51 North American Traditional Religion

G. Cooper

The majority of the original inhabitants of the North American continent migrated there from north-east Asia across the Bering Straits, over a time-span of perhaps 12,000 to 60,000 years ago.

Particular tribal religions thus result from a development of some thousands of years in varying ecological, economic and cultural conditions. Furthermore, systematic investigation into native American religions did not begin on any major scale until the end of the nineteenth century, when all tribes had been affected in some degree by white culture. Consequently it becomes almost impossible to make generalisations about North American native religions, for we are dealing with many different and distinct religions and not one homogenous system.

There are none the less certain common elements underlying North American indigenous religions. No tribe has a word for ‘religion’ as a separate sphere of existence. Religion permeates the whole of life, including economic activities, arts, crafts and ways of living. This is particularly true of nature, with which native Americans have traditionally a close and sacred relationship. Animals, birds, natural phenomena, even the land itself, have religious significance to native Americans: all are involved in a web of reciprocal relationships, which are sustained through behaviour and ritual in a state of harmony.

Conceptions of time among native Americans are cyclical and concerned with reciprocal relationships, such that ritual becomes not mere re-enactment of mythic events, but rather the mythic event re­occurs in the present. Linked to this is the power of names and words: songs, prayers and myth-telling are viewed as spiritual forces which directly affect the world, giving it form and meaning and effecting changes.

Conceptions of the world derive from mythology. Hultkrantz has noted four major types of myth in North America. Firstly the cosmological myths, describing the cosmos, its origins and the interrelation­ships ofits phenomena. This of course includes the Creation myths, of which there are a number of types. The most widespread is the Earth Diver, in which animals dive for mud in the primeval sea. Other major types are creation by world parents (the Father-Sky and Mother-Earth symbol being pervasive in North America), by Spider, from conflict between two beings, and the Emergence myth, which, strictly speaking, is more an account of human origins from worlds below the present one than a pure creation myth. Secondly there are institutional myths, which account for the existence of cultural and religious institutions. Thirdly there are ritual myths, which serve as ‘texts’ for ritual and ceremony and, finally, myths of entertainment or mythic tales, which are subject to elaboration and invention by the raconteur and are thus not of the same sacred character as other myths, but which, none the less, have important religious significance.

A distinction should be made between myth, which deals with the activities of deities and mythic beings in primordial times, and legend, where activities occur in historic times between humans and super­naturals. In North America, such a distinction is often difficult to make, since the two often merge. The Oglala Sioux account of the acquisition of the sacred pipe, for example, is, strictly speaking, a legend, but has the same sanctioning power as myth.

Some variation is to be found in the notion of a Supreme Being. Despite a conviction by many early Western scholars that such a conception did not exist in North America, it has been clear for some time that this was erroneous. One reason for the confusion may well be that the Supreme Being is often only vaguely outlined and plays little role in immediate religious concerns. As such, the Supreme Being exists as a deus otiosus, remote from everyday affairs. This is not to suggest that conceptions of the Supreme Being necessarily lack sophistication. The Supreme Being of the Oglala Sioux, for example, involves aspects of transcendence and immanence of great subtlety. None the less, the Supreme Being usually remains re­mote, being prayed to at times ofparticular criticality, and other sacred beings play more prominent roles in everyday religious activity; in cultic activity the Supreme Being generally has an inconspicuous role. Even in mythology the Supreme Being does not, with the exception of certain cosmogonic myths, play a major role. The most prominent role in native American mythology generally is filled by the Trickster-transformer-culture-hero.

