Colonial Intimacies: Indian Marriage in Early New England

by Ann Marie Plane

In 1668 Sarah Ahhaton, a married Native American woman of the Massachusetts Bay town of Punkapoag, confessed in an English court to having committed adultery. For this crime she was tried, found guilty, and publicly whipped and shamed; she contritely promised that if her life were spared, she would return to her husband and "continue faithfull to him during her life yea although hee should beat her againe." These events, recorded in the court documents of colonial Massachusetts, may appear unexceptional; in fact, they reflect a rapidly changing world. Native American marital relations and domestic lives were anathema to English Christians; elite men frequently took more than one wife, while ordinary people could dissolve their marriages and take new partners with relative ease. Native marriage did not necessarily involve cohabitation, the formation of a new household, or mutual dependence for subsistence. Couples who wished to separate did so without social opprobrium, and when adultery occurred, the blame centered not on the "fallen" woman but on the interloping man. Over time, such practices changed, but the emergence of new types of "Indian marriage" enabled the legal, social, and cultural survival of New England's native peoples. The complex interplay between colonial power and native practice is treated with subtlety and wisdom in Colonial Intimacies . Ann Marie Plane uses travel narratives, missionary tracts, and legal records to reconstruct a previously neglected history. Plane's careful reading of fragmentary sources yields both conclusive and fittingly speculative findings, and her interpretations form an intimate picture, moving and often tragic, of the familial bonds of Native Americans in the first century and a half of European contact.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Native American History

272 pages, Paperback

First published July 28, 2000

Reviews

[Michael Kleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

How did Puritan missionaries affect Native American marriage practices in colonial New England? How did Native Americans react to these changes? These are the questions Ann Marie Plane seeks to answer in Colonial Intimacies: Indian Marriage in Early New England. From the diverse marriage practices of pre-1620, to Anglicized marriage of the late 1600s, to the partial reconstruction of “traditional” Indian marriage in the 1740s, American Indian practices were profoundly altered by Puritan evangelization and colonialism.

For American Indians living in New England, many aspects of their marriage practices changed, including polygamy and the distinction between elite and common marriages, divorce, the role of formal legal bodies, inheritance, notions of household, and even expected gender roles. By the time American Indians began to assert their independence by appealing to past notions of “traditional” marriage in a now English-dominated colony, it was difficult for them to determine what that looked like.

Ann Marie Plane cautiously explains there were no uniform practices among American Indian tribes, and that marriage practices were always in flux. She was able to find some generalities in primary sources, which were mainly generated by early explorers and missionaries. Clan affiliation and kinship were more important to Native Americans than the bonds between a husband and wife.

The nuclear family did not form the foundation of American Indian society like it did for the English. There was also a distinction between common and elite marriage. Elites (tribal leaders) practiced polygamy, while most Indians had only one partner. Because many extended family members lived in a residence together, children were raised communally. Also, sexual activity prior to marriage was not taboo as it was in Puritan society.

Plane distinguished four types of marriage in Native American society: some marriages were arranged in childhood and some in adulthood, but both of these involved a dowry paid to the woman’s family. In the third and fourth types, a man and woman chose to marry by either having a public ceremony or by simply taking up residence with each other.

When Puritans first encountered native peoples, they imagined their marriage practices were wild and uncivilized. In their conversion efforts, Puritan missionaries focused on reforming and transforming American Indian marriage so that it would resemble Christian and English marriage, which was much more rigidly defined, religiously oriented, and central to English society. There were three main areas missionaries attempted to change: gender roles and notions of household, sexual mores, and divorce and inheritance.

The Puritan missionaries succeeded in fundamentally changing American Indian marriage practices in all three areas, although they did not ultimately succeed in remaking them into an exact copy of Puritan practices.

Puritans were able to change at least one aspect of Native American gender relations within marriage. Although Plane is quick to point out that spousal abuse may have been a symptom of the collapse of Native American culture under colonialism, she does present evidence to suggest that there were no proscriptions against husbands behaving violently toward their wives in American Indian society. Puritan missionaries quickly established an Indian legal system among the converted in order to—among other things—discourage this practice.

In that way, English common law and Biblical codes were imposed on the relations between Native American men and women. These courts also attempted to enforce the nuclear family. They abolished polygamy and punished adultery. They made spousal abandonment a crime, and so an American Indian wife could pursue a legal case against her husband if he failed to provide for her.

Colonial Intimacies shows that American Indian marriage practices adapted to changing circumstances, but did not change entirely. Plane reminds her readers that only a small number of elites practiced polygamy. The majority practiced serial monogamy, cohabitating with a succession of spouses, but many stayed with the same partner throughout their lives.

As a result, changes brought about by Christian missionaries affected some more than others. The Puritan mission to transform the diverse marriage practices of Native Americans into English and Christian practices essentially failed, but as a result of that effort, American Indian marriage irreparably changed.

