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

In fact, in the rough Minnesota territory, missionaries often found themselves looking to the Dakota for support. The missionaries and their wives struggled to define what it meant to convert and civilize Dakota people. And, although many scholars depict missionaries as working hand in hand with the federal government, Clemmons reveals discord over the Dakota peoples treatment, especially after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, when many missionaries spoke out against exile.

The missionaries found that work with the Dakota was rarely as heroic, romantic, or successful as what they read about in the evangelical press, but, at the same time, they themselves painted a rosier picture of their own work.