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Chapter Fourteen RACE RELATIONS The Puritans were not alone in their American wilderness. Before they came the land had been farmed, the wildlife hunted, the streams fished by the Indians of the region. And later, in the 1640s, white New Englanders added to the diversity of the region when they followed the lead of their Dutch neighbors and of their fellow Englishmen to the south by importing black men and women from Africa. New England thus developed a racial heterogeneity that has remained typical of America to this day. White and Red: Coexistence and Conversion The seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company depicts an Indian standing on the American shoreline asking Europe to "Come over and help us." There is no reason to believe that the seal truly reflected the desires of the native population. The Puritan belief that the Indians desired their help was a gratuitous assumption based on the conviction that any heathen would instinctively long for Reformed Christianity and English culture. And New Englanders believed they had a divinely ordained mission to spread Puritanism to all men—Indians as well as Englishmen. The charter of the Bay Company, moreover, charged the colony's officials to "win and incite the Natives . . . [to] the only true God and Savior of Mankind." The objects of this solicitude lived mainly along the coast and waterways of New England. The Indian population probably numbered about twenty-five thousand in 1615, but a devastating plague—undoubtedly contracted from Europeanfishermen—reducedthe number to perhaps fifteen thousand by 1620. All were of the Algonquian family, but they were divided into at least ten major tribes. In the north, inhabiting western Maine, were the Abenakis. Present day Vermont and New Hampshire were peopled by the Pennacooks. The Massachusetts reigned in the eastern region of the colony of that name, while central Massachusetts was the territory of the 200 THE PURITAN EXPERIMENT Nipmucs, with the Pocumtucks to their west. The arm of Cape Cod was occupied by the Nausets. The Wampanoags dominated what became the heart of the Plymouth colony. Present day Rhode Island was the tribal territory of the Narragansetts. The Pequots, Wappingers, and a loose group designated as the "River Tribes" each held portions of the land that was to be settled as the Connecticut and New Haven colonies. All of these tribes were essentially regional, moving only with the seasons among a number of semipermanent campsites. The staple of their diet was corn, although they did hunt and fish extensively. (The Abenaki differed in being more dependent than the other tribes upon the hunt.) Individual tribes were led by a chieftain called a sachem or sagamore. Lesser sachems ruled over the various divisions of a tribe. The powwows, or medicine men, were religious leaders whose political and healing functions often took precedence over spiritual duties. Most New England commentators described the natives of the region as tall, full-bodied, and handsome. Their complexion was light enough that close observers of Indian life such as Roger Williams believed that they were born white and bronzed as they aged through exposure to the sun and the repeated application of stains for ceremonial purposes. Indeed, the label "red man" was not used by New Englanders in the seventeenth century— the Puritans did not view the natives as a race apart. The Puritans found the Indian to be courteous and hospitable to strangers. They also considered him lazy and prone to drunkenness. Though they viewed the original inhabitants as uncivilized, the Puritans did not view them as irredeemable. Indeed, some thought that there was a place for the Indians in the "city on a hill." The Indians' willingness to help the newcomers proved valuable to the English. Their skills, strength, and knowledge of the area were sufficient to have created serious problems for the English had they opposed the Puritan colonization, but they accepted the newcomers and assisted them in adjusting to the New World. The legendary tale of the assistance tendered to the Pilgrims by Samoset and Squanto was duplicated many times in the experience of other colonists. From the natives the Puritans learned how to plant corn and other New World vegetables, where to fish and hunt, and other lessons that contributed to the low mortality rate of the early New England settlements. On their side, the Puritan leaders tried to treat the Indian with respect and fairness. That their concepts of fairness were shaped by their English Puritan heritage was to be expected. The New...

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