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Boston in the 17th Century - Notes
BS U101 Apprentice Indentures…
1638 Desire x William Pierce…Negroes from Providence, Barbados
1640 Slaves arrived by ship – General Court immediately ordered them returned. A few years later the court reversed itself and set no limit to the number of slaves a Bostonian could own so long as he had means. 1641 Nehemiah Bruce, North End Shipyard Trial 160 tons Thomas Kaiser and James Smith – Sailed from Boston to Guinea…Two captives 1641: John Harrison of Shrewsbury, England opened Ropewalk in Boston 1642 Diving Bell to raise Mary Rose, which had blown up August 1641 and obstructed harbor for almost a year 1643 United Colonies of New England – Massachusetts got what it really wanted: The means to keep the feisty colonies on a leash. 1643 Two lovers hanged for adultery 1644 General Court “Act of Submission” ordered that “all Indians must worship God” – Baptists banished and in 1646, Presbyterians banished 1642-1649 Civil war in England — a more extensive maritime commerce developed in NE x rum, slaves and molasses BY Mid-17th century – all too clear that Mass Bay Company was not conducting itself in accordance with the basic assumptions of the English colonial system
Many Saints viewed the new world commonwealth as a temporary expedient. They intended the City on the Hill to manifest a viable plan for Calvinist society in England. Anticipated a day when their comrades across the sea would beckon them to implement the model on English soil.
1649 Anne Hibbens taken to court by a carpenter who she publicly accused of doing shoddy work – excommunicated for breaking God’s law calling for wives to be “subject to your husbands in all things” What happened to her? 1651 BS D 84 Baptists…The leader among the Baptists was Obadiah Holmes, who with two others Crandle and Clarke, were heavily fined for their theological heresies and disturbances. Holmes refused to pay his fine of 30 pounds and was flogged at the cart’s tail on Boston Common with 30 lashes from a three-corded whip in 1651. Holmes with his party went to Rehoboth, near Roger Williams, and here attempted to set up a Baptist Church but was resisted by MA and Plymouth. 1653- 1674 privateering among Dutch and Spaniards 1660 Restoration with Charles II – non-conformism -- aggressive colonial policy 1666 A gift of masts to the royal Navy (1676 Cod and cranberries to HM) SHIPBUILDING BIBL The Boston Sailor Shallops for fishing trade JOHN ELIOT Roger Williams: “I know it to have been easy for myself to have brought thousands of these natives, yea the whole community, to a far greater anti-Christian conversion than was ever heard of in America.” 1644 The General Court prompted to take action: “Necessary and wholesome laws for the reducing of them to the civility of life should be made and read to them once in a year by some able interpreter.” Calvin: “teachers sent abroad that they may reduce the world to order” 1644 Five sachems of the Massachusett tribe placed themselves, their subjects, lands and estates under the jurisdiction of MA. Later, the struggling Nipmuc and Pennacook followed suit but the Narraganset refused to yield. They declared they were the colonists equals and would submit only to the British monarch Extension of Puritan law into Indian villages had a profound effect. Bibl: Thomas Lechford critic of Puritans in Plain Dealing Rev John Eliot (1604-1690) “Lost tribes of Israel” Aaron Levi = Antonio de Montezinos came to Amsterdam in Sept 1644 and testified before rabbinate court that he had met Indians in Ecuador and they were Jews. Mannasseh used this fanciful tale as a way to persuade English king to re-admit the Jews banished in 1290 by King Edward I. Mannessah told the story to English Puritan John Devine, Chaplain to Mary, princess of Orange. Devine (or Dune) repeated it to Thomas Thorowgood, a supporter of Eliot. Genuinely felt sympathy. “Childlike sincerity of Eliot.” Thomas Shepherd. Born to Towcaster, Northamptonshire grocer in 1604. At 4 to grandparents to avoid a plague. Epidemic took father’s relatives and mother. Shepherd was neglected by wards. Returned to Towcaster and a new resentful stepmother. At age 10, his father died. The only survivor among three brothers took him in. Attend U of Cambridge in the 1620s, preaching of John Preston, esp. Romans XII/2 which enabled him to see spiritual meaning in life and travails. Abandonment and loss, learning and rebirth… “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” Harassed by Laud…attempted to sail for NE in 1634 – terrific storms drove back the ship. Sailed in August 1635, arrived October. His wife Margaret died. “Eliot came to match the Jesuit, yet even he and his foremost assistants fell short of the extreme devotedness of the Jesuit, in lonely, isolated labor and peril, as in the depths of the wilderness he identified himself in manner of life with the savages. Jesuits sought to interfere as slightly as possible with the native habits, the wild ways, freedom and impulses of the savages: Eliot aimed to establish communities of fixed settlement, entirely their own, with entirely changed habits of life.” Eliot says that an Indian taken in the Pequot war and who lived in Dorchester was the first native whom he used to teach him words, and to be his interpreter.” = Cockonoe, War captain Among the people at Neponset, whom he called Kitchmakins, Drunken Indians, he met with scorn and rejection. By-passed sachems and sought help from Waban (Waban = The Wind), the merchant, born at Concord = Muskataquid, who got status by marrying the daughter of a sachem and displaying skill at business. 1646 Oct 28, on a hill in Nonantum (= Rejoicing) (at some distance from the Charles River across from Watertown in what is now Newton Corner,) Eliot first preached to Chief Waban and some subjects in their native tongue. Ezekiel XXXVIII 9. Spoke for one and a quarter hours in faltering Algonquin – tobacco to adults/sweets to children + three more retreats. – Living at Nonantum on Charles between Watertown and Newton, Nipmuc and Massachusett Indians formed the core of Eliot’s earliest converts Tahattawani x Concord, father-in-law of Waban : “He desired to become more like the English and cast of those Indian wild and sinful courses they formerly lived in.” “Be not all the English in this land, a persecuted people from their native soil?” 1646: Conclusion and Orders at Concord – “They desire that (1-29)…lice, hair, profanity etc. fines…unmarried men lie with unmarried women, 20s; play at former games, 10s; if a woman shall not have her hair tied up but hang loose or cut as men’s hair = 2/6; naked breasts 2/6…Death for adultery, murder, sodomy…A penny a louse! Mocked by traditionalists, Waban and others sent their children to live with English families. Some cut their hair, sported English clothing and gave up the pungent bear grease used to ward off winter cold and summer grease – their kinsmen did revile them and call them rogues Cutshamekin village debate re tribute – tribute to a sachem was traditional form of payment for services as a peacemaker. “they would willingly do more if their sachem got well.” 1651 Cutshamekin as Natick’s Ruler of Hundreds became a kind of Puritan sachem Cutshamekin drinking binge at Samuel Gordon’s Rhode Island plantation created concern about the thoroughness of his heart…Rev John Cotton recommended that C “atone for his sin and integrate his remorse into the covenant itself”…Sept 24 began with the sachem’s confession. Eliot: social conservatism, ethnocentrism, scholarly deliberate temperament – had begun his career as a schoolmaster…scholarly bent, to learn Algonquian etc. Eliot “saddest spectacle of misery of mere men on earth” The lesson of the plagues and poxes was a mandate for acculturation. The Massachusetts were being punished by the hand of Jehovah. Eliot: There is no necessity of extraordinary gifts nor miraculous signs to convert heathens…for we see the spirit of God working mightily upon the hearts of these nations in an ordinary way – they being but a remnant, the Lord using to show mercy to the remnant, for there be but few that are left alive from the Plague and the Pox, which God sent into these parts, and if one or two can understand they usually talk of it as we do news, it flies suddenly far and neare.” 