Native North American religious traditions : dancing for life

Paper, Jordan D. (Author).

Record details

ISBN: 0275990974 (alk. paper)
ISBN: 9780275990978 (alk. paper)
Physical Description: print
xv, 189 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.
Publisher: Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2007.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [173]-182) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

pt. I. General considerations -- 1. Introduction -- Prelude -- Dancing for life -- Native North American religious traditions -- Common features -- The number four -- Reciprocity -- Tobacco and other sacred herbs -- Experiential religion -- Western perceptions -- No religion : the heathen savage -- Animism, totemism and other nineteenth-century fallacies -- The Noble savage -- New age hucksters -- Further considerations -- Esotericism -- Suppression and secrecy -- "Stealing religion" -- Avoidance of photographs and recordings -- 2. From past to present -- Native traditions before contact -- North and Northeast -- Great Lakes and Midwest -- Southeast and Mississippi and Ohio River basins -- Mississippi and Ohio River basins -- Plains and plateau -- Northwest coast -- Southwest, Great Basin and Southern California -- Far South and Caribbean -- From contact to reservations -- Reservations and enforced Christian conversion -- Revitalization of Native traditions -- 3. Theology -- Cosmogony and the influence of Christianity -- The environment as numinous -- Ancestral and other spirits of the dead -- Culture heroes and "tricksters" --