Early Massachusetts Statute

[Douglas Laycock]

 Just ran across a 1633 statute that made it a criminal offense for Indians to worship "their False Gods."  I haven't tracked it to an original source, but James Bradley Thayer has it in a footnote (attached), so I assume it's reliable.   

The statute applied "in any part of our jurisdiction;" I don't know if that meant all the territory claimed by Massachusetts Bay colony, or only white towns and farms.  It seems likely that practical enforcement capacity was limited to areas of white settlement, so maybe this is not quite as stunningly outrageous as it appeared on first reading.  Still, it's pretty remarkable.  Maybe they were no longer dependent on the Indians to feed them by this time. 

Douglas Laycock
Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
625 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1215
  734-647-9713
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