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Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown. John Slocum and the Indian Shaker Church. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1996. 300 + xx pp. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth, $34.95.
In November 1882, John Slocum (Squ-sacht-un) lay near death on Skookum Bay on upper Puget Sound. The soul of the forty-year-old Sahewamish logger traveled to heaven, where angels chastised Slocum for his dissolute behavior and showed him a new way to live and worship as a Christian Indian. After he recovered from this serious illness, Slocum reformed his own life and embarked on a mission to transform the lives of others. The Indian Shaker Church he created spread to Indian communities in the northwestern United States and to southern British Columbia. Shakers took their name from curing ceremonies in which church healers received the power of the good spirit and shook to restore the spiritual health of their patients.
In John Slocum and the Indian Shaker Church, Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown, longtime partners in the study of Northwestern Indian history, offer a narrative of the Indian Shaker Movement from its genesis to the 1990s. The authors show that Slocum and his...