KRISTINA BROSS Purdue University “Come Over and Help Us” Reading Mission Literature Struck in 1629, the Great Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is emblematic of colonial hubris and dependence alike. It depicts a figure—an “Indian” — dressed in a leafy loincloth, holding a huge bow, and pleading “come over and help us” ina cartoon ribbon that wreaths his head. His plea is an echo of the Pauline dream of the welcoming Other, taken from Acts 16: 9-10. It signals the arrogance of an invading people who could make themselves believe that they were being invited to occupy a land inhabited byanother, self-sufficient people. With the scriptural allusion, they assume a typological identity; as a colony, they inhabit the role of Apostle. Yet the seal also signals the reliance of these colonists on the goodwill and patron- age of those they left behind in their English homeland. The figure is not speaking to colonists in America, but directly to an audience “over there” in England. In fact, at least initially, the seal had little to say to the settlers themselves —for the first 15 years of a permanent English presence in New England, almost nothing was done to “help” Indians to Christianity, de- spite the colonists’ repeated assurances to interested parties in England that evangelism was the root and cause of their migration. However disregarded in the early years, the fantasy of the seal was repli- cated in the mission literature that began to be published in the 1640s, and it retained the colonial and metropolitan valences of the seal. We see these transatlantic forces especially in the works considered by the three essays in this spec’ I section; Roger Williams's A Key Into the Language of America, and the so: alled Eliot tracts, nearly a dozen pamphlets written in New Ei gland, but edited and published in London. Yet if we were to assume that all that is to be perceived in the mission discourse is a colony mirroring its metropolitan patrons, we would miss the aspect of the mission writings that has proven most challenging in recent studies. What the mission lit- erature inscribes that the seal does not is the interaction of real people in a religious contact zone. No matter how fantastic or how ventriloquized 13396} EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE: VOLUME 38, NUMBER 3 the “Praying Indian” in mission writings, who replaced the “Indian” on the seal, the figure was constructed in response to the interaction of En- glish missionaries with Algonquian peoples who were interested in, hostile to, or manipulative of the Christian messages missionaries sought to im- part. Thus, mission literature describes a triangle of influences —colonial, metropolitan, and indigenous. The complex of influence and interest (and the triangle, however useful a model, is surely too simple to adequately suggest the range of participants in the colonial mission discourse, even if we limit ourselves to New England; more on this point later) has sparked a cottage industry of new and interesting analysis to which this special sec- tion ably contributes. Until quite recently, early American studies have unquestionably ac- cepted the Great Seal’s message and that of other mission literature at its face. From the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, antiquarians, historians, and biographers believed that missionaries truly “helped” Indians, if only by mitigating some of the depredations of their countrymen. John Eliot, minister of the church at Roxbury and the most visible Puritan missionary, was the “apostle,” the saintly Puritan whose beneficence was lauded in histories of New England beginning immedi- ately after his death and fictionalized in novels from Hope Leslie to The Scarlet Letter.! The revisionist scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s chal- lenged such notions, most notably in the works of Francis Jennings and Neal Salisbury. These ionaries’ work was holars pointed out that the mis made possible by and in turn shored up the more obviously brutal as- pects of colonialism, that missionaries followed fast on the heels of En- glish conquistadores, and their writings were a tool of that empire. While welcome, such revisions often kept the focus on the poles of empire— Boston and London. Other studies, such as those by James Axtell and James Ronda, demanded that we turn our attention to the Indian experi- ence of Christian evangelism, especially that of those who resisted evan- gelism. More recently, scholars such as David Murray, Laura Murray, and Hilary Wyss have reminded us to consider “those who wrote and thought from a Native perspective that included a sense of their colonial position” (Wyss 3), and who considered themselves to be Christian, Additionally, Kathleen Bragdon, Richard Cogley, James Holstun, Dane Morrison, Jean