The Devil and Mr Duncan [Hardcover]

Peter Murray (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 341 pages
• Publisher: Sono Nis Pr (August 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 091920368X
• ISBN-13: 978-0919203686
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,245,413 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Murray uses only selected facts to back his conclusions., June 27, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Devil and Mr Duncan (Hardcover)

Studies of cultural conflict between native americans and
white europeans always create a sense of tension among
white historians. Such is the case with Peter Murray's
work on Anglican missionary William Duncan. Given that
the study of Duncan has gone through various metamorpheses,
from early hagiographies by authors such as Arctander and
others,to William Gilbert Beattie's trashing of him in his
biogrphy of Tsimshian missionary Edward Marsden; Murray may
see himself as a revisionist who is correcting Beattie's
errors. Unfortunately, Murray does not do much better than
the early hagiographies in the sense of objectivity. When
one examines Duncan's letters, one immediately grasps the
conflicts and contradictions in his work. He was one of the
earliest missionary pioneers on the northern Pacific Rim,
yet he had a problem with power in that he wanted to retain
control of his mission, without any interferance from either
the Anglican church, with which he eventually broke, or the
Tsimshians themselves. He never could grasp the fact that
the Tsimshians had grown in his over fifty years of work to
the point that they could reasonably control the destiny of
their own church. Murray pays no attention to any of these
facts, as he seeks to praise Duncan at the expense of
Marsden, Presbyterian missionary Sheldon Jackson, and
others. He presents much anecdotal evidence, but is always
selective in his facts, which may be the greatest
historiographical sin.