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Native American Mythology,
The
first human beings probably arrived in North America by crossing a land or ice
bridge spanning what is now the Bering Strait between eastern Siberia and
Alaska. The date of this migration is variously put at between 40,000 and
15,000 years ago. Over the succeeding centuries the descendants of these
original migrants populated the whole of North and South America, with the
exception of the Arctic coastal region; this area is inhabited by the Inuit,
who may be descended from later migrants arriving c. 12,000 to 8,000 BC from eastern Asia.
Geographical factors influenced the evolution of different ways of
life and cultural traditions, and the mythologies of indigenous American
peoples tend to reflect closely the relationship between humans and their
natural environment. Spirituality, and indeed the possibility of human
survival, is commonly linked to the ability to maintain good relations with the
natural world, in terms not only of its governing supernatural powers (for
example, Sun, Moon, rain, or wind deities) but also of its plant and animal
life, and landscape features such as streams, lakes, mountains, and caves.
Throughout
much of North America, and South America outside the Andean region, the land
remained very sparsely populated, and the indigenous peoples retained a
hunter-gatherer semi-nomadic lifestyle well into the 19th and 20th centuries.
Such societies are too fully occupied with the business of survival to support
a leisured class of priests or artists able to give a fixed form to religious
beliefs. Folk tales abound (these provided material for winter storytelling and
for educating children), but strong beliefs in the immediacy of the spirit
world do not necessarily go hand in hand with a developed mythology involving a
pantheon of individualized deities.
In
the great civilizations of Mesoamerica and the Andes, however, which early
European observers recognized as being of comparable complexity and
sophistication to their Old World counterparts, religious institutions were
overseen by an organized priestly class, and the mythological aspect of belief
was clearly codified. Sculpted and painted religious images were produced by
trained artists, probably in close collaboration with the religious
authorities, and ritual became highly formalized and spectacularly theatrical.
This
survey of the mythologies of the Americas deals mainly with the period before
European contact. In Mesoamerica and South America this period is termed
“Pre-Colombian” and ends with the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec and Inca
empires in the early 16th century (see Conquistadors). In North America the
dates are less clear-cut: while European traders, invaders, and settlers
arrived in significant numbers on the east coast from the 16th century onward,
in other regions the first contact with Europeans came much later. It is also
true that some highly distinctive Native North American cultures, together with
their mythological beliefs and religious practices, were partly shaped by
European imports. The best-known example is the bison-hunting, warlike
lifestyle of the 19th-century Plains peoples, which depended on two
commodities—the horse and the gun—first introduced from Europe.
The
mythology of the Americas can be reconstructed from various sources. In
Mesoamerica and South America the Catholic missionaries whose task was to stamp
out what they perceived as demonic native beliefs compiled careful records of
the religions they were attempting to replace with Christianity, and these
provide much detailed information. There are also documents, such as the Popol
Vuh, the sacred Maya book compiled by native authors after the Conquest.
Despite the wholesale destruction that accompanied the Spanish Conquest, religious
art and its iconography also provide clues.
In North America too, where writing was unknown before European contact, the accounts of white observers are an important source. Other evidence comes from interpreting artefacts and archaeological finds, and through oral traditions which still survive. In both North and South America some mythological narratives that are clearly ancient acquired a Christianized element before they were recorded.
In studies of the indigenous cultures of the Americas, the continent
is usually divided into the following major regions:
1.North
America (present-day Canada and the United
States),
2.Middle or Mesoamerica (present-day Mexico and the more
northerly Central American states including Guatemala, Belize, and part of
Honduras), and
3.South America (from the Central American isthmus
to Tierra del Furgo)