The Poor Indians : British Missionaries, Native Americans, and Colonial Sensibility / Laura M. Stevens.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stevens, Laura M., author.

Series:

Early American Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indians of North America--Missions--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775--Great Britain.

Indians of North America.

Indians of North America--Public opinion--United States.

Indians of North America--History--United States.

Missionaries--Attitudes--Great Britain.

Missionaries.

Anglicans--Missions--History.

Anglicans.

Protestants--History--Missions.

Protestants.

Public opinion.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (273 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2010]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Between the English Civil War of 1642 and the American Revolution, countless British missionaries announced their intention to "spread the gospel" among the native North American population. Despite the scope of their endeavors, they converted only a handful of American Indians to Christianity. Their attempts to secure moral and financial support at home proved much more successful.In The Poor Indians, Laura Stevens delves deeply into the language and ideology British missionaries used to gain support, and she examines their wider cultural significance. Invoking pity and compassion for "the poor Indian"-a purely fictional construct-British missionaries used the Black Legend of cruelties perpetrated by Spanish conquistadors to contrast their own projects with those of Catholic missionaries, whose methods were often brutal and deceitful. They also tapped into a remarkably effective means of swaying British Christians by connecting the latter's feelings of religious superiority with moral obligation. Describing mission work through metaphors of commerce, missionaries asked their readers in England to invest, financially and emotionally, in the cultivation of Indian souls. As they saved Indians from afar, supporters renewed their own faith, strengthened the empire against the corrosive effects of paganism, and invested in British Christianity with philanthropic fervor.The Poor Indians thus uncovers the importance of religious feeling and commercial metaphor in strengthening imperial identity and colonial ties, and it shows how missionary writings helped fashion British subjects who were self-consciously transatlantic and imperial because they were religious, sentimental, and actively charitable.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: "The Common Bowels of Pity to the Miserable"

1 Gold for Glass, Seeds to Fruit: Husbandry and Trade in Missionary Writings

2 "I Have Received Your Christian and Very Loving Letter": Epistolarity and Transatlantic Community

3 "The Reservoir of National Charity": The Role of the Missionary Society

4 Indians, Deists, and the Anglican Quest for Compassion: The Sermons of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts

5 The Sacrifice of Self: Emotional Expenditure and Transatlantic Ties in Brainerdi and Sergeant's Biographies

6 "Like Snow Against the Sun": The Christian Origins of the Vanishing Indian

Conclusion

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9786613211934

9781283211932

1283211939

9780812203080

0812203089

OCLC:

759158222