cover image GODS OF WAR, GODS OF PEACE: How the Meeting of Native and Colonial Religions Shaped Early America

GODS OF WAR, GODS OF PEACE: How the Meeting of Native and Colonial Religions Shaped Early America

Russell Bourne, Bourne, . . Harcourt, $28 (448pp) ISBN 978-0-15-100501-7

In 1802, Thomas Jefferson praised Handsome Lake, a Seneca prophet, for preaching moral reform among the Iroquois people; Handsome Lake, he said, was "favored by the Divine spirit," and would be instrumental in creating harmony between new Americans and Native Americans. Yet, as historian Bourne (Floating West: The Erie and Other American Canals) points out, such harmony was never to be. With dexterity and eloquence, Bourne weaves his considerable research into a compelling narrative of the ways in which Native American religions both meshed and clashed with those of the settlers. More than any other historian of this period, Bourne demonstrates the vitality of Native American belief systems: their ethics of individual and communal behavior, social and gender codes, and deep faith in the divine. As he traces the complicated and often bloody relations between such disparate religious and cultural communities, he points to the teachings of missionaries such as John Eliot, who tried to accept the Native Americans on their own religious terms even as he tried to convert them to Christianity, and the attempts of many of the native leaders, such as Pequot William Apess, to incorporate Christianity into their own beliefs in a rich synthesis. It was, he writes, a time when the two "religions shuddered, gave good for good and bad for bad, and changed in order to survive." By the early 19th century, however, hopes for religious and cultural accord were dashed by the acquisitiveness of the settlers, who thought little of forcing Native Americans from their lands in the name of God and Manifest Destiny. Bourne's excellent book tells a powerful tale of how two deeply religious cultures failed to achieve harmony, but "were battered into becoming Americans of unceasingly, creatively interacting beliefs." 8 pages of b&w photos, maps not seen by PW. (Apr.)