Episode 191: Pacifist Prophet

In 1775 Johannes Papunhunk died in a Moravian village in Ohio. He was not a Moravian, or any other kind of European, but a member of the Munsee tribe who had been born some seventy years before. In his long life he had been a prophet, preacher, reformer, and diplomat, dedicated to finding a home where his people could live in peace. As Richard Pointer observes, Papunhunk bewilders us because he breaks apart our categories. He was a prophet who inspired peacemaking not war; a nativist reformer who embraced Christianity; a critic of white practices admired by leading Pennsylvanians; a war refugee, protected by some whites against other whites.  Papunhunk refuses to be who we think he ought to be. In his complicated life, we can find a different way of seeing early America. Dr. Richard Pointer is Emeritus Professor of History at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. He has previously written Encounters of the Spirit: Native Americans and European Colonial Religion and Protestant Pluralism and the New York Experience: A Study of Eighteenth-Century Religious Diversity.