The front cover of Gregory Evans Dowd's book.[/caption]The first decades of white contact were very difficult for Native Americans for a number of reasons. But the disasters of colonialism are not the subject of this post, only the introduction. What I really want to address now is that there were a variety of ways that Native Americans "reacted" to their most difficult and changing times.
In A Spirited Resistance, Gregory Evans Dowd (page 19) says that the troubles that resulted from white contact "brought about... a debate over the efficacy of sacred power."
Dowd's discussion of Indians' reactions to the hard times of colonialism gets more complicated from there. Nevertheless, I'm going to quote him at length. As you read his quote, try to put yourself in the mocassins of a Native person trying to explain the disasters that followed white contact. How might you interpret the sufferings of your people?
For some, it was apparent that the Anglo-Americans were simply more powerful and that the Indians' sacred powers had failed them. These Indians sought survival and even gain in cooperation, at least of a limited kind, with the Anglo-American or European powers. Others, in a more moderate stance, sought to decipher the secrets of Ango-American strength, and made efforts to incorporate those secrets into their own way of living. Then there were those who understood that they had failed in their committments to the sacred powers, particularly the Great Spirit, the remote Creator who became increasingly important, probably under the influence of Christiainity (19).
Then Dowd tells us that it was that last belief, the mindset of some Indians that they themselves had somehow "failed in their committments to the sacred powers," that was the "central premise of the militant, pan-religious movements of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries"(19)
As I think back over some of the various visions of Native prophets that launched their movements, and as I also review in my mind the reasons other Indians gave for becoming Christians, I have to agree wholeheartedly with Dowd. What do you think?
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Another great blog that gives me a lot to think about.
ReplyDeleteThank you Mark :)
ReplyDeleteOne thing that comes to my mind after reading Mark's comment is that just because I'm willing to "analyse" religion/spirituality doesn't mean that I would be dismissive of it.
ReplyDeleteI'm often in the same place as Mark, thinking about religion/spirituality, culture, human nature, etc. and not knowing where one ends and the other(s) begin.
[…] Yesterday’s post was about how Native Americans reacted to the disasters of colonialism – in terms of their spirituality and/or religion. It brought up a fair amount of discussion on Facebook and I’ll get to that later in this post. […]
ReplyDelete[…] of my recent posts, Sprituality and Reactions to the Hard Times Brought on by White Contact and Death of the Spirit: How did the Eastern Woodland Indians Lose their Traditional […]
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