Philip F. Gura. The Life of William Apess, Pequot. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. 216 pp. $26.00, cloth, ISBN 978-1-4696-1998-9.
Reviewed by David Silverman
Published on H-SHEAR (June, 2016)
Commissioned by Robert P. Murray (Mercy College)
More than twenty years ago, Barry O’Connell formers that includes Margaret Fuller and Eliza‐ introduced the scholarly world to the writings of beth Cady Stanton, champions of women’s rights; William Apess, a Pequot Methodist preacher and Frances Wright and Orestes Brownson, of the dig‐ writer, who in print and politics demanded the nity of labor; and William Lloyd Garrison, Wen‐ white people of Jacksonian America to confront dell Phillips, David Walker, and Frederick Dou‐ their racism and extend Christian dignity to peo‐ glass, of African American freedom and equality” ples of all hues, including Native Americans. Since (p. xiv). Apess stands out from this group, of then, O’Connell’s introductory essay to Apess’s col‐ course, in that he was an Indian writing during a lected writings has served as the basic biography period in which Americans were at once fercely of this long-overlooked fgure, but Philip F. Gura’s debating the policy of Indian Removal, while, new book, the Life of William Apess, is set to be‐ ironically, insisting that Indians were on the brink come the standard. Its succinctness, chronological of disappearing as part of Manifest Destiny. Apess organization, and clear, engaging prose is ideal spent his brief adult life within this charged politi‐ for classroom audiences. It also makes a signif‐ cal context, striving “to understand himself as a cant interpretive contribution by grounding member of an indigenous nation within the Unit‐ Apess’s experience and writings in the racial poli‐ ed States of America, and so to claim for himself, tics of the antebellum era.[1] his tribe, and Native peoples in general a place in Gura makes a strong case for Apess’s signif‐ new nation” (p. xvi). cance to the history of American letters. He con‐ During his childhood in Colrain, Massachu‐ tends that Apess “deserves the same widespread setts, and Colchester, Connecticut, Apess endured recognition as others in the antebellum period hunger, physical abuse, and racism. His mother who questioned the sincerity of the nation’s ongo‐ abandoned Apess and his siblings, and soon his ing commitment to democracy, a cohort of re‐ father did too, leaving them in the care of his ma‐ H-Net Reviews ternal grandmother, who neglected and beat and responsibility to his new family to begin ad‐ them, sometimes mercilessly. When town ofcials vancing toward his literary career. Temporary removed Apess from this situation and placed residence with his aunt, the Pequot Sally George, him in the care of white families, the worst beat‐ rekindled his interest in evangelical Christianity, ings ended, but the psychological abuse of racist prompting a conversion experience, baptism by treatment began. To the extent that there were immersion, and his frst attempts at religious ex‐ some silver linings in this misery, it was that, in hortation. This period also saw him wed Mary Colchester, a young Apess received three years of Wood and relocate to Providence, Rhode Island. formal education from Prince Saunders, an The marriage made him determined to earn a liv‐ African American educator known for organizing ing, while the move exposed him both to a thriv‐ black schools in Boston and then Haiti. This expe‐ ing Methodist community of color and vicious ur‐ rience, Gura points out, was the beginning of ban racism, particularly in the wake of the Hard Apess’s lifetime spent engaged with black activists Scrabble race riot. and their white supporters. These years also saw Gura is at his fnest in speculating how the po‐ Apess fnd inspiration in evangelical Christianity, litical activism and racial critiques of African particularly its emphasis on the equality of all be‐ American evangelical activists infuenced Apess’s lievers in the sight of God, which enabled him to ideas. In this, he builds on a historiography less resist the self-loathing inherent in his ordeal. on intellectual exchange and more on how labor, Poignantly, it was not the Baptist faith of Apess’s intermarriage, and racial oppression linked in‐ white caretakers which attracted him, but rather digenous and African American peoples.