[Jeffrey Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is definitely an immaculately researched book. Plane sticks closely to her topic and doesn't stray. Those are the few strengths that I could find with this. Unfortunately, it reads like a collection of isolated stories and lacks a cohesive narrative. She offers plenty of evidence to prove her point, but indeed, we readers often miss what that point is.

That being said, if you ignore the poorly written narrative, there is plenty of good material here on the Wampanoag Indian culture from the point of European contact through the American Revolution. You may have to dig for it to get to the good stuff.

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, it is remarkable what Plane accomplishes from such limited and fragmented evidence, and evidence that can never truly tell us how native peoples understood sexuality or sexual intimacy. Although recognizing this limitation, Plane still begins with the question of how did native peoples of New England (primarily along the coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island) comprehend and order their societies via sexual behaviors. In other words, how and why did native peoples marry and divorce and what morals and values did they place on other sexual acts. We must find answers to these questions through the writings of Europeans, although some of these sources, like court records or testimonies in missionary accounts, could contain a close dictation of native people's actual words and beliefs.

Plane traces a chronological change in ideas and experiences of marriage and meanings of sexual behavior from 1620 to 1770 that became "inextricably intertwined with the establishment, rise, and maintenance of English colonial authority." (5) Early missionaries to native groups saw the possibility of molding native intimacies into model Christian, patriarchal, and monogamous households. However, when combined with native peoples growing economic and social place as servants (a continuation of their dependent status under missionaries) and hardening views of racial difference, both native peoples and Europeans would appeal to notions of cultural distinctiveness--Europeans to keep native people as unequal and inferior and native peoples to regain a sense of native identity. Throughout the book Plane is continually conscious of the multiplicity of ways native peoples married, defined sexual relations, and combined native and European understandings of both. There was never one definition of "Indian marriage" before the Europeans arrived, in fact Europeans invented the concept and in doing so expressed a new way to Indian and European that affected each. She begins with travel writers who wrote to "civilize" the Indians in print to make readers (and potential colonists) less afraid of the foreignness of the New World and its peoples. They also inspired missionaries to settle among native peoples and in doing so established specific Indian legal codes that put into writing and practice concepts of morality. Ironically, these legal codes, drawn from English common law and biblical law, were more strict than what Europeans followed and caused missionaries to grapple with many unexpected questions--such as if an Indian man was married to two women, the first had produced no children, but the second had born children, which one was the man to remain married to and how should the other woman (and children) be supported? This question brought in issues of patriarchy (in supporting female and minor dependents) and the central role of reproduction in marriage. But, over time the more fluid practices (partially because of native peoples held a greater share of power) became more rigid and enforced through the formal law and social adherence to it. (11) This is not to say that native practices totally disappeared, in fact native peoples often combined Indian and European beliefs and practices in their own lives or used each when most advantageous.
In short, what Plane accomplishes over all is a powerful demonstration of how marriage and sexual ordering shaped "the progress of colonial dominance" during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, defining what it meant to be Indian and European and that these would exist in a hierarchical power relationship. This review cannot account for the many angles Plane approaches her sources and argument, but hopefully it inspires others to read her work. It is a work essential to any scholar of colonial New England, Native American history, and the history of sexuality and one that is engaging and easily accessible.

Two other quick notes:
A side part of her project, produced solely because she asked questions about native peoples and went looking for the evidence, is documenting that native peoples did not quickly disappear in colonial New England, especially in the regions outside of colonial centers. While the standard narrative is that King Phillip's War of the 1670s quickly pushes native peoples out of European areas and draws stark dividing lines between native and European, Plane documents time and time again the continued presence of native peoples in New England through the late eighteenth century--even if they existed only on the margins (or at least appear that way because of their limited entrance into written sources).

One criticism is that she has a tendency to repeat herself at times--usually it is for the sake of tying up her argument at the end of chapters or chapter sections, but since she divides her chapters into many short sections, the repetition is quickly noticeable.

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

A weak book -- too much "exploration" and not enough conclusion -- but it does showcase some interesting research. Plane suggests that marriage customs were an important dimension of native/European contact in colonial New England. (This, however interesting a concept, is more of an approach than an argument.) Plane indicates that Indian customs evolved as English law encroached on native settlements, but that this evolution never allowed the Indians to receive from the English more than uneasy toleration at the margins of colonial life. That is surely a defensible thesis, but this book meanders and qualifies too much to mount a persuasive argument for it. She also suggests that Indians' apparent reluctance to abandon polygyny is evidence of resistance to English cultural hegemony. This would also be a defensible thesis, but it's really just another way of saying that the Indians lived on the margins of New England society, isn't it? Plane should pick a direction of spin; as it is, the book doesn't have much momentum.