People often imagine Indians as they appear in movies or literature, such as the characters in books of Karl Maya. Books such as the novels by author Fenimore Cooper or Thomas Mayne Reid create an image of vast free prairies, millions of bison, giant bear grizzly, ingenious footprints of Indians, and no less unique white…
All About The Native American Prayer Stick
A prayer stick is a stick that has the purpose of making petitions and offerings to the world of spirits. It is also called a medicine stick or a spirit stick. A medicine man or shaman were the ones who’d usually use the prayer stick. But members of the tribe can also make and use…
Totemism in Native American Culture
You have probably seen a totem pole somewhere before, such as on the television or online. It is actually from the belief known as Totemism. Totemism was all about some people’s kinship to a totem that they believe in together. The Ojibwa word odoodem is where the word totem comes from initially. The original word’s…
Living Spaces of Native Americans
There is a very wealthy pool of knowledge to gain when studying the history, culture, beliefs, and traditions of the Native Americans. With the popularity of films like Peter Pan, Pocahontas, and The Last of the Mohicans, the public mind had a glimpse of their culture through the interpretation of media producers. However, there is…
The Significance of Brown Bears in Native American Culture
The most common bears in the entire world are brown bears. It’s mostly found in the forest and mountains of North America, Europe, and Asia. Brown bears follow the omnivorous diet. They have a diet that consists of nut from fruits, fruits and leaves. Bears also eat rodents and sometimes even moose. This is no…
Spirituality and Respect at the Core of Native American History
Native Americans are known to have a distinct culture and unique tribes. Their spirituality boils down to respecting nature. They believe that nature is the where they come from and is also what sustains them. The beliefs and practices of these people revolve around nature; it also includes the way they mature and how they…
Native American Battles that Led to Victories
Several factors contributed to battles between the Native Americans and the Non-Indians in America. Right from superiority to cultural differences, there has always been means and ways that the Natives have been attacked for. The conflicts that took place between the two races often turned very brutal and brought near-destruction to the indigenous people in…
Native American Sports Night
Sometimes when you look back across the the many different and sometimes alien cultures of the past, it’s easy to forget that no matter how strange their beliefs or ways of life may seem we will always have one thing in common, we all like to take a break from the stresses of life and…
Vision Quests
It isn’t rare that any given culture may have given a specific point or age in a person’s life that would mark their passage from childhood to adulthood. Often they would go as far as to have ceremonies created to do so, some still do in fact, take for example the mitzvah’s of the Jewish…
So you Want to Build a Sweat Lodge?
Many different civilisations throughout history have had their own iteration of what we now call a sauna but arguably none relied on theirs as much as the Native American people. A sweat lodge, sometimes referred to as simply a ‘sweat’ or perhaps more aptly a ‘medicine lodge’ or ‘medicine house’ was quite different to say,…