Puritans, Colonization, and Christianity in America

Puritan Religious Beliefs and the Mission to America

Modern Christians looking back into history may find it hard to comprehend the various atrocities that have been committed in the name of Christianity. While religion has consistently been used as an excuse for one group to claim superiority over another, nowhere was this more apparent than when the Puritans came to America. While the lens of time reveals the Puritan actions against the native population to be both arrogant and cruel, it is important to remember that the Puritans did not view their actions in the same manner. On the contrary, their actions were motivated by their deeply held religious belief that it was their divine mission to come to America and begin a colony where they would be free to practice their religion.

Like many modern-day advocates of religious freedom, the Puritans had a narrow view of the term. They did not seek religious freedom for all, but merely the freedom to practice their own religion, which was itself quite rigid. The Puritans believed that God had created a covenant with them and that they were the new Israelites of God's master plan.

These beliefs caused a rift between the Puritans and King James of England. The Puritans wanted to reform the Church of England, while King James vowed to force the Puritans to conform to it. After determining that they were unable to reform the Church, a group of Puritan separatists went to Amsterdam in search of greater religious freedom. Amsterdam did offer more religious freedom than England, but the Puritans still feared that outside pressure would disrupt their community. At this point, the Puritans realized that freedom from persecution was not synonymous with religious freedom, and decided to go to America.

A group of Puritans, led by William Bradford and now referred to as the Pilgrims, fled Amsterdam for the perceived freedom of the New World. While it is common knowledge that the Pilgrim ship, the Mayflower, landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, many are less familiar with the fact that Plymouth Rock was not the first place in America visited by the Pilgrims. In fact, the Pilgrims first stopped at Cape Cod. It was during this layover that the native population received its first hint about the Puritan sense of entitlement and superiority. The Pilgrims discovered large stores of grain that had been set aside by the Native Americans for the winter. The Pilgrims took all of the food, claiming that God's providence was shining upon them. In this way, the Pilgrims began abusing the Native Americans even before they had actually met them.

Pilgrims, Native Americans, and Claims of Divine Entitlement

The belief that God's providence was shining upon them did not continue unchallenged. After landing at Plymouth Rock, the Pilgrims experienced a harsh winter that killed nearly half of them. The number of Pilgrim deaths was limited in part due to the assistance they received from the Pokanokets. Although the Pilgrims had been the recipients of the Pokanokets' charity, they still believed themselves to be superior. When the Pokanokets signed a treaty with the Pilgrims, the Pilgrims interpreted it as a signal of the Pokanokets' willingness to acknowledge the superiority of the English and their culture.

One of the most telling aspects of the Pilgrim claims of English superiority is that those claims were largely based on misunderstandings about the Native American way of life. The Pilgrims believed that farming was a more appropriate way of life than hunting or fishing, and considered themselves farmers. However, despite overwhelming evidence that the Native Americans of New England were also farmers, the Pilgrims continued to dismiss them as hunters and fishermen. As a result, the Pilgrims alleged that the Native Americans were "sinfully squandering America's resources." Claiming that they could make better use of the land, the Pilgrims asserted that they were entitled to Native American lands and took them by whatever means necessary.

The question of whether the Native Americans were farmers or hunters was far from the only dispute the Pilgrims had with the Native American way of life. The Pilgrims were deeply intolerant of the differences between themselves and the Native Americans, characterizing them as savages because they lacked, in the Puritans' view, "Christianity, cities, letters, clothing, and swords." The lack of modern weaponry did, in fact, place the Native Americans in a vulnerable position. With superior arms, the Puritans had the ability to impose their will, and their sense of divine entitlement made them very willing to do so.

The Mayflower Pilgrims were only the beginning of the Puritan influx into America. In 1630, another prominent Puritan settler, John Winthrop, came to America — this time with England's blessing and a royal charter to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony (MBC). Unlike Bradford's separatist group, Winthrop wanted to preserve the autonomy of local churches while keeping them under the auspices of the Church of England. Like Bradford's Pilgrims, however, Winthrop believed he was on a divine mission. He believed that by coming to America he could establish a Christian community that would demonstrate to the world how great a God-fearing society could become. He famously envisioned creating a "city on a hill" that would serve as a model for all other communities.

