Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America

When European Christians arrived in this vast territory we now call the Americas over 400 years ago, they found indigenous people here with their own meaningful and personal and sacred religious beliefs. The contact and conflict between Europeans and Natives sparked a long-term series of religious encounters that intertwined with other settler colonial processes, such as commerce, government, enslavement, warfare and evangelization. The taking of Native Americans’ land and their lives have been called one of America’s two “original sins.”

The legacies of colonialism swirl all about us still, including broken treaties, reservations, alcoholism, poverty, despair, misunderstandings, and questions of sovereignty, alongside of survival, persistence, cultural and linguistic revitalization, and a return to traditional practices. Because religion was central to these processes in colonial America, and continues to play an important role today, taking a look at the religious interactions between European colonists and Native Americans will help us all better understand these issues and help each other flourish in the American 21st century.

Linford Fisher is a professor of history at Brown University. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 2008. Professor Fisher's research and teaching relate primarily to the cultural and religious history of colonial America and the Atlantic world, including Native Americans, religion, material culture, and Indian and African slavery and servitude. 

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