Native American Myths and Beliefs

by Tom Lowenstein

  Though terrifying, shamanic initiation can also be blissful. The Iglulik shaman Aua recalled: “I would sometimes start weeping, without knowing why. Then suddenly, for no good reason, I would be filled with a great, inexplicable delight … in the midst of such a mysterious and overwhelming joy, I became a shaman. I could hear and see in a totally different way. I had gained the shaman-light in my brain and body and could see through the darkness of life. This light wasn’t visible to other people, but it shone out from me to the spirits of earth and sky and sea. They could see it, and they became my helping spirits.”

  An Iglulik Inuit woman called Uvavnuk went outside one winter night and was struck by a huge ball of lightning which entered her body. Before falling unconscious, she felt inwardly illuminated by a spirit that was half human, half polar bear. Presently, she re gained consciousness and, enthused by the spirit inside her, went on to become a great shaman.

  Along the Northwest Coast too, shamanic initiation was often extremely violent. Nootka shamans would spend years preparing for their first encounter with a spirit, but even so when the meeting took place they might collapse with blood trickling from mouth, nose and ears, or even drop dead on the spot. In the same region, Kwakiutl or Tsimshian shamans might struggle to master or even “kill” the spirit in order to acquire its power. In this way, each shaman repeated the original cosmic battles of the heroes of myth in his or her own personal experience.

  Soul Flights, Dreams and Vision Quests

  Many Native myths concern the exploits of archetypal heroic figures. Such legends are constantly being reenacted, and in the process reinforced, in the contemporary experiences of shamans. These may take the form of soul flights, dreams or visions.

  Shamans who embark on soul flights to rescue people’s souls are often repeating the journeys of mythical heroes. One such archetypal figure is the husband who journeys to the underworld to re claim his wife, which is the subject of many Native American myths, and recalls the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. Another myth tells how a Bella Coola shaman on the Northwest Coast succeeded in rescuing his son from the ocean by lowering a rope from his canoe, even though the son had already been reduced to a skeleton by the waves.

  Such myths are recounted whenever a sha man sets out to bring back the soul of a dying patient. The battles that he must fight on the way against monsters and hostile spirits may be a reenactment of the struggles that he fought during his initiation. Among the Coast Salish, several shamans may collaborate in retrieving a sick patient’s lost guardian animal spirit. Assembling at night, the shamans form themselves into the shape of a canoe. To the accompaniment of drums and rattles, each shaman mimes the action of paddling and sings the song of his own guardian spirit as his soul descends into the bowels of the earth.

  Until well into the twentieth century, shamans of the Iglulik Inuit would observe an especially perilous ritual whenever their community was threatened by famine. As the source of this misfortune was always the Woman of the Sea, a strong and brave shaman was delegated to dive to the ocean floor and appease her by combing her hair. His preparation for this dangerous task involved gathering the tribe together in his house. Here he would sit for a long time in silence and breathing deeply, naked except for fur boots and mittens and separated from his people by a curtain. He then began to call for help from his guiding spirits. After gaining the spirits’ permission to descend, the shaman would slide down a passage that had opened up in the ice beneath the house, leading directly to the bottom of the sea. After his departure the audience remained in silence.

  Newitti, a Kwakiutl village on vancouver island, british Columbia, photographed in 1881. shamanism was particularly strong among peoples of the Northwest Coast region.

  The Woman of the Sea

  The myth of the Woman of the sea —sometimes called Sedna (“The Great Food Dish”)—relates how the Inuit were provided with plentiful fish and animals.

  A common myth among the Inuit tells of the Woman of the Sea, or Mistress of the Animals. Known in different regions as Sedna or Takanak apsaluk, she married a fulmar (a seabird) against her parents’ wishes. Later, she became disillusioned with her husband and ran away. Her parents rescued her, but when the angry fulmar found their little kayak on the water, he raised a fierce storm by beating his wings. Realizing that the kayak was about to capsize, the girl's parents started blaming her for their misfortune and told her to cast herself into the sea. Despite her protestations of innocence and her screams for mercy, her parents threw her overboard. As she clung desperately onto the gunwale, her father took his knife and, one by one, cut off all her fingers.

