That everybody else has and to be told he cant have that . John demos repressor emeritus at the university is next on booktv. He recounts the creation of the school by a group of protestant ministers in the 19th century whose goal was to evangelize and educate students throughout the world namely native americans and Pacific Islanders and then send them back to their respective communities as missionaries. This is about an hour and a half. Thank you very much. I really appreciate the chance to talk to you tonight about this new book of mine. Its actually published only a week ago and to me this feels like a little like a kickoff of whats going to be actually a number of talks i will be doing here and there. This is the first one and a chance to try it out on all of you. I hope to be doing it later on as well but i will find out what works and what doesnt work when i talk here tonight. Let me just say that my plan for this presentation has two or three different parts. I will start by saying a little bit about how i got onto this project in the first place and something perhaps about the process and working with it over a good number of years. Then i will move to what in effect is a thumbnail, a 15 or 20 minute thumbnail of the story that lies at the heart of the book. Then i will do a little reading from the book a passage or two from the book to give you a sense of the flavor of what is in between these covers and then a little bit about what jeremy to the project in the first place and why it think it was worth spending quite a few years working on it. It might even be worth reading a book about. How i came to the project. It was by total chance, serendipity. I have an old friend who has a house in the town of cornwall not too far from here and one day in the mid90s, this is quite a while back, my friend invited my wife and myself down for dinner. As i recall it we were standing around. It was a summer evening and we were standing around outside with gin and tonics in our hands i think and one of the neighbors who is also a dinner guest started to tell us what he called a piece of local history. He said you know its just a piece of local history that im a history guy so maybe ive might be interested. He began to unfold the story in just a few minutes but right away i was transfixed by this story. I was so intrigued fascinated really bad as i recall i couldnt sleep that night. I got up first thing the next morning and drove straight to yale and went to our library there really to see if anything much have been written about this and how much was known about the story beyond the locality of cornwall. The answer was not very much. It is mentioned and i think here and there and there are maybe a couple of books where it appears to 10 or 15 pages may be but the point is there is no fullscale treatment. I decided pretty fast that i would like to make a serious commitment to it as a book writer. Now this is 20 years in time and it amazes me to realize this which is to say it was not an easy project to do. For one thing i was leaping out of whats to that point had been my period in history ive made my way as a colonialist a historian at the colonial periodmacperiodmac k in this story is set in the early 19th century so i really had to feel my way into a new territory. There were a couple of other books i wrote along the way but i never let go of this one and i finally had gotten to the point of finishing it off. As i say if i hadnt gone to my friends house that night this book wouldnt be here. And a lot would be different. It happens that way sometimes. In fact i have other projects that have more or less by chance knock on my way but this was the most extreme case of serendipity in historical writing at least for me. Here is my thumbnail of the story that forms the heart of the book. The background, the context in some broad sense is a pattern, a kind of National Ethos you might say of expansiveness in the opening years of the 19th century. The newly independent United States again around them to reach out in a major way to the rest of the world in commerce, in its little glam fashions, and its go ahead spirit they said said as they said at the time and perhaps the epitome of this outreach was to china at trade a rapid growth of trade with the far east centering in the chinese city of canton. Dozens and dozens of ships heading that way and returning loaded with cargo of tea and silks and many other china made items on which americans of that era placed place an increasingly high premium. Travel to china for all these trade ships involved a midocean stopover in the y and islands to rest and restock for the rest of the journey. It also might lead to some reshuffling of personnel with a few Young Hawaiian been taking on more of these ships as a crew. These hawaiians might go wherever the trade ships took them and some might eventually land in one or another part of United States mostly i think a new england. Fastforward now to what is the first major scene where the first act in my book. Its an autumn day in the year 1809. The setting is yale college where students are passing in and out on their way i supposed to class. I myself have seen the same kind of thing, 200 years later many many times. Anyway on this particular morning there was something a little different. A young man who clearly doesnt belong there. He is darkskinned and exotic looking and he is wearing ragged sailor clothes is sitting off to one side quietly weeping. Presently they yale students notice him and feel concerned and asked him the reason for his apparent distress. He replies, because nobody gives me learning and hes referring of course to the fact that all of them are getting good learning and he isnt in this comment is