Medicine man to missionary : missionaries as agents of change among the Indians of Southern Ontario, 1784-1867

Summary: The missionaries who brought Christianity to the Indians of southern Ontario also attempted to introduce "civilization" in accordance with the current European models. In fulfilling their mission, they played a crucial role as agents of change in Indian religion, education, politics, economics, technology and medicine. That they also frequently acted as a protective buffer between the Indians and the exploitive traders and government agents was apparently not regarded as contradictory. By the end of the eighty-three-year period studied, the Indian people had moved from relative independence to a condition of isolation in reserve communities and dependence upon a foreign government. Using missionary and government reports, letters and diaries of the period as source material, Dr. Graham traces the movements of various Indian groups and analyzes some of the elements involved in this confrontation between two vastly different cultures.