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The varieties of Sioux Christianity, 1860–1980, in international perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2007

David Lindenfeld
David Lindenfeld
Affiliation:
Department of History, Louisiana State University,USA E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The paper analyses the multiple ways in which the Sioux have dealt with missionary Christianity between roughly 1860 and 1980, placing this in an international perspective. It addresses the question of how and why Christianity became pervasive among the Sioux despite the avowed purpose of missionaries to extirpate Native culture. It contends that the churches willy-nilly preserved many elements of that culture and provided leadership opportunities for Natives that were not available through other institutions. It examines this process in the light of several interpretations of missionary encounters drawn from other cases, both in North America and Africa. While the Sioux exhibited a variety of ways of adapting to Christianity and combining it with their native religion, the most prominent strategy was dual participation, the simultaneous separate practice of the two.

‘Most Sioux people maintain membership in, and belief in the efficacy of, some Christian denomination.’

Raymond J. De Mallie and Douglas R. Parks, 19871

‘A very small percentage of Native Americans are practicing Christians.’

William Baldridge, 19932

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , November 2007 , pp. 281 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

1 ‘Introduction’, Mallie, De and Parks, , eds., Sioux Indian religion, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987, p. 14Google Scholar. I want to thank Catherine Wessinger, Katie Benton-Cohen, Philip J. Deloria and the reviewers for the Journal of Global History for their perceptive and helpful readings of earlier versions of this paper.

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25 Anderson, Kinsmen of another kind, pp. 203, 256. White paints a similar picture of sudden change for the Western Sioux in his article, ‘The winning of the West: the expansion of the Western Sioux in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, Journal of American History, 65, 1978, pp. 319–43.

26 Tinker, Missionary conquest, p. 3.

27 Warrior, People and the word, pp. 119, 121; Macgregor, Warriors without weapons, chs. 8–14.

28 Weaver, ‘I-hermeneutics to we-hermeneutics’, p. 2.

29 Powers, William K., Beyond the vision. Essays on American Indian culture, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987, p. 102.Google Scholar See also Riggs, Stephen R., Tah-koo Wah-kan; or, the Gospel among the Dakotas (1869), reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1972, chs. xx–xxiGoogle Scholar; Meyer, Roy W., History of the Santee Sioux, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1967, chs. 6–7Google Scholar. Cf. McLoughlin, William G., The Cherokees and Christianity, 1794–1870, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1994, p. 101 for a comparable case.Google Scholar

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31 Powers, Marla N., Oglala women. Myth, ritual, and reality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. p. 192CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ostler, Jeffrey, The Plains Sioux and U.S. colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 188.Google Scholar

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36 Ibid., pp. vii–x, ch. 6.

37 Riggs, Tah-koo Wah-kan, p. 343.

38 Stahl, ‘Carrying the word’, p. 77.

39 Kerstetter, Todd, ‘Spin doctors at Santee: missionaries and the Dakota-language reporting of the Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee’, Western Historical Quarterly, 28, 1997, pp. 46–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The paper split into separate English and Dakota papers, substantially different in content, in 1884.

40 On the Episcopalian paper, see Hawk Sneve, Virginia Driving, That they may have life. The Episcopal Church in South Dakota, 1859–1976, New York: Seabury Press, 1977, p. 63.Google Scholar On the Catholic, see Enochs, Jesuit mission, pp. 89–90.

41 On China, see Diamond, Norma, ‘Christianity and the Hua Miao: writing and power’, in Bays, Daniel H., ed., Christianity in China, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996, pp. 138–57.Google Scholar On Africa, Hastings, Adrian, The construction of nationhood: ethnicity, religion, and nationalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, ch. 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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44 Enochs, Jesuit mission, pp. 22–3; William Powers, Beyond the vision, pp. 113–14. Cf. Frykenberg, Robert Eric, ‘Christian missions and the Raj’, in Etherington, Norman, ed., Missions and empire, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 127, for a similar situation in India.Google Scholar

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48 Enochs, Jesuit mission, p. 59. For a description of the Sun Dance as practised prior to the ban, see Holler, Clyde, Black Elk’s religion. The Sun Dance and Lakota Catholicism, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995, ch. 2.Google Scholar For a description of a Catholic congress, initiated in 1891, see Sister Duratschek, Mary Claudia, Crusading along Sioux trails, Yankton, SD: Benedictine Convent of the Sacred Heart, 1947, pp. 99–104.Google Scholar

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50 William Powers, Beyond the vision, pp. 109–12; DeMallie, , ed., The sixth grandfather. Black Elk’s teachings given to John G. Neihardt, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984, p. 15.Google Scholar On Sioux societies, see Sarah Olden, ‘The people of Tipi Sapa’, in Vine Deloria, Jr., Singing for a spirit, pp. 153–72.

