Writing Indians : literacy, Christianity, and native community in early America

Author / Creator

Wyss, Hilary E

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Summary

"Focusing on New England missionary settlements from the mid-seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, Hilary E. Wyss examines the ways in which Native American converts to Christianity develope...

"Focusing on New England missionary settlements from the mid-seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, 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 ethnohistory, 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 such as 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."--BOOK JACKET.

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