English Letters and Indian Literacies: Reading, Writing, and New England Missionary Schools, 1750-1830 9780812206036, 0812206037

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Technologies of Literacy
1. Narratives and Counternarratives: Producing Readerly Indians in Eighteenth-Century New England
2. The Writerly Worlds of Joseph Johnson
3. Brainerd’s Missionary Legacy: Death and the Writing of Cherokee Salvation
4. The Foreign Mission School and the Writerly Indian
After Words: Native Literacy and Autonomy
Notes
Works Cited
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W
Acknowledgments

Citation preview

English Letters and Indian Literacies

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English Letters and Indian Literacies Reading, Writing, and New England Missionary Schools, 1750–1830

Hilary E. Wyss

universit y of pennsylvania p ress ph il adelphia

A volume in the Haney Foundation Series, established in 1961 with the generous support of Dr. John Louis Haney. Copyright © 2012 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-​­4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-​­free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-​­in-​­Publication Data Wyss, Hilary E.   English letters and Indian literacies : reading, writing, and New England missionary schools, 1750–1830 / Hilary E. Wyss.—1st ed.   p. cm. — (Haney Foundation series)   Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN 978-​­0-​­8122-​­4413-​­7 (hardcover : alk. paper)   1. Indians of North America—Education—New England. 2. Indians of North America—New England—Intellectual life. 3. Indians of North America—Missions—New England. 4. Written communications—New England—History. 5. Literacy—New England—History. I. Title. II Series: Haney Foundation series.   E78.N5W97 2012   371.829'97—dc23     2011049638

To James, Anna, and Cameron

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Contents



Preface  ix



Introduction: Technologies of Literacy  1

1. Narratives and Counternarratives: Producing Readerly Indians in Eighteenth-​­Century New England  33 2. The Writerly Worlds of Joseph Johnson  74 3. Brainerd’s Missionary Legacy: Death and the Writing of Cherokee Salvation  109 4. The Foreign Mission School and the Writerly Indian  150

After Words: Native Literacy and Autonomy  190



Notes  211



Works Cited  231



Index  243



Acknowledgments  249

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Preface

Early Native American studies have blossomed in recent decades, and it has been a privilege to engage with this field at such an exciting moment. Ten or fifteen years ago extraordinary work on Native Americans in colonial New England was emerging from history and anthropology departments, including Jean O’Brien’s Dispossession by Degrees (1998), Daniel Mandell’s Behind the Frontier (1996), Colin Calloway’s The American Revolution in Indian Country (1995), Karen Ordhal Kupperman’s Indians and English (2000), Gregory Dowd’s A Spirited Resistance (1992), and of course Jill Lepore’s The Name of War (1998). Kevin McBride, Kathleen Bragdon, and William Simmons, all in anthropology departments, were also doing exciting work on early Native materials.1 However, with the exception of critical work on Native American autobiography by Arnold Krupat, David Brumble, David Murray, and Hertha Wong, work in English departments was focused almost exclusively on Native novels and poetry and translations of Native oratory, all in the context of twentieth-​­century literary production.2 As scholar Craig Womack has recently pointed out, this was a literary and cultural moment in which it seemed that nobody was interested in discussing the writing of Native Americans from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century.3 My own book, Writing Indians (2000), was an attempt to integrate what I came to understand as a rich and extraordinarily underappreciated body of material into a cultural-​­studies model in which scholars in English departments all over the country turned their attention to material culture or nontraditional, extraliterary texts, using the tools and strategies of English departments—​­close reading, theoretical modes of analysis, and attention to linguistic and structural features of expression. My goal in Writing Indians was to maintain a sense of what I as a literary scholar and close analytic reader of texts had to offer works that had already received significant attention from history and anthropology departments but that were largely unknown in English departments. Today the terrain of English studies has changed dramatically, and Native

x  Preface

American texts that were once only available in archives are now widely reprinted and essential reading in American literature anthologies. Furthermore, the ever-​­increasing importance of the intertwined fields of composition and rhetoric has paved the way for a more nuanced examination of literacy and its practices. Deborah Brandt, Harvey Graff, and others have developed a rich theoretical background for the study of literacy and its acquisition, in both a historical and a contemporary perspective.4 Scott Lyons has shaped that general context in terms of Native writing experiences, coining the term rhetorical sovereignty as a way of thinking through Native self-​­determination—​­both political and cultural—​­and written discourse. Through the work of these scholars it has become increasingly clear that literacy is a vexed terrain in which conflicting intentions and values attach to a set of skills loaded with moral, political, and economic freight; texts that help us recover some of those conflicts have become increasingly valued as objects of study. Meanwhile, the field of literary studies has once and for all exploded the traditional canon, engaging enthusiastically with a wide array of extraliterary texts such as letters, diaries, and petitions while also engaging, with ever-​ ­increasing sophistication, the words and expressions of those previously passed over, such as men and women of color and the marginally literate. Scholarship in the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of History of the Book reminds us that as scholars we lack a full sense of the complex rituals of power and exchange that form the base from which Native Americans participated in the colonial American world of New England, even as it uncovers the material and cultural nuances of books, readers, and literate practice more generally. Recent works by Eve Tavor Bannet, Phillip Round, Matthew Brown, Matt Cohen, and others have supplemented the more general resources in colonial American book history, such as Hugh Amory and David Hall’s first volume of The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, Patricia Cohen’s The Story of A, and E. Jennifer Monaghan’s Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America, all of which situate the materiality of textual production in terms of the ideological basis of reading, writing, and culture.5 This engagement has taken place with a heretofore unimaginable intensity in the field of early American studies, with scholars like Joanna Brooks, Kristina Bross, Laura Stevens, Laura Murray, David Murray, Sandra Gustafson, Josh Bellin, Bernd Peyer, Gordon Sayre, and countless others in English departments across the country and even around the world taking on the work of examining the words and worlds of early Native American peoples and the missionaries who wanted to “save” them.6

Preface  xi

History and religious studies have also participated in this surge of interest in early Native studies: the work of Maureen Konkle, Rachel Wheeler, David Silverman, Amy Den Ouden, and Michael Oberg have reimagined the ways in which academics can interpret and engage with Native communities; Laurel Ulrich and her work on gender and memory has helped us to understand ongoing representations of Native cultural traditions.7 Such scholars speak easily and comfortably to those of us in literary fields, and we share manuscripts and conference venues with a regularity once impossible when the boundaries between fields of study were more scrupulously maintained. By far the most significant development for the field of early Native studies has been the engagement by Native scholars like Lisa Brooks, Jace Weaver, Robert Warrior, and Daniel Heath Justice with early Native writings. Standing on the shoulders of earlier scholars and critics like Paula Gunn Allen and Vine Deloria, Jr., these contemporary Native scholars look for ways to frame a Native literary theory, and remind us all to attend to the words of Native peoples in ways that are sensitive to the notion of Native community identity.8 Rather than imposing a set of outside assumptions, by listening to the words and actions of members of Native communities, we can come to understand words and worlds beyond certain colonialist assumptions. Such scholars have increasingly turned to texts hitherto ignored in the field of Native studies, revealing the complexities of texts written by eighteenth-​­and nineteenth-​­century writers and political thinkers very much engaged in the process of understanding themselves as Native Americans, negotiating a brutalizing colonial system intent on undermining or ignoring that very identity. Scholars in Native studies programs have argued that reframing Native textual production through the words and ideas emerging from Native communities is a powerful corrective to some of the insularity of academic departments and that understanding Native voices from the past should in no way be considered only the domain of scholars and antiquarians. The significance of Native community is most powerfully and emphatically felt in the ways in which Native culture and identity are experienced in New England today. Tribal recognition at the federal level has exploded since the 1990s, thanks in no small part to the commitment by Native peoples to understand and interpret their own histories. Language revitalization projects like that of Jessie Little Doe Fermino among the Wampanoags and Stephanie Fielding for the Mohegans have reached back to the work of John Eliot and others, and the sometimes abstract and arcane work of scholars of colonial texts has taken on a very real and transformative component as individuals

xii  Preface

reconstruct their tribal histories and languages from (among other evidence) colonial texts. The genealogical work of Will Ottery and others has helped shape the current Brothertown community in Wisconsin, as well as communities throughout New England, as increasing numbers of individuals come to understand their relationship to their tribal heritage in vibrant new ways. As scholars and community leaders reach out to each other, we are creating and recreating a past, present, and future that are all ripe with possibilities.9 My sense of this project and its value has changed significantly from the days in which my work on Writing Indians seemed a relatively abstract academic exercise. The collaborative and ongoing challenge to academics and tribal historians today is to recover a past and shape meaning from texts that are not always easily available to those who might be most interested in, and affected by, them. It is very much my hope that this current book honors that principle by both celebrating the lives and struggles of those Native peoples engaged in the schools, while acknowledging the sometimes brutal and often wrenching decisions through which individuals—​­Native and Anglo-​ ­American—​­came to terms with their place in the broader missionary culture of their own moments.

Introduction

Technologies of Literacy

Dr Bassett, Sir. I will tell you now, that very soon I must be kill here, if I stay here any longer. This morning also Wheelock he came in our room to trouble us. He poll out our b[l]anket, then he spit on me then I spit on him too. and I told him not to do so. Then he come begin on me all the time then when I do to him something, then he begin mad at me and kick me sometimes, so I dont want to stay here, because by and by he might kill, or make me sick. He did make me sick little on my breast. That is reason I dont want to stay with him. . . . ​ I am afraid at Wheelock that what his bad action. Crane also he dont like Wheelock because he tell lies too much, some boys I heard that Wheelock is too saucy. Sometime ago I heare Crane that Tarbel say he saucyest their is in Stockbridge. I believe it that Wheelock is saucyest anyone in Stockbridge Nation, because he saucy to me. Rev. Amos Bassett, D.D. I am your sincere friend George Whitefield of the Chippeway Nation

Written to the headmaster of the Cornwall Mission School in Connecticut by a young Ojibwe student in the mid-​­1820s, this letter is a dizzying spin through the broader issues of charity education at the center of this book. The student signs this letter as George Whitefield, a name undoubtedly given to him on his arrival at Cornwall in recognition of the British evangelical minister who had so irrevocably influenced missionary culture from the eighteenth century onward. The issue at hand is that Wheelock (another Native student

2  Introduction

at the mission school) has been harassing Whitefield, who now fears for his own safety. The Wheelock of this letter, a young Stockbridge boy, is named after another eighteenth-​­century figure, this one the founder of what is quite possibly the most famous Native American boarding school of the era. Both Wheelock and Whitefield, the letter makes clear, have reputations back home in their respective Native communities (“Sometime ago I heare Crane that Tarbel say he saucyest there is in Stockbridge”) but also in the pan-​­Indian community that is the boarding school, and each reputation influences the other (“I believe it that Wheelock is saucyest anyone in Stockbridge Nation, because he saucy to me”). But even as we understand that the letter refers to two adolescent boys, it is hard to shake the conviction that the letter applies as easily to the famous men whose names have been recycled in this school context and that the lofty religious debates of eighteenth-​­century divines like George Whitefield and Eleazar Wheelock of the Great Awakening might as well have involved the spitting and short-​­sheeting of boarding-​­school boys. The problem at the heart of this letter seems to be that Wheelock’s behavior (spitting, kicking, verbal attacks) has elicited reciprocal bad behavior from Whitefield, and the situation has gotten so far out of control that Whitefield not only fears for his life but also feels that he must leave the school. Wheelock, it seems, is not above using whatever agency he has to either kill or sicken Whitefield. This language is suggestive; the fear is not of injury, as one might suspect of kicking, brawling youngsters, but rather of sickness; that is, there is just the slightest hint of spirit possession of a suspiciously nonchristian nature at this mission school. The letter concludes with the assurance that this young boy is his schoolmaster’s “sincere friend,” certainly a conventional phrase with which to sign off a letter, but the language once again reflects the topsy-​­turvy nature of this letter: the boy is hardly the schoolmaster’s friend in this situation. Far from the kind of letter one friend writes to another, this missive is at once a plea for help from a superior and a challenge to him: without Bassett’s support this student will simply pack up and leave, and by doing so reveal the chaotic nature of the charity-​­school experience. A surveying map of Cornwall, Connecticut, stands as the other evidence of George Whitefield’s time at the mission school, a pairing that reinforces one of the more sordid aspects of missionary education: the association between the benevolent mission of Indian education and the sometimes brazen appropriations of land and resources that often accompanied such schools (Figure 1). Even as they wrote of their experience as Native people thrown into the often disorienting space of the boarding school,

Figure 1. This surveyor’s map of Cornwall was drawn by George Whitefield (Catitugegwhonhale), an Ojibwe student at the Foreign Mission School, when he was twelve years old. Collection of the Litchfield Historical Society.

4  Introduction

students at the Cornwall mission school were encouraged to document that space for the commodities it contained and land for its use value. Walls, fields, and other “improvements” had their own symbolic representation on surveying maps—​­the kinds of maps through which Indian charity schools recorded Indian spaces (and peoples) as commodified and valued within an English economic system. Eighteenth-​­century divine George Whitefield speaks from the grave here in the guise of a twelve-​­year-​­old boy, while Eleazar Wheelock acts out his rage and frustration at recalcitrant Indian boys by spitting and kicking at them. The nineteenth century thus reimagines the struggles of the eighteenth and in the process brings to light the issues of personal agency, institutional momentum, and networks of community that shape English literacy education produced by the missionary societies of New England. The story of Native education in English literacy is primarily available to scholars through print culture—​­a record overwhelmingly controlled and dominated by colonial figures implicated in very particular ways in the events of Native history. Recent scholarship has sharply questioned the biases of this record and has usefully challenged all of us to look beyond the texts through which Native literacy is documented and recorded.1 Yet we can see from the above letter that this print record still has much to tell us. Put simply, words, names, and ideas all have contexts, and understanding those contexts considerably enriches those words that are still available to us. Private letters, published journals, personal confessions, formal reports, as well as books, ledgers, and court documents form a surprisingly rich and detailed picture of a world in which English education was made available to Native peoples under often brutal circumstances. Certainly missionary voices dominate. It is helpful to recall, however, that Native people became missionaries—​­as well as teachers and students—​­within these schools. Allegiances were complicated, and texts often tell more than the words they contain when understood as markers of affiliation and coercion, respect and fear, love and obligation. Furthermore, by attending to the technologies of literacy—​­the purchases of ink, paper, penknives, and a myriad of other objects through which texts were produced, exchanged, saved, lost, and forgotten—​­we can begin to see the multiple ways that power is negotiated in the Native boarding schools of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—​­all of which, for better or worse, functioned as radical experiments in cross-​­cultural communication. The texts that remain are a powerful testimonial to the ways those experiments came about as well as what came of them.

Introduction  5

By focusing on schools driven by the Congregationalist New England missionary culture as it developed and shifted from Puritanism through the evangelicalism of the second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century, this book explores the ways this missionary culture, based in New England and spanning roughly a century, attempted to shape and define Native literacy through boarding schools. Such boarding schools, really an eighteenth-​­century innovation of charity education, shifted the way missionaries interacted with their Native students. Situated in the Northeast, and in the nineteenth century the Southeast as well, such schools significantly predated the more notorious boarding schools for Native Americans of the late nineteenth century. The early boarding schools, with their uneasy relationship to government policy and religious benevolence, could be, like their later counterparts, rigid and unforgiving institutions; yet they provided an avenue through which Natives could use their hard-​­won literacy skills for their own purposes, to forge alliances and build their own communities. Early Native American use of English-​­language literacy can perhaps best be understood through what Laurel Ulrich has described in a different context as the weaving together of alternative structures of identity. Ulrich uses the analogy of weaving checked fabric to describe the gender dynamic of small New England towns. Community, she argues, was produced not only by the clear delineation of the (“masculine”) public and (“feminine”) private (which she compares to the dark and light of a checkered fabric) but also by the cooperation of men and women and their implicit understandings of the ways in which their worlds intersected. In her analogy the places in which the light and dark threads overlap produce a third color that combines the two.2 According to Ulrich, the social web takes shape through the literal weaving together of warp and weft, and each combination helps shape and define others. Modern scholars are left without a clear impression of much of what composes the checkered fabric, however, because of the limitations of the documentary record, which emphasizes one shading over another and at times completely ignores the ways in which each overlaps with the other. Native writing produces the same field of conflicting intentions and assumptions or, in Ulrich’s analogy, contrasting colored squares through which the desires and needs of missionaries and Indians are made apparent, with the “Indian” square the one that is least accessible using public documents. Yet it is the third category—​­the blended colors of the checked fabric that contains the unintended consequences, unspoken assumptions, and overlapping needs—​­that complicates the narrative considerably. Examining Native texts

6  Introduction

in all their variety recovers a myriad of overlapping needs and desires shaping Indian education. More significantly, by understanding individual actions as alternate textualities we can start to uncover a variety of narratives. Through this third category we can understand Native texts as fields of conflict and contestation rather than the result of the imposition of something foreign, something European on an indigenous population unfamiliar with its value.

Readerly and Writerly Indians White missionaries who longed for passive converts eager to consume religious texts carefully documented their attempts to mold such proselytes. To advance this process a coalition of Congregationalist Calvinists and Presbyterians associated themselves first with the New England Company, later the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG),3 and then eventually the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), all of which were well funded and politically powerful.The missionaries associated with these organizations, often acting under intense scrutiny from the British Isles, were in competition with efforts by Baptist, Methodist, Moravian, and even Catholic organizations. By emphasizing the teaching of reading rather than writing, missionaries could speak for Natives even as they assured benefactors of the success of their proselytizing. The missionary desire for a docile, passive Indian figure—​­a “Readerly Indian”—​­overlays this already unequal power dynamic with a gendered logic; reading was understood through much of the eighteenth century as the feminized first level of literacy and was a skill generally taught by women in the domestic space. Missionaries could thus maintain a particularly gendered fantasy of a passive, docile Native figure by reinforcing a skill set that did not require self-​­expression.4 But as missionaries recognized, even the most docile Indian reader must eventually signal his or her active acceptance of European literacy, and as Natives increasingly participated in the practice of writing, missionaries lost control over their message. The figure of the “Writerly Indian” emerges as not only a speaker and actor fluent in the cultures and conventions of colonial society but also one fully committed to Native community as an ongoing political and cultural concern. Over and over in the records there is a genuine astonishment on the part of white missionaries that Natives who controlled their own representation, “Writerly Indians,” had different notions of Christian experience, political autonomy, and personal identity than what missionaries had

Introduction  7

assumed.5 The term “Writerly Indian” as I use it in this study is indebted to the work of Scott Lyons, whose concept of “rhetorical sovereignty” suggests some of the meanings implicit in the Readerly-​­Writerly dichotomy. If a Readerly Indian is a construction of the missionary imagination, with all the passivity and acquiescence ready for appropriation, the Writerly figure has much more to do with that contested notion of sovereignty that is so central to contemporary Native American intellectual life. As Lyons writes, “Sovereignty is the guiding story in our pursuit of self-​­determination, the general strategy by which we aim to best recover our losses from the ravages of colonization: our lands, our languages, our cultures, our self-​­respect. For indigenous people everywhere, sovereignty is an ideal principle, the beacon by which we seek the paths to agency and power and community renewal” (“Rhetorical” 449). For Lyons, rhetorical sovereignty “is the inherent right and ability of peoples to determine their own communicative needs and desires . . . ​to decide for themselves the goals, modes, styles, and languages of public discourse.” (“Rhetorical” 449–​ ­50). Writerly Indians used written discourse to manage their own sovereignty in ways that often challenged, confused, or contradicted missionary desire. At times, however, that sovereignty meshed nicely with missionary goals. Either way, the Writerly Indian figure left evidence of a powerful commitment to the continued existence of Native communities, even in the face of sometimes overwhelming rhetorical and political challenges to that identity. The texts produced by Indian writers have more recently come to shape and define much of our understanding of Native experience in the colonial period. Through Indian writers with their various communication networks we can begin to glimpse Ulrich’s third color, or the ways in which Native and missionary experience overlapped, contradicted, and helped shape each other’s ideas through their engagement with one another. Of course, individuals then and now are not defined by their abilities as readers and writers; they have a variety of skills and personal experiences that shaped their understanding of the world in ways that are not contained within these labels. Yet because Indian readers did not often record their reactions to missionary texts and ideas, missionaries were left to produce a passive, docile fantasy of the Readerly Indian to reinforce their own desires, while those Natives who did write, no matter what they wrote, fundamentally altered the relationship between missionary culture and Native people through the simple act of self-​­expression. Yet E. Jennifer Monaghan, the preeminent scholar of colonial literacy, usefully reminds us that putting too fine a point on the distinction between readerly and writerly abilities undercuts the revolutionary potential of both. She writes, “The

8  Introduction

definitions of the two literacy skills implied in so many colonial sources—​­of reading as a receptive and passive skill, of writing as the repetitious copying of the work of others—​­were in fact undermined and contradicted by actual practice. . . . ​By the time of Thomas Paine, both reading and writing had emerged as potentially revolutionary practices, challenging every kind of religious and political orthodoxy.”6 Cathy Davidson further reminds us of the revolutionary potential of young, predominantly female novel readers in the eighteenth century and the challenge they posed to ministerial control. Hardly passive and submissive, such readers shaped their own ideas and developed their own interpretive universe specifically through the act of reading. While readers as opposed to writers were perhaps more easily defined by others, we should bear in mind that the assumptions driving missionary characterizations of Indian readers only imperfectly reflected the experiences of those they encountered. Eighteenth-​­ and early nineteenth-​­century Native American readers and writers engaged in a set of practices that connected them to a colonial world in very specific ways. While only the words of the writers are still available to us, both readers and writers made independent choices about the nature of that engagement. Modern Native scholars have repeatedly pointed out that attending to the words of Native writers broadens and complicates our notions of identity, race, and expression. Whether in the eighteenth century or the twenty-​­first, when Native intellectuals speak, as Vine Deloria, Jr., famously wrote in We Talk, You Listen, it behooves the rest of us to listen. The challenge of colonial materials is that while writers are legible through the texts they leave behind, readers and their experiences are much more elusive.

Native Missionary Education: A Brief History For the Native peoples of New England the problems and possibilities of literacy, whether in English or in a Native language, unfolded in myriad ways, with legacies that are still felt today. From the earliest missionary efforts of the 1640s, Protestant missionaries in New England saw literacy and Christianity as an inseparable part of the cultural universe of Englishness. That is, for missionaries as well as the Natives they instructed, English literacy was attached to decisions about hair, dress, manners, religion, and a broad variety of cultural matters. For missionaries there seemed to be only two possible approaches to educating Native Americans: either uprooting Natives from all that was familiar and remaking them in the mold of Anglo-​­American social and cultural

Introduction  9

expectations or, conversely, re-​­creating those Anglo-​­American social and cultural mores in the heart of Indian country. Literacy was enmeshed in Englishness, and it was impossible for the early missionaries to untangle the two, even though initially literacy training was in the Massachusett language rather than in English. For Natives the question was far more vexed: was it possible to embrace literacy as a means of forwarding Native interests?7 The earliest educational attempts in the New England colonies were directed and supervised in the seventeenth century by John Eliot and Daniel Gookin, each of whom had different ideas about how best to accomplish the transformation of Indians into Englishmen. Both of these men, working through the New England Company, initially felt that the most effective way to educate Native people was to house them among upstanding English families who would teach not only reading and writing but English culture as well. However, the missionary John Eliot increasingly came to believe that the English were not their own best advocates, and there were too many negative influences in English communities to lead potential Native converts astray. For this reason Eliot established “praying towns,” or communities of Native Christians at a short distance from English communities; these towns had a series of regulations to control Indian ways, and each had within it not only a minister but also a teacher.8 The earliest phase of missionary work came to an end in 1676 with King Philip’s War. After this event and through the mid-​­eighteenth century most educational and missionary enterprises were of a smaller scale, with significantly less publicity attached to them. They were also increasingly fragmented in terms of denomination, with Baptists, Methodists, and Moravians making inroads into what had once been unified Congregationalist territory. Efforts by Congregationalist missionaries on Cape Cod and elsewhere met with some success, but other than the conversions on Martha’s Vineyard famously catalogued by Experience Mayhew in Indian Converts (1727), these did not garner the attention that Eliot’s attempts had received or that later eighteenth-​­century ventures would receive. While schoolteachers were sent to tribes throughout New England, none of these efforts included schools at which large groups of Native students lived together away from home.9 But in 1743 John Sergeant published a brief pamphlet that laid out his plans for an Indian boarding school. Sergeant was the minister and missionary of the town of Stockbridge, which was established in 1739 to serve as a buffer against the French and the Iroquois. An experiment in Christian conversion, Stockbridge started with four English families in residence to serve as models of right living for the mixed

10  Introduction

Housatonic and Mohican Indians of the area. John Sergeant’s sudden death in 1749 meant that he was never able to see his boarding-​­school plan come to fruition, although he had set the school in motion. In 1752 his widow married Joseph Dwight, and together they continued the boarding-​­school plans, this time less as a missionary venture and more as a money-​­making proposition. When Sergeant’s missionary replacement, Jonathan Edwards, arrived in 1751, he was horrified by the graft and corruption he saw attached to the school, and until 1754, when the school finally closed, Edwards found himself enmeshed in an angry, bitter dispute with the Dwight and the Williams clans, the extended family of Abigail Sergeant/Dwight. This embroilment stretched all the way to Boston and even to London with its accusations, petitions, and grievances. Central to the possibilities the Dwights and Williamses saw for the school was cashing in on the charity money available for educating the Iroquois. To this end a number of Oneida and Mohawk students were enticed to the school. Their time in Stockbridge was short-​­lived, since the school was little more than a single small building falling rapidly into disrepair. However, their effect on the town was far more significant than this brief stay would suggest. By the end of the American Revolution, a war in which great numbers of Stockbridge Indians fought alongside the Americans, the white settlers of Stockbridge had almost completely displaced the Natives for whose benefit the town had initially been founded.10 Finding themselves without a land base, the Stockbridge Indians removed to upstate New York, settling on land received from the Oneidas with whom they had forged connections years earlier through the boarding school. Thus, instead of the Stockbridge Indians providing a model of stasis and “civility” for the Iroquois (as was the idea of the boarding school), the Stockbridge experience confirmed Mohawk and Oneida suspicions that the whites would bleed them dry. When the Stockbridge tribe members displaced themselves to upstate New York, it was a clear indictment of the educational and missionary model that had solidified the connection between the tribes twenty years earlier. As an educational venture, the Stockbridge school was an unmitigated disaster—​­a brief, ugly foray into the underside of charity with few long-​­term educational benefits to any of its students. The unintended consequences of the school, however, were manifold, and it bears close attention as a site through which the notion of charity as a basis for cross-​­cultural exchange took on very particular resonances. Although the Stockbridge school failed—​ ­and failed rather spectacularly—​­when Eleazar Wheelock envisioned his own

Introduction  11

charity school, he based his justification for such a school on John Sergeant’s boarding-​­school plan as it had been laid out in Sergeant’s “Letter . . . ​to Dr. Colman” and Samuel Hopkins’s Historical Memoirs. Wheelock’s charity school narratives (there are nine in all) echo Sergeant’s interest in the Iroquois; they also emphasize coeducation of boys and girls, and reflect Sergeant’s commitment to the idea of both a practical and a liberal education; the students’ time at both schools was to be divided between learning a trade, farming, and learning reading, writing, arithmetic, religion, and (at Wheelock’s school) Greek, Latin, geography, and more. Wheelock founded his school late in 1754—​­the very year the Stockbridge school closed—​­with the arrival of two boys sent by missionary John Brainerd from the Delaware tribe, John Pumshire and Jacob Woolley. In fact, however, the idea for his school, as he acknowledges, came not just from John Sergeant’s efforts, but more significantly from his connection to the astoundingly successful Samson Occom, a student of Wheelock’s who was forced to cut short his college studies because of his poor health. Wheelock became convinced that if Occom could succeed, he should certainly reach beyond this single student to form a cadre of Native missionaries to convert the New England tribes, the Iroquois, and eventually all Native Americans. His idea was to send out missionaries and schoolteachers to establish connections to tribes; these emissaries would send their most promising students to Wheelock’s school, and the students would in turn be sent back into the field to convert more, and so on in endlessly expanding circles of conversion, literacy, and exchange. Central to this belief (Wheelock called it his “Grand Design”), interestingly enough, was his notion of a pan-​­Indian identity. That is, although Wheelock was generally aware of the limits of language and dialect, he was initially convinced that Indians would be more open to other Indians (even those of different tribes), and so he imagined his school as a melting pot through which Natives of different tribes and cultures would come together to educate each other as well as white charity students also attending the school, and then they would all go out to establish links to ever more distant Native communities. Occom was more than merely the impetus for the school; he was central to its success in a number of ways. Having as a young man sought out Wheelock to develop his burgeoning interest in literacy and Christianity, Occom at times chafed under the rather imperious demands of his mentor. Nonetheless, it was through Occom’s intervention that several of Wheelock’s most successful students attended at all: Occom sent his two brothers-​­in-​­law, David and Jacob Fowler from the Montaukett tribe of Long Island, and it is probably with his

12  Introduction

encouragement that Joseph Johnson and other Mohegans attended Moor’s Charity School. Although his own son, Aaron Occom, did not thrive at the school, he did spend some time there at the bidding of both his mother and his father (although none of the other Occom children attended the school). Occom was also key to the success of the school in that he agreed to go to England on a fund-​­raising mission for Wheelock. From December 1765 to the middle of 1768 Occom and his fellow traveler, the minister Nathaniel Whitaker, spoke, wrote, and journeyed throughout England and Scotland on behalf of Wheelock and his school. Upon his return to Mohegan, however, Occom was shocked to discover not only Wheelock’s neglect of Occom’s young family but also the real state of the school, which was nothing close to what Wheelock had promised. In fact, Wheelock was increasingly turning his attention away from his Native students and spending more of his time and energy on his white charity students. By 1771, only three years after Occom’s return from England, Wheelock announced that the charity money would go to the founding of Dartmouth College, ostensibly still open to Native scholars but actually focused almost exclusively on educating white boys for the ministry. Although Moor’s Charity School ultimately failed in its goal of nurturing Native ministers to lead the mass conversions Wheelock hoped for, like the Stockbridge school, Wheelock’s had far-​­reaching consequences. Years after the failure of Moor’s Charity School, a coalition of New England tribes established by Samson Occom, his brother-​­in-​­law David Fowler, and his son-​­in-​ ­law Joseph Johnson founded a new kind of community in Oneida territory. Begun as a Native Christian community, Brothertown, as it was called, was very much a reaction against the domineering, controlling Wheelock, who had sought to shape Native belief through his “Grand Design.” Rejecting the charity terms through which Wheelock insisted his students understand their role as Christians, Brothertown was a community in which Native and Christian were no longer oppositional terms. This Algonquian place came into being through an alliance with the same Iroquois community that Wheelock had been so determined to master and had so disastrously alienated years earlier. It was adjacent to New Stockbridge, the other Native Christian community exiled from its home in western Massachusetts and a casualty of John Sergeant’s earlier boarding-​­school experiment. 11 With the demise of Moor’s Charity School, boarding-​­school efforts directed specifically to Native communities once again fell off significantly. It was only in 1810, with the founding of the American Board of Commissioners

Introduction  13

for Foreign Missions, that efforts to convert and educate Native Americans in boarding schools picked up again among New England’s Congregationalist Calvinist elite. This time, although the missionaries were from New England, their attention was directed far from home. By the early nineteenth century the notion of charity toward Native Americans had become embedded in a more generalized pity for “heathenism” broadly defined. Missionary education had expanded globally, with missionary societies based in New England establishing missions in India, China, and the interior of the United States. Among their other charitable goals, these early nineteenth-​­century missionary ventures reached out to the Cherokees of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, founding schools within the Cherokee Nation while establishing another in the heart of New England in the small farming community of Cornwall, Connecticut. While the Brainerd School in what is now Tennessee focused exclusively on Cherokee education, the Cornwall Foreign Mission School was imagined as a multiethnic institution that served as the culmination of centuries of missionary theory; with their global vision and ambitious educational schemes these nineteenth-​­century institutions imagined themselves as participating in a golden moment of Anglo-​­American benevolence better than anything that had ever come before. Thus, the Brainerd Mission and the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall were both established as boarding schools to educate “poor heathens,” but while Brainerd displaced northern missionaries to the South, the Cornwall Mission displaced southern Indians and others to the heart of New England. Most important, these two ventures both looked toward a future in which they envisioned a unified global Christian community while very consciously situating themselves in relation to New England’s missionary past.12 The Brainerd School went through a variety of permutations, but it closed permanently in 1838 with Cherokee Removal. Its most successful years were the 1820s, after which a fire in 1830 closed the boarding school for nearly two years before its final closing.13 The Foreign Mission School closed much earlier owing to the notorious marriages of two Cherokee students, Elias Boudinot and John Ridge, to young women from the town, Harriet Gold and Sarah Northrup. These interracial relationships caused such an outcry in the Connecticut community that by 1826 the school was forced to shut down, and the missionary effort that had received such enthusiastic support for the dec­ ade or so that the school was in operation was charged with being morally lax. Both school closures signaled the failure of a very particularly New England model of missionary culture, one that emerged in the aftermath of the

14  Introduction

eighteenth-​­century Great Awakening and that had very particular resonances in the second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century. All these educational ventures failed in terms of their original intentions: Sergeant’s boarding school, hardly more than a theory, quickly devolved into internecine squabbling; Dartmouth College, the result of Moor’s Charity School and Occom’s exertions to fund Indian education, served primarily white students from its earliest days, largely ignoring the Native populations it was meant to educate; the Foreign Mission School today exists as little more than a memorial plaque in a small Connecticut town that is itself barely more than a post office, cemetery, and historical society; and the site of the Brainerd School is now a parking lot. Nonetheless, each of these schools left substantial written materials pointing to prevailing notions of how well-​­intentioned white people should interact with Native peoples. Indeed, colonial and early national missionaries kept remarkable records of their attempts to convert and educate Native peoples, in the process defining the very paternalistic assumptions that led to the collapse of each of these schools. Even as white missionaries explained their ideological goals, Native Americans connected to these schools produced their own body of writing in the form of letters, journal entries, and religious confessions, using traditionally western forms to proclaim, among other things, a powerful commitment to their Native American communities. The writings of Native students reveal the complexity of acquiring and adapting to an Anglo-​­American education, with its insistence on rigid conformity to specific European cultural practices, not least among them the clear hierarchy of teacher and student. Such a hierarchical structure assured the continuing power of Anglo-​­American educators, especially since such teachers insisted on maintaining their relationships with Native Americans as eternally enmeshed in an unequal relationship—​ ­sometimes against all evidence of Native authority. But as the responses of Native American “pupils” often make clear, the role of students is infinitely adaptable, especially as Native Americans became teachers within the systems that had educated them. As the writings of Native educators and intellectuals like Mohegans Samson Occom and Joseph Johnson, Montauketts David and Jacob Fowler, and Cherokees John Ridge, Elias Boudinot, and Catharine and David Brown suggest, Native Americans were hardly the passive recipients of Anglo-​­American knowledge. The seeming paradox for Native people of simultaneously embracing a colonial system that threatened to eradicate them and celebrating their identity as Indians has its roots in the complex rituals of power and exchange that

Introduction  15

are at the base of many of the early cross-​­cultural experiments in education. These educational experiments had a clearly enunciated, official set of documents attached to them that were expressly about remaking Natives according to a set of New England missionary standards. If we read only these official publications, the outcome of these schools is a tragic failure for a variety of reasons. However, to read the words and actions of Native participants in conjunction with these documents is to uncover a very different set of practices and outcomes attached to these schools, and success and failure become remarkably elusive categories.

English Literacy: Technologies of Protestant Learning New England towns often had a stated commitment to the set of skills we today define as literacy but that was in earlier centuries generally divided between the more or less discrete tasks of reading and writing. As early as the 1640s, legal codes required towns to maintain a schoolteacher, and indenture contracts routinely included a clause on the obligation of masters to teach their servants alphabetic literacy skills. As Gloria Main has pointed out, though, in Peoples of a Spacious Land, while New England trumpeted a passionate commitment to learning, in practice, schooling was erratic from community to community, for white students as well as Native ones (140−143). The logistics of literacy instruction remained largely unchanged from the seventeenth to the early eighteenth century in schools throughout New England. Literacy, of course, is a modern concept; before the eighteenth century the practices of reading and writing were seen as separate tasks, and mastery of one had no relation to ability in the other. Essential to the early acquisition of each practice was repetition, memorization, and imitation, learning strategies that required little intellectual engagement or even basic comprehension. In the case of reading, which always came before writing, the primary texts were the hornbook, the primer, the catechism, and the Bible, reinforcing for all readers the relationship between Christian worship and literacy.14 Such texts were cheap and widely available; they could also be shared, and were therefore easily accessible to most students. The first level of instruction was memorizing the alphabet (both by sound and by appearance) and from there syllables (Ab, Ac, Ad) were committed to memory and dutifully sounded out. Next students could begin to sound out complete words, with the Bible as their primary text. The earliest form of reading was oral, with word recognition

16  Introduction

based on the syllabic pronunciation of words rather than whole-​­word recognition. Reading from a catechism involved a similar process of rote repetition before comprehension, the idea being that students needed to commit ideas to memory before they could be asked to engage with them. Or as James Axtell put it, “Repetition without understanding was held to precede true reverence for knowledge” (37). Before the mid-​­eighteenth century reading instruction was generally for children under seven years old, while writing instruction started for children around the ages of eight to twelve at the grammar-​­school level. This first level of instruction was connected to the home, to the domestic world, and specifically to a female-​­centered universe. Women would establish “dame schools” in which small children, both boys and girls (usually between the ages of two and seven), came into their homes for instruction in the morning or throughout the day. Lessons were modest and involved recitation and memorization as well as the recognition of letters, syllables, and words. For these young children religious education was not differentiated from literacy, and religious devotion was inextricably linked to the practice of reading. Typically (although by no means universally), only boys continued beyond the dame school to the next level of education, the grammar school. Such schools were intended to prepare the boys for higher study, and therefore required more advanced textbooks as well as other technologies of literacy, including pens, ink, paper, and copybooks. Such technologies were not easily mastered; quills required constant cutting and shaping, paper was expensive, and ink required mixing and adjusting, a potentially messy process. Furthermore, writing, unlike reading, required a flat surface on which to spread out one’s implements and have the room to produce an actual text. Tamara Plakins Thornton describes some of the pitfalls for young writers: The novice penman learned to cut a proper nib from a goose, raven, or crow quill with a penknife, no easy task. Poorly cut quills dried up quickly, carried the ink unevenly across the paper, or otherwise made execution of a proper script impossible, and even well-​­cut quills required constant sharpening. If the pen was not ready-​­made, often neither was the ink, forcing penmen to learn to mix ink from the proper ingredients in the right proportions. . . . ​Furthermore the execution of handwriting required no small degree of manual dexterity and skill. . . . ​ In addition to producing the proper letter shape and slope, students in the quill and ink era had to control the passage of ink onto the paper

Introduction  17

in order to execute hairline upward strokes (ascenders) and contrasting thick, ink-​­laden descenders. Some writing masters taught their pupils how to strike and flourish—​­that is, how to decorate their hands with elements ranging from simple curlicues to fanciful birds, dragons, and angels. And, of course, everything had to be done without spotting and smudging. (15) Another scholar ruefully acknowledges that “the typical schoolmaster’s day was spent as much recutting pupil’s quills as it was teaching. These problems may well have been a contributing factor in the dominance of reading over writing in the education of children, especially younger children” (Nigel Hall, 93). In grammar schools, as in dame schools, instruction took place largely through rote memorization or repetitive practice; skills from reading to mathematics involved repeating back lessons to the teacher or copying out phrases and letters.15 In such schools students started the study of Latin grammar as well as writing, arithmetic, history, geography, and rhetoric.16 This kind of education could be supplemented by individualized tutoring of promising students by the local minister or in a more formal school setting if there were enough such boys in any given community.17 Before the mid-​­to late eighteenth century only the most promising boys were groomed for the final level of instruction, the college or seminary, in which boys left home for extended periods to live together in dormitories on school grounds away from their families. Promising young boys with a commitment to religion or a professional calling were vetted for entry into such institutions, often through a letter of introduction from their minister. The ages of such boys ranged from as young as ten (rarely), to the more common fifteen or sixteen, to the occasional thirty. Such schools were primarily for ministers, and the focus was on language instruction in Greek, Hebrew, Latin, logic, and of course religion.18 A variety of changes occurring in the eighteenth century dramatically increased literacy rates in America as well as in Europe more generally. As Eve Tavor Bannet has noted, the rise of the post office made transatlantic communication cheaper and far more reliable, and Konstantin Dierks documents the increasing accessibility of the technologies of literacy, from ink to paper and writing manuals. The result was an exponentially increased number of people willing to learn to write letters. Along with a more general expansion of educational opportunity throughout the eighteenth century, female literacy rates increased dramatically.19 Through much of the eighteenth century,

18  Introduction

schools continued to adhere to centuries-​­old traditions through which the paired skills of reading and writing were conveyed from generation to generation. However, as access to education widened across the colonies through the eighteenth century, and as literacy skills became more common up and down the socioeconomic scale and young women were increasingly included beyond the first level of education, schooling changed significantly. By the mid-​­eighteenth century the distinction between dame schools and grammar, or common, schools was no longer self-​­evident, and schooling practices expanded and shifted. Young women instructed their charges in writing, mathematics, and geography, while male teachers at supposed grammar schools on occasion found themselves listening to children reciting their alphabets. We see, for example, Nahum Jones’s recollections of his early education, in which he writes of the year he was ten years old: 1783 Feb. 3. We have no school in our school district this winter; this day I go to the Rev. Mr Eben’r Sparhawk’s to study under his tuition—​­My Studies to be Reading, Spelling, Writing, Punctuation, and English Grammar. [March] On the 2d of this month, I leave Mr Sparhawk’s + return home,+ buckle down to hard labor. The time that I have been at Mr Sparhawk’s is four weeks; during this term I have attended to the studies of reading, spelling, writing, and Dilworth’s spelling book in which I learnt the catalogue of words alike in sound but different in spelling & signification; the rules for division of syllables; stops and marks; the grammar as far as the verb—​­During the first two weeks Silas Sawyer was a fellow student with me. Aug 10. This summer Miss Sally Hon, daughter of Mr Sylvanus Hon of Petersham, a young lady of sixteen, kept school in the school house near Mr Drury’s.—​­I attended the school two or three weeks, + studies arithmetic for the first time.—​­I went as far as reduction. I performed simple addition, simple subtraction, simple multiplication, simple division, addition of money and subtraction of money + reduction of money.—​ ­According to the direction of my young though judicious Tutoress I omitted Addition of weights and measures such as troy weight, long measure +tc. By ommitting the Weights and Measures, till after I had performed Simple Division, I made rapid progress.20

Introduction  19

While these excerpts represent just a small sample of the entries in this diary, Jones’s record indicates how erratic schooling could be in smaller communities, as well as the range of skills teachers (and here at least one of the teachers was a young woman) were expected to impart to their students. Furthermore, Jones’s schooling ranged from individual work with the local minister to classroom work with a teacher as each was available to him rather than as a progression of skills and ability. In rural communities schoolchildren’s attendance was often based on the agricultural cycle and the financial and materials needs of their parents. Furthermore, the proximity of younger schoolteachers, who generally boarded with community members, moving from household to household and staying with each for a period of a few days or a few weeks, often bred discontent. Such schoolteachers were dependent on local families for food, wood, lodging, and the maintenance of their personal possessions (e.g., darning, sewing, washing) in communities where the time and money for these needs were often in short supply. Such arrangements easily alienated the community; once this alienation occurred, the situation could collapse quickly. Stephen Bemis, a young teacher in the Anglo-​­American community of Cornish in New Hampshire, writes of his woes in the winter of 1795–​­96: I’m tired of the pedagogic life, among an immoral, irreligious, dissipated people—​­stowed into a house, among a dozen noisy children, without government or good nature—​­3 or 4 women lye a bed till 7 ½ & then get up, & run after each other till after 9, before breakfast can be ready—​­at length, escaping from this bedlam, I set out for school—​­A house—​ ­cold—​­shuttered—​­poor wood—​­noisy, dirty, saucy, children—​­great girls, without modesty or manners!!—​­—​­Here I labor—​­but, alas! ”I fight as one that beateth the air!” What does it avail to confine the attention of children to their books, a few hours at school, who seldom see a book used at home?—​­What does it avail, to endeavor to keep up government & regulations in schools, when there is no government nor regulation in families?—​­What does it avail, to endeavor to instill into youth, at school, the principles of Morality, Religion, decency, or good manners, while thay are bred up in, & accustomed to, all manner of vice, immorality, irreligion, dissipations, un [? illegible] & obsenity?21 Certainly the frustrations that he expresses about living in other peoples’ homes, the divide between his own learning and the lack of interest or ability

20  Introduction

of his hosting community, and the general hopelessness of instilling a desire for learning where little seemed evident were widespread among schoolteachers throughout New England. However futile they may have felt their work to be, these teachers spread literacy to such an extent that by the beginning of the nineteenth century the ability to read and write was more or less a given of middle-​­class American life.22 The nineteenth century saw a growing interest in mass teaching and the broad expansion of education. Even so, as Gerald Moran and Maris Vinovskis note, even as late as 1840 more than 90 percent of students enrolled in any schools at all were in primary or common schools. For the vast majority of students living outside urban areas, such schools had only a single classroom for children of all ages and abilities. One teacher was responsible for forty to sixty students at a time, often with extremely high absenteeism rates. Moran and Vinovskis further detail that “even as late as the 1830s, Theodore Dwight, visiting a Connecticut school, could describe the classroom as a scene of confusion,” with “the teacher . . . ​mending pens for one class, which was sitting idle; hearing another spell; calling a covey of small boys to be quiet, who had nothing to do but make mischief; watching a big rogue who had been placed standing on a bench in the middle of the room for punishment; and, to many little ones, passionately answering questions of ‘may I go out?’ ‘May I go home?’ ‘Shan’t Johnny be still?’ ‘May I drink?’ ” (296). This chaos was exacerbated by the fact that well into the nineteenth century, students usually did not use a common reader but instead used whatever was available (Kaestle, 17), meaning that it was nearly impossible for a teacher to design unified lessons for large groups of students.23 While community schools with their variety of instruction and ability were generally the final stage of literacy training for most individuals, after 1750 schooling options throughout the colonies expanded significantly.24 For example, the eighteenth century saw a rise in the numbers of established boarding schools, often for girls but also in situations through which charity students of various races and backgrounds left their families to further their education. In the past such schooling was only for boys and occurred at the highest level (college or seminary) or in individual situations where promising students boarded with a minister and his family (much as Occom did). By the late eighteenth century, however, seminaries or academies for girls became a regular feature of elite girls’ education, while charity schools crossed racial and gender boundaries.25 Increasingly, educational systems in the early nineteenth century that

Introduction  21

emphasized a more controlled, structured model of educational practice were taking hold. In particular, Joseph Lancaster, a British educational theorist, implemented a model of education through which masses of poor, urban students could be educated at little cost. His system, one that was embraced by reformers of all stripes, emphasized a rote process through which literacy was regularized, systematized, and regimented. In his model every student remained occupied at all times, and students were immersed in a militaristic, ordered world of bells, precise commands, and specific, discrete tasks that would accumulate to produce a cadre of readers and writers perfectly suited to mimic the sights and sounds of literacy. This structured universe, he claimed, could not only produce a literate citizenry, but it could also inculcate middle-​­class, Protestant American values of order, cohesion, and obedience in an increasingly heterogeneous population.

Native Literacies For Native peoples mastery of alphabetic literacy required an engagement with the educational establishments shaped and funded by English missionaries, and such engagement was a choice made by Native Americans as a means of forwarding their own goals. Native peoples’ engagement with literacy was mediated through the role of missionary societies and individual missionaries as “literacy sponsors,” a term coined by Deborah Brandt to encompass the various people and institutions that control the “economic, political, intellectual, spiritual” resource that is literacy.26 Or, in her words, “sponsors . . . ​are any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, and model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—​­and gain advantage by it in some way” (19). Brandt reminds us that even as “people throughout history have acquired literacy pragmatically under the banner of others’ causes” (20), “sponsors are a tangible reminder that literacy learning throughout history has always required permission, sanction, assistance, coercion, or, at minimum, contact with existing trade routes” (19). Brandt’s work emphasizes the human dimensions of sponsorship, or the powerful impact a single individual or institution can have on the literacy practices of individuals and communities. But even before embracing this English version of literacy, it is useful to remember that the variety of Native literacies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was vast—​­certainly expanding well beyond the officially sanctioned

22  Introduction

alphabetic religiously oriented set of practices offered to Native communities by missionaries. Some Native men and women maintained networks of family correspondence through their letter writing—​­clear markers of alphabetic literacy by even the narrowest definition. Some, like Samson Occom and Joseph Johnson, attained much higher levels of literacy, crafting their words in publications and other forms of writing to affect public opinion. Nineteenth-​ ­century Cherokee writers like Elias Boudinot and others not only established a print form of Cherokee but also produced a newspaper in both English and Cherokee—​­surely through this bilingual literary production meeting the highest standard of literacy. However, book-​­history scholars like Germaine Warkentin and Elizabeth Boone have argued that our definitions of text, print, and literacy are inadequate in dealing with Native American graphic expression.27 Definitions of literacy (both modern and colonial) have masked the intersecting worlds of Native orality, writing, and print. Indeed, scholar Matt Cohen recently argued that the very term literacy is overly constraining, and he prefers to think of communication networks through which “nontextual media, from gestures to beadwork to sound” can further our understanding of the ways messaging systems convey meaning and value (4, 13). Participating in long-​­standing indigenous traditions that included weaving and household management, carving, bodily tattooing, painting, and wampum trading, men and women marked their allegiances to kin and to community as well as their complex interactions with Anglo-​­American culture in multiple ways. Through sign systems built into basketry, weaponry, clothing design, wampum belts, and other modes, men and women actively marked their dissent, assent, and, most important, their sense of their place in the world as they defined it. In the process they affirmed the place of alternative forms of self-​­expression in their lives—​­even as those forms of expression were largely illegible to a colonial social order increasingly defined by alphabetic literacy. Once Western literacy practices had taken hold in Native communities, Native peoples continued to mark their bodies and their spaces within alternative literacy systems. For example, several documents from the seventeenth and even the eighteenth century are marked by Native women and men using pictographs, which, as scholar Heidi Bohaker has recently shown, had a variety of functions, only some of which neatly correlate with Western traditions of signatures.28 Similarly, weaving served, as scholars have pointed out, as a means to communicate through distinctive patterning on matters of political and cultural importance. Through much of the eighteenth and even into the nineteenth century Native men and women throughout New England

Introduction  23

peddled their baskets and other wares to the English. Yet these baskets served as more than a source of income through much of this period; the patterning and weaving styles of this traditionally female skill marked out family connections and tribal allegiances.29 In the broadest sense the literacy missionaries brought with them was not new to the Algonquian peoples of the eastern seaboard; only the specific forms and practices of alphabetic literacy were new. More specifically, it was the rituals through which Anglo-​­Americans transmitted those practices from generation to generation that proved the greatest challenge to Native peoples.30 Clearly, however, mastering alphabetic literacy brought with it benefits in the colonial and early national world, and Natives were keenly aware of these. As modern readers, we must navigate among contending meanings, values, and even occasionally differing versions of documents. As we come to understand the forces at play, we can better see the recurring emphasis throughout such documents on the strength and value of Native community and the varied uses of literacy in proclaiming that identity.

New England Literacy Practices and Indian Education Despite the rich variety of Native graphic expression, New England’s missionary societies had an explicit commitment to a particularly European form of education based on a centuries-​­old set of practices begun in England and developed in New England in the earliest settlements. By the 1750s literacy instruction was increasingly part of many New England Native communities, albeit in a limited form. For Natives interested in acquiring English literacy the options were largely limited to missionary-​­sponsored teachers within Native communities or indentured servitude through which masters were contractually obligated to see to their servants’ education. Certainly by the eighteenth-​ ­century, instruction in reading and writing was a standard feature of indenture contracts, although scholars have noted that such teaching was only irregularly implemented in practice. By the time John Sergeant outlined his plan for an Indian boarding school in 1743 or Eleazar Wheelock opened his boarding school in 1754, literacy training for boys and girls in certain Native communities in New England would have been available at least in some limited sense for about a hundred years. Scholars like Kathleen Bragdon and Lisa Brooks have effectively shown the networks of English and Massachusett-​­language literacy that were in place in such Native communities.31 Many (though not all)

24  Introduction

of the Algonquian students attending eighteenth-​­century boarding schools like Wheelock’s would have had some access to literacy before arriving, even if they had not yet fully acquired the two interrelated skills of reading and writing. Indeed, Wheelock got his earliest students from missionaries like John Brainerd, who were themselves involved in establishing and maintaining schools in Native communities. Boarding schools were thus part of a larger missionary educational venture that included a variety of educational settings. Just as in English communities, when possible the earliest literacy training—​­reading—​­was handled by women in the home. For example, when in 1767 Occom writes home to his wife from London, he reminds her to “Instruct Your Girls as well as you can.”32 Sending their recalcitrant son Aaron to Wheelock’s school seems to have been so that he could receive the discipline his parents felt he needed rather than for the learning he would receive; he was already a fluent reader and writer of English before his arrival there. In the Occom family both the girls and the boys were able to read and write, and, after Aaron’s more or less disastrous experience at Wheelock’s school and Occom’s falling-​­out with his old mentor, none of the other Occom sons or daughters ever attended Moor’s Charity School. In many Native communities the earliest level of literacy training took place in a more formalized classroom setting, as it was by no means a given that parents, whether Christian or not, had the means to pass along literacy skills to their children. Sometimes these classrooms involved female teachers functionally holding “dame schools” in a schoolroom setting, while others might involve male teachers spending a good deal of time on basic literacy instruction rather than the more advanced skills missionary societies wanted to see developed. Often such schools were sponsored by missionary organizations, which at times led to conflict between missionary societies and individual Native communities.33 If a Native community was identified (either through a request directly from Natives or through a passing minister) as “ready” for Christianity, a minister was sent by the funding agency to investigate. Usually this visiting minister was from the nearest white community and was looking to pick up some extra money by preaching periodically to a Native congregation. When this ministerial relationship was established, the minister-​­missionary petitioned the board for a schoolteacher. Typically one schoolteacher was paid to tend to the schooling of the entire community, usually anywhere from twenty to fifty students. While Native schoolteachers were often desirable to communities, they were not necessarily appealing to funding agencies since such teachers were

Introduction  25

thought to be less well trained. In 1757, for example, the minister Joseph Fish informed the commissioner of the SPG about his frustrations in hiring a schoolteacher for the Stonington Pequots. He complains, “As they are naturally a very jealous people & hard to please, I thought it might have a happy influence on the design to let ym suit yms with a Person. Accordingly gave ym liberty to propose One.” He continues: “They generally inclined to have a school mistress, and an Indian; Urging that their children were chiefly Girls. I knew not whether this wd be agreable to Commissioners, however, allow’d them to make trial. Several were propos’d, but they could not unite in any, nor did I think that either of ym were equal to ye business. Nor had they any better success in their attempts for an Indian Man: several again were proposed, but either objected against, or unqualified, or both.” Eventually, Fish proposes hiring a white woman who is willing to do the work for a paltry 10 pounds annually, saying of her, “She is a Person of Piety, Prudence, and every accomplishment for ye Business: having a wonderful Faculty to teach little Children; and tho’ an English Woman, the Indns woud Submit, in case a suitable Indn don’t present.”34 The tensions here are manifold among the various members of the tribe who cannot agree on a single candidate, the missionary and his sense of who is or is not qualified, and the uncertainty of the commitment of the funding agency, which might in the end prove reluctant to fund what has turned into a dame school with mainly girls for students—​­hardly the missionary ideal of finding promising young boys in communities to nurture through the educational system. Native teachers affiliated with Wheelock’s boarding school taught at several local schools, including, of course, Samson Occom who taught the Montaukett Indians of Long Island in the 1750s; Ben Uncas at Mohegan; Samuel Ashbow, Samson Wauby, Jacob Fowler, and Abraham Simon, who taught the Pequots at Groton in the 1760s and 1770s; and Joseph Johnson among the Tunxis at Farmington in the 1770s. These men had varying levels of training at Wheelock’s school, but all of them found themselves underpaid and overworked, often barely scraping by on their teacher’s pay even as they performed a variety of duties for their communities. When such schools succeeded, as we see in Joseph Johnson’s diary of 1771–​ ­73,35 they complemented the needs of the community, with the schoolmaster serving as adviser, scribe, and community advocate. Samson Occom describes his own role among the Montauketts, where he served as a schoolteacher for a decade before being ordained as a minister: “I kept school . . . ​and Caried on the Religious Meetings . . . ​and attended the Sick and their Funerals, and did what Writings they wanted, and often Sat as a Judge to reconcile and Deside

26  Introduction

their Matters between them, and had visitors of Indians from all Quarters; and, as our Custom is, we freely Entertain all Visiters.”36 Similarly, Joseph Johnson reports transcribing books, holding singing schools and worship sessions, and even mediating disputes among the Tunxis people of Farmington, for whom he served as schoolteacher. Like Occom and Johnson, Timothy Woodbridge, the white schoolmaster of the Stockbridge Native community from 1739 until his death in 1774, served as an advocate for his students and their parents, writing legal petitions as well as personal letters for them and providing as many opportunities for their success as he could at a difficult time for the Native population of Stockbridge. Even if it could offer prestige within a Native community, however, schoolteaching was a woefully underpaid profession. Taking in white students provided additional income, and most schoolteachers embraced this practice. Furthermore, gathering their own wood as well as farming, hunting, and fishing for food meant that schoolteachers often had to be away from the classroom more than anyone liked. We see repeatedly in the records that schoolteachers were fired for not attending to their Native students: even teachers with otherwise excellent reputations and close ties to the community were occasionally asked to leave. And although certain pedagogical and logistical problems transcended race, schools in Native communities remained even more tenuous than those in Anglo-​­American towns because of the intervention of missionary societies, which occasionally acted in ways that displeased Native communities and reinforced the notion that literacy was an unwelcome intrusion from outside. Beyond the financial and logistical troubles, however, there were long-​ ­standing ideological tensions specific to educating Natives that involved either established schools in their communities or, increasingly, turning to boarding schools like Sergeant’s and Wheelock’s. While boarding schools were envisioned as part of a broader network of schools that included community schools, their philosophical basis in transforming Native students by isolating them from their home communities set up obvious tensions. The question of how best to achieve Native literacy was further complicated by the increasing interest in converting or conquering the Iroquois peoples through much of the eighteenth century, using the Algonquian people of New England to effect this arrangement. Charity schools were touted as a money-​­saving alternative to warfare, yet such schools as often as not actually widened the breach between the Iroquois and the English by raising suspicions among the Iroquois that their children were being mistreated.

