ABSTRACT
Polygamy is most easily recognized as a central feature of the histories of marriage and religion in the United States because of the protracted conflict over The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ practice of plural marriage in the nineteenth-century. However, polygamy has also played a central role in the constitution, development, and execution of settler colonialism, empire, constitutional law, and white supremacy in the United States. Polygamy—both polygyny, in which a man has more than one wife, and polyandry, in which a woman has more than one husband—was practiced among various indigenous groups across North America before and after the arrival of European colonialists. The relative success of the Jesuits at converting native women has sparked a scholarly debate about whether conversion resulted in the loss of various freedoms for women under polygamy or whether their conversions were expressions of agency to escape the restrictions of polygynous marriages.
