'By the rapids' : the Anishinabeg-missionary encounter at Bawating (Sault Ste. Marie), c. 1821-1871
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Between 1821 and 1871, evangelical missionaries representing the dominant Protestant and Catholic churches, ventured to Sault Ste. Marie. They came to proselytize and 'civilize' the Anishinabeg community living in the borderlands of British North America and the United States. Within the Sault region, the Anishinabeg, as well as Baptist, Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, and Presbyterian ministers, interacted in a multiplicity of ways which led to the development of different understandings concerning both conversion and Christianity. To contextualize the multiplicity of interactions within the context of the borderlands, this dissertation delves into the local history of the American and Canadian Sault villages, Indian policies, and missions before discussing the processes of translation, conversion, and participant interactions. After establishing the historical context of the Sault region, this study focuses on the role of women and cultural intermediaries employed in spreading Christianity. In particular, their roles, lives, actions, and opinions concerning the processes of missionization are explored. Finally, in examining conversion, this dissertation addresses both missionary and Anishinabeg understandings while avoiding the pitfalls of success/failure dichotomy. This study demonstrates that the Sault-region Anishinabeg, while nominally Christian by the mid-nineteenth century, perceived their conversions and Christianity from within their cultural framework. Additionally, the cultural intermediaries often neglected in mission studies, played a pivotal role in presenting the Christian message to potential converts. Women, whether Native or non-Native, likewise performed a variety of tasks at the missions which must be considered when examining the multiplicity of interactions between proselytizer and proselyte. The nature of the border region allowed the Anishinabeg to retain a sense of independence in action and thought which is reflected in the processes of Christianization until the 1870s. Taken together, the multiplicity of observers, participants, translations, understandings, interpretations, and conversions can be aptly described as a whirlwind where the disconnected became connected. However one views these multiplicities, the processes at work can only be glimpsed as snapshots of understanding.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.029 | 0.014 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".