Introduction  27

Whether schools reached out to local populations or asked students to travel long distances to board at the school, the introduction to literacy and its practices still emphasized rote learning over comprehension. In fact, eighteenth-​­century educational narratives can leave the impression that it is as much the appearance of learning that matters as the actual set of practices mastered. Titus Smith, a Wheelock missionary, writes of an open-​­air school among the Mohawks: “I am much pleased to see 8, 10, or 12, and sometimes more Scholars sitting round their Bark Table, some Reading, some Writing, and others a Studying; and all engaged, to appearance, with as much Seriousness and Attention as you will see in almost any worshipping Assembly.” This description is accompanied by a footnote explaining the rather unorthodox practice of having novice students begin writing as soon as they can spell out their letters.37 This passage so pleased Wheelock that he reprinted it in the next two narratives (1766 and 1767), with its bucolic imagery and connection between religion and literacy.38 Most importantly, with its suggestion that through this practice students have an accelerated access to literacy, this letter emphasizes the extraordinary success of Wheelock’s implementation of his “Grand Design.” In practice, however, writing instruction for students not fluent in English (and those Mohawk students were most likely not proficient English speakers) was merely a rote set of activities students could perform without access to a broader-​­frame meaning or understanding that a shared language would ensure. In 1773 Wheelock writes matter-​­of-​­factly that Huron students “soon began to read and write English (which an Indian may do before he can discourse in that Tongue).”39 One Wheelock missionary, David Avery, writes ruefully from an Iroquois community in 1768 that “some of the Children learn pretty well, & some are dull enough—​­It hurts me very much that they can’t understand what they read,” acknowledging that this form of “reading” doesn’t accomplish what he had hoped from his young charges.40 Nahum Jones, a white eighteenth-​­century schoolteacher describes a similar situation teaching children of Dutch settlers in upstate New York in English: “I have had 45 different scholars, between 20 & 30 constantly.—​­All Low Dutch, & speak but very little English, none in their families.—​­This is an obstruction to English Learning.—​­However many of them make rapid progress in reading + spelling.—​­But not being used to converse in English, it makes it difficult for them to understand what they read. . . . ​Some of them were considerably forward in reading & spelling.—​­Some tolerable in writing.—​­Mostly small children.”41 For Jones and others, students could acquire reading and writing skills even

28  Introduction

if they had no understanding of the language in which they were ostensibly communicating. In this limited sense literacy is a set of rote actions with no correlation to reason, self-​­expression, or understanding. While higher-​­level skills were thought to follow from repetition, in practice schoolteachers like Jones and Avery often recognized the futility of rote learning when language and translation were an issue. By the time of the missionary ventures of the nineteenth-​­century’s second Great Awakening, the practices embraced by the ABCFM for their Cherokee students were a mix of the old and the new. While the Brainerd School embraced the innovative Lancaster method of mass education, it also established missionary relations with the community based on missionaries’ absolute certainty that their Christian beliefs made them better qualified to raise Indian children than the children’s own parents. The main school established by the ABCFM for the Cherokees was a boarding school in what is now Tennessee, although as the mission expanded, smaller day schools opened throughout the Cherokee Nation after 1825. These schools were primarily run by white missionaries, although each of them at various points included Cherokee teachers and missionaries. The Foreign Mission School in Connecticut included students from around the world, and while its methods were fairly traditional, its goals for its students were as ambitious as Wheelock’s had initially been. The Cornwall School imagined itself as an elite school through which its students could acquire an education to rival that of any college or seminary in the country. That the bulk of its students had only the most rudimentary language skills did not seem to pose a problem for these missionary idealists. Despite the grandiose claims of the various boarding schools, none of them were able to sustain good relations for more than a few years with the various tribes they claimed to serve, and missionaries became increasingly frustrated with their Indian pupils. Each of these ventures reveal the gap between what Natives wanted from such ventures and what missionaries expected of their students. And as Native peoples marked their place by quite literally writing themselves into the record of Indian education, they quietly altered the ways in which the success or failure of missions was determined. Throughout this study I have focused on boarding schools grounded in an explicit written theoretical or pedagogical set of principles, countered by letters or other documents written by the various participants of such schools. The texts that form the basis for this study are documents at once implicated in a deep colonial history of exploitation and denial, even as they mark an

Introduction  29

ongoing Native presence. Even the rich archive of Eleazar Wheelock’s Charity School, perhaps the single most significant collection of letters by and about Native students and teachers in the eighteenth century, must be approached with caution; English-​­language literacy, after all, was part and parcel of colonial attempts to dominate Native space, and writing by Native Americans has to be understood very much within the context in which it was produced. The archive at Dartmouth College, extraordinary as it is, primarily contains the records preserved and maintained by Eleazar Wheelock, which means the letters to him are carefully crafted by Native students to manage his desires and expectations. On the other hand, the collection of the Connecticut Historical Society, with its unclear provenance, is dominated by what seem to have been Samson Occom’s own private records. Together these two archives (along with several others) reveal a much fuller picture of Moor’s Charity School than either one alone. We can read through and around these documents to recover a world through which writing, literacy, and print give meaning to a most insistently Native set of values operating very much in relation to a white missionary world view. The chapters that follow will explore some of the missionary conversations surrounding Native education and literacy. Focusing primarily on boarding schools that produced written ideological or pedagogical tracts related to Native education, each chapter puts into conversation a number of contending texts surrounding such school ventures. The first chapter focuses on the intersecting rhetorics of class and race in the two principal boarding schools of the eighteenth century: the Stockbridge Boarding School and Moor’s Charity School. John Sergeant’s 1743 boarding school plan in Stockbridge, Massachusetts; Samuel Hopkins’s Historical Memoirs; and Eleazar Wheelock’s various narratives of Moor’s Charity School usefully balance each other as they construct different versions of the Readerly Indian for English benefactors and others interested in the abstractions of Indian education. This chapter focuses not only on the official fund-​­raising narratives for these schools but also on the counternarratives of these institutions, or the alternate stories that emerge from a very different set of documents attached to each school. These counternarratives point to the figure of the Writerly Indian, although still at a distance. The next chapter focuses on Joseph Johnson, whose life both embodies and transcends the trope of the Writerly figure. Joseph Johnson, a young Mohegan student at Wheelock’s boarding school and later a community advocate for the Brothertown settlement, used writing both to establish himself as an

30  Introduction

individual and to form the kind of community he wanted around him. While Wheelock’s school was available only to a select group of students, its impact was far-​­reaching as it trained a cadre of teachers for schools throughout New England’s Native communities. Looking at handwriting exercises, language acquisition, and the daily structure of learning, I focus in this chapter on the values and practices that informed Wheelock’s school as well as the day schools his boarding school eventually affected. Those involved in Wheelock’s school struggled with the contradictions built into the missionary model that Wheelock advocated, especially young Joseph Johnson who later was a teacher among the Oneidas as well as in the Tunxis community of Farmington. As both a student and a teacher in mission schools, young Johnson provides an excellent sense of what such schools could provide for some—​­not least because he was a fluent writer and avid diarist, and one of the only Wheelock students other than Occom to produce more writing after his departure from Wheelock’s school than before. The final chapters move the book forward in time by focusing on a set of schools established by a nineteenth-​­century New England missionary society, the ABCFM, as part of a global evangelicalism. Two schools in particular, the Brainerd School in Tennessee and the Foreign Mission School in Connecticut, reached out to Cherokee students, although each school structured its educational practices very differently. Chapter 3 explores the nostalgia for earlier New England missionaries surrounding Cherokee missionary educational practices at the Brainerd Mission, further complicating the tropes of the Readerly and Writerly Indian. Embracing an ideology of Puritan suffering, when the ABCFM turned its attention to the Cherokees, it named the mission station on Cherokee land in Tennessee for the eighteenth-​­century missionary David Brainerd, celebrating his early death, the perceived heroism of that death, and the total sacrifice that his life among the Delaware Indians represented. The ABCFM published tracts following the Brainerd model of personal sacrifice, focusing on the writing of “tragic” Native figures like Catharine Brown and Lydia Carter (both of whom died at very young ages). Centering such published memoirs around Native converts’ fervently Christian letters, Native writing in these texts is carefully contextualized through life stories shaped by Brainerd missionaries to celebrate failure as success and death over life. While celebrating a model of familial love and community, Brainerd paradoxically employed the Lancastrian system, a teaching model in which learning occurs in a factory-​­like procession of accumulated rote motions. Even so, a series of unpublished letters written by Cherokee children and preserved by

Introduction  31

their young teacher from New England reveal that despite (or through) the anonymity of the Lancastrian model, Native students of the Brainerd Mission negotiated a female-​­centered rhetoric of family love and obligation by imagining a Christian New England spiritual “home” for Cherokees even as they emphatically committed themselves to their own homeland in the South. The fourth chapter focuses on David Brown, a Cherokee student of both the Brainerd School in the Cherokee Nation and later the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut. Through this young man the chapter juxtaposes the different approaches of the two allied ABCFM schools that he attended: one that sent New England missionaries among the Cherokees and the other that sent Cherokees (among other “heathen” students) to New En­ gland. The Foreign Mission School in Connecticut brought Cherokee students to the North, instructing them in the broadly imagined educational world in which the all-​­male student body was groomed for missionary perfection. Students from around the world shared what was for many of them the jarring experience of New England propriety and educational rigidity. This school provided a sort of training ground for Cherokee students at an intensely political moment for their people. While David Brown is often obscured by his more famous Cherokee fellow students Elias Boudinot and John Ridge as well as his sister Catharine Brown, who was the subject of her own missionary memoir, in his own day he was central to a group of young Native intellectuals emerging from the Foreign Mission School. Upon his return to the Cherokee Nation, David Brown and his fellow-​­convert John Arch, both of whom have largely been forgotten in the series of political events leading up to the Trail of Tears, shaped and defined Native literacy in ways that have rarely been explored. I conclude by exploring the relationship between alphabetic letters, translation, and personal letters, which together reveal the paradox of the mission school with its simultaneous challenge to Native culture and its transgressive potential to maintain it. Samson Occom describes his pedagogical practices in creating letter-​­chips for his young students to have a tactile sense of the alphabet; much later the Lancaster method demanded that students also acquire an intensely physical sense of the shape and form of English letters without the complicated mediation of the unwieldy pen. This engagement with English letters is further complicated by the syllabary of the Cherokee inventor Sequoyah, who inverted and altered these letters to fashion his own version of written Cherokee language. David Brown’s participation, along with his fellow translator John Arch, in the dissemination of Cherokee-​­language texts

32  Introduction

through Sequoyah’s syllabary as well as his fierce commitment to Christianity reinforce the notion that the effect of mission schools reached well beyond the Readerly and Writerly tropes through which missionaries shaped their own meaning. The engagement with English alphabetical letters is further complicated by the production of epistolary letters in English written by Native graduates of the various schools. Such letters to and from married couples, brothers and sisters, father and sons, teachers and students reveal intimate relationships that belie and complicate the abstraction of missionary documents. While schools were founded for specific political and religious ends, each school produced a cohort of students documenting and celebrating autonomous relationships and communities of desire and affiliation that are best revealed in epistolary exchanges. Much to their own surprise, and whatever their own goals may have been, missionaries thus found themselves unwitting partners in the preservation and survival of Indian communities.

Chapter 1

Narratives and Counternarratives: Producing Readerly Indians in Eighteenth-​­Century New England

Eleazar Wheelock’s account books for Moor’s Charity School in the 1760s are a welter of detail. From buttons (small and large, horn, metal, and wood) to buckles (knee and shoe), pins, needles, combs (ivory and horn), sealing wax, razors, “barber’s scissors,” tea, handkerchiefs, shoes, cider, beans, butter, eggs, molasses, wheat, rye, and Indian corn, Wheelock carefully tallies in his daybook the exchanges that made the school possible. Of course, there were the essentials for any educational establishment: paper, goose quills, ink pots, ink powder, penknives, candles, and books. These books, sometimes carefully listed, more often simply referred to as “box of books,” included Virgil, Cicero, Erasmus, “Edwards on free will,” Baxter’s Saints, spellers, singing books, Latin grammars, Greek grammars, books on navigation and geography, dictionaries, and Bibles of all sorts: small Bibles, family Bibles, testaments, Greek testaments, Hebrew Bibles, even a Scottish Bible. More exceptionally, Wheelock recorded certain indulgences: nutmeg, allspice, pepper, coffee, sugar, chocolate, and even a microscope from London (with a book on how to use it). There were services exchanged by neighbors, such as the use of horses; the doctoring of individuals; and the mending of shoes, saddles, clothing, fences, and even buildings. Cows, horses, hogs, and oxen were borrowed, exchanged, purchased, and sold. A delightful variety of cloth works its way through the account books, from wool, linen, broadcloth, calico, and serge to lawn, ribbon, tammy, and gimp. There are items of Irish and German linen, German serge, and even Barcelona handkerchiefs. We catch sight of checked flannel, striped linen, checked linen, scarlet and green cloth, brown

34  Chapter 1

silk, striped druggett, blue broadcloth, black alamode, and black shalloon. The female school dutifully produces a variety of clothing from the yards and yards of material: breeches, trousers, stockings, hose, waistcoats, jackets, coats, shirts, gowns, shifts, aprons, caps, hats, and handkerchiefs. Throughout is the ever elusive “sundries,” items so ordinary they did not warrant their own listing. Were Indian baskets, common in households throughout New England in this period, included under this label? Perhaps items like brooms or carved wooden utensils were designated under this heading, items essential to Indian livelihood throughout the period yet so inconsequential to Wheelock that they would not have merited a distinct itemization. Only once in his accounts is there an entry for “1 doz brooms” purchased with cash from “William Sobuck Indian,”1 a sharp reminder that these ledger books are for reinforcing the ways Indians become Englishmen, not the ways in which Englishmen absorb Indian goods and services. Sometimes we glimpse individuals: Samuel Kirkland favored Holland shirts, while Joseph Johnson (Mohegan) had a pair of checked trousers. Samson Occom (Mohegan), like several of the other Wheelock missionaries, had leather breeches. David Fowler (Montaukett) had a bearskin coat; he also had a lock and key, probably to protect his books, which in 1762 included a Latin grammar, a dictionary, and a Greek testament. Hezekiah Calvin (Delaware), too, had a bearskin coat, as well as a serge coat, ratteen jacket, tapping shoes, and eventually a silver watch. Jacob Woolley (Delaware) had deerskin breeches and an oznabrigs shirt as well as mittens and yarn stockings. The girls generally wore clothes made primarily from coarse linen, cotton, worsted, and camblet, although Sarah Wyoggs (Mohegan) did have a silk handkerchief and Hannah Garrett (Pequot/Narragansett) had a pair of gloves. The girls shared an ivory comb, purchased February 12, 1767, and no doubt kept at David Huntington’s home, which is where most of them boarded, although Miriam Storrs (Delaware) boarded with Mrs. West in 1767 and 1768.2 Wheelock was convinced of the urgency of transforming the Indian students attending his school from “creatures of the forest” to Englishmen fully outfitted in shoes with buckles, stockings, breeches, shirts, waistcoats, and jackets, and, most important, able to display their knowledge by reading books and transmitting that knowledge through journals and letters. Such Indian gentlemen, in Wheelock’s imagined world, were accompanied by docile Indian wives fully capable of all the English-​­style domestic practices of sewing, weaving, cooking, and tending house for their more erudite husbands. In Wheelock’s view indigenous language and expression was for “wild” Indians,

Narratives and Counternarratives  35

Figure 2. Account book for Moor’s Charity School. Courtesy of the Rauner Special Collections, Dartmouth College.

while English was for the sophisticated metropole, typically the colonial gentleman or the English well-​­wisher who could already take as an indisputable fact the value and importance of written language. Wheelock was convinced he could produce Indian metropoles, figures who would reveal their mastery of English manners by fully engaging the social, cultural, and political value of literacy and its practices. Native comprehension, Wheelock decided, would be transformed from naked/Native orality to civil literacy. Wheelock was confident that if taught to read and write, his students would dutifully repeat back what he had taught them, forming a cadre of Readerly Indians rather than active, self-​­directed Writerly Indians. That his Indian pupils might have their own plans does not seem to have entered his mind. The materiality of Wheelock’s world view—​­the mass of objects accumulated, exchanged, broken, used, and fixed—​­is a reminder that whatever the ideals surrounding missionary education, charity, and benevolence in the eighteenth century were, the fact of that system had very concrete effects on communities, individuals, and even nations. Indian education is the nexus through which social, political, and cultural differences were played out among Native groups, between colonial and indigenous peoples, and between competing colonial figures invested in the idea of Native literacy in the colonial and early national period. However abstractly these schools were presented in the official narratives celebrating their existence, people lived material lives in spaces defined by the objects around them. And under often intensely difficult

36  Chapter 1

conditions Native Americans sustained themselves as people with their own history and culture while accepting the material artifacts of English life. The various conversations around the Stockbridge School and Wheelock’s Charity School—​­both the official narratives attached to these ventures as well as the counternarratives in letters and other documents that challenge the official version of these charitable organizations—​­work in tandem to construct a rhetorical situation through which Indians themselves, whether they were wearing checked trousers or bearskin coats, participate only tangentially in a missionary conversation that is purportedly all about them. While the rhetoric of charity had a powerful effect in creating a transatlantic community of British citizens, as one scholar has recently argued, it did little to actually convert Indians through much of the eighteenth century (Stevens, 3). It was the political concern over the threat posed by the Iroquois nations and their French allies that galvanized much of the capital for the boarding-​ ­school ventures of the mid-​­eighteenth century, and two schools in particular, one in Massachusetts initiated by John Sergeant and one in Connecticut run by Eleazar Wheelock, were some of the most important missionary ventures of the period. Both in terms of their impact on potential Indian converts and as rhetorical engines of financial accumulation, the Stockbridge school and Wheelock’s school each rise and fall around the ethical and logistical problems of collecting money from distant donors who had little sense of the practicalities of missionizing Native peoples. And while the Stockbridge school has almost disappeared from the historical record, Wheelock’s school has received a significant amount of scholarly attention. Yet in its heyday the Stockbridge school rivaled Wheelock’s for numbers and potential; in 1751 around sixty Native students (mostly Mohawks, Oneidas, and Tuscaroras, as well as some Stockbridge Indians) were said to be enrolled, while Wheelock’s school enrolled roughly 65 Native students in its entire sixteen years in Connecticut. Even in 1753 and 1754, after it had essentially collapsed (quite literally, since the school building had burned down in February 1753 and most of the Indians—​­both Stockbridge and Iroquois—​­had left in disgust), Jonathan Edwards still held out the hope that Stockbridge’s boarding school could be a central space through which Indian and English diplomacy won out over warfare, with the school as the centerpiece of all that English culture could offer its Indian allies. Indeed, years after he had himself closed down the boarding school, Edwards continued to take in individual students, writing in September 1755 of his renewed attempts to put charity money to good use and as late as 1757 of the fate of the eleven or so “Indian boys” for whose education he still felt responsible.3

Narratives and Counternarratives  37

A comparison between the two schools is useful. For Edwards and others writing about Stockbridge the Indians connected to the school venture are an abstraction: no particular individuals emerge from a more generalized description of what quickly comes to be seen as an “Indian problem.”4 The records for the school are overwhelmingly kept by the Anglo-​­Americans who fought tenaciously for their respective visions; there are no surviving writings by individual students, no lists of names of student attendees, and in fact very little textual record beyond the political squabbling. Even before Edwards’s involvement, textually speaking, the founding and unraveling of the Stockbridge boarding school is a conversation held largely among the white people involved. On the other hand, Wheelock’s school records contain numerous documents by and about individual Native students, their parents, and other representatives of their communities. In fact, Wheelock’s records are filled with Indians: names, letters, complaints, queries, and financial records of particular individuals from the New England tribes as well as from among the Oneidas and the Mohawks form a significant portion of the records in stark contrast to the abstraction of Stockbridge. Nonetheless, the descriptions of Native experience are striking at Stockbridge: even as Samuel Hopkins produces an abstracted version of the early educational ventures in his 1753 narrative of Stockbridge, Jonathan Edwards writes a few years later of Indian boys in bare rooms without even a roof, never mind desks or paper to do their learning; he also refers to the wigwams set up to encircle the school so that Mohawk families can remain near their children. The school thus becomes the center of an Iroquois encampment, a structure devoid of any of the technologies of literacy, even as it is filled with children who have traveled great distances to reach it. And while these images leap from the pages of Edwards’s letters, the words of Wheelock’s students once he has contained them within his narratives seem so controlled that they can feel as hollow as the absence of documents. It is between these imperfect records that the perils of charity ventures come into being.

Narratives of Benevolence Eleazar Wheelock was intent on saving Indians from themselves, “helping” them by transforming them. Central to Wheelock’s concept of Native education is that the English must control and supervise Indians at all times, even the Indian missionaries and teachers his school produced. He writes to

38  Chapter 1

a benefactor in 1763 of his school’s ability to “Subdue their Savage Temper, and reform their vitious Practices” (McCallum, 69), and his first narrative, also written in 1763, speaks of the English obligation to both the “poor creatures” (10) and the “savages” who are a “sore Scourge to our Land” (11). He also mentions “the malevolent, and ungovernable Temper of some” (22) and those among the “lawless Herds” who would happily murder Christian missionaries (24). Wheelock explains to his English audience in his Brief Narra­ tive (published in London to coincide with Occom’s fund-​­raising trip) that from the earliest days of the American colonies Indians “have been a Scourge and Terror to their English Neighbours; often ravaging and laying waste their Frontiers; . . . ​skillfully devising, and proudly glorying in, all possible Methods of Torture and Cruelty within their Power” (21; italics in the original). Later, after becoming disenchanted with what remained to him a mystifying lack of cooperation from the Native students in whom he had invested so much time and energy, he writes of former students who “are sunk down into as low, savage, and brutish a manner of living as they were in before any endeavours were used with them to raise them up” (A Continuation, 1771, 20). At any rate, he tells us of Indians in general, any attempts to help them must be quick as “these poor stupid creatures . . . ​are wasting like a morning dew” and presumably won’t be around to save much longer (1771, 22). As varied as his terms are, they all one way or another speak to a need to alter definitively the category of people known as Indians—​­or give up on them entirely. For Wheelock it is only by replacing “the pernicious Influence of Indian Examples” with English models of behavior that the project of humanizing and civilizing Native Americans could succeed (1771, 25). Native missionaries, by this logic, could only be successful if they repressed their own thoughts and ideas and simply imitated those of the elite white missionaries. Once this was accomplished, Wheelock believed, Indian intellectual and professional potential was unlimited.5 Sergeant was less sanguine about the possibilities for Native converts. His hope was to establish a cadre of yeoman farmers but certainly no intellectuals. While he writes in his educational tract that his goal is to “change their whole Habit of thinking and acting; and raise them, as far as possible, into the Condition of a civil industrious and polish’d People” (“Letter,” 3), his emphasis was more emphatically on “industrious” than “polish’d.” Like Wheelock, Sergeant seems to have been profoundly suspicious of all things Indian. He writes of the need to replace their “imperfect and barbarous Dialect” with English (3), and considers virtue and piety English rather than Indian characteristics, with the

Narratives and Counternarratives  39

only hope for Indians being to “root out their vicious Habits, and to change their whole Way of Living” (5; italics in the original). These are, in his mind, irrefutable truths; but rather than being the basis for abandoning Indians, he sees these as precisely the reasons for Godly people to redouble efforts to alter them into solid, hardworking Christian laborers. Strikingly, with the brief exception of a few references in Wheelock’s narratives and, of course, Occom’s physical presence on his fund-​­raising mission to Great Britain, actual Native students remain virtually silent in the public representation of these schools. Samuel Hopkins’s Historical Memoirs produces an idealized missionary in the martyred John Sergeant of Stockbridge, in the process displacing even the docile figure of the Readerly Indian from a central role in the narrative of Indian education. Subsumed within Histori­ cal Memoirs is Sergeant’s version of a boarding school in its most theoretical form, a description that is also published separately as a small pamphlet. Absent from either of these descriptions of Indian education in Stockbridge is any sense of Indian participation. Wheelock’s narratives, however, feature a carefully controlled vision of Native docility, in which Native students and missionaries cheerfully embrace their newfound English identity and live out missionary expectations to the letter. But once this vision no longer suited his needs, Wheelock was eager to acknowledge what he described as permanently embedded flaws in the Indian character, turning his attention instead to white students. While ostensibly about his selfless drive for Indian education, for Wheelock the narratives of his charity school reaffirmed his essential role in the production and reproduction of his students’ work to a distant British audience. Indeed, both Wheelock’s and Sergeant’s educational narratives gesture toward hypothetical Indian students who are idealized, demonized, and often hopelessly abstracted to serve a variety of ideological purposes. Each school produced its own textual variant of the model Native student in the narratives or school plans connected to these schools, a figure I call the Readerly Indian. John Sergeant’s 1743 boarding-​­school plan and Wheelock’s charity-​­school narratives each show their own version of this abstracted Indian figure, standing at the ready for the mark of English civilization. As passive consumers of English manners, such hypothetical students were celebrated only for reciting English lessons, not for bringing to bear their own thoughts or ideas. Initially eager to showcase his students’ learning, Wheelock in the 1760s sent student handwriting samples to assure his continued funding from benefactors in England and Boston. Included in a letter to Andrew Oliver of the

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Boston Board with a list of receipts are the handwriting of Abraham and John, Mohawk students at Wheelock’s school. Each carefully shaped a phrase (or part of one): John wrote “Live mindful of Death,” and Abraham penned “Adversity puts us in” three times over in early 1764.6 Their writing has the illusion of depth (“live mindful of death”), yet the repetition of the value-​­laden phrase as well as the meaningless fragment (“adversity puts us in”) suggests that what matters about these phrases is in the discipline and dexterity that they display, not in their meaning. A short letter from a Mr. John Smith, merchant of Boston, reinforces this, describing with enthusiasm the morning recitation exercises of Wheelock’s school: “It was exquisite to see the Savageness of an Indian moulded into the Sweetness of a follower of the Lamb” (McCallum, 75). It is precisely the docility as well as the wholehearted acceptance of all things En­ glish that truly moves this observer. Smith’s description of the obedient Indian learner who gradually moves from repetition to rote explication makes very clear what Wheelock desired: Readerly Indians who unquestioningly absorbed their lessons. Such figures validated his “Grand Design,” and the vision that Wheelock celebrated of his students was one in which they gratefully accepted the limited role he had in mind for them. And in fact, while some donors were delighted by the passive figure Wheelock offered them, they were equally fascinated by the opposite, the “savage” Indian reveling in his otherness, which Wheelock dutifully produced for their pleasure as well. The “wilderness” Indian, as Wheelock characterizes this recurring figure, emerges throughout Wheelock’s letters as well as in the documents surrounding Stockbridge. Always somehow at a distance, these creatures of the wilderness stand in contrast to the corrupted, degenerated Indians the missionaries seem to actually encounter. We see this wilderness Indian in a letter from Wheelock to Lord Dartmouth, one of the benefactors of his school. Along with this December 1768 letter Wheelock presents Dartmouth with a stone pipe decorated with quillwork, writing that “I herewith present you a small specimen of the Produce and Manufacture of the Amarican Wilderness,” thereby eliding the distinction between human labor, or “Manufacture,” and the natural world, or “Produce,” by having the entire object simply a specimen of “Wilderness.” He further alludes to some of the difficulties he encountered: “I have been some time waiting to be able to offer your Lordship that which is perfectly simple, and without the least mixture of any foreign Merchandize, but our Traders have penetrated so far into their Country that I have hitherto found that to be impracticable, unless I had taken some articles which were defaced by use.”7 Indeed, among Wheelock’s various

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exchanges with missionaries in the field is a two-​­year quest for an appropriate “Wilderness” gift for Lord Dartmouth. While Wheelock had reported to Lord Dartmouth that he had found “that which is perfectly Simple,” Theophilus Chamberlain writes in 1766, “You desire me sir to procure some Indian finery for David [Fowler],” further explaining that “my situation is the worst for that of any in the Six Nations as our Indians are in some measure like those in New England much Degenerated, both as to their Customs their Dress and their Impliments.”8 David Fowler, who was to bring whatever “Wilderness” article could be acquired down to Wheelock, himself writes in December 1766, “I am sorry I could not procure those things for Lord Dartmouth. . . . ​I could not go to the Neighbouring Places to search for them. These Women dont make such till winter then they have wherewithal to make them I shall get them very easy in the Spring” (McCallum, 105–​­6). This extended exchange exemplifies the longing for a purely Indian artifact as well as the indeterminate nature of such an object. This exchange also marks the difficulty of acquiring such a thing, since it required engagement with hypothetical Indians who lived “without the least Mixture of any foreign Merchandise.” The missionary trades simultaneously in the pleasure of finding wilderness and reveling in its difference, even as he works tirelessly to eradicate it. The wilderness Indian resurfaces with Isaac Hollis’s insistence in the 1740s that his money go only to “Heathen Indians,” while the actual Indian population of Stockbridge had already become largely Christianized. For benefactors, clearly, Indians become less interesting when they “lose” their Indianness. Wheelock must navigate between the desire for “civilized” handwriting samples and “wilderness” practices untainted by whites, just as Sergeant has to bypass those “already corrupted” Natives who settled Stockbridge to find a somehow more rarefied “heathen” Indian. They managed this negotiation by keeping Indians silent and by speaking for them, thereby leaving unchallenged the notions of purity, corruption, and savagery that are so fascinating to distant benefactors. By insisting on the validity of a single form of literacy (alphabetic), even as they traded in on other sign systems, schools like Wheelock’s abstracted Indian peoples, in the process rendering them voiceless. Lord Dartmouth’s quilled pipe is pleasing because it is illegible to him; he can impose whatever meanings he chooses onto its purity as a wilderness item. In fact, it is precisely the illegibility of such objects to their English consumers that made them fascinating and desirable, while writing exercises, letters, and other schoolwork by Native students that Wheelock was in the habit of sending to his

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benefactors were absolutely familiar and therefore taken as signs of a docile acceptance of English superiority. Both the Readerly and the wilderness Indian are silent—​­either because they are on some level illegible to Englishmen or because they lack the English literacy skill (writing) to inscribe what is not sanctioned in a way that can be understood. In either case that Indian figure is one that English missionaries market to benefactors, and that figure usefully perpetuates the paternalistic desire to control and contain that is at the heart of this missionary impulse. The rhetorical strategies of the educational narratives were very much geared to an overseas audience; even though Wheelock’s school did have some local support,9 the real money for both schools was unquestionably abroad, where the notion of a wilderness Indian still had enormous appeal. The narratives functioned to balance the needs of specific missions and individual donors eager to make a mark in the colonies. This balance was often illusory, though, as money drove the schools rather than the other way around, and missionaries and schoolteachers often found themselves called upon to produce the impossible rather than turn down potential financial support. In all cases the job of the missionary narrative is to shape meaning and value, to translate a foreign situation for English audiences, and above all to censor and control the versions of Indian education that emerged from specific school situations. Both Wheelock’s narratives and Hopkins’s Historical Memoirs exist to assure a benevolent audience of the impossible: that money given to these schemes would be well spent and that Natives were most assuredly the grateful beneficiaries of English generosity.

Historical Memoirs Of the many difficulties faced by Samuel Hopkins in his publication of His­ torical Memoirs early in 1753, perhaps the most delicate was the fact that the boarding school initiated by John Sergeant, arguably the culmination of his mission to the Stockbridge Indians, had been more or less publicly charged with financial and ethical improprieties by no less a figure than Jonathan Edwards, the new minister of Stockbridge. Indeed, by late 1752 it was hard to argue the point; Abigail Sergeant, widow of John Sergeant, had remarried in August, and she was maneuvering to be appointed the mistress of the girls’ school, which was to be built on her own property. This profitable and convenient situation was making its way through the Boston General

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Court through the efforts of the primary trustee of the school—​­her new husband Joseph Dwight. The master of the boys’ school, Martin Kellogg, was generally acknowledged to be incompetent, yet any attempts to replace him were sabotaged by Dwight and his new father-​­in-​­law, Ephraim Williams. The nepotism attached to the school venture was dizzying, as Jonathan Edwards tartly pointed out in numerous “private” letters, and clearly the financial arrangements through which land, buildings, and supplies were allotted were questionable at best.10 Worst of all, the boarding school seems to have been only a symptom of the larger problem of land (mis)appropriation and other shady dealings largely masterminded by the Williams clan against the Native inhabitants of the town.11 Hopkins was faced with the unenviable task of doing what may have felt impossible: he was to sing the praises of a mission in the process of being corrupted by the relatives of the now deceased John Sergeant. Or, as he put it in his November 1752 preface, his task was to “do justice to the memory of that excellent man who . . . ​prosecuted that self-​ ­denying work; to let the generous and pious donors to that good design know what the success of their liberal and charitable contributions to it has been; and to excite others to follow their laudable and generous example by giving freely of their substance to promote that good work” (9). By emphasizing the excellence of the character of John Sergeant over the second and third of his goals, Hopkins was almost able to rhetorically erase the difficulties the town of Stockbridge was now facing. The actual situation of Stockbridge was not the only problem for Hopkins; as it turns out, John Sergeant had kept very poor records of his correspondence and had not kept copies of the journals he was required to send to the mission society in England. Thus, Hopkins had to reconstruct the events at Stockbridge from sketchy records and from a variety of sources. This task, he tells us, along with his own outside commitments, nearly derailed the projected volume, but after a delay of a number of years Hopkins did eventually finish his narrative. Hopkins thus positions himself as a more or less neutral outside observer so impressed by the mission of John Sergeant that he was compelled to write despite the logistical problems. The rhetoric of Hopkins’s narrative emphasizes the link between the benevolent founding of the town of Stockbridge and the value of education for Native children. To carry this point Hopkins suffuses the initial pages of the narrative with Indian voices and bodies, all of which reinforce the sense that this community is one that Indians most fervently desire. However, Indian voices fall away after the initial founding of the town,

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especially as John Sergeant’s boarding school takes on an increasingly important role in the narrative. The first mention of Native education predates the actual settlement of Stockbridge and reinforces the sense that Sergeant is acting to fulfill Native desires: Hopkins cites a moment from Sergeant’s October 1734 journal in which the child Showanun leaves his father to learn to read from Sergeant. “What makes this the more remarkable in the boy is that he is exceeding fond of his father,” Sergeant writes, “and his father is also fond of him” (23). Indeed, as the journals and letters included in Hopkins’s account reveal, initially Sergeant’s role is both teacher and minister: on November 5, 1734, he began keeping school in the schoolhouse built by the Indians, and by the next week had twenty-​­two or twenty-​­three students (26). By the end of November the young Timothy Woodbridge of Springfield has joined the mission as a schoolteacher; he also serves briefly as a minister, working “to instruct the Indians in a catechetical way” while Sergeant returns to Yale to complete his studies (28–​­29). Initially, then, the role of the teacher and of the minister are inseparable, and for the Indians the Stockbridge mission is as much about “hav[ing] their children taught to read” as it is for them to “hear the Word preach’d” (23). In fact, the schoolhouse and the church are the same building, which is surrounded by what Sergeant describes as the “small huts for their several families to dwell in” (23)—​­a description that prefigures Jonathan Edwards’s later description of the Indian schoolhouse surrounded by Iroquois dwellings. Native education, Hopkins suggests, is part and parcel of John Sergeant’s broader missionary martyrdom from the very beginning, and it is inextricably connected to the identity of the town itself. Historical Memoirs makes clear that Native education is central to Sergeant’s mission, even as Sergeant returns to college to finish his own education. When Sergeant returns to New Haven in the winter of 1734–​­35, he takes with him two Indian boys, sons of two prominent Indian leaders, Konkapot and Umpachenee, thereby upending the wilderness narrative of Stockbridge and situating Indian education in the heart of the new American metropolis. He writes, “I took the boys into my own chamber at the College and sent them to the free school kept at New Haven.” He adds: “They liv’d very contentedly, were made much of by everybody” (30). He reports in a letter that “I design to keep them, until I return to Housatunnuk, in the Town School, for my time is so taken up with College business that I cannot teach them myself ”; he adds further that he is hoping the charitably inclined living nearby will defray the costs of their room and board (31). This rationalization is the beginning of what becomes an increasingly desperate negotiation on Sergeant’s part as he

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balances his own desires, his obligations to the Indians he has committed to educating, and the interests of potential donors.12 Initially, the charity business seems quite effective. Benjamin Colman generously reimburses Sergeant for his early efforts, applauding his initiative and commitment. At this point it is Sergeant, not the donor, who makes the decisions about how he can best work within the community, although Indians, it seems, have little say in the negotiation that takes place in a broader international circuit of benevolence. Throughout the first few years of the mission, as Sergeant preaches and recruits (mostly unnamed) Natives from nearby settlements, Colman and others in the missionary establishment give him discretionary money with few demands attached. The introduction of the ever-​­generous Isaac Hollis onto the Stockbridge scene changes the nature of Sergeant’s mission to the Housatonic Mohicans dramatically, however. Moved by Colman’s description of Sergeant’s exertions, in 1735 Hollis first commits to funding the care, upkeep, and instruction of twenty Indian boys, a number later reduced to twelve (65–​­66). Twenty or twelve, either figure was absurdly more than the young John Sergeant could manage at the time, himself still a bachelor living in the homes of other families away from the Indian settlement (69). Another donor offered 100 pounds, which was to go to the education of Indian girls (66). As the numbers of students and financial incentives increase, Native voices fade out of the narrative. Unable to take advantage of the financial opportunities extended by distant donors, Sergeant reluctantly let the money sit, but a year later he takes in twelve (unnamed) boys to live with him in a home he has constructed for himself, hiring a housekeeper to maintain his household. Within a year Sergeant gives up: the commitment to the twelve boys was simply too much for him, and he instead sends them to live with other English families, charging the cost of their board to Hollis and sending them to Woodbridge’s town school to learn to read and write—​­presumably what those boys would have done with or without Hollis’s funds (75–​­76). Yet we hear nothing of the experience these boys have. Was it always the same twelve? Did they object to the ever-​­shifting terrain through which they were to be educated? Hollis’s generosity repeatedly demands that Sergeant act before he is ready, and the incentive the money provides inevitably produces grandiose plans with few logistical underpinnings, permanently shifting the dynamic away from Native decision making and toward a transatlantic financial negotiation between missionary and donor. While this dynamic leaves little room for failure, it also makes success all but impossible, a situation that calls for particular

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rhetorical finesse in reimagining failure as success. Having failed to educate his allotted twelve boys, in 1741 Sergeant redirects attention to his much grander plans for an Indian boarding school. “I have” he says, “entertain’d thoughts . . . ​ of attempting to set up a Charity-​­House for the instruction of our Indian Children, both boys and girls, in business and industry, as well as in reading and writing and the matters of religion.” He adds, strikingly, “This I believe Mr. Hollis expected would be the end of his noble beginning” (95), effectively removing Indians from the plans for their own educational institutions. By the time Sergeant’s letter concerning his boarding-​­school ideas is published in 1743—​­under some pressure from Benjamin Colman, who is in touch with other donors waiting to fund a worthy cause—​­there are no individual Natives named or connected to the school, unlike the earlier, affectionate descriptions of the two boys Sergeant had taken in on his own initiative. And as the narrative of Historical Memoirs moves away from the initial founding of the Stockbridge community, Indians become abstractions to be saved, educated, and managed rather than individuals with their own ideas and engagements with Sergeant’s projects. Indians situated within the school venture described in this narrative become more or less passive recipients of whatever Sergeant wants for them, unlike the fully formed descriptions of Umpachenee and Konkapot, political allies through whom the town is founded. Powerful Indian leaders like these, whose voices and identities initially challenge, confront, and negotiate a Native space in Stockbridge, are not replaced in Hopkins’s text as that first generation of leaders dies, and the attention of the narrative becomes single-​­mindedly focused on Sergeant’s educational plan. This plan, hardly fulfilling the intentions of those first Indian leaders, instead involves turning Indians into farmers who will accept their secondary role in Stockbridge passively and silently. In fact, once the boarding-​­school plan is introduced, Historical Memoirs becomes a litany of financial exchange, with lists of donors, letters of thanks, and promises of further expansion extended and sometimes refused. When Isaac Hollis doubles his support of Indian boys from twelve to twenty-​­four, he adds these limitations: “I desire you would take up for me twelve boys afresh, about the age of 9, 10, 11, or 12 years.” Furthermore, these boys cannot yet be converted but must come from non-​­Christian families (124, 140), functionally closing out the very Stockbridge Indians who had donated land and labor to the school project, since Natives joined the community typically because they were already interested in Christianity. Another problem, of course, was that in 1744 western Massachusetts was embroiled in a war, and supplies were

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difficult to come by; it was an impossible moment to initiate a plan as ambitious as Sergeant’s boarding school. However, Hollis, on hearing that his money would not be put into use until the situation became less volatile, responds in January 1747: “I am not willing to have my money of three hundred and fifty pounds your currency lying by useless until the war is ended. And I do hereby appoint that there be, as soon as possible, twelve more heathen boys taken on my account. . . . ​And after I know of this order’s being comply’d with, I design to have a large remittance for further carrying on the work” (140). A few months later Hollis elaborates: “I request . . . ​that . . . ​my money may be employ’d in the education of twelve new boys of heathen parents, with all convenient speed. Yea, I absolutely insist upon it, and promise herewith to make a remittance for further charge of education and maintenance” (141). In other words, Hollis demands the impossible, not only threatening to withhold his current donation if his terms are not met but also dangling the promise of even greater funds once his conditions are met. This nearly impossible task challenged the ethics and the willpower of all involved. How could Sergeant refuse such benevolence? On the other hand, how could he possibly fulfill the terms Hollis had laid out? By May 1748 Sergeant had cobbled together a less than satisfactory plan, but one that met the broad strokes of Hollis’s bequest: he convinced the Stockbridge Indians to give two hundred acres for a boarding school and, until it could be built, sent twelve boys off to be under the supervision of a Captain Kellogg in Newington. By the time of Sergeant’s death in 1749 arrangements had gone forward to a certain extent. Captain Kellogg had moved with his boys into the unfinished schoolhouse, which was a building thirty-​­eight feet long and thirty-​­six feet wide, with “three Fire rooms on one floor, and two convenient rooms besides, with a large cellar under it” (154). This is the last substantive mention of the boarding school in Historical Memoirs: for the last forty pages of the narrative Hopkins emphasizes the generosity of the donors and the tragedy of Sergeant’s early death, rhetorically erasing the current fiasco that Sergeant had inadvertently set in motion. With Sergeant’s death the boarding-​­school plan was only faltering along, while the promise of what seemed to be nearly limitless funding from Hollis and others meant that whoever took over the arrangements had a more or less open field. By sidestepping altogether the chaotic situation of the school at the time Hopkins wrote Historical Memoirs and instead celebrating Sergeant’s short life, Hopkins produces a compelling fund-​­raising narrative with the fewest ethical challenges possible. Indeed, as he somewhat evasively tells

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his readers near the end of his narrative, his intention was to have brought the account “down to the present time.” But, he says, he has not been able to collect the “proper and necessary materials for that purpose,” and so “I shall not therefore attempt it” (176). Hopkins’s title for his narrative, of course, is the Historical Memoirs Relating to the Housatunnuk Indians. In a marvel of missionary subterfuge he has managed to replace his subject with that of their missionary, making the Housatunnuk Indians passive observers—​­readers, even—​­of their own narrative.

Writerly Indians and the Counternarrative of Stockbridge If Samuel Hopkins’s production of Readerly Indians at Stockbridge left a void where a speaking subject was needed to validate the missionary project, several factions were eager to speak for Indians after John Sergeant’s death. Yet while every faction in the angry debates surrounding Indian education needed the authorizing presence of an Indian voice, it is most relentlessly absent in the documentary record of the school. Instead, the illusion of an Indian speaking subject is maintained by various factions that ventriloquize, transcribe, and relentlessly invoke an abstracted Indian perspective all in the service of establishing the authority to collect the money and build the infrastructure of a mission school. The records of the Stockbridge boarding school suggest that there were loosely three factions vying for authority in the 1750s: Jonathan Edwards, recently hired as the missionary and advocate of a larger vision of Stockbridge as a conduit to Iroquois country; Timothy Woodbridge, speaking for the Stockbridge Indians; and Joseph Dwight, speaking for the white landowners and “Valley aristocracy”13 who see Indians as a source of wealth, property, and power. Each faction establishes its authority in a series of exchanges surrounding the school, all of which in one way or another return to the question of who represents Indian peoples’ best interests and who, in fact, constitutes the “Indian people” who matter most. None of these sources is untainted: Edwards arrived with long-​­standing animosity toward the Williams clan, and indeed his attacks on Abigail (Williams) Dwight have a special venom to them; Timothy Woodbridge, as passionate an advocate as he was to “his” Indian charges, was not above some troubling paternalism, and he also profited from extremely generous “gifts” of Indian land from the Stockbridge Indians. However, it is without question Joseph and Abigail Dwight and their connection to

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the Williams clan that ran Stockbridge who were the most morally suspect of all, and whatever rhetorical flourishes may redeem or indict various players in this drama, only one faction left a record of unquestionable corruption. One way or another, for all the good intentions that may or may not have been circulating, nobody at any point thought to let Indians speak for themselves.

Edwards and the Spectral Writerly Indian The figure of the spectral Indian and the haunted white missionary are present throughout the counternarratives of Stockbridge. This phenomenon, what critic Renée Bergland calls the “politics of spectrality” (6), is “one specific discursive technique of Indian removal” (3). She explains that “by writing about Indians as ghosts, white writers effectively remove them from American lands, and place them, instead, within the American imagination. One result of the internalization of Indians is that the American individuals who ‘contain’ Indians thereby constitute themselves as representative Americans, and even representative Americas” (4). I would add to this characterization the essential element of ventriloquization, in which the white writer “haunted” by Indian ghosts is thus authorized to speak for, or ventriloquize, Indians. Jonathan Edwards speaks for Indians, invoking Indian authority as a distant, impenetrable thing that can only be understood by a select few and that needed translation by men like himself. Yet even as he ignores the ability of those around him to speak for themselves, Edwards passionately advocates for Writerly Indians, those whose training and experience would make them ideally situated to speak for themselves. He celebrates Native desire, interest, and engagement throughout his educational plan, even though he never fully authorizes the Native voices he is so inspired to bring forward to actually speak for themselves. In terms of the Stockbridge school Edwards is a deeply ambivalent figure. He is clearly invested in Native autonomy and authority, and is proud of the trust he feels the Indians have put in him. His son writes many years later of his childhood in Stockbridge: “The Indians being the nearest neighbours, I constantly associated with them; their boys were my daily schoolmates and play-​­fellows. Out of my father’s house, I seldom heard any language spoken, besides the Indian.” Indians clearly were at the heart of the Edwards family’s experience of Stockbridge, and that experience made clear that Indian identity was a broad and flexible category that contained within it a number of national experiences. Indeed, because of his remarkable facility with languages,

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the young Edwards was sent by his father at age ten “among the six nations,” an effort that is cut short (a mere six months) because of the outbreak of war.14 While Jonathan Edwards the father never was himself conversant in the Mohican language of the Stockbridge Indians, he clearly spent a great deal of time among these Indians as well as in cultivating the good will of the Iroquois up north. Edwards’s letters from throughout the 1750s suggest that his home was a location for Native peoples to meet and discuss their concerns with their presumed ally, their new minister. Edwards writes proudly to his own father in January 1752 that “the Indians seem much pleased with my family, especially my wife,” and he refers in various letters to conversations in his house, in which Indians speak freely about their feelings and concerns.15 These Indians, it would seem, are most relentlessly not spectral, but living, breathing beings, and Edwards is convinced that through his connection to Stockbridge and its Indian population he has an essential role to play in the political and spiritual future of Native peoples in New England. Much of his time at Stockbridge is thus spent listening to and supporting the needs of Native peoples as Edwards comes to understand those needs. Even so, as Rachel Wheeler points out, “Edwards’ writings rarely reference Indian individuals” (Wheeler 220), and, in fact, “Edwards does not seem to have developed any close relationships with Stockbridge Indians” (207). As insistently present as Indians may have been in his daily life, they remain surprisingly abstract—​­even spectral—​­in his writing, increasingly so as tensions in Stockbridge mounted. Initially, Edwards embraces the possibilities of the boarding school. In 1751 he writes to Thomas Hubbard, speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, that “God seems to be opening this door in an unusual manner” (Claghorn 401). More than anything Edwards emphasizes the exceptionalism of the moment. For Edwards, Stockbridge provides an opportunity for progressive, innovative teaching methods; a political situation in which Indians welcome education; and the financial support for this project all in one place. Edwards embraces the possibilities in this situation with enthusiasm early in his tenure at Stockbridge; in 1751 he attends a Mohawk conference to encourage Iroquois participation in the Stockbridge boarding school (394), encourages better use of the funding for the boarding school (392–​­93, 401–​­2), and advocates for a better schoolmaster (402). Most revealingly, Edwards writes up a theory of education to supplement (and soften) Sergeant’s rigid and unforgiving approach to Indian children’s instruction. Edwards’s plan is a radical one: he wants active, engaged individuals

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who receive personal attention and care so that their own thoughts and ideas can emerge. Children are to be molded into a full-​­fledged thinking citizenry, ready at all times to express their thoughts and opinions clearly and effectively. Edwards, it seems, wants Writerly Indians. Recognizing a long-​­standing missionary problem, he complains to Isaac Hollis in 1751 that “the children are taught to read—​­but many of them, for want of the English language, know nothing what they read (the books being all in the English tongue)—​­they only learn to make such sounds on the sight of such marks, but know not the meaning of the sounds, and so have neither profit nor pleasure in reading; and will, therefore, be apt soon to lose even what they have learned, having no benefit or entertainment in the use of it” (Claghorn 389). In November 1751 Edwards lays out a more complete educational plan in a letter to William Pepperrell. He repeats his concern that “children are habituated to learn without understanding” (407), a problem that Edwards sees not just in missions but in English schools in general. The problem extends beyond basic reading, Edwards explains; even in reciting their catechism children know only rote responses, not the meanings and values attached to the phrases they can repeat on command. His solution is to emphasize language training first so that children can understand ideas as well as sounds, or as Edwards writes, “things as well as words” (408; italics in the original). True to the assumptions of his own time, Edwards sees English as the only appropriate language for higher thought; he reports, despite his own unfamiliarity with any of them, that Indian languages are “extremely barbarous and barren, and very ill-​­fitted for communicating things moral and divine, or even things speculative and abstract. In short, they are wholly unfit for a people possessed of civilization, knowledge and refinement” (408). Nonetheless, departing from the beliefs of many of those around him, he sees Indian children full of potential as engaged thinkers and learners. Edwards advocates individualized questions and “familiar conversations” between master and schoolchild to ensure the child’s comprehension. Radically upending the formal and extremely hierarchical New England model of education, he writes, “the child should be encouraged, and drawn on, to speak freely, and in his turn also to ask questions, for the resolution of his own doubts” (408). This method, he says, would lead to a number of positive results: “The child’s learning will be rendered pleasant, entertaining and profitable, as his mind will gradually open and expand with knowledge, and his capacity for reasoning improved.” Furthermore, Edwards writes, “His lesson will cease to be a dull, wearisome task, without any suitable pleasure or benefit. . . . ​It is the

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way also to accustom the child, from its infancy, to think and reflect, and to beget in it an early taste for knowledge, and a regularly increasing appetite for it” (408). Edwards, it seems, advocates learning for pleasure and pleasure in learning. Reading should not be a rote task but rather something through which individuals actually benefit emotionally, intellectually, and personally. And perhaps most important, Edwards wants every person to think for her-​­ or himself. Edwards further upends expectations by advocating a system of learning that breaks down “the shyness and backwardness, usually discovered in children, to converse on . . . ​topics with their superiors,” and he encourages teachers to entertain their students with stories from the Bible, “in a familiar manner applying the events of the story discoursed [upon], for informing the child’s understanding, influencing his heart, and directing its practice” (409). From this beginning and from a child’s natural curiosity lessons in history and geography would follow, as would those in arithmetic and other categories of knowledge. Like Sergeant and Wheelock, Edwards was convinced that his system of learning was particularly suited to “change the taste of Indians, and to bring them off from their barbarism and brutality, to relish for those things, which belong to civilization and refinement” (411). However, unlike Sergeant and later Wheelock, Edwards seems to have believed that pleasure and desire should drive Indian learning, not harsh punishment. In particular, music, Edwards believed, would have a powerful influence in “leading them to renounce the coarseness, and filth, and degradation, of savage life, for cleanliness, refinement, and good morals” (411). This transformation would be accomplished through close, individual attention and careful monitoring of student learning. Moreover, personal pride, or what Edwards sees as a “laudable ambition to excel,” should be instituted through public examinations through which students could show off their learning in front of “neighboring ministers, and gentlemen and ladies; and also the chiefs of the Indians be invited to attend” (412). In an eerie foreshadowing of Wheelock’s language in his first narrative written a decade or so later, Edwards is eager to imagine Stockbridge at the center of the educational universe of missionaries and Indians in an increasingly volatile geopolitical situation. He writes a few months later of the possibility of finding the means for “giving some of the children of best genius (for there are some very forward geniuses among ’em) a superior education, to fit them to be instructors, schoolmasters, or missionaries to their own people. And there might be erected in time a kind of academy for this end” with its

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own particular teaching methodologies (444). This “academy” is more than a school for all levels: it is envisioned as a college or university for Native Americans. He concludes breathlessly, “Possibly it may be thought I am in too much haste, too forward in my projections, and that it is time enough to talk of an academy, etc. a many years hence. But certainly, if we consider how active the French are, and what amazing progress they have made of late, and are daily making, it may be sufficient to convince us that we had need to be dilatory. . . . ​If things remain with their present good appearance one twelvemonth longer, I should think it high time to begin to lay new foundations for a more enlarged design” (445). For Edwards, Indian education is a national and even an international matter, and there are no limits to the potential of his students. Edwards sees the Stockbridge boarding school not just as an opportunity to educate Natives but furthermore as a place in which to model a radical revision of education. He writes, “as the boarding schools here are now in their commencement, and are yet to receive their form and character, and that among a people hitherto unaccustomed to any method of instruction whatsoever, it is a great pity but that the method actually adopted should be free from the gross defects of the ordinary method of teaching among the English” (407). Indians, in other words, provide a Lockean blank slate, having never been introduced to “any method of instruction whatsoever”; Edwards imagines this as an exceptional opportunity to reinvent English education on most willing recipients, making Stockbridge (and Edwards) roughly the center of all educational practice in the English-​­speaking world. However, as Edwards gets more deeply involved in Stockbridge, he is pulled into an ongoing drama involving various members of the Williams family. By early 1752 Edwards is no longer writing educational treatises and is instead immersing himself in the interpersonal dramas of the Williams clan. Withdrawing his early support of Joseph Dwight and speaking against Abigail Williams/Sergeant/Dwight, Edwards enmeshes himself in fighting a network of power and influence that is set against him—​­much like the situation he has recently left in Northampton. According to Edwards the central problem is that Abigail and Joseph Dwight are in charge of the money for the boarding-​­school venture, and through them charity has turned into a land grab; rather than being a generous benefactor, according to Edwards, Hollis has inadvertently become a dupe of the Williams corruption, with Abigail and Joseph Dwight acting as agents of the Williams clan. Edwards increasingly sees Indians as mere pawns in a game rigged to benefit the Williamses, with

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himself as the only person able to prevent the total degeneration of the situation; he is thus morally obligated to speak out. Abigail Dwight, Edwards claims, treats the girls as her personal servants, and the boys are not getting an adequate education, never mind adequate food and shelter; in a wartime situation in which alliances with the Iroquois are essential, this situation is damaging colonial interests.16 Joseph Dwight, supervisor of the school, reacts to Edwards’s various charges and countercharges by also rhetorically situating himself as the last, best hope for this faltering situation. With his Mohawk experience from earlier wartime battles and his alliance with the former missionary John Sergeant’s widow, Dwight suggests that he best represents Sergeant’s legacy. He tries to represent himself as the voice of reason and authority, and he suggests to the authorities in Boston that Edwards is making all this up because he hates the Williamses so much. How could anyone doubt the good intentions of John Sergeant’s widow and himself, a war hero? When faced with Dwight’s injured rhetoric, Edwards dissolves into rage and frustration, in the process further spectralizing Indians and producing the conversations around the boarding school as most insistently between the various Anglo-​­American parties involved. Over time Indians almost disappear from Edwards’s letters, and it is only the villainy of Joseph and Abigail Dwight, the Williams clan, and their inept helper Captain Martin Kellogg that consumes his attention. Gone are the celebrations of Indian authority and autonomy; instead, there is only the horrified and horrifying replay of the Northampton feuds with the Williams family and their allies. Increasingly feeling besieged, Edwards shifts the conversation away from the mistreatment of Indians and toward his own mistreatment. In a letter in 1752 he refers to the “late great controversy at Northampton” and “a certain family of considerable note in New England, which had long manifested a jealous and unfriendly spirit towards me,” explaining that “one or two of the inhabitants of Stockbridge were of the same family” (Claghorn 550–​­51). Later, he writes more directly: “There has for many years appeared a prejudice in the family of the Williamses against me and my family, especially since the great awakening in Northampton” (554) and that this “prejudice” has reemerged in Stockbridge. Edwards writes bitterly, “I hear that he [Colonel Dwight] has abundantly represented me as a person of [an] exceedingly stiff, inflexible temper. I knew that this was abundantly said of me by the family of the Williamses in the late controversy at Northampton and by my other opposers who were encouraged by them”; and then further, “And all my sufferings there, my losing the best

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salary of any country minister in New England, and casting myself and my numerous family on the wide world, was all laid to stiffness and willfulness” (561). Indians, it seems, are only the backdrop for a most intensely personal rivalry; they authorize Edwards to give voice to his rage and frustration, but they never attain the central role that Edwards initially imagined for them. Edwards and his relationship with the Indians and Indian affairs in Stockbridge become incidental in the battle that he revisits with the Williams family, a situation most poignantly played out in an exchange over a letter. Edwards writes to Elisha Williams in 1752: “An Indian lately picked up a letter in the street, directed to me, not knowing what, nor from whom it was. However, it is come to my hands. I had some doubts in my mind whether I had any right to it, coming to me in such a manner; for it seems it went out of the hands of the possessor of it accidentally, and not designedly. However, seeing it inscribed to me, I opened it, and found a letter from you; and presuming you intended I should have it, I would now make some reply to it” (515). Based on Edwards’s reply, it seems that the letter in question was entirely focused on matters related to the Indian school. Here we see enacted in the most concrete way what has been suggested throughout the exchange of letters: Indians are merely the conduit for an exchange between Edwards and the Williams ­family—​­an exchange through which the Indian school is a means to carry on a particularly hostile personal feud. The Indian who picks up the letter is thus incidental to an exchange that is at least theoretically entirely about his well-​­being, yet that Indian is not only unnamed but also never again appears in the letter. The entire exchange thus becomes an abstract set of musings on authority, intentionality, and possession: who, in fact, has the right to read and write letters in this case? With its detailed analysis of land, the role of Mr. and Mrs. Dwight, and the overall future of the Indian school, the letter and its accidental delivery embody both symbolically and literally the problem of the Indian school. The larger irony, of course, is that the only person (the Indian) whose voice is most relevant to the matter at hand (the Indian school) is completely incidental to the exchange within the letter, except as the figure through whom the letter is actually exchanged. In 1754 a letter from Hollis finally gives Edwards ultimate authority over the school—​­a pyrrhic victory if ever there was one; the only school building ever constructed had burned down a year earlier under suspicious circumstances, taking with it all the possessions of the young and embattled schoolteacher, Gideon Hawley, who left soon after.17 The last of the Mohawks were on their way back north, abandoning in frustration the Stockbridge situation

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and its eternal promises of change and amelioration. Nonetheless, there is (briefly) a dramatic shift in Edwards’s letters, with Indians once again center stage, asking, meeting, questioning as Edwards tries to determine how to proceed with the boarding school. Over the next few years Edwards makes various arrangements for his Indian charges—​­even asking Wheelock at one point to take in two Indian boys.18 By June 1756 Indian education has most decidedly taken a back seat: he writes to Joseph Bellamy with the briefest plan for education for the two remaining students benefiting from the Hollis fund. This plan is much watered down from his earlier, optimistic one, although it still emphasizes Indian desire and ability. The letter concludes with instructions for examining the two boys with Bellamy to determine whether or not they have benefited from their schooling, although Edwards cautions Bellamy to remain quiet about the reason for the examination, since “’tis with a vast deal of difficulty that I have at last got the boys away after manifold objecting, hiding, and skulking, to avoid going” (689). Whatever the ideological basis for Edwards’s interest in Native agency, he seems to have had very little patience for actual little Indian boys and their preference for staying in their own homes. For Edwards, Indians do not authorize his actions; he authorizes Indian voices. For all his interest in Writerly Indians, Edwards, convinced that he fully understands what is best for Indians, thinks nothing of speaking for them. At no point does he seem to have asked Indians to speak on their own behalf to anyone other than himself, and the records simply do not reveal any documents written by Natives that Edwards used to make his points. For Edwards the Writerly Indian remains a phantasm, an abstraction that he cannot incorporate into his understanding of how the Indian business should proceed, even as his educational plans call for just such a dynamic and empowered figure.

Wheelock’s Narratives Unlike the fragmented and contentious record of the Stockbridge school, Wheelock’s narratives emphasize his unquestioned authority as founder and primary actor in his school. From 1763 to 1775 Wheelock oversaw the publication of nine narratives, two of which were timed to appear in England while Occom and Whitaker made their famous fund-​­raising tour. Although they each take shape very differently, through all his reports, Wheelock justifies his approach to Native education, explaining his methodology and rationalizing

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decisions he makes in the course of running his school. He emphasizes his own authority by including letters from his students (mainly the white ones) that reinforce his points; he also (selectively) summarizes for his readers the most significant missionary activities of any given period and includes “impartial” observations from outsiders. All in all Wheelock uses his narratives to reinforce the notion that his project is not only vital to Native American conversion but also that it is overwhelmingly successful. One way or another, these narratives are about recording success and confirming the general excellence of the school (and by extension, of Wheelock himself ). Wheelock’s presence always shapes and controls each narrative, a pattern he establishes with the first narrative, which is arguably the clearest statement of his philosophy of Native education and the internal conflicts of that philosophy. Reveling in the unprecedented success of his earliest Indian student, Samson Occom, Wheelock introduces his educational project to the general public with the 1763 publication of A Plain and Faithful Narrative of the Original Design, Rise, Progress and Present State of the Indian Charity School at Lebanon, in Connecticut. Throughout this first narrative Wheelock seems certain of the overall excellence of his prospects. He writes enthusiastically of the arrival of the first two students of his actual Indian Charity School in 1754 (Occom had worked with Wheelock before the school itself was founded) and of the steady growth of his school in the intervening years. Based on the example of Sergeant’s school and his correspondence with schoolmasters and missionaries Robert Clelland, John Brainerd, and others, Wheelock is convinced that he has hit on exactly the right formula for educating and converting Native Americans, and, brimming with optimism, his narrative establishes both the theoretical and practical parameters of his plan. However, the optimism of Wheelock’s 1763 narrative is tempered by the circularity of his language. His writing style allows for contradiction and ambivalence; long, wordy sentences often get onto a tangent and do not complete a thought, or they elide logically incompatible ideas. In fact, despite his initial desire to celebrate the value of his educational work, the accumulation of language in his printed texts brings out Wheelock’s underlying suspicions of all things Indian, leading him to write against his own interests. While Wheelock seems to want to embrace Indian alliances, he prefers an entirely subjugated and passive Native figure. For example, Wheelock writes on why missions are a good use of resources with almost comical earnestness, contradicting his own best impulses in the process:

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And there is good Reason to think, that if one half which has been, for so many Years past expended in building Forts, manning and supporting them, had been prudently laid out in supporting faithful Missionaries, and Schoolmasters among them, the instructed and civilized Party would have been a far better Defense than all our expensive Fortresses, and prevented the laying waste so many Towns and Villages: Witness the Consequence of sending Mr. Sergeant to Stockbridge, which was in the very Road by which they most usually came upon our People, and by which there has never been one Attack made upon us since his going there; and this notwithstanding there has been, by all Accounts, less Appearance of the saving Effects of the Gospel there than in any other Place, where so much has been expended for many Years past. (11–​­12) In this lengthy passage—​­actually a single sentence—​­Wheelock seems to want to argue that missions make good financial sense since they are less expensive than forts to build and maintain. Using John Sergeant’s settlement in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, as his example, he points out that although the settlement is right on the path by which the Iroquois would attack the English, since the mission was established, there has not been a single attack. He adds, however, that there has been “less Appearance of the saving Effects of the Gospel there than in any one Place, where so much has been expended for many Years past.” Incredibly, even as he is arguing for the value of missions, he concedes that their actual purpose—​­converting Natives—​­is secondary and finally not even relevant to whether or not they should be funded. The best one can hope for with Indians, he seems to suggest, is the cessation of violence, not actual conversion. Religion apparently has a very concrete, earthly function, which is to protect white settlers and render Indians impotent. Similarly, when he explains his rationale for including young women in his charity school, he undercuts the entire basis of his educational work by implying that up to this point the missions he has established have been failures. He writes as follows: A Number of Girls should also be instructed in whatever should be necessary to render them fit, to perform the Female Part, as House-​­wives, School-​­mistresses, Tayloresses, &c. and to go and be with these Youth, when they shall be hundreds of Miles distant from the English on the Business of their Mission: And prevent a Necessity of their turning savage in a Manner of Living, for want of those who may do those Offices

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for them, and by this means support the Reputation of their Mission, and also recommend to the Savages a more rational and decent Manner of Living, than that which they are in—​­And thereby, in Time, remedy and remove that great, and hitherto insuperable Difficulty, so constantly complained of by our Missionaries among them, as the great Impediment in the Way to the Success of their Mission, viz. their continual rambling about; which they can’t avoid so long as they depend so much upon Fishing, Fowling, and Hunting for their Support. (15) The accumulation of clauses in what is once again a single paragraph-​­length sentence casually loads onto the backs of the hapless young women training in Wheelock’s school the entire weight of the “Grand Design”; through their cooking and cleaning they will not only support their husbands’ work, but they will also serve as such models of upright living that they will fix the single greatest “Impediment in the Way to the Success of their Mission”: the “rambling about” which is unavoidable with a lifestyle dependent on “Fishing, Fowling, and Hunting.” Wheelock’s language even seems to suggest that perhaps it is not the unconverted Indians who struggle with an incapacitating lifestyle but rather the ministers themselves, or the husbands of these hypothetical young women. Women are to be the saving grace of their husbands, the only thing standing between salvation or damnation, success or failure. Even as missionary work demanded travel, change, and movement, these young women were to create fixity and (English) permanence out in the wilderness. It is perhaps not surprising that only one young woman seems to have accepted the impossibly freighted role of missionary wife among the dozen or more who made their way through Wheelock’s school.19 Wheelock’s breathless language and elliptical phrasing allow for multiple readings; they also allow him to suggest a world view that contradicts his ostensible message. Thus, his phrasing positions his own students as already “turning savage in a Manner of Living”—​­with the unmistakable suggestion that savagery lurks just below the surface in all Indians, converted or otherwise. In fact, he seems to suggest that the missions on which he sends his young charges are tests of their resolve; when he sends them back out into the “wilderness” with little money and less guidance, he has almost no hope that they will withstand the temptation—​­not through his own error but rather because of some constitutive weakness in them. In advocating for the education of women Wheelock inadvertently makes the point that up to now the missions he has been touting as successes in fact face an “insuperable Difficulty”

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without the young women he proposes to train and thus could well be considered failures despite his assurances elsewhere that they are successful.20 The narratives that follow the first were invested in a very particular version of Native identity and community, one that had at its core a passive, second-​­class citizen who would happily accept the guidance and direction of English missionaries. As Wheelock increasingly stepped back even from this vision contained within his first narrative, his version of Native community became both the cause and effect of dramatic changes in the nature and direction of his school. The next set of narratives, the English narratives of 1766 and 1767 published in London for Occom and Whitaker’s fund-​­raising trip, are marvels of polyphony. Meant to work in tandem with the living embodiment of missionary zeal that Occom represented, these narratives highlight what is presented as broad consensus over the success of Moor’s Charity School. Indeed, one could almost forget the role of Wheelock in shaping and organizing the material, since he seems to be relegated to a few short letters and attestations scattered among the voices of missionaries, Native Americans, English and colonial benefactors, and ministers, governors, and other community stalwarts willing to attest to the general excellence of the school. In these narratives Natives seem to have a powerful voice, and that voice speaks to the promise and possibilities of Wheelock’s school. The sense that Wheelock has disappeared from his narratives is illusory, however. Wheelock repeatedly (and selectively) chooses whom to cite and how to organize his materials, and often authors extended sections without attaching his name to those sections. The effect is a version of the Charity school that is right in line with Wheelock’s assumptions about the centrality of white missionaries and the intractability of Natives. He quotes his white missionaries extensively while summarizing the activities of his Native students and schoolmasters. Although he quotes the words of tribal leaders at some length, such quotations are usually in the context of a report from one of his missionaries. While the excerpted letters of David Fowler (Montaukett) and Joseph Woolley (Delaware) in the 1766–​­67 English narratives seem to be a departure for Wheelock in the sense that he makes room for these Natives to speak for themselves, his careful control over the content and presentation of their letters makes them the perfect vehicle for Wheelock’s own views. The original letters, carefully preserved among the various papers Wheelock maintained, are substantially longer than the version he reprints in his narratives. As reprinted, the letters show an idealized version of the missionary situation, with any details that might suggest that Wheelock is not in control of the

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situation excised. Two of Fowler’s letters are abstracted. The letters as reprinted in Wheelock’s narrative touch on some of the difficulties Fowler faces—​­the lack of an interpreter, the complications of living without a spouse to cook and clean for him, and the hardships he and the Oneidas are facing with poor crops and food shortages—​­all aspects that might inspire further donations from eager readers. The letters also include enthusiastic assessments of his bright young students and their progress. Among the things Wheelock leaves out are Fowler’s assessment of how much money he will need to live on (thirty pounds—​­certainly more than Wheelock would ever pay), his nostalgia for life in the Wheelock family (“I wish I had some of Mrs. Wheelock’s Bread & Milk, little sweet Cake and good boild Meat” [McCallum, 94]), and an angry tirade about the laziness of the Oneida men and the overworked Oneida women. Wheelock also removes Fowler’s summary of a letter from Kirkland, with its reference to Kirkland’s poor treatment among his people, his rotten meat and lack of bread. Wheelock thus controls the version of missionary truth, providing enough squalor to inspire further donation but not enough to truly horrify. The abstract of Joseph Woolley’s letter leaves out almost as much as it includes; fully half the letter is excised, including Woolley’s concern over the severe shortage of funds, crossed signals with schoolteachers arriving in communities without missionaries ready, and the ever-​­present danger of smallpox. As with Fowler’s edited letters, the effect of Woolley’s edited letters is to suggest the realism of the situation without any of the details that might make such situations seem impossibly bleak. Above all, Wheelock’s selective representation emphasizes the optimism of his missionary schoolteachers and the promise of better times ahead rather than their despair over the chaos and lack of funding that constantly threaten to derail their efforts. The promise such letters established was short-​­lived: Joseph Woolley died of consumption a year after his letter was printed, and David Fowler wrote only one more letter (about a month after the last one quoted) that might be deemed appropriate for Wheelock’s purposes: the rest are marred in a variety of ways, making them unacceptable for Wheelock to redistribute. Woolley’s death was a severe blow, as Wheelock had great ambitions for this most promising Indian scholar; his relationship with David Fowler, however, was quite different, and it is hard not to read the absence of appropriate letters after these published ones as a sign of the growing tension between the two.21 Perhaps to Fowler’s surprise Wheelock’s editing of his letters presents him not just as a humble Christian acutely aware of his own inadequacy but also suggests

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that he sees the “poor Indians” he is sent to convert and educate as objects of pity or contempt. Certainly the excerpts included in Wheelock’s narratives are not entirely representative of what Fowler and Woolley wrote: for all the seeming superiority and suspicion of all things Indian in Fowler’s letters, for example, Wheelock’s excisions significantly altered the character of Fowler’s relationships with other Indians. Wheelock leaves off Fowler’s reference in one letter to “My Father,” one of the leading men of the Oneida tribe and clearly someone Fowler has come to admire and trust. This sense that Fowler sees himself participating in a familial structure in this Native community is confirmed in another letter (one Wheelock does not cite) when he refers not just to “my scholars” but more affectionately “my Children,” to whom he will entrust the care of his garden when he goes on a journey (McCallum, 98). Whether this complex emotional mixture of fear, love, frustration, and occasional anger is something that Wheelock did not understand or was unwilling to represent, certainly Fowler’s relationship to the Oneidas was distorted by Wheelock’s manipulation of his words. After the publication of his letters in the 1766 and 1767 tracts Fowler’s many letters are filled with bitter complaints, requests for materials, and above all intimations that the mission is not going well—​­Kirkland has been thrown out, he reports, and he himself is almost naked for want of decent clothes; he has neither the time nor the inclination to write neat, ordered letters—​­hardly the kind of news Wheelock would want to pass along to his financial backers.22 The variety of Native-​­authored sources in Wheelock’s archive suggests the endless possibilities of Native expression. However, what Wheelock wanted to represent was only one thing: that his students had eradicated their cultural history (what Wheelock notoriously refers to in his first narrative as the “savage and sordid Practices, as they have been inured to from their Mother’s Womb” [25]) and that they embraced his own world view. Wheelock wanted his students to remain Readerly Indians who would read and absorb his precepts rather than express their own identities. If Wheelock’s students refused this bargain they were still available for Wheelock’s interpretation; they did not merely fade into official silence by returning to their communities, but they were publicly dismissed by Wheelock as disgraces to religion, the school, and the “Grand Design” of wholesale Indian conversion. Their actions were endlessly interpretable within Wheelock’s universe, and for a time Wheelock dominated the version of Indian identity that was available to English benefactors.

