Alligator Clans in Oklahoma:  Creek/Seminole Stomp Dance in Indian Territory

Paula Conlon.  School of Music, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA (405)325-1431,  pconlon@ou.edu

Abstract

In the backwoods of eastern Oklahoma, far removed from the public eye, all-night Stomp dances keep the Green Corn religion of the Eastern Woodlands tribes alive and well. Participants from the various grounds travel throughout the summer to help out with their voices and their shell shakers at each other’s ceremonies.

I have been privileged to participate as a shell shaker at Creek, Cherokee, Seminole, Seneca, and Yuchi Stomp grounds moved to Indian Territory during the Trail of Tears era in the nineteenth century.  My primary initial contact was Linda Alexander, a Creek/Seminole elder well known for her expertise as a dancer.  She is a member of the Alligator clan, reflecting her Seminole roots in Florida. Alexander considers powwows to be something that only the “western” tribes do, although she has lived all her life in Oklahoma.

This paper will discuss my involvement with Stomp dancing, and look at the larger issue of living in a cultural mosaic created by government policies put into place to facilitate westward expansion during the colonial period.

1. Background

In his book, Oklahoma Seminoles: Medicines, magic, and religion, James H. Howard states that “all the Northeastern and Southeastern tribes now resident in Oklahoma except the Choctaws have the specific form of dance known as the Stomp, but the Seminoles and Creeks are acknowledged by all to be its most expert practitioners” (1984, p. 157). Since I came to Oklahoma in 1996, I have heard the assertion of the superiority of the Creek/Seminole Stomp dance over and over again. Creek/Seminole Stomp dances have a particular energy and drive that is unmistakable and unsurpassed.

In the years of forced removal from their native lands in the mid-nineteenth century to Indian Territory (later called Oklahoma), Eastern Woodlands tribes brought with them their traditional Stomp dance and their sacred fire.  In the twentieth century, however, the number of tribal Stomp grounds among the Creeks and Seminoles of Oklahoma dwindled from 44 to 14.  By 1995, fewer than 375 Oklahoma Seminoles under the age of 17 spoke Mvskoke, and fewer than 150 of them lived in Seminole County (Schultz, 1999, p. 219).  Fortunately, there has been a resurgence of the Stomp dance in Oklahoma in the past decade, in part due to the increase of intertribal Stomp dances.  Choctaw tribal member Gary White Deer discusses the intertribal aspect of these dances:

Although we may not be able to understand one another’s tribal language, most southeastern Indians share an important cultural feature called the stomp dance, along with its associated songs.  This particular group of songs are widely sung, and are like a common second language.  These shared songs encourage intertribal participation at various ceremonial grounds throughout Eastern Oklahoma. (1995, p. 11)

Much of what has been written about Stomp dance characterizes it as a closely guarded tradition, one that tends to be exclusive and critical of living a modern life.  For example, Howard’s position is that “For traditional Seminoles … life revolves around activities at the ceremonial center … the ‘square ground’ or ‘stomp ground’” (1984, p. 104). However, Jack M. Schultz points out that “many Seminoles participate in both arenas (Stomp grounds and Indian churches) concurrently … Howard was either unaware of or ignored the highly salient fact that his ‘ultra-conservative’ informant, Willie Lena, was, since childhood, a participating member of a Seminole Baptist church” (1999, p. 6). 

Howard’s definition of what it means to be “traditional” suggests a static reality that does not undergo change.  Schultz’s view is that “traditional describes a dynamic social group sharing a history, adapting to changed circumstances, and demonstrating vitality” (1999, p. 4). Cherokee author Charlotte Heth has a similar definition:

‘Traditional,’ as used by many Indian people and scholars, can be an overarching term with varying meanings.  Sometimes it refers to the oldest norms: languages, religions, artistic forms, everyday customs and individual behavior.  At other times it refers to modern practices based on these norms. (1992, p. 17) 

Heth’s view provides for communal change, not dismissing certain activities as unauthentic, but accounting for the community life as a whole.  This paper adopts the more inclusive view of tradition advocated by Heth in a discussion of the use of Stomp dancing in the maintenance of the Green Corn religion in Oklahoma, focusing primarily on the Creek/Seminole tribes and the memories of Linda Alexander, member of the Alligator clan of the Seminole tribe.

2. Linda Alexander

Linda Alexander is an example of an individual who has upheld her Creek/Seminole cultural ties while living and working away from Creek/Seminole cultural centers.  Linda was born near Sasakwa, Oklahoma on March 21 in 1917, and grew up in what she refers to as the “Indian Cultural Life.”  Raised on a 160-acre land allotment outside of Sasakwa, Linda’s chores included the preparation of corn for bread and soup by mashing it in a hollowed-out stump of wood using a wooden pole, a method of grinding corn that was brought over with the Florida Seminoles.  She told me about going to school in Eufaula, Oklahoma: “I was the only Indian in that class, or in that school – there was just a two room school, and it went to the sixth grade” (Alexander, 1998). Linda’s father encouraged her to learn English, but told her to never forget her own language.  Speaking virtually no English when she started school, Linda used a form of sign language to communicate; her classmates would show her photos of objects for word association.  Often she would invite her white friends to her father’s house to eat traditional Indian foods.  After her marriage, Linda lived in various small communities in eastern Oklahoma, and has lived in Norman since 1962.  She retired from her housekeeping job at Griffin Memorial Hospital in Norman in 1984 after 27 years of service, and went on to teach Creek languages courses at the University of Oklahoma from 1992 to 1995 and at Oklahoma State University from 2000-2004, and co-author a book on learning the Creek language (Innes, Alexander, & Tilkens, 2004).  I have been privileged to accompany Linda to Stomp dances throughout eastern Oklahoma for the past 10 years and as her companion have been permitted to participate as a dancer.  

Linda began Stomp dancing as a child, even though her older brothers didn’t choose to dance very much.  Her father encouraged her to dance, and she says that he was a good dancer and singer.  “My father was on the committee and a planner for the Stomp grounds, and he cared” (Alexander, 1998). Stomp dances are traditionally non-competitive, but competitions sometimes occur at powwows where competition is more accepted as the norm.  Linda has won first prize at such contests in the Camper Arena in Kansas City and Stroud, Oklahoma.  She remained active with her Stomp dance group that recorded Stomp Dance Songs of the Muskogee Nation (2000), whose purpose was to reach a wider audience and advance the Stomp dance’s current popularity.  The Tahlahvse Stomp Ground has presented programs throughout the United States, including invitations from the Seminole community that stayed in Florida.  Linda notes that these and other performances allow young people that live away from tribal life to have a greater chance to keep their language and culture alive.

Linda believes that indoor intertribal dances are also very helpful for teaching young people about the Stomp dance.  Stomp dancing has steadily increased in popularity in the last decade, and at the present time there is usually a Stomp dance somewhere in Oklahoma almost every weekend throughout the winter months when the outdoor grounds are closed.  Linda notes that a major benefit of the indoor Stomp dances is that “it keeps the young people off the streets” (Alexander, 1998).

3. Stomp dance form

The form of Stomp dance songs is a song cycle, usually with a series of four songs for each leader.  In the introduction, the leader-chorus unison pattern is set up, which will characterize the rest of the piece.  Only the men sing.  Some songs are sung purely in vocables (syllables without dictionary meaning), while some songs have vocables and translatable words.  The use of vocables in a particular manner is consistent between different renditions of the same song, so songs are often identified by their vocables along with their melodies (Heth, 1975, p. 119). Shouts delineate certain sections in the song cycle, such as the close of the introduction and at the end of each song in the song cycles of most leaders (Heth, 1975, p. 117).

The male vocal leader is also the dance leader.  A male chorus follows him in a counter-clockwise direction around a fire. Once the men have circled the fire, the women join in alternating male and female. The Stomp dance movement is comprised of three types of steps: a natural walk, a flat-footed “stomp,” and a flat-footed hopping or jumping in place that occurs from three to 10 beats before the end of each song (Heth, 1975, p. 87). The texture of the Stomp dance songs can be described as responsorial or antiphonal (based on the call and response format) with some multi-part singing and overlapping parts, along with rhythmic accompaniment. 

Turtle shell rattles, worn on the women’s lower legs, highlight the percussive nature of the rhythmic accompaniment to the men’s singing. “Shell shakers,” as the women are referred to, wear long skirts over their leg rattles. Women not wearing shells, or the modern equivalent using condensed-milk cans, join in after those wearing rattles, with children at the end of the line. Heth stresses the historical importance of the shackles, noting that turtle shell rattles were found in burials of young adult females made circa A.D. 1300 in North Carolina (1975, p. 98). Gary White Deer describes the role of the shell shakers:

Women create the rhythm and pulse of the stomp dance … Turtle shells are cleaned, perforated and fastened in rows upon leather anklets.  River pebbles placed inside the shells bounce and shake to highly-skilled double step movements … The constant rhythm helps move the dances and songs forward through the long night. (1995, p. 11)

4. Green Corn

The Green Corn ceremony is the focal point for traditional religious life of numerous Northeastern and Southeastern tribes.  Green Corn takes place outdoors on tribal ceremonial ground, where worship and dance occur simultaneously.  The Creek/Seminole Green Corn religion involves four dances at the ceremonial ground, one held in April/May, another in May/June, Green Corn in late June or July (at the beginning of the corn harvest, when it is not totally ripened), and another dance in August/September.  Each of these events includes Stomp dancing around a sacred fire.  The first all-night dance is the opening ceremony to renew and purify the fire, or as Linda puts it, “to bring the fire alive” (Alexander, 1998). The second ceremony is another all-night Stomp dance.  The third all-night dance occurs at the four-day Green Corn ceremony, which provides the purification required before the members are permitted to eat the newly ripened corn (hence the English name for the ceremony). The fourth all-night Stomp dance is the closing ceremony for that year.

The week before Green Corn, the men on the planning committee come to the Stomp ground to clean and repair the four arbors that frame the dance arena, and clear the ground for dancing.  The following Friday is “Women’s Day,” when the Ribbon dance is performed.  This is primarily a women’s dance in four rounds.  Each round can be rather lengthy, so many will rest between each round.  In single file, the shell shakers dance around the perimeter of the arena in a counter-clockwise direction.  They generally wear colorful dresses with ribbons attached to their clothing.  Linda says that she encourages the girls to wear the ribbons, but sometimes they put ribbons in their hair instead. 

Saturday is the climax of Creek/Seminole Green Corn activities.  Fasting begins in early morning, and an herbal tea is prepared by the medicine man.  This medicinal drink is designed to cleanse the system, and nothing can be eaten that day until it is ingested.  Vomiting frequently occurs; the medicine also acts as a purgative.  Women and children are served first; even babies may be given small quantities.  Then the men partake.  Ritual scratching, designed to insure a healthy life, takes place at this time, with four scratches on each of the upper and lower arms and the lower legs; medicine is then poured on the scratches. Medicine is also used on the fire, as noted by Robert Wolfe: “The fire at the Stomp ground must be gentled at the Green Corn.  That’s why we pour medicine on it at that time.  If it isn’t gentled periodically it will become too powerful and destroy us” (Howard, 1984, p. 244).  Linda stresses that the medicine is crucial to the life of the Stomp ground.  She cites the example of her father’s old Stomp ground, Tallahasutci: “It is not an active one anymore.  My Dad’s old ground is gone.  They don’t have a medicine man; they don’t have any management people.  They tried it two or three times and it kind of failed” (Alexander, 1998).

The Seminole Green Corn ceremony includes the performance of the Buffalo dance.  The lead singer begins the characteristic song of the dance to a steady beat and the dancers, two by two, alternating male and female pairs, begin circling the stickball pole in a counterclockwise progression. (Playing stickball is also part of the Green Corn ceremony.)  Linda told me that the side-to-side gestures of the dancers’ heads indicate the movements of the buffalo.  Howard discusses the dance movements: “Their step, both men and women, is a double pat of the left foot followed by a double pat of the right.  Often the tremendous noise of the women’s leg rattles accentuating this duple beat and the whooping of the dancers almost drowns out the singer” (1984, p. 146).

After the Buffalo dance, supper is served.  Four calls are then made to announce the last Stomp dance of Green Corn.  This dance lasts all night until sunrise.  For those who choose to fully participate and take medicine, one is not allowed to sleep; this goes back to the origin story when the corn used to ripen overnight until someone fell asleep. The next morning, breakfast is served in the camp.  This breakfast marks the end of Green Corn for another year, and some choose to sleep after the meal is over before returning home.

5. Green Corn and Christianity

At all the ceremonial dances associated with the Green Corn religion, there is a Stomp dance around a sacred fire.  Linda’s explanation of the fire is that “the smoke takes our prayers up to the Creator.  The missionaries thought that we were worshiping the fire, but that’s not it at all” (Alexander, 1998).  Seminole Stomp ground speaker Robert Wolfe stated that: “The fire is the earthly manifestation of the sun … It was given to the Indians by … God.  The Indians don’t need a Bible, since they have the teachings of the ancients passed down at the Stomp ground” (Howard, 1984, p. 244).

At Green Corn, the women frequently wear red skirts with distinctive Seminole patchwork, and a number of the men wear red vests with various Indian designs. Linda explained the use of the color red: “That’s one of our ceremonial things – ‘red.’  And from what I understand, when our Savior died on the cross, he bled.  So that’s one of our ancestors’ beliefs, and [it is] handed down to us.  We wear red for our ceremonial dances and Green Corn dances” (Alexander, 1998).

I asked Linda how this meshed with the time before the white man came and she said it is an example of how the two religions joined together.  She discussed the conflict between the Stomp dance religion, considered by the missionaries to be “devil worship,” and the Christian church:

Some of the younger preachers preach against our Indian Stomp dance, which is not at all sinful in any way because we observe it just like the churches do.  We fast and we lecture on believing our Creator and do the things that need to be done.  Some of them [Indians] are not educated, but they know that there is God and they know the ways of life. (Alexander, 1998)

Fortunately Linda’s experiences were positive.  She never lost touch with her Creek/Seminole traditions although she attended a Seminole Baptist church west of Sasakwa, Oklahoma when she was growing up.  She has actively participated in the Green Corn religion throughout her life, and she continues to go to Ribbon dances each year throughout eastern Oklahoma.

6. The future

The Creek/Seminole Stomp dance in Oklahoma is thriving.  I have been privileged to participate in numerous Green Corn ceremonies throughout eastern Oklahoma. Each time I have come away with much the same sense of having connected with a higher power that I have encountered at the close of Catholic Holy Week at Easter.  When I asked Linda about this feeling, she described it as “being lifted up” (Alexander, 1998). Green Corn enables families to come together at an annual reunion while getting reconnected and renewed through the spiritual elements of the ceremony, and sharing a sense of unity as they participate in the communal night-long Stomp dance.

Seminole/Creek tribal members are creating new ways of maintaining their cultural life, such as making recordings and holding indoor dances, combining the old with the new as a way of redefining tradition.  Their ability to adapt to change, while holding onto their sacred Stomp dance ceremonies and keeping them intact, bodes well for the continuance of the Green Corn religion in the years to come.(1)

Note

1. For further reading on the Green Corn religion, see Densmore (1956); Fairbanks (1973); Gouge (2004); Laubin (1977); Lewis (2002); Martin & Mauldin (2000); Swanton (1928/2000); Swanton (1929).

Acknowledgement

The author wishes to thank Linda Alexander for introducing me to Stomp dancing.

References

Alexander, L. (1998).  Personal communication. Norman, OK.

Densmore, F. (1956). Seminole Music. Washington, DC: Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 161.

Fairbanks, C. H. (1973). The Florida Seminole people. Phoenix, AZ: Indian Tribal Series.

Gouge, E. (2004). Totkv mocvse/New fire: Creek folktales. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

Heth, C. A. W. (1975).  The Stomp dance music of the Oklahoma Cherokee: A study of contemporary practice with special reference to the Illinois District Council Ground. Ph.D. diss. in Music. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA.

Heth, C. (1992).  American Indian dance: A celebration of survival and adaptation.  In C. Heth (Ed.), Native American dance: Ceremonies and social traditions. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1-18.

Howard, J. H., & Lena, W. (1984). Oklahoma Seminoles: Medicines, magic, and religion.  Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

Innes, P., Alexander, L., & Tilkens, B. (2004). Beginning Creek: Mvskoke emponvkv. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

Laubin, R., & Laubin, G. (1977). Indian dances of North America. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

Lewis Jr., D., & Jordan, A. T. (2002). Creek Indian medicine ways: The enduring power of Mvskoke religion. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.

