Sword of the Wilderness: Literature of the Frontier Experience in Early New England

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1 Sword of the Wilderness: Literature of the Frontier Experience in Early New England By Wesley Fiorentino December 2015 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts in History Dual-Degree Program in History and Archives Management Simmons College Boston, Massachusetts The author grants Simmons College permission to include this thesis in its Library and to make it available to the academic community for scholarly purposes. Submitted by Your Name Here Approved by: Stephen Berry Associate Professor of History Stephen Ortega Associate Professor of History Copyright Wesley Fiorentino, 2015

2 Fiorentino 2 Abstract: The wilderness of the New World presented a complex set of issues for English settlers. While frontier life offered no small degree of physical demand and danger, long-held beliefs about wild frontier colored the imaginations of New Englanders. Physical danger was paralleled with the danger posed by the spiritually barren wasteland before them. The wilderness around them threatened to break down their social institutions and turn them savage. Native Americans were seen as an extension of the wilderness predicament. To Anglo-Americans, the Natives represented the logical conclusion to the process of de-civilization they so greatly feared. This anxiety was present in some of the earliest writings of Puritan New England, and would remain consistent throughout the seventeenth century and beyond. Histories, sermons, and memoirs expressed the resentment felt by the Puritans for the untamed wilderness before them. The prevailing social ideal was that society as a whole contended with the dangers of the frontier. King Philip's War was seen by many leaders in New England as the ultimate clash between the wilderness and civilized New England. The writings stemming from this conflict, including captivity narratives and frontier tracts, addressed this same dichotomy but from new perspectives. Whereas once, the ministry had stressed the need for social cohesion in the face of the boundless forests and their Native inhabitants, captivity narratives and memoirs of frontiersmen provided an individualistic mode of expression. This only accentuated the independence felt by many who subverted the collective Puritan ideal as they expanded further into the New World, and the accounts of their experiences were impressed in the literary imagination of America for generations to come.

3 Fiorentino 3 Historiography: Early New England society had always defined itself against what it perceived to be the wilderness condition of the New World. Preconceived notions of the wilderness, gleaned from Biblical tradition and crystallized during the foundation of the Massachusetts Bay colony, characterized the framework of the Puritan commonwealth. While the new communities were to be founded in the midst of the hostile New England wilderness, they believed that God's protection of the advocates of true religion would keep the settlers safe as long as they remained steadfast in their piety. However, the very act of settlement began a prolonged process of deeper penetration into the frontier in order to cultivate new communities, whether for the spread of religion or for material gain. The resulting clashes with Native Americans, commonly viewed as agents the degenerative wilderness, served to reshape popular conceptions regarding the frontier. The resulting literature, informed by the social theory of New England Puritanism, as well as the experience of frontier warfare in the late seventeenth century, represents a prolonged shift from the views of the godly commonwealth about the wilderness toward secular, literary conceptions of the wilderness experience. Puritan attitudes toward the wilderness and, in turn, the experiences of conflicts such as King Philip's War, characterized popular imagination of the North American frontier. Scholarship on the wilderness in Puritan and early American thought ranges in specific focus across a number of scholarly fields. Scholars have written on the New England wilderness with an emphasis toward social theory, literary theory, mythmaking, and formation of national identity. 1 A study of the influence of Puritan wilderness theology on early American literature 1 See: Peter N. Carroll, Puritanism and the Wilderness: the intellectual significance of the New England frontier, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969); Roy Harvey Pearce, "The Significances of the Captivity Narrative," American Literature 19:1 (March 1947); Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The

4 Fiorentino 4 must account for the research from each of these fields. Puritan social theory implied certain viewpoints toward the frontier of New England, which in term influenced the writings of New Englanders during King Philip's War and other conflicts with Native Americans, which then influenced collective imagination with respect to the New England wilderness which would characterize popular literature for generations to come. The perception of the wilderness as a realm diametrically opposed to the ideals of New England society, inherent to Puritan thought, contributed greatly to the groundwork of a distinctly American frontier literary tradition, flourishing from the late eighteenth century into the nineteenth century. The writings of New Englanders about their experiences during the Indian wars of the seventeenth century formed a crucial bridge in this process. Captivity narratives such as that written by Mary Rowlandson helped generate a unique genre which would prove extremely popular, while the narrative of Benjamin Church would provide a prototype of later frontiersman including Filson's Daniel Boone and Cooper's Natty Bumppo. 2 Captivity narratives in particular have been an area of study in which the trace from Puritan theological tracts to popular frontier narratives has been explored in considerable detail. Roy Harvey Pearce writes about the contributions of the captivity narrative to the popular imagination of the New England wilderness. Pearce, a literary theorist and scholar of early American literature, focuses on representations of Native Americans, as well as on the societies which produced these representations. In his essay "The Significances of the Captivity Narrative," Pearce explores the development of the captivity narrative as a literary genre throughout the colonial period and into the nineteenth century. Rather than focusing on their Mythology of the American Frontier, (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1973); Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 1998) 2 See Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, (Boston, 1682).; Benjamin Church, Entertaining Passages relating to King Philip's War, (Boston, 1716).

