Prophets of the Great Spirit: Native American Revitalization Movements in Eastern North America |  | Author: Alfred Cave
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Category: Book
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Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 328
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Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 080321555X
Dewey Decimal Number: 299.71610974
EAN: 9780803215559
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Product Description
Prophets of the Great Spirit offers an in-depth look at the work of a diverse group of Native American visionaries who forged new, syncretic religious movements that provided their peoples with the ideological means to resist white domination. By blending ideas borrowed from Christianity with traditional beliefs, they transformed “high” gods or a distant and aloof creator into a powerful, activist deity that came to be called the Great Spirit. These revitalization leaders sought to regain the favor of the Great Spirit through reforms within their societies and the inauguration of new ritual practices. Among the prophets included in this study are the Delaware Neolin, the Shawnee Tenkswatawa, the Creek “Red Stick” prophets, the Seneca Handsome Lake, and the Kickapoo Kenekuk. Covering more than a century, from the early 1700s through the Kickapoo Indian removal of the Jacksonian Era, the prophets of the Great Spirit sometimes preached armed resistance but more often used nonviolent strategies to resist white cultural domination. Some prophets rejected virtually all aspects of Euro-American culture. Others sought to assure the survival of their culture through selective adaptation. Alfred A. Cave explains the conditions giving rise to the millenarian movements in detail and skillfully illuminates the key histories, personalities, and legacies of the movement. Weaving an array of sources into a compelling narrative, he captures the diversity of these prophets and their commitment to the common goal of Native American survival. (20080129)
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| Customer Reviews:
 Prophets of the Great Spirit March 13, 2009
Gregory Robinson
Prophets of the Great Spirit:
Native American Revitalization Movements in Eastern North America (2006)
By Alfred A. Cave
This well-written and well-researched book (by which the bibliography alone underscores the extensive research done by the author) seeks to explain, clarify, and describe the general archetypal patterns of responses that surrounded Amerindian prophets who called "for the regeneration of the Native American way of life" and warned of the wrath of the Great Spirit. Making use of a combination of historical data, co-joined with stories detailing the various Amerindian prophets, Alfred A. Cave masterfully describes the rise of revitalization movements from the 1740s to the middle 1830s. He separates truth from legend, as he weaves a comprehensive and readable sequence of events that surrounds the prophets, their visions, and their personal spiritual experiences. The gist of the book explains the personal as well as tribal identity problems facing the prophets as they similarly declare the return to some form of communal life and the purging of "practices offensive to the Great Spirit". Cave explains, it is only through the "institution of new rituals", designed to win the favor of the Great Spirit; the "establishment of a new, separatists sacred community; and finally, the development of a pan-Indian coalitions", that natives can "preserve Indian lands from further white encroachments."
Dr. Cave begins with the Delaware prophet, Neolin, who was not the first to preacher to proclaim a return to early native practices and beliefs systems, sans European influences; but rather, posited as a prophet who represents a more symbolic overview of the early prophetic movements. Nonetheless, Neolin learned in a dream that the Creator was "displeased with his Indian children and that the sufferings that plagued them were the result their transgressions. Later, as word spread and even Pontiac recounted Neolin's "journey to heaven", the prophet's message identified numerous transgressions against the Master of Life. These included not only addiction to alcohol, the practice of polygamy and of witchcraft, promiscuity; but also, the idea that Indians depended on whites and could not live without them. Finally, to Neolin, the natives suffered because they had allowed whites upon their lands.
In chapter 2, Cave describes another prophet, Lalawethika, who emerges from the disparaging depths of Native American lost lifeways. The thirty-year-old Shawnee, known as the Rattle, was considered early in his life as a, "scorned as a braggart, drunkard, womanizer, ad coward, fell into a stupor so profound that his family, believing him dead, began preparing his body for burial." Amazingly, Lalawethika did not die, but awoke with a vision of the afterlife he described which encompassed elements of burning and hellish Christian imagery as the price for Indian past transgressions by those who did not follow his vision cultural renaissance and revitalization. By 1808 Lalwethika became known by his new name, Tenskwatawa, which meant "open door" or "he who opened the sky for men to go up to the Great Spirit." According to Cave, Tenskwatawa "inspired the political movement and military alliance usually identified with his brother the celebrated war chief Tecumseh."