O’Brien, Philip Round, and Thomas Scanlan, among others, have investi- gated neglected contexts (linguistic, religious, ethnographic, and discur-Indian Mission Introduction sive) of mission writings. Linguists have even found in the publications material for Wampanoag language revitalization? All these studies dem- onstrate that mis ion literature, far from being a flat and formless represen- tation of colonial power, engages with all three points of the transatlantic triangle. By investigating this rich tangle of motivations, interests, beliefs, needs, and responses, introduced by earlier studies directed toward mission litera- ture, the essays here have benefited more generally from what Ivy Schweit- zer hailed as the “ salutory decoupling” of early American studies from a purely New England focus (578). Although all three essays are focused on New England, all of them understand that region and its literary produc- tions as only a part of “the complicated contestation of global imperial agendas and creolized cultures” (Schweitzer 579). If the terrain they cover is familiar, they are leading us through it at night, and sussing out its features with night-vis ion goggles— familiar landmarks seem strange, and new de- tails emerge from their examinations. David Thompson (with a nod to the transatlantic influences on the mis- sion discourse) concentrates on the local colonial context of Puritan mis- sions, on the ways the resolution of the antinomian controversy made way for “a vibrant, autonomous, indigenous Puritanism.” Although his con- clusions are radically different from those drawn by Ann Kibbey in her study of the controversy’s implication in the violence visited on indige- nous peoples during the Pequot War, their studies together are a call to re- consider seemingly rigid boundaries between English colonial and Indian experiences, J. Patrick C ‘sarini draws attention to the metropolitan point of the mission triangle (and usefully “decouples” mission literature from John Eliot) in his study of Roger Williams's A Key Into the Language of America, published at a moment “when questions about Indians became caught up in the transatlantic literary, spiritual, and political relations be- tween English colonies and the English metropolis,” His essay reminds us that there is an “English context” to mission writings that must be recov- ered, And Craig White examines the third point of the triangle, mining mission literature for the “texts” of the praying Indians’ oral culture, He considers the traditional forms and themes on which the praying Indians relied and their creative adaptation of Christian culture to their own uses, as well as the influence they exerted on their English missionary interlocu- tors. Taken together, not in the sense of consensus (for there are important 1397398 } EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE? VOLUME 38, NUMBER 3 methodological and interpretive differences among them), but rather as an accretive grouping, these essays anchor each side of the mission discourse triangle. The essays go a long way toward extending the scholarship on mis- sion literature, and they remind us of how rich a field the study of colo- nial evangelism can be. They can and should point the way to further in- vestigation. The focus here on Roger Williams, John Eliot, and on people such as Cutshamakin, John Speen, and Waban, with whom the missionar- ies conducted their religious dialogues, while necessary, neglects other fig- ures, Josiah Cotton, Thomas Mayhew (both junior and senior), John Cot- ton, Jr., and Experience Mayhew were also at work in the English colonies, both before and after John Eliot. Close attention to New England’s mission writings forces a focus on the “Praying Indians” of the Bay Colony, espe cially the Massachusett men of Natick, but other peoples were involved: the Pequots, dispersed but surviving after the 1630s war and the residents of Martha’s Vineyard, are but one example. We need more studies that con- sider all these participants in the colonial mission discourse, individually and collectively. Moreover, despite the growing consensus in the field of early American studies of the necessity for cross-cultural colonial study, few have made the comparisons of French and Spanish evangelism to that of the English or Dutch. James Ronda looked at the French and English in 1974, Ralph Bauer has directed our attention to the Spanish-English field, and Bumas in an earlier issue of this journal has shown what fruit a sensitivity to cros cultural influences can bear. Much more remains possible. Finally, the problem of mediation and ventriloquism has yet to be fully plumbed. Each of the essayists here deals with the issue to some degree— with Craig White necessarily speaking most directly to the issue—but more attention must be paid. The