The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic

by John Putnam Demos

Longlisted for the 2014 National Book Award

The astonishing story of a unique missionary project—and the America it embodied—from award-winning historian John Demos.

Near the start of the nineteenth century, as the newly established United States looked outward toward the wider world, a group of eminent Protestant ministers formed a grand scheme for gathering the rest of mankind into the redemptive fold of Christianity and “civilization.” Its core element was a special school for “heathen youth” drawn from all parts of the earth, including the Pacific Islands, China, India, and, increasingly, the native nations of North America. If all went well, graduates would return to join similar projects in their respective homelands. For some years, the school prospered, indeed became quite famous.  However, when two Cherokee students courted and married local women, public resolve—and fundamental ideals—were put to a severe test. 

The Heathen School follows the progress, and the demise, of this first true melting pot through the lives of individual among them, Henry Obookiah, a young Hawaiian who ran away from home and worked as a seaman in the China Trade before ending up in New England; John Ridge, son of a powerful Cherokee chief and subsequently a leader in the process of Indian “removal”; and Elias Boudinot, editor of the first newspaper published by and for Native Americans. From its birth as a beacon of hope for universal “salvation,” the heathen school descends into bitter controversy, as American racial attitudes harden and intensify. Instead of encouraging reconciliation, the school exposes the limits of tolerance and sets off a chain of events that will culminate tragically in the Trail of Tears. 

In The Heathen School , John Demos marshals his deep empathy and feel for the textures of history to tell a moving story of families and communities—and to probe the very roots of American identity.  

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Race, Religion, Microhistory, Christianity

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Where I got the book: review copy provided by publisher. This review first appeared on the Historical Novel Society website.

The intersection of the idealism, religious fervor, and experimentation of the early American republic with 19th-century racism provides the context for this account of the Connecticut-based Foreign Mission School, known locally as the Heathen School. Its core population was made up of Hawaiian men brought to America by the China trade and of Native American youths; its purpose was to educate and ‘civilize’ them so they could return to their point of origin as missionaries.

The hopes of the school’s founders were gradually eroded by the difficulties of assimilating its students into a white society ill-prepared to ascribe full manhood or citizenship to them. The culminating scandals concerned the marriages of Cherokees John Ridge and Elias Boudinot to white women, leading to a shift toward taking missionary endeavors into the field.

The Heathen School provides a good account of the evolution of thought from early American willingness to intermarry with and assimilate native populations to the outright fear and prejudice of the mid-19th century. Its quirky presentation—with travelogues and extensive chapters on background matters and later developments—and its overuse of quotation marks and parentheses hinder the story, but there are many points of interest.

[Uluwehi Hopkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Demos has attained his level of notoriety for a good reason. If you're looking for an interesting twist on American history, then this subject certainly fits the bill. However, as a scholar of Hawaiian history, I can honestly say that there are a lot of holes in this particular tale. Is it Demos' fault? I leave that for you to decide.

Demos had a limited understanding of an indigenous society, which itself has been wildly misinterpreted for nearly two centuries. Therefore, he was working off of flawed sources. Additionally, he did the best he could with what limited English language source material is available on this particular Hawaiian subject.

Except that there are more sources for this story...but they are written in Hawaiian.

Overall, what this really calls out is the fact that most scholars are unaware of the vast archive of Hawaiian language source material. What this also calls out is that many researchers who write about Hawai‘i assume that our archive is as scant as that of other indigenous peoples. Others still, who are aware of our massive archive, treat it as if it as if it doesn't exist, because they can't read any of it.

I cannot speak for the Cherokee stories in this book, but I would be interested to hear from someone who can.

Subject matter aside, there are moments of brilliance in this book, when the author's strength in New England history shows through. He tries to straddle the scholarly rigor while also catering to mass appeal. Whether he does so successfully is up to individual tastes. What I can say is that I got a romanticized view of the New England landscape in the 19th century, both physical and ideological. Romantic or not, there was still value in it.

