Religion in the New World: Native American Spirituality

Sources

Definition. The term “Native American religion” is actually a misnomer if we consider religion in a traditional western sense; that is, a coherent system based on a single text, remaining fairly consistent over many generations. It is more accurate to refer to Native American spirituality. However, Native American spirituality, while possessing certain similarities, differed from tribe to tribe and from region to region. As a whole, Native Americans considered their culture and social structure to be intimately connected to spirituality, which was an integral part of each aspect of community life. Ceremony and ritual were extensions of everyday existence, but often these celebrations held meaning only for a particular tribe.

The Natural World. Each Native American tribe had spiritual relationships with the natural world. The Earth and its fruits were gifts to be appreciated, not taken for granted. Depending on the tribe or language group, different animals held particular powers. For all tribes it was important not to abuse the animals, in order to avoid their wrath. Each Native American tribe worshiped many gods, with one god often possessing superior powers. Some men

also possessed spiritual powers. These were the shamans, who were thought to have supernatural powers as well as the ability to heal others. In this way Native Americans connected body and spirit; an ailing spirit would beget an ailing body. Shamans were also responsible for transmitting myths, which, instead of written texts, served as the Indians’ sacred words.

Varieties. A few examples illustrate the varieties of Native American spirituality, gods, and beliefs. The Micmacs, who lived south and west of the gulf of the St. Lawrence River, shared beliefs similar to those of other northern hunting tribes. They especially respected the bear and believed that bears and other animals could become transformed into other species. Gluskap was a mighty warrior who had gone away but would return to help the Micmacs when necessary. The main religious authority among the

IROQUOIAN CREATION MYTH

In a house in the Sky World, native traditions say, a man and woman lived on opposite sides of a fireplace. The two had great spiritual power because each had been isolated from other people until the age of puberty. Every day after their housemates went out to work, the woman crossed to the other side to comb the man’s hair. Through mysterious means, she became pregnant and bore a daughter. Shortly thereafter, the man fell ill and announced that he would soon die. Because no one in the Sky World knew what death was, he had to explain to the woman what would happen to him and instruct her how to preserve his body. After he died, the woman’s growing daughter endured fits of weeping that, despite the best efforts of village neighbors to comfort her, could be relieved only by visits to the preserved corpse of the deceased, whose spirit told her that he was her father and taught her many things.

When the daughter, whom the Iroquois called Sky Woman, reached adulthood, her father’s spirit instructed her to take a dangerous journey to the village of a man destined to become her spouse. She brought her prospective husband loaves of bread baked with berries and then, enduring great travail, cooked him a potent soup that cured him of a long-troublesome ailment. In exchange he sent her home with a burden of venison that nearly filled her family’s house. After Sky Woman returned to her husband, the pair always slept on opposite sides of the fire and refrained from sexual intercourse. Nevertheless, she, like her mother before her, inexplicably became pregnant. Stricken by jealousy, the husband again became ill and dreamed that a great tree near his house must be uprooted so that he and his spouse could look down through the resulting hole to the world below. To cure his sickness, all the people of the village worked together to pull it up. When Sky Woman looked over the edge of the abyss, her husband pushed her down.

As she fell toward the endless waters below, the spirit birds and animals of the sea held a council to decide how to rescue her. Ducks flew up to catch her on their wings and bring her safely down, and the Turtle agreed to provide a place for her to rest on his Back. Meantime, various animals tried to dive to the bottom of the lake and bring up earth on which the woman could walk; only the Muskrat succeeded. The material he placed on the Turtle’s Back grew, with Sky Woman’s help, into the living dry land of North America. Soon the celestial visitor gave birth to a daughter, who in time became supernaturally pregnant by the spirit of the Turtle. In the younger woman’s womb grew male twins, who began arguing over the best way to emerge from her body. The first, the Good Twin (Tharonhiawagon, Upholder of the Heavens, or Sky-Grasper), was born by the normal route. The second, the Evil Twin (Tawiskaron), burst forth from his mother’s side and thus killed her. When Sky Woman asked which of her grandsons had slain her daughter, they blamed each other, but the Evil Twin was the more persistent and persuasive. The Grandmother cherished him, whom she loved; she turned the body and the head of the boys’ deceased mother into the sun and moon, respectively; and she threw the Good Twin out of her house, assuming he would die.

But he did not perish. Instead, with the aid of his father the Turtle, the Good Twin improved Iroquoia, making various animals, learning the secrets of cultivating maize and other crops, and finally bringing into existence mortal human beings. All of these things he did not create from nothingness; rather, they grew through a process of transformation and infusion of supernatural power from the living earth and from prototypical spirit beings who dwelled in the Sky World and beneath the waters. At each step, Sky Woman and the Evil Twin partially undid the Good Twin’s efforts in ways that forever after would make life difficult for humans. When the Good Twin constructed straight rivers that facilitated canoe travel by flowing both ways at once, the Evil Twin introduced rocks and hills to twist the streams and make their frequently obstructed waters fall in only one direction. When the Good Twin grew succulent ears of corn, Sky Woman threw ashes into his cooking pot and decreed that henceforth maize must be parched and ground before it could be eaten. When the Good Twin made animals readily give themselves to humans as food, the Evil Twin sealed them all in a cave, from which Sky-Grasper could rescue only a portion; the rest the Evil Twin turned into enemies of humans.

Finally, the two brothers fought, and the Good Twin triumphed. He could not, however, undo all the evil that his brother and Grandmother had left in the world. Instead he taught humans how to grow corn to support themselves and how to keep harm at bay through ceremonies of thanksgiving and propitiation to the spirit world. To keep these ceremonies, Sky-Grasper assigned roles to various camps of people he arbitrarily designated as clans named after such animals as the Wolf, the Bear, and the Turtle. But he knew that mortals could never keep the rituals adequately.

Source: Daniel Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), pp. 9–11.

Narragansetts in Rhode Island and Connecticut (they would figure prominently in Puritan New England in the seventeenth century) was the shaman. In each case the shaman, who was always male, had been selected as a result of a dream or vision which may have been induced by herbal infusions. Public rituals, such as those held at harvest time and in midwinter, honored the creator. The North Carolina Algonquians believed in various gods and spirits; the principal god had created lesser gods to create the world. Life after death assured treatment according to one’s moral conduct in this world.

Other Beliefs. The Miwoks in northern California believed that all living things belonged to one of two distinct categories. For people this was either land or water, and each category was represented by animals. The South Sierra Miwok’s symbols for land were the blue jay and the grizzly bear; the coyote represented water.

Sources

Handbook of North American Indians (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978–1990);

Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992).