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Writing Indians: Literacy, Christianity, and Native Community in Early America
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2000
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ColonialismEthnohistoryEducationLiteracy DevelopmentIndigenous PeopleCultural EncounterEarly American LiteratureCultural StudiesIndigenous StudyOwn Distinct IdentityAmerican LiteratureSettler ColonialismCultural HistoryLanguage StudiesLiteracy PracticeIndigenous LiteratureEarly AmericaChristian IndiansLiteracyEthnographyCultural Anthropology
The book examines the largely overlooked experience of Christian Indians in early America, highlighting how scholars have historically neglected their writings. The study investigates how Native American converts in New England missionary settlements forged distinct identities amid colonial culture. She analyzes autobiographical writings of Christian Indians and contrasts them with works by prominent Native Americans and Anglo-Americans to trace identity formation. The texts demonstrate that Christian Indians forged a dynamic identity that appropriated Protestantism to resist colonialism by turning its language against itself.
A study of cultural encounter, this book takes a fresh look at the much ignored and often misunderstood experience of Christian Indians in early America. Focusing on New England missionary settlements from the mid-seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries, Hilary E. Wyss examines the ways in which Native American converts to Christianity developed their own distinct identity within the context of a colonial culture. With an approach that weaves together literature, religious studies, and ethno-history, Wyss grounds her work in the analysis of a rarely read body of autobiographical writings by Christian Indians, including letters, journal entries, and religious confessions. She then juxtaposes these documents to the writings of better known Native Americans like Samson Occom as well as to the published works of Anglo-Americans, such as Mary Rowlandson's famous captivity narrative and Eleazor Wheelock's accounts of his charity schools. In their search for ostensibly authentic Native voices, scholars have tended to overlook the writings of Christian Indians. Yet, Wyss argues, these texts reveal the emergence of a dynamic Native American identity through Christianity. More specifically, they show how the active appropriation of New England Protestantism contributed to the formation of a particular Indian identity that resisted colonialism by using its language against itself.