The youthful Apess found himself more inclined toward what he called the "noisy Methodists." Their fervor stimulated his growing personal convictions about the rightness of spontaneous expression in worship, the loving grace of Christ as the savior of mankind, and about Native Americans as one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
The religious zeal of Apess contributed to his confused identity as an Indian. When berry-picking one afternoon with an adoptive white family, he encountered sun-tanned white women whom he thought were cruel Indians, and fled. His interest in Christianity did not prevent a periodic flogging by various masters, who vacillated in permitting Apess to attend Methodist meetings. In early 1813, Apess finally ran away to New York City with another indentured youth and, prodded by unscrupulous drinking soldiers, enlisted in the Army as a drummer. Initially Apess opposed their blasphemies, as he said in his autobiography, A Son of the Forest, "in little time I became almost as bad as any of them, could drink rum, play cards, and act as wickedly as any. I was at times tormented with the thoughts of death, but God had mercy on me and spared my life."
Apess' militia unit marched to Plattsburgh, New York, to prepare a siege of Montreal.
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