Dorothy Ripley's Mission to the New York Indians (part 2)

[caption id="attachment_9025" align="alignright" width="231"] Independent missionary Dorothy Ripley self-published her journal as "The Bank of Faith and Works United."[/caption]

As we saw in part 1, Englishwoman Dorothy Ripley's 1805 mission to the New York Indians included preaching to the Stockbridge Mohicans and the Oneidas.

After being put up in the home of a white Quaker, Ms. Ripley went on to minister to the Brothertown Indians. She found these Christian Indians - like Christian whites of that time - to be divided on the question of who can be saved.

I went to Brothertown to collect the Indians there together, in the school-house.... Those Indians were Baptists, divided into two classes, one part believed in election, and the other in free salvation. Where I was, they had refused their minister, because they said "They would not worship such a cruel God as he served, as He only took care of a part of his creatures," and drew this comparison, by asking a question concerning their women: "Would not she be a cruel mother, who having two children, took one and nursed it; and left the other to perish? So we will worship a God who takes care of all His children;" which I think was an excellent conclusion and a sound argument was advanced to show how far an Indian is capable of believing in the Living and True God.

A couple days later Dorothy Ripley was back in New Stockbridge, New York.

A meeting was held again in Stockbridge, for the instruction of the poor Natives, who are dear to me. There are some of the [Delaware] Jersey Indians among this tribe, and the whole number here, are rising three hundred... This day two of the missionaries, and a young clergyman were present, while my soul was earnestly engaged for the good of the Indians; but I verily believe by their proceedings it was their opinion that a woman ought not to preach: for one of them said afterwards, had I "come to teach them to knit and sew it would be very well."

At the moment of her departure, the women of the tribe presented Dorothy Ripley with an address, which had actually been written by Captain Hendrick, the Mohican chief that was serving as her interpreter:

Dear Sister,
We the poor women of the Muhheconnuk nation, wish to speak [a] few words to you to inform you that while our forefathers were sitting by the side of their ancient fireplace, about eighty years ago, our father, Rev. Mr. Sergeant's father, came amongst them with the message of the Great and Good Spirit, which he then began to deliver to them. He was the first minister of the gospel that ever preached to our fathers, and the Great and Good Spirit blessed his labors, by which means many of our poor natives were turned from darkness to light....

You can continue reading this on page 111 of The Bank of Faith and Works United.

How the Natick Indians Became Christians

[caption id="attachment_8984" align="aligncenter" width="753"] Native Christianity reached a peak in 1674. King Philip's War proved to be disastrous for the praying Indians. Many of them died or were forced into servitude or even slavery.[/caption]

John Eliot started preaching to Indians in the 1640's, but he didn't get his first convert until 1652. That convert was Waban. Waban himself was quoted in an award-winning scholarly article published in 1990.

After the great sickness [an epidemic in 1633-34], I considered what the English do; and I had some desire to do as they do; and  after that I began to work as they work; and then I wondered how the English came to be so strong to labor.

At the same time, one of the first things that the women of Waban's band wanted to learn from John Eliot was how to spin wool into cloth.

Taking that and other data that had been recorded prior to 1730, the historian, Harold Van Lonkhuyzen, comes to the conclusion that "Indians' individual motivations in first adopting Christianity... appear to have been highly specific, rather modest, and perhaps not at all what the missionaries might have wished."

This, of course, doesn't mean that the praying Indians of New England didn't gradually learn about the religion that was brought to them from across the Atlantic. But they didn't become complete Christians quickly. Van Lonkhuyzen puts it this way:

These Indians were eager to make use of European goods and technologies as a means not of abandoning, but of fulfilling their traditional way of life.

To put it simply, the Indians were selective. Aspects of Christianity that they came to embrace tended to have some kind of function in their traditional mindset. One example that Van Lonkhuyzen gives is the "considerable evidence that one of the major attractions of praying to God was the protection it offered from the sorcery of the powwows [that is, the shamans or medicine men]."

According to Van Lonkhuyzen, the Indian converts were "trying to enhance rather than abandon their traditional order [and] tried to take only what they wanted of the missionary program."

 

The Praying Indians: The Unlikely and Tenuous Survival of John Eliot's Converts

As of about 1670, about one-fourth of New England's Natives were Christians. They lived in fourteen towns, the first and most important being Natick, Massachusetts.

Like Christian Indians that would come generations after them, the so-called praying Indians were "neither fish nor foul." It is hard to put them in a category. Although they had adopted some white ways, they weren't actually trying to be white. And although they were genuine Natives, they were living in "towns" instead of villages, so they weren't recognized as political units in any larger Native nation.



So the uniquely vulnerable praying Indians became refugees - or maybe it would be more accurate to say they were prisoners of war. Here's how the praying Indians website describes it.

In the winter of 1675, fueled by fears of King Phillip (Metacom), [the] mighty Wampanoag Chief, the colonists removed the Natick Praying Indians to Deer Island. At midnight in the month of October, holding their Bibles and with [their missionary, John] Eliot seeking to comfort them, they were taken to Deer Island in Boston Harbor where they were confined. The first Praying Indian Village of Natick suffered severely. Abandoned by their colonial Christian brethren, the Natick Praying Indians were left unprotected on the frigid Island. A month later the Praying Indian Villages of Ponkapoag (Stoughton, MA) and Nashoba (Littleton, MA) were added to the tragic confinement from 1675-1676. By this time the other villages received news of the imprisonment and either fled or joined Metacom, the Wompanoag Chief also known as King Phillip by the colonists for his military prowess. Natives captured were also placed on Long Island in Boston Harbor. However [due to factors such as] little clothing, starvation and enforced deprivation including being forbidden to light fires, hunt game or build shelters, most lives were lost. The young, the old, the pregnant and the weak could not survive. Most of the Indians died of cold and starvation. The sad story is documented of the elderly Eliot going by boat to bring supplies to the Natives and being capsized by angered colonists. During the Island imprisonment some of the praying Indians were coerced into spying and fighting for the colonist. History would eventually misconstrue this bid for the freedom of death and suffering...as weakness and dishonorable betrayal to their Native heritage.

It was long believed that King Philip's War wiped out the praying Indians. Instead, their loss in numbers weakened them to the point that they became invisible. But they lived on, remaining in the east, and they arguably still exist, at least to the point of having a website.

Without a doubt, the praying Indians stayed together at least until 1790, as the subtitle of a book about them makes clear. The Amazon page for Jean M. O'Brien's Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650-1790 was used as a source for this post.

 

How the Housatonic Mohicans Opened the Door to the Stockbridge Mission

Two of my recent posts, spirituality and Reactions to the Hard Times Brought on by White Contact and Death of the Spirit: How did the Eastern Woodland Indians Lose their Traditional Religion? were written in general or abstract terms. But even as I was writing them, I was trying to locate a quote that describes the Mohicans on the Housatonic River in 1734 as having a variety of religious beliefs. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find that quote.

The title of one of my two recent posts borrowed the phrase "Death of the Spirit" from a chapter title in Patrick Frazier's The Mohicans of Stockbridge. The phrase is simply a poetic way of saying that the Mohican religion was no longer intact after 125 years of white contact.

Maybe this should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: the disasters of the fur trade didn't damage the Mohicans' need for spirituality. (Otherwise why would they have ever accepted a new religion?) Instead, the fur trade irreparably damaged the Mohicans' orally transmitted system of rituals and beliefs.

Konkapot and Umpachenee, the chiefs of the two Housatonic villages, were approached by the British with the offer of a Christian mission. The proposal was discussed and debated in council in July of 1734.

It was not a decision that the residents of the two villages took lightly. The council lasted four days! And the winning argument - coming down on the side in favor of Christianity - was made by Poohpoonuc. When translated into English (by Nathaniel Appleton, see bibliography below), Poohpoonuc's argument sounded like this:

Since my remembrance, there were ten Indians where now there is one. But the Christians greatly increase and multiply and spread across the land. Let us therefore leave our former courses and become Christians.

Does that sound like a religious statement to you? Maybe not, but it is a religious statement in the context of the things Gregory Evans Dowd wrote about on page 19 of A Spirited Resistance. Dowd said that Indians were trying to understand the disasters they endured in the context of sacred power. And some Indians decided that there was more sacred power in Christianity. This explains why the Housatonic Mohicans accepted a Christian mission. But it also explains more. A lot more.