1646/47 was the critical smallpox year. 1646: “Seeing the English had been 27 years in this land why did they never teach the Algonquian to know God until now?” – Wabbakoxet 1648...the child’s burial : “So desperate were the remnants of the Massachusetts to end their suffering they sent a child’s soul journeying from them to the afterlife of a stranger’s God. The Christ of Eliot and Shepherd offered salvation for the tribe as well as the soul. They had chosen…They would adapt to the new world of Pox and Plague and Puritan” Stone and oak markers of English settlement 1648 several Nonantum residents began trade with the English “they must attain the higher understanding of Englishmen…There are two sorts of Englishmen, some bad and some naught, and live wickedly and loosely, and these kind of Englishmen were in a manner as ignorant of Jesus Christ as the Indians now are.” Eliot 1648: “these are the children of Shem” “errand in the wilderness” – to bring the light of spiritual grace to the “veriest Ruines of Mankind” language barrier claim? What about Brazil, Paraguay, the reductions etc “Indians in praying towns adopted so many English customs and mannerisms that they were almost incapable of identifying with heir own people. “The light appearing more and more toward the perfect day (Whitfield) 1651 Covenanting of Natick – But Eliot surrendered the hope that he could sway the society of saints to accept full praying Indian assimilation. Racism: English planters came to see in the Indians and the New World wilderness images of demonic forces. Indians accepted as idle, rebellious. Idolatrous, and loose in place and impulse, all contradictory to the rigid order the colonists imposed on themselves. The saint in turn was the model of an industrious, governed, sedentary “sad and sober” Christian. 1652, Oct 13: Confessions + formal covenanting ritual…Confessions (cut short) = touching expressions of sensitive men who were deeply distressed about their place in the world and the afterlife. ..half stated that they were making effort to accept Jehovah’s laws when some personal misfortune afflicted them. They had gone back to the Algonquian ways…Cut short because “a church among them this way, it could not be” Richard Mather: We heard them perform…with such grave and sober utterances, with such comely reverence in gesture, and their whole carriage, and with such plenty of tears trickling down the cheeks of some of them, as did argue to us that they spoke with much good affection, and holy fear of God, and it much affected our hearts” 1653 MA and CT intrigues… Dutch agents stirring up anti-English feeling among the Algonquians. 1654 Again, three days before ceremony…11 year old son of Totherswampe crisis – to stocks + 20 lashes. Boy whipped at school –Result was that rejected despite mastery of Calvinism. 1659 Third time before Roxbury elders x eight “hopeful Indians” 1680 Natick Church Ponampam: “I was young, about eight years old, when my father lived. I did play as other children, and my father did chide me for playing. I wondered at it, for he said we shall all die. I wondered and sat amazed for about half an hour, but I soon forgot it. Then the Pox came, and almost all our kindred died.” Despite the fact that hundreds of colonists also died in these epidemics, many Massachusett came to believe that the foreigners had special immunity “their old soldiers swept away by the plague” 1649-1660 Passing of first generation ‘paragons” among Puritans. Winthrop, Cotton, Dudley, Standish etc. “Their paternalistic design for bringing the savages to Christianity and civility was largely ignored by the next generation, more intent on material comfort than spiritual regeneration. Anthony (?) apprenticed at Roxbury where his master refused to teach him smithing lest Indians learn to make locks and guns. Language served as a badge of cultural integrity. “Stripped as bare as my skin” They saw themselves as the remnants of a people no longer feared, honorable or legitimate. Musquantum manit – “God is angry” Nipmuc “fresh water fishers” scattered villages on the Quniebaug, Blackstone, Quabaug and Nashua Rivers. A ring of praying villages around the Nipmuc, not just to help conversions but primarily to place a buffer between Boston and any trouble to the West. Eliot visited Natick once a fortnight, visiting in the alternate week the wigwam of Cutshamekin in Dorchester, in all weathers. To Natick, Eliot brought food prepared by his wife, as his English stomach would not bear the diet and culinary work and apparatus of the natives.” Natick 18 miles south of Boston, 2,000 acres later expanded to 6,000 acres. Met with resentment of local farmers from Dedham. In Christian towns, men agreed to tie back their hair, women to cover breasts, all agreed to stop killing lice with their teeth. In the Christian village of Nonantum, the Indian converts settled into the considerable business of becoming Puritans. Nonantum foundered because of resistance from settler neighbors. Calvinism: The offer to the savages was a gospel of Good News of joy and blessing. – Its first message to them was that they were all under the curse of the Englishman’s god and doomed to a fearful hell forever. The day breaking if not the sun rising of the Gospel with the Indians in New England General Court records enactments by which “portions of our wilderness territory, the whole of which had so recently been regarded by the savages as their unchallenged territory, were bounded off as henceforth to be their own for improvement. General Court tried to bolster Eliot’s struggle with the holy men by outlawing powwowing, both in practice and participation. 10 pounds fine for violation. “The worldling complained of him for injuring the trade in peltry. The powwow were jealous. The sachems deprived of tribute.” Many English regarded Praying Indians as more of a nuisance than those in a state of nature – as more hankered for the “loaves and fishes,” hypocrites, weaklings, shiftless and dependent paupers. In no single instance was an act proven against an Indian who had confidence of Eliot or Gookin. Though some did leave the towns… King Philip hearing of work across his borders, positively refused to entertain the missionaries, to listen to their teaching, or to allow his subjects to be approached by it. Philip consummate skill as a diplomat Matuonas – one of Praying Indians who joined Philip. His son had been accused of murdering an English settler. He was innocent but hanged and his head placed on a pole 1648 Funeral of child x Jackson description x Nonantum x Transformation 1649 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Land at Natick + Indian Bible + Indian college at Harvard + salary of Eliot and Gookin + guns Vessel wrecked at Cohasset: Eliot told his converts that Satan, in his spite had wrecked vessel, while God in his mercy saved some of the cargo. 1650: A Jesuit visits – Fr. Druilletles said first mass in Boston in a private room. SCENE: Meeting between these two at Eliot’s house. Ellis: “One loves to think of Elliot’s cottage thus graced. His Indian interpreter may have been crouching by the cheerful chimney and one or more Indian youth, whom Eliot always had near him, might have looked on in wonder as the cassocked priest and the Puritan discussed the difficulty of the Indian tongues, in which both of them attained great skill and accomplished their ministry as translators and preachers.” Mr. Eliot’s bad egg: “A malignant, drunken Indian, he stole, killed and skinned a young cow, which had the effrontery to pass off on President Dunster as a moose.” He also asked Eliot a trifling question: “Who made sack?” (sack = all strong drink.) He was snubbed by other Indians who called it a papoose question. 1653 Colonial militia stormed Natick confiscating weapons 1656 Court commissioned Major Daniel Gookin, a man of noble and loveable character, and Eliot’s most attached co-worker as the general magistrate of all the Indian towns. Indian Commissioner until 1687. Bibl: Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians of New England. MSS 1677 Archaeologica Americana II 423-464, 1836 (1660) Praying Indians embodied their own church. “The Half-Way Covenant” “The listening to the confessions and their interpretations was very tedious” Some of the English visitors whispered and went out. Several colonial Latin schools took Indian scholars. A dismal failure. Disease. Disheartened because their education did not bring them to a place in the Puritan world. Gospel Society gave 400 pounds for an Indian college at Harvard. Only 6 ever enrolled. One graduated and died of TB one year later. Another killed by Indians ay Nantucket shortly before graduation day. After 10 barren years, the Indian College ceased to exist. Building was demolished in the 1690s. 1660 Eliot finished translation of the New Testament. Gospel Society sent English printer and funds for 1500 copies. In 1661, New Testament printed; 1663 Old Testament. Eliot’s entire crusade was disabled by King Philip’s War. No group endured more than the novice Indians trying to practice their faith. 1664 A Royal Commission appointed by Charles 11 arrived in North-East headed by Colonel Richard Nicolls and comprised of Sir Robert Carr, Col. George Cartwright and Samuel Maverick. Josselyn (?): Eliot believed their turning to the Christian God was directly related to the advent of the millennium. (?) Fifth Monarchy = Christ’s kingdom, being successor to the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian and Greek and Roman monarchies. To live alongside sin in New England – to live alongside the Indian, whom the Puritans considered the corrupt natural man – aroused Puritan apprehensions even as he sought to determine the meaning and significance of the Red Man. Pre Eliot: Thomas Mayhew Jr. 3,000 Wampanoag at Martha’s Vineyard – 282 in 1652 in a Covenant Catholic and Orthodox Anglican – declaration of faith and/or use of sacraments Before 1640: Roger Williams was the only Protestant minister able to converse with the Indians in their own language, and he refused to proselytize them – against his conviction. He believed that only God could turn a soul from his idols, both of heart worship and conversation: Williams : “I was once with a native dying of a wound given him by some murderous English…who robbed him and ran him through with a rapier…They suffered death at Plymouth.” Rev. Robert Bailie (Presbyterian) charged that the NE Puritans “of all that ever crossed the American seas are noted as most neglectful of work of conversion.” Cantantowwit, the great southwest god. Eliot re critics: Know not the vast distance of natives from common civility, almost humanity itself…”such as are so extremely degenerate must be brought to some civility before religion can prosper, or the word take place.” Eliot’s fight against the powwow at Concord in November 1646 – schedule of fines Eliot: “they have a seep sense of their own darkness and ignorance, and a reverend esteem of the light and goodness of the English” BSRH: William Bigelow, History of the Town of Natick, 1830
