Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2016 A Communion of Churches: Indian Christians, English Ministers, and Congregations in New England, 1600-1775 Gregory Alan Michna Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Recommended Citation Michna, Gregory Alan, "A Communion of Churches: Indian Christians, English Ministers, and Congregations in New England, 1600-1775" (2016). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 6229. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/6229 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. 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A Communion of Churches: Indian Christians, English Ministers, and Congregations in New England, 1600-1775 Gregory Alan Michna Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Tyler Boulware, Ph.D., Chair Joseph Hodge, Ph.D. Brian Luskey, Ph.D. Matthew Vester, Ph.D. Edward Andrews, Ph.D. Department of History Morgantown, West Virginia 2016 Keywords: Native American, New England, Religion, Theology, Churches, Praying Towns, Natick, Indian Christians, Half-Way Covenant, Stoddard, Revivals, King Philip’s War, Wheelock, Samson Occom, Race, Community, Puritan, Puritanism Copyright © 2016 Gregory Alan Michna ABSTRACT A Communion of Churches: Indian Christians, English Ministers, and Congregations in New England, 1600-1775 Gregory Alan Michna This dissertation advances the study of New England’s religious history by exploring the complex and contested religious discourse surrounding puritan ecclesiology and the conceptual place of Native Americans within physical and imagined communities. While relations between puritan missionaries such as John Eliot and Thomas Mayhew and early “Praying Indians,” or Indian Christians, have been closely studied, this work draws attention to the importance of theology and religious discourse in realms like hermeneutics, ecclesiology, and eschatology in shaping the nature of these exchanges. Despite communal and cultural differences, religious culture frequently served as a means of bridging these gaps to foster amicable and meaningful relationships between English ministers and Algonquian-speaking Native Americans within the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its environs. At the same time, frustrations to actualize missionary communities like Natick in conformity with preconceived English ideals and violent altercations like King Philip’s War were similarly filtered through a milieu of religious ideas to solidify early categories of difference which reinforced the exclusion and marginalization of Native Americans from religious spaces. With the arrival of Separatists at Plymouth in 1620 and the first puritans at Boston in 1630, English settlers entered a region dominated by native power. Anthropological examination of both groups reveals the importance of community dynamics, harmony, and wellbeing to both Englishmen and Native Americans. Both groups faced various challenges during these early contact years in the form of conceptually placing their new neighbors within an ontological schema, navigating trade and diplomacy, and confronting internal challenges of schism and disease. The onset of civil war in England in 1642 created new millennialist impulses for select puritans in New England, who read transatlantic events as a sign of the impending apocalypse and set out to convert Native Americans in fulfilment of biblical prophecy. Native Americans faced tremendous violence and pressure from family members in making the decision to form new religious communities in partnership with these missionaries, which makes the religious impetus a significant factor in explaining indigenous decision-making. The transition from civil polity to ecclesiastical polity took nearly a decade for Natick, and this work argues that these developments paralleled internal debates regarding puritanism and the Half-Way Covenant, validating indigenous religiosity in new ways, though these positive developments proved short-lived with the onset of King Philip’s War and popular rhetoric portraying Indians as Canaanite heathens destined for destruction. The status of Indian Christians proved tenuous as the region entered the eighteenth century, though new developments by Solomon Stoddard created the potential to increase the boundaries of English religious communities to include Native Americans. The period of revivalism that swept New England from roughly 1735 to 1750 also raised questions about indigenous religious experiences and participation, leading to a strong critique from the antirevivalist faction. This long view of religious interaction adds more depth to the failure of mid-century missions by Gideon Hawley, John Brainerd, and Eleazar Wheelock. At the same time, Indian Christians like Samson Occom chafed against and challenged prevailing religious discrimination against their brethren. Acknowledgements To appropriate a proverbial saying, it truly takes a village to raise a young scholar. Working through the challenges accompanying a dissertation-length research project would not have been possible without the aid of good music, conversations with close friends, unyielding support from family, and a steady flow of alcohol. I will attempt to address the people who deserve special consideration in due turn. On the family front I must first thank my parents, Glenn Michna and Karen Stieff, for their support throughout my educational career. I’m proud of all that I have accomplished and none of it would be possible without your emotional and monetary support throughout these years of graduate school. I must also thank my sisters Emily and Gina for your support and willingness to talk about things far outside the bounds of my work over games of Cards Against Humanity during holidays. I also want to mention my brother Stephen, who did not live to see my completion. The time that you came up to West Virginia after Nathan was born was one of my best memories and I am glad that we have pictures of you holding him for the future. I think you would have felt a kindred connection to the struggle for community and acceptance that threads throughout this work, and I miss you dearly. A special thanks to my extended family as well for providing support from afar and conversation about my research during the times that we’ve been fortunate to all share the same room. Thank you Lacy for trading off childcare duties with our son Nathan during my frequent writing and research days, and special thanks for shouldering the burden of household maintenance while I have traveled to many archives and conferences. I must also thank the scholarly community at West Virginia University, beginning with Tyler Boulware as the chair of my committee and director of my research project. Your affability and good-natured interest in a subject far outside the geographic and conceptual bounds of the colonial South has been greatly appreciated. I must also thank other faculty members who have served on my committee for your support, insightful reading and comments, and model as researchers and scholars. Thanks to Joe Hodge for pushing me to think broadly about British imperial history across the Atlantic, which has deepened this study tremendously. Thanks to Brian Luskey for serving as such a wonderful mentor during my time as a GTA and as a committee member. Though we vary greatly in our interests within the domain of cultural history, I greatly appreciate you introducing me to Kariann Yokota’s book over the course of your graduate seminar, which led me to think at length about colonial anxiety. Special thanks to Matt Vester. You are probably one of the most intimidating and formidable scholars that I know, and I thoroughly appreciate your passionate support of my work and desire to push it to be the best work possible with your thorough markup of my draft. A special thanks is in order for Ted Andrews as an outside reader and authority in my field. I greatly appreciate your insight into my work and support of the project in looking to the future and a wonderful book manuscript. Thanks to all the wonderful graduate students in G14 and G13 for being awesome friends and classmates, especially Jake Ivey, Hal Gorby, Karina and Josh Esposito, Justin Power, Adam Zucconi, Katie Thompson, Kenny Kolander, Zac Cowsert, Chuck Welsko, Brandon Roos, Cassie Auble, Megan McGee, and Lindsey McNellis. I am sad that the days of First Friday sociability at the Morgantown Brewpub must now come to a close. iii Thanks also to Jan and Roger Wishau for opening your house to me in Naperville, IL while I spent an incredibly fruitful month at a short-term fellowship at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and thanks to all of the summer fellows I met there for your insightful comments on my work, especially John Hunt. I must also thank Priscilla Connors, Justin Power, and Jeff Wiesner for reading drafts of chapters and providing comments on aspects of the project throughout its course. A very special thanks is due to Jake Blosser at TWU for continuing to open your office and house to me as a friend and colleague throughout this process. I must also thank the archival staff members at the various libraries and repositories that have made this research possible. The Jack Miller Center Short-Term Fellowship to the Newberry Library put me in touch with a number of scholars and staff members who were tremendously helpful in fetching secondary texts and countless primary sources for the reading room.