This Once Savage Heart of Mine

Eighteenth and nineteenth century American Indians wrote in a variety of forms. Joseph Johnson (Mohegan), along with other students of Moor’s Charity School, illustrates a constant struggle between Euroamerican Christianity and Native American identity in his letters and diaries. Hendrick Aupaumut's Narrative reveals a man struggling to maintain a diplomatic balance between the Americans and Mohican allies. Peter Jones’s autobiographical journal combines elements of tribal religion, Christian theology, and political commentary to illuminate the plight of the Indian in the early 19th century. William Apess's Eulogy on King Philip uses history to reflect on the present, to overturn romantic notions of the American past, and to open up that narrow field of men whom we have labeled as ideal representations of the American spirit. This Once Savage Heart of Mine focuses on the rhetorical strategies used by these early Native American writers to create something wholly different from what Euroamerican society expected or desired. Each text responds to a specific moment in Indian/white relations and enters the dialogue between colonizer and colonized.