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“A Prey To Their Teeth”: Puritan Sermons And Ministerial Writings On Indians During King Philip’S War, Gregory Michna

Sermon Studies

King Philip’s War encouraged the construction of barbaric Native American typologies by puritan ministers through sermons and wartime histories. While select Algonquians in New England invested in a hybridized identity as a “Praying Indian” during the decades before the war, martial circumstances encouraged ministers to emphasize indigenous savagery, which outweighed earlier efforts to demonstrate the Christian piety of native converts. English texts outlining God’s providential wrath linked the contemporaneous war to Old Testament punishments meted out to the Hebrews. This typological reading of current events also superimposed the characteristics of heathen barbarians on Native Americans irrespective of their allegiance, offering …