Dry Bones and Indian Sermons: Praying Indians in Colonial America

by Kristina Bross

Overview

Native converts to Christianity, dubbed "praying Indians" by seventeenth-century English missionaries, have long been imagined as benign cultural intermediaries between English settlers and "savages." More recently, praying Indians have been dismissed as virtual inventions of the colonists: "good" Indians used to justify mistreatment of "bad" ones. In a new consideration of this religious encounter, Kristina Bross argues that colonists used depictions of praying Indians to create a vitally important role for themselves as messengers on an evangelical "errand into the wilderness" that promised divine significance not only for the colonists who had embarked on the errand, but also for their metropolitan sponsors in London.In Dry Bones and Indian Sermons, Bross traces the response to events such as the English civil wars and Restoration, New England's Antinomian Controversy, and "King Philip's" war. Whatever the figure's significance to English settlers, praying Indians such as Waban and Samuel Ponampam used their Christian identity to push for status and meaning in the colonial order. Through her focused attention to early evangelical literature and to that literature's historical and cultural contexts, Bross demonstrates how the people who inhabited, manipulated, and consumed the praying Indian identity found ways to use it for their own, disparate purposes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801442063
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	02/27/2004
Series:	4/24/2007
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Kristina Bross is Associate Professor of English at Purdue University.

What People are Saying About This

Karen Ordahl Kupperman

"Kristina Bross takes a thoroughly Atlantic approach to her subject, and thus places her work at the forefront of the developing field of early American studies. Her demonstration that leaders on either side of the Atlantic were extremely well-informed about developments and controversies on the other indicates the degree to which the ocean was an information highway as well as a barrier. Bross argues convincingly that Indians and their concerns were at the center of this communication network and demonstrates how high the stakes were for those who sponsored missions."

Joshua David Bellin

"In her reading of these... contexts within which the figure of the Praying Indian became enmeshed, Bross goes beyond fulfilling her stated intention of revealing the complexity of the mission literature when placed in its full historical contexts. She also establishes that the mission texts are texts, literary productions susceptible of close and careful reading and not, as they are often treated, inert repositories of historical and ethnographic data.... Bross's reading of the mission literature in terms of transatlantic conflicts is subtle, rich, and challenging.... Dry Bones and Indian Sermons performs the vital task not only of reenvisioning the mission literature but of reanimating the multiple, interrelated cultures that body of literature served."

Daniel K. Richter

"The cover illustration is familiar to everyone who has studied seventeenth-century New England; that crudely drawn 'Indian' on the seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company who pleads 'Come over and help us'. In Dry Bones and Indian Sermons, Kristina Bross tackles the old dilemma of why it took the better part of twenty years for missionaries to get around to answering that imagined call.... A careful student of transatlantic discourse and of how those who took it as their job to explain New England to the world went about their task, Bross has much to offer.... She demonstrates how much we still have to learn about the complicated cultural worlds seventeeth-century colonists and natives inhabited."

Matthew Dennis

"Dry Bones and Indian Sermons is a book of exceptional merit—important, original, and engaging. It has broad significance for understanding the history of seventeenth-century New England and illuminating critical aspects of American culture. In particular, it offers new insight into the origins of American literature and to representations of American Indians, the nature of colonialism in America, the construction of English and American identity, and the enduring question of American exceptionalism. The book is a deft blend of original research and synthesis: nuanced in its modification, revision, and expansion of previous work on the subject."

Ann Marie Plane

Bross's study unearths the multivocality of the texts related to the Indian missions that begin in the 1640s and ran through the 1670s.... One of Bross's greatest achievements is her ability to build strong and persuasive contexts for these works.... This is a wonderfully rich book, and one to which this reader will turn for years to come. Dry Bones and Indian Sermons makes both a worthy and an important contribution to a number of different subfields in early American studies and early modern history. It is an important contribution to our understanding of Indians, Englishmen, and the making of an Atlantic world.

Richard W. Cogley

"Kristina Bross has accomplished something that is difficult to achieve'she has written a fresh and lively book that colonialists from the disciplines of history, religion, and literature will admire."

David J. Silverman

"In this crisply written literary analysis, Kristina Bross sheds new light on the 'Eliot tracts' published between the 1640s and 1670s by missionary John Eliot and his supporters to publicize their evangelism of New England Indians.... Bross's book is essential reading for anyone interested in the Eliot tracts, for no other study places those writings in such a full transatlantic context. Moreover, this book is the strongest example to date that colonial New England cannot be understood in isolation from its Indian missions. Bross's work should restore life to the dry bones debate over New England identity by illustrating the potential for shared histories of colonists and the people they colonized."

