Making War and Minting Christians: Masculinity, Religion, and Colonialism in Early New England

Chapter 7. “Endeavour . . . to Follow the English Mode”

z 107 c h a p t e r 7 “Endeavour . . . to follow the English mode” The counter point betweenmissionaryidealsandpraying-Indian realities is especially revealing in two highly symbolic areas: adornment and thebuiltenvironment.SymbolsmatteredincolonialNewEngland.Missionaries saw the adoption of English clothing and hairstyles by potential Indian converts as an important measure of the progress of civility and Christian living. For Native americans, adornment had long formed an important means of conveying a range of information about political affiliation, ethnic identity, gender, age, rank, martial expertise, sexual maturity, personal accomplishments ,andspiritualpower.Coloniststoofoundadornmentdeeply resonant. Praying Indians negotiated missionary demands that dress and hairstyles reflect Puritan conceptions of civility with older associations, including an earlier and broader movement of European goods into Native american communities.1 the selective adaptation of English-style clothing in praying towns emerged as part of a larger development, unique in that the manner of dress was the product of negotiation between missionaries’ demands and Indian desires. Missionaries viewed the praying Indians’ adoption of English clothing as a clear sign of the march toward civility. Daniel Gookin, for example, noted that “the Indians’ clothing in former times was of the same matter as adam’s was,” a combination of skins and feathers that “sundry of them 108 y chapter 7 continue” to wear. With European colonization and trade, he claimed, Indians increasingly used European cloth, which they employed to “make a mantle, or coat,” a garment that did not clearly mark the wearer’s gender and evoked earlier English associations with supposed Irish backwardness. the missionary noted that the mantle, though not ideal, did “cover their secret parts.” Fortunately, Gookin concluded, “it is rare to see any among them of the most barbarous, that are remiss or negligent in hiding those parts.” He added, “the Christian and civilized Indians do endeavour, many of them to follow the English mode in their habit.”2 Missionaries were also concerned with symbolically fitting praying Indians into the hierarchical structure of colonial society. this was part of a broader effort by colonial officials to enforce their ideals of how clothing shouldmarkrank. Sartorialanxietyisevident,forexample,ina1651 measure enacted by the Massachusetts Bay Colony General Court around the same timethatmissionaryeffortsinthecolonywereintensifying.theordernoted that although the court had acted “agaynst excesse in apparrill” on numerous occasions in the past, many people persisted in “intollerable exccess,” especially “people of meane condition” who chose to “dishonor” the Lord. the order listed the types of clothing that should be avoided by lower-status people. Clothing thus symbolically announced a man’s status, which was conferred on his family, and also suggested the productivity of his labor and amount of property he owned. transgressing these bounds was an affront to God and a criminal matter for the civil authorities. Missionaries similarly assumed that extravagantlyclothedprayingIndianswould raise eyebrowsin surrounding colonial villages. John Eliot no doubt had such things in mind when he asked that prospective English donors follow his guidelines and provide clothing for the praying Indians that would “best sute with their condition.” In the early eighteenth century, Experience Mayhew was careful to laud the Martha’s Vineyard praying Indian Jerusha Ompan for “wearing such things as were suitable to her own Condition and Circumstances.”3 the problem facing Christian Indians lay in reconciling the old and new meanings of adornment while preserving their precarious place in colonial society. It is clear that clothing was symbolically useful for dealing with the colonists in matters diplomatic, religious, and martial. roger Williams reported that traditionalist Narragansetts sometimes “keep on . . . English apparell” while dealing with the colonists only to “pull of[f] all, as soone as they come againe into their owne Houses, and Company.” Several years before missionary efforts began, an Indian interested in Christianity tried “Endeavour . . . to follow the English mode” z 109 to “imitate” the colonists “in . . . behavior and apparrell.” Once missionary efforts began in earnest, leading Indian men sometimes presented their sons—butrarelydaughters—tomissionariesinEnglishclothingbeforethe boys left for religious instruction. In Massachusetts, Indians would “carefully keep their [English-style clothing] till meeting times” and were “pretty handsome” for such religious occasions. reports from Martha’s Vineyard noted that Christian Indians were “generally Cloathed as the English.” accounts from King Philip’s War describe praying-Indian warriors who served the colonies as removing their English-style clothing to don traditionalist attire and adorning themselves in ways evocative of older spiritual associations in preparation for battle.4 Christian Indians incorporated older symbols and...