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John Slocum and the Indian Shaker Church. By Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. xx, 300 pp. $34.95, ISBN 0-8061-2865-8.)
In November 1882, a Sahewamish-Squaxin native named John Slocum purportedly died and returned to life. This revelation at Skookum Bay on lower Puget Sound near Shelton, Washington, initiated a new faith that eventually spread to Oregon, Idaho, California, and British Columbia. The Indian Shaker Church, unrelated to earlier Christian Shakers, exists today, albeit in weakened condition.
Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown seek to explain Shaker origins, trace the church's growth and hardships, and assess its future. Their sympathetic, fair-minded history establishes the nineteenth-century historical and anthropological context and rests on extensive research.
Shakerism might be interpreted as a...