To live upon hope
Subtitle: Mohicans and missionaries in the eighteenth-century Northeast
By: Rachel Wheeler.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Ithaca
Language: eng
Number of pages: 316
ISBN-13: 9780801446313
Subjects: Moravian Church -- Missions -- New York (State) -- Shekomeko Site -- History -- 18th century; Stockbridge Indians -- Missions -- Massachusetts -- Stockbridge -- History -- 18th century; Moravian Indians -- Missions -- New York (State) -- Shekomeko Site -- History -- 18th century; Mahican Indians -- Missions -- History -- 18th century; Congregational churches -- Missions -- Massachusetts -- Stockbridge -- History -- 18th century; Stockbridge (Mass.) -- History -- 18th century; Shekomeko Site (N.Y.) -- History -- 18th century; Stockbridge (Mass.) -- Ethnic relations; Shekomeko Site (N.Y.) -- Ethnic relations
Description: "Two Northeast Indian communities with similar histories of colonization accepted Congregational and Moravian missionaries, respectively, within five years of one another: the Mohicans of Stockbridge, Massachusetts (1735), and Shekomeko, in Dutchess County, New York (1740). In To Live upon Hope, Rachel Wheeler explores the question of what "missionary Christianity" became in the hands of these two native communities." "Through extensive research, especially in the Moravian records of day-to-day life, Wheeler offers an understanding of the lived experience of Mohican communities under colonialism. She complicates the understanding of eighteenth-century American Christianity by demonstrating that mission programs were not always driven by the destruction of indigenous culture and the advancement of imperial projects. In To Live upon Hope, Wheeler challenges the prevailing view of accommodation or resistance as the two poles of Indian responses to European colonization; colonialism placed severe strains on native peoples, yet Indians also exercised a level of agency and creativity that aided in their survival."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [255]-308) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : Indian and Christian; title: The river god and the lieutenant; title: Covenants, contracts, and the founding of Stockbridge; title: The chief and the orator; title: Moravian missionaries of the blood; title: Mohican men and Jesus as Manitou; title: The village matriarch and the young mother; title: Mohican women and the community of the blood; title: The dying chief and the accidental missionary; title: Indian and white bodies politic at Stockbridge; title: Irony and identity; title: The cooper and the sachem; title: Epilogue : real and ideal Indians.