Martin, J. B. & Mauldin, M. M. (2000). A dictionary of Creek/Muskogee, with notes on the Florida and Oklahoma Seminole dialects of Creek. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Schultz, J. M. (1999).  The Seminole Baptist churches of Oklahoma: Maintaining a traditional community. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

Stomp Dance Songs of the Muscogee Nation (2000). CD Vols. 1 & 2. Indian House Records: IH 3009; IH 3010. http://www.indianhouse.com/

Swanton, J. R. (1928/2000). Creek religion and medicine. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Swanton, J. R. (1929). Myths and tales of the southeastern Indians. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office.

White Deer, G. (1995).  Pretty Shellshaker. In Remaining ourselves: Music and tribal memory. Oklahoma City, OK: State Arts Council of Oklahoma, 10-12.

Perspectives on the Soul and the Afterlife

Thomas J. Hoffman, St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, TX

In the wee hours of December 30^th, 2005, I was laying in bed thinking about our panel.  I was thinking since we were going to dedicate it to Vine that I’d bring a couple of viewgraphs (or powerpoint slides) in his honor.  Then a memory intruded itself on my thoughts.  My dad was driving me somewhere (I was 14 years old) and he turned to me and asked:  “Do you know what I want most out of life?”  I thought for a second, all too brief a second, and responded, “To make as much money as you can.”  I saw the disappointment in his face.  It’s not that he didn’t work hard and try to make money, he did – and he was quite successful; he had to be with us six kids.  He said, “no, that’s not it.  What I want most out of life is to save my immortal soul.”   It was then that his going to mass every day of the week began to make some sense to me and fit with the rest of his life.

I think that’s an appropriate story to start my comments on our panel on the soul and the afterlife.

My comments are meant to basically to summarize the Western European perspective on the soul and the afterlife.  I have gathered information from several traditions, and have compiled them here.  In preparing my comments I discovered several things: First, we have to go back to the Greeks to find the roots for western views of these subjects; second, we have to look at the Judaic tradition in order to understand the Christian tradition; third, it would be incomplete to examine the soul and the afterlife, without also examining the notion of reincarnation.  So what I shall do today, is examine the notions of the soul, the afterlife, and reincarnation from the Greek, Jewish, and Christian points of view.  For the Greeks I shall talk of both Plato and Aristotle; I then trace their influences on the Jewish community.  Then I shall speak both of traditional Christianity and a relatively contemporary version (for the last 200 years or so) known as “New Thought” Christianity.  To bridge to the American Indian views on these topics I shall give a handout on contemporary Indians opinions, and I shall close with a few comments from Vine Deloria’s recent writings on the soul, the afterlife, and reincarnation.

The Soul

Plato:

Plato saw the Soul as immortal, pure, separate from body.  The soul is the essence of man’s being.  It is immortal.  We read in the 10^th book of The Republic: 

“Are you not aware, I said, that the soul of man is immortal and imperishable?  He looked at me in astonishment, and said: No, by heaven: And are you really prepared to maintain this? Yes, I said, I ought to be, and you too --there is no difficulty in proving it….  …the souls must always be the same, for if none be destroyed they will not diminish in number.   Neither will they increase, for the increase of the immortal natures must come from something mortal, and all things would thus end in immortality.”

Aristotle:

Aristotle saw the soul as co-extensive with body; it is the essence of the body. The soul dies with the body.

Emilio Ribes-Iñesta (2004, 55-56) has these comments with regard to Aristotle and the soul:

Psychology as a natural science can be traced back to the foundational writings of Aristotle in De Anima (1908-1952, English translation).  Aristotle included psychology in his biological treatises. Biology and psychology dealt with the study of the soul. The soul, according to Aristotle, was not a distinctive substance. It was always the soul of a particular body and could not be separated from it. There was no soul without body. The soul was a predicate of a special kind of body—living bodies, capable of self-nutrition, growth, and corruption. The faculties of the soul were conceived as the potencies of a living organism, given its organization or form, and the soul was nothing other than these potencies becoming act, given certain objects affecting the organism. The soul consisted of the acting functions of a living body in relation to another body.  Because of this the soul was said to be the entelechy (or definition and essence) of such a body.

Jewish

Among the Jewish community, one can distinguish between the early Jews, the Jews who followed Plato, and the Jews who followed Aristotle.

Early Judaism

The early Jews conceived of the soul as a spirit within the body.  A metaphor that was used quite often in the Hebrew scriptures for spirit was breath, or breeze.

According to Kohler, Broyd, and Blau in their article on the soul in the Jewish Encyclopedia on-line:

The Mosaic account of the creation of man speaks of a spirit or breath with which he was endowed by his Creator (Gen. ii. 7); but this spirit was conceived of asinseparably connected, if not wholly identified, with the life-blood (ib. ix. 4; Lev. xvii.11) the body is in a state of perfect purity (Ber. 10a; Mek. 43b), and is destined to return pure to its heavenly abode.

Among Talmudic scholars, “the Rabbis hold that the body is not the prison of the soul, but, on the contrary, its medium of development and improvement” (Kohler, Broyd, and Blau).

Platonic Jews

Jews who follow Plato’s philosophy of course focus on the immortality of the soul.  Not only do souls persist after life, they existed before birth.

An explicit statement of the doctrine of the preexistence of the soul is found in theApocrypha: "All souls are prepared before the foundation of the world" (Slavonic Book of Enoch, xxiii. 5); and according to II Esd. iv. 35 et seq. the number of the righteous who are to come into the world is foreordained from the beginning. All souls are, therefore, preexistent, although the number of those which are to become incorporated is not determined at the very first (Kohler, Broyd, and Blau).

Plato saw the material plane as corrupt and corrupting.  Hence, his Jewish followers felt:  “as a divine being the soul aspires to be freed from its bodily fetters and to return to the heavenly spheres whence it came”  (Kohler, Broyd, and Blau).

Aristotlian Jews

Jews who follow Aristotlian philosophy see the soul as dying when the body dies.  There is no immorality involved.

As each soul, constituting the form of the body, is indissolubly united with it and has no individual existence, so the soul of man and its various faculties constitute with the body a concrete, inseparable unit. With the death of the body, therefore, the soul with all its faculties, including the rational, ceases to exist (Kohler, Broyd, and Blau).

Catholic/Christian

There are many groupings in the Christian tradition, so I will focus primarily on the Catholic tradition (since it is both the oldest Christian group, and the one I am most familiar with).  In the Catholic/Christian tradition, the soul is immortal.  Here is a definition according to the recently revised (2000) Catholic catechism’s glossary:

SOUL: The spiritual principle of human beings. The soul is the subject of human consciousness and freedom; soul and body together form one unique human nature. Each human soul is individual and immortal, immediately created by God. The soul does not die with the body, from which it is separated by death, and with which it will be reunited in the final resurrection.

New Thought Christian

A relatively new movement within the Christian tradition is a grouping of churches, called “New Thought” churches.  Although Christian by self-definition, these churches have a very different read on many religious issues that are distinct from many “mainline” Christian viewpoints.  Emmet Fox was a very influential religious figure in the New Thought movement during the 20^th century, and his writings will be used here to represent this tradition.  Regarding the soul, Fox (1940) wrote the following:

It may surprise you to be told that you have no only the physical body that you know about—the thing that you see when you look into the glass—but a second body which is none the less substantial because you cannot see it, and that this body is made of ether.  This statement may surprise you, but it is true.  The etheric body is the same shape as your physical body, but it is slightly larger and it interpenetrates the physical body as air fills a sponge.  It does not surround it but interpenetrates it.  It may help you to think of it as a replica of the physical body in ether.

The Afterlife

Plato

In The Republic, Plato tells the story of the afterlife, the Myth of Er.  He describes how after death, those who lived good lives go up a path where they experience good and pleasurable things, and those who lived bad lives go down a path where they experience negative punishments.  They spend the next 1000 years in either this pleasurable, or negative environment.  After the 1000 years, they move to another stage (unless they were so bad in this life.  Then they remain in the punishing depths).

Jewish

There is no afterlife for the Aristotlian Jews.  For the traditional and Platonic Jews there is an afterlife.  Some Jews speak of Sheol, a shadowy sort of place and existence.

According to Hirsh (2006):

Sheol is underneath the earth (Isa. vii. 11, lvii. 9; Ezek. xxxi. 14; Ps. lxxxvi. 13; Ecclus. [Sirach] li. 6; comp. Enoch, xvii. 6, "toward the setting of the sun"); hence it is designated as (Deut. xxxii. 22; Ps. lxxxvi. 13) or (Ps. lxxxviii. 7; Lam. iii. 55; Ezek. xxvi. 20, xxxii. 24). It is very deep (Prov. ix. 18; Isa. lvii. 9); and it marks the point at the greatest possible distance from heaven (Job xi. 8; Amos ix. 2; Ps. cxxxix. 8).

Beyond the notion of sheol, among the Jewish community, there is also the issue of the resurrection of the dead.   “Belief in the eventual resurrection of the dead is a fundamental belief of traditional Judaism.  It was a belief that distinguished the Pharisees (intellectual ancestors of Rabbinical Judaism) from the Sadducees. The Sadducees rejected the concept, because it is not explicitly mentioned in the Torah. The Pharisees found the concept implied in certain verses (Rich, 1999).”

According to Rich (1999), there are several possiblities in the afterlife.  Some few may go immediately to Heaven (Gan Eden , or Olam Ha-Ba), most others may need some purification for wrongs done.  This takes place in gehenna, a place of punishment.  Most will only stay in gehenna for 12 months, after which they will go on to Olam Ha-Ba.  A few, who were so bad may either stay in gehenna, or be ultimately destroyed.

Catholic/Christian

After this life, according to the Catholic tradition, one shall go to heaven, hell, or purgatory.  Purgatory is only a temporary stage during which any impurities are purged before one can go to heaven.  The Catholic catechism (2000) defines these states in the following way: 

HEAVEN: Eternal life with God; communion of life and love with the Trinity and all the blessed. Heaven is the state of supreme and definitive happiness, the goal of the deepest longings of humanity (1023).

HELL: The state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed, reserved for those who refuse by their own free choice to believe and be converted from sin, even to the end of their lives (1033).

PURGATORY: A state of final purification after death and before entrance into heaven for those who died in God's friendship, but were only imperfectly purified; a final cleansing of human imperfection before one is able to enter the joy of heaven (1031; cf. 1472).

New Thought Christian

Life after death, according to Fox (1940) is life like this one, on the next plane.  Our experience seems like we are in a physical body, but we are whole, with no disease.  We continue to learn lessons on the next plane.  “You will go to the sort of place, and be among the sort of people for whom you have prepared yourself by your habitual thinking and your mode of living while on this earth” (p. 202).  “There is, however, one extremely important difference – on the other side your thoughts are demonstrated immediately (p. 203).

Heaven is an ultimate goal, but it may take multiple experiences of learning on multiple planes to reach:

You do not “meet God” on the next plane any more than you do on this plane.  He is fully present on the next plane just as He is on this plane; but there as here, He is to be contacted only in one’s own consciousness by some form of prayer or spiritual treatment.  Heaven is that perfect state of consciousness in which one is in full realization of the Divine Presence.  In that consciousness there is no limitation, or evil, or decay of any kind.  When one attains to that condition he has finished with etheric he has finished with etheric planes just as surely as he has finished with the plane of physical matter.  If you can reach to that level of consciousness while still in this world (and a few have succeeded in doing so), you do not “die” or go across to the etheric planes at all; you go straight to Heaven from this earth.  Moses did this, and Enoch, and Elijah, and a few others  (p. 205).

Reincarnation

Plato

After 1000 years of either punishment or pleasure, people come to look upon the “spindle of necessity”.  They cast lots to see when they shall return to the earthly plane.  They are able to look at sample lives (human and animal alike), and choose one to live upon their return to the earthly plane.

Jewish

In the Jewish community, some believe in reincarnation.  According to Tracey Rich (1999):

There are some mystical schools of thought that believe resurrection is not a one-time event, but is an ongoing process. The souls of the righteous are reborn in to continue the ongoing process of tikkun olam, mending of the world. Some sources indicate that reincarnation is a routine process, while others indicate that it only occurs in unusual circumstances, where the soul left unfinished business behind. Belief in reincarnation is also one way to explain the traditional Jewish belief that every Jewish soul in history was present at Sinai and agreed to the covenant with G-d. (Another explanation: that the soul exists before the body, and these unborn souls were present in some form at Sinai).

Catholic/Christian

Although I know some Catholics who say they believe in reincarnation, officially, the Catholic church does not recognize reincarnation.  Most mainstream Christian churches likewise disavow the existence of reincarnation. 

New Thought Christian

Among New Thought Christians there are a variety of positions on reincarnation, some believe in it, others do not, and others take no stance one way or the other.  Fox does think reincarnation is a reality.  According to Fox (1940) we learn to live on the etheric planes after our earthly death, only to return (in about 500 years) to continue to develop mentally and spiritually.

Why is Reincarnation necessary?  Why should life have to develop in that particular way?  The reason is this:  We are here on the earth planet to learn certain lessons.  We are here to develop spiritually.  We are here to acquire full understanding and control over our mentality; and this cannot be done in one lifetime (p. 234).

American Indian approaches

Before closing with a few comments regarding Vine Deloria, the soul, afterlife, and reincarnation, I’d like to point out some results of survey research here in the United States.  According to the chart I have just passed out (see figure), American Indians have been more likely on average (78%) than the general population (71%) in the U.S., to believe in an afterlife for each year from 1973 – 2004 (with the exception of 1989).  

For the figure mentioned above, click here.

In the Summer of 2005, after a conversation we had at Bellingham at the Bob Thomas conference,  Vine sent me a copy of a manuscript he had been working on for some time.  It is not yet published, but it certainly should be.  I thought it would be appropriate to read from his most recent words on the questions this panel dedicated to his memory is addressing.  The following quotations are from Vine Deloria, Jr., Jungian Psychology and the Sioux traditions:

Soul

With regard to the soul, Vine wrote:  “the Sioux had a belief that they were souls temporarily using a body rather than bodies producing a soul.” (Ch. 8, p. 11)

Afterlife

Vine does not address the afterlife directly.  At one point, however he quotes William Powers in discussing a healing ceremony: 

The generational aspects of Yuwipi are made more consistent by the fact that all Yuwipi spirits, human and animal, are actually spirits of those who once lived on the earth. Hence the Oglala feel the sense of continuity between the living and non-living, and their belief that the spirit world is simply an extension of the earthly world is reinforced  (Ch. 6, p. 9).

Reincarnation

Finally, regarding reincarnation, Vine writes:

Not much is known of the Sioux belief in reincarnation … Specific souls could return by incarnating in a new body but the possible identification of who had been reincarnated was not a subject for speculation as a rule.  Twins were believed to have been compatible souls who had enjoyed close attachments in a previous life and now had great affinity for one another (Ch. 8, p. 11).

I’ll now leave it to my colleagues to more fully elaborate on the notions of the soul and the afterlife in the American Indian community.

References

Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition. (2000).  “Glossary and Index Analyticus.”  Washington, D.C.:  United States Catholic Conference, Inc.

F.M. Cornford, trans., (1951). The Republic of Plato. New York:  Oxford University Press.

Vine Deloria, Jr. (unpublished manuscript).  Jungian Psychology and the Sioux traditions.

Emmet Fox. (1940).  Power Through Constructive Thinking.  New York:  HarperCollins Publishers.

Emil G. Hirsh (2006).  “Sheol.”  Jewish Encyclopedia.com. < http://tinyurl.com/rkzwl >

Kaufmann Kohler, Issac Broyd, Ludwig Blau (2006).  “Soul.”  Jewish Encyclopedia.com.  http://tinyurl.com/htg7z

Emilio Ribes-Iñesta. (2004).  “Behavior is abstraction, not ostension:  conceptual and historical remarks on the nature of psychology.” Behavior and Philosophy, 32, 55-68.

Tracey R Rich. (1999). “Olam Ha-Ba: The Afterlife.”  Judaism 101. <http://www.jewfaq.org/olamhaba.htm>

Pax Lenape: The Peaceable Kingdom of the Pennsylvania Indians

Dawn Marsh Riggs

Assistant Professor, California State University, Fullerton, May 5, 2006

The history of the Lenape begins when the creator, Kishelemukong, forms North America out of the mud on a turtle’s back. This omnipotent creator is also responsible for giving life to other divine entities, all members of a sacred family. The sun and thunder are the elder brothers, corn is the mother, three of the four directions are grandfathers and the south is grandmother. All life on Turtle Island is infused with a spiritual force, animals, astronomical phenomenon, even weather. Kishelemukong created a first woman and first man out of the trees that emerged on Turtle Island, from whom all Lenape descend. According to this traditional history, life, from birth to death, is a journey to immortality or reuniting with the creator and only obtainable by living a right life. Heeding the guidance of spiritual helpers and the faithful practice of ceremonies and rituals, which honor the creator and everything on Turtle Island, is fundamental to successfully completing this journey. [1]   The ethical underpinnings of this spiritual worldview are based on reciprocity, balance and peaceful co-existence in the world and they give shape to Lenape spiritual life as well as their social, political and economic practices. The people living in the Delaware River valley and its environs in the centuries before the European invasion were well acquainted with diplomatic strategies that would preserve and protect the place they called Lenapehoking. Understanding their approach to managing their historic occupation of the region is central to the premise that Lenape people established a “peaceable kingdom” long before they encountered their first European immigrants. Their interactions with the Susquehannock, Dutch and Swedish settlers who moved into the region during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries illuminates the methods and means they employed to maintain a hold on the resources and lands they had cultivated for centuries. The impact the Lenape had on colonial land policies in this extraordinary period of change and conflict were largely responsible for the pre-existing stability and prosperity in the peaceable kingdom William Penn inherited in 1682.  The meaning and importance of Lenapehoking as a place is critical to understanding Lenape flexibility and their willingness to share resources and negotiate shared sovereignty with the multiple waves of newcomers.