sure to get their attention. He is a cast off from the china trade in which he has worked for the last two years. He had been dropped off in new haven and then found his way to the steps of yale. His name is ogled kia. Thats his hawaiian surname. At some point i think he was working alongside american sailors and was taking a given named henry. He was quickly taken under the wing of a number of el students responding to his initial complaint about having learning to give him englishlanguage lessons and at the same time to instruct him in the essentials of religious faith, the christian faith. Gail was at that time the very religious place. Im not sure if you could say the same thing about it today. Im sure a lot has changed. One thing leads to another. The education and conversion of obikiya becomes almost a campuswide project. Im exaggerating a bit perhaps but i do think his presence was widely acknowledged on campus so much so in fact that he was soon taken into the household of the College President who was a protestant minister of great eminence named reverend Timothy White. Yale today has a college named Timothy White which i myself have been Long Associated as a faculty fellow. Anyway whites the students in a fair number of outsiders come to have a look at this rather extraordinary scene and all get involved with obikiya and he begins to make Good Progress both in learning english and in his spiritual condition as well. After some months its decided that he should go elsewhere to continue in the same process. He is taking for a time to an academy and a school in massachusetts and he is passed around among different ministers and households where he visits for weeks or sometimes months at a stretch. Reports of his arrival and progress are published in religious newspapers and journals and in fact he is on his way to what almost could be called a celebrity state. A lot of people knew about him. They dropped down in new haven in 1810, 11 or 12 or i suspect hartford you would have found people who knew about obikiya for sure. His story and his achievements as it were lead people to wonder whether something similar might be done for others like him. Even people in various farflung parts of the world who like him lack education, lack civilized ways of living and above all blacks the blessings of christian faith. Obikiya becomes the seed of a powerful new missionary idea. As it all plays out president white and other toplevel ministers nearby hatch a plan to set up a special school for youth at which obikiya liked transformation can be achieved on a much wider scale. They will have the official name of the Foreign MissionSchool Although informally it quickly gets dubbed a heathen school. Its location will be in the town of cornwall connecticut. The principal is appointed and some additional staff as well. Buildings are acquired and in the spring of 1817 it opens for business. There are about a dozen students in the first group several hawaiians including obikiya. He is sort of a star. Also a couple of young men from india, and native american and also a couple of white new englanders who are themselves training to be missionaries overseas and feel this closeup contact with heathens would be useful as part of their training. Soon there would be quite a few more students and scholars as they typically referred to them. Some additional hawaiians, some other Pacific Islanders some european jewish, a couple of greeks. In those days i guess greeks were considered to be heathen. Why not . As time passed there was a growing number of American Indians cherokees chalk talk iroquois chippewa. In all 15 different indian tribes. Ive got to skip lightly over the actual workings of the school but i want to emphasize and not overemphasize this weeping intensely held hopes and ambitions that underlay this whole project. The idea was that the graduates would return to their various homelands and start similar projects there, schools and churches that would in turn promote the christian conversion of their own people. In short there was a kind of a Multiplier Effect at the heart of this scheme. If all went well and they were very explicit about this, if all went well the entire world with the saved. That was the key word in every important way saved in the shortest time imaginable. One particular happening in the schools first year should be mentioned. Henry obikiya who at this point was the centerpiece of the whole thing, obikiya took sick a relatively short time after the school open. He had a case of typhus and after period of some weeks he died. The school sponsors and leaders then sends to the chance to construe his passing as a kind of a martyrs death. Almost at once one of his teachers would write his biography which would subsequently be published under the title the memoirs of henry obikiya a book that became pretty much a national or international bestseller. You can still find copies around. In fact some years ago i found a copy of one of the first editions from the second hand bookstores in cambridge. It says something. I think there are 12 different editions that were published through the span of the 19th century. Partly in response to the publication of the memoirs the interest in the school and the support for the school shot up as measured in fundraising, and visits by outsiders. The school became a big tourist attraction. A newspaper publicity and so on. All the while the leaders of the school were putting out a lot of very favorable pr insisting that everything is going splendidly and exactly according to plan. Thats what they said. In fact i think this was quite far from the reality. There were Serious Problems right from the start problems on the academic side and people were so various and their backgrounds and levels of education to begin with. Problems also with discipline. Students had to be expelled for one or another kind of misconduct but at least for several years they managed to maintain a good public reputation. Then something happened that was not part of the plan. Romance develops between some of the heathen students and the young women of cornwall. As i said not part of the plan. Imagine thinking or saying, its one thing we should bring you here and educate you and so on and quite another thing that you should romance our daughters. The first such case involved a young person named john bridge. And the 16yearold daughter of the school stewart. She was named Sara Northrop. There were some details about these two when i do it with little reading about the book in a few minutes but for now i will say when their involvement came out there was a big uproar and controversy verse local in and around cornwall and is the new spread across the state it led into other parts of the country. Intermarrintermarr iage between people of different race and color was simply unacceptable. It wasnt anathema to a great majority of americans at that time. Eventually john bridge and Sara Northrop did mary despite the uproar and went off to the Cherokee Nation what is now north georgia. The school tried to tamp down public feelings by claiming it was a onetime thing and promising it would never happen again. Within scarcely a year later it did happen again. Another cherokee student and a Young Cornwall woman named. Gold became engaged and had gotten married. The previous controversy was a new and if anything it was intensified with lots of impassioned rhetoric threats to destroy the school. An angry crowd gathered on the town and burned in effigy and so forth and so on with the result that the second pair of intermarried harriet and and like the first pair went off to the Cherokee Nation. By now the school is doomed. Public feeling was fully aroused against it and its leaders some of whom did not oppose intermarriage felt the lives to bend with the wind and became concerned that its continuance might put the entire missionary movement at risk so they shut the school down for good and lasted a bit less than a decade. They did their best to suppress public memory of it paid im running out of time for this presentation but theres a tale into the story in the book that i want at least a mention. John bridge and goliaths would know quickly became leaders of their nation and this is what you might call the little story of the hes an heathens that intersects with a bigger story of growth and development. We are now at this point in the 1830s and the federal government is pressing the cherokees along with other indians of the lower south to accept removal from their homelands and relocation further to the west in what is today only. Imagine the headlines of this. There is the famous Supreme Court case which seems to favor the cherokees by reopening the rule saying it would be illegal and unconstitutional but then the administration of Andrew Jackson refuses to follow suit and in due course removal, forced removal happens. This is what history knows as the cherokee trail of tears. As leaders of their nation they were at the center of her medal controversy. At first and for some years thereafter they lead in opposition to removal going back and forth to washington negotiating with top federal officials including president jackson himself in defense of cherokee interests and of the cherokee wish to remain where they were. But at a certain point these two flipped and became leader of a minority faction that accepted the idea of removal or as they have called immigration. From then on they negotiated with the feds a treaty and what became known as the treaty sponsored by the boot no group and accepting removal on behalf of all the cherokees was actually signed in his living room. This made them in the eyes of the majority of their fellow cherokees nothing less than traitors. When the removal process had been completed and the nation was fully relocated in oklahoma both were assassinated by their tribal opponents. This was sensational and it led to decades of reprisals and avenge killings within the Cherokee Nations. To this day rich and bodineua are remembered with by the cherokees. Final question. Why did these two men flip on the removal question . What they said for open consumption was that there was no hope that the cherokees tried to remain where they were. They were vastly outmatched by the federal government and all the white people of the lower south who would insist on nothing less than removal. However i think there was a little bit more, something they expressed only privately. In effect when jackson refused to enforce the crucial Supreme Court decision they felt betrayed, betrayed on behalf of all cherokees but also with a kind of personal residence reaching back to their experience years before in cornwall at the heathen school. They there are too they had been betrayed. Having been at first and for some years very much approved and admired as star students. They were then refiled and cast out when they fell in love with women in the White Community and crossed the race line the indelible race line. Faced with what the Jackson Administration had thrown against them they felt we have seen a script before. We know where it leads. We should lead our people as far away as possible from such hypocrisy and aggression. As i say thats where the little story and the big story intersect with tragic results. There were other results of heathens School Stories as well but one thing the Protestant Missionary movement as a whole reverses strategy claiming it would do better from here on. It if it sent