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Advisory Board
Vincent Brown, Duke University
Stephanie M. H. Camp, University of Washington
Andrew Cayton, Miami University
Cornelia Hughes Dayton, University of Connecticut
Nicole Eustace, New York University
Amy S. Greenberg, Pennsylvania State University
Ramón A. Gutiérrez, University of Chicago
Peter Charles Hoffer, University of Georgia
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, New York University
Joshua Piker, University of Oklahoma
Mark M. Smith, University of South Carolina
Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University
Faithful Bodies
Performing Religion and Race in the Puritan Atlantic
Heather Miyano Kopelson
New York University Press
New York and London
New York University Press
New York and London
© 2014 by New York University
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kopelson, Heather Miyano.
Faithful bodies : performing religion and race in the Puritan Atlantic / Heather Miyano Kopelson.
pages cm — (Early American places)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4798-0500-6 (cloth : acid-free paper)
1. Massachusetts—Race relations—Religious aspects—History—17th century. 2. Rhode Island—Race relations—Religious aspects—History—17th century. 3. Bermuda Islands—Race relations—Religious aspects—History—17th century. 4. Great Britain—Colonies—America—History—17th century. 5. Puritans—America—History—17th century. 6. Protestantism—Social aspects—America—History—History—17th century. 7. Ethnicity—America—Religious aspects—History—17th century. 8. Massachusetts—History—Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775. 9. Rhode Island—History—Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775. 10. Bermuda Islands—History—17th century. I. Title.
F75.A1K67 2014
305.800974—dc23 2013049744
References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Defining
1. “One Indian and a Negroe, the first thes Ilands ever had”
2. “Joyne interchangeably in a laborious bodily service”
3. “Ye are of one Body and members one of another”
Part II. Performing
4. “Extravasat Blood”
5. “Makinge a tumult in the congregation”
6. “Those bloody people who did use most horrible crueltie”
7. “To bee among the praying indians”
8. “In consideration for his raising her in the Christian faith”
Part III. Disciplining
9. “Abominable mixture and spurious issue”
10. “Sensured to be whipped uppon a Lecture daie”
11. “If any white woman shall have a child by any Negroe or other slave”
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
About the Author
Illustrations
I.1. Native territories and English colonial claims in southern New England, ca. 1665
I.2. The puritan Atlantic in the long seventeenth century
1.1. Taínoan provinces and cacicazgos on Hispaniola
1.2. Sir George Somers’s manuscript map of Bermuda, ca. 1609
1.3. Manioc processing, 1724
1.4. Bread making, 1565
1.5. Directions for making bread from cassava roots, 1621
1.6. Taínoan palm-thatched house
1.7. Palm fabric, 1670s
2.1. Map of selected Native and English places in seventeenth-century New England
2.2. String of seventeenth-century wampum beads
2.3. Seventeenth-century potsherds with representations of female genitalia
2.4. Zoomorphic effigy pestle in the form of a bear, Rhode Island
3.1. Baptist celebration of the Lord’s Supper, 1736
3.2. St. George’s Chalice
3.3. John Hull beaker, ca. 1659, First Church, Boston
3.4. Roger Wood beaker, ca. 1654, Devonshire Church, Bermuda
3.5. Fireplace, Cooper-Frost-Austin House, Cambridge, Mass.
5.1. Female Quaker preaching, 1736
7.1. Praying Indian towns, ca. 1675
10.1. Incontinency proceedings in Bermuda, 1667
10.2. Unlawful sex cases in Bermuda, 1650–1723
10.3. Gender differential in white bastardy cases in Bermuda, 1690–1723
10.4. Unlawful sex in Bermuda by type of offense, 1650–1723
10.5. Racial labels of Bermudian women charged with unlawful sex, 1650–1723
10.6. Cases charging Bermudian women with unlawful sex by decade, 1650–1723
11.1. Interracial sex cases in Bermuda, 1650–1723
11.2. “An Act for the Better Preventing of Spurious and Mixt Issue,” 1705, Massachusetts
Acknowledgments
It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to thank all of those who have helped me over the years of researching and writing this book. Several institutions provided key financial support: the University of Iowa Graduate College and Department of History, the John Nicholas Brown Center, the Huntington Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Brown