5 Fiorentino 5 historical value, Pearce examines the contributions of captivity narratives to early American popular culture and the development of notions of the frontier and wilderness experience. Pearce speaks to the aesthetic qualities of even the most spiritually-charged narratives, including that of Mary Rowlandson, claiming that from the views expressed by captives, relating the harrowing stories of their suffering, can be gleaned the sensibilities of the greater society toward the wilderness and its supposedly savage inhabitants. According to Pearce, the true value of the captivity narrative is not found in firsthand accounts of interactions with Native Americans or frontier conflicts, but for their ability to enable later generations to tap into the mentalities of the age. Pearce explains that captivity narratives enable scholars to "see more deeply and more clearly into popular American culture, popular American issues, and popular American tastes. 3 Pearce makes the case that as the captivity narrative genredeveloped, the fear of and fascination with the frontier expressed took center stage, while historical accuracy and experience went by the wayside, and thus narratives gradually became more sensationalist as the Puritan theological message faded in importance and the realities of wilderness expansion and frontier settlement grew to greater prominence. Pearce traces the development of captivity narratives from the early, religiously-focused accounts such as that of Mary Rowlandson, to those of the later eighteenth century, such as the account of Peter Williamson's captivity, and argues that a move away from Puritandogma toward literary exposition with regards to perceived outside threats such as hostile Native Americans and French neighbors accounts for the shift from direct accounts to more idealized stories. Pearce insists that, despite an obvious shift in focus over time, such hyperbolic qualities are present even in the earliest narratives of Puritan captivity among New England's Native Americans. He notes "a certain aesthetic quality which derives from the freshness and 3 Pearce, "The Significances of the Captivity Narrative," 20.

6 Fiorentino 6 concreteness of detail" in the way in which Rowlandson "explores her experience." 4 The aesthetic quality, Pearce explains, won out over time in successive narratives, while the "quality of directness, of concern with describing an experience precisely as it had affected the individual who underwent it, of trying to somehow recapture and put what were taken as symbolic psychic minutiae, began to disappear." 5 Religious, confessional aspects of earlier narratives, and the accuracy which accompanied them, diminished in favor of propagandist motives which became more prevalent in the narratives of the mid- to late-eighteenth century. In particular, Pearce examines the writings of Puritan theologians such as Cotton Mather as a turning point in the focus of popular literature about wilderness experience. The exclusive nature of Puritan society in New England certainly lent itself to distrust of Native Americans, but Pearce contends that the development of this distrust was exacerbated by widely-read accounts such as those written and disseminated by public figures like Mather. Pearce points to Cotton Mather's ecclesiastical history of New England, the Magnalia Christi Americana, as a particularly influential work in the move towards sensationalism in frontier literature. "If the Magnalia is the record of godly New England's triumph over the wilderness, part of that record is of a triumph over the evil dwellers in the wilderness." 6 Pearce does not go so far as to say that the New England ministry purposely played an active role in the stoking of such sentiments, but he certainly shows how religious leaders contributed to the dissemination of these ideas. While Pearce's argument regarding Mather's involvement in the scope of captivity narratives is too rigid, he does touch on an important influence for the development of the genre itself as well as the wider grouping of wilderness and frontier literature throughout the colonial period. 4 Pearce, "Significances of the Captivity Narrative," 3. 5 Pearce, "Significances of the Captivity Narrative," 3. 6 Pearce, "Significances of the Captivity Narrative," 4.

7 Fiorentino 7 Much of what characterized the captivity narrative of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was rooted in Christian wilderness theology as well as the ideals and structure of the Puritan commonwealth in New England. 7 In Errand Into the Wilderness, Perry Miller examines the structure and mission of the Puritan commonwealth in the New World and how it was able to function in practice. For Miller, the government of Massachusetts Bay, and subsequently Connecticut, represented "the pure Biblical polity set forth in full detail by the New Testament," but which included "a due form of civil government...a political regime, possessing power, which would consider its main function to be the erecting, protecting, and preserving of this form of polity." 8 Miller focuses on the potential dual-meaning of the word "errand" in the minds of early New Englanders. Miller takes the term from Samuel Danforth's 1671 Election-Day sermon, in which the minister expounded upon the meaning of the presence of Anglo-Europeans in the North American wilderness in order to remind his contemporaries of the necessity to follow in the footsteps of the previous generation of settlers. 9 Miller interprets the term"errand" to represent the mission to found a government based on both sound ecclesiastical and sound civil policy, but also to complete the process of the Reformation, which early New England leaders such as John Winthrop saw as hopelessly stalled in their native England. 10 Miller focuses on the mission of early New England society, with little reference to the significance of the wilderness in the endeavor. The settlers' "errand" is of primary concern for Miller. However, several of the issues of early Puritan society examined in later scholarship, with reference to the wilderness, are identified in Miller's text. In particular, Miller discusses the 7 See: Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God; John Williams, The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion (Boston, 1707), in Alden T. Vaughan and Edward W. Clark, Puritans Among the Indians: Accounts of Captivity and Redemption, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981). 8 Perry Miller, Errand Into the Wilderness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), 5. 9 Samuel Danforth, A Brief Recogniction of New-Englands Errand into the Wilderness; Made in the Audience of the General Assembly of the Massachusetts Colony, at Boston in N.E. on the 11th of the third Moneth, 1670, being the DAY of ELECTION THERE (Cambridge: Printed by S.G. and M.F., 1671), Massachusetts Historical Society. 10 Miller, Errand, 12.

