Native American Religion Native American Religion Because of the long history and wide diversity of Native American cultures and societies, the notion of one single Native American religion is probably false. The people we call North Americans arrived on the North American continent 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, lived in many different locales, and practiced differing lifestyles. Some tribes were hunters and gatherers, others developed agricultural communities. Some lived as nomads, while others built towns and cities. Our vision of Native Americans hunting bison was only true on the western plains, and we sometimes forget that it was the Europeans who introduced the horse that made such hunting possible. We also have to remember that written sources for a study of Native American religion tend to be relatively recent and influenced by a long Christian history of forced conversion. Archeological evidence gives few clues about religious practice. To describe Native American religion, we have one of two options: we can either describe one specific religion of one tribe at a certain time and place; or, we can make general statements about the entire field. In this course, we will take the second approach. To begin, we might ask whether Native American religions are polytheistic, monotheistic, or monist. On the one hand, they are polytheistic. All nature is alive with spirits: the spirits of the animals and plants, who sometimes appear in visions; the guardian spirits of various animals; and the spirits of the dead, who live in the land of the dead. At the heart is Mother Earth, who provides the bounty of the earth. Thunder and lightning are considered separate deities. On the other hand, many Native American religions hold that there is a single Supreme Being. Above and beyond the lesser deities, there is a High God. However, this high God is above daily matters and only appealed to in extreme emergency. Some Native Americans see the High God or Great Spirit as personal, while others see the High God in a more impersonal way. The Dakota (Sioux) belief in Wakan Tanka is a good example of this abstract understanding of God. Wakan Tanka, or the “Great Mysterious,” is a creative force found in all beings and spirits. Any object or being that has influence over the course of life is seen as a manifestation of this divine power. Thus, Native American religions have some elements of polytheism, monotheism, and monism One of the principal characteristics of Native American religion is animism. An animist is one who believes that the trees, rocks, rivers, and animals are spiritually alive. The spirits that live in nature can help or harm, and so some form of worship is normally offered to these spirits. And so nature is to be respected and lived with in harmony. Hunting is a good example of this attitude. Hunting played an essential role in survival and the huntee was viewed as a kindred spirit. The hunter praye ...

1. Native American Religion
Native American Religion
Because of the long history and wide diversity of Native
American cultures and societies, the notion of one single Native
American religion is probably false. The people we call North
Americans arrived on the North American continent 15,000 to
20,000 years ago, lived in many different locales, and practiced
differing lifestyles. Some tribes were hunters and gatherers,
others developed agricultural communities. Some lived as
nomads, while others built towns and cities. Our vision of
Native Americans hunting bison was only true on the western
plains, and we sometimes forget that it was the Europeans who
introduced the horse that made such hunting possible. We also
have to remember that written sources for a study of Native
American religion tend to be relatively recent and influenced by
a long Christian history of forced conversion. Archeological
evidence gives few clues about religious practice. To describe
Native American religion, we have one of two options: we can
either describe one specific religion of one tribe at a certain
time and place; or, we can make general statements about the
entire field. In this course, we will take the second approach.
To begin, we might ask whether Native American religions are
polytheistic, monotheistic, or monist. On the one hand, they are
polytheistic. All nature is alive with spirits: the spirits of the
animals and plants, who sometimes appear in visions; the
guardian spirits of various animals; and the spirits of the dead,
who live in the land of the dead. At the heart is Mother Earth,
who provides the bounty of the earth. Thunder and lightning
are considered separate deities. On the other hand, many
Native American religions hold that there is a single Supreme

