9/12/2023 0 Comments Nootka indian tribe facts![]() ![]() At least as late as the 1950s, the Prairie Band of Potawatomi Indians performed their traditional ceremony to placate the Underworld Panther and maintain balance with the Thunderbird. Potawatomis wove the image of the Underwater Panther, master of underworld forces, into one side of the fiber bags that held medicine objects, and the Thunderbird, master of the powers above, into the other. A friend who is part Potawatomi, (a people indigenous to the Great Lakes region) suggested that the mystery of the animal's hidden life became associated with the unknown underwater world. Mountain lions can swim but rarely choose to, and it's curious that they came to be so intimately- associated with water. Water monsters appear in various guises the world over, but in North America the Native images tended to merge the traits of the mountain lion, or in some cases the lynx, with those of snakes. Tribes from the Great Lakes southward feared the Underwater Panther, a composite monster with the body and tail of a mountain lion, ardens of a deer, scales of a snake, feathers of birds of prey, and parts from other animals as well. ![]() He never makes any noise, for he has the right sort of moccasins." If one sees you first, he will not give you a chance to see so much as the tip of his tail. They are very bashful and yet dangerous, for no animal can tell what they are up to. Eastman, a mixed-blood Lakota from Minnesota who graduated from Dartmouth around the turn of the twentieth century, called the great cats "unsociable, queer people. To the south, toward the Plains, mountain lions kept Indians in a constant state of uneasiness. When they do appear it's usually for a disreputable performance, as in the story of how the whaire's body came to have slits from chin to breastbone-a mountain lions clawed him. Lions are still relatively numerous today in Washington State and British Columbia and it's likely they have always thrived there, but they are largely absent from local Native imagery. A Nootka Indian from the area, interviewed in 1955, called the lion the one animal the Indians did not understand. Indians of the Pacific Northwest, for example, disliked the mountain lion. Only in stereotypes is there a universal American Indian and a standard, nature-loving religion. Thousands of cultures have come and gone in the Western Hemisphere, each with its own language, myths, traditions, and beliefs. Coping with a creature so alien to humans, so physically powerful and potentially threatening, and above all so mysterious must have been a serious exercise from the human psyche. The only large mammals more widely distributed throughout the western hemisphere were humans, so every Native culture except those in the Arctic encountered lions-a fact that contributed to the long list of names by which the animal became known to European settlers. When European arrived in the Americas mountain lions ranged from Canada to Tierra del Fuego, from the coasts of both oceans to the peaks of the Appalachians, Rockies, and Andes. They are agile enough to traverse the roughest country, and strong enough to kill animals much larger then themselves. They seem magically elusive, able to remain invisible even when the landscape is clearly imprinted with signs of their passing. Lions live and hunt alone, except for mothers with young. Wolves have a similar diet, but they procure it through family cooperation in a way that is easily observed and appreciated by humans. Mountain lions are true carnivores, living almost exclusively on animals-preferably deer-that they themselves kill. In this, and in the way they use their hands and feet, bears are like humans. Mountain lions are not the largest predators in temperate North America, being far outweighed by grizzly and black bears, but bears are omnivores and rely more on plants than on meat. I wondered how real mountain lions fared in the secular world of human ego. Hopi Land was the first place I visited to try to understand how the force of the sacred guides the routine of everyday life. Hopi culture is one of the most intact Native lifeways left in North America, and mountain lions play a strong symbolic role in it. Throughout the year they dance and pray in ritual celebrations. Today, as they always have, Hopis focus their lives on communication with the spiritual world. Their success points to the power of Hopi ceremonials. For nearly a thousand years the Hopi people have raised corn, squash, and beans without irrigation in a place where rainfall averages eight to twelve inches a year. The spiritual center of the universe is located on a high, dry plateau in northeastern Arizona, where land stretches out in a vast meditation of mind, and mountains ring the far horizon wish surrealistic shapes of desire. Chapter One: Native Americans and American Lions ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |