Reading Indians' deathbed scenes: Ethnohistorical and representational approaches

Journal of American History

Volumn 88, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 17-47

  Seeman, Erik R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34748858022     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2674917     Document Type: Article

References (186)

1. Experience Mayhew, Indian Converts; or, Some Account of the Lives and Dying Speeches of a Considerable Number of the Christianized Indians of Martha's Vineyard, in New-England (London, 1727), 150.
2. Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (73 vols., Cleveland, 1896-1901), XXI, 279.
3. have also benefited from a project sponsored by Creighton University, which has placed nearly half of the Jesuit Relations online at The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: 1610-1791 〈http://puffin.creighton.edu/ jesuit/relations〉 (Jan. 29, 2001).
4. For example, a work that relies largely on Mayhew's Indian Converts barely mentions its 77 deathbed scenes: James P. Ronda, "Generations of Faith: The Christian Indians of Martha's Vineyard," William and Mary Quarterly, 38 (July 1981), 369-94.
5. The only sustained analysis of Indians' dying speeches is David Murray, Forked Tongues: Speech, Writing, and Representation in North American Indian Texts (London, 1991), esp. 34-35.
6. Indian deathbed scenes are mentioned in Richard W. Cogley, John Eliot's Mission to the Indians before King Philip's War (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 242-43;
7. Hilary E. Wyss, "'Things That Do Accompany Salvation': Colonialism, Conversion, and Cultural Exchange in Experience Mayhew's Indian Converts," Early American Literature, 33 (no. 1, 1998), 39-61, esp. 51-52;
8. Jean M. O'Brien, Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650-1790 (New York, 1997), 60;
9. and William M. Clements, Native American Verbal Art: Texts and Contexts (Tucson, 1996), 64-65.
10. Allan Greer notes that the seventeenth century was "one of the last great periods of European (especially French) hagiography," a genre that saw "death as the central event in the subject's life." Allan Greer, "Colonial Saints: Gender, Race, and Hagiography in New France," William and Mary Quarterly, 57 (April 2000), 323-48, esp. 323, 330.
11. Protestants also had a quasi-hagiographic tradition, represented most notably by John Foxe, Actes and Monuments of These Latter and Perillous Dayes (London, 1563).
12. William N. Fenton, American Indian and White Relations to 1830: Needs and Opportunities for Study (Chapel Hill, 1957).
13. Three of the most influential ethnohistories are Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (New York, 1976);
14. James Lockhart, The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford, 1992);
15. and Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York, 1991).
16. Literary scholars skeptical of European sources include Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago, 1991);
17. and Eric Cheyfitz, The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from The Tempest to Tarzan (New York, 1991).
18. For a similar argument that the Jesuit Relations are more appropriate for study as literary works than as historical documents, see Guy Laflèche, "Les relations des jésuites de la Nouvelle-France: Un document anthropologique majeur de l'américanité française du XVIIe siècle" (The Jesuit Relations of New France: A major anthropological document of French Americanization in the seventeenth century), Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec, 29 (1999), 77-87, esp. 85.
19. For a sketch of the boundaries between ethnohistorical and literary approaches, see Jill Lepore, "Ich Bin Ein Indian," Reviews in American History, 27 (March 1999), 22-27.
20. A few exceptions: Gordon M. Sayre, Les Sauvages Américains: Representations of Native Americans in French and English Colonial Literature (Chapel Hill, 1997);
21. Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570 (New York, 1987);
22. and Olive Patricia Dickason, The Myth of the Savage and the Beginnings of French Colonialism in the Americas (Edmonton, 1984).
23. Scholars who emphasize the sincerity of Indian converts include James Axtell, After Columbus: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (New York, 1988), 100-121;
24. Daniel K. Richter, "Iroquois versus Iroquois: Jesuit Missions and Christianity in Village Politics, 1642-1686," Ethnohistory, 32 (no. 1, 1985), 1-16;
25. and Charles L. Cohen, "Conversion among Puritans and Amerindians: A Theological and Cultural Perspective," in Puritanism: Transatlantic Perspectives on a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Faith, ed. Francis J. Bremer (Boston, 1993), 233-56.