BIBL: Behind the Frontier: Indians in 18th century Eastern Mass Daniel R Mandell, U Nebraska Press 1996 Pequot www.masantucket.com 860-396-6800 BSRH x Constance Post NE Quarterly September 1993: on Mather’s history of John Eliot…Eliot arrived 1631, did not begin proselytizing among Indians until 1646: decision promoted not by heavenly interventions but by several earthly developments: Samuel Gorton had attacked the MB Co in parliament; Thomas Lechford had visited New England and announced that the Puritans had no excuse for not reaching Indians other than their desire to establish a secure business. The English Presbyterian Robert Baylie said that the New England Puritans “of all that ever crossed the American Seas …a re noted as most neglectful of the work of Conversion.” Eliot’s achievements with the Algonquins, in Mather’s assessment, justify New England’s errand into the wilderness as part of a critical global enterprise, the success of which may issue in the eschaton, or last days. According to Reformation doctrine, the millennium would arrive only after members from every tribe and nation on earth were converted. Indian conversions were therefore highly prized. Moreover, Eliot’s successes also fulfill the Puritan mission to function as a “city sett upon a hill.” Mather lavishes praise on Eliot for translating the Bible…By placing so much emphasis on the Bible, Eliot was working with a sacred tradition established during the Reformation. Like Luther, who proclaimed sola scriptura, Eliot could not live without his Bible, Mather notes approvingly…Behold, ye Americans, the greatest honor that ever you were partakers of! This Bible was printed here at our Cambridge; and it is the only Bible that ever was printed in all America, from the very foundation of the world.” …Mather ends the eighth note by advancing Eliot as an exemplary figure because he refused to allow Indians to incorporate their customs into Puritan worship so that the new religion would prove more palatable. The Catholics, Mather snorts, had not shunned such temporizing, and thus had had greater success in gaining converts. Eliot, says Mather, brought his Indians to a plain, pure Scripture worship. HE would not gratify them with a Samaritan sort of blended, mixed worship.” In the thirty years before King Phillip’s War in 1675, nearly one fourth of the Indians of southeastern New England pledged themselves to Christianity, the first large scale conversion of Native Americans effected by English settlers in North America. Magnalia Christi: vol 11 p 576 “Phillip attempted to fight out of the swamp at which instant an Indian presently shot him through his venomous and murderous heart; and in that very place where he first contrived and commenced his mischief (Taunton) this Agag was now cut into quarters which was then hanged up, while his head was carried in triumph to Plymouth where it arrived on the very day that the church there was keeping a solemn thanksgiving to God. God sent them in the head of a Leviathan for a Thanksgiving Feast.” On death of Eliot: “If the dust of dead saints could give us any protection, we are not without it; here is a spot of American soil that will afford a rich crop of it at the resurrection of the just. Poor New England has been as Glastonbury of old was called “a burying place of saints” BIBL: Life of Eliot, Francis Converse BSRH The colony seal derives from the propaganda of Richard Hakluyt. Not a penny was ever raised in New England for converting the Indians.” In general, most historians dismiss the Eliot Indian Bible as unintelligible, even to the Indians, or simply as a blatant tool for cultural destruction. This may be just another way of saying that the Indians could not, or did not “really” want to read it; but the facts refute such condescension. Another edition was called for in only twenty-four years; the dialect of the Indians on Nope gradually conformed to Massachusett; and the Mahpee Indians were still clinging to copies in the 19th century. The copies that survive are nearly all white men’s – who certainly found them difficult to read – and they have generalized from this experience. A new census of copies is badly needed, on which we can build a better understanding of the place of the Bible in Indian society, and the New England economy. If nothing else, the Indian Bible was a seventeenth century equivalent of a neighborhood General Motors plant. BSRH. Harvard Library Bulletin VIII 1954 p 272. Note re Letter of John “Eliot” to Sir Simonds D’Ewes, first reference to Indians (Does he mean Winthrop)…:We are at good peace with the natives…and they do gladly entertain us and give us possession, for we are as walls to them, from their bloody enemies. Also they have many more comforts by us. I trust in God’s time, they shall learn Christ.” “Commissioners of the United Colonies remained unconvinced of Eliot’s competence. They felt that the Indian translations would be incomprehensible. REQUESTED THAT ELIOT Use Thomas Stanton with the translations. Stanton was a rough frontiersman with a better knowledge of the language than Eliot but who held the Indians in contempt. (What happened to him???) “Since the death of Mr. Eliot, there has been a signal blast of Heaven on the Indian work, very many of the most pious Indians being dead also; and others of equal worth not appearing to succeed them.” Increase Mather to the Company in 1697 BSRH: Eliot lived in a two story wooden house with a gambrel roof on a 2 ½ acre estate. His land stretched back in a narrow strip (facing Washington Street where the present Bank of Boston in Roxbury is, stretched back to Winslow Street including what is today Dudley Station and the Orchard Park Housing Dev.) Eliot planted apple trees at the back of his lot. He also owned a 30 acre pasture. There were few Indians living in Roxbury. A few would camp at Tommy’s Rock (at Circuit and Regent Sts) in the summer and would be seen trading their furs and venison, bear and turkey meat. Roxbury was located on the only land route to Boston. John Eliot’s home faced the road to Boston and he no doubt saw the long lines of Pequot prisoners being moved to the slave ships. The Indian slaves of Roxbury and Dorchester also became a familiar sight on the streets. With the subjugation of the Indians, the General Court could now turn to official Indian policy. In 1645 they passed a ruling that the elders of the various churches propose means by which the Indians could be taught the knowledge of God. On October 4 1646, the General Court pass ed legislated which forbade all persons – English or Indian to deny or ridicule the Christian God. The punishment was death, The Court also outlawed the powwows spiritual rituals. John Eliot took up the challenge of the General Court…He began preaching in October 1646 to a tribal clan of the Massachusett living on a hell overlooking Chandler’s Pond on the Newton-Brighton boundary. Roxbury was an important community in Puritan America. It was located at the crossroads of all land travel from the capital. Travel to Plymouth, Cambridge and Providence began on the neck which connected Boston to the mainland and at Roxbury – the present Dudley Square – the roads split. Dudley Street to Plymouth, Center Street to Providence and Roxbury Street to Cambridge (modern names of the ancient roads.) Eliot was a devoted Puritan. Its power and ideology he never questioned or altered even when his Christian Indians were herded into camps or sold as slaves during King Philip’s War. He was not a fanatic like his colleague, friend and neighbor, Master Weld. Eliot saw his life work as a teacher. BIBL: Jewes in America or Probabilities that the Americans are Jews 1650 Thomas Thorowgood. Eliot: ‘There may be at least a remnant of the generation of Jacob in America (some of the Ten Tribes dispersions) and that those sometimes poor now precious Indians may be as the first fruits of the glorious harvest of Israel’s redemption…so shall Jacob’s promise