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The Soul of the Indian · 10 of 29

Chapter III-a

CEREMONIAL AND SYMBOLIC WORSHIP Modern Perversions of Early Religious Rites. The Sun Dance. The Great Medicine Lodge. Totems and Charms. The Vapor-Bath and the Ceremonial of the Pipe. The public religious rites of the Plains Indians are few, and in large part of modern origin, belonging properly to the so-called “transition period.” That period must be held to begin with the first insidious effect upon their manners and customs of contact with the dominant race, and many of the tribes were so influenced long before they ceased to lead the nomadic life. The fur-traders, the “Black Robe” priests, the military, and finally the Protestant missionaries, were the men who began the disintegration of the Indian nations and the overthrow of their religion, seventy-five to a hundred years before they were forced to enter upon reservation life. We have no authentic study of them until well along in the transition period, when whiskey and trade had already debauched their native ideals. During the era of reconstruction they modified their customs and beliefs continually, creating a singular admixture of Christian with pagan superstitions, and an addition to the old folk-lore of disguised Bible stories under an Indian aspect. Even their music shows the influence of the Catholic chants. Most of the material collected by modern observers is necessarily of this promiscuous character. It is noteworthy that the first effect of contact with the whites was an increase of cruelty and barbarity, an intensifying of the dark shadows in the picture! In this manner the “Sun Dance” of the Plains Indians, the most important of their public ceremonials, was abused and perverted until it became a horrible exhibition of barbarism, and was eventually prohibited by the Government. In the old days, when a Sioux warrior found himself in the very jaws of destruction, he might offer a prayer to his father, the Sun, to prolong his life. If rescued from imminent danger, he must acknowledge the divine favor by making a Sun Dance, according to the vow embraced in his prayer, in which he declared that he did not fear torture or death, but asked life only for the sake of those who loved him. Thus the physical ordeal was the fulfillment of a vow, and a sort of atonement for what might otherwise appear to be reprehensible weakness in the face of death. It was in the nature of confession and thank-offering to the “Great Mystery,” through the physical parent, the Sun, and did not embrace a prayer for future favors. The ceremonies usually took place from six months to a year after the making of the vow, in order to admit of suitable preparation; always in midsummer and before a large and imposing gathering. They naturally included the making of a feast, and the giving away of much savage wealth in honor of the occasion, although these were no essential part of the religious rite. When the day came to procure the pole, it was brought in by a party of warriors, headed by some man of distinction. The tree selected was six to eight inches in diameter at the base, and twenty to twenty-five feet high. It was chosen and felled with some solemnity, including the ceremony of the “filled pipe,” and was carried in the fashion of a litter, symbolizing the body of the man who made the dance. A solitary teepee was pitched on a level spot at some distance from the village, and the pole raised near at hand with the same ceremony, in the centre of a circular enclosure of fresh-cut boughs. Meanwhile, one of the most noted of our old men had carved out of rawhide, or later of wood, two figures, usually those of a man and a buffalo. Sometimes the figure of a bird, supposed to represent the Thunder, was substituted for the buffalo.
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Themes
Animismcosmology

The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.

The passage describes a worldview where the Sun is a 'father' and divine parent, and where figures like the buffalo and thunder-bird represent spiritual forces, indicating a belief in spirits inherent in natural phenomena.

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Contritionsoteriology

Penitential sorrow for sin as the first movement of the soul's healing — Julian's first of three medicines ('by contrition we are made clean'), the Christian compunction tradition, Sufi tawba, Greek metanoia, Hebrew teshuvah; the wound of sorrow that turns bitterness into hope of mercy. Distinct from self_examination (the diagnostic practice), rejection_of_hypocrisy (critique of others' form), and dark_night (imposed aridity): contrition is the soul's own penitent turning.

The Sun Dance is described as a 'confession and thank-offering' and an 'atonement' for weakness in the face of death.

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Covenanttheology

A binding agreement or relationship between the divine and a people or individual, establishing mutual obligations.

The warrior makes a 'vow' to the Sun, establishing a binding agreement or relationship between the individual and the divine. [quarantine-w4: covenant x native_american — see rellm data/quarantine/dossiers.jsonl]

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Divine Providencetheology

Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.

The text describes a warrior acknowledging 'divine favor' after being rescued from danger, implying a belief that the divine actively intervenes in human affairs. [quarantine-w3: divine_providence x native_american — see rellm data/quarantine/dossiers.jsonl]

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Living Godtheology

The divine conceived as active, present, and dynamic—not an abstract principle but a personal responsive reality.

The divine is portrayed as active and responsive, granting 'divine favor' and the power to 'prolong his life.' [quarantine-w2: living_god x native_american — see rellm data/quarantine/dossiers.jsonl]

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Microcosm Macrocosmcosmology

The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.

The pole is explicitly 'carried in the fashion of a litter, symbolizing the body of the man who made the dance,' mapping the human body onto the central axis of the ceremonial structure.

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Prayerpraxis

Direct address to the divine, whether petitionary, contemplative, or liturgical; speech and silence offered upward.

The passage explicitly describes the Sun Dance as a fulfillment of a vow made through prayer to the Sun for life and as an act of thank-offering.

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World Tree Axiscosmology

A vertical structure connecting cosmic levels — a tree, pillar, mountain, or ladder linking heaven, earth, and underworld around which the cosmos is organised. Yggdrasil binding the Nine Worlds in Norse cosmology, the Kalevala's Sampo as world-pillar, the Mayan ceiba, the Vedic Aśvattha, the shamanic central tree of Eliade's analyses. Cosmic-structural in character: distinct from sefirot_tree (a kabbalistic emanation diagram) and emanation_hierarchy (an ontological cascade); world_tree_axis is the cosmos's spine rather than the divine's outflow.

The central pole of the Sun Dance is a felled tree raised vertically at the center of a circular enclosure, explicitly described as 'symbolizing the body of the man who made the dance,' functioning as a vertical axis structuring the ceremonial cosmos.

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Related passages · 13 parallels
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