When the woman’s family and friends realized that she had disappeared, they began to bemoan her loss. The following spring, a hun - ter spotted her sitting among the frogs in the middle of the lake. The family gave many offerings in an attempt to persuade the frogs to release their kinswoman, but their efforts were all in vain. The people then tried a different approach, and they started to dig trenches in order to drain the lake. As the water gushed out, it swept the frogs away, carrying the frog-bride with them. Taking care not to harm any of the frogs, the woman’s family pulled her out of the water and attempted to restore her to her former self. However, she never recovered from her experience in the realm of the animals, and she died shortly afterwards.
A Tlingit shaman from the village of Chilkat, photographed in the late 19th century. he is holding a rattle carved in the form of a raven, one of the principal crest animals and spirit-helpers.
Following this sad affair, people and frogs grew closer to one another. They came to understand each other’s languages, and the woman’s family made great efforts to learn the frogs’ songs and names. Future generations of the clan adopted a frog crest as a sign of this ancient supernatural connection.
A WEB OF CEREMONY
The events recounted in myths are used by many native peoples as the basis for rituals that aim to maintain the health and the natural cycles of the earth, people, animals and crops. Native Americans have traditionally believed that a spirit world influences the world of waking consciousness. Sickness or health, starvation or abundance, depend on the proper functioning of the spirits and on their right relationship with humans.
Ritual is performed by many kinds of specialists or holy people, who are known by a variety of names in different languages. Although many Native Americans achieve some communion with spirits through direct experience, such as fasting and obtaining visions, holy people have a special gift for perceiving the working of spirits and knowing how to act upon them to change the world.
Those who concern themselves primarily with healing may most appropriately be referred to as medicine men or medicine women. Others use their powers to harm and can be called witches. Most powerful of all are shamans, who are endowed with a high degree of controlling influence over the spirit world. They often exercise this power by undertaking “soul flights” outside their body in order to visit the world of the spirits and negotiate or fight with them on behalf of their clients.
Although the shaman’s power is derived from highly personal visions and the ecstatic experience of soul flight, it is always used in the service of the community. Shamans and other holy people assist members of the community through the important stages of their lives as they progress via birth, puberty, maturity and death into the next world. They are vital in maintaining good relations with the spiritual powers that control the weather and the animals on which the community depends for survival.
In many rituals, the shamans of today continue to repeat the feats of mythical heroes as they travel to the sky or to the bottom of the sea to find a patient’s missing soul or do battle with monsters and hostile spirits to save their community from famine, disease or disaster. The shaman’s mystical experiences are also used to devise responses to new situations. As the tragic history of the Ghost Dance and Sun Dance showed (see pages 126–30), the last one hundred and fifty years have tested this adaptability to the utmost.
A shaman’s mask in the shape of a skull. Death and rebirth are common themes in many of the sacred objects used by shamans.
This reconstruction of a Chumash rock painting from san emigdiano, in southern California, conveys the visionary experiences that shamans have while in a trance.
Shamans and Medicine
Native American tradition understood the concept of health to include not merely physical and mental well-being, but also such matters as prosperity, harmonious family relationships and lasting friendships.
For Native Americans, good health has traditionally depended on behaving correctly by respecting the spirits of nature and of one’s ancestors. Anyone acting in accordance with these rules is assured of well-being, whereas those who transgress against nature invite illness and misfortune. An Iroquois myth about the first medicine man shows the rewards of good conduct. The myth tells how the animals and birds of the forest brought back from the dead a warrior whose honorable behavior had earned their friendship. After the warrior had been killed in battle and scalped by his enemy, Fox, Bear and Oriole tried to restore him to life by retrieving his scalp. They searched high and low, but without success. Eventually Crow found the scalp laid out to dry in a distant camp. He brought it back, but it was too dry and shrunken to fit back onto the warrior’s head. All the other animals then gathered different herbs, leaves and tree bark to make the scalp stick. Eagle gave the precious dew which had accumulated over the years on her back to soften it. Together, they succeeded in bringing the warrior back to life. Fox, Bear and Oriole then revealed to him the secrets of the medicines they had used to revive him and sent him home, where he became the first medicine man.
However, maintaining good relationships with the animal world is no easy task. In a Cherokee myth, the animals were driven from the forest by the expansion of the human population, and as a result turned they against humans, who had formerly lived in harmony with them. In anger, a council was held by every kind of animal, and each devised a disease with which they could afflict human beings. Only the plants remained friendly to humans. Feeling sorry for them, they decided that each of them—be they tree, herb or moss—would provide a specific antidote to the diseases imposed by the animals.
Shown in an early 20th-century photograph, an inuit shaman dons ritual garb to cure a boy of illness. The shaman is wearing a wooden mask and outsize gloves in order to protect himself from malign forces as he tends the sick child.
