"All He Had Told Them . . . Was True": Native American History and the Witnessing of Abuse in the Archive

Abstract

We have constructed a short piece of fiction to begin this essay in the voice of Hezekiah Calvin, a Delaware boy who was destroyed by the experience in the 1760s of attending Eleazar Wheelock's Indian Charity School, a boarding school in Lebanon, Connecticut, intended to train Indigenous Christian missionaries. A theoretical framework underscores the need for our approach, given the limitations of the archive, and prompts suggested methods and guidelines. A historical study of the Delaware students at the school focuses on Hezekiah Calvin and includes other students to establish recognizable patterns within their experiences. The evidence is then read in the context of literature on sexual abuse. We conclude that the male students were very likely abused in their time at the school and discuss how scholars may make productive rather than hurtful use of this insight. We propose that fiction is an appropriate and useful method to acknowledge the pain that students endured and its long-term effects.