Native American Tribes in New England around 1600
Last week we considered the religion of enslaved Africans, and noted that, although many converted to Christianity, others tried to hold on to their original cultures and religions. This week, let’s consider the experience of another non-Western group: Native Americans. As I approach the end of my blog posts, it seems fitting to come full circle and discuss the Indians. After all, they were in Rhode Island first, and their lives were irrevocably changed by the Europeans and Africans who arrived on their shores.
Historians do not know much about the Natives who lived in Newport and on Aquidneck Island. Little physical evidence of their presence remains, or has been discovered. Therefore, let’s expand our discussion to Indians on the nearby island of Conanicut (where present day Jamestown, RI is located) and the colony of Rhode Island more generally. When European colonists arrived in the 1600s, the territory was primarily occupied by the Narragansetts and Wampanoags. Thousands of years ago, these groups lived nomadically, hunting migratory animals and gathering plants. By around 1000 BC, the Narragansetts and Wampanoags began to settle into villages and farm crops. Archaeology on Conanicut Island has uncovered artifacts which range from the nomadic period through contact with Europeans on the 1600s.
Many of the objects found during the digs on Conanicut offer hints about the religious beliefs of the Native peoples. Combining the physical evidence with written observations by European contemporaries, present-day historians can piece together early indigenous worldviews. The Narragansetts believed in a number of different deities who controlled different elements of the universe. Select individuals like shamans could communicate with these deities through visions or direct conversation. People who specialized in curing illnesses and seeking divine intervention during times of trouble like war and famine, were some of the most important religious leaders in Narragansett life. From contemporary accounts, we can also glean that the Narragansetts believed in that people had something akin to a soul known as Cowwewonck.
As much of our evidence is from burials, we know a good deal about Native American death and mourning practices. As in many cultures, times of death were characterized by grief. The Narragansetts took this further to fear; people avoided mentioning the dead person’s name out of fear and respect. Narragansetts were often buried in the fetal position, as they saw death as a parallel to birth.
Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, treated the Narragansetts and other Native peoples in the colony like the Wampanoag with relative respect. After being banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony, Williams had to depend upon various Native peoples for survival, and he became friends with a number of them. When he obtained the charter from England to establish the colony, he acknowledged that Indians originally owned the land and ensured that they were properly compensated. On a more personal level, Williams wrote A Key into the Language of America in 1643, compiling his understanding of the Algonquian language for others. It not only explained Native language, but articulated Williams’ understanding of Native society, showing that far from uncivilized, the Narragansetts and others were part of complex societies. Yet even in Rhode Island, this relative harmony was very fragile as Natives and Europeans were often unable to co-exist, as during King Phillip’s War.
When Native peoples were treated poorly, religion was often the sticking point. Many Europeans decided that Indians needed some Christian salvation. Putting their own denominational and theological conflicts aside, they sometimes united to try to convert Native Americans to some form of Christianity. With time, as they learned about Indian faiths, some Europeans realized that Indian religions had value, and some Europeans even adopted Native healing practices. Despite this, Indian religion was generally viewed negatively by Europeans. Native religious worldviews were simply too far outside of most Europeans’ conceptions for them to understand. And, in fact, Indian religions were so foreign to Europeans, that even colonists committed to religious toleration had difficulty extending that toleration to Native faiths. Even when Indians converted to Christianity, they were still frequently mistrusted by Europeans who feared that the converts would retain some of their pagan practices.
Thus, the religious toleration that we have been discussing all summer and fall had its limits. Even while Newporters and Rhode Islanders learned to accept people of varying Judeo-Christian traditions, that acceptance did not always extend to non-western faiths. And even though the Narragansetts and Wampanoags who lived in colonial Rhode Island may have been treated relatively well by Roger Williams, colonists in Rhode Island (and across the rest of the British North American colonies) tended to mistrust the Native peoples because of their religious worldviews.
To learn more about early Narragansett religious views, check out Robert A. Geake’s A History of the Narragansett Tribe of Rhode Island: Keepers of the Bay. Of, if you are interested in archaeology, look into William Scranton Wimmons’ Cautantowwit’s House: An Indian Burial Ground on Narragansett Bay to learn about the excavations on Conanicut Island.
