NORTH AMERICAN [INDIAN] RELIGIONS: HISTORY OF STUDY

The religions of North American Indians manifest considerable complexity and diversity. In 1492 several hundred cultural groups practiced distinctive forms of religion. While we customarily begin the documentary record at the time of initial European contact, discoveries in archaeology have extended religious perspectives far back into prehistory. Burial mounds in the Midwest, Southeastern ceremonial sites, abandoned kivas in the Southwest, stone medicine wheels on the Plains, California petroglyphs, and other remains all evoke the antiquity of North American religions.

Despite its intrinsic value for comparative religion, the field of indigenous North American religions has been undercultivated by religious scholars. Too often dismissed as "primitive," these religions have been generally relegated to an undifferentiated residual category shared with other religions of primal peoples around the world. Interest in these religions has been limited to their supposed evolutionary position as stages logically antecedent to what are commonly called the "great religions," which command the allegiance of the majority of the world's population. Rarely, until recently, have North American Indian religions been studied as valid subjects in their own right. Nevertheless, research has revealed intricately structured rituals and ceremonies, myths densely packed with symbolic meanings, cosmologies that embrace subtle relations with nature, and highly elaborated varieties of individual religious experience.

One difficulty in studying native North American religions is that their institutions tend to be much less obviously compartmentalized than those of the so-called great religions. Their religious beliefs and practices pervade many spheres of practical activity; for example, among the Nootka constructing a canoe is considered a religious act, as is Hopi horticulture, the rabbit drive of the Rappahanock, the Paiute piñon gathering, and so on.

A second problem confronting students of North American Indian religions is the absence of literacy in traditional native societies. Lacking bodies of orthodox written doctrine, they have depended on oral and visual transmission of religious tradition. Such modes place a premium on mnemonic devices, rhetorical skills, and tacit understandings gained through participation. The absence of written texts has in the past allowed considerable flexibility in adapting to change and permitted considerable latitude for idiosyncratic interpretation.

A third difficulty is that the religions of North American Indians are typically dynamic. Efforts to depict or reconstruct these religions as timeless, fully integrated systems of belief and action are usually doomed to failure. Religious movements are recurrent features in North American history and prehistory. These movements, usually inspired by prophecy, originated within particular tribes but often spread beyond tribal boundaries. Deeply embedded in many of these religions are many reintegrated traits that ultimately derive from early contacts with Christianity.

Early Observers

The study of North American religions begins with the early European explorers. Many explorers carried with them strong Christian theocentric biases that denied the existence of religion in aboriginal societies. People who went naked and lived communally, who practiced polygamy, anthropophagy, and human sacrifice were sometimes judged as less than human. What served as religion to the Indian was disdainfully dismissed by the European newcomer as devil worship, idolatry, or irrational superstition. However, since part of the European mission to explore and settle the New World was religiously motivated, earnest efforts were made to convert the heathens to the "true faith" through both coercion and persuasion.

Later explorers of the interior regions were scarcely more perspicacious than their predecessors concerning native religions. Older stereotypes persisted: Indians were said to be haunted by demons, their religious practitioners were derided as conjurors, jugglers, and imposters, and their rites were regarded as ridiculous and absurd. On matters of religion, the accounts of the explorers replay their presuppositions with monotonous regularity.

Nevertheless, in the performance of their evangelical tasks, missionaries sometimes mastered native languages and were able to penetrate the belief structures of their potential converts. The Recollet and Jesuit fathers bequeathed an unprecedented record of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century religious customs among Algonquian- and Iroquoian-speaking groups in the Northeast. Not only does the seventy-three-volume The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (compiled 1610–1791; first published in 1896–1901; reprint in 39 vols., New York, 1959) contain accurate firsthand observations, but the scholarly training of these priests enabled them to engage in speculative comparative ethnology. The high point of Jesuit anthropology was reached by the priest Joseph François Lafitau in his two-volume Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains comparées aux moeurs des premiers (1724; translated by William N. Fenton and Elizabeth L. Moore as Customs of the American Savages, compared with the Customs of Primitive Times, Toronto, 1977). Lafitau offered a detailed overview of religious customs based on the works of his Jesuit predecessors and supplemented by his own inquiries. He systematically compared Indian religious practices with those of classical antiquity. Convinced that the Indians had emigrated from Asia, Lafitau argued for the unity of the human race, all of whom had in the remote past, he believed, shared a common God-given religion. Lafitau maintained that through migrations, local adaptations, and forgetfulness, primal beliefs and practices degenerated; yet vestiges of this original condition could still be discerned in the customs of contemporary savages, which presented clues for unraveling unwritten history. Lafitau's ideas were not unique, but the reliability of his documentation and his attempts at systematic comparison place him in advance of his times.

