In the early 1830s, physician, scientist, and neophyte missionary Jean Louis Berlandier watched as his friend, an unnamed Kickapoo Indian, lay dying. The Kickapoo gave off a fierce appearance in his dress, paint, and bearing; he was a skilled hunter; he had once exacted terrible revenge against his estranged wife and her lover. But the Kickapoo had grown tired of his indigenous religion, which had allowed him to justify murderous vengeance; he had given up those ways where “once offended” by treachery, he believed his soul “to be defiled” and sought “at any cost and at every moment to destroy those who” had injured him. Guilt engendered by a growing knowledge of Christianity and the behavior and teachings of his friend Berlandier convinced the Kickapoo to repent and to embrace. How long he believed in Christ’s redemption before he accepted baptism is not recorded; perhaps he had been coming to the belief for some time; perhaps it occurred when he realized the nearness of death. The Kickapoo had been under Berlandier’s care, indeed had resided in the physician’s house, when Berlandier encouraged his mortally ill friend to be baptized. The Kickapoo consented, and Berlandier sent for a Catholic priest, then watched as his friend “rejoiced at the sight of the priest” who was to administer the sacrament. Berlandier, who was not a proselytizer, recorded what he observed: a former “savage” of the plains had willingly accepted the sacrament that would cleanse his sins and mark him as Christ’s own. Missionaries and other commentators before, during, and after this time tended to explain Indian embracement of Christianity as superficial, even inspired by mercenary reasons. The Kickapoo, however, believed that he had nothing to gain from baptism but his eternal soul. Berlandier observed his dying friend to “invoke the Most High” when the priest sprinkled the holy water upon his head. The invocation was “in his own way,” in his own language and according to the beliefs of his youth, “indicating the sky as His place of residence.” The astonishment and change in belief that the Kickapoo experienced was an act of accommodating new beliefs with the old; the new supplants, but does not eradicate, the teachings of youth and experiences of a lifetime. Like many Christians before and since, the Kickapoo embraced Christianity while not completely abandoning his previous indigenous beliefs.
Recent scholarship on the Christian experience of indigenous peoples has questioned whether or not conversion is an accurate, sufficiently descriptive concept of what happens when a person puts aside traditional to embrace new beliefs. Conversion implies an ethnocentric view that describes the Christian experience of the Western Tradition—but does it describe the experience of indigenous peoples as well? Scholarly emphasis has been upon the synchronistic experience of indigenous religious change. Indeed, religious change from one belief to another is neither static nor isolated, but partakes of experiences over time and in particular places. At the same time, to focus so minutely on the particular that the universal is abandoned or simply not seen does not advance thought and understanding of human religiosity. In any culture during any time individuals feel an overwhelming need for completion, sense a pull from a transcendent other, what Rudolph Otto called the numinous, which the individual seeks, senses, reaches out for, receives, and accepts.
Historical accounts of missionary activities in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century North America often provide narratives of indigenous peoples embracing Christian beliefs, usually as recorded by the missionary. The most common are accounts by missionaries who assumed that the convert was little better than a savage who, because of the efforts of the missionary, had embraced Christianity as well as civilization. An example is Jedidiah Morse, a New England missionary to the Iroquois and Algonquians of upstate New York, the Great Lakes Region, and Ontario, who assumed that indigenous peoples lived in a primitive state and needed to be civilized and Christianized. Missionaries who provided an empathetic portrait of conversion with no apparent bias are found less often in historical documents. Many missionaries had genuinely benevolent souls and acted in love toward indigenous people who were friends rather than objects. Jeremy Belknap, who ministered to the Indians of the upper Connecticut valley and upper New York, and who was a colleague with Morse in the Scots Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, empathized with these people whom he considered to be human, no better and no worse than himself, even if their society, culture, and technology were more primitive.
