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Bringing Indians to the Book
In 1831 a delegation of Northwest Indians reportedly made the arduous journey from the shores of the Pacific to the banks of the Missouri in order to visit the famous explorer William Clark. This delegation came, however, not on civic matters but on a religious quest, hoping, or so the reports ran, to discover the truth about the white men's religion. The story of this meeting inspired a drive to send missionaries to the Northwest. Reading accounts of these souls ripe for conversion, the missionaries expected a warmer welcome than they received, and they recorded their subsequent disappointments and frustrations in their extensive journals, letters, and stories.
Bringing Indians to the Book recounts the experiences of these missionaries and of the explorers on the Lewis and Clark Expedition who preceded them. Though they differed greatly in methods and aims, missionaries and explorers shared a crucial underlying cultural they were resolutely literate, carrying books not only in their baggage but also in their most commonplace thoughts and habits, and they came west in order to meet, and attempt to change, groups of people who for thousands of years had passed on their memories, learning, and values through words not written, but spoken or sung aloud. It was inevitable that, in this meeting of literate and oral societies, ironies and misunderstandings would abound.
A skilled writer with a keen ear for language, Albert Furtwangler traces the ways in which literacy blinded those Euro-American invaders, even as he reminds us that such bookishness is also our own.
Bringing Indians to the Book recounts the experiences of these missionaries and of the explorers on the Lewis and Clark Expedition who preceded them. Though they differed greatly in methods and aims, missionaries and explorers shared a crucial underlying cultural they were resolutely literate, carrying books not only in their baggage but also in their most commonplace thoughts and habits, and they came west in order to meet, and attempt to change, groups of people who for thousands of years had passed on their memories, learning, and values through words not written, but spoken or sung aloud. It was inevitable that, in this meeting of literate and oral societies, ironies and misunderstandings would abound.
A skilled writer with a keen ear for language, Albert Furtwangler traces the ways in which literacy blinded those Euro-American invaders, even as he reminds us that such bookishness is also our own.
242 pages, Paperback
First published July 30, 2005
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January 8, 2022
In some respects the title is a misnomer. Rather than proving how Protestant missionaries brought Indians to the Book (the Bible) in 1830’s and 1840’s modern day Oregon Furtwangler demonstrated in a comprehensive, highly textured manner how the missionaries tried and failed to bring the Book to the Indigenous people living there. To his credit he reviewed dozens of primary sources, including letters, reports, journals written by these missionaries. Additionally, the book had 7 pages of Notes and a 7 page Bibliography for those readers wanting to follow up on any specific issue.
Engaging in insightful and at times nuanced analyses of these documents the author made his main argument quite effectively: that the missionaries’ reliance on the written word prevented them from recognizing the value, let alone the effectiveness, of the largely oral, yet highly developed and quite sophisticated perspective which the Indians held about their world and their relationship to it and to each other. Implied but not quite clearly stated was another observation: that these Christians viewed these ‘depraved’ others with the arrogant, white supremacist racism which was common in 19th century America.
Other than to opine that the Indians were ‘indifferent’ to the missionaries Furtwangler unfortunately failed to take into account, let alone to present, how the Indians viewed these men, and a few women, who came uninvited into their world. This review of Bringing discusses this.
https://networks.h-net.org/node/2718/...
It would have been possible for the author to do this. Trevor J Bond’s Coming Home to Nez Perce Country published in 2021 made effective use of NP oral histories to depict how they experienced, let alone suffered at the hands of, the missionary efforts of Henry Spalding during those years. In his 1983 Changes in the Land William Cronon gave voice to the Indian perspective of colonists arriving on the Eastern shores of the New World in the 18th century. If Cronon could accomplish this more than 20 years before Bringing was published in 2005, Furtwangler could have done likewise. Ie, the information was available. Furtwangler chose not to incorporate it into his work.
Two other related elements of this book were flawed, IMHO. First, as is sometimes the case with scholarly books its prose was unwieldy at times. More specifically, long complex, compound sentences made it slow going. Second, some of the quotations intended to provide context to the author's argument were too long. These, too, bordered on the tedious at times.
Overall, I would recommend Bringing but with two provisos. First, patience is required to get through all of the detail. Second, look elsewhere for the Native American perspective.
Engaging in insightful and at times nuanced analyses of these documents the author made his main argument quite effectively: that the missionaries’ reliance on the written word prevented them from recognizing the value, let alone the effectiveness, of the largely oral, yet highly developed and quite sophisticated perspective which the Indians held about their world and their relationship to it and to each other. Implied but not quite clearly stated was another observation: that these Christians viewed these ‘depraved’ others with the arrogant, white supremacist racism which was common in 19th century America.
Other than to opine that the Indians were ‘indifferent’ to the missionaries Furtwangler unfortunately failed to take into account, let alone to present, how the Indians viewed these men, and a few women, who came uninvited into their world. This review of Bringing discusses this.
https://networks.h-net.org/node/2718/...
It would have been possible for the author to do this. Trevor J Bond’s Coming Home to Nez Perce Country published in 2021 made effective use of NP oral histories to depict how they experienced, let alone suffered at the hands of, the missionary efforts of Henry Spalding during those years. In his 1983 Changes in the Land William Cronon gave voice to the Indian perspective of colonists arriving on the Eastern shores of the New World in the 18th century. If Cronon could accomplish this more than 20 years before Bringing was published in 2005, Furtwangler could have done likewise. Ie, the information was available. Furtwangler chose not to incorporate it into his work.
Two other related elements of this book were flawed, IMHO. First, as is sometimes the case with scholarly books its prose was unwieldy at times. More specifically, long complex, compound sentences made it slow going. Second, some of the quotations intended to provide context to the author's argument were too long. These, too, bordered on the tedious at times.
Overall, I would recommend Bringing but with two provisos. First, patience is required to get through all of the detail. Second, look elsewhere for the Native American perspective.
Displaying 1 of 1 review