Description
Book SynopsisThe diaries, letters, and journals of these early ethnographers are among the most valuable resources for recovering the languages, religions, cultures, and political makeup of the “First Peoples.” This volume explores the interactions of two seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European settlement peoples with Native Americans.
Trade Review“The anthology succeeds in recovering Native as well as missionary voices, carefully building context to make those voices understandable to contemporary readers and reintroducing these important texts in exciting ways that will stimulate further study.”
—R. A. Bucko Choice
“This volume’s greatest accomplishment well may be its attempt to elevate David Zeisberger to the status of reliable ethnographer as well as Christian missionary.”
—David P. Dewar Canadian Journal of History
“Ethnographies and Exchanges will appeal to scholars of Native Americans and early modern religion, as it demonstrates the virtues of interdisciplinary studies. Although the essays vary in length and tone, they are uniformly well written and researched, and they engage questions of great importance.”
—Andrew K. Frank History
“Taken as a whole, this collection brings needed scholarly attention to important epistemological and historical questions for mission and native history.”
—Katherine Carté Engel Church History
“Overall, this is a useful collection, with much to interest scholars specializing in either ethnohistory or religious history. The questions the volume raises about how we read early modern ethnographic sources make an important contribution to the field.”
—Michelle LeMaster Journal of American Ethnic History
Table of ContentsContents
Preface
A. G. Roeber
“This Much Admired Man”: Isaac Glikhikan, Moravian Delaware
David Edmunds
I. Texts and Interpretive Perspectives
1. Moravians and the Development of the Genre of Ethnography
Christian F. Feest
2. The Succession of Head Chiefs and the Delaware Culture of Consent: The Delaware Nation,
David Zeisberger, and Modern Ethnography
Hermann Wellenreuther
3. Zeisberger’s Diaries as a Source for Studying Delaware Sociopolitical Organization
Robert S. Grumet
II. Missions and Exchanges
4. The Impossible Acculturation: French Missionaries and Cultural Exchanges in the Seventeenth Century
Dominique Deslandres
5. The Holy See and the Conversion of Aboriginal Peoples in North America, 1760–1830
Luca Codignola
6. Policing Wabanaki Missions in the Seventeenth Century
Christopher J. Bilodeau
7. The Moravian Missionaries of Bethlehem and Salem
Rowena McClinton
8. “Incline Your Second Ear This Way”: Song as a Cultural Mediator in Moravian Mission Towns
Walter W. Woodward
III. Indigenous Perspectives
9. Munsee Social Networking and Political Encounters with the Moravian Church
Siegrun Kaiser
10. The Gender Frontier Revisited: Native American Women in the Age of Revolution
Jane T. Merritt
11. A Footing Among Them: Haudenosaunee Perspectives on Land Cessions, Government Relations, and Christianity
Alyssa Mt. Pleasant
IV. Conclusion
12. Translation as a Prism: Broadening the Spectrum of Eighteenth-Century Identity
Julie Tomberlin Weber
Index