8 Fiorentino 8 problems of New England identity and of Americanization at length. The colonists' vision of settling the New England frontier drew heavily upon Biblical precedent, as Miller points out, but the goal of providing the world with an example of a Biblical polity in practice ultimately failed. "Having failed to rivet the eyes of the world upon their city on the hill, they were left alone in America." 11 Miller begins his examination of seventeenth century New England society at the point of their having been left alone. The influence of the wilderness resulted in aprolonged trend of perceived degeneracy among the successive generations of New Englanders. The issue of declension, for Miller, is tied directly with the problem of New England identity. Miller argues that the consistent exposure to New World conditions is the source of "the anxiety and torment that inform productions of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century." 12 Successive generations were further and further removed from the achievements and prowess of the saintly founding fathers. However, the wilderness, either as a theological construct or as the actual environment, plays only a tangential role in Miller's text. Miller alludes to wilderness theology sporadically, but it remains largely an implied set of beliefs held by most of the settlers. Miller is interested primarily in the ideology of the Puritan commonwealth, and he largely glosses over the effects of the wilderness experience on the development of the New England colonies. Subsequent scholars take up the discussion of the influence of the frontier on the Puritan commonwealth. Moving further than Miller, Peter N. Carroll directly addresses the relationship between seventeenth century New England and the surrounding wilderness. In particular, Carroll focuses on how the settlers' theoretical conceptions of the New England frontier were informed by actual wilderness experience. Carroll demonstrates that early Puritan society in Massachusetts defined 11 Miller, Errand, Miller, Errand, 15.

9 Fiorentino 9 itself against the wilderness and its perceived dangerous and degenerative influences. At best, the New England wilderness was a place for rigorous spiritual contemplation and trial. At worst, it was a realm wholly under the influence of Satan. In his book Puritanism and the Wilderness: The Intellectual Significance of the New England Frontier, , Peter N. Carroll explores the way encounters with the New England frontier informed Puritan theology throughout the seventeenth century and how the resulting theology shaped perceptions of the wilderness in the mindsets of New England settlers. Established traditions about the wilderness as spiritual proving ground were imported from England and blended with the Puritan experience in North America. The Puritans had developed specific views of the wilderness situation prior to their migration to Massachusetts Bay. Derived largely from Biblical metaphors, these concepts provided New Englanders with elaborate rhetorical devices with which they could judge their own experiences. 13 Carroll traces the development of Puritan views toward the New England wilderness from well before the captivity narratives published in the wake of King Philip's War to the end of the seventeenth century. Carroll examines the thought of New England society as a whole, which enables him to draw conclusions about the development of Puritan views of the wilderness over the course of several generations. Carroll's text does not address captivity narratives or the literary tradition following King Philip's War, but he does provide an invaluable study of the formation of Puritan ideology as it relates to perceptions of the wilderness. An understanding of the development of captivity narratives and other writings published in the wake of late-seventeenth century Indian wars relies on an insight into the place of the wilderness in Puritan theology which Carroll's work provides. While Pearce touches on the religious undertones of early captivity narratives, Carroll focuses on the spiritual endeavors of the Puritan commonwealth throughout the seventeenth century. Pearce 13 Carroll, Puritanism and the Wilderness, 2.

10 Fiorentino 10 explores the ideologies which lent themselves to preconceived notions about the New England frontier, and which would later inform such developing literary genres as the captivity narrative. Of particular importance is Carroll's identification of a foundational contradiction in the Puritan mission in North America, between the desire for an enclosed space for the biblical polity and the impetus to cultivate the untamed wilderness. Carroll posits that the very principles of the founders of New England lent themselves to their own subversion. The inherent paradox in the thinking of Puritan leaders undermined the goal of social cohesion, as it implicitly condoned wilderness expansion. "The founders of Massachusetts Bay intended to erect a city on a hill, a unified, organic society bound internally by Christian love. Modelled, in theory, on the medieval town, such a city would enclose the entire population within the confines of strong walls." 14 Carroll observes that this brand of social organization is inherently exclusionary, and goes on to point out that "the leaders of New England expected the commonwealth to function without reference to the areas outside of the community." 15 Carroll identifies the paradox between the ideal Puritan social structure and frontier expansion as a fundamental flaw in the goal to cultivate the Massachusetts Bay colony as a community based on the moral and governmental precepts of true religion. Carroll argues that this contradiction plagued the Puritan communities of New England throughout the seventeenth century. "In defending their migration to the New World," Carroll explains, "the colonists emphasized the importance of settling uncultivated areas. 16 While the Puritans sought to define themselves against the spiritually barren wilderness surrounding them, their goal of creating pious communities within that wilderness undercut that view. The Puritans endorsement of the subjugation of wild lands...provided enterprising settlers with an 14 Carroll, Puritanism and the Wilderness, Carroll, Puritanism and the Wilderness, Carroll, Puritanism and the Wilderness, 3.

