Water-Voyaging Indians and the Metropole

Abstract

Early American historians have gone trans-Atlantic-for those in field, this observation should come as no surprise. New monographs and edited volumes pertaining to Atlantic World go into print with alarming regularity. Early Americanists have dedicated countless conferences, seminars, and study groups to Atlantic World, and scholars will organize more as discipline continues to mature with subfields more clearly defined. For those not in field, a few sentences cannot do justice to either sheer volume of literature or analytic power blossoming from Atlantic-world methodologies that are now so varied and complex.' Approaches have diversified; subject matters have moved back and forth between macro and micro levels. Interest in transmission of knowledge and movement of people across Atlantic has led to scholarship focused on how these exchanges carried cultural, social, political, and intellectual implications for colonies as well as metropole. In such varied contexts Native Americans were once neglected. Recently they have gotten attention they deserve. An emerging body of work has followed the cultural turn. Troy Bickham, Laura Stevens, and Kristina Bross entwine literary analysis and historical contextualization.1 Bickman has explored Native Americans' representations within metropole's print culture and cosmopolitan Londoners' reactions. Bross and Stevens have treated missionary text productions for an Anglo trans-Atlantic audience in which authors framed writings about proselytizing of New England Indians to appeal to Londoners' enlightenment sensibilities and a growing belief in an English benevolent empire. Additionally, Native American Atlantic Ocean travels no longer go unnoticed. With an influential article Eric Hinderaker set visit in 1710 of four Iroquois Kings within metropole Britons' conceptualizations of meanings of empire.2 A promising Mohegan preacher, Samson Occom, journeyed in 1760s to London, garnering mission monies for Connecticut-based New Light Eleazer Wheelock who ran Moor's Charity School for native education. Joanna Brooks has edited