Book Reviews
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BOOK REVIEWS John Eliot's Indian Dialogues'. A Study in Cultural Interaction .Edited by HENRY W. BoWDEN and JAMES P. RONDA. Contributions in American History 88 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980. vii, 173 p. Notes, bibliography, index. $22.95.) The small and expensive book is a reprint of a rare missionary tract with an undocumented introductory essay. The tract is standard Eliot—a set of smarmy dialogues between converts and the unconverted in which the converts win every argument, as is to be expected. I wonder what point there is to resurrecting it. The editors claim that it tells something about how Indians were thinking, though "as much about Eliot" (p. 56). To me it seems that Eliot's Indians are straw men— "partly historical," as he put it (p. 61). Their purported language discloses that the historical part is one in a million. The editors remark that "the fact that they are not factual records does not make the dialogues valueless... [they] can be taken as a distilled paraphrase of important issues" (p. 41). About Eliot himself the tract is illuminating only to someone who can use it as a supplement to research on his conduct. Eliot is no exception to the rule that preachers are not to be understood from their sermons exclusively. In his case we do well to observe the advice of ex-Attorney General and (slightly less ex-) convict, John Mitchell: we must watch what Eliot did more than what he said. For that purpose this book's introductory essay does not help much, and Eliot's own writing is worthless. For background it is essential to know that the Indians of Eliot's praying towns were there under various kinds of compulsion rather than because of a calling of the spirit. Their lands had been seized by Massachusetts Bay. The government appointed a trainband captain who was also a magistrate "to be the ruler" over them. He is mentioned only once in the editors' essay, as a "protege" of Eliot (p. 54), leaving the impression that the Indians governed themselves. This is a hoary myth that has about as much substance as the notion that student councils run junior high schools. Eliot laid down rules, and Captain-Magistrate Gookin enforced them. Thus the praying Indians' abandonment of native custom was compelled by fines and punishments—a fact admitted in an offhand phrase about "the virtues enforced there" (p. 40), after much pious rhetoric about how the missionaries persuaded the Indians to give up their old heathen ways. Eliot and Gookin armed the praying Indians to force submission upon their Nipmuck neighbors, which process was so resented that its victims struck the first blow against Massachusetts in what is miscalled King Philip's War. The gunshot conversions to "civil government"—none of those 600 Nipmucks was baptised—had been begun in order to give Massachusetts a toehold in territory disputed with 1981 BOOK REVIEWS 215 Connecticut and Rhode Island. Such ugly data are missing from our subject essay which states rather that the missions were conducted without any regard to political or economic motivation (pp. 36, 47). Taint true. In brief, I find the discussion of Puritan motives and conduct to be deficient in fact and filiopietist in attitude. There is a glut of such stuff in our libraries already. The essay has some saving value in its discussion of Massachuset and Wampanoag cultures and the effects of missionizing upon their peoples. This is evidently Ronda's contribution. It may be accepted with more respect than the pieties about the Puritans because Ronda has previously demonstrated his sensitivity to the issues involved. See his earlier publications: '"We Are Well As We Are': An Indian Critique of Seventeenth-Century Christian Missions," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d series, 34:66-82; and Indian Missions: A Critical Bibliography, by James P. Ronda and James Axtell (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978). The theological slanting and rationalizing so suffuse the essay under review that a reader would be best advised to turn to Ronda's other work. Newberry Library FRANCIS P. JENNINGS The Keithian Controversy in Early Pennsylvania. Edited by J. WILLIAM FROST. (Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1980. xxii, 378 p. Bibliography. $27.50.) Schisms fascinate historians because they define important religious issues with a clarity and force often lacking in calmer times even as they simultaneously expose some of the seamier aspects of organized religion to public view. Among Quakers the best known and best studied such schisms are the English Wilkinson-Story separation of the 1670s and the American Hicksite separation of the 1820s; that led by George Keith in Pennsylvania in the 1690s has attracted historians' attention only recently. Now, however, its central documents will be available to historians in a volume that also points up the need for editions of even more basic records of the American Friends. J. William Frost, Director of the Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore, provides an opening essay on the context of the schism, a bibliography, seven selections from manuscript sources (six printed for the first time), and twelve contemporary tracts reproduced by a photo-offset process from the original printed editions. The volume is well done within the financial constraints now imposed on all editors. Frost is careful to avoid a narrowly personal interpretation of the materials. He includes nearly all the important surviving documents on the schism, the manuscript selections are superbly transcribed and edited, and the photo-offset reproduction of the contemporary tracts gives readers access to the original sources even in their sometimes blurred printings. Only two criticisms might be offered. Frost's opening essay would have been less rushed had each source been introduced separately, a procedure that would also have encouraged fuller introductions to the documents. And additional documents from Keith's supporters, such as the proceedings of the Brandywine River Keithian congregation organized after 1694, would have broadened the scope of the collection. 216 BOOK REVIEWS April The significance of source collections is best measured by their ability to stimulate new perspectives on their subjects. This collection does so in two ways. First, it raises important issues about the Keithian schism and the Quaker movement it disrupted. A 1691 letter from Christian Ludwig of Rhode Island, for example, again points up the heterodoxy of the early Quaker movement by distinguishing between "Foxians" who cultivated a simple inward light, and "Semi-Foxians" such as Keith, Robert Barclay, and others, who imbibed theology and philosophy, knew the Kabbala (the implications of which are described in Frances Yates's recent The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age), and were important in the movement through the 1690s but not later. The potential cleansing power of the schism is demonstrated in a 1694 Keithian anti-slavery statement that is one of the few such protests to eschew anti-African rhetoric. And the tracts by orthodox Friends, such as Caleb Pusey's 1696 defense of Keith's disownment, steadily reveal the early Quaker ability to pursue theological and philosophical argument that was largely lost after 1700. Second, the volume implicity reminds us of the pressing need for a printed edition of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting records. They remain the last major denominational records of the colonial period not yet available in some printed form. They are, of course, available on microfilm at both Haverford and Swarthmore. But in this form, without editing, they are difficult to use even for historians who live nearby. At the same time, they are especially important to the analysis of both New World Quakerism and middle colony culture because the printed sermons and doctrinal works available for other religious groups were seldom issued by Friends after 1700, and because relatively few personal documents of middle colony Friends also are easily available to historians, especially for the years before 1750. The publication of these Keithian documents suggests that an edition of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting records now might be achievable. Certainly one has long been needed. University of Illinois at Chicago Circle JON BUTLER The Economy of Colonial America. By EDWIN J. PERKINS. (New York: ColumbiaUni- versity Press, 1980. xii, 177 p. Bibliographical essay, appendix, index. $17.50 cloth, $6.00 paper.) Edwin Perkins has written a slender book which purports to be an historical synthesis of the economic history of colonial North America, "a summation and interpretation of recent scholarship in the field." At times the book seems to be more of an annotated bibliography, since lengthy and carefully compiled bibliographical essays accompany each of the eight chapters. Nevertheless, Perkins does draw his own interpretation of the period from the research considered. Amid both dynamic population growth and geographical expansion, the fundamental patterns of economic behavior in the American colonies remained constant throughout the 18th century. Because of a steady, gradually accelerating growth in income, colonial Americans enjoyed a high standard of living, one possibly unequalled in the European world. Along the way, Perkins refutes the theses that economic grievances were the primary 1981 BOOK REVIEWS 217 motive behind the revolutionary war, that income distribution became increasingly unequal as the 18th century drew to a close, and, somewhat obliquely, that economic and social rivalries between occupational groups contributed to the stirring up of revolutionary sentiment in major urban areas. Perkins divides The Economy of Colonial America into three parts. Chapters One and Two treat population and economic expansion, and foreign trade. The next section is devoted to an examination of occupational groups, coupled as: farmers and planters; servants and slaves; and artisans and merchants. The final section deals with money, taxes, living standards, and income growth.