“He Has Not Instructed Them by Books”: Divine Authority on Kiikapoi Lands

The Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo) people, along with many other Native American nations, faced a genocidal removal in the early nineteenth century from their homelands in Illinois. Among the most important Kiikaapoi leaders of this period was Kenekuk, widely known as the Kickapoo Prophet, who long resisted removal but ultimately moved west to help his people rebuild their lives on a new reservation in Kansas. As a part of his ministry, Kenekuk carved wooden prayer sticks using Algonquian pictographic symbols to guide the prayers of his community. Kenekuk’s followers told outsiders that these prayer sticks were their Bible. Kenekuk himself taught that, although the “White Man’s Bible” was a holy book, his people had no need of it because God had given them their own instructions on how to live. His story offers new insights into scriptural practices in nineteenth-century North America, helping us see alternative forms of scripturalization and the imperial contexts in which they emerged.