Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. A Son of the Forest and Other Writings by William Apess, a Pequot. Here he promotes the Indians’ humanity, worth, and potential with his life as an example. Published in 1830, A Son of the Forest implicitly challenges the national controversy of the times over the Indian Removal Bill which legalized the federal government’s decision to force Native Americans off their traditional homelands east of the Mississippi River. Their cause is likened to the American Revolution. Apess further argues that the Native American cause should not be isolated from American history because Indian history and culture is part thereof. He lectures about the relations of Native Americans with the whites in New England. His most powerful polemic is Eulogy on King Philip where Apess compared the seventeenth-century Wampanoag leader, Metacomet or “King Philip” to the English, to the republic’s early national hero and founding father, George Washington. The work describes the character of the Native Americans first-hand by one of their own. The work gives an alternative view of the often-written Native American marginalization and rationalization of Indian extinction. Methodism appealed to Native Americans then because of its enthusiastic style and its emphasis on equality. Apess chronicled the abuses and injustices suffered by the Indians in the hands of the whites and those acting in God’s name. This volume is historically significant because it speaks and argues about racism during the early period of the republic. His topics range from poverty, child abuse, alcoholism (which he himself became one later in life), ethnic identity and religious conversion. He articulated Native American consciousness and sentiments through his fiery Christian evangelism. This gripping volume is a subtle political work of Apess of the Pequot Indian people. In his famous Eulogy on King Philip in Boston in 1836 he strongly forwarded the idea that Indians wanted what the Pilgrims wanted: justice and Christian fellowship. These became the recurring themes of his writings. Here he was able to experience first hand the incompatibility of his Christian faith and the racial prejudice and injustice the whites have done towards the natives. He became a preacher in 1833 and moved to Mashpee, the last Indian town in Massachusetts. This part was the most influential phase of his life. Apess’ 1829 A Son of the Forest: The Experience of William Apess, a Native of the Forest became an eloquent example of Native American jeremiadic rhetoric because in it readers find issues of identity and the formulation of modes of representation characteristic (O’Connell 2) that was customary for this kind of ethnic discourse to. His master introduced him to Christianity and allowed him to go to school. He shares how he was abused by his alcoholic grandparents and eventually sold as an indenture slave while he was very young. He also talks about how his grandfather was a white man who married the granddaughter of King Philip.
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