Title: Puritan New England: Massachusetts Bay (article) | Khan Academy
Headings: Puritan New England: Massachusetts Bay
Puritan New England: Massachusetts Bay
Overview
“A city upon a hill”
Religion and culture in Puritan New England
Religious intolerance in Massachusetts Bay
Puritan relationships with native peoples
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Puritan New England: Plymouth

Content: Unlike the exodus of young men to the Chesapeake colonies, these migrants were families with young children and their university-trained ministers. Their aim—according to John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay—was to create a model of reformed Protestantism, a “city upon a hill,” a new English Israel. The idea of a “city upon a hill” made clear the religious orientation of the New England settlement, and the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony stated as a goal that the colony’s people “may be soe religiously, peaceablie, and civilly governed, as their good Life and orderlie Conversacon, maie wynn and incite the Natives of Country, to the Knowledg and Obedience of the onlie true God and Saulor of Mankinde, and the Christian Fayth.” To illustrate this, the seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company shows a half-naked Native American who entreats more of the English to “come over and help us.” The 1629 seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. On the seal, a Native American dressed in a leaf loincloth and holding a bow is depicted asking colonists to “Come over and help us.” The 1629 seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
Like their Spanish and French Catholic rivals, English Puritans in America took steps to convert native peoples to their version of Christianity. John Eliot, the leading Puritan missionary in New England, urged Native Americans in Massachusetts to live in “praying towns” established by English authorities for converted Native Americans and to adopt the Puritan emphasis on the centrality of the Bible.