During the seventeenth century, the European invaders brought with them a great religious intolerance to North America. Missionaries attempted to Christianize Indians and to prohibit and even punish many aspects of Indian spiritual life. The logic of this Christian imperialism, according to Frances Mossiker, in her book Pocahontas: The Life and the Legend, is that:
“God intended the savage Indians’ land for the civilized Christian Englishman, who would occupy the earth, increase and multiply, who would farm the land and make it fructify, who would give it order.”
In an article in The Progressive, historian Howard Zinn puts it this way:
“The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible.”
Sioux writer Charles Eastman, in his 1911 book The Soul of the Indian, says:
“The first missionaries, good men imbued with the narrowness of their age, branded us as pagans and devil-worshippers, and demanded of us that we abjure our false gods before bowing the knee at their sacred altar.”
The Europeans, and particularly the missionaries, had a great deal of difficulty in understanding that women had power in Indian society and that they had the right to sexual freedom. Indian societies were not organized on the patriarchal, monogamous norms of European society. In her book Countering Colonization: Native American Women and Great Lakes Missions, 1630-1900. anthropologist Carol Devens writes:
“The priests found the ease with which native couples divorced equally outrageous.”
New England
The English claimed sovereignty over New England and thus the right to govern all people there, whether European or Native American. The early English colonists in New England were Pilgrims and Puritans. With regard to Puritans, Richard Holloway, in his book A Little History of Religion, writes:
“They believed that they alone were the true Christians, the pure ones.”
Pilgrims were Puritans who could not tolerate worshipping in a state-sponsored church as this robbed them of their religious freedom and, therefore, at a chance for salvation. Pilgrims left England, settled in the Netherlands, and then came to New England.
With regard to the Puritan religion of the English colonists in New England, James Swanson, in his book The Deerfield Massacre: A Surprise Attack, a Forced March, and the Fight for Survival in Early America, writes:
“Their God was active in this world and in human affairs on earth. He intervened directly in daily life. Success was a sign of his approval, while misfortune of any kind—sickness, failure, accidents, death, and yes, even witchcraft—was a sign of his displeasure.”
James Swanson also writes:
“In Puritan theology, the only way to heaven was through sustained faith; succumbing to temptation and indifference led to hell.”
In Connecticut in 1675, the English colonists passed a law forbidding all Indian spiritual practices.
Jesuits
The Jesuits, a Roman Catholic order, carried out missionary work in many parts of the Americas. James Swanson reports:
“The Jesuits—members of the Catholic order of the society of Jesus, founded by St. Ignatius Loyola in 1540—were radical missionaries.”
In her book Chain Her by One Foot: The Subjugation of Native Women in Seventeenth-Century New France, Karen Anderson writes:
“In the Jesuits’ view, because Satan was particularly powerful in the New World, it was their task to struggle on behalf of God and Jesus against him and his legions.”
In Michigan, at the request of the Amikwa, the Jesuit missionary Father Henry Nouvel (1621-1701) accompanied them to their winter hunting grounds. According to Catholic historians, he paddled through fog, rain, and ice-encrusted water in order to celebrate the first Catholic Mass in the interior of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.
In Illinois, the Mission of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin was established among the Kaskaskia. An estimated 1,500 warriors attended the East Mass given by Father Jacques Marquette (1637-1675).
New Mexico
Writing about the Spanish in New Mexico, ethnohistorian Nancy Parrott Hickerson, in her book The Jumanos: Hunters and Traders of the South Plains, reports:
“The church’s position was evangelical and paternalistic; the friars considered the Indians to be childlike but sinful beings. They were to be saved from perdition through baptism and, that accomplished, their way of life was to be transformed.”
In 1675, the Spanish governor of New Mexico arrested 47 medicine men from the Tewa-speaking Pueblos of Nambé, San Felipe, and Jemez. They were charged with plotting to overthrow the government. Three of the men were executed, the rest were flogged and sentenced to be sold into slavery. In response Tewa warriors, armed with clubs and shields, invaded Santa Fe and demanded that the governor release the men. The men were released.
In his book Intruders Within: Pueblo Resistance to Spanish Rule and the Revolt of 1680, Louis Baldwin reports:
“The governor’s public humiliation of high-ranking Pueblo priests was meant, of course, to break the back of any native resistance that might interfere with the propagation of the Christian faith. What it actually did, however, was to galvanize and unify the resistance.”
One of the men who was flogged and released was Popé, a ceremonial leader from San Juan. Louis Baldwin reports:
“Popé returned to his village of San Juan with the scars of whips upon his back and hatred in his soul. He had always been a troublemaker, a rebel, a leading advocated of purging the river of foreign poison. He was not fanatic, single-minded, and relentless.”
Determined to obtain revenge, Popé moved to Taos, a pueblo known for its anti-Spanish sentiment. Here Popé talked with the spirits and made plans. In 1680 he would lead the Pueblo Revolt against the Spanish.
Nova Scotia
In Nova Scotia, Father Chrestien Le Clercq (1641-1700), a Recollet, arrived as a missionary among the Mi’kmaq on Cape Breton Island. He soon found that many Native Americans were not interested in Christianity or in adopting European practices.
The Recollects was a French reform branch of the Franciscan order who were known as the Gray Friars because of their gray habits and pointed hoods. They were dissolved in 1897.
More American Indian histories
Indians 101: American Indians and English colonists 350 years ago, 1675
Indians 101: American Indians in the Southeast 350 years ago, 1674
Indians 101: American Indians in New England 350 years ago, 1674
Indians 101: American Indians and French explorers 350 years ago, 1673
Indians 101: The Dutch and American Indians in the 17th century
Indians 101: The French and American Indians in the 17th century
Indians 201: American Indians and the establishment of Jamestown
Indians 201: The Spanish search for the mythical American Indian cities of Cibola
