by Jill Lepore
The Spaniards governe in the Indies with all pride and tyranie; and like as when people of contrarie nature at the sea enter into Gallies, where men are tied as slaves, all yell and crye with one voice Liberta, liberta, as desirous of libertie or freedome, so no doubt whensoever the Queene of England … shall seate upon that firme of America, and shalbe reported throughout all that tracte to use the naturall people there with all humanitie, curtesie, and freedome, they will yelde themselves to her government and revoke cleane from the Spaniarde.24
Sir Walter Ralegh even planned to bring Las Casas’ “booke of the Spanish crueltyes with fayr pictures” on his voyage to Guiana in the 1590s, hoping to show it to the natives and impress them with the wisdom of welcoming the kinder, gentler English.25
Part of the mission of New England’s “city on a hill,” then, was to advertise the civility of the English colonists and to hold it in stark contrast with the barbarous cruelty of Spain’s conquistadors and the false and blasphemous impiety of France’s Jesuit missionaries. Books not only about the Spanish conquest but also about the Spanish Inquisition, both of which illustrated the depravity and cruelty of Spaniards, and of papists in general, were printed and made widely available to English readers (“Spanish Cruelties” was even subtitled “Inquisition for Blood,” to make the connection more explicit). The French, on the other hand, were derided not so much for cruelty as for hypocrisy and sacrilege in their meaningless baptisms of Indians ignorant of the gospel. A popular English joke told of a Jesuit missionary who, having lived in New France for a quarter century, wrote to a friend in Europe to ask him “to send him a Book called the Bible, for he heard there was such a Book in Europe; which might be of some use to him.”26
Countering these visions of colonial failures, early published accounts of the English colonists’ adventures in New England stressed the pleasantness of their interactions with Indians; the fairness of their treaties; and, especially after 1640, the success of their efforts to convert the Indians to Christianity by teaching them to read the Bible.27 New Engländers’ fame as missionaries to the Indians was so well publicized that by 1654 Roger Williams was able to dissuade his fellow colonists from waging war against the Narragansetts by pointing out that their reputation was at stake:
it Can not be hid, how all England & other Nations ring with the glorious Conversion of the Indians of New England. You know how many bookes are dispersed throughout the Nation of that Subject …: how have all the Pulpits in England bene Commanded to Sound of this Glorious Worcke…. I beseech you consider how the name of the most holy & jealous God may be preserved betweene the clashings of these Two: Viz: The Glorious Conversion of the Indians in New England & the Unnecessary Warrs & cruell Destructions of the Indians in New England.28
Fearful of “Unnecessary Warrs & cruell Destructions,” those New England colonists who had read or heard of Las Casas’ “Spanish Cruelties” had a vivid idea of what not to do in the New World. In a prefatory address “To all true English-men,” the translator of a 1656 English edition of “Spanish Cruelties” asked his readers to imagine watching the horrors of the conquest, to imagine, in a sense, standing in a circle of spectators to that event:
had you been Eye-witnesses to the transcending Massacres here related; had you been one of those that lately saw a pleasant Country, now swarming with multitudes of People, but immediately depopulated, and drown’d in a Deluge of Bloud: had you been one of those that saw great Cities of Nations and Countries in this moment flourishing with Inhabitants, but in the next, totally ruin’d with such a General Desolation, as left neither Person living nor House remaining: had you seen the poor innocent Heathens shaming and upbraiding, with the ghastliness of their Wounds, the devilish Cruelties of those that called themselves Christians: had you seen the poor creatures torn from the peace and quiet of their own Habitations, where God had planted them, to labour in a Tormenting Captivity … your Compassion must of necessity have turn’d into Astonishment: the tears of Men can hardly suffice….29
Compassion, astonishment, and tears. In 1656, when this “Spanish Cruelties” was printed, these were the only proper responses of “true English-men” to the torture and slaughter of Indians.
