"Learn of the Heathen": Quakers and Indians in Southern New England, 1656-1676

"Learn ofthe Heathen": Quakers and Indians in Southern New England, 1656-1676 Stephen W. Angeli* On August 16, 1657, Christopher Holder and John Copeland landed on Martha's Vineyard, because they had been "moved ofthe Lord" to testify to Quaker beliefs there. They proceeded to a religious meeting of the Indian congregation, whose presiding minister was Thomas Mayhew, Jr., son ofthe island's governor. Waiting until Mayhew concluded his sermon, Holder rose to speak, disputing the doctrines that hadjust been presented.1 Mayhew's mission among the Wampanoags on Martha's Vineyard had probably been the first established by New England Protestants among the Indians. Mayhew received his first Indian convert in 1643. Despite the determined opposition of Wampanoag powwows, his mission prospered, with nearly 300 converts claimed by 1652. His contemporaries praised his work highly, stating that he took advantage of "all occasions to insinuate and show the sincere and tender Love and Goodwill he bare" for his Indian flock.2 But he seemed initially uncertain how to handle this unexpected challenge from Quakers. The constable evicted the two men from the church, but they returned later that day to renew their doctrinal argument with Mayhew. Not until the next day did Thomas Mayhew, Sr., accompanied by a constable, approach the Quakers and order them to leave the island. Holder and Copeland replied that they were not free to go, because they had not yet completed the work which God had sent them to perform there. Disregarding this response, the governor hired a Christian Indian belonging to his son's congregation to transport them to the mainland. The Quakers responded to his demands that they pay for their transportation by stating that "we could not pay the Indian, forasmuch as we did not hire him." Angered by their insolence, Mayhew ordered the constable to search for their money. Nine shillings were confiscated to pay the Indian.3 Holder and Copeland returned with this unnamed Indian to his village, but the elements intervened. For three days, the weather was too stormy to attempt the nine-mile crossing to the mainland. The Indian fed and lodged the Quakers in the meantime. Finally, the skies cleared, and the Indian safely transported them to the mainland in his canoe. Holder and Copeland tried to compensate him for their food and lodging, but the Indian refused *Stephen W. Angeli is a member ofTallahassee Monthly Meeting in Tallahassee, Florida. In 2001, he became the Géraldine C. Leatherock professor of Quaker Studies at Earlham School of Religion. For the previous eleven years, he taught religion at Florida A&M University, where he published two books on the history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Quaker History payment, saying that "we was strangers, and Jehovah taught him to love strangers." During their sojourn on the island, "we received no small love from the Indians, the like we could not receive from the English."4 This, the earliest recorded encounter between Indians and traveling Quaker ministers, illustrates two common themes in seventeenth-century Quaker literature. First, Indians were presented as inherently friendly human beings who usually displayed the innate goodness that all human beings possessed, since, according to Quakers, everyone was enlightened with the light of Christ. Second, Quakers contrasted the nobility of Indians to the corrupt ways of the clergy and magistrates in the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies. To the shame ofthese Puritans, it was in the natural, uncorrupted Indian that the Light of Christ shone the most brightly. These likes and dislikes tended to be reciprocated. Puritans sometimes described both Quakers and non-Christian Indians as devil-worshipers, and Indians sometimes compared the Puritans unfavorably to Quakers. So intense was the opposition to Quakerism throughout most of New England that some Indians may have wondered whether the Quakers were really English. In 1658, an Indian sachem in New England was said to have stated that "this is no Englishman's sea or land" but that the Quakers were "welcome," because they were "honest men and do no harm." As late as 1682, William Penn's agents thought it necessary to state in a treaty with the Indians that there were "no differences between the Quakers and...