"Puritan Statutory Law and the Indians: A Comparative Analysis" by Alden Vaughan, Columbia University Working Draft(1) The Puritan governments in New England--like British colonial governments elsewhere--enhanced abundant laws pertaining partly, especially, or exclusively to the Indians within their chartered boundaries. Those laws were not always obeyed, of course; the letter of the law is one thing, enforcement another. Nor are the motives behind the laws always clear from the surviving evidence; euphemism is probably as common in legislative halls as in academic groves. Yet it seems fair to assume that a comparison of Puritan legislation concerning Indians with its counterparts in the other mainland colonies would tell something about the spirit as well as the letter of the Puritans' policies for their native neighbors. As an aperture to "the New England mind," it is at best a narrow window, but it is a window not heretofore opened.(2) This paper offers my preliminary assessment of Puritan law and the Indians, based on an analysis of the whole corpus of colonial Indian law during the era of Puritan hegemony. Its goals are twofold: first, to offer a comprehensive view of New England's laws concerning Indians in the years when "Puritan" is an apt label; and, second, to compare Puritan patterns with those of the other British mainland colonies. For the purposes of this study, the period of Puritan control is 1620 to 1686; the "Puritan colonies" are Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven; the non-Puritan colonies are New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania (its first five years), Maryland, and Virginia(3); and the laws under review are those passed by each colony's supreme legislative body.(4) Several methodological problems must be addressed at the outset. One is the imprecision of designating some laws as "Indian," others are not. Laws addressed to the public at large implicitly applied to Indians within the colonial communities (as distinct from Indians living in tribal areas) unless otherwise stated, but to include all colonial laws in this study would obviously negate its whole premise. Laws concerning servants, for example, sometimes specifically mention Indians, sometimes not; in the latter case, the wording and context of a law usually makes clear that Indians were not involved to an appreciable degree; they are therefore not included in this analysis although they may have incidentally affected a few Indians. On the other hand, I do include laws that are addressed not to Indians but to the colonists in response to Indian affairs--statutes, for example, that authorize or organize military forces against Indian foes. By using that rough rule of thumb--specific mention of Indians or a context that clearly implies significant relevance to Indians--the number of such laws emanating from the Puritan colonies is impressive: in round figures, about 100 from Plymouth, 80 from Massachusetts Bay, 80 from Connecticut, and 15 from New Haven in its brief lifespan from 1638 to 1664. These laws are a substantial portion--perhaps twenty per cent--of the colonies' legislative action between 1620 to 1686. The non- Puritan colonies exhibit similar quantitative patterns; the distinctions to be discussed below are, instead, qualitative and substantive. Another methodological problem is the impossibility of gathering al colonial laws, even at the top level of government. Legislatures sometimes enacted laws that expired before they could be printed; other laws were printed but no copies survive. In either case, the colony's legislative minutes--where they survive--may or may not preserve the texts. Even the periodic compilations of laws in the various colonies, marvelous as they are, leave much to be desired, for they often silently omit laws that had expired or were overturned by the Crown. Nineteenth- century collections of early legislation usually follow suit.(5) I suspect that the effort to gather all extant Indian laws has produced no more than eighty-five to ninety per cent of the relevant statutes.(6) But I suspect too that the missing legislation is relatively unimportant. Issues of persistent concern to the colonists--arms control, alcohol control, and land acquisition, for example--appear again and again in statutes that repeat themselves almost verbatim. Issues addressed in a single law are seldom significant. Still another methodological problem is the fluid nature of government in British America. Some colonies had no legislatures for various periods of time, especially in the early years. Virginia, without an Assembly from 1607 to 1619, is a prime example. (In the eighteenth century, Georgia would have a comparable experience.) The absence of statutes for Virginia's first decade and a half makes comparison with early New England problematic conclusions. So do the blurred lines between the early governments' legislative, judicial, and executive functions. Because it was the highest judicial as well as legislative body, the Assembly or General Court often issued rulings that do not clearly, by today's standards, fall into one functional category or another. A case in point is a Massachusetts pronouncement of 1667 responding to complaints by Nipmuck Indians of injuries perpetrated by members of the Narragansett nation. The General Court "ordered" (the usual operative verb in Puritan legislation) the appointment of a committee to investigate the complaints; after reviewing its findings, the Court drafted regulations for harmony between the tribes--regulations that the Indians probably took at binding.(7) I have nonetheless excluded such documents on the ground that they are essentially diplomatic rather than legal, but that line too is obviously imprecise. Here again, I doubt that the inclusion of such Court business would significantly alter my analysis. In several respects, Puritan legislation was distinctive. Certain types of laws are found almost exclusively in Puritan New England; other types have counterparts in several British colonies but in New England are distinguished by characteristics that mark them as especially Puritan; and in a few cases the non- Puritan colonies enacted far more legislation on certain matters than did their Calvinist counterparts--sometimes because of differing circumstances but often, it appears, from inclination. All colonies, of course, had much legislation in common, as must be expected in jurisdictions established within seventy five years of each other by people of very similar heritage. Greater differences would undoubtedly surface in a comparison of British American legislation with that of the other European colonies.