialism were shaped by those tensions and Lovejoy clearly demonstrates the role of religious thought and political change in Europe on the ideas of the Puritans in North America.

The impact of the colonial situation on the Puritan understanding of race also became apparent in the Salem witch trials, which have accrued substantial volumes of work and analysis. The literature on Salem has not overlooked

Tituba's role, or the significance of her somewhat contested racial origins.

17David S. Lovejoy, "Satanizing the American Indian," The New England Quarterly, Vol. 67 No. 4 (December, 1994): 603-621. 19 "Tituba's Story" by Bernard Rosenthal, considers her race, origins and role in the trials.18 John McWilliams took a similar approach to the study of race in

Massachusetts Bay in "Indian John and the Northern Tawnies."19 Both works are fairly representative of scholarly studies on the relationship between race and the

Salem witch trials. Although this thesis does not deal to any significant degree with Tituba or the witch crisis itself there is a broad literature of useful texts on the subject, such as Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem by Elaine Breslaw.20 While the crisis could be useful in understanding Puritan attitudes toward race at the end of the seventeenth century, it does not do much to illuminate their relationship with the local tribes. Tensions resulting from the border war with

Native Americans may have exacerbated the crisis but the matter did not involve

Native Americans in any significant way and happened at the end of the period of study. The witch trials mark a critical transition point for the colony, and the beginning of a period of radical social and political changes in the settlement that would eventually distance it from its Puritan roots.

The study of colonial history has come a long way since early attempts to dichotomize relationships with Native Americans and colonial Europeans. While there is still much to be gained by the works of writers such as Francis Jennings and Neal Salisbury, it is essential to understand the more nuanced and dynamic relationships that historians have begun to explore in recent decades. Theodore

18Bernard Rosenthal, "Tituba's Story," The New England Quarterly, Vol. 71 No. 2 (June 1998): 190-203. John McWilliams, "Indian John and the Northern Tawnies," The New England Quarterly, Vol. 69 No. 4 (December, 1996): 190-203. 20Elaine Breslaw, Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies (New York: NYU Press, 1997). 20 Dwight Bozeman and James Holstun have established the significance of

millenarianism to Puritan thought, and Avihu Zakai and his contemporaries

placed it in the context of apocalyptic thought and the Protestant Reformation.

Such works lay out the groundwork for a complex understanding of Puritan

intellectual and religious thought. Building on the ideas established by scholars of

millenarianism and the Reformation it is possible to then begin to properly

explore the Puritan relationship with Native Americans. The Atlantic world is

essential to understanding that relationship, and Jenny Hale Pulsipher's concept

of a "crisis of authority" explains changes in Puritan thought that would be

otherwise difficult to account for.21 Her work, and the work of authors such as

David Scobey explain why Puritan thought changed so dramatically in the

beginning of the seventeenth century, and Kristina Bross and David S Lovejoy's

studies of typology explain how they understood the world, and Native

Americans. All that remains is to synthesize this catalog of important studies and

to explore the gaps. The Puritan relationship Native Americans, and their very

understanding of them, sat at a delicate crossroads in a changing Atlantic world.

During the seventeenth century the Puritan colonists were faced with fresh

challenges to their beliefs, amidst an ongoing struggle to establish their colony.

There are plentiful primary sources that demonstrate the relationship

between the Puritans' religious narrative and their ideas on race. Many authors

have chosen to focus his attentions on sermon transcripts, and have demonstrated their importance to understanding Puritan thought. The accounts

21 Pulsipher, Subjects unto the Same King, 2-4. 21 of missionaries working among the Native Americans are somewhat less prolific, but remain invaluable to this study, as do early speeches and diaries by the founders and leaders of the colony. As many authors have found, it is useful to avoid accounts of the witch trials and captivity narratives in examining the colonization of Massachusetts Bay; while such accounts are interesting for their information on the Puritan mindset, they are also concerned with specific issues and exemplify a time period and subject with which this study is not concerned.

The Puritans dedicated significant thought toward the colony's role in history, their purpose, and their relationship to Native Americans. Missionary accounts, diaries, sermons and speeches all demonstrate the attention Puritans put toward such subjects. John Winthrop was the first governor of the

Massachusetts Bay colony and left significant information regarding the migration and the early years of the settlement. Winthrop crossed the Atlantic in 1629 on the Arbella and became the colony's first governor, having already played a significant role in organizing and leading the migration and settlement.22 Winthrop understood history as a providential battleground and his writing is useful for illuminating the reasoning behind the migration and colonization, particularly revealing the ideas that dominated Puritan colonial thought until the mid- seventeenth century. John Winthrop's "Reasons for Justifying the Undertakers of the Intended Plantation in New England," is especially useful for explaining the motivations for the move, as indispensable as "A Modell of Christian Charity" in which he famously cited the need for the colony to be an inspirational "city upon

22Richard S Dunn, "John Winthrop Writes His Journal," The William and Mary Quarterly Vol. 41 No. 2 (April, 1984): 186-212. 22 a hill."23

John Cotton was amongst the first generation of Puritan colonists, and a significant man in the theology and history of the colony. Cotton was a Puritan minister and theologian and a staunch proponent of Congregationalism and a millenarian who played a direct role in both the Antinomian crisis and the banishment of Roger Williams.24 Cotton left behind sermons, diaries and catechisms, and his work was rife with typology and millenarian references. His most useful and famous work was God's Promise to his Plantation, a speech given upon the departure of the Winthrop fleet in 1630.25 Like John Winthrop,

Cotton's works reveal the attitudes present in the founding of the colony, though he was slightly more committed to millenarian ideas than Winthrop was. John

Cotton's famous conflict with Roger Williams led to Williams' exile from the colony. In 1635 Williams was banished to Providence, Rhode Island, but left behind works that, like John Cotton's, anticipated the millennium and contained millenarian references.26 Williams' most famous and definitive work was A Key into the Language of the Americas which is an account of Williams' experiences

23John Winthrop, "Reasons to be Considered for Justifying the Undertakers of the Intended Plantation in New England." in Life and Letters of John Winthrop: Governor of Massachusetts Bay Company at their Emigration to New England, 1630, ed. Robert C Winthrop (Boston: Little, Brown, 1869), 309-311; John Winthrop, "A Modell of Christian Charity" in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, 1838), 3rd series 7:31-48.), 33-48. 24From 1636-1638 theAntinomian crisis challenged Puritan authority and faith within the Massachusetts Bay colony. The crisis was a brief flourishing of dissent within the colony, and ended with the suppression of the antinomian ideas and the reassertion of Puritan authority. Roger Williams was an English theologian and spent some time in the Massachusetts Bay colony. Williams had a rocky relationship with the authorities of the colony, and supported both separating from the church of England and the separation of ecclesiastic and civil authority. Williams was often associated with Antinomians and after a brief time as a minister in Salem was exiled in 1636, following conflict with the local authorities. 25Cotton, God's Promise to his Plantation. 26Jesper Rosenmeier, "The Teacher and the Witness: John Cotton and Roger Williams," The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 25 No. 3 (July, 1968): 408-431. 23 amongst the Narragansett tribe, with exposition on their culture, language and

history.27 Richard Mather, a Puritan divine, crossed the Atlantic in 1635 and settled in Boston.28 While Richard Mather was typical of the first generation of

New England Puritans, his son Increase in many ways came to exemplify a writer

of second generation jeremiads. Like his father, Increase was a scholar and a

preacher, and left diaries, sermons and historical expositions with a focus on

millenarian attitudes, and expressed great anxiety about declining piety and the

loss of cultural homogeneity in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Of

Increase Mather's extensive writing, his jeremiads and history of Metacomet's

War best exemplify the growing sense of decline and rising millenarian tendencies toward the end of the seventeenth century.29 Cotton Mather was the grandson of Richard Mather and son of Increase Mather and also a prolific writer.

Cotton Mather was an intellectual and preacher who, like his father, focused

heavily on millenarianism and themes of decline. He used apocalyptic prophecy to support the second generation of colonists' growing sense that Puritan

conformity and doctrine had been undermined. Cotton claimed that any further decline of Puritan values in the colony could provoke providential punishment.30

Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana is representative of the sense of decline and spiritual unrest that grew in the colony toward the end of the

27Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America (London: Gregory Dexter, 1643). 28Robert Middlekauff, The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971). 29lncrease Mather, An Earnest Exhortation (Boston: John Foster, 1676); Increase Mather, A Brief History of the Warr With the Indians in New-England (Boston: John Foster, 1676). 30Middlekauff, The Mathers, 210. 24 seventeenth century.31 Both Mathers significantly demonstrate developments in the Puritan sense of identity and history in the colony, toward the end of the seventeenth century. Both published jeremiads and histories of the colony, though Cotton Mather became caught up in the witchcraft crisis, whereas

Increase Mather was more involved in writing about Metacomet's War.

Missionary work was uncommon in the beginning of the seventeenth century in New England, but was not unheard of. During that period John Eliot was one of the most active and influential missionaries in the Massachusetts Bay colony. He began intensive missionary work approximately fifteen years after his arrival in the colony, and continued to work amongst the local tribes until his death in 1690. Eliot was known for his millenarian tendencies and was one of the most successful of the missionaries in New England. The Eliot Tracts includes works by Eliot and others, a collection of some of the most useful works on

Puritan missionary efforts.32

Other works that demonstrate Puritan attitudes on race, thought and identity were left behind by authors such as Thomas Shepard, John Norton,

Edward Winslow and Thomas Hooker. Their sermons, letters and missionary reports have all been useful in analysis of Puritan thought and beliefs. Other sources have taught a great deal about Puritan belief, including fictional writings, poems and histories, such as Edward Johnson's Wonder-Working Providence.

An early history of the colony, Wonder-Working Providence was as orthodox and

31Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, (Hartford: Harvard University, [1702] 1853). 32Michael Clark, ed. The Eliot Tracts: with letters from John Eliot to Thomas Thorowgood and Richard Baxter (Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2003); Richard W. Cogley, "John Eliot and the Millennium," Religion and American Culture, Vol.1 No.2 (Summer, 1991): 227. 25 religious as it was shamelessly biased and incomplete. Johnson was a Puritan historian who traveled from England, and his work shows Puritan beliefs and conception of history from the first half of the seventeenth century.33 While

Johnson's work may not be entirely accurate or objective in its description of historic events, it is demonstrative of the Puritan sense of identity, purpose, and history. Like many primary sources, Wonder-Working Providence is useful for exploring the mind of its author, and the prevailing ideas of the time. The works left behind from colonial Massachusetts Bay demonstrate Puritanism's development from a loosely organized oppositional movement to a group increasingly concerned with defining their own identity as a committed group of radical Protestant reformers. That loose unity began to fragment by the time of the Great Migration, as rifts became more apparent between separatist

Protestants and the Puritans, who were dedicated to bringing about change in the Church of England and committed to worldly involvement.

In defining their own history, New England's Puritan colonists turned to their relationship with English Protestantism, their own brief history in the New

World, and biblical typology. The religious culture of the Massachusetts Bay

Colony was heavily influenced by biblical allegory, religious reform, and the popular beliefs and superstition that survived the journey across the Atlantic. The

Puritans translated the New World into terms they could understand, and their encounters with Native Americans were shaped by their world view, utilizing an organic but consistent narrative built on biblical allegory, Puritan doctrine, and

33Edward Johnson, Wonder-Working Providence of Sions Saviour in New England (Oxford: Published by W. F. Draper, 1867). history that fit their understanding of the world. The history and theology of the

Puritan colonists came to shape the narrative they constructed around their experiences.

The history of the Puritan movement formed the group's identity, prepared them for their encounters with Native Americans and provided a sense of purpose in the colony. In its earliest instances the term Puritan was used as a derisive label for those who dissented from the Church of England, a derogatory definition that implied pretension and perfectionism. After 1590 many Protestant reformers felt that the changes initiated under Henry VIII were insufficient and demanded a further dissolution of Catholic hierarchy, icons, rituals and symbols in the church.34 Puritan religious structure grew out of concern about the influence of Rome on the Church of England, and dissatisfaction with the moderate purges of Catholic theology that took place in the years that followed the Reformation. Reformers believed that Henry VIII had severed political ties without making any concrete changes to the structure of the church itself.35 The radical change sought at Protestant reforms did not take place during the reign of

Henry VIII, or that of his successor, Edward VI, whose moderate reforms were largely undone under the reign of Mary I.36 Elizabeth I took the crown in 1558 and attempted to settle the ongoing religious disputes by instituting the Elizabethan

Religious Settlement in which she reinforced the Church of England's separation

^Joseph Conforti, Saints and Strangers: New England in British North America. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006), 34-35. 35Francis J Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994), 1-2. 36lbid. from Rome and instituted the Book of Common Prayer. As a group the Puritans were intensely unsatisfied with the changes brought about under Elizabeth, and increasingly began to form their own identity in opposition to the Church of

England. In its earliest instances Puritanism was not a unified movement, but a loosely organized program for Protestant reform, defined by its opposition to the church and government. Their history as an oppositional movement continued to shape the Puritans in North America and remained a critical part of their identity in the New World.

By the time of the Great Migration two distinct tendencies had grown to divide the Puritan movement, characterized on one hand by worldly involvement and a commitment to reform, and on the other hand by isolationism. Under pressure from the church, many Puritans abandoned their demands for reform and retreated into their own communities. Meanwhile the Puritan reformers who founded the Massachusetts Bay colony held that the Church of England remained the true church, and continued to strive for change within it. Though both trends had already existed for decades, the founding of the Plymouth colony in 1620 exemplified the growing division between reformist and separatist elements within Puritanism. Under their first governor, John Carver, the pilgrims of Plymouth colony drafted the Mayflower Compact as a substitute for an English charter, thereby founding the colony on explicitly isolationist principles. Although the founders of the Plymouth colony shared a similar system of beliefs to the

Puritans founders of Massachusetts Bay they were distinguished by their 28 isolationism.37 The Massachusetts Bay colony was established roughly ten years after Plymouth, and was ostensibly committed to reform of the Church of

England. The community intended to maintain communication with the English church and set an example that they hoped would eventually bring about wholesale change. In the early years of the colony they were able to justify their existence as a remnant of the true church, an identity that was only challenged with the establishment of a committed protestant church in England, following the

English Civil War.

The Great Migration presented Puritan colonists with a clear sense of meaning in the period immediately following colonization. To the first generation of colonists Massachusetts Bay was a chance to start again and found a community based on Puritan ideals. According to Puritan doctrine, humanity was by nature sinful. Protestant theology taught that when Adam committed the original sin and was expelled from paradise, the covenant of works was broken and replaced with the covenant of grace. The covenant of works was a

Protestant interpretation of the belief that human action could affect Providence.

The covenant stated that through good deeds and vigilance a Christian could have their sins forgiven and earn God's grace. The Puritans accepted that humanity deserved damnation, but that God was merciful and would spare a select few, the elect.38 The Puritans believed themselves to be among the elect, and promised salvation by Providence.

37John Adair, Founding Fathers: The Puritans in England and America (Great Britain: Chaucer Press, 1982), 117-118. 38Conforti, Saints and Strangers, 18-21. Communally and personally the Puritans were accustomed to working under a system of covenants. As they considered themselves to represent the elect, they felt that they could expect divine support so long as covenants were kept, and punishment if they were broken. Their reliance on covenants and stress over providential signs of the health of the covenant were, in part, what caused the Puritans to interpret the actions of the Native Americans as they did.

That tendency gave their migration a sense of purpose in the early years, a purpose that did not include the Native Americans except as indicators of divine approval or disapproval.

Under a covenant with God, Puritans believed that the role of the minister and congregation was to guide the elect to their moment of revelation, and continue to guide them thereafter until death.39 Puritans felt that man was trapped in a state of intrinsic sinfulness, for salvation humanity was reliant on

God's mercy. John Winthrop described the journey across the Atlantic as the forging of a fresh covenant with God.40 As a movement familiar with the use of covenants, it was easy for the Puritan colonists to accept the idea that their voyage was a literal pact with God. Puritan doctrine taught that if the colony upheld their principles and God's will they would receive his blessing and thrive, but that if the colony became worldly or betrayed its spiritual values it would be in defiance of God's covenant and be subject to divine punishment. Unlike the pilgrims of Plymouth, the Massachusetts Bay colonists saw themselves as being a part of the ongoing international struggle against the devil and Catholicism, at

39lbi<±, 18-21. 40Winthrop, "A Modell of Christian Charity," 46. 30 the forefront of the Reformation.41 John Winthrop's Puritans considered

themselves to be the vanguards of the Reformation and responsible for creating

a godly community that would not only provide for its members but offer an

example to England and the rest of the world 42

Puritan theology implied that the elect were to lead pure lives, and the

church and the government were meant to institutionally support their members

in their rejection of sin. Not all members of the community were assumed to be

saints, but all members shared an equal obligation to mutually support one

another and serve the public good, as reinforced by their communalism and

reliance on covenants. The Puritans believed that their society was ordained by

God, but required the efforts of its members to succeed, constituting a social

covenant with common goals under God's elected leaders. If society failed to

maintain standards worthy of their special role under God, they believed that it would be in violation of their covenant, and result in a mutual punishment. It was

the role of government and community, as well as the individual, to prevent

divine displeasure.43 Every aspect of life was included in their mutual covenant

and actions had religious significance. Whether it was committed privately or

publicly, Puritans believed that sin led to a mutual providential punishment.

Both personal and communal lives were important to Puritans and they

believed that anyone neglecting their duty to the community could invite divine displeasure, possibly even resulting in punishment inflicted upon the entire

41 Bremer, The Puritan Experiment, 44. 42Charles Berryman, From Wilderness to Wasteland: The Trial of the Puritan God in the American Imagination (New York: Kennikat Press Corp, 1979). 43Bremer, The Puritan Experiment, 87. 31 group. With the covenant sealed by their successful migration to North America, the community was responsible for its members. It was the responsibility of individuals to contribute to the community and ensure that God's will was upheld.

Successful adherence to the standards set in scripture and theology would ensure the material prosperity of the group, as well as the individual.44 Taking part in the Great Migration was an implicit statement of agreement with the leadership of the Massachusetts Bay colony and participation in the covenant.

Escape from England and the founding of the colony renewed a common sense of purpose and unity. Puritan theology and the events of the journey contributed to the sense that they, as a community under a covenant, existed in a providential narrative with a purpose in North America. In order to understand their role in the providential covenant, the Puritans turned to an interpretative system of portents and providential meaning. Puritan preachers and theologians translated events in order to understand their relationship to divine Providence, as either blessings or punishments inflicted on the community.

