Indians 101: A short introduction to sacred places

Many religious traditions throughout the world have places which are felt to be sacred. American Indian religious traditions have places which are sacred because they are a part of their mythological heritage; other places are sacred because they are associated with human activities, both past and present.

An understanding of Native American sacred places, however, must include the animism which provides the foundation for Native American spirituality. Sacred places are living places, they are places with a soul, a spiritual essence. This soul is not something that is given to a place by humans through ritual practice, but rather ceremonies held at sacred places are an acknowledgment of the soul of the place. In their book The Encyclopedia of Native American Religions, Arlene Hirschfelder and Paulette Molin write:

“Traditional practices of Native Americans are inseparably bound to land and natural formations. For millennia Indian people have worshipped at natural sites that are part of the land—natural, not built, sanctuaries.”

In her University of Montana Master of Science Thesis, Legal Protection for Native American Sacred Landscapes Involving Forest Service Lands Terri Nelson reports:

“Tribal religions focus on a landscape full of power; these places often must be maintained in an ‘undeveloped’ state.”

All humans have a cognitive map which provides them with a spatial analysis of their world, both natural and human made. Traditionally, the cognitive maps of American Indians have been carried in their stories. Indian stories, particularly the spiritual stories and the stories of creation, focus on geography, telling what happened where and describing different places and their associations with each other. When one knows the stories, then one has a map of the traditional tribal territory. Traditionally, this meant that a person could go someplace new and know, because of the stories, not only the route, but also the different geographic features which would be encountered on the trip.

From a Native American viewpoint, the landscape was not named for humans but for the acts of creation told in the oral traditions. In his chapter in American Indian Places, Philip Deloria writes:

“Tribal peoples do not simply name their home territories; they point specifically to the places of creation that anchor those territories.”

Removing people from their homelands, a typical practice of the American government, means removing them from an important part of their religious traditions.

The European cultures which first encountered American Indians were accustomed to delineating sacred places with some type of structure or monument which would then be consecrated as sacred. These structures—churches, cemeteries, altars, etc.—were considered to be self-contained, that is, their sacred nature was contained within the space designated as sacred. American Indians, on the other hand, tended to be animists who viewed the world around them as a living thing. Sacred places were not created by humans. While the people would sometimes designate a sacred place with a structure of some type—a pile of stones, a circle of stones, a mound or earthwork, or a chamber—often places with great sacred power did not have any human-created indications that they were sacred. People know about these places because of the stories and the songs rather than because of the structures which they had constructed.

In comparing European and Native American religions, theology professor George Tinker, in his chapter in North American Indian Wars, writes:

“Indian peoples, then, tend to locate sacred power spatially—in terms of places or in terms of spatial configuration. This is in stark contrast to European and Euro-American religious traditions, which tend to express spirituality in terms of time: a regular hour on Sundays and a seasonal liturgical calendar that has become more and more distanced from any sense of the actual flow of the seasons in particular places and is therefore more abstract and more portable than Native American traditions.”

One example of the interrelationship of sacred space, cognitive maps, and oral tradition can be seen in the Salt Trail Songs of the Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute) which describe both a physical and spiritual landscape. This includes physical features such as oceans and deserts, and spiritual features including life and death. The songs describe ancient village sites, gathering sites for medicinal plants and salt, historic events, trade routes, and sacred areas. The 142-song cycle assists the deceased in their sacred journey.

For American Indians sacred places do not exist in isolation: they are connected to other sacred places and these connections enhance the spiritual power of an area. The connections between sacred places are explained in the stories and ceremonies, and in the songs.

It is not just “places” that are spiritually connected, but also the “people” who are associated with the places: the plants, the animals, the rocks. Arlene Hirschfelder and Paulette Molin write:

“A sacred area can also be a site from which plants, herbs, minerals, and waters possessing healing powers may be taken and where people communicate with the spirit world by means of prayers and offerings.”

Again, the stories, songs, and ceremonies explain the nature and meaning of these connections.

While many sacred places are natural features—geological formations, waterfalls, caves, mountains, islands, hills—other places have become sacred due to human activity. These include rock art sites, rock cairns, earth works, geoglyphs, and medicine wheels.

Rock art sites contain pictographs (images painted on rock) and petroglyphs (images carved or pecked into rock). In some cases, rock art sites may commemorate vision quest experiences, at other times they may mark ceremonial or offering areas, or they may memorialize historic events. Writing about the Columbia Plateau in his chapter on rock art in the Handbook of North American Indians, Keo Boreson reports:

“Pictographs are often located in out-of-the way mountainous areas near rivers, lakes, springs, or streams. A few sites are at high elevations with a panoramic view of river valleys. Petroglyphs are frequently found at places near rivers or lakes where people congregated, often where fishing was exceptionally good.”

