Early Native Literacies in New England: A Documentary and Critical AnthologyKristina Bross, Hilary E. Wyss University of Massachusetts Press, 2008 - 276 pages Designed as a corrective to colonial literary histories that have excluded Native voices, this anthology brings together a variety of primary texts produced by the Algonquian peoples of New England during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and very early nineteenth centuries. Included among these written materials and objects are letters, signatures, journals, baskets, pictographs, confessions, wills, and petitions, each of which represents a form of authorship. Together they demonstrate the continuing use of traditional forms of memory and communication and the lively engagement of Native peoples with alphabetic literacy during the colonial period. Each primary text is accompanied by an essay that places it in context and explores its significance. Written by leading scholars in the field, these readings draw on recent trends in literary analysis, history, and anthropology to provide an excellent overview of the field of early Native studies. They are also intended to provoke discussion and open avenues for further exploration by students and other interested readers. Above all, the texts and commentaries gathered in this volume provide an opportunity to see Native American literature as a continuity of expression that reflects choices made long before contact and colonization, rather than as a nineteenth -- or even twentieth-century invention.Contributors include Heidi Bohaker, Heather Bouwman, Joanna Brooks, Kristina Bross, Stephanie Fitzgerald, Sandra Gustafson, Laura Arnold Leibman, Kevin McBride, David Murray, Laura Murray, Jean O'Brien, Ann Marie Plane, Philip Round, Jodi Schorb, David Silverman, and Hilary E. Wyss. |
From inside the book
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... Minister came to teach us . When I heard that they prayed , my heart desired it not . Sometime I prayed among them , and sometime I ne- glected it . I feared to pray because of the Sachems , therefore I put it off , for the fear of man ...
... minister : Teachers were to attend to doctrine , " administer the seals of covenant , and censure congregants ( Cremin , American Education , 138 ) . Some of the most famous ministers in New England , including John Cotton , held the ...
... ministers on the island should be compared to a case mentioned in the diary of Samuel Sewall . Sewall recounts that when the Indian minister John Neesnummin visited him in Boston in 1708 , Sewall could find no one willing to lodge ...
Contents
The Mohegans | 15 |
Joseph Johnson Diary 1773 | 28 |
Laura J Murray Joseph Johnsons Diary Farmington | 42 |
Copyright | |
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Early Native Literacies in New England: A Documentary and Critical Anthology Kristina Bross,Hilary E. Wyss No preview available - 2008 |