This latter figure reflects a widespread native Ameri­can interest in the process whereby the world has been fashioned into its present nature, rather than in the original creation. The Trickster­transformer-culture-hero is a mythological character combining three differ­ent roles in one and is to be found throughout North America in different guises, being Coyote in the Plains, Basin, south-west and California areas, Raven or Mink on the north-west coast, Hare in the south-east and Bluejay in the Plateau area. Among hunting peoples, he tends to display the full range of roles—Trickster, a prankster or fool, whose activities provide the source for numerous and widespread ‘Trickster tales’; Transformer, whose activities transformed the basic ‘stuff of the world into the present condition; and Culture-Hero, who, through daring adventures, provided numerous bene­fits (fire, water, daylight etc.) and cultural skills and customs to human beings, rendering the earth safe for human habitation. Among tribes where agriculture is prominent, it is often the Trickster elements alone that are found, cultural benefits being due to other beings. The ‘Trickster tales’, found throughout North America, provide one of the most entertaining series of myths and are extremely popular. Even though such myths can be considered as entertainment tales, being subject to elaboration and invention and therefore not having the same sanctioning power as other myths, which are sacred and hence unalterable, these tales none the less have important instructive and explanatory purposes and have significant religious value.

There are other mythological beings of importance, although many are regionally specific. Among the more widespread are the Thunderbird, which produces thunder and lightning, and the Hero Twins, culture-heroes who, in some areas, are associated with warfare.

Without doing injustice to native American con­cepts, it is possible to make a distinction between the sacred beings of myth and those of everyday life.

The seeking of a personal relationship with the sacred through vision is one of the most distinguishing features of many tribes. Deliberate ‘vision quests’ occurred throughout much of North America, typically involving a period of purification and prayer, followed by seclusion in a remote place for a period of days, during which time the supplicant fasts and prays until a vision is attained. Among the Eastern Woodlands and Prairie tribes, boys were expected to undertake the quest at puberty and acquire a guardian spirit, usually in animal form, which would lend supernatural power, usually throughout the individual’s life.

The acquisition of a guardian spirit was a practice found in all areas of North America, except the south-west. The most common way of acquiring one was through vision, but in some areas it was possible to inherit or purchase a guardian spirit, although the spirit involved had to agree to the transfer. Taken as a whole, the nature of guardian spirits seems limitless, varying from mythic beings to demons, the weather, even kettles, although by far the most common were animals and birds, occasion­ally appearing in anthropomorphic guise. Usually different spirits had differ­ent degrees of power or possessed different kinds of specialised power. Through the acquisition of a guardian spirit, an individual gained access to power, the nature of such power varying with the spirit, such as to lend either general power, giving aid in hunting or warfare, or a more specific, perhaps greater, power, such as the ability to cure illness or to prophesy. The relationship to the spirit was sustained through following instructions given by the spirit, including the use of certain songs and prayers, the observation of various taboos and the preparation of a ‘medicine bundle’, containing objects relating to the particular spirit. Spirits could be demanding and argumentative and the strong relationship between an individual and the guardian spirit in some cases amounted almost to a personal religion. On the Plains, individuals having the same guardian spirit formed societies, occa­sionally engaging in competitive demonstrations of power.

Individuals acquiring a guardian spirit which gave the power of curing generally formed a distinct group. Those who acquired this power through an unsought vision were regarded as particularly power­ful and usually became shamans—those who entered trance to perform a variety of tasks, of which curing was the most important. True shamans and shamanism proper were to be found in the Arctic and north-west coast areas, although shamanism demonstrates its influence throughout the continent and many individuals displayed power derived from visionary experience who cannot be termed shamans in the strict sense. Unfortunately, the wide variety of individuals and activities centred around curing and the lack of an adequate morphology of such specialists means that they can only be referred to by the imprecise term ‘medicine-men’. They can, nevertheless, be clearly distinguished from the more priestly figures, found in the south-west among the Navajo and Pueblo tribes, whose power is derived from the learning of traditional rites, rather than personal contacts with spirits.

Disease concepts traditionally rested on notions of soul-loss, taboo-violation or witchcraft, the latter two often resulting in the idea of object-intrusion—the lodging of an object in the patient’s body. Curing rituals thus involved soul-retrieval, characteristic of shamanism, or object-extraction, all requiring the assistance of spirits to lend power. In the Eastern Woodlands and Plains there developed a curing ritual referred to as the ‘Spirit Lodge’ or ‘Shaking Tent’, in which a bound medicine-man attracted spirits to a darkened lodge or tepee to effect his release and cure the sick. Underlying all curing rituals is the basic notion of restoration of harmony.