As significant as their own brief history and their commitment to communalism and covenants were, these were not the only major factors shaping Puritan thought following the founding of the colony. Protestant historiography developed during the Reformation and described history as occupying a state of apocalyptic crisis. To the Puritan, time was a linear progression from creation to the end of history. During the Early Modern period many Protestants conceptualized the Reformation as the beginning of the events

44Moseley, John Winthrop's World, 43-45. 32 of the book of Revelations and expected the apocalypse and conclusion of

providential history within their lifetime.45 Protestant biblical and millenarian

historiography gave Providence a direct role in the way that history developed,

and Puritans understood the world in terms of active, divine involvement.

To the Puritan reformers history was an unfolding process of divine

prophecy that described a literal interpretation of scripture; history was a

battleground in the divine war between God and the devil46 The church was the

central agent in a historical process concerned with that spiritual war. Both the

idea of spiritual war and the dichotomies created by it led to a simplified and

inherently ethnocentric perspective regarding Native Americans. The tribes

encountered around the Massachusetts Bay colony had to be fit into Puritan

beliefs, and their belief in dichotomies and divine war provided the means for the

colonists to do so.

The idea of good and evil as separate sides of an ongoing war subscribed to providential will developed extensively in Puritan thought over the decades following the Great Migration. Contrariness was an essential concept in

Protestant thought, and to Puritans the world was caught in an ongoing battle with the Antichrist. That dichotomy shaped the Puritan understanding of their own

battles, whether with the church, atheists or any other conflict. The apocalyptic

battle described in the book of Revelations was very real to the Puritans, and shaped their individual experiences of salvation, their politics, and their piety 47

45Zakai, Exile and Kingdom, 14. 46lbid„ 17-18. 47Stuart Clark, Thinking With Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (New 33 That sense of divine war was a powerful force, and Protestant reformers employed that sense of apocalyptic history as a tool in their nationalist struggles and conflict with the Catholic Church. By describing history in a providential and

biblical context reformers were able to frame their struggles in providential terms, with Rome and the Catholic Church as a historic analog to Babylon and the forces of the Antichrist.48 Dichotomies and millenarianism gave the Protestants a sense of significance, and reinforced their doctrine and beliefs. The Puritans were only a small fragment of the Christian faith, but by reinforcing the idea that their conflicts were part of a divine struggle they were able to continue as an oppositional movement and claim special significance for their actions.

Having established history as an ongoing battle between God and the devil, Puritans were able to conceptualize their conflicts with the state and

Catholic Church as providential in their significance. As a whole, Protestants defined their struggle as one of faith over human action, the authority of scripture over the authority of the church, empirical inquiry over dogma, and heaven over

hell. To a Puritan reformer in a nationalist environment during an age of exploration, contrast and conflict were fit easily into a familiar narrative structure.

To the Puritan, cause and effect and basic categorizing were employed in a logical framework of contrariness and religious allegory.49

The English clergyman and theologian Thomas Brightman played a significant role in shaping Protestant millenarian thought with his works on the

York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 46-49, 61-65. 48Zakai, Exile and Kingdom, 25, 42-43. 49lbid„ 78-79. 34 book of Revelations and apocalyptic prophecy. Brightman's work discussed the

dissolution of divisions between religious and secular history. Protestant

reformers accepted the idea that God's kingdom would become manifest on

earth, and that the mystery of providential history would become clear. As part of

their millenarian thought, Puritans believed that providential and secular history

would be enacted as a literal series of events, in order to fulfill the prophecies of

Revelations.50 Any interpretation of earthly history without relation to divine

Providence was unsatisfactory to the Puritans. England was understood as a

sacred place, with an important role in Providence and history and the church as

the central active agent. When the Reformation failed to satisfactorily reform the

church, Puritans were able to argue that the Church of England had forfeited its

role in prophecy. The failure of the Church of England allowed New England to

claim the title as sacred space and the Puritans assumed the role of the elect.51

As far as members of the Great Migration were concerned, the Reformation had failed. The Puritans conceptualized England as the battlefield for an ongoing

spiritual war, and North America as a refuge with a central role in prophecy.52

The Reformation brought about change in the intellectual conception of

magic and interaction between the spiritual world and the material. The Catholic

Church had long employed clerical magic and allowed for interaction of spiritual elements with the material, as manifested through a relic, priest or holy miracle.

According to radical Protestant reformers, the belief that humans could directly

50lbid., 46-47. 51 Ibid., 54-59. 52lbid„ 64-65, 67. 35 control or manipulate any kind of magic was a blasphemy. Puritans believed that a priest could pray for a miracle, but that any direct power employed or manipulated by a human could only be explained as the trickery of the devil.53 To the Protestant reformer, the world operated on rules of mechanical efficacy and natural laws did not contradict belief in the supernatural. The world operated under basic, mechanical laws, but both God and the devil could interfere in everyday affairs. Natural law did not operate exclusive of providential will and

Protestants continued to search for correlation between events in order to impose a moral order on the universe. The direct hand of God was constantly active in the world, blessing and punishing according to providential design.

Puritan theology taught that Providence was visible in disasters, portents, meteorological events, births, deaths and any significant event outside of human agency. Providential theory served not only to demonstrate the existence of God, but to enforce a moral code, making sense of events that were often beyond human control and reinforcing doctrine.54

The Puritan colonists believed that, on a day-to-day basis, God worked providential wonders and the devil had the freedom to disrupt the normal order of events and to tempt or harm mortals. According to Puritan doctrine, whether divine or diabolical, all supernatural events worked within a providential framework and subscribed to the will of God.55 The Protestant Reformation

53Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971), 52, 61. Ibid., 91-92, 96. 55David Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 71-72. 36 reaffirmed the possibility of divine prophecy, as observable in disembodied

voices, comets, thunder and lightning, weather, eclipses, political change,

monstrous births and unusual or significant events.56 Puritans believed that

providential displays and omens almost always signified change or a

disturbance. Providential interference in the world was visible in the disruption of

normal events, and as it usually only occurred to demonstrate divine displeasure

Puritans were understandably wary of signs warning of impending divine

punishment. Portents and omens were divine warnings used to uphold the moral

order and punish or warn Puritans of their theological laxness. According to the theory and doctrine of Protestant reformers there was nothing contradictory

about the workings of nature and providential will. The Puritan colonists of

Massachusetts Bay believed that the natural world existed within a divine

narrative.57

The founders of the Massachusetts Bay colony believed in Providence,

and were wary of omens or portents that could indicate divine pleasure and displeasure. They saw themselves as playing a part in a divine war between

God's true church and the forces of the devil. It was in the context of covenants, spiritual warfare, and providential meaning that Puritans encountered Native

Americans, and through that they formed their initial interpretations.

Classifications changed as the Puritans had to reinterpret their own history in order to deal with changing stresses on their colony, but all were based on the same core of beliefs. In the early years, the members of the Great Migration

56lbid„ 76-77. 57lbid„ 78-80. 37 believed that they were in North American to preserve a remnant of the true church, and to live in a manner prescribed by doctrine. That sense of purpose allowed the Puritans to engage in trade or negotiations with the local Native

Americans. CHAPTER TWO

"Sinful and Miserable Estates:"1

Contact. Puritan Colonists and Native Americans

In the early years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the sense of identity

of the Puritan colonists allowed them to treat the Native Americans dismissively

and to describe them as heathens subject to the will of Providence. As they

struggled to understand the existence and practices of the Native Americans, the

Puritan colonists often came to the conclusion the aid, anger, or absence of the tribes was the work of Providence. Dealings with the local tribes were shaped by

necessity as much as religion and changed with the circumstances of the colony.

In the early years of the colony, the Puritans were occupied by the necessity of survival, and put much of their collective energy into the founding of the

settlement. There were no resources available for the conversion of the Native

Americans, and their possible millenarian significance was often overlooked. It was not until the colony became somewhat established that the conversion of

local tribes became of interest to the Puritans. In the meantime, the Puritans

explained the existence of the Native American tribes in other ways. They

searched their own history and scripture for a familiar context through which to explain the tribes and their existence in North America. The Puritans examined the phylogeny, language, culture and history of the local tribes and compared it to their own understanding of the world and what they had been taught in scripture. As long as they were occupied by the initial struggles of colonization,

1Thomas Weld and Hugh Peter. New Englands First Fruits: in Respect, First of the Counversion of Some, Conviction of Divers, Preparation of Sundry of the Indians (London: R.O. and G.D, 1643). 38 the Puritans were content to believe that Native Americans were heathens who

had crossed the Atlantic to take up residence in North America. Their

understanding of the origin and significance of Native Americans allowed the

Puritans to cooperate with them, and to delay the conflict and missionary efforts that appeared later in the century. In their search for meaning, the Puritans fit

Native Americans into a cosmology and intellectual framework imported from

Europe. In order to understand the significance of their encounters with Native

American tribes, the colonists had to first understand the phylogenetic origin of

the tribes, and then their role in the providential narrative within which the

Puritans professed to be central figures. Some Puritans believed the Native

Americans to have millenarian significance, but for the most part they dismissed

the tribes as heathens who had been swept aside to make way for colonization.

Often Puritan writings suggested that Native Americans may have crossed from

Europe to North America, where they existed in the clutches of the devil.

The immediate goals of the colonists turned their attention away from

conversion, and the possible millenarian significance of Native Americans. Prior

to 1643 the Puritans maintained contact with the local tribes and remained

cautious of them despite often relying on their assistance as guides, traders, and

teachers. The early years of the colony were characterized by a mutual

coexistence that was occasionally interrupted by violence, though nothing of the

magnitude seen later in the seventeenth century.2 Like the Pilgrims of the

Plymouth colony, the Massachusetts Bay colonists relied on trade and

2Kristina Bross, Dry Bones and Indian Sermons: Praying Indians in Colonial America (New York: Cornell University Press, 2004), 8. 40 assistance from the local tribes for survival and the establishment of the colony.

Though the region was more sparsely populated then much of North America, there were several relatively powerful tribes present when the Puritans arrived.

The most notable of the tribes were the Narragansett, the Massachusetts, the

Abanaki and the Wampanoag. All of the tribes in the New England area spoke an

Algonquin dialect and had cultural similarities.3

The local tribes were for the most part friendly, and shared local crops and taught the colonists where to fish and procure other resources.4 The local tribes helped the colony during its first struggling years in North America, a period during which the future of the colony was far from certain. Just as they had learned how to subsist from them, Europeans also learned how to navigate the wilderness, adapting native techniques for survival and even warfare.5 Such exchange was responsible for everything from agricultural techniques, to the use of friction from sticks to create fire. Trade in tools, technology and goods was by no means one-sided, and nothing about the supposedly superior technology of the colonists guaranteed their survival in North America.6 The Puritans did not understand their relationship to the local tribes to be entirely mutual however.

Accustomed to divine action in the world, the Puritans saw trading, treaties and friendship with the Native Americans not as the generosity of equals, but as the work of divine Providence. In the early years, Native Americans had the

3Alden T. Vaughan, New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians 1620-1675 (Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 28-29. 4James Axtell, The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 135. 5lbid„ 140. 6Louis Martin Sears, "The Puritan and his Indian Ward," The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 22 No. 1 (July, 1916): 81-82. 41 opportunity not only to play the punishing hand of Providence, but also to deliver

God's blessings to the Puritans.

Puritan relationships with the Native American tribes encountered around

the Massachusetts Bay colony were shaped by their sense of identity and

mission. The move across the Atlantic was immensely significant to the Puritan

colonists; it contributed to their understanding of the world and reinforced their

belief in covenants and divine Providence. In Saints and Strangers, Joseph

Conforti discusses the faltering English economy during the 1600s as it

underwent economic and social changes. 7 According to Conforti that change

combined with an increasingly hostile political environment to give English

Puritans cause to believe that their livelihoods and expression of faith were

threatened. The English Puritans were concerned about the declining cloth

industry, widespread crop failures, and necessity of conformity under a church

and government that were not tolerant of their ideas or behavior. The situation in

England provided the Puritans with the impetus to move across the Atlantic and

form new communities. They completed the Great Migration, believing that to

preserve a true example of their faith was mission enough. Though missionary

work and millenarian theory were present in Puritan thought during the founding

of the Massachusetts Bay colony, neither was as significant as their desire to

safeguard a remnant of their faith.

The Great Migration was important to the Puritan colonists' relationship with England, their sense of identity, and their purpose in the colony. In studying

7Joseph Conforti, Saints and Strangers: New England in British North America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006), 34-35. the migration, Stephen Foster's The Long Argument engages Puritanism as a whole, rather than isolating the American or English experience. Many historians described the Great Migration as the beginning of a uniquely North American

Puritan movement, but Foster argues compellingly for the migration as only a point of transition.8 The Great Migration shaped the ideas and lifestyle of the

Puritans who joined it, and helped to define them as a unique group, separate from those in England or the Pilgrims that had preceded them in the journey. The migration was both a flight from an inhospitable environment and a significant transition point in Puritan history. Participation in the journey from England defined the North American Puritans, and gave them a unified sense of identity apart, but not separate, from England and Protestantism. Dialogue between the

Puritan colonists and England continued to shape the religious and cultural beliefs of the colonists in the decades that followed the move. The Atlantic World was the stage for the Puritan experience as much as North America, and the journey across the ocean had helped to form their collective identity and providential narrative.

As one of the chief organizers of the Atlantic migration and the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop drafted commentaries and journals in which he considered the potential benefits and the risks associated with a departure from England. Winthrop was concerned about the lack of available work in England, pay that was increasingly inadequate to satisfy cost of living, scarcity of land and what he saw as materialist tendencies

8Stephen Foster, The Long Argument (North Carolina: UNC Press, 1996), 138. within the English culture. In his "Reasons to be Considered," John Winthrop suggested that the Great Migration was necessary to ensure freedom of expression, and was encouraged by faltering conditions in England.9 Like many of the Puritans that chose to leave England John Winthrop was pragmatic in his reasoning. He considered the advantages and disadvantages of remaining in the colony, both to his material life and his expression of faith. As a group and as individuals the Puritans considered the risk to their comfort and life as well as the spiritual benefits of migration. They believed that true faith had to be reflected in everyday living, and it was important to the Puritans that their new community allow them to live in the manner prescribed by scripture.

In John Winthrop's World, James G. Moseley argues that Winthrop was both influential in Puritan thought, and a reliable example of Puritan attitudes and tendencies. Winthrop's writing demonstrated Puritan beliefs as they existed at an intersection between worldly and spiritual affairs. The Puritans did not withdraw from the world but balanced pragmatic and earthly concerns with religious beliefs and faith, and that decision-making was reflected in the Great Migration.10 John

Winthrop's famous "A Modell of Christian Charity" speech in 1630 introduced the migrants to the Massachusetts Bay colony, and defended their decision to move.

Winthrop described his fellow colonists as:

...a company professing ourselves fellow members of Christ, in which respect onely though wee were absent from each other many miles, and

9John Winthrop, "Reasons to be Considered for Justifying the Undertakers of the Intended Plantation in New England." in Life and Letters of John Winthrop: Governor of Massachusetts Bay Company at their Emigration to New England, 1630, ed. Robert C Winthrop (Boston: Little, Brown, [1629] 1869), 309-311. 10James G. Moseley, John Winthrop's World. (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press: 1992), 22-23. had our imployments as farre distant, yet wee ought to account ourselves knitt together by this bond of loue and live in the exercise of it, if wee would have comforte of our being in Christ.11

Winthrop described the colonists from his perspective as a political and religious leader. His speech displays their unity as a religious group and a displaced people trying to make a new home for themselves in the colony. While the

Puritans did feel displaced by the move, they also felt that the Great Migration was a necessary and positive step for their community. Those who took part in the journey gave it a special spiritual significance, and believed that it reinforced both their community and their spiritual purpose.

The Puritans who chose to make the move across the Atlantic believed that their journey was providential and united them in a spiritual mission.

Winthrop discussed their reasons for leaving, stating that:

It is by a mutuall consent, through a speciall overvaluing Providence and a more than ordinary approbation of the Churches of Christ, to seeke out a place of cohabitation and Consorteshipp under a due forme of Government, both civill and ecclesiasticall.12

Winthrop demonstrated the sense of divine warrant that the Puritan members of the Great Migration felt they were operating under. The migrants believed that settling in North America would allow them to form a church and government that operated under Puritan principles. The necessity of involvement in worldly affairs encouraged Winthrop's colonists to continue interaction with England, and shaped their relationships both overseas and in the New World. It compelled them to justify their expedition as more than a solace in the wilderness. The

11 John Winthrop, "A Modell of Christian Charity," in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 7 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, [1630]1838): 31-48. 12lbid., 45. 45 Puritans intended to safeguard their way of life and provide for themselves, taking part in a providential flight from England. The quotation from John

Winthrop demonstrates his belief that the colony was meant to be organized and governed according to Puritan values, both "civill and ecclesiasticall."13 The

motivations most readily apparently in the excerpt are the sense of providential

mission and desire for a colony governed under Puritan principles.

Studies suggest that the group of Puritans that settled in Massachusetts

Bay was comprised of families, with demographics remarkably similar to those in

England and included more women and children than were present in Virginia or the other colonies.14 Those who made the journey were often landowners, gentry and skilled tradesman in England with relative economic security and

investments that could have been lost in the transition. For the most part the colonists were skilled laborers, and accustomed to relative economic prosperity.

Though the journey would be expensive, they believed it might safeguard their

prosperity and most importantly that it would allow them to live free of the

restrictions they faced in England. Prior to the Great Migration, there was considerable debate in contemporary literature over the decision to move, from both a practical and religious perspective. Published in 1630 by John White, an

English Puritan and opponent of separatism, A Planter's Plea referenced both

historic precedent and practical concerns about the feasibility of colonization and a religious mission, as well as religious typology and biblical precedent. In

13lbid. 14Virginia Anderson, New England's Generation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 37-40. chapters discussing the English nation, White argued that England's history of colonialism and the North American environment combined to make the migration a practical move with reasonable expectations of success.15 Though it turned to a wide range of evidence for its claims, the book relied heavily on biblical analysis in order to interpret providential will and find precedent for the

New England migration. In White's work concerns about migration were considered and dismissed, and much consideration given to the potential benefits of a colony, and the choice to leave England.16 White's analysis was very similar to that of John Winthrop, and other Puritan writers at the time of the journey, and helps to demonstrate the importance that Puritans placed upon their move, and their reasons for being in North America.

In his "Modell of Christian Charity," John Winthrop discussed the motivations for the migration:

The end is to improve our lives to doe more service to the Lord; the comforte and encrease of the body of Christe, whereof we are members; that ourselves and posterity may be the better preserved from the common corruptions of this evill world, to serve the Lord of his holy ordinances... conformity with the worke and end wee aime at. These wee see are extraordinary, therefore wee must content ourselves usuall ordinary meanes. Whatsoever wee did, or ought to have done, when wee lived in England, the same must wee doe, and more alsoe, where wee goe.17

Winthrop expressed a very pragmatic concern for the material needs of the community, and stressed explicitly that the purpose of the journey was to improve their quality of life. Winthrop's pragmatic concern about the lives of the

15John White, The Planter's Plea (Netherlands: Da Capo Press, [1630] 1968), 17-33. 16lbid., 1-8. 17Winthrop, "A Modell of Christian Charity," 45. 47 colonists was integrated into broader religious concerns, and he clearly believed

that uplifting the lives of Puritans would also allow them to be better Christians

and spread their religion. The Puritan desire to express their faith was impossible

to separate from their material needs, and both were considered as motivations

for the journey across the Atlantic.

In many ways the journey across the Atlantic proved to be both costly and

disruptive to the lives of those who took part. Puritan promotional literature from

the period explicitly stressed religious incentives rather than economic

opportunity. Winthrop's quote describes their motivation for moving to North

America, as more than an economic opportunity, but rather a chance to live out

their ideals, sustain them, and use them to exemplify their religious beliefs. As

Winthrop stated, the migration was by no means ordinary, but was utterly

"extraordinary." The colonists were united by a common religious identity and

aversion to conformity with the doctrine of the Church of England. The colony in

Massachusetts Bay was intended to be founded as a commonwealth, with a

shared commitment to Puritan religious principles. The motivations behind the

Great Migration came to shape the significance the Puritans saw in Native

Americans. As long as the Puritan colonists believed that their purpose in North

America was to found a community on their own ideals and scripture, there was

no urgency in their plans to convert Native Americans. Moreover, colonists

lacked the means to force the local tribes to convert, and often relied on them for assistance in the establishment of their colony. In later years as the Puritan colony's power in North America grew and their sense of meaning changed, their 48 relationship with Native Americans changed along with it.

Winthrop's writing suggested that the primary purpose of the original

Puritan colonists was to establish a community in the wilderness directly beneath

God, as sealed by their covenant with him, an agreement that was implicit in their

successful voyage across the Atlantic. Their reliance on covenants and use of

typology gave a special significance to the journey. The Great Migration took

place in a mood of rebellion against the Church of England, with providence and

prophecy as the Puritans' reassurance in an uncertain climate. Winthrop believed

the Puritans to be the vanguard of the Reformation, essential for the fulfillment of

prophecy and the glorification of the Christian church. Winthrop clearly stated

that they were entering into "a Covenant with Him for this worke."18 In the colonial

context of covenants and prophecy, Native Americans were initially only of

interest so long as they directly affected the Puritans. Puritan theology taught that

any worldly event could have spiritual significance as a portent or indicator of

divine approval.

The impact of the Atlantic crossing on the Puritan mindset is apparent in the typology and folklore of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which refer often to

allegory and symbolism that draw heavily on images of the sea and water. In his

discourse on natural and supernatural occurrences, Increase Mather dedicated

an entire chapter to accounts of providential deliverances from disasters at sea

and the portents associated with them.19 Typology and providence were

18lbid„ 46. ^Increase Mather, Remarkable Providences (London: Reeves and Turner, [1684] 1890), 1- 22. 49 significant in the Puritan sense of self, and the Great Migration was incorporated into the divine narrative through which they understood the world. The first hundred years of the colony's thought were characterized by ongoing revisions of history and divine significance, as the Puritans struggled to face new challenges and to justify the significance of their undertaking. Later revisions of Puritan history helped them to form a sense of their mission as a typological journey, and shaped their interactions with the local tribes.

From the moment of their arrival in New England, the Puritans searched for providential significance in events and circumstances. That search for meaning was extended to analysis of the environment, natural events, and even the presence and actions of Native Americans. The local tribes had been decimated and displaced by plague in years prior to the colonization, leaving them vulnerable, weak, and eager to negotiate a mutually beneficial relationship with colonial powers.20 To colonists already taxed by the necessity of survival, it was often enough to cooperate with the tribes. Although in later years missionary efforts would grow in significance, in the early years of the colony there was fairly little energy expended on the attempted conversion of Native Americans.21

Despite the limited resources and correspondingly low results, the Puritans of the

Massachusetts Bay colony, and the colony's charter clearly called for missionary efforts:

20Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans and the Making of New England, 1500-1643 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 22-30. Salisbury extensively discusses the native population of the New England region prior to contact, and the impact of disease. Research and estimates vary somewhat, but the significance is clear: Native American populations were devastated by epidemics in the early sixteen hundreds. 21Vaughan, New England Frontier, 236. 50 ...whereby our said People, Inhabitants there, may be some religiously, peaceablie, and civilly governed, as their good Life and orderlie Conversacon, maie wynn and incite the Natives of Country, to the Knowledge and Obedience of the onlie true God and Savior of Mankinde, and the Christian Fayth, which is our Royall Intencon, and the Adventurers free Profession, is the principall Ende of this Plantacion.22

Written in 1628, the statement from the charter calls for the conversion of Native

Americans as the principal end of the colony, but does not explicitly call for missionary work or active conversion. It seems to suggest that the governing of the colony as a religious and civil body, based upon Puritan ideals, would encourage the conversion of the Native Americans through its example and providential significance. The colonists believed themselves to be enlightened, and creating a true Christian church and community, one that was unable to exist in England. The Puritans' primary objective was to create that community and church and only once those institutions were established could they actively pursue other agendas, such as the conversion of the local tribes.

At first limited resources hampered missionary efforts and the Puritans were unable to do much more than set what they believed was a positive example for the local tribes.23 Before the Puritan colonists could begin the conversion of the Native American tribes, they believed that it was necessary to build their own ideal Christian community. The charter is reminiscent of

Winthrop's call in his "Modell of Christian Charity" speech:

Wee must consider that wee shall be as a citty upon a hill. The eies of all people are uppon us. Soe that if we shall deale falsely with our God in this worke wee have undertaken, and soe cause him to with-drawe his

22"Charter of Massachusetts Bay," in Foundations of Colonial America: Northeastern Colonies, Vol. 1 ed. Keith W. Kavanagh (New York: Chelsea House, 1973): 57. 23Vaughan, New England Frontier, 94-95. 51 present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.24

The founders of the Massachusetts Bay colony intended to live in a manner suitable to Puritan doctrine, believing that in order to truly worship, religion had to pervade every aspect of their life. Puritans believed that their example could shame heathens, both Native American and across the Atlantic, and encourage their conversion. The first priority of the colony was to live in a manner prescribed by scripture, and part of living devoutly was to set an example to those around them and provide for the conversion of heathens. The Puritan colonists felt that conversion was still necessary in Europe, where the Protestant Reformation had been insufficient; they considered the Church of England to be unsound, and

Catholicism to be rampant. Puritans believed that their purpose was to both preserve their culture and to allow for its propagation; in this context, the colonists Native Americans were merely heathens awaiting conversion.

Providential theory extended beyond human action and divine influence and encompassed the wilderness and colonies themselves. With England's failure to fully reform during the Protestant Reformation, New England assumed its title of sacred space. The idea of a sacred space in which the true church would develop was established in English history prior to the Great Migration. As

Puritans searched for a means through which to understand their migration across the Atlantic, they turned to familiar patterns already articulated by Puritan history.25 Turning to an interpretative framework that they were already

24Winthrop, "A Modell of Christian Charity,"47. 25Andrew Delbanco, The Puritan Ordeal (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991), 42. 52 accustomed to allowed the Puritans to translate an unprecedented journey and an alien environment into one that they could more easily understand.

In order to provide coherence to their experience and develop an understanding of new literal and intellectual landscapes, Puritans developed the scriptural allegory of Canaan and the American Israel, employing familiar typology to frame their experiences. Harry Stout elaborates on Puritan typology in his book, The New England Soul, in which he demonstrates that they theorized that God had prefigured history, and that significant events were repeated throughout history. According to Stout, the Puritans believed that biblical events literally prefigured events within the Church or the coming of Christ.26 Protestants understood the experience of Israel to literally prefigure the experience of the

Puritan church. Rather than creating a new church, the Puritans hoped to recreate a true biblical church. Ritual objects, people and events could all have double meanings unlocked through study of scripture and sacred history. A strong sense of personal history and of literal prophecy was thoroughly ingrained in Puritan culture and affected both their general understanding of the world and their day to day lives. Biblical imagery appeared frequently in sermons, and was readily apparent in even the earliest moments of the colony. In what was a common style at the time, "A Modell of Christian Charity" used biblical passages for its frame of reference, referring to Isaiah, Adam, and Israel, amongst various other biblical figures and stories.27 The Puritan colonists relied heavily on scripture to translate new experiences, and it became significant in every aspect

26Harry Stout, The New England Soul (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 45. 27Winthrop, "A Modell of Christian Charity," 39, 41, 47. 53 of colonization, including their dealings with Native Americans.

By the 1630s the Puritans in North America had begun to develop the idea that they had been typologically prefigured by the biblical experience of the Jews in exile. The story of Israel's exile was significant in Puritan readings of scripture and played an important role in their typology and millenarian theory and was an image frequently encountered in their writing. Although there were difficulties inherent in this interpretation, it allowed the Puritans to draw comparisons between their situation and central figures in prophecy, including Christ and the

Anti-Christ, the Puritan church, and the Catholic Church. Placing New England within a framework of apocalyptic tradition and religious typology gave it an important position in the minds of Puritan reformers.28 In that context the church was central to millenarian prophecy, to the struggle in England and to the entire

Reformation and all of Christian history.

In Exile and Kingdom, Zakai argues that in the system of typology embraced by the Puritans events of the earth could only be truly significant as they related to divine Providence. With the Puritans established as the new elect, they inherited a role in apocalyptic tradition and reestablished sacred space in the New World. Sacred space required its own interpretation through biblical typology.29 Initially the New England wilderness was understood to be a refuge, while England was the site of the war between the Antichrist and the saints. With

England as the site of divine war, Puritans believed that North America was a

28Stout, The New England Soul, 48-49. 29Avihu Zakai, Exile and Kingdom: History and Apocalypse in the Puritan Migration to America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 58-59, 64-65. 54 safe harbor for wayward colonists. One of the earliest and best articulated analogies between Israel and the Puritan colonists was made by John Cotton in his farewell sermon, which he began by quoting the Bible to say that "I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more."30 In his choice of that biblical verse,

Cotton demonstrated not only the tendency for Puritans to frame their purpose in a biblical context, but also their interest in Israel as their typological predecessor, and their belief that the migration was significant as more than a mere geographic move.

Puritan thought had established the colony as sacred space and a safe haven, but the process of settlement caused other issues as well. The Puritans had to justify their abandonment of England and explain the hardships that faced them in their supposedly safe haven. John Cotton was clear in his assertion that

"the placing of a people in this or that Country is from the appointment of the

Lord," and extensively justified the decision to move to New England and the purpose of the colonists there.31 To Cotton and his contemporaries, New England was understood to be analogous to the wilderness found in the flight of Israel from Egypt, not an escape into a new land of promise but into an intermediary space. It allowed the Puritans to describe their new home as a refuge and source of opportunity, while still acknowledging the hardships involved in founding the colony.

30John Cotton, God's Promise to his Plantation (London: William Jones and John Bellamy, 1630], 1. Ibid., 3. The same narrative that Puritans used to interpret new events could be changed to explain fresh difficulties and create a sense of purpose. In God's

Promise to his Plantations, John Cotton invoked God's promise to Israel and a link between divine prophecy and the physical journey.32 Despite its importance to a few Puritan intellectuals, the millenarian significance of colonization received fairly little attention in the early years. Millenarian tradition was applied to the colonization process much more heavily as later generations revisited their own history. Though not focused on millenarian sentiments, the framework of biblical typology was established early in the colony's existence. As a pattern for their journey and purpose in the New World, Puritans turned to biblical typology, reinforcing it and applying it to their own history and life through sermons. As

David Hall discusses in his work on superstition, religion and belief in New

England, structures of Puritan belief were based on literal readings of scripture, and reinforced in literature and through sermons.33 In order to translate new events, the Puritans searched for parallels to their experiences in scripture and prophecy. Keith Thomas argues extensively that during the Reformation, stripping the ecclesiastical authority and magic of the Church's ministry moved the focus to scripture and providential authority.34 This created a tendency to search for divine significance in earthly events, and to interpret them through scripture. By the time of the Great Migration, the Puritans were thoroughly accustomed to scriptural analysis and typology as a means for understanding

32Cotton, God's Promise to his Plantation. 33David Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1989), 70. 34Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971), 52-61. 56 events and the world as a whole. It was consistent with established tendencies in

Puritan thought that scripture be key to the Puritan sense of identity and their

interpretation of new events and experiences presented by colonialism.

To the Puritan colonists, life was a spiritual journey toward salvation and their own literal journey assumed a role there in.35 Reformation in the New World

could allow for true Reformation in England, and hide the Puritans during a time

of struggle. Once in their new environment interpretation of the wilderness into familiar patterns began, and from that the idea of the Puritan errand eventually developed. Even hardships translated into providential will, as Johnson made

clear in stating that "the Lord being pleased to hide from the Eyes of his people the difficulties they are to encounter withall in a New Plantation, that they might

not be hindered from taking the work in hande."36 The Puritans believed that their

mission was providential, and if it was harder than they had expected, then it

must have been the will of Providence that it be so. Providential theory translated trials and hardships into tests or punishments, and its proponents expected to face both. The Great Migration was enormously significant to Puritan thought, and continued to shape their attitudes and understanding of the world throughout the seventeenth century. Finally in the New World, with their physical deliverance and pilgrimage satisfied, the Puritans were able to turn their attention toward the glorification of God and their own piety and conversion experience.

The Puritans understood the wilderness as a waiting area, a perilous and

35lbid., 68-70, 75. 36Edward Johnson, Wonder-Working Providence of Sions Saviour in New England (Oxford: W. F. Draper, [1654] 1867), 11. 57 hard place, but one in which they could survive. They translated their new experiences through scriptural typology into a world they could understand.

Placing the wilderness into a typological framework was fairly simple, but that wilderness was not only occupied by wolves and trees. The New World's human inhabitants presented a unique problem to Puritan imagination and theology, despite the fact that they were forewarned as to the presence of Native

Americans.37 The presence of Native Americans in the New World constituted both a scientific and theological challenge to the Puritan understanding of their colony's significance. To the Puritans, scripture and science were inseparable, and neither was prepared to accept that human life could have stemmed from multiple origins, or that Europeans could be descended from North Americans.

Theory on both sides of the Atlantic was emphatic in its commitment to the idea that Native Americans were descended from the same stock as Europeans and had crossed a land bridge to North America. To suggest that Native Americans had originated independently was not scripturally or naturally sound, and was universally considered to be heretical and even punishable by death.38

In Magnalia Christ Americana Cotton Mather, preacher and son of the

Puritan divine Increase Mather, elaborated on the origins of Native Americans.

Cotton Mather described the account of Philippe Avril, a French Jesuit who during a trip through Russia spoke to an officer in Siberia. According to Mather's

37Salisbury, Manitou and Providence, 106-107, 109-110; Europeans had been aware of the existence of North America and its contents for some time prior to the colony's founding. Both the James Town colony in Virginia and Plymouth colony in New England had been founded in the decades preceding Massachusetts Bay's creation. 38David S. Lovejoy, "Satanizing the American Indian," The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 67 No. 4 (December, 1994): 163. 58 account, it was not unheard-of for the occupants of a Siberian island to become

trapped on the ice during a hunt, and due to an unexpected thaw be sent adrift in

the ocean. Mather seemed convinced that the hunters and their families could

remain on those pieces of ice and be transported as far as "the most Northern

Parts of America, which is not far from that Part of Asia that jutts out into the Sea

of Tartary."39 Mather supported his supposition with an assertion that the

inhabitants of the Siberian island " and Native Americans had a similar

physiognomy.40 Puritans understood the origins of the Native American people

through natural history and inquiry. Puritans were not reliant entirely on theology

and scripture to understand the world, and pursued knowledge through natural

history, so long as it did not actually contradict their theological beliefs.

Thomas Thorowgood discussed the origin of Native Americans in Jewes

in America, and came to similar conclusions to Increase Mather. According to

Thorowgood, Native Americans traveled from Norway, to Iceland, on to

Friseland, Greenland, Estotiland and throughout America. Thorowgood agreed with Mather that the Native Americans had crossed from Europe, but believed them to be Jewish. In his writing Thorowgood cites Bodin as having three

arguments through which to understand the origin of peoples: analysis of history,

linguistic comparison, and similarity between idols. Thorowgood noted that other scholars disagreed with the notion of natives crossing from Europe, and had suggested that they might be of Asian or Jewish origin. According to Emanuel de

39 Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana: or, the Ecclesiastical History of New-England. (Hartford: Silus Andros and Son, [1702] 1855), 121-122. 40lbid. 59 Moraes, they were possibly Carthagians and Jewes 41 While the particular details

may have varied, Puritan theory was unanimous in its claim that all Native

American tribes were of European origin, in keeping with scriptural mandates of the day.

The Puritan theologian and missionary John Eliot was somewhat less

certain about the origins of Native Americans and in 1647 tentatively discussed their possible origin, by stating:

Whence these Indians came here to inhabit is not certaine, his reasons are most probable who thinke they are Tartars passing out of Asia into America by the straits of Anian, who being spilt by some revenging hand of God upon this continent like water upon the ground are spread as farre as these Atlanticke shores...42

The quote suggests that the Native Americans were forced from Europe as a

divine punishment of some kind, and implies both their European origin, and their

race and religious significance. John Eliot, who had tendencies toward

millenarian beliefs, agreed with the popular understanding of Native Americans,

suggesting that they had crossed a land bridge and were gentiles. Later in his

career Eliot began to demonstrate much greater confidence in millenarian theory,

as popular belief began to shift in favour of it. During the beginning of the

seventeenth century the Native Americans were almost universally believed to

be gentiles of one sort or another, crossed from Europe or Asia. To the Puritans

that granted the local tribes no particular millenarian significance, and there was

no urgent cause to battle or convert them.

