Colonial Intimacies

"Native American marital relations and domestic lives were anathema to English Christians: elite native men frequently took more than one wife, while other men and women could dissolve their marriages and take new partners with relative ease. Native marriage did not necessarily involve cohabitation, the formation of a new household, or mutual dependence for subsistence. Couples who wished to separate did so without social reproach, and when adultery occurred, the blame centered not on the "fallen" woman but on the interloping man. Over time, such practices changed, but the emergence of new…