The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West

by Jennifer Graber

During the nineteenth century, white Americans sought the cultural transformation and physical displacement of Native people. Though this process was certainly a clash of rival economic systems and racial ideologies, it was also a profound spiritual struggle. The fight over Indian Country sparked religious crises among both Natives and Americans.

In The Gods of Indian Country, Jennifer Graber tells the story of the Kiowa Indians during Anglo-Americans' hundred-year effort to seize their homeland. Like Native people across the American West, Kiowas had known struggle and dislocation before. But the forces bearing down on them-soldiers, missionaries, and government officials-were unrelenting. With pressure mounting, Kiowas adapted their ritual practices in the hope that they could use sacred power to save their lands and community.

Against the Kiowas stood Protestant and Catholic leaders, missionaries, and reformers who hoped to remake Indian Country. These activists saw themselves as the Indians' friends, teachers, and protectors. They also asserted the primacy of white Christian civilization and the need to transform the spiritual and material lives of Native people. When Kiowas and other Native people resisted their designs, these Christians supported policies that broke treaties and appropriated Indian lands. They argued that the gifts bestowed by Christianity and civilization outweighed the pains that accompanied the denial of freedoms, the destruction of communities, and the theft of resources. In order to secure Indian Country and control indigenous populations, Christian activists sanctified the economic and racial hierarchies of their day.

The Gods of Indian Country tells a complex, fascinating-and ultimately heartbreaking-tale of the struggle for the American West.

Genres: History, Religion

312 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2018

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a monograph steeped in original research with all the details of academic specialists, but still readable by those without specialized knowledge. I learned so much about how much those who called themselves friends of the Indians in the 19th century still ended up erasing much of their culture through their mission efforts. Placing religion and religious change at the center of how imperialism worked was genius. Gravers own expertise in the Kiowa nation allows specificity even if much of her arguments can be generalized to US relations with Indian nations in the 19th century. The photographs were amazing and the longevity of Native resistance was astonishing to me.

[Marin Sneed · Rating 2 out of 5]

VERY WELL RESEARCHED, I just don't have an interest in this topic.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating, excellent religious history of the fraught relationship between Anglo and Native Americans in the nineteenth century. It's particularly impressive for the way Graber finds a broad array of material things with which to tell the story of the Kiowas, providing a much fuller narrative that relies not just on the usual archives produced and controlled by White people. Graber uses artwork, calendars, and other materiality produced by Kiowas over the decades to give them a level of agency rarely seen in narratives of this type.

Graber also connects the struggles over Indian land and identity with similar racial projects targeting former slaves, Chinese immigrants, and Mormon polygamists during the same period – in some ways, all of them targets for assimilation or eradication based on religious and racial markers deemed inadequate by the dominant White Protestant culture. If anything, Graber could have been more explicit about the ways in which religion often stood in for, or even preceded, explicit racial hierarchies – and perhaps examined more thoroughly why, for example African Americans were subjected to a strict racial caste system that left little to no room for participation in the nation's civic institutions, while Native Americans were offered at least a small hope of such participation if they turned away from everything distinctive about their cultures.

Anyway, books of course can't contain all the things, so that might be a small complaint. In any event, this is excellent, if dense and depressing. But of course it's not without its moments of hope. The Kiowa survive, not least in stories like the ones Graber tells, if only historians are willing to look for them.

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

The clash of cultures is nothing new. It has taken place from high antiquity to the present. The Gods of Indian Country, by Jennifer Graber, is a monograph that considers the clash in religious outlooks between Christians and that of the Kiowa tribe of American Indians. It is a touch on the academic side—something that can be said of my own books—because writing a comprehensive history of Native American religion would be a massive enterprise and choices had to be made.

The book is laid out chronologically, discussing American missionaries to Indians, as well as the political actions taken to move eastern Indians to reservations, only to ship many of them back to Carlisle, Pennsylvania for assimilation (or death). This is a sad history, an uneven clash that still hasn’t been addressed adequately even now.

My blog post about the book (Sects and Violence in the Ancient World) focuses mainly on my own personal interest in the plight of the Indians and how it came about. Governments using religions for their own purposes did not begin with the courting of the Evangelicals by one political party. It has been with us since well before Columbus.

[Dan Gorman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful story of the Kiowa Indians' use of religion to preserve their culture in the face of U.S. colonialism. There are two "gods of Indian country" in this story — the God of the Catholic and Protestant missionaries, and traditional Kiowa beliefs (onto which American translators superimposed the phrase "Great Spirit" to make them sound more monotheistic). Graber's great contribution is to use non-textual sources. She explains how Kiowa calendars, drawings, shields, and other artwork can be interpreted as historical sources. Kiowas did not have a written language, but they used art to record history. The drawings of Zotam, a Kiowa man who was sent to a Florida military prison after the failed Red River rebellion, reveal a person making sense of his physical and cultural dislocation. Graber weaves together themes of Native American cultural evolution (not stasis, as many Americans imagined), incarceration, and rectification to show how the Kiowas adjusted their religion to interpret changing circumstances. The epilogue is abrupt, but Graber shows how the missionaries failed in their effort to eradicate Kiowa culture.

[Chad Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an outstanding contribution to the field of American religious history. Graber is a great writer -- this is enjoyable scholarly work to read. And her attention to multiple layers of the influence of religion in the interactions and conflicts between American expansionist activities and Native communities reflects a careful read of history. This book moves in two primary directions that are mutually informative -- outlining how white Americans interpreted their various Christian traditions to justify taking Native land and embarking on paternalistic missions to force Native assimilation; and showing how Native religious practices and understandings empowered and sustained acts of resistance and survival. In addition, Graber's deep analysis of Native visual culture for this assessment of religious activities is a welcome interdisciplinary approach to history.

This book enriched my understanding of American history and our diverse religious history as well.

[Henry · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought the book before a lecture the author gave at my university. I was unimpressed with the author’s lecture, her admitted lack of connection or collaboration with the Native American group her book is loosely organized around. I also found her answer towards being an ally for Native Americans in general lacking in deep understanding of their plight and history. The book itself is sharp jagged snapshots of the history of native Americans within the plains area. Without true center in on the story of one tribe’s journey, the author drifts from reference to reference without deep background or coherent story telling. An amateurish work of writing over too broad of topic without insight from the people who were persecuted. It’s not quite whitewashed scholarship in its neutral tone but close. It’s still filled with relevant facts to follow up on which is its only saving grace.

[Garret Shields · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book and impressive research, especially given the use of unusual primary sources from the Native Americans. The book made me want to meet the Kiowa tribe. I thought the argument regarding the subversive cultural violence of the more “peaceful” white Euro-Americans toward the various tribal nations was not only compelling, but extremely thought-provoking. And, while I didn’t love the extremes Graber went to in the Epilogue, I still liked the book. And, the best compliment I can give is that it made me ponder my own thoughts about persecution and cultural oppression.
DISSERTATION-One comment on religion being the barrier to full treatment as “citizens” by society; Good use of non-traditional primary sources (art, etc.)

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good, but a lot more just listing of historical facts and a lot less interesting analysis/information about Kiowas' spiritual practices than I would've liked.