New Rules
Alongside the focus on farming, the English also enforced strict rules about residents’ roles in the village. The laws and norms established at Nonantum now applied to Natick. They were often in conflict with Native traditions, including gender roles. Women remained indoors to card and spin wool, rear children, and cook. Planting and harvesting crops, and processing meat, traditionally done by women in Native communities, were now exclusively jobs for the men of Natick.
The Puritans believed English grooming habits would encourage Christian values of chastity, sobriety, and industry. New rules required men to cut their hair short and women to cover their hair. English clothing became common in the settlement, setting Christian converts apart from Native people who had chosen other paths.
“I heard that Word, That it is a shame for a man to wear long hair, and that there was no such custom in the Churches: at first I thought I loved not long hair, but I did, and found it very hard to cut it off; and then I prayed God to pardon that sin also.”
—Monequasson, quoted by John Eliot in Tears of Repentance, 1653
Indigenous Identity and English Ways
The settlement’s rules were English rules, but elements of Indigenous culture persisted. Although Eliot maintained influence over Natick and visited every two weeks, the town’s residents were all Indigenous. Massachusett and Nipmuc leaders, including John Speen, Cutshamekin, and Waban, retained their leadership roles in the new town. Native preachers, trained by Eliot, delivered sermons in the meetinghouse to their community. Children in Natick received schooling in their first language. Residents often wore wampum accessories alongside their English clothes and hairstyles.
Still, the Natick settlement was not a natural blend of English and Native cultures, but rather a planned community that imposed the Puritan religion and English customs onto a Native population. Praying towns have been described as one of the more destructive policies of the British Empire. Yet, for the Native people who chose to live in them, praying towns offered some protection from hostile neighbors, access to land and other natural resources, and educational and economic opportunities.
Left: Map of "Praying Indian" towns and other geography of Eastern Massachusetts ca. 1660. Image adapted from a map by Jeanne Abboud.
By the outbreak of King Philip’s War in 1675, fourteen praying towns had been established in New England. Natick was the first.
Header Image: Quinobequin (Charles River), Fall 2020. Image courtesy of the Natick Historical Society.