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A few short years after Occom and Whitaker returned to New England with an astounding 11,000 pounds from England, Wheelock publicly expressed his new intentions in his narrative of 1771: Dartmouth was not to be a seminary for Indians but rather for white students who would convert Indians. Wheelock tries to suggest that this change is small, but his language once again undercuts him. His narrative dismisses in one great sweep all the Indian students of his school, with no specific reference to individuals. While Wheelock initially saw the literacy training he had to offer as a way of turning Native students into docile figures eager and willing to work under the watchful supervision of white missionaries, by his 1771 narrative he has come to believe that nothing good has come from the work of creating a literate cadre of Indian students. His failure amounted to this: Indians, it seems, were less interested in a readerly role than they were in their ability to shape their own stories, as we shall see in the following chapters. Wheelock held the power to represent his school internationally through his control of the publication of his narratives, but try as he might, he could never fully control his students’ utterances. This lack of control became most painfully apparent to Wheelock as Joseph Brant became a political force, Samson Occom established himself as a writer and community leader, and Joseph Johnson increasingly came to the attention of New England’s governors and mayors as he traveled to garner support for Brothertown.23 As the absences and gaps in Wheelock’s narratives reveal, he is dependent on his students for the authority to represent them, and they were not always willing to grant him that authority. Like John Sergeant before him, Wheelock responds to his own apparent failure by initiating even greater, more ambitious ventures, assuring his readers that these ventures are part and parcel of the overwhelming success of the earlier vision. Thus, for Wheelock the creation of Dartmouth to functionally replace Moor’s Charity School is all part of the same commitment to Native conversion; he suggests that the shift to educating white boys rather than Indian boys and girls is little more than a minor adjustment. To keep on message Wheelock found himself ruthlessly drowning out all voices other than his own. From the 1771 narrative to the final narrative of 1775 there is only the illusion of any voice other than his own: the rules of Dartmouth and the poem written by one of his students both reinforce Wheelock’s vision of education, literacy, and Native absence. From the first narrative to the last, Wheelock shaped and gave meaning to the fragmentary outside voices he shared with his audience in his various narratives.

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Father Wheelock: Paternalism and Writerly Silence Unlike Edwards and his ideological interest in the Writerly Indian, Wheelock longed for the perfect Readerly Indian, imagining over and over that he had sponsored that creature in various of his students; when they produced themselves as Writerly Indians, however, Wheelock felt betrayed and abandoned. He spent much of his career controlling the letters and utterances of his students, and so it is perhaps fitting to spend a moment here examining a letter that eluded his control. Written at roughly the same moment as those of Woolley and Fowler that he so carefully manages, this letter, written by Wheelock himself, reveals not only the widening rift between Occom and Wheelock but also the network of relationships through which literacy and its uses affected Native peoples. It is perhaps ironic that this letter forms the basis of my analysis of Writerly Indians: written by Wheelock, it centers around the silence or passivity that he desires from the Natives around him (most especially Samson Occom and his wife, Mary). Nonetheless, it is a revealing letter that opens up some of the complexities of Writerliness, which sometimes paradoxically, as we shall see, emerges from the Native silence that accompanies missionary bluster. As is now well known, from 1765 to 1768 Samson Occom traveled throughout England and Scotland raising money for Eleazar Wheelock’s Charity School. By then Occom was already an ordained Presbyterian minister who had for many years served as a teacher and preacher among the Montaukett Indians of Long Island and his own Mohegan tribe in Connecticut. Indeed, Joanna Brooks has shown that by this point in his life Occom had already served as a tribal elder for the Mohegan people, and he had his own compelling reasons for traveling to England to make a case for the land rights of the Mohegan people. From Wheelock’s perspective, of course, this motive was incidental to the Charity School fund-​­raising, and, once Occom had embarked on his journey, Wheelock insisted that any attention to this Mohegan cause would only detract from everything else. Despite having been educated by Eleazar Wheelock before the formal existence of Moor’s Charity School, Occom was nonetheless in many ways a shining example of all that charity schools like Wheelock’s could offer: it seemed reasonable, at least from Wheelock’s perspective, to have Occom raise money in England. Even so, as others have documented, this trip was extraordinary, not least because Occom and his fellow traveler Nathaniel Whitaker

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were effectively among strangers—​­benevolent well-​­wishers in Great Britain who were eager to help Wheelock’s cause—​­but also because Occom’s trip meant that he left the care of his family (a wife and seven children) in Wheelock’s hands.24 Wheelock felt certain that Samson Occom was the perfect symbol of his school’s success, but neither man had expected Occom to be quite the extraordinary fund-​­raiser he in fact turned out to be. Occom was far more than the flattened figure of the Readerly Indian of Wheelock’s desires: he was a powerful and eloquent public speaker, and by all accounts an altogether pleasant, quick-​­witted companion, as his English hosts came to appreciate. Faithful to the official version of the success of colonial benevolence, Occom did little on this trip to disrupt Wheelock’s version of events, making him the living embodiment of all that the English benefactors hoped to achieve. Occom was a star, and the English could not get enough of him. He met the king, he was referenced in the London theater, and, above all, people hung on his every word, hoping to get from him the “truth” of English missions and Native identity—​­as long as that “truth” fit with what they already expected.25 But Occom was more than just what his audiences wanted him to be; he was also coming to a deeper understanding of himself and his role in this missionary endeavor. Having long embraced his role in the Mohegan community that was his home, through his experiences in Britain, Occom also established himself as a Mohegan Christian and a missionary in an international context. His letters as well as the letters of others from this period show him clearly moving away from the Readerly figure he was expected to be, although it is only after his return to New England that he actively confronted Wheelock.26 As Occom was coming into his own, Wheelock was experiencing his own problems back home. Despite very public celebrations of his success as an educator, Wheelock was in a far more tenuous position than he wanted to admit. By 1765 Wheelock desperately needed Occom for credibility and to raise money for him, as his school was already showing signs of faltering; he had little choice but to provide Occom with access to English money and contacts that he had worked hard to develop over the years. With Occom actually in England, however, the dynamic between Wheelock, the Patriarch, and Occom, the Readerly Indian son, was disrupted. Occom had more power than ever before, while Wheelock was effectively sidelined. As the time Occom spent in England stretched into years, he developed deep and abiding relationships with English benefactors like John Thornton and Andrew Gifford, once known only to Wheelock and now potentially privy to Occom’s side of things.

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Wheelock was increasingly coming to understand that he was in many ways dependent on Occom, a situation that not only was entirely new for him but also countered all of Wheelock’s beliefs about race, benevolence, and his own absolute authority. One of the ways Wheelock recalibrated the dynamic between the two men was through his treatment of Occom’s family. Occom left his home and family with the clear understanding that Wheelock would care for them in exchange for Occom’s work raising money abroad. While neither had initially envisioned the situation quite as hostage holding, over time Wheelock’s references to Occom’s family in his letters take on an almost menacing cast. When Occom seemed at his highest point in mid-​­1766, having successfully survived a smallpox inoculation and having endeared himself to his English hosts, Wheelock’s apparent indifference to the needs of Occom’s family left him feeling helpless and dependent, and several of Occom’s letters from 1767 reveal his profound sadness about his absence from his family. One letter in particular from April 1766 reveals a great deal about Wheelock’s position. Wheelock writes on April 9 to his Indian “son” to explain to Occom why his wife has had to reach out to others for basic sustenance when Wheelock had promised that she would never want for anything. Although the letter seems to move from topic to unrelated topic, Wheelock very clearly sets up juxtapositions that shift any blame from himself to others. The letter, quoted here in full, is as follows: My dear Son Occom I hope these will find you well recover’d of the Small Pox—​­and that I may give you pleasure in informing you that your Family are all well—​­ Mrs. Whitaker wrote me in your Wife’s name a few weeks ago that her Circumstances were needy—​­Capt. Shaw for some Reason, to me unknown Shewed a backwardness to supply her—​­I guess it is through the Influence of the Antimason Party—​­I immediately the Same Day wrote an order to Mr Breed to Supply her on my acct. with everything—​­a few days after, your Father Fowler was with me two nights by whom I Sent as much grain for her present relief as your old mare could carry, and doubt not but She is, and will be, well Supplied. I hope God has made you more humble than you have commonly been—​­and if So he will exalt & lift you up—​­a pill or two in Boston I tho’t was a very good preparative, I was glad to hear of that as well as the Approbation Kindness, and Good liking of your Friends there.

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Mrs Sarah Rogers & her sister have wrote my Daughter to inform them of Mrs Occom’s Necessities that they may Supply them—​­My Daughter is glad of the Office and will take pains about it—​­Your Father told me that Aaron is not a good Boy, runs abroad and not so Obedient to his Mother as he should be. I advised to put him out to a good Master, and Supply her Some other way. I hope you will keep quite clear of the Mason Affair, or you will bring an old House about my Ears. You know they have nobody in that case to blame or contend with but myself—​­They all know that the Commisioners Refused to recommend you, or Send you; only on that Account—​­Their not sending you has been no Discouragement at all to me—​­I have look’d upon it as a Design in Providence to Secure the Glory more Effectually to God alone who performeth all things for us—​­ You will see that I write Mr Whitaker—​­and excuse my not being more particular in this—​­you may depend upon it that nothing Shall be wanting for your Family within my Power. Accept Love in Abundance from My dear Sir Yours most heartily, Eleazar Wheelock27 In Wheelock’s chilling version of events he is not only blameless for Occom’s family’s want, but in fact Occom himself is responsible. The reason, he explains, that Mary Occom has been unable to draw supplies from the local shopkeeper has its base in the political factionalism in which Occom has involved himself, a set of political obligations of Occom’s that reappears throughout the letter. What is clear in this context is that as Occom establishes his own abilities (political and otherwise) beyond the Readerly Indian Wheelock desires, Wheelock retaliates. Incredibly, Wheelock blames Occom for his wife’s misfortune. According to this letter, not only do Occom’s political concerns threaten to derail Wheelock’s “Grand Design,” but they also threaten the well-​ ­being of Occom’s wife. Furthermore, it is not only Occom’s political activity that is threatening; it is also his “Pride.” By setting Occom’s supposed pride in opposition to his own effective management of the problem (“I immediately the same day . . . ​I sent as much grain . . .”), Wheelock suggests that somehow Occom’s “prideful” nature is cosmically related to his wife’s suffering (“I hope

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God has made you more humble than you have commonly been”), despite Wheelock’s “benign” attempts to avert that suffering. As if this insult to Occom were not clear enough, he then establishes a comparison between the two families: “My daughter is glad of the office and will take pains about it,” as opposed to the following sentence in which “your Father told me that Aaron [Occom’s son] is not a good boy.” The implication is clear: Wheelock’s children are good and obedient, while Occom’s are not. If Occom’s son has gone bad, the letter implies, Occom must be a bad father, and the presence of so many other fathers (John Fowler, who is actually Occom’s father-​­in-​­law, and of course the patriarch Wheelock) cannot make up for that central fact. What Wheelock’s letter obfuscates, of course, is that it is at Wheelock’s request that Occom has absented himself from his role as a father and furthermore that the task Wheelock’s “good” daughter will take on is fixing her father’s oversight. But there is more. The version of the letter in the Dartmouth archive is the writer’s copy, which ends on a final assurance of Wheelock’s love and good faith. However, this letter is in fact not what he sent to Occom; the letter he actually sent (housed in the Connecticut State Archives in Hartford, Connecticut) has a postscript, written (incredibly) a full twenty days after he drafted the initial letter. Clearly, Wheelock was reluctant to send what might have felt to him disturbingly close to an apology—​­as defensive and hostile as it might sound to us. Indeed, tucked into the final paragraph is the single phrase that might be construed as an apology: “and excuse my not being more particular in this—​­you may depend upon it that nothing Shall be wanting for your Family within my Power,” although that initial apology might actually refer to the clause preceding it, in which case it is an apology for not repeating all that he has already written to Nathaniel Whitaker, not for neglecting Mary Occom’s needs. Nonetheless, the postscript to this letter is as follows: April 29th this day I found your Letter with Mrs. Whitaker and had the Pleasure of carrying it with me to your House & reading it to your wife on hearing which she wept. I found her comfortable & all ye Family well—​­Mr Breed Supplies her on my accot.—​­I askd her what I should write to you she did not give me a Sudden Answer I askd her if I Should write that She didn’t want to see you, that she was as well without you as with you, yt you might Stay as long as you would. She Smiled and said if you please—​­however she could not conceal all affection to you—​­I

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discoursed with Aaron hope he will do better. Your Father is returned to Long Island—​­I hear very well of David.28 The addition lays bare a series of paternalistic assumptions about Mary and Samson Occom. Why does Wheelock presume to read her the letter out loud, making her weep? Why does he assume that he can characterize Mary Occom’s emotions to her husband, even as a clumsy, heavy-​­handed joke (“I askd her if I Should write that She didn’t want to see you, that she was as well without you as with you, yt you might Stay as long as you would”)? These two assumptions, of course, are based on one primary one, which it turns out, is false: Wheelock assumes that Mary Occom is illiterate and by extension that she is passive, dependent, and largely at the mercy of his “benevolent” intentions. And it seems she uses this assumption on his part to protect her interests (“if you please” she says to Wheelock, after his rather cruel and awkward joke about her supposed indifference to her husband’s absence). Even though she was probably able to both read and write in English (she was, after all, Occom’s student before he married her), in June 1766 she puts a shaky “x” on a receipt written out by Beza Woodward for Wheelock’s money and through much of the rest of the year has others communicate with Wheelock on her behalf—​­especially Woodward, Wheelock’s financial agent. All these actions suggest that she is perpetuating Wheelock’s assumption that she is entirely dependent on him. During this same period, however, she apparently writes letters to her husband in England without Wheelock’s help and stays on top of her family’s increasingly complex affairs, including the building of Occom’s unfinished two-​­story house. There is strong evidence of her ability to write letters on her own (she corresponds with her brothers and later in life seems to have corresponded with her grown daughters and sons), but, even if she herself could not write, she clearly had enough connections to people who could that she had no problem communicating through writing without Wheelock’s help. Yet it seems that at this crucial moment she kept this information from Wheelock—​­or perhaps simply chose not to correct what he assumed about her. Indeed, the letter’s postscript is most revealing of Wheelock’s sense of his own importance in Occom’s family: he reads to Occom’s wife, lectures Aaron on how to do better, and exchanges Occom-​­family news. Wheelock has stepped into Occom’s life, literally replacing him as the patriarch of the family. This appropriation of Occom’s role is presented as a loving gesture, but just as the letter itself jumps from love to threat and criticism and back again,

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the postscript’s description of reading Occom’s letter to his family and ordering their lives for them makes the same leap of domination and control as the actual letter itself does. Without understanding the context of the letter and its postscript, this exchange becomes little more than another indication of the myriad ways colonial figures abused and victimized Indians. And yet there is another component to this story, one that has Mary Occom at its center in a very different way. Mary Occom was far more than a pawn between her husband and his mentor: as this letter reveals, Mary Occom had her own networks that she wielded much to Wheelock’s surprise and embarrassment. In her moment of need she reaches out to Wheelock’s daughters, to Sarah Whitaker (the wife of Occom’s traveling companion in England), Mrs. Rogers and her sister, and even her own husband and father, all of whom appeal to Wheelock separately on her behalf. Mary Occom even appeals to Wheelock’s financial manager as well as the local shopkeepers (she pits one against the other, assuring whoever will give her supplies that when her husband returns, all will be set right). In fact, it is only because Mary Occom has begun to wield her power—​­the greatest being her ability to shame Wheelock into action—​­that Wheelock brings up the situation to Occom. And the supposedly humble, passive Mary Occom that Wheelock’s paternalist assumptions had constructed has informed quite a crowd about her situation, as this letter makes clear. Wheelock’s sense that he is the crucial lynchpin in communications between Occom and his wife is predicated on his presumption that Mary Occom is a Readerly Indian, not a Writerly one. That is, Wheelock presumes that Mary Occom is the passive recipient of Wheelock’s largesse, and more important, he presumes that the connection between Occom and his wife is completely in his hands. Nothing could be further from the truth: Occom and his wife have a number of alternative avenues of communication, even at this distance. Friends, companions, and even functional strangers one way or another are enmeshed in a series of interactions through which Occom and his wife made their voices heard to each other and to whomever will listen. What Wheelock’s letter reveals is not his own authority but rather the astounding network of individual relationships shaped and in turn shaping Native and white benevolence. Indeed, one 1766 letter from Woodward to Wheelock points to the variety of communications that occur: according to this letter Samson Occom writes from London to the shopkeeper who has refused credit to his wife; Occom also writes to his wife with instructions for their house, which she conveys to Woodward who then repeats them to Wheelock.

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Samuel Kirkland delivers money from Wheelock to give to Woodward for Mary Occom; Woodward and Mary Occom decide together which of the two shopkeepers should actually receive the money based on the differing instructions of Samson Occom and Wheelock. Woodward finds out about the letter from Occom to the shopkeeper, Captain Shaw, because Sarah Whitaker mentions that there was one when she went to get her mail.29 In fact, not only is Wheelock most emphatically not at the center of the communications in this network, but it seems that he is more or less the last to know what is going on. As Mary Occom makes her decisions about who to trust and where to purchase her supplies (she chooses to give her business not to the shopkeeper Wheelock recommends but to the one to whom her husband has written), she has gotten help from a vast network of people, finally reporting triumphantly that (Woodward puts her words in direct quotes) “Capt Shaw has turned his Coach about, and is as pleasant as a chicken now, and is ready to let me have any Thing I want.”30 Mary Occom visited with her friends, accepted visits from others, sent messages (apparently both oral and written) through other travelers, reaching out to men and women, Native and white, who might take an interest in her situation. It seems that Mary Occom deployed not so much her own literacy but rather Wheelock’s assumptions about her illiteracy (and by extension her implicit passivity). By giving Wheelock the illusion of control, she could exercise her own agency without him even understanding the ways she did so. Mary Occom eventually does reveal her literacy to Wheelock many months after this exchange, when she finds herself in a different crisis. She writes Wheelock a hasty note on November 8, 1766, to accompany a messenger telling Wheelock of Aaron’s continuing problems, which have spiraled out of her control. She needs Wheelock’s help, and she needs it immediately; so she writes (or has a letter written) to resolve this crisis.31 In January 1767 the crisis has passed, and she writes Wheelock a friendly note thanking him for taking on the care of Aaron. A few months later, however, in July 1767 she writes a terse letter informing Wheelock that she is once again out of supplies and that she is “afraid we shall suffer for want.”32 It is impossible to say with absolute certainty which, if any, of these letters is actually penned by Mary Occom. The language and handwriting, however, are consistent throughout the letters, and while her tone shifts from pleading to friendly to quite brusque, she closes each of these letters with a variation of the same stock phrase (which one is inclined to read sarcastically): “my kind love to your Self and Madam and to all your Family Sir I am your most obedient and very humble serv’t.”

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Mary Occom’s willingness to reach out to everyone and anyone in this “family” affair suggests that her own community of benefactors operates outside of the more famous web that dominated the relationship between Wheelock and her husband. Indeed, if Wheelock assumes he can insinuate himself into Occom’s family, Mary Occom sharply reminds him that she can insinuate herself just as well into his. The remarkable range of individuals who in fact do come to Mary’s aid—​­wives, daughters, accountants, and other associates—​­reveals that however much Wheelock longs to revel in his mastery over Occom, his wife, and Indians in general, the situation is far more complex than he is willing to admit. Indeed, it is this blindness on Wheelock’s part to the possibility of Indian agency, as well as his misrecognition of the range of sympathy and its expression among neighbors, friends, and family members, that ultimately destroys his school and alienates him from former students like Occom and their extended families. Eleazar Wheelock’s school accounts are almost magisterial in their scope and detail, tracking the income and expenditures of the Indian school for well over a decade. But Mary Occom’s household also had its own list of supplies, although hardly on the scale of Wheelock’s: her grocery accounts while her husband was away are still tucked into Dartmouth’s archive.33 Included among her household necessities were an inkpot, ink powder, and paper, modest supplies that profoundly challenge the concept of a Readerly Indian, as raced and gendered as that figure was understood to be. Even while her literate and erudite husband was away, Mary Occom, rarely more than a footnote in her husband’s stellar career, needed writing supplies as well as the postage for her letters. What exactly did she write? What happened to the letters she wrote and received? Was she teaching her children not just to read, as mothers were expected to do, but also to write, a responsibility her husband would surely have been doing had he been home?34 This simple notation on a list that includes food, clothing, and other sundries is a sobering reminder that for all the letters and documents that remain we are haunted by those that are gone. It is also a sharp reminder that the nonalphabetic texts of “wilderness” Indians that Wheelock and Sergeant dutifully produced for their overseas donors were not the only Indian texts that were illegible to their English audiences. If Wheelock’s narratives do not have room for the Indians he has educated to speak, their voices are to be found elsewhere. Similarly, if Historical Memoirs never actually produces a working school, that entity with its complications and corruptions is to be found elsewhere in the print record. The semi-​­public

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world and work of benevolence operates both in the public, generally accessible venue of narratives but also in the more arcane world of legal court proceedings as well as the friendships and alliances of epistolary exchange. But while Occom and his extended family have left enough of a documentary record to stand as a counternarrative to Wheelock’s school, that record is filled with as many gaps and absences as there are letters and documents. Stockbridge’s boarding school, however, has no countering Native voice.35 With the whirl of political and social ferment in the Stockbridge community of the 1750s there were Native people fully embroiled in various school factions, but they are largely silent in the historical record. How many Native men and women were exchanging letters and other documents that no longer exist? How might those texts have changed the stories we have? The subject position of the Writerly Indian is one that is celebrated today by Native intellectuals like Robert Warrior, Jace Weaver, and Daniel Heath Justice. Indeed, as Robert Warrior has noted, carving out a space for self-​ ­expression painfully, gracefully, and always at some personal cost, such individuals as Samson Occom, Joseph Johnson, and William Apess who refused the Readerly space allotted them can be said to have paved the way for Native American intellectuals working within contemporary universities.36 But while these early Native writers left documents—​­letters, petitions, journals, sermons, and other tracts—​­other Natives equally invested in a variety of literacy practices were not quite so legibly scripted into the missionary narrative of English education even as they irrevocably shaped it.

Chapter 2

The Writerly Worlds of Joseph Johnson

References to the pocket watches owned by a number of students and teachers affiliated with Moor’s Charity School are scattered among Eleazar Wheelock’s accounts. Throughout the eighteenth century, watches were markers of bourgeois status, one item in a growing consumer marketplace that provided hitherto unheard-​­of goods and services for the colonial populace. Although watches seem to have been relatively widely available,1 they were still expensive and required care and attention, making it somewhat puzzling that members of Wheelock’s school would have such items. Norwich, just up the road from Wheelock’s school, is thought to have had the first watchmaker in America, when Thomas Harland settled there in 1773.2 But because watches were used by Wheelock’s students as much as a decade earlier, they must have been imported. Moses Peck, a financial agent and avid supporter of Wheelock’s school, was a Boston merchant occasionally identified as a watchmaker: perhaps he was a source for the watches at the school.3 We know that most of the white teachers and missionaries at Moor’s Charity School owned them: the names of Ralph Wheelock (Eleazar’s son), Jacob Johnson, Samuel Kirkland, Theophilus Chamberlain, Samuel Wales, and Amzi Lewis all come up in Wheelock’s account books as owners of watches, and all of them served at some time as schoolmasters of or missionaries for the Charity School. All these men needed to have their watches mended at one point or another, an expense Wheelock carefully noted in his accounts (the unfortunate Samuel Wales has his watch repaired three times, once replacing his watch key in Hartford and twice having work done to the watch itself ). We also know that at least one of the Native pupils (and eventually a schoolteacher) at Wheelock’s school had a watch: Hezekiah Calvin (Delaware), owned a silver watch that his father gave to him (McCallum, 65). Indeed, in October 1767, after a two-​­year stint as schoolteacher among the Mohawks in upstate New York, Calvin wrote anxiously

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to Wheelock wondering whether his fellow student Aaron Occom would be returning to Lebanon. “If not,” he writes, “I must go & get my watch for he has got it, I do not Love to lose it so” (McCallum, 59). A year later Calvin is angrily telling the Narragansett Indians of Charlestown, Rhode Island, that among the various indignities Wheelock has committed against his students is the fact that he took Calvin’s watch from him, supposedly finding it too fancy for a mere Indian (McCallum, 65). Most if not all of Wheelock’s male students, Indian and white, were outfitted with waistcoats or vests made just for keeping items like pocket watches readily at hand. Even if they did not own watches, it seems, there was every expectation that they would desire and one day come to own such an object—​ ­although perhaps not one as fancy as Calvin’s silver one. These fragmentary records give us a glimpse at a tantalizing object, one that seems to have marked the divide between savagery and civilization so clearly that even the charity scholars of Wheelock’s school were deemed appropriate recipients of such a luxury—​­that is, unless they failed to meet Wheelock’s standards. At Moor’s Charity School, it seems, the connection of watches to mission work was so self-​­evident that Wheelock paid for their repair out of the school’s accounts. Watches were one of the most potent symbols of English order and authority, at once concealed in a pocket and yet constantly pulled from hiding to enforce English standards of regulation. They transformed the way individuals and communities related to each other and to the larger world by restructuring time from its fluid, seasonal passage to a rigid and unchanging process of mechanical motions regardless of individual circumstance. Watches separated the notion of time from light, weather, and season; days and nights were divided into fractions through minutes and hours rather than through mornings, afternoons, and evenings. Watches made beginnings and endings more or less arbitrary in relation to any given task; because of watches and clocks students ended their day at a fixed time, not when they had accomplished the lesson of the day or when the light started to fade. With watches as opposed to clocks, scheduled time and its enforcement were in the hands of a single individual, confirming the power of the schoolteacher to control the classroom. English learning was to be regulated, structured, and most aggressively differentiated by the schoolteacher from more flexible ways of knowing. Through watches faraway schoolmasters and missionaries also maintained their connection to Wheelock and to the systematic learning he advocated. As long as they stayed wound and did not break, the watches were a tangible

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reminder to missionaries who were isolated from their community that even at a vast geographic distance they were still part of a larger missionary culture. They reminded impoverished missionaries and schoolteachers that whatever the material conditions of their current situation, they were part of an intellectual and cultural elite, with watches as a concrete marker of their class status. Once lowly students themselves, at the mercy of other people’s watches at Moor’s Charity School, these isolated schoolteachers and ministers could now regulate their lives and the lives of their pupils, controlling time and its passage through their own mechanical trophies. But the need for maintenance (regular winding at the least) meant that watches required constant monitoring. And watches broke down often, as we have already seen. There was always the danger of “losing time,” or of having a watch stop and not being able to get back on an accurate schedule. Thus, in 1772 Samuel Kirkland writes to his friend Samson Occom, urging him to visit, as “things appear very dark & discouraging among my people [the Oneidas].” As a postscript to his letter he tells Occom, “My watch has stopped once of itself & will not go—​­shall next week send it to a watch maker—​­I like it in general very well.” It is perhaps accidental that the mission seems to be failing at the same time as the watch does, but it is interesting to see that Kirkland remains optimistic about fixing the watch, not the community. Teachers at schools established according to Wheelock’s wishes in upstate New York embodied the tension between Wheelock’s uniformity and the seasonal, more fluid schedules of their Iroquois students and church members. These teachers found themselves helpless as their students disappeared for months at a time on hunting trips or other seasonal travels, defying the controlled and regulated world they were supposed to covet. Indeed, letters to Wheelock from David Fowler, Hezekiah Calvin, and others express dismay and frustration that students came and went, and Wheelock regularly mentions this problem in his narratives. But one day, after less than a year among the Oneidas, the young Mohegan schoolmaster Joseph Johnson (he was only seventeen at the time) decides to go with them. He casually writes to Wheelock in May 1768, after a long and very hungry winter: “I have nothing strange to Acquaint you at present. I shall go with the Indians next week to their hunt (as all my scholars will go). I have only five scholars at present and the Oldest is 10 years of age. . . . ​I don’t know when I shall come down to make a short vizit.”4 We don’t know whether or not young Johnson had a watch with him, but we know that his decision to follow his charges on their seasonal hunt rather than stay in the empty schoolhouse or return to Connecticut for

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a “short vizit” to Wheelock was not an insignificant one. With this gesture Johnson embraced the seasonal time of his Indian students,5 putting aside even briefly the mechanized face of civility, industry, and order that he was meant to project—​­even as he recorded this gesture in writing. It was neither the first nor the last time he was to make such a choice, in the process bringing into question every aspect of Wheelock’s mission. While Wheelock’s school was hardly the only source of literacy training for Natives, it was unquestionably the longest lasting and most well funded, publicized, and ambitious institution for educating Native Americans in the eighteenth century. As such, this school in many ways set the standard for transatlantic ideas about Native education, literacy, and religion in New England in the mid-​­eighteenth century. As we have seen earlier, Wheelock’s narrative reports about his Charity School are revealing in that the racism of his casual references to Native Americans contextualizes much of the distrust Native communities came to feel toward his school. He may not have understood why Natives resisted his methods, but for modern observers it does not seem terribly difficult to see why they did: Wheelock’s use of humiliating confessions, demeaning language, a punishing vision of the afterworld, and his emphasis on sin, damnation, and the general inadequacy (in his mind) of Native students all appear in his narratives and throughout his letters as signs of his commitment to the betterment of all Native peoples. Wheelock envisioned his work as guiding his Native students in the transition from oral expression to written and the learning that this shift implies. However, as his school produced more and more Natives able to read and write in English, it increasingly became Wheelock’s job to manage their utterances and to “translate” those utterances to benevolent Englishmen. In Wheelock’s universe Natives remained one elusive step from recognized authorship; Wheelock carefully monitored the Native words produced within and about his school, reproducing in print only those he deemed appropriate. And as we have seen in the first chapter, the form in which such words were produced for the public in the Charity School narratives was fragmented, censored, and even at times inaccurately represented. Indeed, it was only after breaking with Wheelock that Native writers like Samson Occom and Joseph Johnson were able to gain access to print culture in ways that were not dominated by their mentor. The dance of silence and textuality in the life and work of Joseph Johnson—​­once a student of Wheelock’s, then a teacher under his supervision, and ultimately a teacher and community leader on his own terms—​­informs

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us of the ways in which practice, ideology, and voice were not so easily contained in the convoluted world of Wheelock’s Indian communities. Trained by Wheelock to be a Readerly Indian, Johnson became the consummate Writerly Indian, fully cognizant not only of the power and value of the written word but also of his own ability to wield his writing skills to express precisely what structured his sense of Indianness. For Johnson writing is not distinct from his identity: it is through writing that Johnson comes to terms with his relationship to Indian communities. His acquisition and increasingly masterful deployment of his literacy skills suggest a great deal about the complexities of eighteenth-​­century educational models, with their simultaneous insistence on repetition and imitation, even as they provided a model for introspection and critical thinking as preconditions for true Christian conversion.

Moor’s Charity School When Joseph Johnson left his Mohegan home as a seven-​­year-​­old boy in 1758 to become part of Wheelock’s boarding school, he had probably not received much English literacy training yet. Although the situation had ostensibly changed at Mohegan from Occom’s famous description of his own brushes with education more than twenty years earlier, in fact it may not have been substantially different: “There was a ^Sort of a^ School kept, when I was quite young, but I believe there never was one that ever Learnt to read anything . . . ​ when I was about 10 Years of age there was . . . ​a man ^who went^ . . . ​about among the Indian Wigwams, and where ever he Coud find the Indian Childn, would make them read—​­but the . . . ​Children usd to take Care to keep out of his way.”6 For almost a decade starting in 1739, Ben Uncas, son of the Sachem and eventually sachem of the tribe himself, was paid by a missionary society as a schoolteacher, but when Johnson was a child it was the Scottish Robert Clelland (or McClelland) who was schoolmaster to the Mohegans. Clelland was unpopular not only because of his poor teaching habits (the tribe complained that he took in too many English children, neglected the school, and did not feed the children their dinners as he was contractually obligated to do) but also because of his political position in terms of a long-​­standing land dispute (Love, 31–​­32, 123–​­24). Even so, it is quite possible that both of Joseph Johnson’s parents were literate. His mother, Betsey Johnson, made a profession of faith and was baptized in New London before her children were born, and in 1757 (about

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a year before his death) Joseph Johnson, Sr., wrote a letter to his wife that opened with “Dear and loving wife. I received your letter, dated the 9th day of this month. I am glad to hear you are well and all my friends.”7 Clearly, even if members of this family were not themselves able to write in English and instead used amanuenses, they certainly understood and valued literacy. Therefore, it is likely that his mother took advantage of whatever options were available for young Joseph Johnson in his community. For Indian parents like Johnson’s widowed mother, however, such options were limited. Certainly one possibility would have been to indenture children to English families where they were supposed to learn appropriate skills and work as servants. As an educational strategy this had limited success, as David Silverman has shown among the Indians of Martha’s Vineyard; literacy training in such indentures was marginal and sporadic, and English families tended to see this system as a way of getting cheap labor. Besides alienating children from their communities, this system had the further problem of connecting literacy to servitude.8 But as we have already seen, the schools at Mohegan up to this point were of limited success. Certainly the educational options Joseph Johnson’s mother could present to her children were quite poor. For this young Mohegan widow with ambitions for her children (Joseph Johnson’s sister, Amy, attended as well), Wheelock’s charity school, which had only been in operation for four years in 1758, must have seemed a promising alternative,9 one made more so by the school’s proximity to Mohegan as well as the extensive family and community network of Mohegan students already in place at the school, thanks to Samson Occom’s encouragement.10 Wheelock’s Indian School was intended not only to cover a rudimentary range of instruction but to take it even further by serving as a preparatory institution for boys intended for the ministry; the goal of the school was to provide the most capable Indian and white boys a level of instruction that would allow them to conclude their studies at one of the colonial colleges and seminaries. As such, this school offered the most sophisticated education available to Native people at this time—​­surely an appealing possibility for the Johnson family.11 Indeed, boarding schools like John Sergeant’s and Eleazar Wheelock’s emerged as “solutions” to some of the volatility of community schools. By ensuring less parental involvement, more of a commitment by teachers, fixed habitation for all involved, and above all more room for rules, order, and structure, missionaries and their funding agencies felt confident that these institutions would be beneficial to local communities and to individual students.

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Local schools would send their best and brightest to boarding schools, which would in turn mold these students into better, more effective teachers and ministers who could then be sent out to other Native communities, and the cycle would continue ad infinitum. Boarding schools were never intended as a replacement for community schools, only as a better and higher-​­level alternative for a select few. Despite its promise for Indian parents intent on providing the best possible education for their children, a promise seemingly reinforced by the school’s proximity to nearby Indian communities, the school was hardly welcoming to its Indian students. In designing his school Wheelock looked admiringly to John Sergeant’s educational plan model, embracing its theory with only the most minor revisions. Key to both the Sergeant model and the Wheelock ideal is discipline, order, and regulation. Like Sergeant, Wheelock attempted to control his students’ every waking hour, although the Wheelock model emphasizes religion more than Sergeant’s, with various tasks related to rigorous training in religious practice and theology. He writes in some detail of the school schedule: They are obliged to be clean, and decently dressed, and be ready to attend Prayers, before Sun-​­rise in the Fall and Winter, and at 6 o’Clock in the Summer. A Portion of Scripture is read by several of the seniors of them: And those who are able answer a Question in the Assembly’s Cat­ echism, and have some Questions asked them upon it, and an Answer expounded to them. After Prayers, and a short Time for their Diversion, the School begins with Prayer about 9, and ends at 12, and again at 2, and ends at 5 o’Clock with Prayer. Evening Prayer is attended before the Day-​­light is gone. Afterwards they apply to their Studies, etc. They attend the public Worship, and have a Pew devoted to their Use, in the House of God. On Lord’s-​­Day Morning, between and after the Meetings, the Master, or some one whom they will submit to, is with them, inspects their Behaviour, hears them read, catechises them, discourses to them, etc. And once or twice a Week they hear a Discourse calculated to their Capacities upon the most important and interesting Subjects.12 This account is echoed by that of John Smith, ostensibly an impartial observer, in fact a longtime advocate of Wheelock’s school, having donated goods and money over the years to help the school succeed. He writes in May 1764:

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In the morning when on Ringing the School house Bell they Assemble at Mr Wheelock’s House about 5 oClock with their Master; who named the Chapter in Course for the Day & called upon the near Indian who read 3 or 4 Verses till the Master said Proximus, & then the next Indian read som Verses & so on till all the Indians had read the whole chapter. After this Mr Wheelock Prayes And then they each Indian perse a Verse or two of the Chapter they had read. After this they entered Successively on Prosodia & then on Disputations on some Questions propounded by themselves in some of the Arts & Sciences. And it is really charming to see Indian Youths of Different Tribes & Languages in pure English reading the word of God & speaking with Exactness & accuracy on points (either chosen by themselves or given out to them) in the Severall arts & Sciences, and especially to see this done with at Least a seeming Mixture of Obedience to God; a filial Love & Reverence to Mr Wheelock, & yet with great Ambition to Excell each other.13 In both descriptions tasks are carefully monitored, and time is divided and organized by the master or teacher. In Smith’s description it is the bell that marks time, not a clock, although Wheelock’s account books do record the arrival of a clock for the school from Mr. Whitaker in London a few years after this account. The bell (in conjunction with the clock) initiates and structures the day, and Smith’s account suggests students have internalized the logic, reason, and order that such clock time promotes.14 Among those unnamed students is almost certainly Joseph Johnson, who would have been about thirteen years old at the time. Johnson’s name first appears in Wheelock’s narratives in the appendix to the 1766 Brief Narrative in a list of students and missionaries to be sent out to the Six Nations, with no mention of his particular qualifications or of his moral character or promise, as Wheelock did for most of the other students he mentioned by name in his narratives (56). While this was the first public mention of Johnson, however, it is hardly the first written exchange concerning him in Wheelock’s records. His first surviving letter, dated September 1764 (only four months after Smith’s account), presents a very different picture of the regulated, ordered world Wheelock imagined. Johnson writes: Revd & Hond Sir With A great deal of consideration would I inform you Sir what past between Eleazar Sweetland & I. This is the true meaning According

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to the best of my Memory, that as we was playing the Misfortune was this that Sweetland took up A Stone, Gourdains being present and he Sent the Stone not knowing that the dog was there. Gourdain told me of it. In a mean & Sordid Manner I told him that I would do the Same to him, As he would do to the dog. But All in Jest, Sweetland Witnesses to it. And I Also threw him down not Violantly & there held him down About A quarter of An-​­hour he Witnesses himself. In A shorst time After I had got him down I Asked him what if I keept him All the Night then he said he would not Stay here 2 hours longer. Then I told him I did not Intend he Should. Then he said he would not Stay one hour longer. Then I Asked him how he could help himself In no Anger but All in Jest Eleazar Sweetland witnesses. Your Humble Servant Joseph Johnson15 When one boy throws a stone at a dog, Johnson confesses to Wheelock that “in a mean & Sordid Manner” he told that boy he would do the same to him as he had done to the dog. Johnson then, according to his own admission, “threw him down . . . ​& there held him down About A quarter of An-​­hour.” Although he insists that this was “In no Anger” and “All in Jest” and that the other student (Eleazer Sweetland) will attest to all that he has written, the incident suggests a level of random violence and coercion that is not present in the official version. It also rather interestingly reveals the ways in which Johnson is already mastering the written form of the letter-​­confession. His opening phrase (“With A great deal of consideration would I inform you Sir”) is a formal rhetorical flourish that belies the petty content that follows. But Johnson is clearly positioning himself as the innocent party; rash words were said and actions could be construed negatively, but Johnson’s repeated “All in Jest” attempts to reimagine the events as a playful escapade between friends rather than a brutal threat accompanied by a violent series of actions. Beyond this short confession of Johnson’s, however, we have little record of his experience at Wheelock’s school, although there is an extensive record of what life was probably like for young Johnson at this school. The physical space was somewhat more flexible than would allow for the constant order and regularity that Wheelock desired. Joshua Moor’s legacy was “two Acres of

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Pasturing, a small House and Shop” (Wheelock, 1763, 45), but Wheelock also boarded students in his own home (David Fowler was one such student) as well as among other members of the Lebanon community—​­and boys as well as girls were often set to work on the farms or in the homes of local people to learn the trades Wheelock felt were essential. This work, of course, made them less available for the regulation that Wheelock advocated, as did the journeys to and from home of various of his students, which often lasted for months at a time. Thus, student David McClure’s first view of the school in 1764 was only a partial one: “I arrived at Lebanon Crank, late in the afternoon, & the objects which presented were a number of Indian & English youth playing on the spacious green before Mr. Wheelock’s house & the School House” (McClure, 6). He explains that first thing in the morning the students assembled in the main room of Wheelock’s house for a discourse on religion before the school day began and after it concluded, with some psalm singing in the evenings.16 Room and board at the school was very plain, McClure explains: “We reposed on Straw Beds in Bunks & generally dined on a boiled dish & an Indian pudding” (8), although David Fowler recalls with fondness “Mrs. Wheelock’s Bread & Milk, little sweet Cake and good boild Meat” (McCallum, 94). Like schoolmasters across the colonial world, Wheelock attempted to establish order and discipline not only through the physical space of the schoolhouse but also through writing. As E. Jennifer Monaghan points out, “copying was the prime learning technique” for writing instruction ( “Readers Writing” 174), and in Wheelock’s school and others writing was quite simply penmanship. For example, before his arrival at Wheelock’s school McClure had spent seven years in Master Holbrook’s school in Boston where, he says “I had acquired the skill of good writing.” This skill gets him out of the farmwork required of most other students, so, he tells us “my leisure hours from study were generally spent in copying letters for Mr. Wheelock” (McClure 7–​­8). Being a good writer is strictly about having neat and legible handwriting, a skill it took McClure seven years to acquire. Theoretically, of course, this skill could be reinforced through the practice of forming letters in any configuration, and copy books of the period typically had decidedly secular phrases. Wheelock, however, reinforced his notions of religion, sin, and the constant presence of mortality through handwriting exercises, as we have already seen in the writing sample of a young Mohawk student: written out carefully three times on a small scrap of paper is the phrase “Live mindful of Death” (MA 33: 253a). Writing thus served in multiple ways as a site of discipline: the act of

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forming the letters and shaping the words reinforced for students their participation in an ordered, neatly and precisely worked system, and the actual meaning of the phrases they copied reminded them of the hopelessness and helplessness of their position in this ever-​­so-​­temporary physical world. For Wheelock writing had everything to do with identity, specifically the idea that identity could be formed and shaped like letters to fit within a neatly regulated space.17 Thus, by sending evidence of his students’ well-​­formed handwriting, Wheelock was assuring his donors that his students’ minds were equally well formed. Both Tamara Plakins Thornton and Monaghan remind us that this notion of a neatly ordered identity reflected in controlled handwriting was typical in the period.18 Penmanship was all; it defined social class and personal worth. Schools in Boston had exhibits of student penmanship in which the ornate designs and geometric, often circular designs were reminiscent of the kind of fine stitching of girls’ samplers of the same period. Emphasis was clearly on the handwriting, not on the content, which was often a passage copied from models in books on penmanship. Thus, when David Fowler expresses his anxiety over his handwriting and the physical limitations of mission work (his letters mention the lack of a table and light, as well as a writing hand used for farming and building and therefore unable to shape letters effectively) and when Wheelock anxiously reminds his students what and how to write, they are all participating in a very specific understanding of the meaning and value of handwriting. Scholars like Monaghan and others have noted the irony that writing, in this period taught as the most stifling and regimented physical act based on repetition and dictation, should come to have such a central role in expressing values and ideas outside of socially and culturally accepted norms. Wheelock’s school was emphatically centered on writing as a means of ordering and shaping a very particular kind of world, with phrases and salutations reappearing throughout Native students’ correspondence marking acquiescence to a particular model of being. Writing was not about creative self-​­expression in the way that we have come to take for granted today. Indeed, even if their spelling and the actual wielding of the pen is occasionally poor (resulting in ink blots and poor alignment on the page), Wheelock’s students are adept at reciting the conventional phrases he expected from them and at adding the appropriate flourishes to the letters b, g, d, s, and l, seemingly tamping down individual identity for the appropriate display of uniformity. At the same time, Wheelock used his own writing—​­his account books, his letter books, and even his religious books—​­as tools for controlling and

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dominating the ever uncontainable Native figure. For Wheelock, however, handwriting was not an issue; his own was rather ordinary, and he tended to use amanuenses like Beza Woodward and David McClure to copy over his letters and tidy his account books. Wheelock controlled communication and felt himself beyond the need for expression in penmanship. This he left to his inferiors.19 Yet when students act out, Wheelock requires of them lengthy confessions in which they must characterize their actions as shameful and sinful. Writing in this context is less a means of self-​­expression, but instead is a means through which Wheelock expects his students to assimilate culturally. Writing is at the core of the disciplinary system through which Wheelock controls his young charges, and they are keenly aware of it. For example, young Hezekiah Calvin (Delaware) opens one letter with the words “with shamefacedness & humbleness of Heart I write you these Lines” (McCallum, 60). Another letter explains, “It is with Shame I put pen to paper” (61). Jacob Fowler (Montaukett) writes, “It makes me tremble to think to write to such a great gentleman as Mr E Wheelock is, I am afraid I shall say Something that will be displeasing to him.—​­If I do I humbly ask Your Forgiveness Sir” (118). Some young students’ infractions are documented before they can write, and so they must put their mark to lengthy confessions written out by Eleazar Wheelock, his son Ralph, or even one of the older charity students, confirming for them the association of writing and shaming. The act of writing at Wheelock’s Charity School is inextricably connected to contrition and humiliation; few escape the mortification of public, written confessions of bad behavior, and in fact few of the letters connected to Wheelock’s school express anything other than abject humility. Writing produced a body of evidence to be shaped and deployed however Wheelock needed it to be used, a lesson Joseph Johnson took to heart long after his departure from Wheelock’s school. Wheelock carefully kept the correspondence to and from his students, even when it clearly did not match his representations of the school. While Wheelock longed for neatly written, evenly spaced words on a page, when he did not get this, he used that lack to argue for the shift from educating Natives to educating the white charity students who would produce what Wheelock wanted. Even though our record of what was at stake is dramatically compromised by the role of writing and literacy in Wheelock’s plan, as Laura Murray has shown, his Native students manage in a number of ways to disrupt the expectations they were meant to live by, even if these strategies ended up being self-​­defeating in the long run.20 Thus, while Fowler may have apologized for his inadequate writing

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equipment, he very pointedly brought the material conditions of production to Wheelock’s attention; in the end, after all, whose fault is it that Fowler, Calvin, and others lacked appropriate materials to successfully complete their missions or even write a letter? While young Native girls like Mary Secutor, Sarah Simon, and Miriam Storrs (the only three girls from Wheelock’s school to have left evidence of their written literacy) experienced education at Wheelock’s school in substantially different ways than the boys (none seems to have acquired more than limited writing ability), like the boys each of them expressed an acute sense of her own vileness and inadequacy by Wheelock’s standards, as scholar Margaret Szasz reminds us.21 Young Mary Secutor perhaps best reflects this sense when she writes, “I am quite discouraged with myself. . . . ​I have been more trouble to ye Docter then all my mates. Don’t think I desarve ye honour of being in your School” (McCallum, 238). Ironically these young girls spent most of their week sewing and learning the kinds of household tasks that perfectly suited them to a life of servitude, which was what they were hoping to escape by attending Wheelock’s school. The letters from them that Wheelock preserved contain a hopelessness that probably reflects Wheelock’s general lack of interest in their well-​­being; after all he was primarily focused on his male students and the ways in which they could best perpetuate his “Grand Design.” The letters seem to reveal Wheelock’s control and the wrenching, despairing world he creates for his students who must reject everything they love for the “prize” of becoming the kind of person Wheelock can love. In the neat handwriting that Wheelock so cherished, students write of their loneliness, fear, and self-​­hatred. And always having the final word, Wheelock turned that sadness against his students in the end, closing down the school rather than acknowledging how he might have contributed to such tragic loneliness and despair. Whether as modern readers we focus on Wheelock’s haughty pronouncements on the racial characteristics of Native Americans or whether we instead turn our attention to the words of Native students struggling with their place in this system, this documentary record reveals a bleak, violent world for Wheelock’s young students. And yet alongside this record scholars have noted that this school was also emphatically embedded in Native space. Abenaki scholar Lisa Brooks, for example, reminds us of the kinship web that connected so many of Wheelock’s charges and that students from Wheelock’s school went on to important leadership positions within their own communities. Brooks cites in particular Wheelock’s melancholy suggestion in his first narrative that

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young John Pumshire, one of his first students, was sent home to die because of his poor health. Brooks finds that instead the young man probably left the school to act as an interpreter for his people. She writes, “Rather than going home to perish, Pumshire assumed an active leadership role in his community, pushing the colony of New Jersey to make the sale of Delaware land illegal without the consent of a preselected council of Delaware men, and used his skills in literacy and diplomacy to support the larger Delaware confederation” (231). Clearly, Wheelock’s records provide only the most fragmentary sense of the meanings and values behind his school. Although there are poignant letters from the students begging for leave to come to and go from the school, Wheelock’s account books suggest that he had far less control over his students’ movements than those letters would suggest, and the absence of such letters from young Johnson can hardly be understood to mean that he did not return frequently to Mohegan. Sarah Wyoggs (Mohegan), for example, came to Wheelock’s school in 1762 and is said to have been “rusticated” in 1764—​­an odd turn of phrase for the niece of Samson Occom and the child of a mother, also named Sarah Wyoggs, who was herself a reader and a writer and a deeply committed Christian.22 In 1763, while the daughter is still a student at Wheelock’s school, her mother writes to Occom, at the time the schoolteacher at Montaukett, of various and sundry family news from Mohegan, mentioning in passing, “I came from the Crank [that is, Lebanon Crank, the name of the town in which the charity school is situated] 3 weeks agoe, & all was well at mr Wheelocks.”23 This reference is reminiscent of a visit among friends; news of the school is preceded by information about a brother and an uncle and followed by information about sisters and mother. Indeed, Wheelock’s accounts for the younger Wyoggs do not include charges for boarding in 1763, and in 1764 the only charges to her account are some cloth and a silk handkerchief. And despite her supposed departure in 1764, the young Sarah Wyoggs appears in another student’s confession in March 1768 (McCallum, 232–​­33). It seems that at least in this case Wheelock’s desire for control and stability was complicated by the network of relationships of his young charge—​­a set of relationships Wheelock could ill afford to lose. In fact, Wheelock’s account books are filled with journeys not only back and forth from students’ home communities but also between communities. Hezekiah Calvin, a Delaware Indian, frequently visits the Narragansett community in Charlestown, Rhode Island, and the Mohegan Community in New London, while the Mohawk students seem to have accompanied their friends home to Narragansett, Mohegan, and elsewhere. Such home stays sometimes

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extended for months at a time, and the charges for journeys both coming and going were part of Wheelock’s general expenses. It is not by breaking free of Wheelock that students enter Native space, as Lisa Brooks has noted; in fact they are already in it (86–​­90). Indeed, as Wheelock comes to find out, he may feel in control of his charity world, but the Natives who participate in it shape it as well. Besides Samson Occom, himself arguably far more the founder of the school than Wheelock, Native parents modified Wheelock’s plans by removing their children and by critiquing the school’s structure.24 Such input had limited success; when the Native participants in the school asked more than Wheelock was willing to give, he simply closed down the school. Nonetheless, and very much in contradiction to Wheelock’s public pronouncements, students had a part in shaping the nature and tenor of the school, even as these young people are themselves shaped by the experience of coming under Wheelock’s tutelage.

Joseph Johnson Among the Oneidas While the letters between Wheelock and his students lay out a simple binary of failure and success, as we have already seen, other records suggest that the picture was far more nuanced. We see this most emphatically in Joseph Johnson’s experience as a schoolteacher among the Oneidas supported by Wheelock from 1766 to 1768. The constellation of writing related to this moment reveals some of the complexities facing the young men and (occasionally) women sent by Wheelock to unfamiliar Native communities and also points to the limits of the epistolary exchange between Wheelock and his students. In particular, Johnson describes one incident to Wheelock—​­a drunken frolic lasting several weeks—​­as a failure in relatively unambiguous terms, even as his actions suggest a more complex view of what had occurred. The drunken escapade occurred when Johnson was only a young teenager living hundreds of miles from any home he had ever known. After seven years as a student at Moor’s Charity School, which was after all only a few miles from his home community of Mohegan, “in the 3d. month of [his] 15th year,”25 Johnson traveled hundreds of miles from Wheelock’s school to the Oneida community in upstate New York, where he writes several letters to Wheelock reporting on his attempts to establish and maintain a school on Wheelock’s instructions. Johnson arrived at a difficult time for the Oneidas in general and the

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Oneida mission in particular. Repeated crop failures since 1765 meant that the community was suffering desperate hunger and would continue to do so for much of Johnson’s time there. Living that first winter in a small cabin with Samuel Kirkland and the recently married David and Hannah Fowler (Montaukett and Pequot, respectively), Johnson probably felt the close quarters intensely—​­not least because of growing tensions between the young married couple and Kirkland. Samuel Kirkland, Johnson’s white missionary supervisor, himself was chafing under Wheelock’s expectations (in 1769 Wheelock and Kirkland finally broke with each other and never fully reconciled). Sick for much of 1767, Kirkland was only beginning to recover his authority at the mission when Johnson fell into drunkenness. According to Kirkland, Johnson claimed his actions were approved by Ralph Wheelock, who spent three summers (in 1766, 1767, and 1768) on a diplomatic mission to the Iroquois Nations, further undercutting Kirkland’s authority not only with young Johnson but with the Iroquois as well. In fact, Ralph Wheelock did untold damage to his father’s school through his clumsy diplomatic efforts with the all-​­important William Johnson, the Anglo-​­Irish superintendent of Indian affairs for the northern colonies, and the Iroquois—​­and in the process alienated Kirkland as well. When Ralph Wheelock claimed Joseph Johnson as a translator, he took him away from the school he had been charged with establishing as well as from Kirkland’s supervision. Furthermore, the young Johnson was required to participate in diplomatic negotiations for which his language skills were clearly not adequate. More than most could put up with, this accumulation of misfortune, confusion, and tension certainly was more than the young boy could manage. We do not know much about Joseph Johnson’s actual school (really schools, since he makes more than one attempt to initiate and perpetuate a school); Johnson did not write much about his students at this point in his life. He comes initially as an “usher” to David Fowler’s school, or to learn from Fowler how to teach before establishing his own school. Although Fowler had entered Moor’s Charity School about six months after Johnson in 1759, it was as a twenty-​­four-​­year-​­old already well educated by Samson Occom back in his Native Montaukett community. Fowler opened his first school at Kanajohare in mid-​­1765 after being approved as schoolmaster by the Connecticut Board of Correspondents; by the time Johnson joined him among the Oneidas in 1766, Fowler was an experienced teacher. Johnson tells Wheelock in a letter in December 1766, “It is thought fit by Mr Kirtland, that I tarry here this winter to git knowledge of Davids Art in teaching the Natives and to know how to

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keep a School in every Article, and the next Spring to have a school by my-​­self at Old Onida.”26 And indeed Fowler’s school does seem successful—​­so successful, in fact, that Wheelock promotes it in his English narratives. Fowler reports enthusiastically in one letter dated June 15, 1765: “This is the twelfth Day since I began to keep this School, and I have put eight of my scholars into third Page of the Spelling book: some almost got down to the Bottom of the same third: —​­I never saw Children exceed these in learning. The Number of my Scholars are twenty six when they are all present together. . . . ​I am also teaching a singing School: they take great Pleasure in learning to sing: We already carry three Parts of several Tunes” (McCallum, 93–​­94). A month later he reports, “My Scholars learn very well; I have put eleven in a, b, abs: I have three more that will go to that Place this week; and some have got to the sixth Page” (95–​­96). In the same letter, however, he writes, “I have been miserable of [want] for an Interpreter I can/can’t say but very little to them” (96). Just as we have seen earlier, here learning takes place as rote repetition of sounds and syllables, with the aim of connecting letters to sounds rather than to an understanding of language and words. Thus, Fowler can successfully move his students through the initial stages of literacy without actually communicating with them. A year later, with young Johnson at his school, Fowler is still enthusiastic. He says grandly, “My Scholars learn fast the foremost of them got to the eighty sixth Page of the Spelling Book. . . . ​I design to exert all my Powers within me to instruct my poor Scholars not only to read, and all things that belongs to Christianity so far as I am able, but also to instruct them to cultivate their Land” (McCallum, 106). But by May 1767 Fowler is ready to give up. Complaining that it is too much trouble to support himself here and try to keep school, he writes that it has been over two months since he has been able to keep the school, spending the whole of that time farming and trying to support himself without much help from the community. Shortly thereafter, Fowler leaves Oneida, returning to his home community of Long Island as a schoolteacher to his people, the Montauketts. After Fowler’s departure in the summer of 1767 Johnson opens his own school on the order of Ralph Wheelock. It is not a big success, both because of a seeming reluctance on the part of the Oneidas to send their children and also because Johnson is called away from the school often to help Kirkland in his sickness and to assist Ralph Wheelock when he arrives for his diplomatic travels. Johnson reports to Eleazar Wheelock in November 1767 that he has five students, although “they are all absent yet and perhaps will not return

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long before New Year.” In December he has added five more students, and he reports, “They larn very fast. I have Some hopes of having my School Enlarged in Number, but if not, I hope that it may Increase in Knowledge. I will do all that Lays in my power to teach them all thing I am capable of.”27 After the difficult winter of 1767–​­68 Johnson keeps school only sporadically, and with very few students. Hezekiah Calvin’s experience is probably also useful in laying out some of the difficulties these young Algonquian teachers faced when given responsibility for schools in faraway communities. In the summer of 1766 Ralph Wheelock also set up Calvin (Delaware) in a school at Fort Hunter among the Mohawks. He, too, has only a handful of students, and when Ralph finds out, with much bluster and threatening he convinces more parents to send their children to Calvin’s school. However, and in what seems to be a concerted noncompliance policy, these children refuse to follow their young teacher’s instructions, and Calvin finds himself resorting to physical punishment over and over. He complains with some bewilderment to Eleazar Wheelock that “the Indians will complain that I am not severe enough will it do for me to be a thrashing them continually, how oft have I corrected them within a Week sometimes twice or thrice a Day I hate forever to be whipping, whipping too much won’t do.” He continues, “The Indians say that I shall not come home these three Years they think that I am their Servant & are obliged to keep school for Yem & yet they wont send their Children.” He writes somewhat reluctantly to his mentor, “It is true I should be glad to keep School here all my Days,” but finally admits “all these things makes me faint hearted together with my wanting to see my father Mother & relations” (McCallum, 51). It seems that Calvin was being put to the test by his students and their parents, and he was clearly found wanting. Surely Johnson, too, experienced some of this hostility and tension from his own students and their parents as they tested their young teacher, confident that they could break him. He must also have felt the homesickness that tormented Calvin. By the end of 1766 the Mohawks of Fort Hunter seem to have done in Calvin; Johnson and his relationship to the Oneidas, however, was another story. After following his students on their seasonal hunt in May, by December 1768 Johnson abandons his post at Oneida after repeatedly getting drunk. Writing from Providence, Rhode Island, about to embark on a sea voyage, he says to Wheelock, “I am ashamed, & and Concience stings me to the very heart; I am Sorry; my spirits cast down. . . . ​The thoughts of your school haunts me dayly. . . . ​This I am sensible that your kind disposition towards the

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Indians is very Great, neither am I less Sinsable that my ungratfull, & Vitious Actions deserve Gods, and your highest Displeasure.”28 Johnson reports with apparent grief and humility his lapses from the narrow path Wheelock has set for him as well as his frustrations and failures in the role of teacher, for which as a seventeen-​­year-​­old boy he was clearly ill equipped. Interestingly, although he understands that he has let Wheelock and Moor’s Charity School down, he mentions no remorse for letting down his own students or even the Oneidas more generally—​­people he has clearly come to know quite well. It seems it is only Wheelock and his design that he has failed, not the people he was assigned to teach. Johnson verbalizes his failure to Wheelock in terms of spirituality, complaining that the devil is tormenting him, that he has doubts about God’s saving power over his life, and that his own weakness leads him astray. “I am Sensable that I have been guilty of the most heinous Sins which has hurt and Wounded the Redeemers Cause and been of great disadvantage to your school and disgrace to the Religion of Christ.”29 He adds that his lapses (four in all, he reports in this letter) were caused by “the temptation of the Devil . . . ​ together with the Distresses of my mind and Uneasiness which perhaps you are altogether Ignorant of or any one Else besides the Indians.” He frames his actions as a spiritual crisis, but here he suggests that this crisis is one that is particularly Indian in nature: Wheelock, he suggests, will not understand it, while the Indians, he writes, instantly understand “the Distresses of [his] mind and Uneasiness.” Here is the smallest intimation that something beyond the spiritual crisis that he shares with Wheelock is occurring, although he cannot explain it to his mentor. Johnson himself recognizes that his crisis, understood by Indians but not by his white mentor, seems to have had a strong cultural component that was not strictly religious in nature. By moving beyond the written exchanges, both print and manuscript, between Wheelock and his student, we can uncover some of the larger struggle that Joseph Johnson faced. Earlier in 1768, the year of his crisis, Joseph Johnson followed his students on their seasonal hunt rather than stay back at the mission. Although in and of itself, this action was not an explicitly anti-​­Wheelock statement (indeed, we know he joined his students because he cheerfully writes of this to Wheelock), in the context of his later actions it suggests that Johnson is starting to lose faith in the clarity of the split between civility and savagery that is supposed to be at the base of his mission. The freedom and independence of that hunt after another long winter of hunger and cold undoubtedly forged a connection between the Oneidas and their young schoolteacher that would

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have been impossible in the mission setting. It also liberated Johnson from the cramped and unpleasantly close quarters of Kirkland’s cabin.30 Indeed, Johnson’s fluctuating personal pronouns in a letter from this period reveal much about his struggles with his own place in the missionary world: was he one of the Indians for whom good people prayed, or was he one of the missionaries fervently hoping for the conversion of these Indians?31 The nature of his fall—​­specifically his choice to “turn pagan” for about a week (as Kirkland puts it)—​­suggests one answer he has to that question. Samuel Kirkland writes bitterly after Johnson’s departure that “it seems he is fond of changes—​­weary wth ye form of yt old fashioned thing calld puritanic Religion he turn’d pagan for about a week—​­painted, sung—​­danc’d—​­drank and whored it, wh some of ye savage Indians he coud find—​­his Name stinks from Kanajohare to Fort-​­Stanwix.”32 This passage follows his insistence that Wheelock not send an Indian as a schoolmaster as “it won’t be acceptable to ye pple here—​­+ for my own part,” he sniffs, “while I have any Connection wth ye School—​­I must earnestly intreat, you won’t send an Indian in yt capacity (tho he may be transformed into an Angle of light) until there is good evidence to believe ye Indian Devil + evil spirit is gone out of him.”33 For Kirkland, it seems, Johnson’s turn to “the Devil’s service,” as he puts it in this letter, is specifically related to his Indian nature. Having worked closely (and unsuccessfully) with both David Fowler and Joseph Johnson, at this point no Indian will do for Kirkland, not even one who appears to be an “Angle of light” since, he suggests, Indians are imbued with “ye Indian Devil” and possessed by an “evil spirit.” For Kirkland, Johnson’s fall from grace is simply an acknowledgment of his Indian nature—​­or the “Indian Devil”—​­within him. For Johnson’s part the turn to the “Indian Devil” in him is a complicated one. Johnson “turns pagan” by embracing the culture of a tribe that is quite distinct from his own Mohegan community. Hardly a return to his “nature,” this incident seems to be a way of marking his difference from the “puritanic ways” of Wheelock, Kirkland, and the entire system he is supposed to represent to the Oneidas. His gesture of complicity and affiliation with Oneida “Nativeness” connects him to a social order that was quite possibly more foreign to him in 1768 than it was to Kirkland, who at this point has spent four or five years among the Iroquois. His week of celebration with the “savage Indians he coud find” embraced the broader notion of a generalized Indian identity—​­not his own tribe, but certainly one that is most explicitly “un-​­puritanic.” It seems to be only by claiming this identity that Johnson can begin to imagine himself outside the binary Wheelock has established for him.