its Work Overseas by wearing going to where the heathen actually lived instead of bringing them here to america where potentially explosive issues of race might once again interfere. That is the end of my thumbnail so now if you would indulge me i will read a little bit from the book. I would like to read a section thats basic way about the first and let me interrupt myself here for a minute to bring along a prop. In the mid1820s when rich was already still a young man but already leading the nation, his nation he sat for a portrait in washington by a painter who is famous for painting indian chiefs. A magnificent portrait now hanging at an exhibition in arkansas at the crystal museum. Its a wonderful portrait and it went into a gallery a socalled indian gallery that Charles Mckinney had a ching 10. And then a lot of prints were made from the portrait and they were published in books and so forth and so on. I was very thrilled with the plan i discovered one of the early prints was coming up for auction at a local estate auction. I rushed over there to get this. 1838 as its dated a hand colored print a bridge and it was very exciting for me to get it. In many ways i have to sort of confess ridge is my hero in the story. He acted in a necessary and mobile part noble part. Anyway back to the story and to the book. Let me explain a little more about the context. Bridge from an early age suffered from what they called scruffy love. I think its a glandular disease which often left him quite limp and full of aches and pains and sometimes for some. Smack quite disabled. This happened while he was at the school. He got a burst of this chronic illness and what they did was scholar students brought him into the stewarts house. There was a sick room there i think and they cared for him and gave them the best they could in terms of medical care. Rich was brought into the house and that is where he began to get involved with the daughter sarah northrop. Okay here we go. At some point johns illness recurred and he was confined to his sick bed in the stewarts house. Begin in december 1820 Hermann Daggett was the name of the principal of the school but in the summer of 1820 europe ports to the board of commissioners making regular reference to quote is an unhappy situation. Though quayle improve very much in his conduct and his learning and now seriously disclose to matters of faith he has from a child and feeble and his complaints have rather increased of late. In april 21 he continues to be ill. In june he is in a very feeble state of health. In july quote he continues to be very much out of health. In the latter months kelloggs general store in the town a family run shop supplying all kinds of things to the townsfolk recorded sales of the Foreign Mission school of ported mr. Northrop one pair of crutches and surely these were meant for john. Throughout the spring and early summer he was under the care of cornwalls local physician dr. Samuel old however he was sent for several weeks to new haven to receive a more specialized form of treatment. Daggett meanwhile repeatedly urged his return home to his own family and idea that john himself resisted. Quote he wishes to stay them pursue his studies. In the autumn when reports of johns worsening condition reached the Cherokee Country major rich who is johns father achieved major rich decided to undertake the long journey to cornwall. His arrival there in midoctober was a local sensation. His dress including a coat trimmed with gold lace and hard topped boots the most splendid that entered the town and his commanding personal presence a tall and athletic form made the deepest possible impression. He stayed for a full two weeks. He called on Lyman Beecher in nearby whitfield. Its nice to have a beecher reference here i guess. Lyman beecher was a famous protestant minister and he conversed at length with Lyman Beechers daughter catherine described him as quote one of the princes of the forest. Perhaps the sun was to serve as interpreter. He was cordially received in various Cornwall House holds. Decades later the doctors son would write that quote no memory of my boyhood is clear than that of a visit to my home in my sixth year of john ridge rich and his father major rich the cherokee chief in the uniform of the u. S. Officer unquote read the memory also included this. Quote where am i . My father change presents with them giving him a small telescope and receiving intern from him and indian pipe carved in blackstone. The same type nearly 3 feet in length its surface burners with the passage of time hangs today and closed in a class encasement on the living room wall in the home of the gold descendendescenden ts. Attached to it as is an ancient label which reads quote this pipe once belonged to major rich the distinguished chief of the Cherokee Nation. It was presented to us double the gold with the insurance of the giver it had often been smoked in concert. It was generally expected that john rich would return home with his father but when the time came he remained at cornwall. According to some accounts he was still to quote feeble for this travel but several months later daggett declared he chose to stay and still does. Chose to stay and still does. Why . Was it because of his illness or Something Else . To the school in the stewarts household which he would remain a patient for about two years. Enter sarah. The story of their courtship was remembered decades later by woman with a personal connection to all those involved. Her account is dictated to her own daughter remains the fullest we have though impossible to verify in detail. It does have the feel of authenticity. Centers on one particular occasion that begins thus. Mrs. Northrop had so much care that