extend to the multitude of nations and this is a great ground of Faith for the conversion of the Eastern Indians. These Indians may be the Ten Tribes. And therefore to hope that the work of Christ among them may be as preparatory to his own appearing.) Richard Callicot, fur trader, granted Unquety (Milton) in 1636 by Cutshamekin…adjoining land Callicot owned on that side of the Neponset… Callicot owned several Indian slaves captured during the Pequot War. One of the slaves could read and write English. Callicott released the Indian into Elliot’s service as houseman, interpreter and teacher. It is likely that trader Callicot made his bondsman a gift…At the age of 42 Eliot became the only Englishman in Puritan America to begin the study of the Massachusett dialect. In September 1646, Eliot called on Cutshamekin at his village on the Neponset at the head of navigation, where the fresh and salt water mixed. Most of the village located on Unquety. They hunted in these woods and raised corn on the Massachusett Fields on the south side of the Neponset on a hill near Squantum. This hill was the seat of Cutshamekin’s father Chickataubut. Kitchmakins was suspicious, sensed a threat to his authority and discouraged Eliot from teaching at Neponset. Eliot was led by his interpreter to another camp on hill in Newton with a sweeping view of the meadowland above Chandler’s Pond. On this high ground Eliot assembled on Oct 28, 1646 in the wigwam of the minor sachem, Waban. = Magnolia Street, off Kendrick Street, called Nonantum Hill. In 1879 stone terrace built as memorial to Eliot – faces over the fairways of the Chestnut Hill Country Club.) Eliot successfully isolated the powwows through education of the Indians which rid them of some of their suspicious beliefs, and by simply caring for the sick, particularly their children. In this Eliot had the skilful abilities of his wife Anne, who had been trained as a nurse. Many a night and day her house on Washington Street witnessed her healing hands on the fevered body of an infant or the shaking limbs of an elderly woman. Once a fortnight for years Eliot would ride his horse along the old Indian trail that once went from Seaver Street opposite Humboldt Ave, southwest through Franklin Park to the falls of the Neponset to talk with his friend Cutshamekin…The next week he would ride through wood, hill, swamp and stream to Nonantum and then to Natick, after that was established. In 1655 Eliot petitioned Dorchester to set aside land for a second Christian town = 6000 acres granted included the northwest and about one quarter of the southwest shores on Pankapoag (Sweet Water) Pond and it extended south to present Randolph Street. A large cedar swamp around the pond. Indians harvested cedars and cut them into shingles and clapboards sold in Boston. It is important to realize that Eliot was treating the Indians as equals. The same teaching methods were given to the sons and daughters of Englishmen in Roxbury. At Dedham the Indians lived in the vicinity of the Saw Mill Brook and the Charles River in the area of Brook Farm. Legend has it that Eliot preached to this small band from a huge jumble of puddingstone erratic boulders which became known as Pulpit Rock. Today nestled between two Jewish cemeteries on Baker Street in West Roxbury. “A fitting tribute to Eliot’s belief that he had located the lost tribes of Israel.” John Eliot’s work was never very popular in Boston, Roxbury or throughout the Puritan state, The oligarchy were convinced that the Indian was simply degenerate man created by Satan. The yeoman alternately feared the Indian and wanted him out of the way so their lands could be farmed and exploited. Eliot’s mission was more tolerated than anything else as a means of controlling the Indians. The mission was never supported by the State. July 27, 1649 Parliament passed an Act for the Promoting and Propagating of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England.” It authorized a corporation = The Society “Had it not been for Eliot’s popularity in England and for the steadfast generosity of The Society the New England divines would have forced Eliot to stop for lack of resources. BIBL: Gookin, Daniel – Historical Collections of the Indians in New England In 1651 like Moses of old, Eliot led 1,100 of his Indians from Natick and Dedham to spot on high ground above a sharp curve of the Charles in the place that is today South Natick…well watered and far removed from any English settlement…Eliot called he town Natick, meaning Place of Hills…settlement would occupy both sides of the Charles. The highest ground on the west was reserved for a meeting house. It was circular, 50 feet long an 25 wide ? and surrounded by palisades. The third Indian town was Hassanamesitt, unique in that it was an existing Nipmuc town well away from English settlement and left along by the English….Perhaps the most famous Indian of H was James the Printer. Born in 1640, he was apprenticed as a printer’s devil in Cambridge in 1659. He printed every edition of Eliot’s bible and other Indian language books prepared by the missionary. John Eliot – alone among his colleagues in he community of saints and the magistrates of the GC – recognized the ultimate question of Indian conversions: What would be expected of them after they were Christians. By 1649 Eliot had worked out his plan for Christianizing the Indians. When the GC approved the Natick land grand, the magistrates saw it as a segregated reserve for Indians. For John Eliot, Natick was to be a Church State, As all Puritans believed the Church served as the unifying social and political organization. It impressed a unit and a bond on the earliest immigrants to Boston and Roxbury in an uncharted and frightening land. Eliot offered precisely the same harbor to the Indians. For the Indians, a new sense of community was formed. When this was legitimized and made real with the creation of Natick, Ponkapoag, Hassamanesett and other towns, the Indians eagerly accepted the idea that they would be governed by a system prescribed by God in his Holy Book. This same God to whom they could speak directly had formed their government – not the powwows, the Sachems, and not – they believed – the English. It took 14 years to establish the First Indian Church. This signified profound distrust and racist fear of the Indians as well as a deep seated lack of respect and confidence in Eliot and his mission. It took eleven years to establish the second and last Indian church at Hassamanesett on September 23, 1671. In 25 years, Eliot was able to build only two Indian churches from fourteen Indian towns. Eliot began work on translation of the bible about 1649. Two Indians participated from start to finish in this formidable task: The method was to spell out the words phonetically as they were spoken, write them down and read them back as written. With his knowledge and understanding of linguistics, Eliot was able to group the sounds into phonetic arrangement of letter. “I diligently marked the difference of their grammar from ours. When I found the way of them, I would pursue a word, a noun, a verb, through all variations I could think of. And this I came of it. We must not sit still and look for miracles. Up, and be doing and the Lord will be with thee.” + James the Printer, a 19-year-old Nipmuc from Hassamanesett was apprenticed at Cambridge. Most of the Bibles printed in 1663 and given to the Praying Indians in their towns were destroyed during King Phillip’s War. The Bible was reprinted in 1685. In many ways, King Phillip’s War was a civil war: the Indians often had to choose sides. Nesutan, Eliot’s asst and a teacher at Natick for a quarter of a century was killed fighting in the English Army. The heads and scalps of recently killed Indians decorated poles around the Old State House. Deer Island: Eliot letter to Robert Boyle – “the work of Christ is dead but not buried.”