An Imagined Mohican-Moravian “Lebenslauf”: Joshua Sr., d. 1775

Abstract

This text is a work of historical pseudo-autobiography of a Mohican man baptized Joshua, who lived 1720-1775. It is written in the form of a Lebenslauf, the Moravian form of spiritual autobiography, as an experimental attempt to humanize Indian experiences of colonialism. It is based on research in the Moravian mission records, which contain extensive reports about Joshua, though nothing in his own hand. This Lebenslauf is intended to provide a suggestive rather than definitive account of one Native American's experience of Christianity in the eighteenth century.