Shown above is a thunderbird motif petroglyph along the Columbia River.

The image shown above is both a pictograph and a petroglyph.

With regard to the American Southwest, Dennis Slifer, in his book The Serpent and the Sacred Fire: Fertility Images in Southwest Rock Art, writes:

“The location of some rock art sites provides clues as to its possible meaning. We know that the Pueblo/Anasazi rock art, and probably most other, was often made near places in the landscape imbued with mythic significance, or at shrines where ritual took place. Many are near villages, but some are quite remote and hidden. Prominent high points and tributary confluences of streams or canyons are other favored places. Caves and rock shelters were thought to be entrances to the underworld and so often contain rock art.”

Dennis Slifer also writes:

“Despite the varied locations of rock art, it seems clear that many rock art sites are in places considered sacred or that have power of some kind.”

In cultures throughout the world, places where human remains were buried—often designated as cemeteries—are considered sacred places. Archaeologists James Potter and Elizabeth Perry, in an article in American Antiquity, write:

“Mortuary rituals and activities create meaning, memories, and identities for those who experience and participate in them. Mortuary features, therefore, are not only monuments to the identity of the interred, but also to those who participated in the internment, those who claim association with the interred, and those who continue to live in proximity to the grave.”

In his chapter on Adena culture in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology William Dancey writes:

“Burials represent veneration of ancestors and acknowledgement of position of status within the community.”

In many parts of North America, the dead, and particularly high-status individuals, were buried in earthen mounds. While burial mounds are often associated with the ancient Hopewell, Adena, and Mississippian cultures, burial mounds are also found among other cultures.

Fertility shrines are places in the West where women or couples went to perform personal rituals to aid conception, pregnancy, safe births. In her chapter in Discovering North American Rock Art, Kelley Hays-Gilpin reports:

“These sites sometimes included natural or modified rock features resembling genitalia, pecked cupules, petroglyphs, and rock paintings.”

The Gateway site (48LN348) is a small collection of petroglyphs above the confluence of Fontenelle Creek and the Green River in Wyoming. In an article in the Wyoming Archaeologist, James Keyser and George Poetschat report:

“The prominent cleft atop the ridge has an obvious vulvaform shape, and at the site there are nearly 40 large, wide, shallow tool grooves strongly suggesting vulvaforms.”

James Keyser and George Poetschat also write:

“The vulva symbolism of the site itself and the numerous tool grooves carved there originally led us to propose that the site had been a place of women’s power at some point in its history.”

American Indian sacred places have been, and continue to be, controversial as this form of sacredness is often misunderstood by non-Indians. In his book The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek: A Tragic Clash Between White and Native America, Richard Klugar writes:

“To the European and American colonial mentality, such worshipful regard for the natural world reeked of animism, idolatry, superstition, and a pagan perversion of the true Holy Spirit. The whole point of the British settlement of the New World was to possess the land for its utility. The immigrants’ mission was to take title to the fecund earth and tame it for domestic purposes—seek out its best growing places, clear them, fell their timber for durable dwellings and fuel, turn the wilderness into fields, plant them and fence them off from neighbors and the natives, and prosper with the smiling approval of God in heaven and His Son, sent to save humanity. The land, in short, was there to serve man, not to be left sacrosanct.”

Today, Indian reservations contain only a fraction of the aboriginal tribal lands and many sacred sites are now located off-reservation and are thus not under tribal control. Some sacred sites are on federal lands controlled by the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Army Corps of Engineers; others are on state lands or private lands. Obtaining access to sacred sites for ceremonial and spiritual practices can be difficult and is sometimes restricted to enrolled members of federally recognized tribes.

In addition to problems of access, there is conflict between development and preservation. Federal land managers, for example, historically have given preference to economic development. In California, for example, the Yurok, Karok, and Tolowa tribes had traditionally used the Chimney Rock area for religious practices which included gathering plants and other natural resources to use in ceremonial activities as well as personal spiritual ceremonies at Chimney Rock. The U.S. Forest Service, which managed the land, decided to build a logging road through the area which would increase timber harvest in the area, stimulate employment, and provide recreational access to the area. The conflict between the tribes and the Forest Service was resolved by the Supreme Court found that Indian religious rights were outweighed by society's broader interest in destroying sacred sites for economic reasons, even when such reasons were speculative.

Congress responded to the Supreme Court decision by amending the American Indian Religious Freedom Restoration Act to specifically mention sacred sites. In 1997, the Supreme Court overturned the Religious Freedom Restoration Act saying that Congress does not have the right to make laws protecting exercise of religion free from government interference.