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xv i 1 Acknowledgmentssight and offered extended commentary that led me to say moreand to sharpen. I did not take all of their advice (perhaps fool-ishly), but I did address each of the problems they pointed to.Jeffrey Burton Russell, my colleague at the University of Califor-nia, Santa Barbara, also read the manuscript and offered help-ful comments, as did students in a graduate seminar in religiousstudies in the fall of 1988.I remain grateful for the critical acumenand enthus iasm of all of these readers even as I acknowledge that Ialone am responsible for any errors that remain.

Beyond these, other debts abound. I continue to be grateful toCharles H. Long, who many years ago taught me to think in termsof both ordinary and extraordinary religion, a distinction crucial tothe substance of this book. I am grateful, too, to the generous li -brarians at numerous institutions who worked over the years tomake available to me the materials I needed. My gratitude extendsto those who supplied photographs for the book and granted mepermission to use them. And in a related debt, I owe special thanksto Christopher Vecsey and to Lynne Williamson, who helped me tofind suitable illustra tions among the sparse Algonkian materials.Finally, I acknowledge a huge debt to my parents, Louis and TheresaAlbanese, who, as always, have unflaggingly supported and encour-aged my efforts. And I own my debt to Samantha, who-as the out-come of feline leukemia during the summer of 1985-decided tostay and keep on gracing my life. Her animal wisdom and perspec-tive continue to teach me about nature and about the other-than-human persons of the Algonkians and other peoples.

Introduction ttt THE CAS E FORNATURE RELIGION

The Tribe of Jesse consisted of the eleven grown sons and twogrown daughters of Jesse Hutchinson and Mary (Polly) Leavitt ofMilford, New Hampshire. Three more Hutchinsons did not sur-vive to adulthood, but David, the oldest who did, had been born in1803. Abigail Jemima (Abby), the youngest, lived until 1892 butwas outlived by her brother John Wallace. Together the Hutchin-sons spanned the nineteen th century.

The Tribe of Jesse are better known in American cultural his-tory as the Hutchinson Family Singers, the first popular singinggroup in the United States. Playing and singing in cities and townson the East Coast and into the New West, the Hutchinsons fol-lowed a pat tern of itinerancy already mapped by revival preachersand lyceum speakers. They were signs of a new time in an indus-trializing, urbanizing America, expressing a nostalgic longing forold and enduring places as well as a seemingly scatter-gun involve-ment in a variety of contemporary causes and concerns. In variouscombinations of family members and, mos t remembered, as aquarte tof John, Asa, Judson, and Abby ("a nest of brothers wi th a sister init"), the Hutchinsons captivated mass audiences in well-filledhouses and, apparently as often, appeared, like nineteenth-centuryPete Seegers or Joan Baezes, at antislavery and temperance rallies.'

N. P. Rogers, editor of the abolitionist Herald of Freedom, re-viewed their early (1842) singing as "simple and natural." TheHutchinsons, he said, possessed a "woodland tone" and enjoyed"perfect freedom from all affectation and stage grimace." A yearand a half later, Rogers hailed their singing at a Boston antislaveryconvention, acclaiming a particularly excited moment that "waslife-it was nature, transcending the musical staff, and the gamut,the minim and the semi-breve, and leger lines." Similarly, GeorgeP.Braddock, who participated in the Brook Farm experiment, manyyears afterward recalled the Hutchinsons' visit to the farm and the"wild freshness" of their song.2 Meanwhile, appearing on tem-perance platforms with Lyman Beecher and others and continuingto sing elsewhere, the Hutchinsons charmed listeners with their

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Introduction 1 3I IntroductionOh, we love the rocks and mountainsOf the Old Granite State.Pointing up to heaven,Pointing up to heaven,Pointing up to heaven,They are beacon lights to man3

Hutchinson Family Quartet, 1846. "A nest of brothers with a sister in it." By anunidentified artist, from John Wallace Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons, vol. 1(Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1896), opposite page 142. (Courtesy, American Antiquar-ian Society.)family song, "The Old Granite State." I t became, in the parlanceof the twentieth century, a hit, the perennial favorite of theiraudiences.

We have come from the mountains,We've come down from the mountains,Ho,we've come from the mountains,Of the Old Granite State.We're a band of brothers,We're a band of brothers,We're a band of brothers,And we live among the hills.. . . . . . . . . . .David, Noah, Andrew, Zephy, Caleb, Joshua, Jesse, Benny, Judson,Rhoda, John and Asa and Abby are our names;We're the sons of Mary, of the tribe of Jesse,And we now address you in our native mountain song.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Oh, we love the rocks and mountains,Oh, we love the rocks and mountains,

Interspersed among the verses evocative of place and perma-nence in New Hampshire's granite hills were the Hutchinsons'moral and political commitments. The Hutchinsons were "thefriends of emancipation," and they proclaimed to hearers "Thatthe tribe of Jesse 1Are the friends of equal rights." They sang that"Every man's a brother, 1 And our country is the world." As timepassed, they included a verse to "Shout 'Free Suffrage' evermore.''And, in a striking millennial affirmation, they foretold musicallyof "the good time's drawing nigher," when "our nation, tried byfire, 1 Shall proclaim the good Messiah, 1 Second coming of theLord."

Nor was this the whole of the Hutchinsons' remarkable cata-log of affirmations and commitments. They worshiped Theodore-Parker and Henry Ward Beecher, Parker somewhat more. Theyalso made an idol of Horace Greeley, radical editor of the New-YorkTribune, and, in addition to their trip to Brook Farm, visited hisNorth American Phalanx in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Thei rmillennialism extended well beyond the lyrics of "The Old GraniteState,'' for they had heard William Miller preach in Philadelphiain 1844; and, although never Millerites, they shared the generalmillennial expectancy of their age. They sang "maddening SecondAdvent tunes" in the antislavery cause; and , indeed, the verses of"The Old Granite State" were even set to a second-Advent melody.Moreover, the millennial theme continued to be part of Hutch in-son consciousness well after the 1840s, so that the post-Civil Warsuffrage song composed by John Wallace pronounced his "loving,waiting, watching, longing, for the millennial day of light."5

Beyond their millennialism, the Hutchinsons as a family epito-mized the spiritual trajectory of many New Englanders of theirtime. Their parents had begun married life in Milford as membersof the Firs t Congregational Church, but when stil l young theyturned instead to Baptist preaching. According to church records,


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4 1 IntroductionJohn was "saved" during the revival of 1831; but in time someof the younger Hutchinsons withdrew from the church as come-outers, while almost all of the older brothers and some of theyounger became spiritualists. In fact, with Horace Greeley and hiswife, probably eight of the brothers had attended a seance given bythe Fox sisters in 1851. The Hutchinsons knew Andrew JacksonDavis, the celebrated spirituali st and "Poughkeepsie seer," and hehad visited their home. And, at least for Judson, John Wallace, andJesse Jr., various forms of precognition had manifested themselvesat key moments in their lives6

Still further, the Hutchinsons embraced a series of the health-reform movements of the era. Th e brothers were familiar wi thvarious hydropathic (water-cure) institutes, and at least Judsonand Jesse Jr. had entered them as patients, Jesse on his deathbed.Moreover, the Hutchinsons' song "Cold Water," written by JesseJr. and sung in the temperance cause, was also a clever proclama-tion of the gospel of hydropathy.

Oh! if you would preserve your healthAnd trouble never borrow,

Just take the morning shower bath,'Twill drive away all sorrow.

And then instead of drinking rum,As doth the poor besotter;

For health, long life, and happiness,Drink nothing but cold water.. . . . . . . . . . .

Yes, water'll cure most every ill,'Tis proved without assumption;

Dyspepsia, gout, and fevers, too,And sometimes old consumption.

Your head-aches, side-aches, and heart-aches too,Which often cause great slaughter;Can all be cured by drinking oftAnd bathing in cold waters7

The Hutchinsons knew Dr. William Beach, who had initiated a"reform system of medicine on botanic principles." Asa observed inhis journal that he loved Beach's Family Physician and found "plaintruth with in its covers." And Beach had liked the Hutchinsons wellenough too, telling them he enjoyed their song "Calomelv-an un-subtle attack on orthodox medical practice with its universal rem-edy of (poisonous) chloride of mercury.

Introduction / 5Physicians of the highest rank,To pay their fees we need a bank,Combine all wisdom art and skillScience and sense in Calomel.. . . . . . . a * . .

When Mr. A or B. is sickGo call the docter [sic] and be quickThe docter comes with much good willBut ne'er forgets his Calomel.. . . . . . . . . . .The man in death begins to groan,The fatal job for him is done,He dies alas, but sure to tell,A sacrifice to Calomel.'Likewise, the brothers used the Thomsonian system of natural

herbal healing, taking Thomsonian powders and the perennialThomsonian cure-all, t incture of lobelia. When Judson lay sick, Asaexpressed his gratitude for the ministrations of the Thomsonianphysician: "Blessed be his name for it is the helpmeat [sic] of ourwhole Family and ought to be tha t of the whole Human Family.May it s Cause flourish."

