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The Savage Apostle

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In 1675, when the body of Christian Indian John Sassamon is dragged up from beneath the ice of Assowampsett Pond, speculation is rife as to who murdered the man. Sassamon was a man caught between two worlds, that of his Wamponaug ancestry and that of his adopted English society; people on both sides could find cause to kill him. John Eliot, missionary and founder of the Praying Villages where Christianized Indians lived among the colonists of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies is particularly grieved by his protégé Sassamon’s death. Eliot had converted the young Sassamon, educated him at Harvard, and trusted him as missionary to the Indians, especially to the Pokanoket and their sachem Metacom. Eliot knows that converting Metacom and his people could be the key to lasting peace between the colonists and the Indians, a fifty-year peace that is dangerously unraveling. Metacom finds his authority and sovereignty once again undermined by the Plymouth authorities when three of his closest advisors are arrested for the murder of Sassamon. Pressured by his people to retaliate, but knowing the disastrous consequences war with the English would bring, Metacom struggles to find a way out, just as Eliot tries to keep the two sides from falling into a war that could only end in ruin for English and Indians alike. Thoroughly grounded in years of research, The Savage Apostle, is an exciting and colorful account of the events leading up to King Philip’s War, the costliest war per capita ever fought on American soil. Moreover, it is an exemplary lesson for today’s world where divisiveness and conflict are so often brought about by racial and religious intolerance. The author has included a helpful Discussion Guide in the book for teachers and book clubs.

230 pages, Paperback

Published December 23, 2015

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About the author

John B. Kachuba

28 books9 followers
John B. Kachuba is the series editor of America's Haunted Road Trip from Clerisy Press and the author of Ghosthunting Illinois and Ghosthunting Ohio. He has also written other books such as Ghosthunters: On the Trail of Mediums, Dowsers, Spirit Seekers, and Other Investigators of America's Paranormal World, How to Write Funny, and Why is this Job Killing Me? (co-authored with his wife, Mary A. Newman, PhD).

John's short fiction and nonfiction have been widely published and he has received several awards for his fiction, including the 2004 Dogwood Fiction Prize.

He holds advanced degrees in Creative Writing from Antioch University (Yellow Springs, OH) and Ohio University. He has taught writing at both the University of Cincinnati and Ohio University. He is also on the faculty of the Gotham Writers Workshop.

John is a noted conference speaker and presenter and is a sought-after guest on many radio and television programs throughout the country and internationally.

John lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his wife Mary.

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Profile Image for Christy Robinson.
Author 5 books27 followers
June 14, 2016
The Savage Apostle, named after John Eliot, the Congregational (Puritan) pastor to the Native Americans (“savages”) of New England, is the first historical novel by author John B. Kachuba. The “novel” genre assignment seems wrong, when the events and people were real and documented, but the narrative follows the thoughts and speech of two primary figures: Rev. John Eliot (1604-1690) and the Wampanoag sachem Metacom (1638-1676), also known as King Philip. Historical fiction can breathe new life into dusty history, when thought through as carefully as it was by author Kachuba.

The book begins with the musings of Eliot, who mourns the death of the Native American Sassamon, who was a Christian convert. Sassamon had been murdered and dumped in a frozen pond, perhaps by someone of his own tribe, or by the English settlers of Plymouth Colony. In 1675, tensions were high between the natives of New England, and the thousands of English families pushing them back into the wilderness. When the first settlers arrived in the 1620s and 1630s, they found whole villages made ghost towns by disease. They purchased land from native sachems, but by 1636, tensions broke out in the Pequot War, in which the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay militias massacred thousands and sold women and children captives to the Caribbean slave trade (because they had a naughty habit of running away from their “servanthood” in New England). As tens of thousands of settlers arrived in the Great Migration, the various tribes suffered encroachment on their lands and waters, destruction of their crops by English cattle, and overhunting of fowl and deer. Over the next decades, even as John Eliot tried to convert them to Christianity and “civilization,” they lost civil rights and were treated disrespectfully by the second generation of colonists.

