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A Contest of Faiths: Missionary Women and Pluralism in the American Southwest by Susan M. Yohn (review)

A Contest of Paths: Missionary Women and Pluralism In the American Southwest. By Susan M. Yohn. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. 1995. Pp. xiv, 266. $42.50 cloth; $16.95 paper.) In this interesting and informative book the author discusses the history of Presbyterian Church activities in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, with emphasis on the role of women missionaries in the area under the direction of the Ladies Board of Home Missions, which later became the Women's Executive Committee of Home Missions, from the 1870's to the 1920's. The author has based her study on the extensive documentation she found in the original manuscript sources of the Presbyterian Church Archives (U.S.) in Philadelphia; the correspondence, papers, and reports of the Board of Home Missions; minutes of the annual meetings and office conferences of the Board; biographical files; correspondence and papers from women missionaries in the field to the Board; documents in the Menaul Historical Library in Albuquerque, and in the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and the letters and reports of the women missionaries published in various Presbyterian periodicals, especially the Home Missions Monthly. The following statistics show the composition of the population of the region when it was conquered from Mexico in 1846. The European population totalled about 60,000, nearly all Spanish-speaking Hispanics, many of them the descendants of the Spanish settlers when the region was a Spanish colony from 1598 to the 1820's, a larger number from Mexico after the middle of the nineteenth century. By 1885 the population (exclusive of the native Indian tribes increased to 140,000: 100,000 Spanish-speaking residents, and 40,000 Americans from the United States both in upper New Mexico and southern Colorado. After the 1880's the influx of people from the United States increased rapidly. In 1912, when New Mexico became a state, the population had reached about 180,000, about 50% represented by each of the two main population groups. It should be noted that about 80 of the rural population in the region we Spanish-speaking Hispanics. The primary motive of the first Presbyterian women was to convene the Hispanic population from the Catholic Church to their Protestant religion through the establishment of mission schools. The teaching of the English language thus became a priority from the very beginning. Throughout the book the author necessarily gives considerable attention to the age-old religious conflict in the views of Protestants toward Catholics and vice versa. This deep-seated conflict in religious views was always present. In fact, few Hispanic-speaking residents, especially in the rural areas where most of them lived, were ever converted to Protestantism. In elaborating on this subject as an obstacle to cultural accommodation, the author adds some miscellaneous references to the Penitentes, a Catholic lay brotherhood In upper New Mexico, which are a bit miscast in relation to the basic issue under discussion. There were approximately 230 Presbyterian women assigned to mission schools in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado between 1870 and 1924. The schools were in sixty-three localities, mostly in rural areas where the Hispanic population was largely illiterate. The peak period was between 1885 and 1906, when an average of twenty-five schools were in operation yearly. In 1899, forty-eight mission teachers were teaching in twenty-five schools with a total enrollment of 1,446 students. The number of schools increased to fifty by 1900, with a substantial increase in enrollment and teachers. …