[Lisa]

Demos is a pleasure to read. This is sort of personal, with the historian visiting he locations he is studying and remarking on that experience. The connection between the school to civilize young "natives" (primarily from the pacific and North American Indians) and the failure of said school to the project of empire and Indian removal all hinges, it appears, on the love affairs between Indian students and young "white" girls who were connected with the school in some way.
At least that seems to be one of the big take aways. Clearly the school would have "failed" as lots of charities do for other reasons than this scandal, but Demos rests a lot on those inter-racial relationships and the horror they inflicted--forever tainting the project of civilizing and integrating young Christian natives. Makes for a great story and is possibly truly a major prejudice, but this is in no way more than one small anecdote in the large epic of Christian European interaction with the rest of the world in the last 200 years.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like John Demos and I'm already interested in the early 19th century and the whole missionary craze, so it was sort of obvious that I would like this book. Demos has such a good style. It is sort of disheartening to read reviews that complain about how "dry" this is...Demos is a better writer than probably 95% of other historians. After reading a bunch of academic histories, Demos's stuff seems so pleasant and flowy. I definitely wouldn't call it dry.
I did have some problems with this though. It wasn't as good as "Unredeemed Captive." It was hard to figure out exactly what the narrative through line was supposed to be, because the first half of the book is about the school, but the second half isn't really - it's about the two Cherokee students who married women from Connecticut and then about Indian removal. I also don't really understand the structure. I get why Demos included the "interludes" about visiting places central to the story in the present day, but the other little vignettes that also are not part of the central narrative were confusing. It seemed like they could have just been integrated with the rest of the text. The whole thing gets kind of choppy.
But there was so much interesting material here that I had a good time anyway. Demos hones in on a really fascinating time, when this idealistic, early 19th century almost anti-racist moment (we can teach young men from around the world! Indians and whites can be the same! Everyone is one in Christ!) ran headlong into this cynical, early 19th century extremely racist moment (interracial marriages will destroy civilization! Indians and whites can never be the same! Separation is the only option!). Thinking about this conflict is really important to understanding how the country was changing in those decades.

[Kathleen Hulser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ever engrossing historian John Demos explores the story of the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, CT in the early 19th century. Started as a place to educate those from "heathen" countries, so they could return and be more effective evangelists than the usual fervent Anglo missionaries, the school began with a mix of Hawaiians, native Americans and Chinese. The Hawaiians appeared because they often beached on American shores after serving as very young men on merchant ships that traded through the Sandwich islands. The efforts of course turn in unanticipated directions, and to the horror of many locals, there are two romances between the students and Cornwall girls. John Ridge married one, and went on to become a powerful Cherokee leader in the era of the Trail of Tears. Demos thoughtfully considers the personalities and motives involved, and is particularly convincing when he details the way the young converts were used in barn-storming rallies to raise funds around the country. The remarkable success of these celebrity tours, raising substantial dollars from quite modest rural communities, is a testimony to the naive good will of Americans, fatally entangled with imperial aims and cultural prejudices. A strange tale. The most famous Hawaiian was long buried in Cornwall, until a tribal delegation finally removed him to his ancestral lands.

[Sam Gilbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is unruly. Demos squeezes in potted histories of the Congregationalist American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, eighteenth and nineteenth-century Hawaii, the Cherokee removals movement, his visits to Cornwall, CT, Hawaii, New Echota, and lots of epistolary flotsam. He presents the missionary school in Cornwall as a crucible in which were forged key personalities in the Cherokee nation and an American understanding of the other. But he fails, over and over, to answer crucial questions. What is the meaning of the fascinating document transposing dramatic events at the Cornwall school into an Old Testament narrative? How did Cherokee ritual inform the murders of 22 June 1839? Should the marriages of John Ridge and Elias Boudinot be connected to the trajectories of their thinking about how to save the Cherokee nation from extinction? Demos is unable to answer these questions because he is unable, in a very fundamental way, to think historically. He reads documents created by specific individuals in the 1820s as if they had been written last week by his grandkids. He faults the American Board of Commissioners for efforts to generate revenue when the missionary activities of all proselytizing groups of the day were intimately linked to discourses of modernity, philanthropy, and other practices that bound Christianity to capital.

Demos dug colorful details from the ABCFM archive at Harvard and a second missionary archive in Cornwall, and his mastery of the scholarly literature in a field he has worked in for decades is beyond reproach, but the book is a bit of a mess. And so tired did I get of the pedantic underlining of variable spellings in two-hundred-year-old letters that I take a savage satisfaction in noting that Photius Fisk landed at a village church in 1839, only to abandon his job as pastor after “another a [sic] year or two” (233).