  When the fulmar saw that the girl was drowned, he allowed the storm to subside and let her parents proceed safely home. As the girl sank to the seabed, her fingers came back to life as sea creatures—for example, as a fish, a seal, a whale and a walrus.

  This drawing by an inuit shaman shows Takanakapsaluk leading the sea creatures that grew from her severed fingers.

  It was thus through Sedna’s suffering that animals crucial to the Inuit’s survival came into being. Together they provide meat, blubber for heating and lighting in the long dark winters and skins for protective clothing. However, humanity’s sins accumulate as filth in Sedna’s hair, and having no fingers she cannot comb it clean again. When her hair gets dirty, her anger causes epidemics or storms or makes her withhold the seals and other animals on which the people depend.

  Meanwhile, the shaman had to negotiate a series of deadly obstacles on the seabed, including three large rolling stones that tried to crush him. Entering the Sea Woman’s house, he found her sulking next to a pool containing the creatures that she refused to release into the sea. Her long hair hung over her eyes, clogged into a filthy tangle by the sins of humankind. The shaman would carefully place his hand on her shoulder, turning her face towards the light, and begin the delicate task of combing the matted hair out of her eyes. As he did so, he spoke to her in the special language of the spirits, saying: “Those above can no longer help the seals up by grasping their foreflippers.” She would reply, “The secret sins and the breaches of taboo bar the way for the animals.” As she grew calmer, she picked up the animals one by one and dropped them into a current that flowed through her house into the open sea. A good supply of meat was now assured.

  This shield belonged to the famous oglala sioux warrior Crazy horse. his name is derived from a vision that he once experienced involving a bucking horse. This supernatural encounter later helped him to become an illustrious fighter.

  Having appeased her, the shaman began his return journey. The community heard him app roaching from afar. Finally, with a loud cry, he shot up into the house behind the curtain, gasping for breath. Intense silence ensued for a mo ment, be fore the shaman announced: “Words will arise.” Then, one by one, those present began to confess the misdeeds that weighed on their consciences.

  Dreams and Visions

  Many native traditions regard the shaman’s soul journey as a specialized form of the experiences that every layperson has in their dreams. While everyone’s soul has the capacity to wander in their sleep, a shaman’s soul travels in a more purposeful way. Dreaming is seen as happening in a realm that is inseparable from everyday life. For example, the Zuni of the Southwest regard dreams as having a bearing on real events. An action in a dream is not considered complete until its counterpart has taken place in waking life, and many crucial actions are based on a preceding dream. People thus try to influence events. After receiving a good dream, they tell no one until it has been fulfilled; on the other hand, a bad dream is shared, in the hope of forestalling its fulfilment.

  Native Americans make no rigid distinction between dreams and waking visions. So widespread is the quest for a vision that it may be regarded as the most distinctive common element of Native American religions. Among the Plains peoples, for example, everyone sought a vision at least once in their lifetime, while many undertook regular vision quests. The vision t
hat the quest revealed endowed the individual seeker with personal power, while the tribe’s visions taken as a whole added to its communal store of spiritual power.

  On the Northwest Coast, laypersons would often undertake terrifying vision quests. Some Nootka vision seekers died of exposure, while among the Coast Salish, seekers would weigh themselves down with rocks and plunge into deep water. Children who were afraid to take part in such quests were beaten and deprived of food.

  Great shamans and war leaders on the Plains had visions that affected the entire community. The renowned Oglala Sioux warrior Crazy Horse gained his name from one such momentous vision, in which the horse he was riding through an ethereal spirit landscape began to prance about erratically. Another vision warned Crazy Horse always to stay mounted if he wished to remain invincible. Thus reassured, he became a fearless fighter. True to the vision’s warning, he finally met his death while dismounted.

