"For the good of their souls" : performing Christianity in eighteenth-century Mohawk country
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
"For the good of their souls" : performing Christianity in eighteenth-century Mohawk country
（Native Americans of the Northeast）
University of Massachusetts Press, c2020
- : pbk.
Available at 1 libraries
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In 1712, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts opened its mission near present-day Albany, New York, and began baptizing residents of the nearby Mohawk village Tiononderoge, the easternmost nation of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy. Within three years, about one-fifth of the Mohawks in the area began attending services. They even adapted versions of the service for use in private spaces, which potentially opened a door to an imagined faith community with the Protestants.Using the lens of performance theory to explain the ways in which the Mohawks considered converting and participating in Christian rituals, historian William B. Hart contends that Mohawks who prayed, sang hymns, submitted to baptism, took communion, and acquired literacy did so to protect their nation's sovereignty, fulfill their responsibility of reciprocity, serve their communities, and reinvent themselves. Performing Christianity was a means of ""survivance,"" a strategy for sustaining Mohawk life and culture on their terms in a changing world.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction: Mohawk Beliefs and the Needs of the Soul
Chapter 1: ""Dwindl'd to Nothing Almost"": The Mohawks & Their World at 1700
Chapter 2: ""Ordering the Life and Manners of a Numerous People"": The Ideology and Performances of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
Chapter 3: ""Laying a Good and Lasting Foundation of Religion"": Success and Failure at the Fort Hunter Mission, 1710-19
Chapter 4: Mohawk Schoolmasters and Catechists: Literacy, Authority, and Empowerment at Mid-Century
Chapter 5: ""A Single Mission in the Old, Beaten Way Makes No Noise"": New Strategies for Capturing Mohawk Bodies and Souls, 1760-1775
Chapter 6: ""As Formerly Under Their Respective Chiefs"": The Mohawk Diaspora into Upper Canada, 1784-1810 Conclusion
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