In New York, the Hutchinsons ate at (Sylvester) Graham House,which served only vegetarian food. Jesse must have been vege-tarian during part of his life, for once, on the Fourth of July, hemade a speech in favor of brown bread. Judson was certainly acommitted vegetarian, speaking of the sinfulness of eating fleshor wearing garments that demanded for their construction theslaughter of animals. He himself eventually wore neither boots norshoes and walked clad only in stockings, and his diet consisted offruits , cereals, and honey. Meanwhile, Asa pondered the questionof vegetarianism and confessed in his private journal: "I eat ani-mal food some of the time." He had formerly abstained, and hethought his health was 3s good during his vegetarian experiment aslater when he abandoned it.Io

Asa also became absorbed in the works of Orson S. Fowler, thephrenologist, and thought phrenology-the reading of one's char-acter on the basis of various protrusions of the skull-a "true sci-ence." He knew Fowler personally and considered him a friend.And Judson became heavily involved with animal magnetism,displaying mesmeric powers and, more often, falling easily intotrances induced by others. In fact, the brothers worried about


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6 1 Introduction Introduction I 7Judson's magnetic susceptibility, for the magnetic state unnervedthe moody and temperamental Hutchinson in frightening ways."What are we to make of this absorbing list of commitments andconcerns by a band of nineteenth-century popular entertainerswho sang to common folk and presidents alike? The Hutchinsonssurely demonstrated their mass appeal-and, by implication, theappeal of their commitments-even though audiences hedged attimes with regard to the group's radical politics. And they cer-tainly presage twentieth-century involvement by entertainmentgroups in the fads and fancies of the ir moment. But can we saymore about the Hutchinson Family Singers and their unorthodoxcatalog of affirmations? Are these affirmations merely odd piecesof cultural flotsam strung together by chance and circumstance?Are they a group of ideas and predilections united only by the rest-lessness of their holders, signals of bored revolt against formal andcommonplace culture? Are they simply a celebration of nonnor-mativeness, a declaration of sociological independence? Or i s theresome intrinsic relationship between the items in the series, somelogic of the symbol that, throughout the list, we can grasp?

This study rejects the thesis of cultura l flotsam. It also bracketssocial scientific explanations (restlessness and nonnormativeness)and, if the qualifiers "only" and "simply" are retained, disclaimsthe judgments. The book's concerns lie, rather, with the final ques-tion. In what follows, I suggest that the Hutchinsons offer oneprominent example of a way of organizing reality and relating to itthat is consistent and encompassing. Moreover, I call this way oforganizing reality and of relating it to a religion, and I identify i tfurther as nature religion.

Definitions of religion are probably as numerous as the scholars-who hold them, and this is not th e place to engage in definitionaldebate. Suffice it to say that I understand religion as the wayor ways that people orient themselves in the world with referenceto both ordinary and extraordinary powers, meanings, and val-ves. Ordinary powers, meanings, and values are found within theboundaries of human society. They are what cultures are builtfrom-abilities and intuitions that are principles out of which cul-tural practice comes. Extraordinary power, meanings, and valuesare harder to name. They are what a given group or society sees, in

important ways, as outside the boundaries of its own community.Extraordinary powers, meanings, and values are what the groupowns as objective realities-standing in judgment on its projectand practice and also inviting its members across an invisible lineto a place of transcendence.12

Existing on the boundary as well as in the center, religion pointsin two direct ions. It is the ways-the systems of symbols-thatorient people inward toward the societal center or, conversely, outtoward the less known geography beyond the line. So religion in-cludes belief systems, ritual forms, and guides for everydav living,all working in concert to express relationship to the ordinary andto the extraordinary, as a culture construes them. Nor are ordinaryand extraordinary ever completely separated. Looked at one way,what people believe and do reinforces the bonds of their own so-ciety. But, looked at another way, what they believe and do is gen-erated by the kind of "center beyond" that Mircea Eliade hascalled the sacred.13 And, like the nucleus of a n atom, this sacredcenter fixes the orbit of the mory partial symbols that sur round i t.

Throughout the history of Western culture, at least, religious re-flection has been preoccupied with three great symbolic centers,two of them more persistently, especially in certa in forms of Protes-tantism. The three are the familiar trinity-God, humanity, andnature-and it is, of course, God and humanity tha t have been morepondered and nature that has formed the third and less noticedcenter among them. Within the theological speculation that formsthe Judeo-Christian tradition, God has been clearly named as thesole and monotheistic claimant to the religious throne. But humansand nature, as creatures of God and objects of loving providence,have shone in borrowed light. Thus, within the structure of thesymbols, the way always lay open not so much for a rejection of themonotheistic God as for a more emphatic tur n in anoth er direction.

American nature religion, in unlikely and surprising ways, hasdone just that. F irst, I must be clear that the term nature religion ismy own name for a symbolic center and the cluster of beliefs, be-haviors, and values that encircles it. If some prescient nineteenth-century person had cornered a Hutchinson and asked him whetherhe were a follower of nature religion, he probably would havelooked astounded and heartily demurred. Like the term civil reli-gion, which has become part of our academic language in religious


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8 I Introduction-studies since 1967, nature religion is a contemporary social con-struction of past and present American religion.I4 It is a usefulconstruct, I believe, because it throws light on certain aspects ofour history that we have only haphazardly seen-or even failed tosee-religiously. By thinking of these manifestations as nature re-ligion, we begin to discover the links and connections among them,we gain a sense of their logic, and we come to a sense of their power.

Here I should add tha t when I speak of nature religion I do notmean a religious genre that is divorced from human history or so-ciety. It is, of course, tempting to subsume the material of this bookinto familiar comparative categories, to view the practice of naturereligion as an example, on American terrain, of the "cosmic" op-posite to the Judeo-Christian religions of history. But that is hardlywhat I have in mind. Nature, i n American nature religion, is a ref-erence point with which to think history. Its sacrality masks-andoften quit e explicitly reveals-a passionate concern for place andmastery in society.'' Indeed, if the book has a "plot," i t is how early,inchoate bids for historic and personal dominance are played outwith greater clarity and precision as several centuries pass.Allow me to return briefly to the Hutchinson Family Singers, toexplain what I mean by way of example. The critical acclaim forthe naturalness of the Hutchinsons' performance style is easyenough to acknowledge. So is their proclamation of natural whole-ness in their song, "The Old Granite State," far and away the fa-vorite of their audiences. Here, combining metaphors of natureand fixedness with the familial and biblical piety of the "band ofbrothers" from the "tribe of Jesse," the Hutchinsons wove in wholecloth a nature religion that celebrated innocence, permanence, andpurity. Th e power of these metaphors for a people undergoing thepain of cultura l transition cannot be doubted.Similarly, temperance and antislavery involvements suggest themoral urgency of an ethic of purity. Drunkenness and enslavementwere social sins that brought corruption and death to the nation,destroying the vital connection with home and land. Drunkennesseroded families, and slavery obstructed the natural relation of menand women to the land in wholesome agricultural work. Besides,slavery obliterated the democratic principle of equality, found inthe ideology of the new republic and also found, for American re-publicans, in nature. As they saw it, the natural world signified the

Introduction / 9intrinsic equality of each form or species, displayed in a creationunburdened by rank or privilege. And a "natural" America hadmoral claims over Europe precisely because it had rejected ar-tificial lineage claims to choose the innate nobility of democracy.

Nature, in fact, offered a model of societal harmony to manypre-Darwinian Americans, who forgot the violence of storm andtornado in the spectacle of nature's grand cooperation. Like thesinging style of the Hutchinsons, in which individual voices weresaid to merge in an ordered harmony of the whole,16 forms of socialharmony would blend Americans who wanted order for them-selves and their relationships. The call to natural concert was alsoa search for mastery, enabling communities to pursue their goals ofcontrol unaware. Thus, utopian communities expressed both theinnocence of an Edenic world and it s natural, but ordered, harmo-nies and rhythms. And thus, Hutchinson interest in Brook Farm(which became Fourierist only after their visit) and the FourieristNorth American Phalanx was of a riece w ith their other commit-ments. Indeed, the Fourierist motto of Universal Unity evoked acentral value of nature religion.

The come-outer style of some of the Hutchinsons and the sp iri-tualism of many of them may, at first glance, appear to belong todifferent worlds of meaning entirely. Signing off from the churchesis, of course, predominately a negative expression of one's values,the statement that I do not agree. But, in another sense, signing offcomplemented values of freedom and spontaneity that were asso-ciated with a physical separation from human society-a flightaway to nature-but also a "natural" freedom, a dominance oversocial forms, within it. Likewise, nineteenth-century spiritualismbelied its name in some of it s theology. It was true that spirituali stssought contact with th e departed . But many of them, wi th AndrewJackson Davis, grounded their faith in religious materialism, seeingspirit as a higher and more refined form of matter.17 From this per-spective, spiritualis ts were true lovers of nature, exploring its fur-ther reaches and bringing it s benefits back to rule disturbances onthe present plane. Tha t spiritua lists also experienced precognitionin dreams and visions only heightened their sense of masterythrough the connectedness between this world and the other. Onecould see into the future because all things and all times werereally one. Clairvoyance testified to the unknown powers of nature.


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10 1 Introduction Introduction / 11Even millennialism, the hallmark of nineteenth-century evan-

gelicalism, fed freely into the stream of nature religion. Eliade hastold us that millepnial myths are inverted myths of origin, thatin millennialism the paradise of the beginning is transposed to theend.18 Thu s, in millennialism, the locus of nature moves fromthe settl ed past to the active pull of the time to come. Significantly,the innocence and perfection of the first creation are posited i n afuture time; natural and Edenic bliss become the promise of theadvent, when lion and lamb will lie down together, universal h ar-mony will prevail, and-in the American version-humans will bein charge.