26. Those who focus on the "shallowness" of Indian conversions include James P. Ronda, "'We Are Well As We Are': An Indian Critique of Seventeenth-Century Christian Missions," William and Mary Quarterly, 34 (Jan. 1977), 66-82;
27. Ramón A. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford, 1991), esp. 93-94;
28. and Robert H. Jackson and Edward D. Castillo, Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization: The Impact of the Mission System on California Indians (Albuquerque, 1995), esp. 31-39.
29. Perhaps the most sensible approach sidesteps the issue of "sincerity" by asking "what conversion meant to Indians who embraced Christianity." See John Webster Grant, Moon of Wintertime: Missionaries and the Indians of Canada in Encounter since 1534 (Toronto, 1984), 249.
30. Between these two poles was a third category: the "orthodox deathbed scene with an unorthodox element." In such scenes one unusual moment was surmounted, and the person ultimately died in an orthodox manner. These hybrid cases require a hybrid methodology: I use the unorthodox element ethnohistorically, the orthodox moments representationally.
31. Even the most astute discussions of historical evidence rarely confront the special challenges posed by formulaic sources. See, for example, Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft, trans. Peter Putnam (New York, 1953);
32. Carlo Ginzburg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, trans. John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi (Baltimore, 1989);
33. Robert F. Berkhofer Jr., Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse (Cambridge, Mass., 1995);
34. and James Chandler, Arnold I. Davidson, and Harry Harootunian, eds., Questions of Evidence: Proof, Practice, and Persuasion across the Disciplines (Chicago, 1994).
35. Historians may have paid too little attention to the genre conventions of a source widely used for religious history: see Erik R. Seeman, "Lay Conversion Narratives: Investigating Ministerial Intervention," New England Quarterly, 71 (Dec. 1998), 629-34.
36. On Indian women, see Theda Perdue, Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835 (Lincoln, 1998);
37. Nancy Shoemaker, "Kateri Tekakwitha's Tortuous Path to Sainthood," in Negotiators of Change: Historical Perspectives on Native American Women, ed. Nancy Shoemaker (New York, 1995), 49-71;
38. and Karen Anderson, Chain Her by One Foot: The Subjugation of Native Women in Seventeenth-Century New France (New York, 1991).
39. This thesis may be traced back to the old chestnut: "Spanish civilization crushed the Indian; English civilization scorned and neglected him; French civilization embraced and cherished him." Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century (Toronto, 1867), 131.
40. For a subtler - and highly influential - statement of the differences between Catholics and Protestants in New France and New England, see James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York, 1985).
41. See also Peter A. Dorsey, "Going to School with Savages: Authorship and Authority among the Jesuits of New France," William and Mary Quarterly, 55 (July 1998), 399-420, esp. 408-9;
42. Cornelius J. Jaenen, Friend and Foe: Aspects of French-Amerindian Cultural Contact in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Toronto, 1976), esp. 191-92;
43. and Jennings, Invasion of America, 56-57. Axtell's interpretation dominates college-level textbooks.
44. See, for example, Mary Beth Norton et al., A People and a Nation, 5th ed. (2 vols., Boston, 1998), I, 36-37, 54;
45. and James West Davidson et al., Nation of Nations: A Concise Narrative of the American Republic, 2d ed. (2 vols., New York, 1999), I, 62-63, 76.
46. On the commonalities between Catholic and Protestant missionaries, see Neal Salisbury, "Religious Encounters in a Colonial Context: New England and New France in the Seventeenth Century," American Indian Quarterly, 16 (Fall 1992), 501-9.
47. Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven, 1993), 1-12.
48. On Indian syncretism in the colonial Northeast, see Kenneth M. Morrison, "Montagnais Missionization in Early New France: The Syncretic Imperative," American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 10 (no. 3, 1986), 1-23;
49. and Kenneth M. Morrison, "Baptism and Alliance: The Symbolic Mediations of Religious Syncretism," Ethnohistory, 37 (Fall 1990), 416-37.