The Lenape philosophy of sovereignty and land ownership during the colonial period is pivotal to explaining their responses to European immigration and their eventual dispossession of the lands in southeastern Pennsylvania. Current scholarship acknowledges the vast differences between the indigenous North American and western European perceptions regarding land use and governance, but few studies have examined the diversity of those principles from the indigenous perspective. Scholars readily note the distinctions between Dutch, Swedish, French and English colonizing systems and their Judaic-Christian philosophical and ideological foundations. However, most analyses of Native American responses to European colonization focus largely on Indian actions and reactions to the diverse colonial systems. Rarely do they take into account the intellectual and spiritual motivations for the diversity of Indian responses. Lenape philosophical and ethical tenets shaped the choices they made as communities and individuals in very specific ways.

Inquiries into the worldview and historical mythology of the Lenape Indians inevitably lead to the controversy surrounding the Walam Olum. The Walam Olum, an epic tale of Lenape migration has dominated scholarship that attempted to understand the origins and history of the Lenape people. First published in 1836, naturalist Constantine Samuel Rafinesque claimed he had inherited wooden tablets inscribed with the epic story of Lenape migration across the Bering Land Bridge 3,600 years ago. Leading scholars of Lenape studies included evidence from Rafinesque’s transcriptions to support the growing consensus for the Bering Land Bridge hypothesis for the peopling of North America and to corroborate their own suppositions about Lenape history prior to the European invasion. Historians, ethnologists and linguists--Daniel Brinton, Frank Speck, and Paul A.W. Wallace, believed the Walam Olum contained crucial evidence regarding indigenous migrations and early mound-building cultures. [2] As late as 1987, C.A. Weslager reaffirmed his confidence in the document’s authenticity despite decades of mounting evidence to the contrary. Recent scholarship has finally refuted the document’s authenticity, but the influence and misinformation remains imbedded in the limited but influential historical publications about the Lenape. [3]

Current Lenape oral traditions demonstrate a northeastern woodlands identity, although most Lenape today reside in Canada and Oklahoma. A group’s mythology, especially when the mythology relies on an oral tradition, borrows themes, characters, and events from the everyday landscape as well as from their regional neighbors. This is especially relevant when applied to an epic myth that produces endless variations and episodes as in the creation of the world or the beginnings of cultural customs and rituals. These stories and histories change overtime and are influenced by the temporal needs of the people and their communities. However, some of the most significant themes in Lenape oral traditions date back to their earliest encounters with Europeans and clearly establish their link to the environments and cultures of the northeastern United States. One of these traditions, the creation of turtle island, is shared by other northeastern indigenous cultures, including both Iroquoian and Algonquian-speaking groups. Elements that establish a link to specific geographic locations are present in many cultural traditions. Turtles, mud, water and tall tress with deep roots are environmentally specific and would not be a part of the cosmology of a desert people or people who live in the grasslands. [4]

The environmental and geographic specifics of a culture’s historical traditions are often the framework around which their worldview is built. For example, Judaic-Christian traditions, which fueled the worldview of European colonists, emerged from a Mediterranean and desert environment. In this worldview, desert and sea landscapes and the sheep, goats and fish that occupy these environments are fundamental to the historical relevance of these accounts and provide the metaphors and imagery for the spiritual and ideological values of those societies. Likewise, environmental qualities shared by the indigenous peoples of North America’s eastern woodlands utilized the forests, rivers and  certain animals specific to those landscapes in their creation of an equally diverse assortment of social, economic, religious and political systems.

The eastern woodlands identity imbedded in Lenape history helped to shape their worldview but it did not place any limitations or real boundaries on where the Lenape homeland was located. In the seventeenth-century the Lenape occupied an area that included southeastern New York and New Jersey to the north, the east bank of the Susquehanna River valley to the west, the piedmont uplands of northern Delaware to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Both New York and Philadelphia were trade centers controlled by the Lenape and they inhabited all the land that comprises the Philadelphia metropolitan region today. (See Figure 4).  Lenape oral traditions generally assert their migration into the Delaware River valley took place in the distant past. The journey was a search for a promising environment, not divinely appointed or predestined. These cultural traditions defined the Lenape relationship to their land and how they perceived their authority in the land. Their spiritual health did not include religious dogma or doctrine that dictated their occupation of a specific place on Turtle Island. There are no sacred markers on the landscape that delineate a boundary to defend or a sacred site that must be protected at all costs. More relevant was the productivity of the land and Lenape authority over its use, criteria not unlike those of the European colonizers they encountered. Ultimately Lenapehoking existed anywhere on Turtle Island that the Lenape settled. This premise should not be interpreted to suggest that the Lenape were a nomadic or rootless people. Quite the contrary. They claimed very specific boundaries and negotiated, fought for and lost territories and resources to other Indians and European colonists. How they delineated the territory they claimed authority over rested in their historic occupation and use of those lands.

Many Lenape communities, families and individuals in eighteenth century Pennsylvania made conscious decisions to relocate to lands north and west. The changing demographics of their homelands compromised their ability to live a good life. These decisions were traumatic, but their understanding of where Lenapehoking existed facilitated their ability to resettle on other lands successfully. They held a very different set of values regarding the geographic specifics of their homeland and the meanings attached to the landscape. The Lenape imbued their physical environments with sacred identities and familiar meaning like many other indigenous Americans, but these ideas should not be confused with boundary and land use issues. The Lenape were willing to defend their territory but the boundaries that defined Lenapehoking were not limited to a set of specific topographic features in environs of southeastern Pennsylvania. Given the cultural success of the Lenape into the twentieth century it is likely that the philosophical and ideological convictions were critical to their cultural, economic and political survival in the face of constant land dispossessions.

The Lenape faced Indian and European attempts to take control of their occupied lands with consistent resistance throughout the colonial period. Lenape communities adapted and responded to the intense changes brought by European colonization by seeking out diplomatic solutions to the conflicts that arose during this period. The sophisticated diplomacy practiced by the Lenape predated their first encounters with the Dutch and Swedes and is evident in their largely successful co-existence with the belligerent Susquehannock. Just as the Swedish, Dutch and English immigrants employed a variety of economic and political strategies to gain access to the resources and lands they sought to control, Lenape, Susquehannock, Iroquois and Shawnee communities in turn used a variety of tactics to protect and promote their own prosperity in this rapidly changing world. When examined from this perspective, Lenape diplomacy can be credited for creating the economic and political stability necessary for the success of William Penn’s colonial enterprise.  The origins of this benevolent and tolerant Lenape diplomacy is evident in their unique cultural history.

The history of the Indians in Pennsylvania [5] and more specifically, the history of the Lenape, can begin at any number of chronological points depending on the evidence one utilizes. Material evidence, as well as oral evidence illuminates the emergence of a distinct Lenape culture in the mid-Atlantic far deeper in the past than the first written accounts of 1524 or 1609.

The Lenape, living in southeastern Pennsylvania between 3000 b.c.e. – 1000 c.e., settled in small groups living in close range to a single and fixed critical resource (food and fresh water or tool making material) with occasional forays to other locations as needed. The boundaries of these settlements were limited, as were the territories they used and they participated in a ritualized trade system, linked by the rivers and bays, that likely exposed them to diverse cultures to the north, south and west. It is probable these were kin-based settlements with communal-based political and economic organization.

 Between 1000 c.e.- 1500 c.e., settlement patterns changed suggesting the development of a more settled lifeway linked to organized agricultural production. This shift from gathering of plant foods to food production occurred gradually. One could question whether a real difference exists between intensive gathering of plant foods and agriculture, the organized planting, sowing and harvesting of plant foods. If Lenape regularly visited an area within the boundaries of the territory they utilized to gather poke (Phtyolacca decandra), a wild plant used as food and medicine, and they weeded, pruned and harvested this plant, are they gatherers or are they farmers? Acknowledging the relationship between these two forms of food production is important to recognizing the rise of Lenape culture in pre-European southeastern Pennsylvania.

In the two centuries before European contact, the Lenape began to engage in a more complex agricultural production. While the cultivation of domesticated food plants (corn, beans, squash) continued to be secondary to wild plant food for sometime, the gradual change stimulated their move from estuarine settings to the fertile floodplains of the river systems. [6] Domesticated food plants production altered Lenape culture substantially. The production of surplus required methods of preserving the food. As the settlements invested more energy in the development of food cultivation, storage and preservation, Lenape society became more sedentary. Along with more reliable and abundant food sources came an increase in population and the appearance of more permanent villages. All of these changes culminated during the period when Europeans first encountered and observed the Indians of southeastern Pennsylvania. Though the Lenape were not large-scale agriculturists during this cultural stage, the production of domesticated food plants proved to be critical to the flexibility of the Lenape during the contact. The Lenape that Europeans initially encountered were living in small kin based, permanent and semi-permanent villages within recognized territories of trade, agriculture, foraging, hunting and social interaction. [7] The Europeans quickly recognized these reliable trade partners and cultivated a relationship with the Lenape.

The intrusion of the Susquehannock culture into Eastern Pennsylvania, an Iroquoian speaking population that migrated south from New York into the Susquehanna River valley coincided with the initial European contacts in the sixteenth century. [8] By 1500, the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks were migrating into the Susquehanna River valley from the north.  A century later, they had not only settled into the southern reaches of this river system, but dominated the new Indian-European trade in the region. What is important to this discussion is the Lenape response to this intrusion and the role they would play in this economic exchange. The Susquehannock introduced a different set of skills and merchandise into the region including new pottery making methods and designs, stone pipes, intricately carved wood and bone combs, and amulets. These new trade items reflected cultural influences from the north and west. One of the most interesting items introduced into southeastern Pennsylvania’s indigenous marketplace were beads, pipes and calumets made from catlinite, which comes from specific quarries in Wisconsin and southern Minnesota. [9] Eventually, the fur trade would come to dominate all indigenous cultures in the northeast, directly or indirectly, and the Susquehannock and Lenape were no exception. At the opening of the seventeenth century Iroquoian people to the north were already active participants in the exchange with the French. John Smith observed in 1608 that the Susquehannock possessed trader's goods. [10]

The Susquehannock introduced more than just material goods and new trade connections into Lenapehoking. At the same time the Lenape were moving into the fertile floodplains of southeastern Pennsylvania, the Iroquoian people to the north were emerging out of a period of destructive warfare. Between 1400 and 1600 c.e., the Iroquoian people formed the League of the Haudenosaunee, or Five Nations, bringing an end to the ongoing blood feuds that had dominated the culture. [11] The development of this confederacy coincides with the divergence of the Susquehannock and their move into Pennsylvania. While we do not know why this divergence took place, we can speculate about the kind of political and diplomatic savvy the Susquehannock might have brought into southeastern Pennsylvania. Experience in kin-based inter-village warfare, military expertise and territorial defensive strategies were a part of the Susquehannock cultural toolkit. An understanding of the economic and social benefits of alliances and confederacies may have led the Susquehannock to take advantage of the smaller, less consolidated cultures of the Susquehanna and Delaware River valleys. The Lenape, unlike the Susquehannock, had not experienced a similar phase of warfare. Excavations of Lenape sites older than the Iroquoian intrusion show no signs of palisaded villages or other evidence of large-scale warfare.

The mid-fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries were critical for the Lenape. They faced the Susquehannock migration from the north and west and the European encounters largely from the north and east. This small, non-warring, semi-sedentary village-based culture survived, changed and successfully responded to two larger and more economically, politically, culturally and militarily aggressive cultures, Europeans and Susquehannock. Material culture evidence corroborated by various documentary sources produced by the European encounters with the Susquehannock clarifies our understanding of the Susquehannock migration into Pennsylvania and their impact on smaller groups in this region. [12] How Europeans responded to encounters with Susquehannock and Lenape peoples was documented by textual sources produced by Europeans. [13] How we understand the Lenape response to these two groups rests on a desperately limited body of physical and documentary evidence.

Between 1500 and 1575, the Susquehannock settled into the river valley that bears their name, with the furthest southern reaches of their occupation near present-day Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Their immigration into this region left a glaring set of footprints on the cultural landscape. As they moved into this region, smaller riverine groups were subsumed within the dominant Susquehannock culture. The Shenks Ferry society had a distinct material identity that ceased to exist as a separate culture during this period. [14] During the fifteenth-century the Shenks Ferry people came into conflict with another population evidenced in their building of palisaded villages. The introduction of palisades to some villages and the relocation of others to defensible sites declared the obvious: conflicts with outside groups. The final disruption of the Shenks Ferry culture and the disappearance of their villages coincided with the arrival of the Susquehannock  on the southern part of the river between 1550 and 1575. By 1600 they had established a large town located in the present village of Washington Boro, Lancaster County, on the southern reaches of the Susquehanna River.

Both the Lenape and the Susquehannock began to engage in trade with Europeans early in the sixteenth century. There is little doubt the Susquehannock were responsible for introducing European trade goods into the region west of Lenapehoking. Most likely they obtained these goods from other Indian alliances and not through direct contact with the French or other European traders, either the French trade posts on the Saint Lawrence River or from other Algonquian groups to the south who had connections with the Europeans exploring the Chesapeake as early as 1524. [15] Correspondingly, the Lenape gained access to these same goods through their connections in the Chesapeake as well as the New York harbors. Between 1525 and 1625, the Lenape and Susquehannock shared a geographic space that must have required some negotiation of boundaries, a shared use of space and resources, as well as use of waterways and trails. Unlike the Shenks Ferry culture, the Lenape maintained a distinct and independent identity.

Limited data from Lenape sites contemporary to this period show some cultural influence from the Susquehannock based on pottery styles. [16] While this evidence is conclusive proof of a relationship between the Susquehannock and Lenape, it says little about the cultural influence or its extent. What is more important is what did not happen. Unlike the Shenks Ferry culture, the Lenape did not build defensive structures or palisaded villages and their identity was not absorbed by the Susquehannock culture. No  evidence exists of increased warfare ensuing from this early contact between the two groups, though later pressures would result in a period of open hostilities between them. The Lenape managed to maintain hegemony in the region despite Susquehannock intrusion.

The Lenape, from pre-contact into the period of mass migration in the mid-eighteenth century, developed a strategy of acting more as a cultural net or mesh in the geographic region. They co-existed around, beside and in between numerous other ethnic and cultural groups exchanging with those cultures what they needed to succeed and avoiding conflict by allowing the rest to pass through the net. One factor that contributed to Lenape success was the consistent size and organization of settlements throughout this period. The small family based settlements left a small footprint on a vast expanse of territory. The Susquehannock found it difficult to raise any large scale attack against the Lenape, and there were no central settlements that could be seized and dominated.  Initially, European interests were unimpaired by the small settlements that were scattered throughout the region.  Even after European contact forced the relocation of many Lenape village sites from the broad floodplains to more inland locations on small tributaries, this movement did not apparently change the autonomous and dispersed quality of these communities. Lenape settlements were band based and political and economic ties binding them together were not critical to their independence. While the nature of their social, political and social organization did not rely on close contact with neighboring villages, this autonomy does not negate their connectedness.

A second factor that contributed to the continued autonomy of the Lenape was their apparent initial lack of interest in European trade goods. Archaeologists who studied the Lenape sites remain puzzled by the lack of European trade goods during this period of early contact. Despite their close proximity to European trade sources, the few sites excavated contemporary to this period show little if any use of European goods, while similar sites in other culture areas such as New England and New York demonstrate their importance. [17] The lack of European materials in Lenape sites may have several possible explanations. Much of the territory occupied by the Lenape during this early period lies beneath a heavily built and occupied landscape, the greater modern Philadelphia region. While this may serve as a partial explanation, it does not account for the evidence produced from more intact, isolated sites that show few European trade items. A second explanation suggests the European trade partners in the Delaware Bay and its environs had little to offer for trade and the Lenape may have found more value in these items by passing them on to other trade partners. The Dutch and Swedes who manned the forts in this earliest period were often in dire need of supplies and had little to offer the Lenape. The patterns of dependency on European trade goods that so often proved fatal to the economic and political sovereignty of Indian societies during colonization were delayed for much of the Lenape culture in southeastern Pennsylvania. Their continued reliance on both farming and fishing, rather than any deep involvement in the fur trade placed them in a unique situation as suppliers of fish and maize to struggling Dutch, Swedish and English settlements and gave them a nominal advantage. The small size of the Lenape settlements on a vast territory and their limited involvement in the developing Indian-European trade allowed them to continue to negotiate their place in Lenapehoking while the European presence expanded around them. Lenape communities co-existed with other populations whether Dutch, Susquehannock or Swedish.

