“Translated from the dominions of darkness": Native Missionaries, Language, and Scientific Authority in the Nineteenth Century

Pondering Sequoyah’s invention of the Cherokee alphabet, one observer alerted his readers that “the Indians themselves are becoming philologists and grammarians.”  Countless other Native persons amassed material that would both facilitate conversion efforts and provide empirical evidence for an international science of language, a dominant Euro-American intellectual pursuit in the first half of the nineteenth century that most recent historical literature has ignored.  Several Native missionaries assumed personal responsibility for disseminating information on the grammatical organization of the “American languages.”  Capitalizing on the fact that interested white scholars, who accepted that language both reflected and shaped thought, needed tutors to explain Native tongues, David Brown (Cherokee), Eleazer Williams (Mohawk), Peter Jones (Anishinaabeg), and others placed themselves in a unique position to shape scientifically authoritative knowledge of a “savage” or “Indian” mind in the 1820s-50s, an era when “civilization” and segregation were under debate in U.S. and British Indian policy.  These Native missionaries – a Congregationalist, an Episcopalian, and a Methodist who ministered primarily to his countrymen in Canada, respectively – contributed to the science of language because of its potential to shape learned opinion and the broader political climate, each of which were crucial for their religious endeavors.  While the linguistic authority of Native missionaries was nearly universally recognized, their explications of the “genius” of their languages fueled both increased opposition to Native-language education and scientific opposition to philology’s relevance for the study of “race.”  This study moves beyond explaining such roles as the work of “cultural brokers.”  Drawing on literature that stresses Native co-production of anthropological knowledge, this study places the work of Brown, Williams, and Jones at the center of an international scientific pursuit inextricable from their missions.  As such, it also illuminates the extra-religious significance of the missionary effort in transatlantic intellectual life.