[Carin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise of this book was interesting. Back in the early 1800s in Connecticut, a group of people founded a "Heathen school" to both teach people of different nations (including Hawaiians and several Native American tribes, as well as an Indian, a New Zealander, and others from other countries) and more importantly, to convert them to Christianity. The school seemed successful at first and raised a ton of money and had some prominent advocates. However, when the converting didn't seem to stick (several Hawaiians in particular seemed to "go native" quickly when they returned home), things got rocky, and the school's fate was doomed when not one but two of the students (both Native Americans) ended up marrying young white women and causing a scandal.

I wanted the book to be fascinating but instead it was quite dry. It did pick up the pace in the second half with the scandal, and the very few, brief parts of the book where the author spoke personally of his visits to the pertinent areas were easy to read and smoothly written. But otherwise, it was a bit of a slog. In particular, there were long sections set apart in indentations like quotations, but I do not believe they were quotations, but instead were sections where he quoted liberally from documents which was awkward. And he just gave way too many details without enough action or movement. It was static and staid. I did learn some interesting facts about an odd little nook in our country's history, but I wish it had been written in a more accessible, less academic style.

[Jessica Leight · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating and engaging book about an unusual episode in early American history: the establishment of a missionary school in northwest Connecticut intended to educate "heathen" young men, particularly Pacific Islanders and Native Americans, and prepare them for a life of missionary work. The school ended up foundering, for reasons that are not entirely surprising, but it's a very interesting tale. The book feels almost divided in half: the first half is largely preoccupied with native Hawaiian students, fitting their stories into stories of the evolution of Hawaii in this period, and the second half does the same for Cherokee students. The latter story becomes intricately intertwined with the upheavals in Cherokee society during this period and their forced removal west. Both halves might have benefited from more historical context - or perhaps I just wish I knew more - and there could be an argument for focusing on one or the other. But both were very interesting reads. The main quibble I had was a stylistic one: Demos is overly fond of stirring rhetorical flourishes and appeals to the historical spirit that are unnecessary and frankly seem somewhat dated in style. Still, it's a wonderful story and he's a keen historical detective.

[Vannessa Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Heathen School was centered around its relationship with Hawaiians and Native Americans.

 school was expressly designed to make Hawaiians and Native Americans white

 it’s Christian goal was to invoke Shariah or Islamic law (In its Islamic context, Sharia may be defined as the totality of God’s commands and exhortations, intended to regulate all aspects of human conduct and guide believers on the path of eternal salvation) http://www.loc.gov/law/help/sharia-la...

Let them become farmers instead of hunters,--Christians instead of pagans—cultured in the manner of white people instead of savage then maybe—just maybe—they can be absorbed into the national mainstream.

The Heathen School left an awful taste in my mouth for religion. The Heathen School is a book that cannot be explained but must be read.

The Heathen School was an interesting read but with much-to-much filler. A student of History might enjoy all the research the author included in The Heathen School but I was overwhelmed.

What I did liked about The Heathen School was how it exposes how the religious use religion to explain away their cruelties upon other human beings.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, the fact that it took me four months to read is not a good sign. It's not a badly written book, it's nominated for all kind of literary awards, but it was "just the facts, ma'm." That can be a problem with history books when there are no diaries to search and no living witnesses. So it seemed dry to me.

But oh, would it make a good historical fiction. Missionaries brought so-called heathens to the New England school thinking they would become Christians and go home to Hawaii and convert everybody. The fun part came when they brought up Cherokees to the school. When the town's people's own daughters began to fall in love, and even marry Cherokee men, SCANDAL!

I didn't really get interested in the book until the marriages to Cherokees came in. That was close to the end of the book. I liked it because I could imagine what it felt like to love somebody who society says you aren't allowed to love. But even this part is just the facts. None of the young women or men seems to have left a diary of what they went through.

[Nan Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Heathen School, John Demos has given us a detailed and objective account of a sad period in United States history. He does a good job of showing that the founders and supporters of the school were a product of their times, and wisely he does not judge them. But anyone who views the evangelical Christianity that produced the Second Great Awakening as a good thing may have second thoughts after reading this book.
Some reviewers have complained that they found the book dry and dull. I did skip parts of it, but on the whole, it held my interest. Demos has made liberal use of personal, primary-source accounts that portray a vivid picture of life in early 19th century New England. I would recommend the book to anyone interested in that period of history.

