Based on the correspondence of missionaries in the field, this book offers valuable insight unto understanding Protestant attitudes toward the American Indians in the nineteenth century. By focusing upon the work of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., the book portrays a major Protestant denomination's evangelical program to take the Indian from heathenism to gospel light.

From its founding in 1837 the board sent over 450 missionaries to at least nineteen diverse and widely separated Indian tribes, with a goal of uplifting them into the Protestant...

From more than a hundred autobiographical accounts written by American Indians recalling their schooling in government and missionary institutions this book recovers a perspective that was almost lost.

In a system of pedagogy that was alien to their culture these and hundreds of others were wrested as youngsters from their tribal life and regimented to become American citizens. In the process of enlightening them to western codes and values, their memories of ethnic life were intentionally obscured for what was to believed to be the greater good of the nation.

Drawing upon these Native...

For centuries American Indians and the Irish experienced assaults by powerful, expanding states, along with massive land loss and population collapse. In the early nineteenth century the U.S. government, acting through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), began a systematic campaign to assimilate Indians. Initially dependent on Christian missionary societies, the BIA later built and ran its own day schools and boarding schools for Indian children. At the same time, the British government established a nationwide elementary school system in Ireland, overseen by the commissioners of national...