Tormey: John Eliot, Tears of repentance; or, A further narrative of the progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New-England (London, 1653)(pages 197-260)
Team Member: Victoria Tormey
750-Word Description:
This research paper focuses on an artifact called Tears of Repentance; or A Further Narrative of the Progress of the Gospel Amongst the Indians in New England by John Elliot. This piece of text explains why and how John Eliot is converting the Native people from their Native ways of living and beliefs in religion to the settlers of New England’s ways of living and their beliefs in religion, Christianity. The artifact has many confessions that John Eliot transcribed from when he converted a Native to Christianity. In these confessions, people pleaded to God to forgive their past sins, and accept them as a new person and into Christianity. From this document, it is clear to see how dramatic the differences were between the Native people’s religion and the Christian ideals Eliot brought to them, and so this paper focuses on the ways Natives changed their ways to fit in with the New England settlers and to survive them.
Before Christianity, the Natives had their own beliefs and had their own set of religious practices. Instead of a priest, they had a pawwaw who was one of the strongest unifying factors of any Indian community” (Bellin, 16), and these leaders were believed to heal people and be able to connect to spiritual beings in order to control things such as weather patterns, where as Christians worship God. When John Elliot began his missionary journey, and more and more English settlers arrived in New England, natives had to make a decision regarding their religious values. The settlers brought disease and the natives began to get sick. Since the settlers were not getting sick, Natives thought it was because God was protecting them, so they converted to stay safe from the sickness. They also converted inorder to fit in with the settlers. Upon arrival, John Elliot and his people were very land hungry and eager to establish their new home. They implemented many of their own practices and ways of living upon the Natives. Inorder to fit in with their new neighbors, and stay safe from their new ways of government, many native people converted to Christianity.
While Native Americans did convert to Christianity for safety, they also converted because they were led by their sachems. A sachem is the leader of a Native American tribe and they had much influence on their people. Most sachem’s told their people to convert to Christianity and pray to God. It is said that the tribes with the most influential waban leaders were the ones with the most Christian converts. Once converted, Native Americans had to change their way of life. They had to change their appearance inorder to fit in with the new settlers. They had to cut their characteristically long hair to look more European and they had to change the way they dressed and made clothing. Because the natives were not accustomed to their new look, they did not know how to take care of their new clothing the right way and often found themselves infested with lice, and found that their clothes rotted and deteriorated. Along with changing their look, they had to change the way they lived their everdaylives. They had to be faithful to one wife instead of many, they were not allowed to hunt or drink on Sabbath day, and they had to teach their children about Puritans. One of the biggest changes the natives had to change was how they punished their sons. The new punishments were harsh and cruel compared to the native way.
With all of the effort the Native Americans put in to fit in with the settlers, it was not completely successful. The natives that converted to Chrsitianity were not fully accepted by the Puritans, and they also were not fully accepted by the Native Americans who did not convert, putting them in limbo. Although these natives gave up their own beliefs to pray to God, they usually ended up losing their sense of self and meaning. The praying Indians were alienated by their friends and family, but were still not accepted as an equal to the settlers. During King Philip’s War, it was revealed that the English did not trust the Indians. Hundreds of praying Indians were captured by colonial authorities and sent to Deer Island to die, or be sold into slavery,majoriy of them being women and children. These decisions made by the settlers ruined the relationship between the Native Americans and the Puritans forever.
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