A comparative, multi-sited history, my dissertation studies the lives of indigenous women in both Mexico and the United States to better understand the relationship between religion, gender, and ethnic identity in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. In particular, I analyze the faith practices of women within “Christian Indian” communities – places where groups of Native people asserted their right to self-governance as Christians – including the religious education of girls in exclusively indigenous spaces, daily life in convents established for native women, and women’s roles in the ethnogenesis of two North American tribes (Brothertown and Stockbridge) whose identity coalesced around Christianity.

Joining an emerging scholarly conversation regarding minority groups’ practices of Christianity, I shed new light on native women’s expressions of religious identity and uncover gendered strategies of activism within Christian Indian communities. I demonstrate that within these communities, women made crucial financial contributions; held leadership positions; and asserted their own understandings of religion, ethnicity, and race. While these women’s public actions and writings reflected Euro-centric understandings of Christianity, they deployed this Christian rhetoric to defend their rights and advocate for indigenous people. Moreover, by becoming models of exemplary Christians, indigenous women gained more influence over government representatives and clergy.

Utilizing an innovative framework to compare the lives of women in very different geo-political contexts, I argue that native women’s experiences under late colonialism and expanding nationalism resonate even across Catholic or Protestant denominational boundaries. By analyzing the ethics of religious identity and indigenous peoples’ engagement with Christian moral theology, my work uncovers broad similarities in indigenous women’s strategies for survival and empowerment across the Americas.