Conflicted Mission: Faith, Disputes, and Deception on the Dakota Frontier

From the mid-1830s to the 1860s, the missionaries sent to Minnesota by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) wrote thousands of letters to their supervisors and supporters claiming success in converting the Dakota people. But author Linda M. Clemmons reveals that the reality of the situation was far more conflicted than what those written records would suggest.

In fact, in the rough Minnesota territory, missionaries often found themselves looking to the Dakota for...