The Pious Scientist Jeremy Belknap

Posted on March 23, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

Jeremy Belknap, who is featured in three of my books: Ebenezer Hazard, Jeremy Belknap, and the American Revolution, Passaconaway’s Realm, and the American Plutarch, was a pious scientist. He believed that piety is the most important response of the scientist to the work of examining natural and human history; indeed, he believed that the sine qua non of scientific research and methodology is piety and faith. Ironically, then, at a time when reason and the Enlightenment worldview of objectivity and empiricism was touted as the means by which truth could be discovered, progress accomplished, and society’s ills reformed, when Deists such as Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson challenged the Scripture and argued that the human mind could via science and reason discover the ways of the Creator, who was a benevolent yet passive force in the universe, when therefore the Enlightenment intellectual was arrogantly assuming that knowledge was within his grasp, there was a leading scientist and objective, rational human and natural historian who claimed that all of the aims and goals and methods of the Enlightenment, which he supported, were subject to the human response to the numinous, to the subjective intuition of the religious mind, to the singularly religious attributes of faith and piety.

Jeremy Belknap joined the geographer Jedidiah Morse on a missionary journey in 1796 to the Iroquois of upstate New York. In his journal, Belknap betrayed his interests as a historian and scientist in the natural and human history of New York. He made copious notes on observations of geography, geology, meteorology, agriculture, and observations about different cultures—Dutch, German, Indian. His journal was a scientific journal kept by a missionary to the Indians. His comments on the Iroquois include a recounting of a tale of blood vengeance committed by the Oneida, “which,” he wrote, “strongly marks the little progress made by civilization or Christianity among that people.” “Murders of this kind are agreeable to the Indian principles, though of late they have been rarely practised among the Oneidas.” Belknap recounted the story of Mohawk leader Joseph Brant killing his own son. Brant, a loyalist and officer in the King’s army, who led his people to Grand River in Ontario during the war, was not charged for the crime. Belknap wrote, “Brandt was one of Dr. Wheelock’s scholars,” meaning that he had been educated by the Christian missionary Eleazar Wheelock, who founded Dartmouth College in 1770 for the purpose of educating the indigenous peoples. Belknap had followed closely the progress of Dartmouth College, and was doubtful of Wheelock’s pretentions of success. “Brant can assume the Indian or English manners,” Belknap wrote, “as best suits his conveniency, and keep up his influence with both.” Brant’s murder and others he heard about among the Iroquois caused Belknap to write: “It is high time that these Indians should be made subject to the laws of the State; this must be done if they are to be considered as citizens; if they will still be savages they must retire deeper into the forest.” His conviction about the latter conclusion was strengthened as he continued the journey, finding the rich lands of the Oneida generally uncultivated, and the people living in a “savage state.” What farming that occurred was done by the “strong” and “laborious” women, who worked while their husbands stayed home to smoke their pipes. Belknap and Morse met the aged Oneida named Silversmith “head of the Pagan interest”; they heard that, as Belknap wrote, “the objects of his devotion were the rocks and mountains, which he believed were animated by some invisible Power, which had a superintendency over human affairs. To this invisible Power he addressed his devotions, and depended on it for success in hunting and in war. This had been his religion from his youth, and he had never failed of receiving answers to his prayers.”

On the return journey, at one point Morse was ill, so Belknap spent some time “reading Wheelock’s narratives” and, he wrote, “observing the warm, enthusiastic manner in which the business of converting Indians has been conducted, and the changes which appeared in the conduct of the persons concerned when the ardor abated.” In the formal report of their missionary journey, Belknap and Morse commented on the many baptisms of the Indians, but little true conversion. “The hard treatment,” they wrote, “which the [Oneida] women receive from their husbands, being obliged to labour when they are idle, does not indicate the prevalence of Christian principles.” The two men condemned the intemperance of the Indians, and wrote, “Idleness is the sin that easily besets them, and is the parent of many other vices.” But “labour and industry are the best antidote to intemperance.” Responding to a query from the Society for Propagating the Gospel that “the arts of civilization and industry, when adopted by the Indians, have such an unhappy effect on them,” the two missionaries responded that “an idle . . . mode of life is more likely to have been the cause of their present undistinguishable situation; not to mention various incidents, in the course of Providence, which are not under the control of human power.”

In their report to the Society for Propagating the Gospel, Belknap and Morse provided an extensive apology to explain why it is so difficult for Indians to be civilized and to convert to Christianity. Even in civilized societies people often refuse to give up natural liberties for the sake of creating a good society. Education and polite manners often disgusted Indians and repelled them. Belknap and Morse related an anecdote about an Indian youth who is taken from his tribe and put among whites to be educated, but he is always faced with their comments and actions reinforcing in his mind his difference and inferiority. Yet at the same time he is now different from his own tribe and in their eyes inferior. He is caught between two worlds and cannot quite become part of the former or return to the latter. So he turns to drink in frustration.

