The Spice of Popery: Converging Christianities on an Early American Frontier

1. “The Land That Was Desolate . . . Shall Flourish Like the Lily”: Christian Diversity in Early Maine

21           “The Land That Was Desolate . . . Shall Flourish Like the Lily” Christian Diversity in Early Maine In 1646 Gabriel Druillettes, a Jesuit priest who had long worked among native peoples of New France, established the Catholic mission of Narantsuoak on the banks of the Kennebec River. Known as Norridgewock to the English, it grew and prospered as a center for Christian spirituality for the region’s Wabanaki Indians, who took their regional name—the Kennebecs—from the local river.The mission managed to survive for almost eighty years despite its location at the center of a province that the English and French vied to control , while its Native American inhabitants were occasionally at odds with both local European powers. Norridgewock was an island of Catholicism in a terrain often hostile to Catholicism, serving the spiritual needs of the mission’s Wabanaki adherents and walking a fine line between imperial spheres of influence and local interests. In the early years of its existence, Druillettes claimed early successes in making new converts and developing a peaceful coexistence with his potentially resistant English neighbors. Indeed, the impulse to embrace Christianity appears to have predated him: the Jesuit reported coming to the region at the request of Noël Negabamat, a Christian of long standing and a cross-cultural traveler who had lived among the Wabanakis and near the French at Sillery for years.1 Negabamat spoke for a community of Kennebec Wabanakis that sought spiritual and political regeneration.2 Since the Kennebecs had been decimated by disease and the alcohol that was sold to them illegally by English traders, their interests appeared to be best served by multivalent alliances with the Catholic French rather than the Protestant English. Despite his status as a Catholic priest and Frenchman, Druillettes chose to chart a course for his new Maine mission that crossed national identities and transcended established Christian rivalries. The priest’s plans were pragmatic as well as ecumenical. As a missionary , Druillettes likely saw one of his roles as seeking physical protection for would-be Christians, such as the Kennebecs, against their most dangerous non-Christian enemies, the Iroquois.3 They threatened more than just the would-be Catholics on the Kennebec, which led the priest and the government of New France to conclude that all New World Christians shared an interest in seeing them subdued. In 1651, and with the encouragement of the colonial government , Druillettes undertook a diplomatic mission to New England to encourage its Protestant leaders in taking defensive action against the Iroquois. Druillettes’s first exposure to Protestant New England society came at Cushnoc, a Plymouth-owned trading post several miles downriver .There he developed an unlikely, though genuine, friendship with the post’s manager, John Winslow. Both men’s backgrounds underscore the uniqueness of this pairing. Druillettes was a Frenchman and a Jesuit priest who came to Cushnoc undisguised, Winslow, a member of a prominent Puritan Separatist family.4 In building a friendship that transcended religious and national identities, the Jesuit and the Puritan demonstrated that borderlands were places where the common needs of Euro-American Christians could force older prejudices to give way to common interests. Contributing to the friendship’s novelty was Winslow’s acceptance of the Jesuit as a diplomatic representative of another colonial power. At a time when a Jesuit on soil claimed by England could be 22 The Spice of Popery accused of treason, Winslow seemed to accept out of hand that the priest was sincere in the peacetime goals of his mission and would not use his influence among the Kennebecs to harm English interests .5 He stated as much when he welcomed Druillettes to Cushnoc and told the priest’s Indian companions “I love and respect [him] . . . I will lodge him in my home and treat him as I do my own brother; for I know very well the good that he does among you, and the life he leads there.”6 Cementing the spirit of cooperation between these rival Christians was their shared interest in proselytizing to Maine’s Indians. In describing Winslow, Druillettes told his Jesuit superior that the Puritan had “special zeal for the Conversion of the Savages, as also has his brother, Edward . . . who is trying to institute a brotherhood to train and instruct the Savages, just as is practiced with the poor by the charity of London.”7 And though he might have...