The Paviotso Curing Ceremony
Atypically, the Paviotso people of the Great Basin conduct quiet, personal healing ceremonies. However noisy or restrained they may be, such rites always focus on a spirit journey by the shaman.
The Paviotso curing rite starts in the evening. The shaman is accompanied by an assistant, who repeats every sentence that he murmurs. The ceremony begins with the shaman stripping to the waist and starting softly to intone a song, which he improvises under the influence of his helping spirits. He is answered by the audience, who join the assistant in repeating each verse. The shaman lights his pipe, takes a few puffs, and hands it around. When he feels ready, he enters a trance, and his soul embarks on a journey to discover the cause of the illness and to rescue the patient’s soul.
The images that the shaman sees while entranced help him to determine the outcome of the illness. If he sees the patient in a meadow surrounded by living flowers, then the patient will recover; but if the flowers are faded, then he will surely die.
An artist’s impression of a Paviotso shaman’s vision of how a patient’s illness will end positively.
The shaman returns slowly from his long journey. If he has seen that the illness was caused by a foreign object, he sucks it out of the affected part, either directly through the skin or by using a hollow bone or willow tube. He draws blood and spits it into a hole in the floor, takes a puff of tobacco and dances around the fire. This process is repeated as often as necessary until he has extracted the object, perhaps a lizard, a worm or a pebble, which he also places in the hole. The rite ends at dawn, with shaman and audience dancing around the fire while magic patterns are painted on the patient’s body.
Illness is generally thought by Native Amer -icans to have three quite distinct causes, any combination of which may be at the root of a patient’s suffering. The first is that a hostile spirit or enemy sorcerer has projected a foreign object into the sick person’s body—such as a sharp stone, a splinter, an insect, or a tangled thread. The healing shaman will use divination or clairvoyance to locate the position of the object and will then massage or suck the affected area to remove it.
In serious cases, the patient’s symptoms may reveal to the shaman that the illness is more deep-seated than a physical malady. In such situations, the patient’s soul has left the body, either of its own accord (the second cause of illness) or because it has been stolen by an enemy or lured away by spirits (the third cause). To rescue it, the shaman may have to travel to the underworld, the sky, or the bottom of the sea (see pages 116– 17). The Paviotso believe that if the soul has not gone too far, a shaman can chase after it, but if it has crossed the boundary into the realm of the dead then it is lost forever. The neighbouring Chumash maintain that one can sometimes see a soul passing on its way to the land of the dead, trailing a blue light behind it, the fatal disease visible as a ball of fire alongside. If one recognizes the person, there may still be time to rush back to the village and give him medicine. But often it is too late and a distant bang is heard as the gate to the land of the dead shuts behind the soul.
The Shaman’s Magic Objects
Together with numerous herbs, shamans commonly employ some holy object or substance in order to transform a person’s state. Just as a shaman’s helping spirits may appear in animal form, these objects are outward signs of an inner spiritual power acquired through the experience of initiation. On the Northwest Coast shamans speak of harboring a quartz crystal in their bodies, whereas in Northern California they refer to this power more abstractly as a “pain.” Such objects and pains can leave the shaman’s body and attack others; and as a result, shamans are often feared as sorcerers.
A shaman’s equipment usually includes eagle's feathers, a small bag with crystals and other stones and a rattle or drum. The Apache shaman also uses a magic cord to protect himself against enemies, while among the Haida and Tlingit of the Northwest Coast, the shaman makes himself a full costume with a robe and hat. Shamans from this region also employ various kinds of “soul-catcher”— for example, a tube of hollow bone to scoop up souls flying through the air.
Each of these objects may have a myth explaining its origin and symbolic meaning. For example, the migis shells used in the midewiwin ceremony of the Ojibway (see pages 120–21) confer immortality on the initiate because they recall the shell-like hardness of the first humans.
Similarly, the small drum that is now used by dancers in rites invoking the power of the manitou spirits has its origins in a myth. According to this story, the manitous had chosen an old man who was about to die to become a ritual drum. However, as his large body would have made too cumbersome an instrument, the manitous made him fly into pieces when he died and they fashioned one of the pieces into a smaller, more manageable drum. In the initiation and healing rites that recall this event, the initiate or sick person is symbolically brought to the point of death and said to “fly into pieces” before being reborn into the society or restored to life.
Sacred bundles, also known as medicine bundles, are a vital part of the shaman’s equipment. They are among the most revered holy objects, since their contents, and even their external decoration, represent the essential qualities of the deities and spirits. Bundles may be the property of various kinds of group (for example, kinship groups or medicine societies), or belong to an individual, as a memento of a personal encounter with a spirit.
The unwrapping of a sacred bundle is often accompanied by the recitation of myths. The Arapaho recite the myth of the flatpipe bundle over four nights. During the Sun Dance the Kiowa Apache tell the myth of the Ten Grandmothers as they unwrap ten sacred bundles.