41Thomas Thorowgood, Jews in America Or Probabilities That the Americans Are of That Race (London: The Gun in Ivie-Lane, 1660), 2-3. 4 John Wilson, John Eliot, Thomas Shepard, "The Day-Breaking if not the Sun-Rising of the Gospel." in The Eliot Tracts, ed. Michael P Clark (Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, [1647] 2003), 92. 60 Following his work amongst the Wampanoag and Narragansett peoples,

in 1643 Roger Williams addressed the origin of the Native Americans in the

introduction to A Key into the Language of America.4* Roger Williams, English

colonist, theologian and preacher, was known for his antinomian beliefs

regarding the state and church, and his work amongst Native Americans.

Williams suggested that Native Americans were commonly believed to have journeyed north from Tartaria, or that as in an account credited to a Dutch

governor, they had travelled from Iceland. Williams' speculations on their origins

were similar to those employed elsewhere, relying on comparison, history and

linguistics for his conclusions. Williams found the Wampanoag practice of

anointing their heads, use of dowries, and the separation of women during

menstruation all to be familiar to Jewish practice. He also drew comparisons

between their language and Hebrew or Greek.44 Williams took note of a similar

observation of constellations between Europeans and the Native Americans, and

of a story told to him of a man called Wetucks, who was said to have performed

miracles and to have walked on the water, bearing "some kind of broken

resemblance to the Sonne of God."45 Williams seemed content to describe the

tribes as being of European origin, and to understand them as being heathen.

His mention of similarities between Native American and Jewish practices were

intended to prove that the tribes were descended from European origin, and not

necessarily of Jewish origin themselves.

43Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America (London: Gregory Dexter, 1643). 44lbid., 21. 45lbid. 61 Like his contemporaries, Roger Williams only considered theories that

understood Native Americans as having originated from the same line as

European populations. What was more important than the scientific peculiarity of the presence of humans in North America was the theological necessity of fitting

them into a biblical framework. Williams tentatively classified the Native

Americans as gentiles, but their exact line and origin remained subject to

speculation and debate.46 Overwhelmingly the colonists of New England

understood that Native Americans had themselves traveled across the Atlantic at

some point from Europe. Intellectual debate about the origin of Native Americans

was concerned with how and when they had crossed to the New World, and not

whether they had. As a whole scholars were content to believe that Native

Americans had crossed the Atlantic and had European origins.

Having explained the presence of Native Americans in the New World, the

Puritans still had to justify their own migration. The Puritans turned to a scriptural

framework of covenants and apocalyptic prophecy to explain their migration.

When Winthrop's fleet set sail in 1630, John Cotton's speech alluded to

covenants and reminded the Puritan colonists of God's promise to Israel. With his

biblical allusion, Cotton suggested that the journey was part of a providential

mission, with millenarian significance. Cotton's speech suggested a strong

connection between colonialism, and apocalyptic prophecy. He urged Puritans to

remain true to their English heritage, clearly unwilling to encourage separatist

attitudes as found in Plymouth, saying:

46lbid. 62 Forget not the wombe that bare you, and the breasts that gave you sucke. Even ducklings hatched under an henne, though they take the water, yet will still have recourse to the wing that hatched them: how much more should chickens of the same feather, and yolke?47

Once in North America, Cotton embraced the apocalyptic tradition, conversion of the Natives Americans and construction of the church, though the millenarian significance of the Massachusetts Bay colony remained somewhat muted in the early years.48 Theories about the apocalyptic role of the Native Americans were not representative of dominant beliefs in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Like his contemporaries, Cotton understood Native Americans to be gentiles, in need of conversion but without the urgency insisted upon by apocalyptic tradition.

There were several factors that complicated and impeded those conversion efforts. Although the Puritans understood that the Native Americans were in need of conversion, in the early seventeenth century they understood that they were heathens and that there was no more urgency involved in their conversion than could be expected of any other group of unregenerate.

Characterizing the local tribes as heathens, without special millenarian significance was compatible with contemporary European theories on the natural history and significance of Native Americans. Native Americans were characterized in two typical manners: as the proud, rustic figure that prefigured

Rousseau's romantic conception of noble savages, and as primitive barbarians.

They were simultaneously depicted as lazy, vicious and decadent, and as simple, naive and childlike. Common to all depictions was the idea that Native Americans

47Cotton, God's Promise, 18. 48Zakai, Exile and Kingdom, 179. 63 were culturally void.49

Most Puritans considered Native Americans to be the same race as

Europeans despite their physical appearance and a stubborn belief that Native

Americans lacked civilized culture. To that end Puritan authors suggested that

Native Americans were white, and merely darkened by exposure to the sun.50

The belief that Native Americans were tanned and uncultured, but of the same

genetic stock as Europeans was consistent with most intellectual thought in

Europe itself. In New England's Prospect, William Wood extensively detailed the

culture and appearance of "Aberiginians or Indians Northward," describing them frequently as uncultured savages.51 Like his contemporaries, Wood believed that the difference in characteristics between Europeans and the Native Americans of the New England area was largely a matter of culture, the result of diet and lifestyle rather than any physical or racial difference. According to Wood their skin was darkened by the sun and smoothed by oils, hair greased and dyed, and their vigor and agelessness tied to their lifestyle.52 Clearly evocative of the image of the noble savage, Wood's description, like many of his period, was concerned with cultural difference rather than physical differences. The natives are described similarly in William Morrell's extensive poem, New England, as being naturally white, and only stained a darker color:

Besides, their women, which for th' most part are

49Philip L. Berg, "Racism and the Puritan Mind," Phylon, Vol. 36 No. 1 (First Quarter, 1975): 2. 50Vaughan, New England Frontier, 42. 51William Wood, New England's Prospect: Being a True, Lively, and Experimental Description of that Part of America, Commonly Called New-England (Boston: Thomas and John Fleet [1634] 1764), 73. Ibid., 71-72. 64 Of comely formes, not blacke, nor very faire: Whose beautie is a beauteous blacke laid on Their paler cheeke, which they most doat upon: For they by nature are both faire and white.53

This quotation demonstrates Morell's insistence that Native Americans had been darkened through dyes or exposure to the sun, and were as white as European

beneath it. Like his contemporaries, Morell did not believe that Native Americans were racially distinct, a logical conclusion given their understanding of Native

Americans' European origins. Puritan belief regarding the race and origin of

Native Americans was important to their decisions regarding conversion, the role of missionary work, and the status of the local tribes.

Puritans did not acknowledge division between technology, culture, and

religion. According to Puritan doctrine, for conversion to be complete all aspects of life had to be changed, so differences in technology and culture could be framed as a religious failing. In order for their conversion to be complete, Native

Americans had to not only identify as Christian, but live like Europeans. Lifestyle, dress, and all aspects of life reflected on the state of conversion. Cultural change was all the more important, as the Puritan colonists believed that Native

Americans descended from the same biblical stock as the Europeans, and as such were not racially inferior. Once the colonists had established that all

humanity had a common ancestor, it seemed logical to assume that differences

between the races were largely cosmetic. Instead the Puritans believed the

Native Americans to be culturally backward and savage, awaiting their

53William Morell, New England or A Brief Enarration of the Ayre, Earth, Water, Fish and Fowlesofthat Country (London: Imprinted by I. D., 1625), 245. 65 introduction to European lifestyle in all ways, cultural, technological and religious.

Explaining the origins and providential significance of Native Americans did not entirely alleviate the potential problems posed by their presence. Puritan colonists understood that they had traveled from the known world at some point, but with the Providential blessing on their migration confirmed, Puritans still had to justify their use of the land in the New World. The Puritans colonists found their initial justification for expansion in Christian theology, which taught that God had commanded his followers to "fill, and subdue the earth."54 The best articulated example of such an attitude appears in John Cotton's God's Promise to the Plantation.55 John Cotton, Puritan millenarian and theologian, stated that:

And the ground of this is from the grand Charter given to Adam and his posterity in Paradise, Gen.1.28. Multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it. If therefore any sonne of Adam come and finde a place empty, . he hath liberty to come, and fill, and subdue the earth there. This Charter was renewed to Noah, Gen. 9. 1. Fulfill the earth and multiply: So that it is free from that common Grant, for any to take possession of vacant Countries.56

John Cotton clearly felt that it was the right, even duty, of Christians to populate the wilderness of the world. The European colonists believed that scripture provided a divine warrant for their use of the land in North America. The only thing that might have threatened the Puritan justification for their use of the North

American land, was the presence of Native American occupants. Scripture only justified the use of vacant land, and John Cotton considered the status of the land extensively. The conclusion of Cotton and his contemporaries was almost

54Cotton, God's Promise, 5. 55lbid. 56lbid., 5. 66 always that the land of North America was not occupied, and was therefore available for colonization. The Puritan colonists did find ways to justify expansion into Native American territory: with no visible infrastructure the land was as

Robert Cushman remarked in his writing, unsettled, a "vacuum domicilium" or a

"vast and empty chaos."57 European colonists were prepared to believe that

Native Americans were wasting the land, especially as it had no recognizable agriculture or fences when they arrived. The Puritans had traveled from England, where sedentary agriculture was a common practice, so perhaps it should be no surprise that they failed to recognize Native American subsistence practices. The

Algonquin tribes in the area surrounding what became Massachusetts Bay practiced seasonal migration in order to fully exploit the environment and chilly climate. The local tribes tended to spend winters in the relative shelter of interior valleys, subsisting on fish and game and vegetables stored from the summer.

During the warmer seasons of spring and summer, the tribes would venture back to their crop land and begin the cycle again. Those subsistence patterns were shared by most of the Algonquin speaking tribes in the area, and certainly all of the largest and most powerful of them.58 European colonists observing Native

American seasonal migrations mistakenly believed the participants to be homeless and making no attempts to exploit the land. The colonists failed to recognize that the tribes had established territory, and performed short seasonal

"Robert Cushman, "Reasons and Considerations Touching the Lawfulness of Removing out of England intothe Parts of America" in A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, ed. Dwight Heath. (Cambridge: Applewood, [1622)1986), 41-44. 58Vaughan, New England Frontier, 30. 67 migrations within it.59 Contributing to the Puritan failure to recognize Native

American land use, many of the Puritans felt that the progress of disease and near genocide of Native Americans in the region justified their seizure and use of the land.

In the first decades of the seventeenth century the relationship between

Native Americans and Massachusetts Bay were largely characterized by a mutual coexistence. Neither politics nor theology urged the Puritans to interact aggressively with the local tribes. Theories relating the Native Americans to biblical stories about the lost tribes of Israel were tentative at best. Published in

1630, John White's A Planter's Plea suggested that Native Americans might have had contact with the tribes of Israel, as their own history and customs seemed to contain similarities to those documented in the Bible and Christian theology.

Rather than find millenarian significance in the local tribes, White justified the colonization of New England through a biblical command that the world be filled, as it had been gifted to humanity.60 The conversion of Native Americans was understood in the context of prophecy from the book of Revelations. According to

White the natives were gentiles, and their conversion was the gathering that would lead to other prophetic events. Therefore the existence and conversion of

Native Americans was written into a millenarian narrative, but did not allot them any more significance than any other converted heathens.61 White's work justified colonization and conversion without the urgency that developed toward

59lbid., 30-31. 60White, The Planter's Plea, 2. 61 Ibid2-16. the second half of the seventeenth century. The focus on missionary work grew only after the English Civil War as relationships changed between the Puritan colonists, England, and the church. In the meantime the Puritans were occupied with the struggles involved with founding their colony, and had to justify their use of the land, and dedicate much of their resources and attentions to its settlement.

Whether or not the Native Americans had used the land in the past, many

Puritans felt that by the time of colonization the native inhabitants were no longer able to properly exploit it. John Cotton commented extensively on the ways that land could be providentially opened to Christians, the third point being critical to the situation in New England:

Thirdly, when he makes a Country though not altogether void of Inhabitants, yet void in that place where they reside. Where there is a vacant place, there is liberty for the sonnes of Adam or Noah to come and inhabite, though they neither buy it, nor aske their leaves.62

It was not only the lifestyle of Native Americans that suggested to Puritan colonists that the land on which they founded their colony was vacant or unused.

They also understood that the diseases afflicting the local tribes had made the land available for use. Cotton clearly felt that the disease had opened up land, and that land was then meant to be available to the Puritan colonists. In a doctrine of Providence and divine meaning, the plague proved divine approval of their migration, and ensured that the land was available for their use.63

Contributing to Puritan perceptions of an undeveloped wilderness, a massive small pox epidemic had swept New England prior to the arrival of the

62Cotton, God's Promise, 4. 63Axtell. The European and the Indian, 50. 69 Massachusetts Bay colonists. Projected figures based on similar colonial situations estimated that before the epidemics Native American populations may have been as high as 90,000, but by 1674 contemporary measurements recorded numbers as low as 10,750.64 The numbers demonstrate a dramatic population decline and the apparent emptiness of the wilderness that greeted the

Puritan colonists. The opening of the land by plague offered further justification to

Puritan settlers seeking to justify expansion in New England. The colonists of

Massachusetts Bay arrived to find Native American populations already decimated by European disease and previously occupied lands opened by the population decline. To the European colonists who saw no sign of fences or agriculture it was easy to imagine that the land had always been vacant and unused. So long as the land was proven to be unused, it was theologically acceptable to push aside what Native Americans were present. Status as the elect encouraged a decidedly ethnocentric perspective among the Puritans; the unregenerate were of less concern than God's chosen with their distinct role in providential drama.

By depriving the Native Americans of divine significance, the Puritans were able to focus on more pragmatic and immediate goals, securing their foothold on North America before pursuing missionary work or aggressive expansion. Their tendency to see every event as inherently loaded with divine significance allowed the Puritans to use the plague to justify their occupation of the land. The Providential significance of the plagues allowed the Puritans to

64John Peacock, "Principles and Effects of Puritan Appropriation of Indian Land and Labor," Ethnohistory, Vol. 31 No. 1 (Winter, 1984): 39. 70 expand and claim land, without showing active benevolence to the afflicted

Native Americans. The Massachusetts Bay colonists and missionaries assisted

with the treatment, burial and lodging for those suffering from the plagues or

displaced by it.65 Disease opened the land, and to Puritans it seemed to be both

a gift from Providence and a punishment inflicted on Native Americans for

paganism and for their lack of culture.66 In God's Promise to His Plantation John

Cotton turned to biblical typology to describe God's role in appointing a place for

his people and driving away their enemies. To Cotton, divine will was responsible

for both the displacement of the Native Americans and their warm reception and

good will toward the colonists. Cotton suggested that God had given the elect the

Native Americans good will, and opened the land, and that in turn they must

remain fair and spread Christianity.67

As early as the founding of Massachusetts Bay, Puritans showed anxiety

about the legitimacy of their use of the land, and the validity of their divine

warrant. In Reasons for the Plantation of New England, John Winthrop

addressed concerns about the settlement, specifically answering the objection

that "we have no warrant to enter upon that land which hath been so long

possessed by others."68 Winthrop responded to those accusations by referring to

biblical cases in which land was taken, and explained that it could be allowed and just. As John Cotton had stated, the use of land was particularly warranted in

65Moseley, John Winthrop's World, 90-91. 66Conforti, Saints and Strangers, 24. 67Cotton, God's Promise, 3-10. 68John Winthrop, "Reasons to be Considered for Justifying the Undertakers of the Intended Plantation in New England," in Life and Letters of John Winthrop: Governor of Massachusetts Bay Company in their Emigration to New England, 1630. ed. Robert C Winthrop. (Boston: Little, Brown [1628] 1869): 309-311. situations like the one found in North America in which the land was not enclosed, settled, or occupied by any recognizable agriculture or cattle. As his contemporaries had done, Winthrop suggested that the land was "virgin" in nature, and that the natives welcomed them. He continued by suggesting that

God had "consumed the natives with a great plague" that opened the land.69 To

Winthrop the migration was justified through use of biblical allegory and the hand of Providence as he saw both in the destruction of the Native Americans, and the willingness of those that survived the plague to deal peacefully.

In New England's First Fruits, special note is made of the destruction of

Native American populations prior to the arrival of the Puritan colonists.

According to the authors the plagues were a providential clearing of the land that demonstrated God's approval of their venture. The journey to New England was described as a "marveilous safe passage" and the colonists celebrated their newfound freedom in North America.70 It was the feeling of the Puritan leaders that "God meanes to carry his Gospel westward, in these latter times of the world."71 This assertion speaks of millenarian beliefs and chronologically placed the author in the end times and supported missionary efforts. Allegorical comparisons to the flight into Canaan use the Bible as a reference point and confirm the Puritan journey as being done with the approval of Providence, and as part of a larger narrative.72

The colonists expected providential favour in their journey, which they

69 Ibid. 70Thomas Weld and Hugh Peter. New Englands First Fruits, 74. 71lbid„ 65. 72lbid„ 78. 72 believed to have special significance. As the elect, the Puritans felt that the

unregenerate, like themselves, had a specific role to play in providential drama, though a somewhat less glamorous one. The term unregenerate referred to

anyone not of the elect, particularly Europeans of other denominations or beliefs.

In the early years of the Massachusetts Bay colony the natives' role was largely

in delivering divine favour or punishment as it was warranted and related to the

Puritan sense of purpose in the New World. Native Americans were heathen or

unregenerate, and tools of the devil or of Providence, to guide the elect to

salvation or punish them for breach of covenant.

To the Puritans, the presence of Native Americans in the New World

raised theological questions concerning more than just phylogeny and race. The

idea of a land bridge satisfied questions about the origin of Native Americans, but

did not satisfy the absence of Christian religion in North America. The Puritan

colonists could not accept the legitimacy of Native American practices and

beliefs. The idea that humanity could exist outside of the Christian world, with no

knowledge of their beliefs went contrary to scripture and was never a

consideration for the Puritans. Christian scripture understood all humanity as

having developed from a common origin within a single divine narrative. Puritans

had encountered heathens before, but it was difficult for them to accept that a

people could exist with no knowledge of the Christian god. There were a variety of interpretations to explain native religion that did not challenge Puritan doctrine,

including categorizing it as being related to ancient paganism, demon worship or 73 witchcraft.73 The Puritans consistently ignored Native American theology and history, or reinterpreted it to fit within a biblical framework. To the Puritans, Native

American religion had to be explained like everything else, in the context of scripture and doctrine.

