ABSTRACT
Conversion efforts by Christian missionaries in the Americas constituted a remarkably diverse and ambiguous enterprise. Extreme variability in faith traditions by European and Native American alike led to a pattern of innumerable regional accommodations of religious practices, oftentimes contradicting the conventions of established orthodoxy in Christian denominations. The archaeological record demonstrates that negotiations over conversion practices occurred throughout the landscape, built environment, and world of portable objects. While these changes embodied a widespread transformation in Indigenous religious beliefs, they altered Christianity as well. The mutualism of this process was pervasive in both Catholic and Protestant missionary programs.
