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William Appess

William Apess

During the 19th century, the culture and population of the American Indian was in sharp decline. They still had not gained any civil rights and were being persecuted by whites who considered the American Indian as an inferior race. This was especially true in the state of Massachusetts. This state had only one remaining Indian town by 1833 compared to other states at the time that had much more than that. Massachusetts was also the only state in New England to have a law forbidding the intermarriage between whites and Indians. Although Massachusetts, along with the rest of the United States, was filled with people that exhibited great hatred toward the Native American Indian race, there were a few American Indian leaders to have come from there. One of the most influential of these leaders was William Apess. Although much of his work was largely forgotten until the 1980s, when "scholarship on nineteenth century American Literature began to devote substantial attention to the writing of ethnic minorities" (Sayre), his work is said to have influenced several abolitionists and racial justice speakers such as Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, and Henry David Thoreau. One prominent piece of literature by Apess is An Indian's Looking-Glass for the White Man, which concluded his book The Experiences of Five Christian Indians of the Pequo'd Tribe (1833). The techniques that Apess uses in this text helps to convey to the reader the author's points about equality between the Native Americans and the whites. He has

the reader ask his/herself several questions regarding the legitimacy of the white man's superiority over the Indians. This ‘questioning' technique along with his many biblical
references, and descriptive imagery, make this piece one of the most well written and influential pieces of literature regarding civil equality of it's time and of our own.
To understand William Apess, one first must know about his background and his...