2. Being. Above and beyond the lesser deities, there is a High
God. However, this high God is above daily matters and only
appealed to in extreme emergency. Some Native Americans see
the High God or Great Spirit as personal, while others see the
High God in a more impersonal way. The Dakota (Sioux)
belief in Wakan Tanka is a good example of this abstract
understanding of God. Wakan Tanka, or the “Great
Mysterious,” is a creative force found in all beings and spirits.
Any object or being that has influence over the course of life is
seen as a manifestation of this divine power. Thus, Native
American religions have some elements of polytheism,
monotheism, and monism
One of the principal characteristics of Native American religion
is animism. An animist is one who believes that the trees,
rocks, rivers, and animals are spiritually alive. The spirits that
live in nature can help or harm, and so some form of worship is
normally offered to these spirits. And so nature is to be
respected and lived with in harmony. Hunting is a good
example of this attitude. Hunting played an essential role in
survival and the huntee was viewed as a kindred spirit. The
hunter prayed to the spirit of the animal before the hunt, and
asked for its forgiveness afterwards. Every part of the animal
was used. These practices were in marked contrast to Euro-
American hunters, who slaughtered whole herds of bison for
their hides or tongues, and left the rest to rot. The contrast
between Native Americans and whites can be summarized in the
words of a Wintu:
“The White people never cared for land or deer or bear. When
we Indians kill meat, we eat it all up. When we dig roots we
make little holes. When we build houses, we make little holes.
When we burn grass for grasshoppers, we don’t ruin things. We
shake down acorns and pine nuts. We don’t chop down the
trees. We only use dead wood. But the White people plow up
the ground, pull down the trees, kill everything. The tree says,

3. “Don’t. I am sore. Don’t hurt me.” But they chop it down and
cut it up. The spirit of the land hates them. They blast out
trees and stir it up to its depths. They saw up the trees. That
hurts them. The Indians never hurt anything, but the White
people destroy all.”
It is not surprising then that Native American ritual and practice
was aimed at a proper relation between human beings and the
spirit world. One of the ways was taboos. Taboos are all
actions, circumstances, persons, objects, etc., which owing to
their dangerousness fall outside the normal everyday categories
of existence. One taboo was the avoidance of a woman
menstruating, for it was thought that she had special powers
during that time, that even here gaze could destroy a warrior’s
hunting ability or drive away the game. Another taboo was
avoidance of the dead, for it was thought, and still believed
today, that the spirits of the dead might haunt families and give
them bad dreams. Burial grounds were sacred and feared and
not to be disturbed for any reason.
Along with taboos, ceremonies, rituals, songs, and dances
helped control the spirit world. Dances prepared the tribe for
the hunt, the agricultural season, or the preparation for war.
Since the results of a hunt could often be capricious, elaborate
rituals often evolved around the hunt. Here is a description of
a Pueblo ritual before a hunt:
One of the most dramatic memories is that of standing in the
plaza of a Pueblo, in the dark of a January morning, to watch
the Mother of Game bring in the deer. It was almost dawn when
we heard the hunter’s call from the hillside. The shadowy
forms came bounding down through the pinion trees. At first
we could barely see the shaking horns and dappled hides. Then
the sun’s rays picked out men on all fours, with deerskins over
their backs and painted staves in their hands to simulate
forelegs. They leaped and gamboled before the people while

4. around them pranced little boys who seemed actually to have
the spirit of the fawns. In their midst was a beautiful Pueblo
woman with long black hair, in all the regalia of white boots
and embroidered manta. She was their Owner, the Mother of
Game, but she was also Earth Mother, the source of all live
things including man. She led the animals where they would be
good targets for the hunters, and one by one, they were
symbolically killed.
Native Americans often seek visions at some point in life to
gain special power with the spirit world. A young person at the
time of puberty often goes on what is called a vision quest.
They are separated from the community, fast from food and
even water, and wait for a vision. When it comes, it normally
takes the appearance of an animal that becomes that person’s
guide or totem. If the vision does not appear after two or three
days, the young person may take more extreme measures to
bring on the vision. Once the vision is received, the young
person returns to the community as a full member. Some vision
quests are communal, like the Sun Dance among the Plains
people. At the height of summer, the people gather in a sacred
lodge around a sacred pole. The dance usually lasts three days
and nights. The dancers fast and dance continuously. Some are
strung up on thongs through their pectoral muscles to be closer
to the divine. Other vision quests centered on the hunt.
Native American religions had no priesthood. The specialist,
whom came to be called a “medicine man” by early white
settlers, sought to cure sickness by receiving power from the
spirit world. The spirits might appear after a period of prayer
and fasting, and take the form of an animal, like a bear or
badger, because these two animals were associated with healing
in Native American mythology. Because of their special power,
medicine men and women could also curse and bring sickness