50. See also James P. Ronda, "The Sillery Experiment: A Jesuit-Indian Village in New France, 1637-1663," American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 3 (no. 1, 1979), 1-18;
51. and Daniel K. Richter, "'Some of Them . . . Would Always Have a Minister with Them': Mohawk Protestantism, 1683-1719," American Indian Quarterly, 16 (Fall 1992), 471-84, esp. 480-81.
52. I use "deathbed scene" to designate any case where a person was recognized by observers to be dying, excluding cases where the person recovered. I reserve "dying scene" for cases where the dying person was not in a death-bed, such as an Indian being tortured to death. "Dying scenes" are thus a subset of "deathbed scenes." "Dying words" are not necessarily the very last words a person utters, but any speech during a deathbed scene. I have restricted "colonial New France" to present-day Canada, judging that the experiences of the French colonies in the lower Mississippi Valley varied too much from those in the northern colonies to allow fruitful comparisons. I have expanded "colonial New England" to include parts of New York where missionaries from New England worked among the Iroquois. My time period extends through 1800. For a suggestive comparison with New Spain, see Susan Schroeder, "Jesuits, Nahuas, and the Good Death Society in Mexico City, 1710-1767," Hispanic American Historical Review, 80 (Feb. 2000), 43-76. The society's records, unfortunately, do not contain descriptions of good deaths. Thanks to Jorge Cañizares for alerting me to this article.
53. See Mayhew, Indian Converts, 53-54. Experience Mayhew, translation of written statement of Japheth Hannit, 1712, ms. 7957, Papers of the New England Company (Guildhall Library, London, Eng.) (microfilm at Yale University Library). I thank Douglas Winiarski for bringing this source to my attention.
54. The reliability of Thwaites's translations of the Jesuit Relations is called into question by Maureen Korp, "Problems of Prejudice in the Thwaites' Edition of the Jesuit Relations," Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques, 21 (Spring 1995), 261-76. Korp is more convincing in establishing the "prejudice" of the original Jesuit writers than in demonstrating systematic distortions in Thwaites's translations.
55. The "model deathbed scene" is a composite based on scenes recorded with approving commentary. "Unorthodox deathbed scenes" are those that were described disapprovingly or that contained highly unusual elements. A third category, the "model deathbed scene with an unorthodox element," includes, for example, scenes in which the dying person momentarily lost his or her senses and criticized the attending clergyman, but then recovered, apologized, and died well.
56. Nancy Lee Beaty, The Craft of Dying: A Study in the Literary Tradition of the Ars moriendi in England (New Haven, 1970), 2-16;
57. Philippe Ariès, The Hour of Our Death, trans. Helen Weaver (New York, 1981), 95-139, 297-313;
58. Mary Catharine O'Connor, The Art of Dying Well: The Development of the Ars moriendi (New York, 1942).
59. On romantic influences, see Ariès, Hour of Our Death, 298-305, 409-74.
60. Mayhew, Indian Converts, 186;
61. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, XXI, 235;
62. Mayhew, Indian Converts, 193;
63. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, XXXVII, 155;
64. Mayhew, Indian Converts, 231;
65. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, XXXII, 243.
66. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, XLVII, 163;
67. Mayhew, Indian Converts, 237.
68. On Catholic views, see Ariès, Hour of Our Death, 108-10. For characteristic
69. Protestant views, see Mather Byles, The Character of the Perfect and Upright Man; His Peaceful End Described (Boston, 1729), 15;
70. and Samuel Willard, The Mourners Cordial Against Excessive Sorrow (Boston, 1691), 21, 71, 104.
71. See also Ralph Houlbrooke, Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 1480-1750 (Oxford, 1998), 154.
72. James Axtell, The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (New York, 1981), 110-28.
73. The only earlier scene involved a girl who can barely be called "christianized": she was baptized when mortally ill, nine days before dying. See Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, I, 209.
74. Jesuit Relations, Ibid., II, 19-23.
75. See also Jesuit Relations, ibid., XXX, 103, XXXIV, 113, LIII, 169, LXI, 25.
76. Erik R. Seeman, Pious Persuasions: Laity and Clergy in Eighteenth-Century New England (Baltimore, 1999), 68-70.
77. Lalemant did not witness this scene firsthand but heard it from the head of that mission. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, XXX, 105-7.
