Puritan minister John Eliot leads Natick Indians in Christian prayer, as depicted on the mural of the rotunda on the Massachusetts State House in Boston.
In 1646, the General Court of Massachusetts passed an "Act for the Propagation of the Gospel amongst the Indians." It and the success of Reverend John Eliot and other missionaries preaching Christianity to the New England tribes raised interest in England. In 1649, the Long Parliament passed an ordination forming "A Corporation for the Promoting and Propagating the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England," which raised funds to support the cause.
Contributors raised approximately £12,000 to invest in the cause, to be used mainly in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and in the Province of New York. Eliot received financial aid from the corporation to start schools to teach the Native Americans. The Indian nations involved appear to have included the Massachusett and the Nipmuc.
On October 28, 1646, in Nonantum (now Newton), Eliot preached his first sermon to Native Americans in their Massachusett language in the wigwam of Waban, the first convert of his tribe. Waban later offered his son to be taught in the ways of the European colonists and served as an interpreter.[2][bettersourceneeded] Eliot translated the Bible into the Massachusett language and published it in 1663 as Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God. By 1675, 20% of New England's Natives were living in praying towns.[3]
Christian Indian Towns were eventually located throughout Eastern and Central Massachusetts and included Littleton (Nashoba), Lowell (Wamesit, initially incorporated as part of Chelmsford), Grafton (Hassanamessit), Marlborough (Okommakamesit), Hopkinton (Makunkokoag), Canton (Punkapoag), Mendon-Uxbridge (Wacentug), and Natick. Only Natick has retained its original name. Praying Indian Towns started by Eliot extended into Connecticut and included Wabaquasset (Senexet, Wabiquisset), six miles west of the Quinebaug River in present-day Woodstock, the largest of the three northeastern Connecticut praying towns.
The towns had a location that served as an outlying wall of defense for the colony, a function that came to an end in 1675, during King Philip's War. Praying Indians offered their service as scouts to the colonists in Massachusetts but were rejected by the Puritans in Boston. Instead, Praying Indian residents were first confined to their villages and were thus restricted from their farms and unable to feed themselves. Many were confined on Deer Island in Boston Harbor.[4]
John Eliot and many others in the Plymouth Colony tried to prevent it,[5] but it is reported that it became dangerous in Massachusetts to talk positively any Native Americans, which likely contributed to the initial successes of the Indian rebellion.[4] The order for removal was passed in October 1675, and by December, well over 1,000 Christian Indians had been brought to the island, where many died during the winter due to the harsh conditions. The survivors were released in 1676.[6]
After the war, in part because of the loss of life, the General Court of Massachusetts disbanded 10 of the original 14 towns in 1677 and placed the rest under the supervision of colonists,[7] but some communities survived and retained their religious and education systems.[8]
In the mid-17th century, John Eliot and a group of praying Indians from Dedham, Massachusetts, won a lengthy court battle and were awarded the title to the 2,000 acres (810ha) of land in the town that is now known as Natick.[11]
The dispute, which lasted from 1651 to 1665 and flared up again sporadically in the years afterward, centered on the Indians' use of a tract of land along the Charles River.[12] They claimed to have an agreement to use the land for farming with the Town Fathers, but Dedham officials objected to them.[12]
Eliot had converted many of the native people in the area to Christianity and taught them how to live a stable agrarian life.[12] He converted so many that the group needed a large portion of land on which to grow their own crops.[12] The law was on the side of the town,[13] Elliot made a moral argument that the group had a need for land of their own.[12]
The case eventually went before the General Court, which granted the land in question to the Indians and, in compensation for the land lost, gave another piece of land in what is today Deerfield, Massachusetts, to the Dedham settlers.[13] The town's actions in the case were characterized by "deceptions, retaliations, and lasting bitterness" and harassed its Native neighbors with petty accusations even after the matter had been settled.[14]
There are several narratives regarding Native American history that are greatly underrepresented. A significant number of Praying Indians fought for the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.[15] During the war, the vast majority of those Indians had been completely assimilated into their surrounding Christian communities and had fewer significant ties to other Native communities.[16] They fought in entirely integrated units, unlike the African-American soldiers who fought for their country from the Revolutionary War to World War II.[15]
There is no evidence of official discrimination towards Native American soldiers. They received equal pay and treatment as compared to their white counterparts. That is a direct contrast to unit segregation in the Civil War, for instance. African-American soldiers fought in segregated units, such as the 54th Massachusetts Regiment under Col. Robert Gould Shaw. They were initially paid less than their white counterparts. Soldiers of Native American origin fought in several significant battles during the Revolutionary War such as Bunker Hill, Battle Road, Trenton, and Saratoga.[15] The number of Praying Indian soldiers was likely over 100, but an entirely accurate count is hard to come by.