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He is not going home, not reverting to his own ways, but rather claiming someone else’s—​­consciously taking on an identity that is neither what he was before Wheelock nor what Wheelock wants him to become. It seems that by the time Kirkland and the rest of Wheelock’s missionaries arrived in upstate New York, the vast majority of Oneidas had accepted Christianity to some degree, although they had not replaced their earlier beliefs. Despite Kirkland’s complaints to the contrary, it is not in fact Christianity that the Oneidas take issue with; it is Calvinism. Having been initially approached by French Jesuits, many in the town are reluctant to abandon infant baptism, with its assurance of some sort of salvation for infants, for the uncertainty of the Calvinist world view. While Calvinism offered the community literacy and the promise of schoolmasters and ministers as advocates against white encroachments, for many of the Oneidas these benefits were more than offset by what Calvinism refused: to let the Oneidas maintain their own traditions and to assure them that God’s love for them was made visible through their own good behavior. Johnson’s letter in May 1768 attempts to explain this tension between the promises of the French, Dutch, and Germans and those that Kirkland and Ralph Wheelock are advocating. Johnson explains “they hear that they must not get drunk if they Embrace the Gosple which your son offered to them; which goes hard against their deep Rooted Appetites but if they Continue as they are, they can get drunk…and at last Expect to Enter the long house which the call heaven, Some where towards the south, where the will be free from all pain and have nothing to Exercise their minds—​­this is the Heaven which the french friers have promised them.” Johnson concludes, “The Indians in general say that it is vain and talk very discourageing and say that you need not look for them no more; their behaviour Shews Enough that they have Refused.” Although this letter is very dismissive of the promises of the “french friers,” it does try to frame for Wheelock some of the divisions within the community and puts Johnson’s later behavior in a different context.34 Johnson’s drunken frolic might have been seen by some of the Oneidas not as a shameful event but rather as a gesture of reconciliation, an acknowledgment that Calvinism could coexist to a certain extent with the occasional personal lapse. Or perhaps it was the other way around: perhaps the Oneida version of Christianity was what Johnson needed to explore. Even in his final shame-​ ­filled confession to Wheelock after his departure in December, Johnson explains that the Indians have a much more sympathetic capacity for forgiveness. He explains that in one of his downfalls “by ye advice of Thomas I publickly made Confession as is their Custom, where they promised as it

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were to Bury in Oblivion and let things be as if it never happened so.” Even in the context of this letter, which opens with a reference to “this my pretended Confession” and the countless other confessions of Wheelock’s students in the archive, Johnson attributes the practice of public confession to the “Custom” of the Oneidas, not to Calvinism—​­this despite the fact that the Thomas referred to here is a deacon of Kirkland’s church and a supporter of Wheelock’s school, having sent his daughter Hannah that very year down to Lebanon.35 It is more probably the forgiveness that follows confession, the decision to “Bury in Oblivion and let things be as if it never happened so” that strikes Johnson as so foreign; certainly it is a far cry from the confessions permanently embedded in the school record by the fact of their being committed to paper. There is no forgetting of sins at Wheelock’s school, even if there is ostensibly forgiveness. The year 1768 was difficult not just for Johnson but for Wheelock and his school in general. Starting in January with Hezekiah Calvin’s extended and ignominious fall from grace, each month seemed to bring Wheelock further bad tidings. In March, Calvin writes a confession that is at once a threat to leave for good and also a plea for forgiveness (McCallum, 62–​­63). Later in the year he writes several more letters to Wheelock and is also the subject of a letter from Edward Deake telling Wheelock that Calvin has been spreading rumors about him to the Narragansetts.36 In June, Nathan Clap (Johnson’s companion in his drunken frolic a few months earlier at Oneida) also writes a humble letter asking for Wheelock’s forgiveness for his “egnorance and stupedy” as well as Wheelock’s permission to marry “Ms Mary your maide” (McCallum, 68); he is expelled from the school less than a month later. Furthermore, Wheelock is enmeshed in an ongoing disagreement with David Fowler over expenses (McCallum, 103–​­13), and it seems that one after another his students are committing lapses that require written confessions. It is probably already certain to Wheelock that the Iroquois students are unhappy, since by January 1769 their parents come to take their children home more or less permanently. After 1768 no new Indian students enroll in the school for two years, and never again would Wheelock achieve the kind of success with Indian education of his early years.37 When Occom and Whitaker return from England in mid-​­1768 with the spoils of their massively successful fund-​­raising trip, it has probably already become apparent to Wheelock that his school is not working. Indeed, from 1767 to 1771 Wheelock maintains a public silence, not publishing another narrative until he is pressed to it by anxious benefactors of the school who are becoming impatient with the lack of news—​­especially since the 1767 narrative was simply a reprint of the earlier 1766 one.

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After his contrite December letter Johnson, too, disappears into print silence, also not reappearing until 1771. While Wheelock’s 1771 narrative dismisses all of his Native students as failures, on October 9, 1771, Johnson begins the diary that he keeps on and off for the next several years after he returns to Mohegan. This diary marks the ways in which he comes to a greater sense of himself as a member of his own community. The diary also serves as a stark reminder that while Wheelock may have intended for literacy to function within a disciplinary system unsympathetic to Native identity, it also provided a means of expression that far exceeded his boundaries. Through writing Johnson celebrates his newfound conversion, his cautious certainty of what he sees as God’s love and forgiveness. He also comes to participate in a broader Native community of Christians in which forms of worship are defined and shaped by community leaders like Samson Occom, not white missionaries. Using both his skills as a schoolteacher and also his vulnerability as a once-​­fallen man, Johnson embraces a very different kind of pan-​­Indian community than the one at Wheelock’s school.

“My Native Place”: Native Cosmopolitan, Native Leader In August 1773 Johnson drafted what was surely a difficult letter, one in which he renewed his connection to Eleazar Wheelock after several years of silence between them. The author of this letter, though, is very different from his earlier self; now a Christian convert and a community leader, Johnson must make his new and hard-​­won status clear to Wheelock without dredging up too much of the past. Above all, Johnson’s task was to ask for money without suggesting that he has in any way failed to achieve success in life; he also had to put away any lingering bitterness he may have felt toward Wheelock. This letter marks in important ways the distinction between the shame-​­filled boy who had failed repeatedly in the past and the more mature Mohegan and pan-​ ­Indian community leader that Johnson had become. Johnson was shrewd enough not to count on Wheelock for much; along with his pleas to Wheelock he also writes for money to Andrew Oliver and Jonathan Trumbull; he had also been doing a certain amount of lay preaching and, of course, teaching. Letters from beneficiaries are certainly humble, as is appropriate for any petition for money from a benefactor, but his letter to Wheelock is by far the most humble; clearly, Johnson is very aware of what his reader wants to hear:

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Revd. & Much Respected Sir. With much humility, I undertake to Write your Worthy Person, and I would Enform you that I ever have a gratefull Sense of your favours in time past, for which I desire at this time renewedly to express my thanks. If I was an Englishman, & was thus Respected by you, I should be very thankfull, but much more doth it now, become me being an Indian, to be humble, & very thankfull in very deed. Methinks the more I am respected the more humble it makes me. But to Conclude this my Indian introduction let me assure you, that a law of Gratitude is wrote as it were upon the table of my Once Savage heart, for all your Remarkable favours in times Past, & I ever think if your Worthy Person with love, & Reverence in my heart. But whot I would more particularly inform you at this time is what may follow. Revd Sir, by leave of kind Providence, I purpose to Leave this Place [Farmington] next Monday being the time appointed that I & the rest of the Chosen men, Should go into the Wilderness, to visit our Savage Brethren, and to Converse with them Concerning our Proposals, &c. And as the time is drawing nigh, I find I am Obliged to Solicit your favour this once more, for which I am very Sorry. I am Sorry to try your good Nature So Soon, But Still I would humbly, & Earnestly Solicit your favour at this time. I was Considerably disappointed down Country, not seeing Mr. Occom whose note I have with me Still. Also 2 English friends added Disappointments to me, not letting me have my Reasonable due. Their Plea was this that they did not expect I should return till next Winter or in Spring, So they thought it best to lay out the money, intending to allow for Use. But not to be further tedious, my Earnest desire is that you would help me to Some Money. I know not who else Can. I am a Stranger, but for my Indian friends, if I lean upon them at present they are like a broken Staff. But I have nothing against my Brethren. They have a will, had they but ability, and if you Please to pity, & to help me at this time you have no reason to fear, but that you Shall ha[v]e your own, again in due time. If I return well, perhaps, I Shall receive money from down Country by last of October, then I will pay you reasonable due. But if any Accident happen to me So as that I shall never return, Still you need not fear, as doubtless you know, that my reward from Boston will Come into your hands, So you then can take your Money again. Please to help me if Possible. I know not exactly how much I Stand in need of, but I Should be glad to have a little to Spare not knowing what may befall me by the

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way. I shall in Some measure be exposed to Smallpox by the way, & how many more Accident, I know not. I view myself to be feble Creature. If I Should have the Small-​­pox, I Should at least want 8 or 9 Pounds of money, but hoping I Shall Escape that danger our Distemper, I Should be glad to have Six Pounds if Possible. Doubtless we Shall be obliged to lay out Some money, besides our bare expenses, by the way.38 It is only the last two sentences that specify the actual amount of money Johnson would like to borrow from Wheelock; it takes him that long to work up the courage to ask. Along the way he explains, he reasons, and he hopes for pity (“I shall in Some measure be exposed to Smallpox by the way, & how many more Accident, I know not. I view myself to be feble Creature”) if not actual benevolence. Rather than leaving anything to his former mentor’s generosity (Wheelock was notorious for sending his missionaries into the field without enough resources), Johnson specifies exactly how much money he would like. To get this money, however, Johnson has to pay with his own pride. Johnson opens with the words, “With much humility, I undertake to Write to your Worthy Person,” and with the juxtaposition of his own “humility” and Wheelock’s “worthiness,” he implies that he himself is not on the same social or moral level as his (former) mentor. He then goes on to make an analogy between an appropriate English response (thankfulness) and an Indian one (humility and thankfulness). “Let me assure you,” Johnson adds, “a law of Gratitude is wrote as it were upon the table of my Once Savage heart, for all your Remarkable favours in times Past.” With this reference to the physical act of writing as well as the reference to times past, Johnson calls up the days of Moor’s Charity School, commenting obliquely (through the rather brutal biblical image of inscribing God’s law onto one’s heart) on the expectations Wheelock had for his students: gratitude is not an emotion or a sentiment for Wheelock; it is instead a law. And it is not God’s law that is inscribed on Johnson’s heart; it is instead Wheelock’s. Thus, while Johnson’s diaries and other writings from this period suggest that he is no longer himself confident that the hierarchy between Indian and English is so clear, here he must swallow his more egalitarian sentiments to reach out to Wheelock, once again on his mentor’s terms.39 Johnson swallows his pride at this moment because he has come to believe that his future and the future of his “Indian brethren” are tied to a new kind of community that he, along with several others, is negotiating with his “Savage

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Brethren” in the “Wilderness”—​­or actually the Oneidas among whom he lived earlier. It is his political and religious notion of an Indian nation of believers that leads him to swallow his pride and reach out to the ever-​­critical Wheelock. “I am very Sorry. I am Sorry to try your good Nature So Soon,” he writes, knowing that Wheelock may not react to his letter positively. He gives Wheelock the upper hand at every turn, acknowledging once again his audacity in coming to his mentor at this moment and giving him the rhetoric of savagery and humility that Wheelock requires of his students. Johnson does all of this in the service of his people. And yet even as he makes this conciliatory gesture, the physical copy of Johnson’s draft suggests that his submissive approach to Wheelock cannot stand. Upside down on the backside of this letter is a statement that nuances the letter in a very different way. Not addressed to a specific person but rather to “Enquiring Friends, or to Strangers,” it is quoted here in full: Would you know, kind Sir, who the composer of this Discourse is, Be pleased to read the following. I am an Indian of the Mohegan Tribe, known by the Name of Joseph Johnson, Educated by the Revd Eleazer Wheelock D.D. whose School I left when I was 14 years of age. And in the 3d. month of my 15th year, I was Sent amongst the Six nations, and I spent about 2 years in those Parts, keeping School. Afterwards I left the School entirely Revd Eleazer Wheelock D.D. intirely, and from that time, I have been wandering up, and down, in this Delusive World. Some of my time I Spent at Providence Town, keeping a School. Some of my time, I have Spent upon the Ocean wide. I have been down Eastward, as far as to the Western Islands twice. Curvo, & Florus, I have Seen, and to the South ward I have been as far, to the West Indies. Seen also the Islands between Antigua and Granades, and again from Antigua I have Sailed down leeward Sailed by the Virgin Islands, also by Sandy Cruz, Portireco, down as far as to Mona. And after so long time Even in my 21st year I Safely arrived to my Native place. Their I Spent one year in working upon my farm.40 This brief passage—​­a snippet of an autobiography, really—​­is particularly rich when read as a counterpoint to what he writes to Wheelock. He is mocking in his use of Wheelock’s full title, sending up his pompousness by writing out “the Revd Eleazer Wheelock, D.D.” twice within a few sentences, and it hardly seems accidental that this gesture comes on the back of a letter in which

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he appeases the very pomposity he sends up here. Wheelock is a doctor of divinity, with the harshness of the abbreviated title “the Revd . . . ​D.D.” bracketing his name and making him an abstraction rather than a person. More important, he is the embodiment of a school, a way of seeing the world that Johnson has “left . . . ​intirely.” Johnson’s own identity here is very clearly delineated with no abbreviations, no claims to authority or authenticity outside of the plainest facts as he represents them: “I am an Indian of the Mohegan Tribe, known by the Name of Joseph Johnson.” He is first and foremost an “Indian of the Mohegan Tribe” and only secondarily the individual known as Joseph Johnson, and he is comfortable enough with this phrase that he uses it throughout the letters, petitions, and other writing that he produced from this point on, marking himself simultaneously as an individual and a member of a Native community. In this discourse Johnson consciously manipulates Wheelock’s expectations. Johnson marks his life after Wheelock as that of a nomad (“I have been wandering up, and down, in this Delusive World”), in this phrase embracing a supposed Indian quality that Wheelock abhors. For Wheelock, Indians must be stabilized; it is only by preventing their wandering that Natives can be Christianized and civilized. But Johnson also marks himself as a farmer and schoolteacher—​­the very ambitions Wheelock had for him. He celebrates himself as a sailor and a wanderer and an Indian of the Mohegan Tribe, confounding Wheelock’s rigid notions of which Indian identities work successfully with Christianity. And Johnson is also a Christian, although it is only the passing reference to “this delusive world” that suggests this fact in this account. However, in roughly the same period Johnson also writes out another account of his life, although this one is more explicitly about his identity as a Christian. These are the most explicit self-​­definitions that Johnson produces, and together they structure both his independence from Wheelock and his lingering sense of obligation to him, making coherent much of what is opaque in his other writings from this last period of his life. Both discourses open with the same juxtaposition of strangers and friends, with the implication that strangers are friends and that the world is filled with people (“kind sir,” “kind friend”) interested in the life and writing of “a Poor Indian” who in his turn “wishes well, to all mankind”; but, whereas in the first he marks his temporal existence very explicitly with names and places, in the second he focuses entirely on his spiritual state, with no mention of any individual by name other than himself. In both he identifies himself in precisely

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the same terms: “I am an Indian of the Mohegan Tribe, known by the name of Joseph Johnson.”41 While the two versions separate his secular from his religious life, they are not so clearly differentiated after all. Even though his secular narrative is very explicitly in relation to “the Revd Eleazer Wheelock, D.D.” and his school, only two references in the religious discourse connect him back to his mentor. The first is his claim that “I was 21 years in this World, before I was born, and as soon as I was born, I had my Eyes Opened. . . . ​I am but one year, and three months old properly. . . . ​I am but a child in the knowledge of Jesus my Lord, and a babe in understanding” (178). This claim, of course, also erases his years under the tutelage of Eleazar Wheelock, eliminating his claim to Johnson’s faith. Johnson consciously and aggressively dates his conversion to the period of separation from Wheelock, marking his spiritual life as a personal relationship between him and his God, not him and Wheelock. Perhaps more important, as his other autobiographical account reminds us, it is in his twenty-​­first year that he returns to Mohegan, or as he writes, “And after so long time Even in my 21st year I Safely arrived to my Native place.” His rebirth is not just as a Christian but more specifically as a Christian Indian and an adult. As a Christian, a sinner, and an Indian, he claims, he can finally see the value of humility and self-​­abnegation as more than the punishment that Wheelock offered. His second claim in relation to Wheelock’s school is the following: “Be it known to all in general that I am Properly an Illiterate man,” although he goes on to explain that “through the kind Providence of God, I have been taught to read his Blessed word which is able to make me . . . ​wise unto Salvation” (179). Again, Wheelock and his school are erased metaphorically from his true (spiritual) life with his claim to illiteracy and the role of God—​­not Wheelock—​­in teaching him to read. By his own account his youthful education at Moor’s Charity School is no longer relevant to his life as a Christian. Perhaps most important, however, Johnson redefines the humility and self-​­abasement Wheelock was so intent on producing in his students as the basis for his authority among his fellow sinners. In his sermons and various discourses Johnson is very clear that he speaks to his audience as a fallen man himself. He knows weakness and knows it well, he assures his listeners. In June 1772 he writes a confession to David Jewett, minister at Montville, in which he admits to being “intoxicated” (148). Interestingly, he writes “that Sin of drunkenness or drinking I do not allow myself in, but I got overcome not being upon my guard.” In other words, it is not that he has been found out, or that someone has accused him of this problem, but rather he is using

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the form of confession to remind himself of his own goals and ambitions as a Christian. It is by his own desire that the confession is read publicly in church, and his admission of his sin also permits him to celebrate “the holy word of God & there Considered the Encouragements given by God for returning & repenting Sinners, I can take Encouragement from, and Place my hope upon his Eternal word” (149). His confession takes the shape and conviction of a sermon, and through his own sin Johnson reaches out to his community and embraces his and their flaws as their strength, something he was to do later in his negotiations for Brothertown as well. While Johnson redefines his relationship to Wheelock, whose support (financial and otherwise) he sought until the end of his life, he never quite rejects him. He writes breathlessly and enthusiastically to Wheelock in October 1774 that “the Revd Mr Kirtland says that in Six months if I stay among the Indians I can be almost master of their language. . . . ​He says there is more liklihoods of my being usefull in those parts among the Inds. than an English, or white man. He reckons that a door will directly be opened for me to Preach at Onondaga” (244). This endorsement by Kirkland is the proof that can convince Wheelock that perhaps Johnson is in fact a promising young man. His connection to these two men who in some sense raised him, rejected him, and eventually accepted him again remained central to his life. In the end they were the voice of English authority, and it was their approval and disapproval that could make the difference between the success and failure of his life’s mission. Even as he remained enmeshed in his relationship to these men, however, Johnson comes to his sense of himself through his work among the Farmington Indians. Indeed his spiritual autobiography explains, “I am Employd by the Honorable Board of Commissioners at Boston, in teaching Children. I keep a School at Farmington amongst my Indian Brethren” (178). This, along with his identity as a Mohegan Indian, is the only temporal marker, and it is not insignificant that finally it is his identity as an Indian, a Mohegan, and a teacher that sustains him. While at Oneida his authority as a teacher was both given and taken away by Ralph Wheelock and Samuel Kirkland; in his later role at Farmington he acquires his authority and confidence through his own work, or “by maintain[ing] a good Character both among the English and also, among my brethren” (178). In fact, his diaries and letters from Farmington provide a real counterpoint to the earlier isolation, uncertainty, and inability to communicate that characterized his time among the Oneidas, although clearly his teaching skills built on his work with David Fowler, as both men

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emphasize singing and especially hymnody as essential to their work. Teaching at Farmington was the means through which Johnson came to a sense of himself as a community leader. He never loses his identity—​­he aggressively marks his personhood as a member of the Mohegan tribe throughout his correspondence—​­but like Occom he comes to understand the interrelations of all Native people in New England. In other words he reaches out as a Mohegan to other Christian Indians, and, although he was not alive once Brothertown took shape as a living community, there is no sense for Johnson that to be part of Brothertown in any way eclipsed or undercut his Moheganness. From 1773 until his untimely death in his mid-​­twenties some time in 1776, Johnson worked toward the creation of the Brothertown community, convinced that his fate and that of other Christian Indians from throughout New England was tied to a new kind of Indian community. Brothertown emerges through traditionally indigenous exchange—​­community meetings, personal exchanges, diplomatic envoys, and lengthy public speeches. However, the community could not have happened without the newer forms of Native literacy at the core of Wheelock’s school. With literacy also at its core, Brothertown, a Native Christian community established on Indian land by Indians without the control of white missionaries or politicians, provided the means through which Wheelock’s former students (most of whom he had written off as failures) came together with a unified vision of Native Christianity quite different from Wheelock’s and yet not entirely separate from him. Johnson, having practically grown up in the pan-​­Indian community that Wheelock somewhat unintentionally established in Lebanon, Connecticut, cemented his intertribal alliances as a schoolteacher in Native communities in New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut; he disseminated his ideas and the ideas of others through print culture, with the publication of sermons and letters. He also raised money for Brothertown from white benefactors through various written exchanges—​­masterfully deploying the rhetoric of humility that Wheelock taught him so well. Very different in tone, Johnson’s letters to New England’s Algonquian Indian groups urged them to band together as Christians in this new community. He recorded the negotiations with the Oneidas for land not only in more traditionally Native systems of exchange and discussion but also in written form, which circulated among those with an interest in the fate of Brothertown. Hardly the abject boy writing tragic missives pleading forgiveness from his mentor, Johnson had become adept at deploying his literacy to establish a most insistently and distinctively Native community.

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Brothertown was Johnson’s crowning achievement, his final triumph, one for which he quite literally sacrificed his life. One question that lingers in the corners of the archival record is this: which element of Johnson’s interactions with the Oneidas convinced them to trust him and his Native Christian brethren from New England—​­trust that materialized into the gift of the land on which this new Christian community was founded. Although it is unquestionably the case that Samson Occom and others had a central role in the founding of the community, Johnson is the representative who negotiates the final land exchange with the Oneidas. This carefully negotiated exchange is finely calibrated to respect and acknowledge Oneida traditions of oratory and exchange, which I have discussed elsewhere.42 What led to this trust? Was it Johnson’s earnest, hard-​­working, literate credentials as a Wheelock student? His affiliation with William Johnson? Or was it perhaps his hard-​­drinking “lapses” into Indianness—​­lapses he repeatedly references in his sermons to the Oneidas as he is negotiating. He explains, “In times past I have lived in all manner of wickedness drinking, keeping bad Company and every thing that is Contrary to the will of God I have commited,” and also “I have done so much hurt to the glory of God not only in this place, but in other places where I have been.” He continues, “I have often desired to have an opportunity to speak to this people and now it has pleased God to bring me here once more Just to see you a little, and now God is giving me such Convenient opportunity, I think it my duty, & I believe it to be well pleasing to God, if I should ask your forgiveness. . . . ​I purpose most assuredly to lay aside all my former wicked actions . . . ​do not follow my Wicked Example which I sat you when I was here before.”43 Is he apologizing or reaffirming ties? In the end what was the meaning of the incidents several years earlier in which he exhibited a willingness to embrace the “painting singing and dancing” identity that united him to the Oneidas? While he apologizes, frames his actions as sins, and encourages others to avoid the errors of his ways, he is nonetheless reminding his audience, most of whom would remember the boy from six or seven years earlier, of those times in which he joined them in their pleasures as well as in their sins. Perhaps what drew the Oneidas to him and to his cause was not his assurance of his Christian salvation but rather his willingness to acknowledge and even to a certain extent embrace actions that fall outside the Calvinist model of right living. To the end of his life Johnson was a teacher, a Christian, and a Mohegan. These were the categories through which he understood himself as an individual. When he died he left a young family, and the work of establishing

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Brothertown was unfinished. Furthermore, there was an uncomfortable rupture of his relations with his dear friend and supporter at Farmington, Elijah Wampy. Johnson’s work in founding Brothertown had made teaching difficult if not impossible, as several of his later letters attest; he was out of money, and his need to travel meant he could not always tend to his school. Furthermore, his ordination as a minister meant that he was now dependent on whatever monies he could collect by preaching rather than teaching, although he was no more financially successful at balancing the former than the latter, as his political work with Brothertown simply did not leave him the time to nurture his own congregation, even if he could find one. Yet as a writer and a political figure he had come into his own, and his textual archive remains one of the most extraordinary ones of the eighteenth century, rivaled only by that of his father-​­in-​­law, Samson Occom. Joseph Johnson carried a watch, although we do not know when he first acquired it. He wrote to Andrew Oliver in October 1773 that he had come to Hartford “to get my watch which I left here some time past to be repaired being considerably damaged.”44 By the end of his life, though, it does not matter: English literacy and English time-​­keeping are among the many structures of identity that Johnson embraces. With or without a watch, in print and orally, he moves in and out of Indian spaces, negotiating with “Western Tribes” as well as his own beloved brethren, the Indians of New England; he is ordained as a minister, meets with “General Washington,” and also writes loving letters home to his wife, respectful missives to his father-​­in-​­law, as well as formal petitions to the city fathers of New Haven, New York, and Connecticut. He teaches children as young as five or six as well as adults in schoolrooms, in the intimate setting of homes and in informal gatherings. The writing he produces at the end of his life shows him moving fluidly between Indian and white worlds, rarely remarking on the difference. Johnson’s watch served him much like his access to literacy did. Rather than foreign impositions that restructured his indigenous ways of knowing, for Johnson reading, writing, and Christianity, like his watch, gave shape and meaning to life experiences as he understood them. He uses his literacy skills not as a colonial, external imposition but rather to express his love for his wife, his struggles with his salvation, his advocacy for his people, and even his sense of who he is and how he should define himself (his autobiographical fragment is, after all, unlike Occom’s, self-​­generated rather than produced reluctantly and out of obligation to others). By claiming and even embracing his own

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literacy Johnson freely invites us into his world, confident even in his most “private” moments that his thoughts and concerns will be read by others. In the position of the Writerly Indian, Johnson creates, develops, and explores his identity through words and language, using writing both to separate himself from and to embrace Anglo-​­American education. Wheelock’s young charge, accounted by his mentor as a “failure” for much of his existence, lived a life more varied and cosmopolitan than most modern Americans; he traveled up and down the eastern seaboard, to Puerto Rico, the West Indies, and beyond; he founded a community; met with the most important colonial military and political figures of his day (Sir William Johnson and George Washington among them), and married into one of the most prominent Algonquian families of New England—​­all before the age of twenty-​­six. His writing spans his entire life, recording his early anguish at Wheelock’s school, his growing confidence in himself and his people, and always, always his life as a Christian with the struggles and obligations that this commitment called from him. For Johnson, Christianity was a radically political stance, a call to political and social engagement that demanded sacrifice and love. These qualities he gave unflinchingly in the last few years of his life, abandoning any hope of material comfort in the interests of what he believed would be a better kind of Indian community, one that could seamlessly integrate the best of Indian identity with what he considered the most effective English values and practices. As a writer and a teacher, Johnson put his skills to use in proclaiming and celebrating a new possibility for Native community, one that included and even embraced the possibilities that schools and a variety of literacy practices held out for his people, however hard-​­won such skills had been in his own lifetime. Johnson’s sense of his relationship to his people was a complicated one: he was never a teacher, minister, or tribal leader at Mohegan, even as he considered himself first an Indian of the Mohegan tribe and a leader of his people. Throughout his short life Johnson remained a largely untried and eager visionary, imagining himself and his people as participating in a new era of Indian religious and political sovereignty. To be a Mohegan meant something very particular and very modern to him. Although he understood himself in some way as a model, for him this meant embracing his weakness, his lapses, and his frailty, constantly reinforcing his position as an everyman. While Samson Occom, too, spent his life coming to terms with how to be Mohegan in a world that seemed intent on undermining that identity, his position in the tribe was much more clearly defined. Occom was a patriarch before he was

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even a father; from the age of nineteen he held a position in the government of his tribe, and much of his life he guided the Mohegan people along paths that he hoped were in their best interests, even when those paths did not align with his own personal needs. For Occom to be Mohegan was to manage the complex social and political world of his desperately poor and increasingly disenfranchised people. His supposed lapses from the straight and narrow path he allowed himself were sources of piercing shame and humiliation, and when his sons let him down, he saw this as the work of his enemies to undercut him.45 His solution toward the end of his life was to protect Indians from white people as much as possible, convinced that nothing but trouble came from those interactions. Having separated from Wheelock many years earlier, by the end of his life Occom was deeply suspicious of any whites who came to Brothertown, including other ministers. Johnson’s approach was perhaps shrewder in that he embraced the financial support that the white missionary establishment could provide, confident that he could always maintain his and his peoples’ identity as Indians against the onslaught of change and control such financial support often required. The strategies of reading and writing that shaped so much of Johnson’s life emerged very differently among the Cherokees of the next century, with the value given to life stories as shaped by missionary concerns, and the complex role of the syllabary and its use in missionary circles, as we shall see in upcoming chapters. New England’s missionary establishment was active in shaping meaning and value for nineteenth-​­century Cherokee readers and writers, and schools for Cherokees produced their own passionate and eloquent spokespeople intent on shaping public opinion in the fraught years leading up to Indian Removal. But while the nineteenth-​­century missionary establishment embraced (up to a point) the political complexity of an ongoing Indian presence, Johnson’s political consciousness was of little interest to Wheelock, and like Occom, Johnson found himself at least rhetorically living a double life: one was as a confident, articulate community leader, while the other remained

Figure 3. Joseph Johnson’s final written words. Courtesy of the Rauner Special Collections, Dartmouth College.

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enmeshed in the language of submissive dependence with his mentor, who demanded such language as a condition of any continued relationship. Such a relationship was a complicated one, as Laura Murray has shown46 and Johnson was still a very young man when he died, perhaps too young to fully break from Wheelock in the way that Occom had. And yet while Wheelock and his condescension were present for Johnson even into his last years, Johnson’s last written words were directed to himself, not to Wheelock. In a far cry from the self-​­hatred of his youth Johnson wrote: “Let Virtue guide your Noble Mind Joseph Johnson.”47

Chapter 3

Brainerd’s Missionary Legacy: Death and the Writing of Cherokee Salvation

In January 1770 Eleazar Wheelock wrote to a correspondent in New York, thanking him for some books he had recently sent, including one on David Brainerd. He added, “But You made one Mistake, dear Sir. You sent me Mr. Brainerd’s Life instead of his Journal among the Indians. His Life is common among us, but his Journal is not to be had in these parts: & that is it, which my Lord Dartmouth &c. desire to see.”1 The “Life” to which Wheelock refers is Jonathan Edwards’s edition of Brainerd’s private diary first published in 1749, while the “Journal” was published by Brainerd himself in 1746.2 Always looking to curry favor with Lord Dartmouth, it is not surprising that Wheelock prefers him to have the Journal rather than the Life, a volume that almost completely excises any mention of Indians or the practical aspects of missionary work. Instead, Edwards’s Brainerd focused on his sense of his own spiritual inadequacy and failure, only incidentally reaching out to Native Americans. The Journal, on the other hand, was originally produced as a report for Brainerd’s funding agency, the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, so it details his work among the Delaware Indians of New Jersey and Pennsylvania and his daily struggles with faith, mission life, and Indian conversion. For Wheelock the second was more relevant to his own work than the first, even as the first was already becoming the defining model of missionary ardor. The various eighteenth-​­century New England Native boarding schools all converge on the figure of David Brainerd, even if he never was directly involved in any of them. Brainerd initiated his missionary experience working

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with John Sergeant near Stockbridge long before he had developed his idea for a boarding school. However, in 1745 Brainerd sent the proceeds from the sale of his teakettle and iron kettle to support Sergeant’s boarding school, a project that, Brainerd writes, “is an affair much upon my heart” (Pettit, 582–​­83). Late in 1745 David Brainerd sent Wheelock a copy of his journal (that very publication that Wheelock later sought for Lord Dartmouth) (Pettit, 583), and in return Wheelock refers to Brainerd’s selfless work among the Indians in his first narrative. Indeed, Wheelock’s school came into being with two students sent in 1754 (after David Brainerd’s death) by his brother, John Brainerd, from the mission originated by David. By all accounts a brilliant young man eager to tend to the Native communities of New England and beyond, David Brainerd seems to have inspired the friends and fellow missionaries that encountered him, despite his lack of success with his own missionary work. David Brainerd, it seems, was something of a paper missionary: while his actual missionary work was too brief to be particularly effective, the narratives attached to that work achieved an almost unparalleled status not only in the eighteenth century but also in the nineteenth. This iconic figure of New England missionary culture spent most of his career outside of New England, in New Jersey and Delaware, only briefly working in Massachusetts very early in his life. Nonetheless David Brainerd, or more properly David Brainerd’s legacy, was at a crossroads of missionary culture for the greatest Indian revival movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, making his four short years of missionary work quite possibly the most important of his day in terms of the New England missionary establishment that embraced him. While he did not himself ever teach at Wheelock’s or Sergeant’s boarding school, and while he never actually developed his own mission school, David Brainerd’s Christian self-​­sacrifice shaped missionary ideology and education for almost a century. Like Wheelock, nineteenth-​­century readers had available numerous editions of Edwards’s version of Brainerd, while the practical missionary of Brainerd’s Journal no longer circulated widely. It is the internalized, martyred individual of Edwards’s biography/hagiography that stands out for later consumers, not the actual missionary dealing with real converts. There is, of course, a certain irony here: the nineteenth century swept aside the decades of service of eighteenth-​­century missionaries and educators like Samuel Kirkland, Samson Occom, John Sergeant, and Eleazar Wheelock for the fragile, internally oriented David Brainerd, claiming inspiration from a missionary whose work was never particularly successful by any tangible measure. In a

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further irony, despite Jonathan Edwards’s valiant (if futile) efforts to advocate for the Stockbridge Indians in the 1750s, when the nineteenth century turns its attention backward, Edwards as missionary is eclipsed by his edition of David Brainerd’s Life. That is, it is not his own struggles with the Stockbridge community and its various corruptions that make him relevant for missionary schools three quarters of a century later; it is his production of an even more appealing icon for them: the fragile, noble, doubting hero, David Brainerd. Through Jonathan Edwards, David Brainerd became an icon of puritan suffering that was embraced by New England’s missionary establishment well into the nineteenth century. The nineteenth-​­century missionary model that was based on Brainerd justified expansionist, Anglo-​­centered behavior through the language of charity and self-​­sacrifice. Edwards’s Brainerd, the consummate New England missionary whose mission was not even within the confines of New England, reflected the inclinations of New England’s Presbyterian and Congregationalist evangelists working in the nineteenth century through the missionary society called the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, or the ABCFM, founded in 1810. Just as Brainerd had felt called to sacrifice all for his Indian converts, ABCFM missionaries felt called by Hawaiians, Asians, Indians, Muslims—​­even the supposedly benighted Cherokees and Choctaws and Creeks were calling them, calling out to hardy New England missionaries to manage their lives and their souls. Because the ethereal Brainerd missionary mythology of the nineteenth century emphasized missionary obligation, not the Indians’ experience, it made possible the global expansion of missionary efforts, thereby reinforcing a sense of white, middle-​­class American moral rectitude, as Karen Sanchez-​­Eppler has so effectively documented in Dependent States. Through the Brainerd mythology, personal sacrifice, a spirit of benevolence, and above all a melancholy sense of the noble futility of the whole venture made missionaries the heroic saviors of a fallen world, while converts became merely the affirmation of missionary godliness.

The Brainerd School The early nineteenth-​­century missionary impulse—​­a product of the second Great Awakening as much as that of the mid-​­eighteenth century was a product of the first Great Awakening—​­was marked by a desperate sense of urgency. Like Edwards’s earlier rhetoric for the Stockbridge boarding school, in the

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nineteenth century the ABCFM’s rhetoric was very much shaped by an apocalyptic sense; if this moment were to pass, the world would have lost an opportunity that would never return.3 The Brainerd School in Tennessee (along with its partner school, the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut) was part of a larger missionary culture driven by this urgency. Founded in 1817, the Brainerd Mission (with its boarding school) was predicated on the notion that heathenism in all its forms was to be eradicated and replaced with New England’s Christian values and work ethic. Founded only seven years after the establishment of the interdenominational ABCFM, the mission station originally called “Chickamauga” was conceived as a central location for an entire missionary network among the Cherokees that included civilizing as well as converting Natives. By 1823 the mission station had grown to something much more like an entire town; it was not simply a school, but a complex that included a church, farm, mill, blacksmith shop, and warehouse. By 1823 five schools (Taloney, Creek Path, Willstown, Hightower, and Turnip Mountain) had been founded throughout the Cherokee Nation as offshoots of the original Brainerd boarding school.4 When the mission was initially founded, Chickamauga, the name of the nearby creek, seemed a logical name for the new institution. However, the name Chickamauga also referred to a faction of anti-​­American Cherokees active several decades earlier. This Chickamauga faction had a complicated history, not easily characterized by the terms most commonly used in thinking through nineteenth-​­century Cherokee identity (assimiliationist, traditionalist, etc.). Chickamaugans were at their most powerful under the leadership of the young war chief Dragging Canoe in the late eighteenth century. Opposed to the encroachments of the Americans, Dragging Canoe sided with the loyalists in the American Revolution, waging open battle with American forces and forging intertribal and cross-​­racial alliances in the process.5 While this active phase of Chickamauga rebellion was relatively short-​­lived, remnants of this identity—​­most especially a militant opposition to certain forms of accommodation and land loss—​­continued to affect Cherokee politics throughout the nineteenth century. In fact, Cherokee literary historian Daniel Heath Justice argues that what he calls the “Chickamauga consciousness” is an essential feature of Cherokee politics even today. By the early nineteenth century the movement had fragmented among the elite Chickamaugans who had acquired a great deal of wealth and status, poorer traditionalists who were less inclined to see the possibilities of a strategic adoption of Anglo-​­American values, and those who saw Removal as

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a political expediency.6 A number of politically powerful Cherokee families, namely, the families of John Ross, Major Ridge, Charles Hicks, and Charles Reece, were essential to the continued existence of the mission. Several of these wealthy Cherokee families that supported the newly founded mission once had been involved in Chickamauga politics. And whatever else a Chickamauga identity implied, it certainly suggested a powerful and potentially even radical commitment to the cause of Cherokee nationalism, or what Justice calls the “enduring struggle to remain the Real People in the face of a ravenous fledgling empire” (37). This struggle included the commitment to protect “the spiritual and cultural life of the People” (38) through war if necessary but through whatever opportunities seemed most in keeping with Cherokee nationalism. Clearly, the mission was associated, at least for some, with the continued existence of Cherokee sovereignty. The adoption of the name Brainerd “in remembrance of that able, devoted, and successful missionary” was a gesture through which missionaries assured the world (and presumably reminded the Cherokees as well) that this was an institution with New England roots and modeled on a particular notion of Christian sacrifice.7 Historian Althea Bass notes in her biography of Brainerd missionary Samuel Worcester that by 1825 “Brainerd . . . ​had grown into something of a pioneer New England settlement transplanted to the outskirts of the Cherokee Nation,” further explaining that “when the American Board set out to carry salvation to the world, it had in mind the particular type of salvation that New England knew. . . . ​The salvation they took with them was inseparably bound up with that definite New England culture of which they were a product” (29). Indeed, this mission was to be constructed along a clearly defined set of Anglo-​­American, and more specifically New England, values: in the year before the founding of the Brainerd Mission the ABCFM’s annual report proudly announced as its goal for the Cherokees among other southern tribes “to make the whole tribe English in their language, civilized in their habits, and Christian in their religion” (Phillips, 3). To name such a place after David Brainerd was to mark its New England evangelical pedigree as forcefully as possible. Paradoxically, even elite political families among the Cherokees with an urgent sense of the desirablility of the continued political existence of the Cherokee Nation coalesced around an intensely conservative and New England–​­based missionary society with an explicit agenda that included eliminating Cherokee habits of life. The school was established by the ABCFM as part of a larger institution through which Cherokee ways were to be replaced by a model the

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missionaries proposed—​­one based on the notion of “cultivation”—​­of the land, of Cherokee minds, and, most important, of Cherokee souls.8 By living out a better, more effective (that is, New England–​­based) model of industry and moral rectitude, missionaries genuinely believed that Cherokees, who struck them as a particularly promising set of people, would happily abandon their own ways (which missionaries seemed to feel had not served them well) and embrace new models of living. Without ever acknowledging a particular historical moment in which Cherokees were under assault from all quarters, missionaries saw themselves not as part of a larger attack on Cherokee values but rather as the vanguard of a new Christian nation. The Cherokee families who were eager to cement the political strength that came from an alliance with the missionary world signaled the force of their conviction by ensconcing their children in mission schools. Embedded in their support for the missionary cause was the assumption that when the time came, missionaries would advocate for Cherokees and along the way teach the younger generation the skills to navigate the social and political worlds of nineteenth-​ ­century America. The missionaries and teachers at the Brainerd Mission understood their role as taking Cherokee children from their own flawed parents and reinscribing them within a mission family and household.9 As at both Wheelock’s and Sergeant’s eighteenth-​­century schools, at Brainerd the day was divided into periods of learning and periods of appropriately gendered work, which together modeled a particular way of organizing identity. Included in this regimen, of course, was extensive religious training. As we shall see later in this chapter, the educational system in use at Brainerd and the various other mission schools among the Cherokees was the Lancastrian system, which emphasized rote learning and the acquisition of all but the most basic education in a highly structured context. But this form of education was only a part of the larger restructuring of the social and cultural world of its students. The school day at Brainerd began before sunrise and ended at nine o’clock at night with prayers; in between teachers “were equally concerned with inculcating the habits of obedience, hard work, promptness, tidiness, thoroughness, and self-​­discipline,” which, taken together, celebrated a particularly New England set of values.10 One of the earliest reports from Brainerd, written at the infancy of the mission in 1818, describes a typical day, one strikingly similar to the system in place at Wheelock’s school more than half a century earlier in its emphasis on order, structure, and obedience:

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Half an hour before sunrise the horn is blown as a signal to rise; and just as the sun appears above the horizon the family assemble in the hall for morning worship. After prayers, the children proceed to their different employments. The boys, as they come from the hall, file off to the right, and form a straight line; the girls to the left, to a log cabin assigned for their accommodation. . . . ​As soon as the rank is formed, the boys are dispatched to the various employments assigned them. . . . ​When breakfast is ready the various family is called together by the horn. Two long tables are supplied with wholesome and palatable, though plain, food. . . . ​The boys sit at one table, the girls, occasional visitors, and hired men at the other. They take their seats at table as they enter the room; when all, or nearly all, are seated, a blessing is pronounced. . . . ​ After breakfast there is another period of labor, which lasts till nearly nine, when the school commences. The morning labor is about equally divided by breakfast, and amounts to two hours and a half. To this is to be added an hour’s labor in the evening. . . . ​When the girls are out of school, they are under the charge of Mr. Hoyt’s second daughter, now Mrs. Chamberlain. They are all . . . ​lodged in one log cabin which has a chamber. Here all their domestic industry is carried on. . . . ​They wash, mend, and often make their own clothes, and assist in mending the clothes of the boys. Mrs. C prays with them every evening; and they unite in singing a hymn. When engaged in their work, they are often overheard singing.11 The day is thus organized through the ringing of a bell and the sounding of a horn, with each individual assigned to a discrete set of tasks through which the entire organization maintains itself. These tasks are highly gendered, with seemingly little interaction between the boys and the girls at the school. In 1825 teacher Sophia Sawyer describes her situation at Brainerd to a friend: I have nineteen girls in school seventeen of which board with me, & are principally under my care. I have charge of their washing, ironing, mending & making their clothes. Their work room school room, beds, & sleeping chamber to take care & keep clean. Their chamber is large & sufficient to hold ten beds, I have a little chamber at the end of it & one to take care of for Female company our chambers are over the sch. Room & work room, all without point & must be kept clean. Ten girls, under ten years are with me all the time to learn to sew & the nameless things

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that are connected with the education of children. The remainder are from ten to twenty, work in the kitchen & dining room under the direction of Mrs Claworth & Blunt. They all return to me at evening with their joys & sorrows & find me interested in them.12 The world that Sawyer describes is most decidedly a female one, in which guests, teachers, and students are all women and girls; a different chamber, seemingly a world away, contained the men and boys. Cherokee student Nancy Reece describes a typical day in 1828 in less detail, but in very similar terms: “After school is out, the girls are generally divided among the women of the family, to assist them in sewing and other work . . . ​but when the sun is down we all come into the school room to Miss Ames, and sleep in the part of the house belonging to the girls.”13 The boys worked at farming and at various trades, while girls focused on cooking, sewing, spinning, making clothes and household items, and tending the smallest children.14 Along with basic reading and writing, subjects at the school included spelling, arithmetic, history, geography, and grammar. Nancy Reece reported that her studies included “Reading, Spelling, Writing, Woodbridges Geography and spelling the definition in the spelling book and Colbrom’s Arithmetick”; in another letter she adds “reading History of the United States” to this list, and in yet a third she describes her foray into learning the rules of grammar. The school was divided into four grade levels. At the girls’ school the first and second classes (Nancy is in the first) are differentiated in level rather than in the subjects that they study, although the second class does not yet read in history; the third class focuses on reading and spelling, while the fourth class, Nancy tells us, “can read but a little out of their spelling they do not talk much english yet.”15 Those in the first class more often than not required a translator from among the older children to communicate with their teacher. The commitment to fundamentally altering cultural aspects of Cherokee identity that was at the heart of the Brainerd Mission became increasingly complicated over time. Even though the name Brainerd marks the school as participating in an altogether un-​­Cherokee identity that has little to do with life in the fraught years before Removal, there was nevertheless a great deal of sympathy for certain aspects of Cherokee life. Despite the initial sense that Cherokees must embrace English, the Cherokee language not only maintained itself, it even became part of the mission. Missionaries like Daniel Butrick and Samuel Worcester learned to speak and understand Cherokee in

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order to better reach their potential converts. The Brainerd School even held annual performances in both Cherokee and English, and encouraged Cherokee leaders (including Charles Reece, among others) to speak to students in the Cherokee language. Through the intercession of Brainerd missionaries the Cherokee syllabary, which was taught at the school, was given essential support through the early financing of a printing press, which then made the production of the Cherokee Phoenix possible.16 Anti-​­Removal sentiment ran high among the missionaries as a fundamental injustice to Cherokee people who, they felt, were entitled to their own land and (Christian) identity as a distinct nation. The relationship of missionary ideology to Indian identity is certainly a vexed one, as Joel Martin, Virginia Moore Carney, Theresa Strouth Gaul, Joshua David Bellin and others have suggested.17 By assuring an American readership that Natives were dying beautifully tragic (Christian) deaths, despite their own best intentions to support Cherokees’ rights to their land, missionaries reinforced a broader American notion that Native Americans belonged to the past, not the future, of the nation. At the same time, because of the presumption (constantly reinforced by missionaries) that Indian cultures (and individuals) were dying, their words could contain an element of radical identity politics that would have been unpalatable in the eighteenth century and certainly would have been far more threatening in the nineteenth without the tragic certainty that such radicalism would fail. Because they died young and childless, Catharine Brown and other Cherokees featured in nineteenth-​ ­century memoirs could openly advocate for the strengthening of their identity as Cherokees, and missionary audiences could even agree with them, confident that this was at best a short-​­term phase in the achievement of global Christianity. The missionary message and the Cherokee one thus coexisted, entwined around the mutually desirable nature of literacy and cultural familiarity with Anglo-​­American values and practices.

The Brainerd Legacy and the Production of Readerly Indians Because nineteenth-​­century Protestant evangelicalism advocated a deeply introspective relationship with God for all Christians, it also participated in a version of what we might think of as religious mass marketing, in which education as well as conversion occurred through a set of practices that could be applied to a potentially infinite number of converts/students. The Brainerd

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School simultaneously masks and embraces these contradictory impulses through the celebration of its namesake David Brainerd and through the various forms of writing celebrating its most famous converts. Just as Brainerd was more inspirational as a missionary on paper than in practice, several tracts revealed the path to Christianity of individual Cherokees, producing paper converts to inspire further conversion. The memoirs of Cherokee converts, produced as cheap and widely available tracts, followed a more or less formalized path to conversion, one linking literacy and Christianity, introspection, prayer, and Christian community, even as each tract emphasized a deeply personal, individualized experience. Most important, following the Brainerd emphasis on the missionary rather than the convert, Cherokee converts featured in early missionary narratives became models of Christian sacrifice through their commitment to proselytizing their own people, thereby saving them from eternal damnation.18 As model Christians, they in turn inspire white Americans to renew their own faith, thus expanding the missionary impulse ever outward. The individual students whose stories emerge from the Brainerd School give a face to an otherwise abstract and generalized notion of Christian charity, which was the basis for the American interest in stories that span the globe. As presented in the pages of the missionary publications that circulated widely throughout the United States in the early nineteenth century, schools for Cherokees, along with schools for all manner of “heathens,” were to be understood as spaces of pity, promise, and above all benevolent sentiment. The publications that celebrated those schools emphasized the Readerly role of Indian students, who to a person seemed to agree wholeheartedly with the broader missionary cause. These Readerly Indian figures were crafted by missionaries looking for appealing fund-​­raising subjects, and the publications that featured them, like their eighteenth-​­century precedents, were to inspire their readers to give their time, their energy, and their money to the cause. The variously named missionary magazines introduced their readers to the wide reach of mission work in monthly pamphlets of around thirty to thirty-​­five pages.19 These publications, as well as the annual reports of the ABCFM, introduced their readers to various missions around the globe, promoting the situation of the Cherokees as one mission among many through excerpted letters and other documents by Cherokee students and political leaders sympathetic to the missionary cause, along with reports by white missionaries and other benevolent figures interested in the “betterment” of non-​­Christian peoples. Reports and magazines were not the only source of information for this

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interested audience: starting in 1822 with The Little Osage Captive, a series of “memoirs” of Cherokee converts, all of which had originally appeared in installments throughout the pages of the missionary magazines, were published as individual books, each of which was reprinted throughout the nineteenth century. The Little Osage Captive (a text that celebrated Cherokee missions through the story of a little Osage girl adopted into a missionary family), the Memoir of Catharine Brown, and the Memoir of John Arch (both memoirs of adolescent Cherokee converts who died in their twenties) were all pre-​ ­Removal narratives reprinted throughout the antebellum nineteenth century, most especially in the very difficult years of the Cherokee Removal (1836–​­38) but all well into the 1850s, as most Cherokees were remaking their lives out in Indian Territory under very difficult circumstances. Each was marketed to a slightly different audience, although all had at the forefront the interests and well-​­being of children. Like many missionary tracts disseminated throughout the early nineteenth century, The Little Osage Captive (originally published in 1822) was specifically designed for young children, while the memoirs of Catharine Brown (first appearing in tract form in 1825) and John Arch (first published independently in 1829 although never as popular as the first two tracts) were for a more general Christian audience. In 1830 a conglomeration of all these narratives compiled by Sarah Tuttle and framed in a New England context was marketed to children. All projected the same message: Cherokee converts were noble sufferers, and death came early and mercifully to them. Each memoir produced a profoundly religious, docile, Readerly Indian for public consumption; appendices, much like those from Wheelock’s narratives, also contained letters from converts that reinforced this message. Lydia Carter, Catharine Brown, and others came to stand in for all Cherokees in the Christian benevolent family, and with varying levels of intensity each of these individuals became objects of affection and pity for Americans who felt they knew them through the pages of their missionary texts. As the Brainerd mythos of personal sacrifice was displaced onto the Native missionary-​­convert, the inspirational value of early death and martyrdom became politicized in very particular ways. Cherokee suffering was aestheticized through the detailed examination of one young life and death. As Laura Stevens writes, “Missionary writings prepared their readers to expect the disappearance of the Indians from America, associating the death of their bodies with the cultivation of their souls” (33). While this link between spiritual salvation and death, as historian Erik Seeman has noted, is the case from John Eliot to Experience Mayhew onward, it dominates the rhetoric of the early

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nineteenth century in very particular ways.20 At its most elemental level the Brainerd model establishes that early death and great personal sacrifice are the signs of a true Christian. The politics of this are obvious: for all their talk of Cherokee nationhood, the benevolent Christian missionary rhetorically paves the way for the elimination of Native peoples, all in the name of Christian amelioration. The personal narratives or memoirs written on behalf of Cherokee people in the 1820s and widely disseminated by the ABCFM all reflect this model, even as they claim to celebrate individual Christian lives.

The Little Osage Captive Significantly, the subject of the first Cherokee memoir was herself not Cherokee. Nonetheless, the story of the Osage captive, or Lydia Carter, as she is named after her benefactor, was integrally connected to the founding of Brainerd and the shaping of missionary rhetoric for the community. As a mere child of five years old, the little Osage girl who is the subject of this memoir has no fully developed personhood beyond the potential others see in her. Bright but unable to express herself because of her limited English, loving but without a stable family or identity, finally she is a passive, docile, girl-​­child to be saved and shaped by missionaries—​­a generic “Indian” to be defined by missionaries conveniently without her own cultural legacy or home to complicate things. With only the barest literacy skills Carter becomes an idealized convert and emblem of the school. Her story, written by Elias Cornelius, initially appeared in installments throughout the Missionary Herald for a number of years and was collected into a single biography in 1822—​­the first of a series that connects the various mission characters of Catharine Brown, John Arch, and David Brown. All these “characters” appear in the first narrative and then are developed further in their own narratives (except David Brown, who never received his own memoir), which cross-​­reference each other. This technique reinforces the idea embedded in each narrative and developed throughout the missionary publications that the Cherokee mission is one big family united in its common purpose of bringing Christianity to those who need it most. The young child Lydia Carter best represents the ideas and values of the missionaries. With no writing of her own or even words to be quoted, she is the kind of blank slate that Indian missions want most to represent to the charitably minded. Lydia is a creature to be molded, renamed, dressed properly, and beloved by a good Christian family. She is the ideal feminized Indian

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subject—​­or the ideal Readerly Indian who would happily, according to Cornelius, “read in easy lessons, and recite a number of hymns” (63).21 Reproduced in nearly a dozen editions throughout the 1830s and early 1840s, this narrative provides a version of Cherokee identity to help inform a nation concerned about the moral, ethical, and logistical elements of Indian Removal. Clearly written as a children’s book, Carter’s story relies on the familiar conventions of captivity narratives, in which the innocent victim is redeemed from her savage and brutalizing captors, with the redemption metaphorically standing in for Christian salvation. In this case the captivity metaphor emphasizes the redemptive message of Christianity and reinforces the notion that missionaries were there to save Indians from themselves. Lydia Carter is the “good Indian,” a small Osage girl who is saved from her (male) Cherokee captors through the intercession of ABCFM benefactor Elias Cornelius and the existence of the Brainerd Mission. The message is clear: potentially savage Cherokees must be saved through their association with the mission at Brainerd. Carter’s potential as a convert is encoded in what is described as her extreme youth and exceptional beauty. Our narrator describes the child as follows: “In her appearance, the little Osage captive was prettier than most children. She had, it is true, the copper-​­color which belongs to all the Indians of America; but her features were so regular; she had so much mildness and simplicity in her eye; and her strait, black hair hung down so loosely about her neck, that one could not help calling her a handsome child” (17–​­18). Cornelius finds her appealing despite himself; the qualifiers throughout this passage (“it is true” that despite the color of her skin “one could not help” calling her handsome) suggest that in the tradition of the captivity narrative Indians are to be treated with suspicion rather than immediately embraced. Significantly, the initial suspicion of this Indian is replaced for our narrator with an overwhelming sense of pity for her (16). By overcoming his early reluctance our narrator models the kind of behavior we, his readers, are to emulate, and the child comes to represent the potential of every Indian person to be saved from savagery and welcomed into the Christian family through the conversion of our own fear and suspicion into pity. If one of the central conceits of the narrative is captivity, the second and equally important one is the role of family and familial relations in establishing the social world of the mission, a conceit that runs through every one of the Cherokee memoirs. Cornelius writes, “To a person . . . ​who visits Brainerd, the settlement appears like that of a numerous Christian family; the members

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of which are employed in the various duties of civilized and Christian life” (54). This child is welcomed into the mission family repeatedly. Her Indian parents having apparently been killed by her captors, Cornelius feels a fatherly love for this lost child, returning several times to attempt to redeem her from her Cherokee master, who has come to see her as a member of his own family (19). When Cornelius finally brings her to Brainerd, one of the missionaries, Ard Hoyt, “directed her to be told in Cherokee, for she does not understand English, that he would be her father. She fixed her eyes with great earnestness upon him, about half a minute; and then, with a smile, reached him her bonnet, as a token that she accepted the offer, and would go with him” (33–​­34). Shortly thereafter, missionary William Chamberlain and his wife “received her into their family, and adopted her, as their own child. She was taught to call them father, and mother, and to feel towards them as such; while they addressed her as daughter—​­and as the sister of another little daughter whom they had, whose name was Catharine” (36–​­37). We are told by Chamberlain, “I think I never saw a child . . . ​who was more fond of its parents, than she was of hers” (65). The parents to whom he refers are himself and his wife, thus confirming Carter’s status as a missionary child rather than an Osage Indian living among the Cherokees. The narrative continues in its affirmation of her willing membership in her new Christian family: “She was unwilling to stay from them, even for a night. And nothing could be more painful to her, than the idea that she might, one day, have to leave them to return to her own tribe” (65). The child represents what all connected to the Brainerd Mission fervently believe: that they form a family in which missionaries are the fathers and mothers and Indians are the children. Thus, even though we are told she has a nightmarish memory of her mother’s brutal death, we are also told brightly that “it is delightful to think, how Providence had relieved her from all these misfortunes, by placing her at Brainerd. Here she found a home, dearer to her than any she had enjoyed before; and parent were raised up [sic], who had it in their power to do far more to promote her happiness, than those whom she had lost” (65). Even her biological father’s reappearance in her life cannot dissipate the missionaries’ sense that she is theirs; they question his claim to her and take their fight to save her all the way to the president of the United States, to no avail as her repeated journeys from the mission to her Osage home eventually wear her out and she dies some distance from any family that claimed her. Incredibly, we as readers are to understand her lonely and painful death as an inspiration. Despite the missionaries’ hard work, we are told, she could

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not be saved from death, although she could be saved for eternal life. Rather than dwelling on the peripatetic life she was forced to lead, traveling hundreds of miles back and forth as various parties fought over her, we are instead to be moved by her Christian death, at which she repeated the hymns she had learned at Brainerd and died in faith. She exists to inspire American families to turn their attention to Indians struggling without the light of Christianity. Her life on earth was certainly tragic: she dies never having returned to Brainerd and having traveled far and wide to secure a family for herself. And yet, the narrative concludes, “May those who read her history, remember the means by which her last moments were rendered so peaceful and happy. It was through the instrumentality of christian missionaries, who were sent to the Indians, to teach them the Gospel, and to show them the way of salvation, that her mind was prepared for death. Had there been no Missionaries to instruct her, she had died without a knowledge of the Saviour, or any of those consolations which cheered and supported her in the departing hour” (87−88). Most emphatically, her readers are enjoined to remember that “millions of others, in Heathen lands, are still ignorant of the same Savior!” (88). Lydia Carter thus stands in for all Indians, and her ability to read the Bible and recite her spiritual lessons are presented as signs of missionary success. She dies as the embodiment of the Readerly Indian, wanting only to please her white benefactors through her obedient and halting repetition of their words.

