Puritan Vs. Native Americans
A Comparison of Native American Religious Writing to Early Puritan Writings. The Native Americans like every other civilization in the known world have creation stories. These creation stories basically tell the origins of the world as the they know it. For the Native Americans these stories were passed down orally, they did not keep written records of the stories. These oral stories are in some sense the Native American version of the bible. It was a way of thinking and perceiving the world around them. It provided answers to why things happened the way they did and it gave the Native American a sense of morality. Although Native Americans often participated in warfare, they did it with a sense of honor and being not commonly employed by their Caucasian counterparts. As a whole Native American culture is a thing of beauty, celebrating not only the physical world around them but also the spiritual. They did not believe in a single deity ruling over them, but instead used myths and teachings about the Great Spirit to explain things. The Great Spirit was in essence Mother Nature. It was akin to the force in Star Wars in the sense that it was a part of all of us, from the smallest insect to the mightiest war chief. It was not
Cotton Mather for example played a hand in the Salem witch trials. Angered Coyote takes a shit and begins talking to it! He took a shit, he said to his shit, "Tell me, why have those silversides disappeared?" (N. This is why I take such a harsh stance against the Puritan writers and their ilk. This intolerance of beliefs and ways of life different from their own is one of the many reasons why I detest many forms of religious teachings and writings. In comparing the religious writing of the Native Americans and Puritans you find a very different outlook upon life. It was a sermon preaching the hate and power of a vengeful and whimsical God. Norton and Company,1998, 1994, 1989, 1985, 1979. But isn't it written in the Ten Commandments that "Thou Shall Not Kill?" I guess all is excused by using the name of God as an excuse. Under the pretense of allowing the cleansing of people who were associated with the devil, he let numerous people be put to death under his watch:"For my own part, I was not present at any of them; nor ever had I any personal prejudice at the persons thus brought upon the stage; much less at the surviving relations of those persons, with for whom I would be as hearty a mourner as any man living in the world: The Lord comfort them!" (Mather 376) While this sounds like a man strong of thought and moral conviction Mather then goes on to condemn people based on nothing more than superstitious nonsense and forced confessions. Later on Coyote returns to find that the silverside salmon have disappeared. What kind of God would treat his own creations such? Jonathan Edwards even goes on to condemn members of his own congregation (Edwards 485). If you look at the various Trickster tales of the Native Americans you will find a much different way of teaching. The Norton Anthology: American Literature. On one hand you have the Native American, free of spirit and belief.
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