Unit 1: Native Americans

The Native American World

● The Local Gods
○ Master of Breath - God
○ Tamookwa
● An Americas Perspectives
● Native American Diversity
● Change in Native American Traditions

Bering Strait
● Place where Alaska and Asia join
● First people in hemisphere
● 15,000 Years ago

Olmecs
● First Civilization in Americas
● 3,000 years ago
● Built pyramids
● Giant stones heads, masks, etc

Mayans
● 3rd to 10th century
● Kings talked with gods
● Urban Centric

Cahokia
● 900 - 1350 AD
● Urban Centric
● Solar and Seasonal Rituals
● Mississippian society

● Native Americans had no word for religion.

○ Had not separated ordinary from mysterious. Beliefs and activities were part of
the same

Diversity
● Origin stories
● Cherokees’ “Great Island”
● Community Rituals

Religion as Culture
● Cultural collisions
● Every people had sacred stories
 ● Culture -> Tradition -> Religion
Common Characteristics
● Our world and Outer world are interwoven
● Ties of Kinship
● Ties of time

Native American: The purpose of being on the earth was to live in harmony with all of nature
vs.
English: Profane world vs. Divine Existence

1. Syncretism: Keep up traditional practice, but add Christian traditions as well

2. Millennialism: Casting off old religion in favor of a new one
3. Conversion:

Native Americans and Europeans

● Initial Encounters
● Population Shift
● Effects on Religion
● Missionaries

Initial Encounters
● 1492 - 2,000,000 Natives
○ East of Mississippi
● 1700 - 250,000 Colonists
○ Coasts and seaboards
● 1750 - Shift in Population

Native American Religion

● Morally neutral universe
○ Potentially hostile or friendly spiritual forces
● Relation with spirit forces
● Exchange of goods
● The Mourning War
○ Required young men to raid their enemies for war captives to replace loss of
loved ones

Spiritual Power
● Necessary warfare
● Replace dead
● Community rituals
European Contact
● Changing warfare
● Derangement
○ Diseases
○ Guns
○ Trade
● End of Mourning War
○ Warfare failing to maintain a stable population

When Native Americans could no longer explain the world due to European arrival, Christians
easily witnessed them
- Moravian Missionaries

Moravian Missionaries
● Successful
● Similar themes to native religions
● Music and images
● Blood and Wounds Theology
○ Familial Metaphors
○ Symbolism of Communion
○ Transformative Power of Wounds
○ Emphasis on Christ’s Gruesome Death

Effects on Religion
● Native American religion could not provide answers
● Turned to similar forms of Christianity
● Incorporation over conversion