Natural Disasters

Environmental Stress and Rainmaking

When Europeans first attempted to settle in North America north of the Rio Grande, their confrontations with Indian cultures were marked by cosmic struggles over environmental conditions, particularly rainfall. Christian priests and native religious leaders, however recklessly, both claimed the power to make rain, and this rivalry took on special sharpness in the extreme conditions that characterized the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Recent scientific research has demonstrated that serious recurring drought plagued both northern New Spain and southeastern North America. In 1588, during the worst three years of drought for eight hundred years, St. Augustine's governor Pedro Menéndez Marqués wrote home of the hardships his colonists faced: "There has been a very long drought the present year in this part of the world, particularly so in Florida, where not a grain of maize could be planted; and we were in very great distress . . . ."

One of the questions posed most often by Indian leaders was whether the Christians might have greater ability to modify the weather through their special relationship with God. At the same time, European Christians firmly believed that American priests had powers and that they could use those powers to produce environmental effects that could harm them. Rainmaking contests offer an important perspective on the struggle between Christianity and American religions because Indians and Europeans understood these effects in the same way. If drought meant that God was angry, that anger fell on Europeans and Indians alike. And every encounter was marked by fear and hope on all sides.

In northern New Spain Jesuits entered directly into rain contests with leading shamans in struggles of Biblical proportions. Converted Indians sometimes sought out native deities when catastrophe threatened. In one case Tehueco pueblo appealed to a "sorcerer" to bring rain in "a time of great drought." Despite all his conjuration and "great promises of abundant water," the shaman failed. Rain did come when the Jesuit priest organized a procession in honor of "the true lord of the rain". Fray Andrés Pérez de Ribas compared this episode to the prophet Elijah's confrontation with the priests of Baal. Pérez de Ribas coupled his story with one from Teheuco, where "a famous sorcerer" lamented his loss of power: "I do not know what is happening. We are no longer any good at healing. After we were baptized our familiar spirits left us."

Christians knew that they were playing a very dangerous game in demanding God's intervention on their behalf. Did they fear falling into the sin committed by the Israelites at Massah and Meribah? Afraid that they would not find water in the desert, "the children of Israel . . . had tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us, or not?" Those who tempted God by demanding demonstrations of his power were, according to Hebrews 3:7-19, destined to join those "whose carkeises fell in the wildernes."

French Jesuits were as willing to make such promises as were Spanish. In 1634 at Quebec in the midst of a multi-year famine caused by failure of the snow that facilitated their moose hunt, the Jesuits led by Paul LeJeune fed visiting Montagnais as best they could with "a little feast of peas and boiled flour." While the Indians ate, the Jesuits talked to them about Christianity, and the Americans made clear what they expected of God. "As to the proposals we make to them to believe in God, one of them said to me one day, 'If we believe in your God, will it snow?' 'It will snow,' I said to him. Will the snow be hard and deep?' 'It will be.' ' Shall we find Moose?' 'You will find them.' 'Shall we kill some?' 'Yes; for as God knows all things, as he can do all things, and as he is very good, he will not fail to help you, if you have recourse to him, if you receive the Faith, and if you render him obedience.' 'Thy speech is good,' answered he,' we will think upon what thou hast told us.' Meanwhile, they go off into the woods, and soon forget what has been said to them."

And New England's puritans also engaged in public demonstrations of their ability to call on God, the first being when the Plymouth colonists fasted and prayed for rain "in extreame Drought". The Narragansett leader Hobbomock who witnessed the prayer service "fell a wondring" at their actions on such a sunny day under a cloudless sky, "and thought that their God was not able to give Raine at such a time as that." The "poore wretch" was ultimately amazed to see clouds gathering and, as the Pilgrims ended their prayers, a "most sweet, constant, soaking showre. Hobbomock then "fell into wonderment at the power that the English had with their God." He said, "Now I see that the English-mans God is a good God, for he hath heard you, and sent you Rain, and that without Storms, and Tempests, and Thunder, which usually we have with our Rain, which breaks down our Corn . . . ." From then on favorable weather continued, giving them "a fruitful and liberal Harvest."
A cosmic drama marked the coming of Christianity in the arid Southwest. As Juan de Oñate and his men, in the vanguard of the first attempt to found Spanish settlements in New Mexico in 1598, approached the Piros pueblos, according to eyewitness Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá

It seemed the earth did tremble there,
Feeling the great force of the Church
Shaking the idols furiously,
With horrible, impetuous violence
And furious tempest and earthquake.

The priests began to pray and "The Lord, in pity, showed His power." The skies "turned about" and became "calm" and "serene" and the sun showed "his bright rays." It was in this "noble weather" that the Spanish party arrived and were welcomed at the first pueblo. Fray Alonso de Benavides later wrote that the "terrific hailstorm and tempest" was the work of the devil trying to turn back the Spanish, but he acknowledged that the Spanish were as amazed as the Indians at the sudden change in the weather. When they entered the Piros houses, they saw representations of the "haughty demons" that were their adversaries, and took particular note of the "god of water."

Oñate's expedition moved on to Ohke pueblo where they encountered such "loud and fearful" lamentations that they thought "The last moment had now arrived / To the tremendous judgment, final point / of universal end for all the world." The earth, which had had no rain for a long time, was "so cracked and so burnt with thirst" that they could raise no crops; "twas for water all the people wept." The Spanish had themselves endured four days "In which we drank no drop of water" and expected death. Nevertheless, the commissary told the Indians not to weep because he would ask "their Father" in heaven "to have pity." Even though they were "disobedient children", the priests "hoped" that God would "give much water to them all" in time to save their crops. "The Indians believed" and God answered the priests' prayers for a miracle. "It was remarkable, for, while the sky was as clear as a diamond, exactly twenty-four hours after the outcry had gone up, it rained almost throughout the land so abundantly that the crops recovered in good condition."