5. and death on those who incurred their wrath.
One of the most common elements of Native American religions
is the use of tobacco and the sacred pipe in religious
ceremonies. Tobacco was originally grown and used only for
religious purposes, for the tobacco used was far stronger than
cigarettes today. The use of peyote in religious ceremonies
began in Mexico and spread northward. Peyote contains
mescaline which ingested in a tea produces hallucinations and
visions. Its use spread at the end of the nineteenth century with
the defeats of Native Americans at the hands of the U.S.
government. Some Native Americans, who had been taught the
principles of Christianity, attempted to combine peyote use with
Christian rituals. The Native America Church was legally
organized in Oklahoma in 1918 and now has about 225,000
members.
Finally, Native Americans had a variety of beliefs about death
and life after death. Generally, Native Americans believe in
two souls: one soul, the breath of life, accompanies the body
and dies with it. The other soul, the so-called free soul,
wanders about during dreams and leaves the body during
sickness. After death, this soul goes to the land of the dead.
Although little is said about it, the land of the dead is a
continuation of the pleasures of this life on a different plane of
existence. There is no concept of “heaven” or “hell” in Native
American religion. Like the Greek concept of Hades, the soul
exists in the land of the dead only as long as the person is
remembered by the living. When the person is forgotten, the
soul begins to fade away and eventually disappears. This may
account for the strong devotion by Mexicans and Mexican-
Americans on November second to El Dia de los Muertos (the
Day of the Dead), a peculiar blend of Native American and
Christian ideas.

6. While Native Americans were engrossed in faiths that situated
them in the world of nature, the Europeans had historical faiths.
And all three great Western religions were profoundly skepti cal
about human existence. The thrust of European religious life
was away from valuing earthly life and toward founding a
relationship with an unseen God who existed beyond this world.
All three religions were also religions of the Word. God,
through priests and prophets, could speak directly to the people.
While Judaism was relatively self-contained, both Christianity
and Islam sought to convert others to their religion.
Most Americans tend to approach the phenomenon of Indian
"conversion" to Christianity with one of two starkly opposite
and inaccurate assumptions. While some, typically those with
strong Christian convictions, jump to the conclusion that Indian
converts completely abandoned native religious traditions in
favor of the "superior truth" of Christianity, others, who pride
themselves on some skepticism, voice the suspicion that all
Indian conversions were merely expedient--matters of sheer
survival--and, hence, "insincere." This is probably how the
process of "conversion" typically unfolded among Native
American peoples. Indians did not simply replace one faith with
another, nor did most converts cynically pretend to embrace
Christian convictions. Instead, native beliefs and rituals
gradually became intermixed with Christian elements,
exemplifying a process known as religious syncretism--a
creative combination of the elements of different religious
traditions yielding an entirely new religious system capable of
commanding broad popular loyalties. It yielded a broad
spectrum of results, ranging from native peoples' accepting
almost entirely the Christianity of the dominant white society to
tribal attempts at revitalizing traditional Indian religions and, in
some instances, renewing their resistance to Euro-American
efforts at military and cultural conquest. Like any story, it is
extremely complex and

7. The key development in the field of Native American
historiography (also referred to as "ethnohistory") within the
last twenty years is the growing awareness of the "new world"
created for both whites and Indians as a result of their contact.
Earlier histories either celebrated the rapid triumph of Euro-
American "civilization" over Indian "savagery" or deplored the
decimation of native peoples through military defeat and
disease. In both versions, native peoples figured primarily as
passive victims. More recent histories tell another story
entirely, drawing attention to the enduring Indian resistance to
white domination and, even more important, to the multiple
forms of cultural adaptation and accommodation that took place
on both sides of the moving frontier.