The Complete Works of Captain John Smith, 1580-1631

Book Description

A study of cultural encounter, this book takes a fresh look at the much ignored and often misunderstood experience of Christian Indians in early America. Focusing on New England missionary settlements from the mid-seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries, Hilary E. Wyss examines the ways in which Native American converts to Christianity developed their own distinct identity within the context of a colonial culture.

With an approach that weaves together literature, religious studies, and ethno-history, Wyss grounds her work in the analysis of a rarely read body of "autobiographical" writings by Christian Indians, including letters, journal entries, and religious confessions. She then juxtaposes these documents to the writings of better known Native Americans like Samson Occom as well as to the published works of Anglo-Americans, such as Mary Rowlandson's famous captivity narrative and Eleazor Wheelock's accounts of his charity schools.

In their search for ostensibly "authentic" Native voices, scholars have tended to overlook the writings of Christian Indians. Yet, Wyss argues, these texts reveal the emergence of a dynamic Native American identity through Christianity. More specifically, they show how the active appropriation of New England Protestantism contributed to the formation of a particular Indian identity that resisted colonialism by using its language against itself.

Customer Reviews:

"Righting" Indians.......2001-10-28

George Orwell was credited with first saying that "history is written by the winners." This statement has certainly held true when trying to gain an understanding of what life was like for Native Americans during the first 200 years of their cultural clash with the newly arrived and always arriving Europeans. As one whose previous knowledge of Indians was limited to biographies of men like Tecumseh, the Prophet, and Sitting Bull (books written using, at best, the regimental histories of the "winners" as the primary source of material), Writing Indians truly opened my eyes to what many Native Americans really experienced during the early years of cohabitation when they were introduced to Christianity.

The author was extremely creative in bringing the individual stories out one-by-one using the scattered writings left by the Native Americans and allowing the reader to combine the many distant voices into one chorus which, when coupled with the more familiar writings of the "winners", spoke for several generations. In my past studies of Native Americans, I seldom could picture the people outside the boundaries of either the battlefield or the front yard of some Territorial Governor (signing a meaningless treaty). This book is wonderful in that it patches together the writings of a surprising number of individuals who were in the process of developing a unique identity grounded in two cultures. It reveals the intelligence of the Natives as they sought to keep what they viewed as the better elements of their culture by appealing to thier visitors in the familair words and ideas contained in Christian thought. Wyss could only succeed in this by drawing on a great deal of reseach.

Book Description

The house at Bethel had, both in front and in rear, a portico, or, as it was more humbly, and therefore more appropriately named, a shed; that in the rear, was a sort of adjunct to the kitchen, and one end of it was enclosed for the purpose of a bed-room, and occupied by Magawisca. Everell found Digby sitting at the other extremity of this portico; his position was prudently chosen. The moon was high, and the heavens clear, and there concealed and sheltered by the shadow of the roof, he could, without being seen, command the whole extent of cleared ground that bordered on the forest, whence the foe would come, if he came at all.

Customer Reviews:

It is a Romance!.......2007-01-14

Hope Leslie is an enjoyable tale that was remarkable in its day. The women characters are strong and it brought attention to racial issues with the Native Americans. The author wrote it at a time when most people thought nothing about the way Native Americans were treated. But don't forget, this book is a romance. That means that parts of it, just like Last of the Mohicans, are unrealistic. However, I felt this story was much better than Last of the Mohicans, because Sedgwick's characters actually have more depth to them. Cooper seems to care more about the American landscape than he does about his characters interactions, whereas Sedgwick addresses matters of the heart.

Not Bad.......2006-02-14

A much better read the The Last of the Mohicans, this book is actually presented in understandable language. And while trivial at times, this novel presents a clear and interesting picture of 17th Century colonial life and is an enjoyable read.

Absolute Trash.......2005-10-25

Just because it was written by a woman and in the past, does not make it good. There were plenty of women writers during this time period, who we seem to forget today manage to outsell the men every time. In the case of Nate Hawthorne, we can clearly understand why.

In Hope Leslie, Catherine Sedgwick's main goal was to persuade the readers that what they were doing to Native Americans was wrong, and that the English descendants were just as wrong in 1800 as they were in 1600. Unfortunately, although her puritan characters, all stolen from history, are narrow minded, they are very kind. This was not the case people. They hung and pressed "witches," all right? Do you really think they wouldn't punish Hope for breaking two Indian women out of jail? And her little "the devil did it, maybe," excuse wouldn't have flown.

Also, this is not a feminist text. I do not care what anyone says. Simply because Esther realizes she doesn't have to get married does not make it a feminst book. Esther would have married Everell in a heartbeat if given the chance. Remember how she tired to sleep herself to death after he rejectd her?

If you must read this for a class, I will give you a short summary:

Magawisca: Oh, you evil, white men. You have killed my family and rained destruction on this land.

Hope Leslie: I am pretty and my eyes change colors, but I will save you from jail Magawisca, while still believing in my heart that you are inferior, but a really nice girl.