One other sacred specialist deserves mention—the sacred clown. Found predominantly in the Plains, south-west, California and north-west coast areas, the clown displayed varying regional characteristics. In the Plains, he observed backward or contrary behaviour; among the Sioux this resulted from a vision of the Thunderbird. In the south-west, among the Pueblos, clown groups engaged in sexual, social and ceremonial satire. Although such behaviour occasionally appeared to have more entertainment than religious value, the clown was regarded as being a particularly powerful and sacred figure, displaying links with fertility as well as having psycho­social functions.

Women’s participation in religious affairs was gen­erally more limited. In some tribes women attained visions, although this was not common, and whilst medicine-women could be found, especially in Oregon and California, as a whole they were not as numerous as men. Child-bearing and rearing was considered their primary role. The ability to bear children gave women a singular power of their own, which, particularly among the hunters, was considered antithetical to power wielded by men. Female power was manifested most obviously in menstruation and women were normally isolated during this time for fear of‘polluting’ sacred objects and ritual activity. Among the Athapascans especially, the girl’s first menses was marked by an important puberty ceremony.

Ritual and ceremonial life demonstrates great rich­ness and diversity. A brief summary of selected tribes in different areas must necessarily suffice to give some indication of this richness.

The Ojibwa of the north-east lived by hunting, fishing and gathering in a relatively harsh environment. In common with other hunting tribes in many parts of North America, individual rites pre­dominated, centring round visions, attention to dreams and the acquisition of guardian spirits, termed manitos, which inhabited trees, rocks, birds, animals and other natural phenomena. Most rites involved the use of tobacco, regarded as a sacred plant. The largest ceremony was the Midewiwin (literally ‘mystic doings’), a society of medicine-men which held an annual ceremony for the purposes of initiating new members and curing illness. Initiates, on payment of the requisite fees, could progress through a number of initiatory levels. The ceremony culminated in a public performance in a specially constructed medicine-lodge, in which the initiates were shot with migis (small white clam shells), which drove out sickness and renewed life.

On the Plains, the Oglala Sioux, whose traditional culture as we know it developed with the introduction of the horse in the early eighteenth century, likewise derived their living from hunting, predom­inantly buffalo, and here again individual rites predominated. Seven rituals associated with the use of the sacred pipe, originally given to the Sioux by the sacred White Buffalo Calf Woman, constituted the bulk of Sioux rituals. Whilst they included individual rituals, such as the purificatory Sweat Lodge and the Vision Quest, one in particular—the Sun Dance—was a major communal ceremony. This ceremony was held annually during the summer and involved the construction of a special lodge, at the centre of which was raised a cottonwood tree, representing the world pillar. The ceremony took place over four days and provided an opportunity for individual sacrifice as well as renewal of the relationship of the whole tribe to the sacred, being in essence a world-renewal ceremony.

Some of the richest, most dramatic ceremonialism occurred on the north-west coast, where stable and plentiful food supplies and sedentary living patterns in villages on the beaches allowed the develop­ment of rich material and ceremonial cultures. Among the Kwakiutl tribe, clans traced their ancestry to mythical animals who, in primordial times, became humans and founded the different lineages. There was a strong emphasis on status and rank and, through inherited rights, individuals were initiated into religious societies during a long winter ceremonial period. Pre-eminent among these societies was thehamatsa cult, relating to the great deity Baxbakualanuxsiwae (Great Man-eater). Initiation involved seclusion in the woods, spirit possession and public ritual with the appearance of dancers wearing elaborate masks and costumes and representing supernatural beings. The potlatch ceremony was a ceremonial distribution of wealth, related to rank and, like all Kwakiutl ceremonialism, reflected underlying motifs of transformation, death and rebirth.