As early as 1626, the Susquehannock struggled to get past the Lenape who stood between them and a direct and profitable access to the Dutch and Swedes. [18] Lenape towns were geographically located at strategic points in this trade network and as a result, the Susquehannock were forced to accept them as middlemen in many negotiations. The Swedes and Dutch in turn initially were more than happy to have the Lenape negotiators running interference between them and the Susquehannock, whom these Europeans perceived as a more volatile trade partner. By 1634, the Susquehannock struggle for direct access to the Europeans escalated into an unprecedented period of conflict between themselves and the Lenape. What demands more close examination is the relationships the Lenape were able to negotiate successfully between the expansionist, militaristic and profit-seeking Susquehannock to the west and their counterpart, the Dutch, to the east. For a century, the Lenape negotiated a peaceable kingdom in the Delaware River valley despite the numerous factors working against that peace. Before either William Penn (1682) or his agents (1680) set foot in Lenapehoking, the Lenape negotiated successful trade and land agreements with the Susquehannock, Dutch, Swedes and English. With the exception of a brief period of open conflict with the Susquehannock and the competition between the Dutch, Swedes and English to control their traditional territory, Pax Lenape prevailed. If the Lenape were responsible for creating the economically and politically stable climate that would facilitate the success of Penn’s colony, then it should be possible to recognize a pattern to their negotiations with the Dutch and Swedes. Similarly, it may also be possible to identify Dutch, Swedish and English responses to a different Indian-European political climate in the Delaware River valley than those they exhibited elsewhere on the North American continent. Perhaps by 1682, some Lenape bands recognized in William Penn an opportunity to strengthen their hegemony over Pax Lenape.

The earliest European accounts of the Lenape establish them as peaceful and enthusiastic traders. The Dutch initially encountered Lenape in 1609 near Sandy Hook Bay south of Staten Island "who seeming very glad of our coming," brought tobacco to trade for knives and beads and showed an interest in English clothing. [19] Juet's account eagerly remarks that the Indians "have a great store of Maiz," a trade item that would become vital to Dutch survival when their own supplies from home ran out. Juet, an officer on Henry Hudson's Dutch ship the Halve Maen, recognized an important trade item when he saw one. As an experienced sailor and officer, he understood how vital such a resource was. The following day, according to this account, at another point on the bay, some of the crew went on land and were greeted by Lenape who presented them with gifts of tobacco and also showed them where they could find currants and acorns, both portable food sources. The Lenape came on board, men, women and children bringing dried currants and hemp, either as gifts and trade items. Juet, with an eye for marketable commodities, remarked that they were dressed in "Skinnes of divers sorts of good Furres." Despite this initial attempt by the Lenape to establish a positive and possibly profitable trade relationship, the suspicious Dutch slipped away in the night because they "durst not trust them."

Hudson's voyage in 1609 was the legal basis for the Dutch claims in the area. In order to establish and maintain their presence in the Delaware River valley the Dutch purchased lands and established several minor settlements in the first half of the seventeenth century, Burlington Island, Swanedael, Fort Nassau and Fort Beversreede. The Dutch set the colonial legal precedent in the Delaware valley for purchasing lands from the Indians to establish legal privileges against anticipated English claims to the contrary. Historians erroneously credit William Penn with establishing an exceptional and unique relationship with local Indians by purchasing land titles from them. However, the Dutch pursued a similar policy nearly a century earlier. According to Francis Jennings, this was the “singularly benevolent feature of New Netherlands.” [20] This policy had its origin in the competition between the Dutch and English in the East Indies. The Dutch were compelled to formally recognize Indian title to land and initiate purchases since a land grant was not a part of the company’s original charter in North America. Isaac De Rasiere, an agent for the Dutch West India Company, knew well that “a contract being made thereof and signed by them [Indians] in their manner, since such contracts upon other occasions may be very useful to the company.” [21]

The first Dutch settlements were problematic at best, suffering from poor planning, inconsistent occupation and inadequate supplies. Built in 1626, Fort Nassau, near present day Gloucester, New Jersey was the most successful of these settlements, remaining an active trade post until dismantled by Peter Stuyvesant in 1648. [22] The earliest Dutch encounters on record reveal that a Lenape/Susquehannock conflict was already under way, the Lenape being forced from their settlements on the west bank of the Delaware River due to Susquehannock attacks. French Walloons (French speaking Belgians) occupying Burlington Island had already set up one trade relationship with the Susquehannock. De Rasiere, director of this settlement, reported the Susquehannock had made contact, seeking a trade relationship. The Dutch official reciprocated this arrangement and confirmed the deal with an exchange of gifts, the Indians giving ten beaver pelts and the Dutch giving duffel cloth, beads and hatchets. De Rasiere in this record remarks that  “heretofore we could never get in touch” with the Susquehannock. Either the Lenape strategically prevented the Susquehannock from having direct contact with the Dutch trade or the conflict between these two Indian groups predated European trade. [23] The Susquehannock were anxious to establish a relationship with the Dutch and made a deal with de Rasiere “that when the season approached I would send them a sloop or small ship, until whose arrival they would keep the peltries." [24]

The Susquehannock, seeking to out maneuver the fur trade competition to the north with a direct European trade partner to the east, were aware of the critical nature of negotiating a firm trade pact with the Dutch. The only limitation on this unimpaired access to Dutch trade were the Lenape whose traditional territory cut a broad barrier between the Susquehannock River Indians and the Atlantic trade coming down the Delaware River from larger ports in the north and up the Delaware river through the Delaware Bay. In this situation, the Susquehannock modus operandi was an attempt to force the Lenape into a compliant relationship in which the Susquehannock would dominate the trade arrangements with the Dutch and other Europeans they would encounter to the east. However, after a brief period of open hostilities, the Susquehannock failed to force the Lenape into a submissive economic or political role in the Delaware Valley. By 1638 the Lenape reached a peaceful and mutually beneficial understanding with their Susquehannock neighbors, returned to this location and continued their previous role as middlemen.

The Lenape were well aware of their dangerous position. In this same report, de Rasiere urged his company to secure Burlington Island by building a strong presence there. Both the English and the Swedes had designs on the region and if they built a well supplied trade post there, the Dutch would command the trade on the whole river and the control of this river trade could have grave implications for the English both to the south in the Chesapeake and to the north on the Hudson River. No one can say that the Dutch were not entrepreneurial visionaries. De Rasiere argued that the Dutch must fortify this outpost because "the natives (Lenape) say they are afraid to hunt in winter, being constantly harassed by war with the Minques (Susquehannock), whereas if a fort were there, an effort could be made to reconcile them (italics mine)."

Lenape showed little interest in or ability to cooperate in de Rasiere’s venture, although he had identified them as prospective participants in the fur trade. His attention to reconciling the differences between the Susquehannock and the Lenape however, most likely reflected his interest in securing Susquehannock access to the fur monopoly. Once the Susquehannock sought a connection to the Dutch, De Rasiere felt it was imperative that he act swiftly to solidify this relationship. A Lenape leader acted as a go-between in these Susquehannock-Dutch fur trade negotiations. A Lenape “who is at peace with them [Susquehannock], brought them here and offers to go with us and show us the kill or river where they [Susquehannock] dwell, saying that their houses are full of skins." [25] This unnamed Lenape individual, who likely represented one or more settlements, negotiated a safe and profitable role for his people. By acting as middlemen Lenape successfully protected their territory, and preserved and expanded an economic and political niche in these changing times. Without their skills as negotiators and their interest in preserving peace and stability, violence and chaos were inevitable.

Why was De Rasiere concerned with protecting Lenape interests if he knew they had limited access to furs? Two factors suggest that the Dutch basis for their relationship with the Lenape was different than with the Susquehannock. First, supplies to the Dutch settlements on the Delaware were sporadic and inadequate. These small settlements suffered from shortages in food, tools, building supplies and expertise. De Rasiere, in his role as director struggled to strengthen and expand the settlements. A secure Lenape-Dutch trade in maize and other foodstuffs proved to be vital to their survival. Secondly, Dutch settlers traded on their own without the sanction and authority of the province. De Rasiere tried to stabilize the power between various Lenape leaders and he feared that this illegal, unregulated trade would upset the delicate balance of power. Keeping in mind that there were no overarching political or economic ties that obligated one autonomous Lenape settlement to another, de Rasiere was doing his best to keep the peace between representatives of different Lenape factions. Writing to Holland he pleaded for the power to appoint a trustworthy diplomat who could oversee Indian negotiations. De Rasiere claimed "that the natives are treated well, each according to his station and disposition, and that when (representatives) of two or more nations are present, one chief is not shown more favor than the other." [26] Trying to secure Lenape friendship required a delicate touch and that "meanwhile be on one's guard or else things are apt to go wrong." The Dutch needed the Lenape for food and supplies and the Susquehannock for furs.

David Pieterszoon de Vries, provides further evidence on the economic and political niche created by the Lenape. [27] During the winter of 1632 and 1633 De Vries was on the Delaware trading largely for maize and beans. His first encounter in December was on the bay at Swaendael, a Dutch trading post that was destroyed as the result of a cultural misunderstanding between the Dutch and the Lenape. [28] The Lenape de Vries encountered were concerned that this ship was bringing a reprisal. Once it was clear that the Dutch were not their to retaliate, the Lenape proceeded to make peace with the Dutch and told their account of this incident. Swandael (present day Lewes, Delaware) was the first Dutch settlement on the Delaware Bay. The settlement was destroyed in 1632, by the Lenape. According to two Dutch sources, [29] the Lenape relayed the story of its destruction. Apparently, the Dutch settlers erected their royal emblem in front of their palisaded trade post. Several Lenape unknowingly offended the Dutch by taking the emblem made of copper or tin to make tobacco pipes when the post was unmanned. The Dutch overreacted when they returned and made this clear to the Lenape who came to trade. In order to rectify the situation the Lenape killed the leader who was responsible for this offense, as was their legal custom. The Dutch realized their overreaction had in turn caused another, potentially more dangerous, response and chastised the Indians for taking the law into their own hands. As a result, the relatives of the dead Lenape leader attacked the Swandael post and killed the Dutch inhabitants. Later that year, the Dutch and Lenape laid the matter to rest through negotiations, explanations and gifts.

The Dutch continued to rely heavily on the Lenape as dependable partner’s for food, rather than furs. In January 1633, food stores on the Dutch ship were dangerously low and they sought out the Lenape in order to purchase beans. Repeatedly they encountered Indians with furs to trade, but the Dutch were not interested. They needed food supplies and they had nothing of equivalent value to exchange for the furs. During this brief stay near former Fort Nassau several contingents of Lenape who had some furs instead of food to trade were turned away by the Dutch who repeatedly insisted that they came to trade food, not fur. Finally, after several days, this group of Lenape traders apparently were convinced that the Dutch did not want furs and sent nine sachems to the ship to reach peaceful terms. The Lenape sachems sealed the agreement by the presentation of one beaver pelt per leader. The Dutch attempted to reciprocate this gift exchange with axes, cloth and the like, but the Lenape refused the gifts. De Vries, surprised at this rejection reported that "they refused them [the gifts], declaring that they had not made presents in order to receive others in return, but for the purpose of a firm peace." [30] The Lenape were reaffirming their hegemony in the region and their willingness to continue to negotiate and trade with the Dutch. Over the course of the next few days, the Dutch traded axes, cloth and kettles for Lenape corn and beans. De Vries returned faithfully the following month seeking out the same Indians for more food supplies, only to find that these Indians had departed the Fort Nassau site. The ship stayed in the area for eight days before they finally encountered a Lenape couple in a canoe who were willing to sell some maize and beans. De Vries inquired about the lack of trade activity at a site that had been active only a month before and found the couple unwilling to talk and extremely tense about their location. The next day, it was clear why this Lenape couple had been reluctant to stay long. A war party of fifty Susquehannock approached the boat, walking across the frozen river on pieces of broken canoe they laid across the ice. The Dutch refused to allow them to board. Despite their desire to obtain food for trade, de Vries new that direct trade with the Susquehannock would betray their established relationship with the Lenape and make them vulnerable in the future. While the Dutch crew seemed disappointed at the loss of a possible trade opportunity, de Vries wisely argued this was one trade opportunity that may end in disaster.  Several days later the ship met some Lenape who were retreating from a Susquehannock attack. In the attack, the Susquehannock had destroyed their stores of corn and burnt their homes. The Lenape explained "they had escaped in great want and were compelled to be content with what they could find in the woods." [31] Foraging in the middle of winter, despite the Lenape expertise, could prove to be bleak.

Some scholars have suggested that the Lenape role in the corn trade was a brief cultural adaptation in response to the Swedish settlements that began after 1638, an argument that rests largely on the suggestion that the Lenape were not horticulturists, but foragers. [32] If the Lenape adaptation to European settlements was their increased horticultural activity, then the beginning of this adaptation must have occurred much earlier than the Swedish encounter. The earliest Dutch exchange with the Lenape was a regular, dependable trade in corn and beans. For individual Lenape families this trade pattern required changes in settlement patterns and a more sedentary lifestyle in the early 1600s. Sowing and harvesting had a direct impact on the mobility of family members, especially women. In Lenape culture, women usually controlled food production, distribution and storage. In turn, the growing role the Lenape played supplying food commodities fro Europeans in the regions resulted in a greater political and economic interest in preserving lands that were best suited for these gardens, as well as lands that were located reasonably close to the areas where the commerce took place. Lenape interests rested in preserving political and economic hegemony in the region. They filled a niche in the area that did not threaten the Susquehannock or the Dutch interests, but instead provided vital services and commodities to the various trade partners.

The stable relationship with the Dutch was short lived. The irregularity of the Dutch control of the Delaware River invited encroachment by both the English and the Swedish colonists. English territories to the north in New England and to the south in Virginia posed the greatest threat to the Dutch as well as continued ongoing hostilities between the Dutch and Indians in the north. In 1634, Thomas Yong expedition, contemporary to the one lead by de Vries, sheds further light on the niche the Lenape were developing. Yong initially was introduced to the Susquehannock form of diplomacy. A group of Susquehannock leaders approached his ship and explained to the English that they had just defeated some Lenape and they "cut down their corn" and offered to share some of this plunder with the English. Although the Susquehannock were seeking trade with the English, they had no beaver pelts with them. They promised to return in ten weeks, an interval Yong misunderstood to be ten days, with beaver to trade. This exchange is significant because, the Susquehannock made a point of destroying the Lenape corn stores and crops in the field suggesting that the Lenape were horticulturists and did cultivate large surpluses of corn. Secondly, this exchange illustrates the role Lenape played on this economic battlefield. The Susquehannock knew the Lenape did not threaten their hegemony in the Delaware River valley as fur traders or as direct competitors in that exchange. The real limitations the Lenape presented to the Susquehannock were their role in the corn trade and their influence in the territory that lay between the Susquehannock interior access to furs and the Dutch trade. In their earliest and most vulnerable stage of development Dutch, Swedish and English settlements required a reliable source of food. What the Susquehannock did not know was how much, how little or for how long the Europeans would honor or need this alliance with the Lenape.

This same account describes another encounter between the English and Lenape to the north. The English were interested in learning about the northern sections of the Delaware River. Like many European explorers, Yong was convinced that there was a northwest passage and he imagined the Delaware River was that route. Some Lenape claimed the Susquehannock interfered with their ability to hunt elk along the northernmost reaches of the. The ensemble of Lenape, who represented different towns, formally asked the English for protection from the Susquehannock and the English pledged not only to defend them but, to pursue the Susquehannock into their own lands if they attacked the Lenape. In exchange, according to Yong, the Lenape pledged their loyalty to the English crown and no other Europeans. The Lenape "accepted the conditions and soe wee made a solemne peace, they not long departed and it was spread all over the River, that I had made peace with them . . . and I would defend them against their enemies the Minquoes (Susquehannock)." [33]

The Lenape took this solemn pledge quite seriously, but after several decades of experiences, their familiarity with European treachery tempered their faith in the agreement. Some members of this entourage decided to put this pact to a test. In a unique, but telling incident, shortly after this deal was made, the English met with more Lenape further up the river who were already aware of the English pledge of protection. After these Lenape boarded the English vessel, they too, were presented with gifts, as the English had done with the other Lenape sachems down river. The youngest sachem called his people together and made a "long oration" and explained the pledge the English had made with the Lenape. Following this explanation, the English and Lenape proceeded to trade. The marketplace operated without interruption for five days. On the final night, the Lenape on shore sent out an alarm that a Susquehannock attack was underway. The younger sachem, who was spending the night on board the ship, asked that his people be allowed to board the English ship for protection. The English agreed to this request but insisted on disarming them. The next morning Yong "found this to proceed of nothing else but their pollicie to trie whether, if occasion were, I would really assist them or no." [34] The Lenape recognized the value of a strong alliance with the English against the Susquehannock in 1634 and knew that they could only rely on this alliance if the English passed the test. Yong refers to their "pollicie" as though this were an established pattern for the Lenape that other unsuspecting English negotiators be made aware of.