This two-world phenomenon reveals that in the transfer from one civilization, one set of fundamental assumptions, morals, and customs, to another, from pagan to Christian and vice-versa, those caught in between often struggle. Any person experiences something of this struggle when they try to do something that challenges their heritage and upbringing. Anxiety and uncertainty are often the consequence, which can be responded to by drink; but as an alternative, Belknap and Morse wrote, the response can also be to Christ. For the Indian the struggle was a transition from a life of fewer restrictions to a life of more restrictions. The former, savage life is free insofar as there is no surrender to higher authority, whether that authority be society, government, morality, or God. So one is free to engage in unrestrained passion and profligacy. However, sin becomes its own master. One can become so ruled by vice, lust, and drink, that this apparent natural freedom is completely lost. So in the psychology of the transition from one culture to another, any culture will offer attributes where peace and contentment can be found, but to be in abeyance from one to another, neither accepting either, resisting both, is to create uncertainty and anxiety. This anxiety was precisely what the Iroquois Indians of New York were experiencing. For some Indians, the transition and resulting anxiety was too great, so rejected. Belknap and Morse used as an example the Natick tribe of Massachusetts, which refused to abandon their old ways in the face of greater white presence and agriculture taking over the forest, and they eventually became almost extinct.

What is more, Belknap and Morse argued that although humans might try to build their society upon the order of nature, sin will always circumvent the attempt, and failure results. A completely natural human society is savage because no self-control is exercised, and disorder reigns as humans pursue the immediate goals of pleasure and power. Complete freedom is inadequate. Individual, private interest circumvents the good of the whole. Humans must exert will over their own nature. Order in society can come from nature, but it must come from human will as well. The Indian refuses to order himself, and the natural life is insufficient. Civilized humans feel the same yearnings as the Indian, but control them through the will based on education and religion. The civilized state restrains passion by self-imposed order. Sin and passion are natural to fallen man; imposition of order and control is learned, artificial.

Belknap and Morse’s concept of civilization and savagery was informed by their scientific understanding of humankind as well as their piety toward God. The civilized state of being is comprised by a society wherein there are standards of decency and decorum and moral behavior informed by Christianity; a society of hard work and devotion to duty; a society of rational thought informed by Christianity and science; a society of piety and humility in the face of divine providence in nature, history, and time. In the History of New-Hampshire, Belknap referred to such a society as one of “social happiness.” In a 1785 Election Sermon he was more to the point. The only way, he wrote, that humans can acquire anything approaching happiness in this life is when they piously seek out and discover God’s hints in natural and human affairs, hints that if implemented in society promise social happiness. Practical science yielding a society based on common sense is a pious response to God’s hints. Further, before Indians can be Christianized they must first be civilized, which means teaching them to discover and implement God’s hints, which requires hard work, cultivation of the soil, building settled communities, and responding to God’s bounty with thanks and worship. The true savages are those of what ever race and creed who do not embrace God’s hints. That whites came to America and, following God’s hints, are continuing to take over the lands and peoples of America, is God’s plan, and one can do nothing else but accept it. Indeed one must accept all of God’s providential work in human history, embrace it, and help civilize and Christianize the Indians as an act of benevolence and humanity.

No wonder it was so difficult to convert and to civilize the Indians, for conversion to Christianity as well as embracing the pastoral, agricultural way of life are long, difficult processes. Time, coming to know God experientially and through books, was required. The response of the missionary must be patience. To convert and civilize native peoples was such a long term process that it would take many years. But, Belknap and Morse believed, Christians had the responsibility to civilize and convert Indians, and not just because the Great Commission required it, but because providential history showed that the Indians were not unlike ancient Europeans who over time moved from savagery to civilization. Belknap and Morse piously understood the movement of human history over time, the movement toward progress and civilization for all peoples. Progress and civilization required thoughtfulness and reflection, which the process of Christian conversion best engendered in people. But more, Elder Scripture is written on the hearts of all people, including the Indians, and it is a form of scripture not requiring literacy. The Indians experienced it daily. Their veneration of nature was wrongheaded but on the right track. Natural theology is insufficient by itself, but when placed next to the written scripture it provides an additional way to understand God.

