The Paths of Kateri's Kin by Christopher Vecsey (review)

104BOOK REVIEWS Unlike the missions of California and Paraguay,Florida missions were not economic enterprises dominated by friars, nor were Spanish settlers numerous enough to overwhelm their hosts. The Apalachee Indians and Mission San Luis unequivocally shows that on the strategic frontier of Florida, native cultures retained their vitality and chiefs their power. Amy Turner Bushnell College ofCharleston The Paths ofKateri's Kin. By Christopher Vecsey. [American Indian Catholics, Volume IL] (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 1997. Pp. xvi, 392.) This is the second component of a planned trilogy with the overall title, American Indian Catholics. It is, severally and collectively, an outstanding contribution to scholarship that will set new standards in the field for quite some time to come. The first installment was On the Padres'Trail, a study of Spanish Catholicism among Native Americans, and this second contribution surveys French activities in a similar context. One anticipates the third volume as covering English efforts, thus regarding the entire oeuvre as fruit borne from seeds planted a generation earlier (1965) byJohn Tracy Ellis in Catholics in Colonial America. The author informs readers (p. xi) that his primary interest is in the twentieth-century practice of Indian Catholicism, understanding the particular forms of Catholic life that have derived from within native experiences. While today's practices may be the ultimate focus, every reader of this journal knows that a firm grasp of prior history is essential to reaching present times, and author Vecsey provides materials in abundance for this grasp. His researches in the United States and Canadian locations (in this volume, United States and Mexican in the previous one) afford a wealth of detail to show how Indians "have adopted Catholic forms, adapting them to their own culture and at the same time modulating themselves to the demands of their new religious complex ." We gain a better sense of this book's scope by applying various classifications . Geographically, we visit locations on the Atlantic shoreline in Nova Scotia and Maine, then move westward through the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi to Louisiana, concluding eventually in Oregon and Washington on the Pacific seacoast. Active missionaries are predominantly Jesuits, though other participants include Recollets, Capuchins, Sulpicians, Hospitaliers, Ursulines, Oblates, and secular clergy. Missionaries with European origins other than French came principally from Belgium, Italy, and Germany. Among the native groups studied here in gratifying detail are the Hurons of Quebec Province,Algonkians of New England, the Ojibways, Ottawas, and Potawatomis of the central Great Lakes region, the Houmas of Louisiana, and the Flatheads, Blackfeet, BOOK REVIEWS105 and Salish of the Rockies and beyond. Kateri Tekakwitha serves as a thematic figure for all these peoples. As a seventeenth-century convert, half Mohawk and half Algonkian, she epitomized two-part cultural identity. As one pronounced blessed,June 22, 1980, she offers hope and inspiration to all of us but perhaps especially to Native American Catholics. This splendid work has been a long time in coming. The wait was well worth it. In partial explanation ofwhat lies behind its production, it thanks eighty-five different people for their help and specifies eleven archives that provided aid to the author. Its bibliography covers both primary and secondary sources in helpful detail. The text is richly descriptive and fair in its analysis. The scope is ambitious ; the narrative unfolds at a persistent pace, and the unifying theme of Indian-Catholic synthesis recurs with instructive regularity. On a final note, this reviewer finds himself corrected at several places in the present publication and is happy to acknowledge the fact. Vecsey's study furnishes more information , presents it from a more nuanced perspective, and supersedes all previous contributions in this genre. It moves us to a new plateau of missions scholarship , improving on past efforts and thus eliciting better ones to come. Henry Warner Bowden Rutgers University Houses of God: Region, Religion, and Architecture in the United States. By PeterWWilliams. [Public Expressions ofReligion in America.] (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 1997. Pp. xix, 321. $34.95.) Construction, modification, closure, and demolition of Roman Catholic churches are topics of heated debate among and between the nation's clergy, laity, design professionals, and preservationists...