| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Kenneth M. Morrison. The Solidarity of Kin: Ethnohistory, Religious Studies, and the Algonkian-French Religious Encounter. (SUNY Series in Native American Religions.) Albany: State University of New York Press. 2002. Pp. x, 243. Cloth $65.50, paper $21.95.

This collection of essays, written over an extended number of years, explores Catholic missionary relations with several northeastern Algonkian peoples during the seventeenth century with the aim of arriving at a cross-cultural understanding of their history and giving due weight to the Indian side of the story. Kenneth M. Morrison holds that scholars, not understanding Amerindian religious life and judging it by non-Indian standards, have not appreciated that it had "a relational, pragmatic character all its own" (p. 31), and have consequently long misrepresented it in their histories. He argues that Amerindians, aware that missionary teachings were challenging their identity and social solidarity, turned to their own traditions and rituals for guidance in assessing Christian claims. He sees it as inappropriate to classify the changes they accepted as "conversions," as some traditions (defined as "a dynamic consensus about reality" [p. 6]) were retained and are still followed. Using folklore as an example, he cites the continuing presence of the mythic Gluskap, even as the tales also reveal a gradual, but not uniform, adaptation to Christianity. He sees the "explosion of uncertainty" (p. 4) created by the Christian message as leading to deep rifts in Algonkian societies, whose collective goal had traditionally been kinship solidarity.

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