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

1. Praying Towns and Praying-to-God Indians

one Praying Towns and Praying-to-God Indians A portion of the surviving Native groups in southeastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod, and Martha’s Vineyard—Wampanoags, Massachusetts, Pokanokets ,andothers—demonstratedremarkableresiliencyandperseverance whenconfrontedwiththetragicconsequencesofepidemicsanddepopulation , colonization and dispossession. Many would seek new identities as Christian Indians—“praying to God” to find meaning in their adversity and salvation from the calamities of this world through the promise of an otherworldly paradise. New collectivities of refugee, amalgamated, remnant groups would recast themselves as “praying people” in praying townsthatoccupiedtheinterstitialspacebetweenEnglishsettlementsand traditionalIndianvillages.1 “Onahumanlandscapeutterlydevastatedand transformed by English colonization, some Indians found in Christianity a basis for reordering their lives materially, politically, and spiritually.”2 In this chapter we will investigate the practical and economic incentives and politicaladvantagesforbecomingprayingIndians,andconsiderwhysome NativesacceptedreligiouspaternalismtocreatedistinctlyChristianIndian identities and church communities. The first recorded Indian convert, Wequash, appears in an anonymous Eliot tract, New England’s First Fruits, in 1643. The outlines of this story 20 Praying Towns and Praying-to-God Indians reveal the distinguishing features of Christian Indian identity: alienation from one’s natal community, a survivor of war and plagues, a conversion narrative forged in religious melancholy, and martyrdom as indicative of sincerityandauthenticity.HewasaPequot“Captain,”aproudand“proper man of person, and a very grave and sober spirit”3 devastated by war and the destruction of Pequot hegemony. Wequash initially regarded the English God as an insignificant fly or “Musketto.” After his experience as a soldier allied with the English in the Pequot War, he changed this perception to a “most dreadful God” whose powerenabledtheEnglishtoslayhundredsandvanquishthisonce-powerful tribe.4 He had participated in the massacre of his own tribe at Mystic fort in 1637. Wequash spoke of self-loathing, striking his breast with his hand and exclaiming, “this is evil,” “Wequash no God, Wequash no know Christ. It pleasedtheLord,thatintheuseofthemeanes,hegrewgreatlyintheknowledge of Christ, and in the Principles of Religion, and became thoroughly reformedaccordingtohislight,hatingandloathinghimselfeforhisdearest sinnes, which were especially these two Lust and Revenge.”5 The author attributes these emotions to sinful alienation from God and argues that “This conviction did pursue him and follow him night and day, so that he could have no rest or quiet because hee was ignorant of the English mans God: he went up and down bemoaining his condition, and filling every place where he came with sighes and groanes.”6 Wequash returned to his tribesmen seeking forgiveness and reconciliation , forsaking his several wives in favor of monogamy, and instructing the survivors of the war of the special treasure that he had received in his affiliation with English religion and civility. He received abuse and ridicule from the Pequots, and true to his new faith, prostrated himself before thosewhobelittledandassaultedhim.Hesuffered,inthewordsofThomas Shepard,“themartyrdomofChrist”whenPequottribesmenpoisonedhim and he refused medical treatment from a powwow, stating: “If Christ say that Wequash shall live, then Wequash must live; if Jesus Christ say that Wequash shall dye, then Wequash is willing to dye, and will not lengthen out his life by such meanes.”7 Praying Towns and Praying-to-God Indians 21 Howcanweunderstandthisstrikingtransformationofidentity,forsaking ties to his natal community and abandoning the ritual obligations to propitiate the old gods? How could Wequash accept his imminent death with equanimity and faith, surrendered to Christ, in serene compliance with God’s will? FromtheendofthePequotWarin1637untilKingPhilip’sWar(1675–76), praying Indians represented a minority of the estimated fifteen thousand NativesandtraditionalvillagecommunitiesinsouthernNewEngland.Unlike the Narragansetts, Niantics, and Mohegans who had been spared the earlyepidemics,formanyWampanoagsandMassachusetts,southernNew EnglandwasaplaceofIndianrefugeeswhoseworldhadbeenshatteredby war and disease. Survivors from various groups attempted to overcome a “world in disorder” by the formation of new villages where they struggled to reorder their lives “through an amalgam of old and new logics.”8 These Indians were drawn to praying towns. AfterthetriumphofWequash’sreceptivitytomissionaryoutreach,New England’sFirstFruitsconcludeswiththepromiseofevengreatersuccesses: “Thus we have given you a little tast of the sprincklings of God’s Spirit upon a few Indians, but one may easily imagine, that here are not all that may be produced.”9 These first fruits were planted on soil prepared by the devastation of epidemics and catastrophic depopulation. A great plague ofunknownoriginafflictedselectedNativegroupsinsoutheasterncoastal New England from 1616 to 1619. The epidemics spared the Narragansetts but decimated the Pequots, Pawtuxets, Pokanokets, and countless other bands from Massachusetts Bay to Plymouth Bay and Cape Cod. Mortality rates ranged from 50 to 90 percent on what Neal Salisbury describes as “a vast disaster zone, comparable to those left by modern wars and other large-scale catastrophes,” as virgin soil epidemics devastated groups who lacked any immunity from Old World...