[Alyssa Cole · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're ever looking for some unsung or often vilified persons with real personal courage and a heartfelt desire to advance civilization, and their missteps and prejudices and the fallout of trying their best, several can be found here.

[Maura Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

When John Demos first heard about the “heathen school” established in Cornwall, Connecticut in the early 19th century, it was described to him as “just a piece of local history.” In The Heathen School, Demos’s book about that institution, he shows that the history it involves is far more than local. Students came to the school—officially named the Foreign Mission School—from Hawaii, China, India, and American Indian nations. Its founders dreamed of spreading Christianity and Euro-American civilization throughout the world. And when students married local women, as some notably did, they took their wives far away from the small town in Litchfield County, CT where the couples had met.

Demos skillfully braids together many strands of early American history: trade, relations with Indigenous peoples, religious revival and the missionary enterprise, and attitudes toward the “race mixing” that would ultimately lead to the school’s closure. Interludes that describe his own visits to locations important to the story shrink the space between past events and the present day, showing that traces of the short-lived school remain visible even now. Far from a half-forgotten story of local interest, The Heathen School sheds light on attitudes and prejudices that have animated American exceptionalism throughout the history of this country.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unearthed history of a missionary school in Cornwall, CT driven by yankee assimilationist Utopianism, bringing together missionary candidates from China & Hawaii to Native Americans, to be schooled in the ways of New England “civilization” (and the return home to preach, though none did). It all went sour when two Cherokee youths, from aristocratic families, married white New England girls and there’s backlash, though I was unaware how actively promoted race mixing previously was. Those two Cherokees (John Ridge and Elias Boudinott) went home to the Cherokee nation and became leaders of the “Treaty Party,” advocating concession to removal (one even named a child after Andrew Jackson). They were both assassinated in the same day in 1839 by Cherokees opposed to removal.

John Demos’s prose is a bit purple and there’s some scenery-chewing elements (the first person “interludes” as he visits Cornwall, Hawaii and Cherokee country) but these are minor annoyances.

Also: Samuel Morse, who I’m beginning to see as the Forrest Gump of the 19thC, worked as a photographer taking portraits of the “heathen” students.

[David Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

On one level, this book was a fascinating "piece of local history". The story of a religious community in the little town of Cornwall, Connecticut is interesting in its own right, as it sets out in a conscious experiment with the goal of Christianizing the world! But this turns out to be an American history, a Social history, and a profound revelation/exploration of Christian and American values, morals and race relations. At the present time, it doesn't seem that we Americans haven't changed or learned much over the years. I don't think the personal "interludes" did much for the book, but I wish every American would read it and think about how far America's "color line" has advanced and why.

[Thomas Mackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a tragic hard to feel through read. So many large and small scale tragedies. Demos’s tells the story of a Foreign Mission School that takes in a Christianity hamstrung by its own racist attitudes and a society hostile to any non white. There are no pure hero’s only tragic efforts to spread the gospel in a broken society. The wonderful epilogue helps bring closure for us of the survivors of the families of the foreign students. This book should be read with Unworthy Republic by Claudio Saunt which covers the Indian Removal more completely.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book looks at a school in early 19th century Connecticut for indigenous youth, and how it impacted the community, and what it showed about both race relations and missionary activity in 19th century America. It is a good story, but the author jumps back and forth between the story of the school and the larger story of developments in 19th century America, so it can be a bit confusing in some places. Still, it is a good insight into a little-known story.

[Nightwitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

For whatever reason this didn’t grip me enough to finish. The constant use of parentheses was a symptom, I think - the book had so many digressions and covered so much that there was no narrative thread strong enough to keep me reading.

[Meredith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent, but very long. I skimmed over the parts with extreme numerical details, but the overall story was very interesting and in a way disturbing. Crazy to think something like that happened in Cornwall, Connecticut.

[Leslie Simmons]

while the accuracy of some details are questionable, this is the best overview of this experiment in cultural transformation...

[Michele Lawson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could not find an interest in this book.

