When the Europeans came to the New World they felt it was their responsibility to convert the natives and soon both Catholics and Protestants were at work among them, each in their own way. Friars were commissioned to accompany the Spanish exploring expeditions, and by the time the Puritans were busy with their Massachusetts Bay settlements over forty Catholic missions had been established in Florida with nearly thirty thousand adherents. During the same period, Franciscan missionaries went into the Southwest with Spanish expeditions and rapidly won the Indians to the Catholic religion. French missionaries went further than the Spaniards. The Jesuits made perilous journeys among unknown lakes and streams and through the forests. From Maine up through the St. Lawrence valley, westward along the Great Lakes, and down the upper tributaries of the Mississippi the missionaries paddled their canoes, searching out native villages. Sometimes they suffered terrible torture and martyrdom, but they persisted resolutely in their purpose. They planted the cross where they preached, baptized their converts, and administered the sacrament of the mass. In Louisiana, French Catholicism gained a permanent foothold, but after the English conquest, there was little to show for their pioneering in the Mississippi valley. Although most English colonists were hostile to the natives, attempts were made by many dedicated believers to share Protestant Christianity. An early colonial law required the instruction of Indian children in Virginia, and William and Mary College made provision for the education of Indian youth. Roger Williams made friends among the natives and prepared a Key to the Indian Language. The Quakers and the Moravians went among the Indians of the Iroquois Confederacy, and David Brainerd, by his brief but singularly devoted life, gained fame for his efforts to win the Delaware Indians. In 1810 the Congregationalists of the United States organized the first foreign missionary society and promptly sent missionaries to the Indians of Georgia.
Impact: Sadly the Indians came to be regarded as wards of the Government, and it became national policy to place them on specified reservations. The missionaries sent out by Eastern societies were the only groups sympathetic to this maltreatment and they tried to help by building schools, churches, and clinics.