American Indian Religions::

Four Key Generalisations

It is incredibly difficult, even unwise, to generalise regarding Native American religions, but for the sake of clarity and because of space constraints I shall begin this article by trimming down that bewildering variety to manageable proportions with the following four points:

• At the time of European contact, virtually all indigenous cultures in North America had developed coherent religious systems that included cosmologies and creation myths, transmitted orally from one generation to the next, which sought to explain how the universe and the societies of humans, animals, plants and spiritual entities had come into being.
• At the time of European contact, most Indian peoples - predominantly in the Eastern Subarctic, the Eastern Woodlands, the Plains and the Southwest - worshipped an all-powerful, all-knowing Creator - a being that assumed a variety of forms and both genders. They also venerated or placated a host of 'lesser' supernatural entities, both 'good' and 'bad' in our western parlance.
• At the time of European contact, most Indian peoples believed in the immortality of 'souls' and an afterlife. The main feature of the afterlife was the abundance of all the good things that made earthly life pleasant and secure.
• At the time of European contact, most Indian philosophical and religious systems did not strictly distinguish between the natural and the supernatural, the physical and the spiritual. On the contrary, they perceived the 'material' and 'spiritual' as a unified realm of being - a kind of extended kinship network in which all things partook of the same spiritual source or essence.