Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age

by Robert N. Bellah

  Although most of these features of the hunter tradition can still be found among the Apache groups, and are more widely shared with many North American hunter-gatherer cultures, the religion of the Pueblos is quite different. Hunter-gatherer groups, and the pastoral Navajo, were organized in extended families usually living in close proximity, and in larger groupingslocal groups or bands-of up to several hundred people, coming together temporarily for particular reasons, which might range from ritual to warfare. The Pueblos, however, lived in settled villages, ranging in size from several hundred to several thousand, and were largely dependent on the produce of their surrounding fields. Their villages were often quite compact, sometimes built on the top of a mesa for defensive purposes. In these villages, rituals were organized not by individuals who had received their teaching from personal experience with powerful beings, but by priestly societies that handed down their teaching to each succeeding generation. Although curing rituals existed, they were carried out by societies of curing priests, not by individual shamans. The major rituals, each of which belonged to a particular priestly society, were calendrical, organized in relation to the solstices and the equinoxes, and linked to the annual growth seasons of the corn. Origin myths of the Pueblos were much more elaborate than among the hunter-gatherers and focused on the emergence of humans on the present earth after various vicissitudes in several underworlds. Pueblo religion was highly spatial in its orientation, with the home village seen as a kind of world center, and with sacred mountains marking the perimeter of sacred space in the four directions. Though some anthropologists speak of Pueblo “gods,” I believe that such figures are closer to powerful beings than to the gods of archaic societies, in that they are more invoked than worshipped, more identified with than sacrificed to. The Pueblos did, however, have a more coherent and anthropomorphic pantheon than hunter-gatherers with their rather amorphous group of sometimes human, sometimes animal, sacred beings.

  Where do the “Puebloized” Navajo fit in? Although in all the Apache groups there are individuals who receive ritual instruction from powerful beings, either through vision or dream, they are almost absent among the Navajo, being found only among diviners. The most important ritualists, called “singers” as they officiate at ceremonials that are called “sings,” learn the rituals as apprentices to established singers and function more like priests than shamans, though there is no society of singers and each operates on his or (less frequently) her own. There is no ritual calendar, but rituals are performed when particular individuals or groups have need of them. Usually these are curing rituals, though the definition of illness is much broader than our own, except for the most central ritual of all, Blessingway, which is performed on a variety of occasions to be described below.

  The Navajo myth of origin, recorded in many not entirely identical versions, is clearly derived from Pueblo sources, as it is a myth of emergence involving several, usually four, underworlds through which people traversed before emerging on “earth surface,” as the Navajo refer to our world. Even so, hunter figures such as coyote pop up in places where they would not be expected in Pueblo myths. Though shamanism is absent among the Navajo, the myths for the major curing ceremonials have a strongly shamanistic character. They recount the adventures of a human boy or (less frequently) girl, who, through a variety of misadventures, incurs harm at the hands of powerful beings but who, through spiritual helpers, is able to undergo curing rituals from the very beings who had harmed them. These rituals they then bring back to their earth families and teach them, often to a sibling or close relative, before departing again to join the sacred beings. Though Navajo ceremonials are handed down from singer to singer, they were originally learned by humans who had direct experience with sacred beings in a highly shamanistic manner. Thus shamanism, though almost absent among the Navajo in practice, continues to exist, encapsulated, as it were, in the mythological scenarios of curing rituals.

  Although the Navajo have no calendrical ceremonies (most rituals can be performed only in the summer or the winter, but at no particular time other than not during a solar or lunar eclipse), they have a strongly Pueblo-like orientation to space. The four directions with the four sacred mountains are central in Navajo ritual and are associated with colors, times of day, seasons, and particular sacred beings. Because the Navajo are widely dispersed, there is no center quite in the Pueblo sense, but the land within the sacred mountains (Navajoland, or Dinetah) is “central” in the Navajo understanding of space.iss Also the dwelling or hogan where the ceremony is performed is a kind of microcosm of the universe (like the Pueblo kiva, though the kiva is not a dwelling), and in that sense a center.156

  The most general term for sacred beings among the Navajo is diyin dine’e, usually translated as “Holy People,” but students of Navajo religion are quick to remind us that in this case “holy” does not mean ethically good or even necessarily benevolent, but rather powerful. Because of their power they are dangerous, and if improperly approached can be harmful, even though with the proper ritual they may be helpful. The Holy People are quite a heterogeneous group, some coming from the old hunter tradition (exactly which ones is in dispute) and some obviously borrowed from the Pueblos. Of the latter the clearest instance is the ye’i, or masked gods, who are the Navajo version of the well-known Pueblo kachinas. These masked gods appear in certain sequences of a frequently performed ceremonial, Nightway, but are absent from the most important ritual, Blessingway.

