The solidarity of kin : ethnohistory, religious studies, and the Algonkian-French religious encounter / Kenneth M. Morrison.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Morrison, Kenneth M.

Series:

SUNY series in Native American religions

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jesuits.

Algonquian Indians--Religion.

Algonquian Indians.

Algonquian Indians--Missions.

Syncretism (Religion).

Jesuits--Missions--Canada.

Jesuits--Missions--New England.

Missions.

New England.

Canada.

Physical Description:

x, 243 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [2002]

Summary:

Arguing that Native Americans' religious life and history have been misinterpreted, author Kenneth M. Morrison reconstructs the Eastern Algonkians' world views and demonstrates the indigenous modes of rationality that shaped not only their encounter with the French but also their self-directed process of religious change. In reassessing controversial anthropological, historical, and ethnohistorical scholarship, Morrison develops interpretive strategies that are more responsive to the religious world views of the Eastern Algonkian peoples. He concludes that the Eastern Algonkians did not convert to Catholicism, but rather applied traditional knowledge and values to achieve a pragmatic and critical sense of Christianity and to preserve and extend kinship solidarity into the future. The result was a remarkable intersection of Eastern Algonkian and missionary cosmologies.

Contents:

Introduction: Making Sense

Religious Studies and Ethnohistory 1

1. The Study of Algonkian Religious Life: The Methodological Impasse 17

2. Beyond the Supernatural and to a Dialogical Cosmology 37

3. Toward a History of Intimate Encounters: Algonkian Folklore, Jesuit Missionaries, and Kiwakwe, the Cannibal Giant 59

4. The Mythological Sources of Wabanaki Catholicism: A Case Study of the Social History of Power 79

5. Discourse and the Accommodation of Values: Toward a Revision of Mission History 103

6. Montagnais Missionization in Early New France: The Syncretic Imperative 115

7. Baptism and Alliance: The Symbolic Mediations of Religious Syncretism 131

8. The Solidarity of Kin: The Intersection of Eastern Algonkian and French-Catholic Cosmologies 147.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-229) and index.

ISBN:

0791454053

0791454061

OCLC:

47717969