Native Peoples

Many native peoples explained their origins through an earth diver story.  In this story animals acted as creators of the world, sending one of their numbers off to find the stuff of the primordial earth.  This may well be one contributing factor in the unique nature of Native American spirituality.   Native peoples sought depth of relationship with the world and felt ties of kinship with all creation, seen and unseen.  They felt a special closeness in their relationship with the natural world. The Pre-Columbian Natives sought to be in tune with all life. This is can shown by the example of a hunter explaining why he had just killed the beast he had hunted…it was to feed his family.  They offered first fruits to appease the spirits of the world.  Their religion was usually led by shamans who were spiritually in tune with creation and could act as healers and seers, guiding them along their individual path to oneness.

Contact with western society brought conflict and disruption to the Hopi and the Iroquois peoples and trouble to their established traditions.  The Europeans brought warfare, disease and their religions with them, all of which had lasting effects upon the native peoples.  The motivations of these European settlers and missionaries were as varied as there were individuals.  There were many factors for the Europeans to consider when dealing with the natives, trade & labor needs, the saving of their souls and other considerations, often conflicting motives.  The Iroquois and the Hopi had different interactions and each tribe reacted in a different way to the intrusion of western ways into their established order.

Hopi (the peaceful ones) were very ritualistic in their approach to religion.  Theirs was a faith devoted to their daily lives.  They had a well developed story of creation that told of a time when humanity emerged from the underworld through “the navel of the earth, the Shipapu”.  This was a story that represented change and movement as the people moved from underworld to over world, from darkness into light.  Kivas are the underground temples of the Hopi which represented this event in their historical belief. They were circular in shape with an opening in the roof that represented the hole through which the Corn-Mothers climbed in their creation myth.  In the center of the floor was the Kivas’ Shipapu which was the earth’s navel through which people emerged and would eventually return.

The ritualism of Hopi society was driven by gift-giving and reciprocity.  Power was gained over individuals by gifting them or providing gifts for them to give.  This encouraged feelings of indebtedness and reciprocity which were manifested in the cultural norms of the day, we might recognize this as fealty.  This cycle of gift-giving and reciprocity began at birth and extended throughout the Hopi’s life.  In Hopi society “leadership is a creation of followship”, power was gained by establishing a body of followers who were gained by the giving of gifts.  The relations between genders were generally balanced with each gender having its own rights, rites, responsibilities.

One of the most powerful and important aspects of Hopi faith were the Kachina’s.  The Kachina’s were benevolent spirits who visited the people and brought good things.  They brought with them the life-giving rain which made fertility possible, they also brought with them gifts for children. There were Kachina’s that existed for all natural forces in the world.  This Kachina reverence was such a part of their existence that the calendar for the year was divided into Kachina and non-Kachina times of year.  The Kachina had the power to affect the daily lives of the Hopi and if the Kachina’s rituals were done correctly and their needs were met, they would continue to bestow their blessings upon the people. If the rituals were not followed according to tradition dire consequences could result.

For the Hopi all life was sacred and they sought to balance all creation.  One of the most revered members of the community was the berdache.  The Hopi showed great respect for the berdache and held them to be especially attuned to the divine world around them.   The berdache were males who dressed and acted as women.  They balanced the duality of the male and female within themselves and were a living symbols of cosmic harmony.  They had no sexual relations with women but acted as females in pairing with male members of the community, particularly the younger males.  Having intercourse with a berdache served both religious and personal need.

In 1680 in ____ pueblo, El Pope led a revolt against the Spanish missionaries and settlers who had come amongst them. This was actually the most successful revolt by Native Americans against the European colonialist machine.  El Pope killed many and drove the remaining Spanish from their lands and back towards Mexico.  When the Spanish eventually returned to the region they were far more cautious and respectful of the Hopi way of life and worship.  The Hopi learned a valuable lesson from the affair and never again let outsiders know the inner workings of their faith so that information could not be used to undermine their spiritual foundations in the future.

One of the most powerful and transformational events in the history of the Iroquois was the accord which five tribes (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk) reached to form a confederacy.  This was championed by two members of the Onondaga tribe, Deganwida (the peacemaker) and Hiawatha, a warrior who out of a personal and revelatory religious experience sought peace. They established a confederacy of five, later six, tribes based on mutual respect, peace, and trade. Women were more powerful in their confederacy than in many other native societies—they owned property and could divorce.

Of particular interest in their religious activities was the dream guessing rite in which tribe members brought their dreams before an assembled body and presented their dream to the group for discernment.  The power of dreams were recognized and sought out, sometimes individuals brought on dreams through bodily stress and fasting, this latter sort of dream state was often referred to as a vision quest.   Iroquois also had a group known as the false face society. These members carved faces into tree trunks, and sought to access the power of the tree for their own purposes.  