  Let us now consider Blessingway and why it is central and rather different from all other ceremonials. Although Blessingway is rooted in the Navajo origin myth-the narrative that gives the world its meaning-its most important feature, as in the case of all Navajo ritual, is song. Without song (remember that Navajo rituals are called “sings”) no ritual can be effective. Thus we can understand why Blessingway is called “the spinal column of songs.“157 Gladys Reichard emphasizes the importance of song by a passage from Blessingway: “Changing Woman taught songs to her two divine children, admonishing them, `Do not forget the songs I have taught you. The day you forget them will be the last; there will be no other Gary Witherspoon has pointed out that all Navajos sing and many of them have composed songs-not ritual songs, which must be meticulously learned-but songs for various occasions.159 Thus, as in the case of the Kalapalo and the Aborigines, we are in the midst of a singing culture. Indeed, wealth may be indicated by the number of songs one has, and poverty expressed by saying: “I have always been a poor man. I do not own a single

  Song, however indispensable, is embedded in narrative, and here too Blessingway is central. John Farella expresses its centrality with the metaphor of the “main stalk”:

  Navajos commonly conceptualize and refer to their philosophical and ceremonial system as a corn plant. The junctures where the plant branches are the branching off of the major ceremonials. The “roots” extend into the underworld and, of course, refer to the pre-emergence stories. The main stalk is, on the one hand, a reference to hozhooji [Blessingway], and, on the other hand (but really the same thing), a reference to the essence or the synthetic core of the philosophy.161

  The narrative basis of Blessingway is the story of events just after the emergence onto the present earth-surface world, and before the adventures of the protagonists of the great curing ceremonials. It is the ambiguous relation of this narrative to anything we might call history, and its constitutive nature, that tempts Farella and others to speak of “philosophy,” a term I would like to reserve for a theoretic culture almost completely absent among the Navajo.162 The Navajo narrative of origin is not lineal history in the usual Western sense of the term. Rather, as Maureen Schwarz puts it, quoting from a paper by Rik Pinxton and Claire Farrerr: “The ancestral knowledge contained in the Navajo origin stories is `just one more element of present reality, not an objectified, distanced, inert position of wisdom or truth.’ For Navajo individuals, history is `not an attribute or vehicle of an objectified representation of knowledge a
bout reality’ but `the process of what is constantly in the In this sense, the Navajo origin myth recounts Abiding Events, to borrow Swain’s term for the Aboriginal Dreaming, so that the ideas of “before” and “after” have only a relative, not an absolute, meaning. In the ritual, everything in the narrative is potentially present.

  Nonetheless, although there are references to pre-emergence events in many rituals, it is what happened after the emergence that organized the world as we know it.164 When First Man and First Woman and other Holy People first emerged from the Fourth World, the earth surface was covered with water and was formless. Winds (themselves Holy People) dried the land, and the first thing that was done was to create a sweat house. Inside the sweat house First Man unwrapped the medicine bundle he had brought from the underworld. It contained precious stones in the form of grains of corn, soil from the sacred mountains in the underworld, and other objects. From the bundle First Man formed many of the features of the world as we know it, creating the first hogan as a kind of microcosm of the universe, its four main poles marking out the cardinal directions and the sacred mountains.

  First man then covered certain sacred objects from his bundle with sheets of “dawn, evening twilight, sunlight,” and “a spread of darkness,” the four times of day.

  When he had covered them four times as described, a young man and woman first arose from there. Absolutely without their equals in beauty, both had long hair reaching to their thighs … To fix your gaze on them was impossible, the glare from them was surprisingly bright. “This is the only time that any of you have seen them, from now on none of you will see them again. Although they are right around you, even though they are taking care of your means of living to the end of your days right around you, none of you will ever see them again,” he told them.165

  According to one version, it was these two young people who gave birth to a baby, placed on the top of one of the sacred mountains where First Man discovered it. He took it home to First Woman and, with advice from other Holy People, they nurtured the baby with pollen from clouds and plants and with flower dew. “Owing to this special care, the baby matured at an accelerated rate: in two days she walked, in four days she talked, and in twelve days she began to menstruate.“166

  The baby was Changing Woman, and her first menstruation was a cause of great rejoicing, and the occasion for the first Blessingway ceremonial. Girls’ puberty rituals were common among North American hunter-gatherers and were undoubtedly brought with them when the Southern Athabascans entered the Southwest. But these older rites focused on the pollution caused by menstrual blood and the subsequent harm to hunting that contact with it might cause, so they involved the isolation of the girl during her menses. The Navajo rite, a form of Blessingway, was more of a celebration of the vitality and fecundity that Changing Woman was bringing to the people.

  Changing woman was impregnated by the Sun as she lay resting on a rock. She subsequently gave birth to the Warrior Brothers, Monster Slayer and Child-of-Water. Although the appearance of Changing Woman was auspicious, the world was still a dangerous place as various monsters, produced by unseemly acts in the Fourth World, had also come to Earth Surface and were destroying its new inhabitants. The Warrior Brothers, who with great difficulty learned who their father was and how to find him, were after many trials endowed by Sun with the power to slay the monsters. This Monster Slayer, with backup from his younger brother, proceeded to do. All the monsters were slain except for Hunger, Poverty, Old Age, and Lice. Each of these, though unpleasant, has a function in human life: without hunger there would be no pleasure in eating; without poverty there would be no pleasure in getting new things; without Old Age (and death) the earth would become too crowded and birth itself would cease; without lice there would be no incentive to show friendship and love for other humans by picking lice from their heads.167

  Changing Woman asks for and receives First Man’s medicine bundle, but he has another one that he takes with him as he and First Woman return to the lower world. These figures, who had been so important in the story from the beginning, now take on a sinister aspect, for the bundle they take back with them is the witchcraft bundle.168 From now on the nurturant figure of Changing Woman is at the center of Navajo ritual, but even she can be dangerous if her rules are not respected, and the Navajo world is always a mixture of benevolent and dangerous forces.