she would send her daughter into johns room to take care of him. For a time johns condition seem to improve so much so that dr. Gold said to mrs. Northrop i dont think it best to give them more medicine but he has some deep trouble and you must find out what it is. On an afternoon when sarah had left the house mrs. Northrop taking her stockings to darn for the students went to sit with john and she said to him john you have some trouble and you must tell me. You have no mother mother here all me me and you have always confided in me as you would your own mother. He started up in wild amazement and said ive got trouble . She replied they cannot leave until you tell me fall. John, i do not want to tell you mrs. Northrop. You must tell me john. If you must know i love your sarah mrs. Northrop. You must not. John i know it and that is the trouble. Mrs. Northrop, if he ever mentioned it to her . John, no we have not set one word to each other. I dare not but how can i help it when shes taken me such the care mean the last two years paid when sarah returned home or mother was waiting mrs. Northrop. Sarah do you love john rich . Sarah, yes i do love john. At that mrs. Northrop saw there was trouble in the camp. The northrops decided that swift action was essential to prevent further dalliance between the two sweethearts and they must send their daughter away. Thus shortly thereafter mr. Northrop took sarah to her grandparents dr. Joel and mabel in new haven and told them what he had brought her four. He wished them to introduce her to unfair gentlemen and tried every way to get her mind off john rich. Sarah had not of it paid she stayed three months that quote wouldnt take notice of any gentleman or any company. She had no appetite for food and lost flesh and they thought soon she would be a victim of consumption. Understandably her grandparents grew alarmed and they would send her home. There were difficulties too on johns site. Major rich and his wife suzanne expected their son to take a wife in the nation. Thus when john wrote home of his wish to marry sarah they were surprised and dismayed. Susana consulted with one of the resident missionaries who warn that a white woman might feel superior to quote the common cherokees unquote and her son would be more useful to his people where he connected with them by marriage. She then had a letter sent to john objecting strongly to his intentions and he replied by reaffirming his love for sarah and his parents were persuaded to yield. It was clear now that their feelings could not be denied. John was dying for sarah and sarah was dying for john. Sarahs parents wait the possibilities and formed a new plan. Mrs. Northrop told john to go home and stay two years and he if he could come back without his crutches he might marry sarah. Im going to skip a couple of pages here and go to the time they actually got married. He did come back after two years. Another need here approached and john is at this point of the story back in the Cherokee Nation. John sentence lessened enough to return north to his intended bride. He set out in middecember and reach cornwall in month later. Evidently sarahs parents agreed to the terms of their previous stipulation had been met though still somewhat lame john could walk without crutches. In short order the couples intentions were published in the local church following the longestablished practice in such matters. Now at last what some may call the secret thing was fully exposed and local reaction began to build. John and sarah were moving fast. On january 27, 1824 their marriage was formalized to the small gathering in the northrop home. Reverend timothy stone the sponsor the Mission School was the obvious choice to perform the ceremony but declined to protect the reputation of these school. Though set to return to the Cherokee Nation newlyweds remained in cornwall for sundays longer. As was customary in that era they would visit and be visited by friends and relations in a kind of acknowledgment of their marriage. According to reports a local resident after the fact on the next sabbath morning colonel gold a deacon in the Church Called upon rich and his lady to the meetinghouse conceded them with his family unquote. Presumably this was intended as it public sign of personal respect and more so is it meant moving ridge from his former position on the scholars bench to the deacons pew at the front of the church. Additional gestures were followed. Ridge and his lady were invited to visit captain miles a welsh a farmer in the neighborhood together with the aforesaid deacon gold and his lady. There are they were treated with marked attention which has hitherto been given to the members of the Foreign Mission school by some of the inhabitants of this vicinity. This however seems to have kindled resentment. A writer described it as one of the causes of the disgraceful affair which in the coming months would bring so much excitement and discussed throughout our country. Indeed his comment some in cornwall were already displeased with the attention frequently lavished on the scholars. Whatever its source john and sarah soon faced the highest indignation as the report said. Years later they would describe to a friend how quote the papers complained at their wedding as an outrage and denounced in the pulpit. The news flew on the web from cornwall to the surrounding towns to the rest of the state and beyond. Threats were made by the best and most respectable men to drive them from the country and in dignity on the clergy and gauged unquote. The gentleman from richfield 50 men signed in fisherman inviting promising to embody the court role and not return until he had entirely admonished demolish the building in which the school was capped