Twenty years later, those “true English-men” who lived in New England found themselves in a very tricky spot. Barbarism threatened them from every direction: if they continued to live peaceably with the Indians, they were bound to degenerate into savages, but if they waged war, they were bound to fight like savages.30 Their dilemma was further complicated because, along with the lessons of “Spanish Cruelties,” New Englanders were also influenced, however indirectly, by the representation of German, Irish, and Catholic cruelties in English books and stories. In the 1640s England had itself experienced and inflicted some of the worst atrocities of warfare during its civil wars. Meanwhile, Germany’s own religious violence warned that England might meet a similar fate and descend into grotesque and enduring civil strife. At the same time, England’s experience in Ireland, especially during the Irish Rebellion of 1641, contributed to the powerful tradition of Protestant martyrdom by emphasizing English Protestants’ sufferings at the hands of the “wild” and “heathen” Irish and also established a precedent allowing Christian Englishmen to ignore the laws of war when fighting against people England considered “barbarians.”31 Several of these traditions, of course, contradicted one another. The lesson of “Spanish Cruelties” commanded New Englanders to shun cruelty against the Indians, while the English suppression of the Irish Rebellion suggested that cruelty against barbarians might not really be cruelty at all. Yet what linked Spanish, German, and Irish cruelties was that they were all written about at great length, and put into print. This was the lesson New England’s colonists would take to heart: as the Boston poet Benjamin Tompson would write in 1676, “All cruelties which paper stained before / Are acted to the life here o’er and o’er.”32
Here, then, was the solution to the colonists’ dilemma between peacefully degenerating into barbarians or fighting like savages: wage the war, and win it, by whatever means necessary, and then write about it, to win it again. The first would be a victory of wounds, the second a victory of words. Even if they inflicted on the Indians as much cruelty as the Spanish had, New Englanders could distance themselves from that cruelty in the words they used to write about it, the same way the English had when writing about the Irish. They could save themselves from both Indian and Spanish barbarity; they could reclaim their Englishness.
Recall now the scene with which we began. It is July 1676; King Philip’s War is almost over. Houses have been burned, children murdered, men beheaded. The Indian population has been decimated. It could be said that many have been “torn from the peace and quiet of their own Habitations” and that many now “labour in a Tormenting Captivity.” Here, English soldiers and their Mohegan allies stand in a circle while a Narragansett Indian has his fingers and toes chopped off, his legs broken, his brains dashed to the ground. No longer do the English have to imagine watching these “Spanish Cruelties.” They are there; these cruelties are their own. But even here, the only proper response is the response of “true English-men”: compassion, astonishment, and tears.
The way the story is told, we know that the English are disgusted by the cruelty they witness, and as both anthropologists and historians have pointed out, disgust is one way that one culture differentiates itself from another. The story’s expression of disgust goes a long way toward preserving the Englishness of the soldiers present. But the other side of disgust is desire, and, despite their protestations to the contrary, clearly the English feel that, too.33 Their disgust takes the form of revulsion, their desire fascination. While they may find it painful to watch as a young man has his fingers sawed off, they also find it pleasurable. But for an English soldier to confess his fascination, to admit his pleasure, is to become indistinguishable from the Indian beside him.
Now contrast this scene with another, the torture of sev
eral Englishmen by Wampanoag Indians in April 1676:
They took five or six of the English and carried them away alive, but that night killed them in such a manner as none but Salvages would have done. For they stripped them naked, and caused them to run the Gauntlet, whipping them after a cruel and bloudy manner, and then threw hot ashes upon them, cut out the flesh of their leges, and put fire into their wounds, delighting to see the miserable torments of wretched creatures. Thus are they the perfect children of the Devill.34
In this scene, where the English are the sufferers rather than the spectators, who is “savage” and who is “civilized” is much clearer. The torture is what “none but Salvages would have done.” And the smug conclusion, “Thus are they the perfect children of the Devill,” implies its own antithesis: “Thus are we the perfect children of God.”
Yet the key to both of these scenes is not who is being tortured but who is being pleased. When the Englishmen run the gauntlet, the Wampanoags are said to be “delighting to see the miserable torments of wretched creatures.” And when the Narragansett man is butchered, the Mohegans “delight” in this “brutish and devilish Passion.” “Delight” is in fact their chief sin—any good Puritan would have been familiar with Psalms 68:30: “Scatter thou the people that delight in war.” Although the English soldiers watch, they make it clear that they themselves are “not delighted in Blood.” This, in fact, is the only way to excuse their presence: We may be watching, they say, but that doesn’t mean we like it; in fact, it makes us sick. What pleases Indian eyes pains English ones. The Mohegans encircle the tormented man so that all eyes might “be pleased” with a good view, but the English admit to no such pleasure; they can only weep at the grisly sight, “it forcing Tears from their Eyes.” (These are the very same tears that, had they imagined themselves witnesses to the Spanish conquest, they would have shed in abundance.)
Instead of admitting their pleasure, the English displace it onto the Mohegans standing next to them. Again and again they point out that it is the Indians who are “delighted,” not the English. But even that move is not enough. The line between Englishman and Indian is still too thin. To thicken it, the pain of the event must be displaced, too. The Indian in the middle of the circle does not himself “shew any Signs of Anguish.” Instead, the English do. He bleeds but they cry. The scene is so painful to the English that it is torture just to watch it. By feeling the pain of the fingerless, toeless man, feeling it even more than he does, the English onlookers put themselves in his place. Desperate to distinguish themselves from the “heathen” Mohegans, they figuratively hurl themselves back into the center of the circle, where their identity as the tormented victims of barbarous savages is reestablished. Their Englishness has been preserved.
WHAT THE ENGLISH representation of this scene utterly fails to understand, of course, is the elaborate meanings of the Indians’ behavior. Yet, if the Indians’ perspective on this scene goes unstated or uncomprehended in the English account, it need not remain unstated or unexamined here. Interpreted in the context of Algonquian ritual, the Mohegans, whom the English condemn for their “delight,” are not enjoying the victim’s agonies as much as they are admiring his stoicism, his failure to “shew any Signs of Anguish,” and the circle they form has social and spiritual significance, uniting the group in collective catharsis. Since captives may have symbolically replaced a recently deceased lost tribe member, torture, for the tormentors, was both an expression of dominance and a release of mourners’ emotions. And, for the sufferer who endured it, torture was a ritual of initiation, a test of perseverance, and a spiritual journey. His singing and dancing were expressions of defiance that brought worldly respect and otherworldly rewards both to himself and to the tribe member whom he had symbolically replaced. For the Indians, then, this event was an elaborately ordered ceremony.35
Nor should we allow the Narragansett man in the middle of the circle to remain nameless and speechless simply because he is so rendered in the English account. Although his identity cannot be reliably determined, some evidence suggests that he may have been Stonewall John, a Narragansett Indian named for masonry skills he acquired while living among the English. At the start of the war, Stonewall John abandoned the English, joined enemy Indians, and participated in several attacks on English towns. Most notoriously, he was thought to have coordinated the construction of an Indian fort at the Great Swamp.36 And when Roger Williams attempted to negotiate with Stonewall John and other Indians during an attack on Providence in March 1676, they told him, “You have driven us out of our own Countrie and then pursued us to our Great Miserie, and Your own, and we are Forced to live upon you.”37
