| This dissertation examines the influence of Native American forms of media on print culture in early New England. For colonial elites in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, communicating with Native people was important to efforts to create a reformed society. At the same time, transatlantic interest in evangelizing Native groups made cross-cultural contact a central issue in the emerging parliamentary public culture in London in the 1630s and 1640s. Dissenters and critics of the Massachusetts Bay Colony such as Roger Williams, Thomas Lechford, and Samuel Gorton used printed accounts of Native languages and lifeways to substantiate rival claims for independent settlement communities. |
