SHRINE

Buddhism	Christianity	Islam	Judaism	Hinduism	Confucianism
Mother Worship	Native American	Sikhism	Taoism	Sufiism	Parsees

NATIVE AMERICAN

Revised from
THE RELIGION OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS
Alice C. Fletchers
Parliament of Religions, 1893

Anything approaching a consensus of Indian beliefs can be obtained only from careful study of the myths of the people, their ceremonies, various customs, and by searching through all these for the underlying principle, the governing thoughts and motives.

GOD, THE MYSTERIOUS POWER

Like all spiritual traditions, the Native American's feelings concerning God indicates a power, mysterious, unknowagble, unnable, that animates all nature.
From this power proceeds in the past ages certain generic types, prototypes of everything, in the world, and these still exist, but they're invisible to man in his natural state, being spirit types, although he can behold and hear them speak in his supernatural visions. Through these generic types, as through many conduits, flows the life coming from the great mysterious source of all life into the concrete forms which make up this world, as the sun, moon, and the wind, the water, earth, and the thunder, the birds, animals, and the fruits of the earth.

Among these prototypes there seems to have been none of man himself, but he has been generated by them, and his physical as well as his spiritual nature is nourished and augmented through them.

THE POWER OF CEREMONY

His physical dependence on these sources of power is illustrated in his ceremonies. Thus, when the tribe was about to set out on the hunt as in the buffalo country, the leaders, who represented the people, gathered together in a solemn ceremony. They sat about a central fire, each wrapped in the skin of a buffalo, their attitude and their manner of partaking the food for the occassion were in imitation of this animal. They became as buffalo, putting themselves in the line of transmission, so to speak, appealing to the generic or typical buffalo, that the life flowing from this particular projection of the creative power into the specific buffalo might be transmitted to them, that when they killed and ate of the creature they might be imbued with its strength.

Religious ceremonials had both open and esoteric forms and teachings.
They were comprised in the observances of societies, and the elaborate dramatization of myths, with masks, costumes, rituals of song, rhythmic movements of the body, and the preparation and use of symbols.

As the ceremonials of the Indians from Alaska to Mexico rise before me, they're impresive and all contain evidences of the mind struggling to find an answer to the ever -pressing question of man's origin and destiny.

THE MOVEMENT OF LIFE

Everything is alive to him and all life is the same life, continually passing over from one form to another.
He takes the life of the corn he eats and its life passes into and re-enforces his own equally with the life of the animal which goes out under his hand. So he hunted, fished, and planted, having first appealed to the prototype for physical strength through a ceremony which always included the partaking of food.

But the Indians recognized other needs than those of the body. His spirit demanded strengthening. And to satisfy its needs, he reversed his manner of appeal.

THE VISION QUEST

Instead of gathering together with his fellows, he went apart (vision quest) and remained in solitude on the mountain or in the recesses of the forest. Instead of eating in companionship, he fasted and mortified his body, sought to ignore it, denied its cravings, that some spirit prototype might approach him and re-enforce his spirit with life drawn from the great unnamable power. Whatever the prototype was that appeared to him, whether bird, beast, or one of the elements, it breathed upon him and left a song with him which should become the viewless messenger speeding from the heart and lips of the man, to the prototype of his vision, to bring him help in the hour of his need.

When the man had received his vision, before it could avail him, he had to procure something from the creature whose type he had seen, a tuft of hair, a feather, or he had to fashion its semblance or emblem.
This he carred ever after near him, as a token of remembrance. But he didn't worship it. His aspiration carried him farther, his mode of individual approach to the unnamable source of life.

IMMORTALITY IS RECOGNIZED

Personal immortality was universally recognized.
The next world resembled this with the element of suffering eleminated. There was no place of future punishment, all alike started at death upon the journey to the other world, but the quarrelsome and unjust never reached it; they wandered endlessly .

MORALITY

Hospitality was a marked virtue in the race.
The lodge was never closed, or the last morsel of food ever refused to the needy. The richest man was not he who possessed the most, but he who had given away the most. In every home the importance of peace was taught and the quarrelsome person pointed out as one not to be trusted, since success would never attend his undertakings, whom neither the visible nor invisible power would befriend.

