February 28, 2022 • 32 mins
Minister William Apess is often described as the first Native American to publish their own, book-length autobiography. But that is a reductive way to describe a man who wrote a great deal more than that, and also became an advocate for Indigenous people.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Biebelson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we are
going to talk about Methodist minister William APIs and sometimes
(00:22):
he has described as the first Native Americans to publish
their own book length autobiography. That doesn't really capture the
full scope of it, though, because it kind of makes
it sound like his biggest achievement was like meeting an
arbitrary European standard of success. His whole body of work, though,
including that autobiography in a way turned that whole idea
(00:46):
on its head. He was using European rhetoric as a
tool to demonstrate the shared humanity of indigenous people and
to advocate for autonomy and self determination, and also to
point out a lot of injustice and hypocrisy on the
part of white society and in particular white Christians. This
episode turned into an accidental two parter, largely because there
(01:08):
were so many things in that body of written work
that I wanted to include. So today we're going to
talk about the first part of William APIs Is life,
That is the part that was covered in his autobiography,
and that lay the ground for his later work and
his later advocacy. Heads up, though this episode includes some
(01:28):
violent racism and also the abuse of a child, and
we're gonna be talking about apises struggles with alcohol. William
Apes was born William Apes with one S on January
in cole Raine, Massachusetts. He added that second s to
his last name as an adult. Cole Raine is north
(01:49):
of Northampton and amershed right on the border with Vermont.
William's father was also named William and had both Peaquat
and European ancestry. The elder William was a shoemaker, and
like other men in their extended family, he had served
as a soldier. William Apis's mother is usually described as
his father's wife, Candice, who probably had both Indigenous and
(02:12):
African ancestry, but it's possible that Candice was really the
younger William's stepmother. She was enslaved by a man that
William's father worked for. That was Captain Joseph Taylor of Colchester, Connecticut.
Taylor manumitted Candice in eighteen o five, and it's not
really likely that she would have been in Coleraine before
(02:33):
that point. Because Corraine and Colchester were roughly ninety miles
apart and in two different states. William Apis's autobiography definitively
says that he was born in Coleraine, though, and that
the family moved to Colchester after that. Apes's autobiography also
says that his grandmother told him he was descended from
(02:54):
Wapanog's Satan Metacomet, who Colonists called King Philip, but he
doesn't describe meta Comet as Wampanog. He describes him as Peaquat,
and these are two different Algonquian speaking people's. This error
likely came from the work of Elias Boudino, a white
politician and president of the Second Continental Congress. Boudino wrote
(03:15):
a book called A Star in the West or A
Humble Attempt to Discover the long Lost Ten Tribes of Israel,
preparatory to their return to their beloved city, Jerusalem, and
that book argued that North America's indigenous peoples were descended
from a lost tribe of Jews. Aps reworked portions of
this book into an appendix in the second edition of
(03:38):
his autobiography. So if this is indeed an error that
APIs picked up from Buddin. No, there's some irony here
because when Apis's autobiography was first published, critics took note
of it and they used this error as evidence that
Indigenous people's recording of their own history was wrong. But
that was not Apis's recording of his own street. Buddino,
(04:01):
who had written that error, was white. And just to
be clear in case this name is ringing a bell
for anybody, there's also a Cherokee man who adopted Elias
Buddino's name after meeting him. We actually talked about this
other Elias Boudino on the show before in our episode
on the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut, and he
(04:21):
is also going to come up in part two of
this episode. There has been a lot of writing about
whether this was intentional on apes Is part or just
a simple error picked up from Buddino's work, or whether
it was a rhetorical device, or whether Apes had a
Peaquat ancestor who took refuge with the Wampanag after the
(04:41):
Peaquot War in sixteen thirty six and sixteen thirty seven,
in which hundreds of Peaquats were killed. Many of the
Peaquat survivors of that war were enslaved by the colonists,
and many of those who were not took refuge with
other Algonquian speaking nations. Or perhaps it was that a
Bess's mother was Peaquat and his father was Watanagh. What
(05:04):
is clearest is that Aps identified himself as both Peaquat
and as a descendant of King Philip. There is a
bit more on the Peaquot War and on meta comment
in our episode on King Philip's War from February nine
that will also come up again in Part two. So
to return to William's childhood, something seems to have caused
(05:26):
a rift in the family. After they got to Colchester.
They were incredibly poor, and William's parents were trying to
support the family, primarily by making baskets that they could
sell to white people, and that was one of only
a very few ways that most indigenous people in the
area were able to earn an income. His parents ultimately separated,
(05:46):
and his father went back to Coleraine. Candice then left William,
along with two brothers and two sisters with her parents.
In his autobiography, Apes describes this as a time of
cruelty and deprivation. Sation with both his grandparents misusing alcohol
and neglecting him and his siblings. Then, when he was four,
(06:08):
his grandmother beat him severely. His uncle was living with
them and managed to get William away from her, and
he went to a white neighbor named David Furman for help.
Furman had already shown interest in the family, doing things
like bringing milk for the children. When Ferman realized that
William's arm was broken in three places, he went to
(06:28):
the town's select board and he asked to have William
and his siblings removed from their grandparents care. In his autobiography,
APIs wrote of this quote, I suppose that the reader
will naturally say, what savage creatures my grandparents were to
treat unoffending or helpless children in this manner. But this
treatment was the effect of some cause. I attribute it
(06:51):
in part to the whites, because they introduced among my
countrymen ardent spirits, seduced them into a love for it,
and when under its bail full influence, wronged them out
of their lawful possessions that land where reposed the ashes
of their sires. The day to day lives of William
and his siblings seemed to have been somewhat more stable,
(07:12):
with the Furmans than they were with their grandparents. He
describes the Furman family as treating them tenderly and like
their own children. This was also when William got his
only formal education, attending a school for black children during
the winter. This was the typical schedule for boys, since
they had to work during the warmer months. William went
(07:34):
to the school for six winters at the same time.
Though William's account of his time with the Furman's includes
multiple instances in which his treatment was far from tender.