The European colonists' confusion about Native American religious beliefs was in part due to the nature of those beliefs. Many of the tribes in the

Massachusetts Bay area venerated a pantheon dominated by an omnipotent creator figure, much like Christian theology. The dominant religion of the area also taught of a second, evil or destructive god. Particularly following the arrival of Europeans and the resulting plague and warfare, the Native Americans believed that the evil figure had to be pleased in order to avoid his continued active malevolence. Puritans interpreted Native American attempts to ward off disaster as worship of an evil god that they believed was analogous to the devil.74

The Native American tribes in the region held fundamentally polytheistic beliefs, but there was disagreement between European colonial observers about whether they worshiped two figures, or a much larger pantheon. The Puritans colonists expected to find signs of their own religion reflected in the lives of the Native

Americans, and the similarities gave weight to the notion that they might worship the devil, and have a monotheistic structure to their religion.75 It was impossible for Puritans to believe that North America existed outside of biblical history.

Puritans believed that Providence was active in every event, and it was

73Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History (New York, Routledge: 1996), 252. 74James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York, Oxford University Press: 1985), 16. 75Vaughan, New England Frontier, 36-37. 74 impossible for them to accept the absence of Christianity in North America.

Josselyn made careful note of a flood in Native American depictions of their own

history. Josselyn believed the flood remembered by Native Americans was the

same flood mentioned in the biblical story of Noah.76 Both the people and land of

North America were incorporated into the religious history of Europe, in the

context of a biblical war between the Christian god and devil.

John Josselyn was not the only Puritan writer to see parallels between two dominant spirits in the religion of the Native Americans, and the dichotomies in their own faith. Francis Higginson's New Englands Plantation described Native

American religion in a single paragraph, which while hardly an adequate description of the belief system does serve to illustrate the attitude of colonists toward it. The details of the religion were not of particular concern to Higginson,

but he described the natives of New England as worshiping "two Gods, a good

God and an evill God: the good God they call Tantum and their evill God whom they fear will doe them hurt they call Squantum."77 Higginson's treatment of their

religion showed a lack of interest or knowledge in the nuances of those beliefs, and characterizes it as a duality with good opposed to evil. Higginson believed that the Natives Americans feared their "evil God" and it is easy to imagine that colonists drew correlations between such descriptions and their own religion.78 To many of the Puritans, it was easiest to understand Native American religion in the context of Christianity. Higginson was not unusual in believing that Native

76John Josselyn, New England Rarities (London: C. Widdowes, 1675), 105. 77Francis Higginson, New-Englands Plantation (London: T. & R. Cotes, 1630), 14. 78lbid. 75 American religion must be analogous with Christianity. Many Puritan theologians believed that it was possible that their beliefs were merely symptomatic of their crude culture, and that they actually venerated God or the devil.

Puritan doctrine allowed for two active forces in the world: the power of

Providence and power of the devil. The devil was an active force that worked

against humanity. Puritans were certain that if the Native Americans had not

heard of God, then the devil must be present in his absence. Believing that they

had assumed the status of the elect following England's failure to fully reform,

Puritans felt that they were particularly pitted against the forces of the devil and

had attracted his animosity. Devil worship placed the presence of Native

Americans and Puritan colonists in North America into a providential framework,

another chapter in the war between God and the devil. 79 The Puritans were

comfortable in their anticipated victory over the devil, and the view that the Native

Americans were in his hold was consistent with their theology.

Ideas of contrariness and dichotomies inherent in Protestant thought

confirmed to the Puritans that the world was composed of antithetical figures,

divided in a war between God and Satan. Contrariness suggested that Native

Americans were either with God or the devil, and they clearly had no knowledge

of God.80 Clearly describing a relationship between the devil and the Native

Americans, New England's First Fruits described the plight of Native Americans,

characterizing them as "those poore Indians, who have ever sate in hellish

79Richard Godbeer, The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 90-91. 80Zakai, Exile and Kingdom, 45. 76 darknesse, adoring the Divell himselfe for their GOD."81 Collected amongst the

Eliot tracts, New England's First Fruits deals extensively with the conversion of

Native Americans. As the quote suggests, the authors believed that Native

Americans had no exposure to Christianity prior to the arrival of European colonists, and lived in bondage to the devil. To the Puritans, the devil existed as an active force in the world, and they believed that without God and Christianity to protect them, the devil's power would rule.82 They believed that by introducing

Christianity to the New World, they presented a challenge to the devil's previously undisputed reign.

The Puritans frequently demonstrated that their mission was, at least in part, to bring Christianity with them, and proclaimed that "God meanes to carry his Gospel westward."83 When examining the role of Native Americans, the

Puritans suggested that they "serve the Devill and are led by him."84 Both sentiments expressed the feeling that the members of the Great Migration were spreading Christianity to a new continent, a continent that had formerly been under the devil's sway. The colonists believed that prior to their arrival Native

American life had been dominated by devil worship and pawwaws. Pawwaws acted as physicians or priests in the culture of Native American tribes in the

Massachusetts Bay area and were responsible for healing, ceremonial magic, and interaction with the spirit world. The pawwaws held a political, medical and religious position amongst their communities, and were believed to be able to

81 Weld and Peter, New Englands First Fruits, 1. 82lbid. 83lbid„ 8. 84lbid„ 18. dispel evil spirits in times of sickness. For their part, Puritans believed that the

pawwaws could kill with their magic, and saw it as being analogous to

witchcraft.85 Works such as New Englands First Fruits suggested that the arrival

of the Puritan colonists had introduced an almost universal fear of damnation in

the Native Americans, and was helping to draw them away from the devil.86 The

existence of pawwaws only confirmed to the Puritans that the Native American

tribes had congress with the devil.87 In order to demonstrate the value of their

conversion attempts, the missionaries suggested that Native Americans were

becoming aware of their spiritual plight, and were afraid of damnation. Claiming that the Native Americans feared damnation provided a sense of significance to the missionary efforts and suggested that more conversions would be forthcoming. By suggesting that the local tribes were afraid of damnation the

Puritans hoped to demonstrate that their own beliefs were correct and superior,

and alluded to possible future successes from missionary efforts and their role in

North America.

When they compared pawwaws to witches, and local religions to devil worship, the Puritans were attempting to fit the local customs and beliefs into a more familiar pattern. In order to understand the New World, the Puritans attempted to fit it into a scriptural narrative. In A Key Into Language Roger

Williams searched for similarities between the history and culture of Native

American tribes and Christian theology. In his writing Williams described a tale

85Vaughan, New England Frontier, 34-35. 86lbid. 87Lovejoy, "Satanizing the American Indian," 609. 78 he was told regarding a man named Wetucks, a miracle worker in the New World

who had reportedly walked on water. Williams described the man as having

"some kind of broken resemblance to the Sonne of God."88 Regardless of the

significance of the story to its original tellers, Williams clearly saw it as an

analogue to the biblical story of Jesus. To Williams it seemed to confirm that the

Native Americans existed within the same theological universe as Europe.

Though Native Americans were not aware of Christianity by name, Williams'

beliefs allowed them to exist within the same narrative and recognize the same

figures. Doing so provided stability and continuity to the world as Williams and

other Puritans saw it.89 To many Puritan colonists Native Americans were framed

in the context of devil worship and witchcraft, which fit nicely anxieties about a

hostile wilderness, in the grip of the devil and filled with external evils waiting to

assault the elect.90

The Puritans constantly struggled to describe North America in terms that

they and their European counterparts could understand. John Josselyn's

account, New England Rarities and An Account of Two Voyages, attempted to

describe the New World for Europeans. Josselyn spent some time in New

England, and his work begins in 1638 with his voyage over, attempting to catalog the local flora and fauna, and describe the government, and people, including the

Native Americans. Josselyn attempted to describe the religion of Native

Americans, portraying it as a fearful worship of the devil.

88Williams, A Key Into Language, 21. 89lbid. 90Godbeer, The Devil's Dominion, 90-91. They acknowledge a God who they call Squantam, but worship him they do not, because (they say) he will do them no harm. But Abbamocho or Cheepie many times smites them with incurable diseases, fears them with his Apparitions and pannick Terrors, by reason whereof they live in a wretched consternation worshipping the Devil out of fear.91

Josselyn saw very familiar elements in the theology of the local tribes, who

worshiped a god called Squantam, and another figure that Josselyn believed to

be analogous with the devil, a god called Abbamocho or Cheepie. Puritan

dichotomies and beliefs were used to translate Native American worship

practices into a form more familiar, and more compatible with scripture.

According to Josselyn the pawwaws were comparable to witches, and in

exchange for their worship received all manner of magics, including

invulnerability and the ability to cure diseases.92 According to Josselyn, the

Native Americans had demonstrated an understanding of God, the devil and the war between them. Apparently Native Americans recognized that they had worshiped the devil out of fear prior to the coming of settlers and Christianity.

Josselyn's book was published in 1674, and represents a somewhat later

interpretation of Native Americans. While not being overtly religious in his

purpose, Josselyn does write the New World into biblical history.

New England's First Fruits deals particularly with statements from

Praying Indians, primarily of the Wampanoag around Martha's Vineyard, after their conversion to Christianity. The Praying Indians were those Christianized

Native Americans that resided in the praying towns of the New England area.

The praying towns were founded under the supervision of John Eliot, beginning

91 John Josselyn, New England Rarities (London: C. Widdowes, 1675), 113. 92lbid., 114. 80 with Natick in 1650, the largest and most successful example. The towns were founded on the principle that Native Americans had to be 'civilized' before they could be converted to Christianity. They gave the converts an opportunity to live

outside of the colonial communities, but in a manner deemed appropriate to

Christian doctrine and lifestyle. The occupants of those towns were referred to as

Praying Indians.93 Conversion was met with relatively marginal success in the

colony's first decades, and did not receive much support from the colony until

later in the seventeenth century. Like most Puritans, John Eliot believed that it was necessary that the Native Americans live like Europeans before they could

be Christianized and the Praying Indians exemplified that attitude. The delay in the conversion of the tribes demonstrated a great deal about Puritan conception

of the importance of those tribes. Following a conversation with Edward Winslow

in 1640 about the possibility that the Native Americans were the Jews referred to

in scripture, Eliot had begun to increasingly support millenarian sentiments. The

Praying Towns reflected Eliot's zeal to see the Native Americans not merely dominated or conquered, but wholly converted to Christianity.94 According to the authors' accounts of native children raised as Christians by colonists, the children

no longer wanted to return to their own people, and feared for their souls, dreading their "sinful and miserable estates."

...some of them are able to give us account of the Sermons they heare, and of the word read and expounded in our Families, and are convinced of their sinful and miserable Estates, and affected with the sense of Gods displeasure, and the thoughts of Eternity, and will sometimes tremble

93Michael Clark, ed. The Eliot Tracts: with letters from John Eliot to Thomas Thorowgood and Richard Baxter (Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2003), 1-15. 94lbid„ 25-26. 81 and melt into teares at our opening and pressing the word upon their Consciences; and as farre as we can discerne, some of them use to pray in secret, and are much in love with us, and cannot indure to returne any more to the Indians.95

The author's suspicions that Native Americans "pray in secret" and assertions that they are fully converted to European life demonstrated the Puritan requirement of full cultural and religious conversion. The accounts suggest that the Native Americans felt both fear of damnation, and respect for the power of the Christian god, which in the wake of war, plague, and destruction they did not feel that their own power could match. The tract extensively expressed the necessity of full conversion, culturally as well as religiously and describes the natives as willing converts. Many colonists used the description of Praying

Indians to chastise settlers for breaking the Sabbath, or failing to properly respect divine will. By quoting the Praying Indians in the piece, the author suggests that prior to the arrival of the European colonists Native Americans had no contact with Christianity. The author felt that after conversion Native Americans became afraid for their souls and eager to embrace Christianity. To the Puritans believed that the conversion of the Native American helped to prove the colony's special role a providential narrative, and justified their continued presence in North

America.

Concerned with conversion and the spiritual place of the Native

Americans, the Eliot tracts illuminate Puritan perspective regarding them.96

95Weld and Peter, New Englands First Fruits, 3. 96The Eliot tracts were a series of documents by the colonists of New England, representing the work of missionaries amongst the tribes of the area. The works were by men such as Thomas Shepard, Thomas Thorowgood, and Richard Baxter, as well as John Eliot. They include letters, sermons, and other work relating to the missionary projects around the area of New England. 82 Several of the Eliot tracts confirm a similar outlook to the one presented in New

England's First Fruits, including a discussion in Thomas Shepard's The Clear

Sunshine of the Gospel. Shepard described a need for the natives to become

civilized before they could be Christians, and pointed to the role of pawwaws as

leading their worship of the devil.97 Puritan writers frequently compared pawwaws

to witches and devil worshipers. Missionary writers in the seventeenth century

often tried to demonstrate the importance of their efforts by suggesting that they

worked to loosen the devil's grip on Native Americans. Shepard believed that the

Native Americans had been compelled by the new opportunities offered by

Christianity and were changing both lifestyle and belief, paying back their debts

and submitting to English law.98 The writing contained in Puritan missionary

tracts help to demonstrate the changes that the Puritan intellectual conception of

Native Americans underwent throughout the colony's history, and the various

support their attempts received accordingly. In the earliest years of the colony

that support was very limited and it was generally understood that the Native

Americans were poor heathens in the devil's grip. The missionaries who actively

sought to convert the tribes during that period were a minority, and while the

colony appreciated their efforts it gave fairly little support. It was only in later

decades of the colony's existence as it became increasingly necessary to justify the colony's presence in North America that the Puritans began to more actively

support missionary efforts.

97Thomas Shepard, "Clear Sunshine of the Gospel Breaking Forth Upon the Indians of New- England," in The Eliot Tracts, ed. Michael P Clark (Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2003), 106. 98lbid., 115-125. 83 In the first years of the colonization, Native Americans were frequently

believed to be gentiles and heathens, seduced by the devil. Millenarian beliefs and missionary work were both factors in Puritan life, but fairly little energy was devoted toward them. Missionary work was explicitly one of the goals of the journey to North America, but the fledgling colony's resources were spread thin

merely surviving. John Endicott had suggested in 1628 that perhaps the best

hope for the conversion of Native Americans was in the positive example set by the colony." Though they desired the conversion of Native Americans, the

resources necessary to undertake the task were simply not available to the

Massachusetts Bay colonists in the first decades after founding. The earliest and

most notable missionary efforts in the Massachusetts Bay area were those of

John Eliot and the Praying Towns. Eliot's efforts did not begin until approximately

1646 but had limited support, and did not see any significant progress until the

later half of the seventeenth century. The requirement of full spiritual and cultural

conversion made missionary efforts slow expensive. While Calvinism and Puritan theology did support the idea of conversion, they did not provide great support for

it and were not structured in a manner that encouraged it. The Puritan ministers were responsible for their community, not the neighboring communities of

unregenerate. The strongest support that Eliot and his contemporaries found for conversion came as a result of millenarian sentiments, that argued for its significance on a divine, Providential scale. Those ideas did not take off until after the English Civil War, and in the meantime the Puritans in New England made

"Vaughan, New England Frontier, 94-95. 84 very limited headway toward the conversion of the local tribes.100 Instead the

Puritans hoped to set a strong example as they founded their colony based on the principles outlined in scripture. Native Americans could serve as tools for

providential blessing or punishment, and indicators of the state of the covenant,

but they were never granted autonomy. Their beliefs and practices were fit into the Puritans' own identity and sense of purpose, rather than being allowed to challenge their conception of the world. Typically Puritans believed that Native

Americans were heathens or slaves of the devil; their absence cleared the path for Puritans, their submission granted lease of the land, and their conversion or defeat was a blow against the devil. The support or benevolence of Native

Americans was a sign of providential blessing, while aggression was confirmation that the devil led them to punished or test the Puritan colonists for some lapse of faith.

100Clark, The Eliot Tracts. 24-30. CHAPTER THREE

"Perfect Children of the Devil:"1

Armies of the Devil and Lost Tribes.

Initially the Puritans accepted their hardships as providential will and were

content to dedicate their energies to establishing their colony and subduing the

wilderness around it. Though the Puritans felt that they had providential

endorsement for their mission, there was little expansion into the wilderness at

first.2 It was not until after 1640 that the Puritans believed that they were meant

to expand and populate the entire wilderness; though they held divine warrant to

exploit the land, the colonists had arrived to found a community based upon

spiritual principles. Toward the second half of the seventeenth century the

Puritans began to revisit their interpretation of North America, and took to

describing it as a wilderness in need of populating.3 As part of the general

revision of their own history and a search for meaning, the second generation of

Massachusetts Bay colonists also began to understand the wilderness as a

home to heathens, in need of conversion and populating. As the Puritans' foothold in the colony grew they found themselves more capable of expansion, and interpretations of their history and purpose began to include a more aggressive attitude toward the surrounding wilderness and the tribes that occupied it. Meanwhile, the changing situation within the colony and across the

Atlantic brought about new challenges to the colony's power and identity, and

increase Mather, A Brief History of the Warr With the Indians in New-England (Boston: John Foster, 1676), 27. 2Alan Heimert, "Puritanism, the Wilderness, and the Frontier," The New England Quarterly, Vol. 26 No. 3 (September, 1953): 361. 3Ibid., 364-368. 85 their attitudes toward Native Americans changed to reflect the colony's changing

needs and circumstances.

In the decades that followed the colony's founding, Massachusetts Bay grew and became increasingly able to expand its borders. The English Civil War threatened the religious significance of the New World, and forced the Puritans to

reconsider their purpose in it. Following the English Civil War in the 1640s, the

Puritans changed their understanding of Native Americans in order to justify their own significance and purpose in the New World. The members of the Great

Migration had frequently claimed that their journey was necessary to preserve a

remnant of the reformed church. To those Puritans, the idea of a fully reformed

Protestant church in England threatened the purpose of their colony in North

America. With the advent of the English Civil War, the attention of Protestant

reformers turned back to England, and left the leadership of the colony scrambling for a new way to justify their absence and explain their continued

providential significance. Those revisions of history put a renewed emphasis on

missionary work and expressed a growing concern that the hostility of local

Native American tribes might be divine punishment for declining piety. As they became more comfortable in the New World Puritans became more aggressively involved with the Native American tribes. Meanwhile as expansion and conversion efforts accelerated, the local tribes became increasingly concerned about the nature of those relationships. Metacomet's War was something of a breakpoint, one of the last major attempts of the tribes to stop colonial expansion and seize power for themselves. Rather than empowering the Native American 87 perspective, the Puritans believed that the conflict was an inevitable retribution for declining piety and breach of covenant.