[Stuff happens. A ship blows up. Everell and Hope help Magawisca escape.]

Everell: Live with us, Magawisca, and teach us to be pure, like you!

Magawisca: Thanks, you guys, but you have hurt my people so badly that the white man and indian can never be friends. I will go to the wild woods now, and live in peace with God.

Esther: I will go away and pretend it is not because Everell likes my best friend better. When I come back, everyone will want me, but I learned my lesson with men. My havishhaminess will be attributed to feminism for generations to come.

A Gem Decoded.......2005-09-25

Hope Leslie starts out with conflict, with love, with deception, and willing exile to a new land. The story is neatly woven, with plenty of action, romance, and adventure. It is written in a bit difficult of a style, but this book is much worth the decoding. Sedgwick delicately places passeges of savory descriptions of the beauty of the wildlands of New England, and glorifies aspects of both Christianity and Native American theology, but does not disregard small ugliness hidden within both. If looked at carefully, one can see the way that Sedgwick has shown that the Native American and colonist cultures are not as different as they seem.
This is a story of bravery, of love, and of the true nature of all of mankind. Think not, though, that there is no humor in it. Hope Leslie is a witty, passively rebelious girl who fights for what she believes in. She is an enigma that will remain in the hearts of all who read her story. Sedgwick has breathed the breath of life into all her characters and their stories, and their lives will leave imprints on all who read _Hope Leslie._

a wonderful glimpse in the past of our country.......2004-07-09

Sedgewick wrote this book almost 200 years ago. It was hard to read this book without comparing just about everything.
I compared her vocabulary, her descriptions of indians vs the british, the descriptions of appropriate behavior, the mores of the puritans.
Particularly delightful was the way she portrayed Native Americans speaking in old english "thither he went" "thy hands"
I have read other books from this era, and normally they have a terrible ending, so we can all mourn the (dead) heroine.
This book had some skillful twists and turns. Surely as some of our less sophisticated readers have remarked, the plot
was rather romantic and maybe even foppish, but consider the era in which it was read. it is a valuable window to the past.
I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good read

American War Library - The American Revolution: Primary Sources (American War Library)

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American War Library - The American Revolution: Primary Sources (American War Library)
David M. Haugen
Manufacturer: Lucent Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1590182383

Book Description

The struggle for America's independence is revealed in the words of its participants. The stories and documents of participants ranging from the common minuteman to King George III give readers insight into the motives of those who fought for and those who resisted the birth of a new nation.

Captive Selves, Captivating Others: The Politics and Poetics of Colonial American Captivity Narratives (Institutional Structures of Feeling)

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Captive Selves, Captivating Others: The Politics and Poetics of Colonial American Captivity Narratives (Institutional Structures of Feeling)
Pauline Turner Strong
Manufacturer: Westview Pr (Short Disc)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0813316650

Book Description

This book reexamines the Anglo-American literary genre known as the "Indian captivity narrative" in the context of the complex historical practice of captivity across cultural borders in colonial North America. This detailed and nuanced study of the relationship between practice and representation on the one hand and identity and alterity on the other is an important contribution to cultural studies, American studies, Native American studies, women's studies, and historical anthropology.

Colonial Transformations: The Cultural Production of the New Atlantic World, 1580-1640

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Colonial Transformations: The Cultural Production of the New Atlantic World, 1580-1640
Rebecca Ann Bach
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Book Description

Colonial Transformations covers early modern English poetry and plays, Gaelic poetry, and a wide range of English colonial propaganda. In the book, Bach contends that England’s colonial ambitions surface in all of its literary texts. Those texts played multiple roles in England’s colonial expansions and emerging imperialism. Those roles included publicizing colonial efforts, defining some people as white and some as barbarians, constituting enduring stereotypes of native people, and resisting official versions of colonial encounters.

Columbus, Shakespeare, and the Interpretation of the New World

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Columbus, Shakespeare, and the Interpretation of the New World
Jonathan Hart
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Book Description

Columbus, Shakespeare, and the Interpretation of the New World explores a range of images and texts that shed light on the complexity of the European reception and interpretation of the New World. Jonathan Hart examines Columbus's first representation of the natives and the New World, the representation of him in subsequent ages, the portrayal of America in sexual terms, the cultural intricacies brought into play by a variety of translators and mediators, the tensions between the aesthetic and colonial in Shakespeare's The Tempest, and a discussion of cultural and voice appropriation that examines the colonial in the postcolonial. This book brings the comparative study of the cultural past of the Americas and the Atlantic world into focus as it relates to the present.

The English Literatures of America: 1500-1800

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The English Literatures of America: 1500-1800

Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0415908736

Book Description

The English Literatures of America redefines colonial American literatures. Sweeping from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to the West Indies and Guiana, This anthology survey the emergence of Anglo-American cultures in the first dramatic period of the European empires.

