ABSTRACT
In the contested borderlands of seventeenth-century Southern New England, the English colonial project facilitated the creation of dozens of “praying towns” aimed at converting Indigenous people of the region to Christianity. Amid the intentions of English missionaries to develop praying towns as colonial sites where Indigenous Americans would be transformed into Christian subjects of the British Empire, the multitribal communities of the praying towns shaped these spaces into sites of cultural and physical survival. This chapter conceptualizes Southern New England in the mid to late seventeenth century as a volatile borderlands landscape in which secure land tenure became a necessary survival strategy. Drawing from colonial records and archaeological interpretations of material culture within praying towns, this chapter examines legalized land ownership under the English system as a primary motivation for Indigenous people from several tribes across Southern New England to support colonial missionary projects and claim the praying towns as home.
