Prophetic Worlds: Indians and Whites on the Columbia Plateau

by Miller, Christopher L.; Friday, Chris

• ISBN13: 9780295983028
• ISBN10: 0295983027
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Washington Pr

Summary

In his provocative ethnohistory, Christopher Miller offers an innovative reinterpretation of relations between Native Americans and Christian settlers on the Columbia Plateau. Miller draws on a wealth of ethnographic resources to show how culturally-derived perceptions and systems of rationality played more of a determining role in the interactions between these two groups than did material forces. Initially, Plateau Indians and the American missionaries who came to convert them perceived each other as crucial to the fulfillment of their own millennial destiny. When these views were contravened, relations quickly and fatally soured. In explaining this devolution, Prophetic Worlds provides a novel and insightful rendering of the cultural understandings that underwrote the mid-nineteenth-century transformation of life on the Plateau. Christopher L. Miller is associate professor of history and philosophy at the University of Texas-Pan American. His recent work includes Making America: A History of the United States.

Author Biography

Christopher L. Miller is associated professor of history and philosophy at the University of Texas-Pan American.

Table of Contents

Foreword to the 2003 Edition, by Chris Friday	vii
Preface to the 2003 Edition	xiii
Acknowledgments	xvii
Introduction	1	(6)
Chapter 1. The Plateau World	7	(16)
Chapter 2. The Eighteenth-Century Crisis	23	(14)
Chapter 3. The Plateau Prophecy	37	(14)
Chapter 4. The Prophecy Unfolds	51	(12)
Chapter 5. The White Prophecy	63	(14)
Chapter 6. The Prophets Meet	77	(12)
Chapter 7. The Converging Millennia	89	(14)
Chapter 8. The World Will Fall to Pieces	103	(14)
Epilogue	117	(6)
Notes	123	(24)
Bibliography	147	(20)
Index	167