Encounters of the Spirit: Native Americans and European Colonial Religion

3. A Scene of New Ideas

3 A Scene of New Ideas ACENTURY AFTER PURITAN-NINNIMISSINUOK MEETINGS AND A FEW HUNdred miles to the west in central New York, Taunewhaunegeu had had quite enough of the Reverend Samuel Kirkland. It was bad enough that the minister had come and destroyed rum belonging to his wife. Now Kirkland harangued him about ‘‘Temperance, Righteousness, & Judgement ’’ for a good two hours. In typical Oneida fashion, Taunewhaunegeu listened carefully and nodded assent along the way. Then at the end of their talk, he made it clear that he wanted Kirkland to pay for at least half of the wasted liquor. When the missionary refused, the native went off to ponder his next move. He came back the next morning and insisted that Kirkland pay up. Tempers flared and a fight broke out. The minister and two others wrestled Taunewhaunegeu to the floor and bound his arms and legs. The same fate followed for the Indian’s wife when she arrived and ‘‘raged with more Violence.’’ ‘‘I hate you and all English Ministers,’’ the native man cried out. ‘‘You are a good for nothing fellow, a Villain, a Mischief Maker, a servant of the devil. . . . By your continual talk of sin, sin, sin . . . You are a Plague to me, you give me all this trouble. My sins now all lie before me as fresh in my remembrance as tho’ they werecommittedyesterday.’’Taunewhaunegeukeptuphisinsultsforthe rest of the morning, what Kirkland later described as ‘‘the most disagreeable Breakfast I ever had in my life,’’ and the feud went on for several more days. As Kirkland tried to make sense of what had happened, his head was spinning with theological questions. Is this what happens when sinners are made aware of their evil hearts? Should ministers expect to be attacked for pricking sinners’ consciences? For those ministers ‘‘called into Christs vineyard, what kind of a call [is] that?’’ The whole encounter with Taunewhaunegeu, Kirkland wrote in October 1767, ‘‘has opened to me such a scene of new Ideas I know not where to 70 ENCOUNTERS OF THE SPIRIT stop.’’ As for the Oneida, for the moment at least, he just wanted the missionary to leave his body and soul alone.1 By that point in the long history of European-Native American interaction , most knew that Taunewhaunegeu was not likely to get his wish. For whether it was Kirkland or some other group of Euro-Americans, Oneidas could count on whites continuing to disrupt their lives. That had now been true for native peoples for more than a century and a half in British colonial America and for three centuries in the Americas as a whole. When Europeans moved outward to Asia, Africa, and the Americas beginning in the fifteenth century, little stayed the same. Separate precontact worlds largely gave way to a host of new realities. Trade networks, political alliances, disease environments, agricultural techniques , and cultural identities took on altered shapes and colors amid the diverse relationships developed among Asians, Africans, Native Americans, and Europeans. So, too, did the religious worlds and the religious outlooks of all these people groups. The scene of new ideas that crowded in upon Samuel Kirkland’s mind as a result of this one encounter was indicative of the broad refashioning of the sacred realm and religious mindsets that accompanied intercultural contacts in the early modern world.2 How that story played itself out within the particular religious ideas and theologies of Euro-Americans in the North American colonies in response to their encounters with Native Americans is a complicated tale.3 For a long time historians have been persuaded that colonists as a whole offer little testimony to religious beliefs overturned or theologies transformed because of contact with natives. As quoted earlier, James Axtell’s conclusion that religious change moved only in one direction has held sway, maybe especially with respect to religious ideas.4 The socalled white Indians he has studied only seem to be the exception that proves the rule. Their choice to become thoroughly assimilated to Indian ways, values, and beliefs is striking precisely because it contrasts so sharply with the typical colonist’s aversion to and dismissal of native religious notions.5 Recent books on the history of theology in early America reinforce the impression that Native Americans mattered little for Euro-American belief systems. Comprehensive works by E. Brooks Holifield and Mark Noll have illuminated many of the broader social, political, and intellectual contexts that molded the character and evolution of religious...