Experience Mayhew's Indian Converts: A Cultural Edition

by Laura Arnold Leibman

Overview

First published in 1727 under the title 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, Experience Mayhew's history of the Wampanoag Indians on Martha's Vineyard provides a rare look at the lives and culture of four generations of Native Americans in colonial America. Dividing his treatment into four sections—Indian Ministers, Good Men, Religious Women, and Pious Children—Mayhew details the books that different age groups were reading, provides insights into early New England pedagogy and childrearing practices, and describes each individual in terms of genealogy, religious practice, way of life, and place of residence. In addition to drawing on his own firsthand knowledge of the community and transcriptions of oral testimony he and others collected, Mayhew inserts translations of Wampanoag texts that have since been lost. Although the book has been out of print since the early nineteenth century, scholars have long recognized its importance for understanding the history of New England's Native communities. In an extensive introduction to this new scholarly edition, Laura Arnold Leibman places Indian Converts in a broader cultural context and explores its significance. She shows how Mayhew's biographies illuminate the theological upheavals that rocked early eighteenth-century New England on the eve of the Great Awakening, shifts that altered not only the character of Puritanism but also the landscape of Wampanoag religious and cultural life. An accompanying online archive that includes over 600 images and documents further contextualizes Mayhew's work and provide suggestions for students' investigations of the text.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558496613
Publisher:	University of Massachusetts Press
Publication date:	10/21/2008
Series:	Native Americans of the Northeast
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Laura Arnold Leibman is associate professor of English and humanities at Reed College.

What People are Saying About This

David J. Silverman

Indian Converts is like no other source in the history of Atlantic coast Indians and English colonial America. It is a landmark work, and the time is well overdue for a scholarly edition. Laura Leibman is an able scholar to see this project to fruition. She brings to her work not only a comprehensive understanding of colonial literature, consistent with her disciplinary training, but a firm command of the relevant historiography and primary sources.... Editorially, she has done a superb job.

Editorial Reviews

"Indian Converts is like no other source in the history of Atlantic coast Indians and English colonial America. It is a landmark work, and the time is well overdue for a scholarly edition. Laura Leibman is an able scholar to see this project to fruition. She brings to her work not only a comprehensive understanding of colonial literature, consistent with her disciplinary training, but a firm command of the relevant historiography and primary sources. . . . Editorially, she has done a superb job."—David J. Silverman, author of Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community among the Wampanoags of Martha's Vineyard, 1600–1871

"Among the large body of missionary texts documenting the conversion of Native North American peoples the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Experience Mayhew's 'Indian Converts' is unique. . . . Leibman provides the context to make this the 'cultural edition' promised in the title. . . . This valuable edition, useful for both historians and literary scholars, demonstrates the ways in which this text can be more productively used both as a source on Wampanog life during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and as a means of gaining insight into the complex transcultural relations between British colonists and Native North American people."—American Indian Quarterly

"Mayhew's account is a unique source of information. . . . Accessible and a necessary aquisition for Native American, Colonial American, and historical anthropology collections. Highly recommended"—Choice

From the Publisher

Among the large body of missionary texts documenting the conversion of Native North American peoples the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Experience Mayhew's 'Indian Converts' is unique.... Leibman provides the context to make this the 'cultural edition' promised in the title.... This valuable edition, useful for both historians and literary scholars, demonstrates the ways in which this text can be more productively used both as a source on Wampanog life during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and as a means of gaining insight into the complex transcultural relations between British colonists and Native North American people.

American Indian Quarterly

Mayhew's account is a unique source of information.... Accessible and a necessary aquisition for Native American, Colonial American, and historical anthropology collections. Highly recommended

Choice