Mysteries of Native American Myth and Religion

She unrolled the skin bundle and took out a pipe, and a small round stone which she put down on the ground. The earth is sacred, and so is every step that you take on her. The bowl of the pipe is of red stone; it is the earth. Carved into it and facing the centre is the buffalo calf, who stands for all the four-leggeds. The stem is of wood, which stands for all that grows on the earth. These twelve hanging feathers from the Spotted Eagle stand for all the winged creatures.

All these living things of the universe are the children of Mother Earth. You are all joined as one family, and you will be reminded of this when you smoke the pipe.

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Treat this pipe and the earth with respect, and your people will increase and prosper. The woman told them that seven circles carved on the stone represented the seven rites in which the people would learn to use the sacred pipe. The remaining rites they would learn in due course. The woman made as if to leave the lodge, but then she turned and spoke to Standing Hollow Horn again. Remember that in me there are four ages. I am going now, but I will look on your people in every age, and at the end I will return. She now walked slowly around the lodge in a sunwise direction.

The people were silent and filled with awe. Even the hungry young children watched her, their eyes alive with wonder. But after she had walked a short distance, she faced the people again and sat down on the prairie. The people gazing after her were amazed to see that when she stood up she had become a young red and brown buffalo calf.

The calf walked further into the prairie, and then lay down and rolled over, looking back at the people. When she stood up she was a white buffalo. The white buffalo walked on until she was a bright speck in the distant prairie, and then rolled over again, and became a black buffalo. This buffalo walked away, stopped, bowed to the four directions of the earth, and finally disappeared over the hill.

A gopher in the Badlands. Lakota four directions sunwheel; porcupine quill on buffalo hide Lula Red Cloud. Picture the outer colours as trailing arms on a spinning sun disc. If this earth should ever be destroyed, it will be by desire, by the lust of pleasure and self-gratification. Fossil dinosaur bones in the Badlands. Lakota tradition says that such bones are those of Unktegila, the Water Monster. To the Lakota this is probably the most important of all their myths. It has also become a spiritual focus for Plains tribes generally.

It has three main aspects: White Buffalo Woman herself and what she represents, both historically and in the present day; the encounter with the two young men; and the importance of the sacred pipe and the ritual that goes with it. This is the only myth in which White Buffalo Woman appears. She is altogether mysterious, appearing on the distant horizon, bringing her gifts, and then departing. In her self-sufficiency and virgin inviolability she is like the Greek goddesses Athene and Artemis, though since the coming of the Native American Church, many Native people have identified her with the Virgin Mary.

Certainly she is a powerful anima figure, a maiden goddess who springs direct, untarnished, from the spirit world. She is also a culture goddess in that she brings the all-important fetish object, the sacred pipe, as well as teaching the people how to use it to remain in communication with the spirit world. She is said to come from the north, which is the home of the Buffalo Nation Tatanka Oyate , and the place of health and spiritual growth through self-discipline and endurance.

She is of course closely identified with the buffalo.

For the Lakota, as for most Plains tribes, the buffalo was a vital source of food and clothing, as well as providing most of the material goods of everyday life. Tools were made from its bones, rattles from its hooves, tipis from its hide. The Plains tribes also had a close spiritual relationship with the buffalo, as inferred by the Lakota emergence myth in which the medicine man turns himself into a buffalo to feed the tribe.

The Ghost Dance religion, which tragically led to the Wounded Knee Massacre, had as one of its aims the restoration of the buffalo. It met with failure, but there is a prophecy, believed by many modern Lakota, that when four white buffalo have been born, then the old ways will return and the earth will be saved. The two young men show very different attitudes towards the spirit world. The pipe is extremely important in Lakota ritual.

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It is the symbolic means of making an exchange between humanity and the spirit world. Hence when smoked it is always offered to the Four Directions. The smoke is regarded as rising up to the spirit world.

The Plains tribes still make their pipe bowls from red pipestone found only in a quarry in south-west Minnesota. The dark red stone is said to be the congealed blood of those killed in the Flood, and it is also a reminder of the blood sacrificed by the creator Inyan in order to make the world. In addition it is the colour of the earth in much of Lakota territory. When the White Buffalo Woman enters the lodge she walks around it in the solar directions, to meet the chief in the west opposite the east, place of dawn and therefore of enlightenment.

The spotted eagle feathers on the pipe are symbols of transcendent solar spiritual power. His feathers are equated with rays of the sun. In December , Wovoka, who was thought to be the son of the medicine man Tavibo Numu-tibo'o , fell sick with a fever during an eclipse of the sun, which occurred on January 1, Upon his recovery, he claimed that he had visited the spirit world and the Supreme Being and predicted that the world would soon end, then be restored to a pure aboriginal state in the presence of the Messiah.

