World Religions in Credo: Native American Religions

American Indian religious revivalist movement that spread through the Plains Indians and other ethnic groups in the 1890s.

Name used to denote any system of belief or speculation that includes the teaching "God is all, and all is God." Pantheism, in other words, identifies the universe with God or God with the universe.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Religion of some Native North Americans in which the hallucinogenic peyote button is used as the sacramental food. It is the most widespread indigenous contemporary Native American religion. Peyotism teaches an ethical doctrine much like those of the monotheistic religions. The peyote rite lasts from sunset to sunrise and has four major elements: prayer, singing, eating the sacramental peyote, and contemplation. The religion probably originated among the Kiowa in Oklahoma about 1890 and reflects the influence of traditional peyote use among Mesoamerican groups such as the Huichol.

Ceremonial feast of the natives of the NW coast of North America, entailing the public distribution of property.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Earthwork built by Hopewell Indians in the 2nd–1st centuries BC in Ohio, USA. It is 405 m/1,330 ft long, 1.3 m/4 ft high, and about 6 m/19 ft across and may have been constructed in the shape of a snake for religious purposes.

A form of culture that revolves around the central position of the shaman, a religious practitioner in various, generally small-scale societies who is believed to be able to diagnose, cure, and sometimes cause illness because of a special relationship with, or control over, spirits. The shaman acts as an intermediary between man in his environment and society and the forces and the spirits of the other world.

From Chamber's Dictionary of the Unexplained
In some societies, especially those of the Native Americans, a species of animal or plant regarded as having an intimate mystical relationship with an individual, family or clan, and often venerated as a progenitor and protector.

From Chamber's Dictionary of the Unexplained
A Native American ritual that is performed for the purpose of seeing visions, obtaining guidance from the spirit world or finding a guardian spirit.