In short, to the eighteenth-century mind, scientific and religious thought were complementary not contradictory. All avenues of thought based on reason, experience, and observation, even theology, were considered science. Research into nature sheds light on the divine. The most valid response to God the Creator is a pious attempt to understand His Creation, which means natural as well as human history. Piety is engendered by the amazing story of human redemption, which includes, in time, the civilization and conversion of American Indians. Science involves research into the causes and consequences of natural phenomena as well as the causes and consequences of human events. In both of these objects of inquiry, natural and human history, the hand of God is prevalent, and the scientist, as he uncovers the workings of nature and the workings of humankind, cannot help but stand back in awe and reverence. Human understanding is limited of course, by time and by sin. The scientist who examines God’s works can never completely understand them. Lack of knowledge and ignorance are part of man’s sinful nature that requires penitence, acceptance of God’s will, the search for forgiveness of error and sin, and surrender to Christ who is the Word, from whom all things came to be.

https://www.routledge.com/Ebenezer-Hazard-Jeremy-Belknap-and-the-American-Revolution/Lawson/p/book/9780367643591

The Sea Mark: Captain John Smith’s Voyage to New England

Posted in books, Christianity, Great Commission | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pious Scientists

Posted on March 20, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

Oftentimes, missionaries in America were people of exceptional learning. Almon Bacone, for example, the founder of Bacone College, as a faculty member in the 1880s and 1890s taught an incredible number of subjects: Greek, Latin, rhetoric, English literature, logic, natural science, ancient and modern history, physiology, algebra, geometry, trigonometry.

Bacone used science, broadly interpreted, as a tool in his pious work responding to the Great Commission, as recorded in the Gospels, wherein Christ told His disciples to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.” Bacone and others like him, such as his student Alexander Posey, were fascinated by God’s Creation, human and natural history. This religious awe of Creation led to thinking in all forms of intellectual endeavor, based on the assumption that in coming to know the perfection of God’s Creation a person at the same time learns about the human creation and the best way for humans to live according to the mandates of their Creator.

The Protestant Christian community of intellectuals, of which Almon Bacone was a part, were trained as scientists and theologians and many practiced this dual character of the pious scientist. The pious scientist engaged in a search to know the secrets of the universe and to reach the limits of human understanding within the context of nature, an overwhelming entity of mystery that dwarfs any one of us, which generates a pious response, demanding reverence, stewardship, humility, dedication, and faith, and which generates a sense of the rational continuity of time and place and awareness of purposeful change, that answers exist to questions, that order not chaos exists, that reason and knowledge are possible. Piety is the response to the realization that we live in a universe of positive, rational, predictable, orderly phenomena. The scientist showed piety through natural theology, the belief in the continuity of and the order in the universe, the acceptance of natural laws, and the confidence that human reason can (and will) discover natural laws. At the same time the pious scientist recognized that nature represents a vast unknown of which humans would always be ignorant of the deepest secrets. As Cotton Mather once proclaimed, “there is not a fly, but that would confute an atheist,” which was as much an admission of his own ignorance before God’s creation as it was a condemnation of agnosticism and atheism. The scientist derived piety from an awareness of ignorance. The humility, lack of hubris, ability to know that one does not know (or quite know), marks the pious thinker, who is expectant, open-minded, in a way awaiting discovery, knowledge, but knows that knowledge is never absolute, always subject to constraints, changes, interpretations. It is this ability to have faith that knowledge exists, which faith drives the seeker to know, that defines the pious scientist. Such knowledge is acquired in time, therefore cannot be absolute, rather is relative, in a process of accumulation. The pious scientist knows that one day he and she will know. In the meantime the pious scientist is on a quest, everyday, to gain knowledge that will only terminate with death.

Jeremy Belknap the 18th century minister, was a pious scientist:

For more on the history of science, see my Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity to the Middles Ages, published in an affordable paperback on Jan 22, 2026, by Bloomsbury: find it at: https://www.amazon.com/Science-Ancient-World-Antiquity-through/dp/B0FSW74DKZ/ref=books_amazonstores_desktop_mfs_aufs_ap_sc_dsk_0?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=6oCC7&content-id=amzn1.sym.299f645c-0a78-440a-94a2-fb482e7cb326&pf_rd_p=299f645c-0a78-440a-94a2-fb482e7cb326&pf_rd_r=142-5197957-8175817&pd_rd_wg=Erb81&pd_rd_r=7cdd0d6a-0a38-49cf-a2ba-a1a0959be396

Posted in American History, Biography, books, Christianity, Great Commission | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Missionaries and Love

Posted on March 17, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

Missionaries and Love:

There were many missionaries of many denominations who brought the Gospel to American Indians in the United States and Canada: Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans, Moravians, Presybterians, and Baptists. They shared a similar interpretation of the compelling call of the Great Commission; though some believed that conversion could occur in the moment, others thought that it required a long drawn out process. These missionaries were not just promulgators of Christianity, but agents of cultural transmission as well. They brought a new way of life. Some of their listeners willingly embraced the new ideas, others did not. The missionaries were part of a larger social, political, intellectual, and economic movement of society that, in the end, overwhelmed the American Indians. Often what is talked about today is the end product, the result, which is not a very pretty story. We learn of broken promises, lands taken away from tribal peoples, and cultural genocide in government-run schools intent on driving traditional customs and ideas out of the minds of Indian students. Reservations often turned into islands of poverty and despair amid a wealthier society.

