traditionalists and non-Native apologists for them will tell

you that their ancestors inhabited this land from the beginning of
time,

unless they are traditional Hopi-speaking elders, in which case they

have no word for time.  Archaeological features in Oklahoma
have been radiocarbon dated to

30,000 to 35,000 years BP (before present), a site in Chile dates to
33,000 BP,

one in Brazil 50,000 to 60,000 BP, and one in South Carolina

suggests that people migrated across the Atlantic at least 50,000
years

ago. (csmonitor.com) 

The Clovis
points at right were state-of-the-art weaponry eleven

millennia ago.  They do demonstrate the skill of that
culture’s

flintknappers, who used hammers of bone and antler to flake fluted

bifacial projectile points superior even to many styles that came
after

them.  These points, it is widely thought by those who have
studied the

paleontology of North America, were a major factor in the extinction
of

mastodons and other megafauna.

Physical evidence tends to refute, not

to support, the view of early Americans as conscientious stewards of

their environment.  The Clovis people’s favored method of
killing

large mammals such as bison was to stampede them over cliffs en masse and then scavenge
what they could use from the pile of carcasses at the bottom. Perhaps
it was their ancestors’ experiences of

extinction and environmental destruction that taught modern Indians

their reverence for Mother Earth.  We shall consider that
issue later.

Some of the most
debatable aspects of the prehistory of the

Americas involve the geographical origins of the various groups of

“original” inhabitants, and whose

ancestors (among the tribes in existence now) they were. 
Many

natives feel threatened by such things

as scientific evidence that shows they were not related to the
“revered

ancestors” whose remains have been “returned” to them by the federal

government.  Anthropologists are frustrated by the actions of
the

government, which permits religious beliefs to stand in the way of

scientific discovery.

The
embattled stance of traditional native groups is understandable

in the light of their history since European contact.  They
have

lost a great deal, and gained many things they would have preferred not
to have.  Living

Indian traditionalists have expressed their repugnance for

romanticized New Agey images such as the three fantasy works by
MacKimmie at

the beginning of this piece.  They openly deplore the Archaic

Revival’s distortion of

their history, and the appropriation of their traditions by outsiders

who

understand little about the reality of the cultures they
parody.

“Cultures,” we

say.  There is no single homogeneous American Indian culture
any

more than there is such a thing as generic “Native American

spirituality.”  Traditionalists deny,
and have been denying to

ethnographers since the beginnings of European contact, that Indians

have a “religion.”  Those denials seem to be
at the root of the

usage of that term, “spirituality,” in preference to speaking of
Native

religions.  The denials of an
indigenous religion are based on the

widespread and ancient belief among Indians that gods and the spirit

realms are not separate from Earth and its creatures as they are in
the

white man’s religions.

There is surely more
than one source for the misconceptions

about the inherent “spirituality” (in the sense of a high-minded
purity

of soul and unworldly innocence) of Indians.  The
self-evident

reality is that as a people Native Americans are neither more nor less

spiritually-minded than the general run of human races.  It
might

have been liberal guilt over the depredations of their ancestors that

led some

white people to cast redskins in an unrealistically favorable

light.  It might also be that the Indians presented themselves
as

spiritually superior in a mixture of defensiveness and racial pride
while

they watched

their lifeways disappear before the waves of social assimilation,
environmental destruction, and

genocidal attrition.

In whatever way
various cultural misconceptions were born and by whichever means they
were

spread, they still exist, and they do nothing to improve inter-cultural
understanding and acceptance.   It

is not inaccurate to speak of Native American religions

when discussing

their traditional beliefs, any more than it would be inaccurate to
call

the

Christianity practiced by most twenty-first century Indians a

religion.  It may be politically incorrect, and it may be

offensive to some traditional Indians, but it is accurate. 
Amerinds

themselves will invoke their constitutional right to freedom of
religion when it
suits their purposes.

A widespread spiritual
or religious practice in the Americas was and

still is, among traditionalists, some form or another of the ecstatic

experience or vision quest, in which a person seeks contact with a

Higher Intelligence to receive wisdom, understanding, power, healing,

guidance, or a sacred ceremonial name and identity for
himself. 