The various health reforms pursued by the Hutchinsons prob-ably need li ttle exegesis as symbolic and behavioral expressions ofthe religion of nature. "Cold water" evokes pure and crystallinemountain streams-signif icantly, the site of many of the water-cure establishments and the legacy of th e granite hills of NewHampshire. Drinking water and bathing in it bespeak a preferencefor nature in place of artifice, i.e., chemically altered substancessuch as rum or calomel. They also suggest a confidence in one'sability to control the wayward body when it is ill through thepower tha t na ture gives. In the same way, William Beach's botanicprinciples and Samuel Thomson's herbal remedies used the meansthat nature provided for healing, refusing to be deceived by thesynthetic chemical compounds of the orthodox physicians. Andvegetarianism, on Grahamite principles, extolled brown bread be-cause of its composition of unbolted (whole) wheat flour, coarseand unrefined, as nature made the grain. For Grahamites, animalflesh was associated with heavy grease and rich condiments, wi thovercooked and stimulating foods, with pollution of body and mindand the violation of physiological laws that led to the sur rend er ofstrength to disease.

Judson Hutchinson's stocking feet carried the prohibition of ani-mal products as far as it would go. His commitment to th e raw wasnear total, for even the wearing of shoes or boots would bring himtoo close to the cooked, and then overcooked (rotten-and power-less), state of civili~ation.'~udson would walk au naturel, a per-petual child in the Edenic garden. As that perpetual child , Judsonwas open to magnetic energies, ready to use or to be used by them.In effect, he was subscribing to the belief system of mesmerism, an

essentially physical explanation for the power that one humanbeing could hold over another, with it s theory of the ebb and surgeof invisible "fluid.'' Indeed, mesmerism became one of the control-ling metaphors of American nature religion, and it reappeared innumerous forms as the decades passed.

Similarly, Asa's inter est in phrenology signaled the value heput on nature. In essence, 0.S. Fowler's phrenological populariza-tions presented a physical explanation for character. People were"amative" or "avaricious" because they were born that way, andthe bumps on their skulls conformed to the specific charactertraits they displayed. One could read a person's soul by looking atthe shape of the head, much as a twentieth-century handwritinganalyst claims to detect personality traits through graphologicalscrutiny. And one could master one's own character, dominateits weaknesses, if one had a clear sense of the harmony betweenphysical shape and metaphysical bent.

Hence, a second look at the various cultural badges the Hutchin-sons wore reveals a good deal of continuity among them. The Tribeof Jesse exhibited consistency in the structure of their beliefs,finding power, meaning, and value in nature and in natural forms.They created ritual expression for their natural creed, positivelyin the ir songs and negatively in a series of food and medical taboos.And they stood by an ethic of democratic equality that arose fromtheir beliefs, putting themselves on the line in radical causes andever eager to evangelize their audiences for them. Meanwhile,in more private moments they pursued interests such as spiritual-ism and phrenology, which enacted and applied their intellectualcommitments. Throughout, even as they sought harmony, theystruggled for mastery, for a place of freedom and control, withinthe context of their society.The Hutchinson Family Singers offer us one coherent exampleof nature religion. But there are others, and it will be my task inthis book to delineate major forms and moments, describing themchronologically nsofar as that is possible and showing the complexinterweaving and development of motifs among variants. For therewere variants to nature religion, just as there were variant under-standings of nature and variant degrees of intensity with which aparticula r form of natu re religion was held. Indeed, as we trace the


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12 / Introduction Introduction 1 13evolution and (to use a more exact term ) convolutions of natur e re-ligion in the United States, we come to find that in truth therewere nature religions. There were not only particular expressionsof the religion of nature but even opposing tendencies within thesymbolic cluste r.i For some, nature meant the physical world, the "cosmic envi-ronmentalism"-to borrow a phrase from Clarenc e J. Glacken-ofall that was not fa shioned by huma n skilL20For others, nature be-came an abst ract principle, an environmentalism so far ext rude dinto the starry skies that i t lost the famil iar touch of mat ter. Ina related distinction, for some, nature meant the truly real. Forothers, i t became the emblem of the higher s pirit .Similarly, adherence to nature as a central religious symbolcould lead to different-though related-injunctions for living.On th e one hand, nature religion seemed to encourage the pu rsui tof harmony, as individuals sought proper attu nem ent of hum an so-ciety to nature and thus mastery over sources of pain and troublein themselves and others. And yet, nature religion fostered moreambivalent themes of fear and fascination for wildness and, at th esame time, an impulse toward its dominance and control. As wewill see, this complicated rhetoric of the symbol is most clearlyexpressed in the alliance of nature religion with the politics ofnationalism and expansion. In still another change, the impulsetoward dominance expressed itself in movements teaching thepower of min d to order-and, some would say, to manipulate-na-ture. But the impulse to dominate was, in fact , everywhere innature religion, and the story told here cannot escape the theme.Th is book seeks to tell , however, not only how nat ure w as iden-tified and w hat moral responses i t prompted . Th e book aims to ac-knowledge also that nature religion had different histories in theland. For some, such as American Indians, primar y religious rela-tion to natu re was a legacy, a traditional heritage requ iring neith erdeliberate choice nor special comment. For others, such as theNew England Transcendentalists, nature religion included a self-conscious quality, an elem ent of chosenness and even contrivan cethat suggested it was a spin-off of modernity. Still further, as inthe case of the Hutchinso ns, for many the centrality of the symbolof natur e was indisputable. But for other Americans nature sup -

plied a w eaker, more diffuse background, offering one kind of reli-gious horizon for thought an d act. Certainly i n the latt er case it ismore correct to speak of the natural dimension of religion than tospeak of nature religion. In any event, the failure of nature reli-gionists to institutionalize well, if at all , means that-for all ourlonging for precision-we will find them in a somewhat murkyworld. In many cases spect rums and cont inuums wi l l be aptermaps of their religious landsc apes than p recise identification.My book, then, tries to follow a chronology and to suggest a de-velopmental matrix. B ut the book also tries, era by era, to atten d todifferences. At one period, I explore one version of t he religion ofnature; at a second period, another. Unavoidably, I have not beenable to trace each theme through all of American history. Thatsaid, however, I unde rstan d my project as the encourage ment of aconversation that I hope will continue, and so my hope is thatothers wi l l chart paths that I have not been able to t rack from endto end.Perhaps as important , I understand what I do here as a versionof what Michel Foucaul t has called "history of the pr e~ en t . "~ 'sfai thful historian, I t ry to report the past in term s that respect i t sintegrity. As citizen of my own time an d society, I see a past tha thelps to explain us to ourselves. This stance should be especiallyclear in the final chap ter, where d ifferent forms of natu re religionfrom the American past resonate with themes in contemporary so-ciety. And this s tance should be especially impo rtant whe n, in thefinal chapter, new twentieth-century developments seem to bringharmony a nd mastery in to easier, more graceful religious partn er-ships than at any time before.But this is to get ahead of the story. In the cha pters th at follow,we look, first , at two juxtaposed forms of natu re religion; the oneclear and coherent , the other far more ambiguous. Nat ive N orthAmericans and Anglo-American Puritans set the limits of our in-quiry, as, separated by distances of space and time and , stil l more,by fundamental culture, they stand as classic studies in religiousdifference. Next , in ch apter 2, we examine th e ideology of natu rein the revolutionary e ra, as natu re is subsume d into philosophicalconstruct and political strategem. We pursue the republican ide-ology of natu re in to the nin eteen th centu ry, finding paradoxically,


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14 / Introduction Introduction 1 15amid manifest destiny and natural law, an ecstatic religion forhunters and warriors, wild men who desert their haunts in Euro-pean myth for new American frontiers.

Chapter 3 leaves the field of battle for what are seemingly morepeaceful landscapes. Here, in the writings of the New EnglandTranscendentalists, i t finds the definitive expression of the prin-cipal theories-and confusions-that informed so much of laternature religion. Following the Transcendental legacy, we encoun-ter the metaphysical version of nature religion, watching it becomeso entangled with notions of Mind and Reason that in the endit loses the material base with which it began. Meanwhile, in anopposite and seemingly more "natural" evolution, we follow thephysical trajectory of natu re religion in movements for conserva-tion and wilderness preservation.

Chapter 4 studies nature religion as physical religion throughmovements for natural health and healing, tracing metaphors ofmesmerism and Swedenborgianism as they were linked to republi-can and Transcendental themes. Christian physiology, mesmerichealing, Thomsonian herbal medicine, homeopathy, hydropathy,osteopathy, and chiropractic all make their appearance here, mostof them being, at first scrutiny, surprising candidates for religioustreatment. Then, in chapter 5, we think through themes regardingthe complexity of nature religion and its relationship to a plu-ralistic American culture. We find familiar patterns from the past,but we find, too, the insistent mark of newness. We consider a Na-tive American syncretism that works to heal the earth and an en-during Calvinist ambivalence that honors it s violent mysteries. Wefind a politics of "natural" democracy that seeks the greening ofAmerica and, as well, a politics of feminism that celebrates theGoddess in a marriage of nature and mind. We notice religious per-spectives on nature that arise within the holistic health move-ment, with its inherited nineteenth-century legacy and its freshencounter with Eastern forms of healing. Throughout we exploresome of the many ways in which contemporary Americans expressat least partial affiliation with the meanings and values of naturereligion.