Unlike other Native groups such as the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Praying Indians were cohesive and steadfast in their support for the colonists. The Iroquois Confederacy had several factions, most of which supported the British during the Revolutionary War, but some decided to fight with the colonists. That inevitably led to clashes involving previously aligned groups, when Native tribes on opposite sides of the conflict met on the field of battle. For example, the Battle of Oriskany on August 6, 1777, saw Loyalist Seneca soldiers fighting against colonially-aligned Oneidas.[17]
The Praying Indians never saw such a split. They had extremely close ties to both the Puritan clergy that established the Praying towns, as well as non-Native peoples that lived among them.[18] Despite the continued seizure of Native lands, the various Praying Indian communities realized that their continued survival could be ensured only by close ties to their communities. Support of a distant government would only alienate them from those who were in proximity.[18]
The first significant engagements Praying Indians participated in were the Battles of Battle Road and Bunker Hill. Approximately five out of the estimated 21 Native Americans at Battle Road were from Praying Indian communities, and out of the estimated 103 Native Americans at Bunker Hill, about 10 were Praying Indians from the Natick area (primary source confirmation of service histories has numbers that are significantly less).[22] As a result of the unit integration in the Continental Army, most cases had no real concentration of Praying Indians in a single unit. Praying Indians served in dozens of distinct units throughout the Revolutionary War. The Battle of King's Bridge in the Bronx, where both Daniel Nimham, the last sachem of the Wappinger and his son Abraham were killed alongside some 60 members of the Stockbridge Militia is a notable exception.
Historian George Quintal Jr. discusses Revolutionary war veterans who were Native American, African-American, and other minority groups in his book Patriots of Color: ‘A Peculiar Beauty and Merit’.[15] A sampling of histories of Praying Indian soldiers is found below.
James Anthony was born in Natick and initially served for eight months in 1775 in the regiment of Col. Jonathan Ward and in the company of Capt. James Mellen. He later re-enlisted for three years from 1777 to 1780 in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment under Col. William Shepherd, serving in Capt. Reuben Slayton's company. The unit fought at Saratoga and was present at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777. Anthony was discharged 14 March 1780. Joseph Paugenit Jr. (Mashpee Wampanoag) was born in Framingham and was baptized in Natick in 1754. His father, Joseph Sr., fought during the French and Indian War. He served in the company of Capt. Thomas Drury under the command of Col. John Nixon, and fought at Bunker Hill. He later re-enlisted in Col. Thomas Nixon's fourth Regiment in New York and fought at the Battles of Harlem Heights and White Plains. After his second discharge, he re-enlisted a second time, once again under Col. Thomas Nixon. He fought at the Battle of Saratoga and was reported as deceased soon after, likely as the result of wounds sustained during the battle or from contracting smallpox.
A memorial dedicated to Praying Indian veterans of the Revolutionary War
Alexander Quapish (Wampanoag, 1741–1776), born in Wampanoag territory in Yarmouth, Massachusetts, enlisted in Dedham in 1775. He served as a member 13th Massachusetts Regiment of Col. Jonathan Brewer. He took ill in November 1775 and died in Needham in March 1776. Michael Bacon cared for him in his last days and conducted his burial. Quapish's remains were disinterred and donated to the Warren Anatomical Museum. Under NAGPRA, the Mashpee Wampanoag and Nipmuc Nation were able to return his remains to the Pond Street Burial Ground in Needham (now Natick).[23]
Samuel Comecho served in the Battle of Bunker Hill under the command of Capt. Benjamin Bullard in Col. Jonathan Brewer's regiment. Born in Natick, Comecho enlisted for eight month's service and his unit held the line at Bunker Hill between the redoubt and the rail fence. He re-enlisted on the first day of 1776 in Col. Asa Whitcomb's regiment and served in Capt. William Hudson Ballard's company in the Canadian theater. It was reported that he died on March 14, 1776. The cause of death was likely smallpox.
