Native American Myths and Beliefs

by Tom Lowenstein

  When the hunters returned to the village, they went to the longhouse and described what they had seen. “Beat the rhythm of the rabbit chief,” said one of the elders. The men took their drums, and the people began dancing to the rhythm set by the rabbit chief. This rabbit dance was their repayment to the animals whose meat and skins they made so much use of.

  Many animal stories are spun out into long sagas concerning epic quests undertaken by different species; the animals’ journeys often represent the wandering of tribal ancestors. Other animal tales, however, are extremely short. The Inuit tell stories, often accompanying a game of cat’s cradle, that may last no longer than a few seconds; for example: “A lemming circled the skylight of an igloo. Suddenly it fell, shouting, ‘I think I’ve broken my ribs!’” Tales like these, which are often sung with the addition of nonsensical choruses, are simply enjoyed as entertainment. In contrast, some short tales are instructive, such as the sad story of the quail family that is related by the Pima of Arizona: “A mother quail had twenty children and wandered the country in search of water. At last they found a foul, muddy pond. They were all so thirsty that they drank the water. The water was so bad it killed them.” The moral of this myth is simply that the quails died because they did not know, as they should have known, how to recognize healthy water.

  Animal Souls and the Afterlife

  Animals were obviously important for the traditional lifestyles of Native America. Their flesh was human meat, their skin was human clothes, and their bones and sinews made weapons and tools. But their material importance was matched by their no less obvious spiritual value. To continue to hunt, hunters had to pay due reverence to the souls of the hunted.

  In Native American myth, animals are regarded as holy because they have powerful souls. And though the souls of some species, such as bears, whales and elk, may be greater, more important or more dangerous to humans than those of, say, squirrels and lemmings, all animals share an honorable status in the spiritual universe.

  Animals were present in the ancient dream time, when every being and every thing participated in sacred newness. Their presence “back then” is a guarantee of their holiness, but in traditional practice, as well as mythical stories, animals are always treated with respect. When hunting was widespread, most Native American hunters justified their actions with the belief that the immortal souls of their prey would return to their villages for reincarnation. If people killed and butchered an animal “kindly”—by using sharp, clean weapons and following rituals which would please both the individual and its species—then the animal’s soul would not resent its “death.” When the soul reached its homeland, it would report the hunter’s behavior. If the hunter had done everything correctly, the soul might say: “I will return in my new life to that man. He and his wife are good and generous people.

  The main symbol on this sioux dance shield is a buffalo. such symbols acted as talismans that invoked the power and courage of an esteemed animal.

  They share what they hunt. They cut my body with skill and respect. You others can go to that hunter too.” If the hunter was slovenly, lazy or disrespectful, then the animal spirit might refuse to come again to him and would warn the souls of the entire species to avoid him as well. Withdrawal was only one way of punishing a miscreant human: the animals had other ways of showing their displeasure. In particular they could use their soul power to endanger the hunter’s life or cause him to fall ill.

  Perhaps the most feared and honored of all animal souls was that of the bear. Among the Kwakiutl of the Northwest Coast, a hunter who had killed a grizzly bear took on its power, the man’s soul becoming imbued with that of the animal. The following speech of a successful Kwa kiutl hunter on meeting a bear demonstrates how such animals were regarded. “Be ready friend, that we may try our strength. You dreaded one!… Listen to me, Supernatural One, now I will take by war your power of not respecting anything, of not being afraid, and your wildness, great, good, Super natural One.” Here the man acknowledges the supernatural status of the bear while also declaring himself the bear’s equal in strength by virtue of his own previous victorious encounters.

  Guardian Spirits

  The souls of animals could also be enlisted by people as their guardian spirits. In many communities, animal souls were sought out by apprentice shamans and young men and women undergoing initiation rites at puberty. The Algonquin, for example, sought an animal manitou or “spirit” (see page 121); the Inuit sought a tuunraq (“helping spirit”). Among the Tlingit of southeast Alaska a young man might take a river otter, cut out its tongue and hang this around his neck. The spirit of the otter residing in the tongue was thought to provide the owner with an understanding of the language spoken by all animals.

  The spirits of animals could also be invoked for the purpose of healing or self-transformation. Shamans wore the skins, tails, claws and heads of animals that they had encountered in their vision quests. In administering to a sick person, a shaman would dance, shaking all his animal amulets to invoke the souls that they represented, and he would then proceed to call upon one or more animal spirits to restore the patient’s health. The mutually binding relationship between the shaman and the animal meant that the spirit could be persuaded to exert a supernatural curative power. In another reflection of a guardian spirit’s influence, the shaman could use an amulet to transform himself temporarily into the shape of the animal itself and call upon its spiritual power in this way.