Finally, throughout this chapte r and all of the others, we looknot for the differences between elite Americans and ordinarypeople but instead for the common that is shared. What I have in

mind here is less the democracy of the elite with the unintelligentor the unatten tive than the democracy of those who, sociologicallyspeaking, have not been formally trained to be theologians, cere-monial leaders, or ethical guides for their generation. Nature re-ligion in America has flourished among a cadre of people who,largely without systematic "seminary" exposure to a high religiousor academic tradition, have thought and acted for themselves.I once heard it said tha t the task of humanities scholarship was tomake the strange familiar and the familiar strange. The phrase isapt, and it is a good description of what I hope to accomplish inthis book. If, just as Christianity is the religion of the Chris t andhis followers and Buddhism i s the religion of the Buddha and hisdisciples, nature religion is the religion of natu re and i ts devotees,then we need an uncommon set of glasses to glimpse the analogy.But the framework itself-the category of nature religion-is, inanother sense, the set of glasses, lighting up what we might nototherwise have seen. The estrangement is strategic, and if i t is suc-cessful it holds the promise of fuller vision. The glasses-and theoutline-are preliminary guides to a vast and largely uncharted re-ligious world. Putting on the glasses-following the paths stakedout by the study-may introduce us to a dynamic in American cul-ture that surprises in its power and pervasiveness. By coming toterms wi th na ture as religion, we may gain a sense of the more-than-rational force that shapes and orients so much of Americanlife. And that knowledge, in its own way, is a form of power.


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Native Ground / 171 1Native Ground N A T U R E A N D C U L T U R EI N E A R L Y A M E R I C A

I n 1634 the Jesui t Paul le Jeune completed a report on his Quebecmission for his provincial in Par is, including in i t a long accou nt ofhis sojourn-and difficulties-among the Montagnais Indian s. Inone reconst ructed conversat ion wi th a nat ive, the Jesui t su ppl ieddetails of his evangelical effort."When thou seest the beauty and grandeur of this world,-how the Sunincessantly turns round without stopping, how the seasons follow eachother in their time, and how perfectly all the Stars maintain their order,-thou seest clearly that men have not made these wonders, and t hat they donot govern them ; hence there must be some one more noble than men, whohas built and who rules this grand mansion. Now it is he whom we callGod, who sees all things, and whom we do not see; but we shall see himafter death, and we shall be forever happy with him, if we love and obeyhim." "Thou dost not know what thou art talking about," he answered,"learn to talk and we will listen to thee." '

Le Jeune's cateches is is instructive. I n an episodic flash it pro-vides a short tour of the European mind in at tempted com munica-t ion wi th nat ive N orth Am ericans. Impl ici t in the discourse wereFrench assumptions about thought and world as wel l as about hu-man response and cul tural dynamics. For le Jeune and his m ission-ary fel lows, the order bui l t into the universe a nd revealed in i t smotions led inevitably to reflections on its creator. Na ture pointedthe way to the cu l tural apprehension of God and, in le Jeune's reck-oning, to an assuran ce of the afterlife. Even more, reflection on na -ture suggested a creaturely respon se of love and obedience.That the Montagnais Indian st renuously disagreed was clear.His "learn-to-talk" intim ated that, from th e native point of view, atthe most basic level of discourse le Jeune was stumbling hope-l e ~ s l y . ~or was the percept ion one-sided. Most European men andwomen could not fathom the "savage" m ind and found i t s expres-sion in belief, ritual, and life-style generally reprehens ible. Writingnearly fifty years later of a forced residenc e among the Narran gan-sett Indians of southern New England, Mary Rowlandson's re-sponse to her captors was typical.

Now away we m ust go with those Barbarous Creatu res, with o ur bodieswounded and bleeding, and our hearts no less than our bodies. . . .I askedthem whither I might not lodge in the house that night to w hich they an-swered, what will you love English men still? this was the dolefullestnight that ever my eyes saw. Oh the roaring, and singing and danceing,and yelling of those black creatures in the night, w hich mad e the place alively resemblance of hell. And as miserable was the w ast tha t was theremade, of Horses, Cattle, Sheep, Swine, Calves, Lambs, Roasting Pigs, andFowl (which they had plu ndered i n the Town) some roasting, some lyingand burning, and some boyling to feed our merciless Enem ies; who werejoyful enough though we were disc~nsolate.~

Shocked profoundly by the first violence of slaughter and sei-zure, Rowlandson found the N arranganset t ceremonial jubi lee a tonce incomprehensible a nd demonic. The ri tual singing and danc-ing and the spendthri ft appropriat ion of animal flesh provoked hor-ror and repudiation. As her narrative progressed, Rowlandson'slater percept ions of the N arranganset ts made common cause wi thher in itial one. Cast on the inte rpre tive grid of biblical mythology,the Ind ians em erged, fixed in ideological certainty, as fa miliars ofthe devi l. In spi te of her c ul tural immersion in Narranganset t l i fe,Rowlandso n learned litt le of their differen t human vision: her longmisadventure made sense only as temptat ion an d t rial according tobiblical canon.'Between these juxtaposed incidents-the natur e narrative ofFather le Jeune wi th i t s blanket rejection by the Montagnais andthe ri tual performance of the Narranganset ts wi th i t s condem-nation by Rowlandson-lies an un wr itten story regarding theplace of nature in early Am erican symbol making and experience.In the contact si tuat ion, Amerindian and European confrontedeach other wari ly, nei ther comprehend ing the rel igious and ideo-logical power that found expression in the lifeways of the other.For both, to be sure , the term nature religion i s inexact . For Amer-indians, nature as such did n ot exist but ra ther dissolved in a uni-verse of persons an d personal relations. For American Pur itans , towhom the E uro-Ame rican discussion will be confined, na ture reli-gion dissolved in the ambigui ties at tenda nt on a complex C hrist ianvision. Even so, for both the term provides a conve nient shor than dto describe religious belief and behavior. Th e concept throw s lighton the two sides of the cultu ral divide, i l luminating especially the


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A

N A R R A T I V EO F T I - I E

C-APTIVITY, SUFFERINGS AND REMOVES0 F

Mrs. Mnry RowZam&n,

Who was take11 Prif~nerby the INDIANS with fevetal others,and treated in th e nloft barbarous and cruel Manner by thofevile Savages : With many other remarkable Events duting herTRAVELS.Written by her own H ~ n d , or her private Ui"e,and now madepublic at the earneit Delire of fome Friends, ,and for thi Ee:nefit of the afflified.

. . . ..--.-. .B O S T O N :

Printed and Sold at JO :: C O ~ - I .'S I'rinting-Q$I.:r, ? . - a - ,>to the Xhrc? D: , v s in M a r l b o r c u ~ hSrreer : : . ,

Title page of the tenth edition of Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity,Sufferingsand Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1773). (Courtesy, American Anti-quarian Society.) The original edition, with a lengthy title beginning The Sov-eraignty & Goodness of G od, was published in 1682.

Native Ground / 19dispar ities between them-the pervading differences that compli-cated and, in the end, confuted human relationship.

In the pages that follow, we examine, first, Amerindian naturereligion as it can be reconstructed largely from late-nineteenth-and twentieth-century data. T he chronological jump is helpful-and even necessary-because it was during the period beginninga century and less ago that ethnologists and anthropologists col-lected much of the reper toire of native myth and custom on whicha full account must depend. Then, supported by this reconstruc-tion, we approach the Algonkian cultures of seventeenth-centurysouthern New England. Reading in shards and snippets, mostlyfrom uncomprehending missionaries such as Roger Williams andDaniel Gookin, and in archaeological remains, we discover a na-ture religion alive and strong, if threatened by severe culturaldisorientation. Finally, we turn to the disorienters, the familiarNew England Puritans who had so great an impact on the latercultural trajectory of the nation. We explore their ambivalentreading of physical nature, and we conclude by watching the Pu-ritans move, in the shadow of the European Enlightenment, from awilderness sense of the concept to a more abstract and philosophi-cal one.Before Amerindians and Europeans encountered one another inthe s ixteenth and seventeenth centuries, anywhere from less thanfour to more than twelve million native North Americans dwelledin the area north of the Rio Grande R i ~ e r . ~sing perhaps 55 0 lan-guages (as different from one another as, say, Chinese from En-glish) and their dialects, Amerindians spoke in tongues that couldbe traced to nine linguistic stocks, each worlds apart from theother.6 Even when scholars attempt to reduce this cultural diver-sity to manageable proportions, they confront a plethora of Indiannations, each with separate governance and self-understanding ex-pressed in myth, custom, and ritual. Hence, in one way, to speak,collectively of native North American tribal cultures is to do vio-lence to the subjective sensibility of many different peoples. Onthe other hand, cast beside the European invaders, Amerindiansand their religious ways shared much in common. Indeed, in south-ern New England, where Puritan and Amerindian met face-to-face, the underlying unity among a series of Indian cultures was


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20 / Native Ground Native Ground / 21reflected in their common Algonkian heritage of related language,social structure, and religious mentality.

However, before we examine the nature religion of the southernNew England Algonkians, we need to pursue the more generalunderstanding. We need to be clear about how Indians perceivedwhat we, today, call nature, and we need to reflect on major charac-teristics of Amerindian religions.

