To live upon hope : Mohicans and missionaries in the eighteenth-century Northeast / Rachel Wheeler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wheeler, Rachel M.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Moravian Church--Missions--New York (State)--Shekomeko Site--History--18th century.

Moravian Church.

Stockbridge Indians--Missions--Massachusetts--Stockbridge--History--18th century.

Stockbridge Indians.

Moravian Indians--Missions--New York (State)--Shekomeko Site--History--18th century.

Moravian Indians.

Mahican Indians--Missions--History--18th century.

Mahican Indians.

Congregational churches--Missions--Massachusetts--Stockbridge--History--18th century.

Congregational churches.

Stockbridge (Mass.)--History--18th century.

Stockbridge (Mass.).

Shekomeko Site (N.Y.)--History--18th century.

Shekomeko Site (N.Y.).

Stockbridge (Mass.)--Ethnic relations.

Shekomeko Site (N.Y.)--Ethnic relations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (332 p.)

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Two Northeast Indian communities with similar histories of colonization accepted Congregational and Moravian missionaries, respectively, within five years of one another: the Mohicans of Stockbridge, Massachusetts (1735), and Shekomeko, in Dutchess County, New York (1740). In To Live upon Hope, Rachel Wheeler explores the question of what "missionary Christianity" became in the hands of these two native communities.The Mohicans of Stockbridge and Shekomeko drew different conclusions from their experiences with colonial powers. Both tried to preserve what they deemed core elements of Mohican culture. The Indians of Stockbridge believed education in English cultural ways was essential to their survival and cast their acceptance of the mission project as a means of preserving their historic roles as cultural intermediaries. The Mohicans of Shekomeko, by contrast, sought new sources of spiritual power that might be accessed in order to combat the ills that came with colonization, such as alcohol and disease.Through extensive research, especially in the Moravian records of day-to-day life, Wheeler offers an understanding of the lived experience of Mohican communities under colonialism. She complicates the understanding of eighteenth-century American Christianity by demonstrating that mission programs were not always driven by the destruction of indigenous culture and the advancement of imperial projects. To Live upon Hope challenges the prevailing view of accommodation or resistance as the two poles of Indian responses to European colonization. Colonialism placed severe strains on native peoples, Wheeler finds, yet Indians also exercised a level of agency and creativity that aided in their survival.

Contents:

Introduction : Indian and Christian

pt. 1. Hope: The river god and the lieutenant ; Covenants, contracts, and the founding of Stockbridge

pt. 2. Renewal: The chief and the orator ; Moravian missionaries of the blood ; Mohican men and Jesus as Manitou

pt. 3. Preservation: The village matriarch and the young mother ; Mohican women and the community of the blood

pt. 4. Persecution: The dying chief and the accidental missionary ; Indian and white bodies politic at Stockbridge

Conclusion: Irony and identity ; The cooper and the sachem ; Epilogue : real and ideal Indians.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-8014-6348-3

OCLC:

732957123