Perishing Heathens: Stories of Protestant Missionaries and Christian Indians in Antebellum America (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781496201874)

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 m騁is 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.


Author: Julius H. Rubin
ISBN-10: 1496201876
ISBN-13: 9781496201874
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Language: English
Published: 10/01/2017
Pages: 276
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.23lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.75d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 03/01/2018