(8) British colonial laws for the Indians, in any event, show intriguing religious and regional variations. The most distinctively Puritan legislation called for the proselytizing and "civilizing" of the Indians of New England, especially the tribes that had submitted to Puritan authority. Not that other colonies wholly ignored the issue; several of them, through individual or corporate action, encouraged missionary activity. But only the Puritan colonies and Virginia passed laws for the conversion and education of the Indians before 1686. The New England statutes are distinctive for their frequency and specificity. Among the four Puritan colonies, Massachusetts Bay was by far the most insistent on proselytizing and educating. On 10 June 1644 the General Court declared its "earnest desire" that "these natives (amongst whome wee live, & whoe have submitted themselves to this government) should come to ye good knowledge of God." The Court accordingly ordered "all such of ye Indians as have subjected themselves to our government" to meet on Sundays at appointed places to be instructed in Christianity "by those whose harts God shall stirr upp to yt worke," aided by "ye best interpreter[s] they can gett."(9) Two years later (1646), the Court set forth its missionary theory: "[Fa]ith be not wrought by ye sword, but by ye word, & therefore such pagan Indians as have submitted themselves to our goverment ... wee compell them not to ye Xtian faith, nor to the profession of it, either by force of armes or by poenal lawes." That almost implied a hands-off policy. Yet because the colony's charter imposed on the government the obligation to propagate the gospel and because the Indians were anxious--said the Court--for instruction in Christianity, henceforth it would annually promulgate laws "to reduce them to civillity of life." To that end, the church elders were annually to choose two ministers "to make knoune ye heavenly counsell of God amongst ye Indians." Gifts would be distributed at public expense to "those Indians whom [the missionaries] shall perceave most willing & ready to be instructed by them."(10) A corollary of the Bay Colony's missionary program was the imposition of English style government on prospective converts. (Other colonies imposed chiefs on submitted tribes; only the Puritans mixed Indian rulers with English-style polities.) In May 1647 the Court authorized special quarterly courts, staffed by the English, for Indian converts and summary courts, staffed by Indians sachims, for minor causes. Lesser officials, also Indian, were to be appointed by the sachims. All fines imposed on Indian transgressors were to be used to build a meetinghouse and to educate the Indians. In an effort to further anglicize the natives, the Court encouraged them to understand not only "our most usefull lawes" but also "those principles of reason, justice, & equity where upon they are grounded."(11) Three Puritan laws between 1652 and 1658 established the Praying Towns that became John Eliot's principal work and the Bay Colony's major missionary achievement. A law of 1652, designed "for the further ... civillizing & helping them forward to Christianitie," ordered that individual Indians who wished to live among the colonists be allowed land on the same basis as Englishmen; if a group of Indians was sufficiently "brought on to civilitie, so as to be capable of a township," it was to have an appropriate grant from the colony's undistributed lands.(12) Two years latter (1654), the first such grants were made, and the following year the Court directed surveyors to lay out a township of six thousand acres.(13) A subsequent statute (1658) required the inhabitants of the two Praying Towns to "live according to our lawes as farr as they are capable," under the supervision of Indian magistrates who, jointly with Major Humphrey Atherton, were to sit as a county court for major causes.(14) Although Indian education was an important part of the Puritan missionary scheme, the New England legislatures rarely passed laws explicitly for formal schooling, leaving that aspect of education to lesser jurisdictions. Evidence for such instruction comes from other sources--John Winthrop's "Journal", for example, and the writings of Eliot, Daniel Gookin, and the Commissioners of the United Colonies. An exception is the second charter of Harvard College, issued in 1650, in which the Massachusetts General Court announced that the institution's purpose was to be "the education of ye English & Indian youth of this country in knowledge & godlynes."(15) Soon after the war of 1675-76 devastated Puritan missionary efforts, the Massachusetts Court again sought to promote Christianity among neighboring Indians. In late May 1677 the legislature addressed the fate of Indian survivors, because "the well ordering & settlement of those that remain & are under [our] command is a matter of great concernment to the peace & security of the countrey, & the welfare, civilizing, & good education of the sd Indjans & their children." Indian youths already with English families were to remain with them as servants to age twenty-four, "to be taught and instructed in the Xian religion." The same law directed that the Praying Indians--now drastically reduced in number--be clustered into four of the pre-war towns.(16) By a later statute (1681), all free Indians "except prentices or covenant servants for years" were to reside in three of those towns--the first true reservations in New England. Indians who refused to move to the designated towns were to be imprisoned until they changed their minds. The law said nothing about civilizing or proselytizing those Indians nor do later statutes of the Bay Colony. Missionization did not end in 1677, of course, as other documentary evidence makes clear(17), but the precipitous decline of Puritan interest in Indian conversion that followed the war is reflected in the statutory record. The laws of Connecticut and Plymouth follow patterns roughly similar to the Bay Colony's, though in both jurisdictions the laws concerning missionization and education began later than in Massachusetts (1650 and 1665 respectively), were far fewer in number, and were far less ambitious. The Connecticut General Court first encouraged proselytizing in its code of 1650 when it ordered the colony's teaching elders, aided by interpreter Thomas Stanton, to visit the neighboring Indians at least twice a year "and indeavor to make knowne to them the Councells of the Lord"-- an injunction that reappeared in Connecticut's codification of 1672. In 1671, the Court beg divine blessing on their missionary efforts.