Praying town

Praying towns were settlements established by English colonial governments in New England from 1646 to 1675 in an effort to convert local Native Americans to Christianity.

Before 1674 the villages were the most ambitious experiment in converting Native Americans to Christianity in the Thirteen Colonies,[1] and led to the creation of the first books in an Algonquian language, including the first bible printed in British North America.

John Eliot was an English colonist and Puritan minister who played an important role in the establishment of praying towns.

The Puritan missionaries' goal in creating praying towns was to convert Native Americans to Christianity and also adopt European customs and farming techniques.

They learned Native American languages and found ways to relate Christian principles to their existing religions (as was also done by Catholic missionaries in China).

Because of intertribal and intratribal strife and conflict with colonists, some of the Native Americans considered the praying towns as refuges from warfare.

Other tribes had been all but destroyed from disease and famine, and possibly looked to Christianity and the Puritan way of life as an answer to their suffering, when their traditional beliefs did not seem to have helped them.

It has also been argued that the Natives had a difficult time adjusting to the impersonal society of colonial America, since theirs had been built upon relationships and reciprocity, while that of the colonists were more structured and institutionalized.

According to this view, this difference made it hard for Natives to see the institutionalized structures as a whole, and John Eliot had failed to see the need for adaptations appropriate for smoother transitions.

Most of the original "Praying Towns" declined due to epidemics and to the loss of communal land property during the centuries after their foundation.