But part of the job of the historian and thinker is to discover what occurred in a singular moment of time, to recreate a past time, and not just to look at the now to see how it all came about.

Were missionaries evil, ill-intentioned, out to hurt the Indians? If we look at subsequent history, at the forces of dislocation and abuse and exploitation that occurred over time, we might wonder about their motives. But what if we look into their hearts, as it were, in the moment, when it occurred—what if their motives were mostly love? Can this be erased by the consequences? How humans look at such events might differ with how God looks at them. God, who is not constrained by time, sees the person now, in an ongoing present, doing the action—and He sees their goals, drives, and motives. But we, in the future, looking at consequences, looking at what we see through the dark glass of time, looking at the past, might miss what were those motives and goals, which I believe were not so nefarious or evil.

And we might pose this possibility as well: Jesus commanded His Apostles to bring the Gospel to all nations. Can we doubt that the second part of the Trinity, the Son, knew that missionaries would bring their culture, their ideas, their assumptions and prejudices to non-Christians? If we assume that he could peer into the future, to perceive what would happen, then we realize that He knew that according to God’s perception of time, it would all work for the best. Did Jesus, when He formed the Great Commission, have a broad viewpoint of past, present, and future? Did the missionaries have an ethical viewpoint of the Ends Justifies the Means, that anything goes to accomplish the larger purpose of the Great Commission, or did they perceive their role as acting just in the singular moment, and not according to an ethical view of accomplishment and results, but one that was Christlike, seeing what is true in real at a moment in time, acting according to, above all, love?

For the life of missionary Daniel Little, see

Posted in American History, Biography, Christianity, Great Commission | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Thinking–Fulbright Program

Posted on March 14, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

Thinking…

I have done a lot of thinking on, and have become a scholar of, American Indian history. I backed into this field of intellectual endeavor by taking a job at Bacone College, where I began to have many Indian students and where as chair of the general studies division I needed someone to teach American Indian History and so assigned myself the task. I have edited several encyclopedia and so when asked by one, ABC-Clio, if I would edit an Encyclopedia on American Indian Issues Today, I agreed, notwithstanding that I felt somewhat inadequate for the task. But having engaged in this project for about four years, which led to its publication in 2013, I learned a lot, and if I am not an expert on American Indians, I do know quite a bit about their history and experiences.

As I learned more about American Indians, I learned more about some of the historical issues that have confronted them, such as the exploitation of tribes by the US government over the years, the destruction of Indian lives and lands, the epidemic diseases brought to Indians by European explorers, and the attempts by outsiders to eradicate Indian culture.

Some of these threads of thought in my academic life were sewn together by means of the Fulbright program. In studying European and American scientists and explorers of the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, I learned a lot about American Indians, and European and American assumptions about Indians. Many of these explorers—for example the 19th century English botanist Thomas Nuttall, who journeyed throughout America, including Oklahoma, in 1819—studied American Indian culture and science, and not from the point of view of aggressors, rather as empathetic observers. Often these scientist/explorers that I studied and wrote about—for example the 18th century New Hampshire scientist, historian, and minister Jeremy Belknap—were also missionaries. I believed, in studying them, that they likewise did not have an aggressive, rather a limited empathetic, point of view toward Indians.

I knew that there were many missionaries and scientists who had gone among the American Indians of Canada, studying and proselytizing, and decided that this would be a natural area of investigation for myself. I was fortunate to receive a Fulbright Scholarship to travel to Ontario and spend a semester there studying missionaries and Indians. I did this in the fall of 2010.

The Fulbright Program was established to promote cultural and intellectual exchange between different people of different countries. I believe it enhances the understanding of peoples across space and time and promotes goodwill throughout the world. It is for the scholar a personally enriching and profound academic experience. While in Ontario, I lived in St. Catharines, a port city on Lake Ontario, in a house right in the city, which helped me to understand Canadian life and culture. Although my Fulbright was a research grant, the people at Brock University wanted me to teach a course on the History of the First Nations. The course, which involved lecture and seminar, really helped me to know what Canadians are like and to fine-tune my knowledge on American Indian history. Getting to know the Canadian students at Brock was a good experience. Preparing lectures on the First Nations helped me to understand Canadian life, culture, and history.

