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This is an excerpt from "What Did
the Native Americans Believe? A Model that Integrates Lifeways,
Migrations and Values of the People Before Columbus".
Read the complete column in the
Central States Archaeological Societies 2020
July Journal which can be purchased on-line after March
2020
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We understand how Native Americans lived. But what did they believe?
Is it possible to detect ethereal elements such
as values and beliefs of the earliest Americans that dictated these
behaviors? What metaphysical conclusions can be drawn from
ethnographic study and do they match up with physical markers?
Understanding the routes, timing of entry, apparatuses, the
ecological diversity of the Clovis point, diets etc. of North American
Indians are fascinating. But beliefs drove behavior, the seed
of every action a thought that integrated into a philosophy of
life and where the people went.
The goal of archaeology is to uncover who people were. Thus,
the archaeologist is an anthropologist, albeit a spartan
one.1 As Rogers State University archaeologist Brian Andrews
says, “The
stuff that we find, it's just stuff. Stuff's cool, but we're
not interested in stuff for the sake of itself. We're interested
in the human behaviors that went into making it.” Immaterial
in nature,
native views about reality are difficult to uncover with the trowel
but less so in disciplines that house information such as ethnology
and philology. These fields supply the needed material metaphysical
interface for archaeology, the bridge of information found in
language. Harboring more than the lithic signature about a culture,
this information is vital in identifying core religious beliefs
of
ancient cultures. As Corduan explains, “In a traditional
society, information is never neutral; it is always charged with
religious
content.”2 |
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The Evolutionary Model of Religion
The evolutionary model of culture and religion is the competing and
rather tenuous paradigm of origins.3 The premise is that man progressed
out of primitive religious forms into more complex ones. Religion
was just another facet in the general technological process towards
sophistication. Therefore, the earlier the culture the more primitive
religion was - industrially, sociologically, and conceptually.
According to the contributors of this model, once “human
beings evolved past their bestial nature, they started fumbling
about unsuccessfully with attempts at magic in order to control
their environment.”4 It is assumed in the evolutionary model
that human cultures progressed biologically and ideologically,
where society was shaped according to fundamental laws or determinism,
a carryover from the mechanistic assumptions of evolution generated
in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The details in the progression are as follows. As early man developed
cognitively and tried to make sense of his world, he began to conceive
of unseen metaphysical realities to insure the survivability and
cohesion of a people group. Thus, the most primitive cultures identified
a simple impersonal spiritual force called mana which can cause well-being,
fertility, or evil with different objects containing varying amounts
of it. Special objects called fetishes may localize greater quanties
of mana and the responsibility rests on humans to manage and channel
it. Magic manipulates mana using the correct techniques to bring
about the desired results. A late example of this concept comes from
the Cabeza de Vaca account when an Indian near Galveston Bay told
him in 1528 that “the stones and other things that the fields
produce have powers.”5
The next step in the evolutionary progress of religion gives mana
a more intimate touch in the form of personal spirits, or animism.
Typically, there are two kinds of spirits, nature spirits and ancestor
spirits. Nature spirits have human form and personality, and reside
in anything from rocks to animals. Ancestor spirits are thought to
be the spirits of departed relatives and have some power (more than
humans) but are not infinite. The spirits are imperceptible and can
cause good, calamity, or just nagging frustrations. As they are a
source of insight and like to be informed and respected, humans consult
with the spirits through divination. As Corduan explains:
The spirits of animism need attention. They want
to beinformed, honored, and in most cases fed. Spirit veneration…almost always includes
various food offerings, as well as possibly far more demanding sacrifices…if
the sprits are satisfied, one can pray…However, if they are
not happy, the spirits may cause harm..6
The model holds that somewhere in history polytheism phased in the
third stage where humans went from venerating spirits to worshipping
more superior gods. As cultures grew more sophisticated and people
began to comprehend abstract ideas like courage or justice, people
affixed gods to these attributes which became spirits personified.
Gods are innately more powerful than spirits and require worship,
not just respect. Thus, they are less capable of being manipulated
and magic-like techniques are refined as the god dictates. One example
of the idolatry characterized by the natives at the contact period
comes from the Calusa, with practices that fall somewhere between
animism and god worship. A Catholic priest noted in 1569 that “they
engaged in their idolatries in a hut apart, where there were many
wooden masks, painted in white, red, and black…[the principle
idols had] noses two yards in length.”7
Closely related to this third phase is the fourth phase in the evolution
of religion called henotheism, where one god is elevated and worshipped
over others. This is not monotheism or one god per se, but one god
as superior over others. The final and most advanced stage in the
evolutionary model is monotheism. The assumption is that as cultures
became more developed, they also became monotheistic as the notion
of one God required a higher sense of thought. Monotheism requires
sophistication, which is at least half-true as monotheism is correctly
associated with initial intelligence in an original design. 8 .....
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