  The Plains peoples see the vision quest as a form of prayer (known to the Sioux as a “lamentation”) that lies at the very heart of their way of life. In the lamentation, a person stands humble and powerless before the “Great Mystery,” Wakan Tanka. Visions are sought under the guidance of experienced elders and recounted to them afterwards for interpretation. The aim of the quest is not to enter the state of ecstasy attained by the shamans of the Arctic and sub-Arctic, but to gain a clear insight into the future.

  The vision thus plays a central role in Plains culture, forming the basis of most rituals (such as the Sun Dance), and giving guidance in times of traumatic change. The story of the nineteenth-century Sioux healer Black Elk illustrates this.

  At the age of five, Black Elk had a vision, in which two men flew swiftly towards him out of a cloud, singing with voices of thunder. Four years later voices came to him in another vision, saying, “It is time! Your Grandfathers are calling you!” The two men from the earlier vision then appeared and took him into a heaven full of dancing horses. They passed through a door in a rainbow and met the spirits of the Sky, of the Earth and of the Four Directions, who each be stowed their special gifts on him. Looking at the spirit of the Earth, the young Black Elk recognized himself as an old man. From a high vantage point on a mountaintop, he then saw the Sioux nation’s sacred hoop broken and a holy tree devoid of birds, representing the people’s future desolation. However, suddenly the tree blossomed again and a powerful song swept over him. Later, as his people were persecuted and their buffalo herds massacred, Black Elk clung to this vision. Until the final massacre of the Sioux at Wounded Knee in December 1890, the Ghost Dance (see pages 130– 31), seemed to herald the salvation promised in his vision. In old age, Black Elk looked back on his life regretfully as “the story of a mighty vision given to a man too weak to use it … and of a people's dream that ended in bloody snow.”

  This talisman, made from a golden eagle, was carried by a Plains warrior and would have been one of the most sacred items in his medicine bundle.

  Sacred Societies

  Some Native American cultures do not have individual shamans but instead collectivize the role of the holy man into sacred societies based upon a common ideal or ritual. These societies are of various kinds, but their activities commonly focus on rites of passage, celebrations of natural fertility and healing ceremonies.

  One of the most significant rites of passage marked by Native American peoples is that of puberty. This phase in the human life cycle has several rites associated with it, many of which concern the individual’s acquisition of spiritual power. Thus, a widespread practice is for adolescent children—both male and female—to engage in a vision quest. In addition, some cultures deem it essential to segregate girls from the rest of the community during their first menstruation, since their menstrual blood is believed to contain dangerous spiritual properties. The Lakota Sioux regard this enforced isolation as having the same purifying function for girls that a sweat lodge has for ado -lescent boys.

  Many peoples lay particular emphasis on the fact that puberty signals the full integration of an individual into the community. In such communities, the central event in a person’s transition into adult-hood is a public ceremony conducted by a sacred society. For example, the puberty rite of passage is one of several communal rituals celebrated by the Kachina Society of the farming Pueblo peoples (see page 121).

  These wood and leather articulated puppets depicting a family of ghosts were used in initiation rites by the Kwakiutl people of the Northwest Coast.

  Societies of healers developed among the farming peoples of the Northeast. There existed among the Huron several such groups, each specializing in curing a particular disease. They ritually enacted the killing and resurrection of their members, in order to endow them with the power to heal. Another healing society, the Iroquois “False Face,” was named after a giant who challenged the Creator to a contest to move a mountain. In the ensuing struggle, the mountain toppled into the giant’s face, dis figuring it permanently. De feated, the giant agreed to dedicate himself to healing humans. As a consequence, members of this society wear masks representing the giant’s twisted features as they tend the sick.

  Women’s societies were prevalent in the upper Missouri region. Among the Mandan, the Goose Women and those belonging to the Society of the White Buffalo Cow performed rites to attract buffalo herds to their territories and to ensure a plentiful corn harvest.