51 Macgregor, Warriors without weapons, pp. 40, 44, chs. 12, 13.

52 Markowitz, Harvey, ‘The Catholic mission and the Sioux. A crisis in the early paradigm’, in DeMallie, and Parks, , eds., Sioux Indian religion, pp. 125–7Google Scholar; Cash, Joseph H. and Hoover, Herbert T., eds., To be an Indian. An oral history, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, pp. 108–9.Google Scholar

53 Robin Horton, ‘African conversion’, Africa, 41, 1971, pp. 85–108, esp. 101–5; ‘The rationality of conversion’, Africa, 45, 1975, pp. 219–35, 373–99.

54 Ibid., pp. 222, 234.

55 Horton, , Patterns of thought in Africa and the West. Essays on magic, religion and science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, esp. pp. 161–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 E.g. Robert W. Hefner, ‘World building and the rationality of conversion’, in Hefner, ed., Conversion to Christianity, p. 21; Schreuder, Deryck and Oddie, Geoffrey, ‘What is conversion? history, Christianity and religious change in colonial Africa and South Asia’, Journal of Religious History, 15, 1989, pp. 496–518, esp. 514–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Isichei, Elizabeth, A history of Christianity in Africa, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995. p. 7Google Scholar; Meyer, Birgit, Translating the devil: religion and modernity among the Ewe in Ghana, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999, pp. 109–10.Google Scholar

57 Rice, Julian, Before the Great Spirit. The many faces of Sioux spirituality, Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1998, p. 153Google Scholar. Ch. 10 gives an overview of the controversy.

58 Steinmetz, Pipe, Bible, and Peyote, p. 42; Howard, Scott J., ‘Incommensurability and Nicholas Black Elk: an exploration’, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 23, 1999, p. 116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also DeMallie, ‘Lakota belief and ritual in the nineteenth century’, in DeMallie and Parks, eds., Sioux Indian religion, pp. 28–32. Contrast these with the ‘as told to’ version of Thomas E. Mails, Fools Crow, where Wakan Tanka speaks to Fool’s Crow (p. 110) and is manifest as a trinity (p. 120). For a critical demolition of this view, see Tinker, , Spirit and resistance. Political theology and American Indian liberation, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2004, ch. 5.Google Scholar

59 James L. West, ‘Indian spirituality. Another vision’, in Treat, ed., Native and Christian, p. 32; for a comparative study of European notions that resemble these, see Cordova, Viola F., ‘The European concept of Usen’, in Weaver, ed., Native American religious identity, pp. 26–32.Google Scholar

60 Morrison, Kenneth M., ‘Beyond the supernatural: language and religious action’, Religion, 22, 1992, p. 204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Irwin, Lee, ‘Introduction’, in Irwin, ed., Native American spirituality. A critical reader, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000, p. 3Google Scholar; Andrea Smith, ‘Walking in balance. The spirituality-liberation praxis of Native women’, in Weaver, ed., Native American religious identity, p. 181.

61 Quoted in Utley, Robert M., The last days of the Sioux Nation, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963, p. 34.Google Scholar Cf. Holler, Black Elk’s religion, p. 213. On the notion of spirituality as power in West Africa, see Lindenfeld, David, ‘Indigenous encounters with Christian missionaries in China and West Africa, 1800–1920: a comparative study’, Journal of World History, 16, 2005, pp. 356–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the case of the Pacific Islands, see Barker, John, ‘Where the missionary frontier ran ahead of empire’, in Etherington, ed., Missions and empire, p. 96.Google Scholar

62 Ostler, Plains Sioux, pp. 230–1.

63 William Powers, Beyond the vision, p. 120.

64 Ella Deloria, Speaking of Indians, p. 101; Macgregor, Warriors without weapons, p. 92.

65 Elk, Black, The sacred pipe, ed. Joseph Epes Brown, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953, pp. 3–9, esp. n. 12.Google Scholar Also Steinmetz, Pipe, Bible, and Peyote, pp. 52–4; DeMallie, ‘Lakota belief and ritual’, p. 31.

66 Vecsey, ‘Century of Lakota Sioux Catholicism’, p. 266.

67 Steltenkamp, Michael F., Black Elk. Holy man of the Oglala, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993, pp. 37–8Google Scholar; Enochs, Jesuit mission, p. 103.

