Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters in Seventeenth-Century America by Matthew Dennis
1995; The Catholic University of America Press; Volume: 81; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/cat.1995.0123
ISSN1534-0708
Autores Tópico(s)Latin American history and culture
ResumoBOOK REVIEWS97 the author offers well-crafted compilations detailing the often-confusing successions of churches that occupied at least twenty-nine different sites. Here, he utilizes almost every pertinent published primary source, numerous specific secondary studies, along with the standard general ones: Prince (1915), Forrest (1929), Kubier ( 1940), Hewett and Fisher ( 1943), and Kessell (1980). To see the evolution of these historic monuments through a modern architect 's eye is delightful. "The play of curvilinear and planar forms in adobe" (caption 15—3), referring to the famous buttresses and apse of Ranchos de Taos, or Las Trampas, with "the most poised facade of the New Mexican churches, a composition pitting the strong verticals of the towers against the lighter wooden balcony" (caption 13-1)—who but an architect? Typical is this description ofthe same church inside: "Fortunately, SanJosé is not covered by the tin shed roofs that now protect many of the adobe churches, and as a result the light quality from the windows—however enlarged—and the clerestory reveal an interior characterized by softness and repose. The wash of light over the white plastered walls and the soft rendering of the prismatic masses create a spacial impression that complements the cubic forms of the exterior towers" (p. 176). Even we who fret about the Californication of New Mexico can celebrate Marc Treib's welcome contribution of this beautiful guide-book-turnedarchitectural -exposition. John L. Kessell University ofNew Mexico Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters in Seventeenth-Century America By Matthew Dennis. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. 1993. Pp. xiv, 280. 837.95.) Cultivating aLandscape ofPeace deals with relations between the Iroquois, Dutch, and French in the seventeenth century, prior to the British conquest ofNew York and the development ofthe covenant chain between the Iroquois and the English. Matthew Dennis, an assistant professor in the Department of History, University of Oregon, suggests that the central theme in this period of the history of the Five Nations is a continuous search for peace, on Iroquois terms, with the two European powers. Cultivating a Landscape of Peace is divided into two sections. The first examines the Iroquois world prior to contact; the second their post-contact relations with the Dutch and French. In part one, Dennis examines the development of the Iroquois ideal of establishing peace with hostile groups by establishing ties of kinship between them, and their desire to establish aworld 98BOOK REVIEWS of universal peace. Part two records Iroquois attempts to apply this ideal in the decades following the establishment of Dutch and French colonies on the Hudson and the Saint Lawrence, as they sought peace with Europeans by incorporating them into their kinship system. In die course of the seventeenth century, the Iroquois earnestly attempted to assimilate Dutch and French colonists, and to instruct them in their obligations and roles in the Iroquois kinship system. Neither group proved receptive. The Dutch at tempted to distance diemselves from Amerindians, whom they perceived solely as commercial partners. The French sent Jesuit missionaries to Iroquoia with the avowed intention, not of bringing the French colony into the Iroquois world, but ofassimilating the Iroquois and converting them into Christian Frenchmen. This portrayal of the Iroquois as cultural imperialists provides an invaluable insight into the dynamics of the Catholic missionary effort in Iroquoia, as Dennis depicts the attempts of a confident and successful native society to assimilate Europeans. Viewed from this perspective, the Jesuit enterprise ceases to be a unilateral venture in -which European missionaries preach to more or less receptive Native Americans. Instead, it becomes a competitive process, in which each group seeks to convert and assimilate the other to an alien way of life. In skillfully portraying me attempts of a confident and successful native society to deal with Europeans on their own terms Dennis has made an important contribution to the literature on the Iroquois, their European neighbors , and the process of evangelization. D. Peter MacLeod Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide. By George E. Tinker. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 1993· Pp. ix, 182. Paperback.) The natural source of life for a given people, explains the author, is the integrity of their native...
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