Armed with Bible and primer, missionaries and teachers in colonial America sought, in their words, “to Christianize and civilize the native heathen.” Both the attempts to transform Indians via schooling and the Indians' reaction to such efforts are closely studied for the first time in Indian Education in the American Colonies, 1607–1783. Margaret Connell Szasz’s remarkable synthesis of archival and published materials is a detailed and engaging story told from both Indian and European perspectives. Szasz argues that the most intriguing dimension of colonial Indian education came with the individuals who tried to work across cultures. We learn of the remarkable accomplishments of two Algonquian students at Harvard, of the Creek woman Mary Musgrove who enabled James Oglethorpe and the Georgians to establish peaceful relations with the Creek Nation, and of Algonquian minister Samson Occom, whose intermediary skills led to the founding of Dartmouth College. The story of these individuals and their compatriots plus the numerous experiments in Indian schooling provide a new way of looking at Indian-white relations and colonial Indian education.

Indian Education in the American Colonies, 1607-1783 (Indigenous Education)

History

Szasz, Margaret Connell

Americas

University Of Nebraska Press

Cultural boundaries exist wherever cultures encounter one another. During centuries of contact between native peoples and others in America, countless intermediaries–artists, students, traders, interpreters, political figures, authors, even performers–have bridged the divide. Between Indian and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker provides a new understanding of the role of these mediation in North America from 1690 to the present. Cultural brokers have shared certain qualities–in particular a thorough understanding of two of more cultures. Living on the edge of change and conflict, they have responded to evolving and unstable circumstances or alliances with a flexibility born of their determination to bring understanding to disparate peoples. No composite portrait can encompass the complexity of the brokerage experience. To convey the many roles of these intermediaries, editor Margaret Connell Szasz has brought together fourteen distinct portraits, crafted by prominent scholars of Indian-white relations, of brokers across the continent and throughout three centuries of American history–in the colonial world, during the expansion of the republic, in the Wild West, and in the twentieth century. This fascinating and inspiring collection speaks eloquently of life on the cultural frontier. Key figures in our pluralistic heritage, cultural brokers are no less important today, as society continues to struggle with diversity.

Between Indians and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker

University of Oklahoma Press

Two indigenous cultures encounter Scottish educators in the eighteenth century The Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) was founded in 1709 by Scottish Lowlanders for the education of Highlanders: specifically to convert them from the Gaelic language to English, from the Episcopal faith to Presbyterianism, and from latent Jacobitism to loyalty to the crown. In a transatlantic translation of this effort, the “Scottish Society” also established itself in the New World to educate and assimilate Iroquois, Algonquin, and southeastern Native peoples. In this first book-length examination of the SSPCK, Margaret Connell Szasz explores the origins of the Scottish Society’s policies of cultural colonialism and their influence on two disparate frontiers. Drawing intriguing parallels between the treatment of Highland Scots and of Native Americans, she incorporates multiple perspectives on the cultural encounter, juxtaposing the attitudes of Highlanders and Lowlanders, English colonials and Native peoples, while giving voice to the Society’s pupils and graduates, its schoolmasters, and religious leaders. Featuring more than two dozen illustrations, Scottish Highlanders and Native Americans brims with intriguing comparisons and insights into two cultures on the cusp of modernity. It is a benchmark in emerging studies of comparative education and a major contribution to the growing literature of cross-cultural encounters.

Scottish Highlanders and Native Americans: Indigenous Education in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World

Abraham Lincoln’s faith has commanded more broad-based attention than that of any other American president. Although he never joined a denomination, Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ, Spiritualists, Jews, and even atheists claim the sixteenth president as one of their own. In this concise volume, Ferenc Morton Szasz and Margaret Connell Szasz offer both an accessible survey of the development of Lincoln’s religious views and an informative launch pad for further academic inquiry. A singular key to Lincoln’s personality, especially during the presidential years, rests with his evolving faith perspective.
After surveying Lincoln’s early childhood as a Hard-Shell Baptist in Kentucky and Indiana, the authors chronicle his move from skepticism to participation in Episcopal circles during his years in Springfield, and, finally, after the death of son Eddie, to Presbyterianism. They explore Lincoln’s relationship with the nation’s faiths as president, the impact of his son Willie’s death, his adaptation of Puritan covenant theory to a nation at war, the role of prayer during his presidency, and changes in his faith as reflected in the Emancipation Proclamation and his state papers and addresses. Finally, they evaluate Lincoln’s legacy as the central figure of America’s civil religion, an image sharpened by his prominent position in American currency.
A closing essay by Richard W. Etulain traces the historiographical currents in the literature on Lincoln and religion, and the volume concludes with a compilation of Lincoln’s own words about religion.
In assessing the enigma of Lincoln’s Christianity, the authors argue that despite his lack of church membership, Lincoln lived his life through a Christian ethical framework. His years as president, dominated by the Civil War and personal loss, led Lincoln to move into a world beholden to Providence.2015 ISHS Superior Achievement Award

Lincoln and Religion (Concise Lincoln Library)

Biographies & Memoirs

Szasz, Ferenc Morton

Community & Culture

Southern Illinois University Press

First published in 1974, Education and the American Indian has been widely praised as the first full-length study of federal Indian policy. This revised edition brings the book up to date through 1998 with the addition of analysis and interpretation of trends and policies that have shaped Indian education in the 1980s and 1990s and will persist into the twenty-first century. In looking ahead, one Yankton Sioux forecasts that "within two generations we will see some of the most educated people in the world and they will be on reservations." How such an optimistic assessment might become a reality is one of the major themes of this revised edition.

Education and the American Indian: The Road to Self-Determination Since 1928

University of New Mexico Press