Native American Religion

Roger Fritts

November 10, 1996

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church

Bethesda, Maryland

I grew up in Arizona, a state with many Indian⁽¹⁾ reservations. Many Native Americans live in the state, and the area has many archaeological sites. Yet I must confess that I grew up ignorant of the ancient culture around me. Only occasionally was I awakened out of the age of cars, television and air conditioning to the reality that my tribe was not the first to make homes in this land.

One summer, when I was seventeen, I arranged with a friend to go backpacking in the Grand Canyon. It was a macho trip. We carried fifty-pound Boy Scout packs into the canyon with enough food for us to eat well for six days. Maps call the spot we picked to hike into "Havasu Canyon." The name Havasu is an Indian word meaning "people of the blue-green waters." The map showed an Indian reservation near the camping site at the bottom of the canyon.

Near dark, eleven miles into the Grand Canyon, we came to the reservation. It is reachable only by walking or on horseback. The narrow canyon widened into a small flat space about half a mile across with a small river of blue-green water running through it. Red rock canyon walls rose up making a circle wall about two hundred yards high. Canyon openings were near the north and south ends of the circle where the small river flowed. Big green cottonwood trees were near the water. In this space was a village of about two hundred people. The stillness was a stillness that we can never experience in our modern cities. Flowing water from the small river and occasionally the bark of a dog were the only sounds. The village had no electricity and no gasoline-powered motors. Villagers had constructed all the homes, except a schoolhouse built by the government, of cottonwood and the same red rock and earth that made up the canyon walls and floor. I saw a few small kerosene stove fires and a few wood fires. As it grew darker, light came through the windows of the homes from a few yellow kerosene lanterns. As we walked through the village, I felt like an intruder. I suddenly had a glimpse of the past in this land, a past that I had never known. I did not want to romanticize this life or ignore its serious limitations. Nevertheless, there seemed to be something in that village worth learning about and honoring.

What are the religious beliefs of the first Americans? Native Americans do not practice a single, uniform religion throughout North America. Instead a rich diversity exists among the different Indian nations and there is even a large amount of variation within each group. Therefore, generalizing is difficult.

Yet, in spite of all this diversity, researchers do make a few important generalizations about Native American religions. From my own reading I have come up with five elements that most Native American religions hold in common.

First, Creation: Europeans have a creation story in which God creates a man first and gives the man power over all the other animals. Native Americans have a different perspective.

In the beginning, teaches the Indian, all beings on earth were in human shape. Then a change took place that turned many human beings into wild animals and birds. Only the ancestors of those who are human beings today retained their human form. Because wild animals and people all started as people, today a close connection exists between human beings and wild animals. We are sisters and brothers with the animals and it is our task as humans to respect and live in harmony with them. Unlike European belief, in the Indian creation story, no clear distinction exists between humans and animals.

One consequence of the close kinship between humans and animals is the tendency of Native Americans to imitate the animals in dress and religious ritual. For example, the feather-lined shirts, the feather ornaments for dancing and the feather plumes in the hair of American Indians are all measures to instill the spirits of birds in the human being. Feathers symbolize spiritual freedom and independence.

Second, Nature: The Europeans cut the forests and mined the hills for gold. Native Americans have a different perspective.

In order not to over romanticize the Indian, I should start by saying that Indians do not always respect the environment, or understand how to live in harmony with nature. Researchers have found examples of the devastation of nature by Indians.

Nevertheless, it is true that Native Americans pay far more attention to nature than European immigrants to North America. They care about trees because the trees give evidence of the supernatural. They care about the animals because animals may represent spirits. They care about the plains and the deserts because they may show the great spirits. The Native American view of nature is much more alive and filled with spiritual activity than the European view.

The theme of Native American religion is of harmony, vitality, and appreciation of the world around them. We can see the harmony in their view of the universe. Indians usually divide the universe into three levels--heaven, earth and the underworld.⁽²⁾ The various levels are often united through the symbol of a tree. This symbolic tree has its roots in the underworld, stretches through the world of humans and animals and has its crown in the sky world. All these worlds function together in a cosmic whole. In other words, native religions of North America often have a belief in a cosmic unity. World order is founded on a balance of interrelationships between humankind, the universe, and the supernatural powers. Native Americans see it as their task to live in harmony with this universe.

Third, God: Europeans struggled with intellectual constructions and abstract definitions of God. Native Americans have a different perspective.

In contrast to Europeans, Native Americans emphasize an abundance of "spirits," instead of emphasizing one God. These spirits interact freely with humans, especially in dreams and visions. Indians usually believe that a heavenly spirit rules over the sky; that there are spirits who control the wind, the clouds, the rain and the snow; that there are spirits who influence human life on earth; and that there are spirits, including Mother Earth, who roam the subterranean world. Often Indians conceive of these spirits as different manifestations of an overall unity. Unlike European belief, no sharp contrast exists between God and humans, or God and animals, or God and the earth.

Fourth, Visions and Dreams: Europeans tended to believe that only the visions and dreams described in the New Testament were valid and true. Native Americans have a different perspective.

