UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Literacy, Christianity, and Native Community in Early America

Book Jacket: "Writing Indians" by H. E. Wyss

Hilary E. Wyss

A reinterpretation of the place of the Christian Indian in colonial America

"This beautifully written book examines often overlooked writings of Christian Indians in early America. Wyss argues that the Native Americans who converted to Christianity forged a unique identity as they negotiated their place and power in between Native American tribal culture and Protestant Anglo America. She examines missionary tracts, journal entries, captivity narratives, diplomatic exchanges, letters, and biographical excerpts lodged in printed Anglo histories . . . to demonstrate the complicated ways in which Indian converts modified the language of the colonizers to create an idiom of resistance. . . . This is a well researched and important study that bridges literature, religious studies, history, and Native American studies."

Religious Studies Review

"[This] is an important contribution to early American studies because it insists that American Indian voices be recognized as part of the political dynamics forming the nation. It dispels the myth that American Indians did not write. It further dispels the myth that American Indians were silent people who rarely verbalized political or theological opinions. . . . Writing Indians performs a much-needed scholarly function. By bringing the writings of Christian Indians into the academic marketplace, Wyss is insisting that these narratives, and the people who wrote them, be given literary currency."

American Indian Culture and Research Journal

"A fascinating study of Christian Indian writings from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, relating them to the culture of colonial America as well as to the traditional society of Native Americans. Drawing on many little-known sources, she reveals in great detail the ambiguities and complexities inherent in the language of early Christian Indian converts and their Anglo-American missionaries. In so doing, Wyss offers a compelling argument about how certain Indians adapted to Christian theology, reconfigured it to meet specific goals, and ultimately, in a way that strengthened their traditional culture, adopted it as their own."

New England Quarterly

"[A] convincing and compelling book. Shedding so much light on sources that have received so little attention, Writing Indians helps us to more thoroughly appreciate the lives of Native Americans who lived in an exciting but troubling time in American history."

American Literature

Hilary E. Wyss is assistant professor of English at Auburn University.

Native American Studies / American Studies / Literary Studies
224 pp., LC 00-036384
$32.50s cloth, ISBN 978-1-55849-264-6
$22.95s paper, ISBN 978-1-55849-412-1
2000 cloth, August 2003 paper
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A volume in the series Native Americans of the Northeast: Culture, History,
and the Contemporary

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