It is one of those curious coincidences of American history. But on this date–October 9th– Roger Williams, a dissident preacher, was “banned from Boston” (in 1635) and Junipero Serra dedicated Mission Dolores in what would become San Francisco (in 1776).
Separated by more than century and a continent, they might seem like unconnected events. But these are two extraordinary moments in the history of a so-called “Christian nation” and –more to the point– its treatment of Native Americans.
Born in London, Roger Williams came to Massachusetts with the great emigration of Puritans who sailed to America, escaping persecution in England. But after speaking out for religious freedom and even more shockingly, dealing fairly with Indians, Williams was banished by the Puritan authorities from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in October 1635. The Puritans who came to Massachusetts sought religious freedom– their own, not anyone else’s.
Williams lived briefly with friendly natives, established a settlement at Providence, and later won a charter for the colony of Rhode Island.
Williams pioneered two central ideas:
-Civil authority should not have religious authority. He coined the phrase “wall of separation,” later used by Jefferson.
-People should have freedom of conscience in religious matters– what he called “soul liberty.”
He would write:
God requireth not a uniformity of religion to be enacted and enforced in any civil state; which enforced uniformity (sooner or later) is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants, and of the hypocrisy and destruction of millions of souls.
These ideas later found expression in the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Followers of Junipero Serra, the Franciscan priests who founded a mission that later developed into San Francisco, had very different ideas about both religious authority and Indians. Anchored by a church, the mission included a presidio –or frontier fort– and an agricultural settlement. The chain of California missions begun by Serra were essentially forced labor camps in which Indians –“neophytes”– were required to convert. The death toll in missions such as San Francisco was appalling. Disease, harsh treatment, severe punishments and the commonplace rape of Indian women by Spanish soldiers took a devastating toll on California’s native population, practically wiping out California’s original inhabitants.
Of course, the natives of New England ultimately did not fare any better than those of California. Roger Williams’s enlightened approach to native Americans did not take hold. But these two very different chapters in “America’s Hidden History” speak volumes about a past that has been sanitized for the tourist trade and textbooks.
Here is a link to the Roger Williams National Memorial in Rhode Island–
http://www.nps.gov/rowi/historyculture/index.htm
Here is a link to some San Francisco history resources:
http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=SETTLEMENT_OF_SAN_FRANCISCO_%281776%29
