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316WHIPPLE, HENRY BENJAMINSociety 51 (1912): 53–75; Sheldon Sloan, “Parson Weems on Franklin’s Death,”Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 96 (1972): 369–76; LawrenceC. Wroth, Parson Weems: A Biographical and Critical Study (Baltimore, 1911);Paul Leicester Ford and Emily Ellsword Ford Skeel, Mason Locke Weems, 3 vols.(New York, 1928–29); Lewis G. Leary, The Book-Peddling Parson (Chapel Hill,N.C., 1984).WHIPPLE, HENRY BENJAMIN (15 February 1822, Adams, N.Y.–16 September1901, Faribault, Minn.). Education: Studied at local Presbyterian schools;studied at Oberlin College, 1838–39; studied theology under the Rev. William D.Wilson, Albany, N.Y., 1847–50; Career: Rector, Zion Church, Rome, N.Y., 1850–57; rector and missionary, St. Augustine, Fla., 1853–54; rector, Church of theHoly Communion, Chicago, 1857–59; bishop, diocese of Minnesota, 1859–1901.Henry Benjamin Whipple, a bishop and missionary to American Indians, wasbrought up in a well-to-do family in upstate New York. Although raised a Presbyterian,he decided to enter the ordained ministry of the Episcopal Church, hisgrandparents’ denomination. Ordained to the diaconate in 1849 and to the priesthooda year later, he served churches in Rome, New York, and St. Augustine,Florida, before accepting a call to organize a new parish for industrial workerson the south side of Chicago. He was elected bishop of Minnesota in 1859, onlya decade after being ordained. Thirty-seven years old at the time of his election,Whipple moved to Faribault in 1860. His frontier diocese had been part of thehuge seven-state territory over which Jackson Kemper,* the first missionarybishop of the Episcopal Church, had presided.Facing physical hardship and danger, Whipple traveled extensively throughouthis diocese, learning about both the living conditions of its 20,000 Indians andthe failures of the federal government in fulfilling its treaty obligations to them.He frequently used his range of personal contacts to appeal to affluent Episcopalianson behalf of the Indians. He sought not only funds but also fair andhumane treatment. Recognizing the injustice of the government’s policy towardnative peoples, he wrote to Abraham Lincoln in March 1862 outlining the flawsin the government’s management of Indian affairs and asking for “justice for awronged and neglected race.” In 1871, in response to pleas from Whipple andWilliam Welsh (an Episcopalian who headed the congressional Board of IndianCommissioners), the Episcopal Church formed the Indian Commission under itsboard of missions to defend the Indians’ rights. Whipple received internationalacclaim as a leading Christian proponent of Indian reform, and his reputation forhonesty and plain speaking prompted the Ojibwe to give him the Indian name“Straight Tongue.”These achievements notwithstanding, Whipple was also, like other reformersof his time, an assimilationist who hoped to turn the Indians into, as he put it,“useful Christian citizens.” He viewed Native Americans as “heathens” who,though they had been harmed by contact with the worst elements of white culture,