Practices vary in different groups, but most of them involve
isolation,

physical exhaustion and/or pain, fasting and/or ingestion of
hallucinogens, sleep

deprivation, and chanting or singing.  To an Animist, such

practices of direct gnostic contact with Spirit surely must seem more

“spiritual” than the

white men’s religious belief in a distant god who speaks to them only

through

priests.

 The primary
purpose of all religion is crowd control, the maintenance

of social order.   Before there were established
civil

governments in Europe, Asia and Africa, there were priesthoods whose

function was to keep order and settle disputes.  The ancient

Hebrew judges were, first of all, priests.  In North America,
where

tribes have political sovereignty in their own reservation lands, they

have adopted many of the white men’s legal practices such

as police and jails.  Still, they retain some of their
traditional religious practices for

social

control. 

Some Alaskan Native
villages continue the practice of

banishment for certain crimes despite its being a controversial

issue, especially when offenders are abandoned alone on remote and

barren islands.  Pueblo peoples in the U.S. Southwest have
police

departments and Anglo-style justice systems, but they still exert

social control over non-criminal infractions such as vanity or
gluttony

through satirization and ridicule by the Koshare or sacred clowns who

perform during the kachina dances.

White

people romanticized Indians as Noble Savages with a culture of

peace and brotherhood, while the oral traditions and the ethnographic

and archaeological evidence point to ubiquitous prehistoric warfare,
slavery,

murder, rape, torture, blood sacrifice, and cannibalism. 
Intense

hatreds between neighboring tribes, and violent divisions even between

competing bands of the same tribe, were the rule rather than the

exception.  There were complex continent-wide trade routes,
and some uneasy temporary strategic

alliances, but until the European invaders provided them with a common
enemy,

there was no unity or solidarity amongst North American
tribes.

As

an example of inter-tribal conflict and disagreement, consider the

matter of shamans, medicine men, and spiritual healers. 

Anthropologists agree amongst themselves for the sake of professional
discussion that “shaman” (lower case)

refers to any person, of any culture, who works in an altered state of

consciousness for purposes of divination, healing, or personal
empowerment. 

When capitalized, “Shaman,” “Saman,” or “Xaman,” refers to the
traditional ecstatic priests

of the Tungus-speaking peoples of Siberia.  For the benefit of
the geographically

challenged, we will point out that Siberia is in Asia, not in the

Americas.

The word, “shaman,” can be traced back to Sanskrit,

“sramanas,” and the Indian subcontinent southeast of Europe and

southwest of Asia.  Some North American tribes are vehement
in

their insistence that they do not

have shamans, while others, through the mediation of an intertribal
council of medicine

women, have demanded that whites and others never use the term
“shaman”

when referring to themselves because the word refers only to Native

American traditional healers.

Both

positions have arisen in

reaction to the silliness perpetrated by New Age wannabe Indians and

the pretenders and practioners of the Archaic
Revival.  Some

adherents of  the no-shamans position, and some of those who
belong to the “It’s OUR word,” faction

are willing to resort to violence in support of their views. 

That’s the traditional Indian way.

Another contentious issue is the dreamcatcher,
an often kitchy artifact favored by that most populous of all Indian
tribes, the Wannabes. 

There is copious evidence that it originated in the Ojibwe (Chippewa)

culture, but both the Lakota and the Navajo, and probably some others,
claim it as theirs.

Many Navajos are economic opportunists (makes sense, given conditions
in their world), so such claims fit

right in with their traditions.  A young Navajo we met at 4
Corners,

selling to tourists cheap flimsy bead strings with Chinese
mass-produced shell bird

beads that are sold wholesale by various importers for the crafts
trade, claimed that he had sat up all the

night before carving the bird fetishes.  Yeah,
right.

In addition to
claiming to have received the dream catcher directly from Spider Woman,
the

Lakota also lay exclusive claim to the sweat lodge and several

other ceremonial features of Plains Indian tradition, and are among
the

most

militant of tribes when it comes to discouraging the profanation of
their

cultural heritage.  Seeing what suburban white soccer mom

spare-time crafters have done to the dreamcatcher, we feel that

somebody

ought to protest the profanation of Native traditions.  Phony

pearl beads, pink satin rosebuds and ribbons, and white lace ruffles…
sheesh!

