'New Hope for the Indians'

Sinopse

""With upright and benevolent men as Indian Agents; with the friendly influence of the Indian Department fostering education and favoring missionary labors..., surely there is new hope for this people!" With this sanguine declaration, the Presbyterian church in 1870 endorsed a novel approach to civilizing and Christianizing Indians. This new concept, labeled the Grant Peace Policy for the president who initiated it, was a direct response to demands for reform in the Indian service following the Civil War. Reacting to these pressures, the administration agreed to a partnership of church and state by which churches nominated Christian laymen for positions as Indian agents and, whenever possible, assigned missionaries to preach and teach at Indian agencies. In this history of one of the government's first concerted attempts to solve the "Indian problem," Bender perceptively interprets the successes, and lack thereof, of agents and Presbyterian missionaries with Navajos, army officers, government officials, church leaders, and congressmen"--Back cover.