The Life of William Apess, Pequot

Abstract

The Life of William Apess, Pequot. Philip F. Gura. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015. 216 pages. $26.00 (cloth).Who we remember in American history, insofar as the remembrance enters popular memory, is a fraught and politically charged question. Who we remember and privilege in historical narratives says much about our own period's ideals, because it serves as a direct statement to the values we find important. In this way, Philip F. Gura has provided a much needed, and long overdue, biography on the nineteenth century Native American thinker, writer, lecturer, and activist William Apess (1798-1839). Gura's book is one of the first full-length studies dedicated to chronicling the life and development of Apess, and his study does much to both popularize the late Pequot Methodist minister and intervene into the discussion over where to place Apess in the larger antebellum world.Gura begins the study with Apess's birth into abject poverty in 1798 in Colrain, Massachusetts. After his parents separated early in life, he was sent to live with a grandparent who emotionally and physically abused him. Thanks to the intervention of town officials, Apess was pulled out of this home and placed with a series of white families in Massachusetts before becoming an indentured servant. Although conditions in these homes were better than the abuse he experienced from his own family, Apess still faced societal discrimination as a Pequot and as a person of color in relation to education opportunities and social mobility. Eventually, he broke his indentured status and ran away, joining the U.S. military during the War of 1812. Misled by the Army, Apess believed that he was joining to serve as a noncombat member of the music corps. When he was moved to the infantry he cited it as a "breach of contract" and deserted. He was soon arrested, brought back to the ranks, and forced to fight in Canada. "On the subsequent march north to join other troops at Plattsburgh, New York, on Lake Champlain, the officers continually tormented him," Gura writes, "In an unambiguous insult to his background, they repeatedly told him that they intended to stick his skin full of pine splinters and, after 'having an Indian pow wow' over him, then light the wood and burn him to death" (23).Apess bore this discrimination, served his time in the military, and later claimed he was discharged. Army records contest this, however, saying he deserted again on September 14, 1814. After his time in the military, he worked odd jobs in and around Canada, falling into alcoholism, a condition that plagued him for the rest of his life. It was during this period that he became deeply religious, eventually converting to Methodism. By showing how the Methodists' openness to the marginalized in society provided a way for Apess to grow spiritually and intellectually, Gura once again integrates Apess's life into the larger context of early nineteenth century United States.Eventually, Apess became a minister for the Methodist church, and found his talent for presenting ideas to a larger public audience. Apess was eventually compelled to write about his life and conversion in an autobiography. The first book length autobiography published by a Native American in the United States, Son of the Forest was published in 1829. It serves as a particularly interesting biography, Gura argues, because it helps in understanding larger questions of social, cultural, and political engagement in the early decades of nineteenth century America. A product of the exploding print culture of the early nineteenth century, the book was typical for its time since it focused on a personal narrative of religious awakening and conversion. …