Natives & Newcomers Ch. 6: Conversions

Natives encountered 2 waves of Europeans:
Amicable, temporary business relationships
Conflicting, long-lasting struggles for control
Missionaries' thoughts before landing:
Natives were “very ready to leave their old and blind idolatries and to learn of us the right service and worship the true God” (146)
“savage,” “barbarian,” “degenerate”

Reduce, Reuse, Repent

Missionaries wanted to “reduce” the Indians from “savagery” to “civility”
In reducing one's Indianness, missionaries replaced traditional identities with Christian ones
What could define Indianness?
Spirituality
Tradition
Heirarchy
Ego
Ethnocentrism

Praying Towns/Reserves/Missions

To succeed, missionaries had to be involved in native life, not living parallel to it
Wilderness settlements welcomed natives
Permanent dwellings and institutions
Farms
Churches and clergy
Schools – instruction in Europeanness
Christian doctors
Trading posts

How to win friends . . .

Show you are not a threat
Adoption into a family or tribe
Change name
Learn language/dialect
Communicate to children
Earn trust through gestures of equality
Minor similarities in dress and speech
Join hunting parties
Taking part in local rituals
However, no intermarriage
Witchcraft?

. . . and influence people

Make sure individual natives are not a threat
Competition with shamen. Witchcraft?
Invite natives into “family of God”
Relate to local religious beliefs
Christ as the “Master Spirit” or “Creator”
Have natives adopt Christian names
Teach European languages
Create schools with religion & language classes
Gestures of equal civility
Inhabit property year-round, farm
Take part in church, holiday services
However, no intermarriage

“Civility”

Hardline converters often failed, or worse
Missionaries could change native faiths, but “ways of life” were more difficult
Marriage
Sitting still in class
Fasting
“In large measure, whatever success the Jesuits enjoyed was gained not by expecting less of their converts, as the English accused, but by accepting more.” (163)