The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 57her over the site of an Aztec place of worship, which it then was. And the first account
of this miraculous encounter was eventually written down a century later, in 1649,
in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. The Virgin was and remains a syncretic
religious figure. The “somewhat dark” face and Indian features attributed to her in
the original account, and in the numerous paintings and statues of her created ever
since, make her a Native American Virgin; the word “Guadalupe” is itself most
probably a hybrid, derived from the Nahuatl word for “snake” and the Spanish word
for “crush” and referring to a gesture often given to the Virgin Mary in statues, of
crushing the snake. During the eighteenth century, however, the miscegenation of
Spanish and Indian that marked the original legend became less important than the
use of the Virgin of Guadalupe as an emblem of New World hybridity, the mestizo.
She became a potent religious, cultural, and political icon for Mexican-Americans.
She remains so, her figure turning up everywhere, in churches, homes, and religious
and political activities, in Chicano literature. And she is a measure of just how far
removed many Americans of the time were from the creed or even the influence of
the Enlightenment.
The same is true for some American writers situated further east. In 1755, for
instance, Some Account of the Fore part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge ... Written
by her own Hand many years ago was published. Little is known of its author other
than what is contained in her book, but from that it is clear that the central fact of
her life was her conversion. After emigrating to America as an indentured servant,
Elizabeth Ashbridge (1713–1755) discovered that her master, whom she had taken
for “a very religious man,” was, in fact, cruel and hypocritical. Buying her own
freedom, she married a man who, she says, “fell in love with me for my dancing.” But,
when she embraced the Quaker religion, the dancing stopped; and her husband, in
his anger and disappointment, began to beat her. The beatings only ended, Ashbridge
explains, when her husband died. Then she was able to marry again, this time to
someone who shared her faith. That faith, and her conversion to it, are described
with simple power; just as they are in the Journal that another Quaker, John Woolman
(1720–1772), kept intermittently between 1756 and his death – and which was pub-
lished by the Society of Friends in 1774. “I have often felt a motion of love to leave
some hints in writing of my experience of the goodness of God,” Woolman confesses
at the start of the Journal, “and now, in the thirty-sixth year of my age, I begin the
work.” What follows is the story of a life lived in the light of faith that is, nevertheless,
remarkable for its simplicity and humility of tone. Woolman describes how he even-
tually gave up trade and his mercantile interests to devote himself to his family and
farm, and to work as a missionary. He traveled thousands of miles, Woolman reveals,
driven by “a lively operative desire for the good of others.” The desire not only
prompted him toward missionary work but also impelled him to champion the
rights of Native Americans and to attack slavery, which he described as a “dark
gloominess hanging over the land.” Just like Ashbridge, Woolman shows how many
Americans even in an increasingly secular age relied on what Woolman himself
termed “the judgements of God” and “the infallible standard: Truth” to steer their
lives and direct their choices, rather than the touchstones of reason and use.GGray_c01.indd 57ray_c 01 .indd 57 8 8/1/2011 7:54:56 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 56 AM