…There be 350 souls put upon a bleak, bare island where they suffer hunger, and cold, there is neither food nor competent fuel to be had and they are bare in clothing. I cannot without difficulty, hardship or peril for to them and provide for them.” He went on t repeat that some Englishmen shot and killed one child and wounded four adults. The remainder of the clan fled to the woods, where they remained half starved. Of the fourteen Indian towns established by Eliot, all had been destroyed…. Eliot pleaded against selling them into slavery: “to sell soul for money seemeth to me a dangerous merchandise. A fugitive servant from his pagan master might not be delivered to his master but be kept in Israel for the good of his soul. Enlarge the place in thy tent. To sell them away fro slaves is to hinder the enlargement of his kingdom to the eternal ruin of their souls and contrary to the mind pf Christ.” He appealed to Robert Boyle to help locate a shipload of Indians deposited in the slave market of Tangier, when no (other) port in the West Indies would take them. In May 1678 only 50 survivors returned to Natick, which was in blackened ruins. The English had ripped up the fences, planted rye in the Indians’ cornfields, and dug up and removed the apple trees. Most of the Bibles had been destroyed. Hassanamesett took years to reestablish; only five families lived their by 1698 including James the Printer. Eliot’s theology as he taught the Indians was one he believed in himself. That his God was a God of love and humanity, and his faith in that all-powerful, forgiving and merciful God was unshakeable. John Eliot began again. John Fiske, 1898: “The Puritan who conned his Bible so earnestly, had taken his hint from the wars of the Jews, and swept his New English Canaan with a broom that was pitiless and searching. Henceforth, the red man figures no more in the history of New England. In his last two years of his life when he could not longer travel to Indian towns, his mind turned to Negro servants for whom he saw little concern… Eliot died on May 20, 1690…After his death Natick seem to have withered away. The Indians returned to their original homes. A generation later when a minister was sent to take over the church, he found the building in ruins and not a single Christian Indian living in the community. Was Eliot’s life a waste and a failure as the rev James de Normandie, Eliot’s successor at the First Church at Roxbury wrote in July 1912: Not a person alive can read the Indian Bible; the Indians have vanished; he himself saw them sold into slavery, banished and murdered by a fearful, racist society of English planters. One Indian word coined by Eliot is part of American political history. Eliot used the word mugwump to mean a great chief such as Joshua or Jacob. During the raucous presidential election of 1884 Independent republicans who supported Grover Cleveland over James G. Blaine were called Mugwumps. John Eliot stands virtually alone as the truest Puritan. Only Winthrop shares that robe of distinction. The two men lived and built on the main criterion for success in Puritanism – not wealth and materialism’ not that which is America today. The criterion of Puritan success was the creation of a genuinely ethical community. Eliot’s work among the Indians was central to his life. He was not a missionary. He was sent by God on a mission. His mission as he conceived it from the beginning of 1646 was the adaptation of the covenant to include the Indians….Eliot had faith that the Eastern Indians were under an ancient covenant and that his mission was to renew it and bring the Indian into the visible church. The very life of Puritan society. This was beyond the wildest dreams of the Puritan oligarchy who governed during Eliot’s long life. They never truly comprehended it. None of Eliot’s biographers have either. Note: “John Eliot, a master of the begging letter. Before 1649, he solicited money directly and it was sent to him. Afterwards when the society was formed, he saw no reason to stop his direct solicitations. Resulted in a number of private collections that circumvented and irritated the society. BIBL: Collections of the Mass Historical Society Third Series, Vol IV: Tracts relating to attempts to convert to Christianity the Indians of New England. ****** Chickataubut, sachem of Neponset, d 1633 smallpox 1646, Monequasson, an early convert: “Afterwards I considered, I was a poor sinner, I have nothing, nor Childe, nor wife” He lost family in 1646 epidemics Massachusett = Green Hill of the present Blue Hills “Modern civilization comprised of gunpowder, the printing press and Protestantism” *** 1650 Cromwell crushed revolt in Ireland land divided between Cromwell’s Army and English adventurers Catholic proprietors driven across the Shannon. 34,000 Irish soldiers went to France, Spain, Austria and Venice …their wives and children hunted down and sent into tropic slavery…transported to West Indies and the Colonies…20,000, maybe as many as 100,000 The Mancatchers Of Cromwell: “nothing similar in the history of Europe…except the conquests affected by the northern barbarian in the Dark Ages. 17th century: 600 Irish in New England minimum says O’Brien, with offspring as many as 2500 e.g. Dr. McCarthy, surgeon to the forces under Daniel Henchman in 1675 = Mr. Mackarty, servant to Capt. Henchman. 1654…many Irish prior to this year in which the General Court L50 penalty on every Irish entering the colony “on account of their hostility to the English nation” Daniel Gookin: an Anglo-Irishman. To Virginia in a ship from Cork in 1621, with a multitude of people and cattle. – Rumor that Gookin was Catholic Irish Donation = King Phillips War Charity raised in Dublin, as relief for the starving colony. 171 years later Boston reciprocated with the Jamestown in 1847 Ballad of Kathleen, daughter of the Lord of Galway…. Stolen and sold to a captain at sea in Limerick who sold her into captivity. Her father promised her hand in marriage to whosoever rescued her. A handsome youth sailed to Boston, where he found her employed as a menial in a Mass home of an English planter. Ship Goodfellow of Boston carried 400 Irish children to Boston and Virginia BIBL: New England Merchants of the Seventeenth Century – Bernard Bailyn 1955 Sir Ferdinando Gorges who had dreamed of a feudal Nova Britannia complete with gentry and bourgeoisie and divided into counties, baronies and hundreds… In the years that followed it seemed that New England would become another Newfoundland, frequented by the crews of fishing vessels but unsettled and undeveloped. The venturers who, with the Pilgrims and a few fishermen made the first substantial profits from the resources of NE, were almost to a man outcasts from the respectable world of the English middle class. 65000 Englishmen to America between 1630-1640…20,000 to NE The leaders made the crossing to America themselves and as settlers assumed control of the new society. The first magistrates of the Bay Company were men whose life experiences were those of an intensely religious minority within the lesser English gentry. Hammered to a fine edge by controversy and steeled in the fires of persecution, the piety of these Puritan leaders was keen and effective. Their lives were dedicated to the search for righteousness, for the knowledge of which they drew on a body of thought worthy of their inspiration. In Calvinism they found doctrines that could be applied to every aspect of life. It is only in the light of these tenets that the lives of the Puritan merchants can be understood. The ethical keystone of the great edifice of Calvinism was that all men were totally responsible for their behavior. The heart of the question, as a sixteenth century writer put it, is not the quantity of sin but the fact that God’s majesty is offended at all….”be the thing never so little, yet the breach of his Commandment deserves death,” Those you have called to office, Winthrop told a bumptious General Court, have our authority from God, in way of an ordinance, such as hath the image of God eminently stamped upon it, the contempt and violation whereof hath been vindicated with examples of divine vengeance.” ….Of all private occupations trade was morally the most dangerous. The soul of the merchant was constantly exposed to sin by virtue of his control of goods necessary to other people. “ no babes or windyheaded men” Meanwhile, the Puritans moved swiftly in exploiting the peltry trade. Undertakes of the MA Bay Co granted 50 percent of the fur trade, but did not develop monopoly. Only two of the five undertakes who came to New England were there after the first year – Winthrop and Dudley – and they did not devote themselves of fur trading. Development of fur trade fell to a number of independent settlers whose affairs were entirely free from the control of English merchants. 1632-33 622 pounds of beaver fur…insignificant to 10,000 pounds x Dutch annually or the 3,738 carried off by the Pilgrims in 1634. In 1633-34, a veritable gold rush along the Connecticut River in search for furs – Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield By 1640, the Massachusetts fir traders had helped to spread the fringe of settlement from the coast west to the Connecticut, south along Long island Sound, and north to the Merrimac River. Their belief that the rivers flowed east from a central lake district which they were well on the way to controlling. It was their moment of highest optimism. In idle times as they waited at the edge of the forest for Indian trappers to bring in their catch or wiled away long evening hours in drafty, half-dark cabins, they might have dreamed of life as colonial merchant princes of conjured up visions of a triumphant return to homes they had left in England. God’s ways were mysterious, but was it too much to hope that He would keep the wealth of the continent from falling to Romish Frenchmen and the grasping Dutch while His children starved in the midst of plenty? MA set prices for skins and taxed the income from them. Its implied monopoly was made effective in 1636 when it authorized the Standing Council to farm out the fur trade “to such persons as they shall think meete, for a terme of three years” at yearly rent. Need for capital in amounts far above capacity of most settlers. In consequence, fur merchants were not necessarily of the merchant class but of the gentry or had been prosperous yeomen in England. The fur merchants were free to pursue their gain as they could… Other colonists were beginning to deal in commodities vital to the colonists needs. Unlike the fur merchants they were obliged to seek their profit in the white hot glare of public scrutiny. 