Histories of missions to American Indian communities usually tell a sad and predictable story about the destructive impact of missionary work on Native culture and religion. Many historians conclude that American Indian tribes who have maintained a cultural identity have done so only because missionaries were unable to destroy it. In Creating Christian Indians, Bonnie Sue Lewis relates how the Nez Perce and the Dakota Indians became Presbyterians yet incorporated Native culture and tradition into their new Christian identities.

Lewis focuses on the rise of Native clergy and their forging of Christian communities based on American Indian values and notions of kinship and leadership. Originally, mission work among the Nez Perces and Dakotas revolved around white missionaries, but Christianity truly took root in nineteenth-century American Indian communities with the ordination of Indian clergy. Native pastors saw in Christianity a universal message of hope and empowerment. Educated and trained within their own communities, Native ministers were able to preach in their own languages. They often acted as cultural brokers between Indian and white societies, shaping Native Presbyterianism and becoming recognized leaders in both tribal and Presbyterian circles.

In 1865 the Presbyterian Church ordained John B. Renville as the first Dakota Indian minister, and in 1879 Robert Williams became the first ordained Nez Perce. By 1930, nearly forty Dakotas, sixteen Nez Perces, a Spokane, and a Makah had been ordained. Lewis has mined church and archival records, including letters from Native ministers, to reveal ways in which early Indian pastors left a heritage of committed Presbyterian congregations and a vibrant spiritual legacy among their descendants.

Bonnie Sue Lewis is Assistant Professor of Mission and Native American Christianity at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary in Iowa.

Histories of missions to American Indian communities usually tell a sad and predictable story about the destructive impact of missionary work on Native culture and religion. Many historians conclude that American Indian tribes who have maintained a cultural identity have done so only because missionaries were unable to destroy it. In Creating Christian Indians, Bonnie Sue Lewis relates how the Nez Perce and the Dakota Indians became Presbyterians yet incorporated Native culture and tradition into their new Christian identities. Lewis focuses on the rise of Native clergy and their forging of Christian communities based on American Indian values and notions of kinship and leadership. Originally, mission work among the Nez Perces and Dakotas revolved around white missionaries, but Christianity truly took root in nineteenth-century American Indian communities with the ordination of Indian clergy. Native pastors saw in Christianity a universal message of hope and empowerment. Educated and trained within their own communities, Native ministers were able to preach in their own languages. They often acted as cultural brokers between Indian and white societies, shaping Native Presbyterianism and becoming recognized leaders in both tribal and Presbyterian circles. In 1865 the Presbyterian Church ordained John B. Renville as the first Dakota Indian minister, and in 1879 Robert Williams became the first ordained Nez Perce. By 1930, nearly forty Dakotas, sixteen Nez Perces, a Spokane, and a Makah had been ordained. Lewis has mined church and archival records, including letters from Native ministers, to reveal ways in which early Indian pastors left a heritage of committed Presbyterian congregations and a vibrant spiritual legacy among their descendants. Bonnie Sue Lewis is Assistant Professor of Mission and Native American Christianity at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary in Iowa.

This book is a collection of eleven essays about the practice of mission. The first section, titled "Feet First," is about the way in which Christian practices, many of them taken for granted, shape mission. The next section deals with the issue of transformation in mission work and the related concerns of mutuality, solidarity, and marginality. The third section takes up the situation of the relation of Christianity to other religions. Finally, the last four essays take up spirituality as an inward and outward event, doing mission in the context of North America, and finally the development of a new theological identity based on the image of God as a missionary God.

Four newlywed couples, along with one single man, were sent to Oregon in 1838 to reinforce the two-year-old mission established by Marcus Whitman and Henry Spalding. These reinforcements were to become legendary in the history of the Pacific Northwest for the incessant bickering and petty jealousies that eventually caused the deaths of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and forced the abandonment of the mission effort. Uncertainty and conflict as well as willpower and endurance mark the story of the Oregon Mission and its charismatic, though contentious, missionaries. Simply getting to Oregon in the 1830s was a feat. Once they arrived, their efforts were doomed by their inability to agree on strategies for converting the Nez Perce and Spokane Indians. This Bison Books edition contains the very personal diary of Sarah Smith, "the weeping one" as the Indians remembered her. When read in chronological sequence with the nearly one hundred letters written by her husband, Asa, a compelling picture of their journey to Oregon and subsequent life at the mission emerges. Other letters, documents, and biographical sketches enhance the volume.