In Thomas Crobsy and the Tsimshian: Small Shoes for Feet Too Large, Clarence Bolt demonstrates that the Indians were conscious participants in the acculturation and conversion process – as long as this met their goals – and not merely passive receivers of the blessings as typically reported by the missionaries. In order to understand the complexities of Indian-European contact, Bolt argues, one must look at the reasons for the Indians' behaviour as well as those of the Europeans. He points out that the Indians actively influenced the manner in which their relationships with the white population developed, often resulting in a complex interaction in which the values of both groups rubbed off on each other.

Clarence R. Bolt's profile page

Clarence Bolt is an instructor in the Department of History at Camosun College.

Explains how the Tsimshian people of northwest British Columbia took an active part in their contact with European society in the later 19th century, rejecting one missionary and requesting another, shaping their acculturation to further their own interest, and resisting it when it did not.

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