11 Fiorentino 11 effective rationalization for expanding beyond the organic community intended by the founding fathers. 17 Carroll essentially makes the argument that the ideal of the Puritan commonwealth in New England was doomed from the beginning due to its failure to effectively resolve this paradox. Recurring waves of settlers looking to move beyond the protective boundary of the godly society of New England sought to found communities of their own, seemingly encouraged by the Puritan impetus to cultivate civilization on the frontier. In time, the colonists celebrated the process of transforming the wilderness despite the evident dangers to the collective society." 18 Moving beyond the scope of the original Puritan settlements, colonists brought themselves further into the wilderness and into conflict with its Native inhabitants, all the while maintaining their exclusionary outlook. While Carroll demonstrates the debt of early New England to biblical traditions regarding the wilderness, Roderick Frazier Nash frames the colonists' encounters with the frontier within a broader context of western perceptions of wild lands. While Peter Carroll, and to a lesser extent Perry Miller, assumes a certain degree of the influence of a traditional western European outlook on the New World, Nash, in his book Wilderness and the American Mind, places the settlers' perceptions within a long history of ideas regarding frontier expansion.nash discusses "the long Western tradition of imagining wild country as a moral vacuum, a cursed and chaotic wasteland." 19 Nash observes that suspicion of the wilderness predated Christianity in Western thought, though the biblical tradition was indeed the type of the Puritans' notions of the forests of New England. In particular, Nash contrasts the organization of the Garden of Eden with the chaotic wilderness to which Adam and Eve are banished after the Fall. Paradise meant an orderly, cultivated landscape, while untamed lands implied sin and degeneracy. This perception 17 Carroll, Puritanism and the Wilderness, Carroll, Puritanism and the Wilderness, Roderick Frazier Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 24.

12 Fiorentino 12 informed the early New Englanders both on the physical level, where they faced the challenges of settling in a hostile frontier, and the spiritual level, where they feared they had entered a realm under the sway of Satan. "If paradise was early man s greatest good, wilderness, as its antipode, was his greatest evil. In one condition the environment, garden-like, ministered to his every desire. In the other it was at best indifferent, frequently dangerous, and always beyond control." 20 The founders of New England needed to cultivate the surrounding frontier in order to carve out their envisioned society, but also to protect themselves from the dangerous influences of an unregenerate landscape. Another important contribution of Nash's text is that he examines the figures who actively sought to tame the North American wilderness in a way which Miller and Carroll have not. While Miller and Carroll both refer to the figure of the frontiersman and his importance in early American imagination, neither of them consider the implications of such a figure for perceptions of early wilderness cultivation. Carroll discusses the issue of wilderness cultivation and frontier expansion, but does not go into any great detail about perceptions of actual frontier figures. Nash, however, examines the frontiersman at length.for Nash, the frontiersmen of early New England engaged with the wilderness more intimately than most of their fellow colonists, but this engagement resulted in its destruction rather than in a balance between civilization and frontier. "Frontiersmen acutely sensed that they battled wild country not only for personal survival but in the name of nation, race, and God." 21 The frontier figures described by Nash were the agents of the expansionism which undermined the Puritan mission described by Carroll. However, Nash argues that, rather than favoring the wilderness over the close-knit communities of Puritan society, frontiersmen sought to tame the wilderness for further cultivation by Anglo- 20 Nash, Wilderness, Nash, Wilderness, 24.

13 Fiorentino 13 Americans. They may not have prescribed to the social theory laid out by the Puritan founders of Massachusetts Bay, but they participated in the same Western tradition of frontier settlement. For Carroll, the Old World ideas and outlooks transplanted in New England along with its Puritan founders characterized popular notions about the frontier and its wilderness inhabitants for much of the colonial era. Biblical traditions about wilderness experience combined with the firsthand of colonists themselves in the often hostile and foreboding New England environment. This served to form an early Anglo-American societal imagination, a process largely glossed over by Pearce. When discussing the captivity narratives dispersed throughout New England in the wake of the destructive Indian wars of the late seventeenth century, Pearce writes that "the Puritan narrative is one in which the details of the captivity itself are found to figure forth a larger, essentially religious experience." 22 Here, Pearce tangentially references the wider social, religious framework out of which early captivity narratives were born, but fails to adequately address the already existent societal values and sentiments which gave rise to the messages of writers like Mary Rowlandson. While Pearce takes for granted the exclusionary nature of Puritan social theory, Carroll explains the concept of the Hedge of Grace as a foundational principle of early New England social framework, which the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay relied on for protection from the dangers of the wilderness. The Hedge was the spiritual boundary that protected the city on a hill, and it was this boundary between the godly Puritan civilization and the ominous frontier which was reinforced in the minds of everyday New Englanders by the teachings of orthodox ministers such as Samuel Danforth, Increase Mather, and William Hubbard. Carroll writes that "since the wilderness represented the world of reprobacy and sinfulness, Puritan theologians stressed the 22 Pearce, "The Significances of the Captivity Narrative," 2.

14 Fiorentino 14 value of the Hedge as a shield from these corruptions." 23 The theory that a sacred Hedge protected the Puritans from the wilderness stressed that this protection rested on the continued piety of New Englanders themselves. Influential ministers such as Increase and Cotton Mather reminded their congregations that as long as they minded God's holy ordinances, they would remained protected from the perils of the surrounding frontier.the messages of the jeremiad sermons of the seventeenth emphasized this idea throughout the seventeenth century and beyond. 24 Carroll explores the effects of the ministry's messages on Massachusetts Bay colonists in the seventeenth century and how these messages shaped popular perception of the wilderness. The sentiments so often expressed in the literature of King Philip's War, particularly those found in Mary Rowlandson's narrative, must be considered with relation to this societal model. Scholarship on the literature written in the wake of King Philip's War almost inevitably addresses frontier concerns, as the conflict itself, at least in the minds of the men and women who lived through it, represented a clash between the agents of the wilderness and the inhabitants of God's commonwealth in the New World. Carroll reaches the climax of his text in claiming that King Philip's War was a wilderness crisis for New Englanders, rather than a clash between two equally developed cultures. "Not since the early years of settlement did the wilderness condition so threaten the existence of New England colonies." 25 However, Carroll ends his examination of the wilderness condition in the minds of Puritan colonists here, rather than further exploring the effects of the experience of the war on the literature and imagination of future generations. He does not discuss the genesis of the Puritan captivity narrative or the accounts of the wilderness experience during the war later recorded by figures such as Benjamin 23 Carroll, Puritanism and the Wilderness, For more on the role of the jeremiad sermon in Puritan social theory, see SacvanBercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 1978). 25 Carroll, Puritanism and the Wilderness, 208.

15 Fiorentino 15 Church. Carroll demonstrates the social framework which informed and was in turn informed by frontier experiences such as that of King Philip's War, but he does not explore the influences of these experiences on the literature or collective imagination of the next generation. The process of developing the framework of the New England Puritan mindset, reflected in printed literature and popular imagination is explored in depth by Richard Slotkin in his book Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, , as well as by more recent scholars including Jill Lepore. Slotkin emphasizes the significance of the impetus for myth-making in early New England society and how this was achieved by the Puritan literary culture of the seventeenth century. Though their fields of focus are quite different, Slotkin and Lepore examine a large number of the same sources and draw similar conclusions regarding the motives of prominent Puritan writers. 26 While Carroll s text revolves largely around the development of Puritan social theory, Slotkin focuses on how that social theory shaped perceptions of the Puritans place in the New World in the wake of a succession of Indian wars. Printed literature formed the basis for the shaping of these perceptions. Print culture was the primary vehicle of thoughts and ideas in Puritan New England, and this culture gave rise to the captivity narrative, as well as to sermons, wilderness tracts, and accounts of conflict with Native Americans. 27 The paradox discussed by Carroll, between the emphasis on the sheltered Bible commonwealth and the drive to push further into the wilderness in search of land, is at the heart of the literary traditions which Slotkin argues grew out of these experiences. 26 See: Increase Mather, A Brief History of the Warr With the Indians in New England (Boston, 1675); William Hubbard, A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians (Boston, 1677); Nathaniel Saltonstall, The Present State of new England with Respect to the Indian War (Boston, 1675) 27 For more on Puritan theology and print culture see Meredith Marie Neuman, Jeremiah's Scribes: Creating Sermon Literature in Puritan New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); for more on Puritan thought and wilderness conflicts see the introductory chapter to: Richard Slotkin and James K. Folsom, So Dreadfull A Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip's War, (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1978), as well as introductory chapter to: Alden T. Vaughan and Edward W. Clark, Puritans Among the Indians: Accounts of Captivity and Redemption, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981)

