First Founders: American Puritans and Puritanism in an Atlantic World

John Sassamon: A Puritan between Two Cultures

John sassamon A Puritan between Two Cultures Puritans acknowledged that the elect were to be found in all places. God’s saints were female as well as male, and black as well as white. Nowhere was this better demonstrated than when the dorchester congregation admitted a female slave to membership in the church. Native Americans were called as well as Englishmen. This belief underlay the effort to convert the native population. But cultural prejudice shaped the colonists’ understanding of what was required of Native American converts— religious transformation must be accompanied by the adoption of English norms of civility. some natives met this threshold but found that even this was not necessarily enough. Could an Englishman ever see a Native American or an African as a fellow citizen of their city upon a hill? John sassamon represents the transition from aboriginal culture to puritanism and his story tells how conversion left him isolated, trusted by neither the people of his birth nor the faith community he aspired to join. J ohn sassamon was born a Wampanoag near modern Canton, Massachusetts, around 1620. His parents moved soon thereafter and seem to have been living near the Massachusetts town of dorchester when they succumbed to the smallpox epidemic of 1633. They had embraced Christianity, but whether on their deathbed or earlier than that is unclear. Just as John Wilson took in and raised the son of sagamore John at about this time, richard Callicot of dorchester brought the young native into his home and taught him to read and write English. It is likely that the youth attended the school in dorchester at this time. John Eliot, the minister of roxbury who had taken an interest in converting and civilizing the natives, often visited the town and 196 First Founders taught at that school. He came to know sassamon at this time and was impressed with his ability. during the Pequot War sassamon joined Callicot as a member of John Underhill’s expedition, serving as both interpreter and soldier. Underhill noted his bravery in confronting and firing on some Pequot scouts. When the war was over many of the defeated natives were enslaved by the English, and others were distributed to their Mohegan and Narragansett allies. Callicot and sassamon accompanied some of these captives back to Massachusetts, stopping briefly to meet with roger Williams, who negotiated with them for some of the prisoners. Callicot himself claimed two of the captives to be servants in his household, one of whom, Cockenoe, became an interpreter for John Eliot. sassamon himself received a young Pequot woman who may have later become his wife. Little is known of sassamon’s activities over the next few years, though he seems to have remained connected with Callicot and did serve the English as an interpreter on a number of occasions. A contemporary record noted the presence of Callicot and “an Indian, his man,” at a treaty signing in Boston in 1645. Though the conversion of the natives had been one of the stated objectives of the puritan errand into the wilderness, the colonists had largely neglected that mission during the first decade of settlement. The settlers’ struggle for survival was a partial explanation, as was the difficulty of organizing missionary activities within the congregational church system that had been developed. There had, however, been a few attempts to convert and civilize the natives in the early years of colonization. John Wilson’s efforts with sagamore John were typical of the limited nature of most such endeavors. roger Williams had demonstrated an interest in the native language and culture, but his suspicions of organized churches made him disinclined to attempt native conversion. Thomas Mayhew, and particularly his son Thomas Jr., would have some success on Martha ’s Vineyard in the 1640s. In the aftermath of the Pequot War much more energy was devoted to the effort. In the early 1640s English critics of New England used the colonial failure to live up to the evangelical goal as one of the ways to at- John Sassamon 197 tack the colonies. Thomas Welde and Hugh Peter did their best to claim success for missionary outreach in New England’s First Fruits (1643), but the tale they had to tell was not very impressive. The key figure who emerged as New England’s “Apostle to the Indians” was roxbury’s John Eliot. His involvement with young natives such as John...