1638 First Puritan import merchants established themselves…at a time GC appointed a large committee of notable citizens to study the economic difficulties. Single requirement for one hoping to enter import trade: he must be able to gain control of a stock of commodities. Blood relationships = first reliance. Most of the English exporters lived within a stone’s throw of the main artery of the medieval city: Cheapside, Cornhill and Leadenhall Streets, Transplanted tradesmen in 1638 formed the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. No less than half of the twenty four original members were merchants. Within two years the company included almost every merchant in the bay. Though towns could choose merchant deputies to the MGC they could not find support in that body to elect them to the dominating council of magistrates, or governor’s assistants, as they were still called. Of 22 magistrates between 1630 and 1640, only Coddington and Vassal were magistrates, the latter served for a single term in 1630 and Coddington left MA after the disputes of 1637 Conflict between the men who had risen through the struggles of city life and the leaders of the Puritan commonwealth was implicit from the start. The Hutchinson controversy uprooted some of the most flourishing merchants of Boston and prepared the soil of Rhode Island for the growth of a commercial community. Robert Keayne’s fine and admonition for selling at too great a profit. 1642 –1649, civil war and political upheaval in England = growth in pop, industry and commerce in New England….Hutchinson talks of this as the golden age of NE. 1644 in search of Great Lakes fur source….a free company of adventurers incorporated = Valentine Hill etc Plan to send a pinnace up the Delaware to find lakes. Failed. As also attempt to go via land to the hideous swamp of the Iroquois. Pynchon’s success at Springfield etc. to 1654 when the peak of the trade was passed. 1648 Saugus iron works a ton of iron a day from bog iron deposits. 1656..shortage of cloth wool spinning GC ordered that all idle hands, especially women, girls and boys spin threads to their skill and ability and that the selectmen of every town assess each family as one or more spinners and that everyone designated a spinner spin for thirty weeks every year, three pounds a week of linen, cotton or woolen…under the penalties of 12 pence per pound for every pound short. Overseas trade alone could furnish the settlers with the means for maintaining reasonably comfortable lives. The development of commerce was left to the transplanted London tradesmen…Within 20 years, after numerous setbacks and disappointments, this became the dominant form of commerce and remained so for the next 150 years. Fisheries…Hugh Peter, that ambitious worldly cleric whose fascination with thins of Caesar was to cost him his head made a serious attempt to start a native fishery… Londoners wanted to get into the fish shipping trade from NE to Europe and the Wine Islands. By the Restoration, the NE not only in complete control of their own fishery but also had a fleet of locally owned and operated ships plying steadily between their ports and the southeastern Atlantic markets. That stubbornly independent Anglican Maverick initiated the triangular trade NE, Bristol and Malaga Traffic in land x merchants like Hill and Gibbons local and far flung….Gibbons and other merchants with dubious enthusiasm for Puritanism. 1646 Remonstrance and Petition against ultra Orthodoxy – Child etc Failed Pynchon’s “The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption” – a dialogue between a tradesman and a minister. BIBL: John Eliot, Apostle to the Indians – Ola Elizabeth Winslow “wearing a leathern coat and breeches and standing, Bible in hand, in a forest clearing…before him, squatted on the ground, would be a huddle of blanketed Indians..” he believed that civilization must go along with the religious services he offered. Arrived in Boston on the Lyon at age 27 – November 2, 1631 – Margaret Winthrop was aboard…with five of their children. Lyon commanded by Pierce = same ship that took Pequot captives to Barbados. After arrival, appointed substitute minister for Wilson, who was in England. When Wilson returned, Boston people wanted him to stay on as Minister but the first settlers from Nazeing arrived and settled at Roxbury, two miles away. First church on Meeting House Hill. It was twenty by thirty foot built of squred logs neatly fitted together. The roof was thatched, the walls unplastered. Formally dismissed from Boston on November 5, 1632, he was first teacher and later pastro of Roxbury, a post he wold hold for the rest of his life. (Thomas Welde was first pastor.) “she died in childbed and left a godly savor behind her” Roxbury Fire 1645 Eliot’s faith in education was absolute, and his never-ending efforts to found still one more school offfer one of the most illunminating clues to the understanding of his spirit. Whenever he preached to a new group of Indians, the next time he came he founded a school for them and their children. Re Eliot and Hutchinson: “John Cotton was probably the most uncomfortable member of the gathering, for Anne’s praise of him so lavishly given had made him suspect by his brother ministers, who might easily have been jealous of him as well. He was a more impressive poreacher than any of them and and well deserved the popularity his sermons had won for him. He was also more subtle in argument than most of his fellows. . . He had a genius for compromise and a habit of hedging when danger came too close….” Bay Psalm Book published in 1640 Asked years later what sparked his own missionary impulse toward the Indians, he replied, first the colony seal, (Come over and help us) which he called the public engagement, and privately, his own”pity for the poor Indian.” His pity was for the savage in his spiritual darkness, pity for his lost soul, capable of salvation, as he fervently believed. He did not see him as conceived of the dregs of humanity.” This disapraging phrase came early and may be found in scores of sermons and other writings of the clergy. To Eliot the Indian was a human being, created in God’s image, but “lost”. He must be found and it must be the Christian white man who gave him this chance. His first Indian instructor was a”pregnant-witted young Indian” who had been captured during the Pequot War while on a visit to Massachusetts. He was Cockenoe of Long Island, who was working as a houseboy in the home of Richard Collicot of Dorchester, a sergeant in the New England Army, and very probably the captor of this Indian boy. In his service, Cockenoe learned to speak English fluently, but he did not know how to write. “We must not still, and look for miracles. Up and be doing, and he Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through Faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.” Wigwam of Waban and Nonantum – Oct 28, 1646 – first sermon Shepherd: “four of us, having sought God, went unto the Indians inhabiting our bounds with desire to make known the things ofnrhwie peace to them.” Daniuel Gookin and John Wilson /or Elder Heath of Boston. The sermon text was Ezekiel 37:9, the story of the dry bones. After the story of Ezekiel, he preached for a hour and a quarter on the God of the white man….Before the assembly broke up, he produced apples and sweetmeats for the children, tobaco for the men, and other small surprises he had for them. He also accepted the invitation to come again and named a day a fortnight hence. Perhaps the hardest question ever put to him was asked more thn once: “Why has no white man ever told us this before? Many years ago white men came. Why did you wait to tell us?” There being no answer, John Eliot said simply, “I am sorry.” How do I get to heaven?” a firghtened Indian asked in the question period at ythe end of a sermond I which he had heard of heaven and hell for the first time. “Pray; read the Bible,” Eliot ansered. Not once only, but perhaps a hundred times, after a hundred sermons, this question or perhaps one very much like it would come. “Pray; read the Bible,” would always be the answer. Very soon after his third meeting, more Indians came to Roxbury…Wampas wished to offer up his children aged nine, eight, five and four to be educated. If they stayed in the wigwam, he said they would grow up rude and wicked; he wished them to learn better by livingn with the English. Two young Indians who came with Wampas volunteered to serce the English and thereby learn the English religion. Two elder of the church granted their request and took them into their homes, and Wampas was promised education for his children as soon as arrangements could be made. Meanwhile Waban, together with other leaders, had drawn up a code of ten laws for their better governance…wife beating, hair length etc. To tell the mother country….New England First Fruits 1643 Three months later: The Clear Sun-Shine of the Gospel Breaking Forth . . . “The finger of God is here,” Eliot. 