• DOI:10.1353/eam.2014.0010
• Corpus ID: 144549578

Spiritual Diplomacy, the Yamasees, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel: Reinterpreting Prince George’s Eighteenth-Century Voyage to England

@article{Bossy2014SpiritualDT,
  title={Spiritual Diplomacy, the Yamasees, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel: Reinterpreting Prince George’s Eighteenth-Century Voyage to England},
  author={Denise Ileana Bossy},
  journal={Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal},
  year={2014},
  volume={12},
  pages={366 - 401}
}

• D. I. Bossy
• Published 1 April 2014
• History
• Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal

By the 1710s relationships between the Yamasees and their South Carolina neighbors were rapidly deteriorating. Colonists enslaved and physically abused Yamasee people, stole their property, and encroached on their lands. In the midst of this, a Yamasee “Prince” made a singular trip to London, spending twenty-one months with Anglican schoolmasters and tutors who attempted to transform him into a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Why did his community pursue this path? This article argues that the Prince’s clan was attempting to engage in spiritual diplomacy with the British: sending a diplomat to a spiritually and politically important capital who then converted to Christianity. This practice was indigenous in origin but was practiced particularly by Indian communities that had sustained contact with Spanish missionaries in La Florida. Such was the case with the Prince’s community: the Euhaws rejoined the Yamasees in 1703 after a century spent in La Florida and needed to establish a more secure footing for themselves in the Yamasee and British worlds. Though it would prove disappointing in a number of respects, analysis of the Prince’s voyage reveals how southeastern Indians responded to European colonialism by drawing on long-standing Native practices.