More rare are accounts of religious change penned by the indigenous convert or dictated by the convert to an accurate transcriber or translator. Examples include autobiographical accounts of religious change, such as the personal experiences of George Copway, a nineteenth-century Ojibwa who embraced Christianity and became a missionary. Copway, who wrote an account of his experiences in 1847, argued that white missionary work among the Indians was obligatory considering that whites had “dispossessed” the Indians of their lands. Copway, who at a camp meeting in 1830 in Ontario was deeply influenced by the preaching of a missionary, wrote: “I . . . groaned and agonized over my sins. I was so agitated and alarmed that I knew not which way to turn in order to get relief. I was like a wounded bird, fluttering for its life. Presently and suddenly, I saw in my mind, something approaching; it was like a small but brilliant torch; it appeared to pass through the leaves of the trees. My poor body became so enfeebled that I fell; my heart trembled. The small brilliant light came near to me, and fell upon my head, and then ran all over and through me, just as if water had been copiously poured out upon me. I knew not how long I had lain after my fall; but when I recovered, my head was in a puddle of water, in a small ditch. I arose; and O! How happy I was. I felt as light as a feather. I clapped my hands, and exclaimed in English, ‘Glory to Jesus.’ I looked around for my father, and saw him. I told him that I had found ‘Jesus.” He embraced me, and kissed me; I threw myself into his arms. I felt as strong as a lion, yet as humble as a poor Indian boy saved by grace, by grace alone.” Another example was the Ojibwa Peter Jacobs, who after his religious change became a Methodist missionary to indigenous people in the Hudson’s Bay region. Jacobs wrote an autobiographical account of his experiences. In 1824, he wrote, “I was a heathen, and so were all the tribes of Canada West. When I was a lad, I never heard an Indian pray, as Christians pray, to the Great Being. Our people believed in the existence of a Great Being, the Maker of all things; but we thought that God was so very far away, that no human voice could reach Him; and, indeed, we all believed that God did not meddle with the affairs of the children of men.” The Indians did not fear God. They took care of affairs with the tomahawk. Whenever he prayed to the Great Spirit, it went like this: “O God, the Sun, I beseech you to hear my prayer, and to direct my steps through the woods in the direction where the deer is feeding, that I may get near him, shoot him, and kill him, and have something to eat thereby.” After listening to the Methodist missionary William Case, Jacobs realized that “the word of God had now got hold of my heart, but it made me feel very sick in my heart. I went to bed, and I could not sleep, for my thoughts troubled me very much. Then I would pray the words over and over again, and go more and more sick in my heart. I was very sorry that God could not understand my Ojibway. I thought God could only understand English; and when I was praying, tears came spontaneously from my eyes; and I could not understand this, because I had been taught from infancy never to weep. In this misery I passed three or four weeks. I then met with Peter Jones, who was converted a few months before me, and, to my surprise, I heard him return thanks, at meal, in Ojibway. This was quite enough for me. I now saw that God could understand me in my Ojibway, and therefore went far into the woods, and prayed, in the Ojibway tongue, to God, and said, “O God, I was so ignorant and blind, that I did not know that thou couldst understand my Ojibway tongue! Now, O God, I beseech thee to be gracious to me, a sinner! Take away this sickness that I now feel in my heart; for all my sins lay very heavy in my heart! Send now thy Holy Spirit to come work in my heart! Let the blood of Christ be now applied to my heart, that all my sins may depart!” Though I could now pray in this way in my native tongue, yet God did not seem to think it best to hear my prayers at this time, but left me to pass many miserable nights. And I cried out again, “O God, I will not let thee alone! I shall trouble thee with my prayers, till thou bless me!” And at last God heard my prayers, and he took away this heavy sickness of heart; but not till many tears had been shed. And when this sickness was taken away from my heart, then I experienced another feeling, which was joy in the Holy Ghost, which was indeed full of glory. My tongue could not express the joy I then felt. I could say nothing but, ‘Happy, happy!’ When I found this religion of Christ so sweet in the heart of man, I wanted all my people then to know of the great and true God; but they all said, No: that I was wrong; that I had been to the white man’s God, and not the Saviour of the Indians. But I said that God was the Saviour of all the nations of the earth; for I know in my own heart what he has done for me: and what he has done for me, he can do for you. And they began to pray for mercy and the forgiveness of their sins; and they praying in strong faith, many of them were converted; and now at this time there are hundreds that are converted among the North American Indians. I was the first fruits of the Missionary labors in my tribe.” Jacobs referred to another convert, Peter Jones, who also wrote of his experiences of religious change. Jones was influenced by the Anglican missionary Ralph Leeming. He had an initial conversion in 1831, but retained some of his Ojibwa religious beliefs. Three years later, in 1834, he “began to feel very sick in my heart, but I did not make my feelings known. Some of the sermons impressed my mind; I understood a good deal of what was said; I thought the black coats understood all that was in my heart, and that I was the person to whom they were speaking. The burden on my soul began to increase, and my heart said—what must I do to be saved? I saw myself in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity. The more I understood the plan of salvation, the more I was convinced of the truth of the Christian religion, and felt my need of its blessings. In spite of my old Indian heart, tears flowed down my cheeks at the remembrance of my sins. . . . My convictions became more deep and powerful during the preaching: I wept much; this, however, I endeavoured to conceal by holding down my head behind the shoulders of the people. I felt anxious that no one might see me weeping like an old woman, as all my countrymen say that weeping is a sign of weakness, which is beneath the dignity of an Indian brave. In the afternoon of this day my sorrow and anguish of soul greatly increased, and I felt as if I should sink down into hell for my sins. . . . I was fully convinced that if I did not find mercy from the Lord Jesus, of whom I heard so much, I certainly would be lost for ever.” Finally “at the dawning of the day I was enabled to cast myself wholly on the Lord, and to claim an interest in the atoning blood of my Saviour Jesus Christ, who bore my sins in his own body on the tree; and when I received Him unspeakable joy filled my hear, and I could say, ‘Abba Father.’ The love of God being now shed abroad in my heart, I loved him intensely, and praised Him in the midst of the people. Every thing now appeared to me in a new light, and all the works of God seemed to unite with me in uttering the praises of the Lord. There was a time when I thought that the white man’s God was never intended to be our God; that the white man’s religion was never intended to be the red man’s religion; that the Great Spirit gave us our way of worship, and that it would be wrong to put away that mode of worship and take to the white man’s mode of worship. But I and my people now found that there is but one true religion, and that the true religion is the religion of the Bible. Christianity has found us, and has lifted us up out of a horrible pit, and out of the miry clay; it has placed our feet upon a rock; it has established our goings, and has put a new song into our mouths,and ever praise unto our God.”
These two types of conversion narratives, the more common accounts told by the missionary and the more rare accounts told by the Indian convert, are found among the hitherto unexploited manuscripts of Southern Baptist missionaries found in the archives of the American Indian Collection here at Bacone College. This collection illustrates the problems Indians of particularly western Oklahoma had in adapting to white culture and federal land allotment laws. Baptist missionaries who kept extensive diaries of their interaction with Indians, sent and received correspondence with individual Indians, and submitted detailed reports to missionary organizations, consistently recorded the chagrin, anger, and depression of indigenous individuals who were trying to conform to the beliefs, institutions, and laws of white civilization while being tugged in the different direction of their tribal past. Baptist missionaries reported on the poverty, malnutrition, sicknesses, and passivity brought about by the new way of life of the Indians that afflicted the physical and emotional well-being of the tribes. Were such social and economic problems the stimuli for seeking and questioning that resulted in religious change to Christianity? How exactly did an indigenous person come to renounce traditional tribal beliefs to embrace the religion of white missionaries? What individual experiences of loss and suffering, or joy and understanding, resulted in the desire for baptism? How did conversion impact the individual’s sense of self? What was the Indian conception of sin and redemption?
One particularly industrious missionary, Robert Hamilton, was tireless in his proselytizing to the Indians and in writing accounts of religious change in his diary and letters. Hamilton was a missionary of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, active in western Oklahoma, engaging in particular the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, from the 1890s to the 1920s. Hamilton was part of a missionary movement into Indian Territory by Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Quakers, Anglicans, and other Christians during the latter half of the nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth century. Like Christian proselytizers during the preceding centuries in America and Europe, these missionaries considered civilization and Christianity to be one in the same. Missionaries generally adopted a patronizing, condescending attitude toward indigenous people at the same time that they exhibited outstanding energy and bravery in the face of overwhelming despair, poverty, conflict, and violence.
