![]() Experiences, however, also contains “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man,” an essay described as a pivotal work, as a “turning point,” a “breakthrough” (Bergland 125 Konkle 116), as marking a transition from the “writing white” of Apess’s earlier work to the militant consciousness of Indian Nullification (1835), his report on the “insurrection” at Marshpee (for which he spent thirty days in jail), and Eulogy on King Philip (1836), his hagiography of that fearsome scourge “of cursed memory” of early New England’s most famous (virtually genocidal) Indian war, whom Apess claimed as ancestor.Īs an itinerant preacher, as a circuit rider, giving speeches and offering sermons was Apess’s daily business, and the thirty-some instances of anaphora in a fifteen-paragraph piece (variations on “Now I will ask”), the sixty-some rhetorical questions, and the handful of direct audience addresses all clearly show the creative roots of “Looking-Glass” in oral delivery. These early publications, it’s been said, “can certainly be read as capitulations to white discourse, or at least as unsuccessful resistances” (Bergland 122). His second book, The Increase of the Kingdom of Christ (1831), has been called “arguably regressive,” Apess’s “most orthodox Christian expression,” and the conversion narratives that comprise almost all of The Experiences of Five Christian Indians (1833) contain little “to suggest any opposition to white values, other than attacks on the hypocrisy of some Christians” (O’Connell, Ground 99 Murray 60). What really makes Apess extraordinary and remarkable for us is his Indian activism, the fact that the arc of his career moves from “writing white” to writing “mixedblood” (Moon Bizzell). Beginning with A Son of the Forest, the first published autobiography by a Native American (called an “astonishing act” for a man of his culture, class, and race at that time ), Apess published five books between 18, two of them going into second editions, making him “the most prolific Native author of the early nineteenth century” (Doolen 147). ![]() In 1833, Apess’s preaching circuit took him to Marshpee reservation in Massachusetts, where he became, notably, the chief architect of the still generally little known Marshpee Revolt for the right of that tribe’s self-determination, “the first successful example of civil disobedience in Native American history” (Carlson 111 see also Brodeur). ![]() Born in 1798, Apess was raised by abusive, alcoholic grandparents, bound at age five to a succession of white families as an indentured servant, and ran away in his early teens to serve in the War of 1812, afterwards overcoming his own problems with alcoholism, converting to Christianity, and in 1829 becoming a licensed preacher in the Methodist Church (for an overview of Apess’s life and work, see O’Connell, “William Apess”). Pequot William Apess is an “extraordinary figure,” a “remarkable figure” (Richter 238 Warrior 189). Gallagher is Professor of English at Lehigh University. ![]() "The Rhetorical Strategy of William Apess’s 'An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man'" by Edward J. GallagherĮdward J. ![]()
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