The contents of Puritan history were relatively static but the emphasis changed as second-generation scholars and preachers formulated new understandings of their past. The foundation of their thought was always in a strong sense of history as a process grounded in providential theory and scripture. Millenarian sentiment had always existed in their thought, but did not recieve significant attention until the colony's expansion and developing sense of meaning encouraged it. The Puritans saw themselves as existing in a comprehensive narrative that connected them directly to scripture and history.

The significance and role of individual events in that narrative could be changed and interpretations could be challenged, but the continuity of the narrative and the details of the events remained relatively stable. Such revisions of history happened with increasing frequency following the decline of the first generation and the relative cultural homogeneity they had brought with them. The colony was changing, and the Puritan sense of self and purpose had to change with it.

By the second generation, Puritans were extensively revisiting their history and reinterpreting their theological role in the New World. In "Revising the

Errand," Scobey argues convincingly that the Puritan sense of mission underwent extensive changes between the first two generations of the colony. By the third generation and the end of the seventeenth century Puritans had faced both the antinomian crisis and the Half-Way Covenant, events that only deepened their concerns about church membership, decline and the covenant 88 implicit in the founding of the colony.4 To the Puritans the interpretation of their own history was key to understanding the purpose of the colony, the changes it had undergone and the pressures it was under. Toward the end of the seventeenth century Puritans in Massachusetts Bay felt increasingly best upon by outside influences. During that period they were beset by raids from Native

Americans, including the two most significant North American wars of that century. During the same short period the Puritans began to feel threatened by subversion from heretics, Quakers, Baptists and antinomians, imperial challenges to their charter and the witchcraft crises at the end of the century.

Meanwhile, material comforts were becoming more accessible to the colony, and the growing population of immigrants threatened the Puritans' cultural homogeneity. Amidst all this turmoil the Puritans grew increasingly concerned about what they perceived as a loss of piety, and a breach of the divine covenant implicit in the colony's founding.5 The list of concerns was extensive, and

Puritans felt beset and threatened, a feeling that shaped their perception of the local tribes. Within decades of founding the colony, the Puritans already felt that their way of life and very existence were threatened. Their understanding of the world adapted to face a perceived crisis within the community. Correspondingly,

"The Antinomian Crisis took place during the period of 1636-1638. Massachusetts Bay resident Anne Hutchinson played a central role in a conflict between the orthodox Puritan authorities of the colony and religious dissidents. The conflict was focused on Hutchinson's interpretation of the Covenant of Grace, and the claim of dissidents that faith alone could lead to salvation. Hutchinson's claims challenged the legitimacy of the Puritan government of the colony, as well as the Protestant belief in Predestination. The conflict ended in charges of heresy, and Hutchinson's expulsion from the colony. In 1662, The Half-Way Covenant was a form of partial church membership, a compromise on the historic demand for conversion experience. The growth of the colony and decline of the first generation of Puritan colonists precipitated the crisis, which accompanied a growing sense of decline and moral laxness amongst puritans. 5Lovejoy, "Satanizing the American Indian," 618. 89 to the Puritans the significance of the Native Americans changed with the

situation in the colony. In order to cope with pressure the colony searched for

meaning and reevaluated their own history.

Contributing to pressures on the colony, Puritans faced two major

conflicts with Native Americans in the seventeenth century, and had to

understand both in terms of scripture and typology. The Pequot War began in

1636 when the English trader, John Oldham, was killed by Narragansett forces

following a series of escalating conflicts over trade in the region. The English

response was to attack local Niantic and Pequot villages, sparking war with the

Pequot and their allies. The war culminated in the defeat of Pequot forces and

the destruction of the Mystic River village.6 Accompanied by their own Mohegan

and Narragansett allies the colonial forces destroyed the fort, killing between four

and seven hundred Pequot inhabitants there. By 1638 the war had ended in the

destruction of the Pequot tribe.7 The Massachusetts Bay colony had survived its

first major crisis of the century.

The century's second major colonial war was Metacomet's War, often

called King Philip's War, which took place in 1675. Metacomet's War pitted the

English colony and their Native American allies against the Wampanoag

confederacy under their war chief, Metacomet. Twelve towns were destroyed,

many more attacked, and approximately two thousand colonists killed. The

colonial retribution ended the war within the year, but it was one of the costliest in

6Steven T. Katz, "The Pequot War Reconsidered," The New England Quarterly, Vol. 64 No. 2 (June, 1991): 206-208. 7lbid., 210-219. 90 damage and lives for the Massachusetts Bay colony. To make matters worse for the already beset colonists, the war took place during a period of religious strife, change, and natural catastrophe that marked the rise of the second generation and aging and deaths of the first.8 The response of Puritan authorities, including

Increase Mather, was invariably to ask the people of the colony to turn their gaze inward for the causes of the war, and to find the path to reform there. An Earnest

Exhortation to the Inhabitants of New-England was published in 1676, pleading that the colonists search within themselves for the cause of the war to prevent future conflicts.9 Full conflict between local tribes and the Puritan colonists affected their interpretation of Native Americans, their conception of self, and their sense of mission. Metacomet's war took place during a period dominated by a narrative of decline and reevaluations of Puritan history.10 Native Americans' attacks constantly demonstrated the impending divine judgment that the colony could face if its inhabitants did not reform. The colonists were deeply concerned about the heresy of antinomians and Quakers and troubled by any sign of impiety within the colony. While the other signs of judgment troubled the Puritans, the local tribes posed the largest threat to their lifestyle, and very existence in North

America. Metacomet's War particularly threatened the colonists and inflicted significant destruction and loss of life on the European colonists of the region, shaping the Puritan narrative of religious crisis and decline.

8James G. Moseley, John Winthrop's World: History as a Story, the Story as History (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 194. 9 Increase Mather, An Earnest Exhortation (Boston: John Foster, 1676). 10David Scobey, "Revising the Errand: New England's Ways and the Puritan Sense of the Past," The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 4 No. 1 (January, 1984): 7-10. 91 To the Puritans, every war between the colonists and Native Americans was also between God and the devil. John Underhill began training the

Massachusetts Bay Colony's militia in 1630 as a captain, and fought with colonial forces in the Pequot War. Following the war he published one of the most complete first-hand accounts of the Pequot War available. In Newes from

America, Underhill pointed directly to the involvement of Satan in the Pequot

War:

...the old Serpent according to his first malice stirred them up against the Church of Christ, and in such a furious manner, as our people were so farre disturbed, and affrighted with their boldnesse that they scarce durst rest in their beds: threatening persons and cattell to take them, as indeed they did: so insolent were those wicked imps growne, that like the divell their commander, they runne up and downe as roaring Lyons, compassing all corners of the Countrey for a prey, seeking whom they might devoure: It being death to them for to rest without some wicked imployment or other, they still plotted how they might wickedly attempt some bloody enterprise upon our poore native Countrey-men.11

Underhill was vivid in his description of "wicked imps" and "roaring lions" and conjures familiar imagery of both beasts and devils. Underhill asserted that the devil was the commander of Pequot armies and ordered them to prey throughout the country on the holy, an accusation familiar to communities in which stories of

Pequot skins turning away blades, armies empowered by magic and the sorcery of pawwaws were already familiar. Puritan doctrine taught that Providence could allow the devil leeway to harass the elect if they had been lax in their moral duty, or failed in their covenant. It was therefore conceivable that the Native Americans might have been sent on the offensive as punishment for some failure to observe

11John Underhill, Newes from America; Or, A New and Experimental! Discoverie of New England {London: J.D. 1638): 19-20. 92 scripture or a breached covenant.

With Native Americans framed in the context of devil worship the Puritans were able to understand the attacks in the context of divine punishment. Puritan theology demanded self-examination and piety, and encouraged them to show more concern with the possibility of failings within the community than attacks from without.12 Their belief in the active role of divine Providence taught Puritans that events within the community could result in mutual punishment or blessing.

The world served the will of Providence, and while external evil was plentiful it only existed as it was permitted to by God. Meanwhile the devil, while powerful and frightening, only tormented the Puritans when God allowed it as a test, warning, or punishment for moral decline and laxness of worship and belief.13

Living with such a doctrine, the Puritan colonists were accustomed to finding the hand of Providence in daily affairs, and to reading its warnings, judgments and blessing as reflecting on their own piety and morality. Providential theory reinforced existing moral codes and created social stability by turning the attention inward when seeking blame for all manner of disasters.14 While that eased the anxiety growing from issues outside of human control, such as weather, disease, starvation and other factors of the Atlantic crossing and frontier experience, they did not particularly empower a Native American perspective in the causes of conflicts between them and the Puritans. Native Americans were

12Charles Berryman, From Wilderness to Wasteland (New York: Kennikat Press, 1979), 13. "David S. Lovejoy, "Satanizing the American Indian," The New England Quarterly, Vol. 67 No. 4 (December, 1994): 618. 14Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971), 96-104. 93 understood only from a Puritan perspective, their assistance was a providential reward, and the attacks were a punishment for failures in the community. To the

Puritans, the actual motivations and perspectives of Native Americans were always less important than the providential significance of their actions.

Although the pressures on the community were often expressed in supernatural fears and the belief that the colony was being providentially punished, the Puritan religious perspective did not mean that they were ignorant of natural mechanism. As Keith Thomas discusses in his Religion and the

Decline of Magic, the Puritans took no issue with mechanical explanations for phenomena, be they meteorological or otherwise. Instead they placed mechanical causality and worldly events into a framework of active Providence.15

Their understanding of causality affected the Puritan understanding of and relationship with other cultures. Although the Puritans were somewhat aware of

Native American motivations behind the Pequot War and Metacomet's War, they turned to introspection and self-examination in search of the moral laxness that brought it on as divine punishment. As a culture the Puritans were highly self- critical, and as the century moved on preaching became less concerned with offering assurances in times of stability and began to point accusingly to moral laxness and generational decline in piety. The preachers of jeremiads insisted that the colony had heroic origins of literally biblical proportions, and celebrated the actions and piety of the founders of Massachusetts Bay.16 Jeremiads

15lbid„ 91. 16Jeremiads are a genre of literature and prose, often originally given in the form of sermons. The jeremiads were generally based upon the scriptural Book of Jeremiah and were moralistic 94 developed a narrative in which the figures of the colony's first generation became mythologized as righteous in their piety and favored by God. The jeremiads pointed to the high standards and expectations set by the first generation, and insisted that punishment would follow if those standards were not met by future generations. Samuel Danforth's A Brief Recognition of New Englands Errand into the Wilderness was in many ways the most famous and recognizable of the jeremiads. As a jeremiad, Danforth's work blamed the war on declining piety in the colony, and was particularly interested in the generational gap. Increase

Mather made his own famous contribution to the genre with An Earnest

Exhortation.u In his discussion of Metacomet's War, Mather pointed the blame at the failure of Puritan missionary efforts and conversion of Native Americans, as well as an ongoing colonial expansion onto land previously used by the

Wampanoag tribe. In order to prevent further catastrophe, Mather prescribed fast days, humility, and a renewed attention toward competency and piety.18 The

Puritan authorities did not examine their relationship with the Native Americans or their expansion policies as a way to prevent future wars, but examined their own community for impiety or breaches of covenant.

Prior to the beginning of the English Civil War in 1643, the primary goal of the colony was to sustain a remnant, a working example of Puritan faith and communalism. It was only as the English Civil War reasserted England's role in

pieces that denounced the wickedness and moral backsliding of society, while prophesying its apocalyptic downfall. 17Samuel Danforth, A Brief Recognition of New Englands Errand Into the Wilderness (Cambridge: S.G. and M.J, 1671). 18Mather, An Earnest Exhortation. 95 Providence that New England's First Fruits was published, a sign of sudden interest in the conversion of Native Americans.19 The English Civil War promised the possibility of true Protestant reform in England, something that the Puritan colonists had believed to be a lost cause. The establishment of a reformed church in England necessarily eroded the significance of the preserved remnant in North America. Attention had been diverted back to England, and as the attention of radical Protestantism shifted back to England, the New England

Puritans in North America found themselves facing a crisis of identity.20 It had always been important to the colonists that their journey be understood as significant in a providential sense. Fresh challenges to that purpose led the

Puritans to question their own adherence to their initial purpose, and to seek new ways of justifying their colony's significance.

Puritan meaning and identity were often recorded, presented and discussed in the transcripts of public sermons. Thomas Hooker's farewell sermon was published in 1641 under the title The Danger of Desertion, prior to the outbreak of the English Civil War. The sermon was typical of early jeremiads and demonstrated themes that appeared with growing frequency and strength toward the end of the seventeenth century. The text was taken from Jeremiah and dealt extensively with reasons for the migration across the Atlantic, with a focus on providential contracts and the price of abandoning them. Hooker described the

19Thomas Weld and Hugh Peter. New Englands First Fruits: in Respect, First of the Conversion of Some, Conviction of Divers, Preparation of Sundry of the Indians (London: R.O. and G.D, 1643). 20Kristina Brass, Dry Bones and Indian Sermons: Praying Indians in Colonial America (New York: Cornell University Press, 2004), 6-8. 96 punishment inflicted on England for its own failure as a nation of the elect, and claimed that "England hath been a mirror of mercy, yet God may leave us, and make us a mirrour of his justice."21 The Danger of Desertion used the scriptural text of Jeremiah to condemn England's failure as a providential entity, and created a narrative of decline and apostasy that was later reproduced later in

New England after the English Civil War. Just as the Puritans believed that

England had failed as sacred space, the outbreak of the English Civil War challenged the complacency of the colony; the colony's significance and role in

Providence was no longer guaranteed with the possibility of true reformation in

England. In order to ensure that they maintained their central role in providential history, Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony had to seek out new meaning.

The Puritan colonists found some of the meaning they sought in the

Native American tribes around them. The conversion of those tribes created a mission for the Puritans, and battles with them could be understood as divine conflict. Reports of demonic activity amongst the tribes of Native Americans around Massachusetts Bay were consistent throughout the colony's development, but grew more frequent and urgent as more serious conflicts broke out with the local tribes toward the end of the century. As the first generation of

Puritan colonists grew old and died, the Puritans became increasingly anxious about apostasy and decline. With ongoing immigration the colony became less homogeneous, which threatened the Puritan's sense that they were building a

21Thomas Hooker, The Danger of Desertion Or a Farewell Sermon of Mr Thomas Hooker (London: G. M, 1641), 5. 97 true, Christian community for the pure expression of their faith.22

The growing sense of decline that accompanied the second half of the

seventeenth century brought increased attention to the Native Americans. Not

only were Puritans searching for providential significance, but also for a renewed

sense of identity and importance for their own colony. The rise of millenarianism that followed the English Civil War was part of an ongoing search for meaning. In the early years, millenarian theory was muted; John Winthrop's famous "Modell

of Christian Charity" made no mention of millenarian significance and though he

later became a strong proponent of it, in his earliest writings John Eliot only tentatively accepted a connection between millenarianism and missionary efforts.23 For the most part, the Puritans believed that the colony had been founded as a remnant of the true Church, and while missionary work happened there was little suggestion that it had millenarian significance. John Cotton's famous speech on the founding of the settlement embraced typology by comparing the new land to Canaan, but was unusual for its time and did not place great significance on apocalyptic prophecy.24 The rise of millenarian theory in North America accompanied an increased attention toward the activities of the devil and the role of Native Americans in divine war between Providence and the devil.

In the conclusion of The Clear Sunshine of the Gospel Thomas Shepard discussed the pawwaws as being witches or sorcerers who cured the sick

22John Adair, Founding Fathers: The Puritans in England and America (Michigan: Baker, 1986) 246-247. Winthrop, "A Modell of Christian Charity." 24John Cotton, God's Promise to his Plantation (London: William Jones and John Bellamy). 98 through the power of the devil. To Shepard it seemed that the natives of New

England were under the sway of the devil, but that they desired to move away from the devil's temptation and power and find God.25 Shepard's sense of the devil's active involvement was consistent with a growing concern amongst

Puritans about divine punishment and the state of the colony. Shepard and his contemporaries advocated missionary work, which the Puritan leadership increasingly described as the main purpose of the colony as they came increasingly to associate the Native Americans with the devil's machinations.

Puritans increasingly believed that Native Americans living in the traditional manner were still under the yoke of the devil worship and awaiting conversion.26

Even as the colony grew increasingly stable, the unconverted tribes were beginning to seem much less harmless. Increasingly the Puritans saw the devil's willful malevolence in the unrest of the local tribes.

As they looked back on their own history, the Puritans were convinced that they had entered North America as part of a divine war against the devil. To truly wage that war the Puritans required an enemy, and as the century progressed they increasingly identified their diabolical enemy amongst the local tribes of the area. Much of the writing left by missionaries in the middle of the seventeenth century expressed concern that Native Americans were tools of the devil and should be converted. The increasingly common feeling that the Native Americans were tools of the devil awaiting conversion was vocalized in many of the Eliot

25Thomas Shepard, The Clear Sunshine of the Gospel Breaking Forth Upon the Indians of New-England (New York: Reprinted for J. Sabin, 1865), 5. 26lbid. 99 tracts. In 1649 The Glorious Progress of the Gospel also affirmed that the pawwaws were witches and controlled the natives, just as they in turn were controlled by the devil. According to Edward Winslow, the Native Americans themselves were beginning to struggle against their pawwaws and turn to God for protection against their former masters. Winslow saw Native Americans in the context of a providential war between God and the devil, with pawwaws as witches as tools of the devil.27 By the time Tears of Repentance was published in

1653 John Eliot and Mathew Mayhew also seemed convinced that the pawwaws themselves were being converted.28 The conversion of pawwaws demonstrated both the existence of the divine war taking place in North America, and the successes of the colony. By converting those they believed to be priests and leaders the Puritan elite hoped to demonstrate the importance of their missionary efforts, and their struggles in North America. The English Civil War had ended in

1651, and the Puritans were beginning to more urgently point toward the many successes of their missionary efforts, and value of the colony as more than a passive remnant:

Since it hath pleased God to send his Word to these poor captivated men (bondslaves to sin and Satan) he hath through mercy brought two hundred eighty three Indians (not counting young children in the number) to renounce their false Gods, Devils, and Pawwaws, and publickly in set meetings, before many witnesses, have they disclaimed the Divinity of their formerly adored multitude, defiled their tyrannical Destroyer the Devil, and utterly refused the help of the Pawwaws in any case; neither have they at any time, either by threatening or flatteries been drawn

27Edward Winslow, 'The Glorious Progress of the Gospel Amongst the Indians in New England," in The Eliot Tracts, ed. Michael P Clark (Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, [1649] 2003). 28John Eliot, "Tears of Repentance, or, A Further Narrative of the Progress of the Gospel Amongst the Indians in New-England." in The Eliot Tracts, ed. Michael P Clark (Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, [1653] 2003). 100 thereto, although their lives have been in hazard; yea, eight of their Pawwaws have forsaken their Devillish craft, and profitable trade as they accounted it, for to embrace the Word and Way of God.29

The passage from Tears of Repentance exemplifies Puritan attempts to fit Native

Americans into a Christian cosmology, understanding them as tools of the devil, tricked into worshiping false gods. Tears of Repentance was published after the

English Civil War, and the desire of the authors to demonstrate the importance and successes of their missionary work is readily apparent. The missionary effort was described as a providential battle and demonstrated the power of the devil and his minions, as well as the success of the missionary effort in converting their followers. By placing missionary work into the context of a divine battle

Puritans attempted to return the Massachusetts Bay colony to a central role in their providential narrative. The Puritans hoped that by demonstrating the success of their missionary endeavors in a providential context they could not only reaffirm their own sense of purpose, but demonstrate it to the observers in

England.