Furman's discipline could be harsh, including flogging or threatening to
flog him. At one point, William was sick and the
doctor couldn't figure out the cause, and David Furman decided
(07:56):
it was the work of the devil when he tried
to whip the sick this out of him with a
birch branch. The Furmans were also Christians, and they raised
William and his siblings as Christian while also generally trying
to assimilate them into white society, and a lot of
what William heard about indigenous people while living there was negative.
(08:17):
He was threatened with being sent quote to the Indians
in the woods as a punishment if he misbehaved, and
most of the people around him described indigenous people as
savage and dangerous. He internalized all of this to the
point that when he saw some women in the woods
while out gathering berries, women he described as having complexions
(08:37):
quote dark as that of the natives, he was terrified
of them and he fled. William managed to maintain at
least some connection to his Peaquat identity in spite of
all of this, but it was clearly traumatic and very alienating.
William's relationship with the Furmans evolved into an indenture as
William got older. We'll talk about that after a quick sponsor.
(09:09):
When William and his siblings were removed from their grandparents care,
they essentially became wards of the town, and this evolved
into an indenture. They were expected to work to pay
for their room and board until they reached the age
of twenty one, and the amount of work that was
expected of them increased as they got older. This was
a fairly typical way for communities in this part of
(09:31):
New England to manage children who, for whatever reason, we're
not in the care of their families. This wasn't the
same as an apprenticeship, though an apprenticeship would have at
least left children like William with skills and training that
they could use potentially to support themselves as adults. But
they mostly did basic chores and manual labor. So although
(09:52):
David Ferman was a barrel maker, he was not training
William to be the same. He was just using Williams labor.
When William got to the age of about eleven, he
started rebelling against the Furman's expectations of him. He made
friends with some older boys who encouraged him to get
into some petty misbehavior, so things like stealing melons from
(10:12):
somebody else's field. This raised more tensions between him and
the Furman's But another source of tension was on the
opposite end of the spectrum from stealing melons. As we
said earlier, the Furmans were raising William and his siblings
as Christians. When he was about eight years old, William
also started attending meetings of a group he called quote
(10:34):
the Christians. These may have been followers of Eliah Smith,
who founded a denomination called the Christian Connection. Through attending
these meetings, William resolved to try to live a better
and more righteous life, but he also became so fond
of going to these meetings that David Ferman finally forbade
him from doing it anymore. The tensions between William and
(10:57):
Furman became more complicated when Furman's mother in law died.
William had been extremely fond of her. One of William's
older friends finally persuaded him to run away, but then
told Ferman about their plan. At this point, Furman seems
to have gotten tired of dealing with all of this,
and he sold the remaining time on William's indenture to
(11:19):
Judge William Hillhouse, who lived in another town. This also
didn't work out. Hill House was devoutly Presbyterian and that
was one of the more traditional denominations. William still wanted
to attend the meetings of this group he described as
the Christians, and that was considered a lot more unorthodox.
William went to meetings over hill Houses objections, and at
(11:42):
one point he learned his father was living nearby and
went to see him. This was something that William did
at multiple points in his life, often when he was
struggling or otherwise kind of unsettled. He didn't get to
spend a lot of time with his father, but he
did find a way to go see him at several
of his lowest points. William Father, though, sent him back
to hill House, who then sold the remaining time on
(12:04):
his indenture to General William Williams of New London, Connecticut.
Williams was also devoutly Presbyterian and required William Apes to
attend Presbyterian services rather than the meetings that he was
more interested in, so his disputes over religion continued. Around
the same time, Methodists started holding meetings in the area,
(12:27):
and William went to some of them, and he found
what he heard they're really appealing. In the early nineteenth century,
Methodists were more open some black and indigenous members than
some other denominations. There were efforts specifically to preach to
these communities, and the congregations that William saw were often
racially integrated. APIs wrote in his autobiography, quote, I felt
(12:50):
convinced that Christ died for all mankind, that age, sect, color, country,
or situation made no difference. I felt an assurance that
I was included in the plan of redemption with all
my brethren. And he used the term brethren all through
his autobiography to mean other indigenous people. On March thirteenth thirteen,
(13:12):
at the age of fifteen, William had the first of
a series of epiphanies. While working in the garden, a
voice whispered to him, quote, Arise, thy, sins, which were many,
are all forgiven. Thee go in peace and sin no more.
But the family of General William Williams was deeply opposed
(13:33):
to William Apis's increasing religious devotion. They told him he
was too young to be making these kinds of decisions
for himself, and started refusing to allow him to go
to Methodist meetings. They gave him permission to attend only sometimes,
and then pretty grudgingly. William finally decided to leave with
another boy named John. They took all of the money
(13:55):
that William had and they headed for New York. However,
one of the first things they spent some of William's
money on was a bottle of rum, which was the
start of his lifelong struggle with alcohol. Once William and
John finally got to New York, John got a job
on a sailing vessel and he left William defend for himself.
William did this by enlisting in the militia. This was
(14:17):
during the War of eighteen twelve, and it's possible that
he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps by becoming
a soldier, but at the age of only fifteen, he
wasn't considered old enough to actually fight. He told recruiters
he was seventeen. They did not seem to have believed that,
because they made him a drummer. He wrote of this
time quote, I became almost as bad as any of them,
(14:40):
could drink rum, play cards, and act as wickedly as
any I was at times tormented with the thoughts of death,
but God had mercy on me and spared my life.
In spite of his age, he also wound up in combat.
In his mind, this change from drummer to fighting infantry
violated the terms of his enlistment. He tried to leave,
(15:01):
but he was captured and charged with desertion. He fought
in the Battle of Plattsburgh, also called the Battle of
Lake Champlain in September of eighteen fourteen. This was a
joint operation between the Army and Navy and was a
decisive US victory that led to the end of the war.
Aps and the rest of his unit remained in Plattsburgh
(15:21):
until after the Treaty of Ghent was signed on December
eighteen fourteen. The end of the war was complicated for APIs.
He described some of his fellow soldiers abandoning their posts
as soon as they knew the war was over, and
Apis's account, he waited until he had obtained a formal release,
but he didn't receive the compensation he had been promised
(15:43):
when he enlisted that included forty dollars of bounty, fifteen
months of salary, and sixty acres of land. Aps attributed
this nonpayment to racism, that he and the other indigenous
men who had fought alongside him were denied their compensation
and their rights of citizenship because they were Native. He
(16:04):
does not seem to have understood that this so called
bounty land other veterans were receiving had been seized from
indigenous peoples in Illinois, Missouri, in Arkansas. APIs spent the
next stretch of his life in parts of Ontario, Canada,
and in western New York, much of it among indigenous people.