78. See also, for example, Jesuit Relations, ibid., XI, 107, XXXI, 159, LXII, 39-41.
79. On the importance of baptism, see Morrison, "Baptism and Alliance";
80. and Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 35.
81. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Regions, XXXII, 237.
82. See also Jesuit Regions, ibid., XXX, 103, XXXI, 237.
83. Jonn Eliot, The Dying Speeches of Several Indians (Cambridge, Mass., [1685?]), 6.
84. See also Jonn Eliot, The Dying Speeches of Several Indians ibid., 10. Eliot had the Indian minister Daniel Tokkohwompait gather these speeches "in the Language as they were spoken," and Eliot then translated them into English.
85. See Jonn Eliot, The Dying Speeches of Several Indians ibid., 1.
86. Mayhew, Indian Converts, 245.
87. See also, for example, Mayhew, Indian Converts, ibid., 37, 102, 144.
88. For Catholic use of these techniques, see Joyce Marshall, ed., Word from New France: The Selected Letters of Marie de l'Incarnation (Toronto, 1967), 304, 352;
89. and Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, XI, 105, 107, 119, XVIII, 163, XXIX, 169, XLIX, 43.
90. On Protestants, see, for example, Experience Mayhew's tactics in John W. Ford, ed., Some Correspondence Between the Governors and Treasurers of the New England Company (London, 1896), 124; and John Sergeant Journal, April 24, 1791, box 1, Papers of the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others in North America (Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston).
91. For a convincing argument that, even though Jesuits used hell as a conversion tool, they were not firmly persuaded of the devil's presence among the Indians, see Peter A. Goddard, "The Devil in New France: Jesuit Demonology, 1611-50," Canadian Historical Review, 78 (March 1997), 40-62.
92. Kathleen J. Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 1500-1650 (Norman, 1996), 190.
93. See also Denys Delâge, Bitter Feast: Amerindians and Europeans in Northeastern North America, 1600-64, trans. Jane Brierley (Vancouver, 1993), 73.
94. Onaquaga (also known as Oquaga and some sixty other variants) was in present-day upstate New York near the Pennsylvania border. It was home to displaced Oneidas, Tuscaroras, Mahicans, Shawnees, and Delawares. Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (New York, 1995), 110-11.
95. Gideon Hawley Journal, Oct. 1762, box 1, Papers of the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others in North America; Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, XI, 105.
96. Matthew Mayhew, A Brief Narrative of the Success which the Gospel Hath Had Among the Indians, of Martha's Vineyard (and the Places Adjacent) in New England (Boston, 1694), 41, 42.
97. This speech appears in nearly identical form in Mayhew, Indian Converts, 21-22.
98. Marshall, ed., Word from New France, 162.
99. See also Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, XXXI, 147, XXXII, 203, 251, XXXVII, 155.
100. On Marie de l'Incarnation, see Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 63-139.
101. On the women who went to New France as lay and religious missionaries, see Leslie Choquette, "'Ces Amazones du Grand Dieu': Women and Mission in Seventeenth-Century Canada," French Historical Studies, 17 (Spring 1992), 627-55.
102. See, for example, Thwaites, ed. Jesuit Relations, VIII, 137-39, XIII, 151-53, 209.
103. Jesuit Relations, Ibid., XXXV, 91-93.
104. See also Jesuit Relations, ibid., VIII, 141, XIII, 29, 127-29, XLI, 143;
105. and Morrison, "Montagnais Missionization," 12-14.
106. Mayhew, Indian Converts, 157.
107. See also, for example, Mayhew, Indian Converts, ibid., 188.
108. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, XXXI, 245.
109. Mayhew, Indian Converts, 203.
110. On Indian deathbed stoicism, see Bruce G. Trigger, The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 (Montreal, 1976), 52;
111. and John Josselyn, An Account of Two Voyages to New-England (London, 1674), 132.