THE SACRED PIPE CEREMONY

This virtue of peace was inculcated in more than one religious ritual, and was the special theme and sole object of a peculiar ceremony which once widely existed over the vally of the Mississippi - the calumet or the sacred pipe ceremony.
The symbols used point back to myths which form the groundwork of other ceremonies hoary with age. In the presence of these symbolic pipes there could be no strife. Marquette, in 1672 wrote: "The calumet is the most mysterious thing in the world. The scepters of our kings are not so much respected, for the Indians have such a reverence for it, that we may call it the god of peace and war, and the arbiter of life and death * * * One with this calumet may venture among his enemies and in the hottest battles they lay down their arms before this sacred pipe."

The ceremony of these pipes could only take place between men of different gentes or of different tribes.
Through it they were made as one family, the affection, the harmony, and good will of the family being extended far beyond the ties of blood. Under this benign influence of the pipes, strangers were made brothers and enemies became friends. In the beautiful symbolism and ritual of these fellowship pipes, the initiated were told in the presence of a little child who typified teachableness, that happiness came to him who lived in peace and walked in the straight path which was symbolized on the pipes as glowing with sunlight. In these teachings, which transcended all others, we descern the nobler and gentler virtues of mercy and its kindred graces.

We are recognizing today that God's family is a large one and that human sympathy is strong.
Upon this platform have been gathered men from every race of the Eastern world, but the race that for centuries was the sole possessor of this Western continent has not been represented. He's not here, (at the Parliament of Religions) but can't his sacred symbol serve its ancient office once more and bring him and us together in the bonds of peace and brotherhood?

"The Sacred Pipe"
Black Elk's Accountof the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux
Recorded and Edited by Joseph Epes Brown

PREFACE

Black Elk first became known to a wide range of readers in 1932, through John G. Neihardt's
Black Elk Speaks:
The Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. Neihardt's poetic and sympathetic treatment of this unusual man's life and mission raises the question as to who in fact Black Elk really was. For if the account is faithful to at least the essential qualities of the man, then it's clear that - even among a people noted for their large share of great personalities - here was an unusual man of vision; a holy man in the full sense of the term; and a man upon whom destiny, in a time of cultural crisis, had placed a heavy burden of responsibility for the spiritual welfare of his people. Here too could also be an important message for the larger world.

I went to find Black Elk in the fall of 1947.
After following his traces across many of the Western states, we finally met in an old canvas-wall tent on a Nebraska farm where his family and members of their band were employed in harvesting potatoes. During that first encounter we simply sat side by side on a sheepskin and silently smoked the red stone pipe I'd brought with me as an offering in the traditional manner. Partly crippled, almost completely blind, he seemed a pitiful old man as he sat there hunched over, dressed in poor cast-off clothing. But through the beauty of his face and the reverent quality of his movements as he smoked the pipe, it was clear that Neihardt had given to us the essence of the man - an initial impression confirmed by the subsequent years I spent with Black Elk. Knowing that Black Elk had usually refused to talk with many outsiders, it was with relief and wonder that I heard his first words: he had anticipated my coming and he wished me to spend that winter with him, for he had much to tell of the sacred things before they all passed away.

I spent that very cold winter with Black Elk and his generous family, in their little hewn-log house under the pine-covered bluffs near Manderson, SD.
Everything the old man told me I recorded during the time that was available when we were not hunting for game, hauling water from the nearest hand-pump eight miles away, or cutting hardwood in the valley bottom for the iron stove. I profited from this rigorous life, which his family and my many new relatives shared with me. Black Elk had a special quality of power and kindliness and a sense of mission that was unique and which I'm sure was recognized by all who had the opportunity to know him.

According to his own account, he was born in 1860. He had therefore known the old days when his people still had the freedom of the plains and hunted the bison. He had fought against the white men at the Little Bighorn and at Wounded Knee Creek.
He was a cousin to the famous chief and holy man Crazy Horse and had known Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, and American Horse. Although Black Elk spoke no English, he had observed much of the white man's world, having traveled with Buffalo Bill to Italy, France, and also England, where he danced for Queen Victoria -"Grandmother England." But whether hunting, traveling, or fighting, Black Elk was not as other men were. During his youth he had been instructed in the sacred lore of his people by such great men as Whirlwind Chaser, Black Road, and the sage Elk Head, Keeper of the Sacred Pipe, from whom he had learned the history and deep meanings of his people's spiritual heritage. Through prayer, fasting, and a deepening understanding of this heritage, Black Elk himself eventually acquired special powers to be used for the good of his nation.

