Native American Religion
Before they were conquered by the English, the indigenous people of North America followed a religious system in which they perceived themselves as living in a cosmos pervaded by powerful, mysterious spiritual beings and forces that underlay and supported human life. Native Americans believed that in order to survive as individuals and communities, it was necessary to acknowledge these spritual powers in every aspect of their lives- through addressing them in prayer and song, offering them gifts, establishing ritual relationships with them, and passing down knowledge about them to subsequent generations. Native Americans lived in a world of spirits who made their presence known primarily thorugh natural phenomena. Most Native Americans believed in a Great Mystery or Great Spirit that underlays the complexity of all existence, as well as in many other spiritual powers that influenced the whole of life. At times of crisis, Native Americans turned to powerful spirits to acknowledge their dependence on these spritis and to seek help. Such crises included drought and disease, the suspicion of witchcraft, and the failure to track and kill game. Each tribal group conceived of the spirit world in its own particular way, and there were variations of belief and ritual practice within each community. Native Americans did not profess monotheism in any way. They did hold a view that a even a supreme being could be conceptualized in more than one way. Because most Native Americans thought that supernatural powers were personal beings, they sought to establish relationships with benevolent guardian spirits. Such relationships existed across the North American continent, although they were not prominent in the Southwest. Most of the hunting and gathering peoples of North America hoped to enter intimate relationships with spirits and to win these spirits as their protectors. . They also hoped to avoid spirits thought to be dangerous, harmful, or evil. Sometimes, as in native cultures of the Pacific Northwest, guardians were handed down within families from one generation to the next. More often, as in the cultures of the Eastern woodlands, youths sought the guardians' pity and protection by means of lengthy fasts. Guardian spirits became like family members to individual Native Americans, assuring them health, long life, success in economic pursuits, and help in times of crisis. The Native Americans, in turn, were responsible to their guardians, providing them with tobacco and other offerings, singing their praises, and upholding their honor. Thus, whereas supereme beings seemed distant to daily concerns, guardian spirits took an immediate interest in an individual's welfare. In the worldview of most Native Americnas, ghosts were to be avoided. Native Americans would go to the extreme to avoid contact with ghosts by disposing of the bodies of deceased relatives immediately,avoided burial sites, never mentioned the names of dead ancestors, and even abandoned the dwellings where they had died> if a person was responsible for an individual's death- then they would usually be required to adopt the dead person, keeping his scalp, and appeasing his spirit continually with gifts and kind words. In a world filled with harmful and helpful forces, Native Americans tried to locate repositories of spiritual power. Uncanny phenomena such as geysers, trees struck by lightning, and deposits of rare minerals, as well as dangerous locales such as waterfalls and whirlpools, became sites of pilgrimage where indigenous people hoped to collect spiritual power. They gathered herbs and pollen, oddly shaped stones, and horns, bones, teeth, feathers, and other body parts of animals and placed them in medicine bundles, collections of objects believed to heal disease and ward off ghosts, witches, foes, and destructive spirits. Most Native Americans kept these medicine bundles for personal, household, and community protection. Native Americans engaged in a variety of rituals. As a person passed through the stages of the life cycle-obtaining a name after birth, seeking a guardian spirit at puberty, setting off at death for the journey to the afterlife-rituals marked the passages. One of the basic rituals was the sweat lodge- a purification ritual in which water was poured over heated stones to create a hot vapor bath. The rites, or ceremonial acts, of the sweat lodge were believed to wash away both moral and physical impurities. Sweat lodges were used for teaching, praying, and singing, often in preparation for other ceremonies. Native Americans used gestures and words to communicate in prayer with the spiritual sources of life. Prayers were offered for a whole range of needs, including health, agricultural bounty, and success in the hunt. Prayers could take a variety of forms; songs and dances, as well as such acts as the sprinkling of corn meal, could function as prayers. Verbal prayers included expresions of thanksgiving, requests or pleas, and coercive formulas. In order to make their prayers effective, Native Americans made offerings to the spirits. The most common offering was of native tobacco, either smoked in pipes, burned in fires, or deposited ceremonially. When gathering herbs, Native Americans placed tobacco in the earth as an offering of appreciation. Such gifts were thought to seal and renew relations with the sources of life. The cycle of the year was punctuated with ceremonial observances of prayer and thanksgiving. Such observances took place at critical points in agricultural or hunting season such as the return of the first salmon from the ocean to the rivers, the times of planting, ripening, and harvest, the appearance of sap in maple trees, or the summer and winter solstices. In some cases a whole season was devoted to riotual. Spirits were welcomed into the villages with song and dance, and the people shared their food and wealth with one another in elaborate feasts. Rituals were meant not only to communciate with spritual beings but also to pass dwon tribal traditions. One of the most common rituals among Native Americans was a recounting of myths, which contained a wealth of religious knowledge. Myths provided comunities with a cosmogeny, a worldview, and an ethos. Through their oral traditions, Native Americans told how the processes of creation occurred, often through the transforming actvities of creative deities, cultural heroes, and tricksters. These stories were not authoratative assertions about the origin of the world. Rather, these stories were means by which Native Americans examined the spritual and physical conditions of their existence- the origins of humanity, the place of human beings in the cosmos, the sources of sustenance, the reasons for death, and socials institutions like marriage. Various cuiltural regions had their own characteristic creation myths usually depciting animals as agents of creation. There was always depicted dualistic struggle between a hero animal and a trickster animal.
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