While it is difficult to ascertain when the conflict between the Lenape and Susquehannock began, its demise is clear. [35] In 1638, Sweden made its claim to territory on the Delaware River, adding another facet to an increasingly complicated milieu. The history of New Sweden’s first five years are poorly documented due to the loss of Peter Minuit’s account. Minuit, former second director general of New Netherlands and the organizer and leader of New Sweden’s first venture, knew the importance of establishing legitimate territorial possession of the desired lands in the Delaware Valley. The Dutch set the precedent by purchasing lands from the Indians and so Minuit, with instructions from the Swedish crown, planned to do the same. The directors knew that it was imperative they acquire deeds to Indian lands if they were going to defend their claims to their Dutch and English competitors. The initial orders given to the leader of the New Sweden Company reflected a similar policy regarding their relationship with the Lenape as rightful owners of the lands they wanted to acquire legally. Central to this policy was the Indian “sale” of lands and the issuing of a “certificate or declaration” recognizing the Swedish claim and as a result, the collective sovereignty of the Lenape in the Delaware Valley. [36] Until recently scholars assumed that since many of the key investors and leaders in the New Sweden Company were Dutch, it would follow that they held a charter for the company. No such document has ever been located and scholars question that a charter ever existed. [37]

The Swedes followed European custom by first seeking out any Christians who would lay claim to the territory by firing their cannon as they sailed along the Delaware River and up Minquas Kill (Christina Creek). Having concluded no Christians lived in the territory they sought to acquire, Minuit invited “all the nations or people to whom the land really belonged to come before him.” [38] How the Swedes did this is not clear from the evidence. Once the attendees were present, the Swedes asked if they were willing to sell the land “lying about there, as many days’ journeys as he would request.” The Lenape later contested the land exchange with the Swedes. Lenape sachem Mattahorn, present during this exchange, gave his account to the Dutch in 1648 and 1651. He claimed that Minuit had bought only a small parcel of land, small enough to fit inside “six trees” and large enough to “plant some tobacco on it.” In 1648, Mattahorn accused the Swedes of stealing. [39] The consent for this land sale was agreed upon by representatives of several Lenape settlements and the Susquehannock who “all unanimously with one another declared in what manner they transported, ceded, and transferred the said land” to the New Sweden Company and they “acknowledged that they, to their satisfaction, were paid and fully compensated for it.” [40]     

This transaction marked the founding of New Sweden and has serious ramifications for the changing role of the Lenape in the region. The founding of Fort Christina (present day Wilmington, Delaware) at the junction of Minquas Kill and the Delaware River was a strategic move on the part of the Minuit and the New Sweden Company. Christina Kill was a direct route into the heart of Susquehannock territory by way of the Minquas Path and a direct conduit for the more abundant fur resources upriver. The presence of the Susquehannock in this negotiation would suggest that the Lenape approved of a Swedish-Susquehannock fur trade alliance. Since the Lenape had already secured a trade relationship with Europeans based on food procurement and a variety of diplomatic and communication services, they were not threatened by the Susquehannock fur trade with any European partner. The Lenape were well aware by 1638 that their participation in the fur trade was unfeasible except for very localized and limited exchanges or as middleman who would profit from their strategic location. They also knew that war with the Susquehannock interfered with the continuation of their own successful relationships with the Europeans. The Lenape were interested in stability in the region by maintaining and preserving their settlements in this strategic location. Negotiating a peace with the Susquehannock depended on their mutual agreement or recognition of the advantages of peace as well as recognition of the non-overlapping roles they could both assume in their dealings with the Europeans. By 1638, the New Sweden Company and the Swedish crown recognized the Lenape and the Susquehannock as “the people to whom the land belonged.”

Royal instructions to Johan Printz, Governor of New Sweden, in 1642 granted Swedish claims by “virtue of the deeds entered into with the wild inhabitants of the country, as its rightful owners.” His first meeting with the Indians in 1643 included representatives from the Susquehannock and Lenape people. This cooperation suggests that hostilities had been short-lived. The Swedes purchased lands from Lenape and Susquehannock representatives for different intentions. The lands purchased from the Lenape were for occupation and permanent settlements and those purchased from the Susquehannock were to establish and foster trade relationships.

The Swedish enterprise was really a Dutch-Swedish venture in the beginning. Their company was primarily interested in the tobacco trade. Thereafter, their interests shifted to the fur trade, minerals, fishing and even silk worms. None of these prospects proved to be very fruitful because the Swedes failed to establish a single successful outpost. By the time Printz assumed the governorship of New Sweden (1642) the Swedish settlers, like the Dutch and English, depended heavily on the Lenape food trade. Printz actually identified the Lenape as obstacles to the settlement’s self-sufficiency. He complained in his reports that “we have no beaver trade with them [Lenape] but only maize trade” and he further reasoned that if the Lenape were out of the way “each one could  . . . feed and nourish himself unmolested without their maize.” [41]   His frustration suggests that the dependability, quantity and quality of food made available for trade by the Lenape undermined his efforts to promote the colonist’s self-sufficiency. Printz pleaded with the directors in Sweden to send supplies and a military force. He reasoned that “nothing would be better than to send over here a couple hundred soldiers, and [remain here] until we broke the necks of all of them in this River.” [42] Printz’s reasoning is not surprising. Indian-white hostilities had irrupted in New Netherlands to the north and between Susquehannock and Maryland colonists to the south. The English and the Dutch would both accuse the Swedes of selling arms to the Indian factions with the intention of profiting from the conflicts through trade with the disaffected parties. [43] Neither Printz nor the last governor of New Sweden, Risingh denied these charges. Printz was pragmatic and presumed that as the colonies expanded, and inter-colonial competition increased, hostilities were inevitable. The sooner his colony became sufficient, the more likely were their chances of success. The Lenape were a crutch he did not want to rely on.

Despite the best efforts of Printz, the Swedish continued to depend on the “maize trade” throughout the colony’s existence, but the inability and unpredictability of the Swedes to acquire trade goods left the Lenape dissatisfied with their Swedish trade alliances. Risingh reports that the Lenape bought items on credit from the Swedes and traded with the Susquehannock for items that they could then in turn sell to the Dutch with a greater profit, undermining the stability of the Swedish settlements. [44] Despite the growing dissatisfaction on both sides, the Swedes continued to employ Lenape as messengers and guides. Both Printz and Risingh referred on multiple occasions to Lenape agents who carried messages of extreme importance and strategic value. [45] The records reveal no major outbreaks of violence between the Swedes and the Lenape despite multiple external pressures. The Lenape, even though they were at the center of the economic and political maelstrom of these colonial settlements, managed to avoid open conflict. Swedish historians, not unlike their Pennsylvania counterparts eulogized New Sweden’s peaceable kingdom crediting Swedish benevolence, rather than Lenape expertise and experience. [46]

In 1655, the Swedish lost the colony to the Dutch, who in turn relinquished it to the English in 1664. At the close of this period of intense economic, political and social interaction, the Lenape emerged changed, but remarkably undamaged. Violence, shifting subsistence strategies and disease had all played a part in reorganizing Lenape settlements and territories.  However the Lenape continued to exercise collective sovereignty in the Delaware River Valley so much so that William Penn, following the already established patterns of diplomacy approached the Lenape in the 1680s regarding land purchases.

The Lenape for their part, surely recognized in the earliest phases of the next wave of English colonial efforts, that their strength lay in negotiation, not confrontation. Through trial, error and astute observation of their competitors and adversaries they acknowledged that their power would rest in their ability to exploit the needs of both the Susquehannock and the Europeans. Providing food, alliances and loyalty, and a variety of diplomatic and communication services allowed the Lenape to create a successful political, cultural and economic niche in and around the Dutch, Swedes and the Susquehannock. Beginning in 1674 the Lenape were introduced to a new diplomatic partner, the English. The arrival of these new trade partners initially posed no threat. They were just a different group of negotiators and Lenape diplomacy was well established and prepared to respond to the new negotiations. Between 1674 and the arrival of William Penn in 1682, the Lenape continued to maintain stable diplomatic and trade relations with the English. Their neighbors, the Dutch and Swedish colonists, made similar adjustments to the new political and economic authority in the region. The English, led by Edmund Andros were astutely aware that making the transition a peaceful one would preserve the region’s economic stability. Edmund Andros understood the importance of Lenape diplomacy and initiated a relationship with them that lasted until Penn’s arrival. William Penn, credited with the establishment of an exceptional colonial policy and the creation of a “peaceable kingdom,” did not create the political, cultural and economic environment, he only inherited it. The Lenape clearly laid the groundwork for Penn’s “peaceable kingdom” and offered to extend Pax Lenape to include William Penn’s followers.

Treaty Settlements and The Management of Natural Resources: A Comparison between American Indian Tribes and Maori Tribes.

Alex Steenstra, Ph.D.

Economics Dept., 1 University Blvd., Eastern Oregon University,La Grande, Oregon 97850 (541)962-3371; alex.steenstra@eou.edu

Introduction

            The indigenous peoples of the United States and New Zealand have in common the British government’s nineteenth century policy to conquer and settle newly acquired lands.  The Crown did not look at the indigenous populations as a source of labor (slavery), instead they desired title to the lands and the unrestricted use of natural resources.  From the Crown’s perspective, all indigenous peoples looked the same and a single policy of treaty settlements would curtail the expenses of war, pacify tribes, and allow for the settlement and development of the land.  In New Zealand this resulted in The Treaty of Waitangi [1] (1851) which was to include all Maori tribes and land.  Due to the size of the United States, one treaty could not cover all tribes and as a result many treaties were signed with individual tribes.  Treaties in both countries were broken and tribes have made attempts to address the breaches of the governments’ promises in courts.  This paper will compare and contrast tribal and governmental approaches to treaty settlements in the United States and New Zealand and identify some potential impacts of settlements on the natural environment.

Historical Context in the U.S.

            U.S. Indian policy was centralized in the federal government to better coordinate its objectives and has been cyclical in nature due to changing attitudes towards the Indian people.  Before declaring independence from England, the British colonies’ main concern was to keep pace with the advancements of Spain and France in trade and land settlements.  The threat of the French and Indian Was on the colonies’ resources and existence convinced the British to coordinate its efforts and nationalize Indian policy.  In 1763 the Royal Proclamation centralized authority over Indian affairs and from that point on, Indian lands could only be obtained and settled with the consent of the Crown through negotiations with tribes.

            The Indian policies of the United States sought to gain an acknowledgment of submission from the Indians by formulating a single, coordinated national Indian policy.  The constitution of 1789 endeavored to correct the flaws of the Articles of Confederation in sharing sovereignty with the States in Indian affairs by delegating to Congress exclusive power over Indian affairs.  Congress was committed to deal with the Indians within their territory with “utmost good faith” and to formulate “laws founded in justice and humanity . . . for preventing wrongs being done . . . [and] for preserving the peace and friendship with them.”

            To preserve the peace and obtain Indian lands, a policy of negotiating treaties made practical and economic sense because it attempted to avoid costly wars.  Negotiations, however, implied and recognized Indian sovereign powers and an indigenous transferable title to land ^[2] .  Negotiated treaties established reservations with well-defined borders which were mostly ignored by the people living on the frontier.

            Pressures from the pioneers forced the government to formulate a policy that would satisfy the increasing land needs for the pioneers and protect Indian tribes from annihilation.  Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson exercised the greatest influence in the development of federal Indian policy which has lasted in the twenty-first century.  President Jefferson viewed Indians as being “equal in body and mind” and his Indian policy was based on coexistence and gradualism.  The objective was to change the Indian into the image of the white man through the process of civilization which believed to take several generations (Gibson, 281; Wrone, 98).  Transforming the Indian hunter to a civilized farmer would reduce the natives’ land needs and bring peace.

            President Jackson described Indians as “a degraded brutal race of savages, whom it was the will of God should perish at the approach of civilization” and “subjects of the United States with no sovereignty of their own.”  Indian nations, Jackson argued, “retarded progress and for their own good the ‘unhappy race’ must be moved from civilization (Wrone, 99).  To legitimize the dislocation, The Indian Removal Act was passed in 1830 which marked the beginning of forced removal of Indian from tribal lands to reservations.

            Since the Jacksonian era, federal Indian policy has oscillated between the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian philosophical attitudes towards the Indians.  In 1887, Congress passed the Allotment Act to make available surplus reservation lands to non-Indian settlers.  The Act remained into effect until 1934 and reduced American Indian lands from almost 3 billion acres in 1500 to 48 million (Gibson 506).  With the momentum of the New Deal, the Wheeler-Howard Bill or the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) was passed.  The IRA has as it objectives to promote cultural pluralism or self-determination, improve Indian education, and access to health care, train and produce tribal leaders, encourage economic development, and repeal the General Allotment Act.

            The full potential of IRA, however, was never realized since political opposition and the financial burden of World War II caused it to be under funded.  Many politicians argue that true self-determination should include the full liberation of Indians and the termination of the federal government’s relation with the Indians.  The termination policy lasted till 1961 when John F. Kennedy initiated the “self-determination” policy to develop Indian economics and reduce their dependence on the federal government.  Today’s Indian policy avoids the extreme measures of termination but uses similar self-reliance arguments to justify smaller budgets in fulfilling treaty obligations.

For Table 1: Cyclical Phases of Principal U.S. Federal Indian Policies, click here

Historical Context in New Zealand

New Zealand Maori policies have followed a similar pattern as U.S. Indian policy.  The so-called Declaration of Independence was signed in 1835.  In March 1834, the Crown’s representative, General Busby held a meeting at Waitangi with several Maori Chiefs an instituted a national flag in order to allow ships built and registered in New Zealand to fly the Independent Tribes flag and be recognized according to maritime law. In October 1835 Busby called for a second meeting to counteract the French attempt to set up an independent state at Hokianga. Over thirty northern Chiefs signed the Declaration of Independence and were called the Confederation of United Tribes.

            In August 1839 the British Government sent Captain William Hobson to New Zealand with orders to annex a part of New Zealand and place it under British rule. Hobson was to sign Maori chiefs to a treaty that would accept British sovereignty. Under the treaty, the Maori and their land were to be protected from land speculation and the interests of the 2,000 settlers already established in New Zealand were to be secured. In the treaty, Maori would retain possession of their lands and fishing areas while accepting the new Colonial government's pre-emptive right to purchase land. All sale of land by either Maori or European would be transacted via the government. In addition, Maori would accept the sovereignty of the Queen and were guaranteed the same rights and privileges as those of all British subjects.  Hobson promised the tribes that all land which had been unfairly bought would be returned to the tribes and that all land transactions made before 1840 would be investigated by a Land Court.  The Treaty of Waitangi (Waitangi means weeping (or noisy) waters) was signed on February 6, 1840.  Not all tribes were in favor of the treaty and not all Maori chiefs were present at Waitangi to sign the treaty.  Hobson traveled around the north and south islands to gather additional signatures. It was not until the September 3, 1840 that the final signature was obtained. Over 500 Chieftains signed the treaty but a number of important Chiefs did not sign the Treaty. In May 1840 Hobson declared British sovereignty over New Zealand.

            Although the Treaty stated that the individual Maori tribes should have undisturbed possession of their lands, forests, fisheries and other taonga (treasures) and that Maori land could only be sold to the Government, under pressure from settlers the government gradually ignored terms of the settlement and allowed non-Maori to settle on tribal lands.  This development led to the era of the New Zealand Land Wars (1845-1865). The legacy of the Land Wars continues today but the battles are fought in courtrooms and around the negotiation table. A number of major historical treaty claims have been settled since the 1980s, generally with a formal apology by the government, the exchange of money and return of Crown-owned land.

            What followed next is a series of Native Land Courts that continued the gradual loss of tribal owned and controlled lands.  In 1862 the New Zealand Parliament passed a Native Lands Act which allowed settlers to buy Maori land themselves. The Act allowed Maori a large role in deciding land ownership. Eleven Maori were made judges these local of the court system.  However, in 1865 the localized system was replaced with a centralized system that was mostly controlled by Pakeha (non-Maori from European decent) and based on the settler’s legal system.  The Maori judges were demoted anddid no longer have a decisive role in the court.  It was not until 1923 that a judge of part-Maori descent was appointed again.

