William Clark: Indian Diplomat by Jay H. Buckley (review)

BOOK REVIEWS lose members to other churches or to apathy. The church's response to these dangers was not to accommodate frontier conditions but rather to establish a traditional, hierarchical Catholicism. Slowly but surely,priests brought their parishioners in line while bishops similarly strengthened their control over the priests. Although Dichtl does not discuss the fact that many priests in the West were refugees of the French Revolution, that too surely shaped their reaction to attempts to republicanize the church. As a result, it was not an An»] ericanized Catholic church that flourished in the West but rather a transplanted European church. Dichtl's second major theme is that Catholicism' s spread in the T/ Vest came about largely because of assistance from nonCatholics . Although most historians have assumed that animosity dominated CatholicProtestant relations throughout American history, a few have pointed to incidents of cooperation, especially in the years immediately after the Revolution. But Dichtl' s work makes an important contribution in documenting the forms of this cooperationnon Catholics helping to build Catholic churches, attending Mass, and sending their children to Catholic schoolsand in demonstrating that it was not simply a product ofpostRevolutionary euphoria but a trend that continued for almost half a century. This point becomes especially intriguing in light of his argument about clerical dominance of the church. As he demonstrates , church leaders made virtually every decision with nonCatholic opinion in mind. Nonetheless, they refused to adapt to nonCatholic tastes and instead flaunted their distinctiveness through architecture, processions, polemics, and an unabashedly antidemocratic ecclesiology. Because Dichtl focuses on the Catholic viewpoint, he offers only a few examples to explain why so m.any nonCatholics supported the church. Similarly,he maintains that antiCatholicism swelled in the 18305 and offers some compelling hypotheses but little evidence to explain why. Such questions lie outside the bounds of his study. Dichtl's work is thoroughly researched and meticulously documented, but he employs enough anecdotes of fiery priests, recalcitrant laymen, and saintly ( and notso saintly )bishops to give his narr·ative a lively pace. His work contains only one serious omission. Despite his focus on church leaders, he has surprisingly little to say about Catholic women religious. The sisters who played such an important role in Catholic institutionbuildinir and who often served as the point of contact between Catholics and nonCatholics receive only a few pages of discussion. Dichtl's analysis of their contribution is limited to their educational work and he seems to view them simply as agents of male church leaders. Priests and bishops indeed treated the sisters as such, but iii reality the relationship was far more complicated , with women religious often claiming significant autonomy and authority. Dichtl concludes that " good feelings between Protestants and Catholics from the 1780s to the 1830s were ephemeral and did little to change either group" ( 180).By 1830 Catholicism in the West was little different from that of Europe and Protestant attitudes towards Catholics differed little from the days of the Reformation. But whether or not there was permanent change, Dichtl's story is an important one for understanding h·alf a century of history,both of Catholicism in America and of the early West. Andrew Stern Southern Catholic College Jay H. Buckley. William Clark:Indian Diplomat. Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 2008. 320 pp. ISBN: 9780806139111 cloth), $ 29.95. With bookshelves groaning under the load of Lewis and Clark books spawned by the bicentennial of that great venture, one must FALL 2008 75 BOOK REVIEWS ask whether room exists for yet another book about William Clark. In this instance the answer is a resounding yes. Given that Clark has been the subject of two recent biographies, this reviewer s Wilderness Journey: ' I? Je Life of William Clark and Landon Jones's William Clark and tbe Sbaping of tbe West,Jay Buckley chose another path and opted to make Clark' s lifelong associations with Indians and his thirtyyear career as an Indian diplomat the book' s primary focus. Historians have long struggled to sort through the contradictory impulses that shaped Clark's dealings with Native Americans. Some view him as a poster child for ethnic cleansing even as others point to his friendships with Indian...