Lights and Shades of Missionary Life Containing Travels, Sketches, Incidents and Missionary Efforts During Nine Years spent in the Region of Lake Superior

Cincinnati: Western Book Concern, 1859. Octavo. 431 pages.[1]pp. ad. While the dream of the founders was that the Indian tribes would forsake their nomadic lifestyle and settle down to farm, Rev. Pitezel's answer was both to buy land to keep them from being located and to get them converted to his gospel message. Still the forces to make the American Indian a semi-white man worked against those who tried to bridge the aggressiveness of the pioneer with the pressure to force the removal of the Indian. The tribes soon realized their enemies were the surveyors who were not protecting them but determining the "legal rights" of those who would soon take their land. Based on his journal which was made in the 1840's, he discusses the conflict in the upper midwest extending to the Great Lakes. Toward the end of the volume, he notes the names and lives of the Indian converts including several who were now pastors and to whom he refers to as "fellow pastors". In one sense, this attempt to follow the gospel by Rev. Pitezel and his followers rose against the racism inherent in early American culture. While there is some toning to the pages with foxing on the engravings, the text is easily read and provides an important firsthand account of the interplay of missions and Indian tribes versus the greed of the American pioneer whose greed for land was as troubling for Pitezel as it had been for George Washington. Bound in brown embossed cloth, spine lettered and decorated in gilt, gilt worn, some chipping to spine ends, corners worn, rear joint cracked and apparently glued, lacks one endpaper from front and rear. A good copy. [Howes D-390].