Brokers of Culture examines the interactions among multiple ethnic groups in the American West and a group of nearly four hundred Italian Jesuits who emigrated to the United States after 1848 in the wake of the Italian unification movement. The first wave of exiles taught in Jesuit colleges on the East Coast, where they played a major role in reforming American seminary education. From their eastern base, the dispersed clerics moved to the frontier, shaping the evolution of culture in eleven western states. The Jesuits' most powerful source of influence was their western colleges, which adhered to educational traditions brought from Europe while simultaneously meeting the needs of an ethnically mixed and mobile frontier population.
Gerald McKevitt is Ignacio Ellacuría SJ Professor of Jesuit Studies at Santa Clara University. He is author of The University of Santa Clara: A History, 1851-1977 (Stanford UniversityPress, 1979).
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations ix Preface xiii Introduction: The Jesuits 1 "Out with the Jesuits": Becoming Refugees 14 "Instant Despatch": The Ideology of Emigration 36 "Witnesses to Shortcomings": Reforming Jesuit America 61 "Attracted Toward Remote Lands": Becoming Western Missionaries 91 "Methods Adopted by Us": The Art of Indian Conversion 120 "Habits of Industry and Useful Toil": Native American Education 150 "The Darkest Part of the U.S.A.": The Southwest 178 "Who Could Have Done Anything Like This in Italy?": The Colleges 208 "Our Pen Is at Your Service": Mediating Cultures 234 "A Delicate State of Transition": Jesuits Divided 264 "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi": Foreign No More 296 Conclusion 320 Abbreviations 329 Notes 331 Glossary 395 Index 397