Uncertainties
regarding the origins of religious practices and cultural

artifacts are inherent in any oral tradition.  The creation
myths

and ancient roots of the religious traditions of the Judeo – Christian
and Muslim

cultures have been recorded
and codified in writing

for about five thousand years, since the time of the
Sumerians.   In

the Americas, writings on stone have been preserved in the Olmec,

Mayan and Zapotec areas of Central America for about half that

long.  For the tribes of
North America, however, the recording and

retelling of history depended on the bardic tradition of the

storytellers, supported and supplemented by petroglyphs, kiva murals
in

Pueblos, pictographs on

bark, hides, or stone, and masked reenactments in dance.

Most

traditionalists resent having their stories referred to as

myths. 
They consider them histories.  One man’s myth is

another man’s history.  Your stories are myths, but my stories are

Gospel.

Many tribes think of their stories as people, alive.  A
California

storyteller

might, when he’s finished, order his story back into its
cave.  An

Eskimo might segué into a second tale by saying he can’t leave it

standing on one leg. Respect for the traditions is demanded by the

storytellers and shown in various ways by different
cultures. 

Many of them always begin storytelling sessions with
prayers. 

Tlingits in old days would tie the feet of fidgety children
together.

All

across North America, there are rules about when stories can be

told.  It is considered dangerous to tell stories other than
at

particular times, generally at night and in winter.  The
Cherokee

are an exception, telling stories day or night, all year. 

According to the Salish of the Washington coast, snakes would crawl in

the door if stories were heard in summer.  The Wyandot said
the

snakes would crawl in your bed.  Senecas said they would choke
you,

and bees would sting your lips.   Our theory on this
is that

it was to prevent people, especially the young, from slacking off

telling stories during summer daylight hours when there was important

work to be done.

Speaking a common language does not mean that groups also share a

common mythic tradition.  The neighboring Yurok, Karok and
Hupa

tribes of California (the spear fisherman in the photo above on the
left

is a Hupa) share a mythic tradition, and all three tribes speak
unrelated

languages.  The Athapascans of Alaska and Northwestern Canada
(shown in

light mauve on John Wesley Powell’s map of tribes at right) speak the

same language as the Navajo and some other groups (same color) in the

Southwest, but their mythic traditions are quite different.

 For most tribes, the “Myth Age” was a time when all animals
were

people.  Depending on the culture or the individual
storyteller,

that could mean a talking creature with an animal’s body in

human clothes, or one with a human appearance but other attributes of
a

particular animal.  The sacred stories tell of events that

happened in that long ago age, and many of them begin with the words,

“Long ago….”  The Myth Age ended when the “animal people”
were

transformed into the common animals of today.

The

variability and lack of continuity that are inherent in any oral
tradition can be observed in

the divergent renderings of a single story told by

different storytellers even in the same village.  An overview
of the geographical

distribution of mythic cycles, figures and motifs looks like a crazy

quilt.  The mural by Robert Dafford pictured at left is an
artist’s conception of

the continental distribution and variation of the “emergence”

motif.  Stories of the emergence of primeval ancestors from

underground occurs all across North America, through Central America

and as far south as the Andes in South America, but they are not the

same stories everywhere.

Geographically, in
North America related mythic traditions extend

in

east-west bands as long as 2,000 miles in the south and up to 4,000
miles in

the far north.  North to south, wide variations appear even
over

short distances.  There are very few elements that all of
these

traditions have in common.  One notable commonality is the

practice of dividing the oral tradition into two distinct types of

stories.

Eskimo peoples say
that some of their stories are old and others are

young.  In Winnebago tradition, there are waikan (sacred)
stories

and worak (narrated) stories.  The Pawnee divide their
stories

into true and false.   The second set of stories in
each of

those pairs might consist of fiction, non-fiction or a combination of

both.  What characterizes the true, old, sacred stories of
any

group of people

is that which makes them the basis of religious beliefs, rituals and

spiritual practices.  These sacred

traditions are what mythographers and mythologists mean when we speak

of myths.

Stories that are old and sacred in one tribe might be adopted into

the young “false” oral tradition of tales considered merely
entertaining by other

tribes. 

