Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T16:30:29.806Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Indigenous Literacies in Early New England

from Part I - Traces and Removals (Pre-1870s)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

By
Hilary E. Wyss
Edited by
Melanie Benson Taylor
Melanie Benson Taylor
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
Get access

Summary

This essay explores the multiple literacies of Indigenous writers from the earliest moments of American settlement, with a particular focus on early New England. The chapter sketches out the contours of early New England Native writing: its principal figures; its plural etiologies and intent; and its contested emergence at the fractious join of Native and settler spaces, institutions, and worldviews. Moving from John Eliot and his earliest missionary attempts to produce a new kind of alphabetic literacy for Indigenous converts, the essay documents the tensions between missionary-driven literacy projects and Indigenous uses of such literacy for specific political and cultural reasons. From 18th century figures like Samson Occom, Joseph Johnson to the 19th century writer and activist William Apess, Native writers produced rhetorically sophisticated texts that expressed a deep commitment to the continuity of Native peoples.

Keywords

William ApessJoseph JohnsonSamson OccomJames PrinterEliot BibleIndigenous literacyEarly New England Native writingNew England missionary cultureMassachusett language
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Native American Literature , pp. 113 - 128
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Axtell, James. 1985. The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, Joanna, ed. 2006. The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan: Leadership and Literature in Eighteenth-Century Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, Lisa. 2008. The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, Lisa. 2018. Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Bross, Kristina, and Wyss, Hilary E., eds. 2008. Early Native Literacies in New England: A Documentary and Critical Anthology. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Bross, Kristina. 2004. Dry Bones and Indian Sermons: Praying Indians in Colonial America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Michael P. 2003. The Eliot Tracts: With Letters from John Eliot to Thomas Thorowgood and Richard Baxter, ed. Clark, Michael P.. Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Cogley, Richard. 1999. John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians before King Philip’s War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
DeLucia, Christine M. 2018. Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Fisher, Linford. 2012. The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goddard, Ives, and Bragdon, Kathleen, eds. 1988. Native Writings in Massachusett. 2 vols. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.Google Scholar
Grande, Sandy. [1993] 2015. Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought, 10th anniversary edn. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Gura, Philip F. 2015. The Life of William Apess, Pequot. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Kellaway, William. 1961. The New England Company, 1649–1776: Missionary Society to the American Indians. London: Longmans, Green & Co.Google Scholar
Lopenzina, Drew. 2012. Red Ink: Native Americans Picking up the Pen in the Colonial Period. Albany: State University of New York Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lopenzina, Drew. 2017. Through an Indian’s Looking-Glass: A Cultural Biography of William Apess, Pequot. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Lyons, Scott Richard. 2010. X-Marks: Native Signatures of Assent. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
McMullen, Ann, and Handsman, Russell G., eds. 1987. A Key into the Language of Woodsplint Baskets. Washington, CT: American Indian Archaeological Institute.Google Scholar
Murray, Laura. 1998. “To Do Good to My Indian Brethren”: The Writings of Joseph Johnson, 1751–1776. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
O’Brien, Jean. 1997. Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650–1790. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
O’Connell, Barry, ed. 1992. On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, a Pequot. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Pratt, Richard H., ed. 1973. Official Report of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of Charities and Correction [1892]. Repr. in “The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites,” in Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the “Friends of the Indian” 1880–1900, 260–71. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Peyer, Bernd C. 1997. The Tutor’d Mind: Indian Missionary-Writers in Antebellum America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Rasmussen, Birgit Brander. 2012. Queequeg’s Coffin: Indigenous Literacies and Early American Literature. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Round, Phillip. 2010. Removable Type: Histories of the Book in Indian Country, 1663–1880. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Salisbury, Neal, ed. 2018. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God by Mary Rowlandson, with Related Documents. 2nd edn. Boston: Bedford.Google Scholar
Senier, Siobhan. 2014. Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New England. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Sergeant, John. 1743. A Letter from the Reverend Mr Sergeant of Stockbridge, to Dr Coleman of Boston. Boston: Printed by Rogers and Fowle, for D. Henchman in Cornhill.Google Scholar
Tinker, George. 1993. Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide. Minneapolis: Fortress.Google Scholar
Vizenor, Gerald. 1999. Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Warkentin, Germaine. 1999. “In Search of ‘The Word of the Other’: Aboriginal Sign Systems and the History of the Book in Canada.” Book History 2: 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warrior, Robert. 2005. The People and the Word: Reading Native Nonfiction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Wyss, Hilary E. 2012. English Letters and Indian Literacies: Reading, Writing, and New England Missionary Schools, 1750–1830. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×