Old Canaan in a New World: Native Americans and the Lost Tribes of Israel

by Elizabeth Fenton

Overview

Were indigenous Americans descendants of the lost tribes of Israel?

From the moment Europeans realized Columbus had landed in a place unknown to them in 1492, they began speculating about how the Americas and their inhabitants fit into the Bible. For many, the most compelling explanation was the Hebraic Indian theory, which proposed that indigenous Americans were the descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel. For its proponents, the theory neatly explained why this giant land and its inhabitants were not mentioned in the Biblical record.

In Old Canaan in a New World, Elizabeth Fenton shows that though the Hebraic Indian theory may seem far-fetched today, it had a great deal of currency and significant influence over a very long period of American history. Indeed, at different times the idea that indigenous Americans were descended from the lost tribes of Israel was taken up to support political and religious positions on diverse issues including Christian millennialism, national expansion, trade policies, Jewish rights, sovereignty in the Americas, and scientific exploration.

Through analysis of a wide collection of writings—from religious texts to novels—Fenton sheds light on a rarely explored but important part of religious discourse in early America. As the Hebraic Indian theory evolved over the course of two centuries, it revealed how religious belief and national interest intersected in early American history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479866366
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	04/21/2020
Series:	North American Religions Series , #2
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	1,010,948
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Fenton is professor of English at the University of Vermont. She is the author of Religious Liberties: Anti-Catholicism and Liberal Democracy in Nineteenth-Century US Literature and Culture (2011) and co-author, with Jared Hickman, of Americanist Approaches to The Book of Mormon (2018).

Table of Contents

Introduction: In the Beginning: Lost Tribes, New Worlds, and the Perils of History 1

1 Proof Positive: Hebraic Indians and the Emergence of Probability Theory 21

2 "A Complete Indian System": James Adair and the Ethnographic Imagination 55

3 Elias Boudinot, William Apess, and the Accidents of History 85

4 The Book of Mormons New American Past 113

5 Indian Removal and the Decline of American Hebraism 142

6 The Hollow Earth and the End of Time 169 Coda: DNA and the Recovery of History 197

Acknowledgments 211

Notes 215

Index 239

About the Author 243

Editorial Reviews

"A capacious and far-reaching history of the enduring national myth identifying American indigenous peoples as the Lost Tribes of Israel. In an account ranging from the seventeenth century to the current vogue for genealogical DNA testing, Elizabeth Fenton recovers an extraordinary archive of influential but often-overlooked materials— among them scripture, ethnography, and novels—to show the origins and uses of this national and religious fantasy. In lively, lucid prose, Fenton explains how this national myth has persisted despite the lack of any corroborating evidence, and this ambitious, deeply learned study offers an essential analysis of an oddity in erroneous American history. Old Canaan in a New World is extraordinary scholarship and an important contribution to the field."

Claudia Stokes

"From ‘first encounter’ to contemporary science, Old Canaan in a New World breathes new scholarly life into the centuries-old theory concerning the Israelite origins of Native Americans. With a fresh view, new evidence, and great care for detail and nuance, Elizabeth Fenton turns the story from an early-modern European fantasy into a compelling modern American story. A must-read in the history of American religions."

Zvi Ben-Dor Benite

"[T]he appeal of Fenton’s book lies mostly in its materials, which are fascinating."

The Forward

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