But though they gloried in their successes, no one believed that the Indian priests had lost their powers; reports from every region blamed harmful episodes on their machinations. John Ley reported a revealing episode from one of the earliest English attempts to explore the Amazon basin. "In these partes we had most tirrible tempests of windes, raine lightninge and Thunder, One Evening I shewed my Indian a black Cloude comminge threatninge a cruell storme, And sodenlie he said 'naughtie Indian make naughtie weather', And made signes howe they did cut the throate of a man, and utter altogeather certaine wordes as he he, Chy Chy." Unfortunately Ley did not elaborate: "I am compelled to be short or els I wold write more touchinge this matter." Europeans everywhere reported that Indians employed the weather in their strategies. Governor Pedro Menéndez de Avilés wrote to Philip II from Florida with an urgent request for crossbows. He said the Indians attacked in the rain when they knew the Spanish arquebuses were useless.

And the association of the powerful Christian God and his followers with superior control of the natural world could be a double-edged sword. Jean de Brébeuf, cataloguing the dangers in which the Jesuits stood in New France, wrote, "And then you are responsible for the sterility or fecundity of the earth, under penalty of your life; you are the cause of droughts; if you cannot make rain, they speak of nothing less than making away with you."

For development of these points see Karen Ordahl Kupperman, The Jamestown Project (Cambridge, MA, 2007).
Pedro Menéndez Marqués, governor of Florida, to Philip II, July 17 1588, printed in The Historical Magazine, III (1859), 275-6. On environmental conditions see Elinore M. Barrett, Conquest and Catastrophe: Changing Rio Grande Pueblo Settlement Patterns in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Albuquerque, 2002); Susan L. Swan, "Mexico in the Little Ice Age," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XI (1981), 633-48; David G. Anderson, David W. Stahle, and Malcolm K. Cleaveland, "Paleoclimate and the Potential Food Reserves of Mississippian Societies: A Case Study from the Savannah River Valley," American Antiquity, 60 (1995), 258-86; David W. Stahle, et al., "The Lost Colony and Jamestown Droughts," Science, 280 (1998), 564-67; David W. Stahle, Edward R. Cook, Malcolm K. Cleaveland, Matthew D. Therrell, David M. Meko, Henri D. Grissino-Mayer, Emma Watson, and Brian H. Luckman, "Tree-ring Data Document 16th Century Megadrought Over North America," Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union, 81 (2000), 121-5
Andrés Pérez de Ribas, History of the Triumphs of our Holy Faith Amongst the Most Barbarous and Fierce Peoples of the New World, ed. Daniel T. Reff (Tucson, 1999), 249. See 152 for another such episode. The biblical quotation is from The Holy Bible Faithfully Translated into English out of the authentical Latin . . . by the English Colledge of Doway (Rouen, 1635). In this Bible the episode is in III Kings, 17-18. The same book is named I Kings in the Geneva Bible, and the prophet's name is written Elijah. The English college at Douai was founded in 1568 by William Allen.
The words are those of the Geneva Bible, 1560. Elijah's confrontation with the priests of Baal is in I Kings, 17-18. Discussions of the episode at Massah and Meribah are Exodus, 15-17; Deuteronomy, 6: 16; Psalms 78: 17-42, 81: 6-7, 106: 13-18, 32-3. Jesus himself, as Satan tried to trick him into demanding a show of God's power in the wilderness, remembered the severe judgment on those Israelites who had provoked God's anger and said, quoting Deuteronomy 6:16, "It is written againe, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." See Matthew, 4:7 and Luke, 4:12.
Paul le Jeune, "Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Novv elle France, en l'année 1635," in Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 73 vols. (Cleveland, Ohio, 1896-1901), VIII, 29-35. On Le Jeune see James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (Oxford: 1985), chaps. 5-6.
Anon., New Englands First Fruits (London, 1643), 4-5; Nathaniel Morton, New-Englands Memoriall (Cambridge, 1669), 37-9.
Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá, Historia de la Nueva Mexico, 1610, trans. and ed. Miguel Encinias, Alfred Rodríguez, and Joseph P. Sánchez (Albuquerque, 1992), 141-2.
Fray Alonso de Benavides' Revised Memorial of 1634, ed. Frederick Webb Hodge, George P. Hammond, and Agapito Rey (Albuquerque, 1945), 57.
Villagrá, Historia, 142.
Villagrá, Historia, 148-9; Benavides' Revised Memorial, 58-9. Ramón A. Gutiérrez argues that the priests deliberately presented themselves as "potent rain chiefs" and timed their arrival to coincide with the onset of the rainy season; When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford, CA, 1991), 55-6, 63.
"John Ley's Exploration of the Lower Amazon, 1598," in Joyce Lorimer, ed., English and Irish Settlement on the River Amazon, 1550-1646 (London, 1989) 132-6, quote 134.
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to Philip II, October 20, 1566, in Eugene Lyon, ed., Pedro Menendez de Aviles, Spanish Borderlands Sourcebooks, vol. 24, (New York, 1995), 357-61.
Jean de Brébeuf, "Relation of what occurred in the Country of the Hurons in the year 1636" in Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 73 vols. (Cleveland, Ohio, 1896-1901), X, 95.

Karen O. Kupperman is Silver Professor at New York University. She recently published The Jamestown Project (Belknap Press, 2007).