One of the most unique facets of Iroquois spirituality was the mourning war, a means of repopulation, social continuity and dealing with death. The Iroquois believed that the death of a family member could cause a loss of reason in his or her survivors which, if unresolved, could prove harmful to the tribe. They went through a series of mourning rituals which lasted ten days.  During this mourning time they spoke only as necessary and performed as their societal roles dictated; sleep, hygiene and social interaction were all altered. While the mourners went through their grieving procedures, other members of the community performed cleansing rituals for the benefit of the mourners. It was a systematic way of spiritual warfare through which whole villages participated in ritual resolution.  The following year the mourning rituals were renewed but with much less intensity.

If the mourners’ grief was not assuaged by the rituals the next step was the mourning war. Most warfare of this type was not fought to the death.  The goal was rather to capture prisoners. These prisoners then were used for the next ritual step in an effort to console the Iroquois’ loss.  The mourners themselves did not often participate in the mourning war.  When the raiding party returned with their prisoners the whole village would meet them and many would rain blows upon the captive. They would torture their prisoners to the near death then, nurse them back to health and then repeat the process over again.  After a prisoner finally succumbed to his wounds they feasted upon his flesh.  If the prisoner impressed the tribe he or she may have been adopted into the tribe as a family member.
If the adoptee assimilated into their new family they would be accepted as full members of the tribe.  If they did not meet expectations they were killed.

An interesting result in the development of the mourning war ritual upon Iroquois military tactics was that their mode of warfare was designed to capture individuals not to inflict heavy casualties.  Another related Iroquois belief was that the souls of warriors slain in war were not allowed to join the village of the dead lest their tormented souls disturb the rest of their fellows.  The two fold result of this belief was that the Iroquois sought to capture hostages and limit their own casualties.  It has been noted that even when Iroquois were on the verge of victory they would retreat as if in ignominious defeat after suffering a limited number of casualties.  This mode of warfare was a stark contrast to the battle tactics and strategy of the European settlers.

The arrival of the Europeans with their diseases and superior weaponry wreaked havoc upon the mourning war system.  The diseases that swept the ranks of the tribes created an ever growing void of population which resulted in more and more mourning wars to replenish the ranks.  The system was further endangered by the weapons provided from the European traders.  Their superior weaponry caused greater casualties and resulted in fewer captives which together with disease created a quagmire that the Iroquois were ill prepared to overcome.  The difficulties of the Iroquois were furthered by the depletion of fur stocks in their home hunting ground.  They needed furs to trade for technology and when the stock grew low this prompted a series of raiding wars in which the Iroquois sought to raid their neighbors fur stocks.  This brought the confederacy into direct conflicts with New France as the Iroquois raided their Canadian allies.  Eventually a French army marched down from New France and ravaged the Mohawks. Peace came with France and with the peace came Christian missionaries.  This was a vulnerable time for the Iroquois since after so much conflict and chaos many of them were adopted from other tribes.  The Christian missionaries drew many of the new tribe’s people away from the confederacy towards Christianity.  The arrival of Christians was a dual edged sword for the Iroquois.  They brought with them a sort of pax Christiana but this peace was at the cost of established norms and traditions.  The Europeans brought peace to the tribes but the new weapons that the Iroquois received from European traders wreaked such heavy casualties that the whole system of sacred war, adoption, and repopulation fell into disarray.  

The Iroquois soon found themselves trapped as pawns in the struggles between England and France for control of the new world.  They lost many of their members to war, disease and other calamities.  Their time honored traditions were failing to meet the needs of society and they found themselves rife with factional divisions.  The headmen of the confederacy negotiated a treaty which was to become known as the Grand Settlement of 1701.  This brought peace to the Europeans and natives by establishing boundaries, access to trade and the promise of neutrality in any future Anglo-French wars.  Thus, the Iroquois found themselves with secure borders on their north and west (previously the most threatened) and access to the European markets they so greatly needed.  Their population loss began to steady somewhat, although there was still a gradual decline.  A sixth nation was joined to the confederacy when a native tribe fleeing from a defeat at the hands of the English and their native allies further south settled in Iroquois lands.  This new confederacy made use of the trade and secure borders to wage war upon their northern and southern neighbors. This establishment served them well enough, albeit in a decaying system fraught with alcoholism and loss of cohesion until the revival under Handsome Lake.

There was a revival of traditional longhouse spirituality under Handsome Lake.  Handsome was an unlikely prophet; a former warrior and an alcoholic who survived a near-death experience and had a series of visions which led him to revitalize and reinvigorate the longhouse religion.  Handsome’s revelations caused him to promote moral living and a new system of ethics. While maintaining as much of their traditional beliefs as possible, he encouraged the adoption of certain European practices that seemed practical and beneficial. Handsome taught temperance, peace, etc.  It is probable that Handsome’s restoration of longhouse spirituality was influenced by Christianity and in particular the Quaker tradition. His Gaiwiiyo tradition is still adhered to by many followers of the longhouse religion.