Contents

List of Illustrations

Acnowledgments

Introduction

1. The Benevolent Design: Mapping the Landscape

Mappers and Missionaries

The Connecticut Land Company: Mapping

In regard to the Heathen on our borders”: Erasing the Natives

“The most benevolent designs”: Missionary Publications

2. Models of Piety: Protestant Missionaries on the Frontier

“I find I can preach, if I can ride”: Missionary Letters

Difficulties inseparable to a family”: Age, Marital Status, and Missions

“I have no prospect of being popular”: Social Status and Missionary Labor

“Book knowledge is not all”: The Heart, Not the Head

“Born and raised in the woods”: Homegrown Missionaries

3. The Moral Garden of the Western World: Bodies, Towns, and Families

“Nurseries of piety”: Body, Town, and Family

“A considerable phalanx of infidelity”: Religious Rivalry and the Body

“Scattered promiscuously over the face of the country”: Town Planning and Moral Order

“One great step towards a state of barbarism”: Family and Home Order

4. Geography Made Easy: Geographies and Travel Literature

Geography Made Easy: Mapping and Moralizing

Domestic Travel Narratives

Fairy-Tale Reports: Western Reserve Travel Literature

A Correct View: New Connecticut as the Promised Land

5. A Beacon in the WIlderness: Moral Inscriptions on the Landscape

The Oberlin Colony and Institute

Building Up Society: Missionary Institutions

Ecclesiastical Outlaws

Moral and Spatial Order

Conclusion: Moral Geography

Notes

Bibliography

Index