  There were also a number of secret societies—for example, the Cann ibal Society of the Kwa kiutl, whose induction ceremony was believed to involve eating parts of a corpse.

  The link between ceremony and myth is evident from the initiation ritual conducted by the midewiwin, or Great Medicine Society, of the Ojibway and Chippewa of the Great Lakes region. A creation myth of these peoples relates how the first humans were made by the spirits—chief among them Manitou—and were intended to live forever, through regeneration every hundred years. The Ojibway trickster Manabozho, who was present at the creation, watched as Manitou fashioned human figures out of clay, put a hard megis shell (cowrie) on their heads (signifying the durability of their existence) and then brought them to life.

  A Celebration of Rain

  In the Pueblo villages of the Hopi, initiates of the Kachina Society dance at ceremonies that mark seasonal changes. One particularly elaborate rite celebrates the arrival of the winter rains, which the Hopi believe are brought to them by the kachinas— the spirit essences of all life on earth.

  The farming Pueblo peoples of the Southwest believe that the rain-bringing kachina spirits descend in winter from the cloud-topped San Francisco Peaks to spend six months in their villages.

  To mark this crucial event in the crop-growing cycle, the Hopi hold a midwinter ceremony known as the powamu, or bean dance. Powamu celebrates the germination and growth of such staple crops as beans and corn, and it is also used to initiate children into the kachina cult.

  The 16-day-long festival begins with the planting of seeds in beds of moist sand inside a steamy kiva, a sacred underground chamber specially prepared for the occasion. Dances then begin, led by men dressed as the kachina spirits. Once the seeds have sprouted, they are used in a performance by carved puppets that mimic the dancers. Against a painted backdrop of rain and lightning, marionettes depicting water serpents chase away the sun, to forestall the premature arrival of the summer drought. Other puppets then grind cornmeal, which is sprinkled by masked clowns onto the heads of initiates. On the final day of powamu, the new crop of bean sprouts is harvested and carried through the village.

  Although the kachina bring rain, a vital element of life on Earth, their home is the Land of the Dead.

  Zuni women in the arid southwest sow their crops in “waffle gardens”—beds of soil subdivided into small compartments to minimize evaporation. The Zuni, like the other farming peoples of this region, celebrate the various stages of the crop-growing cycle in a number of annual festivals.

  Human immortality immediately came under threat when one spirit, jealous a
t not being involved in the creation, opened up a direct route from the human world to the realm of death. However, Manitou subsequently taught Mana -bozho how, through ritual observance, he might sacrifice himself and be reborn. The midewiwin ceremony recalls this feat. Candidates for initiation into the society, or sick patients, are symbolically killed and then revived, with megis shells placed on their bodies to act as points of entry for Manitou’s power.

  Hunting Ceremonies

  While some peoples, particularly in the Northeast, Southeast and Southwest, developed sophisticated systems of agriculture, others relied heavily on the traditional method of acquiring food—hunting. This required great care and scrupulous observance of custom: not only were animals seen as sentient beings like humans, but they were also believed to be able to change into humans, and vice versa.

  The fluid boundaries between the human and animal worlds could be used to advantage by shamans in their retrieval of souls. An Inupiat legend from northern Alaska recounts how a man was walking along the beach when his soul was abducted by a boat full of spirits and turned into a whale. His body lay where it had fallen for the entire winter. In spring, when the whales migrated past his village, his soul returned to his body, and he regained consciousness. This experience marked the man’s initiation as a shaman. The insight he gained from having lived among the whales as one of their number enabled him to persuade them to let them- selves be hunted by members of his village. He starved an enemy village into submission by asking the whales to disappear from its hunting grounds.

  Photographed in 1915, ceremonial dancers of the Kwakiutl hamatsa society wear many different masks symbolizing animal spirits. The dancers in long-beaked masks represent hokhokw, a creature that cracks open people’s skulls and eats their brains.