Legacy
The sacrifices made by Praying Indians and other minority groups during the Revolutionary War have never been properly celebrated.[opinion] It was not until the 20th century that these veterans were first recognized. The town of Natick installed a monument to Native American veterans of the Revolutionary War in 1900, which still stands today on Pond Street near Natick Center. However, it was not until Needham historian Robert D. Hall Jr. that their final resting places were properly honored. Hall and volunteers placed grave markers and American flags in a Needham cemetery to honor these veterans in 2003.[16]
Self-government
The Praying Indian communities were able to exercise self-government and to elect their own rulers (sachems) and officials, to some extent exhibited continuity with precontact social system and used their own language as the language of administration of which a wealth of legal and administrative documents has survived. However, their self-government was gradually curtailed in the 18th and 19th centuries, when their languages also became extinct. During that period, most of the original Praying Towns eventually declined because of epidemics and the communal land property of others passing out of Native control. The Indian-inhabited areas were eventually transformed into "Indian districts."[24]
Natick is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is near the center of the MetroWest region of Massachusetts, with a population of 37,006 at the 2020 census. 10 miles (16 km) west of Boston, Natick is part of the Greater Boston area. Massachusetts's center of population was in Natick at the censuses of 2000–2020, most recently in the vicinity of Hunters Lane.
John Eliot was a Puritan missionary to the American Indians who some called "the apostle to the Indians" and the founder of Roxbury Latin School in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1645. In 1660 he completed the enormous task of translating the Eliot Indian Bible into the Massachusett Indian language, producing more than two thousand completed copies.
King Philip's War was an armed conflict in 1675–1676 between a group of indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands and the English New England Colonies and their indigenous allies. The war is named for Metacomet, the Pokanoket chief and sachem of the Wampanoag who adopted the English name Philip because of the friendly relations between his father Massasoit and the Plymouth Colony. The war continued in the most northern reaches of New England until the signing of the Treaty of Casco Bay on April 12, 1678.
The Wampanoag, also rendered Wôpanâak, are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands currently based in southeastern Massachusetts and formerly parts of eastern Rhode Island. Their historical territory includes the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.
The Massachusett language is an Algonquian language of the Algic language family that was formerly spoken by several peoples of eastern coastal and southeastern Massachusetts. In its revived form, it is spoken in four communities of Wampanoag people. The language is also known as Natick or Wôpanâak (Wampanoag), and historically as Pokanoket, Indian or Nonantum.
The Massachusett were a Native American tribe from the region in and around present-day Greater Boston in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name comes from the Massachusett language term for "At the Great Hill," referring to the Blue Hills overlooking Boston Harbor from the south.
The Nipmuc or Nipmuck people are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who historically spoke an Eastern Algonquian language. Their historic territory Nippenet, "the freshwater pond place," is in central Massachusetts and nearby parts of Connecticut and Rhode Island.
John Sassamon, also known as Wussausmon, was a Massachusett man who lived in New England during the colonial era. He converted to Christianity and became a praying Indian, helping to serve as an interpreter to New England colonists. In January 1675, Sassamon was ambushed and assassinated. A mixed jury of colonists and Indian elders convicted and executed three Wampanoag men for his murder. These events helped spark the conflict known as King Philip's War, in which the New England Colonies defeated the Wampanoag and ended armed resistance by the Native Americans of southeastern New England.
Waban was a Native American of the Nipmuc group and was thought to be the first Native American convert to Christianity in Massachusetts.
Praying towns were settlements established by English colonial governments in New England from 1646 to 1675 in an effort to convert local Native Americans to Christianity.
The Webster/Dudley Band of Chaubunagungamaug Nipmuck Indians, also known as the Chaubunagungamaug, Chaubunagungamaug Nipmuck, Pegan or Dudley/Webster Indians, is a cultural heritage group that claims descent from the Nipmuc people. They are a state-recognized tribe by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Native American tribes in Massachusetts are the Native American tribes and their reservations that existed historically and those that still exist today in what is now the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A Narragansett term for this region is Ninnimissinuok.
Ponkapoag, also Punkapaug, Punkapoag, Ponkhapoag or Punkapog, is the name of a Native American "praying town" settled in the late 17th century western Blue Hills area of eastern Massachusetts by persons who had accepted Christianity. It was established in 1657, during the colonization of the Atlantic seaboard of the United States by settlers from Britain. This was the name given to the winter residence of the group of Massachusett who lived at the mouth of the Neponset River near Dorchester in the summer, in what colonists called Neponset Mill.
