The Great Plains Indians Complete Text - Lingua

Religion
To the Plains Indians everything in the world served a purpose in their lives. The sun,
the mountains, the animals, the rivers, the trees. Everything in the warrior’s natural
environment had a connection to the creator and therefore was filled with its own
mysterious force.
God or the Creator of the great spirit was not separate from the earth. This meant
that everything was sacred. The many rituals and ceremonies of the tribe connected
its members to the earth and everything on it as well as to the creator of all things. As
a result, the Plains Indians believed that they could through ritual directly connect
and participate with God or the spirit.
The most important ritual for every warrior was the vision quest 146 . The quest lasted
from two to four days and included fasting 147 , staying awake and crying for help from
the spirits.
„That drum is the centrepiece of the whole power. It’s like the earth. The earth
is round and everything in it. In that circle it touches.“
„When you go in, like we are right now, you go in, you come in, enter it, but
when it closes up you can’t see, hear or anything, so what’s gonna happen,
(you know), once somebody tells you, you’re in your mother’s womb and you
have no qualities naked, so when you go out, when this opens up, you don’t
run out, you’re gonna crawl out, I guarantee you, because of what happened in
here, so when you crawl out, you crawl out like when you were a baby, (see),
so you take the water and spit it on yourself, you take everything and put it
back in, so you start anew.“
Vision quests were used by warriors to provide them with a direct link to the spiritual
world and to aid them in finding supernatural protection. The dance and the beating
of the drum were and still are of great importance to the Plains Indians. By 1840
economic and social transformation of the Plains Indians from agricultural and
sedentary societies to nomadic warrior hunters was complete.
The military alliances among the tribes and their territories would not change over the
next 50 years span on the Plains. This period was called the Indian Wars. Ironically
at a time when much of the Western World was experiencing the Industrial
Revolution, the Plains Indians’ horse culture had completed a grand experiment in
producing a true warrior society, one that would nobly 148 fight for its land and way of
life.
146 the vision quest – a warrior’s search for visions of the past or future while in a state of ecstasy or trance
147 fasting – to fast – to eat little or no food for a period of time, especially for religious reasons – fasten
148 nobly – noble – showing fine personal qualities e.g. honor and honesty – edel, nobel
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