16 Fiorentino 16 One could not maintain religious discipline by purely theological argument or pure civic force, if parishioners were willing and capable of seeking their fortune by itinerating on the edges of the wilderness; so sermons merged with accounts of frontier hardship. 28 While Carroll focuses on this tension as the disintegrating factor in the Puritan goal of a city on a hill, Slotkin shifts the focus to the development of a distinctly American literary tradition which grew out of attempts by Puritan society to come to terms with the seemingly irreversible trend of inland expansion into the frontier. Jill Lepore s focus is more oriented toward the process by which New England literary culture undermined and demonized the Puritans Algonquian neighbors during King Philip s War. In her book The Name of War: King Philip s War and the Origins of American Identity, Lepore explores the literature surrounding the war, emphasizing the colonists attempts to defend their conduct in the conflict. Puritan anxieties over the influences of the wilderness are explored, as much of the literature Lepore analyzes focuses on the drive to solidify the boundary between civilized New Englander and savage Indian. The divine Hedge, so important to Carroll s argument, plays a prominent role in the racialization of Anglo-American-Indian relations. However, Lepore discusses the stress of New Englanders on distinguishing between their justifiable conduct in the war and the brutal, savage behavior of the Native Americans. Lepore s argument shows that this movement in literary culture during and after King Philip s War was an extension of the theoretical Bible commonwealth which had already defined itself against the Indian-haunted wilderness. However, Slotkin demonstrates that the circulation of frontier stories such as that of Benjamin Church led to an unconscious blend of Anglo-American settlers with the Native Americans in the wilderness, resulting in subsequent popular frontier figures, both real and imagined, such as Daniel Boone and Natty Bumppo. 28 Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, 19.

17 Fiorentino 17 The metaphors developed by the Puritan theologians of New England emphasized the wilderness experience of the colonists, with particular stress on differentiating the godly commonwealth from the influence of the wilderness. These metaphors, shaped and expanded upon in the discourse of distinct literary genres, formed the basis for popular American literary tradition in future generations. Once the sermons and spiritual tracts began to be informed by the experiences of the Indian wars, beginning with the Pequot War of 1637 but culminating with King Philip s War four decades later, these distinct genres began to emerge. The Indian war was a uniquely American experience, Slotkin writes. It pitted the English Puritan colonists against Indian barbarism. 29 These new literary forms were informed by Puritan theology and exceptionalism, but their emphasis gradually shifted away from spiritual idealism toward popular sentiment based on the frontier experience. 30 It was within this genre of colonial Puritan writing that the first American mythology took shape - a mythology in which the hero was the captive or victim of devilish American savages and in which his (or her) heroic quest was for religious conversion or salvation. 31 While continuous wilderness endeavor and conflict undermined the original mission of the Puritan commonwealth, its literary tradition survived and translated into the developing American literary tradition, characterized by popular perceptions of the New England frontier. It is important to examine the roles of writers like Mary Rowlandson and Benjamin Church in forming opinions about the wilderness beyond early New England communities as well as collective memory of King Philip's War and other conflicts with Native Americans. While the writings of Increase Mather and other New England ministers are important for a 29 Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, See John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New York, Alfred K. Knopf, 1994). 31 Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, 21.

18 Fiorentino 18 study of the growth of wilderness ideology in Puritan thought during this period, the narratives of people like Rowlandson and Church, who actually underwent significant wilderness experiences, contain early iterations of motifs which would become commonplace in later American literature. Rowlandson's captivity narrative achieves a synthesis of earlier Puritan literary forms, but also served as a prototype for a new genre which would remain popular among everyday American readers for at least another century. 32 Meanwhile, Church's memoirs of his time in King Philip's War contribute significantly to the figure of the frontiersman in early American literature. 33 While Carroll does not deal with these sources in any meaningful way, Pearce addresses only Mary Rowlandson's narrative, though he does go on to discuss John Williams' as well. Slotkin, and subsequent scholars including Lepore deal with these sources in depth and discuss at length their role in shaping later literary interplay between perceived civilization and the ominous frontier which lay beyond its borders. In his book The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story From Early America, John Demos explores the different sides of captive and frontier experiences. He takes as his subject the family of the Reverend John Williams of Deerfield, who were taken captive during a raid on their town on the night of February 28, Williams, his wife, and children were all taken captive by a combined force of Frenchmen from Canada and their Native American, mostly Mohawk, allies. Demos explores Williams experience his motivations for composing his captivity narrative The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion. The memories of captivity beckoned him to write - another chance to edify the faithful - and write he did. 34 Demos argues 32 For more on the influences on Rowlandson's narrative see: Dawn Henwood, "Mary Rowlandson and the Psalms: The Textuality of Survival," Early American Literature 32:2 (1997); Michelle Burnham, "The Journey Between: Liminality and Dialogism in Mary White Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative," Early American Literature 28:1 (1993). 33 See: "Benjamin Church: King of the Wild Frontier," Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull A Judgment, 370; Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, Demos, Redeemed Captive, 51.