(18) Not until 1665 did the Plymouth General Court pass missionary legislation and then only in response to Reverend Richard Bourne's motion "in behalfe of those Indians under his instruction, as to theire desire of liveing in some orderly way of gouerment." The Court named six Indians "to have the chiefe inspection and managment" of the catechumens, with Bourne's "healp and advise"; one of the six was to be chosen constable by his peers. Lest the new policy for converts threaten traditional Indian power structures, the law stipulated that "what homage [is] accostomed legally due to any superior sachem bee not heerby infringed."(19) New Haven, alone among the Puritan colonies, passed no legislation establishing Christianization or education for the Indians, but that may reflect its location (amid fairly cohesive tribes), its brief lifespan (twenty seven years), and a sizeable gap in its surviving records (much of 1644-53) more than it does a lack of interest by the New Haven authorities in propagating the gospel. Virginia, alone among the non-Puritan colonies, passed any laws before 1686 for the Christianization, civilization, or education of the Indians. The newly-created Assembly of 1619, concerned with "laying a surer foundation of the conversion of the Indians to Christian Religion," ordered each community in the colony to "obtain unto themselves by just meanes a certaine number of the natives Children to be educated by them in true Religion & civil course of life." The "most towardly boyes in witt & graces of nature" were additionally to be taught "the firste Elements of litterature, so as to be fitted for the Colledge intended for them" and thereafter to join in the proselytizing effort.(20) The intended college--to be built at Henrico--of course never came to pass; it and Virginia's other educational schemes were shattered by Opechancanough's uprising in 1622 and the subsequent war that lasted a decade and, in the 1640s, by Opechancanough's second assault and its aftermath. Not until 1656 did the Assembly again address Indian education, and then only obliquely. To prevent "great dangers" from the colony's Indians, the Assembly authorized gifts to "The King or Great Man (as they call him)" of a cow for each eight wolves heads he delivered to colonial authorities (more on the perennial wolf problem below), with the exception that "This will be a step to civilizing them and to making them Christians." Just how the bovines would convey Protestant theology the Assembly did not say. In a more plausible vein, the Assembly urged Indian parents to assign their children to English families; the Assembly in turn promised that "wee will not vse them as slaves, but do our best to bring them up in Christianity, civillity and the knowledge of necessary trades."(21) A subsequent law the same year specified that the children in question would be servants for terms, mutually reached by the parents and master; two years later (1658), the Assembly decreed that the children were to be free at age twenty-five, which suggests that many were being held to longer terms than were European-American servants.(22) In 1663, faced with the likelihood of war against the tribes on its northern border, the Assembly ordered the kings of those Indian nations to deliver several children as hostages or be declared enemies; the hostages were to be "civilly used and treated by the English to whose charge they shalbe delivered, and ... brought up in the English litterature soe farre as they are capable." The law did not mention religion.(23) If a Puritan ethos showed clearly in New England's laws for Christianizing and anglicizing, it was reflected almost as well in legislation that attempted to control Indian behavior that offended the governments' sensibilities. Violations of the sabbath, for example. In 1637, the Bay Colony urged its towns to prohibit Indian irreverence on the Lord's day.(24) Local enforcement apparently did not suffice, for the law of 1644 that launched the Bay Colony's missionary program also insisted that "common reason requireth every state & society of men to be more carefull of preventing the dishonor & contempt of ye Most High God ... then of any mortall princes & magistrates"; the authorized penalty was death for anyone, "whether Xtian or pagan," who intentionally blasphemed God "by willfull or obstinate denying ye true God, or reproach of ye holy religion of God, as if it were but a polliticke devise to keepe ignorant men in awe."(25) This, of course, left open the possibility that Indians who refused to hear Puritan preachers would be deemed obstinate and therefore must forfeit their lives, but that interpretation seems not to have been applied; the penalty was never exacted. In the enforcement of sabbath restrictions, the other Puritan jurisdictions lagged about a decade behind Massachusetts. Plymouth in 1652 outlawed "any seruill worke on the Lords day as by fishing fowling planting hilling and carriing of burthens etc."(26) Plymouth reenacted the law in 1658, and it remained in force until 1672, when a similar law appeared in the colony's last codification. That law proscribed a similar list of forbidden Sunday activities for all Indians in the jurisdiction, "especially such as live amongst or near the English Plantations."(27) Not until 1667 did Connecticut prohibit Indians within English territory from working or playing on the sabbath at risk of a fine or time in the stocks, a law that reappeared in the colony's codification of 1672.(28) New Haven's law of 1647 against laboring on the Sabbath did not mention Indians, but its applicability to "whosoeuer ... within this plantation" surely included them.(29) More destructive, presumably, of Indian culture than sabbatarian rules were prohibitions against the Indians' religious ceremonies. Massachusetts launched an assault on Indian rituals in November 1646, when it prohibited any Indian to "pawwow or performe outward worship to their falce gods or to ye deuill upon any land or ground which is proper to ye English," at risk of a ten pound fine. The next year the Bay Colony's rules for the Christian Indians of Concord included a prohibition on powwowing, and a statute in the Laws and Liberties of 1648 repeated and extended the colony-wide anti-powwowing regulation of two years earlier.(30) Plymouth's laws of 1671 threatened devil worshippers with a five pound fine or "severe Corporall Punishment both of said Powwow and of such other as shall procure or abett him therein."