Cave clearly details in the third and one of the most prolific chapters of the book entitled: Tenskwatawa, Tecumseh, and the Pan-Indian Movement, Tecumseh's role in the revitalization movements. Cave elucidates Tenskwatawain's role, posited as the true prophet and the inspiration behind Tecumseh's 1811 organization of the league of Indian tribes. Threaded throughout the text, the author expands on the diverse and intricate tribal leadership roles that at times thwarted collective tribal cooperation. For example, after Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh moved to Wapakoneta and "challenged the leadership of the accomodationist chief Black Hoof and sought to convert the Shawnees there to the native gospel. They were unsuccessful," and as Cave explains, "As members of the Kispoko band, the brothers lacked political stature, as leadership had been traditionally entrusted to the Mekoches." Thus exemplifying the political difficulties faced by many the prophets identified in the book.
Faced with discord, both brothers, Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh were further frustrated by their inability to achieve consensus among other tribal nations, they built the Prophets village near Greenville and hoped it would become the seedbed of Tenskwatawa's influence as word of his miracles and teachings reached other tribal nations. However, as Cave notes, at Prophetstown, the two brothers' vision of a new world order free of European influences could not be achieved overnight since "they were still dependent on whites for certain vital trade goods, for the repair of guns and metal implements, and, for a time, even food. They did not call for a total rejection of post contact innovations." Nevertheless, given that Prophetown's numbers estimated at three-thousand, the community could not provide enough food for the followers. Additionally, in terms of political agenda, other chiefs from various nations refused to accept claims that that Prophetstown represented a "capital city of an all-encompassing Indian confederation committed to the preservation of existing boundaries." Finally, after Tecumseh's death Thames, and the failed pan-Indian coalition, Tenskwatawa wanted to move his community to the River Raisin Michigan area. However, Governor Cass of Michigan and superiors in Washington thwarted his efforts. Finally, Tenskwatawa returned to live with the Shawnees in Kansas after spending more than a decade in Canada and died in poverty in 1836.
Other messages from other prophets included a new separatist and sacred communal community that supported renewed pan-Indian alliances that worked to stop white expansion into Indian lands. In similar vein, the Creek "Red Stick" prophets also posited this motif and preached for the unification of all Indian peoples with new nativist traditions. In the chapter, Red Sticks, Cave sorts through the numerous accounts of natives identified as Upper and Lower Creek Indians but also those similar language families do not necessarily make for cooperation and unification. For example, the complexities of the term "Creek Nation" since it "would have no meaning to Native inhabitant of the Southwest in the seventeenth century." Cave adds that the Creeks were a diverse group of peoples with a majority of those who were rooted in the Muskogean language families. Yet, some Creek militants "incorporated some of the dances and songs taught by Seekaboo," a Shawnee holy man, "who remained with them after Tecumseh's departure, but their words and actions did not always reflect either the prophet's teachings or Tecumseh's political advice. The Muskogee world had their own prophets, and their own prophets had their own agenda and their own timetable." Cave further acknowledges the difficulty and challenges associated with identifying individuals and that helped shaped native societies. Therein lays the difficulty in detailing the larger patterns of many Native societies, who, striving to find a return on their cultural losses, posited each their own tribal views thus thwarting efforts for total devotion to prophetic teachings and a complete return to native rituals and lifeways.
In the Seneca Prophet chapter, Cave describes similar Native American responses against European cultural influences. For example, a Seneca prophet named, Handsome Lake described several beliefs systems, similar in nature to other prophets that also include the rejection of Euro-American values, a need to preserve ritual practices, to stop witchcraft, to not use love charms or "the secret poisons in little pouches," and finally to prohibit the use of herbs to induce abortions. Tragically enough however, the infighting among Iroquois left no real single ruler of the nations, but instead fueled quarrelling and discontent among leaders of differing factions. Later Handsome Lake called for neutrality and opposed the call for armed resistance as encouraged by the Shawnee's prophet. Yet these cries for unification were challenged by Iroquois religious traditionalists, progressive secularists, and a few Christian converts, and among other rival leaders, like Red Jacket who too claimed he was the choice for leader of all Iroquois or all would suffer if they did not comply with the Creator's wishes.
