condescending today. For example, songs said to be "inspired by American Indian spirits" tended to involve stereotyped pidgin English like "Me love Mother and she love me, Quille ose van da wahaw me!" (notebook from their Golden Harvest CD) Still these beliefs caused them the most violence as it encouraged them to harbor fugitive slaves or American Indians. Apostate literature A strong source of literature hostile to a religion or group comes from former members or apostates. This is as true of Shakerism as it is of other groups. In the case of apostate Shakers there are strong similarities between their tracts and those written by ex-nuns or ex-Mormons. The most significant Shaker apostate writer was likely Mary Marshall Dyer whose anti-Shaker efforts ran from 1815 to 1852. In 1813 she had joined the Shakers of Enfield, New Hampshire, with her husband and family. However two years later she left blaming them for alienating her from her children. Despite that her husband and her family decided to stay. After that she did tours and wrote tracts against the Shakers. The main writings she did were A Brief Statement of the Sufferings of Mary Dyer and A Portraiture of Shakerism in 1822. She also got a group together to enter the Enfield Shaker Community to take her children back, but this effort failed. For one, her husband Joseph remained devout to the community and criticized her in strong terms. Only one of her five children ever left the Shakers and he never became close to her. By the 1850s her anti-Shaker views seemed extreme, in New England at least, and she died as a largely forgotten figure in 1867. Anti-Shakerism today During the twentieth century the Shakers went into significant decline, so hostility to Shakerism did as well. Although never a large denomination, their influence was significant due to their skills at seed businesses and their general productivity. However, technology and culture changed so by the 1970s membership had been reduced to a scattering of elderly women and men. This decline led even ex-Shakers to view them in relatively positive terms. This began in the 1860s, as toward the end of her life Mary Dyer had difficulty making friends among apostate Shakers. They viewed her as too harsh, and her son never reconnected with her, furthering the discomfort with her. As the group declined further most viewed them as being, at