[Skylar Hatfield · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learned quite a bit from this book. It's theme corresponds with other reading I have done. Still, I do not fully recommend this book. The author's style is weird. There is not a good flow from chapter to chapter. The author shifts from the past to present in ways that don't feel natural. In fact, at the end of one chapter, the author suddenly presents a discussion of modern concerns about gay marriage. At that point, I felt betrayed. I also believe the author betrayed his subjects by trying to place their struggles in a modern context. If we are going to do that then we need to really examine the total cost of Indian racism and removal through the decades and into modernity. Is it really an apples to apples comparison. Have as many homosexuals been forced from home, culture and country? Have as many been murdered? Have as many been forced to live on isolated tracts of land while the government steals their mineral rights and prevents access to healthcare, education, nutrition and self-determination? While I recognize to some degree the discomfort and persecution many homosexuals have felt and continue to feel, I do not accept the notion that their struggle compares in any degree to that of the native Americans. Also, homosexuality is not just a white American issue. People of all races and religions feel same sex attraction. So calling white Americans out for their continued persecution of homosexuals is not representative of a continued persecution of Cherokees or Creeks. The subjects of this book were incredibly brave individuals who deserve full recognition for what they achieved in their time.

[Gillian Hollett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first heard of John Demos’ latest book, The Heathen School on an NPR Books podcast. They featured a great teaser for the listeners and it certainly piqued my interest.

The premise of this school was to bring in “heathens”— native americans and asians predominantly, educate in the language, religion and culture of a Christ-centic New England and subsequently unleash them as missionaries on their “primitive,” non-Christian homeland and community.

A great plan right? The only problem was that living breathing imperfect people were the guinea-pigs subjected (albeit voluntarily) to live out the founders’ theories on cultural and religious assimilation. Things did not go according to plan right from the start.

While I find the history of attempting to evangelize these cultures into Christendom interesting, I was unable to engage fully with this book. I do believe it was extensively researched and thought out, but I was not sufficiently equipped to take in such serious depth and heavy detail on the subject.

[John Benson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was interested in this book as a child of missionaries and as a person who wrote a book on the missionary community in which I grew up. However, this mission history is about a precursor to the world missions that happened later on. In this history of a small school that was started in Cornwall, CT in 1817 for students from overseas and Native Americans, and lasted only about 10 years, John Demos looks at the impact of the school on the students who attended it, its impact on the town, and its place in the larger issues of American history that were taking place in the town. Each of the four sections of the book begins with a shorter chapter on larger themes that were taking place at that time in American history, followed by a much longer historical chapter on the growth and eventual closing of the school, and ends with visits to some of the key places important to the book from Hawai'i, Concord, CT; and the Cherokee lands of Georgia. I liked his style of writing and the way he presented his ideas. I found it to be a very good book.

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Heathen School was established in Connecticut in order to civilize non-christian nations with Christianity. "Children" from Hawaii, Indian and China came to the school in the hopes that they would return home and disseminate the Word of God. I was interested in the personal lives of the "heathens" but unfortunately it was more from the perspective of the school/church and very little is know about the students. Although well written it was not a "moving story of families and communities".

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting piece of history. Anything involving Christian efforts to "civilize" native peoples through missionary work fascinates me. This is the story of maybe the only time natives were brought to the U.S. for "civilizing" as opposed to missionaries going out to foreign countries, as is much more the norm. I generally liked the author's writing style and will check out more of his work. As for this book, it felt somewhat disjointed focusing on both the Hawaiians and Native Americans. I think the book would have been more solid if he had focused on one group rather than both of them.

[Leslie K Simmons · Rating 4 out of 5]

while the accuracy of some details are questionable, this is the best overview of this experiment in cultural transformation...

[Gayla Bassham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't love this the way I love Demos's The Unredeemed Captive, but it is still a well-written and insightful work of history, and filled with great set-pieces. I particularly recommend the sections dealing with the death of Henry Obookiah and with Elias Boudinot's courtship of Harriet Gold. (I would love to read a biography of Elias Boudinot or of John Ridge, whom Demos really brings to life in this book.)

[Sharon Shelley]

I rarely give up on a book but I just did not like this one. So, I read 23% and gave up. I just did not like reading about how Christian missionaries went out and forced their religion on different people and just took away their heritage in the name their God, all the while considering these people as heathens. Then they patted themselves on the back for training these poor animals and "educating" them.

[Jana · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an interesting man John Demos is! Enjoyed meeting him and hearing him tell the tales of researching this book about a school in New England where indigenous boys came to be "civilized" so that they could go back to their own country/people and spread the word.

Needless to say: It was an epic failure. Good history. Interesting!