Isaac McCoy week 6/ Snapshots from my library 25 Indian Caanan- Isaac McCoy and the vision of an Indian state- George Shulz, by Jim Curran

Jim Curran Admin 01/29/2021

Isaac McCoy week 6/ Snapshots from my library 25 – Indian Caanan- Isaac McCoy and the vision of an Indian state- George Shulz

Of the biographies on Isaac this is probably the one that had the most copies out there on the secondary market. It was published by University of Oklahoma Press. As such it is different from other biographies as in many ways it is written from a sociological viewpoint rather than a “religious” viewpoint. Books in this genre can vary widely- they can be sympathetic and understand their subject such as Sweets histories of American religion on the frontier, or they can be antagonistic (a 1970 reprint of McCoys History of Baptist Indian missions was prefaced by such an introduction written by a professor at the university of Wisconsin Robert Berkhoffer) Shultz’s work falls somewhere between. He gives a relatively unbiased account of McCoy but spends too much of his time in a sociological analysis of McCoy’s interest in such things as Indian customs. He does concentrate much on McCoy’s vision of an Indian state and that from a sociological viewpoint as well. He sees McCoy first as a reformer and as a missionary second- this is doubtless due to his point of view. The primary problem is that he mises McCoy’s motivation as a missionary- taking the gospel to the Indian nations. Given this caveat if we understand this first when reading the book is useful and fairly comprehensive.This book personally means a lot to me as it was out of my Dad’s library. I am trying to find the dust jacket for this and if Dad were still here I might have gotten in trouble for having misplaced it before we moved 

– I know it is still sitting somewhere downstairs. He was very picky with his dust jackets and it is from him that I got my love for history and books. This was in his Oklahoma history section and was purchased before my family were saved. When I started to study McCoy we had just went down to visit and I noticed the book- This was probably the first book he ever let go out of his library. Although I have other books that were in his library on other subjects this one is special to me.As was mentioned this was printed by the University of Oklahoma press in 1972. Prices on this book have varied widely- right now there are fewer copies and some are going for $60- however a few months back on Ebay there were copies for less than $10-15- welcome to the world of used books. An electronic copy has not been made.