One Man Able to Compose the Sheets: James Printer and the Origins of the John Carter Brown Library

Blog post by JCB Research Associate Daniel Howlett

The John Carter Brown Library traces its origins to the 1846 manifest of books sent from Henry Stevens to its namesake collector. Brown’s first invoice of books demonstrated the geographic and chronological scopes of the earliest days of Americana, and while renowned names like Columbus, Mather, and Cortes littered the first purchases, lesser known historical figures also built the base of this collection. The production of each text required a printer to set the letters, roll the ink, and press the words onto the pages. For many early New England printings, the brothers Sameul and Bartholomew Green ran the presses that put Massachusett Bay works into the Atlantic world, and much of the Green brothers’ credit also belongs to an Indigenous, rarely-acknowledged, typesetter named Wawaus or James Printer. The JCB Library collection includes extensive collections on the British Atlantic, many from these two presses and therefore likely made by Printer’s hands, now sitting on the ancestral homelands of the Narragansett Indian Tribe, south of his Nipmuc homelands in central Massachusetts. The attributed works to the Green brothers open the door to consider the Indigenous labor and knowledge that shaped the early American Atlantic world that Brown purchased.

The representation of seventeenth century New England in Brown’s early invoices gravitated towards two themes: religion and violence, oftentimes not exclusive. Indigenous people, including the Pequot, the Wampanoag, the Abenaki, the Narragansett, the Mohegan, the Nipmuc, the Pennacook, the Haudenosaunee, and more appeared throughout contemporary histories of English colonization as both potential converts to Christianity and providential enemies. In works like Philip Vincent’s A true relation of the late battel fought in New England and William Hubbard’s The present state of New-England, Indigenous nations were written as obstacles to the English settling the territory on an allegedly divine mission.

In other texts, John Eliot’s translation of the Bible into the Massachuset language demonstrated the purpose of colonization to Christianize the continent. While both these types of works often flattened Native people to devices subject to the whims and motivations of settler colonialism, Brown unknowingly preserved examples of James Printer’s labor and myriad of opportunities to read against the European grain.

Starting in 1658, Wawaus, a Nipmuc man and Harvard Indian scholar, apprenticed at Samuel Green’s press about the same time that John Eliot sought to publish his translated Bible. In 1661, Eliot, along with the Indigenous translators and interpreters that he relied on, produced the New Testament followed by a complete Bible in 1663. While uncredited in the publications, when revising the book twenty years later in 1683, Eliot wrote that “we have but one man (viz the Indian Printer) that is able to compose the sheets, & correct the presse, with understanding,” two years prior to its publication. The 1661 and 1663 printings appear on the invoices, but marked that Brown returned them, likely because he already possessed copies. The JCB Library collection includes all three editions.

Printer’s only publication credit appears in the 1709 Massachusee/Massachuset Psalter alongside Bartholomew Green’s name, but clearly his work extended much further into New England print culture.

Other religious texts from the Brown invoices that cite the Green presses include Increase Mather’s Angelographia and 3 works by Cotton Mather: Duodecennium Luctuosum, Another Tongue brought in, and The Life of the Reverend & Excellent Jonathan Mitchel. Another Tongue is referred to as "Iroquois Indian Language”, referring to the secondary title Some Communications of Christianity Put into a Tongue used among the Iroquois Indians in America. The title page goes on yet even further note “put into the Hands of the ENGLISH and the DUTCH Traders.” It isn’t possible to authoritatively state that James Printer worked on most texts, but given his record of working with Indigenous language printings of Christian texts, he probably set the type for this publication too.

The General Laws and Liberties of the Massachusetts Colony in New England also provides another example of Printer’s international work. In 1672, the Massachusetts Bay Colony ordered a printing of the laws of the colony, but the JCB Library has a curious edition. The title page reads “Printed by Samuel Green for John Usher of Boston, and to be sold by Richard Chiswel, at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul’s Chruch-yard, London, 1675.” A 1917 analysis of several printings of The General Laws proposes that the JCB copy reflects a repackaging on the 1672 printing. Most likely, the pages from Green’s press arrived in London years later and Chiswell bound the folios for sale to a London audience. Whether James Printer also set the type for this volume is impossible to determine, but it is also likely that Printer knew English law. Scholars credit Printer with writing letters and negotiating the release of the English captive Mary Rowlandson during King Philip’s War. Whether he relayed messages as a scribe or they reflect his own words is unclear, and Lisa Brooks’ Our Beloved Kin considers both possibilities. A letter left by Printer for the English on a bridge outside of Medfiled accused them of provoking the war and warned “we have nothing but our lives to loose but thou has many fair houses cattell & much good things.” The laws of Massachusetts include a 1640 provision that “if any harm be done at any time by the Indians unto the English, in their Cattle” then the Massachusetts Bay courts “may order satisfaction.” Undoubtedly, Indigenous people knew the value that English colonists placed on cattle and other property, so Printer referencing it is neither surprising nor revelatory. However, understanding the likelihood that Printer had an intimate knowledge of Massachusetts Bay laws contextualizes his actions both against and within a colonial system through that familiarity.

By considering Printer’s actions in light of his labor, the nature of plausibility in Printer’s historical record- that he might have set the type for this book, that he likely wrote the letter at Medfield, that maybe the words are his own- allows for Printer to stand among other celebrated intellectuals in the JCB collections. The lack of printed credit obscures his place in the catalog records, but Wawaus put together the books that put together the catalog. Brown sought works by distinguished ministers, explorers, and politicians who shaped the early American world. By doing so, he preserved the efforts of a Nipmuc printer whose work crossed the Atlantic, tied together Indigenous and colonial empires, and perhaps enabled his own acts of resistance. Letter by letter, Wawaus helped build a print culture network that stretched across the early Americas, and eventually, Henry Stevens purchased the pages impressed with Printer’s unacknowledged labor and shipped them to Providence, Rhode Island.

For further reading:

Brooks, Lisa, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War, Yale University Press, 2018.

DeLucia, Christiane M., Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast, Yale University Press, 2018.

O’Brien, Jean, Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England, University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Acknowledgements:

This blog post was written following a conversation with Kimberly Toney, the JCB Coordinating Curator for Native American and Indigenous Materials, about the library collections and 17th-century New England. See her project theirmarks for some fascinating work.