His account isn't specific, but they were likely among the
(16:26):
five nations of the Hoddenishawni Confederacy. Some of what he
had witnessed as a soldier had been really gruesome, and
he said these images stayed with him for the rest
of his life. He tried to cope with this and
with the just huge amount of trauma from his earlier
life through drinking, and then he struggled when he tried
to stop. He did odd jobs, traveling from place to
(16:47):
place wherever he could find a few months of work,
and attending Methodist meetings where he found them. This period
of his autobiography reads a little like two steps forward,
one step back, sometimes finding him self in the company
of spiritual people who helped him refocus his life, but
other times with people who were often intoxicated or otherwise struggling.
(17:09):
Things really seemed to change after he returned to Massachusetts,
which we will get to After a sponsor break. In
the fall of eighteen eighteen, William APIs made his way
to Groton, Massachusetts, which is northwest of Boston. His aunt,
(17:31):
Sally George lived there. He was reunited with her and
with multiple other members of his family, most of whom
had not seen him in years. A lot of them
had thought that he must be dead. His aunt was Methodist,
and he went to Methodist meetings with her. Of everybody
in his family. She really seems to have been the
most supportive of his spiritual pursuits, but it was still hard.
(17:55):
In his words, quote, my soul was weighed down on
account of my many transgressions. Eventually, though, Aps started to
feel that he had been called for a spiritual purpose,
first by feeling that it was his duty to call
sinners to repentance. Having come to this realization at a
camp meeting, quote, I found all impediment of speech removed,
(18:18):
My heart was enlarged, my soul glowed with holy fervor,
and the blessing of the Almighty sanctified this my first
public attempt to warn sinners of their danger and invite
them to the marriage supper of the Lamb. I was
now in my proper element, just harnessed for the work,
with the fire of divine love burning on my heart.
(18:41):
In December of eighteen eighteen, APIs was baptized. Not long
after that, he went to visit family in Coleraine, and
their quote, the Lord moved upon my heart and a
peculiarly powerful manner, and by it I was led to
believe that I was called to preach the gospel. This
wasn't just about his own well being. He saw that
a lot of other Indigenous people were also struggling and
(19:04):
thought many of them were being harmed by white missionaries
who didn't actually care for their well being. So this
gets a little complicated. In previous episodes of the show,
we have talked about multiple efforts to use religion, specifically Christianity,
as a tool to quote assimilate Indigenous people into the
white world and places like the residential schools in the
(19:28):
US and the boarding schools in Canada. Christianization was an
act of cultural genocide and a means for separating Indigenous
students from their families and their tribal and cultural heritage.
Himself had lived through this on kind of a more
limited level by being taken from his grandparents care in
place with a white family who were trying to do
(19:49):
a lot of the same thing. But APIs is approach
to all of this was slightly different. He believed that
the indigenous people of North America were one of the
ten Lost tribes of Israel, had disappeared after being attacked
by the Assyrians in seven b C. So he saw
Christianity as part of his indigeneity, and he used it
(20:10):
as part of his advocacy for indigenous rights and tribal sovereignty.
He thought the indigenous population of North America had an
ancestry and a heritage that stretched all the way back
to the Biblical creation, and that God cared about people's souls,
which were equally worthy, not their skin. In his words quote,
the proper term which ought to be applied to our
(20:32):
nation to distinguish it from the rest of the human family,
is that of natives. And I humbly conceived that the
natives of this country are the only people under heaven
who have a just title to the name, inasmuch as
we are the only people who retained the original complexion
of our father Adam. So to add to the complexity here,
(20:53):
white people also used this same idea to justify everything
from forced removals of gigenous people to genocide. The Assyrian
attack which we just referenced had been framed as a
divine punishment of the tribes because they had turned away
from the Hebrew God. So under this mindset, Native Americans
(21:14):
had done that. And we're also Jewish, which meant that
anti Semitism played a role in all of this. The
lost tribes idea also undermined the cultures and the accomplishments
of indigenous nations by sort of explaining them away as
having really come from Judaism. This is all sort of
akin to claiming that indigenous works of art and architecture
(21:35):
were really the work of aliens, and it also has
parallels to the use of biblical arguments to justify the
institution of slavery. Apes, though, was seeing all of this
as part of indigenous people's inherent worth and place in
the Kingdom of God equal to that of white people.
At the same time as Apes was starting his work
(21:56):
as an itinerant preacher, he was also working through a
lot from his earlier life. In his autobiography, he wrote
about living through a lot of indoctrination and shame, and
it's clear that over the years that he was being
fostered and indentured, and then when he was a soldier,
he had internalized a lot of anti indigenous stereotypes. For example,
(22:18):
he wrote quote, I thought it disgraceful to be called
an Indian. It was considered as a slur upon an
oppressed and scattered nation, and I have often been led
to inquire where the whites received this word which they
so often threw as an opprobrious epithet at the sons
of the forest. I could not find it in the Bible,
and therefore concluded that it was a word imported for
(22:40):
the special purpose of degrading us. But ultimately he saw
the souls of all humanity is having the same inherent
connection to God. And his experience of the missionary, which
was published later on as part of his work The
Experience of Five Christian Indians of the Pequa Tribe, he wrote, quote,
a white man finds so much fault because God has
(23:02):
made us. Thus, Yet if I have any vanity about it,
I choose to remain as I am and praise my
Maker while I live that Indians he has made. In
December of eight twenty one, Apes married a woman named
Mary Wood of Salem, Connecticut, who was about ten years
older than he was. Some sources describe her as white,
(23:24):
but Apes describes her as quote nearly the same color
as myself. They had met at a Methodist meeting where
he was preaching, and they went on to have at
least two children. They established a home in Providence, Rhode Island,
but he traveled all over New England preaching, sending money
back to the family. A lot of the congregations he
(23:45):
drew were black and indigenous, but there were also white people,
some drawn by curiosity and some drawn by his reputation
as a preacher. At first, he wasn't formally ordained, and
the Methodist Church hadn't authorized him to preach in any way.
Eventually he got an exhorting license, it's basically a license
to work as a lay minister. On April eleventh, eighteen
(24:08):
twenty seven, he went through the exams that were required
to become formally ordained in the Methodist Church, which was
then known as the Methodist Episcopal Church. At this point
in history, the process of becoming ordained required an examination
by a committee, and it was possible for a person
to become qualified to be ordained through self study. It
(24:30):
was not like today where people go to seminary and
essentially get an advanced degree in in a religion. First,
he thought his examination had gone well, and afterward the
committee told him that the church didn't know enough about
his character to ordain him. The committee advised him to
just renew his license to exhort, which led him to ask, quote,
(24:53):
as this conference refused me a license to preach on
the ground that its members did not know enough of
my character, had they any right to grant a license
to exhort at the same time that they refused one
to preach. His conclusion was that even though the Methodist
Church said that it welcomed people of all races, this
denial was because of his race. So he left the
(25:16):
Methodist Episcopal Church to join another faction of Methodists called
the Protestant Methodist Church. The Protestant Methodist Church ordained him
on August eighth, eighteen thirty one. In between his examination
with the Methodist Episcopal Church and his ordination with the
Protestant Methodist he published his autobiography that was A Son
(25:37):
of the Forest, The Experience of William Apes, a native
of the Forest. This was the first of five books
that he would write over the next seven years, and
it documented his life up to his decision to leave
the Methodist Episcopal Church at the age of thirty one.
It was published before he added that second s to
his last name. He published a second edition in eighteen
(26:00):
thirty one. That's One that, for some unclear reasons, softened
a lot of his criticisms of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
It took out a lot of naming names he had
done about the people who had prevented him from becoming ordained,
and a lot of his justifications for joining the Protestant Methodists.
The reason that's given in the text itself was that
he had slightly abridged the earlier version to make room
(26:22):
for an appendix, which, as we said earlier, included a
lot of Elias Buddino's a Star in the West. He
also published a sermon in eighteen thirty one titled The
Increase of the Kingdom of Christ, and that included an
appendix as well, this one called the Indians the Ten
Lost Tribes. These publications were coming out alongside a massive
(26:44):
and horrific injustice that the United States committed against indigenous
nations and people's. Multiple states had been trying to forcibly
remove their indigenous population, and on May eighteen thirty President
Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law. This
set the stage for the forced removal of indigenous peoples
(27:05):
to land west of the Mississippi River. Sometimes this is
called the Cherokee removal, but it targeted multiple other nations
as well, including the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee Creek and Seminole.
William APIs doesn't directly address this in his autobiography. It
is more focused on his own spiritual journey and the
(27:26):
innate humanity of all of his brethren and the many
injustices that indigenous people had faced more generally, including at
the hands of reported Christians. But not long after publishing
his autobiography that changed, and that is what we'll talk
about in our next episode as we wait for part two.
Do you have a listener, Mayo? I knew it is
(27:47):
from Montana, and uh I really loved this email. Um
Montana wrote high Holly and Tracy. I've been listening to
Stuffy miss and history class since and have long wanted
to write, but the recent episode on Lucy pars And
finally pushed me to do so. I'm a doctoral student
and my focuses on race, gender, and economics in the
nineteenth century US South. While I was familiar with parsons
(28:10):
labor activism, I was not aware that she and her
mother had been taken to Texas during the Civil War.
My dissertation focuses on enslaved women like Charlotte and Lucy,
who were coercively moved to Texas by enslavers as a
last ditch effort to outrun emancipation. My research focuses on
the slaveholding and enslaved women who made or were forced
(28:32):
to make this move, and how this domestic disruption followed
by emancipation and the collapse of the Confederacy impacted women's
conceptions of motherhood and identity. Lucy and her mother were
fortunate and that I have found significant evidence that enslaved
children were often abandoned en route to Texas, a slaveholders
(28:53):
promoted expediency and deemed children as poor investments for the journey. Still,
enslaved mothers fought to take their children with them and
shepherded their broods at great personal, physical and mental expense.
Adding to this stress and trauma, sexual violence against enslaved
people was rampant along the roadside and meant that countless
(29:14):
women entered Texas as expectant or new mothers. My goal
is lofty, but I hope to bring the stories of
some of these women to light and honor the ways
in which they fought for themselves and their children. I
can now add Charlotte and Lucy to my growing list
of sources. I could truly ramble about this forever, but
I will spear you all that. I want to thank
(29:34):
you also for changing the way that I teach an
increasing participation in a classroom. I teach undergraduate history classes
at a large state university and struggled with getting students
to read their textbook assignments. I decided two years ago
to forego textbooks altogether and instead aside one podcast and
a handful of primary source readings each week. Not only
(29:57):
does the spare my students from having to purchase expense
of books they won't reuse, I found that students are
far more interested and engaged since making the switch. Stuff
you miss in history class has become a syllabus staple
for me. I'm also attaching pictures of my kiddies for you.
I love any opportunity to brag about them. Millie is
our oldest girl, A white calico ashes our orange friend,
(30:19):
Opel is our fluffy princess, and Pip is our blind
little rascal. I take my comprehensive exams next week, and
it promised myself a celebratory cat tattoo when they're finished.
I apologize for this novella of an email. Please don't
apologize for this novella of an email. This is great
and it made both of us cry. Yes, thank you,
thank you for your time, hard work, your compassion, and
your humor each episode. I hope that you're both well. Montana.
(30:43):
Thank you so much for this email, Montana number one.
What a great doctoral project. I am so glad this
is work that someone is doing. Um, the biography of
Lucy Parsons that I read reference that this, this relocation
from where they were into Texas was probably basically a
(31:06):
forced march and it would have been awful, and so
taking a look at the greater impact of that I
think is super important. Also, man, these cats are so cute. Uh.
One of them is in a white, fluffy bed, and
I think we have that exact same bed. We have
(31:28):
a cat who was also named Opal, and for a while,
Opal was really into that bed, and then she just
decided just does not exist anymore so because she's a cat.
Now it's just a decoration on our living room floor. Um,
thank you again, so so so, so so so much
for every word of this email. Montana. I would also
(31:48):
like to interject a request, which is, please send us
a picture of your cat tattoo when you get it. Yeah,
I'd love to see that. Um, if you want to
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Biebelson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we are
going to talk about Methodist minister William APIs and sometimes
(00:22):
he has described as the first Native Americans to publish
their own book length autobiography. That doesn't really capture the
full scope of it, though, because it kind of makes
it sound like his biggest achievement was like meeting an
arbitrary European standard of success. His whole body of work, though,
including that autobiography in a way turned that whole idea
(00:46):
on its head. He was using European rhetoric as a
tool to demonstrate the shared humanity of indigenous people and
to advocate for autonomy and self determination, and also to
point out a lot of injustice and hypocrisy on the
part of white society and in particular white Christians. This
episode turned into an accidental two parter, largely because there
(01:08):
were so many things in that body of written work
that I wanted to include. So today we're going to
talk about the first part of William APIs Is life,
That is the part that was covered in his autobiography,
and that lay the ground for his later work and
his later advocacy. Heads up, though this episode includes some
(01:28):
violent racism and also the abuse of a child, and
we're gonna be talking about apises struggles with alcohol. William
Apes was born William Apes with one S on January
in cole Raine, Massachusetts. He added that second s to
his last name as an adult. Cole Raine is north
(01:49):
of Northampton and amershed right on the border with Vermont.
William's father was also named William and had both Peaquat
and European ancestry. The elder William was a shoemaker, and
like other men in their extended family, he had served
as a soldier. William Apis's mother is usually described as
his father's wife, Candice, who probably had both Indigenous and
(02:12):
African ancestry, but it's possible that Candice was really the
younger William's stepmother. She was enslaved by a man that
William's father worked for. That was Captain Joseph Taylor of Colchester, Connecticut.
Taylor manumitted Candice in eighteen o five, and it's not
really likely that she would have been in Coleraine before
(02:33):
that point. Because Corraine and Colchester were roughly ninety miles
apart and in two different states. William Apis's autobiography definitively
says that he was born in Coleraine, though, and that
the family moved to Colchester after that. Apes's autobiography also
says that his grandmother told him he was descended from
(02:54):
Wapanog's Satan Metacomet, who Colonists called King Philip, but he
doesn't describe meta Comet as Wampanog. He describes him as Peaquat,
and these are two different Algonquian speaking people's. This error
likely came from the work of Elias Boudino, a white
politician and president of the Second Continental Congress. Boudino wrote
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a book called A Star in the West or A
Humble Attempt to Discover the long Lost Ten Tribes of Israel,
preparatory to their return to their beloved city, Jerusalem, and
that book argued that North America's indigenous peoples were descended
from a lost tribe of Jews. Aps reworked portions of
this book into an appendix in the second edition of
(03:38):
his autobiography. So if this is indeed an error that
APIs picked up from Buddin. No, there's some irony here
because when Apis's autobiography was first published, critics took note
of it and they used this error as evidence that
Indigenous people's recording of their own history was wrong. But
that was not Apis's recording of his own street. Buddino,
(04:01):
who had written that error, was white. And just to
be clear in case this name is ringing a bell
for anybody, there's also a Cherokee man who adopted Elias
Buddino's name after meeting him. We actually talked about this
other Elias Boudino on the show before in our episode
on the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut, and he
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is also going to come up in part two of
this episode. There has been a lot of writing about
whether this was intentional on apes Is part or just
a simple error picked up from Buddino's work, or whether
it was a rhetorical device, or whether Apes had a
Peaquat ancestor who took refuge with the Wampanag after the
(04:41):
Peaquot War in sixteen thirty six and sixteen thirty seven,
in which hundreds of Peaquats were killed. Many of the
Peaquat survivors of that war were enslaved by the colonists,
and many of those who were not took refuge with
other Algonquian speaking nations. Or perhaps it was that a
Bess's mother was Peaquat and his father was Watanagh. What
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is clearest is that Aps identified himself as both Peaquat
and as a descendant of King Philip. There is a
bit more on the Peaquot War and on meta comment
in our episode on King Philip's War from February nine
that will also come up again in Part two. So
to return to William's childhood, something seems to have caused
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a rift in the family. After they got to Colchester.
They were incredibly poor, and William's parents were trying to
support the family, primarily by making baskets that they could
sell to white people, and that was one of only
a very few ways that most indigenous people in the
area were able to earn an income. His parents ultimately separated,
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and his father went back to Coleraine. Candice then left William,
along with two brothers and two sisters with her parents.
In his autobiography, Apes describes this as a time of
cruelty and deprivation. Sation with both his grandparents misusing alcohol
and neglecting him and his siblings. Then, when he was four,
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his grandmother beat him severely. His uncle was living with
them and managed to get William away from her, and
he went to a white neighbor named David Furman for help.
Furman had already shown interest in the family, doing things
like bringing milk for the children. When Ferman realized that
William's arm was broken in three places, he went to
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the town's select board and he asked to have William
and his siblings removed from their grandparents care. In his autobiography,
APIs wrote of this quote, I suppose that the reader
will naturally say, what savage creatures my grandparents were to
treat unoffending or helpless children in this manner. But this
treatment was the effect of some cause. I attribute it
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in part to the whites, because they introduced among my
countrymen ardent spirits, seduced them into a love for it,
and when under its bail full influence, wronged them out
of their lawful possessions that land where reposed the ashes
of their sires. The day to day lives of William
and his siblings seemed to have been somewhat more stable,
(07:12):
with the Furmans than they were with their grandparents. He
describes the Furman family as treating them tenderly and like
their own children. This was also when William got his
only formal education, attending a school for black children during
the winter. This was the typical schedule for boys, since
they had to work during the warmer months. William went
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to the school for six winters at the same time.
Though William's account of his time with the Furman's includes
multiple instances in which his treatment was far from tender.
Furman's discipline could be harsh, including flogging or threatening to
flog him. At one point, William was sick and the
doctor couldn't figure out the cause, and David Furman decided
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it was the work of the devil when he tried
to whip the sick this out of him with a
birch branch. The Furmans were also Christians, and they raised
William and his siblings as Christian while also generally trying
to assimilate them into white society, and a lot of
what William heard about indigenous people while living there was negative.
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He was threatened with being sent quote to the Indians
in the woods as a punishment if he misbehaved, and
most of the people around him described indigenous people as
savage and dangerous. He internalized all of this to the
point that when he saw some women in the woods
while out gathering berries, women he described as having complexions
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quote dark as that of the natives, he was terrified
of them and he fled. William managed to maintain at
least some connection to his Peaquat identity in spite of
all of this, but it was clearly traumatic and very alienating.
William's relationship with the Furmans evolved into an indenture as
William got older. We'll talk about that after a quick sponsor.
(09:09):
When William and his siblings were removed from their grandparents care,
they essentially became wards of the town, and this evolved
into an indenture. They were expected to work to pay
for their room and board until they reached the age
of twenty one, and the amount of work that was
expected of them increased as they got older. This was
a fairly typical way for communities in this part of
(09:31):
New England to manage children who, for whatever reason, we're
not in the care of their families. This wasn't the
same as an apprenticeship, though an apprenticeship would have at
least left children like William with skills and training that
they could use potentially to support themselves as adults. But
they mostly did basic chores and manual labor. So although
(09:52):
David Ferman was a barrel maker, he was not training
William to be the same. He was just using Williams labor.
When William got to the age of about eleven, he
started rebelling against the Furman's expectations of him. He made
friends with some older boys who encouraged him to get
into some petty misbehavior, so things like stealing melons from
(10:12):
somebody else's field. This raised more tensions between him and
the Furman's But another source of tension was on the
opposite end of the spectrum from stealing melons. As we
said earlier, the Furmans were raising William and his siblings
as Christians. When he was about eight years old, William
also started attending meetings of a group he called quote
(10:34):
the Christians. These may have been followers of Eliah Smith,
who founded a denomination called the Christian Connection. Through attending
these meetings, William resolved to try to live a better
and more righteous life, but he also became so fond
of going to these meetings that David Ferman finally forbade
him from doing it anymore. The tensions between William and
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Furman became more complicated when Furman's mother in law died.
William had been extremely fond of her. One of William's
older friends finally persuaded him to run away, but then
told Ferman about their plan. At this point, Furman seems
to have gotten tired of dealing with all of this,
and he sold the remaining time on William's indenture to
(11:19):
Judge William Hillhouse, who lived in another town. This also
didn't work out. Hill House was devoutly Presbyterian and that
was one of the more traditional denominations. William still wanted
to attend the meetings of this group he described as
the Christians, and that was considered a lot more unorthodox.
William went to meetings over hill Houses objections, and at
(11:42):
one point he learned his father was living nearby and
went to see him. This was something that William did
at multiple points in his life, often when he was
struggling or otherwise kind of unsettled. He didn't get to
spend a lot of time with his father, but he
did find a way to go see him at several
of his lowest points. William Father, though, sent him back
to hill House, who then sold the remaining time on
(12:04):
his indenture to General William Williams of New London, Connecticut.
Williams was also devoutly Presbyterian and required William Apes to
attend Presbyterian services rather than the meetings that he was
more interested in, so his disputes over religion continued. Around
the same time, Methodists started holding meetings in the area,
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and William went to some of them, and he found
what he heard they're really appealing. In the early nineteenth century,
Methodists were more open some black and indigenous members than
some other denominations. There were efforts specifically to preach to
these communities, and the congregations that William saw were often
racially integrated. APIs wrote in his autobiography, quote, I felt
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convinced that Christ died for all mankind, that age, sect, color, country,
or situation made no difference. I felt an assurance that
I was included in the plan of redemption with all
my brethren. And he used the term brethren all through
his autobiography to mean other indigenous people. On March thirteenth thirteen,
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at the age of fifteen, William had the first of
a series of epiphanies. While working in the garden, a
voice whispered to him, quote, Arise, thy, sins, which were many,
are all forgiven. Thee go in peace and sin no more.
But the family of General William Williams was deeply opposed
(13:33):
to William Apis's increasing religious devotion. They told him he
was too young to be making these kinds of decisions
for himself, and started refusing to allow him to go
to Methodist meetings. They gave him permission to attend only sometimes,
and then pretty grudgingly. William finally decided to leave with
another boy named John. They took all of the money
(13:55):
that William had and they headed for New York. However,
one of the first things they spent some of William's
money on was a bottle of rum, which was the
start of his lifelong struggle with alcohol. Once William and
John finally got to New York, John got a job
on a sailing vessel and he left William defend for himself.
William did this by enlisting in the militia. This was
(14:17):
during the War of eighteen twelve, and it's possible that
he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps by becoming
a soldier, but at the age of only fifteen, he
wasn't considered old enough to actually fight. He told recruiters
he was seventeen. They did not seem to have believed that,
because they made him a drummer. He wrote of this
time quote, I became almost as bad as any of them,
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could drink rum, play cards, and act as wickedly as
any I was at times tormented with the thoughts of death,
but God had mercy on me and spared my life.
In spite of his age, he also wound up in combat.
In his mind, this change from drummer to fighting infantry
violated the terms of his enlistment. He tried to leave,
(15:01):
but he was captured and charged with desertion. He fought
in the Battle of Plattsburgh, also called the Battle of
Lake Champlain in September of eighteen fourteen. This was a
joint operation between the Army and Navy and was a
decisive US victory that led to the end of the war.
Aps and the rest of his unit remained in Plattsburgh
(15:21):
until after the Treaty of Ghent was signed on December
eighteen fourteen. The end of the war was complicated for APIs.
He described some of his fellow soldiers abandoning their posts
as soon as they knew the war was over, and
Apis's account, he waited until he had obtained a formal release,
but he didn't receive the compensation he had been promised
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when he enlisted that included forty dollars of bounty, fifteen
months of salary, and sixty acres of land. Aps attributed
this nonpayment to racism, that he and the other indigenous
men who had fought alongside him were denied their compensation
and their rights of citizenship because they were Native. He
(16:04):
does not seem to have understood that this so called
bounty land other veterans were receiving had been seized from
indigenous peoples in Illinois, Missouri, in Arkansas. APIs spent the
next stretch of his life in parts of Ontario, Canada,
and in western New York, much of it among indigenous people.
His account isn't specific, but they were likely among the
(16:26):
five nations of the Hoddenishawni Confederacy. Some of what he
had witnessed as a soldier had been really gruesome, and
he said these images stayed with him for the rest
of his life. He tried to cope with this and
with the just huge amount of trauma from his earlier
life through drinking, and then he struggled when he tried
to stop. He did odd jobs, traveling from place to
(16:47):
place wherever he could find a few months of work,
and attending Methodist meetings where he found them. This period
of his autobiography reads a little like two steps forward,
one step back, sometimes finding him self in the company
of spiritual people who helped him refocus his life, but
other times with people who were often intoxicated or otherwise struggling.
(17:09):
Things really seemed to change after he returned to Massachusetts,
which we will get to After a sponsor break. In
the fall of eighteen eighteen, William APIs made his way
to Groton, Massachusetts, which is northwest of Boston. His aunt,
(17:31):
Sally George lived there. He was reunited with her and
with multiple other members of his family, most of whom
had not seen him in years. A lot of them
had thought that he must be dead. His aunt was Methodist,
and he went to Methodist meetings with her. Of everybody
in his family. She really seems to have been the
most supportive of his spiritual pursuits, but it was still hard.
(17:55):
In his words, quote, my soul was weighed down on
account of my many transgressions. Eventually, though, Aps started to
feel that he had been called for a spiritual purpose,
first by feeling that it was his duty to call
sinners to repentance. Having come to this realization at a
camp meeting, quote, I found all impediment of speech removed,
(18:18):
My heart was enlarged, my soul glowed with holy fervor,
and the blessing of the Almighty sanctified this my first
public attempt to warn sinners of their danger and invite
them to the marriage supper of the Lamb. I was
now in my proper element, just harnessed for the work,
with the fire of divine love burning on my heart.
(18:41):
In December of eighteen eighteen, APIs was baptized. Not long
after that, he went to visit family in Coleraine, and
their quote, the Lord moved upon my heart and a
peculiarly powerful manner, and by it I was led to
believe that I was called to preach the gospel. This
wasn't just about his own well being. He saw that
a lot of other Indigenous people were also struggling and
(19:04):
thought many of them were being harmed by white missionaries
who didn't actually care for their well being. So this
gets a little complicated. In previous episodes of the show,
we have talked about multiple efforts to use religion, specifically Christianity,
as a tool to quote assimilate Indigenous people into the
white world and places like the residential schools in the
(19:28):
US and the boarding schools in Canada. Christianization was an
act of cultural genocide and a means for separating Indigenous
students from their families and their tribal and cultural heritage.
Himself had lived through this on kind of a more
limited level by being taken from his grandparents care in
place with a white family who were trying to do
(19:49):
a lot of the same thing. But APIs is approach
to all of this was slightly different. He believed that
the indigenous people of North America were one of the
ten Lost tribes of Israel, had disappeared after being attacked
by the Assyrians in seven b C. So he saw
Christianity as part of his indigeneity, and he used it
(20:10):
as part of his advocacy for indigenous rights and tribal sovereignty.
He thought the indigenous population of North America had an
ancestry and a heritage that stretched all the way back
to the Biblical creation, and that God cared about people's souls,
which were equally worthy, not their skin. In his words quote,
the proper term which ought to be applied to our
(20:32):
nation to distinguish it from the rest of the human family,
is that of natives. And I humbly conceived that the
natives of this country are the only people under heaven
who have a just title to the name, inasmuch as
we are the only people who retained the original complexion
of our father Adam. So to add to the complexity here,
(20:53):
white people also used this same idea to justify everything
from forced removals of gigenous people to genocide. The Assyrian
attack which we just referenced had been framed as a
divine punishment of the tribes because they had turned away
from the Hebrew God. So under this mindset, Native Americans
(21:14):
had done that. And we're also Jewish, which meant that
anti Semitism played a role in all of this. The
lost tribes idea also undermined the cultures and the accomplishments
of indigenous nations by sort of explaining them away as
having really come from Judaism. This is all sort of
akin to claiming that indigenous works of art and architecture
(21:35):
were really the work of aliens, and it also has
parallels to the use of biblical arguments to justify the
institution of slavery. Apes, though, was seeing all of this
as part of indigenous people's inherent worth and place in
the Kingdom of God equal to that of white people.
At the same time as Apes was starting his work
(21:56):
as an itinerant preacher, he was also working through a
lot from his earlier life. In his autobiography, he wrote
about living through a lot of indoctrination and shame, and
it's clear that over the years that he was being
fostered and indentured, and then when he was a soldier,
he had internalized a lot of anti indigenous stereotypes. For example,
(22:18):
he wrote quote, I thought it disgraceful to be called
an Indian. It was considered as a slur upon an
oppressed and scattered nation, and I have often been led
to inquire where the whites received this word which they
so often threw as an opprobrious epithet at the sons
of the forest. I could not find it in the Bible,
and therefore concluded that it was a word imported for
(22:40):
the special purpose of degrading us. But ultimately he saw
the souls of all humanity is having the same inherent
connection to God. And his experience of the missionary, which
was published later on as part of his work The
Experience of Five Christian Indians of the Pequa Tribe, he wrote, quote,
a white man finds so much fault because God has
(23:02):
made us. Thus, Yet if I have any vanity about it,
I choose to remain as I am and praise my
Maker while I live that Indians he has made. In
December of eight twenty one, Apes married a woman named
Mary Wood of Salem, Connecticut, who was about ten years
older than he was. Some sources describe her as white,
(23:24):
but Apes describes her as quote nearly the same color
as myself. They had met at a Methodist meeting where
he was preaching, and they went on to have at
least two children. They established a home in Providence, Rhode Island,
but he traveled all over New England preaching, sending money
back to the family. A lot of the congregations he
(23:45):
drew were black and indigenous, but there were also white people,
some drawn by curiosity and some drawn by his reputation
as a preacher. At first, he wasn't formally ordained, and
the Methodist Church hadn't authorized him to preach in any way.
Eventually he got an exhorting license, it's basically a license
to work as a lay minister. On April eleventh, eighteen
(24:08):
twenty seven, he went through the exams that were required
to become formally ordained in the Methodist Church, which was
then known as the Methodist Episcopal Church. At this point
in history, the process of becoming ordained required an examination
by a committee, and it was possible for a person
to become qualified to be ordained through self study. It
(24:30):
was not like today where people go to seminary and
essentially get an advanced degree in in a religion. First,
he thought his examination had gone well, and afterward the
committee told him that the church didn't know enough about
his character to ordain him. The committee advised him to
just renew his license to exhort, which led him to ask, quote,
(24:53):
as this conference refused me a license to preach on
the ground that its members did not know enough of
my character, had they any right to grant a license
to exhort at the same time that they refused one
to preach. His conclusion was that even though the Methodist
Church said that it welcomed people of all races, this
denial was because of his race. So he left the
(25:16):
Methodist Episcopal Church to join another faction of Methodists called
the Protestant Methodist Church. The Protestant Methodist Church ordained him
on August eighth, eighteen thirty one. In between his examination
with the Methodist Episcopal Church and his ordination with the
Protestant Methodist he published his autobiography that was A Son
(25:37):
of the Forest, The Experience of William Apes, a native
of the Forest. This was the first of five books
that he would write over the next seven years, and
it documented his life up to his decision to leave
the Methodist Episcopal Church at the age of thirty one.
It was published before he added that second s to
his last name. He published a second edition in eighteen
(26:00):
thirty one. That's One that, for some unclear reasons, softened
a lot of his criticisms of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
It took out a lot of naming names he had
done about the people who had prevented him from becoming ordained,
and a lot of his justifications for joining the Protestant Methodists.
The reason that's given in the text itself was that
he had slightly abridged the earlier version to make room
(26:22):
for an appendix, which, as we said earlier, included a
lot of Elias Buddino's a Star in the West. He
also published a sermon in eighteen thirty one titled The
Increase of the Kingdom of Christ, and that included an
appendix as well, this one called the Indians the Ten
Lost Tribes. These publications were coming out alongside a massive
(26:44):
and horrific injustice that the United States committed against indigenous
nations and people's. Multiple states had been trying to forcibly
remove their indigenous population, and on May eighteen thirty President
Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law. This
set the stage for the forced removal of indigenous peoples
(27:05):
to land west of the Mississippi River. Sometimes this is
called the Cherokee removal, but it targeted multiple other nations
as well, including the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee Creek and Seminole.
William APIs doesn't directly address this in his autobiography. It
is more focused on his own spiritual journey and the
(27:26):
innate humanity of all of his brethren and the many
injustices that indigenous people had faced more generally, including at
the hands of reported Christians. But not long after publishing
his autobiography that changed, and that is what we'll talk
about in our next episode as we wait for part two.
Do you have a listener, Mayo? I knew it is
(27:47):
from Montana, and uh I really loved this email. Um
Montana wrote high Holly and Tracy. I've been listening to
Stuffy miss and history class since and have long wanted
to write, but the recent episode on Lucy pars And
finally pushed me to do so. I'm a doctoral student
and my focuses on race, gender, and economics in the
nineteenth century US South. While I was familiar with parsons
(28:10):
labor activism, I was not aware that she and her
mother had been taken to Texas during the Civil War.
My dissertation focuses on enslaved women like Charlotte and Lucy,
who were coercively moved to Texas by enslavers as a
last ditch effort to outrun emancipation. My research focuses on
the slaveholding and enslaved women who made or were forced
(28:32):
to make this move, and how this domestic disruption followed
by emancipation and the collapse of the Confederacy impacted women's
conceptions of motherhood and identity. Lucy and her mother were
fortunate and that I have found significant evidence that enslaved
children were often abandoned en route to Texas, a slaveholders
(28:53):
promoted expediency and deemed children as poor investments for the journey. Still,
enslaved mothers fought to take their children with them and
shepherded their broods at great personal, physical and mental expense.
Adding to this stress and trauma, sexual violence against enslaved
people was rampant along the roadside and meant that countless
(29:14):
women entered Texas as expectant or new mothers. My goal
is lofty, but I hope to bring the stories of
some of these women to light and honor the ways
in which they fought for themselves and their children. I
can now add Charlotte and Lucy to my growing list
of sources. I could truly ramble about this forever, but
I will spear you all that. I want to thank
(29:34):
you also for changing the way that I teach an
increasing participation in a classroom. I teach undergraduate history classes
at a large state university and struggled with getting students
to read their textbook assignments. I decided two years ago
to forego textbooks altogether and instead aside one podcast and
a handful of primary source readings each week. Not only
(29:57):
does the spare my students from having to purchase expense
of books they won't reuse, I found that students are
far more interested and engaged since making the switch. Stuff
you miss in history class has become a syllabus staple
for me. I'm also attaching pictures of my kiddies for you.
I love any opportunity to brag about them. Millie is
our oldest girl, A white calico ashes our orange friend,
(30:19):
Opel is our fluffy princess, and Pip is our blind
little rascal. I take my comprehensive exams next week, and
it promised myself a celebratory cat tattoo when they're finished.
I apologize for this novella of an email. Please don't
apologize for this novella of an email. This is great
and it made both of us cry. Yes, thank you,
thank you for your time, hard work, your compassion, and
your humor each episode. I hope that you're both well. Montana.
(30:43):
Thank you so much for this email, Montana number one.
What a great doctoral project. I am so glad this
is work that someone is doing. Um, the biography of
Lucy Parsons that I read reference that this, this relocation
from where they were into Texas was probably basically a
(31:06):
forced march and it would have been awful, and so
taking a look at the greater impact of that I
think is super important. Also, man, these cats are so cute. Uh.
One of them is in a white, fluffy bed, and
I think we have that exact same bed. We have
(31:28):
a cat who was also named Opal, and for a while,
Opal was really into that bed, and then she just
decided just does not exist anymore so because she's a cat.
Now it's just a decoration on our living room floor. Um,
thank you again, so so so, so so so much
for every word of this email. Montana. I would also
(31:48):
like to interject a request, which is, please send us
a picture of your cat tattoo when you get it. Yeah,
I'd love to see that. Um, if you want to
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Holly Frey
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