Holy objects are not confined to shamans. Plains warriors carried beautifully crafted shields decorated with designs that signified their inner power.
A Tsimshian shaman’s rattle from the Nass river on the Northwest Coast. rattles are used to accompany ritual chanting in healing ceremonies.
These Chumash rock paintings, in the san emigdiano range of southern California, are thought to have been executed by shamans in a state of ecstatic trance.
Healings are generally communal events. Among the Western Apache, elders would recount myths about the origin of the rite to the assembled community. Then the shaman would sit near the patient and chant throughout the night, invoking the help of Black-Tailed Deer and other spirits. At daybreak, the shaman would dust the patient’s head with the pollen from a cat’s-tail plant.
An entire community may suf fer if an individual breaks certain taboos. A hunter who fails to pay proper respect to the soul of an animal he has killed or a person who excretes near a holy site may cause an offended spirit to withhold the animals that are the community’s main source of food or to inflict a plague upon the village.
Shamanic Initiation
There are a number of different types of shamans, who are known in the many Native American languages by a variety of terms. There are also many other kinds of medicine men, medicine women, diviners, herbalists and healers. A shaman, who can be either male or female, is a person who is particularly adept at making contact between the world of ordinary people and the spirit world. Only those shamans who have the capacity to enter into a trance while in a state of ecstasy have the power to cure illnesses that have been caused by soul loss. Such shamans, who are prevalent in the hunting societies of the Arctic and sub-Arctic, undertake “soul flights” in which they journey to other realms, either in pursuit of a patient’s missing soul or to get advice from the spirits on the whereabouts of game animals.
In order to become a shaman, one must acquire a spiritual power from outside oneself. A person may inherit this, seek it in a quest, or have it imposed upon them by the spirits themselves.
In some regions, especially on the Northwest Coast, shamanic powers are inherited. But inheritance is rarely enough on its own. Among the Haida, a shaman’s initial inheritance was followed by a personal quest. In the Southeast, Cherokee shamans could pass on magical spells to their successors, but the actual power to make them work had to be sought by the successors themselves.
A photograph from 1908 showing members of a healing society of the Arikara people of the Plains region carrying rattles used in their sacred rituals. The name of their society – the mother Night men – derives from their custom of performing nocturnal ceremonies.
In all regions, one of the main means of initiation as a shaman is through dreams. Among the Yurok and Wintu of California and the Paviotso of the Great Basin, a dead shaman may appear in a dream to a descendant, who will then assume the deceased’s power. Such visions may come to a person while he or she is still a child. One Paviotso boy who wanted to become a shaman in order to cure the sick members of his community withdrew to a cave and prayed for the power to heal. Finally overcome by sleep, he had a vision of a healing session, in which a shaman was vainly attempting to revive a patient. The man died, and the sleeper heard the lamentations of his family. Then the rock wall of the cave started to crack open, revealing the figure of a man holding the tail feather of an eagle (a common item in a shaman’s sacred bundle). This spirit apparition then taught the boy the art of healing.
Equally, however, shamanic power can come unsought, or even against a person’s will. Among the Washo of the Great Basin, people chosen by the spirits to become shamans would be visited by a series of dreams, in which an animal or other spirit appeared and offered teaching. Those who shunned this offer would be plagued with illness until they accepted their destiny, learning in further dreams about secret sites, songs and procedures. Especially among more northerly peoples, involuntary initiation could occur in violent and extraordinary ways.
Power through Bliss or Terror
Two accounts of involuntary initiation express the conflicting emotions that can affect a person who is chosen by the spirits to become a shaman.
Isaac Tens, a Gitksan shaman, recalled his initiation: “One day when I was cutting wood in the forest, a large owl appeared to me. The owl caught hold of my face and tried to lift me up. I lost consciousness. When I came to, I found myself lying in the snow, covered with ice and blood. All the way home, th
e trees seemed to shake and lean over me; tall trees were crawling after me as if they had been snakes. When I got home I felt very cold and fell into a trance. I felt that flies were completely covering my face and then that I was caught up in a huge whirlpool. Two shamans were brought to treat me. They said that it was time for me to train as a shaman too. But at that time I took no notice.”
“Another time I went hunting and shot an owl. But when I went to pick it up, there was nothing there, not even a feather. Then at my fishing camp I heard a hubbub of voices, even though it was deserted. I ran away, and the voices pursued me. When I looked around, there was still no one there and I again fell into a trance. My father and some shamans tried to help me, but my flesh seemed to be boiling. My body was quivering, and I started to sing. These chants didn’t come from me, but from the spirit. Then I saw many birds and animals, which no-one else there could see. Gradually I memorized the songs by repeating them.”
A heart-shaped Tsimshian charm from the Northwest Coast contains the effigy of an owl. in Native American myth, the figure of the owl is frequently associated with the afterlife.
Native American Myths and Beliefs Page 14