Native Americans of North America

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Language and Communication

There is no way of knowing exactly how many Native American languages once existed in North America. It is known, however, that in 1900, more than 300 distinct languages were spoken. In some areas, such as the Arctic rim, the same language was spoken over a large area. In other areas, such as California, greater linguistic diversity existed than is found in all of modern Europe. Today, about 150 Indian languages are still spoken in North America, but less than 50 of these are widely spoken.

Usually members of a tribe learned a neighboring tribe’s language to communicate with them, facilitating trade and intertribal agreements. However, in areas where many different languages existed, sign language (a language of hand gestures) was necessary. Originating either on the Texas Gulf Coast or in the extreme southern Plains, American Indian sign language probably arose to meet the communication needs of the deaf, or in other contexts, such as hunting and warfare, where silence was crucial. It was ideal for face-to-face communication between people who spoke different languages. Sign language spread onto the Great Plains, where it gained wide use because so many languages were spoken there that lacked similar vocabulary or grammar.

Smoke signals were another nonverbal form of communication. They were used throughout the continent mainly to announce the presence of game or to warn of enemies. In smoke signaling, Native Americans fed a fire with damp grass or green leaves to create smoke. By varying the type of fuel and manipulating the smoke with a blanket, Indians could create a smoke column in a wide range of different shapes and colors. On the Plains such signals could be seen as far away as 80 km (50 mi). Mirror signals were also used to communicate in areas of wide visibility, such as the Plains and Southwest.

Many Native American groups used pictography, or picture writing, to aid in remembering information and to convey new information. Tribes recorded historical and religious events in pictorial form on various materials. For example, Plains Indians painted pictographs on hides, while Northeast tribes used birchbark scrolls. Sometimes pictographic texts were sent as messages. The most famous Native American writing system was created by Sequoyah, a member of the Cherokee tribe, in the early 19th century. He devised a syllabary, a set of written characters representing syllables that enabled hundreds of Cherokee to learn to read and write their language by the 1820s. Today, the Oklahoma Cherokee continue to use his syllabary for their tribal newspaper.

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All Native American tribes had and continue to have a strong tradition of storytelling, also called oral literature. Older members of the tribe taught their traditions, morals, legends, myths, and history to younger people through stories and performances that were often as entertaining and humorous as they were educational. On the Northwest Coast, performers riveted their audience’s attention by wearing fantastic masks and costumes as they danced by a central fire.

When Europeans landed in America, they encountered many things for which they had no names and had to adopt Native American terms for identification. Thus, many Native American terms entered the English language. Animals names based on Indian words include moose, cougar, skunk, and caribou, while plant names that come from Indian words include mesquite, pecan, saguaro, hickory, and persimmon. Europeans also borrowed Native American names for cities such as Chicago, Seattle, Tallahassee, and Tucson. Many states in the United States are named for Indian nations, including Delaware, Dakota, Kansas, Massachusetts, Utah, and Illinois.

See also Native American Languages.

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Spirituality and Religious Practices

Spirituality was central to the lives of all Native Americans. Most Native American groups shared the following spiritual concepts, although their expression differed: the existence of unseen powers or spirits, the interdependence of all forms of life in the universe, a form of worship that reinforces personal commitment to the sources of life, sacred traditions that teach morals and ethics, trained practitioners who pass on sacred practices, and a belief that humor is a necessary part of the sacred to remind us of our human weaknesses.

Each group’s origin story told how a holy being or beings meant for them to live in their particular territory. Many groups believed in a single Creator or Great Spirit; others believed there were multiple holy beings who joined together to create and guide human beings into existence. Spiritual forces were believed to be present in every natural object, from insects to mountains. Thus, Native Americans maintained a sacred relationship to animals and plants, which provided physical and spiritual sustenance and were often part of a tribe’s mythological history.

All Native American belief systems shared the idea that the natural world was not created for human exploitation and domination. Instead, Native Americans believed that if they cared for the resources of the Earth, then the Earth would take care of them. Although considered to be a sacred, living being, the Earth was not worshiped. Rather, the land was seen as an expression of the Creator or Great Spirit that must be treated with respect. As a way of giving thanks for the great gifts of the Earth, all indigenous peoples left offerings of a precious substance, such as corn pollen, to plants and animals that gave their lives for human benefit. Some tribes practiced elaborate thanksgiving ceremonies.

A person strived to live well, with respect for others, in order to attain a full life and reach old age. Living a good life also meant that one prepared for death. Death was greatly respected in all Native American traditions because of its inevitability. It was not feared or seen as the end of life; rather, it was regarded as a natural part of life, a time of transition into another world. Most Native American groups believed that at death the soul continued into an afterlife, which varied according to the beliefs of different groups.

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Shamans and Priests

Health and spirituality were intimately intertwined in Native American beliefs, and spiritual practices played an important part in maintaining and restoring health. Most communities had individuals called shamans, who were believed to have direct contact with the supernatural. A shaman’s primary roles were to diagnose and treat illness and to divine the location of an enemy, food source, or missing object. The shaman generally went into a trance to contact his or her personal spiritual guide for assistance in healing or divination. The Havasupai of the Southwest believed that the spirit helper, after being summoned, lodged in the shaman’s chest. When the shaman sang, it was really the spirit helper that sang. When the shaman applied his mouth to a patient’s body to suck out the illness, the spirit helper entered the patient and drew out the trouble. Shamans were sometimes called medicine men or medicine women because they tended the sick.

