This dissertation is an ethnohistorical account of the advent of Christianity, how it was taught and practiced, on the upper Fraser-Skeena watershed and adjacent North Pacific littoral between the years 1741 and 1873. The region was a focal point of sustained international colonial and commercial attention, and missionaries of various European Christianities played an important role in the introduction of Christianity in the vast socio-geographical space. However, they were not the only teachers and practitioners. Lay Christianities, that is, Christianity as practiced by the various workers in the maritime and continental fur trades, and later by Russian, Spanish, British, Canadian and American colonists were perspicuous features of the social field. While the presence of lay Christianities is often underdetermined in the North American historical and ethnographic records, I argue it figured significantly into the quality of social relations between newcomers and peoples Indigenous to the region. Indigenous peoples were initially interested in Christian form and content. Later those interests were augmented by Indigenous prophets interested in indigenizing Christianity; a task which entailed ensuring that Christianity originated locally. When the Hudson’s Bay Company emerged as the chief commercial operator in the region at the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Indigenous Christianity was mobilized as a religion of resistance against the Company’s incursion into local social spaces and in the ensuing struggle with both the Company and Christian missionaries.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MANITOBA/oai:mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca:1993/14391 |
| Date | 03 January 2013 |
| Creators | Redden, Jason Allen |
| Contributors | McCance, Dawne (Religion) Trott, Christopher (Native Studies), MacKendrick, Kenneth (Religion) Alexandrin, Elizabeth (Religion) Perry, Adele (History) Neylan, Susan (Wilfrid Laurier University) |
| Source Sets | University of Manitoba Canada |
| Detected Language | English |
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