            During that time, Pakeha judges convened courts in towns often times far removed from lands under dispute. Distance and the amount of time (often months) to investigate claims discouraged or made it unfeasible for many Maori to attend the court proceedings. Any individual, whether a rightful owner or not, could apply for investigation of title. This forced whole communities into court, because it only considered evidence presented to it on the day. If customary owners boycotted proceedings, or were simply unaware their lands were under investigation, the land could be awarded to others. Even successful claimants often found that it was so expensive to secure title (including court fees and payments to lawyers, interpreters, surveyors, etc.) that they had to sell some of the interest in the land they had been awarded. Debt entrapment became a standard technique of unscrupulous land speculators.

            The complexity of Maori customs relating to land ownership and succession were ignored by the court in favor of a simplified set of Pakeha rules. Variations in tribal customs were mostly ignored as were the customary dispersement of resource rights among several groups attached to a single plot of land. This often increased tensions among tribes appearing in court, forcing them to compete for exclusive rights to lands they might once have shared. 

            The Native Land Court undermined tribal ownership.  The results of the court were to convert customary Maori title into lands held under grant from the Crown and to remove "communalism" and encourage the sale of Maori lands to the settlers.  A new Native Land Act in 1873 stipulated that every owner was to be listed on the titles, but title could no longer be awarded to hapãu (subtribe) or iwi (tribe), as was theoretically possible under the 1865 Act. The new law therefore took individual ownership even further. Each named owner was free to sell their interests without reference to other owners. There was no legal basis for multiple Maori owners to act as a group until 1894.  Many communities found that their land was now a series of paper titles owned by unaccountable individuals. The only thing they could effectively do with their land was to sell it.

            The government continued the aggressive pursuit of tribal lands by obtaining title through purchase of acquisition for public works through the early twentieth century.  Immigration and the need to improve the infrastructure of New Zealand were the driving forces behind these developments.  This largely stopped around the end of World War I.  By the early twentieth century nearly seventy-five percent of the North Island had passed out of Maori ownership. In the South Island, where most land had been acquired by the Crown before 1865, Maori retained less than one percent.  Not all of this land had been sold. Under the Public Works Act of 1864 and subsequent laws, Maori (and European) lands could be acquired for roads, railways and other public works, sometimes without compensation. It appears that in many instances Maori land was especially targeted for compulsory acquisition in preference to nearby Pakeha land.

            The period 1950-1974 was characterized by urbanization and assimilation of Maori.  It also marked the beginning of Maori protests.  During the late 1970s  the Treaty of Waitangi became the focus of strong Maori protests as decisions by the Land Court and unfavorable legislation continued to separate Maori from their land and gave momentum to the protest movement.  Maori called for honoring the treaty and to address treaty grievances.  Increased pressure and exposure to violations of the Treaty of Waitangi resulted in the Treaty of Waitnagi Act in October 1975.  It confirmed and called for the observance of the principles of the Treaty.  The Treaty received the royal assent and the Waitangi Tribunal was established to hear claims of Treaty violations.  During the early 1990s, the government began to negotiate settlements of historical claims.  As of February 2006, there have been twenty settlements with compensation paid of approximately NZ$700 million.  Settlements generally include financial redress, a formal Crown apology for breaches of the Treaty, and recognition of the tribe’s cultural association with the land.

            The New Zealand government announced in 1989 the following Treaty Principles:

1.      The principle of government (the kawanatanga principle).

2.      The principle of self-management (the rangatiratanga principle).

3.      The principle of equality.

4.      The principle of reasonable cooperation.

5.      The principle of redress.

The principle of government or the kawanatanga principle gives expression to the right of the Government to govern and make laws but is subject to the principle of self-management.  The principle of self-management or the rangatiratanga principle guarantees to iwi Maori the control and enjoyment of those resources and taonga that it is their wish to retain. This principle recognizes the right for iwi to organize as iwi and, under the law, to control the resources they own.  The principle of equality constitutes a guarantee of legal equality between Maori and other citizens of New Zealand. This means that all New Zealand citizens are equal before the law. Furthermore, the common law system is selected by the Treaty as the basis for that equality, although human rights accepted under international law are also incorporated. The principle of reasonable cooperation establishes a relationship and a partnership between two peoples. Duality and unity are both significant. Duality implies distinctive cultural development while unity implies common purpose and community. The relationship between community and distinctive development is governed by the requirement of cooperation, which is an obligation placed on both parties by the Treaty. Reasonable cooperation can only take place if there consultation on major issues of common concern and if good faith, balance, and common sense are shown on all sides.  The principle of redress provides a process for the resolution of grievances arising from the Treaty. This process may involve courts, the Waitangi Tribunal, or direct negotiation. The provision of redress, where entitlement is established, must take account of its practical impact and of the need to avoid the creation of fresh injustice.

            In the history of the treatment of Maori tribes, these principles were largely ignored.  However, the most recent developments offer a sharp contrast to U.S. Indian policy.  These New Zealand developments offer suggestions and hope for an alternative approach in U.S. Indian policy. The New Zealand government explicitly acknowledges historical grievances and in attempting to resolve outstanding claims, the Crown avoids the creation of further injustices.  The Crown has a duty to act in the best interest of all New Zealanders and as settlements are to be durable, they must be fair, sustainable, and remove the sense of grievance.  There is an emphasis on making the resolution process consistent and equitable between claimant groups, however, nothing in settlements will remove, restrict or replace Maori rights.  Settlements will take into account fiscal and economic constraints and the ability of the Crown to pay compensation.

For Table 2: Cyclical Phases of Principal
New Zealand Maori Policies, click here

Motivation for Settlement

            This section will briefly consider the motivation for settlement for the two peoples.  The Maori, in most cases, are seeking resolution over land and other natural resources that were taken in breach of government’s promises made in the Treaty of Waitangi.  This would legitimize further the Treaty and preserve rights granted under the treaty.  They seek protection and the granting of full economic and cultural self-determination, economic development, and socio-economic issues.  Maori are seeking to protect management authority.  Although every claimant croup’s experiences and issues are unique, there are many commonalities in grievances, including:

-The Crown unjustly confiscated Maori Land in the 1860s

-The Crown didn’t keep promises to set aside Maori reserves but instead sold or leased land to settlers.

-The Crown claimed it had bought land that Maori tribes didn’t believe they had sold.

-The Crown bought land from Maori who didn’t have the right to sell it.

-The Crown didn’t protect access to Maori burial grounds and other sacred sites.

-The Crown granted title to the New Zealand Company or settlers when they hadn’t legitimately bought the land.

-The Native Land Court era resulted in large-scale alienation of Maori land

-Maori land was taken for public works and then not used for those purposes.

            The New Zealand Government seeks to maintain its sovereignty, settle the disputes equitable, look out for the interests of all New Zealanders, and minimize the financial redress exposure.  Political realignment is also a consideration as well as the prevention of  international exposure of human rights abuse.

Issues of Law

            Treaty is a contract.  By signing treaties the Crown implicitly recognized that indigenous rights existed to land and natural resources prior to the signing of a treaty. Settlements are not a precursor for co-management of natural resources.  They reconfirm existing rights, environmental guardianship, and customary use of natural resources.  Competing interests and confusion over resource management has come about through environmental protection legislation.  The EPA in the US and the Ministry of the Environment in New Zealand actively sort to manage natural resources, as do state and local governments, even if they do not own them.

For Table 3: Objectives in Treaty Settlements, click here

Summary of Settlements

Settlements over Indian water rights have been reached in the U.S. In additional research I will compare and contrast those settlements with the 25 settlements that have been reached in New Zealand with a cost of more than NZ$7.5 billion (see table 4).

For Table 4: Summary of NZ Settlements, click here
For map of Settlement Areas, click here

Conclusion

            Although the approach to Indian policy and Maori policy have similar roots, the developments in the two countries are quite different.  In the U.S., disputes over resources and land are either settled in court or through settlements, as in New Zealand, but they lack the following elements which are part of all Maori settlements:

            1. Crown Apology.

The historical basis of the claims, those matters the Crown acknowledges as breaches of the treaty and its principles, and the working of the Crown’s apology.

            2. Financial and commercial compensation.

Transfer of commercial assets.  For complex settlements smaller sub-groups may be employed to look at types of assets.  Valuation questions settled.

            3. Cultural Redress.

Resources management, access to traditional food and resources, relationship with the Crown is resolved.

            4. Text both in Maori and English.

The incorporation of these elements into U.S. Indian treaty settlements would go a long way to alleviate tensions, distrust, fear, and to improve the relationship between Indian tribes and the U.S. government.  Indian water rights settlements for example are in English only, lack a government apology, may or may not include financial compensation, and cultural redress.  It is the lack of a coherent approach that characterizes Indian treaty settlements in the U.S.  The development of treaty principles by the U.S. federal government would go a long way in providing much needed clarity and reconciliation for past wrongs.

            It should not be concluded that there are no issues with the treaty process in New Zealand.  Many settlements are seen as tokenistic by Maori and they argue that they do not reflect the true loss of resources.  Settlements, however, do address issues of cultural and resource loss by helping to establish better relationships with government departments and make way for alternative economic development.  Pakeha, however, think that the government is overly generous and there are issues relating to authority in co-management systems.  Treaty settlements are complex, emotional, and require some financial redress.  The New Zealand approach offers the hope for better solutions and relationships between the indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.

REFERENCES

Alver, Dora.  The Maori and the Crown:  An indigenous People’s Struggle for Self-Determination.  Westport, Connecticut;  Greenwood Press, 1996.

Articles of Confederation, 1789. http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation.

Gibson, Arell M.  The American Indian; Prehistory to the Present.  Lexington; D.C.  Heath and Company, 1980.

Prucha, Francis P.  Documents of the United States Indian Policy, second edition.  Lincoln; University of Nebraska Press, 1975.

Treaty of Waitangi — Tiriti o Waitangi
February 6^th, Waitangi, New Zealand, 1840.

The Royal Proclamation - October 7, 1763.

Wheeler-Howard Act - Public No. 383, 73d Congress, 1934.

Wrone, David R.  “Indian Treaties and the Democratic Idea.” Wisconsin Magazine of History 70, no. 2 (1986-1987):  83-106.

Appendix A

Treaty of Waitangi*

English Text:

Preamble:                    

HER MAJESTY VICTORIA Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland regarding with Her Royal Favour the Native Chiefs and Tribes of New Zealand and anxious to protect their just Rights and Property and to secure to them the enjoyment of Peace and Good Order has deemed it necessary in consequence of the great number of Her Majesty's Subjects who have already settled in New Zealand and the rapid extension of Emigration both from Europe and Australia which is still in progress to constitute and appoint a functionary properly authorised to treat with the Aborigines of New Zealand for the recognition of Her Majesty's Sovereign authority over the whole or any part of those islands - Her Majesty therefore being desirous to establish a settled form of Civil Government with a view to avert the evil consequences which must result from the absence of the necessary Laws and Institutions alike to the native population and to Her subjects has been graciously pleased to empower and to authorise me William Hobson a Captain in Her Majesty's Royal Navy Consul and Lieutenant-Governor of such parts of New Zealand as may be or hereafter shall be ceded to her Majesty to invite the confederated and independent Chiefs of New Zealand to concur in the following Articles and Conditions.

Article the First:

The Chiefs of the Confederation of the United Tribes of New Zealand and the separate and independent Chiefs who have not become members of the Confederation cede to Her Majesty the Queen of England absolutely and without reservation all the rights and powers of Sovereignty which the said Confederation or Individual Chiefs respectively exercise or possess, or may be supposed to exercise or to possess over their respective Territories as the sole sovereigns thereof.

Article the Second:

Her Majesty the Queen of England confirms and guarantees to the Chiefs and Tribes of New Zealand and to the respective families and individuals thereof the full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties which they may collectively or individually possess so long as it is their wish and desire to retain the same in their possession; but the Chiefs of the United Tribes and the individual Chiefs yield to Her Majesty the exclusive right of Preemption over such lands as the proprietors thereof may be disposed to alienate at such prices as may be agreed upon between the respective Proprietors and persons appointed by Her Majesty to treat with them in that behalf.

Article the Third:

In consideration thereof Her Majesty the Queen of England extends to the Natives of New Zealand Her royal protection and imparts to them all the Rights and Privileges of British Subjects.

(signed)

William Hobson,
Lieutenant Governor.

Now therefore We the Chiefs of the Confederation of the United Tribes of New Zealand being assembled in Congress at Victoria in Waitangi and We the Separate and Independent Chiefs of New Zealand claiming authority over the Tribes and Territories which are specified after our respective names, having been made fully to understand the Provisions of the foregoing Treaty, accept and enter into the same in the full spirit and meaning thereof in witness of which we have attached our signatures or marks at the places and the dates respectively specified. Done at Waitangi this Sixth day of February in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty.

Maori Text:

Preamble:

KO WIKITORIA te Kuini o Ingarani i tana mahara atawai ki nga Rangatira me nga Hapu o Nu Tirani i tana hiahia hoki kia tohungia ki a ratou o ratou rangatiratanga me to ratou wenua, a kia mau tonu hoki te Rongo ki a ratou me te Atanoho hoki kua wakaaro ia he mea tika kia tukua mai tetahi Rangatira - hei kai wakarite ki nga Tangata maori o Nu Tirani - kia wakaaetia e nga Rangatira Maori te Kawanatanga o te Kuini ki nga wahikatoa o te wenua nei me nga motu - na te mea hoki he tokomaha ke nga tangata o tona Iwi Kua noho ki tenei wenua, a e haere mai nei.

1. Na ko te Kuini e hiahia ana kia wakaritea te Kawanatanga kia kaua ai nga kino e puta mai ki te tangata Maori ki te Pakeha e noho ture kore ana.

Na kua pai te Kuini kia tukua a hau a Wiremu Hopihona he Kapitana i te Roiara Nawi hei Kawana mo nga wahi katoa o Nu Tirani e tukua aianei amua atu ki te Kuini, e mea atu ana ia ki nga Rangatira o te wakaminenga o nga hapu o Nu Tirani me era Rangatira atu enei ture ka korerotia nei.

Ko Te Tuatahi:

Ko nga Rangatira o te wakaminenga me nga Rangatira katoa hoki ki hai i uru ki taua wakaminenga ka tuku rawa atu ki te Kuini o Ingarani ake tonu atu - te Kawanatanga katoa o o ratou wenua.

Ko Te Tuarua:

Ko te Kuini o Ingarani ka wakarite ka wakaae ki nga Rangitira ki nga hapu - ki nga tangata katoa o Nu Tirani te tino rangatiratanga o o ratou wenua o ratou kainga me o ratou taonga katoa. Otiia ko nga Rangatira o te wakaminenga me nga Rangatira katoa atu ka tuku ki te Kuini te hokonga o era wahi wenua e pai ai te tangata nona te Wenua - ki te ritenga o te utu e wakaritea ai e ratou ko te kai hoko e meatia nei e te Kuini hei kai hoko mona.

Ko Te Tuatoru:

Hei wakaritenga mai hoki tenei mo te wakaaetanga ki te Kawanatanga o te Kuini - Ka tiakina e te Kuini o Ingarani nga tangata maori katoa o Nu Tirani ka tukua ki a ratou nga tikanga katoa rite tahi ki ana mea ki nga tangata o Ingarani.

(signed)

William Hobson,
Lieutenant Governor.

Na ko matou ko nga Rangatira o te Wakaminenga o nga hapu o Nu Tirani ka huihui nei ki Waitangi ko matou hoki ko nga Rangatira o Nu Tirani ka kite nei i te ritenga o enei kupu, ka tangohia ka wakaaetia katoatia e matou, koia ka tohungia ai o matou ingoa o matou tohu.

Ka meatia tenei ki Waitangi i te ono o nga ra o Pepueri i te tau kotahi mano, e waru rau e wa te kau o to tatou Ariki.

Key Differences:

Preamble:

      The preamble of the English version states the British intentions were to:

            1. Protect Maori interests from the encroaching British settlement

            2. Provide for British settlement

            3. Establish a government to maintain peace and order.

The Maori text suggests that the Queen's main promises to Maori were to:

      1. Provide a government while securing tribal rangatiratanga and Maori land ownership for as long as they wished to retain it.

Article the First:

In the English text of the Treaty, Maori leaders gave the Queen "all the rights and powers of sovereignty" over their land.

In the Maori text of the Treaty, Maori leaders gave the Queen "te kawanatanga katoa" – the complete government over their land.

Article the Second:

In the English text of the Treaty, Maori leaders and people, collectively and individually, were confirmed and guaranteed "exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates, forests, fisheries and other properties".