Agricultural ceremonialism was found in some form wherever crops were grown. The most prominent forms occurred among the Pueblos of the south-west, particularly the Hopi of Arizona. Relying on scanty rainfall for the growing of maize and other crops, Hopi ceremonialism is linked to both myth and the agricultural cycle. Social, political and cere­monial organisation was traditionally interlinked and a number of different religious societies perform ceremonies at particular times of the year from November (the start of the New Year) onwards. Involving secret rituals in ceremonial chambers, called kivas, and with public dances on the concluding days, ceremonies incorporate rituals of recreation, initiation and the attrac­tion of kachinas—spirits who bring rain and other blessings to the tribe. Masked dancers appear as kachinas in both private and public rituals. Other Pueblo groups to the east, whilst stressing fertility, show stronger emphasis on curing ceremonies, carried out by organisations of medicine-men. Although these practices show clear shamanic influences, Pueblo religious specialists rely solely on learned traditions as the basis of their power and not on visionary experience.

The Navajo, pastoralist neighbours of the Pueblos, likewise rely on the learning of word-perfect ritual as the basis of their ceremonialism. Arriving in the south-west around 1500 ce as small hunting bands, this tribe provides a good example of a people who have adopted more elaborate religious conceptions and practices (in this case from the Pueblos) and, in so doing, have developed basic shamanic curing rituals into complex and lengthy ceremonials for the curing of illness, which constitute virtually the whole of Navajo ceremonial practice. During these ceremonials, some of which last nine days and nights, the patient is identified with holy people through prayer, song and the use of dry-paintings or sand-paintings, which depict mythic events associated with the particular ceremonial; in fact each ceremonial is a reoccurrence of a myth, the patient being identified with the hero and original patient, who, through exorcising of evil and identification with holy people, is restored to a state of harmony.

These brief examples can only suggest the richness and diversity of native American ceremonial life, which tends to be almost exclusively concerned with this life. Native American religious life generally displays little concern with eschatology. The afterlife was commonly seen as a happier continuation of this life, behaviour in this life having little effect on one’s fate after death. In all of North America, bar the south-west, the belief occurs in one form or another that human beings are equipped with two kinds of soul: a bodily soul, granting life and movement and consciousness to the body, and a dream or free soul, identical to the person, which can leave the body and visit far-away places, including the land of the dead. This free soul can be directed at will by shamans and indeed the general belief can be traced to the pervasive influence of shamanism. The dead, with few excep­tions, were feared in varying degrees and it was considered important to maintain a clear separation between living and dead.

The traditional religious life of the native Americans is the result of development over many thousands of years. Even before the arrival of the Europeans, ecological, economic and cultural factors meant that native American religions have never been static systems of belief and prac­tice. However, the incoming Europeans had a radically different and more overwhelming influence on traditional cultures. Policies towards the native Americans varied, but the net result was the introduction of diseases and military conquest, which killed millions and led to the extinction of numer­ous tribes, the taking of land and the suppression of traditional culture and religion. The loss of land and traditional lifestyles has affected different tribes in different ways. Little remains of traditional religious culture in some areas, whereas other areas (for example in the south-west, where the desert land was of little interest to whites) retain strong traditional religions.

The south-west was the initial area of penetration by Europeans into North America when the Spaniards arrived in the sixteenth century and proceeded to impose political and religious domination on the Pueblos. Despite nominal conversion to Catholicism, traditional ceremonial­ism survived virtually intact and today the two systems of belief coexist with relatively little friction. Elsewhere, missionary activity, coupled with the banning of traditional ritual in the 1880s, has led to the nominal conversion of most native Americans to Christianity. I say nominal because it is in fact often impossible to make clear distinctions between Christians and traditionalists. Whilst there are strict adherents to both of these belief systems, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive, many native Americans fluctuating between the two, depending on circumstances. Of overriding importance is their sense of identity as, firstly, members of a particular tribe and, secondly, as native Americans.

