Brokers of Culture: Italian Jesuits in the American West, 1848-1919 (review)

2??8Book Reviews355 and process operate in practice in a wider social, economic, and political context. Despite these limitations, I enjoyed GettingAway with Murder. It certainly reminds us that what counts as justice was as negotiated in late-nineteenth-century West Texas as it is today. California State University Monterey BayDavid A. Reichard Brokers ofCulture: ItalianJesuits in tL·American West, 1848-içiç. By Gerald McKevitt. (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006. Pp. 448. Illustrations, notes, glossary, index. ISBN 0804753571. $60.00, clodi.) "Whether [San Francisco] should be called a villa, a brothel, or Babylon, I am at a loss to determine," wrote Jesuit missionary Michele Accolti during his labors in California during the mid-nineteenth century (p. 116). His disapproval of the city notwithstanding, Accolti gained a reputation for his tireless work among San Francisco's disparate communities. A Protestant minister recalled: Wheuier it was a dying foreigner in the sandhills, a young man without money hunting for work, a poor widow bewildered and helpless in her grief, a woman with a drunken husband and a house full ofhungry children, a prisoner in diejail, or a sick man in the hospital, Father Accolti's hand was sure to be found in anyscheme ofrelief. (O. P. Fitzgerald, CaliforniaSketches, 1880, p. 148). Father Accolti was one of several hundred Italian Jesuits who evangelized in the American West following their expulsion from Italy in 1848. Gerald McKevitt's impressive Brokers ofCulture chronicles theirjourneys, analyzes their achievements, and demonstrates their influence as missionaries, educators, and cultural mediators in a region considered especially godless by residents and historians alike. Based on extensive archival research in Rome, Turin, Naples, London, and throughout the United States, Brokers ofCulture follows members of the Society of Jesus from Italy to New York City to the diverse landscapes of the American West. Interweaving Italian Jesuits' correspondence and diary entries with published sources, McKevitt shows the impact missionaries made on the Westwhile documenting their hopes, frustrations, and cultural biases. In the Rocky Mountain Mission district,Jesuits ministered to the Native American groups ofdie Pacific Northwest, teaching English and Catholicism in accordance with a European model. In the SouthwestMission district, which included NewMexico, Colorado, and Texas,Jesuits batded against die encroachment ofProtestantism by constandy traveling between Hispanic hamlets. "Almost all week, I am out galloping from village to village in order to preach, say mass, administer die sacraments," noted Pasquale Tomassini in New Mexico in 1871 (p. 188). In addition to running boarding schools for various Indian groups,Jesuits founded colleges in New Mexico, Colorado, California, and Washington diat are still prominent today. In the book's final two chapters, McKevitt examines the divisions that arose amongJesuits as Roman Catholicism became Americanized in the late nineteendi century. Throughout, McKevitt emphasizes how Italian Jesuits were "readied by bodi nationality and religious tradition" to "facilitate cultural bridge-building" in die West 356Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJanuary (p. 2-3) . Like Michele Accolti in San Franciscojesuits moved between western communities , interactingwith Indians, Hispanics, and European immigrants in schools, parishes, and districts. McKevitt shows howJesuits' foreign nationalities helped them win the trust ofmarginalized groups mistrustful ofProtestantAmerica. At the same time,Jesuits' unfamiliarity with the West's religious plurality tended to make them "polemical and adversarial" toward Protestants (p. 239). In the Southwest,Jesuits mediated between Anglo culture and californio, tejano, and nuevomexicano cultures even as diey propagated a proudly Old World Catholicism. With its important themes of transnationalism and religious accommodation , Brokers of Culture deserves a wider reading audience than it will likely find. Its abundance of detail and slow start—ninety pages pass before McKevitt turns his attention to the actual West—may hinder its attractiveness to nonspecialists of Catholic history. However, the book's coundess stories of individualJesuits, placed as they are widiin a broader international context, reward the patient reader with a new understanding ofa largely misunderstood and ignored religious subculture that left an enduring mark on die American West. University ofCalifornia, Los AngelesJoshua Paddison Jewish Roots in Southern Soil:A NewHistory. Edited by Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg. (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2006. Pp. 384. Illustrations , notes, index. ISBN 1584655887. $65.00, cloth. ISBN 1584655895. $29.95, paper.) Because...