The spread of Christianity is often presented as a story ofconquest, of powerful European missionaries waging a cultural assaulton hapless indigenous victims. Yet the presence of indigenous men amongmissionary ranks in the nineteenth century complicates thesenarratives. What compelled these individuals to embrace Christianity?How did they reconcile being both Christian and indigenous in an age ofempire? Tolly Bradford finds answers to these questions in the lives andlegacies of Henry Budd, a Cree missionary from western Canada, and TiyoSoga, a Xhosa missionary from southern Africa. Inspired by both faithand family, these men found in Christianity a way to construct a modernconception of indigeneity, one informed by their ties to Britain androoted in land and language, rather than religion and lifestyle.Although they shared a new sense of "nativeness," the menfollowed different paths. Whereas Budd sought to create a modern Creevillage to cope with the upheavals of the 1860s and 1870s, Soga triedto foster among his people a politicized, and Christianized, sense ofAfrican nationalism. In telling this story, Bradford portrays indigenous missionaries not asvictims of colonialism but as people who made conscious, difficultchoices about their spirituality, identity, and relationship with theBritish colonial world. Tolly Bradford is an assistant professor of history atConcordia University College of Alberta in Edmonton.