Regarding the first, it is fair to say that the sense of natu re as acollective physical whole-an ordered cosmos comprising the ani-mal and vegetable kingdoms on earth as well as the stars an d otherheavenly bodies-is a product of the European heritage. Filte redthrough the lens of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, as weshall see in chapter 2, this understanding of nature grew moresystemic and more mechanistic, providing an overarching framewithin which humans could comprehend themselves and theircultural pursuits and activities. Amerindian peoples, on the otherhand, recognized the nurturing (natural) matrix of their societies,but they sensed at once a more plural and more personal universe.Instead of the abstract and overarching "nature" of Europe, theysaw a world peopled with other-than-human persons, often of mys--terious powers and dispositions. Not all of what we name naturewas identified by the Indians in personal terms, but the presenceof persons animating "nature" radically grounded the ir nature reli-gion. "Are all the stones we see about us here alive?" the anthropolo-gist A. Irving Hallowell asked one old Ojibwa man in the 1950s.After reflecting a long time, the man replied, "No! But some are."'

If native North Americans saw nature, as we know it, as inhab-ited by natural persons, that fact already opens the way to a surveyof major themes in Amerindian religions. For Amerindians' viewof their world was fundamentally relational. Bound to the sacredby ties of kinship, they could speak of preterhuman beings asThun der Grandfathers or Spider Grandmothers or Corn Mothers.The Tewa remembered that in the beginning they had lived be-neath Sandy Place Lake with the animals and the first mothers,"Blue Corn Woman, near to summer" and "White Corn Maiden,near to ice." But even beyond their relationship to individual na-ture beings, the Tewa-as other Amerindian peoples-understoodthat their relationship was with the earth itself. Sacred origin ac-

counts of native North Americans told, in imaginative language, oftheir emergence from the womb of earth. Or they detailed how arrearth-diving animal had plunged into the waters to come up with aspeck of d irt that grew into th e world. In the Tewa origin myth, theworld above was still "green" and "unripe," but af ter an elaborateand ritualized migration the people emerged upon a ground thathardened. Expressing the strength of their relationship to theearth in the way they named themselves, ordinary Tewa were theDry Food People, not unripe like the early earth but mature likethe hardened grains of corn that nourished them.*

For the Algonkians in the region of the Great Lakes, the animalsembodied the power of the ear th. A Great Hare had supervised thecreation of the world, floating on a wooden raft with the other ani-mals and taking the grain of sand, which the diving muskrat hadfound, to form from it the earth. When the first animals finallydied, "the Great Hare caused the bir th of men from their corpses,as also from those of the fishes which were found along the shoresof the rivers which he had formed in creating the land." So the Al-gonkians derived "their origin from a bear, others from a moose,and others similarly from various kinds of animals.Og The Win-nebago, in turn, could recall the antics and foibles of the Trick-sterl cultu re hero Coyote, from the remnant s of whose mutilatedpenis came the crops. And numbers of Amerindian peoples ac-knowledged a "keeper" of the game, a spir it animal who long agohad made a pact pledging the members of his species to sacrificethemselves that the Indians might eat and survive."

For native North Americans the numinous world of natur e be-ings was always very close, and the land itself expressed theirpresence. Indian peoples created religious geographies in whichspecific sites were inhabited by sacred powers and persons. Thus ,the Eastern Cherokee knew that the spirit Little People had lefttheir footprints within a cave behind a waterfall close to the headof the Oconaluftee River. And they located the game preserve ofKanati, the husband of the corn mother, in a cave on the northernside of Black Mountain, some twenty-five miles from Asheville,North Carolina. The Kiowa recalled the sinister Devil's Tower ofthe Black Hills, where a Kiowa boy playing with his seven sistershad unaccountably been turned in to a bear, run after his terrified


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Native Ground 1 23

Powhatan's Mantle. Woodlands, Algonkian. (Courtesy, Ashmolean Museum, Ox-ford.) Made of deerhide and sinew and 2.13 meters long, the mantle belonged toPowhatan, chief of the Algonkian nations in Tid ewater Virginia in the early seven-teenth century. With motifs suggestive for the study of nature religion among theAlgonkians, the mantle is the earliest example, for which documentation exists, ofNative American art from the historic period.

siblings, and scored the bark of a great tree they climbed as hechased them. T he sisters had escaped, becoming the stars of theBig Dip per ; the rem nant of the tre e was Devil's Tower."Th e sense of contin uity with the sacred-and natural-worldthat was revealed in this language had i t s counterpart in a mythicsense of time, in which what we call history was conflated, forAmerindians, wi th events that had occurred outside of ordinaryt ime. In th e Indian view, the present repl icated the past , and onecould discern the shape of contemporary events by reflecting onthe message gleaned from th e time of beginning. So the Kiowa, or"coming-out" people, are today a small tribe because once, at th eorigins of their earthly life, a pregnan t woman became stuck whilethe people were emerging from a hollow log. Fertili ty had gotten"hung up," and only those who had come out before i t was stoppedcould con stitute the Kiowa nation."Similarly, in one twent ieth-century Hopi account that also in-clude s the found ing of the village of Hotevilla, the narrative beginsas Hopi Birdmen perform thei r corn ceremony to help the q uarrel -ing people emerge to the earth. In the twent ieth century, Hopishad quarreled again-this t ime about educat ing thei r chi ldren inUnited State s government schools-and one group, evicted fromthe ancest ral vi llage of Oraibi , made thei r encampm ent at the si teof Hotevilla. The twentieth-century tale of hostili ty evokes thetime of origins, with conflict a recognized part of Hopi past andpresent . Ceremony, ordering the t ribal l ife to the n atural world, ineach case fos te rs eq ~i l i b r ium . '~As this relational view suggests, the well-being of Amerindianpeoples d epended in large measure on a correspondence betweenthemselves and what they held sacred. The m aterial world was aholy place; and so harmony wi th nature beings and natur al formswas the controlling ethic, reciprocity the recognized mode of inter-action. Ritual functioned to restore a lost harmony, like a great bal-ancing act bringing the people back to right relation with th e world.What we, today, would call an ecological perspective ca me, forthe most part, easily-if unselfconsciously-among tradition altribal peoples. Typically, one apologized to the gua rdian spir it ofan animal or plant species for taking the life of the hu nted animalor gathered vegetable crop. One paid attention, ceremonially, tothe cardinal directions, orienting existence literally by placing


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Native Ground 1 23

Powhatan's Mantle. Woodlands, Algonkian. (Courtesy, Ashmolean Museum, Ox -ford.) Made of deerhide and sinew and 2.13 meters long, the mantle belonged toPowhatan, chief of the Algonkian nations in Tidewater Virginia in the early s even-teenth century. With motifs suggestive for the study of nature religion among theAlgonkians, the mantle is the earliest example, for which documentation exists, ofNative American art from the historic period.

siblings, and scored the bark of a great tree they climbed as hechased them. The sisters had escaped, becoming the s tars of theBig Dipper; the remnant of the tree was Devil's Tower."

The sense of continuity with the sacred-and natural-worldthat was revealed in this language had its counterpart in a mythicsense of time, in which what we call history was conflated, forAmerindians, with events that had occurred outside of ordinarytime. In the Indian view, the present replicated the past, and onecould discern the shape of contemporary events by reflecting onthe message gleaned from the time of beginning. So the Kiowa, or"coming-out" people, are today a small tribe because once, at theorigins of their earthly life, a pregnant woman became stuck whilethe people were emerging from a hollow log. Fertility had gotten"hung up," and only those who had come out before it was stoppedcould constitute the Kiowa nation."

Similarly, in one twentieth-century Hopi account that also in-cludes the founding of the village of Hotevilla, the narra tive beginsas Hopi Birdmen perform their corn ceremony to help the quarrel-ing people emerge to the earth. In the twentieth century, Hopishad quarreled again-this time about educating their children inUnited States government schools-and one group, evicted fromthe ancestral village of Oraibi, made their encampment at the siteof Hotevilla. The twentieth-century tale of hostility evokes thetime of origins, with conflict a recognized part of Hopi past andpresent. Ceremony, ordering the tribal life to the natural world, ineach case fosters equilibrium.I3

As this relational view suggests, the well-being of Amerindianpeoples depended in large measure on a correspondence betweenthemselves and what they held sacred. The material world was aholy place; and so harmony with nature beings and natura l formswas the controlling ethic, reciprocity the recognized mode of in ter-action. Ritual functioned to restore a lost harmony, like a great bal-ancing act bringing the people back to right relation with the world.

What we, today, would call an ecological perspective came, forthe most par t, easily-if unselfconsciously-among traditionaltribal peoples. Typically, one apologized to the guardian spirit ofan animal or plant species for taking the life of the hunted animalor gathered vegetable crop. One paid attention, ceremonially, tothe cardina l directions, orienting existence literally by placing


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24 / Native Ground Native Ground / 25oneself in space with reference to all of its beings and powers. Aperson lived by a ri tual calendar i n which the naming of monthsand times centered on growing and hunting seasons. And in diseaseor other illness, a person sought the cause in relational disharmonywith a natural form or person-like a Navajo who encounteredlightning in the sheepfold and then got sick or like a Cherokeewho knew that overpopulation and overkilling of the animals hadbrought disease. Similarly, one found cure through the healer's-and patient's-identification with natural forms and through thehealer's knowledge of herbal lore.14

Meanwhile, healers, as shamans and seers, worked out of theirsense of correspondence with natural forms. They were leaders incommunication with other-than-human persons who dwelled innature, sharers in the mysterious power that made things happen-the wakan of the Sioux, the orenda of the Iroquois, the manitou ofthe Algonkians.ls From this point of view, what we call magic andmiracle were simply cases of like affecting like or of part affectingwhole. United to natura l forces and persons, Amerindians thoughttha t all parts of the world-and their own societies-were made ofthe same material. Since everything was, in fact, part of everythingelse, it followed that one piece of the world could act powerfully onanother, affecting change and transformation.

