page_title: Praying Indian
section_title: Self-government
hierarchical_section_title: Praying Indian / Self-government
caption_attribution_description: English: The first Natick Praying Indian wedding in over 340 years.
context_page_description: Praying Indian is a 17th-century term referring to Native Americans of New England, New York, Ontario and Quebec who converted to Christianity either voluntarily or involuntarily. Many groups are referred to by this term, but it is more commonly used for tribes that were organized into villages. These villages were known as praying towns and were established by missionaries such as Puritan leader John Eliot and Jesuit missionaries St. Regis and Kahnawake and the missionaries among the Huron in western Ontario.
context_section_description: The Praying Indian communities were able to exercise self-government and to elect their own rulers (sachems) and officials, to some extent exhibiting continuity with the pre-contact social system, and used their own language as the language of administration, of which a wealth of legal and administrative documents survive. However, their self-government was gradually curtailed in the 18th and 19th centuries, and their languages also became extinct around the same time. During that period, most of the original "Praying Towns" eventually declined due to epidemics and to the fact that the communal land property of others passed out of native control. The Indian-inhabited areas were eventually transformed into "Indian districts".
caption: A wedding ceremony of modern-day Natick (Massachusett) Praying Indians
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