(31) Connecticut and New Haven passed no statutes against powwowing. New York, along among non-Puritan colonies, did. The Duke's Laws of 1665, which borrowed unabashedly from New England statutes, forbade the Indians "to Powaw or performe outward worship to the Devil in any Towne in this Goverment."(32) Connecticut was unique among the Puritan colonies in passing legislation on what must have been a common concern in early New England--fear that the Indians rather than the English would win the contest between (as they saw it) savagery and civility. Cultural atavism was a constant threat, Puritan spokesmen warned periodically, from too close familiarity with heathen and barbarian natives; yet only the River colony took legislative action to curb excessive fraternization.(33) In 1642, Connecticut's Assembly admitted with evident dismay that "divers persons departe from amongst us, and take up their abode with the Indeans in a prophane course of life." The penalty for such renegades was three years or more in the house of correction, a fine, and corporal punishment.(34) The Connecticut legislature repeated the statute in its codification of 1650.(35) In 1647 a statute of similar purpose tried to prevent atavistic influences from moving in the other direction--from the forest to the town. The law's preamble complained that "divers inconveniences fall out by letting land to the Indeans, whereby they mixe themselves in their labours with the Inglishe, and thereby the manners of many young men are lyable to be corrupted." Henceforth only Indians who "have carried themselves peaceably, and which will subiecte themselves to be ordered by the Inglishe," were to live near the colonists.(36) Maryland, alone among the other British mainland colonies, took a comparable stance against living with the Indians. (The authorities at early Jamestown had issued strict rules against desertion to the Indians, but that appears to have been more a matter of defense than of religious or civil purity.(37)) In 1639, the Maryland Assembly prohibited "withdrawing of ones Self out of an English Plantation to inhabit or reside among any Indians not christned without Consent of the Lord proprietary or his Leiutenant Generall."(38) All British mainland colonies attempted at various times and in various ways to curtail Indian access to alcoholic beverages. The Puritan colonies were unusual only in their persistence, and the rigor of their efforts to curb the sources of illicit sales, and--more surprisingly--in their initial insistence (in Massachusetts, anyway) on the Indians' God-given right to enjoy wine--though not, of course, to the point of intoxication. Laws passed in the early years of each New England colony forbade colonists, especially traders and tavernkeepers, to barter or sell intoxicants to the Indians. Also targeted were colonists who used such beverages to pry land from unwilling natives. Indian purchases, however, were not initially outlawed on the apparent assumption that the natives might have acquire the liquor outside of the immediate jurisdiction or, later on, have manufactured some such beverages themselves.(39) Beginning in the mid-1600s, colonial statutes increasingly forbade Indians to have liquor and authorized its confiscation by any observer.(40) Massachusetts inaugurated a limited prohibition in July 1633: no one was to give or sell liquor to the Indians; wine was implicitly allowed.(41) In 1644 Massachusetts justified wine sales because "it is not fit to deprive ye Indians of any lawfull comfort which God aloweth to all men by ye use of wine"; licensed retailers were accordingly permitted to sell as much wine to the Indians "as may be fit for their needfull use or refreshing."(42) Four years later, at John Eliot's request, William Phillips was given a monopoly of wine sales to Indians in Boston, presumably because an increase in drunkenness demanded tighter controls. That much is implied in the Bay Colony's law of 1654--New England's most comprehensive on the subject--which established new restrictions on the distribution of alcohol because uppon too much experience it is apparent, & also much complayned off as a cause of much & just greivance, that the Indians, through the excessive & abusive drinkinge of wine & strong liquors, are ffrequently overcome & therby guilty of swinish drunkness, which oft times they atayne by some such of the traders as too much affect & regard their owne profitt.... Sale to Indians were henceforth limited to one pint per transaction and only by two licensed men per county.(43) That rule proved as ineffective as its predecessor. In 1657, the Court deplored the persistence of Indian drunkenness and concluded that "no moderation cann be attayned to prevent drunckeness amongst them, (the fruites whereof are murder and other outrages,)." The Court's new solution was absolute prohibition of all alcoholic beverages, the demolition of unlicensed trading houses, and increased rewards to anyone who reported violations. Even this rigid law had a loophole: "it is not intended that this lawe shall ... restrayne any person from any charitable act in releiving any Indian (bona fide) in case of suddaine extremitje by sicknes or fainting, which calls for such help ... nor when any phisition shall prescribe [it], in way of phisicke."(44) (Much earlier [1639], Plymouth had made a similar exception, allowing Indians a dram or two "incase of sicknes of faintnes" if approved by a magistrate or other high authority.(45)) But still the problem remained. In 1666 the Massachusetts Court, lamenting that "the sinn of drunkenes amongst the Indians doth much increase, notwithstanding the lawes," went a giant step further toward apprehension and punishment of violators. By a new law, an Indian's drink could be seized by anyone who saw it; drunken Indians were to be imprisoned until they identified the dispenser; and the Indian's testimony was tantamount to conviction of the accused "except such persons shall cleare themselves by takinge their oath to the contrary."(46) (How many Puritans perjured themselves on this issue?) By the same law, Indians deemed drunk were subject to fines of five shillings or ten stripes. Connecticut's code of 1650 did not mention alcohol sales or abuse, but beginning in 1654 the River colony passed laws similar to the Bay Colony's. Among the few differences was Connecticut's outlawing of anyone "male or feamale, one or other, within this Jurisdictyon" who sold or gave liquor or wine to the Indians--a sure sign that some Connecticut women were engaging in illicit trade.