This responsibility to "bring to life the flowering tree of his people" haunted Black Elk all his life and caused him much suffering.
Although he had been given the power to lead his people in the ways of his grandfathers, he did not understand how the vision could be brought to life. It was certainly because of his pervasive sense of mission that Black Elk wished to set forth this book explaining the major rites of the Oglala Sioux, for he hoped that in this manner his own people would gain a better understanding of the truths of their own Indian tradition. So too, perhaps, would the whites.

It has now been over twenty years since Black Elk last spoke.
Many changes have taken place in these years and they require that Black Elk's message, like the similar messages of other tradition-oriented people, be placed in new perspective and in a new light. At the time Black Elk was lamenting the broken hoop of his nation, it was generally believed, even by the specialists, to be only a matter of time (very little time in fact) before the Indians with their seemingly archaic and anachronistic cultures would be completely assimilated into a larger American society convinced of its own superiority and the validity of its goals.

We are still very far from being aware of the dimensions and ramifications of our ethnocentric illusions.
Nevertheless, by the very nature of things, we are now forced to undergo a process of intense self-examination and to engage in a serious revelation of the promises and orientations of our society. For example, the inescapable reality of the ecological crisis has for many people shattered a kind of a dream world. It has forced us not only to seek immediate solutions to the kinds of problems fostered by a highly developed technology, but also and above all to look to our basic values concerning life and the nature and destiny of man. An increasing number of people today, especially those of the younger generation, may not yet be sure about the most effective means of furthering this process of reevaluation, but they are looking to the kinds of models represented by the American Indians.

In their relationships to this troubled America, the Indians encompass a wide variety of possible positions.
On one hand are the few traditional and conservative groups that, against enormous pressures, have miraculously remained very close to the essence of their ancient and still viable life-ways. On the other hand are the groups that have become completely assimilated into the larger American society. Nevertheless, almost all Indian groups that retain any degree of self-identity are now reexamining, through a wide range of means and expressions, their relationships to that larger society, which now tends to represent diminishing attractions.

If there is a validity to the above statements, it seems clear that it is too early to say that Black Elk's mission to bring his people back to "the good red road" has failed as he thought it had. Rather, his mission may be succeeding in ways he could not have anticipated.

Black elk was a member of the Oglala division of the Teton Sioux.
These Western Teton were one of the seven bands or "Council fires" of the Dakota ("Allied") nation. This is one of the nations belonging to the large Siouan linguistic family, which also includes the Assiniboin, Crow, Hidatsa, Iowa, Kansa, Mandan, Missouri, Omaha, Osage, Oto, Poca and Quapaw.

According to their own historical account, the Dakota were established on the headwaters of the Mississippi River as late as the sixteenth century.
In the seventeenth century they were driven westward from Minnesota by their enemies the Chippewa. In leaving the forests and lakes, the Dakotas substituted the horse for the bark canoe with remarkable ease. In the nineteenth century they became known and feared as one of the most powerful nations of the plains. Indeed, it was these Dakota Sioux who offered perhaps the strongest resistance of all the Indians groups to the westward movement of the whites.

This account of the sacred pipe and the rites of the Oglala Sioux was handed down orally to three men by the former Keeper of the Sacred Pipe, Elk Head (Hehaka Pa).
Of these three, Black Elk was the only one still living at the time this history was written. (Black Elk himself died in August 1950.) When Elk Head gave this account to Black Elk, he told him that it must be handed down - that their people will live for as long as the rites are known and the pipe is used. But as soon as the sacred pipe is forgotten, the people will be without a center and they will perish.

I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to Benjamin Black Elk, who acted as interpreter for this work and who is the son of Black Elk.
It is unusual to have an interpreter who understands both English and Lakota perfectly, and who, is also familiar with the wisdom and rites of his people. It is largely because of the absence of this dual understanding in interpreters that many writings on the Indians have created unfortunate misunderstandings. I wish also to mention Benjamin's wife, Ellen Black Elk, a remarkable person of strong faith and character, who with quiet dignity always saw to it that everyone in her warm home was fed and cared for. Here death in September 1970 was a loss for all who knew her.

