A Son of the Forest and Other Writings by William Apess, a Pequot

A Son of the woodwind and Other Writings is writings of William Apess, a nineteenth century Native American. He was the first Native American to write extensively in the English language.Aside from culling from his first published autobiography, A Son of the t genius (1829), this volume also contains other autobiographical works like The Experiences of Five Christian Indians of the Pequot Tribe (1832) and his Eulogy on King Philip (1836).In A Son of the Forest he narrates to the highest degree being born in a tent in the woods of Colrain, Massachussetts, to a Pequot mother and a mixed blood (white and Pequot) induce who later separated. He describes his participation in the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain (after he ran away from indenture servitude) and his conversion to Methodism.He also talks about how his granddad was a white man who married the granddaughter of King Philip. He shares how he was abused by his alcoholic grandparents and eventually sold as an i ndenture knuckle down while he was very young. His master introduced him to Christianity and allowed him to go to school. This part was the most influential phase of his flavour. He became a preacher in 1833 and moved to Mashpee, the blend in Indian town in Massachusetts.Here he was able to experience first hand the incompatibility of his Christian faith and the racial prejudice and injustice the whites ease up done towards the natives. These became the recurring themes of his writings. In his famous Eulogy on King Philip in Boston in 1836 he strongly forwarded the idea that Indians precious what the Pilgrims wanted justice and Christian fellowship.This gripping volume is a subtle political work of Apess of the Pequot Indian people. He articulated Native American consciousness and sentiments done his fiery Christian evangelism. His topics range from poverty, child abuse, alcoholism (which he himself became one later in life), ethnic identity and religious conversion.This volume is historically world-shattering because it speaks and argues about racism during the early period of the republic. Apess chronicled the abuses and injustices suffered by the Indians in the hands of the whites and those acting in Gods name. Methodism appealed to Native Americans then because of its enthusiastic means and its emphasis on equality. The work gives an alternative view of the often-written Native American marginalization and rationalization of Indian extinction.The work describes the character of the Native Americans first-hand by one of their own. His most powerful polemic is Eulogy on King Philip where Apess compared the seventeenth-century Wampanoag leader, Metacomet or King Philip to the English, to the republics early national hero and founding father, George Washington.He lectures about the relations of Native Americans with the whites in New England. Apess further argues that the Native American cause should not be isolated from American score because Indian h istory and culture is part thereof. Their cause is likened to the American Revolution.Published in 1830, A Son of the Forest implicitly challenges the national controversy of the times over the Indian removal Bill which legalized the federal governments decision to force Native Americans off their traditional homelands east of the Mississippi River. Here he promotes the Indians humanity, worth, and potential with his life as an example.ReferencesOConell, B. (Ed.) (1997). A Son of the Forest and Other Writings by William Apess, a Pequot. Amherst University of Massachusetts Press.