Overview:
The traditions of Native Americans have been diverse, as we have seen, but
Indians have held many things in common. Their sense of continuity with
the sacred world has been expressed in beliefs regarding kinship with nature
and in traditional sacred stories that reflect no break between the events
of creation and the ordinary history of the people. For American Indians,
the outer, material world has been holy in itself, and so, too, has been
the inner world of dreams. Moving between the different worlds has meant
existence without firm boundaries. Hence, transformations have been important,
and holy beings have been seen as shapeshifters, able to assume new form
or change the world around them. Living in harmony with the natural world
has been the great religious requirement, for Indians have thought that
the human world should correspond with the model the natural world provided.
Among the Oglala of the North American Plains and the Hopi of the Southwest, different versions of Native American religion gave ordinary and extraordinary meaning to existence. Thus, like Indian societies in general, both collapsed ordinary and extraordinary into one. At the same time, the Oglala, a hunter-gatherer society, and the Hopi, an agricultural people, are case studies in diversity. Their respective traditions show us how American Indian religion really means American Indian religions. Still further, American Indians experienced religious change especially after the coming of Europeans. In a series of different forms of religious combination, sometimes there was a blending in which elements from European Christianity were joined to Native American ways. At other times, more dramatically "new" religions sprang up, while in still different instances Native Americans became converts to various Christian denominations. Meanwhile, in a series of court cases, despite their losses Native Americans continued to challenge Euro-American views of religion and to insist on the seriousness of Indian sacred ways.
The differences, however, are not all. The story of American Indian religions is a microcosm of the religious encounters that would confront each of the immigrant peoples to the United States. All would come with the ways of their ancestors; all would intend to preserve them. Yet each people was one among many "nations" present in the new country, and the presence of other ways led to changes in traditional religions. Religious combinativeness was not confined to Native Americans but what widespread.
If other peoples shared the Indian experience, the people of Israel--the
Jews--were a special case in point. Like Native Americans, for centuries
they had been sojourners more than settlers, and also like Native Americans,
they sought to preserve their traditions even as they emulated their Protestant
neighbors.
BACK to table of contents