(47) Six months later, the Court added beer and cider to the list, "except it bee their ordinary howshould beare," which could be given freely but not sold.(48) In Plymouth by 1677 meeting of the General Court were so pestered by drunken Indians that it banished the Indians rather than the liquor: any Indian who appeared without proper authorization was to be whipped in public.(49) New Haven also enacted laws against Indian imbibing. A brief law of 1656 added cider to its list of forbidden beverages (implying an earlier, lost, law); it was reenacted a year later.(50) In the non-Puritan colonies, restrictions on alcoholic consumption by Indians were similar in purpose and penalties but far less frequent. The laws were also as ineffectual: nowhere, judging from the legislators' constant lamentations, did the populace heed governmental warnings. The lure of quick profits, regardless of the penalty, turned countless colonists into scofflaws. The problem seems to have been least serious--or least seriously taken--in the Chesapeake colonies. Virginia apparently passed no laws restricting Indian access to alcohol in the period under review.(51) Maryland waited until 1679, when--in response to a request by two Indian leaders that the colonists stop selling liquors to their subjects--the Assembly directed its inhabitants to cease such commerce or "answer at their perill."(52) This was the Chesapeake colonies' sole statutory regulation before the 1690s. New York, by contrast, outlawed transactions in alcohol in the Duke's Laws of 1665 and again in a statute of 1675.(53) The new British colony had ample precedent from its Dutch forerunner. In 1643 the Director General and Council of New Netherland, deploring the "large quantities of strong liquors [that] are daily sold to the Indians, whence serious difficulties have already arisen ... and further calamities, it is apprehended, will be occasioned," prohibited the sale of liquor to all Indians. Although the law was frequently reissued, the problem persisted. In 1654 the New Netherland authorities complained that "many Indians are daily seen and found intoxicated, and being drunk and fuddled , commit many grave acts of violence." Increased fines and the jailing of drunken Indians until they identified their suppliers did not solve the problem. In 1656 the Director General and Council, labelling the liquor trade "very dangerous, injurious and damnable," stiffened the penalties again, but in 1663 they admitted that the repeated regulations "are not regarded, observed or executed."(54) During their brief existence before 1686, Quaker jurisdictions acted more like New England than like the Chesapeake on alcohol restrictions. West New Jersey in 1680 prohibited the sale of "any Rumme or other strong liquor" without permission from the Court, though six months later the government authorized limited sales if the Indian purchasers "speedily depart with the same Liquors apart into the Woods to drinke the same there."(55) Across the Delaware River, Pennsylvania prohibited the sale of strong liquors from the outset. Chapter 48 of the Colony's first set of laws lamented that many people-- English, Dutch, and Swedish--had been selling liquor to the Indians "though they know the Said Indians are not able to Govern themselves in the use their of but commonly drinke of it to Such Excess as makes them Sometimes to Destroy one another and Grievously anoy and disquiet the People of this Province." The legislature outlawed the sale or barter of strong liquors (no mention is made of wine, beer, or cider), with a penalty of five pounds for each infraction.(56) Almost on a par with the frequency of alcohol-restricting statutes were laws concerning land purchases. Here again, the governments' purposes were an orderly society and peace with the natives; the principal technique was a prohibition on unauthorized individual purchases of land from Indians by colonists. And as with the liquor regulations, in New England and elsewhere, the preambles to the land laws suggest a plethora of violations. Massachusetts Bay decreed on March 4, 1634 that "noe person whatsoever shall buy any land of any Indean without leave from the Court."(57) In 1639 the legislature required that henceforth meticulous records be kept of major demographic and property matters, including "all purchases of land of [i.e., from] the natives."(58) The most problematic law concerning land purchases passed the Massachusetts Court in October 1652: Forasmuch as there hath been a question in this Court about the Indians tytle to landes, this Court, takeing it into consideration, & willinge that there may be a ffree passage of justice for theire right amongst us, as well as for the English, it is therefore ordered ... that what landes any of the Indians, within this jurisdiction, have by possession or improvement, by subdueing of the same, they have just right thereunto, accordinge to that Gen: 1:28, chap: 9:1, Psa: 115, 16.(59) Just which Indian lands were thereby protected was unresolved, but the Court obviously had assumed the right to decide. Some colonists found a way around the law requiring Court approval for land purchases from the Indians by renting (probably for long terms) rather than buying. The Court responded in 1665 by extending the earlier prohibition on purchases "as well [to] grants of yeares as for ever."(60) Connecticut was slow to follow suit on this matter. Not until 1663 did Connecticut decree that no one could buy, rent, or receive as a gift any land from any Indian unless on behalf of a town or the colony.(61) That law, too, left abundant loopholes, so it is not surprising that Connecticut, more than the other Puritan colonies, had a variety of ongoing land problems. The government attempted to solve one kind by declaring in the aftermath of King Philip's War (1680) that lands set apart for Indians within towns were to "remayn to them and their heirs for ever"; purchases of such land by "whatsoever Englishman" were null and void, and the perpetrators were to pay treble the purchase price to the colonial treasury.(62) New Haven, by contrast, required almost from its outset that all lands purchased from Indians be "in the name & for the use of the whole plantation," a rule that was repeated and expanded six years later (1645).(63) The Plymouth General Court claimed in 1639 that it "hath bine our constant costome from our very first begining that noe person or persons haue or euer did purchase rent or heir any land herbage wood or timber of the Indians but by the magistrates consent."