Personal Additions

Question 1

A Praying People - Dane Morrison

Answer 1

• Native Americas weren’t passive victims
• 1616-1619 plagues forced Indian “remnants” to search for a new order (Christianity)
• Indigenous people adapted, but New England defined them as marginalized people
• Praying Indian experiment “quashed” after King Philip’s War

Question 2

Behind the Frontier - Daniel Mandell

Answer 2

• 1676 - 1776
• King Philip’s War didn’t end the Indian presence “Behind the Frontier”
• Racism and ethnocentrism limited Praying Towns after King Philip’s War
• Christian Indians forged a new Indian identity that emerged in the mid 18th century
• Most remaining male Natick Indians die fighting for patriots during the Revolutionary War

Question 3

Dry Bones and Indian Sermons - Kristina Bross

Answer 3

• Effect of English Civil War and Interregnum Government on New England
• Daniel Gookin’s career reveals religious motivations behind England’s imperial interests in the West indies and New England colonialism
• Early on, New England’s existence depended on Indian’s presence
• Praying Indians served as the maginot line between Godly land and the Devil/savagery
• After KPW, Indians who acculturated according to the rubric established by those like Daniel Gookin were often seen as mockeries of English culture

Question 4

Mary Rowlandson’s 1682 narrative

Answer 4

• turned American literature and its representation of Indians firmly in the direction of racist exclusion or extermination
• the narrative shows how the period of the Restoration of the English Monarchy to King Philip’s War ended the viability of there being a permanent Praying Indian identity in New England

Question 5

Native Apostles - Edward Andrews (2016)

Answer 5

• Native missionaries formulated an indigenous Christian spirituality that was Indian and Christian in nature
• Native Preachers used their connection to Christianity to combat colonization, dispossession, and racial slavery
• Indians greased the wheels of the praying town system, not Englishmen, at least by around ~1674

Question 6

John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians before King Philip’s War - Richard Cogley (1999)

Answer 6

• Historians have exaggerated the extent to which self-interest governed the creation of the Indian mission
• John Eliot emphasized Indian redemption over self-aggrandizement
• Eliot’s zeal for Indian missionary work came about after the mission was created in 1646, not before
• Eliot’s mission counteracted English domination rather than abetting it
• Relative to the early settlement period, the mission improved the fortunes of the Indians.