While the oral tradition provided numerous outlets for self-definition, the Indian peoples of North America did not begin to produce written autobiographical works until the 18th century. (If one includes letters and other more fragmentary pieces, the time-frame can be shifted back into the 17th century). The efforts of early Christian missionaries to evangelize and convert the indigenous population was the key driving force behind this early literary production. Working arm in arm with the political institutions of colonialism, the churches brought literacy and specific models of confessional discourse to those Indians whom they endeavored to "civilize."
Considerable scholarly debate continues regarding both the motives of these early agents of conversion and the degree to which Christian ideology penetrated into the hearts and minds of their charges. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that the religious discourse of conversion provided both the impetus and generic framework for the emergence of Indian autobiography. European missionaries encouraged the production of texts that would attest to their success as evangelists (and spur charitable donations to assist in that work). In turn, much like their African American contemporaries, Indian writers regularly adapted the conventions of spiritual autobiography to offer their own protests against racial discrimination and political exploitation, while still offering compelling accounts of personal piety.
Early Indian autobiographers were often constrained by generic norms in their ability to fully articulate their social concerns, however. Indeed, one such writer, Samson Occom, explicitly records his own sense of "speaking like a fool" owing to such constraint. The primary difficulty lay in the fact that the Protestant spiritual autobiography of the period was rigorously inward-looking, focusing on the discipline of self-examination and criticism rather than on social protest. Indian writers working in this confessional mode thus regularly vacillated between providing conventional accounts of their personal experiences of sin, grace, and conversion and attempting to communicate elements of their particular experiences as colonized, racial "others."
Some writers, most notably William Apess, were able to find ways to use Christian discourse as the basis for developing broader claims for equal rights. Others have left us more staid, carefully controlled works. Modern readers are often inclined to see irony in many of these texts. Yet if such readings are frequently compelling, it is important to avoid automatically assuming insincerity in a writer who offers an unambigious account of his or her own Christian experience. Then, as now, Christianity has meant different things to different "converts." Indeed, much of the richness of these early autobiographies derives from the fact that they record a facet of colonial contact that is still very much being worked out in individual lives.