Denominated "SAVAGE": Methodism, Writing, and Identity in the Works of William Apess, a Pequot

Abstract

IN 1829, A THIRTY-ONE YEAR OLD PEQUOT PREACHER NAMED WILLIAM Apess gained notoriety with the publication of his memoir. Titled A Son of the Forest, it was the first full-length autobiography published by a Native American.' Like African Americans, it was through the genre of autobiography that Indians effected their first significant interventions in Euro-American print culture.2 As numerous critics have noted, this is paradoxical, as the production and publication of an autobiography assumes at least three conditions, none of which automatically apply to those on the margins of society: an appreciation of the importance of one's experience; an interested, literate audience; and access to resources for printing and distribution.3 This essay begins by asking how an impoverished Pequot could presume to publish his autobiography, let alone numerous caustic polemics against white racism. The answer is found in a place that may seem unlikely to many: Apess's Methodism. Apess's work is admired today for the modem tone of its attack on the Puritans' providential conception of history and the brand of racism that it sanctioned. But Apess was no anachronism; the upheavals of his day were the enabling condition of his voice. He wrote at the intersection of three highly-charged controversies of the 1820s and 1830s: Andrew Jackson's plan to expel Indians from the southeast, immediatist-abolitionism, and the Second Great Awakening. Apess played on Euro-Americans' temporarily heightened interest in Indians