Playing Indian
An excerpt from the new Demons, Saints, & Patriots: Catholic Visions of Native America Through The Indian Sentinel (1902 – 1962). The Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions published The Indian Sentinel “as both a chronicle of Catholic Indian missions activities and an impassioned public relations tool to save a beleaguered missionary venture.”
By Mark Clatterbuck
Many missionaries through the 1920s no longer perceived Native customs and religious beliefs as a genuine threat to reservation Catholicism. In turn, spoofs on so-called Indian superstitions, and photographic gimmicks at the expense of tribal customs, were employed as humorous props in Sentinel advertisements and appeals for donations. This development paralleled a rising tide of Catholic triumphalism which rendered formerly-feared indigenous ways as largely benign relics of a fast-fading culture. In the contest between Church and paganism, the outcome was no longer in doubt in the great majority of missionaries’ minds. Christianity and civilization had conquered, and time was now on truth’s side.
In subsequent decades, the Indian as mission-prop did not disappear from Indian missionary literature so much as it morphed into a new version of itself. The practice gradually moved beyond photos of funny feathers and mock arrows to feature, instead, Indians role-playing staged versions of themselves. Continue Reading →