Table Of ContentOn Our Own Ground
On
Our Own
Ground
The Complete Writings
of William Apess,
A Pequot
Edited and with an Introduction
by Harry O'Connell
The I ’niversity o/ MasssachiiselIs Press
Amherst
A volume in the series:
Native Americans of the Northeast: Culture, History,
and the Contemporary,
edited by Colin G. Calloway and Barry O’Connell
Frontispiece: Portrait of William Apess. Courtesy,
American Antiquarian Society.
Copyright © 1992 by
The University of Massachusetts Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
LC 91-27750
ISBN 0-87023-766-7 (cloth); 770-5 (paper)
Designed by Mary Mendell
Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Apes, William, b. 1798.
[Works. 1992]
On our own ground : the complete writings of William Apess, a
Pequot / edited and with an introduction by Barry O’Connell,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-87023-766-7 (cloth : alk. paper). — isbn
0-87023-770-5 (paper : alk. paper)
1. Indians of North America—New England. 2. Pequot Indians.
3. Indians, Treatment of—New England. 4. Apes, William, b. 1798.
I. O’Connell, Barry, 1943- II. Title.
E78.N5A64 1992
974'.00497—dc2o 91-27750 CIP
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data are available.
For Kristin,
who believed and gave
and loved so that this
might come into
being
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xiii
Chronology Ixxix
i A Son of the Forest (1831) 1
2 The Increase of the Kingdom of Christ: A Sermon
and The Indians: The Ten Lost Tribes (1831) 99
3 The Experiences of Five Christian Indians of
the Pequot Tribe ( 1833) 117
4 Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws
of Massachusetts Relative to the Marshpee Tribe; or,
The Pretended Riot Explained ( 1835) 163
5 Eulogy on King Philip, as Pronounced at the
Odeon, in Federal Street, Boston (1836) 275
Textual Afterword 311
Bibliographic Essay 325
Index 35 z
Acknowledg
ments
Completion and celebration belong together. There
are many people to be celebrated for all each has
done to make this book a reality. In writing there are many hands: voices that
feed the mind; good and mistaken books and articles without which one could
not have learned; particular teachers and students who led one on. It has
always seemed to me one of the strangest of contradictions to have but a single
name on a title page for this, one of the most genuinely collaborative acts I
know. So, imagine all the following, and those I do not know enough to name,
crowding across the spaces in and around my own name. To them should
belong whatever credit is due, and to me, conventionally and fairly, the re
sponsibility for what falls short.
Books like this one especially depend upon libraries. But libraries are
given life by those who everyday re-create them. I have had the happy
privilege for this project of being able to work at the American Antiquarian
Society, the kind of library scholars dream about. Without its collection, but
more importantly without the constant generosity, knowledge, and interest of
its staff, this book could not have been accomplished. As always, I am thankful
to John Hench for his hospitality. Nancy Burkett, Associate Librarian, not
only gave every assistance but treated the project almost as her own. Joanne
Chaison, head of Readers’ Services, taught me how to use the many resources
of the collection and introduced me to scholars in the reading room who
proved, at several key points, of indispensable assistance, most especially
Michael Winship, who took time away from his own research to spend an
afternoon leading me through the intricacies of nineteenth-century Ameri
can book publishing. Georgia Barnhill, Curator of Graphic Arts, responded
to my requests with grace and efficiency. The librarians at Robert Frost
Library at Amherst College were the first to show me how much a scholar
depends upon these, his true colleagues. With this, as with all my other
projects over the last twenty years, I could not have done without the hours,
x Acknowledgments
the education, and the ideas so freely given to me. Michael Kasper and Leeta
Bailey of the Reference Department deserve particular mention for their help
this time around, but Margaret Adams Groesbeck is to blame for being the
first to get me into the habit of believing that reference librarians can either
answer every question or find the means to do so, a belief that has held up to
tests of reality better than most. v '
I am grateful to Ronald C. Rosbottom, Dean of the Faculty at Amherst
College, for coming through several times with modest grants, each of which
funded student research assistants who contributed substantially to the book
and without whom it would have taken months and years longer to complete.
Each deserves credit by name: Stephanie Reents and I virtually began reading
Apess together. For a year she combed every reference, census schedules, and
any lead I provided to track Apess down. Libbie Rifkin took on the project for
one summer and achieved a number of breakthroughs, the most tangible
being Apess’s enlistment record from the National Archives. At the very
last stages Jo Park, Terri Webb, and Shawn Sullivan typed, proofread, and
searched for references. I could not have gotten the book to press without
them. And it was Shawn who discovered the full extent of Apess’s indebted
ness to Elias Boudinot’s A Star in the West. Ben Steinberg carried out original
research for me at the Connecticut State Library, double-checked census data,
and continued the so far fruidess pursuit of Apess after 1837-38 and of his
place and date of death—and, at the very last minute, voluntarily rescued me
so that I could make a critical deadline. Michael Elliott read, typed, converted
disks, and did the hard work of gathering the information for the footnotes to
the Eulogy on King Philip. All of them, along with my students in English 62
with whom I first explored Apess, illustrate how much difference can be made
by superb, independent, and interested students. Their presence at Amherst
has been the most dependable of its several resources.
A semester as a Rockefeller Fellow at the Center for the Humanities at
Wesleyan University provided the space, time, and collegiality to allow me
finally to bring to fruition several projects while also helping me to generate
many new ones, of which this is the first to be published. Richard Ohmann,
Henry Abelove, Khachig Tololyan, and Karen Bock deserve special mention
for the friendship they gave me and all they did to help me renew myself.
My own teachers have had to wait too long a time to be acknowledged.
They have given me too much to be sufficiently characterized or thanked in
this short space. Alan Heimert was my mentor. His passion, crankiness,
brilliance, and his rejection of the “merely academic” enabled me to believe a
fellow like me could find a place in the academy, despite many doubts about its
purposes and practices. His example is before me every day. David Riesman
began answering now countless requests from me when I was in graduate
