Title: To live upon hope
First published: 2008
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.
Subjects: Congregational churches, Ethnic relations, History, Mahican Indians, Missions, Moravian Church, Moravian Indians, Stockbridge Indians, Indians of north america, east (u.s.), Massachusetts, history, New york (n.y.), history, United states, ethnic relations, Indians of north america, missions
Places: Massachusetts, New York (State), Shekomeko Site, Shekomeko Site (N.Y.), Stockbridge, Stockbridge (Mass.)
Time periods: 18th century
LC classification: E99.S8 W54 2008