Editorial Reviews

In this important and provocative book, Kristina Bross argues that seventeenth-century accounts of British missionary work among the Indians in colonial New England constitute a 'Transatlantic debate' (p. 101), in which English writers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean used the of the Indian proselyte to construct their own spiritual and national identities.... Bross's precise and sophisticated attention to the discursive dimensions of this literature distinguishes her work from that of other scholars who have recently turned to Puritan missionary writing to reconstruct the life of indigenous peoples in colonial New England.... Her subtly nuanced close readings effectively demonstrate the literary sophistication and historical significance of these works, and her analysis of subjectivity within a 'Triangular' structure among Indians, colonists, and English Puritans is an important contribution to postcolonial studies of early America.

The Journal of American History - Michael P. Clark

"In her reading of these . . . contexts within which the figure of the Praying Indian became enmeshed, Bross goes beyond fulfilling her stated intention of revealing the complexity of the mission literature when placed in its full historical contexts. She also establishes that the mission texts are texts, literary productions susceptible of close and careful reading and not, as they are often treated, inert repositories of historical and ethnographic data. . . . Bross's reading of the mission literature in terms of transatlantic conflicts is subtle, rich, and challenging. . . . Dry Bones and Indian Sermons performs the vital task not only of reenvisioning the mission literature but of reanimating the multiple, interrelated cultures that body of literature served."—Joshua David Bellin, The New England Quarterly

"The cover illustration is familiar to everyone who has studied seventeenth-century New England; that crudely drawn 'Indian' on the seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company who pleads 'Come over and help us'. In Dry Bones and Indian Sermons, Kristina Bross tackles the old dilemma of why it took the better part of twenty years for missionaries to get around to answering that imagined call. . . . A careful student of transatlantic discourse and of how those who took it as their job to explain New England to the world went about their task, Bross has much to offer. . . . She demonstrates how much we still have to learn about the complicated cultural worlds seventeeth-century colonists and natives inhabited."—Daniel K. Richter, University of Pennsylvania, The International History Review, 17.4, December 2005

"In this crisply written literary analysis, Kristina Bross sheds new light on the 'Eliot tracts' published between the 1640s and 1670s by missionary John Eliot and his supporters to publicize their evangelism of New England Indians. . . . Bross's book is essential reading for anyone interested in the Eliot tracts, for no other study places those writings in such a full transatlantic context. Moreover, this book is the strongest example to date that colonial New England cannot be understood in isolation from its Indian missions. Bross's work should restore life to the dry bones debate over New England identity by illustrating the potential for shared histories of colonists and the people they colonized."—David J. Silverman, George Washington University, American Historical Review, October 2005

"Bross's study unearths the multivocality of the texts related to the Indian missions that begin in the 1640s and ran through the 1670s. . . . One of Bross's greatest achievements is her ability to build strong and persuasive contexts for these works. . . . This is a wonderfully rich book, and one to which this reader will turn for years to come. Dry Bones and Indian Sermons makes both a worthy and an important contribution to a number of different subfields in early American studies and early modern history. It is an important contribution to our understanding of Indians, Englishmen, and the making of an Atlantic world."—Ann Marie Plane, University of California, Santa Barbara, Intinerario, 29:2, 2005

"In this important and provocative book, Kristina Bross argues that seventeenth-century accounts of British missionary work among the Indians in colonial New England constitute a 'Transatlantic debate' (p. 101), in which English writers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean used the of the Indian proselyte to construct their own spiritual and national identities. . . . Bross's precise and sophisticated attention to the discursive dimensions of this literature distinguishes her work from that of other scholars who have recently turned to Puritan missionary writing to reconstruct the life of indigenous peoples in colonial New England. . . . Her subtly nuanced close readings effectively demonstrate the literary sophistication and historical significance of these works, and her analysis of subjectivity within a 'Triangular' structure among Indians, colonists, and English Puritans is an important contribution to postcolonial studies of early America."—Michael P. Clark, University of California, Irvine, The Journal of American History, June 2005

"Dry Bones and Indian Sermons is a book of exceptional merit—important, original, and engaging. It has broad significance for understanding the history of seventeenth-century New England and illuminating critical aspects of American culture. In particular, it offers new insight into the origins of American literature and to representations of American Indians, the nature of colonialism in America, the construction of English and American identity, and the enduring question of American exceptionalism. The book is a deft blend of original research and synthesis: nuanced in its modification, revision, and expansion of previous work on the subject."—Matthew Dennis, author of Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters in Seventeenth-Century America

"Kristina Bross has accomplished something that is difficult to achieve'she has written a fresh and lively book that colonialists from the disciplines of history, religion, and literature will admire."—Richard W. Cogley, Southern Methodist University

"Kristina Bross takes a thoroughly Atlantic approach to her subject, and thus places her work at the forefront of the developing field of early American studies. Her demonstration that leaders on either side of the Atlantic were extremely well-informed about developments and controversies on the other indicates the degree to which the ocean was an information highway as well as a barrier. Bross argues convincingly that Indians and their concerns were at the center of this communication network and demonstrates how high the stakes were for those who sponsored missions."—Karen Ordahl Kupperman, New York University

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