For the Good of Their Souls

William B. Hart contests the characterization of the easternmost members of the Longhouse of the Iroquois Confederacy as “faithful Mohawks.” Such a judgment, he charges, interprets their Anglican Protestantism from a Eurocentric perspective, emphasizing how well Mohawks may have internalized Christian beliefs and become bona fide converts instead of determining what their engagement with the Church of England meant to the Natives themselves. Mohawks premised their interactions with missionaries in terms of reciprocity, the establishment of cooperative relationships intended to benefit both sides. Missionaries tended to appraise Mohawks' religiosity on how well the Natives learned catechisms or attended services, but Mohawks judged themselves by a different calculus: how effectively their participation in the same Christian rites and duties as Euro-Americans enrolled each side in an “imagined faith community” that shared a common religious world view—and, as a corollary, underlined the amicable connections that extended beyond the church (p. 5). The

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