(64) Yet in a 1659 preamble, the Court noted that "some [colonists] in an under hand way" were buying Indian lands, and in 1660 the Court complained of acquisitions by pretended gift from Indians.(65) In 1663 the Plymouth Court forbade colonists from using Indian lands without the Court's permission--an implication that squatting may have become common. In 1667 the Court required that "the lands which are not as yett bounded betwixt the English and the Indians may be bounded and mutually agreed on by both parties."(66) On the eve of King Philip's War, land dealings with Indians were still a contentious issue. The story of land-purchase restrictions is much the same in the non-Puritan colonies. Soon after settlement began in each region, governments required that individual purchases be made from the Indians only with prior governmental approval or, in some instances, only if the purchase was for public (colony or community) use, not for the purchaser's personal benefit. Three motives seem to have functioned simultaneously: to prevent trouble with the Indians over disputed sales; to prevent a few colonists, scrupulous or not, from acquiring excessive landholdings; and to prevent overlapping land purchases that could lead to intracolonial and well as interracial contention. Virginia's early land policy is unclear. The colony acquired much by occupation, much by conquest, much by foreclosure of mortgages, and, apparently, some by purchase.(67) In 1654 the Assembly required Northampton County's commissioners to deal fairly with the Indians in land purchases; the Governor and Council would review and, if necessary, overturn the commissioners' transactions--a strong hint that land was being acquired improperly.(68) Two years later, admitting that Indians hostilities had resulted partly from "our extreme pressures on them," the Assembly ordered that lands assigned to the Indians "shall not be alienable by them the Indians to any man de futur" without the approval of the Assembly.(69) Such laws slowed, perhaps, but did not stop encroachments. By 1658 the Assembly had received "many complaints ... touchinge wrong done to the Indians in takeing away their land and forceing them into such narrow streights and places that they cannot subsist either by planting or hunting." The Assembly declared such land-grabbing to be contrary to "the true intent of the English plantation" and to its efforts for the conversion and civilization of the Indians. Henceforth no one was "to entrench or plant upon such places as the said Indians claime or desire" without permission of the Governor and Council. Indians were forbidden to sell land except at the Quarterly Courts.(70) This policy, reached after half a century of settlement, was similar to the land policy instituted in most other colonies during their first decade. Maryland's first Indian law, for example, decreed that no one acquire any land from the Indians "to his own or the use of any other then of the Lord Proprietarie or his heirs." Like land laws in the other colonies, this one was often honored in the breech. In 1649 the Assembly conceded that "divers persons have heretofore purchased or accepted of lands ... from the Indians and have made use of and possessed the same without any lawful title"; the pretended titles were null and void.(71) Maryland enacted no further land-purchase legislation in the seventeenth century. In New Netherland, the Dutch West India Company--much like the Maryland proprietors--waged an ongoing struggle to preserve their territorial monopoly. In 1652 the Director General and Council complained that many colonists, "covetous and greedy of land," tried to get tracts directly from the Indians "and by virtue thereof to pretend actual and real possession." The current squatters, however, were not to be ousted.(72) To avoid a similar dilemma, the Duke's Laws of 1665 required potential land purchasers to first have the Governor's permission and then to bring the sachem and the "right owners" to the Governor to acknowledge their agreement and receipt of payment. This law was repeated in 1684 by the newly created General Assembly without any indication of violations since 1665.(73) Pennsylvania, as legions of the colony's historians have not tired of telling, prohibited individual land sales in its first set of laws. The statute required that "if anie person shall presume to buy any Land of the Natives in the Limits of this Province ... without Leave from the Proprietary & Governor thereof, or his deputy" shall forfeit the land and be fined ten shillings per hundred acres.(74) Although this law was the most concise of the many colonial land statutes and the most explicit in its penalties, in essence it repeated what most British colonies had prescribed for several decades. By and large, land- purchase laws that sought (in part) to protect Indian interests were standard fare in British America. The problems--and, one suspects, the regional variations--that ensued stemmed less from the legislation itself than from differences in enforcement and the character of frontier evasions. [Alas, the deadline for submission of this paper has come and gone; Federal Express awaits. Still to come were discussions of several more types of laws that show some regional variations--laws protecting Indians from abuse by colonists, for example, and provisions for compensation to abused Indians, as well as laws establishing categories of Indian servitude. Also omitted here is a brief discussion of laws that did not vary much from region to region, such as the very frequent bounties for wolves' heads or, more important, the prohibitions on sale or gift of potentially dangerous implements--guns and swords, most obviously, but also boats, horse, and even dogs. A very tentative and incomplete conclusion follows.] It should be apparent from the preceding pages that the Indian laws of seventeenth-century New England reflect to some degree the religious ethos that many scholars have argued--over the strenuous objections of many other scholars--infused the region's life and mind. Put another way: the question i implicitly posed at the outset of this paper, "Did the Indian laws of the Puritan colonies differ significantly from those of the other British mainland jurisdictions?" should be answered "Yes, to an appreciable and predictable but not dramatic extent." The most obvious difference is the relative frequency and purposefulness of missionary laws, either encouraging conversion and education or providing for the administration of Christian Indians. Less prominent but distinctive nonetheless were statutes for strict