  The afterlife of animals was generally perceived as being happy. Dead animals lived in soul-villages and they ranged over extensive plains resembling those they had enjoyed in their earthly existence (see page 124). Native Americans believed that the souls of buffalo continued to graze on the plains of the afterlife long after their real numbers on the Great Plains had been reduced to a few isolated herds by the white men’s depredations in the 1880s. In some cultures, fearsome animals guarded the river leading to the other world. The Ojibway people of the Great Lakes maintained that a huge serpent served as a bridge spanning this river. This was benign enough to other animals; but threatened to devour shamans in search of spirit helpers. Animals also inhabited the world of the human afterlife. The souls of dogs would often pass down the same road as human souls and would continue to be devoted to their masters; the other animals provided game for human souls who coursed the “happy hunting grounds.” The Great Hare, who was the deity and culture hero of the Algonquian people of the Northeast, also presided over the next world.

  However, by no means all of the animal souls encountered in the afterlife were friendly. The Iroquois be -lieved that a ferocious dog stood at the far end of the bridge leading to the land of the dead. Similarly, the Senel people of Cali fornia thought that a dangerous buffalo bull stood in the path of the soul of every deceased person. Those people who had led a good life were allowed to pass by, but those who had behaved wickedly fell victim to this menacing creature.

  Salmon had more than a simple nutritional significance for the peoples of the Northwest Coast. The annual salmon runs were a constant reminder of the cyclical flow of life and death, and salmon were perceived as humans in another form. every year, the underwater salmon people exchanged their human clothes for those of fish and migrated upstream to be fished by humans. After they had been eaten, their bones floated back to the sea, where, once again, they would become salmon people. This wooden Tlingit sculpture, collected in 1898, represents the living human aspect of the salmon’s identity.

  Soul Theory and Spirit Flight

  Within the Native American cosmos there is no separation between the spiritual and material, between the natural and the human, between life and death, or between body and soul. Any single body is likely to house a variety of spirits or souls—one that emerges during dreams or sickness, one that dies with the body, one that joins the afterlife, and one that manifests itself as a delinquent ghost.

  The Native American cosmos is populated not just by the living, but also by countl
ess souls; these are invoked and propitiated in countless myths and rituals. Shamans, or “holy people,” were masters of the art of soul exchange and soul flight. Usually, though not invariably, these holy people were adult men, who became “soul doctors” only after intense solitary experiences that proved their ability to tame or at least direct the power of souls. An apprentice shaman would retreat to some lonely, spirit-receptive place, where, after a period of fasting, he would endure a psychic struggle with an aggressive, invasive spirit. In their subsequent soul flights, qualified shamans, aided by drumming, dancing and singing, could fly to other spheres to encounter the spirit of the moon or sun or plunge to the seabed to meet the spirits of the ocean.

  However, the mobile spirits of traditional Native American belief were not always benign. Bad spirits could enter an individual and cause mental illness, often diagnosed as temporary soul loss. In such cases, a shaman’s expertise was required. On a soul flight, the shaman would journey to where the patient’s soul had been taken. There, he would wrestle with whatever malign spirit had abducted the soul and, if successful, guide the missing spirit home.

  Animal spirits sometimes help deserving people, but they may afterwards want to keep them in their spirit houses. A story of the Northwest Coast Bella Coola people describes how a man called Kuna was helped by mouse spirits, yet still managed to return to his family. Kuna had married into another tribe and used to go hunting with his brothers-in-law. Whenever he shot at sea lions, the brothers would object to his bowmanship. One day, they decided to get rid of him. One of the hunters pretended that he had lost his whetstone and when Kuna was sent back for it, the rest of the hunting party deserted him. Kuna sat down and cried. Presently he fell asleep, but was woken by a voice saying: “I invite you to my chief’s house.” Kuna looked around but seeing no one, he went back to sleep. This happened again, but the third time Kuna looked, he saw a mouse. “Don’t hide, supernatural one,” said Kuna, “I see you now.” Kuna followed the mouse to the mouse chief’s house. “Go kill a dog, so that Kuna may eat,” said the mouse chief to his followers. While Kuna waited, an old woman came up. “Take this basket,” she said. “When they give you meat, do not eat it, but put it in the basket, or you will never return home. Long ago I ate the spirits’ meat and so I cannot return.” Then the meat was brought, and while the mouse chief ate, Kuna did as he had been told. The spirits realized that he had not eaten and prepared to return him. They fetched a skin bag and put him inside it. “When you hear a bird settle on the bag,” they said, “snap your fingers. The bird and the winds will guide you ashore.” They floated Kuna on the water, and the south and west winds blew him homeward. Before long he had reached his wife’s village. When his children saw him they ran to tell their mother. “Your father is dead,” she said. But soon they realized that he had returned alive, saved by the spirits.

  The soul of a salmon is evoked by this inuit shaman’s mask from southeast Alaska. The seven pendants are stylized representations of the fish shape, designed to reinforce the mask’s magic powers.

  The Next Life

  In the mythologies of Native America death has no dominion. Life on earth is followed by a spiritual existence in another realm, the afterlife. Sometimes this is visualized as a blissful, heaven-like continuation of earthly life; at other times, it is pictured as being more like hell. Many stories describe people who briefly cross over into the afterlife, mingle with the spirits who are assembled there, and then come back to resume their life on earth after their experience.

