| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Noble, Wretched, & Redeemable: Protestant Missionaries to the Indians in Canada and the United States, 1820–1900. By C. L. Higham. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000. viii, 283 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-8263-2165-8.)

The title suggests that this book concerns missionaries who were "noble, wretched, and redeemable." In fact, these adjectives characterize the major ways Protestant missionaries described Indians to non-Native audiences. Based on extensive original research, the book adds much "to the literature on stereotype creation." 1

The image of the noble savage initially inspired Protestant missionary societies to send missionaries westward to convert and to civilize Indians. But by midcentury missionaries confronted a new political order. "The Canadian frontier began to function like the American one," promoting forced assimilation or removal of Indians. The Hudson's Bay Company gave way to the North-West Mounted Police, and U.S. policy turned toward "war against everything Indian." In response, missionaries repositioned themselves as agents of pacification among peoples depicted as wretched, bloodthirsty, and cannibalistic. . . .

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