Made useful by the grace of God : Sophia Sawyer's life as a missionary among the Cherokee, 1823-1844

Made useful by the grace of God : Sophia Sawyer's life as a missionary among the Cherokee, 1823-1844

Cherokee Indians

Cherokee Indians -- Missions

Sawyer, Sophia, 1792-1854

Women missionaries -- Arkansas -- Fayetteville

Women missionaries -- Tennessee -- Chattanooga

Hirschten, Sean Michael

2006

Denson, Andrew

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/

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61748

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This thesis examines the life of Sophia Sawyer, who worked as a missionary and teacher among the Cherokee from 1823 -1 844. The thesis posits that Sawyer's commitment to the total transformation of the Cherokee people led her to have little influence on the development of that tribe due to Cherokee desires to meet the future in their own ways. This thesis is divided into three thematic chapters that look at Sawyer's commitment to the total transformation of the Cherokee from different angles. Chapter 1 discusses Sawyer's work as a teacher, how she saw her role in relation to the larger mission effort and what exactly she taught. This chapter concludes that Sophia Sawyer did not distinguish between civilizing and Christianizing the Cherokee. For her, teaching her students to read and do arithmetic was as important as teaching religious subjects. Sawyer saw herself playing a role just as important as that of her male ministerial superiors. Chapter 2 examines Sawyer's attitude toward cleanliness and the ways she used the discourse of cleanliness to distinguish promising from unpromising Cherokee. As part of her totalizing mission Sawyer sought to make Cherokee cleanliness habits differences between Anglo-American and Cherokee concepts of cleanliness in detail. In addition, Sawyer used cleanliness discourse the way many other Anglo-Americans used racial discourse to distinguish between Cherokee who were likely to make a successful transformation to Anglo-American ways and those who were likely to remain ""savages."" Chapter 3 examines Sawyer's relationship with the members of the Ridge- Watie- Boudinot family, who were politically powerful members of the Cherokee elite. Sawyer's relationships with Elias Boudinot and John Ridge in particular led to her association with the Treaty party during and after removal and ultimately led to her residence in Fayetteville, Arkansas, just outside the new Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory. Sawyer's commitment to the total transformation of the Cherokee people and her alliance with the pro-treaty faction of the Cherokee elite led her to have little influence on the development of the Cherokee Nation in the nineteenth century. The Cherokee rejected Sawyer's attempts to transform them, and she ended her teaching mostly Anglo American students in Arkansas

2014-09-04

All rights reserved. For permissions, contact Hunter Library Digital Collections, Western Carolina U, Cullowhee, NC 28723

Fayetteville (Ark.)

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

20202 KB(file size)

vi, 118 pages(pages)

Western Carolina University Restricted Electronic Theses and Dissertations