In order to create this exalted community, Winthrop believed he had to fulfill his duty to God. The Puritans held that they had a covenant with God that imposed four duties: to undergo a conversion acknowledging the true God; to establish a community of believers; to strictly adhere to the covenant of civil order; and to commit collectively to a binding covenant with God. This covenant was not merely a religious agreement — it carried the force of law. Those chosen by the Lord and considered wise in the scriptures were called saints, and the saints held power in both secular and ecclesiastical matters, using scripture as their guide. Therefore, although the Puritans had come to America in search of religious freedom, they maintained no separation between church and state.

John Winthrop, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Pequot War

Once Winthrop had established the MBC, the Puritan presence in America grew dramatically. In 1630 there were approximately 1,200 settlers in Boston; by 1636 that number had grown to over 11,000. This population growth intensified the settlers' desire for land. Their demand was partly satisfied by a smallpox outbreak in 1634 that decimated much of the Native American population. While modern observers understand that the Puritans brought smallpox with them and that Native Americans were vulnerable due to lack of immunity, the Puritans viewed the epidemic as God's way of providing more land for them. William Bradford wrote, "It pleased God to visit these Indians with a great sickness." John Winthrop similarly believed that "God was just making room for the colonists."

This attitude foreshadowed a deepening inhumanity in the Puritan treatment of Native Americans. The Puritans needed land, and the Native Americans had it. Although the Puritans believed they made better use of land than Native Americans, they actually required much more land to sustain each person. As a result, Native Americans were pushed off their own lands and forced to encroach upon the territories of other Native groups, producing displacement and conflict between Native nations.

Furthermore, it was not the nations the Puritans considered hostile that suffered most from settler encroachment — those groups that aligned themselves with the Puritans often fared the worst. One example is the fate of the Pequot nation. Facing increasing Puritan encroachment, the Pequot signed a treaty with the MBC in 1634. However, they soon discovered that a treaty with the English "resulted in complete subjugation and humiliation." By 1636 the Pequot had determined that the situation was intolerable and initiated hostile action against the Puritans. So desperate were they that they attempted to form an alliance with the Narragansett, their traditional enemies — but the Narragansett sided with the English, drawn by the Puritans' greater economic and political power. Hostilities escalated into war when the Pequot supported Native Americans who killed Puritans that had taken their land in violation of the 1634 treaty.

While the war was devastating to the Pequot, it revitalized the Puritan community. The MBC had grown disillusioned due to the lack of individual rights, particularly regarding personal experiences of grace, and some settlers had begun to move against Winthrop's leadership. The war gave Winthrop the opportunity to demonstrate his capabilities and to reaffirm the MBC's covenant with God and its "divine mission."

The Puritans' mission may have been framed as divine, but their conduct in the Pequot War was far from what modern Christians would consider holy. The massacre at Mystic village stands as a stark example. The Puritans surrounded the Pequot village, set fire to all of its dwellings, and killed anyone who attempted to escape. Between 400 and 700 elderly men, women, and children perished. The Puritans justified the massacre by claiming that God wanted His enemies cast into a "fiery oven." Having associated Native Americans with the devil since the earliest days of their occupation — finding their religious practices "diabolical and uncouth" — the Puritans eventually came to believe that Native Americans "personified the Devil and everything the Puritans feared: the body, sexuality, laziness, sin, and the loss of self-control." This equation of Native Americans with the Devil ultimately permitted the Puritans to commit what amounted to military genocide. By 1638, the Pequot nation had ceased to exist.

The Pequot War and the subsequent eradication of the Pequot benefited the MBC in several ways. Most obviously, it freed up more land for settlers. It also provided the community with a sense of unity, confirming in Puritan minds that God had a purpose for them and that their presence in America was the result of divine providence. The war further solidified the belief that it was manifest destiny for the English to conquer America. Finally, the war equalized the Puritan community in a new way: whereas before the war only saints were considered spiritually elevated, after it all settlers believed themselves superior to the natives and therefore entitled to enforce their will by any means necessary.

By dehumanizing the Native Americans, the Puritans relieved themselves of any moral obligation to treat them decently. As exemplified by the Mystic massacre, the Puritans relied on the concept of a divine mission to justify whatever actions they took against the native population. Other settlers adopted the same position. As they moved further into America, they carried these beliefs with them, resulting in the long-term cultural genocide of Native North Americans.