Spanish missions in the New World usually pacified sedentary peoples accustomed to the agricultural mode of mission life, prompting many scholars to generalize about mission history. James Saeger now reconsiders the effectiveness of the missions by examining how Guaycuruan peoples of South America's Gran Chaco adapted to them during the eighteenth century.

James Schofield Saeger is Professor of History at Lehigh University. He has written extensively on Guaycuruan society, most recently in the Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas.