The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 47Benjamin Franklin. He also encouraged missionary work among African-American
slaves, in The Negro Christianized (1706), and among Native Americans, in India
Christiana (1721). But here, too, in his encouragement of Christian missions to
those outside the true faith a darker side of Puritanism, or at least of the Cotton
Mather strain, is evident. Mather’s belief in the supreme importance of conversion
led him, after all, to claim that a slave taught the true faith was far better off than a
free black; and it sprang, in the first place, from a low opinion of both African and
Native Americans, bordering on contempt. For example, in his life of John Eliot, “the
apostle of the Indians” whom Nathaniel Hawthorne was later to praise, Mather
made no secret of his belief that “the natives of the country now possessed by New
Englanders” had been “forlorn and wretched” ever since “their first herding here.”
They were “miserable savages,” “stupid and senseless,” Mather declared. They had
“no arts,” “except just so far as to maintain their brutish conversation,” “little, if any,
tradition ... worthy of ... notice”; reading and writing were “altogether unknown to
them” and their religion consisted of no more than “diabolical rites,” “extravagant
ridiculous devotions” to “many gods.” Furthermore, they did not even know how to
use the abundant resources of the New World. “They live in a country full of the best
ship timber under heaven,” Mather insisted, “but never saw a ship till some came
from Europe.” “We now have all the conveniences of human life,” he claimed proudly;
“as for them, their housing is nothing but a few mats tyed about poles.” Such were
“the miserable people” Eliot set out to save and, in view of their condition, he had “a
double work incumbent on him.” He had, Mather concluded, “to make men” of the
Native Americans “ere he could hope to see them saints”; they had to be “civilized ere
they could be Christianized.”
Mather’s account of Eliot’s work among the Indians shows just how much for
him, as for other early European settlers, the projects of civilization and conversion,
creating wealth and doing good, went hand in hand. It comes from his longest and
arguably most interesting work, Magnalia Christi Americana; or, the Ecclesiastical
History of New England, published in 1702. This book is an immensely detailed
history of New England and a series of eminent lives, and it reflects Mather’s belief
that the past should be used to instruct the present and guide the future. Each hero
chosen for description and eulogy, like Eliot, is made to fit a common saintly pat-
tern, from the portrait of his conversion to his deathbed scene. Yet each is given his
own distinctive characteristics, often expressive of Mather’s own reforming interests
and always illustrating his fundamental conviction that, as he puts it, “The First Age
was the Golden Age.” This is exemplary history, then. It is also an American epic, one
of the very first, in which the author sets about capturing in words what he sees as
the promise of the nation. “I WRITE the Wonders of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION,”
Mather announces in “A General Introduction” to Magnalia Christi Americana:flying from the Depravations of Europe, to the American Strand. And, assisted by the
Holy Author of that Religion, I do ... Report the Wonderful Displays of His Infinite
Power, Wisdom, Goodness, and Faithfulness, wherewith His Divine Providence hath
Irradiated an Indian Wilderness.GGray_c01.indd 47ray_c 01 .indd 47 8 8/1/2011 7:54:55 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 55 AM