Native Americans and Christianity

Presbyterian missionary Kate McBeth and her Nez Perce Students

When European settlers started coming to the New World, they brought with them Christianity. The native peoples they encountered, however, already had their own religions. Christianity was very different from the religions of the Natives. Native religions were tied to the land; beliefs and practices were centered around the plants, animals, climate, and landscape of each specific region. This was very different from Christianity, a “portable” religion, which could be practiced by anyone, anywhere (Martin, 16).

The Native Americans had varied reactions to their exposure to Christianity; some embraced it, finding Christianity more fulfilling than their native religion. As Piumbukhou, a converted Indian, said in a  dialogue, "Our joys in the knowledge of God, and of Jesus Christ, which we are taught in the Book of God, and feel in our heart, is sweeter to our soul, than honey is unto the mouth and taste" (Eliot).

Some Indians even went so far as to become Christian missionaries. Catharine Brown was a Cherokee Indian who was raised in a Christian boarding school. She left her family, who didn't understand her passion for Christianity, so that she could stay with the missionaries she lived with there, and became a teacher and missionary, eventually converting many Native Americans including her family members (Martin, 67-68).



Enmegahbowh, the first Native American Episcopal priest.

Other Native Americans were forced to convert to Christianity, or converted for the economic and social benefits that Christianity allowed. They were sometimes even threatened with the death sentence for not accepting Christianity (Zimmerman & Molyneaux, 26).

Yet many Indians, however, rejected Christianity for their Native beliefs. In Zitkala-Sa's article "Why I Am a Pagan," published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1992, she writes about her experience with a Native Christian preacher: "I listen with respect for God's creature, though he mouths most strangely the jangling phrases of a bigoted creed" (Seelye & Littleton, 407).


Bibliography
Eliot, John. A Dialogue Between Piumbukhou and His Unconverted Relatives. 1671.

Martin, Joel W. Native American Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Presbyterian Missionary Kate McBeth and Nez Perce Students. Digital image. Canton Asylum For Insane Indians. N.p., 8 July 2012. Web. 28 May 2014. <cantonasylumforinsaneindians.com>.
Enmegabowh. Digital image. For All the Saints. N.p., 12 June 2013. Web. 27 May 2014. <http://forallsaints.wordpress.com/>

Seelye, James E., and Steven A. Littleton. Voices of the American Indian Experience. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood, 2013.

Zimmerman, Larry J., and Brian L. Molyneaux. Native North America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000.