In Eliot’s view, Native people could not convert to Christianity until they adopted English lifeways. Waban and several of his followers worked with Eliot to draw up ten laws for the newly renamed Nonantum. The new laws enforced customs that, to the English, signaled a respectable Christian life. They established fines for behaviors the English considered un-Christian, including idleness, pre-marital sex, and traditional styles of dress.
Soon, many of Waban’s people were cutting their hair and dressing in the English fashion. They also began cultivating the land in Nonantum with tools they received from Eliot. To follow English expectations, they cleared fields for agriculture, fenced in cornfields, and built permanent, rather than seasonal, homes.
Nonantum residents continued to use their traditional skills, such as basket weaving and maple sugaring. They sold handmade objects and surplus crops to the English. English missionary Thomas Shephard wrote in a fundraising pamphlet in 1648, “All winter they sell Brooms, Staves, Elepots, Baskets, Turkies. In the Spring, cranberries, Fish, Strawberries; in the Summer Hurtleberries, Grapes, Fish: in the Autumn they sell Caneberries, Fish, Venison, &c.”
The Conflicts of Conversion
Waban and other residents of Nonantum were the first Native community in the Bay Colony to convert to Christianity. The decision to convert was a difficult one. Even Waban felt conflicted. He spent time visiting English people in their homes and asking questions about their faith. At first, he was not persuaded. As he later recalled, “When the English taught me of God . . . I would go out of their doors, and [for] many years I knew nothing; when the English taught me I was angry with them.”
The decision to convert was controversial. Many Indigenous people rejected Puritanism altogether and were hostile to those who accepted the new religion. They criticized Nonantum residents who cut their hair and dressed in the English fashion.
At the same time, the English often doubted Native converts’ sincerity. A Massachusett elder named Wampas, who attended all of Eliot’s meetings at Waban’s longhouse in 1646, later remembered: “Because we pray to God other Indians abroad in the country hate us and oppose us, the English on the other side suspect us, and feare us to be still such as doe not pray at all.”
Why Did Waban and Others Choose to Convert?
Many factors influenced Native people’s decisions to convert. For some, Christian teachings offered a way of understanding the devastation caused by the recent horrific epidemics. In fact, when missionary John Eliot later recorded the testimony of 18 men who chose to convert to Christianity in Natick, nine singled out the deaths of family and friends as a significant factor in their conversion.
“A little while ago after the great sickness, I considered what the English do, and I had some desire to do as they do, and after that I began to work as they work, and then I thought I shall quickly die, and I feared lest I should die before I prayed to God.”
—Waban, quoted by John Eliot in Tears of Repentance, 1653
“Nipmucs and other natives who joined these towns did so for a variety of reasons. Protection from Mohawk attacks, curiosity about English ways, economic survival, education, and the availability of food and clothing were some of the factors involved in Native people voluntarily moving to the towns.”
—Cheryll Toney Holley, Nipmuc Nation chief
Left: Map of Native peoples and their territories in Massachusetts. Image generated by Native Land Digital.
A desire to stay on their land, and the hope of securing safety from encroaching English people and hostile Native nations, such as the Mohawk, also convinced some Native people to accept the Puritan religion. A Nipmuc leader named John Speen testified in 1658 that he had converted “because I saw the English took much ground, and I thought if I prayed the English might not take away my ground.
“Sometime I thought if we did not pray, the English might kill us.”
—Waban, quoted by John Eliot in A further Account of the progress of the Gospel, 1659
Header Image: Quinobequin (Charles River), Spring 2020. Image courtesy of the Natick Historical Society.