54 Orientalism and Empiresuch as Kishinev and Odessa, was briefly incarcerated for an un-
known crime, and received administrative exile for a false accusation
of murder in 1839. Officials in the Georgian Ekzarkh discovered all
this and then wisely rejected his application to serve as a missionary
in the mountain regions.^104 The “civilizing” work that put priests in
conflict with local customs sometimes even provoked violence, as
had been the case for the missionaries of the earlier Ossetian Spiritual
Commission.^105 Georgian priest Ioseb Surguladze in the Ossetian vil-
lage of Chetorsi was murdered in the early 1860s when he refused to
sanction the arranged marriage of two children.^106 Or sometimes mis-
sionaries suffered from the problems they brought upon themselves.
Romantic liasons between teachers and village girls were a frequent
source of tension. A Khevsur father killed a priest in the village of
Sno in 1853 over such an issue concerning his daughter.^107 A Tushin
priest, a former student at the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary, was killed in
188 7 by Lezgin in the village of Bash-Suagal after he “abducted a
Muslim girl.”^108 With embarassment, in 1864 the society was com-
pelled to establish a special fund to support village orphans that were
the offspring of village priests.^109
For all these reasons, but chief among them the language problem,
Restoration Society officials looked for native speakers as teachers
and missionaries. They were the most likely to be comfortable in the
mountains, develop a productive rapport with the local population,
and communicate effectively the truths of the Christian message and
the virtues of the imperial world of civilization. Society teaching ros-
ters reveal that by 1880 predominantly Georgian teachers (with
names such as Natenadze, Geladze, and Khmaladze) worked in
“mountain Georgian” areas, Ossetian teachers (Sadzagelov,
Sanakoev, Khatagov) staffed the village schools in the countryside
surrounding Vladikavkaz, and Abkhaz teachers (Charaia, Eshibaia,
Narkebiia) worked in Abkhazia.^110 Teacher seminaries such as the
Tiflis Spiritual Seminary and other such institutions in Vladikavkaz
and Mozdok concentrated on training native students from the
mountains for future work with the Restoration Society. Conse-
quently they adjusted their own curriculum to adopt to the need for
mountain language instruction and literacy. Some officials wondered
about the possibility of an entirely separate course for the Ossetian
students at the ecclesiastical seminaries. Instead, church educators
eliminated Greek and Latin study for the Ossetian children, so as to
give them more time to master literacy in Ossetian with the Cyrillic
characters. They also tried to teach a pure Ossetian, not mixing in
words and phrases of the nearby Pshav (“mountain Georgian”). Like
officials administering affirmative action programs in the United