After fleeing religious persecution in England, a group of Christian colonists traveled to America in 1630. Calling themselves the Puritans, these settlers endeavored to carve their colony from the wilderness of the New World, using God as their guidance and the Bible as their law.
Their writings and ideology defined how later authors would view and react to the concept of the wilderness.
“Wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us; soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our god in this worke wee have undertaken and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a byword through the world, wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of god and all professours for Gods sake…”
Elected governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, John Winthrop delivered his legendary address “A Modell of Christian Charity,” one year later as he and his fellow colonists sailed for the New World. Winthrop’s vision of the colony as a “City Upon a Hill” not only drew a religious parallel between the Puritans and the earlier exodus of the Israelites to the Promised Land, but it also established much of the Puritanical attitude towards the New World.
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“The key book was the Bible, which the Puritans viewed as the revealed word of God and consequently as the ultimate source of authority in all human affairs, from domestic arrangements to the structure of civil and religious institutions.”
In the Puritan’s eyes, the wilderness of the New World was something sanctioned to them by God, a place to be conquered and contained within strict religious doctrines. Winthrop’s idea of the “City Upon a Hill,” reflected the desire to elevate Puritanical society above the challenges of colonial life, creating a perfect, moral, Christian society that could serve as an example to the rest of the world. As he stated in his address, “the eies of a people are uppon us” (Winthrop, 149).
Of course, the “unclaimed” lands the Puritans sought to colonize were already inhabited by thousands of tribes and numerous other colonies sprouting up along the East Coast. Yet, to the Puritans, none of these peoples held the same religious claim to the land that they believed God had given themselves. Thus, the wilderness also came to mean everything outside of the Puritanical lifestyle – the land, the American Indians, and the other Colonists living under a different religious doctrine.
Winthrop’s address encapsulates the hopeful, yet forceful attitude of Puritans as they sailed to the New World. Believing wholeheartedly in the holy nature of their endeavor, the Puritans defined themselves through their victories over the wilderness that surrounded them.