The book begins with the first colonization of the Americas and stretches beyond the Revolution to the early national period. Placing the literary culture of the settlements in the context of other colonies as well as the growing cosmopolitan culture of the British empire itself, this lively reader contains numerous dialogues across the Englis Atlantic world. While historically sound and thorough, thi anthology responds to current interests,for example, the global context of national cultures; the relation between colonial histories and cosmopolitan culture; or the omissions and margins of the literary record.

The English Literatures of America offers a wide range of voices, including women writers on both sides of the ocean, early English-language texts of Native Americans, and writings of Africans both slave and free, in London as well as in the American colonies. It includes texts from elite as well as common cultures, Puritans in New England as well as Puritans in the West Indies, regional cultures in the colonial South as well as the grand cosmopolitan culture of imperial London. The organization of The English Literatures of America involves a thorough rethinking of colonial American literature while retaining the standards of the American canon. American literatures are for the first time presented in an international and colonial context. Not only do new texts appear; familiar ones have new significance. The Puritans can be read as they understood themselves, i.e., as New English .

Many texts are collected here for the first time in any anthology. Others are recognized masterpieces of the canon--both British and American--that for the first time can be read in their Atlantic context. Here, for example, are Francis Bacon, Andrew Marvell, Alexander Pope and Adam Smith, as well as Bradstreet, Wheatley, Edwards and Franklin. Despite the unparalleled scope of this anthology, many texts are given complete rather than in snippets. These include Hariot's Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, Aphra Behn's play The Widow Ranter, numerous essays by Benjamin Franklin and others. By emphasizing the culture of empire and by representing a transatlantic dialogue, The English Literatures of America allows a new way to understand colonial literature both in the United States and abroad.

Language and Political Meaning in Revolutionary America (American History)

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the language of revolution

Language and Political Meaning in Revolutionary America (American History)
John R. Howe
Manufacturer: University of Massachusetts Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1558494227

Book Description

Between the Declaration of Independence and the federal constitution, the American revolutionary generation produced an enormous body of writing on political matters. Using the written word as an instrument of political action, they articulated ideologies, negotiated conflicts, and charted the future of a new nation. In the process, John Howe argues, American writers effected a fundamental transformation in the nature and expressive purposes of political language. Turning away from earlier assumptions about the capacity of language to capture universal truths and contain human behavior, they fashioned a new discursive practice based on the recognition that the language of politics, far from being fixed or even stable in structure and meaning, evolves over time.

Securely in place by 1790 and clearly evident in the Federalist papers, this new language of political experimentation was well suited to the rapidly changing, open ended circumstances of American life. More than that, it proved essential to the emergence of a democratic politics. As Howe shows, only when language came to be used for the continuing exploration of political truth, only when it served to further popular discussion of contested ideas, could the construction of a genuinely democratic dialogue proceed.

By challenging the notion that the founders of the republic were fully confident about the clarity or permanence of their language, this book also has implications for the ongoing debate over the doctrine of "original intent." According to Howe, the framers understood the constitution to be the product of a hurried and contentious process, reflective of the limitations of human intellect and the imperfections of human language. They saw it, in short, as but an approximation of universal truth, an approximation that future generations were certain to improve.

Customer Reviews:

the language of revolution.......2004-04-14

John Howe has written a marvelous book on an important subject, one that resonates in the early 21st century. He argues that in the revolutionary era there was a profound change in discursive practices that mirrored the politics of those dramatic times. It had been assumed that language was "fixed in meaning and exact in expression, its vocabulary and grammar based on timeless standards, its meaning existing apart from the shifting currents of historical change." Howe has done the scholarly spade work necessary to demonstrate that the Federalists changed all that by fashioning a language "whose grammar and vocabulary were understood to change over time, whose meaning derived from its immediate historical context, and whose purpose was to facilitate rather than restrain political initiative, thus serving the needs of an unfolding future." Anyone who has ever mulled over the challenge of recovering the "orginal intent" of the framers of the Constitution will find this book richly rewarding, for Howe is a superb scholar and a gifted writer in his own right.

The Transformation of Authorship in America

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The Transformation of Authorship in America
Grantland S. Rice
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Economic History | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0226711242

Book Description

Did the emergence of a free press liberate eighteenth-century American authors? Most critics and historians have assumed so. In a study certain to force a rethinking of early American literary culture, Grantland S. Rice overturns this dominant view. Rice argues that the lapse of Puritan censorship, the consolidation of copyright law, and the explosion of a commercial print culture confronted writers in the new United States with a striking predicament: the depoliticization and commodification of public expression.

Rice shows that the rigorous censorship practiced by Puritan authorities conferred an implicit prestige on texts as civic interventions, helping to foster a vigorous and indigenous tradition of sociopolitical criticism. With special attention to the sudden emergence of the novel in post-revolutionary America, Rice reveals how the emergence of economic liberalism undermined the earlier tradition of political writing by transforming American authorship from an expression of individual civic conscience to a market-oriented profession.

Includes discussions of the writings of Benjamin Franklin, Michel-Guillaume-Jean de Crèvecoeur, and Hugh Henry Brackenridge.

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