Samson Occom and/In The Missionary's Position: Consideration of a Native-American Preacher in 1770's Colonial America

2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-20
Author(s):  
Polly Stevens Fields
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
Samson Occom

Catholics in Colonial America (1500–1700)

2020 ◽  
pp. 325-355
Author(s):  
David W. Kling
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
North America ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
New World ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Attitudes And Practices ◽  
Alta California ◽  
Full Knowledge ◽  
The Caribbean

Conversionary efforts in the New World mirrored attitudes and practices in the Old. Christendom remained as much a project in the New as in the Old, and thus religious differences remained as problematic in the Americas as they did in Europe. Images of military conflict—combat, battle, and victory—language familiar on the Continent—infused the outlook of early modern Catholic missionaries, whereas Spanish and French missionaries in the New World often had the arm of the state to protect them and, all too often, to coerce the natives. This chapter selectively examines initial missionary efforts in a variety of locations—Spanish missionary outreach in the Caribbean, Peru, and Alta California and French missions in North America. The depth of Native American conversions was as varied as the methods used to produce them. On a superficial level, conversion meant a transfer of loyalty or allegiance, often without a full knowledge of what that transfer entailed. Or, with defeat, conversion might represent a conscious acknowledgment of the more powerful Christian God over weaker traditional deities.

Colonial America

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Clark
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Old Order ◽  
Early Settlement ◽  
Different Origins

The British American colonies embodied such social, economic, and political diversity that they did not, of course, constitute a single “old order” any more than Europe did. They had evolved from different origins: English, Dutch, and Scandinavian; and under an array of influences: Native American, French, African, Irish, Scottish, German. Even the two oldest areas of English settlement, the Chesapeake region and New England, differed markedly. In New England, where early settlement involved whole families, and where sex ratios quickly achieved a rough parity, seventeenth-century settlers set patterns for longevity and demographic robustness that were sustained throughout the colonial period.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Céline Carayon
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Native American ◽  
Nonverbal Communication ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
Indigenous Studies ◽  
Nonverbal Expression ◽  
Communicative Strategies ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonies ◽  
Over Time

This introduction explains why it is crucial to pay attention to nonverbal means of communication when trying to understand colonial encounters and the culturally hybrid worlds they produced. Throughout the colonial period, people mobilized age-old communicative strategies using embodied means of telling and learning, both alongside and independently of spoken language. Some things could be well understood without language, and misunderstandings were not the primary cause for violence. Situating this book within the larger historiography, the author details her methodology, sources, and terminology. The book’s contributions to multiple fields, especially the history of the French Atlantic, colonial America, and Native American and Indigenous studies, are outlined. Nonverbal communication is described along a spectrum of kinetic signs, deeply connected to rich Indigenous alternate literacies and worldviews. Signs and sensory exchanges helped connect otherwise dissimilar cultures, making nonverbal communication fundamental to French colonies between 1500 and 1700. The French imagined an intercontinental empire through commercial connections and shared communicative practices. While the demands placed on intercultural communication changed over time, Indigenous traditions of nonverbal expression remained highly influential well into the eighteenth century and must be further acknowledged, with important consequences for descendant communities.

Colonial America Today: U.S. Empire and the Political Status of Native American Nations

2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Bacon ◽  
Matthew Norton
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Political Status ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Colonial Empire ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
Traditional Sense ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractThe article systematically assesses U.S.-Native relations today and their historical foundations in light of a narrow, empirical definition of colonial empire. Examining three core elements of colonial empire—the formal impairment of sovereignty, the intensive practical impairment of sovereignty through practices of governance and administration, and the continuing otherness of the dominated and dominant groups—we compare contemporary U.S.-Native political relations to canonical instances of formal colonial indirect rule empires. Based on this analysis, we argue that the United States today is a paradigmatic case of formal colonial empire in the narrow, traditional sense, one that should be better integrated into the comparative, historical, and sociological study of such formal empires. Furthermore, this prominent contemporary case stands against the idea that the era of formal colonial empire is over.

Becoming Colored in Occom and Wheatley's Early America

PMLA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 123 (5) ◽  
pp. 1398-1417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katy L. Chiles
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Specific Model ◽  
Early America ◽  
Dark Skin ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Phillis Wheatley ◽  
Early American ◽  
Samson Occom ◽  
The Status

Engaging contemporaneous ideas about how environmental factors could alter the surface of the human body, Samson Occom and Phillis Wheatley use language emphasizing the ostensible malleability of physical characteristics—what I call a symbolics of metamorphosis—to depict the formation of racial identities. For Occom, the beliefs his Anglo- and Native American contemporaries held about the status of the “red” Indian enable him to challenge colonial society's contradictory Christian epistemology in his 1772 A Sermon, Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian. In her 1773 Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, Wheatley fuses ancient mythological beliefs and natural-historical axioms about the production of poetic genius and dark skin to characterize the black poet as an inevitable outcome rather than an anomalous exception. Drawing on the late-eighteenth-century notion of transformable race, this essay posits a historically specific model of critical race theory for interpreting early American literatures.

The deaths of Moses: The death penalty and the division of sovereignty

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-183
Author(s):  
Christopher Bracken
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Political Power ◽  
New Haven ◽  
Samson Occom ◽  
Indigenous Nations ◽  
American Author

Derrida insists that any effort to think theological–political power “in its possibility” must begin with the death penalty. In this paper, I revisit the death of Moses Paul, “an Indian,” executed in New Haven in 1772 for the murder of Moses Cook, a white man. The Mohegan minister Samson Occom delivered Paul’s execution sermon and accompanied him to the gallows. Revised, Occom’s sermon was one of the first works published by a Native American author in English. Occom suggests there can be a theological–political power that signals itself not by decreeing the death penalty, but by opposing it. Hence sovereignty can be thought, with and against Derrida, as the theologico-political power to restore life. By opposing death to grace, moreover, Occom achieves a division of sovereignties, creating an opening for Indigenous nations within the scaffolding of the settler state. Working in collaboration, then, Occom and Paul produce a political theology.

Fostering the Literacy of indigenous Elementary School-Age Children

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Frome Loeb ◽  
Kathy Redbird
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Culturally Sensitive ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
School Age ◽  
Reading Curriculum ◽  
Authentic Materials ◽  
Elementary School Age ◽  
Values And Beliefs

Abstract Purpose: In this article, we describe the existing literacy research with school-age children who are indigenous. The lack of data for this group of children requires speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to use expert opinion from indigenous and non-indigenous people to develop culturally sensitive methods for fostering literacy skills. Method: We describe two available curricula developed by indigenous people that are available, which use authentic materials and embed indigenous stories into the learning environment: The Indian Reading Series and the Northwest Native American Reading Curriculum. We also discuss the importance of using cooperative learning, multisensory instruction, and increased holistic emphasis to create a more culturally sensitive implementation of services. We provide an example of a literacy-based language facilitation that was developed for an indigenous tribe in Kansas. Conclusion: SLPs can provide services to indigenous children that foster literacy skills through storytelling using authentic materials as well as activities and methods that are consistent with the client's values and beliefs.

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