Praying town

Based on Wikipedia: Praying town

In the winter of 1675, hundreds of Native Americans were starving to death on a desolate island in Boston Harbor. These weren't enemy combatants. They were Christians—converts who had abandoned their traditional ways, learned to read and write in their own language, and built communities modeled on English towns. Their reward for this cultural transformation was imprisonment, exposure, and death.

This is the story of the praying towns.

The Experiment

The praying towns were an ambitious social experiment launched in colonial New England between 1646 and 1675. The concept was straightforward: create settlements where Native Americans would convert to Christianity and adopt European customs, farming techniques, clothing, and social organization. In exchange, they would theoretically gain legitimacy in colonial society and protection of their land rights.

The experiment produced remarkable achievements. Missionaries and Native translators created the first books ever printed in an Algonquian language. They published the first complete Bible printed anywhere in North America—not in English, but in Massachusett, the language of the local Indigenous people. Native communities established systems of self-government, electing their own officials and producing legal documents in their own languages.

But the experiment ended in catastrophe.

The Architect

John Eliot arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony as a young Puritan minister in the 1630s. Unlike most English colonists, who viewed Native Americans as obstacles to be removed or enemies to be defeated, Eliot believed they had souls worth saving. This made him unusual. It did not make him an advocate for Indigenous rights in any modern sense—his goal was complete cultural transformation, the erasure of traditional beliefs and practices in favor of English Puritan ways.

To accomplish this, Eliot needed to learn Massachusett, a language entirely unlike English. He found teachers among bilingual Indigenous people, including John Sassamon, an orphan who had survived the devastating smallpox epidemic of 1633, and Cockenoe, a Montauk man who had been enslaved after the Pequot War. With their help, Eliot became fluent enough to preach.

His breakthrough came in 1646 at a place called Nonantum—meaning "place of rejoicing" in Massachusett—in what is now Newton, Massachusetts. There he met Waban, a Nipmuc leader who would become the first Native American in Massachusetts to formally convert to Christianity. The friendship between Eliot and Waban set the template for what followed.

Why Would Anyone Join?

From a modern perspective, the praying towns seem like a terrible bargain. Give up your religion, your clothing, your customs, your entire way of life—and in return, receive second-class citizenship in a society that will never fully accept you.

So why did thousands of Native Americans choose this path?

The answer lies in understanding the desperate circumstances of Indigenous communities in seventeenth-century New England. European diseases had already devastated the population. The smallpox epidemic of 1633 killed between thirty and seventy percent of Native people in some areas. Entire villages were wiped out. Traditional healing practices and spiritual beliefs offered no protection against these mysterious illnesses.

Warfare made things worse. The Pequot War of 1636-1638 demonstrated the colonists' willingness to use extreme violence, including burning an entire village and killing hundreds of men, women, and children. Intertribal conflicts, often exacerbated by colonial interference, created additional pressures. Some Indigenous people saw the praying towns as refuges from this chaos.

Others made a more calculated decision. Converting to Christianity might—they hoped—give them standing in colonial courts. It might help them hold onto their remaining lands. It might offer economic opportunities unavailable elsewhere. When your traditional economy has collapsed, your population has been decimated, and your neighbors are being killed or enslaved, joining a praying town might look like survival rather than surrender.

The Towns Themselves

By 1675, the Massachusetts Bay Colony had established fourteen praying towns. Natick, founded in 1651, was the first and most prominent. Ponkapoag followed in 1654. Both were populated primarily by Massachusett people. Other towns served different communities: Wamesit was established for the Pawtucket, who belonged to the larger Pennacook confederacy. Most of the remaining towns—places like Hassanamessit, Magunkaquog, Nashoba, and Pakachoag—were Nipmuc settlements.

The names themselves tell a story. These weren't English place names imposed from above. Chaubunagungamaug. Okommakamesitt. Wabaquasset. The praying towns retained their Indigenous identities even as their residents adopted English customs.

Beyond Massachusetts Bay, other colonies established their own praying towns. Plymouth Colony had Mashpee, which survives today as the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. Martha's Vineyard had Gay Head—now Aquinnah—home to the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head. Nantucket had its own community. A 1674 census by Puritan pastor Daniel Gookin listed dozens of these settlements across New England.

Self-Government Within Constraints

The praying towns weren't simply English villages with Native residents. They developed their own hybrid systems of governance that blended colonial structures with traditional Indigenous leadership patterns.

Residents elected their own rulers and officials. On paper, these were English-style offices: constables, justices of the peace, town selectmen. But the people who filled these positions were often traditional tribal leaders. The offices themselves were frequently given names drawn from Indigenous languages, titles identical to those of pre-contact Native American leadership roles. In some communities, hereditary rulers maintained their authority even as they operated within colonial frameworks.

Most remarkably, the praying towns conducted their official business in their own languages. They produced legal documents, administrative records, and correspondence in Massachusett and other Algonquian languages. Some of these documents survive today—primary sources in Indigenous languages describing Indigenous communities governing themselves, a rare and precious historical record.

This autonomy was always conditional. The colonial government maintained ultimate authority. But within those constraints, the praying towns represented something genuinely novel: Indigenous communities adapting colonial institutions to their own purposes while preserving elements of their traditional social organization.

The Promise and Its Limits

News of Eliot's work reached England and generated considerable excitement. In 1649, Oliver Cromwell's Parliament passed an Act creating the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England. This organization would fund missionary work, establish an Indian College at Harvard University, and support a printing press in Cambridge dedicated to publishing Christian materials in Massachusett.

The Harvard Indian College accepted its first student in 1655. Only a handful of Native Americans ever attended—the experiment never scaled beyond a token gesture—but the printing press proved more consequential. Between 1654 and 1685, the Cambridge press produced numerous works in Massachusett, including primers, catechisms, and in 1663, a complete translation of the Bible. This Eliot Bible, as it came to be known, was a monument to linguistic and cultural collaboration. It was also an instrument of cultural transformation, designed to replace Indigenous spiritual traditions with Puritan Christianity.

For all these achievements, the praying Indians never achieved the acceptance they sought. English colonists viewed them with suspicion. Conversion did not make them equal citizens. It did not protect their land rights in practice. It did not earn them trust or respect. They remained, in colonial eyes, Indians first and Christians second—useful as converts, dangerous as potential enemies, never fully belonging to either world.

King Philip's War

In 1675, the fragile accommodation between colonists and praying Indians shattered.

King Philip's War—named for Metacom, the Wampanoag leader the English called King Philip—was one of the bloodiest conflicts in American history relative to population. It began as a dispute between the Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoag, then spread across New England as various Native groups joined the fighting. Colonists suffered devastating raids. Indigenous communities were destroyed.

The praying Indians found themselves trapped between two hostile forces. Colonial authorities questioned their loyalty. Native Americans fighting against the English viewed them as traitors. Both sides had reasons to distrust people who had attempted to straddle two worlds.

Colonial suspicion won out. In October 1675, Massachusetts authorities ordered the praying Indians confined. Most were sent to Deer Island, a bleak spot in Boston Harbor with no shelter and inadequate food supplies. There, hundreds of people who had committed no crime, who had done everything asked of them, who had given up their traditional ways and embraced Christianity, spent the winter of 1675-1676 starving and freezing.

Many died. The exact number is unknown, but the death toll was substantial. These were not casualties of war. They were victims of their colonial neighbors' fear and hatred.

After the War

King Philip's War ended in 1678 with the defeat of the Native alliance and the death of Metacom himself. The survivors from Deer Island were released. Some were sold into slavery—a final betrayal of people who had trusted colonial promises of protection and acceptance.

Of the original fourteen praying towns in Massachusetts Bay Colony, ten were disbanded by the General Court after the war. The remaining four were placed under the direct supervision of colonial officials. Self-government, such as it had been, was curtailed.

Some communities survived. Mashpee persisted on Cape Cod. Herring Pond endured near Plymouth. Gay Head and other Martha's Vineyard communities maintained their identities. These were not triumphant survivals but diminished remnants, their populations reduced, their autonomy restricted, their futures uncertain.

The Long Decline

Over the following centuries, the praying town communities that survived faced relentless pressure. Epidemics continued to reduce their populations. Colonial and later American governments steadily stripped away communal land holdings. The self-government that had made these communities distinctive was progressively eliminated.

The languages eventually fell silent. Massachusett, which had once been sophisticated enough to render the full text of the Bible, ceased to be spoken as a first language. The administrative documents, the legal records, the correspondence in Indigenous languages—all became historical artifacts rather than living traditions.

Yet the communities did not entirely disappear. Living descendants in New England today trace their ancestry to residents of praying towns. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe received federal recognition in 2007. The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head has maintained its presence on Martha's Vineyard for over four centuries. These communities represent both the survival of Indigenous identity and the profound losses that survival required.

What the Praying Towns Reveal

The story of the praying towns illuminates the terrible choices faced by Indigenous peoples in colonial America. Convert or resist. Adapt or die. Become Christian and suffer anyway. The praying Indians chose a path of accommodation, hoping that cultural transformation would bring security and acceptance. They were wrong.

But the story also reveals Indigenous agency and resilience. The praying towns were not simply colonial impositions. Native people shaped them, governed them, and conducted their affairs in their own languages. They adapted English institutions to their own purposes. They maintained aspects of traditional social organization within colonial frameworks. Even in defeat and dispossession, they preserved communities and identities that endure today.

The winter on Deer Island stands as a grim monument to colonial betrayal. People who had done everything asked of them—converted, civilized themselves by colonial standards, abandoned their traditional ways—were imprisoned and left to die anyway. Their Christianity did not save them. Their cooperation did not protect them. In the end, to colonial authorities, they were still Indians, still threats, still expendable.

This is not ancient history. The descendants of the praying Indians are still here, still advocating for their rights, still preserving what remains of their cultural heritage. The languages may be gone, but the people remain. The praying towns failed as experiments in cultural assimilation. They succeeded, against all odds, as communities that refused to disappear entirely.