Research on my project involved learning more about Protestant missionaries of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Upper Canada, which involved research primarily into Anglican missionaries but also Methodists, Congregationalists, Moravians, and Catholics. The general research into the topic required me to read a lot of books and visit places associated with missionary work in Upper Canada. Missionary work took place during a time of political change in late 18th and early 19th century Canada, as Upper Canada (Ontario) was being established and settled in part by refugees from the War for American Independence. Some of these refugees included Anglican priests who had stayed loyal to the King during the American Revolution and finally had to flee during and after the war to Canada. Some of these Anglican refugees, such as Samuel Andrews of Connecticut, fled to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. I spent some time looking at the life and work of people like Rev. Andrews, but only through published works. Other refugees traveled to Upper Canada. These included John Stuart, an Anglican priest of New York who became Commissary of Upper Canada and a missionary to the Mohawks, and his friend the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant, who had converted to Anglicanism, fought in the war for England, and after the war led his people to Brantford on the Grand River in Ontario. To research Brant and Stuart I relied in part on published books found in libraries at Brock University and Niagara-on-the-Lake. The Niagara Historical Museum at Niagara-on-the-Lake provided a wonderful array of resources, including the Ontario Historical Quarterly, which helped me a lot in my research. I also traveled to the Anglican Church Synod offices in Toronto, which had manuscripts about John Stuart. The Synod office also had important resources about another Anglican missionary to the Mohawks that I researched, John Ogilvie. Finding manuscript resources on Joseph Brant was a bit more difficult, as the historical museums in Burlington and Brantford had little and the Historical Society in Brantford at least, was reluctant to tell me what they did have. However, I did find out some information about Brant and the Mohawks indirectly by researching the life and work of missionary Robert Addison, who was rector at St. Mark’s, Niagara-on-the-Lake. I found manuscripts on Addison at the Niagara Historical Museum and at the Diocesan archives, McMaster University. I was disappointed to find that most of the Diocesan archives, besides the Diocese of Niagara at McMaster, had little information to suit my purposes. However, I did find a good collection of manuscripts at Victoria University, which had the journals of the Methodist missionary and Ojibwa Peter Jones. I also visited some different places related to my research, such as the Mohawk Chapel, Brantford, and some of the forts in the Niagara region. I attended Anglican services in several cities in the Niagara region, which informed me about the Canadian religious experience.

After returning home, I applied to the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church for a research grant, which I received during the summer of 2011, which enabled me to journey to Boston, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, where I researched the papers of Mather Byles, Jr., an Anglican priest who, during the War for Independence, fled Boston for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and the papers of New York priest Charles Inglis, who also fled during the war, ending up as Bishop of Nova Scotia.

I once had a professor at OSU who told me that research is the exciting part, writing based on what one has learned is the chore. I actually don’t agree. Research is one part of the act of thinking; writing is another part. The former, research, requires activity, travel, organization, investigation, analysis, forming hypotheses and arriving at conclusions. The latter, writing, requires putting bits and pieces into a whole, and a whole that not only me, the researcher, can understand, but what you, the listener or reader, have to be able to understand. Writing requires analysis and examination, but also empathy and evocation—to recreate a past world, past thoughts, past feelings, to put oneself in the lives of others, those similar, like, for me, the missionaries, or different, which would be, for me, the Indians. Thinking requires a pursuit of truth, because conscious falsehood is not thinking, but deceiving. Thought, as St. Augustine one argued, presupposes a larger Thought (with a capital T), which is God. God cannot be deceived. Hence the act of thinking must involve the pursuit of the truth.

But as Pontius Pilate so famously asked Jesus in the Gospel of John, “what is truth?” Therein lies the rub. Especially when we are dealing with a topic that brings out so many fears and anxieties, bad memories and feelings, misunderstandings—purposeful and accidental. What was the missionary experience to the Indians of North America? Was it good or bad, a blessing or a curse? Different groups over time have argued differently. Scholars are often pictured as up in the clouds, lost in thought, unable to deal with reality, naïve in a philosopher’s sort of way. I could be accused of this. After researching the works and activities of Protestant missionaries to the First Nations, I came to the conclusion that missionaries were motivated not by hate, not by the desire to oppress, but by the desire to convert to the Christian belief, by the urge to love. I said as much in the Inaugural Fulbright Lecture at Brock University in October, 2010. I was Brock’s first Fulbright, and they were my first host institution. I did not quite expect what their attitude was toward me, and they did not quite expect my attitude toward them. The response by the faculty, administration, and local press, about my comments that missionaries were motivated by love, was not enthusiastic, indeed somewhat angry. The faculty did not seem to want to talk to me after my lecture. People wrote into local newspapers wondering why I could so blatantly distort the historical facts of the oppression of Indians. I was taken aback. But in the end, it inspired me to continue my research and writing, to see if I could discover what was, indeed, the truth. So I continued to think.

For the life of 18th century missionary Daniel Little, see

Posted in American History, Biography, Christianity, Great Commission | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Thinking

Posted on March 13, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

“I think, therefore I am.” This famous sentence comes from Rene Descartes the seventeenth-French philosopher. Descartes, a skeptic doubting all, looking for the basic rudiments of reality, discovered a core of reality in the awareness of his own being. By the act of thinking, he realizes that he exists, that he simply is.

