The Poor Indians. Laura M. Stevens
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this Occasion, that to Them, whose Strength and Toil is consumed in the Service of your Carnal Things, Some Debt is contracted, Some Title thereby convey’d, to the Spiritual Advantages, they might receive from you? This were to act like generous Traders indeed; To barter Gold for Brass, and Pearl for Trifles; in returning the noblest and most useful Treasure, for Riches, which they knew not either the Use, or the Value of.66
While gentile Christians of the early church offered material help to Jewish ones in return for sharing the spiritual wealth of Christ, Stanhope suggested that the British owed a spiritual debt to those who had given them material wealth. The change was subtle but significant. Material acquisition preceded spiritual generosity. The order and the origin of exchange were overturned. This reversal allowed Stanhope to validate the very trade that the image of gold for glass condemned. The Indians gave away gold because they did not understand the use of it. By taking their gold and repaying them with spiritual wealth, the British were donating spiritual pearls for material trinkets.
Rather than badgering his audience into charity, Stanhope tried to prompt their generosity by offering a pleasing image of mutually profitable trade. A few years later Edward Chandler, Bishop of Coventry and Litchfield, expanded on Stanhope’s strategy by presenting a moral vision based on reciprocity: “Natural Justice guides Men to be kind to that People, and Benefactors to those Places, by whom, and where they live, thrive, and prosper…. The moral sense whereof is this, that we return good, wherever we receive good: Return it not in Beads and Baubles, but in a Species, which may indeed cost us little, but to them, that are without Christ, and without God in the World, is of inestimable Value.”67 Although he cited “natural Justice,” Chandler echoed Paul’s description of exchange when he stressed the importance of repaying goodness. His goal may have been the gathering of money for mission, but he approached it by describing colonialism as an exchange of gifts rather than exploitation. Describing America as England’s “benefactor,” Chandler called his audience to express thanks by offering America a gift of “inestimable value,” the knowledge of Christ.
The idea of mission allowed Chandler to reverse the usual vision of gold traded for glass. Britain would give true gold instead of the “beads and baubles” other colonists offered for the wealth of America. At first cheated of their treasure, the Indians would now receive something more lasting and useful. Their gain did not required Britain’s loss but in fact enabled its continued enrichment.
“We are more poor, they more rich by this”
The idea of spiritual wealth flowing to America in exchange for temporal riches became a cliche in missionary writings, especially Anglican ones, through the mid-eighteenth century. In 1709 William Dawes, Bishop of Chester, said in a sermon before the SPG, “[W]e cannot make them a more rich amends, for all these Advantages, for all these their carnal Things, than by letting them reap our spiritual ones.”68 Several decades later Martin Benson, Bishop of Gloucester, proclaimed, “We abundantly reap temporal things thence, and it is just therefore that we should sow spiritual things there.”69 Reminding his readers of their Christian duty as he alluded to their profits, Benson drew simultaneously on images of husbandry and trade, combining the Gospels’ evocations of God’s vineyard with Paul’s juxtaposition of spiritual and material wealth. Perhaps John Waugh, the Dean of Gloucester, made the point most persuasively in 1722 when he wrote,
Nor can we otherwise do Justice, or express our Gratitude to those poor Infidels, from whose Countries we have drawn such immense Wealth … than by repaying them spiritual for temporal Riches. This, as it is an easie Expence to the Contributors, for so great Gains, so will it be a Means of procuring to those that receive the Advantage of it, a Treasure of inestimable Value, The Knowledge of the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent. A Treasure, which St. Paul set so great a Value upon, that he looked upon the most pretious things as nothing worth, as Dung and Dross.70
By referring to Paul’s epistle, Waugh was able to suggest the worthlessness of worldly goods even as he stressed the bargain that his readers would enjoy by funding missions. The British suffer only an “easie Expence,” in exchange for which they receive both material wealth and the awareness of Indian conversion. The “Infidels” of foreign lands lose wealth they hardly knew existed, and in return they receive the invaluable word of God. Everyone gains and nobody loses in this vision of intercontinental exchange.
The trope of trade allowed the British in their most optimistic moments to imagine an inexhaustible circulation of wealth around the Atlantic basin, enriching every participant and saving every soul. As Philip Bisse, the Bishop of Hereford, said, “All Zeal naturally spreadeth, without spending its Force; and rather increaseth its Fervour, the farther it goes.”71 Long before Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations, missionary texts taught their readers to transcend the zero-sum game of a mercantilist vision, seeing piles of wealth made endlessly expandable through global circulation. While raising money for the salvation of the Indians, they transformed a symbol of the Indians’ exploitation into one of their spiritual compensation.
Later missionaries were focused far less on tropes of exchange. In his fund-raising narratives of the Indian Charity School, written in the 1760s and 1770s, Eleazar Wheelock rarely described his work as part of a trade with or a debt owed to Indians. When he discussed his school in financial terms he was more likely to stress the comparative bargain Indian conversion presented in comparison with the price of waging war. Near the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War he speculated, “[I]f one half which has been, for so many Years past expended in building Forts … had been prudently laid out in supporting faithful Missionaries … the instructed and civilized Party would have been a fair better Defence than all our expensive Fortresses, and prevented the laying waste so many Towns and Villages.”72 After he announced his intention to focus on the education of Anglo-American missionaries rather than Indians, his focus shifted altogether.73
Factors including the Seven Years’ War, a growing sense of British entitlement, and a weakening of transatlantic ties between Britain and the colonies probably influenced this rhetorical shift in missionary writings.74 Another important factor no doubt was the growing poverty of those Indians who remained in areas now filled with European colonists. In his SPG sermon of 1766 William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester, juxtaposed spiritual with material wealth, but with an important change. He wrote, “[T]he Aborigines of the Country, Savages without Law or Religion, are the principal Objects of our Charity. Their temporal, as well as spiritual, condition calls loudly for our assistance.”75 Unlike his predecessors, Warburton did not refer to an exchange, reciprocal or not, but rather stressed the Indians’ temporal and spiritual needs. A sense of specific obligation disappeared under the general rubric of charity.
In 1633, George Herbert’s “Church Militant,” the penultimate poem of his collection The Temple, included a prophecy of true religion moving westward from its seat in England to a new home in America. Prompting this transfer was an eastward flow of wealth from America to Europe, which it was corrupting. Of America Herbert wrote,
My God, thou dost prepare for them a way,
By carrying first their gold from them away,
For gold and grace did never yet agree;
Religion always sides with poverty.
We think we rob them, but we think amiss:
We are more poor—they are more rich by this.76
Celebrating the arrival of Protestants in the New World, Herbert portrayed the church on the brink of transition, about to abandon a corrupt Europe for an innocent America from which the Spanish already had taken much wealth.77 He transformed the impoverishment of America into enrichment, toying with the term as he linked colonialism to divine will. By having the Spanish take their gold, God prepares Indians for Christianity. The English also help the natives by making them financially poor, while transforming that poverty into spiritual wealth.
Writing when the only English attempt to convert America’s indigenous peoples had been the abortive establishment of Henrico College near Jamestown, Herbert reversed