To Live Upon Hope: Mohicans and Missionaries in the Eighteenth-Century Northeast (review)

Wheeler's well-written and well-documented study narrates the history of the Shekomeko and Stockbridge Mohican (Mahican) mission communities of the Housatonic region in the eighteenth century, a period when the politics of conversion dominated both their own and outsiders' commentaries. Wheeler compares the two communities vis-à-vis the influence of their different types of missionary experience: The Protestant missionaries advocated a hierarchical, transformative conversion for the Stockbridge Mohicans, whereas the Moravian missionaries had customs and practices that were compatible with the traditional native beliefs of the Shekomeko Mohicans. In addition, Wheeler also contrasts what she sees as the differing motives of native community leaders—those of Stockbridge seeking protection through the acquisition of a secure land base, education, and alliance and those of Shekomeko looking to reconcile Christianity with native beliefs and practices and to ward off the evil effects of alcohol and despair.

Wheeler joins other historians who question the "revisionism" of 1970's era scholarship, which, she argues, has overemphasized the cataclysmic nature of culture contact. Instead, these new revisionists focus on the adaptive nature of native conversion within the colonial regime. For Wheeler, this is a story of the "inner, subjective experiences" of native people as they "constructed new spiritual lives" in response to the negative effects of colonialism (64).

As Wheeler notes, a comparative study of these two communities is not without difficulties. Although founded within five years of one another, the sources available are different, making equal treatment difficult. For the Stockbridge, they are lengthy but general; for the Shekomeko, they are personal and detailed. Wheeler's decision to address the difference in sources as problematical is one of the strengths of her study. Also praiseworthy is her focus, where possible, on individuals, such as Umpachenee—Stockbridge's first leader—and Shekomeko's Tschoop (Johannes), as well as such missionaries as John Sargeant, Jonathan Edwards, and Christian Rauch, whose voices give color and depth to the narrative.

The volume is divided into four parts with a brief concluding section. Part I, entitled "Hope," which includes the introduction, describes the Mohicans of the Housatonic and other members of the "River Indian Confederacy" and the founding of the Stockbridge community. Part II, "Renewal," reviews the origins of the Moravian mission to Shekomeko. The third and fourth parts, "Preservation" and "Persecution," respectively, contrast the two communities and their fates.

Particularly interesting is Chapter 6, in which Wheeler discusses native accounts that include references to both Christian and native beliefs. Although necessarily speculative, Wheeler offers plausible explanations for the new meanings that Shekomekoans attached to such Moravian rituals as the lovefeast. Equally interesting are the personal stories of Mohican women converts, whose lives Wheeler places in the larger context of native women's experiences within mission communities.

Whereas in the earliest chapters, Wheeler focuses on the distinctions between the Stockbridge and Shekomeko communities, in Part IV, she emphasizes their similarities. The Great Awakening, imperial conflicts, and the growing influence of native revitalization movements throughout the Northeast also played a role in the history of these communities, although the surviving sources make their influence difficult to evaluate. The Stockbridge community welcomed an alliance with the Mohawks (as did their English advisors), but increasing pressure from English settlers made their ultimate emigration inevitable. The Shekomeko community's lack of reserved land and its association with the increasingly unpopular Moravians made it even more vulnerable than the Stockbridges. Many from that community eventually either migrated to the south and west with the exiled missionaries or joined other Native groups.

In her conclusions, Wheeler returns to a biographical approach, focusing on the Mohican leader Hendrick Aupaumet and the Shekomeko native Joshua. Wheeler suggests that the writings of Aupaumet, a widely respected spokesman for the Stockbridge community, aptly reflect the new "Stockbridge" identity that began to emerge during the eighteenth century. For Wheeler, the Mohicans of Stockbridge shared a sense of history as members of a self-selected mission...