I agree with Descartes, “I think, therefore I am.” But for me, the statement simply means that thinking identifies my existence. Thought is a creative expression of my being. I am a thinker.

What does it mean to think?

According to modern science, to think involves the observer (called in philosophy, the subject) separating him/herself from the object of inquiry. This form of thinking is called objective thinking, which is distinct from an older way of thought, practiced for millennia, called subjective thinking, which is when the subject (the observer) identifies with, empathizes with, the object of inquiry. Subjective thinking is akin to American Indian epistemology, in which the object and subject are merged in inquiry—the other and the self are united. Thought is therefore inextricably linked with, cannot be detached from, the self.

I agree: to think involves more than just the mind. One must feel, intuit, as well. Science is not just objective, but subjective as well.

My heroes have always been thinkers, whether they be great thinking generals like Alexander of Macedon, great thinking explorers like John Smith, great religious thinkers like Aurelius Augustine, or great humanist thinkers like Michel de Montaigne. I have learned from past thinkers that a thinker contemplates, above all, God and Self.

I think, which is what the liberal arts teach us to do. Liberal arts are the foundation of western education going back two thousand years; they focus on questioning and seeking answers—in science and mathematics, history, literature, arts and humanities, politics, and so on. All of these academic subjects teach the ability to observe, analyze, intuit, feel, reflect, ruminate–that is, to think. The liberal arts train the mind to think.

Thinking, questioning and seeking answers, opens the mind to so many possibilities for action (other than what I do), so many answers (other than my answers), so many beliefs (other than my beliefs).

This is what my life, in short, has been—to think. Usually I put my energies in this regard to work in preparing class materials, including lectures, and in writing on a variety of topics. I have written poems, short stories, novels, and many, many histories. Only the histories have been published. These include books on ancient science, the history of American science, American poverty, American Indian studies, and biographies of thinkers, scientists, and explorers. My latest, soon to be published, is on Captain John Smith.

The Sea Mark: Captain John Smith’s Voyage to New England

Posted in American History, Biography, books, Christianity | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

In Praise of Alexander Posey

Posted on March 11, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

Alexander Posey, the Creek poet, was a student and librarian at Indian University, now Bacone College, in the 1890s. During his brief life (1873-1908), Posey published essays, satire, stories, and wonderful poems about nature, life, and death. He wrote whimsically about life on the Indian University campus under the presidency of Almon Bacone.

For example, in the B[acone] I[ndian] U[niversity] Instructor, a periodical published by Indian University in the 1890s, he wrote of a student-faculty picnic along the banks of the Arkansas River:

The “picnic was enjoyed in a beautiful grove of walnut trees on the Arkansaw river.” Everyone listened to the wonderful cry of the birds, which (quoting James Whitcomb Riley), “had something new in cadence for the hearing.” Students walked or rode in wagons a mile north of the Indian University campus “to the nymph and faun-hanted woods.” They ate and played games, such as croquet and baseball, and took boat rides on the river and walked along the shore. “The picnic grounds afforded a picturesque view of the confluence of Grand River with the Arkansaw, and the distant outlines of the historic and now deserted, Fort Gibson. Thus a day was spent with Nature in one of the loveliest spots of which the Hesperian lands can boast.”

At about the same time Posey wrote that “quotations from the poets on that delightful season” of spring “are beginning to appear on our black board. Even the professors, one or two at least, have betrayed inclinations to write delicious rhymes in praise of her for the coming violets and redolent breath already. Do not be surprised if you should see a book issued by the B[acone] I[ndian] U[niversity] press ere long, entitled, ‘Spring and Other Poems’.”

In his poem, Twilight, published in the Bacone Indian University Instructor in 1893, he imagined the setting sun on the seashore:

Beyond the far-off waves, the seagulls cry,

As twilight shades

The emerald glades

And zephyrs waft the strains of nightbirds nigh,

Now sinks the sun–

Its course is run–

The day is done–

It fades in the gold of the western sky.

Alexander Posey was the kind of person that Almon Bacone often talked about: an indigenous American, thoughtful and talented, given the chance to grow and bloom in a college in the midst of Indian Territory. When Bacone said, “A Christian school planted in the midst of a people becomes one of the most powerful agencies in the work of civilization,” he was thinking of the likes of Alexander Posey.

(Please note that the image below is the cover of a book that I wrote in 2015 when I was a professor at Bacone College. The book is no longer for sale, so you cannot purchase it by going to the link. When Bacone suffered a financial crisis in 2018 they let go many faculty, such as myself, and never paid me money that they owed. For example, I never received any royalties for the book Marking the Jesus Road. It is unfortunate that such a wonderful institution was destroyed by the unthinking decisions of the Board of Trustees. If you wish to purchase a copy of the below book. please email me at russell.lawson@gmail.com.)

