AN OPINION ON CHAPTER TWO OF LINCOLN MULLEN’S THE CHANCE OF SALVATION: A HISTORY OF CONVERSION IN AMERICA (original) (raw)
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Christianity is often portrayed as a negative influence on traditional indigenous community life. This was not always the case, particularly in New England, as a number of researchers have verified. Ongoing research into tribal histories in Connecticut west of the Connecticut River reinforces those findings. " Conversion " often resulted in free goods for tribal members, a white authoritative figure in close residency who could prevent white neighbors from stealing reservation resources or selling liquor to community members, and a school for learning English language, customs, and law. Most importantly, the processes and results of conversion could create a revitalization movement that promoted community cohesion and enhanced cultural identity. In this paper, I will present two case studies of the positive effects of Christianity on tribal peoples: the Schaghticokes in northwestern Connecticut, and the Wangunks in central Connecticut. Interestingly, the end result was two distinctive forms of Native American identity, tribal and supra-tribal.
Native Americans, Conversion, and Christian Practice in Colonial New England, 1640—1730
Harvard Theological Review, 2009
Fortunately, the two travelers arrived before sunset. Earlier in the day, on 5 May 1674, John Eliot and Daniel Gookin had set out from Boston for Wamesit, the northernmost of the fourteen Indian “praying towns” within the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the one most subjected to retaliatory attacks from raiding bands of Mohawks in the previous few years. Upon safe arrival, the Englishmen greeted their Pennacook friends and gathered as many as they could at the wigwam of Wannalancet, the head sachem of Wamesit, where Eliot, the aging missionary to the Indians, proceeded to talk about the meaning of the parable of the marriage of the king's son in Matthew 22:1—4. Wannalancet, according to Gookin, was a “sober and grave person, and of years, between fifty and sixty”; he had from the beginning been “loving and friendly to the English,” and in return they had tried to encourage him to embrace Christianity. Although the English missionaries would have desired him to readily accept the g...