Girls of Many Lands: Minuk

This story takes place in 1890 in Alaska and is about a young Eskimo girl named Minuk.

How you feel about this book will be shaped very strongly by your own religious views. If you are of the school that holds that the Christian God is the only one acceptable and the Bible is the only way acceptable, then you will agree with what happens to the Eskimos in this novel.

If you are a person who does not hold those views, but holds somewhat of a more widespread religious orientation, then the events in this book might very well prove upsetting.

It's basically about how some missionaries come to an Eskimo village, severely criticize almost everything about the Eskimo culture, and how they and other whites bring diseases to the Eskimos which end up resulting in the death of most of the tribe.

There are some things about the Eskimo culture that are shown not to be good, of course. The killing of girl babies stands as the worst of the lot; there are also lots and lots of restrictions on women who have just begun having their periods, restrictions that seem quite primitive in nature.

The worst things in the book are saved for the Christian missionary Mr. Hoff, however. His criticisms of the Eskimo culture are non-stop and even rise to the point of disrupting a meeting of the Eskimo men. Although he ran a school for Eskimo boys, he was not above whipping them when they did not do what he wanted them to do. He refused to help teach Minuk how to read. He spoke out against Eskimo celebrations and feasts. He spoke out against their ceremonial dances. He spoke out often and strong against their shaman.

This went on and on until the sickness brought by the white people (influenza, in this specific case) decimated the tribe and Hoff moved on to somewhere else where more people had survived.

This is anything but a happy story. It's about the strongest book I've read in any series as far as presenting Christian missionaries in a bad light, and since the book is based on actual accounts, journals and documents of that time then it's seems reasonable to suppose that events very similar to this actually did happen.

No one comes out the winner in this book. A few come out survivors, but in this clash of cultures both lose, severely.

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