Writers of the 1700s

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Writers of the 1700s

• Native Americans,
• Equiano,
• Wheatley, and
• Woolman

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Pontiac (1720 1769)

• The Ottawa chief Obwandiyag the English called
  Pontiac
• In 1763 Pontiac and followers made several
  attacks against British, defeated troops at
  Battle of Bloody Run
• Incited spark of other French-allied Indian
  attacks
• British treated Pontiac with great authority
• Pontiac assassinated by rival Peoria Indian

Pontiac, by John Mix Stanley
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Red Jacket (c. 1750 1830)

• Known as Otetiani in his youth and Sagoyewatha
  after 1780
• Seneca orator
• In 1794 signed peace treaty with U.S. and other
  Iroquois members
• Senecas supported the British in the
  Revolutionary War (1776) but sided with the
  Americans in 1812.
• Worked on behalf of Senecas, not always
  successful
• Believed in Great Spirit as Christian God

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Red Jacket from an 1835 lithograph based upon a
painting by C. Hallmandel.
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Tecumseh (1768 1813)

• Shawnee leader
• Much of his family moved westward, fearing white
  settlers encroachment Tecumseh raised by
  brother and sister
• Became an admired warrior called for violent
  resistance of further white settlement (against
  most treaties signed at the time).
• Worked to form a confederacy of Indian tribes to
  unite for common interests

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• William Henry Harrison, gov. of Indiana
  territory, led an attack on a group of the tribes
  at Tippecanoe
• Supported British during War of 1812, hoping to
  get land back if they won
• British abandoned Indian allies on the
  battlefield Tecumseh killed by an American in
  combat in 1913.
• His death marked the end of united resistance
  against Americans.

Tecumseh, from the Ohio Historical Society
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Writings on Slavery
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Interior of a Slave Ship, a woodcut illustration
from the publication, A History of the Amistad
Captives, reveals how hundreds of slaves could be
held within a slave ship. Tightly packed and
confined in an area with just barely enough room
to sit up, slaves were known to die from a lack
of breathable air.Image Credit New Haven
Colony Historical Society
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The importation of slaves had been prohibited in
the United States since 1808, and yet, the
trade continued illegally on a smaller scale for
many years -- even up to the outbreak of the
Civil War.Published in the June 2, 1860 issue
of Harper's Weekly, The Slave Deck of the Bark
"Wildfire" illustrated how Africans travelled on
the upper deck of the shipThe author of the
article reported seeing, upon boarding the ship,
"about four hundred and fifty native Africans, in
a state of entire nudity, in a sitting or
squatting posture, the most of them having their
knees elevated so as to form a resting place for
their heads and arms."
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Living Africans Thrown Overboard
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Olaudah Equiano (1745 1797)

• The youngest son of a village leader, Equiano was
  born among the Ibo people in the kingdom of
  Benin, along the Niger River (present day
  Nigeria).
• His family expected him to follow in his father's
  footsteps and become a chief, an elder, or a
  judge.
• Slavery was an integral part of the Ibo culture,
  as with many other African peoples. His family
  owned slaves, but there was also a continual
  threat of being abducted and becoming someone
  else's slave.

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Olaudah Equiano
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Abducted as a Child

• When Equinao was 11, he and his sister were
  abducted and taken to the West African coast to
  be sold to white slave traders.
• Equiano describes the horrors of the Middle
  Passage the inconceivable conditions of the
  slaves' hold, the "shrieks of the women," the
  "groans of the dying," the floggings, the wish to
  commit suicide, how those who somehow managed to
  drown themselves were envied.

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• Equiano was shipped off to the English colony of
  Virginia, where he was purchased and put to work.
• A few weeks later, he was purchased by Michael
  Henry Pascal, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy .
• Under Pascal, who owned Equiano for the next
  seven years, Equiano would move to England,
  educate himself, and travel the world on ships
  under Pascal's command.