In the book, Metacom has equal time with John Eliot, as they both realize that war will come to New England, no matter how hard they work to avoid it. They both envision innocent deaths and burned-out villages. Eliot wonders if he has failed his God when he sees the “Praying Indians” deserting their villages ahead of the war to return to their tribes. He agonizes over the will of God: why did God seem to direct his missionary work, and then deny Eliot, in his old age, the fulfillment of happy, fulfilled Christian converts? Metacom wants only to die peacefully as an old man, with his children and grandchildren nearby, and go to the afterlife to be with his father and brother, but his advisors are bent on avenging the executions of the three Pokanoket men who were falsely accused and falsely convicted of murdering Sassamon.

Author Kachuba’s depiction of the exhumed body of Sassamon was (as I imagine) quite realistic, but so was his depiction of sudden emotion from Rev. Eliot, looking on the decomposing body of his friend and convert. “From where I now stood, trembling, I had an unobstructed view of the corpse, a view I would gladly have given up so as to have Sassamon’s memory from happier times live on within me… I had to close my eyes for several moments to calm my wild heart. My knees shook and I thought I should fall.”

I’ve read several books set in the time before and during King Philip’s War (among them Flight of the Sparrow, by Amy Belding Brown; Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick; Caleb’s Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks), and have seen descriptions of Eliot and his ministry, and the English versus Indian conflict from several outside angles. It’s a new dimension to read about the precursors to war through the eyes of Eliot and Metacom, who perhaps had the best perspective.

As an author and a student of 17th-century New England history, I found the personal narratives fascinating. The story is so believable as told here, that I’m tempted to think this is what must have happened. As a genealogy enthusiast, I knew some of the peripheral players in the story, and though they weren’t covered in detail in the book (which was proper), it drove me back to my files to compare information. And it fits! Those dusty ancestors contributed to the story in my head. Dr. Fuller administered a potion which may have killed Metacom’s brother. Others lived heroically through the atrocities of King Philip’s War, ferried colonists from grave danger to safety at Newport, or, like one great-great, didn’t survive, when he was taken captive and marched to Canada, where he was burned at the stake.

There were a few confusing bits in The Savage Apostle: Metacom’s flashbacks to his experiences with father and brother took us back about 13 years but didn’t explain the timehop. What was the medieval law of cruentation? And the Pokanoket name of Montaup (Mount Hope, Bristol, Rhode Island) and other places could have been set for the reader who is not from New England, by a map or two. Sure, I can Google them, but that would mean getting out of bed where I’m reading in the wee hours!

The book contains a reading list and discussion guide, and would be appropriate reading for high school and college history students, as well as history enthusiasts of all ages. The few descriptions of violence (at the very end of the book) are necessary to a book about the prelude to war. The physical book is well made and the text is easy on the eyes. The cover image appears to be an aerial view of a landscape with water and clouds in the distance. The cover texture feels a bit like peachskin.

Disclosure: The publisher sent me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Profile Image for Raul Sanchez.
Author 8 books34 followers
October 21, 2016
In The Savage Apostle, John Kachuba brings accurate history to life. Through finely-drawn characters and prose fitting for the period, the author takes us back to 1675, a crucial point in U.S. history when the surging tide of English settlers is overrunning the native population in New England. The novel explores the period's growing tensions while revealing the personal angst of two men who want to preserve the peace on both sides of the brewing conflict. John Eliot is a minister whose work at converting the natives to Christianity has led to villages of “Praying Indians.” Eliot fears the converted natives will be caught in the middle of a region preparing for war. Metacom, the native leader known to English as Phillip, wants to avoid war but understands the complex relationship between the tribal groups around him may compel him to bloodshed. The Savage Apostle not only illuminates the origins of a tragic conflict in U.S. history, it also gives us valuable insights into the challenges we face today.
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