Early Indigenous Literatures

James Printer and the 1663 Bible

Before we enter the collaborative space, let’s notice what we see on the page for each of the literary contributors. To reiterate, by on the page, I am referring to the paratextual materials. The importance of observing paratexts is spotlighted by Lara Langer Cohen and Jordan Alexander Stein in their introduction of Early African American Print Culture. They state, “Our contributors also aim to expand what we as readers take to be our texts- and what we read for- when we study print culture. Their objects of inquiry include not only the printed works of what we generally consider ‘the text’ but also typography, format, and bindings (Rezek, McGill); frontispieces and mastheads (Ashton, Clytus); engravings and photographs (Capers, Scruggs); and the very materials of paper and ink (Senchyne).”[1] I am very much in agreement with these scholars, and in this exhibit I hope to display how vital it is to observe the paratexts for both Black and Indigenous writers. The paratextual materials demonstrate principal insights regarding authorship, framing, and ordering choices for participants.

While describing the paratextual material, I will cite secondary scholarship regarding early Black and Indigenous print culture that offers rich insight and context to the exhibit. These scholars include Lisa Brooks, Robert Dale Parker, Phillip Round, Jodi Schorb, Simon Gikandi, Rhonda Robinson Thomas, Karen Weyler, and Joseph Rezek. Often, their work solely focuses on one minority group. However, placing their understandings together further highlights that there is value in scholars who study early Black print culture and scholars who study early Indigenous print culture to come together and have conversations about the parallels and distinctions between their work.

This first section focuses on what we see on the page and how words are ordered in the paratexual materials. In the second section, the literary contributors will consider why these words are on the page and why they are ordered this way. In other words, a majority of the analysis will take place in the collaborative space in the second half of the exhibit.

The exhibit will introduce the paratexts in chronological order, and the first item is the 1663 Bible. The 1663 Bible was translated by James Printer (Wowaus), our first literary contributor who will be invited to the collaborative space. Printer was an Indigenous scholar from the Nipmuc tribe, an expert in both English and Nimpuc languages, and was recruited by John Eliot to help translate the Bible into Nimpuc.[2] Along with Nipmuc, the other Wampanoag translators wrote in Wopanaak.[3] Both Nimpuc and Wopanaak are Algonquian languages.

Since the Bible is our object of conversation here, it is crucial to think about its significance as a religious text and its role in assisting colonization efforts. Robert Dale Parker notes “In short, to think about early Indian print culture it may help to think about how print culture worked both to colonize and to resist colonization.[4] The translation of a Bible was an obvious colonial strategy that hoped to spread Euro-American religious views into the minds of Indigenous communities. Phillip Round expands this idea, writing that the “figure of the book as an agent of conquest is ubiquitous.”[5] Euro-American missionaries hoped not only to conquer physical Indigenous lands, but also their minds in their desires of religious conversion and assimilation. The Bible, as a book, held a lot of power and had an active and fundamental role in the Euro-American conversion project.
[1] Lara Langer Cohen and Jordan Alexander Stein. Early African American Print Culture, (2012), 7-8.
[2] Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War, (2018), 72.
[3] Ibid., 76.
[4] Robert Dale Parker, “The Hum of Routine: Issues for the Study of Early American Indian Print Culture: a Response to Phillip H. Round,” (2007), 290.
[5] Phillip H. Round, Removable Type: Histories of the Book in Indian Country, 1663-1880, (2010), 21.

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