Such transformation often meant the shape-shifting of animalsto human form and, likewise, the change of humans into animals.Amerindian myths are filled with accounts of encounters betweenhumans and the other-than-human world. The Oglala Sioux re-ceived their sacred pipe and their full ceremonial panoply of sevenrites when a strange wakan woman appeared among them with hergift, then moved around "in a sun-wise manner'' and turned into ared and brown buffalo calf and subsequently into a white and ablack buffalo. "This buffalo then walked farther away from thepeople, stopped, and after bowing to each of the four quarters ofthe universe, disappeared over the hill." '" Encouraged by her wid-owed mother, a Cherokee girl married her suitor, but when hefailed to bring home a substantial hunt she followed him and foundthat, away from her, he changed into a hooting owl. Two Penobscots,in a contest with some Iroquois who had discovered them, changedthemselves into a bear and a panther and got away.17

In this world of animallhuman transformations, Tricksters suchas Coyote or Raven assumed human or animal form as they chose.Amerindians, who delighted in Trickster tales, also transformedthemselves ritually by ceremonial clowning. These ritual clownswere deadly serious figures, like the heyoka among the Sioux, con-torting the natural and accustomed order by doing things com-pletely backward, saying yes when they intended no, and generallyoverturning canons of normalcy the more to underline them. Instill other ritual transformations, Amerindians, like the Tewahealing Bears, portrayed the animal sp irits by the ir clothing, ac-couterments, and even behavior.''

In visions and dreams, too, natural persons appeared to guideIndian peoples. Expressed most explicitly in ri tuals of seeking fora guardian spirit, the naturalness of sacred things dominated theinner as well as the outer world. In his account of "crying for a vi-sion" given to Joseph Epes Brown, Black Elk explained unequivo-cally how the powers came. The "lamenter" was required to "bealert to recognize any messenger which the Great Spirit may sendto him, for these people often come in the form of an animal , evenone as small and as seemingly insignificant as a litt le ant." "Per-haps," Black Elk continued, "a Spotted Eagle may come to himfrom the west, or a Black Eagle from the north, or the Bald Eaglefrom the east, or even the Red-headed Woodpecker may come tohim from the south." lg

In short, Amerindian peoples lived symbolically with nature a tcenter and boundaries. They understood the world as one that an-swered personally to their needs and words and, in turn , perceivedthemselves and their societies as part of a sacred landscape. Withcorrespondence as controlling metaphor, they sought their ownversions of mastery and control through harmony in a universe ofpersons who were part of the natural world. Nature religion, if itlived in America at all, lived among Amerindians.Apparently, for all the changes history wrought, this picturedrawn mostly from late nineteenth- and twentieth-century ac-counts applies as well to earlier times. There was a good deal oflikeness between later and earlier expression; and, with only frag-mentary-and often hostile-evidence from which to reconstruc t


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26 / Native Ground Native Ground / 27seventeenth-century Amerindian lifeways, we can still trace theoutlines, among the Algonkians of southern New England, of afully developed nature religion.Th e dist inct groups whom the Engl ish Puri tans fi rst encoun-tered were part of a related family of Indian nations. In the areaframed by the Saco River, flowing southeast from present-day N ewHampshire through southern M aine to the At lant ic, and the Quin-nipiac River, flowing southward through central Connecticut toNew Haven Harbor, Algonkian populations probably reached fromseventy-two thousand to twice that number by the early seven-teenth century. (By a century later the Engl ish populat ion hadonly reached ninety-three th ~u sa nd .)~ ' ut from 1616 to 1618 andagain from 1633 to 1634 epidemics swept throu gh the tribes, deci-mat ing nat ive populat ions by as much as ninety pe r ~ e n t . ~ 'odoubt caused by microbes from Europe brought first by trans-Atlantic traders, disease ravaged peoples who had no previous im-muni ty and cul tures that had no earl ier preparat ion. Thus, thereligions that Puritan observers would write about without com-prehension were religions confounded by a double crisis-the joltof foreign invasion and the catastrophe of a biological scourgeworse in its relative effects than the Black Death of fourteenth-century Europe.Th e four major Amerindian nations in the area-the Narragan-sett (of present-day Rho de Island), the Massachusett (of Massachu-setts Bay), the Pokanoket, or Wampanoag (of Plymouth Colony),and the Pequot (of present-day Connecticut)-spoke related lan-guages of the Eastern Algonkian family. They were united, too,by simi lar subsistence pat terns and governance st ructures. In amixed economy, they farmed the land , raising maize, beans, squas h,and some tobacco, even as they gathered wild plants and alsofished and hunted. With the coming of the English, they engagedin the fur trade. Dw elling in villages, with easy m obility to accom-modate seasonal changes in the food supply (at least until the1630s), these southern N ew England ers were governed by sachems,political leaders whose power varied with each unit. O n the whole,though, sachems ruled through prestige and moral autho rity, usinggenerosity and persuasion more than outright coercion to gainthei rAlthough the personal initiative of Algonkian Indian peoples

has been cited , more striking still was their strong sense of commu-ni ty wi th one another and wi th nature.23 Their small-group lifeemphasized bonds of kinship. Their collective understanding ofland tenu re and thei r equat ion of ownersh ip wi th use obviated Eu-ropean notions of private property that fostered indiv idualism . Al-gonkian labor was often cooperative, as Roger Williams noticedamong the Narragansetts: "When a field is to be broken up, theyhave a very loving sociable speedy way to dispatc h it: All the neigh-bours men and W omen forty, fifty, a hun dre d &c, oyne, an d come into h e lp f r e e l ~ . " ~ 'til l more, the ric h cerem onial life of these Amer-ind ians re inforced t he ir sense of mutua l it y and c o m m ~ n i t y .~ ~

Living closely as they did, Indian bands practiced an ethicof harmony within their communities. Roger Williams remarkedon the lack of crime an d violence among them, and William Wood-another seventeenth-century observer and probably not a Pu-ritan-commented on their hospitality to strange rs and theirhelpfulness. "Nothing is more hateful to them than a ch url ish dis-position," he wrote, going on to discuss their equanimity, cheer-fulness, and calm.26Perhaps a sociologically conditioned survivaltactic, the harmony ethic was also-if we can take later Amerin-dian experience as an indicator-an expression of their nat ure re-ligion. A "connected" view of the environment would foster theconnection of community.Connect ion, however, did not mean amorphousness. The south-ern New England Algonkians, even read through fragmentary evi-dence, elaborated a systematic cosmology in which the world andhum an l i fe were careful ly named and ordered. K eeping themselvesand thei r world in balance, which the harmony ethic enjoined,meant an intricate network of exchanges and interactions. Andsuch a network had to be predicated on precise and detai led knowl-edge of parts of the larger whole. Hence, the u nfam iliarity of a con-cept such as nature and the famil iari ty of nature persons madeconsiderable sense in the Ea stern Algonkian schema. Indeed, NealSalisburyI--as righhly argued tha t the ethos of reciprocity was para-mou nt, and he has noticed, too, the social, natura l, and-as heterme d it , somew hat problematically-"supernatural" worlds tha tneeded to be maintained in e q ~ i l i b r i u m . ~ ~Th e equi l ibrium began, as in other Am erindian societies, wi thbirth out of nature. Roger Williams told how the Narragansetts


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28 / Native Ground Native Ground / 29had heard from their fathers "tha t Kautantowwit made one manand woman of a stone, which disliking, he broke them i n pieces,and made another man and woman of a Tree, which were theFountaines of all mankind." "They say themselves, that they havesprung and growne up in th at very place, like the very trees of theWildernesse," he noted, just as tellingly, elsewhere. Further north,the missionary Daniel Gookin related the origin myth regardingtwo young squaws who swam or waded in th e waters. "The frothor foam of the water touched their bodies, from whence they be-came with chi ld; and one of them brought forth a male; and theother, a female child. . . .So their son and daughter were their [thepeople's] first progenitors." 28

If the people were themselves the gift of nature, so, too, weretheir foodstuffs, especially their corn. Stories of the sacred originsof corn run through numerous Amerindian cultures, many of themsouthwestern and southeastern. And in southern New England,even in an area near the northern boundary of corn cultivation, themythology of corn throve with th e growing crop. Williams ex-plained the gingerly fashion in which the Narragansetts kept thebirds away from the standing corn, citing the tradition "that theCrow brought them at first an Indiarz Graine of Corne in one Eare,and an Indian or French Beane in another , from the Great GodKautantouwits field in the Southwest from whence they hold cameall their Corne and Beanes."" Corn ritual, too, figured promi-nently in the ceremonial life of the tribe.

Williams's references to Cautantowwit (the modern spelling)point to the preeminence of this figure (or Ketan, as he was knownto the Narragansetts' neighbors) among the sacred beings who fa-vored the Indians. Cautantowwit's home in the southwest was as-sociated with the warm and nurturing wind that encouraged thegrowth of the corn. His home was also the place to which the peoplereturned at death, and so he was linked to the life force itself, whichoriginated from his house and again returned to it . "Ketan," wroteWilliam Wood, "is their good god, to whom they sacrifice (as theancient heathen did to Ceres) after their garners be full wi th a goodcrop; upon this god likewise they invocate for fair weather, for rainin time of drought, and for the recovery of their sick." 30 Worship ofCautantowwit, in short, was invocation of a nature deity.