  After the slaying of the monsters, Changing Woman wished for companionship:

  The White Bead Woman [who is most often considered to be one and the same as Changing Woman] wished now to have her own people. She wished to have a people that she could call her grandchildren. They would carry on the lore that she would teach them. They would respect and hold holy the prayers and chants that she would give them.169

  Changing Woman rubbed skin from various parts of her body, and breathed life into what she had rubbed off. These were the Navajo, to whom she taught all the lore they needed. Then at the Sun’s behest, she left the Earth Surface People and went to the West. Neither Changing Woman nor the other Holy People really leave, however, because in the rituals they are present and those undergoing the rituals can become one with them.

  Important though Changing Woman is, the very heart of Blessingway, and according to interpreters such as Witherspoon and Farella, of Navajo life, is personified in the “beautiful ones” who were the parents of Changing Woman. Witherspoon, drawing from Wyman, recounts what First Man said to them at the beginning:

  “Of all these various kinds of holy ones that have been made you the first one will be (represent) their thought, you will be called Long Life [Sa’ah Naaghaii],” he was told. “And you who are the second one, of all the Holy People that are put to use first, you will be (represent) their speech, you will be called Happiness [Bik’eh Hozho],” he was told. That much so happened. “You will be (found) among everything (especially ceremonial affairs) without exception, exactly all will be long life by means of you two, and exactly all will be happiness by means of you two,” was said to them.170

  The centrality of sa’ah naaghaii bik eh hozho is inadequately rendered either by the personification of them or by the translation “long life, happiness.” The phrase is at the heart of Blessingway and is used in the Blessingway section with which almost every ceremonial ends. The term hozho, which is variously translated as “blessing,” “beauty,” “health,” “wholeness,” and so forth, and combines the ethical with the aesthetic, has been seen by many as the key term in Navajo culture. Farella reminds us that hozho always implies its complement, hochxo, variously translated as “evil” or “ugliness,” but which is as necessary a part of Navajo life as hozho. The Navajo do not absolutize a contrast between good and evil but seek order in the midst of inevitable disorder. The ceremonial system, with Blessingway and sa’ah naaghaii bik’eh hozho at its center, brings meaning and order in this dangerous world.171

  Farella suggests how the attitude toward the Holy People can change through an individual’s life:

  A youth, particularly an adolescent boy, will violate taboos with impunity to show that he is not afraid and that he has courage. Then a misfortune occurs and he begins to believe. It is at this point when one begins to believe but has no knowledge, that the world is most fearful. One then begins to learn the stories and the ceremonies in an effort to transcend this fear. During the initial phases of this learning, the teacher protects his pupil, until he has acquired the control himself. Subsequently, a point is reached where fear is no longer the predominant emotional coloring of one’s relation with diyinii [Holy People]. That fear is replaced with respect. This respect describes a relationship between equals or near equals, whereas fear characterizes a relationship of subordination.

  Those individuals in later life who are most knowledgeable, as Farella notes, often are not ritual practitioners:

  They seem to be rather satisfied with things, not totally satisfied by any means, but accepting of the way things are. They do employ ritual, not to alter,
but in the form of minor celebrations for what exists. At the same time the relationship of these men with diyinii is rather more intimate than is the relation of the ritual practitioner. They have a direct experience of the “powerful ones” as a part of them, and themselves as a part of the “powerful

  With these more knowledgeable men, this boundary between self and diyinii, never very strong for the Navajos, has become nearly nonexistent. The men I knew who attained this state were very old, and I suppose that death brought the final dissolution of this boundary. But, their state of mind on approaching death was one of peace, not of anxiety. 172

  As this account of an ideal Navajo life implies, the meaning of sa’ah naaghaii bik eh hozho is completeness, but not, as Farella points out, the completeness of the isolated individual. sa’ah naaghaii bik eh hozho can be equated with nilch’i, the wind, air, or breath that animates all things. It is by means of Wind that we are connected to all beings. Another way of putting it is to say that sa’ah naaghaii bik’eh hozho links us to all beings, not only humans, as kin,

  Perhaps this is the moment to counter the stereotype that the Navajos are “individualistic” whereas the Pueblos are “collectivistic.” It is true that in a sheep-herding culture people are on their own more often than in a densely populated agricultural village, and that Navajo have a strong sense of respect for everyone, even children, to make important decisions for themselves. But the ideal Navajo is not like an Anglo individualist, seeking his own interest or “realizing himself” first of all. Rather the ideal is one who reciprocates blessings and takes responsibility for others. Even though Navajo rituals are all organized around “the one sung over,” and thus have an apparently individualistic focus, even the curing ceremonies have a much wider concern: