Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America

Richter examines two types of historical documents that record the words of Indigenous people in early America: conversion narratives and spiritual autobiographies of Indigenous Christians as transcribed by Puritan missionaries in Massachusetts, and speeches of Indigenous diplomats as recorded by colonial government scribes.

In 1653, Puritan missionary John Eliot published Tears of Repentance, a collection of conversion narratives by Indigenous Americans from Natick, the “praying town” Eliot had founded near Boston. The most extensive narratives are those by a man named Monequassun. His testimony is couched in an idiom more European than Indigenous, full of “interminable expressions of self-flagellating piety” (115). However, Richter believes that although Eliot may have adapted the wording, the speeches probably represent a “reasonably authentic record” (117) of what Monequassun said.

Puritan clergyman William Perkins developed an elaborate “morphology of conversion” (119) consisting of 10 stages modeled on the Calvinist doctrine of divine grace. Indigenous Christians used their new faith to make sense of their material and spiritual conditions, emphasizing interpersonal relationships rather than doctrinal or creedal statements. This perspective was a natural extension of the community-oriented worldview common among Indigenous peoples.

In 1679, a delegation of Mohawks gathered in Albany, New York, to deal with the aftermath of Bacon’s Rebellion.