Posted in American History, Biography, books, Christianity, poetry | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Messenger’s Way

Posted on March 9, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

Carved on the northeast corner of the Bacone College chapel is this passage from the Old Testament:

Micah, 6:8: He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good: and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?”

We have found, in our world, that it is difficult indeed “to do justly,” “to love mercy,” “to walk humbly.”

The first Baptist missionaries to engage the Indians of western Oklahoma encouraged them to follow the Jesus Road. The Indians discovered, however, that the missionaries themselves struggled to keep to this road. On the northwestern corner of the Bacone chapel is this quote, from Charles Journeycake, Chief of the Delawares:

“We have been broken up and moved six times. We have been despoiled of our property. We thought when we moved across Missouri River and had paid for our home in Kansas we were safe, but in a few years the white man wanted our country. We had good farms, built comfortable houses and big barns. We had schools for our children and churches where we listened to the same gospel the white man listens to. The white man came into our country from Missouri and drove our cattle and horses away and if our people followed them they were killed. We try to forget these things but we could not forget that the white man brought us the blessed gospel, the Christian’s hope. This more than pays for all we have suffered.”

Indians, whites, and others, have found themselves joined on this same path to try to do good by one-another. Clearly, the thousands of people of Bacone College during the past 135 years have struggled to keep to the Jesus Road. But the very fact that the Bacone chapel has such inspiring words carved upon it indicates that notwithstanding the crooked paths and varying directions we take, there is one path that points the way.

For more on the Baptist missionaries of Oklahoma, see Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years, newly republished in January 2026 and available on Amazon at Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years: Lawson, Dr. Russell Matthew: 9780977244805: Amazon.com: Books

Posted in American History, Biography, books, Christianity, Great Commission | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

America in 1492

Posted on March 8, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

The indigenous peoples of America, those people north of the Gulf of Mexico, Rio Grande, and Sonoran Desert in what is today the continental United States and north into Canada stretching from the Gulf of St. Lawrence east to Nova Scotia, south to New Brunswick, and west to Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, featured hundreds of tribes of people scattered throughout North America; their lifestyles depended in part on the geographic peculiarities of the environment they inhabited. In general, however, American Indians were typically either hunters and gatherers, agriculturalists, or a combination of the two. In most tribes, women gathered and cultivated; men, considering themselves hunters and warriors, abhorred agriculture. Some tribes were patriarchal, others matriarchal: which type would determine how women were treated. Women would butcher animals, skin animals, prepare the hides for clothing, sew, mend, raise children, prepare food, set up temporary shelters and bring them down, pack up everything for journeys. In some tribes, women were bought and sold; divorced at will; females who committed adultery could be killed, mutilated, or abandoned; husbands who committed adultery were only punished by the cuckold; women were sometimes offered to guests to spend the night with them. Some indigenous tribes lived in communities during the spring/summer/fall, but then hunted in the winter. Warriors during these long winter hunts sought buffalo, deer, and beaver. They would lay in a stock of food for the remainder of winter and early spring. Native Americans were excellent fishers. Tribes made superb nets to catch fish. Northeastern and northwestern tribes were adept at catching spawning salmon. Fish would be split and dried in the sun on a wooden rack. Fishers used lines and hooks, or they would spear fish, or use bow and arrow. Some engaged in night fishing from canoes with the light of a pine resin torch. Some tribes cooked fish in baskets or in holes in rocks, putting water in the basket or hole and dropping a series of heated rocks into the water until it boiled. Weapons varied throughout America but they were universally made with wood, bone, ivory, and stone. Ash was a good strong wood for arrows and war clubs. As the Europeans would discover, the big limitation of North American tribes was their technology–they lacked the knowledge of how to smelt metals. Europeans had discovered the use of bronze, made by superheating copper and a small amount of tin, as well as iron, which required a higher melting point.

Tribal organization lacked the structure of European government. Many ceremonies and traditions were organized around patriarchal or matriarchal clans and tribes that were intermarried in the distant past. Families were the basic social institution. Men would often meet in council smoking the calumet (pipe). Filial piety (ancestor veneration, respect for elders) dominated clan and tribal traditions. Lacking set laws, indigenous people had personal obligations toward one-another. Traditional customs dominated relationships and ethics. They were oriented toward the past. Their sense of time was based on tasks, seasons, day or night. Their society was organic, close to the land. The indigenous mindset was focused on the organic and alive, on feelings and beliefs, the oneness of life and being, nature as an extension of self, the mythical and mystical, the subjective mentality. Living close to nature, they were observant people seeking understanding of a living, spiritual, natural world.