As Edward Winslow and Thomas Thorowgood's publications evoked the idea of Native Americans as the Lost Tribes of Israel, Christian missionaries amongst the Native Americans found the same ideas supported the value of their missionary work. Winslow found that relating the two cultures also solved another historic and theological problem, specifically the whereabouts of the Lost Tribes.

Ascribing meaning to the conversion of the Native Americans not only provided

29lbid„ 215. 101 the colony with significance, but satisfied theology.30 The lost tribes were important to millenarian thought and Christian theology, and they became increasingly important to the Puritan colony toward the end of the seventeenth century.

Though tentative in its early years, John Eliot later justified his missionary work with millenarian theory, and his writing became one of the stronger examples of it. In 1643 New England's First Fruits employed a familiar allegory that compared New England to Canaan. Though the work employed millenarian imagery, it categorized Native Americans as heathens, who were largely displaced to make room for the elect.31 By the time The Glorious Progress of the

Gospel was published in 1649, however, Eliot was much more enthusiastic in supporting the millenarian significance of the natives. He discussed in some detail the similarity of custom, form and belief between Native Americans and

Jews, suggesting that they were the remnants of the Ten Tribes of Israel as described in apocalyptic prophecy. Winslow compared the two cultures' manner of worship, treatment of women, and their understanding of theology and history.32 Winslow clearly desired to draw a correlation between Native

Americans and Israel, a correlation that would give special scriptural significance to the local tribes, and the colony's relationship to them. The change in Eliot's writing reflected larger changes in the writing and thought of the Massachusetts

Bay toward the middle of the seventeenth century. Corresponding with the

30lbid. 31Weld and Peter, "New England's First Fruits," 65. 32Winslow, Glorious Progress of the Gospel, 145. 102 outbreak of the English Civil War, Puritans in North America began to put greater resources toward the conversion of Native Americans, and increasingly used millenarian theory to defend the importance of their effort. Though more prolific and enthusiastic than some of his contemporaries, Eliot's writing demonstrates the changing focus of the Puritans as the seventeenth century progressed.

Despite their growing importance toward the end of the century, missionary efforts had often received limited support from the colony, particularly in Massachusetts Bay's first decades. While the conversion of the local Native

Americans had been part of the colony's intended purpose, those efforts were initially limited by available resources and the necessity of survival. As the colony changed they revisited their priorities and their sense of history, and provided an increasingly hospitable environment for the work of the missionaries. Toward the middle of the seventeenth century the efforts of missionaries such as John Eliot began to receive increasing popular attention as the colony's sense of purpose gravitated toward conversion efforts. Despite limited conversions, by 1655 John

Eliot was optimistic about the future of the conversion effort, and claimed that much good had already come of his work with the Indians:

Now Christ keeps the house, which Satan formerly kept; yea, they who were kept by Satan as his house, are now ready and earnestly desire to be built up as a house for Christ. The poor, naked, ignorant Indians, who lately knew no civill Order, now beg to be brought into Church Order, to live under the Government, and enjoy the holy Ordinances of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the purest way of Gospel-worship.33

Eliot spoke of the uplifting of Native Americans and the battle against the devil,

33John Eliot, "A Late and Further Manifestation of the Progress of the Gospel Amongst the Indians in New England" in The Eliot Tracts, ed. Michael P Clark (Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2003), 302. 103 and according to his description in 1655 the ongoing conversions had gone exceedingly well. John Eliot was one of the earliest and most significant examples of Puritan mission work, and had quickly asserted that the lack of strong institutions in Native American culture was a sign of their readiness for conversion. The quotation is clear in its insistence that the local tribes' natural state was undesirable, in the eyes of the Native Americans as much as the

Europeans, and that they sincerely desired the conversion that men like Eliot offered. Similarly, in New Englands First Fruits Eliot made it clear that he felt the

Puritan colonists and their missionary efforts were welcomed, and that Native

Americans could be entirely converted. Eliot claimed that the difficulty of translation across languages and cultures was responsible for the delays in conversion.34 The Puritans' renewed interest in millenarianism during the seventeenth century related to an ongoing attempt to justify the importance of their mission and their role in North America. Following the onset of the English

Civil War and the crisis of meaning it caused amongst the Puritans, millenarian theory and missionary efforts both rose to a new prominence.

After the 1640s the Eliot tracts increasingly turned to justifying continued missionary work through millenarian terms, giving providential significance to their undertakings. Edward Winslow's The Glorious Progress of the Gospel compared Native Americans to European Jews and claimed that similarities between their customs, form and beliefs suggested that they were the ancestors of the ten tribes of Israel. Winslow referred to Menasseh-ben-lsrael's theories to

34Weld and Peter, New Englands First Fruits, 58-61. 104 support his own assertions about the history of Native Americans and their role in millenarian history. Menasseh was a Jewish rabbi and theologian in Europe, responsible for extensive millenarian writings. In his millenarian prophecy

Menasseh had famously claimed that the Jews must be found in all parts of the world before the apocalypse could come about.35 Winslow's work takes the providential exercise even further by suggesting that the rapid success of missionary work amongst the natives might prove their lineage and significance.

Winslow elaborated extensively on signs that he believed to point to a connection between the lost tribes of Israel and Native Americans.36 The scriptural reference to the ten lost tribes of Israel referred to a biblical scattering of Israel's tribes and corresponding prophecies that claimed they would return prior to the apocalypse.

Supporters of millenarian prophecy were interested in the return of the tribes as a partial fulfillment of prophecy.

The outbreak of Metacomet's War caused great anxiety among the

Puritans, who quite legitimately felt that it could threaten the very existence of their colony. If the colony was threatened by the war, so too were missionary efforts, that had only begun to gain support. The war disrupted any serious efforts at conversion, but the conflict with Native Americans was framed in providential terms. In Magnalia Christi Americana, Cotton Mather made it clear that he believed the pawwaws were sorcerers who intended to frustrate the attempts of colonization, and believed that their failures had led the natives to

35Lionel Abrahams, "Mennaseh Ben Israel's Mission to Cromwell." The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol 14 No.1 (October, 1901): 1-25. 36 Winslow, "The Glorious Progress of the Gospel, 145-146. desire peace. To Mather, like others before him, Native Americans were enslaved by the devil through pawwaws, and served out of fear and helplessness.37

...upon the arrival of the English in these parts, the Indians employed their sorcerers, whom they called powaws, like Balaam, to curse them, and let loose their demons upon them, to shipwreck them, to distract them, to poison them, or any way to ruin them. All the noted powaws in the country spent three days together in diabolical conjurations, to obtain the assistance of the devils against the settlement of these our English; but the devils at length acknowledged unto them that they could not hinder those people from their becoming the owners and masters of the country; where upon the Indians resolved upon a good correspondence with our new-comers; God convinced them, that there was no enchantment or divination against such a people.38

The Puritan understanding of the character and purpose of the local tribes had changed with Metacomet's War, and they viewed them with considerably more hostility and fear than they had in the past. The war described as malicious attack on the colony by servants of the devil, and after the war Mather claimed that the tribes felt chastened and humbled by the righteousness of the colony and its inhabitants. Cotton Mather clearly felt that the Native Americans had been hostile in the earliest encounters, but that the failure of their resistance had swayed them to more positive relationships with the colonists of Massachusetts

Bay. Both their initial conflict and their eventual peace helped to reinforce providential thought by associating conflict with the active force of the devil, and peace with the superiority of the Christian God.

Rather than empowering a Native American perspective, the belief that they served the devil justified both war and conversion, and gave Puritan

37Cotton Mather. Magnalia Christi Americana (Hartford: Harvard University, 1853), 133-135. 38lbid„ 52. 106 colonists a sense that they played a key role in a providential war. The submission or conversion of Native Americans demonstrated the strength and righteousness of Puritan efforts. John Eliot shows a similar attitude in his 1655 publication.39 Despite his extensive work with the local tribes John Eliot, like

Increase Mather, believed that the Native Americans were without culture or government and were savage and controlled by the devil. Eliot clearly felt that the arrival of the Puritan colonists signaled the disruption of the devil's machinations in North America. Many of the Puritan missionaries believed that their work was frustrating the devil's previously undisputed hold on North America. Eliot framed the colonization and missionary efforts within the context of a spiritual war between Providence and the devil. His assertions about the low state of the

Native Americans, their relationship to the devil, and the successes of missionary efforts reinforced that his efforts were a legitimate reason for the colony's existence and glorification. After the colony's self-perceived loss of significance caused by the shift of attention overseas during and after the English Civil War the Puritan leadership believed that focusing on missionary efforts would allow the colony to retain a central position in their Providential narrative.

Missionary efforts in the Massachusetts Bay area had begun in the colony's first decades, realized through the work of men such as John Eliot. The

English Civil War did not cause the conversion attempts, so much as shift attention toward them and bring them to new prominence. Even as early as the

Pequot War, some Puritans had suggested that conflict with the local tribes was

39Eliot, "A Late and Further Manifestation," 302. 107 due in part to their failures to Christianize the Native Americans. By the time of

Metacomet's War, a growing number of Puritan authors had begun to accuse the

colony of failing to fulfill its charter and providential covenant, both of which called

for the conversion of the local tribes. In An Earnest Exhortation Increase Mather

suggested that the failure to convert the Native Americans was one of the causes

of Metacomet's war. In his own writing Thomas Thorowgood leveled similar

criticism at the colonists:

It is an astonishment to many, that it should be conceived by any, the English had no thought of Planting the Gospel among the Indians, when the Patent of the King expressly requires it in these words, In our Royal intention and the Adventurers free possession, the principle end of this Plantation is, that the Natives may be brought to the knowledge of the only true God, and Saviour of Mankind, and to the Christian faith.40

In Thorowgood's quote it is very clear that he is demanding the colony return to what he believed to be its original purpose: the conversion of the local tribes, as

prescribed by the English charter. While Increase Mather seemed primarily

interested in the religious freedom of the colony, Thorowgood was interested in the lost tribes of Israel. Even prior to Metacomet's War, Thorowgood was

criticizing the colony for failing to convert the local tribes, and his publications

came during a period in which the English Civil War was encouraging a fresh

analysis of the colony's significance. Increase Mather believed that the original

mission of the colony was for the Puritans to express their religion and live in a

manner suitable to their beliefs, but Thomas Thorowgood was more interested in what he saw as a failure to fulfill the conversion prescribed in the colony's

40Thomas Thorowgood, Jews in America Or Probabilities That the Americans Are of That Race (Montana: Kessinger Publishing, [1660] 2003). 108 charter.41 Both writers demonstrate that while the charter had called for conversion as the colony's chief purpose, serious attempts at it were not made

until the English Civil War. Though decrying the general failing of missionary work, Thorowgood did acknowledge Eliot's efforts in saying that "...if the

Americans be Israelites or Jews, how happily instrumental hath our good God made Mr. Eliot in the beginning of the complement of those Prophesies, that foretells their Calling and Conversion?"42

In 1647 "The Day Breaking, if not the Sunrising of the Gospel" again asserted the importance of native conversion, by reconsidering the history of the colony.43 Reevaluating the colony's past allowed Puritans to describe the missionary efforts struggles and victories as significant and key to the colony's identity. Thomas Shepard's The Clear Sunshine of the Gospel followed in 1648 as part of the same ongoing reassessment of the history of the colony, and attempting to revitalize the Puritan errand by describing the conversion of Native

Americans as the providential purpose of the Massachusetts Bay colony.44 In the

Epistle Dedicatory of The Clear Sunshine of the Gospel, Shepard was clear in his assertion that:

In order to this what doth God require of us, but that we should strengthen the hands, incourage the hearts of those who are at work for him, conflicting with difficulties, wrestling with discouragements, to spread the Gospel, & in that, the same and honor of this Nation, to the

41 Mather, An Earnest Exhortation, 3, 21. 42Thorowgood, Jews in America, 46. 43John Wilson, John Eliot, Thomas Shepard, "The Day-breaking, if not the Sun-rising of the Gospell with the Indians in New-England," in The Eliot Tracts, ed. Michael P Clark (Connecticut: Praeaer Publishers, 2003). Shepard, The Clear Sunshine of the Gospel. 109 utmost ends of the earth?45

Shepard clearly felt that the primary goal of colonists was to encourage the

spread of the gospel amongst the Native Americans. Shepard, like others of his

period, was able to revisit the Massachusetts Bay colony's brief history and frame

it not only as an attempt to preserve a remnant, but as an enterprise that would

offer an example to others, and spread their faith in a new environment. Since

the colony's earliest days, Puritans had believed themselves to be setting a

positive example to the unregenerate, but the idea that the primary end of the

colony was to spread Christianity did not receive significant attention until the

middle of the seventeenth century. There was a significant difference between the somewhat isolationist idea of preserving a true remnant of the Christian church, and the idea that the primary purpose of the colony was conversion and the proliferation of their faith.

As the idea that conversion was the primary end of the colony gained currency, some Puritans began to suggest that inattention to it had led to their difficulties during the mid-seventeenth century. Metacomet's War had an enormous impact on its survivors and the Puritans were well aware that the colony had nearly been destroyed. Following Metacomet's War, Increase Mather suggested that conflict between the colony and local Native American tribes had been provoked by the failure of missionary efforts. Mather searched for signs of providential judgment in the war, and claimed that "the Lord hath afflicted us by the Indians since the body of the present Generation hath no more of an heart to

45lbid. 110 endeavour their Conversion and Salvation."46 Despite his interest in conversion,

Increase Mather seemed to feel that there was still a founding errand interested in the preservation and expression of religion, and stated that the colonists had failed to fulfill it, and must:

Remember the Errand that our Fathers came into this Wilderness for, and pursue that Interest. In general, it was on the account of Religion, that our Fathers followed the Lord into this Wilderness, whilst it was a Land that was not sown 47

Through the quoted text Increase Mather suggested that the colony had maintained its providential significance as the elect, despite the English Civil

War. In order to defend their status as the elect, Mather declared that the colony was also in the New World to convert the Native Americans. Mather's writing fit into a genre of jeremiads that became popular in the second half of the seventeenth century, partly in response to Metacomet's War. The colony was greatly affected by its near destruction at the hands of Metacomet's forces, and the authors of the jeremiads claimed that that the Puritans had failed in their mission and had to reform or be destroyed. Although the colonists may have understood the actual motivations of Metacomet and his allies they blamed their defeats on their own impiety and breach of covenant.

Increase Mather believed that the colony's troubles had to stem from laxness of piety and divine disapproval. The Puritans believed that war, like disease and natural disaster, was inflicted on them as punishment.

Of late some unhappy scandals have been, which are enough to stop the current of mercy, which hath been flowing in upon us, and provoke the

46Mather, An Earnest Exhortation. 47lbid„ 21. 111 Lord to let loose more Enemies upon us, so as that the second error shall be worse then the first.48

Increase Mather was concerned with preventing future calamity by examining how the Puritans might have offended Providence or broken their covenant.

Mather's concern was as much with preventing future disaster as explaining the current one. He urged that the colonists not become complacent in their peace, but to remain vigilant and strive to meet divine expectations. Puritan culture was certainly familiar with self criticism, and many of the devout engaged in self- examination and kept extensive diaries. That tendency toward self-examination was also present in the culture of the colony, and they searched their community for those that might have strayed from doctrine. To a Puritan culture concerned with self-examination and providential punishment, the Pequot War and

Metacomet's War could easily have signaled a breach of covenant. By the time of

Metacomet's War the Puritans justified their presence in North America through the conversion of Native Americans, despite their lack of progress. That lack of progress seemed particularly troubling following Metacomet's War and the threat it posted to the colony.

Just as they represented the failure of conversion, Native American attacks could just as easily represent divine punishment for internal failures.

Cotton Mather wrote on the subject of war and decline, and his suggestion in

Magnalia Christi Americana that the natives of New England had been cleansed by plague for wickedness carried with it the threat of similar treatment if the

48lncrease Mather, A Brief History of the War With the Indians in New-England (London: Printed for Richard Chiswell, 1676), 75. 112 colonists continued to falter.49 John Norton's The Heart of New England Rent employed a similar structure, though Norton himself was more concerned with antinomians than Native Americans, and the work was primarily concerned with

Quakers. The Heart of New England Rent fits within a genre of jeremiads but places the blame on the influx of Quakers and their ideas.50 Whether or not they were concerned with the subject of Native Americans, Puritan writing in the period during and immediately after Metacomet's War was heavily influenced by themes of decline and Providential punishment.