In this regard, two religious responses by native Americans to encroaching white culture and religion are of importance. The first is the Ghost Dance movement of the late nineteenth century, which originated with the Piaute prophet, Wovoka, who beheld Godin a vision. He was told that the old life would return and the dead come back to life, provided that the Indians regularly performed dances. This millenarian movement, combining Christian and indigenous elements, swept across the Great Basin and Plains areas in 1889-90, assuming a distinctly anti-white tendency among the more warlike tribes, particularly the Sioux, who intro­duced ‘Ghost Dance shirts’, said to offer protection against bullets. The movement culminated in military action against the Sioux, ending with the murder of Chief Sitting Bull and the massacre of a large band of Sioux at Wounded Knee in 1890. With this defeat and the failure of the millenium to materialise, the movement died away. It was, none the less, a significant attempt to posit a positive future for peoples whose ways of life were being destroyed.

A more successful syncretic response is the Peyote Cult. The ritual taking of peyote, an hallucinogenic cactus, developed in Mexico and spread northwards into the Plains during the latter part of the nineteenth century. It is now firmly established in a number of tribes and, although its spread was vigorously opposed by both Christians and traditionalists, it clearly provides a means of gaining power for the dispirited and, by combining Christian (the use of the Bible, Christian prayers and ethics) and traditional (singing, drumming, visions and the incorporation of indigenous spirits) elements, it provides a new ritual form which is distinctly Indian, but which allows accommodation to a changing world.

It has often been assumed that, with the overwhelm­ing influence of white culture and the corresponding destruction of tradi­tional native American ways oflife, that the traditional religions have become virtually extinct. This is an inadequate and erroneous conception. Whilst traditions often display outward signs of collapse, native American religions have always been dynamic, incorporating historical changes and disruptive elements within them. The effects of white culture have been especially dramatic and severe, but the persistence and survival of the basic identity of so many Indian tribes is a testament to their ability to withstand change and adapt new situations to the essential characteristics of their own traditions.

Currently, therefore, native American societies dis­play a variety of religious beliefs and practices, ranging from the purely traditional, through syncretic forms such as peyotism, to Christianity. One important recent factor has been the rise of what has been termed ‘red power’, reflecting a widespread determination by native Americans to pursue more forcibly such issues as land rights and sovereignty, guided by an increased concern with arresting the erosion of their traditional cultures and religions. This is resulting in much resurgence and revitalisation of traditional reli­gions. These religions are thus by no means extinct, indeed they continue to give strength and meaning to native Americans and offer scholars of religion a rich source of revealing and significant insights into the religious life of human beings.

Further Reading

Beck, P. and Walters, A. (eds.) The Sacred (Navajo Community College, Tsaile, 1977)

Brown, J.E. The Sacred Pipe (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1953) Cooper, G.H. Development and Stress in Navajo Religion (Almqvist and Wiksell, Stockholm, 1984)

Feraca, S.E. Wakinyan: Contemporary Teton Dakota Religion (Museum of the Plains Indian, Browning, 1963)

Gill, S.D. Songs of Life: an Introduction to Navajo Religious Culture (E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1979)

----- Native American Religions: an Introduction (Wadsworth, Belmont, 1982) Goldman, I. The Mouth of Heaven: an Introduction to Kwakiutl Religious Thought (Wiley, New York, 1975)

Hultkrantz, A. ‘Spirit Lodge, a North American Shamanistic Seance’ in C-M. Eds- man (ed.), Studies in Shamanism (Almqvist and Wiksell, Stockholm, 1967), pp. 32-68

----- The Religions of the American Indians (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1979)

----- ‘Myths in Native American Religions’ in E.H. Waugh and K.D. Prithipaul (eds.), Native Religious Traditions (Wilfred Laurier University Press, Waterloo, 1979), pp. 77-97

LaBarre, W. ‘The Peyote Cult’, Yale University Publications in Anthropology (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1938), vol. 19

Landes, R. Ojibwa Religion and the Midewiwin (University of Wisconsin Press, Madi­son, 1968)

MacNeish, R.F. Early Man in America (W.H. Freeman, Oxford, 1973)

Mooney, J. The Ghost Dance and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 (University of Chicago, Chicago, 1965; originally pub. 1896)

Slotkin, J.S. The Peyote Religion: a Study in Indian-White Relations (Free Press, Glen­coe, 1956)

Waters, F. Book of the Hopi (Viking, New York, 1963)