The majority of North American Indian tribes were celestial and spirit worshippers. Sunrise elicited a pious response from the tribe. The rays entered the eastern-facing teepees or huts at first light. The people bowed to the sun, and offered the celestial body the first fruits of the pipe bowl, and such prayers as were uttered. After this sun rite, they also bent knee toward the earth and the holy things of the tribe, the pouhahantes. The Comanche Indians went into battle with a shield (chimal) made of thick buffalo hide decorated with feathers or certain types of “medicine,” or pouhahantes, which were the skins of small animals attached to the shield that could provide magical powers of warding off enemy arrows or spent musket balls. If the amulet did not work, the problem was only temporary, and could be reinvigorated with the correct enchantments. The pouhahantes were like the manitous of northern tribes and were common among the Indians of North America. A shaman could become a pouhahante himself, using the supernatural power for good or evil, and even normal people could obtain the power of the pouhahante if they performed various religious rites such as fasting. A person might seek a particular revelation by going into the wilderness or atop a hill and there spending the night in solitude with the pouhahante. Otherwise, there were few religious buildings, religious inspiration coming from one’s experience in nature. The Pawnee plains tribe called themselves the “star people of the plains,” as they worshiped the morning star as means to reach the great spirit, Titiwa. Indeed all of their ceremonies involved worship of the morning star and the great spirit. They were great dancers; a dance was not a social occasion but a healing, spiritual activity. The sun dance involved human suffering, such as flesh hooks to tear the muscle and skin. When the skin and muscle broke the prayer would be answered. Other ways to rid oneself of evil was self-mortification, such as scratching the body, or purging the body with emetics. A medicine man had a dance bag with four smudge objects. Smudges were means to approach the divine. Smudges included tobacco, sweet grass, “the hair of mother earth,” sage, and cedar. Burning of tobacco was a means to carry prayers to the great spirit. Eagles also carried prayers, hence eagle feathers were important religious implements to possess.[1]

The American Indians were great watchers of the stars and planets. The Hopi of the Southwest were astronomers observing the living sun going across the sky, day after day. Solstices they interpreted as the sun needing rest and Hopi ceremonies provided the energy. Hopi paid strict attention to solstices to begin ceremonies. Some rooms in buildings were solstice markers: catching rays of the sun on precise days of solstices. The Mayans used calendars and astronomical alignment of temples and buildings; at Chichen Itza a tower called El Caracol had windows oriented toward solstices and the path of Venus through the heavens. Tribes used petroglyphs. For example the Pueblos of New Mexico drew sun daggers wherein at solstices the sun rays shined on two petroglyphs drawn on the stone wall. Medicine wheels aligned items in the sky or certain celestial events with spokes on a wheel; the wheel was designated medicine because they had astronomical as well as spiritual significance. The directions of the medicine wheel were: north—body, plants and animals, infancy of humans; east—mind, air, adolescence of humans; south—fire, heat, adulthood of humans; and west—spirit, water, final stages of life. The American Indian pharmacoepia involved identifying plants that had certain medicinal properties; Indians learned by watching the effects of plants on animals. Their belief was that the plant was alive and as a living being had not just a physical but a spiritual impact on humans. Plants were prayed to as they were collected.

Other aspects of the American Indian worldview included: morality was personal, based on personal affronts rather than a universal code of justice and ethics; justice was typically based on vengeance, to right a wrong done to oneself or one’s family; the Great Spirit was akin to a world soul: a pantheistic, animistic belief that the world/universe is alive with spirits and souls—material objects had a spiritual dimension. Each human, like everything else, had a soul and an afterlife. There were good spirits and evil spirits. Healing of bodily diseases occurred through intercession with the spiritual world. The shaman or medicine man was an intercessor between the spiritual and material world.

American Indians did not practice science according to European standards; nevertheless their practical experimentation and observation resulted in some astonishing accomplishments, such as the domestication of corn, which began 7000 years ago in Central America. About 3000 years ago sunflower and ragweed were domesticated in North America. Indians tested the cultivation of various seeds, used irrigation, and developed a systematic practice based on observation. Their practical inventions included birch-bark and dugout canoes; reed boats; snow-shoes; weirs for fishing; sophisticated traps; and numerous lethal weapons. In short, indigenous peoples combined an intuitive understanding of the natural environment with long term observation and reason.

American Indians were not “civilized” according to European standards, which required metallurgy, codes of law, writing in verse and prose, hierarchical government, and Christianity. The tribes of Mexico, the Yucatan peninsula, and western South America were more sophisticated than the tribes of Central America, western and northern Mexico, and North America north of the Rio Grande, Gulf of Mexico, and Baja California. The range in the sophistication of society was comparable to other cultures throughout the world in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Some indigenous people were technologically, economically, socially, politically and intellectually primitive compared to the advancements of other American Indians, such as the Maya, Aztec, and Inca peoples, as well as European cultures.

[1] ??

Posted in American History, Biography, books, Christianity, Great Commission | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment