Faithful Bodies: Performing Religion and Race in the Puritan Atlantic

Introduction

Introduction To the casual observer, the crystals appear to be inert lumps of quartz, roughly shaped. But to the seventeenth-century individuals who placed them in the corners of their new building at Magunkaquog in the heart of their homeland, they were hope and insurance for the future, connection to the past, and an active shaping of their present. The crystals not only expressed the intent to continue The People’s place in the land that was theirs, to sink deep into the earth in the face of all the changes that followed on the heels of the Coat-men who had invaded it—often clumsily yet so destructively—they were one means by which to accomplish that goal. By the time The People buried the crystals beneath where they would gather to join in words and song in ways their ancestors had not known, they knew the Coat-men called themselves English and that their new way to reach other-than-human persons was called being a Christian. They had come to live in this place to be with their kin and others who had lost much so that together they could practice the new forms of interaction with the unseen members of their community. When Daniel Gookin, the puritan missionary and superintendent of Indian affairs for the colony of Massachusetts , came to encourage them in 1674, they gave the entire building over to his use during his visit. He prayed with them, briefly joining with them as one of their number. But most English living in what they called New England did not think that it was possible for Indians and English to be members of a congregation. Increasingly after the violence of the conflict the English came to call King Philip’s War (after the Pokanoket 2 / introduction A T L A N T I C O C E A N N 0 0 20 30 40 50 km 10 10 20 30 mi Approx. Native boundaries Colonial claims Nantucket Martha’sVineyard C o n n e c t i c u t R . T h a m e s R . M y s t i c R . H u d s o n R . N a u g a t u c k R . H o u s a t o n i c R . Plymouth Massachusetts Connecticut Rhode Island MONTAUKETT WAMPANOAG SHINNECOCK MATTABESIC NIPMUC POCUMTUCK NARRAGANSETT WAMPANOAG MASSACHUSETT NAUSET PEQUOT EASTERN NIANTIC MOHEGAN PAUGUSSETT WORONOCO NONOTUCK AGAWAM PAWTUCKET QUINNIPIAC WESTERN NIANTIC Figure I.1. Native territories and English colonial claims in southern New England, ca. 1665. sachem who had tried to orchestrate alliances across long-standing tribal enmities), it seemed to English puritans that Natives could not be Christian , that something inherent made it impossible for them to incorporate into a body of Christ. Had Gookin known about the crystals beneath the floor as he led the community in prayer and exhorted them to strive to live a godly life, he might have doubted his firm conviction that they were Christian. The People did not; they knew that they were. And they continued to be, even after fifteen Natick Indians, inhabitants of another praying town, sold Magunkaquog lands to Harvard College.1 Half an ocean away, Hannah Manena McKenney contemplated her future and the future of her family. Her husband, Anthony, had just bought her freedom as soon as he had finished his own indenture. They could try to stay in Bermuda as free people of color, to ensure that their children stayed out of entangling indentures. There were certainly some who did, deciding to take the risk that no one would try to make an issue of their freedom with the local justice, rather than to start over in a new place, far away from family and friends, that also held no guarantee of respect for their free status. Hannah did not relish that prospect. Although moving would mean leaving her parents and grandparents, it might also mean the chance to live in a community with fewer legal introduction / 3 obstacles. And Anthony had heard that there were other families like them, who looked like them, with whom they might worship without being confined to an area far from the pulpit.2 In many ways, the Nipmucs who lived at Magunkaquog and built the meetinghouse for the settlement and Hannah and Anthony McKenney lived very different lives, but in certain key ways...