An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man
William Apess (1833)
William Apess (also spelled Apes) was of Pequot ancestry, the Pequots being an indigenous nation whose tribal lands had been reduced, ever since the late 1600s, to two small reservations in Connecticut. Born off-reservation, Apess was reared mostly in white households as an indentured servant, after white authorities removed him from the home of his abusive, alcoholic grandmother. During the War of 1812, Apess enlisted in the US military and fought in Canada. He was later licensed as a Methodist preacher, ministering mostly to Native Americans and African Americans. As exemplified by the essay excerpted here, Apess was an impassioned advocate of indigenous rights. In the same year he published this essay, he helped Mashpee Wampanoags on a reservation in Massachusetts successfully petition the state for self-government in lieu of their reservation’s being administered by a state-appointed white agent.
Having a desire to place a few things before my fellow creatures who are traveling with me to the grave and to that God who is the maker and preserver both of the white man and the Indian— whose abilities are the same and who are to be judged by one God, who will show no favor to outward appearances but will judge righteousness—now, I ask if degradation has not been heaped long enough upon the Indians. [...] Let me, for a few moments, turn your attention to the reservations in the different states of New England, and, with but few exceptions, we shall find them as follows: the most mean, abject, miserable race of beings in the world—a complete place of prodigality and prostitution.
Let a gentleman and lady of integrity and respectability visit these places, and they would be surprised. As they wandered from one hut to the other, they would view the females who are left alone, children half starved and some almost as naked as they came into the world (and it is a fact that I have seen them as much so), while the females are left without protection, and are seduced by white men, and are finally left to be common prostitutes for them and to be destroyed by that burning, fiery curse that has swept millions, both of red and white men, into the grave with sorrow and disgrace—rum.
One reason why they are left so is because their most sensible and active men are absent at sea. Another reason is because they are made to believe they are minors and have not the abilities, given them from God, to take care of themselves [...] Their land is in common stock, and they have nothing to make them enterprising. Another reason is because those men who are agents, many of them are unfaithful and care not whether the Indians live or die. They are much imposed upon by their neighbors, who have no principle; they would think it no crime to go upon Indian lands and cut and carry off their most valuable timber or anything else they chose, and I doubt not but they think it clear gain. Another reason is because they have no education to take care of themselves; if they had, I would risk them to take case of their own property.
Now, [...] I would ask: Could there be a more efficient way to distress and murder [the Indians] by inches than the way [the whites] have taken? [...] I would take the liberty to ask why [the Indians] are not brought forward and pains taken to educate them—to give them all a common education—and those of the brightest and first-rate talents put forward and held up to office. [...]
I know that many [whites] say that they are willing, perhaps the majority of the people, that we should enjoy our rights and privileges as they do. If so, I would ask: Why are not we protected in our persons and property throughout the Union? Is it not because there reigns in the breast of many who are leaders a most unrighteous, unbecoming, and impure black principle—and as corrupt and unholy as it can be—while these very same unfeeling, self-esteemed characters pretend to take the skin as a pretext to keep us from our unalienable and lawful rights? I would ask you if you would like to be disfranchised from all your rights, merely because your skin is white and for no other crime. I’ll venture to say these very characters who hold the skin to be such a barrier in the way would be the first to cry out, “Injustice! Awful injustice!”
[...R]eader, [...] I am [...] merely placing before you the black inconsistency that you place before me, which is ten times blacker than any skin that you will find in the universe. And now let me exhort you to do away with that principle, as it appears ten times worse in the sight of God and candid men than skins of color—more disgraceful than all the skins that Jehovah ever made. If black or red skins or any skin of color is disgraceful to God, it appears that he has disgraced himself a great deal, for he has made fifteen colored people to one white and placed them here upon this earth.