By 1737 the Mohicans had a missionary that was preaching in their own language and, according to Patrick Frazier (page 37), Indians came "from near and far" to listen to the sermons and "witness the new Indian life." Some of those visiting Indians permanently joined the tribe. For that reason, (and others) I continue to believe that Christianity was an essential element in the history of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians.

 

Printed Sources:

Appleton, Nathaniel. Gospel ministers Must be Fit for the Master's Use. (An ordination sermon, printed by S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1735.)

Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

Frazier, Patrick. The Mohicans of Stockbridge Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

 
[mc4wp_form]

Death of the Spirit: How did the Eastern Woodland Indians Lose their Traditional Religion?

[caption id="attachment_1367" align="aligncenter" width="403"] Oral historians, storytellers and other leaders (including African griots) in oral cultures transmited the knowledge that most of us now get from films, books, and websites. Photo credit[/caption]

Yesterday's post was about how Native Americans reacted to the disasters of colonialism - in terms of their spirituality and/or religion. It brought up a fair amount of discussion on Facebook and I'll get to that later in this post.


From time to time I like to remind readers that in the 1700's religion wasn't separate from everything else. I suppose there was some separation for Christians who had a Sabbath Day that was different from the other six "ordinary" days, but for Indians prior to white contact, religion - or "spirituality," if that is the term you prefer - was simply part of the fabric of their lives.

When game was still plentiful, Indians would say a prayer for the spirit of an animal after they killed it. So religion and the hunting economy were intertwined.

But - as we know - things changed. They changed for the worse. With the coming of the fur trade, Indians exchanged furs for the things they needed - and sometimes they exchanged the furs for firewater instead of for what they needed. Either way, the demand for furs that came from whites resulted in forests with less game. Hunting became more difficult and the practice of praying for the spirit of an animal after you killed it became extinct. Economics started to become separate from religion/spirituality.

That is one partial explanation for the erosion of traditional Native religion. But what follows is another, more comprehensive explanation.

After reading my post yesterday, a Native Facebook friend of mine made another point. (By the way, what he wrote on Facebook is also an agreed-upon reality amongst scholarly historians.) Anyway, my friend Shawn Stevens pointed out that diseases that came from Europe, like smallpox and measles, killed so many Indians from the Algonquian language family, and killed them off so fast, that it - indirectly - pretty much destroyed traditional Native religion. Not having a paper trail, traditional beliefs and rituals only survived when they were passed along orally from one generation to the next. The epidemics made that impossible.
[mc4wp_form]

Sprituality and Reactions to the Hard Times Brought on by White Contact

[caption id="attachment_1324" align="aligncenter" width="231"] The front cover of Gregory Evans Dowd's book.[/caption]

The first decades of white contact were very difficult for Native Americans for a number of reasons. But the disasters of colonialism are not the subject of this post, only the introduction. What I really want to address now  is that there were a variety of ways that Native Americans "reacted" to their most difficult and changing times.

In A Spirited Resistance, Gregory Evans Dowd (page 19) says that the troubles that resulted from white contact "brought about... a debate over the efficacy of sacred power."

Dowd's discussion of Indians' reactions to the hard times of colonialism gets more complicated from there. Nevertheless, I'm going to quote him at length.  As you read his quote, try to put yourself in the mocassins of a Native person trying to explain the disasters that followed white contact. How might you interpret the sufferings of your people?

For some, it was apparent that the Anglo-Americans were simply more powerful and that the Indians' sacred powers had failed them. These Indians sought survival and even gain in cooperation, at least of a limited kind, with the Anglo-American or European powers. Others, in a more moderate stance, sought to decipher the secrets of Ango-American strength, and made efforts to incorporate those secrets into their own way of living. Then there were those who understood that they had failed in their committments to the sacred powers, particularly the Great Spirit, the remote Creator who became increasingly important, probably under the influence of Christiainity (19).

Then Dowd tells us that it was that last belief, the mindset of some Indians that they themselves had somehow "failed in their committments to the sacred powers," that was the "central premise of the militant, pan-religious movements of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries"(19)

As I think back over some of the various visions of Native prophets that launched their movements, and as I also review in my mind the reasons other Indians gave for becoming Christians, I have to agree wholeheartedly with Dowd. What do you think?

[mc4wp_form]