  Life after death, according to the traditions of southwestern Hopi, Zuni and Tewa peoples, is an extension of life on earth. The dead journey to what is often an underground or underwater village, where they join the spirits of people they were associated with in life. Some of these spirits of the dead might once have specialized as hunters, athletes, shamans or dancers; or they might have been rainmakers who now have the form of clouds and lightning. Benevolent ancestral spirits, the kachinas, keep company with the souls of humans in this subterranean territory, and they invite certain human souls to come as guests to a kachina dance house, or to Wenima, a beautifully wooded and watered afterlife resort.

  The afterlife of Pueblo belief seldom involves any strict separation, familiar from Christian ideas of the Last Judgment, between saved and lost souls, but the Hopi tradition does contain the notion of punishment after death. On the path to the place where the Hopi emerged onto Earth (sipapu) in the Grand Canyon (Oraibi), the “breath body” of the deceased traveller is met by a guardian called Tokonaka. If Tokonaka judges the traveller to be good, he lets him or her proceed to the town of the dead. Otherwise, a spirit traveller might have to journey on a forked trail leading to a series of up to four fire pits. If the spirit can be purified in the first pit, it can return to the trail of the good. The incorrigibly evil are burnt in the fourth fire pit.

  The possibility that “dead” souls, at some unspecified but favorable time, can be reborn on Earth arises in many Native American afterlife traditions. Thus one Inuit view is that the Raven Man hero who, at the beginning of time, perfected the creation, will return after a universal holocaust with the souls of the dead and reestablish life in its primal goodness. Smohalla, the holy man who inspired the nineteenth-century Dreamers Cult of the Northwest Coast, declared: “I want my people to stay with me here. All the dead men will come to life again. Their spirits will come to their bodies again. We must wait here in the homes of our fathers and be ready to meet them in the bosom of the mother.” A generation later, Smohalla’s vision was echoed and amplified by Wovoka, the prophet of the Ghost Dance Movement of the Plains (see page 130). In their struggle against the white men, the Dreamers and the Ghost Dancers enlisted the help of the sacred spirits of their ancestors, of the buffalo and of the elements. With the aid of these spirit powers, they hoped to bring about a return of the old ways and a restoration of cosmic harmony.

  This hopi kachina figure, made in 1939 by william Quotskuyva, represents masau’u, the protector of the living and ruler of the dead. his role as lord of the underworld is expressed by the goggle eyes and protruding teeth of his skull-like mask.

  The Ghost House

  Though death was not terminal and therefore not to be feared, ghosts were often objects of horror. This Tsimshian story from the Northwest Coast features a frightening Ghost chief.

  Brown Eagle, a chief’s son, ate only salmon. When he grew up, he became sick and died. His grieving parents put salmon on his grave, and the village moved to a new site. After two years, some young women and young men went to dig fern roots at the old site. At supper, they sat down to a meal of salmon. One foolish boy cried, “Look, this is Brown Eagle’s food!” Everyone laughed, and one of them said, “Let’s see if he’ll come from his grave when we call him. We can feed him salmon.” One of the men promptly took the fish and offered it at Brown Eagle’s grave. In vain, the women implored them not to mock the dead. Suddenly a frightful noise was heard from the graveyard. Brown Eagle’s skeleton was approaching with arms outstretched. “Let me have it!” he roared. Everyone was terrified. Some fell into the fire. Others tried to escape, but the ghost took their breath away. When the village discovered what had happened, they consulted their shamans. One of them said, “The souls of our young are now living in the Ghost Chief’s house. If we claim our youths tonight, they could return!” The shaman told his colleagues to shake their rattles and amulets. “The Ghost House shamans will answer. Then the ghosts will run out, and each of us can take the soul of a young person.” When they shook their rattles, the Ghost House shamans replied. The village shamans rushed into the house and grabbed the people’s souls. They restored them to the bodies they belonged to and gradually purged the ghostly air that hung over the young people.

  This Tlingit rattle in the form of a salmon with a shaman rider vividly illustrates the holy man’s capacity to harness the spirit power of animals.

  KEEPERS OF ORDER

  An Indian family is canoei
ng downstream early one evening, travelling from their spring hunting grounds to one of their summer campsites. The group consists of three generations—old people, young adults and children. From time to time, the young adults seek advice from the elders, who respond quietly, gesturing towards the river, the woods and the mountains. Sometimes they reply tersely, while on other occasions they begin to relate stories. The tales they tell are about places they have been to, adventures of their tribal forebears, animals they have hunted, and their spirit visions.

  Such conversations were a constant feature of Native American life. They always took a similar form, irrespective of whether they took place among the Sioux or the Huron, the Kwakiutl or the Zuni. Discussion would center on local knowledge about the land, seasonal changes, animal behaviour and where useful plants might be found. The older people who were well versed in such wisdom were held in high esteem by their community, for without their knowledge the group could not operate efficiently. Yet the elders’ ancestors, long since dead, had an even higher status. Most societies had a fund of memories of recent ancestors; the further back these memories went, the grander and more heroic the stories and their central characters became.