observation of the sabbath (which were not primarily part of the missionary program because they applied to all Indians within the Puritan jurisdictions whether Christian- minded or not) and, similarly, the proscriptions against powwowing. The latter reflect the Puritans' determination to curb devil worship wherever and whenever they thought they saw it. Of a more secular nature were the prohibitions on sales of alcoholic beverages to the Indians and against Indian drunkenness. Here, as the flood of such laws from the British colonies attests, was a universal type of Indian law. The Puritan colonies were distinct in their early and often legislation and their (apparently) greater determination to keep good order in this regard even if success was forever elusive. In keeping with their belief that wine was from God, drunkenness from the devil, the Puritan colonies (Massachusetts at least) seem initially to have favored moderate Indian imbibing; when they decided that Indians--encouraged by unscrupulous colonists-- knew no happy medium on this matter, the General Courts clamped down more rigorously than did their non-Puritan counterparts. The Puritans' laws on land purchases, I tentatively suggest, also show a relatively firm determination to be fair and orderly, partly no doubt for practical considerations. Like the other colonial governments, those under Puritan sway knew that unrestricted land purchases could incite Indian resentment and retaliation, and--almost as dangerous--encourage rival colonial claimants. Hence all British colonies passed land-purchase restrictions. But with the later exception of Pennsylvania, the Puritan governments enacted restrictive laws more quickly than did the other colonies, and they seem to have tightened rather than relaxed the laws as time passed. Finally, Puritan weapons control [not yet written into the text] seems slightly more rigorous too. Local circumstances-- impending or existing wars or fears of Indian attacks--probably dictated colonial policies on guns and other potentially dangerous instruments more than did piety or, surely, concern for Indians' rights and welfare. And no discernible differences seem to separate the Puritans from their non-Puritan countrymen on several types of legislation such as bounties on wolves. In short, where matters of piety and discipline were concerned, the Puritans' Indian laws were slightly or significantly distinct. On other matters, the Puritan legislatures passed laws that mirrored those in the other mainland colonies. If this conclusion might have been expected, it had not heretofore been documented. Endnotes 1. This paper is an offshoot of a larger project--a reprinting of all the laws concerning the Indians issued from 1607 to 1789 by the British colonial legislatures, the states, and the Confederation government. The forthcoming volumes, coedited by the author of this paper and Deborah A. Rosen of Lafayette College, is part of a still larger project--an intended 20 volume collection of "Early American Indian Treaties and Laws, 1607-1789" (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979- ), of which 7 volumes have been published so far, including all the treaties of colonial Virginia and Maryland (3 vols., ed. by W. Stitt Robinson), Pennsylvania treaties to 1756 (2 vols., ed. by Donald H. Kent), New York and New Jersey treaties to 1682 (ed. by Barbara Graymont), and Georgia treaties to 1763 (ed. by John T. Juricek). I gratefully acknowledge the important contributions of Randolph Boehm and his researchers at University Publications of America and especially Deborah Rosen's preliminary organization and annotation of the laws they photocopied. A slightly earlier draft of this essay benefitted from Prof. Rosen's perceptive critique. 2. There have been several studies of Puritan law and the Indians, of course, but none has involved a systematic review of statutory law in the several Puritan colonies, and none has compared such legislation with the "Indian laws" of other jurisdictions. The principal modern studies are Yasuhide Kawashima, "Puritan Justice and the Indian: White Man's Law in Massachusetts, 1630-1763" (Middletown, CT, 1986); Lyle Koehler, "Red-White Power Relations and Justice in the Courts of Seventeenth-Century New England," "American Indian Culture and Research Journal", III #4 (1979), 1-31; James P. Ronda, "Red and White at the Bench: Indians and the Law in Plymouth Colony, 1620-1691," "Essex Institute Historical Collections", CX (1974): 200-15; James W. Springer, "American Indians and the Law of Real Property in Colonial New England," "American Journal of Legal History", XXX (1981): 25-88. On Indians and colonial law outside New England, see especially W. Stitt Robinson, "The Legal Status of the Indians in Colonial Virginia," "Virginia Magazine of History and Biography", LXI (1953): 247-59; and Yasuhide Kawashima, "Indians and Southern Colonial Statutes," "The Indians Historian", VII (1974): 10-16. The latter must be read with extreme caution; its claim, for example, the "the word 'Indian' never appears in [the Georgia] slave statutes" (p. 11) is wholly erroneous, as are, accordingly, the conclusions based on such misreadings. 3. The other middle and southern colonies had so little legislation, if any, by 1686 that their inclusion would be meaningless. I have omitted Rhode Island out of sheer cowardice: it is so problematic--part anti-Puritan, part quasi-Puritan part, radical Puritan--that I have deferred wrestling with it until a later stage of this study. 4. A considerable body of important legislation was passed by subordinate jurisdictions--towns, counties, manors, etc.--in every colony. Perhaps a study of local legislation would change the overall picture of Puritan and non-Puritan Indian laws, though my random reading of such laws and regulations does not suggest any significant distinctions. 5. Pennsylvania may be the only colony for which the legislative record is largely complete, including the texts of most laws, their expiration dates, and, where appropriate, Privy Council abrogations. See James T. Mitchell and Henry Flanders, comps., "The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801", 16 vols. (Harrisburg, 1896-1908)--hereafter cites as "Pa. Statutes". Notably missing from the Mitchell and Flanders collection, and especially detrimental to this study, is the intended first volume, which was to have covered Pennsylvania's earliest legislation. 6. Despite the best efforts of UPA's researchers, Prof. Rosen, and myself, we have no doubt missed some laws that do exist, in print or in manuscript. In the absence of adequate finding aids, the search for colonial statutes is a frustratingly inexact science. 