Focusing on Ojibwa, Cree, and Montagnais-Naskapi women, Devens analyzes the gender-specific responses to Christian missionary activity. In the 17th century, Jesuit efforts to convert Native Americans to Catholicism and to a ^D["male-dominated nuclear family^D]" social structure usually elicited a unified community rejection. In the early 19th century, Methodist missionaries preached a similar dual message of the Protestant gospel and ^D["female domesticity.^D]" This time, however, either the community accommodated or it divided sharply along gender lines, with women either outwardly (but grudgingly) conforming or actively opposing not only the proselytizers, but the male Indian converts as well. Therefore, Devens, argues, the emergent divisive gender relations in the Great Lakes witnessed by early 20th century anthropologists were not traditional patterns but, rather, the results of Euroamerican colonizing efforts. Devens is most persuasive when she restricts her discussion to Native American communities that had accepted the presence of missionaries, and when she assesses the corrosive power of the fur trade in shaping a predominant male pattern of accommodation to Christianity. Nevertheless, her assessment of women's responses is an important counter to the tendency in most other studies to generalize Native American responses from male-generated documents. Advanced undergraduate; graduate; faculty. From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.