Dreams and visions play a central role in Indian religion. Most North America Indians believe that spiritual power has come to them in their dreams or in visions they have received in isolated places in the wilderness. This belief in dreams and visions is a characteristic feature of most Native American religions.

Indians generally connect the basic vision quest with a coming-of-age of boys into adulthood. Adults expect the boy to seek the aid of a guardian spirit to withstand the trials of existence including such activities as hunting, warfare, and love. The parents or elders send the boy out, usually with other males, into the forest or mountains to fast and suffer from the cold and the attacks of wild animals. During this fast he may have a vision of the apparition that becomes his guardian spirit.

Sometimes spiritual revelation comes not through a vision but in a dream. For example, the Iroquois in New York State gather in the morning to tell their dreams and decide their actions from interpretations of those dreams. And the Mojave in western Arizona and southern California construct their religious myths from the contents of their dreams.

Fifth, The Cycle of Life and Death: Europeans believed in a linear notion of time with a beginning and an end, a birth and a death. Native Americans have a different perspective.

Indians conceive of time not as linear but as a cycle. They understand time as an eternally recurring cycle of events and years. Some Indian languages lack terms for the past and the future, so that everything rests in the present.

This applies not only to the seasons but also to human beings. Each person makes a cycle of time from birth to death. This suggests that death is not an end but a beginning of new life. The new life comes in one of three ways: reincarnation as a human, transmigration into an animal or a transcendent life in another world.

However, the question of a person's survival after his or her death has never been a prominent theme for American Indian speculation. Native Americans usually avoid the issue of death, thinking that nothing can be known for certain about death. In contrast to European religion that often focuses on salvation after death, the native religions of North America focus on this life.

This is a short introduction to a rich panorama of religion that features many diverse beliefs, ceremonies and ways of life. Of course, I do not agree with all the beliefs of Native American religion. For example, the male quest for a guardian spirit, in which most tribes do not include females, is sexist. And the emphasis on the value of visions could encourage some to lose touch with reality.

Yet there is much here that we can learn from the five principles of Native American religion:

• Their story of creation teaches that we are sisters and brothers with the animals.



• Their view of nature teaches that we are responsible to the earth.



• Their view of God teaches that the Great Spirit exists in the trees and the animals, the plains and the forests, the mountains and the waters.



• Their view of dreams teaches us to remember our dreams and look at them as a source of understanding.

• And their view of death teaches us that we are part of a cycle of birth and death and rebirth, of spring, summer, fall, winter, and spring again.

As an undergraduate I attended Arizona State University. For a time I lived in an apartment near the Salt River. Those of you who have flown into the Phoenix airport may remember that a few seconds before landing or taking off, the approach to the airport from the east is over an uninhabited area. This is the Salt River bed. The river is dry most of the year because engineers divert the water through canals. My apartment was at the edge of this riverbed.

I remember one afternoon going out into the sandy river bed near the apartment and throwing a Frisbee with a friend. Modern jets took off and landed over our heads. At one point, running to catch the Frisbee, I tripped and fell over a rock half buried in the ground. As I sat there waiting for the pain in my foot to stop, I looked at the rock. Suddenly I realized that I was looking at a grinding stone like those I had seen in museums. On one side was an indented smooth surface worn out by the slow grinding of corn. I remembered that I, my apartment, my plastic Frisbee and the jet airplanes above my head all occupied space that an Indian village had once occupied hundreds of years before.

I know that I cannot recapture another religion or return to a former time. Nevertheless, the hard rock made me aware of a culture that, in the distant past, had existed on the same land on which I lived. With my hand on the grinding stone I tried to imagine what that space must have been like. In the dusty earth all around me was a rich and wise heritage of the people that had lived before me. And for a time I imagined the spirits of these people around me. I wondered: If these people of the past could speak, what could they teach me about the meaning of life and about my place in the universe? Then a plane flew over and I was back in the 20^th century. But a part of me did not forget the evidence of the Native American past. A part of me remembers that many have come before me and many will come after me. This knowledge encourages me to give thanks for the gift of life, and to try to tread gently on this earth.

Primary Sources:

Hultkrantz, Ake, Native Religions of North America: The Power of Visions and Fertility, Harper & Row Publishers, San Francisco, 1987.

Tooker, Elizabeth, Ed. Native North American Spirituality of the Eastern Woodlands: Sacred Myths, Dreams, Visions, Speeches, Healing Formulas, Rituals, and Ceremonials, Paulist Press, Mahwah, New Jersey, 1979.

1. I use "Native American" and "Indian" interchangeably. Some argue that "Native American" is more respectful, because it is not based on the first explorers' mistaken belief that they had arrived in India. However, "Native American" is also historically imperfect. The first inhabitants were not native. They immigrated from Asia 60,000 to 30,000 years ago. And "America" is named after an Italian explorer.

2. My source for this is Native American Religions of North America By Ake Hultkrantz, Harper and Row, 1987, page 25.

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