Page 49 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1350 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

A Native American pictograph depicting a ceremony meant to give thanks to the Great Spirit.
Ideas like the Great Spirit were not indigenous but were borrowed from Christianity and
merged with indigenous beliefs.

Taken together, these sacred possessions—the stories, discovered two principal sequences of tribal history. The
the crests, the songs—provide a solid foundation for each first starts at the beginning and works its way toward the
Gitskan house and for the larger clan of which it is a part. present. The second starts with the present and works its
According to living Gitskan elders, each house’s holdings way back to the beginning. Although there may be dis-
confirm its ancient title to its territory and the legitimacy of cussions on the history of the people moving to a particu-
its authority over it. lar place, for example—isolated events—often these
In fact, so vital is the relationship between each house historical notes seem to be just that until they are pinned
and the lands allotted to it for fishing, hunting, and food- down in this large framework (Walters 1992, 77).
gathering that the daxgyet,or spirit power, of each house
and the land that sustains it are one (Wa and Delgam Interpreting these dynamics of native historicity may
1987, 26). necessitate abandoning chronological, linear, interpre-
tive-building emphases on personalities,events,or social
The historical testimony of this complex of songs and and economic forces. In the time-linkage narratives of
rituals connects architecture and traditional environ- Native American lifeways the primary focus is more typ-
mental knowledge. Gitskan elders voice their concerns in ically on seminal realities of place, action, and spiritual
these religious performances for the cosmological and presence. Rather than ideas or mental constructs as pri-
historical continuity of community vitality. mary,the mutual participation of humans and the beings
of the earth opens a way toward understanding the wis-
The Linkage of Past, dom of history.
Present, and Future A striking illustration of this complex linkage is the
Regarding the fourth point, namely, the simultaneity of tobacco symbolism found throughout the American
memory in Native American Religions, the Pawnee/ hemisphere. In one particularized expression of tobacco
Otoe author Anna Lee Walters wrote that she: ceremonialism the shaman-healers of the Warao peoples