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  • 6 - Indigenous Literacies in Early New England

  • from Part I - Traces and Removals (Pre-1870s)
  • Edited by Melanie Benson Taylor, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Native American Literature
  • Published online: 18 September 2020
  • Print publication: 17 September 2020, pp 113-128

  • Summary

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