Tears of Repentance: Christian Indian Identity and Community in Colonial Southern New England

3. The Pattern of Religious Paternalism in Eighteenth-Century Christian Indian Communities

three The Pattern of Religious Paternalism in EighteenthCentury Christian Indian Communities The seventeenth-century idea of the praying town as a rational religious utopiaandsemiautonomouspoliticalenclavewasacasualtyofKingPhilip’s War and gave way to a new expression of religious paternalism—the mission and missionary as an instrument of the colonial administration of Native peoples, who were perceived to be a declining or vanishing race. In this chapter we will consider the transformation of Natick from a Native church community to an English settlement. Next we will examine ExperienceMayhew’sIndian Converts(1727),whichprovidesanextensive considerationofthevicissitudesofChristianIndianidentityandthecharacter of religious experience and expression for the first three generations of Christian Indians on Martha’s Vineyard. Finally, we recount the efforts by John Cotton Jr. and Josiah Cotton to minister to their Indian charges who lived and labored on the Cotton Plain Dealing Farm, and the story of Gideon Hawley’s mission to the Mashpee. Religious paternalism espoused a system of Protestant moralism—a rigorous code of ethics and sanctions designed to promote godly living, asceticself-control,temperance,andindustry.Inthe1740smanyChristian IndiangroupsonCapeCodandtheIslandswereunaffectedbytheawakening of evangelical pietism, New Light theology, and the expectation that 78 Religious Paternalism in Indian Communities theircommunitieswouldreceiveavisitationandawakeningfromtheHoly Spirit.Insteadofavitalexperimentalpietythataugurednewbirth,Christian Indians embraced Protestant moralism that was intended to counter the disorientationandanomieofreservationlifethatwasfrequentlycharacterized by alcoholism, the incremental dispossession of tribal lands to satisfy debt, indenture and debt peonage, and despair. ReligiouspaternalismgrantedNativestheunenviablestatusof“children” in perpetual tutelage to colonial authority. The missionary functioned as a spiritual “father” to the tribe, assuming the powers of the justice of the peacetosettleintratribaldisputesandadjudicatemisconductbyimposing finesandsanctions.Inaddition,themissionaryassumedpoliticalandlegal powers as guardian granted by the colonial legislature. Guardians could lease or sell tribal lands and exploit fishing and timbers rights, distribute charity, and disperse tribal funds. Thus, religious paternalism served the purpose of the spiritual, political, legal, and economic administration of a colonized people who were increasingly impoverished and confined to a limited reservation land base. The transformation of Natick from praying town to English village provides the first example of eighteenth-century religious paternalism. King Philip’s War began with the attack on Swansea, Rhode Island, on June 24, 1675, and escalated to encompass northern settlements along the Connecticut River, and northwest to Mohawk lands along the Hudson River. By the end in August 1676 of fourteen months of brutal hostilities, approximately40percentofNativepopulationshadbeenkilledorremoved, andthirteenEnglishsettlementshadbeendestroyedwithalossof5percent ofprewarEnglishpopulation.1 JamesD. Drakemaintainsthat thisconflict was a civil war initiated by Philip (Metacom), a Wampanoag sachem who created a loose alliance of Nipmucks, Narragansetts, Pocumtucks, and others in protest against the failure of Plymouth Colony to protect their villages and land base from the expansion of colonial settlements and the extensionoftheMassachusetts’prayingtownsintodwindlingWampanoag homelands in Rhode Island. With Metacom’s back to the Narragansett Bay and surrounded by a honeycomb pattern ofnewcolonialsettlements, the creation of new praying towns created an unacceptable threat to his Religious Paternalism in Indian Communities 79 remaining lands and the declining numbers who lived in traditional villages . These events signaled the failure of Metacom’s strategy of ethnic self-preservation—submissionto Englishsovereigntyinexchange forthe benefits of secure land tenure and trade.2 The depredations committed by Philip and his allies, who had previously submitted to English sovereignty and had repeatedly sworn oaths of fealty and friendship, shattered the colonial civil society. The English had coexistedinpeacewithtraditionalNativeandprayingIndiancommunities in southeastern New England in the four decades following the Pequot War.3 ThecolonistscondemnedPhilip’srebellionastreasonandtreachery, as expressed in Increase Mather’s account of the “cruel habitations” and atrocities of war, which reflected the escalating public outrage against all Indians. Despite Natick’s early attempts at neutrality and alliance with the colonists,thepublicturnedagainstthem.MatherlamentedinSoDreadfull aJudgment,“howmanywithushavecondemnedallPrayingIndians,crying out, they are all nought, there is not one good amongst them? And what thought some of them may be Hypocrites.”4 BenjaminChurchdescribedthekillingofcattle,thedestructionofproperty , and the escalating thirst for English blood. When Philip killed eight men at Mattapoiset, Church wrote about the killer’s “brutish barbarities; beheading, dismembering and mangling them, and exposing them in the most inhumane manner, which gash’d and ghostly objects struck a damp on all beholders.”5 DuringtheassaultandburningofSwansea,Middlebury,andDartmouth inPlymouthColonyinJuly1675,accordingtoMather’shistory,theIndians “barbarously murthered both men and women in those places, stripping the slain whether men or women, and leaving them in the open field as naked as the day they were born. Such also is the inhumanity as that they flay of[f] the skin from their faces and heads of those they get into their hands, and go away with the hairy Scalp of their enemyes.”6 CaptainSamuelMoseley,renownedforhishatredofIndiansandcruelty, conductedhismilitiaandarrestedfourteenprayingIndiansatMarlborough inAugust1675.HebroughtthemtoBostonfortrial...