Praying Towns Essay

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Praying Towns Through the centuries lands have been explored and claimed, and its people have been enslaved and destroyed all in the name of God. Evangelization of natives has long been practiced by missionaries seeking to convert natives to Christianity and free them of their savage ways. One such example was the Praying Towns of Massachusetts. The Nipmuc Tribe called the eastern swath of our continent home when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock Massachusetts on December 20, 1620. Through the charity of the Wampanoags, another coastal tribe, the Pilgrims were able to become established in the area, but the Nipmucs soon initiated friendly trade relations with the Puritans. Soon the religious fervor of the Pilgrims could not be contained, and the Nipmuc Tribe was the target converts. In 1646, with the Good Book in hand, Puritan missionary John Eliot preached his first sermon to the Native Americans in their own language in the wigwam of the Nipmuc chieftain Waban. From his mouth spewed words “that God was angry with them for their wickedness, and would destroy them and give their country to another people, that they should not live like beasts as they did . . . that God had many ways to destroy them that they knew not.” With the typical scare tactics of religious evangelization, Reverend Eliot was able to convert Chief Waban to Christianity. From here, Eliot established seven Praying Towns in the Massachusetts Colony known as the Old Praying Towns: Wamesit (Chelmsford), Nashobah (Littleton), Okkokonimesit (Marborough), Hassannamesit (Grafton), Makunkokoag (Hopkinton), Natick (Natick), and Punkapog or Pakomit (Stoughton). Here the Nipmucs were forced to renounce their native language, ceremonies, beliefs, traditional dress, and customs. One could say that they were forced to become ‘Red’ Puritans. Theologians would argue that evangelization is
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