This is one way in which a people’s oral traditions change through

time.  The creation stories of many Indian groups have
absorbed

monotheistic

elements from Judeo-Christian mythology, and some of them have even

come to be considered “old” and sacred.

The European invaders
have influenced Native American cultural

traditions in other ways.  Other than a few Jesuits east of
the

Great Lakes who recorded some

local myths in the 1600s, nobody took much interest in writing down
the

American oral tradition until Henry
Rowe Schoolcraft

started, about 1822.  As every known ethnographer of that era
did,

Schoolcraft rewrote the stories he heard, cleaning them up for public

consumption.  His Algic Researches,

a collection of Chippewa tales published in 1839, is the American

counterpart of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, a similarly rewritten collection
of

European folk tales.

Although myths in
Eastern Canada are still being told in forms that

have not changed in 350 years, and some Pueblo traditions in the

Southwest could be as much as a thousand years old, deliberate

genocidal extermination, politico – economically motivated
relocations,

catastrophic epidemic illnesses, and cultural assimilation have left

other oral traditions hanging by a thread.  In New York, there
are

some Iroquois who still tell stories, and a small oral tradition is
still

alive in Washington state.  The thread is broken in Georgia,
and

in Virginia there is no living trace of Indian culture.

Between the General
Allotment Act of 1877, which aimed to dissolve

Indian communities, and the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which

sought to re-establish them (too late for many), in exchange for

promises that their stories would be preserved in books, many

storytellers consented to share their tribal traditions with

mythographers.  At the same time, the old ethnographic
practice of

rewriting the folklore was beginning to give way to anthropological

methodology and greater attempts to relate the stories
accurately.

By the 1950s, myth
collectors were focusing as much on their informants

as on the stories, taking note of the storytellers’ age, sex,

psychology, etc.  In the 1960s, sound recording devices began
to be

used and the new generation of “performance ethnographers” noted

details such as pauses, audience responses, and instances when the

teller’s version was corrected by an expert or elder.  Native

groups began publishing their own collections of stories in the early

1970s for the benefit of their future generations.

Since there is no
way we could adequately relate here the full range of

the sacred stories of the Americas, we will share a few tales that are

widely told.  One story that exists in various versions all
the

way from California to the Great Lakes and south to Tierra del Fuego
is

“Trickster
Marries his own Daughter.” 

Trickster is a mythic figure whose identity differs from place to

place.  In areas of the Great Plains and Southwest U.S., he is
Old

Man Coyote.  In the Pacific Northwest, he is Raven. 
To some

Plains and Woodland tribes he or she is Spider, as in Africa, while

other North American tribes have Fox as their Trickster figure, as in

Japan.

Not all indigenous American cultures have creation myths, but
virtually

every one that does has some version of the “Earth Diver”
motif. 

The continuous distribution of this motif from Europe through Alaska

and south suggests a common origin.  In North America it is

found everywhere, except on the Arctic Coast and in the desert

Southwest,

as an embedded motif, not a consistent story.  In it, the
primeval

environment is all water and various animals such as duck, turtle,

crawfish, and muskrat take turns diving to find dry land. 

Finally, one succeeds but ends up half-drowned or dead.  The
muck

scraped from the dying creature’s claws becomes Turtle Island, or

whatever the particular culture calls its world.

One variant of this motif involves
Tezcatlipoca and
Quetzalcoatl,

who must catch and restrain the Earth Monster Cipactli to form the

land.  Their myth is a crossover into another near-universal

worldwide mythic motif, the Hero
Twins. 

From Castor and Pollux of the Greeks, and Romulus and Remus who
founded

Rome, to the Hopi’s Twin War Gods, they are everywhere.

We said we would revisit the issue of modern tribes’ reverence for

nature, for the Earth Mother.  As in other cultures, there
are

environmentalists among Native Americans, and there are also those

willing to sell or lease their sacred lands for strip mining and the

disposal of nuclear waste, in the name of economic
necessity. 

People are people, wherever you go.

Selected further reading:

Comparison
of Hopi, Zuni and San Juan Tewa creation myths

Quetzalcoatl’s
return

Native American
Trickster Tales

Creation
Myths with Female Creators

We are greatly indebted to John Bierhorst, author of  Mythology
of the Americas in Three Volumes for much of the
mythographical information in this article.