Less distinct but more pervasive than the worship of Cautantow-wit was the southern New England orientation toward manitou. Ina perception shared with other Algonkians, the word manitou car-ried meanings of wonder and extraordinary power, of a godlinessinhering in numerous objects and persons. Williams remarked thatat "any Excellency in Men, Women, Birds, Beasts, Fish, &c.,"the Narragansetts would "cry out Manittoo, that is, it is a God."Gookin, linking the manitou belief to Cautantowwit, spoke of ac-knowledgment of "one great supreme doer of good; . . Woonand,or Mannitt." Other colonial New Englanders, such as ThomasMayhew on Martha's Vineyard, noted the use of the term. What isclear from the references is that, if Cautantowwit possessed mani-tou or was manitou or a manitou, the manitou essence could also befound in other nature beings, in humans, and even in marvelous(for the Indians) technological objects such as English ships andgreat buildings. "The most common experience seems to be thatof being overwhelmed by an all-encompassing presence," wroteWilliam Jones in his classic essay on the subject. Referring to aproperty (adjectival) as well as referring to an object (substantive),manitou was closely linked to "the essential character of Algonkinreligion . . .a pure, naive worship of nature." 31

Among the beings who possessed manitou were those whomWilliams identified as deities of the sun, moon, fire, water, snow,earth , deer, and bear, some thirty-seven or thirty-eight in all. Therewere deities of the four directions, and a woman's god, a children'sgod, and a house god as well. On Martha's Vineyard, Thomas May-hew likewise found knowledge of thirty-seven dei ties and notedtheir relation to "things in Heaven, Earth, and Sea: And there theyhad their Men-gods, Women-gods, and Children-gods, their Com-panies, and Fellowships of gods, or Divine Powers, guiding thingsamongst men, besides innumerable more feigned gods belonging tomany Creatures, to their Corn, and every Colour of it." DanielGookin's testimony, if less extensive, was similar.3z

Moreover, it was clear, as Neal Salisbury has succinctly re- 'marked, that the Indians were not "crypto-monotheists," confer-ring on Cautantowwit the role of creator of other gods.33 ndeed,the entire language of monotheism, god, and supernatural is forcedand strained when made to fit Amerindian thinking. More to the


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30 / Native Ground Native Ground / 31mark, nature mangested sacred powers and revealed other-than-human persons of mysterious and numinous capacities. Instead ofthe opposition between divinity and creature or between super-natura l and natural , there was-as already has been noted-acontinuity between extraordinary and ordinary. While dualisms-such as body and spiri t, for instance-existed, they were insertedinto a different frame and bore a different, more intimate meaningthan they did for Europeans.

If this observation be kept in mind, then the regard that south-ern New England Algonkians showed for animals assumes newand heightened significance. When the Narragansetts refused tokill crows or other birds that ate their crops, their behavior wasconsistent with other Indian practices. Thus, the English writerJohn Josselyn described the spiritual etiquette that attended thekilling of a moose in the New England region: i ts hear t, tongue, leftrear foot, and sinews were ritually removed before the flesh wasused, accomplishing the "gesture of reciprocity" that was theAmerindian response to beneficent power. Williams, in describingtrapping practices for deer, cited the divine power the Indians sawin the animal to explain why the Narragansetts were "very tenderof their Traps." Wood noticed that native peoples adorned them-selves with earrings in the forms of birds, beasts, and fishes, and he.lso remarked on the depictions of animals and birds incised intotheir checks. And John Eliot, the New England missionary, placedfirst in his list of religious questions his would-be converts asked,"Why have not beasts a soul as man hath, seeing they have love, anger,Gc. as man hath?" 4

The ceremonial forms of southern New England Algonkians ex-pressed regard for animals and their power and, beyond that,regard and gratitude for vegetable life. Successful hunts and har-vests were both marked by ri tual (as were numerous other occa-sions in Indian life). Ceremonies accompanied spring fish runs andmade supplication for rain in time of drought. The Narragansettsheld a midwinter festival, according to Williams, and the feastmay have been related to the time of solstice. Meanwhile, Williamsalso recorded the giveaways, in which people outdid one another indistributing their goods, imitating, perhaps, the bounty that ani-mals and plants had shown to them. At various ceremonial times,dances were led by shamans or powwows, who garbed themselves

in skins in order to imitate bears, wolves, and other animals, howl-ing as they danced no doubt for the same p~ rp os e. ~'

With all but one of their lunar months named for the plantingcycle, Algonkian Indians expressed the significance of agriculturein their lives. But the ceremonial time of the community was sup-plemented by a round of other rituals, linked to hunting cultures,that focused more on individuals. Like the hunting cultures to thenorth and west, these Algonkians sought special guardian spiritsin ritualized vision quests, and accounts tell of asceticisms andhardships incorporated into the practice. Thus, in one remarkablenarrative, Williams wrote of a dying Narragansett's call to Muck-quachuckquand, who had come to him many years before, biddingthe Indian to seek him in time of distress. Likewise, southern NewEngland Algonkians honored the menstrual hu t used in huntingcultures.36At the time of her menses, the ferti lity power of thewoman was thought so strong that i t could conflict with the other,male form of power needed in the hunt. Sequestered with her dur-ing her time in the hut, the woman's power did not endanger others.

The chief religious specialist among the New England tribeswas the shaman or powwow, and much of the English commentaryon native life was preoccupied, invariably negatively, with this fig-ure. The shaman's tutelary deity and the power through whom heacted was Hobbamock (Abbomacho), who was also identified withChepi, the shaman's helper. A terrestrial spirit believed to be in-volved in the onset of disease and suffering,---obbamock. oamed-abroad at night, commanding fear. He signaled the negative pow-ers of the sacred, the dangers it embodied, and the need for specialknowledge and prowess to deal with it securely. In similar vein,Chepi's name was linked to terms for death, the departed, and thecold northeast wind. The English called Hobbamock @devil;and, in the language of their own dualistic understanding of goodand evil, they were not completely wrong. Converted natives ac-cepted the equation. It was true, too, that when Puritans firstencountered the New England Indians the cult of Hobbamockseemed to be waxing and that of Cautantowwit declining-sup-porting the judgment that witchcraft beliefs are strategies for con-trol that thrive in communal crises.37

Shamans, as we noted, presided at the nature ceremonies ofsouthern New England Algonkians. Such shamans entered their


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32 / Native Ground Native Ground 1 33t rue estate when they became entranc ed, possessed and taken overby Hobbamock and the powers of manitou. On M artha's Vineyard,Thomas Mayhew related striking accounts of shamanic posses-sion. He spoke of "Imps," whom th e shaman s called their "P reserv-ers" and "t reasured u p in thei r bodies." One narrat ive suggestedthat inanimate substances, too, were alive, for the shaman Te-quanonim claimed he had been "possessed from the crow ne of thehead to the soal of the foot with Pawwawnomas, not onely in theshape of living Creatures, as Fowls, Fishes, and creeping things,but Brasse, Iron, and Stone." A nother sha man on the island told ofhis initiation through "Diabolical Dreams, wherein he saw theDevil1 in the likenesse of four living Cr eatur es; one was like a m anwhich he saw in the Ayre, . . . and this he said had i t s residenceover his whole body. Another was like a Crow, . . .and had i t s resi -dence in his head. The thi rd was l ike to a Pidgeon, and had i t splace his breast. . . .Th e fourth was l ike a Serpent ." 38Healers of their people, the powwows employed herbal medi-cines and shamanic sucking cures in ri tual fashion. The ir ident i fi -cation, in the healing ceremony, with animals was suggested byWilliam Wood's description of one such rite. Here the powwowproceeded "in his invocations, sometimes roaring like a bear, othe rtimes groaning like a dying horse, foaming at the mouth like achased boar, smit ing on his naked breast and thighs wi th such vio-lence as if he were mad." Shamans also aided their people by theirdivinatory powers. In one anecdote remem bered a fter King Philip'sWar, i t was the shaman's vision of a bear-a ravenous animal andso a bad omen-that convinced the Indians they should retre atfrom Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Rainmaking was also the sha-man's province. And, less benignly, the sh aman could, on occasionand w i th preterh uman aid, infl ict evi l on another. Thomas May-hew reported how, at the behest of the powwow, "the Devil dothabuse the real body of a Serpent, which comes directly tow ards theman in the house or in the field, . . . and do shoot a bone (as theysay) into the Indian s Body." 39Significantly, even the sou thern New E ngland Algonkian un der -standing of the afterl i fe expressed an A merindian immersion innature religion. We have already pointed to the connection be-tween Cautantowwit 's house for the dead and the w armth a nd l i fe-bestowing properties of the southw est and its wind. Archeological

evidence from New England burials supports the association, fornot only were the dead al igned to the southwest but , in Narra-ganset t burials, the dead were placed in fetal posture, suggest ingthe idea of rebirth. Similarly, red paint discovered in the gravessuggests the blood and placenta that came w ith chi ldbirth. AndWilliam Scranton Simmons has argued that the positioning of theskull to the southwest was related to the depa rtu re of the soul orsouls in that direction.40Jus t as st riking as evidence for a natu re rel igion associated wi thdeath are the brief li terary references of English contemporaries.Roger Wil liams l ikened Ind ian death hopes to the Turkish expec-tation of "carnal1 Joyes." William Wood, in words that bear fullrepetition, was more specific.They hold the immortality of the never-dying soul that it shall pass to thesouthwest Elysium, concerning which their Indian faith jumps muchwith the Tur kish Alcoran [Qura n], holding it to be a kind of paradisewherein they sh all everlastingly abide, solacing themselves in odoriferousgardens, fruitful corn fields, green meadows, bathing their tawny hides inthe cool streams of pleasant rivers, and s helter themselves from heat andcold in the sumptuous palaces framed by the skill of nature's curious con-trivement; concluding that neither care nor pain shall molest them butthat nature's bounty will administer all things with a voluntary con tribu-tion from the overflowing storehouse of their Elysian H ~ sp it al .~ '

