Conquest, Colonization, and Christianity

The expansion of European imperialism from the sixteenth through the early twentieth centuries ravaged and radically influenced indigenous religious traditions in the Americas. Throughout North America, the effects of colonialism on indigenous peoples were disastrous: indigenous populations were devastated by disease and warfare, forced to move far away from their ancestral homelands, and sometimes enslaved or indentured to work for the colonists.

Spanish, British, and French colonial powers sent Christian missionaries to their imperial holdings (and beyond) in North and Central America with the aim of “saving” indigenous peoples from what were viewed as their pagan ways. As a result, many indigenous peoples converted (forcibly or by choice) to the Christianity of the colonizers. Some colonizers, such as the Spanish, also believed that they could bring about the second coming of Christ by completing the work of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth.

More recently, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Native American children in the United States and Canada were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to boarding schools, where they were taught the “errors” of their cultural and religious ways. In the United States, the 1819 Civilization Fund Act, which aimed to educate native children in an effort to “civilize” them, led to the development of many of these boarding schools. As another example, in the southwestern United States, Navajo children were adopted by white families and raised in Mormon or other Christian traditions. In Canada, many of the schools were run by Christian missionaries until the late twentieth century, and Christian education was a key goal.

Indigenous religious traditions were never entirely eradicated, however, even when Native peoples identified as Christians. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Mesoamerica, the indigenous religion of the Mayan peoples was banned, written versions of holy texts were burned, and the Maya were often forcibly converted to Roman Catholicism. Although many Mayan people today identify as Catholic, elements of indigenous religion remain.

In the United States today, many Native Americans identify as Catholics, Protestants, or nondenominational Christians. However, as with the Maya, this does not necessarily mean that the beliefs and practices of Native religions are no longer relevant. Furthermore, some Native Christians understand Christianity as an indigenous American religion. Among the White Mountain Apache of Arizona, some religious leaders claim that they “have always had the Bible.”— As with the Navajo, an important part of Apache girls’ initiation is the assumption of the powers of Changing Woman. In Apache mythology, Changing Woman was distressed about the difficulty of life on earth and prayed to God to change it. God answered her prayers by impregnating her with the rays of the sun, and she gave birth to a heroic son, who made the earth safe for humans. Some Apache religious leaders interchange the names of Jesus and Mary for Changing Woman and her son. Furthermore, at the girls’ puberty ceremony, participants draw parallels between other sacred Apache narratives and the stories of Genesis. It is in such contexts that practitioners argue that Christianity is indeed an indigenous American religion that predated colonization.²³ For other Apache Christians, however, traditional religion is viewed not as a complement to Christianity but as a relic of the past that good Christians should reject.