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TINKER, GEORGE E. MISSIONARY CONQUEST: THE GOSPEL AND NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURAL GENOCIDE. MINNEAPOLIS: AUGSBURG FORTRESS, PUBLISHERS, 1993. IX + 182 PP., NOTES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, INDEX.
The 500th anniversary of Columbus's "discovery of the New World" has produced a flurry of popular and academic interest in the nature of the conquest of Native American peoples by Europeans. Centered on the place of aboriginal people in contemporary society, many have lamented this continuing conquest, not the least as it occurs in the annals of history. It is in this context that George Tinker's Missionary Conquest must be received. He attempts to expose the history and perhaps even the historiography of conquest by examining the role played by Christian churches in the cultural genocide of Native Americans.
Focusing on four individuals, Tinker calls attention to the way missionaries have been romanticized in much of historical literature. His condemnation of them-indeed, of the American past generally-is both a strength and a weakness of the book. It is a strength because it confronts the myth of white cultural superiority and its resulting legacy of dysfunctionality for many Native communities. It is a weakness, however, for, in laying blame, Tinker often sacrifices historical relativism and ultimately Native people are portrayed as passive victims.
The thesis of the book argues that European missionaries actively participated in the cultural genocide of Native Americans. Tinker looks at the mission careers of John Eliot, a seventeenth century Puritan missionary to the Native peoples of Massachusetts; Junipero Serra, a Spanish Franciscan who was canonized for his missionwork to eighteenth century Native Californians; Pierre-Jean de Smet, a Jesuit missionary in the Oregon Territory; and Henry Benjamin Whipple, the first Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota. Tinker finds that these individuals sacrificed the message of Christian salvation...