Both precolonial cosmologies and Christianity placed spiritual limits on acceptable sexuality throughout the colonial era. Spiritual restrictions on sexuality subordinated individual consent to questions of pollution, impurity, and sin. Most precolonial Xhosa speakers understood that certain forms of sexual behavior, such as incest or sex with a menstruating woman, could create or spread pollution. Witchcraft (the malevolent use of spiritual power) could also involve sex. Unlike violations of custom, polluting sex could endanger the health of families and communities. Missionaries, who arrived in Xhosaland in the 1820s, described a much larger range of sexual behavior, including all extramarital sex, as spiritually wrong. Some Xhosa speakers converted to Christianity, while many others incorporated Christian ideas about sexual morality into their cosmologies without identifying as Christian. The major prophetic movements of the nineteenth century (led by Ntsikana, Nxele, and Nongqawuse) responded to Christian condemnations of Xhosa sexual impurity. Missionaries and devout African Christians sought to enforce Christian sexual morality among converts. Christian communities focused on nonconsensual sex as a sin against God rather than a violation of individual autonomy. This focus made women punishable for illicit sex if they could not prove it was nonconsensual.