Hamilton, who had been ordained a Baptist missionary in 1892, was a man of tremendous drive and devotion, energy and patience, curiosity and courage. He, like other missionaries in Oklahoma before and after statehood, cared for the indigenous people, whom he considered to be like children; he was their missionary father, and indeed the Indians themselves adopted the designations of “children” and “father” when addressing him. Hamilton understood that “the Indians are by nature religious, mystical, ritualistic, reverent,” as he wrote in The Gospel Among the Red Man, a partially autobiographical account of Baptist missionary activities in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. “It is one of the evidences of the divine nature of the gospel, and of the efficiency of the Holy Spirit to ‘guide into all truth,’ that the missionary to a primitive people, with an unskilled interpreter, can get the message to them, and the resultant surprising grasp they have of divine truth.” In the manuscript account, Sketch of Work Among Cheyennes and Arapahos, found in Bacone’s American Indian Collection, Hamilton narrated in third person the scene when in 1892 he began to meet with the Cheyennes: “These Indians had only nineteen years before quit the warpath, and were living in the midst of a people, who if they had understood them, might have been a great blessing and help to them, but who viewed them with suspicion, and only visited their camps out of curiosity or to trade with them. For these reasons, they continued to live apart from their white neighbors, practicing the most disgusting of heathen customs in the name of religion. Mr. Hamilton attended an Indian burial, at which a woman cut gashes in her arms and legs for the dead, until the blood ran down to the ground. He saw women, who in their grief for their children, had cut off a joint of their fingers one after another until their hands were but stubs.” More astonishing was the Sun Dance ceremony “at which twenty men stripped of all their clothing, danced continuously for three days and nights without food or water. . . . Others had places cut in their breasts, and a skewer put through under a muscle, and this tied to a rope which was attached to a central pole of the dance lodge. Throwing their weight upon the rope, they would dance until the muscles were torn out.” He also witnessed the Ghost Dance, “where all night long, they formed a large circle, going round and round keeping step to the weird, plaintive music as they sang their Messianic songs. He saw a woman go inside the circle and stand for more than an hour with her hands stretched out toward the north, praying most fervently, while the tears ran down her face, pleading for the coming of the Indian Messiah. Her tone and posture expressed the most intense longing. Finally exhausted, she fell in a swoon.”
Into this pagan environment Hamilton came preaching the Gospel, comparing himself to the Apostle Paul, who likewise brought the teachings of Christianity to a similarly polytheistic and animistic people. Although Hamilton was vain and full of himself, he nevertheless believed wholeheartedly in the Great Commission given by Christ to His disciples. Delivering the Gospel was the sole object to him, and he and his family endured privation and the environmental extremes of western Oklahoma to succeed in this self-appointed goal. The Indians of Oklahoma, like the missionaries that came among them, thought of life as a journey down a well-traveled road, as it were. The Indians knew of many roads to religious enlightenment: the peyote road, the traditional tribal road, and the “Jesus Road.” Frequently they were called upon by missionaries and their own people to make a choice among the available roads. The Cheyennes, Hamilton wrote in the manuscript, Recommendations as to the Cheyenne Field, “in the beginning received the missionaries and their message more readily, and came into the Jesus Road more quickly than any of the other tribes.” The Jesus Road, of course, was fraught with peril to the mind and soul; it was a terribly hard road to follow, and many times the Indian man or woman slipped, unable or unwilling to regain the Jesus Road, rather returning to the road of their ancestors.
Hamilton provided many examples of this conflict and confusion over the correct path to happiness and redemption. He heard firsthand accounts from Indian men and women, a few of whom could speak English; for others, Hamilton relied on interpreters, such as the Cheyennes Philip Cook and Moore Vanhorn, the latter of whom was an early convert and enthusiastic Christian, despite having suffered many wrongs in his youth at the hands of white soldiers. In the manuscript pamphlet Christmas with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, Hamilton described the anguish of two women, who had been through much sorrow because of personal loss of family, including their children: “One who had lost her son said that when he died, she had been tempted to throw away the Jesus Road, and take up again her old heathen religion, but that now she could see that it was better to trust in Jesus, and that she could see that His way was right, she asked the church to forgive her for her sinful thoughts, and promised to walk in the ‘Road’ more carefully.” In the manuscript Sketch of Work Among the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, Hamilton described the personal experience of “one old man,” who “told the missionary that in the olden times it was thought an honorable thing to steal from those who were not their friends, and the man who could steal the most horses and cattle, and thus make the best feasts and presents to his people, had the greatest respect. . . . How Jesus had changed his heart from that way of doing[!] Now he had learned to love his enemies, and to do good to all men, and his life bears out his testimony.” In the same manuscript, Hamilton described how some Cheyennes, “who started in the way ‘went back and walked no more with Him’,” and began to persecute those who stayed on the Jesus Road. Such antagonists rejected Christians who were to join a delegation of the tribe going to Washington because they considered the Christian Cheyenne to be too close to the white man, and therefore influenced in the wrong way by Christianity. Moreover, “Christians were told by the Ghost Dance prophets that when the Indian Messiah came and restored the Indians and the buffalo, that all the Indians, who were found in the white man’s religion, would be destroyed with the white people.” Even so, some Ghost Dancers, such as the Arapaho, Hail, in time rejected their beliefs to follow the Jesus Road. The Plains Indian “medicine man,” however, graced with the knowledge of the mystical selection of himself to influence the powers of nature, was less inclined to renounce his pagan beliefs, and was the most formidable opponent of Indian converts. Hamilton recorded the case of a Cheyenne “medicine man” who went so far as to hex a Christian Indian couple: “this medicine man had an arrow, called the arrow of jealousy or hate. When dipped in a certain preparation known only to the fraternity, and shot in the direction of his victim, though miles away, the substance would search him out, and his destruction was certain.” Hamilton rode miles to find the couple, then told them that the medicine man’s threats were the work of Satan (Eahwo), and believers in Christ could put off Satan. “After prayer they were able to cast off the delusion, and peace of mind was restored.”
Hamilton recounted other examples of religious change among the Cheyennes of Oklahoma. One “old man . . . on being received for baptism, related the following touching incident. ‘The first religious act that impressed itself on my childish mind [the old man recounted], was when a small boy on my mother’s back. At that time my mother made an offering of two buffalo robes to the Great Spirit, and prayed for me, asking that I might live and grow up to be a good man. Later when I was a young man, I met a white man with a kind face and a soft voice, who told me that I ought to love and worship Jesus. He gave me this”–the old man drew “from his breast a crucifix, which he wore next his skin, under his shirt, attached to a string about his neck”–“and told me always to keep it. I have worn it over my heart ever since. I do not pray to it, but have kept it to remind me of the good man and his words. When the missionaries came to our reservation, I was glad to learn that they knew about this same Jesus. I never miss an opportunity to hear them tell about Him, and I was glad when I learned that I could be His friend and follower’.” At a meeting of Christian testimony among the Cheyenne, among other leaders was Chief Iron Shirt, who rose to speak, saying: “I feel as though we all being to uncover our heads, see what the Great Father has done for us. I want to thank you chiefs for the good talks you have made to the people, it makes my heart feel glad. This is all I wish to say as my heart is so full of joy I can scarcely speak.”
The missionaries of western Oklahoma such as Robert Hamilton helped the Indians form an association of converts, called the Blanket Indian Association. They met annually in June during the first years of the twentieth century. At one meeting, held on the land of the Kiowa chief Lone Wolf near the town of Hobart, indigenous peoples of several tribes—the Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Osage, and Navajo—met along with Baptist missionaries for a day of testimonial. On this day former Kiowa warriors, leaders of armed bands of men who had raided white settlements and attacked military installations in Texas and Indian Territory, but who had come to embrace peace, spoke of their commitment to the Jesus Road. One of the most notorious of the Kiowa warriors, Big Tree, proclaimed: “I express my gratitude to the Father above for knowing that the Lord Jesus is here. The Almighty created the earth and no part of it has been changed by any other power. God planted his word and work and it has been going on until it reached us. At last it reached me personally. All the Kiowas know what I was—bad—but now I have eated God’s food and been filled. Thirty years ago I was arrested and sent to prison I was so wicked. Lived that way until the Bible came before my face. I didn’t go round or back, but went up to it. My wife first baptised, I follow her, so must you . . . follow missionary teaching, all good. Religion is like throwing away an old garment and getting a new clean garment. I want you head-men to start in this road, it is a good road for all of you; it is the only road which will lead you to the best place we all can think of. Lone Wolf is our only chief, he is a good work-horse, but can’t pull alone, we all must help him; if we would all do this, it would be like traveling with a fast team on a good road. Now this is for the Comanches; tell your leading men to leave off their evil ways and walk in the Jesus road, and then we will get their followers. Today speak out and tell what you will do. Kiowas pushing and fighting every day and we are getting on. The Kiowas are like an engine to a train, it go first and pull, so we start in good, we help you all we can.” One Comanche named Ninsie told his brothers and sisters: “If you want to take the road straight, put away all bad roads. Our brother Jesus is strong, he is very loving, but if Jesus and God pull you out of the fire, and you hold some of it in your hand, they can’t help you.” Lone Wolf himself, who grew up hearing about his father and grandfather’s violent raids on farms and supply trains, spoke during another meeting of the Indian Blanket Association; his comments were recorded by one of the missionaries: “Some time ago [Lone Wolf said] I went up to visit the unfriendly Osages. I found them doing all the old time things. One of their leaders is here, and I want him to know I am very sorry to see them in the old time roads. (He said this with his eyes full of tears.) The white people see me and think I am educated. My father and my grandfather taught me the warpath, and I never had a chance to learn in school. Just as the children will learn the old roads, if not taught. . . . My father should have taught me, but he did not know the Jesus road. I am man enough to know that it is a good road, and take it.”