Nature religion, in sum, formed and framed nat ive North Ameri -can l ife from birth unt i l death-and, in the Amerindian view, be-yond. Nature religion shaped mentality; i t lay behind behavior insymbolic and ordinary settings; it worked to achieve a harmonythat was also an at temp t to control the powers that impinged onlife as native peoples knew it ."We are well as we are," John Eliot had an Indian kinswoman sayin his Indian Dialogues. Th e words have an i ronic cogency whenmatched against the rel igion of natu re th at characterized Indianpeoples in southern New England. That William Wood foundAmerindians "litt le edified in religion" by their encounter withthe Engl ish and that Daniel Gookin, before 1674, had heard of noone in the Rhode Island colony "inst rum ental to convert any ofthose Indians" are observat ions less than surprising. The Pu ri tansfailed to claim the majority of the Indians for Christianity for a


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34 / Native Ground Native Ground / 35series of complex reasons. An English sense of cultural superi-ority, the growing commercial orientation of the colonists, beliefsregarding predestination, sectarian preoccupation with the al-ready saved community, even the practice of congregational callingbefore ordination to the ministry-these and other factors under-cut a wholehearted mission effort.4z

Yet, basic to the Puritan failure-and what concerns us here-was the different meaning and value accorded to the symbol of na-ture by each culture. If Amerindians lived a nature religion with-out possessing the abstract and universalized European concept ofnature, Puritans understood nature in overarching and universalterms but never found the centeredness in nature charac teristic ofnative peoples. Both cultures, in the contact situation, acknowl-edged the existence of sacred powers and, more, saw a holy pres-ence in the world and in daily life. And both cultures valuedcommunity and lived according to "tribal" norms. But with the ab-solute claims of their religious commitment, the Pu ritans couldnot find common ground in nature with southern New EnglandAlgonkians.What place, then, did the Puritans accord to nature? And howare we to include these inward-turning sectarians, haunted byquestions of supernaturalism and salvation, in any account of na-ture religion? To do so is possible only if we recognize the clearpriority of Jehovah in the Puritan vision. For these English colo-nists, na ture could function only as par t of a sacred geography inwhich the supernatural essence of the divine realm was stronglymarked and in which sacred persons lived above and apart fromnature. However, if we accept these limits and still continue tolook for the religious place of nature in Puritan culture, the resu ltsare richer than a t first we might suppose. Nature did function as asignificant religious symbol for Puritans, and i t was against and ininteraction with nature that they made sense of their spiritual-and material-venture in the New World.

When William Bradford wrote of the Pilgrim landing a t Plym-outh harbor, he recalled the terror of "a hidious & desolate wilder-nes, full of wild beasts & willd men."43The language is indicative,for it underscores one strong element in a complex Puritan rela-tionship with nature. As Roderick Nash has told in his now-classicWilderness and the American Mind, for European cu ltu re in general,

nature in the wilderness was manifestly different from nature in agarden.44The wilderness was a dangerous place, beyond humancontrol and threatening in both physical and metaphysical ways.Outside the pale of established society and away from the cul tureof citied traditions, Puritans could revert to the savagery theyfound around them. Wilderness was, literally, the place of wildbeasts: the fear was that, in the primitive forests with the beasts,one would become confused, bewildered, losing a sense of self andsociety that was essential to civilized life and to salvation there-after. Hence, the absence of European humanity in the wildernessmade it an alien and alienating landscape.

Yet both the Greco-Roman and the central and northern Euro-pean cultures had found a sacred, if often negative, dimension inthe wild country. For Greeks and Romans, the wilderness washome to a series of lesser gods and demonic beings-to pans andsatyrs, nymphs and centaurs alike. For central and northern Euro-peans, wood sprites and trolls as well as other preterhuman beingsinhabited the forests. Motifs of fertility, power, and danger wereintertwined in this pagan heritage of Europe. With the heritageappropriated by Christian peoples as Europe was converted, moralvalences were emphasized, and the ambiguous nature of forest be-ings was clarified. They still carried sacred import, to be sure; but,in keeping with the dualism of Christian teaching, now the spiri-tual force that lurked in the wilderness was purely negative. Thewilderness was the territory of the devil and the powers of evil.Wild beasts and wild men who dwelled there could only be hisemissaries and servants.

Hence, when Puritans regarded Amerindians in the New Worldfor the first time, they d id so wearing lenses that had been groundby centuries. Epitome of the spiritual degradation of the wilder-ness condition, native peoples showed the Puritans, as DanielGookin said, "as in a mirror, or looking glass, the woful, miserable,and deplorable estate, that sin hath reduced mankind unto natu-rally, and especially such as live without means of cultivating andcivilizing." Except for their "rational souls," he thought, Indianswere "like unto the wild ass's colt, and not many degrees abovebeasts in matters of fact."45New World nature, for Puritans, was akingdom under Satan, and, preeminently, southern New EnglandAlgonkians were his assistants. In short, as Neal Salisbury has


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36 / Native Groundsaid, the colonists saw Indians as "the complete inversion of theworld they sought for them~elves."~~

In this context, Puritan identification of Hobbamock with Satanachieves new explanatory power, and the war Puritans wagedagainst Algonkian powwows becomes a crusade, not simply againsta false religion but against elemental evil. Powwows, although theymight be native herbal physicians, were also-and more signifi-cantly-"partly wizards and witches, holding familiarity withSatan," as Gookin said.47Prohibited under penalty by the GeneralCourt of Massachusetts, powwows no doubt seemed to most whiteNew Englanders the embodiment of the spiritual dread the wil-derness br o~g ht.~ '

Yet, in other moments, at least some Puritans linked Indiansto biblical history, needing to find a place for them in the divineplan of salvation that began with the fall of Adam and Eve in theGarden of Eden. The Indians, these Puritans speculated, had de-scended from the ten lost tribes of Israel. "Surely i t is not impos-sible," Gookin wrote, "and perhaps not so improbable as manylearned men think." Another gospel minister sought various pointsof religious resemblance, noting Indian acknowledgment of a cre-ator and of his providential relationship to the world and findingin Algonkian gestures of grief or gratitude toward a higher powerevidence for the Israelite co nn e~ ti on .~ ~hat makes these specula-tions important here is that , as a common Purit an view, they signalan ambivalence toward the wilderness and its inhabitants thatgainsays the demonic dread.50

Thus , even as nature stood for the kingdom of evil in the Puri tanmyth, the resources of the Judeo-Christian tradition made of thewilderness a place with provisionally positive spiritual meaning.True, the shift from negative to positive meant the demotion ofwild nature as a sacred power: not simply the embodiment of Sa-tanic power, i t became the backdrop for the action of a God aboveand beyond it. Still, demotion became an appropria te price to payfor change, and change led to later forms of American naturereligion.

The Jewish heritage of Chr istianity included the origin myth ofthe Exodus, which explained the common ancestry of th e Jews andtheir preparation by God for a shared destiny as the people of hischoice. At the center of the story, the Hebrews who followed Moses

Native Ground / 37fled the fleshpots of Egypt, experienced divine deliverance as theycrossed the Red Sea, and then wandered in the deser ts of Sinai forforty years. Here they endured tr ial and desolation, beset by temp-tation in the emptiness of the desert. Yet it was precisely in Sinai,with its harsh testing, that Yahweh revealed himself, giving thepeople an abiding pledge of his steadfastness in the command-ments of the Law.5'

As heirs to the Exodus account and the entire Jewish legacy,Christians, too, understood the wild places of the desert as sitesfor spiritual testing and the visitation of God. Jesus had fasted forforty days and forty nights in the (desert) wilderness, and therethe devil came to tempt him and the angels came to minister tohim. Accounts of fourth-century monks who fled cities for theEgyptian desert stress the solitude of these anchorites, the temp-tations and spiritual graces they experienced, and their commu-nion with nature. Thus it was in the desert that the celebratedAntony of Egypt fought off the onslaughts of demons as he dwelledwithin a tomb, the symbol of his death to the civilized luxury ofthe cities and the self-indulgence they encouraged. "Monks losetheir strength in towns," he was once reported to have said. Thetamer of wild beasts and the tiller of a garden, when he set off tovisit the hermit Paul of Thebes, according to one account b n ~ o n yencountered a centaur, a satyr, and a she-wolf, all of whom proved^ . - -beneficentXs Paul and Antony talked, a crow flew down from aneZ&y tree and deposi ted a loaf of bread to feed them, and when,in aftertimes, Antony returned to the cave to find the corpse of Paul,two lions came flying toward him to dig the grave of the saint.52

Tales such as these seem a far cry from the New World experi-ence of the small band of English Puritans, especially in lightof their Calvinist repudiation of monks and monkish supersti-tion. Yet, within the continuity of Christian culture, something ofthe attitude of the fourth-century monks and their admirers haddescended to these latter-day children of the Reformation. Thewilderness was still a place of testing, the backdrop for a sp iritualpurification in which the corruption of old England might be per-manently purged. As a proving ground for the saints, the wilder-ness might also protect them from worldly evil and even invigoratethem. Indeed, it mi

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