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• 1766, Equiano bought his freedom.
• In 1773, he took part in an expedition to try to
  discover the Northwest Passage, a route through
  the arctic to the Pacific Ocean.
• In England, Equiano became an active abolitionist
  
• By 1789, the year he published his autobiography,
  Olaudah Equiano was a well-known abolitionist.
• Ten years after his death in 1797, the English
  slave trade was finally abolished.

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This portrait of Olaudah Equiano was used as the
frontispiece (illustration opposite a book's
title page) of his autobiography, The Interesting
Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or
Gustavus Vassa, The African (1789).
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• In its introduction, Equiano states that the main
  purpose of the book is to "excite in the
  reader's august assemblies a sense of compassion
  of the miseries which the Slave-Trade has
  entailed on my unfortunate countrymen."
• The book succeeded dramatically in this regard,
  since it offered a vivid first-hand account of an
  individual born in Africa and abducted into the
  slave trade.
• One of England's abolitionists said that Equiano
  was of "more use to the Cause than half the
  People of the country."

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Phillis Wheatley (1754 1784)
A rare portrait of Phillis Wheatley shows her
facing forward, wearing an evening dress and
jewelry. The portrait appeared in Revue des
Colonies in Paris between 1834 and 1842. Image
Credit Schomburg Center
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• Phillis Wheatley was the first African American,
  the first slave, and the third woman in the
  United States to publish a book of poems.
• Kidnapped in West Africa and transported aboard
  the slave ship Phillis to Boston in 1761, she was
  purchased by John Wheatley as a servant for his
  wife.
• Young Phillis quickly learned to speak English
  and to read the Bible with amazing fluency.

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• Because of her poor health, obvious intelligence,
  and Susannah Wheatley's fondness for her, Phillis
  was never trained as a domestic.
• Instead she was encouraged by the Wheatleys to
  study theology and the English, Latin and Greek
  classics.
• She published her first poem in 1767, and six
  years later, she published a book, Poems on
  Various Subjects.
• That same year, John Wheatley emancipated her.

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Illustration for Phillis Wheatley, Poems on
Various Subjects
Image Credit Courtesy Massachusetts Historical
Society, Boston
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• Wheatley achieved international renown, traveling
  to London to promote her book.
• She was called upon as well as received by noted
  social and political figures of the day --
  including George Washington, to whom she wrote a
  poem of praise at the beginning of the war, and
  Voltaire, who referred to her "very good English
  verse.
• Wheatley lived in poverty after her 1778 marriage
  to John Peters, a free black Bostonian.
• Although Wheatley advertised for subscriptions to
  a second volume of poems and letters, she died
  before she was able to secure a publisher. Her
  final manuscript was never found.

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John Woolman (1720 1772)

• Until he was 21 Woolman worked for his father, a
  Quaker farmer. He then moved to Mount Holly, New
  Jersey, to enter trade.
• At that time he made his first appearance as a
  preacher of Quaker doctrine, exercising his
  ministry without financial remuneration, in
  keeping with his religions practice.
• From 1743 he made frequent and often arduous
  preaching journeys,
• He worked for abolition of slavery and more just
  land policies for Indians.

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• Woolman maintained a strict manner of life,
  making his trips on foot whenever possible,
  wearing undyed garments, and abstaining from the
  use of any product connected with the slave
  trade. He was successful in getting Quaker
  communities to go on record against slavery and
  in persuading many individuals to free their
  slaves.
• Woolmans Journal, published in 1774, was begun
  in his 36th year and continued until his death
  it is a major document of his religious
  experience, written in a style distinguished by
  purity and simplicity of expression.

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Woolmans Influence Today

• Quakers
• Henry David Thoreau
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Sources

• Olaudah Equiano PBS Africans in America
  http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p276.html
• Phillis Wheatley PBS, http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia
  /part2/2p12.html
• Native Americans Ohio History Central,
  http//www.ohiohistorycentral.org/index.php