[2] Gura the evangelical egalitarianism of itinerant notes the possibility that Apess encountered the Methodists. Protest was part of the appeal. Reverend Nathaniel Paul, an associate of Prince Yet it would take Apess several years of ser‐ Saunders, a leader of Providence’s ecumenical vice in the military during the War of 1812, fol‐ African Union Church. Likewise, he speculates lowed by wide-ranging journeying throughout the that Apess encountered Hosea Easton, a black Northeast, before he discovered a sense of pur‐ Boston preacher, abolitionist, and booster of the pose in itinerant preaching and writing. Gura ar‐ Freedom’s Journal newspaper. Easton gave a fa‐ gues that this phase of Apess’s life gave him a mous thanksgiving address in Providence in 1828, keener sense of the racial injustice at the heart of castigating whites for degrading free blacks, in‐ American society. Later, Apess would write mov‐ cluding ministers, in ways large and small. When ingly of the abuse he sufered at the hands of fel‐ white Methodists refused to ordinate Apess as an low soldiers just because he was an Indian. He itinerant preacher, Apess joined the breakaway also had the opportunity to contrast the commu‐ Methodist Society of New York, an organization nitarian fellowship of the Haudenosaunees (or founded in protest of the growing conservatism, Iroquois) with the crass individualism and Chris‐ including racialism, of the Methodist movement. tian hypocrisy of white Americans, who used ev‐ Later in life, Apess likely developed a relationship ery underhanded means they could conjure up to with the New Bedford African American mer‐ force the Haudenosunees of what little remained chant and antislavery activist Richard Johnson, of their land. Apess could clearly see the parallels and possibly also with the Afro-Indian merchant between their trials and those of his Pequot peo‐ and “Back to Africa” proponent Paul Cufee. Apess ple and other southern New England Indians. never said whether or how these radicals shaped In 1818, when he was twenty years old, Apess his views, but Gura’s exploration of the possibili‐ built on a growing sense of religious conviction
2 H-Net Reviews ties takes the reader on a rich journey through the Americans, whose paths he crossed in Boston” (p. political and cultural milieus of the era. 71). This is a fresh and convincing perspective, In the late 1820s and 1830s, Apess began to grounded both in textual analysis and in Gura’s come into his own as a writer and preacher. He careful prospographical research. wrote and published his autobiography to edify Apess’s maturation as an activist thinker, troubled souls, and, not the least of all, to sell Gura demonstrates, contributed toward his lead‐ copies to white readership interested in examples ership among the Mashpee Wampanoags of Cape of civilized, Christian Indians. Gura sees Apess Cod as they sought to remove a longstanding, Har‐ reaching the “increasing realization of how Chris‐ vard-funded missionary who spent more time tianity provided Native Americans a set of argu‐ preaching and teaching to whites than to them, ments through which to criticize American soci‐ even within a meeting house located squarely in ety,” something he would continue to develop in their territory. Apess felt a twofold connection to his future writings (p. 47). At the same time, the Mashpees: as a fellow Indian struggling for Apess’s itinerant preaching, particularly in Bos‐ justice in face of white racial oppression, and as a ton, drew him deeper into a community of fellow Christian seeking to reform a corrupt African American and white activists opposed to world. He took a leading role in their fght by slavery and Indian Removal as part of their goal virtue of his principles and the Mashpees’ need to make American a more just, Christian nation. for someone with his education and connections Gura imagines Apess engaged with the leading fg‐ to white powerbrokers. He also paid for it, sufer‐ ures and political debates of Boston’s African Soci‐ ing jail time and fnancial ruin for standing up to ety and the African Masonic Lodge. He cannot white power. Nevertheless, his sufering as a con‐ imagine Apess escaping the infuence of the black scientious objector enabled Mashpee to win state abolitionist David Walker, whose Appeal ... to the approval for the community to become a self-gov‐ Coloured Citizens of the World, published in 1829, erning district. called for African Americans to unite in resistance Gura contributes important details to Apess to white oppression, violently if necessary. Nor biography by tracing his activities during the last could Apess have possibly ignored the arguments few years of his life, 1837-39, after he had had left of William Lloyd Garrison and his Liberator. The Mashpee and published his now-famous Eulogy to evidence is in the radical egalitarianism of Apess’s King Philip, comparing the historic Wampanoag later writings. It also appears, Gura submits, in war leader favorably to George Washington. the Liberator’s positive coverage of one of Apess’s Gura’s use (it would appear) of recently developed speeches on the Cherokee removal crisis. online newspaper databases allows him to track This period saw Apess produce one of his down Apess’s speaking engagements in Boston, most poignant writings, “An Indian’s Looking- Washington, DC, and New York City, and to place Glass for the White Man” in which, Gura suggests, Apess once again within the broader network an‐ Apess “began to realize more fully that the physi‐ tebellum activists, such as the Tappan family, and cal and psychological oppression he knew linked the lecture-going audiences of New York’s Mer‐ him to all Native Americans, to the Cherokee, say, cantile Library. The efect is to bring Apess closer so much in the news. But even more, he realized to three-dimensional form in the last days before that racial discrimination was part of an exten‐ he died in New York’s downtrodden River Ward sive, interconnected ideological system through neighborhood. which whites rationalized and justifed their cu‐ Yet if Gura succeeds admirably on that front, pidity toward other peoples, including African he falls a bit short in considering how Apess was
