ABSTRACT
Glasson’s essay examines the Church of England’s primary missionary society, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), and its missions to the Mohawk and other nations of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy in the eighteenth century. Stretching from the first decade of the eighteenth century to beyond the American Revolution, the SPG pursued these missions with the strategic aim of bringing Mohawks into a political, cultural, and military alliance with the British, as Glasson demonstrates. Glasson also highlights Mohawk agency in shaping these endeavors. He further shows how SPG missionary sermons contributed to transatlantic discussions of difference, race, religion, and “civilization” of indigenous and enslaved converts. His essay cogently reveals the links between SPG missionary tracts and racist discourses that would become so prominent in the nineteenth century.