The Eliot Indian Bible was the first translation of the Christian Bible into an indigenous American language, as well as the first Bible published in British North America. It was prepared by English Puritan missionary John Eliot by translating the Geneva Bible into the Massachusett language. Printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the work first appeared in 1661 with only the New Testament. An edition including all 66 books of both the Old and New Testaments was printed in 1663.
The Massachusett dialects, as well as all the Southern New England Algonquian (SNEA) languages, could be dialects of a common SNEA language just as Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible languages that essentially exist in a dialect continuum and three national standards. With the exception of Massachusett, which was adopted as the lingua franca of Christian Indian proselytes and survives in hundreds of manuscripts written by native speakers as well as several extensive missionary works and translations, most of the other SNEA languages are only known from fragmentary evidence, such as place names. Quinnipiac (Quiripey) is only attested in a rough translation of the Lord's Prayer and a bilingual catechism by the English missionary Abraham Pierson in 1658. Coweset is only attested in a handful of lexical items that bear clear dialectal variation after thorough linguistic review of Roger Williams' A Key into the Language of America and place names, but most of the languages are only known from local place names and passing mention of the Native peoples in local historical documents.
Cutshamekin was a Native American leader, who was a sachem of the Massachusett tribe based along the Neponset River and Great Blue Hill in what is now Dorchester, Massachusetts and Milton, Massachusetts before becoming one of the first leaders of the praying Indian town of Natick, Massachusetts. He is the possible namesake of Jamaica Plain.
Daniel Takawambait was likely the first ordained Native American Christian pastor in North America, and served the church in the praying town of Natick, Massachusetts from 1683 to 1716. Takawambait also advocated for indigenous land rights in colonial Massachusetts, and authored at least one publication.
The Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag is a cultural heritage group that claims descendancy from the Massachusett people, an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands.
The Praying Indians of Natick were a community of Indigenous Christian converts, known as Praying Indians, in the town of Natick, Massachusetts, one of many Praying Towns. They were also known as Natick Indians.
Alexander Quapish, also known as Alexander Quabish, was a Wampanoag veteran of the American Revolution.
↑ Goddard, Ives and Kathleen J. Bragdon (eds.) (1989) Native Writings in Massachusett. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. P. 14.
↑ Gookin, Daniel (1836) [1677]. The Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians. Worcester, etc. hdl:2027/mdp.39015005075109. OCLC3976964. archaeologiaame02amer. But this shows the prudence and fidelity of the Christian Indians; yet notwithstanding all this service they were, with others of our Christian Indians, through the harsh dealings of some English, in a manner constrained, for want of shelter, protection, and encouragement, to fall off to the enemy at Hassanamesit, the story whereof follows in its place; and one of them, viz. Sampson, was slain in fight, by some scouts of our praying Indians, about Watchuset; and the other, Joseph, was taken prisoner in Plymouth Colony, and sold for a slave to some merchants at Boston, and sent to Jamaica, but upon the importunity of Mr. Elliott, which the master of the vessel related to him, was brought back again, but not released. His two children taken prisoners with him were redeemed by Mr. Elliot, and afterward his wife, their mother, taken captive, which woman was a sober Christian woman and is employed to teach school among the Indians at Concord, and her children are with her, but her husband held as before, a servant; though several that know the said Joseph and his former carriage, have interceded for his release, but cannot obtain it; some informing authority that he had been active against the English when he was with the enemy.
1 2 3 4 Quintal, George Jr. (2004), Patriots of Color – 'A Peculiar Beauty and Merit', National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. [ISBNmissing]
1 2 Schmidt, Ethan (2014). Native Americans in the American Revolution: How the War Divided, Devastated, and Transformed the Early American Indian World. Praeger. p.52. ISBN978-0313359316.
↑ Tortora, Daniel J. (2016), "Indian Patriots from Eastern Massachusetts: Six Perspectives," Journal of the American RevolutionAnnual Volume 2016, pp. 283–290.[ISBNmissing]
↑ Mandell, Daniel R. (2000). Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN0803282494.
↑ O'Brien, Jean M. (2003). Disposession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts 1650–1790. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN0803286198.
↑ Quintal, George Jr. (2004), Patriots of Color – 'A Peculiar Beauty and Merit', National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior pp. 39–41.[ISBNmissing]
↑ Goddard, Ives and Kathleen J. Bragdon (eds.) (1989) Native Writings in Massachusett. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. pp. 2–15.[ISBNmissing]
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