I also acknowledge my gratitude to the Smithsonian Institute for the Barry photograph of Sitting Bull and to the Illuminated Phote-Ad Service of Sioux Falls, S.D. for having given me permission to use their photograph of seven Sioux who participated in the battle of the Little Bighorn and who were all close friends of Black Elk.- Joshep Epes Brown - Indiana University, Bloomington, February 1971.

FORWARD BY BLACK ELK

In the great vision which came to me in my youth,
when I had known only nine winters, there was something which had seemed to me to be of greater and greater importance as the moons have passed by. It is about our sacred pipe and its importance to our people.

We have been told by the white men, or at least by those who are Christians, that God sent to men His son, who would restore order and peace upon the earth; and we have been told that Jesus the Christ was crucified, but that he shall come again at the Last Judgment, the end of this world or cycle.
This I understand and know that it is true, but the white men should know that for the red people too, it was the will of Waken-Tanka, the Great Spirit, that an animal turn itself into a two-legged person in order to bring the most holy pipe to His people; and we too were taught that this White Buffalo Cow Woman who brought our sacred pipe will appear again at the end of this "world," coming which we Indians know is now not very far off.

Most people call it a "peace pipe," yet now there is no peace on earth or even between neighbors, and I have been told that it has been a long time since there has been peace in the world.
There is much talk of peace among the Christians, yet this is just talk. Perhaps it may be, and this is my prayer that, through our sacred pipe, and through this book in which I shall explain what our pipe really is, peace may come to those peoples who can understand, an understanding which must be of the heart and not of the head alone. Then they will realize that we Indians know the One true God, and that we pray to Him continually.

I have wished to make this book through no other desire than to help my people in understanding the greatness and truth of our own tradition, and also to help in bringing peace upon the earth, not only among men, but within men and between the whole of creation.

We should understand well that all things are the works of the Great Spirit.
We should know that He is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and all the four legged animals, and the winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that He is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as He intends. -

BLACK ELK - Manderson, S.D.

Taken from the introduction of
Hiawatha And the Great Peace

by
Torkom Saraydarian

Hiawatha is both a legendary and historical figure. He is a legendary hero, a great statesman, a man who served, suffered, and brought into existence "The Great Peace"- of the Confederacy of the five Indian nations.
He gave to five nations a unique "constitution" which was the proof of His very advanced consciousness and statesmanship. Not only the United states but many European nations were inspired by the real democracy this legendary hero gave to five nations.

Great men are not physical existence's only.
They have a great reservoir of spiritual values and experiences, which make them magnetic, creative, inspiring and highly influential. It is this spiritual reservoir of values and spiritual attainments that stands behind every Great One as His creed and His source of power and inspiration.

I attempted to present Hiawatha as a man, as flesh and bones, tears and labor; but I also emphasized His legendary nature, which like a rainbow surrounds Him and makes Him human - and more.

In this book I build the platform by the stones taken from the mines of history, but I tried to build Hiawatha by His aspiration, His dreams, and vision for the future.
I felt that because He belongs to Indians, He truly belongs to all humanity, and His vision is a vision for all humanity.

Beyond all this, there is a deep love in me for Indians. I say this with tears in my eyes. I want to see them even greater than what they are now. I want to see their spiritual culture, arts, and understanding of statesmanship shining out all over the earth. I want to see them worldwide in leadership positions and their reservations as areas of great culture and creativity.

I wrote this book with deep admiration of the Hero Who was human and Divine and with a deep desire to see similar heroes appearing in the arena of our troubled earth.
T. Saraydarian, August 2, 1984, - Sedona, Arizona.

THE SPEECH OF CHIEF SEATTLE

The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land.
But how can you buy or sell the sky? The Land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.
Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us.
The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors.
If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each ghostly refection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.

The rivers are our brothers.
They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give to the rivers the kindness you would give any brother. If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

One thing we know: our God is also your God.
The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

Your destiny is a mystery to us.
What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is it to say good-bye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

When the Red Man has vanished with the wilderness and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here?

Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat.
So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in you mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all.

As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land.
This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you. One thing we know: there is only one God. No man, be he Red Man or White Man, can be apart. We are brothers after all.