The Memoir of Catharine Brown While Lydia Carter held a central role in the mythologizing of Cherokee missions, it is unquestionably the 1825 Memoir of Catharine Brown, by Rufus Anderson, that attained the most exalted status. Brown’s story, like that of Carter, emerges initially from the pages of missionary magazines, but her story is reproduced in various forms. Not only the subject of her own widely reprinted memoir, she was first the subject of an 1819 play,22 and her letters were reproduced in the appendices of other memoirs. Like the subjects of other missionary memoirs, she is presented as a docile, Readerly Indian, eager to please her mission family, even as her narrative contains all manner of evidence of the writing skills and personal desires that challenge such a characterization. In certain ways her life story was already written for her and had been in place before she ever encountered the Brainerd Mission. The Memoirs of Mrs. Harriet Newell, a book that Catharine Brown knew well and read frequently,23

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documented the life of a young missionary to India through her own letters and journals. Newell died at nineteen, only a month after giving birth to a child who herself died shortly after birth. As scholar Mary Kupiec Cayton has written, “She never witnessed her faith to the heathen she sought to save, never brought the light of Christianity to the people she felt drawn to serve. Yet for generations of evangelical women, she became a saint, a martyr, a heroine” (409). Harriet Newell was essentially the female counterpart to the David Brainerd. Their success as missionaries was not in their effect on the population they were sent to save but rather in their inspiring life story and more especially in the written version of their inner lives. Harriet Newell was a model of Christian thinking, and as such her memoir was widely distributed by the ABCFM missionaries; her story was first printed in the Panoplist and Mission­ ary Magazine (as was Catharine Brown’s a decade later) and was reprinted as a separate tract from 1814 and 1840, with seven editions appearing before 1817 (Cayton, 414–​­15). She was the inspiration through whom Catharine Brown was encouraged to understand her own role as a Christian and a missionary. But if Newell’s memoir offered a model (like the Brainerd model) of an interiorized Christianity, a successful life measured by early death and an utter lack of pragmatism or a spirit of self-​­preservation, it also presented a striking early model of female self-​­expression, as Cayton has noted (412–​­13). In the newly developing genre of the evangelical-​­missionary magazine, life stories like those of Harriet Newell and Catharine Brown brought women readers into the fold and modeled for them appropriate modes of reading and writing. Catharine Brown and her memoir were at once part of a particular kind of Cherokee experience, but they also fit into a larger missionary sensibility that produced readers and converts from around the globe. Catharine Brown’s story as a Cherokee young woman became part of a generalized narrative of conversion and Christianity through which conversion was measured by writing and success was most clearly marked through death. The Readerly Indian here is a writer, and a woman writer at that. As several recent scholars have suggested, Brown’s memoir is structured and shaped by a missionary desire to find the right first Cherokee convert—​ ­one who was functionally already one of their own.24 Unlike the child Lydia Carter, who is beautiful “despite” her tawny skin, Jeremiah Evarts, the treasurer of the ABCFM, reports in the Memoir after meeting Catharine Brown that she is so light-​­skinned as to barely seem Indian. “If you were to see [Catharine Brown] at a boarding-​­school in New England, as she ordinarily appears here, you would not distinguish her from well-​­educated females of the same age,

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either by her complexion, features, dress, pronunciation, or manners,” he tells us approvingly (34).25 Indeed she is a find for these missionaries: essentially a New England schoolgirl dropped into the middle of Cherokee territory. In other words, she is Harriet Newell, only at a geographic remove. But if Brown is to be the quintessential white Cherokee convert, the description of her parents establishes her “Indian” credentials. Neither of her parents speaks English; both have Cherokee names as well as the name by which they are known among white people; and both, we are told, are “like others of their nation;—​­no better acquainted with the language, religion, manners, or customs of the white people” (11). Our narrator hastily points out that “the mere possession of an English name, in an Indian country, is no evidence that the person thus distinguished is able to speak the English language; much less, that his habits are those of civilized life, or that his mind has been in any degree cultivated” (12). In fact, in traditional Cherokee manner, Brown’s mother, Sarah, is one of two concurrent wives of John Brown, although his other wife, Betsy, eventually separates from the family and her husband (11). Catharine is thus clearly marked as a Cherokee girl, an identity that is essential to the missionary project, even as their goal is to fundamentally alter that identity. As an amalgam of Cherokee culture and whiteness, Catharine Brown is initially described as “easy in her manners, and modest and prepossessing in her demeanour,” with the slightest suggestion of personal vanity in her early attention to her clothing and appearance (19–​­20). Missionaries are initially reluctant to include her in the school; she is older than the typical Brainerd student, and missionaries are concerned that she may not take to the discipline required at the school (18–​­20). Nonetheless, she learns quickly, since, her teachers report, “she was attentive to her learning, industrious in her habits, and remarkably correct in her deportment” (21). Brown makes rapid progress in the next few months; her reading and her handwriting were both excellent within a short period, and missionaries are heartened by her growing Christian faith. More than vindicating herself with her good, Christian behavior and putting to rest the concerns of missionaries, in under a year Brown becomes the first Brainerd convert, although shortly thereafter and much to the missionaries’ regret her father arrives to bring her home. Happily, however, her father relents, and Catharine goes on to become a teacher at the Creek Path mission school in Alabama until her declining health makes her continued service to the missionary cause all but impossible. Like Harriet Newell, she dies, we are told, an obedient child of God, waiting with mildness and patience for her own death. The missionary who

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ministers to her in her final hours reports of her death: “I have rarely, if ever, seen a more lovely object for the pencil, than she appeared to me on her dying bed. The natural mildness of her features seemed lighted with a beam of heavenly hope, and her whole aspect was that of a mature Christian, waiting, with filial patience, the welcome summons to the presence of her Lord” (134). But however resonant this scene was with Newell’s death, with all of its elements of patient sufferance and passive acceptance, it becomes the ultimate Native death, aestheticized for a Christian audience eager to mourn her passing. The culmination of a life of the most Brainerd-​­like sacrifice, Catharine’s death is memorialized not just through the text but as the frontispiece of the memoir, marking it as the most important sign of her full acceptance into the Brainerd family. While some scholars have suggested that the Memoir of Catharine Brown is hopelessly entangled in the missionary cause to the detriment of any real sense of individual identity, others point out that there are details in the narrative to suggest that Catharine Brown stepped outside of her role as mere Readerly Indian, embracing her own sense of Native authority.26 As Virginia Moore Carney points out in her study of Eastern Cherokee women’s letters and speeches, whatever uses the broader missionary society of the ABCFM may have had for her story, Brown seems to have had her own reasons for producing the letters and journals that were the basis for her memoir, and “to cite the letters of Catharine Brown . . . ​as a classic example of acculturation is to deny the author of those letters the right to embrace Christianity as her own religion, or to use the language of her teachers to instruct her own people” (55). With the approval of her mission family and following the model of Harriet Newell, Brown sees writing as a means of self-​­expression, and her memoir should be understood not only as a means of structuring her own agency but also as a passionate plea for the expanded literacy of Cherokee people. In other words, Catharine Brown is enabled through her readerly status to produce herself as a writerly figure. And her writing establishes her very clearly as advocating a free and equal status for Cherokee people through Christianity. Catharine Brown does this by defining her role as missionary sister, daughter, and friend, not just acolyte. In the letters throughout her narrative she refers to her fellow missionaries as brothers and sisters, and speaks often of their shared commitment to a particular vision of the world, one that is developed and expanded through writing. In the period in which Catharine Brown is writing, her missionary family unequivocally supports the continued

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existence of a Cherokee nation, albeit a Christian one. None of her relationships mark her as separating herself from the missionary cause; they all endorse it. However, her mission relationships allow her to pursue her commitments to literacy and to education as much as to Christianity, and as such mesh with her clear political commitment to Cherokee sovereignty. While her death may have crystallized missionary hopes for a perfect Cherokee martyr, her life and her letters, as Carney reminds us, reveal a passionate commitment to Cherokee identity and sovereignty. Brown’s memoir thus balances the readerly and writerly figure in a way that The Little Osage Captive never even tries and that was unthinkable in the more controlled narratives of Wheelock’s school. Through Catharine Brown in particular but more generally throughout the missionary literature of Brainerd, the school and the mission increasingly come to be associated not just with childhood but more specifically with girlhood as a particularly authorized position of moral strength. Ideologically convenient, this gendering makes the rhetoric of family and the domestic imagery associating Brainerd essential to the broader aim of Cherokee conversion. It also connects Cherokee Christianity to an ever-​­expanding circle of conversion that culminates with northern white, middle-​­class Americans. Let­ ters and Conversations on the Cherokee Mission, published semi-​­anonymously by Sarah Tuttle, makes explicit the connection between girlhood, conversion, death, and white American identity through a series of fictional characters who are moved by the actual characters associated with the Brainerd Mission. In this two-​­volume narrative, which is really a loose compilation of the Cherokee materials already published in missionary magazines and elsewhere, Cornelia Pelham, the young, white protagonist, goes to visit her aunt and uncle Claiborne in rural New England.27 Shocked by their casual indifference to evangelical Christianity and to the benevolence movements of the day, Cornelia tells her seven young cousins about Indian missions to the Cherokees. Incorporating the stories of Lydia Carter, Catharine Brown, and others, the text is set up as a series of questions and answers through which Cornelia transforms her rather self-​­absorbed (but kindly) cousins and aunt and uncle into committed benefactors of Indian missions. Cornelia explains, in the first years of the mission to the Indians, female associations were formed in all parts of the United States, which prepared boxes of clothing for the missionaries and all their scholars, and I can truly say, that some of my happiest days have been spent in these little missionary

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circles, where one of our number read aloud the journals of the missions, while the rest were making gowns, shirts, vests, stockings, and linen for beds and tables; for it was thought by many that the sooner civilized habits were formed, in domestic arrangements, the better. Several handsome dresses were sent to a few of the school girls by ladies in New England. (Tuttle, 54−55) On hearing these statements her cousin Delia exclaims, “O mother, do let me try and get up such a society while cousin Cornelia is here” (55). Young Cornelia is the vector through which conversion can occur both among middle-​­class New Englanders and Indians like the Cherokees. Children both facilitate and benefit from benevolent actions, and even little Lydia Carter, a mere five-​ ­year-​­old child, becomes an essential actor in the drama of Christian conversion. But if Native children like Lydia Carter all seem to die, this narrative makes clear the reasons for the enormous expenditure of time and energy of nineteenth-​­century New England missionary associations: Cherokee converts are the impetus for white Americans to come to terms with their social and moral obligation to remake heathen others in their own image, thereby becoming better Christians themselves. In this context the difference between Readerly and Writerly Indians is completely irrelevant; they are merely textual figures through which white readers enact their Christian values. This line between the paper Indians of the benevolence machine and the lives and texts of Cherokee converts is made starkly evident in the material conditions of the Brainerd School.

Lancastrian Education and the ABCFM The Brainerd mission was founded on the assumption that the “benevolent” restructuring of Cherokee identity was a good and appropriately Christian action. Through memoirs, published letters, and other missionary documents, Cherokee individuals are repeatedly identified as malleable, agreeable, and above all worthy recipients of New England’s largesse. This northern interest in Cherokee people extended beyond simply reading narratives of Cherokee Christian experience, however; individual benefactors or even institutions were encouraged to take a special interest in a particular student, thus extending benevolent concern from an abstraction to a more specific relationship of sorts. In fact, for a donation Cherokee students could be given a particular

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name, so at the request of donors, names like Cotton Mather, David Brainerd, Jeremiah Everts, Cyrus Kingsbury, Samuel Newell, Cornelius Atwood, and Samuel Worcester appear as names chosen by New England’s well-​­meaning individual donors and benevolent societies for hapless Cherokee children.28 Lydia Carter, the little Osage girl that so enchanted her missionary family, is herself named after the woman who produced the money to buy her out of captivity—​­a renaming that is naturalized through the memoir as a modest means of thanking individuals for their contributions to the eternal salvation of Native souls.29 In some ways this missionary practice fit with the Cherokee cultural practice of adopting new names for different periods of life. Whatever may have seemed familiar to Cherokee students about this, however, does not change the complexity of the exchange from an Anglo-​­American perspective, where names stay with an individual forever, mark familial allegiance, and fix personal identity.30 Even as they claimed a particular affection for individual students, missionaries were perfectly content to market their identities for the larger good of the mission, making them available for imaginary reconstitution by complete strangers who would never meet or interact with the child in any substantive way. The Readerly Indians produced within missionary documents seemingly did not complain about this wholesale conversion of their personhood and nationality; in fact, they apparently had no objection to being bought and sold, recreated in whoever’s image suited the moment—​­that is, unless one scans the records for those who ran away or never returned from home, a problem that became so acute it had to be addressed though legislation by the Cherokee Council.31 This notion of a malleable personal identity for Cherokees took root in an even more pernicious way through the adoption by the Brainerd School of the Lancastrian system. If the model of Christian conversion embraced in the various memoirs is based on a set of conventions through which genuine conversion is made documentable and recognizable, the educational system in place at Brainerd conventionalized literacy as a series of rote actions. Requiring complete obedience within a mechanized, impersonal structure, the Lancastrian model, imported from England and in use at Brainerd at this time, educated its students in docility and obedience.32 The logic of the Lancastrian system rendered “successful” students anonymous and void of personhood. Its embracement by missionaries reflects a broader desire to reconstitute Cherokee culture, however unsuccessful this strategy may have been in practice. A pedagogical model outlined by Joseph Lancaster and put in practice

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in the early part of the century in schools throughout the British Isles and in urban centers in the United States, the Lancaster method was popular for educating the masses at the least inconvenience to those doing the educating. It worked by largely doing away with the two most expensive components of education: books and teachers. In the process it erased the individual give and take of student-​­teacher engagement and replaced that process with a machine-​­like regimentation in the name of financial expediency.33 Through the Lancastrian system the paradox of the Brainerd Mission is most insistently revealed: while missionaries felt strongly that individual conversions required a thoughtful engagement with the ideas and values of Christianity as well as a clear sense of one’s own personhood and soul’s condition, the Lancaster method functioned by systematically erasing individuality and replacing personal engagement with repetition and memorization. In the Lancastrian world students’ names are replaced with class ranks, and free will is exchanged for a rigid adherence to a set of practices regulated down to the way a student holds a pencil or wears her or his clothing.34 While the eighteenth-​­century boarding schools also required Indian students to wear new clothes, sometimes take new names, and accept instruction in temporally and spatially unfamiliar contexts, the Lancaster method went much further in regulating walking, talking, and every motion associated with reading, writing, and learning. At least theoretically, through the Lancaster method the most basic elements of Cherokee children’s identity are radically reconstituted. In groups divided by gender, age, and ability students are downgraded from person to number or ticket: students (always envisioned by Lancaster as male) stand in numbered order with “pasteboard tickets, with number 1, &c. inscribed, suspended, by a string from the button of the bearer’s coat, or round his neck. The best boy stands in the first place; he is also decorated with a leather ticket, gilt, and lettered merit, as a badge of honour.” Lancaster continues, “He is always the first boy questioned by the monitor, who points to a particular letter in the alphabet, ‘What letter is that?’ If he tells readily, what letter it is, all is well, and he retains his place in the class; which he forfeits, together with his number and ticket, to the next boy who answers the question, if he cannot.” This system produces emulation as well as competition, says Lancaster with great approval.35 It also reinforces the relentless logic of replacement; if one student cannot answer, another will take her or his place.36 Lancaster advocated the use of a competitive model through which certain actions were rewarded with “tickets” that could be accumulated for small prizes. Robert Berkhofer describes in more detail the implementation

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of the Lancaster method at Brainerd, explaining that “the children progressed through the alphabet, to spelling one, two, three syllables, to reading, then writing . . . ​in the prescribed Lancastrian pattern under monitors. To excite effort, little cards bearing the initial letters of the words “Punctual attendance,” “Behavior,” and “Diligence” were awarded twice each day. . . . ​Damaged slates, lost pencils, and misbehavior cost fines in tickets” (26). Brainerd used tickets to reward children both in school and outside of it: for morning work “tickets are given to those who are most distinguished for quickness and punctuality; and the fine of a ticket is imposed upon any one who shall be culpably dilatory. These tickets, which are given as rewards on other occasions also, answer the purpose of a circulating medium among the boys [and girls], as they are redeemed with little books, or such articles as the holders need.”37 In this system, books enter not as objects of study but rather as rewards for good behavior; they are objects to be exchanged and treasured rather than used within the structured classroom. Missionary tracts circulated widely at Brainerd and were voraciously read by the very students who later became the subjects of such tracts. Lancaster initiates his “improvements” as a way to control the cost of schooling; he writes enthusiastically that with the new plan, “one master alone can educate One Thousand Boys in Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, as effectually, and with as little Trouble, as Twenty or Thirty have ever been instructed by the usual modes of Tuition.”38 While the Brainerd Mission never went that far, according to the ABCFM Report of 1818, “the School house . . . ​ is sufficiently large to accommodate 100 scholars on the Lancasterian plan” (190). Again, the emphasis here is on the mass of replaceable bodies, not the individual stories celebrated through the various Cherokee memoirs. Like eighteenth-​­century students of Wheelock’s Charity School and the Stockbridge boarding school, students in the Lancastrian system encountered literacy as a set of rote motions to be mastered through repetition rather than understanding. Brainerd went even further than these earlier schools, however, by insisting that such motions could be mastered not simply through repetition but through regimented attention to the minutest details of bodily action (see Figure 4). In a striking departure from earlier systems of reading in which reading (letter and word recognition) was separate from writing (forming letters), Lancaster’s innovation was to connect reading and writing through student mastery of the alphabet and the particular shape of letters. Lancaster’s system elides letter recognition with letter formation, an innovation that is now the basis for modern literacy instruction. Replacing paper and pens with

Figure 4. Lancaster method illustrations for writing on slates. Detailed instructions range from producing writing on slates to the orderly emptying of rows of pupils from their seats. Such activity is carefully calibrated (and diagrammed) to be accomplished in complete silence. Lancasterian System of Education, 28. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

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a sandbox and stick for the earliest readers, the children use their right hand to write in sand so that they can feel the letters before they even take hold of a pen. Students write only on the command of their monitor, or student teacher: “In teaching the boys to print the alphabet, the monitor first makes a letter on the sand, before any boy who knows nothing about it; the boy is then required to retrace over the same letter, which the monitor has made for him, with his fingers; and thus he is to continue employed, till he can make the letter himself, without the monitor’s assistance. Then he may go on to learn another letter.” By integrating reading and writing, Lancaster made it possible for even the youngest child to connect the two disparate literacy skills by making each a rote action largely devoid of significance. Brainerd embraced this system: we are told that even in the first year of the school, young children with almost no previous alphabetic literacy training were already learning to write: “The principle exercises are reading, writing on sand, slates and paper, spelling and arithmetic.”39 Joseph Lancaster produced a system through which reading and writing were mechanized acts that required neither understanding nor intellect. Called by one modern appraiser, Carl Kaestle, “paranoid . . . ​with a martyr complex that distorted his view of the world and his place in it” and by another, Patricia Crain, “profligate, spendthrift, overweight, paranoid, probably a sadist, possibly a pedophile, half altruist, half self-​­promoting snake-​­oil salesman,” Lancaster’s model is striking in its cold, machine-​­like efficiency. His publications included detailed diagrams about the proper and most efficient way to educate masses of children all working at various levels without the help of individual instruction or books. Key to his system was silent learning, where monitors, or student teachers, signaled their charges through signs, or even bells and whistles but not voices to move on to the next task. He used modern technologies like the object he calls the “telegraph” and a strikingly panoptical layout to increase efficiency and instruct masses of students. Most famous for his “monitorial system” through which older students instructed younger ones with the help of cards, “examination sticks,” and absolute regimentation, Lancaster held out the possibility for missionary societies like the ABCFM of schools that could be run cheaply, expanded indefinitely, and operated as models of efficiency. Through the Lancaster model, students moved in regimental order, rarely allowed to move or speak out of turn. Most significantly, there was to be no opportunity for independent thinking or higher-​­level instruction in this system, as most of it was accomplished by rote repetition.40 There were gaps, of course, in this ostensibly draconian system. Even

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Lancaster himself, in an addendum to one of his books, acknowledges the following: “Persons wishing to see my institution [Borough Road, Southwark], are requested to send written notice, post paid, of their intention to call . . . ​ for, though the system is always in practice, yet it is often but partially so: this arises from one part being in practice at one time, and another at another, in order to simplify the object of the children’s attention.”41 Clearly, the Lancastrian system operated better in theory than in practice. Students at Brainerd reported using textbooks for the study of grammar, geography, and even spelling in a break from the Lancastrian system. The monitorial system as well as the language barrier between missionaries and Cherokee students also meant that as new students arrived unable to understand English or the household system of Brainerd, they were shepherded through by older Cherokee students, which suggests that Cherokee-​­centered knowledge could be passed along from one generation of students to another at mission schools. And most remarkably, even within this rigid schooling space the children of Brainerd inserted a startling record of friendship and delight that is very much at odds with the brutality of the theories behind the school system. Embedded within the missionary system that simultaneously embraced both the language of family along with the practice of mechanization is a space in which children and young adults could express themselves to the larger world. And while this self-​­expression did not ever fully disrupt the missionary world that had forged a new kind of home for them, it did not always neatly conform to the expectations surrounding these young students. Within the Memoir of Catharine Brown as well as in “private” letters written by several young Brainerd students, the Writerly expressions of these individuals point to the ways they shaped and were shaped by the experience of education at the Brainerd School.

Letters Beyond the starring roles of figures like Catharine Brown and Lydia Carter, whose stories were regularly featured in serial form, occasionally letters from young Cherokee students were also disseminated in missionary magazines. Delilah Fields, a preadolescent Cherokee girl and others like her charmed donors with their clever and innocent letters, even as they reinforced the missionary sense of the special potential of Cherokee children.42 It is perhaps for this reason that Lucy Ames, the young missionary teacher who had arrived

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from New England to the Brainerd Mission in 1827, copied out a series of letters written by her female students between 1828 and 1829 (Coleman, 125–​­26), a full decade after Catharine Brown’s arrival at Brainerd and about five years after her death. These students range in age from roughly nine years old to fifteen or sixteen, and are in many ways the perfect missionary vehicles, even as they occasionally break out of the role assigned to them by the missionary establishment. The girls are enthusiastic about converting siblings, parents, and others; they eagerly devour reading material in the form of missionary tracts about heathens, expressing dismay over the condition of their souls, and they are fervent participants in a benevolence society through which they will “support a heathen child.” They express love and devotion to their mission family, embracing their teachers’ friends and families as their own. Finally, they distance themselves from the notion that they might themselves be perceived as objects of pity by expressing their concern over the backwardness of other Cherokees.43 Like the Memoir of Catharine Brown, these letters contain a strong sense of the importance of the literacy skills the mission imparts to the Cherokees. One young girl writes, “I think the missionaries are doing a great deal of good; if it were not for them these children, that are here, would be without any knowledge of God, and now the most of them can read and write” (9); in another letter she writes, “There are a number of Cherokee children at this station to receive instructions; who a few years ago were without any knowledge of God.—​­I am very glad that I can read and write” (7). For this student reading and writing are inextricably linked to religion, although while religion is something that requires inner transformation, literacy is a set of skills that can be accessed unproblematically. In fact, for all that they appear in the same sentence, for this young writer knowledge of God and the ability to read and write are quite distinct offerings from the missionaries: in her mind one is clearly more valuable than the other. In fact, of all the girls who write letters at the request of their teacher Miss Ames, not one of them has converted or has “a new heart” as more than one student writes (41, 50, 52); God seems like a rather abstracted figure that simply does not have much to do with them. While their interest in God seems to fade in and out, they are perfectly content to take on the trappings of Christianity (benevolence culture, education, clothing, letter writing) without a personal commitment to their own religious state. These children fervently hope that the rest of the Cherokees will embrace God, even though they themselves have not. They are at school for an education; over and over they detail their

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own educational plans, their studies, their difficulties with particular subjects, but few give more than a sentence or two over to their spiritual state in these letters. Even though they are not, properly speaking, fully converted, these students have a strong sense of what is otherwise expected of them. Repeated throughout the letters is some variation of the phrase “we ought to feel/think/ appreciate,” which is applied to God, Jesus Christ, missionaries, the people of the North, and school in general. This sense of obligation seems to be little more than a rhetorical flourish, however; after obediently expressing this pious sentiment, most of the girls cheerfully move past this construction to other, more interesting matters like questions for their correspondents, or information about the Cherokees, or even incidents out of their day or an interesting anecdote from one of the missionary tracts that seem to have formed the bulk of their reading. One nine-​­year-​­old even confides to her correspondent that a year earlier she used to have “bad thoughts” and contemplated running away. She admits that she resented having to work for missionaries, although “I do not think so now and feel sorry that I did not have better feelings,” adding that “I think that I feel more grateful” and further, “I feel as though we ought to be very thankful indeed to God for his kindness that he sent the good missionaries” (51). The conditional nature of her newfound gratitude suggests something of the artificiality of the “ought” construction for these young writers: they understand what they are supposed to feel, but the emotion is abstractly described rather than reported as a felt experience. These young girls write about a great many topics, but one that recurs with some frequency is the association of Removal and death. As Virginia Moore Carney writes, “That removal was uppermost in the minds of early-​ ­nineteenth-​­century Cherokee children is abundantly clear in the letters of the Brainerd school girls” (67). Carney notes that this association reaches beyond Brainerd to letters of other Cherokee children of the day.44 One of the youngest Brainerd writers, a nine-​­year-​­old whose letter is one of the first she has ever written (“I have not been writing but a few weeks”) tells her correspondent that “I have friends that died, I felt very bad but I could not help it, a brother that I loved dearly and a grandmother and two Ucles [sic] and a cousin but I must not murmer because he took them away for it is right. perhaps it was that we might think more about dying Death may come when we will not think it will. if we should remove I don’t know what would become of us we would be scatered about it may be that we never see the missionaries any more who have been so kind to us and have done so much for us” (55).

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Clearly, for this child Removal and death are closely associated, and being “scatered about” is akin to the loneliness and loss of the death of a family member. The child sees the ultimate tragedy of Removal as separation from the missionaries, although it is unclear whether this viewpoint is because missionaries help Cherokees navigate an unfamiliar world outside the Cherokee Nation or whether missionaries are a stand-​­in for home and place. Either way, the child closes her somber letter with the gleeful statement, “This is the finest letter I ever wrote” (55), a reminder that however complicated her emotions at this fraught moment for her people, she did after all achieve an impressive milestone as a writer. Another child associates her guilt over her inability to fully accept God with the dispersal of the Cherokees through Removal. She writes, “If the Cherokees should be removed from their native land and be driven into a far country and separated from each other we cannot expect God will be our friend in this time of affliction if we have not given up our hearts to him” (53). For her, Removal is clearly a Cherokee issue, and the separation from missionaries is secondary to the loss of their homeland and their dispersal as a people. In this moment young Lucy McPherson wants the all-​­powerful Christian God on her side, yet she hesitates, understanding not only that this figure does not forgive those who do not “give up [their] hearts to him” but also that her fundamental lack of interest in the whole issue of religious conversion “is awful and wicked” (53). Of all the student writers the three eldest are Nancy Reece, Elizabeth Taylor, and Mary Vail, the last being the daughter of one of Brainerd’s white missionaries. All are fifteen years old, and all three are in the first, or most advanced, class out of the four classes available to the Brainerd girls. Of the three Mary Vail is the only one who speaks consistently and with the appropriate vocabulary and religious flourishes of her Christian faith and even of her born-​­again state (as Carney observes, her letters “reflect . . . ​an attitude of superiority and self righteousness that the Cherokee girls must have found exasperating at times” [66]). But she writes only two letters recorded by Lucy Ames, while Nancy Reece, by far the most prolific of all the student writers, produces fifteen letters to a wide-​­ranging audience of friends and strangers all associated one way or another with the Brainerd Mission, most of whom are in New England.45 Throughout the two years of this correspondence Reece contemplates her spiritual condition regularly but explains that she is not yet certain of the state of her soul. She does, however, teach Sunday School and is anxious to see Christianity well established in the Cherokee Nation—​­like all

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the other letter writers, apparently she feels that God will be good for others even if he has not quite reached her. Nancy Reece is clearly an adept writer by the time she is Miss Ames’s student. One of the first fragments of her writing, however, shows her development as a writer and a student. Sophia Sawyer, a teacher at the Brainerd School in 1825, includes a brief line of the young Nancy Reece’s prose in her letter to a northern correspondent, Linda Ward. At the top of the page is a short, clear, grammatically correct paragraph in even letters and good orthography signed by Nancy Taylor. Below that, Reece writes in oversized letters and blotted ink: “Dear Madam, I love my Teacher my scool and the little Cherokees are all learning fast. Nancy Reece.” Sawyer adds, “Poor Nancy cried because she could not write like Nancy Taylor who spoke english when she entered the school. Nancy T is more than half English blood—​­Nancy R. almost full Cherokee. She is a good little girl but she cannot bear to be outdone by any. I told her to learn & she should write in my next & you would see her improvement.”46 Reece’s word choice for this early writing venture is interesting: who are all the little Cherokees who are learning fast? Does she count herself as one of them, or is she somehow outside of this category, as her syntax implies? This awkward subject positioning is exacerbated in Sawyer’s addendum, which reinforces the racial assumptions of the missionary order: Cherokees with white blood in them are somehow better and more adept than full bloods. Reece must have felt the comparison to Taylor acutely, and the tears Sawyer notes suggest not only competition with her older and more adept schoolmate but also her frustration with her own inability to measure up in the eyes of her missionary mother-​­sister. Three years later when Lucy Ames transcribes her letters Nancy Reece has become perfectly comfortable presenting herself to functional strangers who have an interest in Cherokee missions and the lives of young Cherokees like herself. Her letters all have a familiar framework: she introduces herself, explaining the connection that leads her to write; she then explains something that links her to her correspondent (“Miss Ames . . . ​has been telling me about your family and the place where you live. She says your door yard and garden are filled with rose bushes and flowers. . . . ​We have a rose bush at our door but it is a wild one such as grows in the woods” [8]) and finally describes some aspect of mission life or some element of Cherokee tradition that might be unfamiliar to her reader. Through her letters she connects herself to a geographically and experientially distant world from her own. Mostly, though, Nancy Reece explores her relationship to her young

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teacher through this letter writing. Nancy writes, “I love my school very much, I love it better every year,” and later, “I love my books and school better and better” (1, 10). She tells us, “We often on Saturdays and some week days walk out with our Teacher. It is very pleasant in the woods this time of year [June], the trees are green, and we can find flowers in almost every place” (6). Her developing friendship with her teacher Lucy Ames, who is really no more than a few years older than herself, colors everything about her relationship to the Brainerd School and Mission. As the teacher and her students go on walks together, sew together, and even write shared letters, we see Nancy gradually stepping imaginatively into her teacher’s life history, positioning herself within her letters as part of a past that is completely distinct from her own experience. She tells us that “when the hours of school are over and we sit down to sewing, we ask her a great many question about the North and her friends. It seems as though I could see them and the places she tells us about” (18). She tells one correspondent, “Miss Ames says you are her friend and she has not time to write and she wishes me to write. She has been telling me about your family and the place where you live . . . ​and that your house is kept neat just as she wishes us to keep our part of the house. . . . ​She says you and she use to take your fathers horse and the chaise and ride around the town to get some money to send to the heathen” (8). Nancy herself is, of course, the “heathen” for whom the two girls collected money, although she prefers to inscribe herself imaginatively in the chaise with the two girls sharing their friendship rather than as the recipient of their goodwill and abstract benevolence. Similarly, she writes to another of Miss Ames’s friends who has recently lost a child: “I think you will not expect to receive a letter from your friends pupil. I have heard her speak of living in your family when she was a little girl. . . . ​She told us about your little Rebecca that died said that she loved her and that she felt very much grieved for you . . . ​since she came to this place she took up a Boston Recorder and saw the death of your son in Boston. She felt very much for you, and I thought I knew how you felt” (12), inserting herself in the shared grief of these two women. She concludes this letter with “Please to give my best respects to your family and especially your daughters and if any of them should write to Miss Ames I should be glad to receive a few lines from any of them” (12). Nancy Reece becomes more and more consumed by her teacher’s desires, often allowing them to take precedence over her own. When she writes to Lucy Ames’s mother, she explains that “I watch the mail and when it arrives,

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I tell her and she says ‘go and see if I have any letters.’ Yesterday she received one from Virginia, and I had one from a lady in Charleston. I did not wait to get mine but caught hers and ran to her and forgot mine. I think I feel as sorry as she does when there is none for her” (18). Nancy Reece has inserted herself into her young teacher’s life to such a degree that her own pleasures in receiving a letter are eclipsed by the joy of watching her teacher receive one. Her desire to become her teacher is rendered all the more poignant when she writes, “Sometimes Miss Ames laughs at me and tells me to let my thoughts come forth that people may know that I can talk,” but she reports ruefully that “I can write more than I could say if you were here” (18). Painfully tongue-​­tied, the young Nancy prefers her adventurous teacher’s past to her own sheltered existence. She writes, “I do not know much about the world. I was never out of this part of the Nation till lately,” although on a recent trip she saw a printing press for the first time as well as a piano, saying of the latter, “I never saw one before but Miss Ames says they are very common among the Ladies at the North” (17). Her teacher has introduced her through her correspondence to a world this young girl can barely imagine, and through her literacy she finds ways of engaging with this world that is otherwise shut off to her. This appropriation of her teacher’s life and memories continues throughout her correspondence, but in December 1828 Nancy Reece’s world comes into sharp focus for her, and a new element enters her letters. She writes to a correspondent of her teacher, “I do not think all the people are friends to the Cherokees. Miss Ames has been reading a part of the Presid. Message. Perhaps he does not like the laws of the Indian tribes for he says ‘This state of things requires that a remedy should be provided’ ” (21). Because Andrew Jackson was elected to the presidency of the United States in 1828 on a platform that emphasized Indian Removal far more forcefully than his predecessors, his election was greeted with great consternation among the Cherokees. Nancy’s political sense is clearly entering a new stage; whatever conversations may have occurred with her teacher as well as with her own people (and her father’s participation in Cherokee politics makes such conversations all but certain), this letter marks her sense that the urgency of this situation must be conveyed to the fantastical Northern world of horses and chaises and rosebushes and other dooryard flowers. But what is perhaps most difficult for Nancy Reece is the divide between her concern and her teacher’s: “It seems that it will be a trying season to us and the missionaries if we should be separated from them, but [Miss Ames] says if God suffers it to be, we ought not to complain, for it will be for the best.

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I have been talking to the children about it and one says ‘if the white people want more land let them go back to the country they came from’, another says ‘they have got more land than they use, what do they want to get ours for?’ ” (21–​­22). While Nancy quotes “the children” directly, she only generally characterizes her teacher’s words, suggesting that “the children” make more sense here than her teacher does. Indeed, her teacher’s mild acquiescence separates her irrevocably from her young charges, whose world is being upended. Nancy finds herself caught in the middle and can only narrate what seems to be a growing divide between student opinion and that of her teacher. As Reece continues to struggle with the horrifying political events that directly impact the Cherokee Nation, her letters reveal that she wavers in her sense of how to imagine this potentially apocalyptic alteration in her world. In one letter she parrots her teacher’s language: “I see much in the papers of the Cherokee’s Removal. I think the missionaries and most of the children think that such a separation would be the most trying season that they ever met with. I hope we shall not murmur if it is God’s will that such a thing should take place” (26). Here the separation that she refers to is from the missionaries, not from the land of her ancestors, suggesting that the rhetoric she is deploying here has more to do with missionary concerns than Cherokee political ones. However, her phrasing (“I hope we shall not murmur”) is less than fully convincing; she cannot with any certainty promise that she will acquiesce to God’s will, although in this letter she seems to suggest that she is certainly trying to. In yet another letter Reece explores the hostility between the people of Georgia and the Cherokees. Writing to a class in Georgia, she explains that their teacher (Miss Sherwood) is acquainted with the Brainerd missionaries, and so they have exchanged letters: “[Miss Ames] has just read her letter . . . ​to us. She said a great many people in Georgia had become Christian and a great number of them had joined the church, likewise she mentioned some of her scholars had become Christian and a number of Sabbath school teacher. I did not know so many were Christians. I do not think that these Christian people wish us to remove. I think they wish us to be civilized and be like other Christian people. I have read much in the papers about the Georgians wishing the Cherokees to remove from their native Country” (27). Clearly, Reece is struggling with what her various sources suggest; the newspapers say that Georgians want Cherokees to leave, and certainly the experience of the Cherokees with the terror tactics of the Georgia Guard as well as other white Georgians suggests the same, but the missionaries are saying that Georgians are Christian

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people. How can it be possible that Christians would advocate the Removal of the Cherokees? Reece concludes, somewhat confusedly, that there must be a mistake, and surely Georgians more likely would prefer the Christianization and civilization of the Cherokees (a conclusion, it should be noted, that far more politically sophisticated Cherokees drew at the same time). In one of her last letters Nancy Reece tells of hearing Miss Ames read from a letter she is writing about the Cherokees. This moment is a nuanced one for Reece, who finds her allegiances fragmented between her once beloved teacher and her people. The letter, written to Mrs. Thanksful Holton, is reprinted here in full: Respected Madam, When our teacher received her boxes she read a letter from you she told me that you requested her when she write that some of her scholars would write. When Miss Ames receives letters from her friends if she does not answer them immediately I feel sorry for them because I think they will expect a letter every time the mail arrives and will be disappointed, but I think they will know the reason that it is because she is so much engaged in the school. Miss Ames has a great many letters from the north and it seems that in almost every one they think of her as one of their own family. I thank you very much for the cloth you sent me for my frock and likewise thank Nancy for the tracts she sent me. Please tell her that I have a Sabbath class of the little girls who do not understand much english, I explain their lessons to them in Cherokee and tell them what the sermon was about. One of the gentleman reads a sermon on Sabbath days because we have no minister. I have four that recite in the testament and I will give them these tracts as rewards. Before the boxes came I thought about some rewards but I did not know what to give them. We have a Society among the Cherokee scholars we are trying to make some things as the Northern ladies do in their Societies to get some money for the Board so that they can send out more missionaries to the heathen. We have made several things such as work bags needle books &.c. and Miss Ames learns us to make and repair bonnets for the Cherokee women she sets a price to the work and they pay the money to our Society. I have been thinking that perhaps we shall have enough to support a heathen child. I feel very much interested in this Society if

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we had not one we should be wasting our time, we meet on Saturdays in the afternoon in the hours that were given us to play. I wish to write to Mrs. Preston but Miss. Ames finds she cannot let me have toon [sic]. Please give my best respects to her and tell her that I thank her very much for the present she was so kind to send me and likewise thank her daughter for the bonnet she sent me. I send my best respect to Miss Abigail Parker. Miss Ames has read a part her letter where she is describing the Cherokees. It appears to me that you cannot not avoid laughing where she is telling her the manner of their living of their living. Give my best respects to Mr Holton and except this. From your youg [sic] friend, Nancy Reece (28–​­29) Reece opens with a reference, like her earlier, cheerful one, to receiving mail, although this time she has a veiled rebuke to Miss Ames for not immediately responding to her correspondents. Momentarily putting herself in the place of these correspondents, Reece “feels sorry for them because I think they will expect a letter every time the mail arrives and will be disappointed.” Her teacher, it seems, disappoints those who have expectations of her, although gentle Nancy Reece hastens to defend her from the charge Reece has imagined against her. She then wistfully adds, “Miss Ames has a great many letters from the north and it seems that in almost every one they think of her as one of their own family,” implying there is something almost unseemly about Miss Ames insinuating herself into all these families. The tone seems to be a curious mixture of admiration and bitterness, as Nancy Reece finds herself increasingly separating from Lucy Ames. After thanking her correspondent for the gift of cloth for a frock and some tracts, Nancy Reece situates herself very clearly as a teacher in her own right: she teaches a “Sabbath class” of little girls who do not understand much English. Here is something she can do better than Miss Ames: she can communicate with non-​­English-​­speaking Cherokees and open up the world of Christianity to them. Reece proudly explains that she will use the tracts as rewards for the most advanced of her little students. In this benevolence economy those who give gifts are those with enough cultural and economic capital to share, while those who receive gifts are clearly defined as below them. Even as Nancy Reece enjoys receiving her presents (in this letter alone she mentions cloth for a dress, tracts, a bonnet, and an unnamed gift), she is quick to reposition herself within this economy to a giver as much as a receiver of gifts. She

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gives away the tracts to her scholars, as we have seen, but she also is a member of a “Society among the Cherokees” created to make money to help “send out more missionaries to the heathen.” She is hopeful that the profits of their work making work bags and needle books and repairing bonnets will enable them to fund “a heathen child” (28), although she is evasive about whether or not that child would be Cherokee. Indeed, the letter fluctuates between an allegiance to the “heathen Cherokees” and that to the “Northern ladies.” Nancy uncomfortably recognizes herself in the former but longs to be the latter. By finding herself at both ends of the exchange economy, Reece’s indeterminate position in the mission is constantly reinforced. She writes in a different letter, “I am glad that we have a society for I think if we did not have one we shall be spending our time foolishly. We all ought to exert ourselves and try to do all we can to pay what has been done for us” (27–​­28), just as she says in the above letter that, “if we had not [a Society] we should be wasting our time, we meet on Saturdays in the afternoon in the hours that were given us to play.” Perhaps unconsciously, Reece has begun to understand that she has been the recipient of services that are now coming due. She has no time left for games or for playing. There is a growing sense in these letters that the Cherokee obligation to the missionaries and the Northern benevolent societies that sponsor them is not an open-​­ended one, and it seems almost certain to be paid out through Removal. Reece’s own small gesture of repayment is her way of forestalling that horrifying possibility. Once Reece herself was happy enough to mildly denigrate those Cherokees who had not yet acquired the benefits of civilized life, but her anxious reading about Removal seems to have shifted her sense that she was more closely aligned to the missionaries than to the Cherokees. She writes, “Miss Ames has read a part of her letter where she is describing the Cherokees. It appears to me that you cannot not avoid laughing where she is telling her the manner of their of their living” (29). The contorted syntax of the triple negative (“you cannot not avoid laughing”) as well as the later repetition (“the manner of their of their living”) highlights the most delicate elements of this sad situation. The polished and sophisticated married lady, friend of her teacher, can only laugh when she hears of Nancy Reece’s people, and the stuttering repetition (textually replicating Nancy Reece’s earlier report of her own tongue-​­tied shyness) emphasizes that their manner of living is what is most at stake at this moment—​­either through the benevolent reinvention of the Cherokees by missionaries or through their removal from their beloved home. This letter seems to mark Nancy Reece’s increasing understanding that the

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interests of young Cherokee girls like her lie not with her teacher but rather with her people. Her final letter is very short: she writes to another Northern lady that although she will no longer continue as a student at the school, she will continue to live and work at the mission station. “I do not expect to attend school after this season but I have thought best to live with the family and attend to domestic concern [sic] and other things which will be useful” (30). Like Catharine Brown, Nancy Reece seems to have abandoned her own education for the greater good, although in this case that greater good is the continuation of the mission. Which domestic concerns were most relevant to her is a bit unclear: at this point several of her brothers and sisters were still students at Brainerd, and her father, Charles Reece, was a regular presence, participating weekly in the Sabbath activities. For her to remain at the mission was a way for her to remain connected to her own family as well as the mission family. Yet these letters never suggest the familiarity or comfort that Catharine Brown expresses for her mission family; for Nancy Reece there is a longing to connect to the missionaries that is never achieved. Indeed, it is unclear from this letter whether she sees herself as a domestic servant to the mission family or an actual member of that family. Rhetorically, she remains the outsider desiring a different life and then a different outcome for her people, but she never quite attains the solidarity with the missionaries that she wants. Her friendship with her teacher, it seems, was a bit illusory, and her earlier enthusiasm for the life that is Miss Ames’s birthright but not hers fades into a more resigned understanding of her role as helper to the mission family, not as a member of it. Even though the Brainerd School always had at least as many boy students as girls, in all these letters the Brainerd Mission is structured as a domestic, women-​­centered universe, with men circulating only around the periphery. Perhaps because the letters of the young girls have survived while those of the boys have not, we find a surprisingly resilient and engaged set of girls organizing their lives and their world views in a gendered space that encourages their self-​­expression while boys are largely erased. As they write grateful letters of thanks for the various gifts donors send to the mission, empathize over the loss and suffering of their correspondents, write anxiously about Removal and other political events, and even write lonely letters to their own families, the Cherokee girls of Brainerd shape and reconcile their various understandings of what it means to be a Cherokee person in nineteenth-​­century America. In fact the letters point to precisely the slippages between the Lancaster

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erasure of personhood and the relentless family building that is Brainerd. This family life exists in the moments after school in a profoundly female-​­centered world attempting to bridge distance and race. These children can challenge white stereotypes about Indians because this is precisely what benevolent circles want to have happen; the children can embrace a notion of Cherokee identity because this is celebrated by missionaries as well. Girlhood, with its exalted position of moral authority, puts these young Cherokees in a surprisingly powerful rhetorical position, even as they are increasingly shut out of the political maneuverings of the new generation of Cherokee men. From this position they can express a profound sense of self-​­definition even within the bounds of missionary culture. The Writerly Indian has found a place in the benevolence universe, and she is most emphatically female.

Conclusion The Brainerd Mission was not centrally located within the Cherokee Nation; the mission was founded between modern-​­day Alabama and Tennessee in what is now the city of Chattanooga. Situated to maintain easy access to Northern supplies and cities, the geography of the Brainerd Mission thus emerged as a series of paradoxes: Chickamauga had been a center of resistance against white encroachment but now housed the Mission Station, while the political power struggles between different models of Cherokee Nationhood played themselves out at some distance from the mission. Brainerd always tilted north, although among the Cherokees this locale evoked both a recognition of the New England roots of the mission station as well as a nod to the Chickamaugan history of decidedly complex Cherokee anti-​­Americanism. The Lancastrian system in place at Brainerd functions as an apt analogy for the missionary system. Brainerd missionaries expected conversion to occur along a rigidly prescribed set of activities that met the needs of missionaries more fully than they did the needs of Cherokees. While the missionary memoir acknowledged the beautiful tragedy of the death of the Cherokee convert, the Lancastrian method outlines a metaphorical death of the Cherokee student, with the erasure of all marks of individuality, originality, or difference as the condition of membership within the New England Christian family of Brainerd. Both, as it happens, existed more perfectly as theories than in reality; in fact each accommodated itself rather fluidly to the realities of Cherokee life, even as they each celebrated their eradication of this troublesome thing.

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Indeed, Catharine Brown serves as a representative of the promise and contradiction of both. In her memoir she is the idealized face of Brainerd, docile, accommodating, and always lovely and patient, in life as in death. Her presence as a writer both within her memoir and elsewhere, however, marks her as a woman committed to her identity as a Cherokee person as much as to her identity as a Christian. She is, of course, by no means the only writer among the Cherokees associated with the Brainerd Mission. Appendices to most of the memoirs include carefully chosen letters from various and sundry converts—​­Catharine and David Brown, certainly, but others as well. All such published letters share a profound interest in Christianity, and most reflect the key themes of family, community, and the urgency of uniting in Christ. Indeed, Cherokee writers involved in missions became adept at refracting the missionary message of such narratives as Lydia Carter’s, which is dominated by the voice of missionary Elias Cornelius. The Cherokee letters that were included within and in appendices to such narratives have Cherokees conveniently producing themselves as perfect Readerly types—​­docile, humble, earnest Christians. One such unnamed student writes a letter in English to his parents, which is included in the appendix of The Little Osage Captive. In this letter he urges his “Heathen” parents to convert to Christianity, concluding with the words, “But you cannot speak English, but you can pray to Him in your own language. Pray to Him who died on the cross for us. Give my love to all. I remain your dutiful Son” (164).47 If his parents cannot speak English, clearly the letter functions as a set piece for a missionary public desperate for signs of Indian acceptance of Christianity rather than as an actual plea from a child to his parents. Surely the young Cherokee boy was aware of the illusion he and the missionaries were perpetrating; if so, we can understand his words as directed to an English audience, not a Cherokee one. With such an audience in mind the rhetorical strategy of the letter shifts considerably. The boy is telling his reading public (not his parents) that Cherokee prayers spoken in Cherokee have value. Furthermore, Christian children can remain “dutiful son[s]” to heathen parents, loving them no less for their beliefs and practices. No longer a condescending and bitter insult to his parents, the letter in this context becomes a brave (if futile) attempt to give them and their world dignity by addressing white readers who cannot imagine a world outside their own. Letters such as these break down the neat narrative established through the missionary tract even as they reinforce it. Over and over they articulate a commitment to Cherokee nationalisms, a stance made palatable to outsiders

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in the context of the dead and dying Indian. Catharine Brown and Nancy Reece function in a variety of ways within and around the Brainerd Mission. They are the faces that make the mission and its various practices palatable to a broader audience, and that audience appropriates their stories and consumes them and their lives with an eagerness that is extraordinary. At the same time, like the little boy who pens the letter above, these young Cherokees carve out a place in the mission world for their own people and their needs. The Brainerd School constructed itself very explicitly around a model of Indian identity that was feminized and infantilized, but it also contained within it a freedom of expression that had not previously existed within any other missionary model. Even though, as historian Theda Perdue points out, Cherokees preferred to send their sons rather than their daughters to Brainerd, the missionary rhetoric of the Brainerd Mission emphasized the essential role of Cherokee girls and women.48 Native women and girls are no longer confined to roles as readerly figures, and their words and testimonials are essential to global Christianity. Catharine Brown, with her anglicized name, white skin, and dutiful Christianity seemed to be the answer to missionary dreams of global Christianity, but in her memoir she models a commitment to Cherokee nationhood that never disrupts her love for her missionary family. By modeling all of Cherokee conversion on her the Brainerd Mission tried to erase the potential strain of those contradictory impulses and the violence implicit in the process of conversion it had established. The letters of the young Cherokee girls who were students of Lucy Ames draw connections between Cherokee life and the Christian world of the Brainerd Mission that both challenge and celebrate the structured universe of Brainerd in ways that are much less visible in Catharine Brown’s memoir. Like Catharine Brown, these young girls represent the least threatening version of Cherokee identity available to missionaries and white benefactors. Proclaiming their delight with the world their missionary benefactors provide for them, these children nonetheless refuse to fully convert, simultaneously recognizing both God’s powerful role in the world and their own lack of interest in giving themselves over to him. And even as they cheerfully denigrate Cherokee customs, these girls are still not quite ready to reject their own families and friends; it seems it is always “other” Cherokees that are a problem. Even a sophisticated writer like Nancy Reece, marked as she is with the innocence of her girlish observations, can rhetorically challenge the president of the United States as well as the motives and intentions of Americans in the secure space of a letter. Her increasingly complex understanding of the relationship between

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the tantalizing, magical world of Northern missionaries and the agonizing possibility of Removal becomes apparent only in the accumulation of letters, not in any single one. Indeed, the charm of these Cherokee students’ writings masks the disruptive potential of their words, and the reassuring sense that these children are perfectly content with the limited skills missionaries offered them in the familial setting of Brainerd made them appealing enough for their young teacher to copy their letters and preserve them. Even so, from their position of innocence, these young girls speak powerfully of their commitment to their homeland and their sovereign status as a people in terms that were made palatable to the missionary audience that already largely agreed with them. The letters and documents of the Brainerd School reveal a complex dynamic through which young girls were authorized in very particular ways to serve rhetorically as leaders of a new Christian nation. All they had to do to achieve this authority within the logic of the missionary world was die or, in the case of the Cherokee letter writers, fall silent in that uncontaminated child state.

Chapter 4

The Foreign Mission School and the Writerly Indian

Upon a Watch Little monitor, by thee, Let me learn what I should be; Learn the round of life to fill, Thou canst gentle hints impart, How to regulate the heart. When I wind thee up at night Mark each fault and set thee right, Let me search my bosom too, And my daily thoughts review, Mark the movements of my mind, Nor be easy when I find Lattent errors rise to view, Till all be regular and true. —​­John Ridge, February the 4th 1819

John Ridge bought a watch in 1818, on his journey from the Cherokee Nation to the Cornwall Foreign Mission School in Connecticut. When he arrived at the school that was to be his home for the next four years, the missionaries criticized this purchase, claiming it was an extravagance that required him to borrow funds to complete the journey. A few short months later Ridge copied out a poem called “Upon a Watch,” an aesthetic response to a matter of personal and cultural criticism.1 This verse and several others he penned in the earliest months of his stay in Cornwall were copied from various sources,

Figure 5. The poem “To My Watch” that Ridge copied from The American Reader was reprinted later that same year in the small tract A Present for Sabbath School Children (Boston, 1819), 14. This poem has been attributed to Anne Steele, an eighteenthcentury British writer of devotional poetry, although it was generally reprinted without attribution throughout the nineteenth century. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

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most likely collections of edifying prose and verse miscellanea for children. This poem, for example (which has been erroneously attributed to Ridge),2 was published in a collection compiled by Herman Daggett before he became the principal of the Foreign Mission School, titled The American Reader, an edition of which appeared a year before Ridge’s arrival at the school.3 But while Ridge did not write the poem, he certainly thought well enough of it to copy it out. The poem probably resonated for Ridge because of his recent purchase and the reaction it had elicited from the missionaries at his school. Just like Hezekiah Calvin’s did nearly a century earlier, Ridge’s watch made him susceptible to criticism, even though watches were valued by the missionary establishment. Choosing to copy this particular poem about a watch, Ridge may simply have been revealing his fondness for his newly acquired object—​­but he may have also been hoping to redeem himself in the eyes of the missionaries of the school through its pious sentiments. This carefully copied poem may have also marked Ridge’s inclination to make his own decisions about financial and cultural matters, reminding everyone involved in the most subtle and pious terms that the watch was, after all, his own to do with as he wished. All schools emphasized the copying of phrases as penmanship exercises, but while these may have been classroom exercises, more likely they were the work of Ridge’s spare time, and as such they fit more properly into the conventions of the commonplace book, when individuals would copy and exchange poems or other writing that held particular meaning for them. Commonplace books were popular in the nineteenth century, as were gift books like the one preserved in the collection of the Cornwall Historical Society in which students of the Foreign Mission School wrote their farewells to Cherry Stone, a young woman of Cornwall.4 While John Ridge’s writing is not included in that particular book, students in the Foreign Mission School penned rhymes, drew pictures, and wrote in their own languages as well as English, producing colored pictures, line drawings, and poetry that was perhaps original but also likely copied from admired sources. They exchanged these aesthetic statements with each other and gave them as gifts to visitors and others associated with their school. All the poems that Ridge chose to copy in his first months in Connecticut share a pious tone and a sense of spiritual self-​­reflection through which the young student marked his connection to the missionary outlook of his new school.5 The other poems he copied, among them “Pleasures of Piety” and “On the Shortness of Human Life,” speak to a sense of God’s greatness as well

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as the insignificance of human experience in relation to divinity. The poem on a watch in many ways fits the overall sentiment. In the form of an apostrophe the poem speaks of the lessons he can learn: regularity, consistency, evenness. The narrator nightly adjusts his watch, reminding himself to search his own heart for inconsistencies, and to “mark the movements of my mind” by constant self-​­monitoring until “all be regular and true.” Unlike most of the students at Wheelock’s school three-​­quarters of a century earlier, when he arrived in Connecticut, John Ridge had long been acquainted with the regularity of an academic schedule, having been a boarding-​­school student both at Spring Place (the Moravian mission in the Cherokee Nation) and at Brainerd. With bells, horns, and clocks at both missions to divide and organize his day, Ridge was very familiar with the regimented schedule that missionaries felt best suited their Native charges. Buying his own watch meant that he would no longer be dependent on the public sound markers of minutes and hours having passed. By copying out this poem Ridge may have been attempting to integrate what seemed a frivolous and excessive expenditure into a pious gesture of acquiescence with the missionaries’ model of introspection and self-​­denial. In fact the reference to “little Monitor” in the first line must have had a particular resonance for Ridge, since Brainerd had used student monitors, older students who became responsible for the training and well-​­being of younger ones, in keeping with the Lancastrian method of education. By serving as his de facto monitor Ridge’s watch reminds him every evening of his shortcomings, of the ways in which his heart and mind, like his watch, may have faults and lose their perfect mechanical regularity. However, by purchasing his own watch, Ridge became his own monitor, replacing a human with a mechanical object that he controls. By doing so he mitigates missionary authority over his life; he controls his own time, no longer dependent on missionary bells, whistles, and clocks. The paradox of Ridge’s watch then is that he wrests control from missionaries by producing himself as exactly the kind of young man they want: pious, consistent, and self-​­reflective. In a further irony, though, if a new watch seemed excessive to the missionaries who welcomed him to Connecticut as an object of their benevolent intentions, such an expense was hardly out of line with the wealth and privilege in which he was raised. Major Ridge, John Ridge’s father, was an important man. When he came to visit his son in Connecticut in 1819, he made quite an impression with his fine clothing and elegant carriage—​­reportedly “the most splendid carriage . . . ​that ever entered the town” (Wilkins, 130). A

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military figure who had established himself in the Creek War as a younger man, Major Ridge (as he was known) was a central figure in the Cherokee government, and remained so until the notorious signing of the Treaty of New Echota in 1835. He was also a very wealthy man living in one of the finest houses in the Cherokee Nation; he was in possession of significant land holdings, a vast orchard and fields, a ferry, and a trading post (Wilkins, 186–​­90). He was in many ways the quintessential Southern gentleman, a slave owner and man of political and social power in his community. The possession of a pocket watch was hardly inappropriate for the son of this wealthy figure; Southern plantation owners, as Mark Smith has argued, were increasingly turning to clock time in the early nineteenth century as a way of marking their modernity and their interest in the regularity, order, and social control that such a method of timekeeping suggested (5). Smith further emphasizes that in the South, the clock or watch “was always a statement of fashion, a talisman of cultural capital and social status, and, simultaneously, an instrument of precision and of necessity” (21). Owning a watch indicated that young John Ridge was a person of some standing, as cheap, reliable watches were not yet available in the United States. Although owning a watch may not have been what missionaries expected of their Native students, many of whom were in Cornwall on charity6 (Ridge was one of the students who paid his own way), it was not unusual for an aspiring Southern gentleman to desire such an object. So, even as this watch served as his educational monitor, it would also remind Ridge of his control over his own situation and his standing as a young gentleman back home. As historian Tiya Miles notes, Ridge’s interest in this poem has two sources: “his New England education and . . . ​a new admiration for clock time among other southern slaveholders” (102). Clearly, his choice to copy this poem among the several short poems like it in Daggett’s collection resonated in multiple ways for this young man. Within a month of copying the poem on a watch John Ridge copied another poem that also exhibits this curious mix of the pious and the appropriative gesture. This poem, a widely reprinted excerpt from a much longer work by the English poet William Cowper, was probably copied from a collection of inspirational poems typically available to nineteenth-​­century schoolchildren.7 Ridge chose where to cut off his copy since the selection starts with the line of Ridge’s copy but extends beyond his version. Ridge carefully wrote out the following lines:

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            True Liberty He is the Freeman, whom the truth makes free, And all are slaves beside. There’s not a chain, That hellish foes, confederate for his harm, Can wind around him, but he cast it off, With as much ease as Samson his green withs. He looks abroad throughout the varied fields Of nature, and though poor perhaps, compar’d With those, whose mansions glitter in his sight, Calls the delightful scenery all his own. His are the mountains, and the vallies his, And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy, With a propriety that none can feel, But who with filial confidence inspir’d, Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye, And smiling say, “My Father made them all.” —​­John Ridge, Cornwall, Feb. 23, 18198 The references to Christianity are clear throughout: the true Christian cannot be enchained or enslaved by “hellish foes”; as this Christian son of the one true God looks around at the “varied fields” and “mansions [that] glitter in his sight,” he calls “the delightful scenery all his own,” exclaiming “My Father made them all.” There is a reference to John 14:2 in the spiritual mansion, and the scenery, of course, is the English countryside. And yet there is much to return to in this seemingly simple statement of Christian piety copied out by a Cherokee convert. To begin with, the opening reference to a “chain” and “winding” are primarily about spiritual slavery, but they also seem to recall his earlier watch poem, in which the act of winding his watch reminds him of his obligations to regular self-​­scrutiny. Here, he (Ridge the narrator) is enslaved by this obligation and casts off this chain his “hellish foes” attempt to wrap around him. In this construct the truth sets him free, although it is unclear whether that truth is a recognition of who his true enemies are or whether it is simply a reference to God’s will, as in John 8:32. The reference to the freeman and the enslaved must have also resonated even at this early date for this Southern slaveholder surrounded by missionary abolitionists. By copying out this poem Ridge, presumably the Christian figure that is the subject of the poem, is the one who is potentially enslaved but still

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strong enough to withstand the attempts by all around him to “confederate for his harm.” The poem continues with what may have seemed to Ridge like a paean to the beauties of Connecticut, with its reference to the mountains that surround the village of Cornwall, the fields and forests of this valley settlement as well as the Housatonic River that flowed nearby. Of course Cowper’s poem is about the English countryside, not New England’s. Yet Ridge’s poem—​­if we can claim that the act of choosing and copying a poem somehow gives the copier ownership over it—​­claims this land of Connecticut as his own. If the stately homes around him, the “mansions,” are out of reach, at least the “delightful scenery” is his to admire. And through this poem Ridge does more than admire the scenery: the poem emphasizes his appropriation of the land in lines, such as “his are the mountains, and the vallies his, / And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy.” Carefully copied out in late February, however, it is hard to imagine this young boy admiring the “delightful scenery” that is around him in the bleakness of a Connecticut winter. It is also difficult to imagine the small farmhouses of Cornwall, Connecticut appearing to him as mansions. Perhaps then this fictive world in which the “varied fields . . . ​mountains . . . ​and vallies . . . ​ and the resplendent rivers” form such a delightful backdrop remind him of his home in Georgia, and the appropriative gesture that is so striking in terms of the Connecticut landscape is a poignant reminder of the political crisis brewing back home, as some Cherokees moved to Arkansas in one of the earlier dislocations that threatened the Cherokees for the first half of the nineteenth century.9 Cowper’s poem suggests that however poor the subject is compared with those around him, he can still enjoy the natural world as a gift from his heavenly father. However, the poem complicates this reading with the addition of the word “perhaps,” so that the line reads “though poor perhaps, compar’d / With those whose mansions glitter in his sight.” This line must indeed have resonated with young Ridge, who may have been already growing tired of the condescension of the Connecticut farmers who presumed their own superiority. The Ridges’ home in Georgia was called by many a mansion: it was certainly a plantation that was one of the finest in the Cherokee Nation. As the scion of a wealthy family, Ridge came burdened with the responsibility of representing all Cherokees and their potential for learning and change. It was surely disconcerting for this young man to find himself treated as a pauper. The poem gives him a number of ways of venting some of these frustrations, most appealingly as the words were those heartily approved of by his missionary teachers.

