Race, Presbyterian Missionaries, and American Indians in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Race, writes historian of anthropol ogy George W. Stocking, Jr., was characteristically nineteenth-century phenomenon. Historians generally be lieve that during the century, growing numbers of scientists and ordinary Americans came to accept that certain races were innately inferior, retarded by inherent biological qualities which were unchangeable, or changeable only over long periods of time, and that cul tural manifestations were primarily ra cial. By late in the many Ameri cans ranked races and cultures in a hierarchy which stretched from civi lized whites at the top, to dark skinned peoples at the bottom. Although not typical Americans, men and women of the Board of Foreign Mis sions (BFM) of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (PCUSA) were members of their changing national culture. And from what they wrote about American Indians it might appear that they too had imbibed some of the racism of the age. Like missionaries of other denom inations during the great century of Protestant missions, those of the BFM possessed an all-encompassing vision the Christian civilization. The BFM variant fused evangelical Presbyte rianism with an idealized American way of life, and from this perspective tribal cultures appeared shockingly inferior. Thus, during the six decades of BFM involvement with the Indians (1837-1893), its missionaries relent lessly denounced almost every cultural value and trait of Choctaws, Creeks, Omahas, Nez Perces, and more than a dozen other tribes. The rigidly exclu sive missionaries would accept no syncretism, no expression of Christian truths through Indian forms. They demanded that converts totally reject tribal religions and sex roles, patterns of kinship, economic subsistence, lea dership, and even Indian names and styles of clothing. Resorting to the stock evangelical vocabulary of hea thenism and darkness, they conveyed an almost paradoxical double-image of undisciplined and self-willed Indians, who simultaneously groaned under the tyranny of chiefs, customs, and kin. Such lawless but pitiable wretches had one hope of salvation in the next life and of survival in this, acceptance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and of the total cultural package of the Christian civilization.