One of the most dramatic testimonials given at a meeting of the Blanket Indian Association was by another Kiowa convert, Sanco. “He said,” in the words of one of his hearers, that the experience of embracing Christianity and coming to know the Gospel was “like a stream of living water without sticks or stones or mud in it, ever-flowing, clear as crystal, free to all.” He added: “before the missionaries came they knew nothing about God; the Indians lived in the dark; their minds were covered just like a veil over the face, but now they can see clearly.”
The accounts of religious change among the Plains Indians of western Oklahoma translated by Indian interpreters and transcribed and recorded by Robert Hamilton were, notwithstanding the time, place, language and events, similar in evocation of feeling and sincerity of mind to the accounts of other religious feelers and thinkers who had their sensations, thoughts, words, and deeds translated and recorded by others. Was the experience of religious change of the Kiowa Sanco any different from the dazzling light that blinded Paul of Tarsus; the child’s voice that responded to Saint Augustine’s agonizing question; the austere, universal presence of the One that so captivated Plotinus and his disciples Porphyry and Julian; the oneness that Siddhartha Gautama experienced in the rushing water of the river of life; or the fear and awe that Moses knew when standing on holy ground before Yahweh? Common in most of the world’s great testimonies of religious change is the question of who and what exists, followed by the search for being or substance outside of yet connected to oneself, which leads to the discovery of the answer, change in belief and behavior, and finally, acceptance of what is.
Christianity as an experience of religious change has been an ecumenical force in world history because the religious seeker finds in the scriptures, teachings, traditions, music, liturgy, and the experience of the holy their own questions and answers and their own search and discovery notwithstanding the place or time. The Plains Indians of western Oklahoma discovered in the words of the missionary explanations for human behavior, for mistakes and doubts, for unhappiness and suffering. Even the most fierce warriors sought to be embraced in overwhelming love. The closest experiences to such love that tribal beliefs offered were the promises of happiness in the next life, or the benevolence of the Great Spirit, or the means by which nature nourished, clothed, and sheltered them. The Kiowa Sanco adapted the natural theology inherent in Christianity to his own experiences of delight and satisfaction when finding a pure stream of bright, crystal water, or when coming from out of the darkness of a spring thunderstorm into the broad horizon of the plains covered by the ubiquitous rays of the sun. Not only did Christianity emphasize the importance of natural history in the scheme of redemption, but one’s personal physical and spiritual experiences were known to God, who watched to see whether or not these peripatetic people would keep to the Jesus Road, eschewing all other roads as being distractions of ignorance, hubris, and idleness.
Baptist missionaries to the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and other western Oklahoma tribes were struck by how eager the indigenous people were to learn of this new religious road that they could take out of the shadows of darkness and doubt into the light of understanding. These religious converts understood what Jesus meant when he told Nicodemus that one must be born again from the mother’s womb. There was no other way, no other road. As a writer the the Baptist Mission Monthly put it:“The evidence of a genuine work of grace in the hearts of these children of the plains are so marked and varied that no one can doubt the reality of their conversion”–or, should we say, the reality of their change from one religious belief that had its own inherent validity to another belief that offered similar conceptions of salvation and redemption, of a universal deity that defied understanding, of rituals of blessing and healing, but which offered something more, a clear path undertaken originally by a man whom the Indians knew simply as Jesus. By forging a road through life and time amid distractions, temptations, suffering, and death, Jesus showed, by means of his example and by the examples of his missionaries, that his road was one for all people. Christian Indians believed that by taking the Jesus Road they shared Jesus’s experience, even if they did live in the arid plains of Indian Territory, hunting the dwindling numbers of beasts and living in mud huts or skin dwellings, impoverished but proud, willing to humble themselves to others, to the Other, for the sake of love.
The American Plutarch 