Caleb's Crossing

Tequamuck is a pawaaw, the spiritual leader and healer of the Wampanoag tribe. He is also Caleb’s uncle and, at one point, initiates Caleb into his occult knowledge. He breaks his ties with Caleb after Caleb’s conversion to Christianity.

Tequamuck is the primary rival of Bethia’s father, who spends the novel fighting against the encroaching cultural and religious influence of the settlers over his people. Because he does not succeed, Tequamuck ends up a bitter and angry man, living alone. He ultimately resigns himself to the fact that the English and their God will dominate, but he refuses to abandon his people or his faith. 

Bethia’s father, the minister, is a stern but somewhat progressive figure. Unlike many other settlers, he seeks to convert Native Americans rather than drive them off. However, after his wife’s death, he becomes more severe and radical, trying to seek converts through fire and brimstone preaching. He ultimately dies at sea on a mission to win support for his work in England.

Joel is the son of Iacoomis, Bethia’s father’s first convert. Like Iacoomis, Joel is not physically impressive like Caleb; nonetheless, he has an extraordinary intellect that eventually allows him to graduate from Harvard College as valedictorian. Joel is an interesting point in the novel’s spectrum of Native American responses to the settlers—like his father Iacoomis, Joel has entirely forsaken his culture of origin and has fully embraced Christianity and the white world. His death at the hands of desperate Native Americans is a horrible irony—when raiding the foundering boat, it is clear they mistook him for a white man.

Bethia’s brother Makepeace is not always an admirable character. He is the perfect example of what happens with a parent tries to push a child into a path that does not come naturally. Though Makepeace is clearly not cut out for intensive academic study, his minister father is determined to make him into a scholar. Constantly feeling like he cannot measure up, either to his father or to his much more intellectually gifted sister, Makepeace becomes an angry and manipulative young man who wields his power over Bethia with glee. At one point, he relishes telling on Bethia for cursing him and then getting to beat her with a switch. Interesting, the novel gives Makepeace a redemption arc: as soon as he decides to abandon school, he finds happiness as a husband and father.

The novel’s narrator Bethia often lives up to the meaning of her name—“servant.” She spends much of her life serving others, both literally in her work at Master Corlett’s school and Harvard College, and more figuratively as the chronicler of the lives of Caleb and Joel. Bethia exemplifies the need for women to have access to education—she is an intelligent, observant, talented young woman who manages to learn several languages despite only hearing snatches of other people’s lessons while doing manual labor.

Bethia’s fate is the novel’s consolation to the lives of Caleb and Joel, whose promise is cut short after they die young. Bethia finds a likeminded husband whose academic ambition matches her own and who is happy to find a wife who is an intellectual partner. Their happy marriage is a rebuke to the deep misogynism of 17th century New England.