3 H-Net Reviews shaped by similar debates over Christianity and acknowledges.[4] justice within the ranks of New England Indians. This shortcoming aside, Gura has produced In so many respects, Apess’s critique of American an accessible, deeply researched, and learned ac‐ society echoed that of the Mohegan preachers, count of the life of William Apess and his times. It Samson Occom and Joseph Johnson, a generation deserves to be widely read, assigned, and consid‐ earlier. Their legacies must have remained a topic ered. of conversation in Apess’s indigenous network, Notes and formed an infuence on his decision to preach and write. After all, Occom’s role, not only as a [1]. Barry O’Connell, ed., On Our Own Ground: minister, but as the frst published Native Ameri‐ The Complete Writings of William Apess, a Pequot can autobiographer, sermonizer, and psalmist, (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, had set the groundwork for Apess’s career as lec‐ 1992). turer and writer.[3] [2]. Daniel R. Mandell, Tribe, Race, History: It is also likely that Apess was infuenced by Native Americans in Southern New England, the political activism of Christian Indian commu‐ 1780-1880 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univer‐ nity of Brothertown, which Occom and Johnson sity Press, 2007), and “Shifting Boundaries of Race had helped to create. Made up of Christian Indi‐ and Ethnicity: Indian-Black Intermarriage in ans from throughout Long Island Sound, includ‐ Southern New England, 1760-1880,” Journal of ing Pequots, by the 1820s and 30s the Brother‐ American History 85, no. 2 (1998-99): 466-501; town community had relocated to Wisconsin, Russel Lawrence Barsh, “‘Colored’ Seamen in the where it wasfghting desperately to preserve its New England Whaling Industry: An Afro-Indian lands from ongoing white encroachment. In the Consortium,” in The Indian-Black Experience in end, its people decided to petition for US citizen‐ North America, ed. James F. Brooks (Lincoln: Uni‐ ship, which they called “becoming white,” though versity of Nebraska Press, 2002), 76-107; Jason R. in the hopes of defending their status as a distinct Mancini, “Beyond Reservation: Indians, Maritime Indian town. Neighboring groups of Christian In‐ Labor, and Communities of Color from Eastern dians, including the Stockbridge Mohicans and Long Island Sound,” in Perspectives on Gender, Duck Creek Oneidas, faced similar dilemmas, with Race, Ethnicity, and Power in Maritime America, the Stockbridges going so far as to write a new ed. Glenn S. Gordinier (Mystic, CT, Mystic Seaport constitution for the community modeled on the Museum, 2006), 23-44; and Nancy Shoemaker, Na‐ US frame of government, a measure refecting the tive American Whalemen and the World: Indige‐ legal activism of the Cherokees and Creeks in the nous Encounters and the Contingency of Race face of the 1830 Removal Act. Apess would have (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, known about these struggles, as people from 2015). Brothertown commonly returned to southern New England to visit relatives and pursue legal battles, just as New England Indians occasionally [3]. Among many works on these fgures, see ventured to Brothertown. He also would have Joanna Brooks, ed., The Collected Writings of known of how these people, like him, interpreted Samson Occom, Mohegan: Leadership and Litera‐ the racial injustice perpetrated by white society as ture in Eighteenth-Century Native America (New Christian hypocrisy. Christianity and race were York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Laura J. deeply intertwined on multiple fronts in antebel‐ Murray, ed., To Do Good to My Indian Brethren: lum America, more than even Gura’s fne work The Writings of Joseph Johnson, 1751-1776 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
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1998); and Hilary Wyss, English Letters and Eng‐ lish Literacies: Reading, Writing, and New Eng‐ land Missionary Schools, 1750-1830 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).
[4]. David J. Silverman, Red Brethren: The Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians and the Problem of Race in Early America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010); and Brad D.E. Jarvis, The Brothertown Nation of Indians: Land Ownership and Nationalism in Early America, 1740-1840 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010).
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Citation: David Silverman. Review of Gura, Philip F. The Life of William Apess, Pequot. H-SHEAR, H-Net Reviews. June, 2016.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=44727
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