ULTIMATELY, it is not at all surprising that the English have failed to record evidence that might explain the reasons why this man, a “cruel Monster,” fought against the English during the war, or to recognize the layers of meaning that might make his torturers’ “delight” something other than “savage.” The English account, after all, is concerned only with explaining English meanings. In that regard, its strained and twisting moral posturing is not unusual; indeed, it is typical of writing about war. A great deal is at stake when people are trying to kill one another, and the language used to write about it can be very complicated indeed. So much was at stake for the English colonists, in fact, that they had to tell stories like this over and over again. This scene, they say, is an example of “unheard of Cruelty,” but it does not go unheard of for long. “‘Tis said” that the young Narragansett man sat down silently while his torturers knocked his brains out. Said by whom? Said, no doubt, by many. Clearly, this story made the rounds. People were eager to hear it, and the soldiers were eager to tell it. Often, those who related this torture scene, or the story of the expedition of which it was a part, went out of their way to exonerate the English soldiers. The Rhode Islander William Harris claimed that the English had been “provoked by the barbarous inhumanety they have heard of: & Seen hath bin done to the English whose dead bodyes they founde in the woods.” Fearful that the actions of the English soldiers “Should be thought too great Severity,” Harris went on to provide a detailed description of “the cruelty of the Indeans” that had so provoked them.38
The account of the torture of a captured Narragansett man with which we began is that of William Hubbard, who included it in his Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-England, printed in Boston in 1677, and in London, under a slightly different title, that same year. Hubbard was a Puritan minister, but (much as he criticized Mather for hubris) he also called himself a historian. Being a historian, in Hubbard’s mind, required only two things: diligence in collecting materials and faithfulness in presenting them. Most of his materials, he claimed, were “either gathered out of the Letters, or taken from the Mouths of such as were eye or ear Witnesses of the things themselves.”39 Hubbard probably obtained an account of the July 1676 torture scene from Major John Talcott, who led the expedition against the Narragansetts, during which, over a single two-day period, his soldiers killed 52 Indian men and 114 women and children, and took 72 captive (of such a disproportionate number of women and children, Hubbard wrote that “being all young Serpents of the same Brood, the subduing or taking so many, ought to be acknowledged as another signal Victory, and Pledg of Divine Favour to the English”).40 When one of those captured Narragansett men was tortured to death, Talcott himself may have stood in that “great Circle,” entranced, tearful, repulsed.
But if Talcott stood in that circle, so did Hubbard. And so, too, in a way, did all of Hubbard’s readers, Englishmen and-women on both sides of the Atlantic. Hubbard’s book was widely read, especially in England, where it probably found an audience among the readers of England’s popular literature of gore—tales of executions, murders, and massacres. People who read Hubbard’s account might well have experienced the same set of feelings as Talcott—shameful pleasure in being witness to torture; sympathy for the suffering victim; and, most of all, condemnation of the cruel, vic
ious Mohegans. Compassion, astonishment, and tears. Watching this scene is different from reading about it; readers would probably have felt these things less intensely than Talcott, and certainly they would have felt safer than he. Still, the power of the event resides in its being a spectacle, and readers and spectators have a great deal in common.
Hubbard claimed to be “faithful” in presenting his materials. If an event was “variously reported by the Actors, or Spectators,” he would only include those details “which seemed most probable.” And yet Hubbard, we can be sure, embellished Talcott’s story. First of all, as a clergyman, he felt compelled to contribute a religious interpretation: “Instances of this Nature,” he advised, “should be Incentive unto us, to bless the Father of Lights, who hath called us out of the dark Places of the Earth, full of the Habitations of Cruelty.” More importantly, perhaps, Hubbard worried that readers in Old and New England might identify too much with the suffering Indian in the middle of the circle. Hubbard’s telling of the story encouraged readers to affirm their Englishness by finding the Mohegan tortures appalling and by sensing the Narragansett man’s pain, but Hubbard never wanted his readers to sympathize with the tormented man too strongly, or for too long. By the time Hubbard wrote his account, near the end of the war, the kind of compassion for Indian victims of cruelty that had been encouraged by “Spanish Cruelties” had been replaced by contempt. Now, the near destruction of an entire population of Indians inspired only further destruction. In August 1676, the Connecticut Council wrote of the Indians that “their wicked contriveances will doubtless incite & animate all true Englishmen to endeavoure the confusion of such bloodsuckers, as are now, thorow God’s mercy to us, totally routed in theses partes & gathered into a nett … ; they being but the gleanings of sundry nations that were great numbers ere while.”41