19 Fiorentino 19 that, like Rowlandson, John Williams felt the need to write the tale of his captivity for the benefit of his contemporaries, that they might know that God would not forsake them, even as he chastised them. However, Demos explores the experiences of Williams other family members as well, especially the experience of Williams daughter Eunice. Eunice Williams is Demos titular unredeemed captive. In telling her story, Demos provides valuable insight into the sorts of situations faced by captives who were pressured to join the kin-groups of their captors and the decisions they made. Eunice was adopted into the largely Mohawk community of Kahnawake in Quebec, adopted Roman Catholicism, and eventually married a Mohawk man. All this was to the horror of the Williams family back in New England. Demos accurately gauges the family s reaction to the news of Eunice s wedding when he writes that they just cannot face it, cannot quite write the words without tears her husband is a Philistine indeed. An Indian. A Catholic. A savage. 35 Demos details a series of attempts by representatives from New England to convince Eunice to return home, as well as her staunch refusal on each of these occasions. For Demos, the story of Eunice Williams decision to remain with her adoptive Mohawk kin-group is an example of innumerable captives from New England who made similar decisions. The writings of participants and witnesses of King Philip's War build on the foundation of wilderness ideology developed by New England Puritan social theory and provide common themes and motifs for later popular literature. Studies of this process of development should be done from an interdisciplinary approach. Seventeenth century Puritan theology and social theory should be examined, as well as the literature of New England from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. A study of the influence of Puritan ideology on early American literature can also benefit from perspectives of literary criticism as well as sociology. Pearce, Carroll, 35 Demos, Unredeemed Captive, 99.

20 Fiorentino 20 Slotkin, and Lepore each take one of these respective approaches, but much of their work only tangentially relates to the formation of literary conceptions of the New England wilderness. A comprehensive study of the development of American popular frontier literature should take all of these aspects into account in order to accurately demonstrate the influence of the Puritan worldview on collective notions of the wilderness.

21 Fiorentino 21 Introduction: The wilderness of the New World played a crucial role in the development of the early American collective imagination. In particular, early New England society consistently defineditself against what it perceived to be the wilderness condition in which the Native Americans lived. Preconceived notions of the wilderness, gleaned from Biblical tradition and crystallized during the foundation of the Massachusetts Bay colony, characterized the framework of the Puritan commonwealth. While new communities were founded in the midst of the hostile New England wilderness, their founders believed that God protected them as advocates of true religion. They were kept safe as long as they remained steadfast in their piety. However, the very act of settlement, whether for the cause of religion or material gain, began a prolonged process of deeper penetration into the frontier for the sake of cultivating new settlements. Resulting clashes with Native Americans,commonly viewed by New Englanders as agents of the degenerative wilderness, served to reshape popular conceptions regarding the frontier. Literature resulting from Indian wars, informed by the social theory of New England Puritanism as well as frontier experience in the late seventeenth century, represented an introduction of the themes of Puritan wilderness theology into popular literary genres. Puritan attitudes toward the wilderness and, in turn, the experiences of conflicts such as King Philip's War, characterized the imagination of the North American frontier in later popular fiction. Images of the hostile wilderness inherent in the New England consciousness since the first generations of settlement, but it was the crystallization of these images in new genres such as captivity narratives and tales of frontier warfare, born out of the experiences of King Philip's War, that gave birth to a distinctly American frontier literary tradition.

22 Fiorentino 22 The turning point for the development of this tradition can be traced to the emergence of new literary genres, which changed the scope of expression for New Englanders. Men and women writing in the wake of King Philip's War often articulated familiar ideas in these newly conceived genres. Captivity narratives introduced uniquely individual accounts of the frontier, capturing the imaginations of the men and women for whom captivity at the hands of Native Americans was a distinct possibility. Following the first captivity narratives in New England came accounts such as those of Benjamin Church, who had ventured into the New England wilderness to fight alongside and against different Native American groups in order to preserve the way of life of his fellow Anglo-Americans. The wilderness experience was nothing new to seventeenth century New Englanders, but it took on a significance and meaning which it did not possess for earlier generations. Both the destruction of King Philip's War, and the recounting of individual experiences such as those of Mary Rowlandson and Benjamin Church, informed perceptions of the frontier for succeeding generations. The wilderness experience was a fundamental aspect of the early New England Puritan commonwealth. However, with the advent of destructive Indian wars later in the century came a new kind of experience. The pervasive New England frontier had always been seen as a dangerous influence, though the damage done to Puritan communities during conflicts such as King Philip's War was seen as a new wilderness crisis. No longer is the wilderness simply a precarious realm beyond the walls of the godly commonwealth but a combative force threatening New England's very existence. Where the emphasis had once been on the stemming of frontier expansion, the writings on King Philip's War and after focused on the dangers of the wilderness invading Anglo-American settlements. Mary Rowlandson expressed this very fear when she wrote of her home being burned and her friends and relations being butchered around her."some