In the last chapter Cave describes a final prophet, Kenenkuk, whose Gospel resembled Christianity but still maintained a "nativist answer to the question of why his people suffered defeat and were afflicted by poverty and disease: Native Americans had offended the great Spirit by embracing the vices of the white man." Like his predecessors, Kenenkuk was against alcohol, witchcraft and greed, and his religious teachings included similar themes of "sobriety, hard work, and peaceful co-existence with whites."
In conclusion, the fundamental contributions of Dr. Cave's research in this book describes in detail the historical applications of the origins and developments of the prophet movements and the syncretic religious practices and beliefs that were formed from the various prophets. Finally, the book reveals the archetypal tragic struggle between Native Americans and whites, between various tribes as leadership roles, and tribal milieus of the many tribal nations--all of which diminished as each prophet struggled to explain his message to his peoples. The only reactions left by the remnants of once powerful and numerous tribal nations whose numbers dwindled due to white encroachment, bio-invasions, and alcoholism, was that of relying upon and piecing together lost beliefs systems in an attempt to return to earlier lifeways, pitted against the backdrop of complex tribal relationships and leadership, and white influences and controls.
Greg Robinson
 Conflict of Spirit September 30, 2009
E. Hansen (Mojave Desert, California)
Author Alfred Cave presents a lengthy treatise arguing the premise that an American Indian concept of a 'Great Spirit' evolved among divergent groups post contact with European missionaries. I enjoyed reading this history even though it presumes (speaking for my grandfathers,) that before we were ever known, that we had no traditions of our own upon which to deduce the white man's religious traditions contain similarities which we could name for ourselves in our own languages. After all, the barrier of languages existed well before these spiritual leaders endeavored to stir a pan-Indian yearning in our souls.
Consequently, this work stands as a sociological analysis because it is based on anecdotes of those who encountered the authentic characters. Although there exist contradictory reports of the origins of the Shawnee Prophet La-lay-weth'ka (Tensquatawa), and his brother Tecumseh the great war chief, this volume favors that version of legend which has their family being one of many siblings abandoned by their mother after the death of their father. When she gives birth to triplets, Tecumseh, Tensquatawa, and a third brother who dies, a toddler, she returns to live with her father's people, leaving the Shawnee prophet and his brother to be raised by older siblings.
It seemed remarkable to me that two chapters, a full 80 pages of the book are focused on the story of these two brothers, and the events that shaped them. Most of it is devoted to historical recounting, so it stands out amidst an otherwise sociological attempt at explaining the psychology of the peoples in conflict. The following historical citation profiles how murder was racially condoned when it involved killing an Indian (even one invited to a treaty negotiation):
"British general Thomas Gage complained that 'all the people of the Frontiers from Pennsylvania to Virginia inclusive, openly avow, that they will never find a Man guilty of Murther[sic], for killing an Indian' Gage described the frontiersmen as a 'People...near as wild as the country they go in' and 'by far more vicious and wicked' than the Indians they sought to dispossess." "In the same vein, Gov. John Penn of Pennsylvania had complained a year earlier that 'no jury in any of our frontier counties will ever condemn a man for killing an Indian. They do not consider it in the light of murder, but as a meritorious act'."
Although I don't necessarily accept the premise of this author and other ethnographers, being that nativistic religious expression is overly syncretic, (ie. borrowing from external religious sources without comprehension) it becomes quite clear in these pages how the Eastern American Indian prophets by processes, accomplished an attitude among their followers which demonized the old world spiritism of their ancestors. In contrast, those whose efforts were perhaps more successful, owing that they brought less destruction upon their own people, would include Kenekuk the Kickapoo prophet, and Handsome Lake the Seneca prophet. Readers can learn more of what these chiefs strove to achieve, in their own words, from the following sources,
Spiritual Leaders (American Indian Lives)
Kenekuk, the Kickapoo Prophet
The Code of Handsome Lake, the Seneca Prophet (Forgotten Books)
I also concur with the previous reviewer that the bibliographical references in Prophets of the Great Spirit are indeed substantial. Readers should prepare themselves to patiently digest countless descriptions of the social attitudes and outbursts of missionaries, Indians and colonists. Complaints and characterizations without dialog get kind of heavy at times. I had to put it down several times and restart with a refreshed mind.
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