Natives and newcomers: A clash of worldviews The interplay of conflict, resistance, adaptation, near extinction, and preservation
Native American Religion According to Jon Butler, African and American Indian religions exhibited equal complexity (to European religions) Despite an insufficient archaeological record, anthropologists and historians have long demonstrated that the religions of preliterate societies were exceptionally sophisticated (17) Caveat: Be mindful of the critical thinking fallacy called chronological snobbery the tendency to equate the thinking of an earlier time as inherently inferior, ignorant, primitive, and under-evolved.
Native American Religion Native Americans had no word for religion; all aspects of personal and tribal life were permeated with religion. This holistic view of reality meant the sacred and earthly spheres were interrelated; and there existed an intimacy with humans, natural phenomena and the supernatural. Myth was a central cultural facet Myth explains some basic truth about human life and serves as a means of affirming collective tribal identity (i.e., different tribes held different myths accounting for things in the natural world)
Wakan Tanka When I was ten years of age I looked at the land and the rivers, the sky above, and the animals around me and could not fail to realize that they were made by some great power. I was so anxious to understand this power that I questioned the trees and the bushes. It seemed as though the flowers were staring at me, and I wanted to ask them, Who made you? I looked at the moss-covered stones; some of them seemed to have the features of a man, but they could not answer me. Then I had a dream, and in my dream one of these small round stones appeared to me and told me that the maker of all was Wakan Tanka, and that in order to honor Him must honor his works in nature. Brave Buffalo of the Hunkpapa Lakota
I wonder if the ground has anything to say? Native Americans felt tied to the land Since all were connected to a common origin, descending from ancestors who arose from the earth as versions of the creation myth stated none had a private claim to the land Shamans or medicine men were seen to have a special connection to the land and the spirit realm through ritual and complex practices they healed social and physical ills
Mother Earth You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother s breast? Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest. You ask me to dig for stone. Shall I dig under her skin for bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again. You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it, and be rich like white men. But how dare I cut off my mother s hair? Sohalla, Nez Perce tribe
The European lens The trope of European colonialism was the misdiagnosis of foreign cultures as wild, savage, pagan, polytheistic, lacking religion. Colonists would use the designation uncivilized peoples to justify European savagery as they destroyed tribal way of life, and conquered the land. European cultures circumscribed religion to the religious sphere; Native American (and African) religion was invisible because it penetrated all aspects of life. Europeans failed to grasp this worldview distinction.
Getting religion and getting civilization Unlike the Spanish and French, the English wavered in their views about converting Native Americans. Anglo-Europeans seemed more interested in Native American land, not Native American souls. The Puritans created praying towns to isolate and separate Native Americans from their tribes and tribal customs, and to strip them of all that was un-christian.
Do we really want to make them like us? Butler notes two aspects to the Christian missionary thrust: To extend Christianity into the new world by Christianizing the first nations To control what that Christianity would look like uniformity. This meant eradicating by the roots Native American culture Yet Christians argued among themselves. Did missionary endeavors really serve a religious purpose? Or was it a thin disguise to steal land and control the first nations? Should force be used to convert them? Should their children be taught? How? Should Indian converts be treated equally with Europeans?
If we become like them, then what happens to us? Butler imagines how the first nation peoples must have argued among themselves: accommodate, assimilate, imitate, resist? Native Americans everywhere simultaneously resisted and accommodated to the European presence and demands. Many rejected demands to convert to Christianity by ignoring, openly opposing, and sometimes killing missionary priests. Other natives converted but sometimes retained many vestiges of traditional culture. As a counterpart to the European hesitancy about the missionary enterprise, first nation peoples wondered: Is this conversion legitimate? How can we accept European goods but reject European gods? What are the long term ramifications? If one tribe converts and tries to assimilate, does this threaten other tribes? All tribes? (Butler 22-23)
The Trail of Tears In the years following the Revolutionary War, Native Americans experienced some of the most brutal treatment In 1838, Andrew Jackson mandated the transplantation of Native Americans to Oklahoma Territory, a journey known as the trail of tears during which many native people perished The forced removal primarily affected tribes east of the Mississippi, including that Five Civilized Tribes, deemed such by Anglo-Europeans In a more militant turn, the Cherokee adopted the ghost dance, intended to bring about and represent apocalyptic change, whereby the Europeans, along with their influence, would be wiped out
Five Civilized Tribes
THE GHOST DANCE
Sacred ground The ground on which we stand is sacred ground. It is the dust and blood of our ancestors. Plenty Coups, of the Absaroke
You own nothing. You don t even posses your body; it belongs to mother earth. All you posses is your spirit. But the simplest form of energy is there: the energy of the human soul. Spirituality is what [our movement] is about. Ernie Peters, South Dakota Sioux Native American activist (Marty 437)
References consulted Butler, Jon, Grant Wacker, & Randall Balmer Religion in American Life: A Short History, 2 nd edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Erodes, Richard and Alfonso Ortiz, eds. American Indian Myths and Legends. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Fitzgerald, Michael Oren & Judith Fitzgerald, eds., Indian Spirit. New York: MJF Books, 2006. Lippy, Charles. Introducing American Religion. New York: Routledge, 2009. Marty, Martin E. Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America. New York: Penguin Books, 1984.