23 Fiorentino 23 in our houses were fighting for their lives, others wallowing in their blood, the house on fire over our heads, and the bloody heathen ready to knock us on the head if we stirred out." 36 In Rowlandson's narrative, Native Americans were emphasized as the active agents of the treacherous frontier in the sense similarly conveyed in the thought of earlier New England writers, but her focus was on being attacked on her own ground, rather than during a venture into the unknown forest. While Mary Rowlandson wrote of her traumatic experience in Biblical terms, Captain Benjamin Church related the stories of his exploits in King Philip's War with a markedly different tone. While Rowlandson was dragged from her home and family in the frontier town of Lancaster, Church willingly journeyed into the New England forests in order to fight the hostile Algonquians on their own terms. In his Entertaining Passages relating to Philip's War, first published in 1716, Church wrote of his exploits in combating Native Americans throughout the frontier of New England. Church was a foundational personality in American frontier literature. Motifs found in both Rowlandson's narrative and Church's memoirs also appeared in later works of popular fiction such as John Filson's account of Daniel Boone's adventures and Charles Brockden Brown's novel Edgar Huntly. The themes of captivity and wilderness conflict would still be central to nineteenth century works such as the novels of James Fennimore Cooper. These themes were crystallized in the testimonials of those who witnessed the destruction of King Philip's War, but were developed in the writing and thought of the founders of New England and continuously expanded upon to meet the needs of a changing social atmosphere throughout the seventeenth century. 36 Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness, in Alden T. Vaughan and Edward Clark W.Puritans Among the Indians: Accounts of Captivity and Redemption, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).

24 Fiorentino 24 Scholars have long since considered the interpretation of Mary Rowlandson's narrative as a jeremiad sermon, projected onto her own experience, for the identity formation and reaffirmation of late seventeenth century New Englanders. As God's chosen people, the New England Puritans had to contend with a dangerous wilderness, in which the heathen Indians lurked seeking their destruction. This was the message of King Philip's War, according to ministers such as Increase Mather and according to Rowlandson's interpretation of her own experience. Backsliding New England had to e shown that God could easily destroy them, even using a seemingly primitive and inferior enemy such as their Native American neighbors. However, reading Rowlandson's experience as a conversion narrative is more fruitful for understanding the influence of her text on the development of subsequent frontier literature. As Patricia Caldwell explains in her book The Puritan Conversion Narrative, New Englanders seeking full church membership had to prove that they had undergone a true conversion experience. 37 That they had been overwhelmed by their sense of sin and that, in that moment of lowliness, had felt the spirit of God within them. This was how they proved their sanctity, their status as a living saint. They were humiliated, but then reaffirmed in their sense of salvation. It is in this sense that the narratives of Rowlandson and subsequent New England captives should be understood in order to gain further insight into the development of subsequent narrative forms such as those of Benjamin Church and later frontier figures. Whereas the jeremiad sermons of the Puritan ministry emphasized the collective society as a single unit, the captivity narrative brought the focus down to the individual. Ministers like Increase Mather were focused on the redemption and salvation of New England as a whole, but the publication of Rowlandson's story began a trend towards the interest in individual experience. Individual 37 Patricia Caldwell, The Puritan Conversion Narrative: The Beginnings of American Expression (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

25 Fiorentino 25 endeavor had been downplayed for decades, for fear that it might undermine the collective Puritan mission in North America. However, the story of a single woman, even a minster's wife, captured the attention of readers throughout North America and beyond, and the individual experience of the frontier remained at the forefront of the imagination of New England readers.

26 Fiorentino 26 Chapter I: The Wilderness and the Origins of Puritan New England As soon as they arrived in the New World, Puritan settlers came to resent the wilderness surrounding their fledgling communities. The vast, untamed forests of New England were diametrically opposed to the orderly society which the Puritan founders hoped to build. In a society functioning according to the ethics of New England's Puritan founders, the newcomers' community was to be explicitly separated from the uncultivated world around it. Generations before Mary Rowlandson others expressed dread at the thought of the threat of the looming wilderness, early New England leaders such as William Bradford articulated similar concerns over their new environs. The land itself was inhospitable, and the Native inhabitants were perceived as godless and cruel. Bradford and his fellow Mayflower passengers had anticipated the New World being "fruitful and fit for habitation, being devoid of all civil inhabitants." 38 However, on their arrival, the Separatists found that their new home was neither as fit for habitation as they had anticipated nor uninhabited. When they arrived, Bradford lamented that when he and his companions surveyed the land before them, "what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men - and what multitudes there might be of them they knew not." 39 Bradford's obvious disappointment upon first seeing New England is suggestive of a disparity between those who had actually seen North America before this point and the messages being conveyed to potential settlers still in England. The colonists' expectations for their new homeland were colored both by preconceived notions about untamed wilderness and by overly optimistic advertisements about the fecundity of the land in North America. 38 William Bradford, Of Plimouth Plantation, Bradford, Of Plimouth Plantation, 62.