Islands of Conversion: A Cultural Edition of Experience Mayhew's Indian Converts (1727)

FAIN: FB-37575-02

Laura Arnold Leibman
Reed College (Portland, OR 97202-8138)

No project description available

Media Coverage

Laura Arnold Leibman. Experience Mayhew's "Indian Converts": A Cultural Edition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008. 432 pp. Cloth, $98.00; paper, $29.95. (Review)
Author(s): Robbie Richardson
Publication: The American Indian Quarterly
Date: 12/21/2011
Abstract: Among the large body of missionary texts documenting the conversion of Native North American peoples during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Experience Mayhew's Indian Converts (1727) is unique for its attention to the individual lives of Wampanoag people on Martha's Vineyard and for the long history of interaction between the Mayhew family and the Indigenous people they sought to convert. Fluent in the Algonquian language Wôpanâak, Mayhew spent his life, like three generations of his family before him, preaching to the Wampanoag community on the island. His book offers the greatest detail of any written about an Algonquian community during the period, and, given the recent scholarly interest in the literature produced around the efforts to Christianize Native people in North America, Laura Arnold Leibman's edition of this significant book is a timely one.
URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_indian_quarterly/v034/34.1.richardson.html

Associated Products

Experience Mayhew's Indian Converts: A Cultural Edition (Native Americans of the Northeast: Culture, History, & the Contemporary) (Book)
Title: Experience Mayhew's Indian Converts: A Cultural Edition (Native Americans of the Northeast: Culture, History, & the Contemporary)
Author: Laura Arnold Leibman
Editor: Laura Arnold Leibman
Abstract: First published in 1727 under the title Indian Converts, or Some account of the lives and dying speeches of a considerable number of the Christianized Indians of Martha s Vineyard, in New-England, Experience Mayhew s history of the Wampanoag Indians on Martha s Vineyard provides a rare look at the lives and culture of four generations of Native Americans in colonial America. Dividing his treatment into four sections Indian Ministers, Good Men, Religious Women, and Pious Children Mayhew details the books that different age groups were reading, provides insights into early New En-gland pedagogy and childrearing practices, and describes each individual in terms of genealogy, religious practice, way of life, and place of residence. In addition to drawing on his own firsthand knowledge of the community and transcriptions of oral testimony he and others collected, Mayhew inserts translations of Wampanoag texts that have since been lost. Although the book has been out of print since the early nineteenth century, scholars have long recognized its importance for understanding the history of New England s Native communities. In an extensive introduction to this new scholarly edition, Laura Arnold Leibman places Indian Converts in a broader cultural context and explores its significance. She shows how Mayhew s biographiesilluminate the theological upheavals that rocked early eighteenth-century New En-gland on the eve of the Great Awakening, shifts that altered not only the character of Puritanism but also the landscape of Wampanoag religious and cultural life. An accompanying online archive that includes over 600 images and documents further contextualizes Mayhew s work and provide suggestions for students investigations of the text.
Year: 2008
Primary URL: http://www.amazon.com/Experience-Mayhews-Indian-Converts-Contemporary/dp/1558496610/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239051239&sr=1-1
Primary URL Description: Amazon Book Listing
Secondary URL: http://cdm.reed.edu/cdm4/indianconverts/
Secondary URL Description: Indian Converts Collection. This website contains study guides with information about life on Martha's Vineyard for both Wampanoags and white settlers as well as an accompanying online archive with over 600 images and documents that further contextualize Mayhew’s work. This archive can be browsed or searched. In the study guides you will also find tips for how to analyze on the artifacts, gravestones, and maps found archive as well as suggestions for students’ investigations of the text. Educators will find sample assignments and syllabi.
Publisher: Univ. of Massachusetts Press
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 1558496610

Tradition and Innovation in a Colonial Wampanoag Family from Martha’s Vineyard (Book Section)
Title: Tradition and Innovation in a Colonial Wampanoag Family from Martha’s Vineyard
Author: Laura Arnold Leibman
Editor: Hilary Wyss & Kristina Bross
Abstract: Designed as a corrective to colonial literary histories that have excluded Native voices, this anthology brings together a variety of primary texts produced by the Algonquian peoples of New England during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and very early nineteenth centuries. Included among these written materials and objects are letters, signatures, journals, baskets, pictographs, confessions, wills, and petitions, each of which represents a form of authorship. Together they demonstrate the continuing use of traditional forms of memory and communication and the lively engagement of Native peoples with alphabetic literacy during the colonial period. Each primary text is accompanied by an essay that places it in context and explores its significance. Written by leading scholars in the field, these readings draw on recent trends in literary analysis, history, and anthropology to provide an excellent overview of the field of early Native studies. They are also intended to provoke discussion and open avenues for further exploration by students and other interested readers. Above all, the texts and commentaries gathered in this volume provide an opportunity to see Native American literature as a continuity of expression that reflects choices made long before contact and colonization, rather than as a nineteenth- or even twentieth-century invention. Contributors include Heidi Bohaker, Heather Bouwman, Joanna Brooks, Kristina Bross, Stephanie Fitzgerald, Sandra Gustafson, Laura Arnold Leibman, Kevin McBride, David Murray, Laura Murray, Jean O Brien, Ann Marie Plane, Philip Round, Jodi Schorb, David Silverman, and Hilary E. Wyss.
Year: 2008
Primary URL: http://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/early-native-literacies-new-england
Primary URL Description: U. Mass Press Book Description
Secondary URL: http://www.amazon.com/Early-Native-Literacies-New-England/dp/1558496483/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239051268&sr=1-1
Secondary URL Description: Amazon Book Listing
Publisher: Univ. of Massachusetts Press
Book Title: Early Native Literacies in New England: A Documentary and Critical Anthology (Native Americans of the Northeast: Culture, History, & the Contemporary)
ISBN: 1558496483

Indian Converts Collection (Web Resource)
Title: Indian Converts Collection
Author: Laura Arnold Leibman
Abstract: This website contains study guides with information about life on Martha's Vineyard for both Wampanoags and white settlers as well as an accompanying online archive with over 600 images and documents that further contextualize Mayhew’s work. This archive can be browsed or searched. In the study guides you will also find tips for how to analyze on the artifacts, gravestones, and maps found archive as well as suggestions for students’ investigations of the text. Educators will find sample assignments and syllabi.
Year: 2008
Primary URL: http://cdm.reed.edu/cdm4/indianconverts/
Primary URL Description: This website contains study guides with information about life on Martha's Vineyard for both Wampanoags and white settlers as well as an accompanying online archive with over 600 images and documents that further contextualize Mayhew’s work. This archive can be browsed or searched. In the study guides you will also find tips for how to analyze on the artifacts, gravestones, and maps found archive as well as suggestions for students’ investigations of the text. Educators will find sample assignments and syllabi.

Messianism, Secrecy and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life (Book)
Title: Messianism, Secrecy and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life
Author: Leibman, Laura Arnold
Year: 2012
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=9780853039570
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Publisher: Vallentine Mitchell
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780853039570

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