Perishing heathens : stories of Protestant missionaries and Christian Indians in antebellum America / Julius H. Rubin.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In Perishing Heathens Julius H. Rubin tells the stories of missionary men and women who between 1800 and 1830 responded to the call to save Native peoples through missions, especially the Osages in the Arkansas Territory, Cherokees in Tennessee and Georgia, and Ojibwe peoples in the Michigan Territory. Rubin also recounts the lives of Native converts, many of whom were from mixed-blood métis families and were attracted to the benefits of education, literacy, and conversion.

During the Second Great Awakening, Protestant denominations embraced a complex set of values, ideas, and institutions known as "the missionary spirit." These missionaries fervently believed they would build the kingdom of God in America by converting Native Americans in the Trans-Appalachian and Trans-Mississippi West. Perishing Heathens explores the theology and institutions that characterized the missionary spirit and the early missions such as the Union Mission to the Osages, and the Brainerd Mission to the Cherokees, and the Moravian Springplace Mission to the Cherokees.

Through a magnificent array of primary sources, Perishing Heathens reconstructs the millennial ideals of fervent true believers as they confronted a host of impediments to success: endemic malaria and infectious illness, Native resistance to the gospel message, and intertribal warfare in the context of the removal of eastern tribes to the Indian frontier.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Focusing on the contradictions of conversion, Rubin (emer., sociology, Univ. of St. Joseph) uses a number of methods, including ethnohistory and psychology, to argue that Christian missionary engagements with Native Americans in the antebellum period were often sites of anxiety, doubt, and disappointment. He shows how missionaries were often at odds to explain why they failed to bring Indians, or the "perishing heathens," to Christianity. In the lead-up to the era of removal, mission societies across the North American continent sometimes aided the US government's interest in moving Indians off of their lands. At other points, however, the organizations became staunch allies of Native rights. Rubin argues that missionaries attempting to navigate this tense political environment often ran up against indigenous resistance to their efforts. In excellent chapters about the Osage and Cherokee, for example, Rubin focuses on the pressure between individual conversion and the politics of communal identity. This book is built on an incredible range of sources, and Rubin's theoretical treatment of conversion is both welcome and excellently done. A must read for those interested in the religious dimensions of Indian politics in the early 19th century. Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries. --Andrew R McKee, Florida State University