Missions, Missionaries, and Native Americans: Long-Term Processes and Daily Practices

By Mariah F. Wade

From Florida to California, colonial Spanish missions have long fascinated visitors and have served as the site of controversy for both scholars and Native Americans. The spiritual conquest of the Americans was a new battleground between good and evil with European roots and New World actors. Anthropologist Maria F. Wade here addresses the conceptual world of Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries who traveled to Florida, northeast Mexico, Texas, and southwest California to convert Native Americans to Christianity. Through detailed analysis of long-term conversion strategies and daily religious practices as they intersected with the survival and prosperity of those within the mission as well as the political and military mandates of the Crown, Wade provides a significant portrait of the conversion process and its impact on the lives of its participants. Book jacket.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813032806
• ISBN13: 9780813032801
• Release Date: December 2008
• Publisher: University Press of Florida
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"