Jonathan Beecher Field’s “A Key for the Gate: Roger
Williams, Parliament, and Providence,” is, at its worst, a highly accessible
text that fully explains how Roger Williams’ “A Key into the Language of
America” works as not only a guide for translation between the Native Americans
and the English, but as a metaphorical key that attempts to open a dialogue of
civility between the Native Americans, the new settlers of America, and the
English peoples as a whole, and at its best is a fascinating study of how Roger
Williams single-handedly won over the English parliament in favor of treating
the Native Americans as a body of people, while at the same time securing a
piece of land (recognized by both the Native Americans and the English Parliamentary
members as legitimate) where he would be free to practice his dissenting views
of Christianity.
Let me sum this up for you in short and in a way only JBF
himself could do:
JBF <3 Roger Williams
Roger Williams was a Puritan migrant who showed up on the
western shores of the Atlantic during the early 1600’s. He was a highly intellectual individual, but
he “soon began to make enemies among Boston’s ministers and magistrates.”
(355). This was because: “he challenged the prevalent English conviction that,
because the American continent lay beyond the pale of Christendom, the English
sovereign had the prerogative, with a mere stroke of his pen, to grant vast
tracts of it to his subjects.” (355). In other words, he challenged the idea
that the newly arrived American settlers could simply take land from the Native
Americans.
Thus, after acquiring a grant of land from the Native
Americans, Roger Williams set out on a trip across the Atlantic to meet with
the English Parliamentary members, who were themselves in the midst of a
separate revolution, to attempt to legitimize the idea that Native Americans “are
autonomous peoples, who have, like their European counterparts, sovereignty over
their land.” (366).
Perhaps of most importance to Williams’ successful argument
was his creation of a book of Native American and English phrases, called A Key into the Language of America: or an
help to the language of the Natives in that part of America, called
New-England. This book, though built
in what could easily be considered a didactic manner, is “not so much to teach
Londoners how to speak to Native Americans but rather to teach them how to
think about America.” (366).
Up until the writing of this book, the American natives were
considered, for various reasons, to have been a race of savage people. Through his book, Williams “imbues his London
readers with a sense of the Narragansett’s’ humanity.” (367). Williams creates
a people that are civil; through this book, he gives them a societal structure,
a language that can be comprehended by all, and through this he reinforces the
idea that ownership of land cannot be parceled out in grand chunks from across
the pond.
It should be said, however, that Williams’ achievements were
not simply limited to creating the beginnings of an equal footing between the
Native Americans and the English, but also the beginnings of a state government
without religion. The statement Williams
received from the English parliament also “proclaims that the government of
Providence Plantations will enjoy equal status with that of Massachusetts,”
(377), and offers Williams the opportunity to practice his own religion as he
pleases. “The physical space he created on the shore of Narragansett Bay became
the ground from which further religious dissent could be promulgated.” (380).
My assessment of JBF’s assessment of Williams’ work has become a bit of a book review, so I can’t help but add it in: Go read the damn thing. It’ll be the most accessible and enjoyable bit of reading you’ve done so far this semester; I promise.
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