Totherswamp's Lament: Christian Indian Fathers and Sons in Early Massachusetts

Abstract

Focusing on two striking episodes in the early history of Natick, a Christian Indian town in colonial Massachusetts, this article examines the importance of Indian fathers and sons in New England missionary discourse and efforts. Just as missionaries saw fatherhood and patrimony as key to propagating Indian Christianity across generations, Native Americans who resisted the mission viewed prominent fathers and sons as a useful target for their resentment.

Keywords

Native Americans Indians parenting fatherhood childhood missionary efforts

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References

Roger Williams, A. Key into the Language of America (1643), ed. John J. Teunissen and Evelyn J. Hinz ( Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University , 1973), 116.

On these issues, see the following: Carole Shammas, “Anglo-American Household Government in Comparative Perspective ,” William and Mary Quarterly 52, no. 1 (1995): 104-44 ; Richard White , “ What Chigabe Knew: Indians, Household Government, and the State ,” William and Mary Quarterly 52, no. 1 (1995): 151-56 ; Ann Marie Plane , Colonial Intimacies: Indian Marriage in Early New England ( Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press , 2000); and Gloria L. Main, Families and Cultures in Colonial New England ( Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press , 2001).

For a discussion of Indian children in colonial New England, see R. Todd Romero , “ Colonizing Childhood: Religion, Gender, and Indian Children in Southern New England, 1600-1720 ,” in Children in Colonial America , ed. James Marten ( New York: New York University Press , 2007), 33-47 . The episode described is reported in The Day-Breaking if Not the Sun-Rising of the Gospell with the Indians of New England , ed. Thomas Shepard ( London: Richard Cotes, for Fulk Clifton , 1647), 1, 9-10 , 19 . For the parable of the prodigal son, see Luke 15: 11-32 .

Thomas Shepard , The Clear Sun-shine of the Gospel Breaking Forth upon the Indians in New England ( London : Printed by R. Cotes for John Bellamy, 1648), 34. On Indian resistance to Christianity in the Northeast, see James P. Ronda, “`We Are Well as We Are': An Indian Critique of Seventeenth-Century Christian Missions,” William and Mary Quarterly 34, no. 1 (1977): 66-82 .

The best recent accounts of the mission's development are Jean O'Brien , Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650-1790 ( New York: Cambridge University Press , 1997); and Richard W. Cogley , John Eliot's Mission to the Indians before King Philip's War ( Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press , 1999). For an estimate of the praying Indian population, see Daniel K. Richter , Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America ( Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press , 2001), 95-96.

On syncretism in praying town life, see David J. Silverman , “ Indians, Missionaries, and Religious Translation: Creating Wampanoag Christianity in Seventeenth-Century Martha's Vineyard ,” William and Mary Quarterly 62, no. 2 (2005): 141-74 .

Romero , “Colonizing Childhood.”

John Eliot to Thomas Shepard, September 24, 1647 , in Shepard , The Clear Sun-shine, 21-23 .

Ibid., 6, 21-23 . On these issues, see Plane, Colonial Intimacies, 61-63 .

10.

John Eliot to Thomas Shepard , in Shepard , The Clear Sun-shine, 21-22 .

11.

Ibid., 22 .

12.

Ibid., 22-23 .

13.

Although making rebellious sons subject to capital punishment appears unduly harsh to modern eyes, it was extremely difficult to prosecute cases because capital convictions in colonial Massachusetts required two witnesses, as stipulated by Deuteronomy 17:6. See George Lee Haskins , Law and Authority in Early Massachusetts: A Study in Tradition and Design ( New York: Macmillan , 1960), 145-46, 152-53. The Gridley family's woes are recounted in John F. Cronin , ed., Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1630-1692, 3 vols. ( Boston: County of Suffolk ; reprint, New York: AMS Press , 1973), 3:144-45; and Richard D. Pierce , ed., Records of the First Church in Boston, 1630-1868, 3 vols. ( Boston : Colonial Society of Massachusetts , 1961), 1:61, 1:64.

14.

Pierce , Records of the First Church in Boston , 1: 61 , 1: 64 .

15.

John Eliot, A. Late and Further Manifestation of the Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New-England ( London : Printed by M.S., 1655), 7.

16.

Daniel Gookin , “ The Historical Collections of the Indians in New England ” (1674), Massachusetts Historical Society Collections 1, no. 1 (1792): 177 ; Yasuhide Kawashima , Puritan Justice and the Indian: White Man's Law in Massachusetts , 1630-1763 ( Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press , 1986), 28-35 , 244-45 ; and Eliot, A Late and Further Manifestation, 6 .

17.

Eliot , A Late and Further Manifestation, 6. Also see Jean O'Brien's treatment of this incident as resistance against Eliot in O'Brien, Dispossession by Degrees, 59.

18.

Eliot , A Late and Further Manifestation, 8-9.

19.

Ibid., 8 .

20.

Genesis 22: 1-18 . The scripture is quoted from The Geneva Bible: A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition ( Madison: University of Wisconsin Press , 1969). Eliot, A Late and Further Manifestation, 274 .

21.

Praying town justice could be extremely severe, so much so that in 1673, Eliot explained in a letter that “they are so severe that I am put to bridle them to moderation and forbearance.” See John Eliot , “ An Account of the Indian Churches in New-England , in a Letter Written A.D. 1673 ,” Massachusetts Historical Society Collections 1, no. 10 ( 1809): 125 .