methodology of literary studies, it seems to me, offers the best approach to the problem. By attending to the form and not just the content of Indian confessions, lists of questions, and narra- tive descriptions of “meetings” —and by considering such representations in their full transatlantic and colonial contexts —we can find new ways of approaching these texts. It is more important than ever to reconsider and rediscover these mis- sion materials, By doing so, of course, we can better understand the mo-Indian Mission Introduction | 399 ment and the contact zone out of which they were produced. But also, these texts can shed light on our present moment. As I write, a new generation of missionaries is issuing from an American metropolis, entering the—to them —“New World: dream of welcome. Dayna Curry, one of the two young women imprisoned ” ofa remade Baghdad or Kabul, responding to anew in Afghanistan for Christian proselytizing before the U.S. invasion in 2002, returned after her rescue to report that the Afghan people had an “incred- ible spiritual hungering” (Gorski). Reportedly, Christian missionaries are prepared to enter Iraq to offer their witness to residents as they rebuild after the war and the fall of Saddam Hussein. Perhaps we can find in the earlier production of mission writings some insight into the motivations and desires of the present-day evangelists, and the responses, positive or negative, of those whose lands they enter. NOTES 1, For a discussion of the nineteenth-century reception and use of Eliot, see Bellin. . The results of this linguistic research have, appropriately, been disseminated within the Wampanoag community and are not widely published for academic consumption, for descriptions of the language revitalization work see fermino, as well Hinton and Hale. WORKS CITED Axtell, James. The Invasion Within. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 198s. ‘The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 198 Bauer, Ralph. “John Eliot, The Praying Indian, and the Rheto Errand.” Zeitschrift flir Anglistik und Amerikanistik 44.4 (1996): 331-45. “The ‘Principle End of the Plantation’: The Praying Indian and the of a New England Colonial Identity, 1630-1700.” The American Nation, ic of a New gland Politic National Identity, Nationalism. Ed. Knud Krakau. Munich: Lit Verlag, 1997. 55-82. Bellin, Joshua, “Apostle of Removal: John Eliot in the Nineteenth Century England Quarterly 69.1 (1996): 3-32 Bragdon, Kathleen, “Native Languages as Spoken and Written.” The Language Encounter in the Americas, 1492-1800, Ed, Edward G. Gray and Norman Fiering. New York: Berghahn, 2000. jernacular Literacy and Massachusett World View, 1650-1750.” Dublin New Seminar for New England Folklife. Annual Proceedings 16 (1991); 26-34.4oo| EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE: VOLUME 38, NUMBER 3 Bumas, E. Shaskan, “The Cannibal Butcher Shop: Protestant Uses of las Casas’s Europe and the American Colonies.” Earl Literature 35.3 (2000): 107-36. Cogley, Richard. John Eliot's Mission to the Indian before King Philip's War. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1999. Brevissima relacién American fermino, jessie little doe. “Recovering Spoken Wampanoag La Unpublis! 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Forked Tongues: Speech, Writing, and Representation in North American Indian Tex ed paper delivered at “Reinterpreting New Sturbridge, 2 tion in Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1991. Murray, Laura. “Joining Signs with Words: Missionaries, Metaphors, and the Massachusett Language.” New England Quarterly 74.1 (2001): 62-93 O'Brien, Jean M. Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650-1790. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997. Ronda, James. "We Are Well As We Are Century Christian Missions.” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 31 (January 1974): 66-89, Round, Philip. By Nature and by Custom Cursect: Transatlantic Civil Discourse and New England Cultural Production: 1620-1660. Hanover: Univ. Press of New England, 1999. Salisbury, Ne New England, ‘An Indian Critique of Seventeenth . Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of 00-1643. New York: Oxford Univ, Press, 1982 —."Red Puritans.” William and Mary Quarter 27-54, Scanlan, Thomas. Colonial Writing and the New World, Desire. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999. 3rd ser, 31 (January 1974): 1583-1671: Allegories of Wyss, Hilary. Writing Indians: Literacy, Christianity, and Native Community in Early America. Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 2000,Copyright of Early American Literature is the property of University of North Carolina Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listsery without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.