Native American Religion (religion In American Life)

Native American Religion JON BUTLER & HARRY S. STOUT GENERAL EDITORS Native American Religion Joel W. Martin OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS NewYork • Oxford Oxford University Press Oxford NewYork Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1999 by Joel W. Martin Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Website: www.oup-usa.org Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Martin, Joel, 1956Native American Religion / Joel Martin. p. cm. — (Religion in American life) Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: Discusses the world view and beliefs of various Native American religions and their role in promoting survival of the devastation caused by the arrival of Europeans. ISBN 0-19-511035-8 (alk. paper) 1. Indians of North America—Religion—Juvenile literature. [1. Indians of North America—Religion.] I. Title. II. Series. 299' .7—dc21 98-50155 CIP AC 987654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Design and layout: Loraine Machlin Picture research: Lisa Kirchner On the cover: Rain House and Saguaro Wine Festival, painted in 1993 by Mike Chiago, depicts the O'odham ceremony performed each June. Frontispiece: Lisa Altaha with her godmother during the Sunrise Dance at the Apache Girls' Puberty Ceremony at Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona. Contents Introduction Jon Butler and Harry S. Stout C H A P T E R C H A P T E R C H A P T E R C H A P T E R 1 Circling Earth 13 2 Tradition and Crisis in the Eastern Woodlands 39 3 Native and Christian 67 4 New Religions in the West C H A P T E R 7 91 5 Homecoming 121 Chronology 147 Further Reading 151 Index 154 Introduction JON BUTLER & HARRY S. STOUT, GENERAL EDITORS A "Our land, our religion, and our life are one." statement describing the belief of the Hopi Indians, it echoes throughout the history of many other Native Americans. For the Anishinaabe people of contemporary Minnesota, the wild rice harvest, with its eager anticipation, family activity, and traditional rituals, reconnect the Anishinaabe to the land and its sacred power. For Handsome Lake, the Seneca visionary of the early 1800s, religious renewal offered a way to recover the "Good Word" of ancient moral teachings and to shed the drinking and gambling introduced by Europeans. For Catharine Brown, a youth converted by New England missionaries working among the Cherokee Indians, a religious awakening meant long hours in Bible reading and a concern for conversion that overwhelmed even her dreams. Joel Martin's Native American Religion explores the rich diversity and vital heritage of religious expression among America's many Native peoples. It traces the development of Native American religion from ancient burial mounds thousands of years old to the arrival of European conquerors and missionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It depicts the vast movements for pan-Indian renewal and the remarkable persistence of traditional Native belief in twentieth-century America, The Gaa