All Native Americans would inherit this world, including those who were already dead, in order to live eternally without suffering. In order to reach this reality, Wovoka stated that all Native Americans should live honestly, and shun the ways of whites especially the consumption of alcohol. He called for meditation, prayer, singing, and dancing as an alternative to mourning the dead, for they would soon resurrect. Wovoka's followers saw him as a form of the messiah and he became known as the "Red Man's Christ. Tavibo had participated in the Ghost Dance of and had a similar vision of the Great Spirit of Earth removing all white men, and then of an earthquake removing all human beings.

Tavibo's vision concluded that Native Americans would return to live in a restored environment and that only believers in his revelations would be resurrected. In fact, some bands of Lakota and Dakota were so desperate for hope during wartime that they strengthened their militancy after making a pilgrimage to Nevada in — They provided their own understanding to the Ghost Dance which included the prediction that the white people would disappear.

The Caddo Nation still practices the Ghost Dance today. The name comes from the shaking and twitching motions used by the participants to brush off their sins. The religion combines Christianity with traditional Indian teachings.

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This religion is still practiced today in the Indian Shaker Church. Mexicanidad ; see -yotl is a movement reviving the indigenous religion , philosophy and traditions of ancient Mexico Aztec religion and Aztec philosophy amongst the Mexican people. The movement came to light in the s, led by Mexico City intellectuals, but has grown significantly on a grassroots level only in more recent times, also spreading to the Chicanos of North America. He had a deep influence in shaping the movement, founding the In Kaltonal "House of the Sun", also called Native Mexican Church in the s.

From the s onwards Mexcayotl has grown developing in a web of local worship and community groups called calpulli or kalpulli [14] and spreading to the Mexican Americans or Chicanos in the United States. It has also developed strong ties with Mexican national identity movements and Chicano nationalism. The Peyote Religion legally termed and more properly known as the Native American Church has also been called the "Peyote Road" or the "Peyote Way", is a religious tradition involving the ceremonial and sacred use of Lophophora williamsii peyote. The Wanapam Indian Smohalla c. Smohalla claimed that visions came to him through dreams and that he had visited the spirit world and had been sent back to teach his people.

Smohalla's speaking was called Yuyunipitqana for "Shouting Mountain". The Dreamer Faith , and its elements of dancing, foreshadowed the later Ghost Dances of the plains peoples. The religion combined elements of Christianity with Native beliefs, but it rejected white-American culture. They aspire to be Indian and nothing else.

The Waashat Dance involves seven drummers, a salmon feast, use of eagle and swan feathers and a sacred song sung every seventh day. The sun dance is a religious ceremony practiced by a number of Native American and First Nations Peoples, primarily those of the Plains Nations. Each tribe that has some type of sun dance ceremony has their own distinct practices and ceremonial protocols. In many cases, the ceremony is held in a private and is not open to the public. Most details of the ceremony are kept from public knowledge out of great respect for, and the desire for protection of, the traditional ways.



Many of the ceremonies have featured in common, such as specific dances and songs passed down through many generations, the use of traditional drums, the sacred pipe, praying, fasting and, in some cases, the piercing of the skin. It is also practiced by the Canadian Dakota and Nakoda , and the Dene. From time to time important religious leaders organized revivals. In Indiana in , Tenskwatawa called the Shawnee Prophet by Americans led a religious revival following a smallpox epidemic and a series of witch-hunts.

His beliefs were based on the earlier teachings of the Lenape prophets, Scattamek and Neolin , who predicted a coming apocalypse that would destroy the European-American settlers. The revival led to warfare led by his brother Tecumseh against the white settlers. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act is a United States Federal Law and a joint resolution of Congress that provides protection for tribal culture and traditional religious rights such as access to sacred sites, freedom to worship through traditional ceremony, and use and possession of sacred objects for American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, and Native Hawaiians.

It was passed on August 11, Cultural items include funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of also known as RFRA , is a United States federal law aimed at preventing laws that substantially burden a person's free exercise of religion. It was held unconstitutional as applied to the states in the City of Boerne v. Flores decision in , which ruled that the RFRA is not a proper exercise of Congress's enforcement power.

However, it continues to be applied to the federal government - for instance, in Gonzales v.

O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal - because Congress has broad authority to carve out exemptions from federal laws and regulations that it itself has authorized. In response to City of Boerne v. Flores , some individual states passed State Religious Freedom Restoration Acts that apply to state governments and local municipalities. Article 31, in particular, emphasizes that Indigenous Peoples have the right to their cultural heritage, including ceremonial knowledge, as protected intellectual property.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Spirit Dance disambiguation.