| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

James A. Sandos. Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions. (Western Americana Series.) New Haven: Yale University Press. 2004. Pp. xix, 251. $35.00.

In the wake of the controversy over the possible canonization of Junipero Serra, the Franciscan responsible for the founding of the first nine California missions, James A. Sandos reassesses the missionization of California Indians. Refusing to take either a "Christophilic Triumphalist" or a "Christophobic Nihilist" position, as he describes the pro-Franciscan and anti-Franciscan divisions that have marked scholarship over the last century, Sandos suggests a third alternative. He claims that "Indians and Franciscans together created mission culture" (p. 184), making irrelevant the question of who were the heroes and villains. Employing what he calls a "theohistoric" method of inquiry, along with ethnohistory, Sandos focuses attention on conversion in an effort to "put Gods, both Indian and Christian, at the core of this fundamentally religious struggle" (p. xviii). To that end, he traces the history of the Franciscan mission attempt to "transform Indians into new Catholic-Spanish people" (p. xviii) while also probing the competing Indian responses.

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