7. "The Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England", ed. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, 5 vols. in 6 (Boston, 1853-54), IV (2): 357-59 (hereafter cited as "Mass. Bay Recs."). Throughout this essay I have imposed minimal modernization on the printed texts. Contractions are silently expanded when necessary, and superscript letters are lowered to the line. I have left the thorn and ampersand as they appear in the originals because they will cause no confusion in this essay's intended audience. N.B.: I have not verified the accuracy of all quotes and citations in this working draft; minor errors surely exist. 8. Although such a comparison would be useful and potentially enlightening, it would be profoundly handicapped by the absence of legislative bodies in most non-British colonies. One comparison, however, is telling: with a few significant exceptions--the absence of missionary laws, for example-- Calvinist New Netherland's legislative pattern is remarkably similar to New England's. See E.B. O'Callaghan, ed., "Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland, 1638-1674" (Albany, 1868), passim (hereafter cited as "New Neth. Laws"). 9. "Mass. Bay Recs.", I. 10. "Mass. Bay Recs.", II: 176, III: 98. 11. "Mass. Bay Recs.", II: 188, III: 105. 12. "Mass. Bay Recs.", III: 281, IV (1): 102. 13. "Mass. Bay Recs.", III: 348, IV (1): 192, 317. 14. "Mass. Bay Recs.", IV (1): 334. 15. "Mass. Bay Recs.", III: 195. 16. "Mass. Bay Recs.", V: 136. 17. See especially the coverage of the post 1675 period in William Kellaway, "The New England Company, 1649-1776: Missionary Society to the American Indians" (Glasgow, 1961; New York, 1962). 18. "The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut", ed. J. Hammond Trumbull, 15 vols. (Hartford, 1850-90), I: 529, II: 158 (hereafter cited as "Conn. Recs."); "The General Laws and Liberties of Connecticut Colonie" (Cambridge, 1673, 32? (hereafter cited as "Conn. Gen. Laws"). 19. "Records of the Colony of New Plymouth", ed. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff and David Pulsifer, 12 vols. (Boston, 1855-61), IV: 80 (hereafter cited as "Plymouth Recs."). 20. "Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1619-1658/59", ed. H.R. McIlwaine (Richmond, 1915), 10 (hereafter cited as "Virginia Journals"). 21. "The Statutes at Large: Being the Laws of Virginia from ... 1619", ed. William Waller Hening, 13 vols. (Richmond, 1819-23), I: 393 (hereafter cited as "Va. Statutes"). 22. "Va. Statutes", I: 410, 455; cf. ibid., I: 257. 23. "Va. Statutes", II: 193. 24. "Mass. Bay Recs.", I: 209. 25. "Mass. Bay Recs.", II: 176, III: 98. 26. "Plymouth Recs.", [XI], 60-61, 184; "The Compact with Charter and Laws of the Colony of New Plymouth" (Boston, 1836), 96 (hereafter cited as "Plymouth Compact & Laws"). 27. "The Book of the General Laws of the Inhabitants of the Jurisdiction of New-Plimouth" (Cambridge, 1672), 43 (hereafter cited as "Plymouth Gen. Laws"); "Plymouth Compact & Laws", 288 (dated 1671?); see also p. 298?. 28. "Conn. Recs.", II: 61; "Conn. Gen. Laws", 32?. 29. "New Haven Recs.", I: 358. 30. "Mass. Bay Recs.", II: 176, III: 98; "The Cleare Sunshine of the Gospell, Breaking forth upon the Indians in New England," "Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections", 3 ser. IV (1834): 39; "The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts" (repr. Cambridge, MA, 1929), 29. 31. "Plymouth Compact & Laws", 298. 32. "New York Laws", I: 6; Robert C. Ritchie, "The Duke's Province: A Study of New York Politics and Society, 1664-1691" (Chapel Hill, NC, 1977), 34. 33. See, for example, Increase Mather, "An Earnest Exhortation to the Inhabitants of New-England" (Boston, 1676), 5, 11. 34. "Conn. Recs.", I: 78. 35. "Conn. Recs.", I: 529. 36. "Conn. Recs.", I: 149. 37. William Strachey, comp., "Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall, etc.", ed. David H. Flaherty (orig. pub. London, 1612; Charlottesville, VA, 1969), 20. 38. "Maryland Archives: Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly of Maryland", ed. William Hand Browne et al., 61 vols. (Baltimore, 1883-1944), I: 52. 39. E.g., "Plymouth Recs.: Laws", 184, 215; "Recs. Mass. Bay", I: 106, 487. 40. "Plymouth Gen. Laws", 43. 41. "Mass. Bay Recs.", I: 106. The restriction as partially repealed in 1641 (I: 323). 42. "Mass. Bay Recs.", II: 85. 43. "Mass. Bay Recs.", III: 369, IV (1): 201. 44. "Mass. Bay Recs.", III: 425, IV (1): 289. See also ibid., IV (2): 564 for modifications of the punishment. 45. "Plymouth Recs.: Laws", 184; "Plymouth Gen. Laws", 43. 46. "Mass. Bay Recs.", IV (2): 297. 47. "Conn. Recs.", I: 254. 48. "Conn. Recs.", I: 263. For further lamentations of continuing Indian drunkenness and further restrictions, see ibid., I: 338, 354, II: 119, 257, 574, III: 94; "Conn. Gen. Laws", 40. 49. "Plymouth Recs.: Laws", 243. 50. "New Haven Col. Recs.", I: 195, 219. 51. In 1632, Virginia prohibited "All trade with the Savages ... as well publique as private" ("Va. Statutes", I: 173), which, of course, included alcohol, though the intent of the law is clearly wartime caution rather than moralistic concern. The trade prohibition seems to have lasted very briefly. 52. "Md. Archives", XV: 260. 53. "N.Y. Laws", I: 90, 97. 54. "New Neth. Laws", 34, 52, 64, 93, 100, 180-83, 258, 383-84, 446, 451. 55. "The Burlington Court Book: A Record of Quaker Jurisprudence in West New Jersey, 1680-1709", ed. H. Clay Reed and George J. Miller (Washington, DC, 1944), 2, 3. 56. "Pa. Statutes", I: 167. In 1701 Pennsylvania passed a further, very comprehensive, prohibition, though again it applied only to "rum, brandy, or other strong liquors" (ibid., II: 168). 57. "Mass. Bay Recs.", I: 112. 58. "Mass. Bay Recs.", I: 276. 59. "Mass. Bay Recs.", III: 281-82, IV (1): 102-03. 60. "Mass. Bay Recs.", IV (2): 282. 61. "Conn. Recs.", I: 402. 62. "Conn. Recs.", III: 56. 63. "New Haven Col. Recs.", I: 26, 200; II: 593. 64. "Plymouth Recs.: Laws", 41, 54, cf. 95; "Plymouth Recs.", III: 84. 65. "Plymouth Compact & Laws", 124, 129. 66. "Plymouth Recs.: Laws", 185, 220. 67. For a brief discussion of early Virginia land acquisition, see Alden T. Vaughan, "'Expulsion of the Salvages': English Policy and the Massacre of 1622," "William & Mary Quarterly", 3 ser. XXXV (1978): 73-74. 68. "Va. Statutes", I: 391. 69. "Va. Statutes". 70. "Va. Statutes", I: 467. 71. "Md. Archives", I: 41, 248. 72. "New Neth. Laws", 130-33. 73. "New York Laws", I: 6. 74. "Pa. Statutes", I: 152.