Race And Religion In The Eighteenth Century

Throughout the late eighteenth century Americans began to create new meanings of race and religion. The new-found changes whites made in response to their affiliations with the Indian tribes significantly shaped the race, religion, and economic life. With the nation enmeshed in a sixty-year war against tribes from the Ohio Country, bureaucrats and missionaries debated if Indians had the ability to find a place within the nation. Contemporaneously, in Oneida country in upstate New York, Indians from nearly one dozen tribes held gatherings to discuss race and becoming one solid nation. Beginning with the great awakening of the 1740’s, Indians throughout the northeast adopted Christianity in ever greater numbers, culminating in the decision of
the Christian Indians on Long Island Sound and Western Massachusetts to migrate to Oneida country in the 1770’s and 1780’s. In addition to the Oneidas already there, there were also two multitribal Christian Indian communities: Brothertown, composed of the Mohegans, Pequots, Niantics, and Tunxis from Connecticut, the Narragansetts from Rhode Island, and the Montauketts from Long Island; and New Stockbridge, made up of Mohicans, Housatonics, and Wappingers from the old praying town of Stockbridge on the Massachusetts- New York border. Pulled by the hope of finding Indian solidarity, Joseph Johnson, David Fowler, and Samson Occom hatched a plan in 1773 for the Christian communities to band together and move to Oneida country and live by God’s law. This influenced the people of Brothertown, Stockbridge, and Oneida to address each other as Christian Indian brethren, because they saw racial solidarity, prosperity, and Christianity as being intertwined with one another.
Throughout the seventeenth century, colonists and natives alike called the Christian Indians praying Indians rather than just Christians, which they reserved for Europeans. Although, Indians themselves had already introduced the phrase praying Indians to highlight the mission Indians’ distinctive ritual practice. For Englishmen, though, a praying Indian was a hyphenated or qualified Christian (Silverman 502). To be simply Christian was to be European; a praying Indian was, by influence, someone in between savagery and civility, someone who measured up “almost… but not quite” to the colonists’ standards (Silverman 502). The Indians inability to translate Christian and civilized reforms into earthly benefits, including coexistence with whites, led them to imagine that God cursed Indians in this world less for their own wrongdoing, but as punishment for the sins of their ancestors. In consequence, they felt as though they could not reform and become a prosperous nation, like the white people, until the time comes when their punishment is removed. At the same time, Indians saw this venture as a test of faith. They believed God would reward them with peace, prosperity, and acceptance by whites, only when they proved themselves worthy by living as a Christian community and spreading the gospel. The task was not to impress colonial society but to attract God’s smile. If all mankind in the world believed in Jesus Christ with all their hearts, there would not be any more wars and they would live as one family in peace.
The Christian Indian movement became even more relevant to the Indians following the revolution because their condition had grown ever more desperate. At the height of desperation, these people had uprooted their lives because they trusted that God smiled on those who worked hard, discontinued sinning, spread his word, and worshipped him honestly (Silverman 532). Though they were not wholly obedient to God, they could plainly see that they were no more sinful than others.