Encounters of the Spirit: Native Americans and European Colonial Religion

5. Martyrs, Healers, and Statesmen

5 Martyrs, Healers, and Statesmen DAVID BRAINERD WAS UNUSUAL BUT NOT UNIQUE. ASPECTS OF HIS MISSIONary sojourns find parallels before and after him in the long history of religious encounters in early America. Specifically, his close working relationship with Delaware interpreter Moses Tatamy and desire to mold him into a particular kind of Christianized, Anglicized Indian assistant both echoes and foreshadows the experiences of other groups of European newcomers in their endeavors to spread the gospel to native peoples. They, too, relied heavily upon the talents of native assistants. Though now virtually forgotten, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Native American Christian preachers, teachers, dogiques, interpreters, catechists , and deacons carried on the work of the church within early America in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.1 Past studies of native assistants have devoted much attention to the ways in which Europeans sought to control or limit the authority Christian Indians could exercise. Often this was achieved through denying natives any chance at ordination. The resulting frustrations over their lack of equal status divided native converts from their white brethren and in the long run very likely curtailed the effectiveness of the church overall .2 Certainly this was an important part of the story of religious leadership and religious power in colonial America. However, it was hardly the whole story. European Christians who crossed the Atlantic were themselves often uncertain about what kind of pastoral or priestly leadership would be required or desired in the dramatically new settings of colonial cities and towns, let alone in the wilds of the backcountry. What kind of men (and for some groups, women) would make the best missionaries? What qualities of mind and character were most essential ? What talents and skills would ensure evangelistic success? What biblical or historical models of leadership were most relevant? How MARTYRS, HEALERS, AND STATESMEN 123 should colonial leaders relate to their spiritual charges? Who could train and equip ministers and missionaries most effectively? All these questions and more came into play as European Christians sought to transplant their faith to North America and pass it on to the indigenous peoples. Answers were formulated on the basis of what the Europeans brought with them but also arose in the midst of the give and take of their interactions with one another and Native Americans. As they performed their Christianizing work, Protestant and Catholic newcomers turned invariably to Indian converts for help. Naturally, they attempted to inculcate within any native assistants the particular styles and convictions of their brand of Christianity, including their notions about religious leadership. As a result, Christian Indian dogiques and deacons, not surprisingly , were indoctrinated in, and usually did their duties according to, the designs of those European believers who had introduced them to the new faith. What is surprising is that colonial sources reveal that they also carried on their duties according to the vibrant traditions and styles of religious and political leadership natives had long practiced within their own Indian cultures. In the process, native assistants showed colonists ways of leading that were sometimes too powerful to ignore. When that happened, Indians had opportunities to shape colonial Americans’ attitudes and actions regarding what constituted authentic, faithful Christian leadership. Over the course of colonial history, leadership models clearly varied across the spectrum of Protestant and Catholic communities that took hold within the expanse of early America. One only has to think of the Puritans’ faithful shepherd, the Quakers’ traveling preacher, and the Methodists’ itinerant evangelist. What did not vary as much was the possibility that within European-Native American religious interaction, individual Indians through the force of their own example and the power of their own traditions might affect what those models were. Etienne Totiri, Johannes Wassamapah, and Good Peter (Gwedelhes Agwelondongwas) were three such Indians. Totiri ministered alongside French Jesuits in the 1640s at his home Huron village of Teanaostaiaé (St. Joseph II) as well as among neighboring Neutrals. A Mahican, Wassamapah co-labored with German Moravians in Shekomeko, New York and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the 1740s. Oneida chief Good Peter operated primarily within the orbit of the Congregationalist/Presbyterian missionary efforts among his people in central New York from the 1750s into the 1790s. Though widely separated by time, space, culture, language,andpoliticalcircumstance,theindividualstoriesofthesethree men will remind us that Europeans were not alone in promoting or 124 ENCOUNTERS OF THE SPIRIT defining the Christian message in early America, or in...