The Puritans arrived on the northeastern coast of the Western Atlantic continent about ten years after the Separatists (later called Pilgrims) had established a settlement at Plymouth. The Puritans were better financed and were a larger group – a little over 700 individuals on 7 ships as opposed to around 100 Separatists on one ship. They established a number of settlements north of Plymouth, with Boston being the largest and serving as the center for the colony’s administrators, including its first Governor, John Winthrop.
Winthrop was the tacit leader of the Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was a student of the scripture and a social activist, in the sense that he dedicated himself to remaking a world he saw as being wicked. He administered the Colony in a dogmatic manner, declaring at one point that, “A democracy is … accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government.” He was also convinced, like other prominent Puritans, that God had elected him to salvation which further reinforced his elitist worldview.
In his writing, sermons and other speeches, Winthrop consistently used biblical references to construct analogies that were meant to encourage and guide the colonizers. The main themes were ‘City on the Hill’, ‘Promised Land’ and ‘Chosen People’. Perhaps his best known sermon is “A Modell of Christian Charity” which he delivered either just prior to, or actually during the crossing (there are conflicting accounts). In it he quoted Mathew 5:14: “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.”
The sermon declared: “For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. Soe that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.” A case could be made that this statement, based on the selected passage from Mathew, was the justification for all of Winthrop’s Colonization Practices.
With this foundational statement, Winthrop and his Puritan followers easily saw themselves in a situation similar to the ancient Israelites – a Chosen People; in Canaan – the Promised Land. And if this analogy is followed further and the fate of the Canaanites at the hands of the Israelites is considered, there should be no surprise how the Indigenous Peoples were mistreated to the point of near extinction by the Puritans. Their 17th century plan was modeled after one that had occurred centuries before, and their’s was also accepted as God’s will.
An interesting note about the concept of a ‘Chosen People’. Early Christian scholars believed that Jews were indeed God’s Chosen People. However, they also argued that because the Jews had rejected Jesus as the Savior, God had retracted the honor and conferred in onto the Christians. It’s formally known as Supersessionism, but also referred to sometimes as Replacement Theology or Fulfillment Theology.
The results of Winthrop’s teaching and guidance were the oppressive, and sometime deadly, actions that eventually decimated the Indigenous Peoples who were living on the land when the Puritans arrived. The 1636 – 37 war against the Pequots essentially exterminated that Nation. Plus, it provided a pool of Indian captives as slaves for the colonizers, of which Winthrop had at least one, and perhaps three – the journals aren’t completely clear. It was the practice at the time to ship the locally captured Indigenous slaves to the Caribbean in exchange for African slaves, since the natives knew the territory in the North and more easily found ways to escape.
Alfred Cave, PhD and a historian particularly noted for his definitive study of the Pequot War, claims that Winthrop was purported to have said that the property rights of “more advanced” peoples superseded the rights of the Indians. While there was occasionally a pretense at legally acquiring title to the land the colonizers wanted, for the most part it was just ‘staked-out’ and then defended by superior weaponry. The Puritans adopted the rule called ‘Vacuum Domicillium’, a version of ‘Terra Nullius’, one of the ten rules of the Doctrine of Discovery. Under ‘Vacuum Domicillium’, which means ‘empty of inhabitants’, if land was not being actively used, with fixed habitation, structures, or fences, it was considered to be free for the taking. Which meant that lands only used seasonally by the Indians for fishing or hunting, but were otherwise vacant, could be claimed.
In 1641 the Massachusetts Bay Colony adopted the Body of Liberties, a lengthy set of conditions setting the standards for administrative regulations for the colony. John Winthrop was a member of the commission that created that document. Many of the concepts contained in the Body of Liberties eventually found their way into what we now know as the Bill of Rights. But, it was also the first legal endorsement for slavery in North America which wasn’t formally outlawed in Massachusetts until 1870.
While the actual historical events may have varied, the scripture as the Puritans chose to understand it, gave them – the ‘Chosen People’ in their own ‘Promised Land – the privilege of taking the land they wanted and discarding the current inhabitants. And they felt their God was showing them validation for their actions as they observed wide-spread plagues, probably caused by themselves and their animals, that killed untold numbers of the Indigenous Peoples, but did not affect the Puritans.
There was an additional Religious Practice that both Catholic and Protestant colonizers were aware of – the ‘ Second Coming’. Though it had been centuries since the promise had been made, preparing for the return of Christ was still a real task and an obligation for some. We know the Popes who served during the colonizing period already felt they were charged with the well-being of the whole world. And for them that meant everyone was to be a Christian. In fact, at one point that was one of the ‘seven conditions’ that needed to be completed before the ‘Return’ was possible. Clearly, the goal for the total world population to be converted to Christianity was impossible to achieve. But, many still held onto that as a legitimate goal in their interactions with Indigenous Peoples. Christopher Columbus, for one, recorded in his journal an awareness that this was a task he felt responsible for completing. It was certainly an incentive to make converts. Unfortunately, it was also frequently interpreted as authorization to eliminate non-converts.