Spanish and English missionaries, with rare exceptions, fell far short of the high standards set by the French. The rigid religious orthodoxy of the Spanish and the notorious ethnocentrism of the English seemed to conspire in precluding sympathetic tolerance for native beliefs. Only in the late eighteenth century do missionary accounts of native religions begin to possess substantive worth.

Along with the records of enlightened missionaries, the reports of early travelers and traders offer valuable material on North American Indians. Travelers, by virtue of their experiences with a series of different groups, frequently were sensitive to religious variations. Lack of sustained observation tended to diminish the reliability of these reports, but this deficiency was overcome by exceptional traders and administrators who resided for long periods in Indian communities, learned Indian languages, and often married Indian women. For example, the trader John Long in his account of the Ojibwa (Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter and Trader, 1791) is the first to refer to the concept of totem, which he describes as an association established with a guardian spirit during a vision quest. Later scholars misappropriated and universalized the term to denote names for descent groups and elementary forms of religion.

Much knowledge about traditional religion among Indians of the Southeast Woodlands derives from James Adair's The History of the American Indian (1775). Adair, who lived for forty years among the Cherokee and Chickasaw, believed that the Indians were descended from the lost tribes of Israel. To sustain his argument, he established twenty-three points of specific convergence between Indian and Israelite customs. Despite his erroneous thesis, Adair's mode of analysis forced him to ask questions and record important religious information that might otherwise have been ignored.

Emergence of a Field of Study

Early theories about the indigenous people of North America revolved around questions of origin. Who were they? Whence did they come? Few theorists subscribed to an autochthonous origin; some, influenced by the foreshortened biblical chronology, attempted to link them with historically known Old World peoples. Such speculations encouraged the collection and analysis of ethnological materials, among which religious information was considered critical. Simple connections proved untenable, and the origins of North American Indians were pushed farther into the past. Many European and colonial philosophers and universal historians equated indigenous peoples with early stages of human development, as epitomized in Locke's famous phrase, "in the beginning all the World was America." Themes of native degeneracy and inherent inferiority were countered by the philosophical and literary image of the "Noble Savage," a convention that attained popularity in the mid-eighteenth century more as a critique of Western morality than as a serious effort accurately to portray Native Americans.

The post-Revolutionary consolidation of a national identity on the part of Americans provided another stimulus to the study of North American Indians. Intellectuals of the new republic sought to advance evidence proving that their continent was not inferior to the Old World and could support civilization. Under the influence of such leaders as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Barton, Peter DuPonceau, Lewis Cass, and Albert Gallatin, coordinated efforts were undertaken not only to "civilize" the Indians but also to preserve for posterity a record of their traditional cultures.

The career of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793–1864) exemplifies the transition from amateur observer to professional ethnologist. Schoolcraft's younger years were spent on the frontier as a geological explorer and Indian trader. After taking up residence among the Chippewa of Sault Sainte Marie, he married an Indian woman, learned Chippewa, and became a governmental agent. In 1839 he published his influential Algic Researches, (New York, 1839) in which he sought to reveal the deeper levels of Indian mentality through the collection of myths and folklore and the analysis of subtleties in Algonquian linguistics. His scholarly reputation thus established, Schoolcraft deserted the frontier to promote the fledgling science of ethnology. He secured federal support and was responsible for compiling the mammoth, six-volume Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States (Philadelphia, 1851–1860). This work is laced with important data from missionaries and Indian agents, but its cumbersome and disorganized format limits its utility.

Advances under the Bureau of Ethnology

The founding of the Bureau of Ethnology in 1879 auspiciously launched formal government anthropology in the United States. The bureau's mission was primarily salvage ethnology and scientific systematization of knowledge about America's original inhabitants. Under the inspired directorship of John Wesley Powell, a dedicated group of scholars was assembled who left enduring contributions to the understanding of Indian religions.

The Southwest became an important area of investigation, since Apachean-speaking and Pueblo groups retained viable neoaboriginal religious systems. Such bureau-sponsored researchers as James Stevenson and Matilda Stevenson, J. W. Fewkes, Washington Matthews, J. G. Bourke, and Frank Hamilton Cushing produced papers and monographs on Southwestern ceremonialism that attracted international attention.