112. Murray, Forked Tongues, 129.
113. On unorthodox deaths in colonial New England, see Seeman, Pious Persuasions, 67-78;
114. for early modern England, see Houlbrooke, Death, Religion, and the Family, 196-200, 207-11;
115. for early modern France, see John McManners, Death and the Enlightenment: Changing Attitudes to Death in Eighteenth-Century France (New York, 1981), 258-64. Many of the dynamics may also pertain to missionary accounts of Africans' and African Americans' deathbed scenes. The issue is explored in my current book project, "Deathways: Cross-Cultural Encounters with Death in Colonial North America."
116. George Parker Winship, ed., Sailors Narratives of Voyages along the New England Coast, 1524-1624 (Boston, 1905), 19;
117. Alexander Young, ed., Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth, from 1602 to 1625 (Boston, 1841), 313, 362. Edward Winslow's account was originally published in 1624.
118. Roger Williams, A Key Into the Language of America; or, An Help to the Language of the Natives in That Part of America, Called New-England (London, 1643), 187-88, esp. 187;
119. Josselyn, Account of Two Voyages, 132. Josselyn explained this stoicism in the most narrowly ethnocentric manner, attributing it to Indians' "not knowing of a Hell to scare them, nor a Conscience to terrifie them."
120. Josselyn, Account of Two Voyages, 132. Ibid.
121. Williams, Key Into the Language of America, 192-93.
122. Williams, Key Into the Language of America, Ibid., 193;
123. Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 229.
124. See, for example, Williams, Key Into the Language of America, 119, 190;
125. Josselyn, Account of Two Voyages, 134-35;
126. and Edward Winslow, The Glorious Progress of the Gospel Amongst the Indians in New England (1649), in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1834), 3d ser., 4, 77.
127. Williams, Key Into the Language of America, 116-17;
128. Josselyn, Account of Two Voyages, 133-34.
129. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, XV, 135, X, 267.
130. See also Joseph François Lafitau, Customs of the American Indians Compared With the Customs of Primitive Times, trans. William N. Fenton and Elizabeth L. Moore (1724; 2 vols., Toronto, 1974), II, 227.
131. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, X, 265-67, XI, 103-5, XIII, 55-57, XX, 65, XXIX, 171, XXXIV, 113, LI, 263.
132. See also Lafitau, Customs of the American Indians, trans. Fenton and Moore, II, 227.
133. Jesuits reported that the Micmacs of present-day Nova Scotia had a similar ritual called tabagie. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, I, 213, II, 15-19.
134. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, X, 147, 153, XII, 11.
135. Jesuit Relations, Ibid., XIII, 257.
136. See Seeman, Pious Persuasions, 64-65.
137. On people who died in great distress in England, see Houlbrooke, Death, Religion, and the Family, 198-99.
138. Mayhew, Indian Converts, 172.
139. See also Gideon Hawley Journal, March 18, 22, 1754, Gideon Hawley Papers (Congregational Library, Boston, Mass.);
140. and Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, XIV, 145.
141. Seeman, Pious Persuasions, 69-71.
142. The nineteen-year-old Anglo-American Nathaniel King of Marblehead, Massachusetts, made a statement much like Mary Manhut's as he lay dying in 1749: he was willing to die only "if he was prepared for it." Seeman, Pious Persuasions, Ibid., 70.
143. Mayhew, Indian Converts, 210.
144. Hawley Journal, April 3, 1754, Hawley Papers.
145. See also Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, XIV, 155.
146. On Protestant missionaries' obsession with Indian haughtiness, see Axtell, Invasion Within, 131-78. Catholic missionaries shared this perception, though perhaps with less fervor.
147. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, XIII, 221-23.
148. See also Jesuit Relations, ibid., XIV, 31, XXIII, 135B37, XXXIX, 77, XLI, 101-3.
149. See Trigger, Children of Aataentsic, 469-70;
150. and Dorsey, "Going to School with Savages," 416-20.
151. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, LI, 31.
152. Indians threw tobacco on fires as part of traditional non-Christian prayers: see Trigger, Children of Aataentsic, 76;
153. and Delâge, Bitter Feast, 71.
