Perishing Heathens: Stories of Protestant Missionaries and Christian Indians in Antebellum America

Posted in Books, History, Media Archive, Monographs, Native Americans/First Nation, Religion, United States on 2017-11-06 20:12Z by Steven

Perishing Heathens: Stories of Protestant Missionaries and Christian Indians in Antebellum America

University of Nebraska Press
October 2017
276 pages
1 photograph, 3 tables, index
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4962-0187-4

Julius H. Rubin, Professor Emeritus of Sociology
University of Saint Joseph, West Hartford, Connecticut

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.

Table of Contents

  • List of Tables
  • Preface
  • Introduction
  • 1. The Travails of David Bacon: “A Humble Missionary of the Cross”
  • 2. The Missionary Vocation of Miss D: A Life Broken by Disease and Disappointment
  • 3. The Endless Chain of Religious Intelligence: The Emergence of an American Evangelical Identity
  • 4. The Question of K: “The First Friend of the Osage Nation unto God”
  • 5. The First Fruits of the Cherokee Nation: Catharine Brown and Sister Margaret Ann
  • 6. Métis Christian Indian Lives: Jane Johnston Schoolcraft and Mackinaw Mission Converts
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
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