Other areas as well were attended to by the bureau. Clay MacCauley, James Mooney, and, later, John R. Swanton studied Southeast Woodlands religions. Research on Iroquois religion persisted through the works of Lewis Henry Morgan and Horatio Hale, whose The Iroquois Book of Rites (Philadelphia, 1883) represents the first modern monographic treatment of North American Indian ceremonialism. Such bureau scholars as Erminnie Smith and J. N. B. Hewitt contributed significant studies on Iroquoian myths and cosmology. Other aspects of Eastern Woodlands religion were documented by W. J. Hoffman's works on the Ojibwa and Menomini and later by Truman Michaelson's impressive corpus on the Fox.

The heyday of Plains culture still survived within living memory when bureau ethnologists entered the field. J. Owen Dorsey collected valuable information on Siouan religions; James Mooney reported on the Kiowa and Cheyenne; Alice Fletcher, in collaboration with native intellectuals Francis La Flesche and James Murie, produced classic monographs on Omaha and Pawnee religion. Mooney's brilliant description and analysis of the contemporary Ghost Dance remains a recognized masterpiece of religious ethnology. Very little bureau work was undertaken among tribes west of the Rocky Mountains until the twentieth century.

Rise of University Specializations

By 1900 the center of American anthropology began to shift from museums and government agencies to universities. As gifted and resourceful as the early researchers of the Bureau of Ethnology were, none had received formal academic training in anthropology. The central figure in the movement toward professionalization was Franz Boas, a European-trained scholar, who exerted a dominant influence on American anthropology for the next half century. Boas developed the modern concept of culture, set new standards for fieldwork, and trained several generations of students destined to make decisive contributions to the study of Indian religions. Boas's own works on the Northwest Coast demonstrated a meticulous concern for ethnographic particularism aimed toward problems of cultural-historical reconstruction. Later he moved from an emphasis on trait analysis and diffusion toward interpretation of the dynamics of cultural integration. Reluctant to generalize and distrustful of grand theory, Boas assiduously collected native-language texts, many of which involve religious topics. Some have argued that Boas's strong positivistic empiricism inhibited theoretical development in North American anthropology; however, his insistence on obtaining the native viewpoint through texts provides a tangible legacy for modern anthropology.

Regardless of how one evaluates Boas's direct contributions to religious ethnology, his students and collaborators succeeded in filling out in fine descriptive detail the major lineaments of indigenous North American religions. Substantive works by such field-workers as Ruth Benedict, Ruth L. Bunzel, Roland B. Dixon, Alexander A. Goldenweiser, Esther Goldfrank, Erna Gunther, Herman Haeberlin, George L. Hunt, Melville Jacobs, A. L. Kroeber, Robert H. Lowie, Elsie Clews Parsons, Paul Radin, Gladys A. Reichard, Edward Sapir, Frank G. Speck, Leslie Spier, John R. Swanton, James A. Teit, Ruth M. Underhill, and Clark Wissler cannot be reviewed here. However, some brief comments on emergent trends can be mentioned. Increasingly, one finds concern with the nature of religious experience and religious meaning for the individual. Stylistic and literary features of myths and tales are given serious attention. Interest in culturally constituted worldviews becomes more apparent. Finally, there emerges an implicitly functional approach that relates religion to other aspects of culture, society, and the individual. Many of these scholars reached beyond ethnographic particularities to address problems of general theory and to impart the facts of native North American religions to a wider audience.

From the beginning, religious materials from North American Indian sources served as ammunition for the heavy artillery of European "armchair" theorists. These materials were employed in hit-or-miss fashion to support the global theories of such commanding figures as E. B. Tylor, James G. Frazer, Andrew Lang, R. R. Marett, W. J. Perry, Émile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Wilhelm Schmidt, and Adolf E. Jensen. American reaction to these theories has typically been defensive and critical. It must be admitted that, with few exceptions, these theorists and subsequent European ethnologists, comparativists, and religious historians lacked direct American field experience. Yet they have contributed significantly by viewing the American data from the broader perspective of world religions, by constructing typologies with which the American evidence can be analyzed and compared, and by probing deeply into the philosophical implications of these materials. Recent European scholars whose work deserves greater recognition by their American colleagues include Kaj Birket-Smith, Josef Haekel, Rolf Krusche, Werner Müller, Raffaele Pettazzoni, and Anna Burgitta Rooth. The prolific and more accessible works of Åke Hultkrantz, a Swedish scholar, deserve special comment. Hultkrantz conducted field research among the Shoshoni and Arapaho, but his principal eminence derives from his unparalleled grasp of the published literature on native North American religions, displayed in several comprehensive comparative monographs and in numerous topical essays.

Recent Topics of Study

The post-Boasian period from World War II to the present has witnessed an accelerating interest in the indigenous religions of North America, and many profitable approaches have been taken. Psychological anthropology, for example, has brought new insights into the nature of religious experience through the study of alternate states of consciousness induced through ritual use of hallucinogens and other means. Weston La Barre's The Ghost Dance (Garden City, N. Y., 1970) is particularly notable for its profound psychological interpretation of Native American religions.

Another approach is through environmental issues, which have stimulated considerations of the effects of religious ideology on ecological adaptation. Calvin Martin's Keepers of the Game (Berkeley, 1978), a historical account of Indian participation in the fur trade, has evoked a wide variety of responses on the role of religious motivation in hunting activities. Probably the most solidly crafted study to address this problem is Adrian Tanner's monograph on the Cree, Bringing Home Animals (New York, 1979).

The study of religious movements, too, commands much attention. Anthony F. C. Wallace's The Death and Rebirth of Seneca (New York, 1969), an eloquent account of the Handsome Lake religion, is a modern classic. Considerable study has been devoted to variations of the peyote religion. La Barre's enlarged edition of The Peyote Cult (New York, 1969) offers the best general overview of the subject, while David F. Aberle's The Peyote Religion among the Navaho (Chicago, 1982) and J. S. Slotkin's several publications on Menomini peyotism provide excellent accounts of specific manifestations. Homer Barnett's monograph Indian Shakers (Carbondale, Ill., 1957) stands as a definitive treatment of its subject.

The structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss has opened new vistas for the reinterpretation of North American totemism, art, myths, rituals, and the witchcraft-sorcery complex. Lévi-Strauss himself has utilized North American materials extensively in his provocative publications. Structuralism has inspired a whole generation of primarily younger scholars to think about previously collected data in interesting new ways.

Several noteworthy reworkings of important manuscript collections have recently appeared. Irving Goldman, synthesizing Boas's notes and scattered publications, has accomplished what Boas was never able to do—produce a coherent, theoretically informed account of Kwakiutl religion. Goldman's The Mouth of Heaven (New York, 1975) is complemented by Stanley Walens's symbolic analysis of Kwakiutl art and ritual, Feasting with Cannibals (Princeton, 1981). Raymond J. DeMallie and Elaine A. Jahner have made available the rich previously unpublished Lakota materials that were collected early in the century by James R. Walker (Lakota Belief and Ritual, Lincoln, Nebr., 1980; Lakota Society, Lincoln, Nebr., 1982; and Lakota Myths, Lincoln, Nebr., 1983). DeMallie has also assembled primary materials relating to the renowned Lakota medicine man Black Elk (The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt, Lincoln, Nebr., 1984). William Power's Oglala Religion (Lincoln, Nebr., 1977) and his excellent descriptions of an Oglala curing ritual in Yuwipi (Lincoln, Nebr., 1982) amplify our understanding of Lakota religion. James R. Murie's account of Pawnee ceremonialism has been edited by Douglas Parks and published as Ceremonies of the Pawnee (Washington, D.C., 1981). Another important contribution to Plains research is Peter J. Powell's masterful, two-volume opus on Cheyenne religion, Sweet Medicine (Norman, Okla., 1969). Elisabeth Tooker has combed The Jesuit Relations to reconstruct Huron religion in her An Ethnography of the Huron Indians, 1615–1649 (Washington, D.C., 1964), and she has also published a useful study entitled The Iroquois Ceremonial of Midwinter (Syracuse, N.Y., 1970). William N. Fenton has contributed mightily to Iroquois studies with his superb monograph on the Eagle Dance (The Iroquois Eagle Dance, Washington, D.C., 1953) and a continuing stream of research on Longhouse rituals. Information on several extinct Californian religions have been resurrected from the field notes of the remarkable J. P. Harrington and published in various books and articles.

The Ojibwa and the Winnebago remain two of the best-documented American religious traditions. The works of Alanson Skinner, John Cooper, A. Irving Hallowell, and Paul Radin have provided sturdy scaffolding for subsequent research. Ruth Landes's Ojibwa Religion and the Midewiwin (Madison, Wis., 1968) and recent historically oriented works on the Ojibwa by Christopher Vecsey (Traditional Ojibwa Religion and its Historical Changes, Philadelphia, 1983) and John A. Grim (The Shaman: Patterns of Siberian and Ojibwa Healing, Norman, Okla., 1983) illustrate this continuity. Landes's monograph on The Prairie Potawatomi (Madison, Wis., 1970) and James H. Howard's summary of Shawnee ceremonialism (Shawnee: The Ceremonialism of a Native Indian Tribe and Its Cultural Background, Athens, Ohio, 1981) enlarge our picture of Algonquian religions.

The Southwest continues as a focus of important research on religion. The complexities of Navajo religion, in particular, have been elucidated in the ethnographic and textual works of David F. Aberle, Leland C. Wyman, Berard Haile, David P. McAllester, Charlotte J. Frisbie, Louise Lamphere, and Gary Witherspoon, as well as in useful work by Sam D. Gill and Karl W. Luckert, both skilled historians of religion. Elsewhere in the Southwest, Alfonso Ortiz, a leading Tewa anthropologist, has written a sensitively informed account of Pueblo religion (The Tewa World: Space, Time, Being and Becoming in a Pueblo Society, Chicago, 1969), and Carobeth Laird, an affinal Chemehuevi, has recorded religious materials based on a lifetime of observation in her richly textured The Chemehuevis (Banning, Calif., 1976).

Knowledge of Southeast Woodlands Indian religion has been enriched by studies of religious continuities in modern Oklahoma (to which many Southeast Woodlands tribes were forcibly removed in the mid-nineteenth century); William L. Ballard's elegant analysis, entitled The Yuchi Green Corn Ceremonial (Los Angeles, 1978), and James G. Howard's Oklahoma Seminoles: Medicine, Magic, and Religion (Norman, Okla., 1984) are notable in this regard. Howard also provocatively analyzed the ceremonial complex of the prehistoric Southeast Woodlands Indians in The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (Columbia, Mo., 1968), in which he gains insights from surviving beliefs and practices. A collection of papers edited by Charles M. Hudson, The Black Drink (Athens, Ga., 1979), represents another effort to link prehistoric and ethnographic horizons.

The present surge in attention to native religions of North America derives from many sources. Most important is the growing recognition by Indians and non-Indians alike that religion constitutes a viable aspect of past, present, and future North American Indian societies, a point made in Vine Deloria's vigorous manifesto God is Red (New York, 1973). Not only have areas such as the Southwest enjoyed unbroken religious continuity, but elsewhere, once-moribund ceremonies—such as the potlatch in the Northwest, the Spirit Dance among the Salish, and the Sun Dance in the Plains—have been revivified. Syncretic and ecumenical native religions are achieving legitimacy, and in many areas Christianity has assumed a distinctively native flavor. These trends reflect changes in the political atmosphere toward native self-determination. Among other developments, passage of the Religious Freedom Act in 1978 has had far-reaching consequences in preserving sacred sites.

Academic concern with indigenous North American religions has grown dramatically in recent years. The establishment of special programs of study in many universities, the increased number of religion scholars of Native American descent, and the seriousness with which indigenous religions are now treated in many theological centers all testify to a new enlightenment. Yet despite the enhanced academic and popular visibility of Native American religions and the proliferation of publications in the field, much groundbreaking work remains. Only the surface has been scratched.

Bibliography

Åke Hultkrantz's The Study of American Indian Religions (New York, 1983) has proved indispensable in preparing this entry. The same author's The Religions of the American Indian (Berkeley, 1979) and Belief and Worship in Native North America (Syracuse, N. Y., 1981) are valuable sources on native North American religions. A slightly older synthesis, Ruth M. Underhill's Red Man's Religion (Chicago, 1965), remains a useful introductory survey. A pair of works by Sam D. Gill, Native American Religions: An Introduction (Belmont, Calif., 1981) and Native American Traditions: Sources and Interpretations (Belmont, Calif., 1983), offer a lively introduction to the subject. Three anthologies with diverse contents are Teachings from the American Earth, edited by Dennis Tedlock and Barbara Tedlock (New York, 1975); Seeing with a Native Eye, edited by Walter H. Capps (New York, 1976); and Native Religious Traditions, edited by Earle H. Waugh and K. Dad Prithipaul (Waterloo, Ont., 1979). A carefully annotated areal selection of native texts is presented in Elisabeth Tooker's Native North American Spirituality of the Eastern Woodlands (New York, 1979). Other areal guides can be found in the available volumes of the new Smithsonian Handbook of North American Indians (Washington, D.C., 1978–). Systems of North American Witchcraft and Sorcery, edited by Deward E. Walker (Moscow, Idaho, 1970), and Virgil Vogel's American Indian Medicine (Norman, Okla., 1970) are useful sources. Harold W. Turner's Bibliography of New Religious Movements in Primal Societies, vol. 2, North America (Boston, 1978), is a major resource.