THE POOR INDIANS

The Poor Indians British Missionaries, Native Americans, and Colonial Sensibility Laura M. Stevens Stevens has written a thoughtful study of British missionary culture. Most important, she reveals how philanthropy shaped the identity of a transatlantic British public and the ways that identity has resonated from the seventeenth century all the way up to our time.--New England Quarterly Eloquent and important. . . . This is a work of careful textual analysis that harbors many riches for historians. Stevenss analysis of the discourse of Christian charity will travel well into other fields and periods of study, particularly those that address Christian missions to Africans and African-Americans.--Literature and History Between the English Civil War of 1642 and the American Revolution, countless British missionaries announced their intention to spread the gospel among the native North American population. Despite the scope of their endeavors, they converted only a handful of American Indians to Christianity. Their attempts to secure moral and financial support at home proved much more successful. In The Poor Indians, Laura Stevens delves deeply into the language and ideology British missionaries used to gain support, and she examines their wider cultural significance. Invoking pity and compassion for the poor Indian--a purely fictional construct--British missionaries used the Black Legend of cruelties perpetrated by Spanish conquistadors to contrast their own projects with those of Catholic missionaries, whose methods were often brutal and deceitful. They also tapped into a remarkably effective means of swaying British Christians by connecting the latters feelings of religious superiority with moral obligation. Describing mission work through metaphors of commerce, missionaries asked their readers in England to invest, financially and emotionally, in the cultivation of Indian souls. As they saved Indians from afar, supporters renewed their own