Apess’ text is the story of a man caught between two worlds, neither of which seems to want him and in neither does he feel at home. I strongly agree with the first part of your post. New York: University of Massachusetts, 1831. His tribe’s relation to nature seems to still be strong from what I can tell from the text, but William himself is the poster child for the beginning of the destruction of an entire people’s way of life. His relationship to nature has been severed, though he sometimes goes home to see family, he never goes into detail about his time there which leads me to believe that he is completely disconnected from his people. He fears the wilderness more than he finds it his home, so I doubt he holds many of the stereotypical Indian beliefs at his heart.
#Apess william. son of the forest how to#
He doesn’t seem to know how to survive very long in the wilderness as evidenced by his reaction to becoming entangled in branches and trapped in a mire, “I raised my heart in humble prayer and supplication to the father of mercies, and behold he stretched forth his hand and delivered me from this place of danger” (Apess, 42). He is more concerned with being forgiven for his sinful ways and seems to constantly be in emotional and mental suffering for whatever sins he thinks he has committed. William doesn’t seem too concerned with his people’s traditional way of life, nor does he really fit into the stereotype of an ecological Indian. The ecological Indian stereotype is “the Indian in nature who understands the systemic consequences of his actions, feels deep sympathy with all living things, and takes steps to conserve so that earth’s harmonies are never imbalanced and resources never in doubt” (Garrard, 121). Native Americans are portrayed as a people who are slowly dying from within. He portrays his people as if they are human beings instead of savages, but his writing also depicts how the arrival of the white settlers has slowly eroded the identity of William and his people. William seems very lost in a world he loathes, but yet still finds small slivers of comfort in. Even though he blames the white settlers for what has happened to his people, he still considers Christianity to be, in a sense, the true religion. The way William represents himself and his people is in a greater light than that of how Europeans depict his people since he still heavily blames the white settlers for the problems within Native American communities. The problem of alcoholism in Native American communities is portrayed by his grandparents who are violent alcoholics. William even goes so far in his life as to completely disregard his tribe’s beliefs and feels that they should convert to Christianity because he believed that Jesus was the savior of all people and that Native Americans were one of the lost tribes of Israel. The picture William paints of his life experiences is that of a Native American that has lost touch with his culture and becomes acculturated to a society that looks down upon his people, enslaves them, and beats them.
The white settlers made William fear his brethren by telling him biased stories about the ongoing conflicts between the settlers and the Native Americans. The text itself is the autobiography of a Native American, but he was taken in by white settlers at an early age to be a slave. Native Americans in A Son of the Forest are depicted in an unusual manner.
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