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Ethnohistory 47.3-4 (2000) 823-825



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Book Review

Battle for the Soul:
Métis Children Encounter Evangelical Protestants at Mackinaw Mission, 1823–1837


Battle for the Soul: Métis Children Encounter Evangelical Protestants at Mackinaw Mission, 1823–1837. By Keith R. Widder. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1999. xxiv + 220 pp., preface, maps, tables, bibliography, appendixes, index. $24.95 paper.)

In Battle for the Soul, Keith R. Widder, the former longtime curator of history for the Mackinac State Historic Parks, aims to contribute to the history of evangelical Protestantism in the United States and its impact on Native–Euro-American relations. The author hits the mark in his endeavor to determine how Protestant missionaries related to the multiethnic society at Mackinac and to outline their role as agents of Americanization. He is less successful on issues of intercultural relations and métis and Native history.

Drawing on Richard White’s (1991) concept of “the middle ground,” Widder argues that for a brief time evangelical Protestant missionaries and their charges at the Mackinaw mission negotiated an agreement that allowed them to “live compatibly together” (xvi). The foundations of this middle ground were shared (largely European) sociocultural values, the most significant being the nuclear family. As Widder represents Great Lakes métis society, the children hailed from communities “where the nuclear family occupied a central place,” which made the “organization of the mission as a family understandable to both the children and adults” (103). At the end of their residence at Mackinac, however, the missionaries had converted only a few Native adults and métis students. The middle ground became unraveled in the late 1830s as a result of the missionaries’ inability to articulate an inclusive vision for the métis in American society and the students’ own resistance to missionization.

Battle for the Soul succeeds best where Widder discusses the experiences of the evangelical Protestant missionaries. Chapter 2 provides an engaging analysis of the mentalities, religious convictions, and familial backgrounds of the Anglo-Americans who ventured to Mackinac. Widder also successfully delineates the connection between this particular story and the historical significance of evangelical movements in nineteenth-century America, most notably their central place in western expansion. In perhaps [End Page 823] the strongest portion of the book, chapter 4, Widder chronicles individual conversion experiences and the dramatic 1831 confrontation between Rev. William Terry and the newly arrived Catholic priest, Father Samuel Mazzuchelli. These individual and community stories detail the stresses and internal divisions that faced the multiethnic settlement at Mackinac, while also pointing to the complex role of Catholicism in challenging Anglo-Protestant colonization of French-Indian communities.

When Widder moves to discuss intercultural relations at Mackinac, his analysis falters because of his uncritical use of White’s “middle ground” theory. Widder insists that centuries of acculturation had prepared métis children for their encounter with American missionaries. In describing the missionaries’ mentality, however, he clearly shows that they dismissed Indian cultures and that they ardently desired to change their charges into evangelical Protestants. Upon the children’s arrival, the missionaries forced the children to wash, don new clothing, and speak English. Widder admits that mortality rates were high and that disciplinary problems existed because of the language barrier. Given these observations, one might glean an alternative interpretation. Perhaps life at Mackinaw mission was a harrowing experience for métis children, where they faced missionary efforts to strip them of their religious and cultural identity, and where they may have felt isolation and loneliness, seeking connections with other métis children, not the English-speaking newcomers.

In addition to the salient weakness in Widder’s theoretical framework, Battle for the Soul contains troubling factual errors and a tendency to simplify complex historical realities. When describing the fur trade society at Mackinac, Widder writes “the French could still be French” (2). By the eighteenth century, however, native-born French speakers from Canada called themselves “Canadiens,” not “Français.” Widder insists that the Great Lakes métis were a distinct ethnic group, yet he largely...

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