SOURCE: "Monologue and Dialogue in Native American Autobiography, " in The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Canon, University of California Press, 1989, pp. 132-201.

In the following excerpt, Krupat examines Apess 's major works, particularly A Son of the Forest, concluding that in this volume Apess attempted to "subsume all voices to the single voice of Christian salvationism."

Born in 1798 of a mixed blood father and a Pequot mother, William Apes suffered through a particularly brutal childhood. He learned Christian doctrine along with his letters from white foster parents—with whom, for all their kindnesses, he did not dwell long. In his early teens he enlisted as a soldier and participated, on the American side, in the attempted invasion of Canada during the War of 1812, a war in which Tecumseh and Black Hawk fought for the British. After leaving military service, Apes worked at a variety...