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The Poor Indians
EARLY AMERICAN STUDIES
Daniel K. Richter and Kathleen M. Brown, Series Editors
Exploring neglected aspects of our colonial, revolutionary, and early national history and culture, Early American Studies reinterprets familiar themes and events in fresh ways. Interdisciplinary in character, and with a special emphasis on the period from about 1600 to 1850, the series is published in partnership with the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.
A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.
The Poor Indians
British Missionaries, Native Americans, and Colonial Sensibility
Laura M. Stevens
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
Copyright © 2004 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First paperback edition 2006
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stevens, Laura M.
The poor Indians : British missionaries, Native Americans, and colonial sensibility / Laura M. Stevens.
p. cm. — (Early American studies)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8122-1967-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8122-1967-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Indians of North America—Missions. 2. Indians of North America—Public opinion. 3. Indians of North America—History—Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775. 4. Missionaries—Great Britain—Attitudes. 5. Anglicans—Missions—United States—History. 6. Protestants—Missions—United States—History. 7. Public opinion—Great Britain. 8. Great Britain—Colonies—America. 9. United States—History—Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775. I. Title. II. Series.
E98.M6S75 2004
| 266′.02341′008997—dc22 | 2004042027 |
For Tom
Contents
Introduction: “The Common Bowels of Pity to the Miserable”
1 Gold for Glass, Seeds to Fruit: Husbandry and Trade in Missionary Writings
2 “I Have Received Your Christian and Very Loving Letter”: Epistolarity and Transatlantic Community
3 “The Reservoir of National Charity”: The Role of the Missionary Society
6 “Like Snow Against the Sun”: The Christian Origins of the Vanishing Indian
Introduction
“The Common Bowels of Pity to the Miserable”
In Daniel Defoe’s Life and Strange and Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Crusoe tells us that in his eighteenth year as a castaway he stumbled across the remnants of a cannibalistic feast. Repulsed by “this horrid Spectacle,” he “gave God Thanks that had cast my first Lot in a Part of the World, where I was distinguish’d from such dreadful Creatures as these.” He then spent several weeks plotting “how I might destroy some of these Monsters in their cruel bloody Entertainment.” After a while, though, he gave up these fantasies, as he considered the injustice of “so outragious an Execution as the killing twenty or thirty naked Savages.” Several factors prompted this change of heart. Crusoe admitted that the Caribes had not hurt him by slaughtering each other. He considered that any attack might result in his own death. He began to pity the Caribes, “who it seems had been suffer’d by Providence in his wise Disposition of the World, to have no other Guide than that of their own abominable and vitiated Passions.” He wondered, how could God want him to kill Indians for their sinful acts when he had never told them those acts were sins?1
The real change, though, occurred when he realized that killing cannibals “would justify the Conduct of the Spaniards in all their Barbarities practis’d in America.” After all, the Indians of Mexico “had several bloody and barbarous Rites in their Customs,” but they were “yet, as to the Spaniards, very innocent People.” To kill these Caribes would make Crusoe just like the Spanish, who, he categorically proclaimed, were “without Principles of Tenderness, or the common Bowels of Pity to the Miserable.”2 Crusoe gave up on murdering the Caribes because he pitied them, but more because he could not bear to think of himself as a man without pity. His response was ponderous and self-conscious, precisely because it emerged from his need to think of himself as one who, unlike the Spanish, spontaneously felt pity. A few years later he did find an opportunity to be both compassionate and violent. After dreaming of and planning for such an occasion, he killed two Caribes in order to rescue and enslave one of their captives, another Caribe he named Friday. Although Crusoe was pleased to hear
