The Poor Indians. Laura M. Stevens
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imperialism then is to bring together commodity conversion and spiritual conversion.”89 This chapter has explored one such aspect of this intersection. From the time of Columbus’s first encounter with the natives of what would be called America, one of the most important images of that encounter became the trade of gold for glass. It is one of the cruel ironies of imperial history that even as they condemned the exploitation of America and sought to save the souls of its indigenous residents, British missionaries set in place a rhetoric that bridged the benevolent and acquisitive desires of Europe in relation to America. Describing colonial commerce through biblical references to charity and the Kingdom of God, they made it possible to see Christian conversion as fair compensation for the vast sufferings of America’s natives.
Ironically, the proponents of mission used the tropes of husbandry and trade to align their work with the domestic sphere, even as they helped define the burgeoning public sphere. They sought nationwide charitable collections, established some of Britain’s earliest philanthropic organizations, and reified the idea of voluntary collective endeavor. With Indian visitors such as the Iroquois in 1710 and Samson Occom in 1766–68 they gave Britain some of its most memorable public spectacles. As they presented the pitiable state of Indians to their readers, the texts of British mission developed new ways of expressing shared and public sentiment. Yet they did all this while separating British mission rhetorically from the world of politics and violence. How missionary letters and sermons contributed to the development of collective identity and shared sentiment is the topic of the next two chapters.
Chapter 2
“I Have Received Your Christian and Very Loving Letter”: Epistolarity and Transatlantic Community
Early British missionary writings encompass an eclectic corpus of narratives, dictionaries, biographies, and journals, but one of the most prominent genres is the letter. The British hardly set precedent here, as the vast collection of letters making up The Jesuit Relations testifies. The earliest English effort at fund-raising for a mission in America was organized through letters from James I to the archbishops, and then from the archbishops to their church wardens, who raised money at the parish level.1 Most of the “Indian Tracts” describing work in New England are made up of letters between ministers on either side of the Atlantic, along with epistles to the reader, Parliament, and Cromwell. The SPG’s annual reports include abstracts of letters from missionaries, and from 1708 to 1718 this group also published a series of letters from one of its members to a friend in London.2 The SSPCK published some of its texts, such as A Genuine Letter from Mr. John Brainard [sic] (1752), in epistolary form. The Moravians’ first fund-raising publications, such as Latrobe’s Succinct View of the Missions Established Among the Heathen by the Church of the Brethren, or Unitas Fratrum (1771), were written, as the text’s subtitle notes, “In a Letter to a Friend.”
Letters, of course, were central to missionary operations, as the vast correspondence that fills the archives of both Catholic and Protestant missionary groups suggests. From requesting funds to reporting conversions, these documents provided channels for information exchange between organizations, their supporters, and their employees. But however unremarkable as choices for the discussion of missions, they also were uniquely suited to their fund-raising task because of their formal properties. The letter form also helped construct the community of feeling evoked by missionary writings.
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