154. 2 Kings 1 Revised Standard Version; Winslow, Glorious Progress, 77.
155. See also Walter Pilkington, ed., The Journals of Samuel Kirkland (Clinton, 1980), 214.
156. Thomas Mayhew Jr. was not especially intolerant; even a harsh critic of missionaries lauds him for his "sincerity" and noncoercive style: Jennings, Invasion of America, 228-53, esp. 230-31.
157. For visions approved by missionaries, see, for example, Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, XXX, 103-5, XXXII, 207, XLI, 141, 155;
158. and Mayhew, Indian Converts, 44, 160, 211, 233.
159. On Indian attitudes toward dreams, see Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill, 1992), 25-28;
160. Matthew Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters in Seventeenth-Century America (Ithaca, 1993), 112-13;
161. Kenneth M. Morrison, "Discourse and the Accommodation of Values: Toward a Revision of Mission History," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 53 (Sept. 1985), 365-82, esp. 370-71;
162. Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 191, 205;
163. and David Blanchard, " . . . To the Other Side of the Sky: Catholicism at Kahnawake, 1667-1700," Anthropologica, 24 (no. 1, 1982), 77-102.
164. Chrestien Le Clercq, New Relation of Gaspesia, trans. William F. Ganong (Toronto, 1910), 207-8.
165. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, XIII, 149-51.
166. See also Jesuit Relations, ibid., X, 153-57, XIV, 151-53, XVIII, 201, LII, 255;
167. Mayhew, Indian Converts, 58, 262;
168. Gideon Hawley Journal, Jan. 27, 1754, Hawley Papers.
169. Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 191. This is Bragdon's gloss on Josselyn's description, quoted above.
170. Mayhew, Indian Converts, 33, 44, 58, 147, 150, 160, 201, 211, 214, 221, 233, 241, 262. See also Jonathan Barber to Benjamin Colman, Oct. 2, 1733, Benjamin Colman Papers (Massachusetts Historical Society). Although I have not carefully quantified a control group, I would estimate that in no more than 2-3% of contemporary Anglo-American deathbed scenes did the dying person have dreams or visions.
171. Mayhew, Indian Converts, 33, 147, 150, 201, 214, 221, 241.
172. On the disproportionately female association with supernatural events in Mayhew's account, cf. Wyss, "'Things That Do Accompany Salvation,'" 50-52.
173. Mayhew, Indian Converts, 33.
174. Mayhew, Indian Converts, Ibid., 199-200, 201.
175. Mayhew, Indian Converts, Ibid., 33, 201.
176. Seeman, Pious Persuasions, 44-45, 71-72.
177. Mayhew's openness to Christian Indian syncretism is further suggested by his membership - as a congregant, not a missionary - in a Christian Indian church. Charles Edward Banks, ed., "Diary of Rev. William Homes of Chilmark, Martha's Vineyard, 1689-1746," New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 48 (1894), 414. I am grateful to Douglas Winiarski for sharing this source with me.
178. The case for Indian influence on another missionary is made by Richard W. Pointer, "'Poor Indians' and the 'Poor in Spirit': The Indian Impact on David Brainerd," New England Quarterly, 67 (Sept. 1994), 403-26.
179. Robert F. Berkhofer Jr., The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York, 1978), 28.
180. On the problems in using treaty speeches as sources, see James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York, 1999), 253-55.
181. James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (Philadelphia, 1826);
182. Thomas L. Brasher, ed., Walt Whitman: The Early Poems and the Fiction (New York, 1963), 124-239.
183. "The Death of Wind-Foot," a story embedded in Franklin Evans, was twice reprinted in 1845 as a separate short story.
184. William Coyle and Harvey G. Damaser, eds., Six Early American Plays, 1798-1890 (Columbus, 1968), 92-93.
185. On the vanishing Indian theme, see Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (New York, 1998), 191-226 ;
186. and Laura M. Stevens, "'Like Snow against the Sun': English Missionary Writings and the Origins of the Vanishing Indian," in Mortal Remains: Explaining Death in Early America, ed. Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg (forthcoming, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).