Benjamin Thompson's 1676 poem New England's Crisis was structured like a jeremiad and decried the decline and failure of the Massachusetts Bay colony. Thompson's critique was similar to those of Increase Mather and Samuel

Danforth. Samuel Danforth, a Puritan minister and close associate of John Eliot, published A Brief Recognition of New Englands Errand into the Wilderness in

1670. Danforth's work was also a jeremiad, and examined the purpose of the colony as the sermon repeated the question "What went ye out into the

Wilderness to see?" Danforth was concerned with decline, particularly in regards to the second generation, listing sins and crimes committed by the increasingly lax inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay. The central issue of the sermon was the breach of the providential covenant, and Danforth stated that the original colonists migrated in search of the "...Liberty to walk in the Faith of the Gospel

49Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, 49. 50John Norton, The Heart of New-England Rent at the Blasphemies of the Present Generation (London: J.H., 1660). 113 with all good Conscience."51 The work was not concerned with Native Americans,

but focused heavily on the same breach of contract and sense of decline that

shaped the genre.52 Faced with growing troubles, the colonists of Massachusetts

Bay increasingly struggled to demonstrate their purpose and meaning in the New

World, both to themselves and to observers in England. Metacomet's War was

often understood as a providential judgment and a great threat to the colony. The war left many Puritans convinced that they had brought providential punishment

upon themselves, at the hands of the local tribes under the devil's guidance.

Decrying the moral backsliding and spiritual laxness of the colony,

Increase Mather's A Brief History condemned the failures of "New Israel" for the

sins of its second generation and their inattentiveness to the conversion of native

peoples.53 Published in 1676, Mather's work looked back on both the Pequot War

and the English Civil War during a time in which Puritan colonists needed to justify their presence and purpose in North America. Mather's work was part of a

larger literature of jeremiads that became popular after Metacomet's War

demonstrated the failure of conversion efforts and the threat posed by the local

tribes. To Mather the various afflictions the Massachusetts Bay colony suffered

from were the result of their breached covenant with God. To Mather, the end of

Metacomet's War demonstrated the failure of Native American force of arms, and the failure of their pawwaws' magic to protect them or drive the colonists out. The

defeat of Metacomet's forces proved the continued affection of Providence for

51Danforth, A Brief Recognition, 67. 52lbid. 53Mather, A Brief History, 82-88. 114 the colony's elect, and was a promise of reprieve with reformed behavior.54 The

period's writing demonstrated an interest in proving the value of the colony and

an anxiety about the threat posed by the wars suffered during the seventeenth

century.

Increase Mather's An Earnest Exhortation reads as a theological

explication of the events of Metacomet's War, preaching on the sins that brought

about the war and the dangers of over confidence in its wake. Mather believed that the survival of the colony was not a guarantee of continued safety, but was

an enormous act of providential forgiveness. According to Mather's writing, the

colony had a second chance, but could suffer even greater calamity if their moral

backsliding continued. An Earnest Exhortation demanded inquiry into the sins that brought about Metacomet's War through scripture and self-criticism, and

asserted that sin, pride, fashion and moral laxness were symptoms of the waste

of the providential blessings granted to the colonists of the New World.55 In

particular Mather suggested that the elders amongst the Wampanoag would

have preferred to avoid the war, but that the youth insisted on it. The quote

demonstrates some insight into the decision making of the Wampanoag people,

but Mather clearly believed the providential meaning of the events to be most significant to their community. Puritans understood natural history to coexist with divine meaning, and Mather was more interested in the providential significance encoded in events than the actual culture and motivations of Native Americans.

Mather tied conflict between the Wampanoag's elders and the youth to the Ten

54lbid. 55Mather, An Earnest Exhortation. 115 Commandments in which it was demanded that children respect their parents.

The generation gap in the Massachusetts Bay colony allowed Mather to use the supposed conflict between generations as an analogy to the colony's own situation. Metacomet's War was frequently understood in a theological framework of punishment and laxness, fit into a literature that focused on decline and backsliding, and centered not on the Native Americans themselves but on the theological implications of the war and situation in New England.56 The events of the war were frequently believed to be a final warning that the backsliding colony could reform or be destroyed in another battle. It was not uncommon that the failure to convert the local tribes was listed amongst the colony's failings, but the most consistent message was that the war was a warning to the colony.

When stresses were placed on their community Puritans turned their attention inward and searched for social stability. Toward the end of the century the community's anxieties began to manifest themselves in their writing, their understanding of the world, and even local politics. The Salem witchcraft crisis took place in an atmosphere of anxiety and fear for the much beset

Massachusetts Bay colony. The town of Salem underwent an extensive search for suspected witches, and several local people were arrested and eventually executed. The events of the witch crisis can illuminate the Puritans' relationship with Native Americans, their tendencies toward millenarian thought and their use of biblical allegory. The local events demonstrate how strongly the Puritans believed themselves to be involved in a war with the devil's minions, and how

56 Mather, A Brief History, 2-27. 116 personally it affected them. Although they often suspected that the local tribes

had some dealing with the devil, it did not trouble the Puritans so much as the

idea that the devil's minions might exist even within their community. The

Puritans were consistently more concerned about their community's adherence to doctrine and their own place in a scriptural war than they were in outside

events. Discovering why they had earned the animosity of Providence was of

enormous concern to the Puritan leadership of the colony. Cotton Mather had

referred to the Native Americans around the colony as serving pawwaws, who he

described as being like "a priest, who has more familiarity with Satan than his

neighbours."57 When looking back at Metacomet's War and the witchcraft crisis,

Cotton Mather related the Native Americans to devils again by claiming that witches referred to Satan as "the black man" and suggesting that he was Native

American in appearance.58 The Puritans believed that they were involved in an

ongoing war with the devil. It was easy for them to understand Metacomet's

troops as the devil's forces, and equally clear that Providence had allowed the

attack for a reason.

Although the Puritans may have believed that pawwaws were witches, they were mostly concerned that the devil's influence allowed them to lead

armies, cause conflict, or impede conversion. Those attacks were a very real threat to the colony and the Puritans believed that future attacks could be even worse if the colony continued to stray from scripture. As Increase Mather

"Mather, Magnalia ChristiAmericana, 504. 58 Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World (London: J.R. Smith, [1693] 1862), 220. 117 indicated, the Puritans believed that the machinations of the devil amongst the

Native Americans would not affect them so long as they remained devout.

Mather and many of his contemporaries believed that the devil's plots could only work if allowed by Providence, something that turned their attentions inward toward signs of spiritual laxness within their own community. 59 Although the

Puritans believed that the local tribes wielded diabolical power and served the devil they also believed that the root of their troubles was to be found within their own community.

By the end of Metacomet's War, the Puritans were certain that their enemies amongst Metacomet's forces had dealings with the devil. They imagined

Native American life as dominated by pawwaws, conjuration and devil worship.

To the Puritan colonists, all enemies of the colony were understood in the context of divine war. Anyone who attacked the colony must have some connection to the devil. Metacomet's forces were frequently described as being diabolical, and

Cotton Mather at one point used the analogy of Native American warfare to describe conflict with Quakers.60 For the most part Mather's consideration of the relationship between the witchcraft crisis and Native Americans was tentative and ambiguous, at times pointing to a connection and other times ignoring it entirely. In "Satanizing the American Indian," Lovejoy notes that the Puritans frequently mentioned a possible relationship between Native Americans and witches, but that the notice was inconsistent and done without great anxiety.61

59Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, 52. 60lbid„ 189-196. 61Lovejoy, "Satanizing the American Indian," 619. 118 Roughly two weeks prior to the identification of the first three witches in the

Salem crisis, one of the largest frontier battles of the seventeenth century took

place in southern Maine, culminating in great loss of life, many displaced people and growing anxiety within the colony.62 Relationships can also be drawn

between the accusations against Tituba, one of the first girls accused of witchcraft and often described as "half Indian." The issue of race, and the colonial

relationship to Native Americans is irrevocably tied to the witchcraft crisis, and other perceived threats facing the colony. The association between natives and demonic power had already been established, leaving Tituba in a very precarious position.63 Puritans believed that both their enemies within the colony and without stemmed from a common source, and were followers of the devil. Framing dissent and conflict in the context of divine war reinforced traditional Puritan values. Rather than allowing the attacks to challenge the ideas the

Massachusetts Bay colony was founded on, the clergy and political leaders of the time used the attacks to reinforce the doctrine and history of their community.

Devil worship and apostasy amongst the natives was never as much a concern as the possibility of it within Puritan communities.64 Native Americans received attention primarily when it was necessary to reinforce Puritan purpose and identity in the New World. Although the outbreak of large scale violence between colonial forces and Native Americans demonstrated the dissatisfaction

62Joseph Conforti, Saints and Strangers: New England in British North America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006), 129. 63Elaine G Breslaw, Tituba's Confession: The Multicultural Dimensions of the 1692 Salem Witch-hunt. (New York: New York University Press, 1996). 64lbid., 617-619. 119 of many of the local tribes, the Puritans turned much of their attention toward

providential meaning. The Puritans were concerned that attacks from Native

Americans could represent a divine punishment, a concern that often outweighed

interest in the tribes' actual motivations and dynamics.

Puritan thought often characterized Native Americans as naive and weak

without culture, prone to suggestion or temptation and easily lured by the devil,

feminized in their 'otherness.' Women had historically been subject to similar

ideas, seen as more permeable and easily seduced by the wiles of the Devil,

rendering them particularly vulnerable to witchcraft. As Diane Purkiss suggests in

her analysis of the Salem witch trials, race and gender, were at the heart of

accusations of devil worship.65 'The other1 was threatening for its ability to affect

social stability, and while it often shared similar characteristics different forms

required different responses. Purkiss' analysis is interesting for the distinction it draws between internal and external troubles. The Native Americans were a threat for their ability to wage war and harm settlers, while witchcraft directly

affected social order within the community. When faced with threats to the community, the preachers and writers of the colony often pointed their concern

inward. Conflict with Native American tribes could have challenged the Puritan community's sense of entitlement and purpose in North America. Instead, the

Puritan leadership focused on the wars as a punishment for declining piety, and in doing so reinforced the status quo within the colony and their own sense of doctrine and purpose. As the colony became more established in North America

65Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations (New York: Routledge, 1996), 253-256. 120 cooperation with the local tribes was less essential to their survival. Believing that attacks were a divine punishment for failings within the community allowed the

Puritans to maintain a sense of entitlement and reinforced the authority of scripture, and the colony's leadership.

Significantly, anxiety was much greater at the thought of corruption and devil worship within the society of the elect than without. The Puritans expected onslaughts from the devil and his followers, and as such assaults from Native

Americans only reinforced a world view that privileged them as God's elect. The crisis in Salem took place during one of the most virulent periods of Native

American attacks and warfare in the history of the colony, following the nearly fifty years of relative peace that ended with the beginning of Metacomet's war in

1675. Anxiety about the threat of native attacks matched anxiety at home.66 The twin assaults put stress on the colony, and the Puritans understood both as the action of the devil.

Portents, omens and providential meaning had often been important to

Puritan sense of meaning and understanding of the world. The idea that they existed within a providential narrative of covenants and typology was essential to

Puritan thought, and they relied heavily on the interpretation of omens to understand their place in the world. While the Puritans did separate mechanical causality from divine significance, it did not in any way diminish the divine significance they saw in certain events. Their search for meaning in portents and

66Richard Godbeer, The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 182-183. 121 events consistently reaffirmed the principles and meaning of the colony.67 The elaborate structure of interpretation that the Puritan leadership used to understand the colony included portents and divine opens, but was not always consistent. There was debate and disagreement over precise meanings, and all of them were subject to change over time. As the years passed Native

Americans were reinterpreted from the unwitting hand of Providence and heathen neighbors to tools of the devil in need of conversion.

As the century progressed, the colony's importance as a self-declared remnant of the true Puritan church was called into question by the decline of the first generation, ongoing immigration, and the changing political situation in

Europe. The English Civil War brought the sense of decline and crisis of identity in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to a breaking point. In search of identity and purpose, the colonists paid increasing attention to millenarian theories and the conversion of Native Americans, reevaluating their own history in order to do so.

Wars with Native Americans were consistently seen as resulting from internal crisis, and preachers insisted that the colony's gaze be turned inwards for the cause of the troubles. Rather than examining the causes of the war with Native

Americans, Puritans used the war to justify their own presence in the colony, and to reinforce their doctrine. By the time that the colony faced Metacomet's forces, the English Civil War had come and gone and the Puritans were caught in a crisis of identity. The Puritan colonists believed that the colony had providential significance and was tasked with the Native Americans, and the attacks seemed

67David Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 103-105. 122 to be a divine chastisement for the failures of their mission. As the colony changed from a once culturally homogenous community to a much more diverse one the Puritan elite used a narrative of decline to encourage adherence to doctrine and scripture. Native American consistently served as an indicator of

providential approval or disapproval, and the Puritan elites invariably responded to attacks by calling for self-examination and adherence to Puritan principles. In the second half of the seventeenth century the growing colony found itself

pressed with a new crisis of identity, and began to understand the local tribes as

having a relationship with the devil. Believing the local tribes to be of diabolical

intent allowed the Puritans to approach them in a more aggressive manner, both

in warfare and in conversion. Despite the defeat of Metacomet's forces and the

subjugation of the local tribes near the end of the century the Puritans used

Metacomet's War as a reason to return to their traditional values and demand

new piety of the community. Conflict with Native Americans was used to justify

the place of the Puritans in a providential narrative, especially after threats

caused by the changing situation in England. By placing Native Americans into a

providential narrative the Puritan leadership was able to use them as another tool

to reinforce the value of scripture and doctrine. CONCLUSION

The Puritan colonists came to New England with a sense that they were continuing a legacy, and preserving the true church. Whether their new home was an exile or a haven, they were the true church, and their first priority was to ensure that their community functioned according to Puritan principles, in both its

civil and ecclesiastical practices. The Puritan colonists were committed to

covenants and providential thinking, and their journey across the Atlantic seemed to seal another, significant covenant that ensured divine approval of their journey.

However, they were alert to potential providential signs and warnings that could

imply that some internal failure was threatening to break that covenant, and threaten the colony. In the earliest years, the colony was relatively

homogeneous, being composed largely of the Puritan families that had chosen to

participate in the Great Migration, united by faith and community. In those first

decades, the energy of the colony was occupied almost entirely with the

necessity of survival, and the Puritans felt that they were properly upholding their

faith. They took trials in stride as providential tests or assaults from the devil, and

took their success as an omen of providential approval.

With their identity and purpose secure as a remnant of the true church,

Puritans only heeded Native Americans to the extent that they had to explain

their existence in the New World and fit them into a theological framework. To do

so, they often suggested that they were heathens, traveled from Europe, and in

the grasp of the devil. Converting the Native Americans was desirable, but not

pressing, and like the rest of the natural world their actions were imbued with

123 124 meaning to be interpreted. An attack from Native Americans could be the result of moral laxness or disregard of the covenant on the part of the Puritan colonists.

Trade and peace with the local tribes could be a providential blessing and approval. Due to the hardships of settling a colony with limited resources in a foreign wilderness, the Puritans relied somewhat on the benevolence of the

Native Americans. The two cultures were able to negotiate a form of middle ground, whereby they were able to trade and interact without either feeling excessively pressed. That mutual coexistence allowed the Puritans to turn their energy to their other struggles in the first year of the colony, and their understanding of Native Americans suited it perfectly.

As the colony grew more established, they were able to more aggressively deal with the Native Americans. Toward the middle of the seventeenth century two factors began to have an enormous impact on the Puritan understanding of

Native Americans. The first factor was the establishment of the colony itself. As the colony grew, the Puritans were less desperate for the assistance of Native

Americans, and in need of more land and resources to satisfy a growing population. The economic situation and population growth in Massachusetts Bay allowed them to express a more aggressive approach toward their dealings with

Native Americans. The second factor to shape Puritan relationships was the sudden advent of the English Civil War. Even before the Great Migration much of the purpose and identity of the colonists was wrapped up in their antagonistic relationship with the Church of England. The transition made in crossing the

Atlantic separated them from others seeking Protestant reform, and gave them a 125 common identity as migrants. Puritans were able to use that identity to explain their existence in the New World until the English Civil War brought the attention of Protestants back to England, and undermined the significance of their community. That threat to their identity came coupled with a growing sense of decline, a loss of homogeneity and perceived threats to Puritan existence in the

New World. Both the establishment of the colony and the changing Atlantic situation called for a new approach to colonial relationships, and the Puritans

began to justify their seizure of land and missionary work both through a new

understanding of Native Americans. By the mid-seventeenth century, the

Puritans were more than ever convinced that the local tribes were in need of

conversion, and that the conversion could have divine significance.

Meanwhile, the Puritans had other issues that put pressure on the colony.

As the colony grew, they also found their homogeneous community increasingly

eroded. The same materialism and conflict that the Puritans felt they had

escaped in England began to appear in the Massachusetts Bay colony as the

first generation died off rising numbers of immigrants and a younger generation

replaced them. Many of the Puritans felt that their expression of faith and the

purity of the colony were threatened and it seemed logical to them that the

troubles of the colony might have been a punishment for their failings. The border wars with Native Americans were only one of several troubling events toward the

end of the Seventeenth century, and interpreted in the context of divine

punishment. Certain that they had offended Providence, the Puritans turned all

the more to self-criticism, and often found themselves wanting in their 126 relationship to Native Americans. Those crises encouraged both the aggressive

conversion of Native Americans and the devout battle against them as the devil's forces. Frequently the new focus on millenarianism gave even greater

significance to those trials and battles.

In order to deal with challenges to their identity and purpose, Puritan

colonists reevaluated their own history. Rather than focus on their role as a

remnant, they turned back to their charter and the sporadic early missionary work, explaining that their purpose was the conversion of the Native Americans, who were sadly in the grasp of the devil. Wars with the Native Americans

associated them all the more with the devil and witchcraft, and seemed to be

chastisements for their failure to convert, again in the spirit of providential

meaning. Increasingly, Puritans began to support millenarian ideas that claimed the Native Americans had their origins not only from Europe, but as one of the

scriptural lost tribes of Israel, whose conversion was essential to millenarianism.

The Puritans consistently fit Native Americans into their providential world view,

rather than taking them in their own context. Forcing the Native Americans into their own narrative deprived them of voice, and used them to reinforce Puritan

identity and internal order. Rather than presenting a challenge to the Puritan world, their cooperation and conflict supported the community and its ideas. The typology and narrative that Puritans used to understand the Native Americans was both flexible and consistent.

Fitting the presence and actions of Native Americans into the context of

Puritan beliefs provided order and stability of the Puritan identity and community. 127 To the Native American, the situation was not as profitable. That understanding

limited their voice and obscured their motivation to the Puritans, often

perpetuating conflict and misunderstanding. Though not a conscious move,

prescribing the Native Americans to a role in their providential narrative

empowered the Puritans and stifled the voice of Native Americans. In that

sense, both conflict and cooperation could be used to support the stability of the

colony, and their narrative was flexible enough to allow it to adapt to changing

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