OCTOBER 2022
UPDATES & SCHEDULE

Hidden No More

Stories of the Indigenous & Separatist people in our area between 1550-1740! 

Every Thursday evening in October from 5:30 – 7:00 PM

A light vegan supper of 3 Sisters Stew will be served each week. 

You're welcome to bring some bread, salad or desert to share, if you wish.  

This very special series will led by The Rev. Dr. Liz Rice Smith (bio below) 

Join us for one or all of these gatherings, which are open to the community. 

Thursday, October 6th          Pokanaket Covenant

Thursday, October 13th        Eunice Redeemed

Thursday, October 20th        After the Mourning Wars

Thursday, October 27th        Indigenous Terrain & Seas

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The Rev. Dr. Liz Rice Smith (M.Div., Th.M., Psy.D.) brings her interdisciplinary training, experience, and history as a trauma recovery specialist and writer.  Over the past two decades, she has felt compelled to deeply research “hidden” or “lost” aspects of our Congregational family histories for us to know and acknowledge more fully all that occurred when indigenous North Americans in the Atlantic Northeast were confronted with/by the arrival of waves of immigrant colonist coming her from Britain and other European Countries.  These stories carry us into perspectives on the distortions, mis-understandings, and many motives which contributed to indigenous – colonies contact within our own religious traditions.  These stories will challenge us to know repent, repair, and transform our understandings of what occurred as well as to anticipate what awaits our action now and in the future.

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October 6, 2022  POKANOKET COVENENT  

When the Pokanoket/Wampanoag people saw the Mayflower sail into their Patuxet Harbor in November, 1620, they were well-familiar with the risks and challenges such a ship would bring into their lives. The story of Pokanoket contact and covenant with the Separatists (known colloquially as the Pilgrims) is a story of the saving of lives after the Patuxet people had been decimated by plague/disease carried from Europe by fisherman who sailed into their world. This evening’s story offers news of a history of 250 years of bone-chilling persecution that the Separatists had suffered at the hands of many Popes as well as English kings & queens, with thousands upon thousands of them being burned at the stake for their beliefs and efforts to build a different kind of church, educational possibility, and government.

October 13, 2022  EUNICE REDEEMED

From the mid-late 1500s into the mid-1750s, in the Atlantic Northeast, the land that we now identify as a “triangle” from Provincetown up to Quebec/Montreal, down to Albany and back to P-Town was a hot bed of activity with indigenous people having to contend with the arrival of so many Europeans. This evening’s story is a story about a young Congregationalist girl who decided to become Mohawk and Roman Catholic. Eunice Williams, a minister’s daughter and daughter of Deerfield, Massachusetts, was carried on the back of a Mohawk warrior in February/March 1704 up to Kahnawake, near Montreal, when her village was raided by Mohawk, Huron, and French invaders. History describes her as “the unredeemed captive” because she chose to stay there and identify with a remarkable people. This evening we will consider her as “Eunice redeemed,” having experienced the love, generosity, talent, protection, and embrace of the Mohawk people - as one of their own.

October 20, 2022  AFTER THE MOURNING WARS

1704 was quite a year for Mohawk raids into Massachusetts. As a people, the Mohawk are very observant, noticing that when a plague/epidemic struck, there was something about the White people that meant that fewer of them died than did their own people. They needed more people, so colonists’ children were taken and dearly adopted as Mohawk. In their wisdom, and early on, they had clear ideas about immunity, genetic transmission, and the adaptive benefit of inter-racial family life. This evening’s story is a story of four boys — brothers and cousins — who were taken from Westborough in 1704 into Kahnawake/Montreal and Quebec, and what their lives after abduction can show us about the richness of indigenous life.

October 27, 2022 INDIGENOUS TERRAIN & SEAS

Right here, in our midst, for thousands of years on Cape Ann, indigenous peoples have tended the land and the waters, living with climate sensitivity, wisdom in life, and care for one another. This evening’s story is a story of the Pawtucket of the Pennacook, Abenaki-speaking people.

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