Now let me ask you, white man, if it is a disgrace to eat, drink, and sleep with the image of God, or sit or walk and talk with them. Or have you the folly to think that the white man, being one in fifteen or sixteen, are the only beloved images of God? Assemble all nations together in your imagination, and then let the whites be seated amongst them, and then let us look for the whites, and I doubt not it would be hard finding them; for to the rest of the nations, they are still but a handful. Now, suppose these skins were put together, and each skin had its national crimes written upon it—which skin do you think would have the greatest? I will ask one question more: Can you charge the Indians with robbing a nation almost of their whole continent, and murdering their women and children, and then depriving the remainder of their lawful rights that nature and God require them to have—and, to cap the climax, robbing another nation to till their grounds and welter out their days under the lash, with hunger and fatigue, under the scorching rays of a burning sun?
[...] I can tell you that I am satisfied with the manner of my creation, fully, whether others are or not. [...] Did you ever hear or read of Christ teaching his disciples that they ought to despise one because his skin was different from theirs? Jesus Christ being a Jew, and those of his apostles certainly were not whites—and did not he who completed the plan of salvation complete it for the whites as well as for the Jews and others? And were not the whites the most degraded people on the earth at that time, and none were more so, for they sacrificed their children to dumb idols! [...] But we find that Jesus Christ and his apostles never looked at the outward appearances. Jesus in particular looked at the hearts; and his apostles, through him being discerners of the spirit, looked at their fruit without any regard to the skin, color, or nation, as St. Paul himself speaks: “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free—but Christ is all and in all.”
If you can find a spirit like Jesus Christ and his apostles prevailing now in any of the white congregations, I should like to know it. I ask: Is it not the case that everybody that is not white is treated with contempt and counted as barbarians? [...] Now, if the Lord Jesus Christ, who is counted by all to be a Jew—and it is well known that the Jews are a colored people, especially those living in the East, where Christ was born—if he should appear amongst us, would he not be shut out of doors by many, very quickly? And by those, too, who profess religion?
By what you read, you may learn how deep your principles are. I should say they were skin deep.
[...Y]ou may think I am what is called a hard and uncharitable man. But not so. I believe there are many who would not hesitate to advocate our cause—and those, too, who are men of fame and respectability, as well as ladies of honor and virtue. [...H]ow I congratulate such noble spirits—how they are to be prized and valued—for they are well calculated to promote the happiness of mankind. They well know that man was made for society and not for hissing-stocks and outcasts. And when such a principle as this lies within the hearts of men, how much it is like its God, and how it honors its Maker, and how it imitates the feelings of the good Samaritan who bound up the wounds of him who had been among thieves and robbers.
Do not get tired, ye noble-hearted—only think how many poor Indians want their wounds done up daily; the Lord will reward you. And pray you, stop not till this tree of distinction shall be leveled to the earth, and the mantle of prejudice torn from every American heart—then shall peace pervade the Union.
Source: William Apes [sic], “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man,” in The Experiences of Five Christian Indians of the Pequod Tribe (Boston: James B. Dow, 1833), 53-60, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/loc.ark:/13960 /t0sq90w1q. Public domain.
Excerpts edited by John-Charles Duffy. Paragraph and sentence breaks adjusted for readability. Grammatical infelicities corrected or clarified. Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation emended in line with modern American conventions. For the sake of modernization, the words agents, universe, continent, apostles, and barbarians, all capitalized in the source publication, have been converted here to lowercase. The source’s capitalizing of the word rum, apparently for emphasis, has been replaced with italics. The use of lowercase for the racial labels white, red, and black replicates the source; so too does the capitalizing of the East and the inconsistent capitalizing of the word maker in reference to God.
These edited excerpts from Apess’s essay are intended for teaching purposes only. For research purposes, you should consult, quote, and cite the source publication listed above.
© 2022 by John-Charles Duffy. Except as otherwise noted, this work is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommerical–ShareAlike 4.0 International License, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.
All rights are reserved for the flag-shaped “Empire and American Religion” logo; if you alter this work, you may not reproduce the logo. Use of the Creative Commons license icon is subject to the Creative Commons Trademark Policy.