But what is extraordinary is that his autobiography, as we alluded to, reads much like Smollett or Dickens, and even if you don’t care about race history in the United States, it holds up quite well as an amusing and rattlingly good, if every now and then disturbing and sobering, read. He may also have been inspired by slave narratives like that of Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797) or Venture Smith (1729?-1805). Outside the church, outside of the military, there was no effective way for native Americans, blacks, or people of color to haveĬentury tracts and pamphlets, and Apess cleverly uses the genre to get in his own sermons on race and race relations. As with Samson Occom and Jupiter Hammon, we see it was religion that first opened doors to people discriminated for race and color, and it was only in certain churches - or in the military, army and navy - that desegregation was or ever could be tolerated. He later headed up the first open, non-violent, and largely successful civil rights protest in the United States on behalf of people of color in the Mashpee (or Marshpee) Revolt of 1835 in Cape Cod. He began his life very early as an indentured servant subsequently ran away and became a soldier serving in the War of 1812, and ended up a traveling Methodist minister, working the preaching circuits.
#A SON OF THE FOREST APESS SHMOOP SERIES#
, Apess (originally spelled “Apes” with “apes” in Latin, incidentally, meaning “bees”) suffered an extremely trying and abusive youth growing up as a semi-half breed - his paternal grandfather had been white - in northwestern Massachusetts, and after a series of fairly astonishing adventures and run-ins with odd characters - rivaling in wildness and pathos, and sometimes in humor, the wanderings and scrapes of Roderick Random and David Copperfield. By his own account, Apess was a descendant of King Philip of Pokanoket, or Metacomet, (c 1639- 1676), the heroic and tragic Wampanoag chief, son of Massasoit who waged a war of resistance (1675- 1678) against the first new England settlers and their Indian allies perhaps made most familiar to later generations by a piece written about him by Washington Irving in the latter’s And yet even conceding this to have been an occasional fault, his better traits of indefatigable perseverance, political shrewdness, impassioned elegance, and touching eloquence are more then enough to prevent us from losing sight of his merit and where it lies. True, his was not an unqualified artistic success if at times Apess in his writings appears or sounds a bit ridiculous, it no doubt was because sometimes he indeed was and acted ridiculously. He therefore proved his own thesis namely, that when it comes to talent or greatness, race and ethnic heritage are no proper measures, and what most and truly matters is worth founded on strength of character combined with ability. And yet perhaps what arguably makes Apess as much, or more, a figure of interest than these honorable titles is that he could have passed for a gifted writer and engaging personality regardless of his color or nationality.
, as well as most prolific, of published Native American authors - William Apess (1798–1839 pronounced, or so I have heard, A-pess, with “A” as in “hay”) was both of these.
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