In the Maori text of the Treaty, Maori were guaranteed "te tino rangatiratanga" – the unqualified exercise of their chieftainship over their lands "wenua", villages "kainga", and all their property/treasures "taonga katoa".

In the English text of the Treaty, Maori yielded to the Crown an exclusive right to purchase their land.

Maori agreed to give the Crown the right to buy land from them should Maori wish to sell it

Article the Third:

In the Maori text of the Treaty, the Crown gave an assurance that Maori would have the Queen's protection and all rights - "tikanga" - accorded to British subjects.

This is considered a fair translation of the English.

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Powerful Parallels: Deep Ecology and the Writings of Vine Deloria, Jr.

By Richard M. Wheelock, Fort Lewis College

      Vine Deloria, Jr. would probably argue that his own understandings of tribal traditions about the relationships between specific peoples and specific homelands are a far cry from today’s “deep ecology” movement.  His writings, though, reveal some of the most useful discussions of the intellectual and cultural dimensions of the human relationship to the natural world which might, if considered in our time of rapidly dwindling energy resources and global climate changes, yield a valuable conceptual framework for future policies, especially where indigenous peoples are themselves involved in development decisions. 

      A number of indigenous scholars have noted that much of the thinking in many fields of scholarship and even in the popular culture seems to slowly be moving closer to what many traditional peoples have believed about the universe all along.  Some of the positions taken by environmentalists seem to reflect this paradigm shift in thought.  Much of Deloria’s writing reveals his own belief that traditional tribal thought has been wrongly dismissed by the Western intellectual tradition, obviating tribal ideas from the discussion of many areas of human development, including current environmental affairs.  As debates continue about the deteriorization of the world’s environmental health, Deloria’s views of tribal traditional “relatedness” to the many natural entities of a specific homeland can provide a powerful intellectual basis for development of viable alternatives to the present flawed global land ethic. 

      Deloria rarely wrote entire articles devoted solely to the tribal traditions concerning human relationships with nature.  Most often, he mentioned those traditions as part of a larger discussion designed to extol the legitimacy and practicality of tribal traditions as a part of his critiques of modern science, religion or politics.  In so doing, he often made rather sweeping statements about the sense of relatedness people of the tribes of North America feel or once felt for the sentient entities in their homelands.  One of the recent collections of his writings provides many such cases.  In the book Spirit and Reason, Deloria’s comments are characteristically direct as he says:

      This idea that everything in the universe is alive, and that the universe itself is alive, is knowledge as useful as anything that Western science has discovered or hypothesized.  When understood and made operative by serious and sensitive individuals, it is as reliable a means of making predictions as anything suggested by mathematical formulas or projected by computer programs.  There are, however, substantial differences in the manner in which predictions are made.  Because the universe is alive, there is choice for all things and the future is always indeterminate.  Consequently, predictions are based on the knowledge of the “character” of an entity.  Statements about how an entity will behave have almost the same probabilities as the educated speculations made at the subatomic level in physics.1

Deloria’s assertion that the universe is a living being, made up of many other living and sentient beings, parallels the concept of “deep ecology,” a relatively recent conceptual creation of Western science and philosophy, which has some roots in the consideration of tribal traditions, including pagan traditions of Europe, long ago dismissed in the religious, philosophical and scientific developments of today’s mass society.  Deep ecology’s proponents champion a concept of “inherent value” in nature, beyond what value humans may otherwise ascribe to it.  It is a revolutionary idea, bringing such thinkers as George Sessions and Arne Naess to the brink of acknowledging an animistic universe.

      As these ecologists began to look for ways to improve the relationships between mass society and the natural world in the 1980’s, it quickly became clear that the worldview of most Americans and other people of the developed world provided few models upon which to base public policy initiatives, unless that policy was to be rapid exploitation.  As environmental collapse loomed on a global scale, lifestyles of traditional indigenous peoples stood in stark contrast to those of the people of modern post-industrial nations.  It seemed a natural development for thinkers and writers in the environmental movement to draw upon tribal models and to advocate selected portions of those life ways in the search for solutions to the seemingly overwhelming impacts of global corporate development. 

     A sense of human separation and dominance over nature emerged from the consideration of the development of Western religion and philosophy, a cultural orientation that leads to frequent disregard for impacts upon nature other than the possible economic disadvantages that might result. 

      Today, national and global development schemes, supported by a mentality of denial of many of these impacts, have forced environmentalists to reach for arguments that will reenergize their movement that was so compelling in public policy circles only a decade or two ago.  As a result of the ruminations of people like Naess and Sessions, two radical strategies have been advocated by today’s ecologists: deep ecology and bioregionalism, each with strong parallels to the perceived values of traditional tribal peoples in North America.  Though not all environmentalists adhere to the values of these two concepts, the philosophical framework for environmental policy-making has been greatly affected by both of them. 

      Deep ecology is based upon the realization that nature has a value of its own, beyond the human, anthropocentric patterns of today’s mass society.  Lovelock’s writings on the Gaia concept demonstrate that even in the early development of Western culture, spiritual connections with natural “beings” were once a crucial part of the heritage of many peoples. [1]   Today’s writers in this movement sometimes refer to that heritage and parallel it with the tribal traditions of the indigenous peoples of North America and elsewhere.  The sense of connectedness that arises from this contemplation compels deep ecologists to recognize the essential spiritual demeanor demanded as humans interact with natural forces.  The kind of spiritual solitude that comes from direct, intimate contemplation of nature’s wonders is an immediate and inherent experience that many ecologists feel only in what is called wilderness today. [2]   That sort of reasoning, combined with a certain irreverence towards Western innovations that have created a “mass society,” [3] are crucial to the emergence of deep ecology.

      The “Deep Ecology Platform” was formulated by Arne Naess and George Sessions while camping in Death Valley in 1984.  The simple, straight-forward statement reads like a creed:

1) The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: inherent worth; intrinsic value; inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes. 

2) Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.

3) Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.

4) Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.

5) The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.

6) Policies must therefore be changed. The changes in policies affect basic economic, technological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.

7) The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent worth) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.

8) Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes.

                                                                               -- Arne Naess and George Sessions -- [4]

    Naess and Sessions’ platform has become the basis of a major intellectual dialogue.  Long treatises continue to appear elucidating or attacking each of the eight elements of the platform and continuing discussions of the implications of such a far-reaching intellectual and spiritual quest are certain.  Yet it is often attacked as not only impractical, but anti-human in its implications, especially by those who are convinced by their faith or economic demands that humans are manifestly dominant over nature.  For some, it is seen as an attack upon nearly all Western values.  This crisis has brought deep ecologists into direct conflict with the religious right and corporate America in U.S. politics and has forced ecologists to carefully define their perception of the proper relationship with nature. 

      The continuing pubic debate has sometimes included the use of perceived tribal understandings, often inaccurately.  Tribal traditions have been mischaracterized and even desecrated in a number of cases and non-Indian environmentalists have been accused of interference in tribal economic development and religious practices.  Of course, those committed to unbridled development under corporate power have sometimes attacked the environmental movement by targeting what they perceive as inaccurate and romantic portrayals of tribal connectedness with the natural world.  Apologists for Western intellectual development, like Shepard Krech, have targeted Deloria’s writings in poorly supported attacks on tribal traditions in a hostile attempt to discredit both tribal traditions and the modern ecology movement. [5]   These unforeseen consequences of environmental advocacy have often stymied the possibility of coordinated actions on environmental degradation between today’s Native peoples and the mass society that surrounds them.  Yet the development of concepts of deep ecology have revealed some powerful parallels with indigenous tribal traditions that warrant further consideration if the search for a more harmonious relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world is to be accomplished. 

Tribal concepts in today’s public debate on the environment

      At the extreme levels of the public debate over the environment, both sides of the controversy have had to rely upon a rather abstract set of notions about the human connection to nature.  Right-wing pro-development advocates have been able to frighten voters with the specter of economic collapse and loss of private property while espousing a relationship with nature that relies upon their perception of biblical imperatives. [6]   Deep ecologists have had to imagine and advocate a worldview far removed from the experiences of most Americans as they warn of imminent environmental catastrophe and are forced to find alternatives to present development models. [7]   Both groups reach deeply into the psyche of the American public, into areas of faith, philosophy and worldview. 

It is a public policy argument of epic proportions, of course, one in which tribal traditions are both championed and denigrated, even though tribal people themselves are rarely proponents in the debate.  Nonetheless, Indian people have taken on some impressive environmental projects of their own, frequently outside the scrutiny of the raging public debate, as we shall see.

      Deloria’s approach is to focus upon the concept of “relatedness.”  Thus, he avoids the separation of humans from nature.  Tribal traditions, especially those of the Teton Sioux he is familiar with, require humans to experience and interact with other entities in a very personal, subjective, experiential way.  Human are not separated from the cosmos, he claims, but are essential participants in a network, a web, of interacting entities.  He has gone so far as to examine the Western concepts of separation from and dominance of nature to their religious and philosophical roots as he tries to explain the distinction of tribal relatedness.  As dedicated readers of his works know, Deloria has produced a legion of articles and chapters of books that deal with the distinctions between the basic orientations to the universe of Western and tribal conceptions. [8]   Among the many areas of contention he has revealed, two are of great importance in the discussion of modern concepts of deep ecology.

      First, Deloria has documented the tribal concepts of a living, sentient universe, one in which many entities strive together toward maturity and completeness.  Though not all of these entities are in harmony with each other’s quest at all times, the shared processes involved are the main causal framework of the experiences they and we all have.  Such an orientation requires mutual respect and an ethic of participation in the processes of the living universe. [9]   He has characterized the human participation as “extreme subjectivity” as he contrasts the concept with the “extreme objectivity” of modern science. [10]   Humans, then, are not separate from or dominant over nature.  Instead, their responsibilities are in the area of the gift of conscious, purposeful efforts to maintain communication and even reciprocal spiritual relationships with other entities. 

      Secondly, Deloria reminds us that the tribal relationships with other living entities is personal and specific, sometimes not easily delineated from our relationships with other humans.  His idea that humans and other entities actually create “covenants” in the visionary, spiritual realm helps to explain the destiny that the People share with other entities in the universe. [11]   In such a conception, it is hard to imagine the role of “stewardship” over nature for humans, a major part of the justification for environmental groups before the advent of deep ecology.  In tribal traditions, though, stewardship plays a role in only the most mundane levels of interaction with natural forces.  Humans communicate with other entities in the obvious direct ways provided by daily experience and through prayers, ceremony, vision, dreams and in insightful moments.  These resulting relationships are evidenced in naming, spirit helpers and many other very direct, personal relationships.  In that conception, humans and other natural entities intervene regularly in each other’s lives, creating a basis for continuing mutual interdependence that reaches far beyond the material needs of humans, even as material uses of other beings by humans are acknowledged and compensated.

      As a result of just these two conceptual points, Deloria uncovers the vast differences in orientation to the universe between traditional tribal people and Western mass society.  In writing about what Western thinkers call the natural world, Deloria says

It is a relationship of specific responsibilities, specific insights, specific knowledge, and a specific task in the world.  It is never a community of human beings who go out and “embrace nature.”  In this situation, what is nature?  Nature is too generalized a concept to deal with. [12]

In the same writing, he continues to place the challenge on Western thinkers, encouraging them to look back on the development of their cultural worldview: 

“Why did people six thousand or seven thousand years ago determine that heaven is good and “down here” is bad?  Why did they decide to go out and conquer things?  Then why did the Greeks later make that other division between history and nature?  And why, after Newton and Darwin, did you grab that one quadrant [the portion of experience that could be called “science”] and say that is what the world is about? [13]

      Deloria’s challenge to today’s environmentalists in these writings illustrate the difficulty of finding a new land ethic for the modern world.  He points out that scientists fear a subjective relationship with the natural world, since they have the experience of repression of their discipline by Western religious dogmas which see science as a challenge to the biblical version of creation.  Those same religious leaders fear the tribal viewpoints because they smack of paganism, which is heresy in their view.  Since Western thought is so bound up in religious, philosophical and economic patterns that have emerged from its formative development, truly revolutionary processes would be necessary to change its conceptions of “nature.”  Thus, crucial areas of divergence remain between the modern ecological thought and tribal traditions, too.  Yet in its effort to acknowledge the intrinsic value of natural beings, as minor as that paradigm shift may appear, the deep ecology movement has come a long way toward the interrelated process of the universe that tribal traditions, like those Deloria describes, recognize.    

      When one considers the void between deep ecologists and the forces of development in mass society today, though, deep ecology seems the appropriate domain of philosophers and poets, not that of pragmatic policy-makers.  Present global development schemes championed by the United States and funded by the World Bank clearly are headed in the opposite direction.  Local bioregions, often considered the proper regional focus for deep ecology initiatives, are not a part of present global economics, which instead seem bent upon creating a single, vast marketplace where imports and exports are the only practical products.  Any local sustainability in such an economy would depend on the ability of local planners to create products for that marketplace and would rely upon imports from elsewhere to meet even its own basic needs.  In that mileau, the eight elements of the Deep Ecology Platform would seem increasingly obsolete as time passes. 

      At the present time, the consideration of deep ecology at the global policy-making level is clearly blocked by other values.  Yet in tribal economics, some interesting alternatives have arisen that rely to greater or lesser degrees upon tribal traditions like those Deloria has described.  In writings from a book he co-authored with Clifford Lytle entitled The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty, Deloria urged tribes to

…develop programs that are perceived by the people as natural extension of the things they are already doing.  A natural economy maximizes the use of the land in as constructive a manner as possible, almost becoming a modern version of hunting and gathering in the sense that people have the assurance that this kind of activity will always be available to them. [14]   

As tribes are forced to consider the finite resources on tribal lands, they have the opportunity to find sustainable economic devices that build upon their own values, adapting their plans to meet modern economic needs.  Whether these adaptations violate the traditional values Deloria describes is, of course, a matter for those tribes to decide for themselves.  Today’s demands for pragmatic consideration of strategies in a climate of desperate economic conditions have forced tribes in the past to follow very destructive corporate models or the always controversial strategy of gaming, making new models necessary for survival in an increasingly commodified economic environment. 

Examples of tribal economic initiatives that build upon tribal traditional values

      There are a number of economic strategies that tribes have discovered in their struggle to maintain what was once called “Fourth World” development strategies.  If one remembers that the first two “worlds” are comprised of capitalism in its expressions of U.S. and its major allies; and socialism as expressed by the USSR and its allies, one will recall that the discussion of global economics was once couched in terms of the Cold War economic environment.  When one recalls that the “Third World” referred to those countries being developed economically and militarily under the economic umbrella of one of the first two worlds, that Cold War analysis becomes clear. 

      The Fourth World, though, is a concept that lingers in discussions among those most involved in indigenous affairs in the global context, most visible in the Non-Governmental Organizations of the U.N’s International Labor Organization.  The Draft Resolution on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples remains the most important recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights on the global stage. [15]   For many, the global implications of the resolution is a bit disconcerting, since tribes themselves live in such intimate, local social environments.  Nonetheless, the Fourth World concept provides a useful framework for tribally controlled, sustainable economic plans that rely mainly upon tribal traditions.  While the deep ecology movement is presently stymied by present economic policies in the U.S., a remarkable number of tribal initiatives have relied upon the sovereign and aboriginal status of tribes in the U.S. and Canada as they develop culturally appropriate economic strategies. 

      One such strategy has evolved in Canada.  Because so much of the public lands of that nation, the so-called “crown lands,” retain an unresolved aboriginal claim, some tribal groups have recently found ways to foster their own development strategies from some of the usual exploitive relationships of corporate and government development plans.  Though tribes are not recognized in the same ways as U.S. tribes, with protections of sovereign status over specified reservation lands, the tribal interests in those unceded public lands have provided leverage for continuation of their long-standing economic uses there.  Among some major tribal victories, including modern “treaties” and even the creation of the Province on Nunivat within some of the former Northwest Territories, the Barriere Lake Algonkins in northern Ontario and Quebec have nearly completed a trilateral agreement between the tribal peoples, the provinces and the Canadian government.  Of greatest importance, from the tribal peoples’ perspective, is the preservation of a way of life based upon subsistence economics in the lands they have always relied upon.  Their way of life is to be preserved in an integrated resource management plan that recognizes their subsistence economy. [16]   Traditional relationships with the many entities in the region are specifically addressed in the agreement.  Though recent political changes seem to threaten the Canadian government’s commitment to the agreement, Russell Diabo, one of the major technical advisors for the Algonquins, remains hopeful that the arrangement will eventually be fully implemented, since it shares management of the area among many groups who have interests there, yet preserves the most substantial of Algonquin traditional uses in ways that ensure their continued efficacy. [17]     

      In the United States, another economic strategy has emerged, based upon the traditional understandings that Deloria advances.  The White Earth Land Recovery Project, headed by Winona LaDuke, has provided an economic strategy for the tribe that is deeply linked to tribal traditions.  It is a sustainable development project that features tribal tradition, yet makes use of the most modern marketing practices of the mass society. [18]   The on-line website emphasizes the priority of regaining economic self-sufficiency for tribal peoples and regaining of control of wild rice resources in the region, while it helps market traditional arts and crafts of the White Earth Chippewas/Ojibwes. The amazing work of the director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, Winona LaDuke, leaves no doubt about the ultimate “fourth world” approaches involved. [19]   Her direction of the White Earth Land Recovery Project has already resulted in regaining crucial tribal lands on the reservation and the passage of tribal laws that forbid genetically modified organisms there.  She has framed her work in the traditional tribal beliefs that recognize wild rice and other “entities” on Ojibwe lands as crucial to any economic plans.