1647/8 first bill sbmitted to Parliament for support of Eliot’s work…Thrown out in December. A second bill in 1April 1649 made speedier progress. A third pamphlet…The Glorious Progress of the Gospel among the Indians Second bill finally read on July 27, 1649 and finally printed… “An Act for the promoting and proopagating of the gospel of Jesus Christ in New England.”… As a beginning, parliament authorized a collection from house to house in every parish in England and Wales to further the work that Eliot had begun. First year a surprising £12,000. By 1660, £16,000 was being collected. Corporation later known by the shorter name of the New England Company financed missionary work among the Indians for 120 years. First fourteen assistants were wealthy merchants of London… Widespread local scepticism to settlers in nearby towns they were often unruly, often troublesome, and always in the way. Eliot was a decidated man and had the dedicated man’s blindness. His zeal was untempered by the layman’s good sense. HE did not see what the layman saw. He had the zealot’s unawareness. Otherwise, very probably, no generation except his own, and sparingly, would have heard of Eliot. New town of Natick on 6.000 acres that included the present Natick, as well as Wellesley, Sherborne and Needham. Territory belonged to the people of Dedham who gave it to the General Court in exchange for the land comprising Deerfield. By Indian inheritance it belonged to the Indian family of John Speene, who agreed to relinquish their rights in favor of the group. 1650 Wigwams raised…First public building was a small English dwelling house for storing of furs, clothing and provisions, with a small room for John Eliot when he was staying as he sometimes did on his biweekly journeys. After the swelling house came the fort, the meetinghouse and footbroidge connecting two parts of the town divided by the river. The footbridge spanned an eighty foot river bed was arched to the middle nine feet high and had stone abutments on either bank. This bridge became the special pride of Natick residents. Aug 1651 Governance went back to Jewish precedent…Jethro x one for every ten who would judge small matters; then fifties and hundreds. The culmination of five years’ work with them… “And now our next work is to prepare them for Church-estate, to which end I do intsruct them,” Eliot concluded, on September 24. Three men who got Totherswampe’s son drunk—stocks and 30 lashes…Then Totherswampe condemned his son…stocks and whipped in school. The school was taught by a young Indian he had taken into his house Monequassum… On preaching days, the whole congregation appeared in english clothes. The men had cut their hair. The children were no longer half-naked. “You can hardly tell them from the English,” John Eliot had remarked pridefully. In his view Christianization meant not only becomig civilized, but civilized according to English ways, English houses divided into rooms, English clothing, English customs and someday English speech. Under his guidance, The Idniasn were willingly and quickly giving up their triabl identity and trying to substitute everything English for what corresponded to it in their own tribal culture. Bible translation took fourteen years. 1663. Through the long process of translating these 1180 pages, Eliot had little encouragement from his own countrymen in New England…Some doubted…Hugh Peter, minister at Salem, did great damage to the cause by calling the whole missionary scheme a hoax and alleged Indian conversions a mere cheat….He never lost faith: “The Bible is the Word of life. They must have it.” Church….first step was “confession” = to the public testimony of religious experience and purpose…2) to discern the reality of Grace in these Indians” = assembly of English church elders to hear new and fuller confessions = decided more time needed, more isntruction…3)Three years later, not confessions but an examination publicly of each candidate…..Elders, without enthusiasm, offered no further objection to setting up of a church at Natick 4) Five more years went by as Eliot attempted to train more native teachers and preachers. 5) In 1660 according to the English custom, the Church at Natick was gathered. In early 1670s there were 1100 Indians in 14 towns, testimony to the fruitful ministry of one man. Daniel Gookin was made superintendent in 1656, and held courts in them to deal with matters beyond local control. 1674: Uncas is not well pleased tht the English should pass over Mohegan River, to call his Indians to pay to God. Others + Mayhews, John Cotton of Plymouth; etc…Samuel Treat who preached to the Indians for 45 years…all supported by the London Society for the Propagation of the Faith. 1674 Gookin wrote: “The harvest is ripe for many more towns, if God please to thrust forth laborers: 1646…after the great Indian massacre in Virginia, a number of people immigrated from there to MA, including Daniel Gookin 1643 Trade with the Dutch in New York had become so large that the GC had to pass an order determining the value of Dutch coins. As early as 1634 Wintrhop wrote about trade with New Netherlands “we had from them about forty sheep and beaver and brass pieces, and sugar etc. for sack, strong waters, linen cloth and other commodities. They have a great trade of beaver – about nine or ten thousand skins in a year.” 1653: In May 1653, during the war between England and Holland, the General Court passed an order prohibiting all persons within their jurisdiction from carrying provisions as corn, pease, bread or pork into any of the plantations of Dutch or French inhabiting in any of the parts of America under a penalty of a fine of three times the value of provisions carried. This prohibition remained in force until August 1654, when it was repealed. 1664 Royal Commissioners sent over by Charles II visited Boston, one of questions was whether the Colony would assist in expedition against New Netherlands. Provision for volunteers…not known whether any were enlisted but when the Royal Commissioners left Boston they were accompanied by reps from MA, and the Dutch did not venture to resist the force which soon afterwards appeared in front of the little fort on Manhattan Island. The Dutch settllements came under English control and at a somewhat later period Boston and NY had the same governor. (Andros?) “MA readily committed 200 men for the expedition” Mem H 307 1665 Mar 23 Endicott died.s 1650 Gabriel Druilletes sent to NE by his superior…to negotiate on free trade, with the concurence of the Gov of Canada… “but the chief object of his mission seems to have been to engage the the NE colonies in a war with the Mohawks for the advantage of the Abenakis, but his mission failed to produce any results though he had the moral asurance that three of four colonies were favorable to his plans. 1660: during 16 years the MA governor never once took the oath which the Navigation Act required of him.
Timeline Background 1643 New England Confederation formed to combat Indians and the Dutch and French intrusion – United Colonies of New England. CT Mass Bay, New Haven and Plymouth 1644 MARY (HUTCHINSON) WHEELWRIGHT died 1646 Robert Child and others protest the intolerance of Massachusetts Puritans toward those of other faiths; in response, Governor John Winthrop and others justify their policies and banish Child. 1646 United Colonies supported Ousamequin and other sachems against Narragansett dominance. John Eliot began to preach to the Massachuseuk (in English with interpreters) at Dorchester, Massachusetts Bay. 1647 24 JUNE REV JOHN WHEEWRIGHT BECAME PASTOR OF CHURCH OF HAMPTON 1647 First woman barrister in the colonies, Margaret Brent of Maryland, seeks and is denied the right to vote in the assembly. 1648 Margaret Jones of Charlestown is hanged for being a witch. Winthrop: “that she was found to have such a malignant touch, as many persons, men, women and children, whom she stroked or touched with any affection or displeasure were taken with deafness…or other violent pains or sickness. Her behavior at the trial was very intemperate, lying notoriously and railing upon the jury and witnesses, and in like distemper she died. 1649 Governor Winthrop buried in King’s Chapel Burying Ground 1649 ROBERT NANNEY APPEARS NO MORE IN DOVER. 1650 Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America Bradstreet was wife of Simon Bradstreet who later served as governor from 1679 to 1686 and from 1689 to 1692. Johnson pictured Puritans as soldier of Christ waging war against the wilderness and unbelievers. 1651 ROBERT NANNEY LISTED AS ONE OF DEBTORS OF ESTATE OF JOHN MILLS, COUNTY OF SUFFOLK, MAINE, WILL dated 27 OCTOBER 1651 RN MAY HAVE BEEN LIVING IN OR NEAR SUFFOLK? 1651 Law required that most products be shipped to England in English owned ships, a move which stimulates New England shipbuilding 1652 ROBERT NANNEY AND KATHARINE WHEELWIRTH MARRIED probably before May 1652 x 9 months x birth of John 1652 Massachusetts general court rules that the territory of Maine lies within the boundaries of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, thus ending Maine's immediate hopes of independence 1653 NANNEY, JOHN, s of ROBERT AND KATHARINE born 16 FEBRUARY BOSTON 1653 John Eliot, Catechism in the Indian Language, first book printed in an Indian language. He will later (in 1661) translate the Bible into the Algonquian language. 1653 Edward Johnson, Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England – a history of the Puritan settlement from 1628-1652 1654 JULY 20, JOHN, ye SONNE OF ROBERT NANNEY AND OF KATHERINE, his wife, DIED, NE H&G Vol 10, p 67 1654 HAMPTON CONGREGATION PETITION TO GENERAL COURT FOR VINCITION OF REV. WHEELWRIGHT’S NAME… 1654 First Jew to settle in North America arrived on Manhattan Island 1655 New Netherlands took over New Sweden – In 1683, the Swedes and Finns became English citizens when William Penn founded Pennsylvania 1655 or 1656 NEH & G Register: 1655 OR 1656 REVEREND WHEELWRIGHT ENDED HIS LABORS AS PASTOR OF HAMPTON. NO RECORD BEYOND MID-SUMMER 1655 1656 WHEELWRIGHT WENT TO ENGLAND WHERE HE WAS FAVORABLY RECEIVED BY THE PROTECTOR, OLIVER CROMWELL, WITH WHOM HE HAD BEEN IN EARLY LIFE ASSOCIATED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. 1656 (Summer) Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans whip, imprison, and banish the first Quakers to arrive in the colony. – Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, from Barbados, July 1, 1656 – Legislation in 1658 bars the Quakers from holding their services, called "meetings." – 40 shilling fines levied against anyone sheltering Quakers and prescribed various physical mutilations for those who returned to the colony after having been banished. 1657 Halfway Covenant allows baptized as well as converted church members to vote. 1658 APR 20, REV. WHEELWRIGHT LETTER TO THE HAMPTON CHURCH IN WHICH HE MENTIONS AN INTERVIEW WITH CROMWELL, ‘WITH WHOM I HAD DISCOURSE IN PRIVATE ABOUT THE SPACE OF AN HOUR. ALL HIS SPEECHES SEEMED TO ME VERY ORTHODOX AND GRACIOUS.’ 1658 In search of furs, Medard Chouart and Pierre Esprit Radisson explore the northern plains near Lake Superior. 1659. 27 October. Quakers William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson are hanged for refusing to leave Massachusetts. Mary Dyer, a follower of Anne Hutchinson and later a Quaker, is scheduled to hang with them but is reprieved at the last minute. Except in RI, Quakers banned in all colonies. Not until 1682 and founding of PA did they have a haven in the New World 1659 27 AUGUST NANNEY, SAMUEL, ye sonne of ROBERT NANNEY and of KATHERINE his wife, borne 1660 REV WHEELWRIGHT RETURN FROM ENGLAND 1660. 1 June. Mary Dyer is hanged after defying an expulsion order by returning to Boston in May 1660. BSN: 1935 NEWSPAPER REPORT: “With an introduction that recalled the drumbeats and iron military guard of 200 men that led Mary Dyer to the gallows tree, Admiral Ralph Earle branded the Puritans as “stern, unbending bigoted opponents of toleration” who carried Cromwell’s iron rule to America. 1660 Parliament calls for the restoration of the English monarchy; Charles II accepts Parliaments conditions of amnesty; returns to England and is proclaimed king. Restoration period begins 1660-1696 Slave trade largely in the hands of the Dutch until the 1660s, when it was continued by the English, with the New Englanders especially active after the Royal Africa Trade Company lost its monopoly in 1696.In the trade, a ship sailed from New England with rum and other goods for the Slave Coast. The slaves were then carried to the West Indies or the colonial south where they were exchanged for sugar, molasses, and tobacco for the North. During this period Virginia planters relied more on white indentured servants from Europe.6000 indentured servants in Virginia in 1681 compared with 2000 slaves. Some came voluntary signing papers for five or more years, at the end of which they might get some clothing or a piece of land. They often became tenant farmers. Criminals, vagrants and debtors were sent involuntary, usually for a term of service of seven years – his Majesty’s Seven Years Passengers. Others, children and adults were victims of kidnapping. They were sold to shipmasters who in turn sold them into servitude in America. Many servants caused trouble in the colonies. As a result the end of the 17th century saw a steady growth in the slave trade. 1661 22 JUNE, NANNY, MARY – YE DAUGHTER OF ROBERT NANNEY AND OF HIS WIFE, BORNE 1661 Massachusetts continues to punish Quakers by hanging those who refuse to leave the colony. After a royal edict requires the Massachusetts authorities to release imprisoned Quakers and return them to England, the authorities instead allow them to leave for other colonies. By December, corporal punishment for Quakers and other dissenters is suspended in the Massachusetts Bay colony by order of Parliament 1662 REVEREND WHEELWRIGHT BECOMES MINISTER OF THE SALISBURY CHURCH, WHERE HE RMEAINED UNTIL THE CLOSE OF HIS LIFE 1662 Michael Wigglesworth, The Day of Doom A Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment. This immensely popular poem sold 1800 copies in its first year, and according to the Norton Anthology of American Literature (Volume 1), "about one out of every twenty persons in New England bought it" (284) 1662 EDWARD NAYLOR IS TRUCKMASTER AT THE PONSCOT FORT UNDER LT. GARDNER 1663 John Eliot published the entire bible translated into the Massachusett language. 1663 22 AUGUST, ROBERT NANNY makes last will at BOSTON NEH&G Register Volume 12, p 155: “there being an estate in my hands in partnership with my uncle RICHARD HUTCHINSON of LONDON… 27 AUGUST, ROBERT NANNY, dies, age 50 KATHARINE NANNY (age 32), LEFT WITH A SON (SAMUEL, age 4,) A DAUGHTER (MARY, age 2), A CHILD SHE WAS EXPECTING 1663 SEP 10 Estate inventoried 1663 OCT 31 Katharine deposed 1663 NOV 7 At a meeting of the Magistrate and Records… Note: JOHN NANNEY, 2 DEAD, AS NO MENTION IN WILL. “Elizabeth Wheelwright Pearson was in the house of Katherine Wheelwright Nanny in 1663 in an upstairs room. She was sick with her child Samuel. The deposition of 1673 mentions Elizabeth speaking of her niece. “My niece.” That Niece I believe is Hopestill (Bell) Austin…” 1664 Maryland Colony passes a law mandating lifetime servitude for black slaves; previous precedent had allowed freedom for those who converted to Christianity and established legal residences there. 1665 Legislation in several states tightens the bonds of slavery. English law provides that slaves may be freed if they convert to Christianity and establish legal residence, but Maryland, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia pass laws allowing conversion and residence without freeing the slaves. 1666 EDWARD NAYLOR ‘IN COMMAND AT NEGAS FOR COLONEL TEMPLE.’’ POSSIBLY HE CAME FROM BARBADOS 1667 Philip accused of conspiracy against the colony 1667 JULY 2, TABITHA, DAUGHTER OF EDWARD AND KATHARINE (later m. one Peak) 1668 JULY 26, LYDIA, DAUGHTER OF EDWARD AND KATHARINE (later, m. one Amee) 1668 SEP 4, DEBORAH, DAUGHTER OF MARY READE BORN EDWARD COMMITTED ADULTERY WITH MARY READE, WHOSE DAUGHTER DEBORAH WAS BORN IN HAMPTON, 4 SEPT 1668 AND WHO TESTIFIED IN THE CASE. 1669 First comprehensive history of New England, by Nathaniel Morton, sec of Plymouth Colony New England Memorial 1670 Hudson's Bay Company is chartered. 1671 Samuel Danforth, A Brief Recognition of New England’s [sic] Errand into the Wilderness, a powerful jeremiad 1671 KATHERINE NANNY NAYLOR ASKS FOR A DIVORCE FROM EDWARD NAYLOR, ACCUSING EDWARD OF BEATING HER, OF KICKING ONE OF THE GIRLS DOWNSTAIRS, OF “WHOREDOMS,” AND “ABUSES OF THE MARRIAGE BED.” ‘HE WAS GIVEN TWO MONTHS TO SETTLE HIS AFFAIRS BEFORE BEING BANISHED 20 MILES FROM BOSTON, BUT THIS SENTENCE WAS REVOKED THAT SAME YEAR AND HIS CHILDREN RESTORED TO HIM’ (?) 1672 John Josselyn publishes New England Rarities – Account of Two Voyages to New England 1674, expanded version in which he claims to have seen a merman in the North Atlantic 1673 Marquette and Joliet travel from Lake Michigan down the Mississippi as far as the Arkansas River, completing a 2500-mile journey of exploration 1674-1675 EDWARD WAS IN COURT FOR INTRUDING INTO HIS LATE WIFE’S COMPANY. HE SETTLED ACCOUNTS WITH SAMUEL WHEELWRIGHT IN 1676. “MR NAYLOR’S BROOK’ IN WELLS, 1678 WAS DOUBTLESS HIS, IN WHEELWRIGHT TERRITORY. IN 1679, IN PARTNERSHIP WITH OBADIAH WALKER, HE BOUGHT 1000 ACRES ON EAST SIDE OF KENNEBEC OVER AGAINST PURCHASE’S ISLAND. SEE EXTRACT FROM SAVAGE: ‘SHE, A ‘GOOD WOMAN AND BLIND’ WAS CARED FOR 15 YEARS BY JONATHAN AND ELIZABETH CARY IN BOSTON. ‘ – WHO IS ‘SHE’? KATHARINE NANNY NAYLOR? HER WILL, 1 MAY 1700—1 MAR 1715-16, dev. a ho, to her daus. And bequeathed to Mrs. Cary, the exec. Child born in Bos: Tabitha, b 2 July 1667, m. one Peak. Lydia, b. 26 July 1668, m. one Amee. 1674: Increase Mather was appointed a fellow at Harvard College. 1686 he took charge with title of rector, and held post until 1701
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