(10) NATIVE AMERICAN – LAKOTA

 

“The Great Spirit has given to you a red day and a red road” – Black Elk

A mythology that is part of an active religion – or mythologies and religions, as native American mythology at its broadest can be very broad indeed. The description of native American mythology can extend to mythology throughout the pre-Columbian Americas. Even if we confine ourselves to the geographic northern continent, that still is incredibly diverse – including the more lurid central American or meso-American mythologies.

This entry is intended to be representative of the native American mythologies in the area of the present United States. Of course, this remains as diverse as the people themselves in this area, but if I have to nominate any in particular, it would be those of the Great Plains in general or the Lakota (or Sioux) in particular.

This is because of my familiarity with Lakota ‘holy man’ Black Elk, through his own words as narrated in Black Elk Speaks (narrated to John Neihardt) and through the apparent focus his work gave to Huston Smith in the latter’s study of primal religions. I have a particular soft spot for Wakan Tanka, the overarching Great Mysterious that resides in everything – also the Ghost Dance.

 

SACRED SPACE & CHTHONIC BLUES

 

I don’t know much about the mythic worlds of Native American mythology other than references to their belief in an afterlife in the happy hunting ground that is attributed to them, although that probably originated in the British settlers interpreting their description – apparently the phrase first appeared “in 1823 in The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper”.

 

APOCALYPSE HOW

 

Lakota mythology indeed has its apocalypse and one of the most famous at that, albeit it may have been influenced by Christian millenarianism (and was strangely parallel to the contemporaneous millenarianism of the Boxer Rebellion) – the Ghost Dance. While it certainly was to be an apocalypse for the United States, it was more in the nature of a positive millenarian transformation or eucatastrophe for the Lakota.

 

EQUAL RITES

 

Lakota mythology has at least one messianic female figure – White Buffalo Calf Woman.

 

DIVINE COMEDY

 

More broadly, Native American mythologies have quite the divine comedy of recurring trickster figures – Coyote and Raven.

 

TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

 

Another mythology in my top ten that persists in religious belief among Native Americans – and in cultural impact beyond that. Indeed, enough so that Huston Smith included a chapter on the primal religions among major religions in his book The World’s Religions – and with the Lakota religion featuring prominently.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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