Bio 7b David Brainerd

3. He was a missionary to people he called Indians, what we now call Native Americans, descendants of America's earliest inhabitants.

Over the years, since the arrival of white men, those not absorbed into the dominant population had steadily moved westward from New England into the States of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and beyond. Animistic in religion their contact with uncaring Europeans tended to encourage only laziness, drunkenness and constant debt. Attempts had been made to evangelise them (the work of Puritan John Eliot 1604-1690 stands out) but by 1675 it was suggested that there were only some 4,000 'Praying Indians'.
Brainerd worked among Native Americans from many tribes in several different places. He first preached to Indians near New York in August, 1742. On April 1, 1743, under the auspices of the Society in Scotland for Promoting Christian Knowledge (founded 1701), he began a ministry at Kaunaumeek, between Stockbridge, Massachusetts and Albany, New York (now Brainard, NY, 18 mls SE of Albany – named for a Brainerd descendant). Just over a year later he arrived at the Forks of the Delaware River, E Pennsylvania (near the present city of Easton) where he did further work. In June, 1745 he began work among Native Americans in Crossweeksung (now Crosswicks, near the present town of Freehold, 9 miles SE of Trenton, NJ). Just under a year after that, in 1746, with a company of Native Americans, he moved 15 miles north west to Cranberry, near Newark, New Jersey, where he engaged in his final months of labour. It was in these latter places that he knew most success.