Unaffected by the Gospel: Osage Resistance to the Christian Invasion, 1673-1906: A Cultural Victory (review)

What benefits is a religion supposed to provide? The nineteenth-century Osage Indians of the southern prairie-plains expected tangible things: plenty of buffalo, large corn harvests, success in war, healthy families. Their religion was concerned with the here and now and not so much with the soul and its afterlife. And up to the 1820's, it seemed to work well for the Osages. So well that when Protestant and Catholic missionaries arrived among them, their message fell on stony ground. Willard Hughes Rollings, an associate professor of history at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, argues that the Osages found that Christianity, as these missionaries taught it, did not provide the benefits they expected. So they ignored it and instead maintained a distinctly Osage set of beliefs.

The first intensive Osage missionary effort came in 1820 with the Protestant United Foreign Missionary Society (USFM). Hoping for schools, manufactured goods, food, and protection, the Osages initially welcomed the missionaries. But when these items failed to materialize the Osages lost interest. Even worse, this flinty New England Protestantism was just too alien. It possessed little imagery. And dry sermons that told the Osages they were a degraded people who should give up their Indian culture did little to attract them. Instead, the Osages remained satisfied with their own communitarian ways and were unwilling to become entrepreneurial small farmers. In 1837, the Protestants, with few if any converts, threw up their hands in failure.

During the 1840's, the Jesuits also began missionary work among the Osages in southern Kansas. The pageantry of Catholic Mass and communion, supported by the crucifix, the chalice, and the censer, all appealed to the Osages. With its saints and rituals, Catholicism seemed somewhat similar to their own religion. And while there did seem to be more Osage conversions by the Catholics than by the Protestants, the tangibles were equally lacking.

Rollings sees the Catholics as unsuccessful as the Protestants. Most Catholic converts were métis, the children of French creole traders and Osage women. And it was these who filled Catholic schools and missions, rather than full-blood Osages. Soon the Jesuits were spending all their time ministering to the métis. And when the last Osages were moved to Indian Territory in the early 1870's, the Catholics did not follow, but remained with their métis congregation.

Down on an Oklahoma reservation, hemmed in by government regulations and modern society, Osage religion changed as some rituals disappeared while others took on a new importance. Nevertheless, by the early twentieth century, Osage beliefs remained powerful, as seen in the rise of the Peyote Road of the Native American Church. Shrugging off both Catholicism and Protestantism, the Osages created and maintained a religion that fit them and their needs.

Rollings has produced a thoughtful work. While these missionaries may have failed, Christianity itself did not. If anything, it gave the Osages more choices. Today there are plenty of Osages who attend a powwow on Saturday night and then show up for church on Sunday. It's an Osage way. And that's really what Rollings is arguing.