Monday, January 23, 2012

Religion of the Powhatan Tribe

Something that has always fascinated me about colonization of the “New World” is the nature of the interactions between its current inhabitants at the time and its newcomers. Today, it seems very farfetched to us that a group of unknown people could show up and claim someone else's land as something they “founded", being that there had been people there all along. The culture shock is unimaginable. With little to nothing in common with the English, Native Americans had to find ways to coexist with them, while trying desperately to preserve their culture.
In John Smith’s writings, he mentions acts and rituals performed by the Powhatans for religious purposes. Because I enjoy learning about other cultures, especially languages and religions, this sparked my interest. When Smith mentions the horrified reaction of the Powhatans when English colonists shot at their “Okee", it is made evident that religion was an important part of Powhatan life. This caused me to wonder what their religious life was like before it was tainted by the religion of the English. What was key in their religion? What was most important? Though John Smith’s crew did not colonize Virginia for religious purposes, we can assume that religion is important to them as well because of the religious references in Smith’s writing.
I was very interested to learn what the importance of the Okee was. To understand this, I had to first examine the Powhatan religion more closely. Powhatan Indians worshiped an assortment of gods and spirits in a hierarchical sense. Their two most important gods were Ahone, who was responsible for the creation of good things, and Oke (referred to by Smith as “Okee”), who was responsible for evil and war. Because they believed a certain god was responsible for all the bad things that happened, it only makes sense that they wanted to please it. They went about this by giving offerings to Oke, such as furs, food, tobacco and beads.1 This explains why they sought peace and the return of their idol after Smith’s crew shot at it.
Unlike Oke, the Powhatan people did not make offerings and sacrifices to Ahone.  Ahone was more of an abstract being who was never personified in folklore. They also believed that Ahone had no specific gender until Christian settlers compared Ahone’s benevolence with that of God’s, causing them to begin to refer to Ahone as a “he". 2
Another fact that evidences the importance of religion to this tribe is that the priesthood acted as advisors to the leaders of the tribe. There were two classes of their priesthood: priests and lower-class conjurors. Priests had the responsibility of keeping tribal history, presiding over rituals and maintaining the temples. Lower-class conjurors’ duties consisted of predicting enemy attacks and curing illnesses. Both levels of the priesthood made themselves distinct from the rest of the tribe by painting their faces and wearing feather capes and headdresses. They also attached bird feathers and blackbirds to their ears. 1
Anyone who is familiar with the Christian religion realizes how different these two belief systems are. It was interesting to learn about a religion that places such importance on nature, idols, rituals and sacrifices. Similar religions exist today, but not in regions with which most of us are familiar; therefore, I found learning about the Powhatan religion to be intriguing and eye-opening.


Sources:
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)