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It is possible that this poem, far from reflecting the pious sentiments of a young convert, can also be understood as a frustrated tirade against those who cannot see that this boy is the son of an important man, someone who is in Connecticut to better himself and his people, not to be condescended to. Cowper’s poem refers to the “filial confidence” with which he can “smiling say, ‘My Father made them all.’ ” For young Ridge who is this father? Like Elias Boudinot and most of the other Cherokee boys who came to Cornwall, the urgency of their acquisition of an education was pressed upon them. Sent by fathers and other prominent figures in the Cherokee community, their exile must have been painful, one made no less so by the daily insult of the small New England community’s certainty of its own superiority. As men, Ridge, Boudinot, and David Brown penned passionate arguments about the abilities of their own people and the unlimited potential of the Cherokee Nation if left to operate as its own sovereign state. For now, however, this young boy used his watch and his seemingly innocent copying of poetry to make a place for himself in a missionary world in which the continued existence of the Cherokees was not a mandate but rather secondary to the salvation of their souls in another world. John Ridge’s simultaneous use of poetic flourish to deflect criticism and establish his right to his own personhood is not an isolated phenomenon. Students at the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall were brought in to be trained as exemplars of civilization: trained as farmers, tradespeople, missionaries, doctors, and lawyers, these students were to bring back to their own nations evidence of the ameliorating qualities of “civilization.” By taking control of their own representation these students ceased to be simply objects of refinement and became the producers of their own versions of Cherokee refinement and culture. Ridge’s gesture collapses the Readerly/Writerly dichotomy. He can be understood as the passive copyist of others’ writing, but his tactical appropriation of language also exhibits the active engagement of the Writerly Indian as well. If Brainerd’s Readerly Indians produced themselves as Writerly ones through their engagement with the feminized rhetoric of the school, the Foreign Mission School students produced themselves as Writerly by engaging in just the sort of practices of copying and translation that the missionaries wanted. But they also went much further, as we shall see in the case of David Brown, as they negotiated the ideologies of the missionary establishment to speak or write of their own experience as Cherokees. In the process all these Cherokee students wrote themselves into their own stories by producing themselves as almost exactly what missionaries wanted to see. Almost.

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*   *   * As we saw in the previous chapter, the Brainerd School with its various auxiliaries was clearly designed for the Cherokee child and primarily based on the acquisition of rudimentary literacy skills. It displaced the New England missionary to the American South to reach out to Cherokees, producing those Cherokee children as properly anglicized subjects. By engaging with an insistently feminizing rhetoric and using figures like Catharine Brown and Lydia Carter as idealized converts, the Brainerd School emphasized the childlike and innocent nature of Cherokee Christianity. The Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, although it was also operated by the ABCFM and opened its doors in the same year as the Brainerd Mission, was meant to be a very different affair. Both schools were founded in 1817, but the Foreign Mission School immersed Cherokees in a global missionary culture based in a more generalized notion of “heathenness.” And while the Brainerd School, as we have seen, is presented as a universe of family love and childlike affection along with a stiff dose of mortality and the tenuousness of life, the Foreign Mission School is more specifically and aggressively about a masculinized version of education. Missionary magazines, annual reports of the ABCFM, and other accounts variously described the Foreign Mission School over the years as a seminary, academy, and college, and from the first real mention of the school onward it is clear that the ambitions for the school are high. A school designed for young men, the Foreign Mission School was to produce a cadre of elite Natives to shape and embody Christianity and civilization in their own nations. The Brainerd Mission and the Foreign Mission School were paired projects, and in terms of public consumption much was made of their overlapping strategies for producing the most promising young Cherokees as productive members of their society. The language that surrounds each school is very explicit about its role: the Brainerd School, located on Cherokee homelands, uses familial rhetoric of love and friendship to draw in an increasingly female student body, while the Foreign Mission School in Connecticut is presented as the training ground for a new generation of doctors, teachers, and activists who would change the world. Unlike the Brainerd School, with its close attention to a specifically Cherokee political and social situation, the aggressively masculinized rhetoric of the Foreign Mission School situates itself within a global mission. And yet, the schools are linked: Cherokee students at the Foreign Mission School were more often than not once Brainerd students, and there is a regular exchange between the two schools. For Cherokees throughout the 1820s the masculine ideal of the Cornwall School is counterbalanced

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by the increasingly feminized rhetoric of the Brainerd School.10 While the Brainerd system emphasized what I have called the Readerly Indian, or the passive recipient of English cultural models, the Foreign Mission School explicitly wanted to produce Writerly Indians who actively mastered language and civilization. As we have already seen, however, practically speaking, each school produced Readerly and Writerly figures. David and Catharine Brown were both students at Brainerd, with David continuing on to the Foreign Mission School and then even the Andover Theological Seminary. Catharine Brown, as we saw in the previous chapter, is the exemplary first-​­generation convert, idealized by missionaries through her memoir but also, as Gaul has reminded us, an agent of her own fame through her letters, which were reprinted throughout her lifetime (140–​­41). Her brother is presented within missionary circles as her first project: he is converted by her, and she keeps him steadily on the path to personal and cultural improvement through her inspirational letters to him. David Brown largely established himself after his sister’s death as a writer and speaker advocating Cherokee Nationhood and Christianity, becoming a significant voice among Christian Indians in his own day. The fame of this brother and sister pair was central to the representation of missionary work among the Cherokees; their mutual devotion to each other stood in for their devotion to the larger cause of Cherokee conversion, and they were vaunted as the public face of Cherokee missionary success. The letters that David and Catharine Brown exchanged were reproduced not only in Catharine Brown’s memoir but also in missionary magazines and other public venues. Their letters back and forth produce an idealized relationship—​­brother and sister, mutually admiring, loving yet (clearly) platonic. As public figures, however, each masks a more complex dynamic at work in the school they represented: for Catharine Brown the rhetoric of family that she embodies so powerfully at Brainerd masks an educational system that stripped Cherokee students of their personhood, while David Brown’s letters and missionary ardor at the Foreign Mission School mask the more aggressive incarnation of Cherokee sovereignty that his later translation work supported. Furthermore, by focusing on David Brown, missionaries could at least briefly deflect attention from the more volatile version of Cherokee manhood that John Ridge and Elias Boudinot embodied with their marriages to white girls from Cornwall and the attendant suggestion of carnal desire that resulted in the abrupt closing down of the school and of the illusion of a Christian brotherhood of equals.

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With his first mention in the August 1820 issue of the Missionary Herald, David Brown is initially little more than his famous sister’s promising younger brother. But years later his death is memorialized in the Cherokee Phoenix and elsewhere.11 Clearly, David Brown’s intervening years were important ones not only for the Brown family but also for the Cherokee Nation. Although he is rarely mentioned in the political accounts of those fraught years, David Brown, like his Cherokee coworker John Arch, was central in disseminating not only a fervently Christian message of spiritual renewal but also in producing and marketing Sequoyah’s Cherokee syllabary, a written language that placed Cherokee literacy at the core of a new model of Cherokee identity and by doing so displaced Christian conversion from English-​­centered to Cherokee-​­centered.12 Along the way Brown maintained a steadfast opposition to Removal, writing letters and working with the Cherokee Council as well as the American government to do whatever was in his power to avert it. While Joseph Johnson of an earlier chapter has to separate himself from the missionary establishment that trained him to find a voice through which he could speak of his faith and his community, David Brown remains solidly within the system through which he is educated. Like Joseph Johnson, his entire family is connected to the mission, and again like Johnson, David Brown dies a young man, leaving behind a wife, young children, and an unfinished life. Committed both to the evangelicalization of Cherokees and to their ongoing political existence as a nation, Brown is eagerly sought after by missionaries looking for just such a young man to represent the success of their labors. In a missionary culture suffused with feminized rhetoric, however, his public persona is complicated; he is celebrated as a convert who has fully embraced all the features of middle-​­class evangelical culture while his past as a Cherokee warrior provides just the kind of pleasurable frisson of danger that his benevolent audiences desired. Brown negotiated these two positions, using his words and his physical presence to argue that Cherokee culture was more than a guilty pleasure and that Cherokee Nationhood could and did exist in a state of modernity. Largely overlooked today, David Brown played a central role in Cherokee education through his letters and political writings as well as by embracing the Cherokee syllabary, while his connection to Catharine Brown made him for a while the darling of the ABCFM missionary establishment.

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The Foreign Mission School Among the sermons, book reviews, and obituaries of important figures in missionary circles (the “brothers and sisters in Christ”) contained in volume 14 of the Panoplist and Missionary Herald of 1818 is one of the first mentions of the Foreign Mission School, along with the first installment of the narrative of The Little Osage Captive. The two schools, Brainerd and the Foreign Mission School are thus introduced together, although in very different ways. At least in its initial appearance in the pages of the missionary magazine, the Foreign Mission School was part of a broader New England missionary commitment to reaching out to Southeastern Indians. From 1818 to 1825 the news of the Foreign Mission School in this publication is unequivocally positive; the school maintains a steady presence in the missionary press, and individual students like Elias Boudinot, John Ridge, and David Brown appear with regularity. In 1821 the school is grandly described as follows: “This consecrated Seminary was instituted in the autumn of 1816, and opened in the beginning of May 1817. There belong to it a commodious edifice for the School, a good mansion house, with a barn, and other out-​­buildings, and a garden, for the Principal;—​­a house, barn, &c. With a few acres of good tillage land for the Steward and Commons:—​­all situated sufficiently near to each other and to the Congregational meeting-​­house in the south parish of Cornwall, Con.—​ ­and eighty acres of excellent wood land, about a mile and a half distant.”13 This school seemed to suggest a triumphant return to the glory days of New England’s missionary work; it was the embodiment of the potential that had largely fallen away after the ignominious closing of the Stockbridge boarding school and Wheelock’s shift from educating Indians to founding Dartmouth College. Indeed, when Wheelock replaced Moor’s Charity School with Dartmouth College in the 1770s, it was clear to anyone willing to pay attention that this institution was not focused on Native students; for Samson Occom the founding of Dartmouth College was the clearest evidence of Wheelock’s bad faith toward Native Americans. Half a century later the establishment of the Foreign Mission School, with its ambitious educational agenda and commitment to global Christianity, promised a return to the high ideals of the past. It did not single out Native Americans but rather conceived of itself as a place through which promising “heathen” boys of all nations could come together to learn. David Brown and his fellow Cherokees John Ridge and Elias Boudinot

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Figure 6. Drawing of the Cornwall Foreign Mission School from Cherry Stone’s Friendship Album, 1824. Collection of the Cornwall Historical Society.

are positioned throughout the 1820s as the face of the mission, functionally replacing the Hawaiian young man, Henry Obookiah, who was the original inspiration for the school.14 Indeed, Native American students generally, and Cherokees specifically, were always the dominant national group attending the mission school, although along with Obookiah, students included Greeks, Choctaws, Cherokees, Malaysians, New Zealanders, Tahitians, with no fewer, according to one historian, than fifteen different nations represented (Starr, 140–​­42). And while the intentions of the school were to maintain a global reach, increasingly the figures to whom the missionary press turned were Native Americans, specifically Cherokees. The ambitious educational goals of this school were written into its constitution, as a later volume of the Missionary Herald explains: The object of the School as set forth in the Constitution, is—​­‘The edu­ cation in our own country of Heathen Youths, in such manner, as, with subsequent professional instruction will qualify them to become useful Missionaries, Physicians, Surgeons, School Masters, or Interpreters; and to

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communicate to the Heathen Nations such knowledge in agriculture and the arts, as may prove the means of promoting Christianity and civilization.’ As these youths are designed for a higher education, than is expected to be obtained at our Mission Schools in heathen countries, it is deemed of no small importance, that they be only such as are of suitable age, of docile dispositions, and of promising talents.15 But while the ambitions for these young men were high, language was a major obstacle, and learning seems to have remained somewhat rudimentary for all but a small number of boys. We hear, for example, of some of the earliest students to arrive at the Foreign Mission School: Four Indian youths, a Choctaw and three Cherokees, have recently been placed at this institution with a view to their receiving a thorough education. They are from fourteen to sixteen years of age, and extremely desirous of obtaining the benefit of instruction. . . . ​Two of the Cherokees . . . ​are able to read, write, and parse the English language. They have also made some progress in arithmetic. . . . ​These youths speak the English language well; and would not be suspected, by their pronunciation, of being of any other than English descent. The remaining youth is a full-​­blooded Cherokee, who has been about six months a member of the school at Brainerd. He can read in easy lessons, and has made considerable progress in pronouncing English.16 Clearly, these boys were at the earlier stages of formal education. But while some received little more than the most rudimentary literacy training, others were learning, according to Edward Comfort Starr, “Latin, Greek, Rhetoric, Navigation, Surveying, Astronomy and Theology” (141), a list that a year later included Chemistry and Ecclesiastical History (142). Elias Boudinot famously calculated a lunar eclipse at seventeen years old (Morse, 278). David Brown reports of his own education at Cornwall, “Soon after my arrival . . . ​ I committed to memory the Westminster Assembly’s Shorter Catechim [sic]. Reading and writing and spelling, was my principle study. Subsequently, the Latin and English Grammar. Arithmetic, Rhetoric, Geography and History. After reading through Corderii and a small book called ‘Historae Sacrare,’ it was thought best for me to relinquish the Latin language. Have spent a little time in studying the Hebrew Language, but very superficially.”17 Brown was clearly a bright, ambitious young man, and he quickly moved through the

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curriculum that the Foreign Mission School offered him, even though boys of vastly different capabilities worked together in one classroom, sometimes connected only through whatever ambition had brought them there and the daily schedule of prayer, work, and study. The school was a “small, gambrel-​­roofed building of one and a half stories that stood on the Cornwall green” (Wilkins, 121). Fourteen acres of land were centered on the green, with an additional eighty-​­six farther away. Most of the boys boarded in a large attic room above the classroom, while they ate at the house of the steward, John Northrup, who lived a short walk from the school, and the principal’s house was nearby; others boarded with townspeople. According to at least one source, students were not allowed to go freely in the town or socialize with their white neighbors until they had professed their faith in God, in which case they had permission to wander within two or three miles to share their stories (Starr, 155). They were, however, expected to work regularly in the fields or under the apprenticeship of local craftspeople. Like the Brainerd school, the day started early with the ringing of a bell; the boys gathered at six (in the winter at seven) for morning prayers, then breakfast, then a few hours of work. According to Wilkins, “several hours before noon and most of the afternoon were devoted to study and recitations in the classroom. . . . ​Much of each evening was devoted to prayer” (125–​­26). David Brown wrote to his sister in early 1821 of his school days: “I room with mr J. Ely, one of the members of this school. . . . ​I generally go to bed about 10 o’clock, & rise at 5 & sometimes 6. Our bell rings for breakfast about 7—​­& school hours are similar to those of Brainerd. In the room where I reside is a Library of good books for the Institution. I wish to read many useful books, had I time: but my attention to study, & being with a class, deprives me, at present, of reading any kind of book much, except the Holy Bible.”18 The Cherokee students of the Foreign Mission School, with the encouragement of the principal Herman Daggett, met once a week to pray and converse in their own languages (Wilkins, 130), maintaining their sense of themselves as a community within the school. David Brown explains in early 1821: “The Principal of the Institution we all esteem highly. . . . ​By his direction, we formed what we call, a Cherokee prayer meeting, which enables us to retain our own language, & somewhat improve in it: for we pray, sing, & converse, in the Cherokee language. Every Sabbath evening this pleasant duty is performed. . . . ​We often converse together, & pray for our nation, and the work which is before us, when we return home.”19 Sanchez-​­Eppler remarks that an essential feature

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of the Foreign Mission School was continued fluency in the mother tongue of each student, since all expected to return to their own land to convert their countrymen. In this context she writes that “what counts as civilizing knowledge is highly flexible, an elasticity based in pragmatism perhaps, but nevertheless one that cedes control, granting some space for native self-​­expression.” (“Copying and Conversion” 310). Cherokee students were experts in their own national traditions, and rather than disrupt that, the Foreign Mission School was invested in maintaining that knowledge while clearly shaping it through a Christian lens. Every May the Foreign Mission School held an anniversary exercise in which students would exhibit their newly acquired skills. This event was one of the highlights of the small town’s year, with crowds attending to see the results of the community’s benevolent prayers and fund-​­raising. In 1820 there were thirteen declamations in six languages, a clear indication of the global reach of this school (Wilkins, 126). An extended description of the 1821 exercise was included in the Religious Remembrancer: We had an excellent exhibition before a crowded house. . . . ​After the exercises of prayer, singing, and a sermon by Mr Blair, a number of single pieces were spoken, and then a Cherokee council was held on the subject of war with the Osages. After a consultation in their own language, a Choctaw appears as interpreter, and gives his advice. A messenger comes and informs them, that Governor Miller [of Arkansas territory] has mediated a peace between their countrymen at the west and the Osages. They all join in song. Also, a dialogue among the Owhyheans [Hawaiians] on information brought them of the renunciation of idolatry among their countrymen; together with an exhibition of a real idol brought this spring from Owhyhee. This idol is carved in wood of a dark brown colour, mounted on a pedestal—​­the whole two feet high, with silver plates for eyes. The house was filled completely, every aisle, stair, &c. All expressed the highest gratification. Numbers of the Owhyheans are genteel young men; and also the Cherokees, among whom the appearance and performance of Elias Boudinot, John Ridge, and David Brown, the Brother of Catharine, would have done credit to the best white young men of their age. Elias Boudinot, in a declamation, confuted the idea more completely by his appearance than his arguments, that savages are not capable of being civilized and polished.20

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These exhibitions were a way for the citizens of Cornwall to admire both the “progress” of the Foreign Mission School students and at the same time to marvel at their exoticism, as Sanchez-​­Eppler has noted (“Copying and Conversion,” 315). The foreign-​­language portion of the exhibit, which was probably unintelligible to anyone other than a few of the students in the room, was an essential feature of these displays, marking as they did the difference of these students even as that difference is contained within the space of a small New England church. These exhibitions were designed to make clear that the school was living out its promise to educate the elite of the “heathen nations,” preparing them to return to their own people as missionaries and professionals to further “improve” their people. According to one historian, however, the effects of the school on its varied assortment of students were not so straightforward. Edward Starr suggests that the students fell into four categories, with one quarter of the students attaining a “useful education,” a quarter being dismissed for “impropriety,” another quarter dismissed for “incapacity,” and a final quarter leaving of their own choice (153n). Missionary reports tell a much more optimistic story; the Mis­ sionary Herald for January 1824, for example, suggests that half the sixty or so students who had attended the school up to that moment have become “hopefully pious,”21 with the suggestion the rest were well on their way to being a credit to the institution. Whichever was more truthful, there is no question that the Foreign Mission School could be a difficult place: the boys ranged in age from the youngest at ten years old to the eldest, a married man in his thirties, with most of the students in the mid-​­teen years. The majority of these students lived crowded together. Theft was a problem, as were fights. There were at least two reported death threats among students, reports of drunkenness and the more evasive “misconduct” that got many of the boys dismissed. At least two of the boys were said to be “mentally deranged” as opposed to simply “slow” or “dull.” Indeed, before their arrival at this school some of the students had lived in the most precarious situations, with some serving on ships, others living on the streets, and several escaping from brutal conditions in their home countries.22 While the Cornwall Foreign Mission School may have saved some from difficult lives, it did little to help them with the transition from the seedy underlife of early America to the more refined expectations of the mission community. Certainly many of these students were genuinely inspired by their faith, while others may well have seen the school as a far more pragmatic means to integrate into American society in ways that their former lives did not offer. For the Cherokee students at the school, most of whom had lived

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their entire lives in a very close-​­knit community, the adjustment was not only to Northeastern life but also to a cadre of fellow students whose lives were vastly different from their own. After years of triumphant reporting, however, the school, which had been touted as the moral and cultural center of missionary idealism, was touched by scandal; over the course of roughly a year not one but two Cherokee students (John Ridge and Elias Boudinot) married New England girls of the highest social standing. Much to the astonishment of the Cornwall community, after a two-​­year absence in which Ridge had returned to the Cherokee Nation to convalesce from a chronic hip condition, in January 1824 John Ridge and Sarah Northrup were married with the approval of her family and his. The Foreign Mission School publicly responded to this event with a general assurance that this was an exceptional situation and nothing of the sort would ever happen again. Rather awkwardly, however, within a year of this statement Elias Boudinot and Harriet Gold announced their own engagement, and the agents of the Foreign Mission School were forced to recant their earlier position.23 Gold and Boudinot were married in May 1826. This episode has been well documented by Gaul, Perdue, and Karen Woods Weierman, among others.24 Unable to withstand accusations of lax morality and of inappropriately intimate behavior between students of the school and their Connecticut neighbors, the school was in peril. On November 8, 1826, Jeremiah Evarts writes grimly to a number of correspondents that “at a late meeting of the Prudential Committee it was resolved, that the Foreign Mission School be discontinued as soon as practicable,” and his letter contains detailed instructions for how to proceed with this final action.25 By the end of 1826 the school had ceased to exist.

Letters in English: David Brown and the Foreign Mission School David Brown was an important figure in his own day. Born around 1802 in Wills Valley, Alabama, Brown (also known as A-​­wih or Dewi Brown) had family connections that established him as one of the chief men in the northern Alabama region of Wills Valley; his father, known as Captain John Brown, served on the governing council of the Cherokees and was a central force in bringing a mission school to Creek Path, while his uncles and stepbrothers variously established themselves in trade and farming as well as in Cherokee politics both in Alabama and Arkansas.26 Brown joined his sister at Brainerd

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in 1819; he also attended the Foreign Mission School from 1820 to early 1823 and Andover Theological Seminary for most of 1823. Until his death in 1829 Brown balanced his commitment to the religious evangelization of the Cherokee people with his profound political commitment to the ongoing existence of a sovereign Cherokee Nation. David Brown’s letters appear throughout the records not only of the Foreign Mission School but also of the Brainerd Mission and the ABCFM, and were publicized in dozens of local newspapers and magazines; he also completed a major speaking tour to largely white audiences along the East Coast in late 1823 and early 1824. In addition, David Brown’s linguistic work first with missionary Daniel Butrick, later with scholar John Pickering, and eventually with Cherokees George Lowery and Sequoyah made key texts available to Cherokee people. One scholar has said of David Brown that in his own day he was what we might call “a rock star . . . ​part evangelist, part advocate for Native American rights, he inspired and galvanized listeners with his message.”27 Yet today he is almost unknown; his translation of the Bible has been superseded by that of a white missionary, and his role in the political and intellectual turmoil of the 1820s is largely forgotten. Like his sister, David Brown remained opposed to Removal throughout his life, and he spent much of his time after completing his education speaking and writing against it. While Brown’s opposition to Removal was firm, the extended Brown family was divided over the issue. We know from Catharine Brown’s memoir that her parents contemplated moving to Arkansas as early as 1817, although they did not actually move until 1823. By then several brothers and sisters had already moved, and an 1824 letter from David Brown written from Arkansas included in his sister’s memoir reports that “my friends and relatives are so numerous, that I am constantly on a visit” (Anderson, 67). Indeed, throughout the mid-​­1820s Brown traveled back and forth between Arkansas and the Cherokee Nation. In 1825 he married Rachel Lowery, the daughter of George Lowery, one of the elite men among the Cherokees and Brown’s collaborator in translating both the New Testament and the laws of the Cherokee Nation into the syllabic written Cherokee language (Higginbotham, 82); the couple had two children, a son named John Lowery Brown and a daughter named Catharine Brown. Through his father-​­in-​­law, Brown was related to George Guess (Sequoyah), himself one of the “old settlers” who had moved first to Arkansas and then to Oklahoma well before the rest of the Cherokee Nation was forcibly removed in 1838.28 Brown was central in introducing Sequoyah’s syllabary to white missionaries and politicians, seeing it as crucial proof against Cherokee Removal despite the political leanings of its

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creator. Brown was thus connected by family to the inventor of the syllabary as well as to factions of the Cherokee Nation that ranged all along the political spectrum. While his sister abandoned her studies when she was needed to teach children at Creek Path, David Brown continued his studies as long as possible. He was selected to go from Brainerd to the Foreign Mission School and from there to the Andover Theological Seminary, where he studied Hebrew and Greek before he turned his attention fully to the work of publicizing and expanding the missionary presence among the Cherokees as well as to promoting their political interests. Although he was not among the first Cherokee students to enter the Foreign Mission School in 1818, David Brown is mentioned regularly in connection with this school, with his first appearance in the August 1820 issue of the Missionary Herald. He is linked to the promise and potential of this school, and is presented as an earnest, hardworking young man: “Among the interesting things, which have recently taken place, in reference to the mission, is the arrival in New England of David Brown, a younger brother of Catharine, with a view to obtain a thorough education at the Foreign Mission School. . . . ​The amiable manners, good sense, apparent piety and conscientiousness of this youth were such as to commend him powerfully to Christians, with whom he became acquainted, and to raise high hopes of his future usefulness among his own people” (vol. 16, no. 8, p. 384). At this point Catharine Brown is such a fixture in the magazine that she is the means to identify her brother, even though her memoir does not appear for another four years. His potential is identifiable by his association with her, and he is already clearly a figure through whom New England benefactors can feel the tangible effects of their contributions to the school. Yet David Brown was in a rather complex position vis-​­à-​­vis the missionary press in the early 1820s. In the Brainerd Journal as well as the Missionary Herald and other such publications, he is presented as one of the finest young men of his tribe and a worthy follow-​­up to his sister Catharine.29 But a curious set of letters in The Little Osage Captive complicates this considerably. While his sister Catharine is unambiguously presented as an idealized Indian convert, in this first of the Brainerd memoirs David is rhetorically positioned as a transitional figure in the process of suppressing his “Cherokee” vices and replacing them with true Christian virtue. A letter from a Cherokee student (probably David Brown himself ) that is cited in the text of the tract suggests the complexity of this role. To begin with we are told “the following Extracts from a Letter, written by a Cherokee youth in the Foreign Mission

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School, at Cornwall, and who was present when the Little Osage was taken captive, describes the origin of the war” (Cornelius, 21).30 The double-​­edged introduction—​­a student currently at the Foreign Mission School who was also involved in Cherokee warfare—​­suggests the ambivalence surrounding Cherokee manhood. The fact of the existence of this letter of course suggests that this student/warrior has embraced literacy and presumably Christianity. The letter itself, however, complicates things further. In explaining the role of Cherokee warriors in the captivity of the young Osage girl rescued by missionaries, the letter states: “Revenge, you know, is one of the characteristicks of an Indian, and that was the principal cause of the war between the Cherokees and Osages. . . . ​I wish here to be understood correctly. The above hunters [the men who reignited the longstanding war between the Osages and the Cherokees] were not the leading men in each tribe by any means, but wild and bloody men that regarded not the interest of their countrymen” (23–​­25). The letter from the text of The Little Osage Captive defines the general characteristics of Indians (“revenge”), while denigrating those who participated in the raid as exceptionally brutal. Yet the writer himself is identified both as an Indian and as “one who was present” when the child was taken captive, and in another letter the writer acknowledges, “I was one of the warriors that traversed the Osage nation in pursuit of blood” (143).31 The subtext is clear: students like David Brown are “wild and bloody m[e]n” who care little for the “interest of [their] countrymen,” even as they are being touted as the most promising Cherokee youths of the day. This warrior self-​­representation is one that Brown returns to throughout his career, complicating and shaping it over time to structure Cherokee manhood. The two letters included in the text of The Little Osage Captive mark Cherokee men as brutal killers, while the letters to David Brown by his sister included in the appendix to this text soften the impression the reading public is given; those letters plead with him to remember the saving power of God and by doing so reinforce his potential as a convert. Catharine Brown writes, for example, “I often think of the morning you left Brainerd. It was a solemn hour, and I trust it was a sweet season to our souls. We wept, and prayed, and sung together before our dear Saviour” (151). Later in the same letter, she writes, “How thankful we ought to be then, my dear brother, that we have a hope to be saved through the blessed Lamb of God!” (152). In another letter cited immediately after this one, Catharine Brown concludes with “that you may enjoy the light of our Saviour’s countenance, while in this short journey of life, and finally be received to the mansions of eternal glory, is the prayer

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of Your Sister” (156). The selected references to David Brown and his sister both in The Little Osage Captive and in its appendix suggest that his salvation is very much dependent on his truly spiritual older sister; it is only her intercession that keeps her “wild and bloody” younger brother on a properly spiritual path. Indeed, David Brown’s textual identity is largely fleshed out for the readers of the Missionary Herald through his relationship with his sister. The letters between David and Catharine Brown, some of which Herman Daggett copied out while David was at the Foreign Mission School, while others appeared in Catharine Brown’s memoir and elsewhere, help solidify the impression of this young boy as an upstanding Christian. Daggett’s access to these letters suggests that while they seem to be private, they are clearly understood by their authors and recipients as semi-​­public documents. In the letters to and from David Brown in Daggett’s booklet, the formulaic language of Christian conversion masks whatever ambivalence this young man may have felt so far from his family and community. He writes to his sister, “When I seriously think of you all, & the distance the Lord has separated us, & our dear father, mother, brothers & sisters, I sit down and weep,” adding “but the Saviour often makes me rejoice, at the same time, & what more can I want, than his divine presence” (Daggett Notebook, Cornwall HS). There is a palpable sense of longing for unity and closeness, a desire for community that at least for a time must be managed through a shared love of God. The letters between the siblings that are included in Catharine Brown’s memoir suggest that their relationship is also central in her life; their mutual faith in God as well as in each other reflects their broader desire for Cherokee community. Her deathbed letter, dictated rather than written because of her weakened physical condition, is written to her brother, and this letter suggests some of the urgency of their shared spiritual mission to reach out to their people. Catharine Brown was still the means to establish David Brown’s credibility on his 1823 speaking tour throughout New England, as he is introduced by his traveling companion Jeremiah Evarts in a brief explanation of his relationship to his sister; David Brown’s words, however, make no mention of his famous sister, although he does refer to his parents. While his published letters suggest a tension between his role as a Cherokee warrior and his newfound identity as a Christian convert, his speech, published as the “Address of Dewi Brown, a Cherokee Indian,” masterfully integrates these various components of his identity and in the process makes an impassioned and radical argument for Cherokee political and cultural sovereignty.32 This speech, taken

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in conjunction with letters published in 1825, establishes David Brown as a powerful rhetorician and advocate for his people. Along with John Ridge’s letter to Gallatin and Elias Boudinot’s “An Address to the Whites” delivered on his speaking tour of 1826, Brown’s letters and speech are part of a broader political strategy to publicize the situation of the Cherokee people in hopes that this would forestall the growing national sentiment for Removal.33 Brown opens his talk by embracing the stereotypes his audience holds: “I am one of the sons of the forest, yea! the image of an Indian is upon me, and Aboriginal blood runs in my veins. I have worn the armour of a Cherokee warrior, have traversed the western wilds in pursuit of an Osage scalp, and far toward the setting sun have I gone, to avenge the blood of my fathers” (30).34 Brown is no tragic remnant, no semi-​­civilized figure like the one that he mourns as the vanished races of New England later in his address. Here David Brown celebrates a virile Indian warrior, demanding that his audience not only take in his physical form as he stands in front of them but also imagine him in the garb of a Cherokee warrior. He is a walking contradiction, an emblem of civilization and good taste in his suit and with his prepared speech while he celebrates the warrior figure that will most titillate his audience. He hearkens back to the complex figure of the letter writer in The Little Osage Captive, but here he is fully in control of his rhetoric. There is no apology for the “wild and bloody m[e]n” who care little for the “interest of [their] countrymen,” no extenuating circumstances to explain away the supposedly bloodthirsty nature of the Cherokee warrior. He embodies Cherokee masculinity, that fearsome quality so absent in the Brainerd materials and yet so essential to the value and values of the Foreign Mission School. In a strategy that he repeats throughout his address, Brown gives his audience what they expect and then alters it, shaping their ideas about Cherokees while seeming to confirm what they already knew. Brown thus bemoans the fate of so many Native peoples (“where now are the Mohawks, Iroquois, Catawors, and other great nations? . . . ​Alas they are gone; as the falling leaves before a mighty storm, they have disappeared; nothing now remains of them but a mere name, excepting here and there one of their sons”), while excepting the Cherokees from this tragic disappearance: “Notwithstanding, however, that the aboriginal race is almost extinct in the United States, blessed be God! there are yet many tribes and nations of them in America . . . ​the great wampum of peace is yet seen in its original purity, and the council fires still burn by the rivers of the Missi[ssip]pi; the sons of Tutsela and the daughters of Talontiske still drink the waters of Arkansaw, and repose themselves beneath the sylvan

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shade of Zazoo” (33). His audience was right: Natives have tragically disappeared, he says—​­just not the Cherokees. Brown uses Cherokee names and words (Tutsela, Talontiske, and Zazoo) to reinforce the notion that Cherokees have largely escaped the genocide he has documented earlier in his narrative. By using Cherokee-​­language words, Brown also asserts his own deep knowledge of Cherokee culture, positioning his audience as outsiders who will surely help once they understand what Cherokees want. Brown further develops his claim as an authority on Cherokee culture, positioning himself as a key inheritor of Cherokee traditions. He writes, From the forests of Tsusaeso, beneath the tall trees that bloom in its plain, and not far from the banks of Tsikcamega, in the Cherokee nation, I sprung, and was there reared up in the habits of my country; of course my parents are heathen. Yaenugvyaski, my honored father, early taught me the religion of my ancestors. . . . ​My fond mother, too, when I was quite young, often sung for me a mournful song, commemorative of the death of some of my valiant forefathers. . . . ​Importunate was she to inform me of the injuries done to her countrymen, and often invoked the Great Spirit to destine her son to aid the return of peace and gladness in all the dwellings of Tsalagi. (33–​­34) Brown emphasizes that both his parents reinforced for him the injustices done to his people by the Europeans and raised him to both remember and end those injustices. From here Brown gives an extended analysis of Cherokee religious thought, explaining the relationship of the good spirit (Galolatichi) to the bad one (Askina), the father of “sorcery, poison, witchcraft, and deceit” (34). His breakdown of Cherokee religion deemphasizes polytheism (“there are also subordinate spirits who reside at the four cardinal points, but their power is not great” [34]), while suggesting that the Christian cosmology of good and evil also structures Cherokee thought. In this description Brown seems to suggest that Cherokees are perfectly situated to embrace Christianity, as their beliefs are in some sense merely a variation of it. From there, however, Brown tells of an incident he witnessed in 1817 of a prophet performing a ceremony before battle. The inclusion of this moment disrupts the soothing suggestion that Cherokees are after all simply watered-​ ­down Christians; the incident involves a prophet’s ability to foretell the future by reading the skins of various animals. Brown writes, “In these skins was the

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depositories of his supernatural apparatus, the archives of future events” (35), a notion that surely struck his audience as profoundly different from their own world view. By reading the skins as they relate to each warrior, the prophet is able to foretell “prosperity and success to our arms” (35). This act of divination marks Cherokees as very different from white, middle-​­class Americans, and Brown’s inclusion of this incident as well as his own participation in it marks him as a member of a distinct culture with its own ways of structuring the world. Brown again uses the rhetorical strategy of giving his audience what they want (“we are just like Christians”) and then qualifying it (“except that our prophets read animal skins for divining the future”). Further challenging his audience, Brown follows the divination anecdote with the assurance that Cherokees are in some ways more Christian than “civilized” Americans: “There are some traits in the character of my countrymen that are truly admirable, and are worthy of imitation; such as extreme love of friends, hospitality to strangers, respect for the aged, &c. In these respects I firmly believe that the Indians are more like the offspring of Jehovah, than many who call themselves civilized. I fondly hope that these principles of virtue will never be wholly eradicated from the Indian character” (35). It is at precisely the moment that David Brown has most explicitly marked off the differences between Cherokees and his white audience that he chooses to make this point about the admirable traits of Cherokees. Rather than linking what is admirable about Cherokees to their near-​­Christianity, he instead positions this claim next to their most decidedly non-​­Christian world view, and in the process he pushes his audience to accept Cherokee difference, not Cherokee near-​­whiteness. It is only after making this point about Cherokee virtue that Brown then grimly turns his attention to Cherokee faults. He writes, “In other points, however, especially in their religious views, they are immersed in delusion and gloom; and when we view them through the gospel of Jesus Christ, we lament their deplorable condition” (35). From here on the address is devoted to the benefits missionaries have brought to the Cherokees and the ongoing need for support. In a barbed comment Brown asks: “And who, let me ask, who will send to [the Cherokees] missionaries, and support them? Who will obey the voice that sounds from the west for aid? Shall not you who now stand on the soil once possessed by natives? . . . ​as you here enjoy the consolations that flow from the glorious Gospel, as you behold with delight your empire rising with rapidity, while you send your missionaries over the Atlantic and Pacific, oh! remember, remember, your red brethren, the original proprietors of America” (37).

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Brown tempers his request for charity by framing it in terms of an obligation. His speech makes clear that the depredations of the whites are the cause of Cherokee struggles, and that missionaries can only begin to repair the damages done to Native peoples. Brown presses his audience to see their financial support less as an act of generosity than as an obligation that has come due. This notion of European harm to Native cultures in fact frames the entire address. Brown claims early on that before the arrival of Europeans, “the fire of war was scarcely seen to blaze, and the smoke of the council of peace ascended round council fires.” He continues, “It is a matter of fact, proved by the authority of the first and most respectable of this country, that the natives were in a more tranquil and prosperous state previous to their acquaintance with Europeans than at any subsequent period.” He then qualifies this claim somewhat, saying, “Far from me, however, to insinuate that the native population were free from vice, immorality, and occasionally destructive wars; . . . ​ they, like all the nations of the earth, wage bloody wars, and turn their pleasant places and forests into a field of carnage and slaughter.” He concludes with this important qualifier: “But those were nothing to what have subsequently taken place” (30). The generalized Native figure of the first section—​­one encountered by Columbus, William Penn, and others—​­is not differentiated by tribe. In fact, Brown suggests that this Native figure is quite homogenous, a claim he later amends when he focuses more narrowly on the Cherokees. He refers to a past moment across the continent, “from Hudson’s Bay to Cape Horn, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, when an Indian chief could look upon vast herds of deer, elk, and buffaloes, and pronounce them his own, and given to him by the great Galolatichi” (30), implying that Natives believed in the same divinity and Indian chiefs looked out on the same vistas. All Natives, he suggests here, have suffered with the coming of Europeans. In this early section of his speech he notes that this suffering at the hands of Europeans is what produced the quality of vengeance that has so commonly been characterized as an Indian trait. He writes that after the coming of the Europeans formidable wars broke out, and the hand of vengeance arose from its slumbers; over-​­reached on many occasions for a thirst of gain, their friends and relations treacherously entrapped, and carried away to be sold as slaves, themselves injured, oppressed, and deceived, driven from their lawful possessions: no wonder the natives unbound the tomahawk

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of war, and made ready the arrows of vengeance against the usurpers of their dominions—​­no wonder the white intruder found an inveterate enmity, hereditary animosity, and perpetual revenge. . . . ​In the midst of confusion and despair, the Indian was compelled to raise the tomahawk against his red brothers, as well as against the sons of Europe. (32) Gone is the irrational Cherokee warrior of the earlier letter; here Indian warriors fight only reluctantly and are forced to it by the abuses of whites. When he turns more specifically to his own tribe, Brown is emphatic on this point: Cherokees are brave because they love their homelands, and they fight because they are protecting what is rightfully theirs. By the end of the speech it is very clear that while Brown has positioned himself resoundingly as a Cherokee warrior, his war is to fight the wrongs perpetrated against his people through violent European encroachment. He enlists his troops rhetorically from among his white audience, urging them to make amends for the injustices of their forefathers. He moves quickly through an argument for missions, eliding civilization and evangelization in claims that were surely familiar to his audience: “The grand point then should be to make every effort to have the Indian civilized, and above all evangelized. Nothing can bring the untutored sons of the forest to the blessed wreaths of science and religion but the Gospel of Christ. When the barbarian becomes a Christian, he easily becomes a civilized man. The Missionary operations of the day, therefore, claim the attention as well as the admiration of all” (36). From there he rushes through the virtues of a newly civilized Cherokee Nation, listing the various benefits brought by missionaries to his people. He writes, “The bow and quiver are converted in to utensils of industry; and the bloody tomahawk that used to be bathed in human blood is buried deep, I hope to rise no more” (36). The new weapon is the utensil of industry, and the tomahawk is no longer necessary among the Cherokee, who are “cordially . . . ​receiving the useful manners and customs of Europeans. . . . ​The Cherokee code of laws, legislatures, courts of justice . . . ​are similar to those of the United States. . . . ​ Agricultural, literary, and religious schools are in operation” (36). The Cherokee Nation that Brown describes here is well on its way to living out the American values brought by missionaries and far from being driven by a spirit of vengeance: the Cherokees that Brown describes are ideal American citizens. In fact, Brown winds down his speech with a striking claim, one that could resonate in a number of ways: “I fondly hope that the time is not far distant when these nations shall unite with the great commonwealth, and

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their sons participate in the glory to which our happy American is destined” (36). On the surface what Brown is suggesting here is of a piece with everything that came before: far from being a vengeful people, Cherokees would love nothing more than to participate in full measure in the “glory” of “our” modern America. The suggestion here is that with a few more years of effort, the Cherokees will have met the standard of “civilization” and Christianity that define American identity and will blend into that culture. On another level, however, this statement is a striking challenge to white assumptions of superiority, and as such is part of a concerted strategy by pre-​ ­Removal Cherokees to assert their political authority. For Brown and others, America is not synonymous with whiteness, and his peoples’ claim for participation demands that his white audience cease to see his Cherokee identity as an impediment to political existence and start to see it as an element of the modern nation-​­state that is America. If Christianity is available to all, and everyone is working together to bring this religion to his people, then the link between civilization and Christianity that he has invoked suggests that Christianity should bring with it full participation in the American Nation for the Cherokee Nation. Perhaps what Brown is suggesting here is something along the lines of statehood for the Cherokee Nation; clearly, what he has in mind is the ongoing political existence of the Cherokee Nation rather than the integration of individual Cherokees into the polity that is the United States of America. Indeed, Maureen Konkle points to the overall strategy of Cherokee spokesmen like Elias Boudinot, John Ridge, and John Ross in claiming “a modern Indian nation, one that could not be characterized as representing a timeless prepolitical state of nature, but one that existed in time, as European nations did” (44). Brown’s reference to the participation of Cherokee sons in the modern American nation is thus prefaced with the claim that nations would unite in a commonwealth, not that individuals would become American citizens.35 The relationship between citizenship and Cherokee identity was to be argued in the Supreme Court a few years later in the famous cases through which Cherokee Nationhood was defined as a domestic dependent state. Furthermore, the implications of eliding civilization and nationhood were to have catastrophic consequences in the upcoming decades for Brown’s people. In this moment, however, Brown is rehearsing an argument whose optimism was shared at least for a time by his classmates John Ridge and Elias Boudinot, whose marriages to Sarah Northrup and Harriet Gold, respectively, were predicated on a similar sense that conversion to Christianity and a good-​­faith

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commitment to “civilization” entitled Cherokees to equal treatment in the eyes of America. Elite Cherokee men were united in a shared political strategy to fend off Removal by asserting Cherokee civilization and modernity. A few short years later David Brown writes occasional letters which are published in the Richmond Family Visitor, refining and developing several of the points from his speech. No longer desiring the assimilation into America of his earlier speech, in his letters Brown lays out more explicitly an anti-​ ­Removal position.36 As Timothy Sweet argues in American Georgics, the writings of Brown, Ridge, and Boudinot emphasize a logic of “improvement” through which Cherokees have developed their culture so dramatically in the nineteenth century that Removal would destroy all their progress. Rather than a gesture of assimilation, Sweet suggests, this model of “improvement” as it is deployed by Cherokee intellectuals emphasizes (as Maureen Konkle also argues) a political understanding of Cherokee sovereignty rather than a cultural model of Cherokee identity.37 While Boudinot, Ridge, and others shared a sense of the political urgency of the moment, their speeches and letters focused on a very concrete set of measures for Cherokee “improvement.” All used the statistics from the 1825 census to ground their arguments, listing specific numbers of cattle, horses, and swine as well as citizens, whites, and African slaves as evidence of Cherokee civilization.38 However, Brown’s letter only briefly touches on the statistics that emerge from the census; he focuses instead on developing the Cherokee political aesthetic that he had originally established in his address, one that is clearly directed at a white audience but that is based on a political sense of Cherokee Nationhood. In his letters Brown is clearly comfortable with the range of rhetorical strategies he had deployed in his earlier writings, but here he focuses on an aestheticized Cherokee world as a way of making his political point palatable to the white audience that read these letters without the benefit of his physical presence. Brown establishes the importance of beauty in evaluating the Cherokee landscape, and by doing so deploys the strategy Ridge had used in his copying of the watch poem. By producing an aesthetic to make a political point rather than simply being the product of an aesthetic, Brown and Ridge both claim their own right to shape meaning, even if that meaning closely mirrors a white set of values and expectations. The first letter is dated April 27, 1825, and it is essentially in two parts: the first is a strong anti-​­Removal statement, and the second is an extended description of David Brown’s translation work; the September 2, 1825, letter, which is widely reprinted, has an

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update on the translation Brown is working on, an extended description of the Cherokee Nation, and a brief analysis of recent Creek politics. The letters work together to form a broader picture of the current state of Cherokee culture.39 Brown begins his first letter with an anti-​­Removal position that is made explicit in his analysis of the division in the Cherokee Nation between the Arkansas Cherokees and the homeland Cherokees, or those who live on the land of their ancestors—​­what he refers to elsewhere as “my mother-​­country” (Anderson, 67). He writes, “I am sorry to say, that there is no prospect of the two divisions ever uniting again” (Religious Intelligencer, 88). Brown knows this split all too personally, since his extended family moved to Arkansas, but his home remained in northern Alabama. Brown maintained connections with the Dwight Mission in Arkansas, but he and his family were central in establishing the Creek Path Mission, and of course he and his sister attended school at the Brainerd Mission. Brown thus has a very full sense of the increasingly diasporic nature of Cherokee life—​­one made particularly so through the educational opportunities available to certain Cherokees in Connecticut and his constant traveling to Washington, D.C., for political reasons. To be Cherokee, as Brown understands all too well, is to have an increasingly transnational sense of political and personal identity. Brown presents this situation as a tragic consequence of particular circumstances rather than an inevitability, establishing from the start that any Cherokee Removal, whether it is already begun or still to be contemplated, is a mistake. For Brown the split between the Arkansas Cherokees and those remaining on ancestral lands is tragic since, as he argues, Cherokees would never leave “their extensive farms, cotton-​­gin houses, grist and saw mills, English schools to the number of fifteen . . . ​and the growing Christian churches in the nation” (88) while the Arkansas Cherokees refuse to return. Even if the land in Arkansas is arguably better in that it has more game, Brown insists that the eastern Cherokees have long abandoned the hunt as their primary means of support. He thus uses the division as an opportunity to explore the “improvements” in Cherokee life, consolidating his anti-​­Removal argument around the notion of Cherokee civilization. He writes in this first letter, “Many years have now past since they buried the bow and arrow with the tomahawk of war. Instead of acquiring subsistence by the precarious chase of the wild woods, they now pursue a different course: the weaver’s shuttle is playing, the plough and hoe are used, the thick forest is cut down and large farms are made” (88). The passage brims with the new and improved

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way of life of the Cherokees, but it does so by removing Cherokees from the very scene of their own improvements. That is, shuttles play, plows and hoes are used, and farms are made, yet Cherokee people themselves seem to have little to do with all of this. If Cherokees are anywhere, they are on the other side of the colon that separates the old ways (the hunt as a means of subsistence) from the new ones, which are presented rather curiously in the passive voice. This removal of the Cherokees from their own improvement continues in the second letter, in which commerce, farming, and trade take on a life of their own: These plains [in the southern and western parts of the Nation] furnish immense pasturage; and numberless herds of cattle are dispersed over them. Horses are plenty, and are used for servile purposes. Numerous flocks of sheep, goats, and swine, cover the valleys and hills. On Tennessee, Ustanala, and Ganasagi rivers, Cherokee commerce floats. . . . ​In the plains and valleys, the soil is generally rich; producing indian corn, cotton, tobacco, wheat, oats, indigo, sweet and Irish potatoes. . . . ​Apple and peach orchards are quite common; and gardens are cultivated and much attention paid to them. Butter and cheese are seen on Cherokee tables. . . . ​Numerous and flourishing villages are seen in every section of the country. Cotton and woolen cloths are manufactured here. Blankets of various dimensions, manufactured by Cherokee hands are very common. . . . ​Industry and commerce are extending themselves in every part. (310–​­11) There is a resounding absence of Cherokee action in this passage, which continues on. In fact, when Cherokees do emerge, they are disembodied; their tables hold butter and cheese, and their hands manufacture blankets. It seems that the land itself has produced Cherokee improvement, and to separate Cherokees from this land is to destroy their only chance at maintaining or even escalating such improvement. By rhetorically removing actual Cherokees from their own improvements, Brown bypasses any discussion of Cherokee capability or potential. Improvement is an outgrowth of the place, and the people allow the place to improve them; separation from the land is thus made inconceivable. The emphasis is consistently on the natural world, which produces the social and cultural conditions of an ordered and reasonable people. The naturalization

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of improvement in this passage leaves no room for debate: Cherokees are the land and the land is Cherokee. For Brown little distinction exists between what is aesthetically pleasing and what is economically valuable, as both participate in the “improvement” (or refinement) of Cherokees. In fact, throughout the second letter there is a rhapsodic quality to the descriptions of the land, whether these descriptions are practical or aesthetic. For Brown the mountains are not only functional, they are “majestic and lofty,” while the water is “abundant . . . ​and pure” and the plains are “extensive and fertile” (310). “Beautiful streams of water glide,” while “the climate is delicious and healthy” and “the spring clothes the ground with its richest scenery” (310). Brown intersperses his commodification of the land with these kinds of aesthetic judgments, noting that “Cherokee flowers of exquisite beauty and variegated hues meet and fascinate the eye in every direction,” while his next sentence delineates the crops most commonly grown on the plains (310). The land has unbounded potential, and Brown describes it in terms that mark all of its possibility. Brown writes with pride that in this nation in which the land farms itself and commerce grows spontaneously and food appears on Cherokee tables, “the female character is elevated and duly respected. Indolence is discountenanced. Our Native language, in its philosophy, genius, and symphony, is inferior to few, if any in the world. Our relations with all nations savage, or civilized, are of the most friendly character. We are out of debt, and our public revenue is in a flourishing condition” (311). Certainly Brown’s letter celebrates Cherokee achievement, but his word choice suggests a rather modest set of aspirations. If the land is “majestic” and “abundant,” the people are quite unassuming; there is no fantastic wealth here, or powerful nationhood; instead, the middle-​ ­class values of hard work, respect, and friendliness are celebrated: the Nation is out of debt, friendly with its neighbors, and, as Brown writes of the language, “inferior to few, if any in the world” (311). Rather than emphasizing the excellence of the Cherokees, Brown extols their lack of inferiority, thereby removing anything resembling hubris while he celebrates a lifestyle and set of national ambitions that would most resonate with middle-​­class Americans. Tidiness, order, and reason are aesthetic qualities in this account, and Cherokees are the fortunate recipients of nature’s largesse, which allows them to exist in this ordered state of beauty. The work of David Brown’s letter is thus to both aestheticize and naturalize Cherokees. The natural world is ordered and structured into pastures and commercial rivers, mountains and trees that provide beauty and bounty. As

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Sweet argues in American Georgics,40 when considered “in terms of the visual conventions of the picturesque, . . . ​Brown’s composite landscape represents a balanced sense of land use” (135). Sweet points out that by using “landscape conventions familiar to whites, [Brown] reorients those conventions to argue against Manifest Destiny” (135). Brown thus uses an aesthetic—​­Sweet argues that it is in fact related to the Virgilian Georgic tradition—​­to make a claim for Cherokee Nationhood. Through an aesthetics of tidiness that appeals to middle-​­class Americans of the nineteenth century, the Cherokee Nation itself is equally aestheticized through its debt-​­free status, fair government, balanced rights, and beautiful language. Most significant for Brown, the Arkansas Cherokees are a sobering reminder of the “evil consequences that would follow in the event of [Cherokee] removal to the wild and inhospitable regions of the west” (Religious Intelligencer, 310). Or as Sweet suggests, Brown argues that “removal would entail the inverse of improvement, a regression towards savagism” (Sweet, 134). There is a striking paradox in a rhetorical strategy through which the people to be removed are first rhetorically removed by Brown himself. That is, the landscape works itself: Cherokees are invisible agents. By using the passive voice for the work of people while personifying work implements, animals, and the landscape, Brown erases Cherokees from their own world. This choice partly reflects Brown’s ambivalence about what it means to be Cherokee; this pattern appeared in an earlier letter in which he simultaneously celebrated his relationship to his own language and people even as he cautiously absented himself from the political entity that was the Cherokee Nation. In that 1823 letter Brown wrote “I went . . . ​to see some of the Cherokees who had come as delegates from their nation. . . . ​They were all pleased to see me & expressed desire to have me return to their nation as soon as practicable, & preach the Gospel to them.”41 Perhaps Brown found it difficult to reconcile his lived experience of Cherokee culture and tradition with his intellectual desire to “improve” away so many aspects of Cherokee life, finding a partial solution in a rhetorical strategy that eliminated individuals from the larger process of improvement. Certainly Brown never expressed in writing anything other than a wholehearted embrace of Christianity and the logic of social and cultural improvement that accompanied it. As a Christian convert himself and a product of missionary schools both inside and outside the Cherokee Nation, Brown advocated the missionary stance on amelioration and conversion, yet his rhetoric reveals something more complex and nuanced. Just as John Ridge before

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Brown complicated his acquiescence to all things missionary through the act of copying a poem, Brown in his speech and his letters challenges missionary ideas of Cherokee docility and adaptability without ever writing a word of dissent. These young men lived in a critical political moment through which their ability to convey the concept of Cherokee Nationhood was contingent on their ability to deploy the rhetorics through which they were understood by the dominant white culture. Their commitment to their people and to the notion that they had the right and authority to shape their own meaning can get lost in a rhetoric that seems so completely to embrace a set of values inculcated in the Foreign Mission School as well as the Brainerd School. Yet the talent of these Writerly Indians is precisely that: through their rhetoric of refinement and culture they argue passionately that they can and do shape their own meaning.

Cherokee Lives: David Brown, John Arch, and Missionary Memoirs The 1831 American edition of Catharine Brown’s memoir includes this passage about David Brown in the appendix: This young man, of whom repeated mention is made in the preceding memoir, was seized with bleeding at the lungs, in the spring of 1829, and died at Creek-​­Path, about the middle of September, of the same year. His conduct was exemplary to the close of life, and he died in a very happy state of mind. In a letter to the corresponding secretary of the board, dated June 1st, he said; “On the bed of sickness I have enjoyed sweet communion with my dear Saviour.”—​­Materials had been collected for a brief memoir of this amiable young man; but they were consumed by the flames, which destroyed the missionary rooms in Boston, in the spring of 1830. (125–​­26) David Brown never got his own narrative. In many ways he fit the bill: he died young (half a dozen years after his sister) and was a literate, committed Christian, one of the brightest stars of the Foreign Mission School. Certainly the fire that claimed the materials for a biography must have been an impediment, but it was probably not the only one. David Brown was not so straightforward a candidate for a memoir after all; he was politically active and seems to have

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had strong opinions about what was best for his people. And not only was he married, but he had children, disrupting the ideologically driven vision of the lone Cherokee convert dying tragically as the last of her or his line. Brown never spoke out against the mission, never did anything to undermine its work, and yet after about 1826 he was increasingly relegated to the outskirts of the missionary machine until his death in 1829. He is said to have retired from public life in the years leading up to his death, spending his days studying to become a missionary to his people (Tracy, 194), a claim belied by his continuing translation work with George Lowery and others and his travels to Washington with Sequoyah in 1828. For David Brown, becoming a missionary does not seem to have been separate from an active political life. In fact, in 1829 John Ross reports having offered the editorship of the Cherokee Phoenix to Brown, a post he turned down because of his poor health.42 Certainly, however, he receives very little attention in the missionary press after about 1826. In the year Brown died, a memoir did appear in book form, although it was the Memoir of John Arch. Arch, a student at Brainerd, never attended the Foreign Mission School, although he was briefly recruited for it. Originally appearing in the Missionary Herald in 1828 in short form, his memoir was published as a separate book in 1829, with a third and fourth edition in 1836 and 1838, respectively. The last of the three memoirs of individual Cherokees to be published, Arch’s story was never as popular as either The Little Osage Captive or the Memoir of Catharine Brown; only five editions are known to have been printed in the United States in the nineteenth century. In fact, other than the missionary writings largely incorporated into his memoir, little information exists about John Arch. Arch’s narrative contains the familiar cast of characters, including Catharine Brown and others from the “mission family.” We are assured on the first page that “the authenticity of the narrative may be depended on by the reader” and that Arch himself is “a proof of the excellent influence which Missionaries may be expected to exert wherever they may be sent among the benighted millions of pagans.” John Arch, it seems, provided just the right material for a missionary memoir since, unlike David Brown, John Arch had no documented role in Cherokee nationalist politics outside of that sanctioned by the missionaries with whom he lived and died. John Arch’s memoir as it is told here seems relatively straightforward. Arch grows up hunting with his father on the Cherokee reservation with minimal contact with whites—​­in other words, as the typical “savage” Cherokee of Anglo-​­American imagination, one just like the figure in David Brown’s early letter. At twenty-​­one he experiences a crisis of faith based on his poor

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hunting season. When he travels with friends to Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1818, he meets a missionary who encourages him to go to a local mission school. The missionaries at Brainerd receive him initially with reluctance because of his age, but their fears are soon allayed by Arch’s remarkable devotion and most especially by his gentleness and his humility. Arch, we are told in his memoir, becomes the quintessential Brainerd student—​­hardworking, faithful, and steady. When his father comes to take him home, he is thrown into confusion over his seemingly divergent responsibilities to his biological and his spiritual father. The dilemma is resolved when his Cherokee father decides that Arch is better off with the missionaries. This is indeed the ideal missionary story, one that in the six years between the publication of The Little Osage Captive and the Memoir of John Arch has become quite conventional: when faced with the clear superiority of all that the missionaries have to offer their children, Indian parents simply hand over their parental duties, confident that the mission family can and will do better than they can. From this point on, according to the missionaries, Arch’s main concern with his fellow Cherokees is how best to spread the gospel among them. Although his name is mentioned as a likely candidate for the Foreign Mission School, Arch refuses to go, and when a school is established at Creek Path within the Cherokee Nation, Arch instantly agrees. He works with Catharine Brown and missionary Daniel Butrick to expand and develop this school, even as he travels throughout the Cherokee Nation translating for missionaries. He dies in June 1825, two years after Catharine Brown and seven years after his initial arrival at Brainerd, having spent much of his adult life convincing Cherokees to listen to the words of the missionaries. Twenty-​­eight years old, Arch died of “the dropsy” (28), having apparently never married or pursued a life independent of the mission. Both John Arch and Catharine Brown are presented in their memoirs as Readerly Indians at their finest, but to very different effect. Young Catharine is modest, respectful, affectionate and grateful, thus participating fully in the model of girlish innocence and vulnerability that Brainerd celebrated. John Arch, however, is a young man, and the characteristics the missionaries point to with approval in Catharine Brown have a very different resonance in Arch. He is remembered fondly as “a pattern of mildness and amiableness, in his whole conduct” (Memoir, 28). We are told that he was “a general example of piety” (32), which his fellow missionaries connect to his sense of personal inadequacy. We are told that Arch, “having less confidence in his own judgement, than in that of those who had more experience than himself . . . ​chose

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to be directed in his labors by the proper authority of the mission” (33). This language is strikingly different from David Brown’s masculinist rhetoric in his speech—​­the rhetoric that turned him (in the words of Joel Martin) into a “rock star” for his northeastern audiences. Brown also lived out his rhetoric in very specific ways: unlike Arch, rather than being directed by white missionaries, Brown’s goal was to become a missionary himself. Arch’s memoir further claims of its young hero, “When thus directed, he did not complain, nor seem to suppose that his opinion would have been preferable” (33). Joel Martin has written of the significance of John Arch’s decision to exchange his gun for a pen, and the reassurance that such a symbolic act would have on a nation eager to hear of the ability of missionaries to make the archetypical “savage” docile (“Almost White,” 52). But even as a benevolent audience longed for docile Readerly Indians, it resisted Arch’s position as a man-​­child whose connection with the Brainerd Mission turned him from an active and adept hunter to a docile and unmanly reader. John Arch’s memoir is devoid of any reference to the political situation roiling the Cherokee Nation through the 1820s and instead focuses almost entirely on education, conversion, and literacy, seemingly less volatile topics. Yet there are moments in John Arch’s narrative that suggest a richer story than the one that is produced for mass consumption. Although Arch is presented to his readers as an unsophisticated Cherokee boy who had spent his youth “in savage life” (10), at some unspecified point before he came to Brainerd, “he once traveled to Washington, where he received some tokens of kindness from Mr. Madison, then President of the United States” (11). While this passage throws into question the rhetoric of rough, uncultivated paganism that the text establishes, it indicates that like David Brown, John Arch was deeply invested in the political world of Cherokee-​­U.S. relations long before he attended Brainerd. It may well be that his memoir did not attain the levels of popularity of the others because of his awkward position in the gendered world of Brainerd; certainly no other memoirs emerged from Brainerd with Indian men or boys at their center. Or perhaps his memoir was an artifact of a very particular moment, timed precisely to counter the embarrassing publicity of the closing of the Foreign Mission School and the Cherokee marriages of two of its star pupils. John Arch’s memoir, with its docile male central figure who rejects the ambition of the Foreign Mission School, is precisely what the reading public wanted to hear: Native men will not marry white women or aspire too highly. In fact, in the brief version of the “Memoir of John Arch” first published in the Missionary Herald in 1828, Arch refuses to go to the Cornwall School (“it was

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proposed that John, with one or two other promising Cherokees, should be removed to the Foreign Mission School at Cornwall, Conn.; but he not being willing to leave the land of his fathers, the plan, so far as it regarded him, was relinquished”),43 even though the Brainerd Journal suggests that he deferred the decision to the missionaries. The choice of words here (“be removed” and “land of his fathers”) makes the Foreign Mission School one of the evils facing the Cherokee Nation that must be rejected. The Brainerd Journal notes that John Arch was to have accompanied David Brown to Cornwall in 1820, although at the last minute another opportunity presented itself (Phillips, 143, 145). This fateful decision in 1820 conveniently made Arch the purer, better Cherokee nine years later, who can be understood to have seen the corruption and false promise of this school. This connection is all the more clear in that this comment appears so closely after the announcement of the closure of the heavily promoted school. The appearance of a Memoir of John Arch and the absence of a memoir of David Brown are suggestive. While Arch is made understandable to his missionary audience through his production as a docile, passive follower, David Brown is literally erased from his own story. Relegated to the margins of other peoples’ stories, he is nonetheless a figure whose labors to spread literacy and education are fiercely political and nationalist. Generally, Brown’s commitments fit nicely into the missionary mandate: writing was always at the core of the educational experience for Cherokees both at the Cornwall Foreign Mission School and at Brainerd. While all the schools taught reading and writing, these schools encouraged self-​­expression outside the classroom—​­as long as that self-​­expression was spiritual. At Brainerd, for example, Catharine Brown kept a diary and writes letters while her brother at the Foreign Mission School keeps a journal of his travels and writes to benefactors and friends. While John Arch also writes the occasional letter, none are included in his memoir; he is instead presented as one who translates the words of the missionaries for his people as well as translating portions of the Bible. Arch is thus produced as a conduit rather than a thinker or intellectual in his own right, and as such he is an ideal subject for a missionary memoir, unlike David Brown whose life and writing became increasingly complicated in terms of missionary ideology. The Cornwall School was the living embodiment of an aesthetic that involved a shared sense of the wonder of God’s creation as a means of political and cultural unity. Beauty of form (poetry, drawing, elaborate penmanship) was all in the service of an ever-​­expanding evangelical sense of God’s glory,

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and as young people in this small Connecticut town shared their lives, they did so through a highly romantic aesthetic of representation as well as a firm commitment to manual labor and educational striving. The annual exhibitions of the school, with their celebration of the exotic as well as the pious, aestheticized the students of the school, with one observer commenting that “the Indian pupils appeared so genteel and graceful on the stage that the white pupils seemed uncouth beside them” (Wilkins, 126). John Ridge’s copying of a poem about his watch was also part of this aesthetic exploration of difference; it was not enough for him simply to weather criticism of his watch, as Hezekiah Calvin had done a generation or two earlier at Wheelock’s school: at the Foreign Mission School, Ridge chose to express himself by copying out a poem. The drawings and poems that remain from the school were as essential to the shared world of Cornwall as the mathematics, geography, sciences, and rhetoric that the boys studied in school. At Cornwall, students were the producers of as well as the objects of aesthetic representation; local newspapers and missionary circulars regularly marveled at the appealing sight of the pious students of Cornwall bowing their heads in prayer. The Cherokee students who attended the Foreign Mission School were well-​­versed in the political expediency of Anglo-​­American manners, and they were eager to share in the aesthetics of personal and political expression, playing in a Writerly manner with the aesthetic conventions they felt could best illuminate their Native identity. Nineteenth-​­century America valued a certain model of self-​­expression with an emphasis on sentiment, tears, and tragedy; it found in the Cherokees an ideal subject, and Cherokees were eager to turn this attention to their advantage. As the Cherokee graduates of the Foreign Mission School were also keenly aware, writing was a political practice they could deploy in their ongoing effort to save their world. Urgent, engaged, committed, these graduates of missionary schools were participants in an apocalyptic moment for their people; they were fully cognizant of the balance they had to reach to make a difference. It is clear that Brown and Arch and others’ activities in relation to literacy moved beyond aesthetics and were profoundly political. Jill Lepore suggests that it is the increasingly diasporic nature of Cherokee identity that reinforced for Cherokee people the value of a written language (88–​­89); certainly Brown, who did not live to see Removal, did see his own family spread out in Arkansas as well as within the Cherokee Nation, and was himself removed from their presence through his own travels in New England. He maintained family con-

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nections through letters and literacy in ways that other Cherokees also came to feel in increasingly urgent ways through the 1820s and beyond. For all that they can be seen as docile Readerly figures, education, literacy, and the production and dissemination of books and letters is at the core of the lives of David and Catharine Brown in a way that suggests they understood literacy as a political and even Cherokee-​­centered practice. Largely downplayed in the narratives associated with the Brainerd Mission, through the familial and political connections of Catharine and David Brown as well as John Arch, a different literacy history of the Cherokee people emerges, one that is founded on people profoundly committed to Christianity as a means of developing political sovereignty. Through their engagement with the missionary schools available to the Cherokees, the Browns participated in some of the most dramatic moments of Cherokee culture, marking themselves and their people as indigenous writers and thinkers. Their various relationships to the Foreign Mission School and its promise suggest how complicated Readerly and Writerly roles were for Cherokees of the mid-​­nineteenth century. David Brown perhaps most clearly embodied the promise that the school held for Cherokees; unlike his colleagues and friends John Ridge and Elias Boudinot, he never openly tested the patience and commitment of the missionary society that promised him equality by asking for it through marriage to a white woman. And Brown remained a committed Christian to the end of his life, following the righteous path missionaries wanted him to take. However, like Ridge and Boudinot, the challenge that Brown posed for missionaries was a complicated one: in the end he too took at face value the assurances of missionaries that they accepted him as an equal. In Brown’s case, as we shall see in the epilogue, his role in the production of an indigenous Bible, one that he would produce with other Cherokees, tested his relationships with the missionary establishment. Throughout his life Brown remained true to the values of the missionary education he received, challenging the institution only by fully living out its promise.

A f t e r Wo r d s

Native Literacy and Autonomy

From the seventeenth century onward there is a clear pattern to missionary benevolence; an aggressive charity drive (usually with an accompanying pamphlet or petition touting the promise of a particular situation) drums up funds for people, buildings, and other resources. The charity takes on a life of its own, and charitable giving drives the shape of the institution rather than the needs of the people ostensibly at the center of the project. As Laura Stevens suggests, “money becomes the medium of, and a metaphor for, mutual redemption” (15). This guiding principle explains what otherwise appears to be the incoherence of charity as it is lived out among missionaries in New England in the eighteenth century and beyond. The rupture between the idealized notions of donors and the practicalities of mission work meant that donors were often far more willing to finance grandiose plans than to do the more mundane work of subsidizing a salary or sending boxes of books or other supplies—​­a problem that still plagues charity organizations today. Thus, missionaries and schoolteachers found themselves abandoned and hungry in Native communities that may or may not have wanted them to begin with; the repeated pleas of these missionaries to funding agencies had little effect, as such agencies sought out even more promising situations upon which to bestow their benevolence. And if the exchange of money (however misdirected) seals the bargain through which donors and Indians are mutually redeemed, it is in the gap between those donors, the missionaries in the field, and the specific needs of Indian communities that we see some of the most interesting rhetoric surrounding Indian education. It is at precisely the moment when Native Americans get shut out of the charitable scheme that the language of benevolence reaches its most fevered pitch. Donors act, Indians receive; the logic of the benevolent situation relentlessly reinforces the active role of the English

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benefactor and the passive position of the Indian recipient of English benevolence. As Stevens writes, the pamphlets, letters, and documents surrounding missionary work give us a view of “the mechanics by which benevolence can erase its object,” focusing on the salutary effects of benevolent action on the actor rather than the recipient (22). Even as schools for Natives presented their students as enthusiastic participants in English systems of value, the rhetoric surrounding such charity schools also insisted on the silent docility of those very students. In the mutually beneficial exchange of redemption, it seems, it is the redemption of the donor that matters more than all the rest.1 From Sergeant and Wheelock onward, educational endeavors become a means of reifying the social and cultural distance between the English and all Indians, with teachers and their students living out those distinctions in the classroom. Using the language of benevolence and good intentions to justify an attempted restructuring of Native ways of knowing and being, educators at mission charity schools assumed a yawning abyss between their own privileged cultural position and that of Native Americans in general. The controlling presumption behind this attempt is clear: Native identity is of value only as it is malleable enough to be transformed into English identity. As representatives of Englishness, then, teachers necessarily know better than their Indian students, who must be remade. This notion, perhaps most prevalent among many of the English in eighteenth-​­century New England, reemerges in the conversations among missionaries and between Cherokees as the Cherokee Nation managed the complex negotiations of Christianity, nationhood, and Cherokee identity. Eighteenth-​­century New Englanders believed that the Algonquian Indians were a degraded race whose only salvation was in sloughing off the remnants of their Indian ways, while nineteenth-​­century missionaries believed that Cherokees were a most promising people if they would only eliminate the worst of their Indian ways and passively accept the superiority of the dominant American culture. The effect was the same: Indians were to change themselves, while white people instructed them in the details of that change. Yet both eighteenth-​­and nineteenth-​­century notions of the racial inferiority of Indians existed in tension with broader notions of Christian equality, making the social position of Native students problematic.2 Should eighteenth-​­century converted Natives be granted a Latin education to equip them as missionaries, or should they receive only the basic instruction due to laborers and yeomen? More important, does an education alter the supposed racial inferiority of Native Americans? Might Indian boarding schools in fact

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produce Indian gentlemen, or are Natives only capable of entering English society at its margins? This anxiety is raw in all accounts of the school, with Sergeant’s school never attempting to “raise” Indians above the lowliest status, while Wheelock’s school had much more ambitious pretensions. Similarly, the Cherokee gentlemen with their refined manners were profoundly unsettling to their Connecticut hosts in the Cornwall community of the 1820s. Each of these situations resulted in an emphatic closing down of the potential social mobility these schools offered. Key to this closing down, as Stevens has noted, is the notion of pity, which reifies the social and cultural gap into a hardened, unchanging thing. Whatever the particulars of each situation, the bitter gift that missionaries brought with them was the confirmation of Natives’ inferior social, political, and cultural status, even as their religion held out the promise of the equality of souls after death. For Wheelock and Sergeant, both of whom were initially eager to expand their schools and reach out to an ever-​­growing field of Native peoples, producing docile Indian readers eager to absorb English manners was the surest way to garner increased funding. Readerly Indians could obediently replicate the sounds and flavors of English without seeming to rely on their own backgrounds or understanding. Such passive figures were ideally suited to the kind of fund-​­raising that sustained the New England missionary ventures. By the nineteenth century, as Jean O’Brien has recently documented, despite an ongoing Native presence throughout New England, Indians were considered a phenomenon of an earlier time, and efforts to convert and educate are focused on more distant peoples like the Cherokees of the American South.3 Nineteenth-​­century consumers of benevolence tracts, unlike their eighteenth-​­century predecessors, insisted on a more active Indian presence, however, demanding a speaking subject who just happened to say exactly what a charity-​­minded public wanted to hear. Indian figures like Catharine and David Brown, as well as the young Cherokee letter writers of the Brainerd School, were prominently featured in missionary publications, their writings seemingly confirming the general superiority of Anglo-​­American culture and religion. Such Writerly Indians spoke for themselves, shaping meaning within the confines of a very particular set of missionary expectations. The words and letters of Writerly Indians can be difficult to situate, as we have seen. Some of these texts were readily available for soliciting funds in both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; others, however, were less in keeping with the message missionaries wanted to convey about their schools. Indian students in these schools recorded their impressions and frustrations

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and even occasional delights as they navigated these systems. There are also letters and other texts through which former students revealed the longer-​­term effects of these schools on their lives and on the political and cultural landscape of their people: such documents were rarely used to market schools, and in fact were almost never produced specifically with those schools in mind. Contrary to the distinctions emphasized by school publications, these texts repeatedly emphasize the connections that bound disparate individuals, tribes, and institutions together. In personal letters written by various members of these schools and their families, the rigid categories of being that define and characterize so much of the public literature of these schools get folded in on themselves, producing alliances, friendships, marriages, and even rivalries that challenge the racial and cultural hierarchies that the language of missionary outreach reinforces. Read in conjunction with the missionary tracts through which schools were promoted, such texts give a far more nuanced sense of the afterlife of educational communities; they are in a sense the after words of these communities.

English Letters, Indian Letters New England charity boarding schools were characterized by the English alphabet. Its graphemes (more commonly called letters) were shapes imbued with cultural meaning through which Indians were to mark their affiliation with English missions. All the educational models adopted by these schools—​ ­from the open-​­air classrooms of Wheelock’s missionaries to the Iroquois to the Lancaster method of the nineteenth century Cherokee missions—​­emphasized mastery of the English alphabet, with students absorbing the shape and texture of the individual alphabetic letters as a bridge between reading and writing. Whether practicing the shaping of letters in sandboxes early in the literacy process or wielding quill pens, the missionary system gave Indian learners a tactile relationship to the English alphabet as well as an auditory relationship that linked the shape of an alphabetic letter to its corresponding sound. As a teacher among the Montaukett, Samson Occom was very clear about the physical element of the relationship between sounds, shapes, and knowledge acquisition, noting that of his students “most . . . ​Can Soon learn to Say over their Letters they Distinguish the Sounds by the Ear, but their Eyes can’t Distinguish the Letters.” His solution, he writes, is “making an Alphabet on Small bits of paper, and Glued them on Small Chips of Cedar, after this manner A

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B &c. I put these on Letters in order on a Bench, then point to one Letter and bid a Child to take notice of it, and then I order the Child to fetch me the Letter from ye Bench . . . ​when they Can bring any Letters, this way, then I Just Jumble them together, and bid them to Set them in Alphabetical order, and it is a Pleasure to them; and they soon learn their Letters this way.”4 For Occom’s students the shapes of letters had to be associated with their sounds, recognizably English by ear as well as by eye. Indian charity schools in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries emphasized rote learning, as was indeed typical for the teaching of reading and writing in general. Since such charity schools were at least some of the time teaching students who had limited English-​­language comprehension, rote learning could mean that students were able to sound out syllables and produce words even if they could not understand their meaning. This was the situation for the youngest Iroquois children who generally remain voiceless in these school records, even as they increasingly become the rationale for the continued existence of these institutions: it is quite possible they could not understand English even if they could “read.” For all that English letters were a tactile, sensory experience for some Indian learners, they could stay distinct from meaning making, and as such remained hopelessly abstracted from self-​­expression. Questions of how to represent the sounds of language as well as how to express personhood or even national identity in writing are certainly vexed issues. On one level the individual orthographic symbols of written English became Indian letters in the hands of prolific writers like Joseph Johnson, Samson Occom, David Brown, and Elias Boudinot, who easily and comfortably expressed themselves in written and spoken English. Deeply committed to the ongoing political and (to varying degrees) cultural sovereignty of their people, such writers clearly marked their texts with their identities as Native people. Missionaries to the Cherokee Nation of the early nineteenth century presumed that students like Brown, Boudinot, Ridge, and others would be easy to attract. It seemed perfectly reasonable to English missionaries that Cherokees would be willing to spend years absorbing the lessons of missionary culture, so the early linguistic efforts of the missionary society were heavily informed by English literacy practices. When English linguists like Daniel Butrick and later John Pickering (working in association with the ABCFM) originally contemplated a Cherokee written language, what they had in mind was using English letters to reproduce more or less phonetically the Cherokee language

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in an alphabet suited to English sensibilities. Practically speaking, one had to be familiar with the Roman alphabet not only in its actual form but as a conceptual frame for shaping meaning (Bender, 32). The complexity of such systems presumed familiarity with the English alphabet, or at the very least a willingness to spend years in missionary schools learning the English alphabet and the sounds and syllables various letter combinations could produce. One of the earliest attempts to produce a written Cherokee language was Butrick’s collaboration with Brown and Arch, which resulted in the Cherokee spelling book printed in 1819 and some early translations. These were superseded a few years later by Pickering’s linguistic work, produced in collaboration with David Brown. Pickering, a linguist who believed in a “universal alphabet” that would capture the sounds of any language using the Roman alphabet, was searching for a literacy system through which any oral tradition could be textually produced. Such a written language could produce “readers” who had no comprehension, even if they could sound out words and sentences. Much like the Iroquois students of an earlier generation who could “read” the Bible in English out loud to their teachers without understanding a word of it, missionaries could pick up a Bible in Pickering’s written form of Cherokee and attempt to communicate its meaning to potential Cherokee converts without knowing any Cherokee themselves. Because they understood the conventions of alphabetic literacy and the indirect relationship of symbols on a page to the sounds and meaning of language, missionaries could thus read from texts to Cherokee audiences without engaging with the meanings attached to specific sounds and words. The initial goal of the Brainerd Mission was to have missionaries learn just enough of the language and culture to help their Cherokee charges better embrace English-​­language learning. Pickering’s linguistic work was part of this strategy, and his collaboration with David Brown was part of a larger missionary plan for Native conversion. Although the two worked together for about a year, with much of their work occurring through correspondence, it seems they had very different goals. Pickering seems to have felt that Cherokee texts could serve as aids to missionaries until English could fully replace Cherokee, while Brown was more interested in perpetuating the Cherokee language by producing it in written form. Pickering was dependent on Brown for guidance and clarification on the particulars of the Cherokee language, even though Brown already had commitments that prevented him from concentrating fully on this project. He writes to Pickering in September 1823 while at Andover that once he has caught up in his studies, he “shall have considerable time to

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attend to our beloved Cherokee language” (Pickering, 332), although later, Brown complains that “perpetually am I going from one place to another,—​ ­which course renders it impossible for me to study. But I am determined to find time for the Cherokee Grammar. Every sheet you send on I will look over with pleasure” (Pickering, 333). While Pickering and Brown both felt that their language work was part of the larger drive for Cherokee “improvement,” Brown was invested in maintaining a distinct language (“our beloved Cherokee language”) while Pickering wanted to eventually replace it. John Arch, like David Brown, was one of a cadre of young men that missionaries sought out as special instructors and interpreters. Like Brown, Arch was committed to Cherokee-​­language literacy, although the following exchange recorded by a visiting missionary suggests some of the difficulties of this work: “I asked if he [John Arch] did not believe the language would be lost, in a few generations? He reluctantly answered,—​­yes. I asked if he was willing? ‘I had rather,’ says he, ‘it would remain as it is.’ I thought there was something of patriotism in his melancholy look and answer.”5 From the start, it seems, Brown and Arch saw their work as preserving and maintaining the Cherokee language, although the certainty of the missionaries that surrounded them that their language was dying was clearly sobering for both of them. A few short years after the above exchange Arch must have felt very differently about the supposed inevitability of the disappearance of the Cherokee language. Sequoyah’s production of the syllabary, as well as the decision by missionaries to embrace it, fundamentally altered Cherokee literacy. George Guess, or Sequoyah, made Cherokee literacy and written expression not only possible but widespread through his invention of a Cherokee writing system. Containing graphemes suited to Cherokee-​­language expression, Sequoyah’s syllabary scattered shapes and symbols from the English alphabet throughout the eighty-​­six original Cherokee sound markers without ever simply reproducing them.6 The syllabary is one way Native peoples challenged the dominance of English meaning making by expanding and developing their own systems. Although he never attended any English school and was by most accounts not fluent in spoken or written English, Sequoyah was one of the foremost meaning makers of Cherokee letters. What David Brown and others did rhetorically, Sequoyah produced tangibly by selectively adapting elements of the English alphabet for Cherokee self-​­expression (see Figure 7). Even after their considerable labors working with Pickering on his cumbersome version of written Cherokee, Arch and Brown recognized that the

Figure 7. “Sequoyah Syllabary of 1839.” This document, dated to 1839, is signed by Sequoyah and is one of the only versions of the eighty-six original characters of the Cherokee syllabary in Sequoyah’s handwriting. While the first six lines are number forms, the characters of the syllabary are the last three lines in the order established by Sequoyah himself in the early 1820s. Although Samuel Worcester later rearranged the characters to more easily reflect English patterns of pronunciation, based on this and other early versions of the syllabic writing system, the form and substance of the syllabary is clearly that of its Cherokee inventor, Sequoyah. Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma, accession no. 4026.312.

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syllabary provided a Cherokee-​­centered way of disseminating knowledge. For Cherokee speakers, learning to read Cherokee in the Pickering language system was certainly onerous; to access their own language they had to learn the codes and symbols of English literacy so as to produce Cherokee meaning. In fact, for those students willing to spend months and often years acquiring literacy, it made more sense to learn to read and write in the English language. This was particularly the case since the world of English literacy generally required attendance at missionary schools with rules and regulations that reinforced the supposed superiority of English manners and culture. The Cherokee syllabary changed all that. One of the only orthographic systems known to have been successfully created by one person, it is an extraordinary achievement. The Cherokee syllabary is easily comprehensible to fluent Cherokee speakers—​­according to more than one observer it is accessible within a few days.7 Cherokees without any interest in formal English training could become literate in the syllabary, bypassing missionary schools entirely.8 The audience for the linguistic work of David Brown, John Arch, and others thus changed overnight. With the syllabary, the Bible was most definitively to be in the hands of Cherokee readers. The Cherokee Bible would be largely unintelligible to missionaries, who as non-​­native speakers of the Cherokee language struggled with the sound system and morphology embedded in the syllabary. With its emphatically Cherokee context the Sequoyah syllabary takes on the challenge of the English civilization project and its assumptions about literacy, schooling, and culture and quite simply renders it irrelevant to Cherokee literacy. To the English-​­speaking observer of Sequoyah’s syllabary many of the symbols are strikingly familiar: sideways, angled, upside down—​­in script, block letters, capital or lowercase we find D, R, T, O, A, J, E, W, P, M, H, Z, C, and L. There is also what looks like an upside down V, a cursive V, w and B, and an embellished C, O, and J, among others.9 There are even some shapes that look more like numbers than letters—​­6, 9, and 4, for example. Rather than a sign-​­system distinct from English, elements of the syllabary read as a corrective to English—​­an almost-​­but-​­not-​­quite rendition of a sign system (English) amended for the Cherokee context. Some of the shapes are lovely, Sequoyah seems to suggest, but they need to be disentangled from the English context. In the syllabary D sounds like an English A, while R sounds like E, and so on. Why leave meaning in English hands, after all? Why an alphabet of twenty-​­six letters when eighty-​­six or so sounds will work even better? In a sweeping gesture Sequoyah’s syllabary brushes aside the presumption of English superiority

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and establishes a structure of Cherokee difference. Some of the letter shapes may be adapted from English—​­but their symbolic meaning is most resoundingly Cherokee. Unquestionably the product of a Cherokee intellectual, the syllabary was almost immediately embraced by Cherokee men whose lives up to that moment had been given over to English education. David Brown, Elias Boudinot, and others found in the syllabary precisely what they had been trying to enact in their own lives: a way of expressing Cherokee difference that was less a challenge to English culture than a gentle rebuff of its assumptions. Young men like Brown and Arch were central to the literacy revolution. In fact, they were very much part of a Cherokee agenda for political enfranchisement through their role in the production and reproduction of written Cherokee. At the same time, they were profoundly committed to Christianity as a means to perpetuate Cherokee nationalism. Committed as much to Christianity as they were to literacy, their linguistic work focused on the Bible: Arch produced, arranged, and supported the increased literacy of his own people not only through his work with missionaries but also through his own preaching and translations of the Bible; Brown’s language study at Andover Theological Seminary allowed him to read the Bible in Greek and Hebrew, positioning him, it was hoped, to produce the most accurate translation. Together Brown and Arch tried to integrate their sense of how Cherokee Nationhood could be nurtured through Christian love and charity by means of the Cherokee syllabary, making Cherokee literacy a nationalist movement, not an outside imposition. The commitment of David Brown and John Arch to the ongoing existence of the Cherokee language positions them at the center of a set of debates on literacy. They were caught not only between two languages but between two ways of knowing, literally two ways of reading. Pickering’s alphabet was to erase all difference; the syllabary was to mark it. Brown and Arch did not hesitate in choosing the latter. There is, of course, an irony here: the life’s work of these two men was providing access for Cherokee people to the very texts and ideas that were being used to remove them. John Arch and David Brown were both devout Christians who believed that is was in the best interests of their people to do away with Cherokee practices and beliefs that were deemed unchristian. Each complied with pretty much every request missionaries ever put to them, and they spent most of their adulthoods in white-​­dominated school situations. Yet in letter after letter they repeated their commitment to their people and to their belief in a sovereign Cherokee Nation. Arch’s memoir states that his earliest translations were oral; that is, he

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translated the Bible directly into spoken Cherokee for the edification of those who had just heard a visiting missionary sermon, also translated by Arch. By 1824 Arch was working on his own syllabary translation of the New Testament, and “the translation thus written,” the memoir explains, “was received with wonderful avidity, and was soon copied, as was supposed, some hundreds of times, and read by multitudes. All who understood both languages, strongly approved of it” (Memoir 29). This translation was of the third chapter of John; with its repeated references to the relationship between water, spirit, purification, and renewal through Christianity, this first translation of any part of the Bible into Cherokee resonates with a traditionally Cherokee aesthetic by emphasizing rebirth and renewal. In his selection of this biblical chapter Arch makes the Bible a Cherokee text, accessible to his people not just in terms of its translation but in terms of its connection between the spiritual and the earthly planes. David Brown’s initial translation of the four gospels was completed in late 1825, and in 1826 Brown and his father-​­in-​­law, George Lowery, were commissioned by the Cherokee National Council to translate the laws of the Nation into the syllabary for the use of the people (Lepore, 81). Brown’s and Arch’s commitment to both Cherokee nationalism and Cherokee literacy is thus embodied in these early texts, with the biblical translations only barely preceding the political and legal system through which Cherokee people were codifying their nationhood. Arch’s and Brown’s partial biblical translations were circulated in manuscript form and copied over by hand as the Cherokee press did not yet exist (it was not brought into the Cherokee Nation until 1828).10 Yet when missionary Samuel Worcester arrived in 1825, he almost immediately began a new translation of the Bible in collaboration with Elias Boudinot; together they printed the Gospel of Matthew in the Cherokee Phoenix in installments throughout 1828–​­29, with the complete Gospel printed in 1829.11 With Brown’s and Arch’s translations already circulating, why would the missionary establishment restart all that work? Modern critics have marked the shift from Brown’s and Arch’s translations to Worcester’s in a number of ways: Althea Bass suggests that David Brown’s translation was riddled with errors that Worcester corrected (37). Historian Theda Perdue is also critical of Brown’s translation, suggesting that his grasp of Cherokee was not strong and that Elias Boudinot and Samuel Worcester had to fix the errors of his botched translation (Cherokee Editor, 8). This conclusion seems to be based on a handwritten note dated 1850 and signed by Rufus

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Anderson in reference to Pickering’s grammar system, which says, “The work was discontinued by Mr. Pickering in consequence, I believe, of some distrust in the knowledge & accuracy of David Brown’s knowledge of the language” (Lepore, 73, n. 25). Yet, as Jill Lepore points out, Pickering himself cited the invention of Sequoyah’s syllabary as his reason for abandoning his work, not his distrust of David Brown. Indeed Brown’s inadequacy with Cherokee seems unlikely; Brown is frequently mentioned as a translator for missionaries in a number of different contexts. Furthermore, his translation was supervised by George Lowery, himself a leading political figure among the Cherokees and a fluent speaker of the Cherokee language. It was also supported by John Huss (known as Captain Spirit before his conversion), a recent convert whose English was so poor he needed translators to understand missionaries. Huss’s first and only language was Cherokee and he was an excellent syllabarian writer of Cherokee; it would have been nearly impossible to find a translation partner with more Cherokee-​­language credibility.12 Brown and Arch were well-​­respected figures in the missionary press, and both were longtime associates of the ABCFM mission to the Cherokees; neither was ever publicly rebuffed for nationalist tendencies. Yet, as scholar Pamela Jean Owens suggests, the earliest translations by Arch and Brown may have been replaced by a missionary society concerned about their lack of orthodoxy and overtly Cherokee origins (8−10). In other words, David Brown and John Arch were guilty of no linguistic or cultural errors other than simply being Cherokee and taking control of Cherokee meaning—​­however much that meaning did or did not align with the goals and intentions of the missionary establishment. It seems that the issue of concern for the ABCFM was less the linguistic ability of the various figures involved than it was a discomfort with who supervised the actual encoding of the Bible into the syllabary. For all that the ABCFM missionaries initially admired David Brown and his linguistic work, after his return to the Cherokee Nation from New England his work was received cautiously. The syllabary made it possible for Cherokee people to produce and disseminate the Bible as part of a broader nationalist spirit potentially without missionary intervention. Brown’s collaborations with George Lowery and John Huss, sanctioned as they were by the Brainerd Mission, left the translation of the Bible entirely in the hands of Native people. As if by mere chance, just as David Brown announced the completion of his initial translation of the New Testament in late 1825, white missionary Samuel Worcester was making his way to Brainerd to start his own translation work at the request of the ABCFM.

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Brown very clearly set out in his linguistic work with the intention of printing his New Testament, not simply having it available, like Arch’s, for hand copying. His translation had been commissioned by the Cherokee National Council and was done in collaboration with George Lowery (Owens, 8), although it was never printed in its entirety. In September 1825, before Worcester’s arrival at Brainerd and his work with Elias Boudinot on the syllabary translation, Brown writes of having completed his initial translation, saying “I hope that the day is not very distant, when the Cherokees, my brethren and kindred according to the flesh, shall read the words of eternal life in their own tongue” (Religious Intelligencer, vol. 10, 310). It is clear that Brown saw himself as the linguist and scholar in charge of the Cherokee Bible, responsible for producing this cherished text for his people. There were certainly problems with Brown’s translation, as he readily acknowledged. He writes of his translation process in some detail in his 1825 letters. He explains in April: I am now translating the New Testament from Greek and English into my native tongue. . . . ​In consequence of there existing no Cherokee dictionary or complete grammar, the work, particularly at the outset, must go slowly. . . . ​I write now according to the plan proposed by the Hon. J. Pickering, of New England, which plan is not without some defects. In this way I intend to translate the Testament, and on its completion, to transcribe it into a Cherokee syllabic system for the press. The mode of writing lately invented by Mr. Guess, the self-​­tutored Cherokee philosopher, has been universally adopted in the nation; but like all systems of learning, it needs improvement. I would not rob this distinguished Cherokee of the honour justly due him for his philosophical researches, but if he or any other person, does not engage to improve the system, I must tender my humble services to the subject. (Religious Intelligencer, vol. 10, 88) Here Brown makes it clear that his translation will first be done using Pickering’s system and then using the syllabary. The New Testament that Brown creates is thus rendered first into an alphabetic transcription in the Pickering system and then into the syllabic system. Or what has in fact occurred is a compromise between the mission-​­centered Pickering translation and the Cherokee-​­centered syllabary. On the way to producing a Cherokee Bible, Brown has in effect produced both a Pickering translation and a syllabary

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version of the New Testament. Dependent on this two-​­layered representation, it is possible that Brown’s system exacerbated any phonetic irregularities based on dialect and regional pronunciation.13 Brown’s translation into Cherokee, he writes in April 1825, is begun in the hope that he “shall have the pleasure of presenting to [his] country, in Cherokee version, the whole of the New Testament” (Religious Intelligencer vol. 10, 88). On September 29, 1825, a few weeks after publicly announcing the completion of his translation of the New Testament, Brown wrote to Jeremiah Evarts, saying that while his translation was complete, he would spend some time correcting and improving it. He then added that “in the meantime br. Huss will be transcribing it on the plan of G. Guess, that it may be open to the inspection of our people” (Walker and Sarbaugh, 91, n. 10). Much rides here on the distinction between translation and transcription: it is possible that Brown only completed the translation into the Pickering system without encoding that work into the syllabary, a task he expected to share with recent convert John Huss.14 Certainly the arrival of Worcester would have made that final step irrelevant since it was clear that he was now to be responsible for this work. Whatever the intentions of the Cherokee council, Samuel Worcester’s version is the one that is published in the Cherokee press and remains the only syllabary Bible widely available today (Owens, 8; Bender, 32). The only part of Brown’s syllabary Bible to be printed was a brief segment in the Boston Pano­ plist in December 1827, using the very fonts that were shortly to be shipped to the Cherokee Nation and later used to print Worcester and Boudinot’s translations (Lepore, 83–​­84). Given his commitment to making the syllabary New Testament available to his own people, the appearance of Brown’s translation in a Boston missionary publication rather than a publication with a Cherokee audience is not without irony. If Worcester was brought in to fix the “errors” of earlier translations, he did so not as a speaker of Cherokee but as a scholar of the Bible. His work was supported by a number of Cherokee speakers, especially Elias Boudinot and John Candy, both graduates of the Foreign Mission School, just like David Brown. Indeed, if Brown’s Cherokee was suspect because of his long years away from his people, the same could have been said of any of the Cherokees who replaced him as translators. Even so, Worcester and Boudinot’s version of the Gospel of Matthew was published serially in the Cherokee Phoenix throughout 1828 and 1829, and also published as a whole in 1829, with a second edition in 1832. It was widely distributed in the Cherokee Nation, eventually becoming the definitive translation.

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There are certainly compelling reasons to believe that Worcester and Boudinot’s translation was an excellent one. While Brown’s system of translation involved shifting the original into the Pickering representation of Cherokee and from that into the syllabary, Worcester rejected the Pickering system in favor of direct encoding into the syllabary—​­a task that his collaborator Elias Boudinot complained about (“one cant write fast in Cherokee,” he points out ruefully in 1829 to a family member).15 Indeed, it is hardly fair to call the translation Worcester’s, since Elias Boudinot and other Cherokees had such a crucial role in producing the Cherokee Bible. The 1832 edition of Matthew’s Gospel makes this point quite clearly on its title page: “The Gospel according to Saint Matthew / translated into the Cherokee language and compared with the translation of George Mowrey [sic] and David Brown. By S. A. Worcester & E. Boudinot.” The missionary society arguably replaced one Indian Bible with another, although Samuel Worcester’s presence assured them that the Bible remained in the hands of white missionaries, not Indian ones. According to at least one source, David Brown spent his final years “retired from public business,” studying to become a missionary in his own right (Tracy, 194). However, in 1828 David Brown went to Washington to translate for Sequoyah in a treaty through which the Arkansas Cherokees exchanged their land for land further west—​­in what would eventually become the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. After his return from Washington, Brown was invited by John Ross and Elias Boudinot to a larger role in the promotion and circulation of the newly established Cherokee Phoenix, but Brown’s health made it impossible for him to accept and he died a year later.16 Hardly acting as a man “retired from public life,” it seems that until the last months of his life Brown was active in both the missionary and political life of his people, even as his translation faded from public use. The reason Brown’s translation never became the predominant one ultimately remains unclear; what is clear, though, is that the ABCFM, whose funding and publicity made the press and the newspaper possible, was instrumental both in raising David Brown and his letters and then in erasing them. The Cherokee Bible marks out the ways in which translation and missionary culture coexisted uneasily. The production of a Cherokee Bible using the Cherokee syllabary and Cherokee translators was clearly a profoundly nationalist situation. We are, however, left with a number of haunting questions: was Brown’s translation, mediated as it was by English linguistic models, any better than Worcester’s? Conversely, was Worcester’s translation, carefully checked and rechecked with Cherokee translators, any less Indian than Brown’s?

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English Letters, Indian Correspondence If the challenges of translating the Bible from English alphabetic letters into the Cherokee syllabary marked one kind of Native engagement with mission schools, epistolary letters suggest a very different set of after words. Certainly all manner of writing shaped the legacy of the boarding schools, as I hope I have suggested: account books, diaries, government petitions, printed narratives. But more than any other the personal letter serves as an apt metaphor for the entire missionary educational project. Epistolary exchange requires the entangled skills of reading and writing; through letters, social hierarchies are both marked and crossed. Finally, there is always the possibility of miscommunication: letters are lost, misdirected, misunderstood. They can also be ignored, and silence is indeed an essential part of any epistolary exchange. At least theoretically letters demand a literacy dyad—​­a unit of a reader and a writer through which communication occurs. And yet the notion of a binary is illusory: letters produce and are produced within communities. Readers and writers do not act alone; they are functions of an extended set of relationships—​­some coercive, others not—​­through which literacy is transmitted and letters are exchanged. The composer of the letter might not be the one who writes it down, and the intended audience might reach far beyond the person whose name is in the salutation. Letters could be copied, altered, read out loud, or passed along to other readers. They are markers of communication, but in the end their existence tells us much less than we might want to believe about the systems of exchange in which they operated. Perhaps they are more properly markers of the desire to communicate, although as material objects they are profoundly unstable. There is another interesting literacy gap that the letters reveal. English literacy has always been understood to have been extremely limited among the Mohegans in the eighteenth century: yet, as we have seen, a year before his son was sent to Wheelock’s school, Joseph Johnson, Sr., not only writes a letter to his wife but also refers to one that she has written to him.17 This letter suggests that even as Samson Occom was being touted as exceptional for his literacy skills, Mohegans were already exchanging written texts in the most intimate settings. Wheelock widely celebrated his achievement in educating Occom, proudly taking credit for raising Occom from nothing at all. But Occom’s sister, Sarah Wyoggs, writes him a casual and informal letter in 1763, one with nothing urgent enough to warrant an amanuensis. It is simply a chatty

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letter from sister to brother. Wyoggs’s literacy, unremarked by Wheelock, reminds us that Wheelock was simply one medium for acquiring an education, not the only one. Half a century later Catharine Brown, the unlettered star convert who embodies the entire Brainerd missionary experiment among the Cherokees, arrives with literacy skills already in place—​­John Arch as well. Yet the missionaries who produce their memoirs and convey this information to us also suggest that these two Cherokees emerged out of the wilderness as yet barely touched by English culture. If letters tell us anything, they tell us that Native people who attended mission schools came with a clear sense of what they had to offer—​­and on occasion the literacy skills in place to succeed. Native communities were not without letters. While the goal of the boarding schools discussed here was never explicitly to produce letter writers, letters were an essential element of the kind of missionary network within which such schools operated. Missionaries encouraged their students to produce letters, often using them to promote their schools. In fact, Native letter writers were also participating in a broader national expansion of letter writing. In the mid-​­eighteenth century, people who once would have had neither the literacy training nor the finances to exchange letters began corresponding. Letters became conventionalized in form and structure, with letter-​­writing manuals providing instruction in proper form and polished phrases.18 Furthermore, as families become increasingly dispersed through industrialization and national expansion, people wrote out of a desire to maintain family connections over long distances. In these ways Indians who produced letters were simply participating in a broader national trend towards expanded literacy that was embraced by the missionary culture. Indians who could produce letters at least on some level represented missionary success, whether those letters were addressed to fellow Indians or to white people. On another level Indian letters were profoundly unsettling to the missionary establishment. With their blend of the public and the private, letters revealed the intimacy of life in Indian boarding schools. Letters documented to the world the emotional bonds broken, maintained, and even stretched to their thinnest. Perhaps most dangerous, through letters Native people controlled their own means of communication. Letter writers shape meaning and value, documenting their own hopes and desires and connecting communities. Letters enabled relationships that sometimes crossed all kinds of social and cultural barriers—​­and then other times did not. When young Joseph Johnson wanted to marry Samson Occom’s daughter, he formalizes the request by asking for her hand in marriage through a letter to her father. In fact, he

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writes two letters in October 1773, the first a formal request for Tabitha’s hand in marriage,19 and the second a more anxious letter written two weeks later, in which Johnson writes, “It is Late in the Night, and I am very weary. . . . ​So I hope you will excuse, my brevity in Writing. . . . ​Sir, my mind is the Same, my Request is the Same, and if Providence permits, I Shall come down, Soon as I return, unless you write a Prohibition. As you Said take her as She is, I Say So be it, Just as She is, with all my heart.” Both letters suggest that Occom might have concerns about both his daughter and his potential son-​­in-​­law, which Johnson addresses by writing, “So I say again, that I will live in peace with her, and use her Well, not withstanding all things that can be thought, or spoke of, that is those that are past.”20 These letters, along with the handful that remain from Johnson to his wife in the brief years of their marriage, suggest the complex web of relationships through which Johnson created his own family with Tabitha as he joined Occom’s. The network produced by Joseph Johnson’s marriage to Samson Occom’s daughter Tabitha suggests that marriage could consolidate and unify Christian community through familial bonds. This marriage provided tangible links to a number of tribes in ways that are hardly unusual but that reveal a great deal about the interconnectedness of Native New England: Joseph Johnson’s father-​­in-​­law Samson Occom is Mohegan; his mother-​­in-​­law Mary (Fowler) Occom is Montaukett, as are her brothers, David and Jacob Fowler. Johnson’s brother-​­in-​­law Samuel Adams (married to Olive Occom) is Tunxis from Farmington; another brother-​­in-​­law, Emanuel Simon (married to Mary Occom), is Narragansett. Together these families form an essential part of the Brothertown settlement in upstate New York. The political web through which this community was established was clearly an emotional and familial one as well, as Lisa Brooks has outlined so effectively in The Common Pot. Most significantly in terms of the subjects of this study, letters mark and maintain all these relationships, political as well as emotional, in the most intimate language. The Cherokee men who attended the Cornwall Foreign Mission School also allied themselves through marriage, and these marriages came about largely through letters. When David Brown married Rachel Lowery, this alliance solidified his relationship with his politically well-​­connected father-​­in-​ ­law, George Lowery, with whom he produced written versions of Cherokee laws and biblical texts. This marriage also allied him to the white missionary Milo Hoyt, who married Rachel’s sister Lydia. Through marriage David Brown connected himself not only to a well-​­placed Cherokee family but also

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to a white New England missionary family. John Ridge and Elias Boudinot famously allied themselves with white New England missionary families through their marriages to young women of Cornwall, Connecticut. When Ridge and Boudinot first reached out to the young Connecticut ladies they eventually married, they each conducted their courtships by letter: in both cases their correspondence (now lost) spanned over two years. As Gaul has documented, the Gold extended family was central to the Foreign Mission School (To Marry an Indian, 5); by marrying Harriet Gold, Boudinot thus became the son-​­in-​­law of one of the most important benefactors of the school. In marrying Sarah Northrup, Ridge is similarly allied to the Cornwall school. These relationships are all marked by letters—​­intimate, familiar, familial letters that break down the boundaries the schools otherwise establish. Letters record the networks of family: letters that remain provide testimony of the hardship as well as the joy of these extended Indian families. Tucked into the archives of various schools are letters recounting the everyday struggles and pleasures of life. Jacob Fowler writes a searing letter from Groton, Connecticut, to his brother-​­in-​­law and sister down the road at Mohegan, telling them of the death of his child. He writes, “We are bereved [sic] of our only Child, that lay so folded up in our Hearts, alas! What shall I say, what can I say; who is there that can say unto God what doest Thou or why do’st Thou thus my heart is almost broke but it is the Will of God. . . . ​O! for an Heart to praise any God. Submissive Will is wanting—​­do der [sic] Brother come over speedily. . . . ​I am your Little Brother that is Bereaft of my only Darling.” He adds only, “We bury her to morrow about noon.”21 In his moment of almost indescribable grief he reaches out not to his sister but rather to his brother-​­in-​ ­law Samson Occom, whose counsel he so desperately needs; a grown man and father, he describes himself touchingly only as “your Little Brother.” Many years later, when Harriet and Elias Boudinot send letters a distance of over a thousand miles to the extended Gold family, the anguish of their separation leaps from the pages. In one letter Harriet writes to her mother, she encloses a single lock of her darling baby’s hair, one mother to her own mother. Letters between Elias Boudinot and the extended Gold family are from brother to brother or brother to father, constantly reinforcing the idea of one united family. And yet there are always references around the edges of the correspondence that acknowledge the racial complexities; Elias Boudinot signs his letters from “your Indian Brother,” while in a letter to her sister and brother-​­in-​­law Harriet describes “My Dear Cherokee Mother” as well as her Indian sisters and brother (154–​­55).22 In another letter describing her children

After Words  209

to her New England relatives, Harriet writes her youngest daughter’s name in syllabary letters, reporting of her simply that at one month old “she is probably like other children of her age. I love her” (181). In other letters doting parents Elias and Harriet variously report, “Mary . . . ​has real Indian Black eyes. People say she is handsomer than Eleanor. You must not think we brag” (162). “Of our little cherokees I will not say much . . . ​only wish you to see them & judge for yourselves. Tell Father, I think he will have to make an heir of William Penn—​­for he is said, by all, to look like him & I think he has no other grandson who does resemble him” (173). In these family letters racial identity is both noted and upended, with the New England daughter dutifully writing to her white family up North about their Cherokee relatives. At the same time Harriet clearly wants her family’s approval, challenging them to fully accept her Cherokee children, even as her playful tone hints at her fears that she and her children will be forgotten. Although her father cannot see his Cherokee grandson William Penn, she needs him to understand that they are connected by blood. Later, when Elias Boudinot tells his New England family of his young wife’s death, his misery is tangible. When he eventually remarries, he apologizes to the Golds for not waiting for their permission, explaining, “It is true I was very desirous to see you and consult you first, because I have too much respect for you to do any thing which you would not approve. But in this case the person who has now become the Mother of my dear Children is so unexceptionable, so universally acknowledged to be like your dear daughter Harriet, I have ventured at the step before receiving any intimation of your opinions.” He adds, “I hope it will meet with your approbation, for I can assure you, and all your friends in this Nation will assure you, your dear grand children could never expect a better friend, a better mother” (199–​­200). In this moment Boudinot simultaneously marks their ongoing and everlasting connection through Harriet and the Boudinot children, even as he recognizes that their familial relationship has been altered. These intimate exchanges defy the grandiose plans of the schools and instead mark the connections, betrayals, friendships, and communities through which individuals allied themselves with each other and to broader institutions. In each of these situations, as this book tries to make clear, the pleasure that missionary audiences gained from their understandings of the art and artifacts of Native literacy were not always perfectly aligned with the motives or strategies Native peoples used to further their own ends. Yet there was enough

210  After Words

overlap to make such systems work for everyone, even if only for a while. As modern readers we would be naïve to believe that we have uncovered more than the most fragmentary, partial truths of this situation—​­and yet it is the very fragmentariness of this truth that is most appealing. In a world of social media enabled by the Internet, there is an undeniable pleasure in the silence, the gaps in which people live their lives with dignity and grace. To be denied access to the thoughts and feelings of those in a time and place so different from our own is a gift the past has left to us. We can construct our truths from the pieces given to us, with the hope that the pieces future generations put together will leave us an even richer legacy of shared culture.

Notes

The following abbreviations appear in the notes. AAS CHS CLC Cornwall HS CSA DCA JHPP LHS MA MHS

American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, Connecticut Clements Library Collection, Ann Arbor, Michigan Cornwall Historical Society, Cornwall, Connecticut Connecticut State Archives, Hartford, Connecticut Dartmouth College Archive, Hanover, New Hampshire John Howard Payne Papers, Newberry Library, Chicago Litchfield Historical Society, Litchfield, Connecticut Massachusetts Archive, Boston Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston

Preface 1. Kevin McBride’s archaeological work with the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center has had an enormous impact on the field, while Kathleen Bragdon’s seminal works, Native Writings in Massachusetts (with Ives Goddard 1988) and Native People of Southern New England (1996), have considerably enriched our understanding of the worlds and words of colonial and precolonial Native peoples. Finally, William Simmons’s The Spirit of the New En­ gland Tribes (1986) collected materials related to lifeways of early Native peoples from throughout New England. 2. Arnold Krupat, Voice in the Margin; David Brumble, American Indian Autobiogra­ phy; David Murray, Forked Tongues; and Hertha Wong, Sending My Heart Back. 3. See Womack’s essay in Reasoning Together, 17−18; although he is talking more specifically about the 1980s, in many English departments this perspective held well into the early years of this century. Jace Weaver’s important book, That the People Might Live, was published in 1997, largely initiating what was to become the dominant mode of Native scholarship for the past decade.

212  Notes to Pages ix–6 4. See, in particular, Deborah Brandt’s concept of “literacy sponsors” in Literacy in American Lives. 5. Eve Tavor Bannet, Empire of Letters (2005); Phillip Round, Removable Type (2010); Matthew Brown, The Pilgrim and the Bee (2007); Matt Cohen, The Networked Wilderness (2010); and Konstantin Dierks, In My Power (2009). 6. Collections include Barry O’Connell’s collection of the writings of William Apess; Joanna Brooks and Samson Occom; Laura J. Murray and Joseph Johnson; and my own critical anthology coedited with Kristina Bross. Analyses include Joanna Brooks, American Lazarus; Kristina Bross, Dry Bones and Indian Sermons; Laura Stevens, Poor Indians; David Murray, Indian Giving; Sandra Gustafson, Eloquence Is Power; Josh Bellin, Demon of the Continent; Bernd Peyer, Tutor’d Mind; and Gordon Sayre, Les Sauvages Americains. 7. Maureen Konkle, Writing Indian Nations; Rachel Wheeler, To Live upon Hope; David Silverman, Faith and Boundaries; Amy Den Ouden, Beyond Conquest; Michael Oberg, Uncas: First of the Mohegans; and Laurel Ulrich, Age of Homespun. 8. See, for example, Lisa Brooks, The Common Pot; Jace Weaver, That the People Might Live; Robert Warrior, The People and the Word; and Daniel Heath Justice, Our Fire Survives the Storm. 9. Siobhan Senier’s forthcoming anthology is a collaboration with tribal editors in defining and shaping literary value within tribal communities.

Introduction. Technologies of Literacy Note to epigraph: Letter from George Whitefield (Ojibwe) to Amos Bassett D.D., LHS. 1. See, in particular, Matt Cohen, Networked Wilderness; Joshua Bellin, Medicine Bun­ dle; Lisa Brooks, Common Pot; and some of my own work, especially Early Native Literacies in New England. 2. See Laurel Ulrich, Midwife’s Tale, pp. 75–​­80. 3. There are two missionary societies that use this abbreviation: one is the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which was a Church of England organization founded in 1701. The other is the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others in North America, which began in 1762 as the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge among the Indians in North America and was reestablished in 1787 with the SPG name. This second group was founded by the New England Calvinists. From 1649 to 1660 the formal name of the society familiarly known as the SPG was the President and Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England. After the English Restoration the name became the Company for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England. William Kellaway notes in his book The New England Company that this organization founded in the seventeenth century shared membership with the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge among the Indians in North America, later the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others in North America, but they are entirely distinct. The New England Company continued to exist after the American Revolution as a

Notes to Pages 7–17  213 British organization and funded missions in Canada through at least the 1970s. My thanks to Laura Stevens for help delineating these various societies. 4. I am simplifying here. For a far more complex analysis of the ways in which reading is gendered, see Reading Women, edited by Heidi Brayman Hackel and Catherine Kelley and E. Jennifer Monaghan’s “Literacy Instruction and Gender in Colonial New England.” 5. I document some of the tensions between Native versions of Christianity and white missionary versions in Writing Indians. 6. E. Jennifer Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America, 8. 7. Kathleen Bragdon argues strongly that Native peoples embraced literacy as a way of forwarding their own cultural practices. See, in particular, pp. 168–​­98 in Native People of Southern New England, 1650–​­1775. 8. For more on Eliot’s praying towns see especially the work of Richard Cogley, John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians before King Philip’s War; Kristina Bross, Dry Bones and Indian Sermons; and Jean O’Brien, Dispossession by Degrees. 9. Even Experience Mayhew’s Indian Converts had little to say about education or the efforts of schoolmasters and mistresses on Martha’s Vineyard; the missionary work of Richard Bourne and Josiah Cotton on Cape Cod received only modest publicity. For more on the missionary efforts not explored in this study, see Kellaway, New England Company; Daniel Mandell, Behind the Frontier; David Silverman, Faith and Boundaries; Laura Liebman, Experience Mayhew’s Indian Converts; and Monaghan’s article on Native women’s literacy on Martha’s Vineyard, “ ‘She Loved to Read in Good Books’.” 10. For more on the history of the Stockbridge Indians, see chapter 3 of Colin Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country; Lion Miles, “The Red Man Dispossessed,” an article on land sales; my own Writing Indians, chap. 3; Patrick Frazier, Mohicans of Stock­ bridge; and Rachel Wheeler, To Live upon Hope. 11. For more on the Brothertown community see Silverman’s excellent recent book Red Brethren. 12. Karen Sanchez-​­Eppler, “Copying and Conversion”; and Rufus Anderson, Nothing but Christ 10–25. 13. Robert Sparks Walker, Torchlights to the Cherokees, 249, 329–​­30. 14. See, among others, David Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment; Patricia Crain, The Story of A; Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America; David Cressy, “The Environment for Literacy”; and Gloria Main, Peoples of a Spacious Land, for more detail on the connection of literacy and religion. 15. See Cohen, Networked Wilderness; Crain, The Story of A; and Thornton, Handwrit­ ing in America. 16. Of course, the fact that occasionally girls and others not typically included in such instruction were literate not just in reading but also in writing and other cultural knowledge reminds us of the fluidity of literacy instruction; while we can track the formal elements of education, what remains largely invisible are the ways students instructed nonstudents, and the ways family members, masters, and servants, and even friends or other informal mentors conveyed a broad range of skills to those theoretically excluded from formal training.

214  Notes to Pages 17–23 17. For ministers taking in promising boys see, for example, Reverend Aaron Putnam’s diary, AAS. Putnam, the town minister of Pomfret, Connecticut, takes in approximately fifteen students (staying for varying lengths of time—​­some boarding, some apparently not) between 1756 and 1764. They pay for his services in a variety of ways: cash, potatoes, use of plowing oxen for three days; use of a cart; rye, wheat, an axe, cider, salt, chores, mowing, sugar, etc. This is a more or less typical arrangement in a farming community in New England in this period. Thus, when nineteen-​­year-​­old Samson Occom sought out Eleazar Wheelock for instruction in 1743, he was following an age-​­old pattern of asking the local minister to tutor promising boys and young men who had reached the limits of the local schoolteacher’s expertise. 18. James Axtell, School upon a Hill, 204, 174–​­80. For more information about early American educational practices, see Lawrence A. Cremin’s magisterial American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607−1783. 19. See Eve Tavor Bannet, Empire of Letters, and Konstantin Dierks, In My Power. Together these two books are essential reading for anyone interested in eighteenth-​­century letter writing more generally. For more on the rise of female literacy see Monaghan, “Literacy Instruction and Gender in Colonial New England,” and Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak. 20. Nahum Jones diary, first volume, AAS. 21. Stephen Bemis diary, AAS. 22. For more on middle-​­class writing leading up to the nineteenth century, see Dierks, “The Familiar Letter and Social Refinement in America.” 23. For a description of a “typical” one-​­room classroom see Kaestle, Pillars of the Re­ public, 13–​­18. 24. Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America, 238.; Moran and Vinovskis, “Schools,” 288–​­90, Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak. 25. Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak; Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, 30–​­61. 26. Brandt, Literacy in American Lives, 5. 27. See Germaine Warkentin, “In Search of ‘The Word of the Other,’ ” and Elizabeth Boone and Walter Mignolo, Writing Without Words. 28. Heidi Bohaker, “Nindoodemag.” 29. While much of the symbolic vocabulary of color, shape, and texture is lost to us now, this does not mitigate the value of basketry and other forms of weaving as texts to be produced, read, and exchanged—​­particularly those forms of weaving that remained within the community rather than being produced for sale to colonists. As Ann McMullen, Gladys Tantaquidgeon, and Melissa Tantaquidgeon have pointed out in articles in Ann McMullen and Russell Handsman, A Key into the Language of Woodsplint Baskets, and Laurel Ulrich, for example, has pointed out in Age of Homespun, the designs woven into baskets and mats and painted onto woodsplint baskets had a variety of meanings, and such designs could comment about the value of community or the significance of any particular political act through an extended vocabulary of signs. For more on this discussion see Hilary Wyss and Kristina Bross, “Introduction,” 1−13 in Bross and Wyss, eds., Early Native Literacies in New England, as well as Stephanie Fitzgerald’s essay “The Cultural Work of a Mohegan Painted Basket” in that collection, 52−56.

Notes to Pages 23–38  215 30. See Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 1500–​­1650, and Native People of Southern New England, 1650–​­1775; and Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence, for more on indigenous educational practices in New England. 31. See Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 1650−1775 and L. Brooks, Common Pot. 32. Joanna Brooks, ed., Collected Writings of Samson Occom, 78. 33. The SPG and other organizations funded schools among the Montauketts, on Cape Cod, in Stonington, Charlestown, Martha’s Vineyard, and elsewhere (Kellaway, New England Company, 81–​­121; 228–​­76). 34. Joseph Fish to Andrew Oliver, Nov. 5, 1757, MHS, miscellaneous bound. 35. This diary is actually two documents, one dated from October 1771 to March 1772 and the other from November 1772 to February 1773. The second of these diaries describes Johnson’s experiences as a schoolteacher among the Tunxis of Farmington. Both can be found in Laura Murray’s edited collection To Do Good to my Indian Brethren, pages 92−140 and 151−67. 36. J. Brooks, Collected Writings of Samson Occom, 55. 37. Eleazar Wheelock, Continuation of the Narrative (1765), 13–​­14. 38. Wheelock, A Brief Narrative (London, 1766 and 1767), 45−46. 39. Wheelock, Continuation of the Narrative (1773), 4. 40. Avery to Wheelock, June 23, 1768, DCA. 41. Nahum Jones diary, second volume, Aug. 1795 entry, AAS.

Chapter 1. Narratives and Counternarratives 1. Wheelock Daybook, entry for January 1768; this item is again recorded in Wheelock’s listing of “Goods, Furniture &c. for the School” as an expense for 1768 (DCA). 2. Wheelock’s record books are in the collections of Dartmouth College. They include his Daybook, ledger books, and accounts for individual students. He summarizes these detailed expenses in the published accounts of the school. 3. See in particular his letter to Thomas Prince of September 15, 1755 (Claghorn, Let­ ters, 673), and his letters to Joseph Bellamy dated February 12 and August 6, 1757 (Claghorn, 700–​­701 and 724–​­25). 4. See Vine Deloria, Jr.’s, now classic formulation of the “Indian Problem” in Custer Died for Your Sins. See Rachel Wheeler’s comment in To Live upon Hope that Edwards did not develop close relationships with the Indians to whom he ministered in Stockbridge (207). 5. Wheelock initially argued that since Natives would be more likely to embrace other Native teachers, much energy must be expended in training Natives for this work. He writes, “Indian Missionaries may be supposed better to understand the Tempers and Customs of In­ dians, and more readily to conform to them in a thousand Things that the English can,” adding that “an Indian Missionary may be supported with less than half the Expense, that will be necessary to support an Englishman,” and even concluding that “the Influence of their

216  Notes to Pages 39–50 own Sons among them will likely be much greater than of any Englishman whatsoever” (Plain and Faithful Narrative, 16–​­17; italics in the original). Nonetheless, from the beginning Wheelock’s underlying assumption in the entire venture is not only that Natives are poor reflections of their superior white counterparts but furthermore that they are innately untrustworthy because of the years of bad influence of their own people. He writes of his potential students, “I am fully perswaded from the Acquaintance I have had with them, it will be found, whenever the Trial shall be made, to be very difficult if not impossible, unless the Arm of the Lord should be revealed in an eminent Manner, to cure them of such savage and sordid Practices, as they have been inured to from their Mother’s Womb, and form their Minds and Manners to proper Rules of Virtue, Decency and Humanity, while they are daily under the pernicious Influence of their Parents Example, and their many Vices made familiar thereby” (25). 6. From Wheelock to Andrew Oliver, MA, 33: 253a. 7. See Susan Scott Parrish’s American Curiosity for more on the collecting impulse. 8. Chamberlain to Wheelock, Oct. 4, 1766, DCA. 9. Land for Wheelock’s school was famously donated by local farmer Josiah Moor; local churches regularly took up collections, and people donated goods and services (penknives, combs, and books seem to have been the most popular items). 10. Edwards’s letters also make clear that Hopkins was aware of the situation in Stockbridge; he refers in a lengthy letter in the summer of 1752 to Isaac Hollis to an enclosed set of documents expressing concern with the boarding-​­school situation that includes a letter from Hopkins himself (Claghorn, 508). 11. Lion Miles traces out these land dealings in his important 1994 article “Red Man Dispossessed.” 12. In the initial negotiations for his salary Sergeant writes to Benjamin Colman, “Money alone is no temptation to me, at all, to devote myself to such a life; yet I think it reasonable to expect to be supported so as to have no other care than the business I shall go upon”; he then adds that he will want to be repaid for the expenses attached to his having brought those two Indian boys to New Haven. Dr. Colman, the recipient of this letter, is so charmed by what Hopkins terms Sergeant’s “self-​­denying, generous and pious behaviour” in this letter that he copies Sergeant’s words into a letter to an anonymous English donor—​ ­later revealed to be Isaac Hollis (Hopkins, Historical Memoirs, 41, 65)—​­who largely funds Sergeant’s adventures in Native education. 13. See the entry for Joseph Dwight in John Sibley, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, for a characterization of the “Valley aristocracy.” 14. See Jonathan Edwards, Jr.’s, full account in MHS Collections, 2nd series, vol. 10, Boston, 1823, p. 85. 15. George Claghorn, ed., Letters of Jonathan Edwards, quote on p. 420. See, for example, Claghorn, p. 424, in which Edwards refers to “things they have said of her [Abigail Sergeant] at my house, of their own accord, without anybody saying anything to lead ’em to it”; and on p. 472 he states, “The chief of those [Mohawks] that were here came that day to my house to complain of the treatment.” Later, on p. 627, Edwards says, “I had a

Notes to Pages 51–63  217 conference with them all, men, women, and children [Mohawks] at my house,” and there are further references to gatherings with Native peoples at Edwards’s home on pp. 633, 635, 637, and 638. Unless otherwise indicated, all page numbers shown in the section titled “Edwards and the Spectral Writerly Indian” are from Claghorn. 16. See, in particular, Edwards’s letter to Andrew Oliver dated April 13, 1753, which is devoted entirely to the shortcomings of Abigail Dwight as schoolmistress of the female boarding school (Claghorn, Letters of Jonathan Edwards, 587–​­92) as well as various letters written in 1752 and 53. 17. See Gideon Hawley’s description of this moment in Stockbridge in the MHS Col­ lections, esp. pp. 54 and 55. 18. Wheelock to Edwards, Oct 29, 1755, DCA. Wheelock writes breezily to Edwards, “I rec’d a letter from you (I believe) more than 12 months ago, desiring me to take two Indian Boys etc. . . . ​but no opportunity presenting I did not write ’till is was so late that I concluded it wo’d probably be of no service.” Instead, Wheelock had taken in two Indian boys sent by John Brainerd, thus initiating what would become Moor’s Charity School. 19. Only Hannah Garrett, a student at Moor’s Charity School, married another student, David Fowler, while Wheelock ran his school (Margaret Szasz, Indian Education, 227). 20. While sometimes Wheelock’s own language reveals the contradictions in his ideological model, at other times Wheelock seems to be actively rearranging the truth. He assures his readers, for example, that at his school “in general [Native students] are orderly and governable: They appear to be as perfectly easy and contented with their Situation and Employment as any at a Father’s House. I scarcely hear a Word of their going Home, so much as for a Visit, for Years together, except it be when they first come” (Wheelock, Plain and Faithful Narrative, 36–​­37). In fact, however, extant letters from his students suggest a very different version of the Charity School environment than Wheelock’s. The school’s numerous “confessions” from students are for infractions as varied as fighting, drinking, swearing, and running away—​­hardly indicators of children “easy and contented with their Situation.” The repeated acts of rage, frustration, and grief in the school record suggest that life with Eleazar Wheelock was for so many of his Native students a wrenching cultural experience, and far from being “easy and contented,” they struggled not only during their time at Wheelock’s school, but long after as well. (See Miriam Storrs’s letter after she has left Wheelock’s school, reprinted in McCallum, Letters of Eleazar Wheelock’s Indians, 239, for one of several examples.) 21. See Laura Murray, “Pray Sir, Consider a Little,” for more on this rift. 22. Letters from Fowler to Wheelock are in McCallum, Letters of Eleazar Wheelock’s Indians, 87–​­113. 23. See L. Murray, To Do Good to My Indian Brethren, 177–​­285, or the final section of the book, which includes letters by Joseph Johnson to Jonathan Trumbull, the governor of Connecticut; Andrew Oliver, the treasurer of the Boston Board for the New England Company; William Johnson, superintendent of Indian Affairs for the British Crown; Pastor Andrew Eliot; Colonel Guy Johnson; George Washington; the Connecticut Assembly; the New York Congress; the Albany Committee of Correspondence; and the New Hampshire Assembly.

218  Notes to Pages 64–74 24. For more on Occom’s travels in the British Isles see Leon Burr Richardson, Indian Preacher in England; Alden Vaughan, Transatlantic Encounters, chap. 10 (190–​­210); Joanna Brooks, Collected Writings of Samson Occom; and Margaret Connell Szasz, Scottish High­ landers and Native Americans, chaps. 6 and 7. 25. See the Thomas King discussion of “Indians as Entertainment” in The Truth About Stories, pp. 61–​­90. While King’s discussion ranges from Ishi to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the experience he describes of being enmeshed in a series of expectations about who Indians ought to be and how they should present themselves was surely part of what Occom felt in his travels on behalf of Wheelock’s charity school. 26. One letter in particular, known as the “Alba Mater letter” is included in J. Brooks, Collected Writings of Samson Occom, 98–​­100; in it Occom accuses Wheelock of bad faith in shutting Indians out of the very school his fund-​­raising had produced. 27. Richardson, Indian Preacher, 118–​­19. 28. This letter is in the Ellen Glines Autograph Collection, volume A, p. 41 of the Connecticut State Library. A copy of this letter is also in the DCA. 29. Woodward to Wheelock, June 13, 1766, DCA. 30. Ibid. 31. In this letter from Mary Occom writes that her son “is trying to get Married to a very bad Girl, he has made one attempt to Run off with her, but was Disappointed, and he is out from home Night and Day half his time, and trys to run me in debt by Forging orders &” (DCA). 32. Mary Occom to Eleazar Wheelock, July 15, 1767, DCA. 33. DCA; “copy of Captain Shaw’s Account with Mr. Occom,” 1767. 34. See, for example, the mournful Occom letter to Wheelock describing his sense of his parental failure, J. Brooks, Collected Writings of Samson Occom, 79–​­80; see also my articles on Mary Occom in Wyss, “Mary Occom and Sarah Simon” and “Reading and Writing Indians.” 35. Certainly Hendrick Aupaumut became a powerful literate spokesperson for Stockbridge and New Stockbridge in the 1790s and beyond, but he was born after the boarding school had closed and he seems not to have written anything related to schooling and Indian education. For more about Hendrick Aupaumut see Wheeler, To Live upon Hope; Patrick Frazier, Mohicans of Stockbridge; and Wyss, Writing Indians, chap. 3. 36. Robert Warrior, “Eulogy on William Apess,” in The People and the Word, 43–​­47.

