3 - Missionaries, Explorers, and Other Spirits

Summary

This chapter goes beyond Surama Village and focuses on how Anglican missionaries from the Church Missionary Society (CMS) established missions in British Guiana during the mid nineteenth century that impacted the Makushi and other Indigenous groups. Based on archival sources, it closely describes how Thomas Youd formed three successive missions in the Makushi territory during the 1830s and 1840s. The chapter considers the relational modes, acquisitions of desiderata, and patterns of interaction evident among Makushi groups in this context. It considers the strategies and intentions involved in their seeking relations with Youd and other Anglican missionaries against the backdrop of ongoing threats of slaving expeditions directed against them from Brazil. The chapter also examines a later visit to the Makushi by an Anglican missionary during the 1850s and introduces early evidence of the aftermath of such missionisation. The chapter builds up to a discussion of the shamanic dimensions of these historical interactions.