Shamanism dominated religion and medicine in the Arctic, Subarctic, Plateau, and Great Basin. On the Great Plains, in most of the East, and in much of the Southwest, religious leaders included both priests and shamans. Priests had more formal religious training than did shamans, and often led the ceremonies that marked major events in community life. They derived their power from a codified body of rituals learned from an older priest. Such rituals had to be carefully memorized and replicated precisely to be effective. The Southeast may have been the only area in North America with full-time priests. Linked to the Sun, the political and religious ruler of the Natchez inherited his position and had the power of life and death over his subjects.

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Ceremonies

Native Americans celebrated many public ceremonies as well as private rituals. While tribal practices varied considerably, many ceremonies focused on stages of the human life cycle. These ceremonies, known as rites of passage, were often held to recognize the birth of a child, the coming of age for a young woman, the warrior status of a young man, or the death of a loved one. (For a discussion of puberty rites, see the Marriage and Family Life section earlier in this article.)

Other ceremonies, rather than focusing on individuals, centered on communal well-being and were held annually to give thanks and keep the universe in balance. The Green Corn Ceremony, celebrated in the Southeast and Northeast near the end of summer when the late corn crop ripened, marked the beginning of the new year. In this renewal ceremony, tribes gave thanks for a successful harvest and formally forgave tribal members of all crimes except murder. In the Southwest, the Hopi held the Snake Dance to bring the last summer rains. Part of the dance involved the use of live snakes, which were believed to carry the request for rain to the underworld, where the snakes lived. The Hopi also held religious ceremonies in which dancers impersonated kachinas, or spirit beings, by wearing sacred costumes. Hopi girls received wooden kachina dolls—elaborately carved, painted, and costumed—to teach them about the kachinas. The Snake Dance, kachina dances, and other ceremonies continue among the Hopi today.

Most Plains Indians performed the Sun Dance, a ceremony of spiritual renewal held to benefit the welfare of the entire tribe. Lasting up to 12 days, the ceremony marked the beginning of the summer encampment when the various bands of a tribe gathered after being separated during the winter. The final four days of the ceremony, the most sacred period, included the preparation of the Sun Dance Tree, or central pole, from which dancers suspended themselves through skewers inserted through their flesh. Other dancers fasted or dragged bison skulls attached to their skin with skewers. The extraordinary pain suffered by each individual was believed to bring personal contact with the spirit world and to enhance tribal well-being.

Indians often prepared for ceremonies inside a sweat lodge, a low dome often made of willow saplings covered with animal skins or blankets. Inside the sweat lodge, cold water was poured over a pile of red-hot rocks to create steam. Usually a medicine man sang prayer chants to help everyone release moral and physical impurities. In this way, sweat baths helped to clear the mind and body.

The Pueblo peoples of the Southwest were among the few groups that had permanent ceremonial structures. Pueblo peoples built round or rectangular chambers called kivas underground, or partially underground, to house religious items and to serve as the site of some ceremonies. Other Pueblo ceremonies were held outside on a central plaza. Only a few tribes, such as the Natchez, had temples, but nearly all tribes established small temporary or permanent shrines where they left sacred offerings.

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Tobacco, Alcohol, and Peyote

Indians in almost every region of North America used tobacco for religious rites and ceremonies, for medicinal uses, and for relaxation. It was considered a sacred plant to most Native American tribes, for its smoke enhanced their prayers as it rose to the sky and to the Great Spirit. European explorers found tobacco in use by Native Americans of all regions except the Arctic, Subarctic, and part of the Northwest Coast. For Plains Indians, tobacco pipes were among the most sacred of objects. In addition to individually owned pipes, tribal pipes were used to ensure a successful bison hunt, for healing purposes, and to mark the initiation of peace or war. In California and Nevada, Native Americans ground tobacco leaves with lime and water and ate the mixture. Sometimes Datura (jimsonweed) was mixed with tobacco and drunk in an attempt to produce visions, acquire a spirit helper, bring success on a hunt, or alleviate illness.

Alcoholic beverages were used in some parts of North America before European contact. The Tohono O’Odham of the Southwest fermented syrup of the saguaro (a type of cactus) into wine for their four-day saguaro wine feast, a ritual intended to bring the summer monsoons. By saturating themselves with saguaro wine, they prayed that life-giving rain would likewise saturate the parched earth of the Sonoran Desert.

Many tribes used hallucinogenic plants—plants or plant derivatives that produce hallucinations when ingested—to enhance their religious rites and bring them into closer contact with the Great Spirit. The most common hallucinogen was peyote, a spineless cactus whose mushroom-shaped caps, or buttons, were dried and chewed or brewed into tea. First used in Mexico and along the Rio Grande, peyote use later spread onto the Great Plains and into Canada. In the late 1800s the Kiowa and Comanche were among the first tribes to adopt the Peyote religion, or Peyotism. In 1918 the Peyote religion was formally incorporated as the Native American Church, which regards peyote as sacred and uses it in religious ceremonies and rituals. Church doctrine stresses brotherly love, family responsibility, self-reliance, and abstinence from alcohol.