Chapter 2. The Writerly Worlds of Joseph Johnson 1. Pamela Rector, “History of Time Keeping”; Thomas Allen, A Republic in Time, 63. 2. Chris H. Bailey, Two Hundred Years of American Clocks and Watches, 191. 3. Moses Peck is identified in a number of Dartmouth College publications as a watchmaker from Boston. The dating of this reference is unclear: more likely he imported watches from London before eventually becoming a watchmaker himself. See for example,

Notes to Pages 75–84  219 McCallum, Letters of Eleazar Wheelock’s Indians, 270n; and Richardson, Indian Preacher in England, 22n. Alden Vaughan also refers to Moses Peck as a Boston watchmaker in his book Transatlantic Encounters, p. 195. We do not actually know how most of the underpaid teachers and charity student at Moor’s Charity School got watches. They were most likely given to individual students or to the school by benefactors: besides the watch given to Hezekiah Calvin by his father, we know, for example, that one student, Theophilus Chamberlain, received a watch from Moses Peck. We also know that Jacob Johnson was charged 6 pounds for “a watch of the school,” which he returns to Wheelock a year later (having failed in his mission and angered Wheelock), and his account is reimbursed the cost. Perhaps watches were among the undifferentiated “sundries” listed for the students heading out for their mission work, or they may have been a reward only for the most promising students. 4. L. Murray, To Do Good, 71. 5. See Scott Lyons’s wry comments on “Indian Time” in which he decries the impulse to define Indian time as circular rather than linear (X-​­Marks, 9–​­10). My argument here has more to do with an agricultural, seasonal rhythm than an inherently Native American sense of circular time. This argument is given further critical weight through studies like Allen’s A Republic in Time, which argues for a particularly modern and mechanized structure made possible through modern timepieces but that nevertheless remained embedded in the local and natural worlds (4–​­11). 6. J. Brooks, Collected Writings, 52–​­53. 7. L. Murray, To Do Good, 25, quote on p. 26. 8. See Silverman, “Impact of Indentured Servitude.” 9. For more on Amy Johnson, see L. Murray, To Do Good, 27–​­28. 10. L. Brooks, Common Pot, 87. 11. In his first narrative Wheelock reports that an unnamed “English youth” and Jacob Woolley have both been sent to the College of New Jersey to finish out their studies (Wheelock, Plain and Faithful Narrative, 33). This became a regular feature of his plan: Samuel Kirkland was also sent away to finish his schooling at the College of New Jersey, for example, as did several others, although Wheelock sent off his white scholars at a much higher rate than his Indian ones. 12. Wheelock Plain and Faithful Narrative, 36. 13. McCallum, Letters of Eleazar Wheelock’s Indians, 74. 14. David McClure, a somewhat later contemporary of Joseph Johnson’s at the school, remembers the opening sound as the “blowing of a shell,” not the ringing of a bell (Diary of David McClure, 8). 15. L. Murray, To Do Good, 59−60. 16. McClure, Diary, 6. John Smith’s letter expounds further on the psalm singing (McCallum, Letters of Eleazar Wheelock’s Indians, 73–​­74). 17. Interestingly, when Joseph Johnson records his 1771 conversion to Christianity at Mohegan and his sense that his life is gaining meaning and his mind is clearing, he borrows a handwriting book from Samson Occom so that his handwriting will better reflect the

220  Notes to Pages 84–98 order and sense of his new life. Thus, long after he has left Moor’s Charity School, Johnson maintained Wheelock’s emphasis on the relationship between writing and an ordered mind (L. Murray, To Do Good, 116). 18. Monaghan, and Thornton, Handwriting in America, 18, 22–​­23. 19. For more on the use of amanuenses, see Thornton, Handwriting in America, 13–​­14, 23. 20. L. Murray, “Pray, Sir, Consider a Little.” 21. Szasz, Indian Education, 230–​­31. 22. For more on this mother and daughter, see L. Murray, To Do Good, 107n. 23. Sarah Wyacks to Samson Occom, August 2, 1763, CHS Occom Papers. 24. McCallum section on Simon children, Letters of Eleazar Wheelock’s Indians, 218–​­31; Love on Wheelock’s school, Samson Occom, 56–​­81. 25. L. Murray, To Do Good , 191–​­92. 26. L. Murray, To Do Good, 60. 27. L. Murray, To Do Good, 64, 65. 28. L. Murray, To Do Good, 75. 29. L. Murray, To Do Good, 76. 30. Even Kirkland himself complains, “I can’t willingly endure this smoke + crowd another winter, if it can possibly be avoided—​­I find to my sorrow + loss yt a smokey house grows no better by use—​­of ye two rather worse” (768679, DCA). 31. L. Murray points this fact out in To Do Good, on p. 58. 32. Kirkland’s letter further complains, “Elder Joseph + ye prophet Nathan, kept their strumpets here nigh two months last spring—​­drank up near three Galln of wine (sent up for me in my sickness) + between 6 +7 Galln of Rum—​­disposd of some household furniture + wasted no small quantity of provisions. The Virtual Elder—​­being given much to pride and vainglory bo’t a number of trinkets to please his refin’d curiosity + adorn his strumpet—​­for obtaing wc, he very artfully procur’d an order from Capt Butler, + has took ye value of 40/ on my acct.” Kirkland to Wheelock, December 29, 1768, DCA. For more on this incident see Bernd Peyer, who argues that Kirkland’s racist and patronizing attitude as well as Wheelock’s refusal to read the warnings in Johnson’s earlier letters to him probably had an important role (Tutor’d Mind, 102). 33. Kirkland to Wheelock, Kirkland to Wheelock, December 29, 1768, DCA. 34. L. Murray, To Do Good, quotes on 70. 35. L. Murray, To Do Good, quotes on 76 and 74. 36. McCallum, letters from Hezekiah Calvin and Edward Deake, Letters of Eleazar Wheelock’s Indians, 65–​­67. 37. See, for example, appendix A of McCallum’s book, which lists the Indian students of Moor’s Charity School as well as the year they arrived at the school. 38. L. Murray, To Do Good, 190–​­91. 39. It is unclear what impact, if any, this letter had on Wheelock since there is no direct response from Johnson’s former mentor. However, since Samson Occom and others spoke highly of Johnson, by February 1774 Wheelock responds, although he refuses to give Johnson money. Even so, in August of that year Johnson is licensed to preach after being

Notes to Pages 98–113  221 examined at Dartmouth College through the help of Wheelock. Indeed, despite having rejected Johnson’s desperate pleas for money more than once in 1773 and 1774, Wheelock writes in his 1775 narrative of his own central role in Johnson’s life, suggesting that it is through his own good offices that this young man is a “real Christian, and is become a zealous Preacher of CHRIST among the Indians” (16; italics in the original). 40. L. Murray, To Do Good, 191–​­92; also reprinted in Peyer, Tutor’d Mind, 103, and McCallum, Letters of Eleazar Wheelock’s Indians, 150. 41. L. Murray, To Do Good, 177, 178, 191. Unless otherwise noted, all further references in this section are from L. Murray, To Do Good. 42. See chapter 4 of Wyss, Writing Indians. 43. L. Murray, To Do Good, 211–​­12. 44. L. Murray, To Do Good, 193. 45. J. Brooks introduction, Collected Writings, 20–​­22. 46. Laura J. Murray, “Joseph Johnson’s Diary, Farmington, Connecticut, 18 November 1772 to 1 February 1773,” in Bross and Wyss, Early Native Literacies in New England. 47. L. Murray, To Do Good, 285.

Chapter 3. Brainerd’s Missionary Legacy 1. Wheelock to Hugh Wallace, Jan. 30, 1770, DCA. 2. The Journal was originally published in two parts, the first titled Mirabilia Dei inter Indicos, or the Rise and Progress of a Remarkable Work of Grace Amongst a Number of the Indi­ ans in the Provinces of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and the second (usually combined with the first with both known generally as “Brainerd’s Journal”) Divine Grace Displayed, or the Continuance and Progress of a Remarkable Work of Grace among Some of the Indians Belonging in the Provinces of New Jersey and Pennsylvania (1746). 3. Catharine Brown’s memoir concludes with the suggestion that “the present is emphatically the time for vigorous Christian effort. Probably it is the only time when great success is possible” (177). 4. For more on the early history of the Brainerd School, see The Brainerd Journal, edited by Joyce and Paul Gary Phillips; Thurman Wilkins, Cherokee Tragedy (97–​­114); Bass, Cherokee Messenger; and McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence (247–​­59). As the various smaller mission schools were established, the number of missionaries and teachers at Brainerd was cut almost in half as they shifted to other locations within the Cherokee Nation (Mary Higginbotham, “Creek Path Mission,” 80) 5. For more on this Chickamauga identity see Colin Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, 200–​­212; Greg Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 160–​­66; and Cynthia Cumfer, Separate Peoples, One Land, 101–​­13. See also Susan Abram, “Souls in the Treetops.” 6. Indeed, the Chickamaugan position on Removal was hardly straightforward; many in the early decades of the nineteenth century felt that separation from whites was better effected by removal to Arkansas, while others felt that they were inextricably connected to

222  Notes to Pages 114–121 the land. The mission, then, certainly existed in relation to what had been known as the Chickamauga faction but in ways that could be quite unclear. 7. ABCFM Report, 1818, p. 17. 8. Nancy Reece, a student at the Brainerd Mission, writes of her schoolmates, “When Miss Ames [their teacher] tells the two white girls they have done well, we often say they can do well, because they are white girls, though she says that people at the North think that the Cherokees have as good a genius to learn if only it was cultivated” (JHPP, vol. 8, p. 10). For more on cultivation and the American pastoral in relation to the Cherokee, see Timothy Sweet, American Georgics. 9. For more on this notion of the mission family replacing Cherokee families for young Cherokee children, see Perdue, Cherokee Women, 178. 10. McLoughlin, Cherokees and Missionaries, 138. 11. ABCFM Report, 1818, 18–​­19. 12. Sawyer to Linda Ward, May 24, 1824, Clements Library Collection. 13. JHPP, vol. 8, p. 6. 14. Berkhofer’s Salvation and the Savage includes more detail about Brainerd’s educational structure on pp. 35–​­43. See also Wilkins, Cherokee Tragedy, 108–​­9; and McLoughlin, Cherokees and Missionaries, 138–​­43. 15. JHPP, vol. 8, quotes on pp. 1, 6, 17, and 12. 16. Sally Reece tells her “dear friend” Eleanor Fields that “the children are going to learn the Cherokee Alphabet” in a letter dated June 7, 1828 or 1829 (JHPP, vol. 8, p. 35). On missionary involvement in the creation and dissemination of the Cherokee syllabary, see William Joseph Thomas, “Creating Cherokee Print,” and Pamela Jean Owens, “Bible Translation and Language Preservation.” 17. See Gaul,“Cherokee Catharine Brown’s Epistolary Performances”; Martin,“Almost White”; Bellin, Medicine Bundle, 78–​­132; and Carney, Eastern Band of Cherokee Women, 45–​­73. See also Perdue’s analysis of the complicated relationship between mission schools and traditional Cherokee life in Cherokee Women, 159–​­84. 18. For more on evangelical publishing of the nineteenth century see David Paul Nord, Faith in Reading, and Candy Gunther Brown, The Word in the World. Clearly, as Edwards’s modern editor has shown, Edwards had a free hand in editing the journals. Paradoxically, the public Brainerd is written and edited by himself while the private Brainerd is Edwards’s version of him (inversion of public and private). See Joseph Conforti, Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition, esp. 62–​­86; David Murray, Indian Giving, esp. 158–​­69; and Richard Pointer, “ ‘Poor Indians’ and the ‘Poor in Spirit,’ ” for Brainerd’s missionary experiences as well as Jonathan Edwards’s revisions of David Brainerd’s journals. 19. Issues 1–​­3, June 1805–​­May 1808, captioned Panoplist: or, the Christian’s Armory; afterward Panoplist, and Missionary Magazine United (1808–​­12); Panoplist and Missionary Magazine (1812–​­17); Panoplist and Missionary Herald (1818–​­20); and Missionary Herald (1821–​­1934). Generally speaking, these magazines were printed in two columns per page, with small print and no images. Each volume could be bound together into a substantial book (400 pages), although each monthly issue was only about thirty to thirty-​­five pages.

Notes to Pages 122–129  223 20. See Seeman, Death in the New World, especially chap. 5, 143–​­84. 21. Unless otherwise noted, all other quotes in this section are taken from Elias Cornelius, The Little Osage Captive. 22. See Martin, “Almost White,” with its analysis of this play. 23. Jeremiah Evarts notes in Catharine Brown’s memoir that “she is fond of reading . . . ​books, and has been particularly pleased with the Memoirs of Mrs. Newell” (35). 24. See especially Gaul’s article “Cherokee Catherine Brown’s Epistolary Performances” on Catharine Brown and her sense that the missionary memoir fundamentally alters the impression we get from Brown’s letters; see also Martin’s article “Almost White” and his argument that Catharine Brown is profoundly committed to her Cherokee identity in ways that are not immediately apparent simply in the memoir. Joshua Bellin’s excellent chapter, “Being and Becoming White” in his book Medicine Bundle positions the memoir as participating in a number of overlapping rhetorics, including a domestic model for women celebrated by Catharine Beecher as well as a Cherokee tradition of women’s power (100–​­32). 25. Unless otherwise noted, all references to Catharine Brown’s memoir are to Rufus Anderson, Memoir of Catharine Brown. 26. Scholars who have argued that the memoir is shaped almost entirely by missionaries include Barry O’Connell, On Our Own Ground, xxxix−xl, n. 34; Krupat, Voice in the Margin, 147, and Gaul, “Cherokee Catharine Brown’s Epistolary Performances”; scholars who have argued that the memoir offers an alternative to the dominant missionary voice include Bellin, Medicine Bundle, 118−27, Martin, “Visions of Revitalization,” 61−87, and Joshua Nelson, “Integrated Circuitry,” 17−31. 27. There is a reference to the arrival of Penobscot Indians (p. 30), which causes quite a stir; this suggests the events take place in northern New England. 28. The Panoplist and Missionary Herald for 1818, vol. 14, no. 1: Donations for children to be named, pp. 46–​­47, 272–​­73—​­throughout the donations listed are names for children given for various reasons, such as “out of respect to their pastor” (273); see also, for example, the Brainerd Journal, p. 280: “Gave the name of Samuel Worcester to a full Blooded Cherokee boy agreeable to a request from two societies, viz. Juv. Brainerd Soc. of Beverly, Ms. & the female members of the Tabernacle Church Salem, Ms.” 29. Young Lucy Campbell writes to Daniel Campbell, signing her letter “from your adopted Cherokee daughter.” She writes, “I thank you for supporting me at school: all my Brothers and sisters are well and my parents also is well. Give my best love to Mrs Campbell. I do not remember you now but I have heard the Mission family speak about you (JHPP, vol. 8, p. 40). Another student, Sally Reece, writes of her two brothers, Samuel Worcester and William Reece both of whom have or plan to be “united with the church” (JHPP, vol. 8, p. 57). Clearly, one of them has taken on a mission name either of his own volition or at the request of a donor. The effect, of course, is to separate him in the written record from his Cherokee siblings and parents and associate him more fully with his new Christian life. 30. In the dominant culture of the nineteenth century only women exchanged their last name for another through marriage as a signal of a woman’s new allegiance to her

224  Notes to Pages 129–135 husband and her permanently altered state of being; this act signified her disappearance within the legal and political identity of her husband. 31. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence, 335. 32. The U.S. Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun, writes to British educator Joseph Lancaster in 1820, “The School of Brainard, in the Cherokee Nation, is the only one now established on the Lancasterian plan, and judging from the success which has attended it, I have no doubt, if it were more generally introduced, that it would be found, not only the most agreeable to the Scholars, making their progress more easy and rapid, but highly advantageous for the interests of the institutions themselves” (J. C. Calhoun to Joseph Lancaster, Department of War, May 16, 1820, Box 3, Folder 1, AAS). 33. See Ronald Rayman’s article on Joseph Lancaster in Education Quarterly, “Joseph Lancaster’s Monitorial System of Instruction and American Indian Education, 1815–​­1838.” 34. See the footnote instructions for walking, talking, removing hats, etc., in Lancaster, The British System of Education. Boys (children) are not addressed by name but as numbers in rows: “The classes are numbered, each beginning at the number 1, and ending its series of numbers at 30, 70, 130, or any other number of which the class may consist. The list of each class is kept by the monitor of it. . . . ​Answering to this is another series of numbers, printed on the school wall. . . . ​[50]. The monitor calls his boys to muster . . . ​the class go out of the seats in due order . . . ​go round the school room; and, in going, each boy stops, and ranges himself against the wall, under that number which belongs to his name on the class list. By this means the absentees are pointed out at once . . . ​every boy who is absent will leave a number vacant. The monitor of the class then passes silently around the school-​­room, and writes on the slate the numbers which are vacant . . . ​he then makes a list of absentees, by referring to names in the class list. This list he gives to a monitor, whose business it is to see that the absentees are inquired after” (51). 35. Joseph Lancaster, Improvements in Education; Abridged, 1808, p. 42. 36. The inverse of the reward system is, of course, the penalty system, which Lancaster details in several of his publications. At Brainerd one young student reports the penalties attached to certain transgressions: “We are not allowed to do bad things. When we get angry we have to stand in the middle of the floor before all the other scholars and say the 29 verse of the 14 chapter in Prov. When we tell lies we say the 22 verse of the 12 chapter of Prov. And Rev. 21 chap and part of the 8 verse.” She continues with her list of bad behaviors, which include stealing and breaking the Sabbath, as well as their accompanying punishments (JHPP, vol. 8, p. 54). The Bible is the source of punishment, and publicly reciting from the Bible paradoxically becomes a source of humiliation. 37. ABCFM Report, 1818, p. 18. 38. Lancaster, Improvements in Education, 1807, p. 24. 39. Lancaster, Improvements in Education, 1807, p. 41; ABCFM Report, 1818, p. 19. 40. Two excellent sources on Joseph Lancaster are Crain, “Children of Media,” and Kaestle, Joseph Lancaster and the Monitorial School Movement. Quotes are in Kaestle, Joseph Lancaster and the Monitorial School Movement, 28, and Crain, 62. 41. Lancaster, Improvements in Education, 1807, 166.

Notes to Pages 136–154  225 42. Her letter is published in the Missionary Herald for the year 1821, vol. 17, p. 259; it apparently so delighted audiences that it is further described in vol. 18 (1822), no. 3, p. 139. 43. The letters are cited from the typescript in the John Howard Payne Papers (JHPP) at the Newberry Library, vol. 8, 1–​­62 (quote on p. 29). Unless otherwise indicated, all references to page numbers in the section “Letters” are to JHPP, vol. 8. For more on these letters, see Michael Coleman “American Indian School Pupils,” William McLoughlin (Cherokees and Missionaries), and Patricia Crain “Children of Media”; for an excellent and detailed reading of these letters, see Virginia Moore Carney, Eastern Band of Cherokee Women, 58–​­73. For more on the mission child, see Karen Sanchez-​­Eppler, last chapter of Dependent States. 44. See, for example, pp. 80–​­81, in which Carney cites a letter from 1838 from Cherokee Jane Bushyhead to a former classmate in which the association between Removal and death is once again made clear. 45. For a slightly different analysis of Nancy Reece’s letters, see Carney, 58–​­67. 46. Sophia Sawyer to Linda Ward, Feb. 12, 1825, Sophia Sawyer Correspondence, Clements Library. 47. The unnamed Cherokee boy writes this letter to his “heathen parents” from the Moravian mission at Spring Place in 1818. 48. Perdue, Cherokee Women, points out that it is the “cult of true womanhood” that most powerfully affected missionary rhetoric (159–​­60), while other considerations kept Cherokee families from sending their daughters (172–​­73). She emphasizes that enrollment numbers show very clearly that “more boys than girls attended mission schools” (172).

Chapter 4. The Foreign Mission School and the Writerly Indian Note to epigraph: JHPP, vol. 8, p. 63. 1. Ridge bought his watch in Philadelphia, and because of this additional expense he had to borrow from his traveling companion and official escort, Dr. Dempsey, who was to manage the funds for the four Cherokee boys who journeyed together in the fall of 1818 to finish their education up in Connecticut. The incident is reported in Wilkins, Cherokee Tragedy, 119–​­21; the poem is also reprinted there on pp. 123–​­24. 2. Reference in Wilkins, Cherokee Tragedy, 123–​­24; and Tiya Miles, Ties That Bind, 101–​­2. 3. The American Reader was originally published in 1812 and went through at least four editions. Daggett’s edition reprints “Upon a Watch” on p. 282. 4. See Karen Sanchez-​­Eppler, “Copying and Conversion,” and also the actual gift book in the collection of the Cornwall HS. 5. See Daggett’s introduction to The American Reader for this outlook. 6. Sanchez-​­Eppler cautions us about drawing too many conclusions about the “charity students” at the Foreign Mission School: she points out that “what we know of the histories of other students at the school . . . ​suggests that most of the young men educated in Cornwall came from elite and ambitious families in their own communities” (“Copying and Conversion,” 314).

226  Notes to Pages 155–164 7. William Cowper’s long poem is called “The Task”; this selection is from Book 5, “A Winter Morning’s Walk.” 8. JHPP, vol. 8, p. 76. 9. Although the Trail of Tears did not take place until 1838–​­39, the Cherokees had been faced with some variation on Indian Removal for much of the nineteenth century. Historians have characterized Cherokee Removal as having several crisis points: in 1810 about eight hundred Cherokees moved to land along the Arkansas River, and in 1817 and 1819 the Cherokees signed treaties exchanging land within the Cherokee Nation for land in what was later known as Indian Territory further west. In 1828 Andrew Jackson was elected to the presidency on a strong Indian Removal platform, and in 1830 the Indian Removal Act passed in Congress. For more on the events leading up to the Trail of Tears, see Willam L. Andrews, ed., Cherokee Removal: Before and After; McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence; Wilkins, Cherokee Tragedy; and John Ehle, Trail of Tears. 10. The Foreign Mission School, ambitious as it may have been, closed in 1825, while the Brainerd School lasted in Tennessee until Cherokee Removal and then was reconstituted in Oklahoma. While rhetorically the Brainerd School may have been at cross-​ ­purposes with Cherokee continuity, practically speaking, it was by far the longer-​­lasting and more effective of the two schools. 11. The Cherokee Phoenix identifies David Brown as the brother of Catharine Brown and adds, “The deceased was well-​­known to the Christian public before whom facts relating to his death will ere long, no doubt, be communicated” (Sept. 30, 1829, vol. 2, no. 26, p. 3). According to this very brief obituary, David Brown died September 14, 1829, at the Creek Path home of Reverend Potter. 12. Along with his translations of the Bible, the Cherokee Phoenix reports that David Brown and George Lowery were paid seventy-​­two dollars by the National Council of the Cherokee Nation to translate the laws of the Cherokee Nation from English into Cherokee in November 1828 (vol. 1, no. 38, p. 1). 13. Missionary Herald, 1821, vol. 17, 1st issue, p. 2. 14. The Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, A Native of Owhyhee, and a Member of The For­ eign Mission School; Who Died at Cornwall, Conn. Feb. 17, 1818, Aged 26 Years, by E. W. Dwight, memorialized the young Hawaiian man whose desire for a Western education inspired the founding of the school in Cornwall, Connecticut. This memoir, much like those of Catharine Brown and the other Cherokee students, was an early embodiment of an increasingly familiar structure: the early life of a single Native figure is briefly described until the inevitable meeting with missionaries through whom her or his desperate desire for Christian salvation and English learning is fulfilled. While the memoir ends with the death of the subject, the chapter or two preceding that death contain excerpts of a diary or letters, or both, through which this person’s Christian purity is fully displayed. What makes this memoir remarkable is that much of the first part is taken from an account Obookiah wrote before his death and is thus more autobiographical than the typical missionary memoir. 15. Missionary Herald, 1821, vol. 17, 1st issue, p. 2; italics in the original. 16. Missionary Herald, Aug. 1818, no. 8, p. 391.

Notes to Pages 164–169  227 17. Religious Intelligencer, 1821, vol. 6, p. 780. 18. Herman Daggett notebook, Foreign Mission School Collection, Cornwall HS. 19. Ibid. 20. Perdue, Cherokee Editor, 7−8. 21. Missionary Herald, 1824, vol. 20, no. 1, p. 4. 22. For a list of individual students and assessments of their conduct, see Starr, A His­ tory of Cornwall, Connecticut, 144–​­52. 23. “We the undersigned,” begins a terse comment in the semi-​­annual report of donations to the Foreign Mission School (no. 19, June 1825), “being a part of the Agency of the Foreign Mission School, and having heretofore stated to the public that we believed that no repetition of marriage connexion between any who have been members of the Foreign Mission School, and any female of the vicinity was to be expected; that no such connexion was contemplated, we had good reason at that time to believe from actual inquiry and thorough investigation. . . . ​But now we feel it to be our duty as honest men, to say to the public, that we have recently become acquainted with the fact, that a negotiation for a marriage has been carried on secretly between Elias Boudinot a young Cherokee . . . ​and Harriet R. Gold of this village; and that this negotiation which has been carried on, by secret and covered correspondence, has now become a settled engagement between the parties (5–​­6). 24. See Gaul’s excellent collection of letters and other documents surrounding the Boudinot-​­Gold marriage called To Marry an Indian; Perdue argues in Cherokee Editor that Boudinot’s relationship with missionaries was permanently marked by this episode in which Northern white racism was made apparent (10); Weierman puts this relationship in the context of interracial marriage in the nineteenth century in her excellent study One Nation, One Blood, the first chapter of which discusses the Ridge and Boudinot marriages at some length. There is also the suggestion that the Foreign Mission School experiment was quite simply collapsing under its own weight; by 1825 there was growing consensus that the gathering of such a diverse set of students together was not altogether effective; educating students at such different educational levels was costly, and bringing them to New England rather than expanding schooling options in their home countries was counterproductive (Starr, 137). 25. Jeremiah Evarts to John Cotton Smith, Boston, Nov. 8, 1826, Cornwall HS. 26. This David Brown should not be confused with the David Brown who was a prominent figure among the Arkansas Cherokees in the 1830s. For more information about this other David Brown see the brief reference in Izumi Ishii’s Bad Fruits of the Civilized Tree, p. 65. 27. Martin, “Crisscrossing,” 77. 28. Brown was also the clerk of a delegation to Washington, D.C., that included Sequoyah in 1828, through which Cherokees in Arkansas exchanged their territory for lands further west in part of what eventually became the territory of the Cherokee Nation after Removal in 1838. 29. In 1821 the Brainerd Journal contains the following reference to David Brown,

228  Notes to Pages 170–179 which is reprinted in the Missionary Herald: “David Brown set out this morning on his way, (if the Lord will,) to the Foreign Mission School. He goes by Savannah and Boston. We did expect Mr. Elijah Hicks to accompany him. He has waited several days, but, learning that Mr Hicks could not go soon, he intreated that we would permit him to go alone. It is indeed a long journey for a lad of 19 to undertake alone among strangers, and people of another nation. But no difficulty appears to him insurmountable, or even great, which comes in the way of his being prepared to preach that Gospel, which he has found to be so precious and powerful in his own case” (1821, vol. 17, no. 2, p. 45; Brainerd Journal, 172). 30. All references to The Little Osage Captive are from the second edition of 1824. 31. While David Brown is never identified by name in the Little Osage Captive itself, he is identified in the text as the brother of Catharine Brown who is currently (in 1822) studying at the Foreign Mission School and who is “between eighteen or twenty years of age” (90–​­91, 143). Furthermore, Catharine Brown mentions in her memoir that she prayed for him in 1817 while he was “on the Arkansas river” (Anderson 26). We also know that David and Catharine Brown’s father was on an expedition to explore the possibility of settling in Arkansas; this revelation puts David Brown in Arkansas right when Lydia Carter was captured. David Brown was also a student at Brainerd in 1819 when Lydia Carter was there; together, this evidence strongly suggests that the unnamed author of these letters is in fact David Brown. 32. I am indebted throughout this section to Sydnee Doolittle and Joel Martin. Joel Martin first brought my attention to David Brown’s speech in 2010, which he discussed at length in his important chapter “Crisscrossing Projects of Sovereignty and Conversion.” Our shared interest made for a delightful semester of scholarly exchange and argument in spring 2011. Doolittle’s work in her honors thesis at Auburn University, “Identity Crisis,” informs much of my discussion below, as do my conversations with Joel Martin about David Brown. I am grateful to both of these scholars for sharing their work and their ideas. 33. See Ridge’s letter to Gallatin (available in Green and Perdue’s Cherokee Removal: A Brief History in Documents, 35–​­44) and Elias Boudinot’s “An Address to the Whites” (available in Perdue’s Cherokee Editor, 65–​­84). 34. Unless otherwise noted, all references are to David Brown, “Address of Dewi Brown.” 35. See also Jean O’Brien’s recent observations in Firsting and Lasting about the refusal of nineteenth-​­century historians to include Native peoples in the modern nation state. While she is focused exclusively on New England histories, her observations bear directly on the assumptions facing Cherokees in the period. 36. This letter and several others were published in the Richmond Family Visitor (also simply called the Family Visitor), then the Niles Weekly Register and Religious Intelligencer. The September 2, 1825 letter is quoted in Thomas McKenney’s letter to the Secretary of War, James Barbour. The letters as quoted here are from the Religious Intelligencer 37. Sweet, 124–​­25; Konkle, 42–​­49. 38. Boudinot, “An Address to the Whites,” in Perdue, Cherokee Editor, 72; Ridge,

Notes to Pages 180–198  229 “Letter to Albert Gallatin,” in Green and Perdue, The Cherokee Removal, 35; Brown, “Letter from David Brown,” in the Religious Intelligencer, vol. 10, 311. 39. The letters were reproduced with a brief headnote in various missionary newspapers, originally in the Richmond Family Visitor but also in other publications such as the Religious Intelligencer. 40. For Sweet’s more detailed analysis of Brown’s letter, see American Georgics, 133–​­36. 41. Letter written in May 1823, reprinted in Bass, Cherokee Messenger, 40–​­42; emphasis mine. 42. JHPP, vol. 7, part 1, pp. 104–​­5. 43. Missionary Herald, November 1828, vol. 24, no. 11, p. 338.

After Words 1. For more on the dynamics of benevolence, see Susan Ryan’s excellent book, The Grammar of Good Intentions, especially the introduction (1−24) and the first chapter (25−45). 2. I am indebted here to Roxann Wheeler’s meticulous analysis of British eighteenth-​ ­century conceptions of race or racial thinking, which are inflected with older conceptions of religious and civil difference. She writes of the emergent nature of racial categories in the eighteenth century, explaining that “the concepts of Christianity, civility, and rank were not simply abstract categories of difference; they constituted visible distinctions that are difficult for us to recover today” (7) and that such distinctions carried at least as much weight as the visible markers of racial difference (like complexion and facial features) moderns take for granted. While Wheeler writes specifically of Britons, arguing for the need for a separate historiography of racial thinking in the various British colonies, her insights apply broadly to the issues at hand. 3. See O’Brien’s Firsting and Lasting, which lays out a pattern of thought through which histories of New England systematically erase Native Americans in the nineteenth century. 4. J. Brooks, Collected Writings, 56. 5. Missionary Herald, March 1822, vol. 18, no. 3, p. 139. 6. The relationship of the syllabary to the English alphabet is one that is hotly contested among modern scholars. The issue is largely related to the claim by some that Samuel Worcester had a major role in developing and producing the Cherokee syllabary and that the syllabary was functionally coopted by the missionary establishment. I do not mean to suggest here that Worcester produced the syllabary—​­far from it. However, I do want to suggest that certain graphemes of the syllabary were influenced by the graphemes of the English alphabet. Rather than simply reproducing that alphabet, Sequoyah (along with early Cherokee adopters of the syllabary, like Charles Hicks, George Lowery, David Brown, and Elias Boudinot) fundamentally altered elements of the English alphabet to serve a Cherokee purpose. For more on this debate see Willard Walker and James Sarbaugh’s “The

230  Notes to Pages 199–210 Early History of the Cherokee Syllabary”; Ellen Cushman, “The Cherokee Syllabary from Script to Print”; and William Joseph Thomas, “Creating Cherokee Print.” 7. Wilkins, 140; Bender, 25–​­26; Bass, 75. 8. McLoughlin, Cherokees and Missionaries, 185–​­86. 9. Individuals from Samuel Worcester on have commented on the relationship of the syllabary to English letters. For more on this commentary see Thomas, p. 5, and Cushman, p. 640. 10. Perdue, Cherokee Editor, 87–​­88. 11. The Acts of the Apostles appeared in 1833. The Gospel of John and Luke as well as the Epistles of John, Paul to Timothy, and Peter appeared from 1838 to 1848 in Park Hill, the Cherokee Nation in what is now Oklahoma (Perdue, Cherokee Editor, p. 36, n. 32), after Removal. Worcester and Boudinot had already left New Echota in the East in 1835 and 1837, respectively, for their new home in what would become Oklahoma. 12. For more on John Huss see McLoughlin, Cherokees and Missionaries, 131, 133, 205–​ ­6, 306–​­7, and 339; and R. Walker, 126–​­33, 238–​­39. While clearly invested in the missionary values of Brainerd, Huss maintained a strong connection to traditional Cherokees that at times confused and unsettled the missionaries of Brainerd. 13. See Bender, 128–​­29, for dialect variations in modern Eastern Band Cherokee speakers and syllabary pronunciations. Brown, after all, was from the northern Alabama region, hundreds of miles from where Boudinot was raised in northwestern Georgia and from where the Brainerd Mission was located in southern Tennessee. 14. For more on John Huss (including a sermon he wrote in the syllabary), see Walker, 126–​­33. 15. Gaul, To Marry an Indian, 161. 16. In May 1829 Brown was offered a position as an agent for the Cherokee Phoenix, but he declined owing to ill health (Cherokee Phoenix, vol. 2, no. 8, p. 2). A letter from John Ross to the Committee and Council of the Cherokee Nation, November 4, 1829, details a salary negotiation between himself and Elias Boudinot concerning his term as editor of the Cherokee Phoenix. Ross explains that Boudinot refused to continue serving as editor of the Cherokee Phoenix without an increase in salary and an assistant translator, terms Ross initially refused. He writes, “I then offered the appointment to Mr David Brown, and he refused to accept it, on account of the bad state of his health” (JHPP, vol 7, part 1, p. 104); Ross eventually met Boudinot’s terms, and he continued as editor until 1832. 17. L. Murray, To Do Good, 26. 18. See Bannet, Empire of Letters, and Dierks, In My Power. 19. L. Murray, To Do Good, 192–​­93, 20. Ibid., quotes on pp. 201 and 193. 21. Jacob Fowler to Samson Occom, December 11, 1772, CHS. 22. Gaul, To Marry an Indian, 154–​­55. All other page numbers here refer to this same publication.

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Index

Account books, 33, 74, 81, 84−85, 87, 205; accounts, 34, 72 Aesthetic, 119, 126, 150, 152, 178, 181−82, 187−88 Alabama, 125, 146, 167, 179, 230 Algonquian, 12, 23−24, 26, 91, 103, 106, 191 Alphabet, 15−16, 18, 31, 130−33, 193−96, 198, 222, 229 Alphabetic literacy, 15, 21−23, 41, 133, 195. See also English literacy Amanuensis, 79, 85, 205 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), 6, 28, 30, 31, 111−14, 118, 120, 124, 126, 131, 133, 158, 160, 168, 194, 201, 204 American Revolution, 10, 112, 212 Ames, Lucy, 134, 137−45, 148 Anderson, Rufus, 123, 200−201 Andover Theological Seminary, 159, 168, 169, 199 Anniversary exercise, 165−66 Apess, William, 73 Appearance, 15, 27, 58, 121, 125, 165 Appendix, 81, 119, 123, 147, 170−71, 183 Arch, John, 31, 119, 160, 184−87, 196−200, 206. See also Memoir of John Arch Archive, x, 29, 62, 68, 72, 95, 105, 174, 208 Arithmetic, 11, 17, 18, 52, 116, 131, 133, 163. See also Mathematics Arkansas, 13, 156, 165, 167, 168, 179, 182, 188, 204, 221 Avery, David, 27 Bannet, Eve Tavor, 17 Baptist, 6, 9 Bass, Althea, 113, 200 Bearskin coat, 34, 36 Bell, 21, 81, 115, 133, 153, 164, 219 Bellamy, Joseph, 56

Bellin, Joshua David, 117, 223 Bemis, Stephen, 19 Benefactor, 6, 29, 38−42, 53, 60, 62, 65, 72, 95, 96, 103, 120, 121, 123, 127, 128, 148, 169, 187, 190−91, 208, 218−19. See also Funding agency Benevolence. See Charity Bergland, Renée, 49 Boarding schools, 2, 4, 5, 109−10, 124, 191−93, 205−6; general history of, 9−14, 20−21, 23−24, 26, 28−29, Stockbridge Boarding School, 36−37, 42−43, 46−47, Jonathan Edwards and Stockbridge Boarding School, 50−53, 56, Moor’s Charity School, 12, 29, 33−35, 64−65, 74, 77−88; Brainerd Boarding School, 112, 114−17, 128−31, 153; Foreign Mission School, 3, 13, 28, 31, 142−44, 150, 161−67, 169, 187−89 Bohaker, Heidi, 22 Bonnet, 122 Boone, Elizabeth, 22 Boudinot, Elias (Cherokee), 13, 14, 22, 31, 157, 159, 161−63, 165, 167, 177, 189, 194, 199−200, 203−4, 208−9, 227, 230; “An Address to the Whites,” 172 Bragdon, Kathleen, 23 Brainerd, David, 30, 109−13, 118, 124, 129 Brainerd, John, 11, 24, 57, 110 Brainerd Journal, 169, 187 Brainerd Mission, 13, 30−31, 112−14, 116, 121, 122, 127, 128, 130, 135, 137, 145−48, 158, 168, 179, 186, 189, 195, 201 Brandt, Deborah, 21, 211 Brant, Joseph, 63 British audience, 6, 36, 39 Brooks, Joanna, 64, 212 Brooks, Lisa, 23, 86, 88, 207 Brothertown, 12, 29, 63, 102−5, 107, 207 Butrick, Daniel, 116, 168, 185, 194

244  Index Calvin, Hezekiah, 34, 74, 76, 85, 87, 91, 95, 152, 188 Calvinist, 6, 13, 94, 104, 212 Captivity narrative, 121 Carney, Virginia Moore, 117, 126, 136 Carriage, 153 Carter, Lydia, 30, 119–21, 123, 124, 127–29, 134, 147, 158. See also Little Osage Captive Catechism, 15, 16, 51, 80 Catholic, 6, 94 Chamberlain, Theophilus, 41, 74, 219 Chamberlain, William, 122 Charity, 5, 10–13, 35–37, 45−46, 53, 65, 66, 70, 73, 88, 98, 111, 118, 128, 139, 143, 146, 175, 190–91, 199 Charity education. See Missionary education Charity students, 11, 12, 20, 75, 85, 154 Charlestown, Rhode Island, 75, 87 Chattanooga, 146 Cherokee Bible, 198, 200−204 Cherokee language, 22, 31, 117, 122, 160, 164, 168, 173, 194–96 Cherokee Nation, 13, 28, 31, 112, 113, 117, 120, 137, 141, 146, 150, 154, 157, 159, 160, 168, 173, 176, 177, 179, 182, 184, 185, 188, 191, 194, 199; Cherokee National Council, 129, 160, 167 Cherokee Phoenix, and Indians’ Advocate, 117, 160, 184, 204 Cherokee Removal. See Indian Removal Chickamauga, 112−13, 146, 221; Chickamauga consciousness, 113 Clap, Nathan, 95 Class rank, 130−31 Clelland, Robert, 57, 78 Clock, 75, 81, 153−54 Cloth, 33−34, 87, 142−43 Clothing, 22, 33, 34, 62, 72, 115−16, 125, 127, 130, 135, 153, 180 Cohen, Matt, 22 College. See Seminary Colman, Benjamin, 45, 46, 216 Commonplace book, 152 Common school. See Grammar school Comprehension, 15−16, 27, 35, 51−52, 194−95 Confessions, 4, 14, 77, 85, 95, 217 Congregationalism, 5, 6, 9, 13, 111, 161 Connecticut, 1, 20, 29, 30, 36, 57, 64, 68, 76−77, 89, 103, 105, 208 Connecticut Board of Correspondents, 89 Copybook, 16

Copying, 8, 17, 83, 85, 149, 152–57, 178, 183, 188, 202 Cornelius, Elias, 120, 121, 147 Cornwall, Connecticut, 2, 13−14, 28, 31, 112, 150, 152−53, 156−57, 167, 179, 188, 192, 208 Cowper, William, 154 Crain, Patricia, 133, 225 Creek Path, 112, 125, 167, 169, 179, 183, 185 Creek War, 154 Crop failure, 89 Cultivation, 114, 119, 222 Daggett, Herman, 152, 154, 171 Dame school, 16–18, 24, 25 Dartmouth College, 12, 14, 29, 35, 107, 161 Dartmouth, Lord, 40−41, 109−10 Davidson, Cathy, 8 Deake, Edward, 95 Death, 30, 40, 83, 117, 119−20, 122–27, 136−37, 139, 146−47, 166, 171, 173, 192, 208 Deloria, Vine, Jr., 8 Devil, 92; Indian devil, 93 Diary, 19, 25, 96, 109, 187, 226 Dierks, Konstantin, 17, 214 Diplomacy, 36, 87 Discipline, 24, 40, 80, 83, 114, 125 Divination, 174 Dragging Canoe, 112 Drunkenness, 89, 101, 166 Dutch, 27, 94 Dwight, Abigail, 42−43, 48, 53, 54 Dwight, Joseph, 10, 43, 48, 53, 54 Dwight Mission, 179 Edwards, Jonathan, Jr., 49−50 Eliot, John, 9, 11, 119 English literacy, 4, 8, 15, 21–23, 42, 78, 105, 133, 137, 194, 195, 198, 205. See also Alphabetic literacy English missionaries, 6, 14, 21, 28, 38, 42, 60, 63, 96, 103, 118, 168, 186, 194, 204 Europeans, 173, 175−76 Evangelicalism, 1−2, 5, 30, 113, 117, 124, 127, 160, 187−88 Evarts, Jeremiah, 124, 167, 171, 203 Family, 22, 23, 49−50, 79, 125, 137, 139, 142−43, 206, 208−9; Brown family, 160, 167–69, 171, 179, 188, 208; Occom family, 65–73, 87; rhetoric of, 31, 114−16, 119−23,

Index  245 126, 127, 129, 134, 135, 145−47, 158, 159, 184, 185; Williams family, 53–55 Farmer, 38, 46, 100, 156, 157 Farmington, Connecticut, 25−26, 30, 97, 102−3, 105, 207 Female-­centered rhetoric, 31, 124 Female literacy rate, 17 Fish, Joseph, 25 Fort Hunter, 91 Forts, 58 Fowler, David, 12, 34, 41, 60−62, 76, 83, 84, 89, 93, 95, 102 Fowler, Jacob, 11, 14, 25, 85, 207, 208 French Jesuits. See Catholic Friendship, 73, 134, 139, 145, 158, 193, 209 Funding agency, 24, 25, 109 Garrett, Hannah, 34, 217 Gaul, Theresa Strouth, 117, 159, 167, 208 Gentleman, 35, 85, 142, 154 Geography, 11, 17, 18, 33, 52, 116, 134, 146, 163, 188 Georgia, 13, 141−42, 156 Georgia Guard, 141 Gifford, Andrew, 65 Gift book. See Commonplace book Global Christianity, 13, 30, 111, 117, 148, 158, 161, 162, 165 Gold, Harriet, 13, 167, 177−78, 208−9 Gookin, Daniel, 9 Grammar, 17, 18, 33, 34, 116, 134, 163, 196, 201−2 Grammar school, 16−18, 20 “Grand Design” (Wheelock’s), 11, 12, 27, 40, 59, 62, 67, 86 Great Awakening, 2, 14, 54, 111; Second Great Awakening, 5, 14, 28, 111 Greek, 11, 17, 33, 34, 162, 163, 169, 199, 202 Guess, George. See Sequoyah Handwriting, 16, 40, 71, 83−86, 125, 197, 219; handwriting exercises, 30, 39, 41, 83 Harland, Thomas, 74 Hawley, Gideon, 55 Heathenism, 13, 112 Hebrew, 17, 33, 163, 169, 199 Hicks, Charles, 113, 229 Hierarchy, 14, 98 Hollis, Isaac, 41, 45−47, 51, 53, 55, 216; Hollis fund, 45, 56 Homesickness, 91

Horn, 33, 115, 153 Housatonic, 10, 45, 156 Hoyt, Ard, 122 Hubbard, Thomas, 50 Humble, humility, 61−62, 66, 68, 70, 71, 82, 85, 92, 95−99, 101, 103, 147, 185, 202 Hunting, 26, 59, 76, 184−85 Huron, 27 Huss, John, 201, 203, 230 Illiterate, 69, 101 Improvement, 4, 131, 138, 159, 178−82, 196, 202 Indentured servitude, 23, 79; indenture contracts, 15, 23 Indian Removal, 13, 49, 107, 112−13, 116, 119, 121, 136−37, 140−42, 144, 145, 149, 160, 168, 172, 178−80, 182, 188, 221, 226 Industry, 46, 77, 114, 115, 176, 180 Ink, 4, 16−17, 33, 72, 84, 138 Interpreter, 61, 87, 90, 162−63, 165, 196 Iroquois, 9, 10, 11, 12, 26, 27, 36, 37, 44, 48, 50, 54, 58, 76, 89, 93, 95, 172, 193−95 Jackson, Andrew, 140, 226 Jewett, David, 101 Johnson, Amy, 79 Johnson, Betsy, 78−79 Johnson, Joseph (father), 78−79, 205 Johnson, William, 89, 104, 106 Jones, Nahum, 18, 27 Justice, Daniel Heath, 73, 112 Kaestle, Carl, 20, 133 Kanajohare, 89, 93 Kellogg, Martin, 43, 47, 54 King Philip’s War, 9 Kirkland, Samuel, 34, 61, 62, 71, 74, 76, 89, 90, 93−95, 102, 110 Konkapot, 44, 46 Konkle, Maureen, 177, 178 Labor, 18, 19, 40, 46, 79, 115, 160, 186, 188, 191 Lancaster, Joseph, 21, 129, 131, 133−34, 224 Lancastrian method, 28, 30, 31, 114, 129−34, 146, 153, 193, 224 Latin, 11, 17, 33, 34, 163, 191 Law of Gratitude, 97−98 Lebanon, Connecticut, 75, 83, 87, 95, 103 Lepore, Jill, 188, 200−201, 203 Literacy instruction, 15−16, 23, 24, 131; “Literacy Sponsor,” 21

246  Index Little Osage Captive, 119−23, 127, 147, 161, 169−72, 184, 185, 228 Long Island, 11, 25, 64, 69, 90 Lowery, George, 168, 184, 200−202, 207 Lowery, John, 168 Lowery, Rachel, 168, 207 Lyons, Scott, 7, 219 Main, Gloria, 15 Mansion, 155, 156, 161, 170 Martha’s Vineyard, 9, 79, 213 Martin, Joel, 117, 186, 228 Masculinized rhetoric, 158, 186 Massachusett language, 9, 23 Mathematics, 17, 18, 188. See also Arithmetic Mayhew, Experience, 9, 119 McClelland, Robert. See Clelland, Robert Memoir of Catharine Brown, 119, 123−27, 134, 135, 184 Memoir of John Arch, 119, 184−87. See also John Arch Memoirs of Mrs. Harriet Newell, 123−26 Memorization, 15–17, 130 Methodist, 6, 9 Metropole, 35 Middle-­class America, 20, 21, 11, 127, 128, 160, 174, 181, 182 Miles, Tiya, 154 Missionary culture, 1, 5, 7, 13, 76, 110, 112, 146, 158, 160, 194, 204, 206 Missionary education. 1, 2, 5, 8−15, 24, 30, 35, 189, 205. See also Charity students Missionary Herald, 120, 160−62, 166, 169, 171, 184, 186 Missionary ideology, 110, 117, 187 Missionary Society, 30, 78, 111, 113, 189, 194, 201, 204. See also ABCFM; New England Company; SPG; SSPCK Mohawk, 10, 27, 36, 37, 40, 50, 54−56, 74, 83, 87, 91, 172, 216−17 Mohegan, 12, 14, 25, 30, 34, 64, 65, 76, 78, 79, 87, 88, 93, 96, 99−104, 106−7, 205, 207, 208 Mohican, 10, 45, 50 Monaghan, E. Jennifer, 7, 83, 84 Monitor, 130−31, 133, 134, 150, 153, 154, 224 Montaukett, 11, 14, 25, 34, 60, 64, 85, 87, 89, 90, 193, 207. See also Long Island Moor’s Charity School. See Boarding schools Moran, Gerald, 20 Moravian, 6, 9, 153

Murray, Laura, 85, 108 Music, 52. See also Singing Narragansetts, 95 Native missionaries, 11, 38 New England Company, 6, 9, 212 New Haven, 44, 105 New Jersey, 87, 109, 110 New London, 78, 87 New Stockbridge, 12 New York (upstate), 10, 27, 74, 76, 88, 94, 103, 105, 109, 207 Newspaper, 22, 141, 168, 188, 204 Northampton, 53, 54 Northrup, John, 164 Northrup, Sarah, 13, 167, 177, 208 Nostalgia, 30, 61 Obedience, 21, 81, 114, 129 Obligation, 4, 15, 31, 38, 45, 67, 100, 105, 106, 111, 128, 136, 144, 155, 175 Obookiah, Henry, 162, 226 O’Brien, Jean, 192, 228 Occom, Aaron, 12, 75 Occom, Mary (Fowler), 64, 67, 69−72, 207 Occom, Samson, 11−12, 14, 20, 22, 24−26, 29, 31, 34, 57, 63, 71, 73, 76−79, 87−89, 96, 97, 103−8, 110, 161, 193−94, 205−8; fundraising trip to Great Britain, 12, 24, 38, 39, 56, 60, 63−70, 72, 95 Old Settlers, 168 Oliver, Andrew, 39−40, 96, 105 Oneida, 10, 12, 30, 36, 37, 61, 62, 76, 88−95, 99, 102−4 Onondaga, 102 Order (instruction), 47, 66, 90, 194 Order (organization), 21, 22, 62, 70, 75, 77, 79−84, 93, 114, 130, 132, 133, 138, 154, 180, 181, 194, 197, 217 Osage 119−22, 129, 165, 169−70, 172. See also Little Osage Captive Owens, Pamela Jean, 201−3 Pan-­Indian community, 2, 96, 103 Panoplist, 124, 203, 222 Panoplist and Missionary Herald, 161, 222 Paper, 4, 16−17, 33, 37, 60, 72, 83, 85, 95, 118, 128, 131, 133, 141, 193 Passive, 6−8, 14, 39, 40, 46, 48, 57, 60, 69, 70, 120, 126, 157, 159, 187, 191, 192; passive voice, 180, 182

Index  247 Paternalism, 48, 64−72 Peck, Moses, 74, 218−19 Pelham, Cornelia, 127 Pen (quill pen), 16−17, 20, 31, 33, 84, 85, 131, 133, 186, 193 Penknife, 4, 16, 33 Penmanship, 83−85, 152, 187. See also Handwriting Pequots, 25, 34, 89 Perdue, Theda, 148, 167, 200 Personal sacrifice, 30, 111, 119−20 Physical punishment, 91 Piano, 140 Pickering, John, 168 Pickering language system, 201, 194−96, 198, 199, 201−4 Pious sentiment, 136, 152, 157 Pity, 13, 62, 97, 98, 118, 119, 121, 135, 192 Plantation, 154, 156 Pocket watch. See Watch Post office, 14, 17 Prayers, 80, 114, 115, 147, 164, 165 Praying Town, 9 Presbyterian, 6, 64, 111 Printing press, 117, 140 Pronunciation, 16, 125, 163, 197, 203 Providence, Rhode Island, 91, 99 Puerto Rico, 106 Pumshire, John, 11, 87 Readerly Indian, 6−7, 29, 30, 32, 35, 39, 40, 42, 48, 62−65, 67, 70, 72, 73, 78, 118, 119, 121, 123, 124, 126−29, 147, 148, 157, 159, 185, 186, 189, 192 Reece, Charles, 113, 117, 145 Reece, Nancy, 116, 137−45, 148 Religious Remembrancer, 165 Removal. See Indian Removal Repetition, 15, 16, 28, 40, 78, 84, 90, 123, 130, 131, 133, 144 Revenge, 170, 176 Rhetoric, 17, 29, 36, 42, 43, 46, 47, 49, 54, 82, 99, 103, 107, 111−12, 119−20, 127, 136, 141, 145−48, 157−60, 163, 169, 172, 174, 176, 178, 180, 182−83, 186, 188, 190, 191, 196 Rhetorical Sovereignty, 7 Richmond Family Visitor, 178, 228 Ridge, John, 13, 14, 31, 150−57, 159, 161, 165, 167, 177, 178, 182−83, 188, 189, 194, 208; “Letter to Albert Gallatin,” 172

Ridge, Major, 113, 153−54 Ross, John, 113, 177, 184, 204 Sabbath School. See Sunday School Sanchez-­Eppler, Karen, 111, 164−66 Sand, 133 Savage, savagery, 38, 40, 41, 52, 58−59, 62, 75, 92, 93, 97−99, 121, 165, 181, 184, 186 Sawyer, Sophia, 115−16, 138 Schoolmaster, 2, 17, 25−26, 50, 52−53, 57, 58, 60, 74−76, 78, 83, 89, 93, 94 Secutor, Mary, 86 Seeman, Erik, 119, 244 Seminary, 17, 20, 28, 44, 53, 63, 79, 158, 161 Sequoyah, 31−32, 160, 168, 184, 196−201, 204 Sergeant, John, 9−11, 23, 29, 36, 39, 42−48, 54, 58, 63, 80, 110 Shaw, Captain, 66, 71 Showanun, 44 Silence, 62, 64, 77−78, 95−96, 132, 205, 210 Silverman, David, 79 Simon, Abraham, 25 Simon, Emanuel, 207 Simon, Sarah, 86 Singing, 26, 33, 83, 90, 103, 104, 115, 165 Slaveholder, 154, 155 Smallpox, 61, 66, 98 Smith, John, 40, 80−81 Smith, Mark, 154 Smith, Titus, 27 Society for Propagating the Gospel (SPG), 6, 25, 212 Society in Scotland for Propagating the Christian Knowledge (SSPCK), 109 Sovereignty, 7, 106, 113, 127, 159, 171, 178, 189, 194 Spectrality, 49 Spelling book, 18, 90, 116, 195 Spring Place, 153 Starr, Edward C., 162–64, 166 Steele, Anne, 151 Stockbridge Nation, 1−2, 10, 36, 42, 50, 111 Stockbridge school, 10−12, 29, 36, 37, 39, 44−50, 53, 56, 73, 111, 131, 161 Stockbridge, town of, 9−10, 26, 39, 41, 43, 49, 53, 54, 58, 110 Storrs, Miriam, 86, 217 Structure, 5, 14, 21, 30, 37, 62, 75, 78, 79, 81, 88, 100, 105, 114, 124, 129, 131, 145, 148, 170, 173, 181, 199, 206 Sunday School, 137, 141−43

248  Index Surveyor’s map, 2−3 Sweet, Timothy, 178, 182 Sweetland, Eleazar, 81−82 Syllabary, 31, 32, 107, 117, 160, 168−69, 196−205, 209, 229 Syllables, 15, 16, 18, 90, 131, 194−95 Syntax, 138, 144 Szasz, Margaret, 86 Tennessee, 13, 28, 30, 112, 146, 180, 185 Textbook, 16, 134 Thornton, John, 65 Thornton, Tamara Plakins, 16, 84 Tidiness, 114, 181−82 Time, 74−77, 80−81 Tomahawk, 175−76, 179, 180 Trail of Tears, 31, 226. See also Indian Removal Transatlantic community, 17, 36, 45 Transcribing, 26, 203 Translation, 28, 49, 157, 159, 168, 178−79, 184, 195, 199−204 Treaty of New Echota, 154 Trumbull, Jonathan, 96 Tuscarora, 36 Tuttle, Sarah, 119, 127−28 Ulrich, Laurel, 5, 7 Umpachenee, 44, 46 Uncas, Ben, 25, 78 Universal alphabet, 195. See also Pickering language system Usher, 89 Valley aristocracy, 48, 216 Ventriloquize, 48, 49 Vinovskis, Maris, 20 Violence, 58, 82, 148 Virtue, 38, 108, 174, 176, 216 Waistcoats, 34, 75 Wampy, Elijah, 105 Wandering, 99−100

War, 10, 46−47, 50, 113, 154, 165, 170, 175−76, 179−80 Warkentin, Germaine, 22 Warrior, 160, 170−72, 174, 176 Warrior, Robert Allen, 73 Watch, 34, 74−77, 105, 150−55, 157, 178, 188, 218−19, 225 Wauby, Samson, 25 Weaver, Jace, 73 Weierman, Karen Woods, 167 West Indies, 99, 106 Wheelock, Eleazar (English minister), 2, 10−12, 23−24, 27−29, 33−41, 52, 74, 109−10, 114, 161, 192, 205−6; and Joseph Johnson, 76−78, 81−89, 91−103, 106−8; Narratives, 56−63, 77, 80−81, 90, 119, 127; and Mary Occom, 64, 66−73 Wheelock, Eleazar (Stockbridge student), 1−2, 4 Wheelock, Ralph, 74, 89−91, 94, 102 Whitaker, Nathaniel, 12, 56, 60, 63−65, 67, 68, 95 Whitaker, Sarah, 66, 68, 70, 71 Whitefield, George (Catitugegwhonhale: Ojibwe student), 1−4 Whitefield, George (English minister), 1−2, 4 White missionaries, See English missionaries Wigwam, 37, 78 “Wilderness Indian,” 40−42, 72 Williams clan, 10, 43, 48−49, 53−55 Williams, Elisha, 55 Williams, Ephraim, 43 Wills Valley, 167 Woodbridge, Timothy, 26, 44, 45, 48, 116 Woodward, Beza, 69−71, 85 Woolley, Jacob, 11, 34, 60−62, 64 Worcester, Samuel, 113, 116, 129, 197, 200−204 Word recognition, 15−16, 131 Writerly Indian, 6−7, 29−30, 32, 35, 49, 51, 56, 64, 70, 73, 74, 78, 106, 126−28, 134, 146, 157, 159, 183, 188, 189, 192 Wyoggs, Sarah (daughter), 34, 87 Wyoggs, Sarah (mother), 87, 205−6

Acknowledgments

This project has been more than a decade in the making, and along the way I have benefited from the support of both institutions and individuals. The American Antiquarian Society (AAS), the Connecticut Historical Society, the Cornwall Historical Society, Dartmouth College, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Massachusetts Archive, Newberry Library, the New York Public Library, and the Stockbridge Town Library opened their resources to me in ways that still astonish and gratify me: individual archivists helped me track down sources and even on occasion patiently made their archives available to me by staying open late or e-​­mailing me responses to odd questions. My special thanks go to Ann Schillinger and Dinny Greene at the Cornwall Historical Society and Caroline Sloat, Tom Knoles, and Marie Lamoureux at the American Antiquarian Society, all of whom reminded me of how intellectual communities can be formed and maintained through the generosity of a handful of people. A yearlong grant from the American Council of Learned Societies in 2003, a summer research grant from the AAS in 2006, and summer grants from Auburn University in 2002, 2005, and 2009 as well as a semester off in 2007 allowed me to develop my research and write several chapters. Three research assistants at Auburn helped me with this project. Stacey Dearing helped me corral sources and revise my bibliography, while Kirsten Iden provided invaluable support for my SEA responsibilities, freeing up just enough time to keep this project going at a particularly crucial moment. Taylor Bowman saved my sanity in the final stages by tracking down some last minute references. I thank them all not only for their hard work but also for their enthusiasm and collegiality. Portions of the introduction and first chapter are reprinted from New England Quarterly, 79:3, 2006: 387–​­412. Portions of chapter 2 were previously published in “Print Culture and the Power of Native Literacy in California and New England Missions” in Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of

250  Acknowledgments

Early America’s Religious Landscape, edited by Joel Martin and Mark Nichols, 201–​­22 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). In the course of writing this book I have accumulated a great many debts of friendship and scholarship that I happily acknowledge. Ralph Bauer, Heidi Bohaker, Matt Cohen, Patricia Crain, Betty Donahue, Greg Dowd, Stephanie Fielding, Stephanie Fitzgerald, Theresa Strouth Gaul, Sandra Gustafson, Karen Kupperman, Dan Mandell, Joel Martin, E. Jennifer Monaghan, Jean O’Brien-​ ­Kehoe, Barry O’Connell, Karen Sanchez-​­Eppler, Jodi Schorb, Ivy Schweitzer, Erik Seeman, David Shields, David Silverman, and Rachel Wheeler all shaped this project in diverse ways. Kristina Bross and Joanna Brooks inspired me with their friendship and generosity. Various people have read and commented on individual chapters or the entire manuscript: I am deeply grateful to them. They include Joanna Brooks, Kristina Bross, Betty Donahue, Sydnee Doolittle, Theresa Strouth Gaul, Joel Martin, and Rachel Wheeler. Colleagues at Auburn have been generous with their time and expertise. Paula Backscheider was unstinting in her enthusiasm for this project. Kevin Roozen helped me formulate my thoughts about Readerly and Writerly Indians very early in the writing of this book, usefully pointing me to sources I would have otherwise overlooked. And finally my colleague Robin Sabino guided me through unfamiliar linguistic territory, patiently reading over my epilogue and helping me frame my argument about David Brown and the Cherokee syllabary. Chantel Acevedo, Craig Bertolet, Kathryn Braund, and James Ryan provided a most supportive and congenial writing environment at Auburn University. And of course James Truman, my partner in every sense, read the entire manuscript—​­most of it more than once. At the University of Pennsylvania Press I am grateful to Jerry Singerman, who has been a most patient editor. When we first talked in 2003, I assured him I would take no more than a year or so to finish up. All these years later he has been as gracious and supportive an editor as anyone could ever wish for. Caroline Winschel has most helpfully responded to my various queries with patience and goodwill, and Noreen O’Connor-​­Abel has been a patient and supportive project editor. I am most grateful to have had two excellent readers for the press, Laura Stevens and Matt Cohen. Both provided me with detailed, careful readings of the book, which is unquestionably better for their suggestions. Most of all, my thanks go to my family. Without James, Anna, and Cameron none of this makes any sense. When I started this project my children were babies; at its conclusion Anna could clarify the sometimes mystifying

Acknowledgments  251

eighteenth-​­century horseback-​­riding references I encountered in letters and journals, while Cameron shared his nearly virtuoso talents with a blender and sustained me with a daily mango or berry smoothie as I revised the manuscript. James Truman has been my beloved partner in all things. My parents, Hugo and Meta Wyss, shared their home in Cornwall, Connecticut, with us for weeks on end, while the Eingorns in New York and Catherine Truman in Boston were all I could ever ask for in an extended family. John and Dorothy Truman shared their love of travel and adventure with my children, spiriting them away for days or weeks at a time while I wrote. Scott Colville and Perry Peters taught me about love, commitment, and family in this immensely difficult year. My distance from my kin in New England here in my Alabama home gives this book a special resonance for me, as does the understanding of the ways ties are forged and maintained by letters (mostly electronic today) in families and among communities.