      Initiatives among Northwest fishing and maritime tribes, like the Lummi and Makah of Washington; Western and Plains tribes who continue their traditions in their plans for economies partially based upon their relationships with buffalo; and continued agricultural plans among tribes as disparate in traditions as the Oneidas of Wisconsin and the pueblo groups of the Southwest all reveal a commitment to traditional beliefs in the modern economic plans of tribes.  It is a “growth industry,” one that recognizes the kinds of values Vine Deloria has expressed in his philosophical discussions of tribal traditions of “relatedness.”  

      Those of the deep ecology movement should be watching closely as their own ideas about bioregionalism and spiritual value in natural entities is demonstrated daily across Indian country.  Though those tribally appropriate development projects still face many challenges, their concern with maintaining the traditions of interaction and interdependence with the other entities in the universe are immensely instructive.  It can be hoped that deep ecologists will feel encouraged in their efforts to transform the economies of destruction that have so long characterized Western mass society.  Without a massive cultural change in today’s global economics, though, no initiatives in Indian country are likely to be enough to stem the tide of environmental collapse augured by present global corporate development.  It may seem unlikely at this moment that any environmental movement can establish massive change in the underpinnings of the worldview of developers, but that is exactly what deep ecologists propose to do.  With great good luck, perhaps alliances between traditional Indians and the deep ecology movement will yet be forged. 

            Deloria would be surprised!

"EL DIA DE LOS DIFUNTOS EN SANTIAGO SACATEPEQUEZ BARRILETES PARA LAS ANIMAS BENDITAS"

              Ignacio Ochoa, Director of Nahual Foundation, a Think Tank by and for Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.

On November 1^st and 2nd, a powerful force stirs in all the towns of Guatemala. Traditional markets are adorned with flowers of sempa (orange marigolds), chrysanthemums, wild daisies, and the smell of copal – a pre-Columbian incense made from pine resin.  The pickup trucks and vans carrying people on the dirt roads between villages have much heavier loads than usual. People take wreaths or coronas (“wreaths”) of fresh flowers, candles, dried and sugared fruits, festive foods such as tamales and fiambre (a cold meat and vegetable dish prepared in Guatemala only at this time of year), tissue-paper kites of many colors, and machetes to cut the weeds from the tombs of deceased family members. In villages, church bells chime on the hours of matins, lauds, angelus, and vespers¹ the Roman Catholic canonical hours for prayers. All of these activities are part of celebrations for El Día de los Difuntos or “the Day of the Dead,” a festival which many English speakers associate with Mexico.  However, it is also a very important festival throughout Guatemala, especially in the majority indigenous (Kaqchikel) town of Santiago Sacatépequez, where it is the occasion for a beautiful and unique kite-flying ritual. Although part of the official Catholic festival calendar- the day of All Saints and Martyrs- the Guatemalan celebration integrates this Christian framework with pre-Columbian Mayan practices.

An important part of the celebration is the role played by the cofradías or religious “brotherhoods.” In Santiago Sacatepéquez, there are six cofradías dating from the seventeenth century, each dedicated to a different Catholic saint. Between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, Catholic missionaries instituted these brotherhoods throughout Latin America as a way of involving lay people in the religious life of the church. Their responsibilities were meant to help catechize them and encourage them to have a stake in the church. These responsibilities included maintaining the shrine of the saints housed inside the church, organizing prayer novenas, and preparing for celebrations on the feast days of respective saints.

These cofradías have an explicitly Christian form and mission, however they also represent important and long-standing institutions which have been run by indigenous people, often in indigenous languages, for generations.  In the cofradías, indigenous peoples have traditionally decided how religious celebrations would be observed, blending many Mayan practices with Catholic rituals. Especially since Guatemala’s independence from Spain (1821), the cofradías have been outside the oversight of priests and the official Church hierarchy. The heavily indigenous cofradías are one important example of how the Maya worldview has survived the imposition of the Catholic ideological framework by the Spanish through a strategy of syncretism.

For the past five centuries, indigenous populations throughout the Americas have struggled to maintain their cultural practices, beliefs, and languages.  In Guatemalan cofradías, as with the correspondences between African gods and Catholic saints in Haitian Santería or Celtic goddesses like Brigit rebaptized as saints in Ireland, lay Catholic traditional practices represent the survival of pre-Christian icons, rituals and beliefs.

The leaders of the cofradías are called mayordomos, and the most important or primer mayordomo is also called the cofrade. He is chosen by the villagers for a one-year term and must be an upstanding member of both the town and church community. During this time, he and his family are responsible for financing everything related to the feast day of the saint. This includes paying for fireworks, food, and clothing for the saint, and these expenses can lead to incurring great personal debt in order to fulfill these obligations. Organizing the celebration takes an entire year to plan and involves not only religious obligations, but also coordination with municipal services and local political leaders, giving the brotherhood a great deal of political and social clout in the town. The more services the cofradía provides to the town, the more the leader of the cofradía rises in the esteem of the people. The next year, a new mayordomo is elected to undertake the responsibility of financing the festivities. Over time, this practice creates a network of reciprocal obligations between town members. 

The official court system based on the Guatemalan constitution and the concepts of Roman law holds sway in Santiago Sacatepéquez, as throughout Guatemala. However, there is a parallel system regulating citizen behavior within the village. Although not written down in legal tomes nor enforced by police, there exists a morally binding system of community expectations. These expectations govern practices such as mutual aid, inheritance of property within families, voluntary work for the benefit of the whole community, and the annual repago.² Adult village-members living abroad can face ostracism for failing to live up to their financial obligations to the village. These communal practices have long been the glue which holds indigenous societies together in the face of outsider (Ladino, non-indigenous) domination. 

In most Guatemalan towns or municipios, there are several cofradías. In Santiago Sacatepéquez, there are six – each dedicated to a different saint.³  In addition to the statue of their respective saint which stays in a shrine inside the church, each cofradia is responsible for a smaller statue which they keep in a shrine in members’ homes (the shrine rotates from house to house annually).  These antique statues have been passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years. For every religious celebration, six men and six women of the cofradía join together to work for the benefit of the community. Although the patron saint of Santiago Sacatepéquez is Saint James, the most prestigious cofradía in the town is that of Saint Michael Archangel, responsible for the celebration of the Day of the Dead. This illustrates the great importance of this celebration in the hearts and minds of the townspeople.

Preparations for the Day of the Dead celebration in Santiago Sacatepéquez begin forty days before November 1st, when young people form groups and, following the lead of the oldest, begin construction of the kites.  The tradition of flying kites in the cemeteries of Guatemala on Day of the Dead dates back at least 107 years.⁴ Traditionally young men did most of the work, but today young women also make kites. Together, they discuss and select themes for the intricately designed kites. Themes may be political, religious, or cultural and often draw on events from the national news.  For example, in 1992 there was a kite dedicated to Mayan human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchú. In 1996, there was a kite dedicated to the signing of the Peace Agreements that ended the country’s 36-year civil war that year. In 2005, a kite honored the ten-year anniversary of the public promotion of Indigenous rights.

One of the first steps in building a kite is to find the bamboo used for the frame. One day during the forty days of preparation, the young, unmarried men of the village rise at 4:00 a.m. to take a truck to the coast to hunt for bamboo. This pre-dawn journey serves as a rite of passage which helps young males to be seen as men rather than boys in the eyes of the town. The journey to the coast is difficult and once the youth arrive, the work of cutting the heavy, thick bamboo is laborious. The straightest pieces must be located, which are then cut to 10, 12, and 15 meters. 

During the quest for bamboo, the young people travel in a liminal mental state, open to the challenges which present themselves along the way. They return from the coast to find townspeople waiting for them in the central park and municipal lounge, eager to hear their stories of adventures on the coast. The bamboo is distributed to the kite-making groups to begin making frames, a task they will perform every day until the Day of the Dead.

Not just the bamboo, but all kite materials used are natural.  The glue is made from yucca flour mixed with pieces of lemon peel and water. These ingredients are cooked to the proper thickness. Ropes used for kite strings are made from maguey, the same plant from which tequila alcohol is extracted. The tails of the kites are made from woven cloth. Frames of smaller kites are made by weaving stalks of castilla, a plant similar to wheat which is farmed near Santiago and often used to weave baskets.  But the largest kite frames are made from the bamboo gathered on the coast.

There are three main styles of kite, each with a characteristic design and typical size. Crown, Diamond, and Moon kites are all made of very thin tissue paper, which seems too thin to withstand the rough winds of the sky. “Crown” kites are from three to five meters in diameter and have a circular frame around an empty center, like a donut. The inner and outer circles are connected with four bamboo stalks. “Diamond” kites range from a half meter to ten meters in diameter and have a diamond shaped frame.   These have long tails and fly on strings of fishing line. “Moon” kites are the largest and have a circular frame with a central circle of paper in the middle and range from ten to fifteen meters in diameter.  

The building of a giant kite can cost more than 40,000 quetzales! For this reason, kites are sometimes sponsored by commercial establishments, but most kites are paid for by the villagers through year-round saving and fundraising. 

During this special time of the year, when the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead is believed to be most porous, people sometimes attach aluminum foil and paper with hand-written messages on the tails of the kites. These messages are intended to reach the heavenly spirits when the kites ascend to the sky, letting them know that they are wanted and helping to guide them in their journey from heaven to earth.  

Prior to the Day of the Dead, on the last Sunday in October, the people of Santiago have a competition to determine the best kite. Kites are judged based on their colors, construction, designs, and topics. The townspeople usually show the greatest appreciation for kites involving the most intricate and difficult details and favor themes from ancestral Maya culture.

The role of women in the celebration is less public than that of men, but nonetheless crucial. Women participate in the measurement, design, and construction of the kites, preparing the ingredients (like making the glue) and materials (cloth, wicks, and strings for the tails), as well as helping to decide on colors, designs, and themes. As in traditional times, women today do the bulk of the festival food preparation and decorating of public places such as the church and town plaza with flowers and cut-out tissue paper decorations (papel picado). Young women do not travel to the coast with the men because, in Maya communities, teenage women not yet engaged or married are expected to stay close to the family for reasons of modesty and safety.

On November 1^st, the cemetery of Santiago Sacatepéquez begins to fill with people at 4:00 a.m., with families carrying floral wreaths and branches of flowers to the tombs of their deceased. The murmured conversations between family members rise in volume with the increasing light of the rising sun. While cleaning, repainting, and adorning their family tombs, people chat with neighbors, fondly reminiscing about the deceased, and catch up on the latest news.  Children help their parents but also find time to run and play in the graveyard, creating an ambience of happy harmony between various families in the community. Community bonds are renewed and strengthened as people work side by side. They share paint, tools, and brushes to repaint or refurbish tombs or the wooden crosses that often mark graves. They help each other haul water to the tombs for cleaning the stones or watering the flowers. They pray together by the tombs and share food with each other. Outside the cemetery, vendors sell special holiday treats and the ever favorite atol de maiz (hot corn drink).

The bells of the church chime to announce mass on the morning of All Saints’ Day. In the house of the brotherhood of Saint Michael Archangel, people begin preparing food and drink. The smell of copal, flowers, and food greet visitors who come to offer candles of devotion to the saint and flowers for the dead.  Groups of young people, carrying kites as banners, begin arriving at the cemetery. They wait for a strong wind to raise their giant kites to the skies.

A moon kite ten to fifteen meters in diameter will need four or five “flyers” or people who control the kite. A lone flyer could be lifted off the ground by a strong gust of wind! The kites test the winds and signal the spirits until 4:00 in the afternoon, when they are lowered and families gather at home to await the arrival of the souls.  Inside many homes, families offer their visitors güisquiles (a vegetable which looks like an avocado and tastes like a potato) and sweet corn to eat.  Chilacayote (sweet squash) and jocotes (like a sweet olive) in sweet syrup are also offered, along with a taste of chicha.⁵

Eventually, the members of the cofradía of Saint Michael Archangel begin a procession through the streets carrying the anda, a life-sized wooden statue of the saint. Members of the procession play the harp and accordion to the delight of the living and dead who accompany them. The procession travels from house to house throughout the night carrying a piggy bank which they place on the hearth of each home for monetary gifts and offerings to defray the expenses of the festivities.  Along with the cofradía, other townspeople visit from house to house sharing traditional foods and alcohol. This is one of the largest and most important celebrations of the year for Mayan people.

The primer mayordomo, chief of the cofradía, sits in the place of honor in each house. When it is time to depart, he requests that the family look for an old piece of pottery, the oldest cooking pot used daily.  The pot is broken at the front doorway to symbolize the entry of the spirits of the deceased who will remain with the family throughout the night. While the pot is broken, a special song is sung in honor of the dead, and the brotherhood leaves for the next house. The singing of this song by the choir is another part of the ritual cementing the connections with the deceased. These festivities continue all night on the evening of November 1^st, until the break of dawn on November 2^nd. 

While this article focuses on the rituals of Santiago Sacatepéquez, Maya villages throughout Guatemala have their own important rituals for Day of the Dead. These share many aspects of the celebration in Santiago Sacatepéquez, but also have their unique traditions. For example, in Huehuetenango, the dead are serenaded in the cemetery on the eve of November 1st, as musicians go from tomb to tomb playing instruments and singing to the difuntos or the “defunct.” In Salcajá, children traditionally knock on doors on November 1st, asking for candles to place on the graves, calling out from house to house, “candelitas, candelitas para las ánimas benditas.”⁶ In Quiriguá and many other areas of Guatemala, families have picnics by the tombs of the departed and may hold nocturnal candlelight vigils for the dead.

At 4:00 a.m. on November 2nd, townspeople in Santiago Sacatépequez begin moving toward the cemetery with candles in their hands so the spirits who have been with them all night can return home.  This journey back to the cemetery is to ensure that all the spirits find their proper way (nahual be’y)⁷ to the cemetery. In towns like Salcajá, Quetzaltenango, or San Juan Sacatepéquez, the population lines the walkway from the town to the cemetery with burning candles and flowers. The footpath runs between the Catholic Church and the cemetery and the lights are intended to guide the spirits in their peaceful return to the cemetery.⁸

As the holiday winds down in Santiago Sacatepéquez, smaller children demolish their kites to signal to the spirits that their earthly visit is over and that they must now return to heaven. The giant kites which have stayed in good shape are raised to the air one final time.  It is believed that the oldest spirits are the last to leave and the giant kites help lead them back to heaven.

Later that evening, the giant kites that were torn by the winds are burned inside the cemetery in the hope that the rising smoke will guide any vagabond spirits back to heaven. The kites that are still in good shape are taken to be exhibited publicly in the local Catholic church during a novena for the deceased performed by the community. Nine days later, these kites will also return to the cemetery to be burned.  The ashes are then buried, completing the annual ritual for the Day of the Dead in Santiago Sacatepéquez.

NOTES:

[1] . Canonical hours are ancient divisions of the day, developed by the Catholic Church to mark the times for prescribed prayers. The major hours include dawn (matins); morning (lauds), noontime (angelus), and evening (vespers).

2. Expected payments similar to tithing, but paid to community organizations, rather than the church hierarchy, as in the case of the mayordomo’s payment for the annual celebration.

3. Every confraternity or “brotherhood” is presided over by a married couple, who takes charge of the patron saints of the town. Each of the six brotherhoods is responsible for one celebration annually, on the feast day of their respective saint.  The brotherhoods of Santiago (July 25); Saint Michael Archangel (September 29); the Virgin of the Rosary (October 7); the Virgin of Candelaria (February 2); Saint Joseph (March 19), and Corpus Christi (takes place 50 days after Easter and therefore can fall anywhere from May to June).

4. Local records mention the kite flying ritual in Santiago Sacatepéquez  in 1899. 

5. Chicha is a traditional Mayan hot fermented alcoholic corn beverage simmered with ginger, jocote, and barley.

6.. “Little candles for the blessed souls.”

7. A Kaqchikel word meaning the essence of the path.

8. While people welcome annual visits from their family spirits, everyone wants the spirits to return to heaven on November 2nd.  Spirits who do not return are considered to be bad luck or dangerous for the community.