My concern in Native Americans and Christianity came from this recently created association between churches and Native people. I was interested by the information that the Christian churches, which almost smashed Native cultures, began to support and recognize the significance of Native lives and cultures. After the Apology, I started wondering about the degree of the friendly understanding between Native people and Christianity. Therefore, the study of history of Colonial America became a private expedition for me, and an examination of the places of Christianity and Native life. In Native Christian writings, and through the lens of postcolonial period, Christianity is offered as a means to survival and as a tool of adaptation, reflecting careful choices which do not essentially involve rejection of Native religion. Preceding the contact, Native people had their own civilizing and spiritual systems that maintained their physical and spiritual existence for centuries. Though, with the coming of European colonizers came the containment and prevention of traditional Native spiritual practices.
In an effort to “educate” the Indians, the colonizers wanted to challenge traditional ways of worship. Europeans confronted the authority of religious leaders and disqualified Native worship, penalizing and putting to prison those who sustained their customary ways. Religious organizations agreed, “that instruction in Christianity was basic in the teaching of Indian youth. To fit Indians for citizenship in a Christian Nation, it was very important that spiritual training precede or parallel the industrial and literary knowledge that was intended to organize pupils of the tribes for full contribution in white American Society”. Prejudiced colonial religious attitudes finally became included into the United States Government’s Indian policies. Euro-Americans powerfully believed that “to educate the Indian in the ways of civilized life was to protect him from death, not as an Indian, but as a human being. Facing such intolerant policies intended at destroying customary ways of worship, many Natives transformed into Christianity with full power, rejecting all that was Native. Others struggled to come to integrative conditions with the innovative religion.
The Essay on Integration Among Early American Settlers and Native Indians
The book The Unredeemed Captive is a story about the French-Indian raid on the small town of Deerfield Massachusetts. The raid is not a total surprise to the people of Deerfield, they find out a few days prior to the incident. They hear of towns east of them being attacked. The town of Deerfield did not feel that they were to be affected by the Indians. These few extra days to prepare for the “ ...
All the voices of these occupied Natives give a “hybrid” viewpoint, which includes ethnic and Christian direction. The degree of the integration of certain aspects of the dominant and retention of the cultures of the subjugated, however, vary from personal to individual and this is clearly verified in the different postcolonial texts..