68 Comaroff, Jean and Comaroff, John, Of revelation and revolution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, 1997, vol. 1, pp. 24, 199, vol. 2, pp. 24–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 218. The Tswana term was badimo. At the same time, the singular form of the same word, modimo, became the word for ‘God’. See Paul Landau, ‘Language’, in Etherington, ed., Missions and empire, p. 211.

70 Ella Deloria, Speaking of Indians, p. 103.

71 Wilson, Remember this!, p. 53.

72 Elbourne, Elizabeth, ‘Word made flesh: Christianity, modernity, and cultural colonialism in the work of Jean and John Comaroff’, American Historical Review, 108, 2003, p. 451CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blood ground. Colonialism, missions, and the contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799–1853, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002, pp. 18–20; Landau, , The realm of the word. Language, gender, and Christianity in a South African kingdom, Portsmouth, NH: Heineman, 1995, pp. xxi–xxii.Google Scholar

73 Berkhofer, Robert F., Jr., The white man’s Indian, New York: Knopf, 1978, pp. 27–8.Google Scholar

74 For example, Deloria, Philip J., Playing Indian, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998Google Scholar; Huhndorf, Going Native, ch. 1.

75 They thus anticipated Edward Said’s definition of the intellectual as a spokesperson for the less powerful. Said, Edward W., Representations of the intellectual, New York: Pantheon Books, 1994, pp. 11, 22.Google Scholar

76 Quoted in Heflin, Ruth J., ‘I remain alive’ The Sioux literary renaissance, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000, p. 36.Google Scholar This generation has received much attention in recent scholarship, e.g. Warrior, , Tribal secrets. Recovering American Indian intellectual traditions, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995, pp. 5–14Google Scholar; Maddox, Lucy, Citizen Indians. Native American intellectuals, race and reform, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005.Google Scholar

77 Comaroff and Comaroff, Revelation and revolution, vol. 2, pp. 85–6, 108–15; William Powers, Beyond the vision, ch. 5; DeMallie and Parks, ‘Introduction’, p. 14; Vecsey, ‘Century of Lakota Sioux Catholicism’, pp. 273, 285. Steinmetz, Pipe, Bible, and Peyote, p. 163, calls this ‘ecumenicism 1’, to be distinguished from a simultaneous practice that is part of a coherent belief system (‘ecumenicism 2’). He maintains that a majority of Lakota subscribe to ecumenicism 1.

78 Marla Powers, Oglala women, pp. 185–8.

79 Ibid., p. 189. See also Spider, Emerson, Sr. ‘The Native American Church of Jesus Christ’, in DeMallie, and Parks, , eds., Sioux Indian Religion, pp. 189–209Google Scholar; Steinmetz, Pipe, Bible, and Peyote, ch. 2.

80 See Steinmetz, Pipe, Bible, and Peyote, pp. 37–8, 87–8. William Powers, Beyond the vision, p. 99, disputes the term ‘syncretism’ as applied here; he sees it rather as a strategy by the Catholic Church to gain new converts.

81 See Holler, ed., The Black Elk reader, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000, for selections from these different points of view.Google Scholar

82 According to William Powers, the Lakota who remembered Black Elk did not regard him as an exceptional figure, but one of a number of Native catechists. See ‘When Black Elk speaks, everybody listens’, in Vecsey, Christopher ed., Religion in Native North America, Moscow, ID: University of Idaho Press, 1990, pp. 140–7.Google Scholar

83 De Mallie’s introduction constitutes the fullest biographical source for Black Elk. See The sixth grandfather, pp. 1–74.

84 Ibid., p. 294; cf. pp. 123, 214.

85 DeMallie, ed., The sixth grandfather., p. 47; on Black Elk’s first marriage and sons, see pp. 3–14; on the school, p. 23. See also William Powers, ‘When Black Elk speaks’, pp. 140–1.

86 Ibid., p. 141; De Mallie, Sixth grandfather, p. 14; Steltenkamp, Black Elk, p. 34.

87 De Mallie, Sixth grandfather, pp. 14, 135–7.

88 Steltenkamp, Black Elk, pp. 62–7, 88.

89 De Mallie, Sixth grandfather, p. 21.

90 On his sharing knowledge with Jesuits, see Bucko, Raymond A., The Lakota ritual of the Sweat Lodge, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998, p. 118.Google Scholar On his relationship to Fools Crow, see Mails, Fools Crow, p. 88.

91 The outside study in the 1940s led by Gordon Macgregor concluded that young people on the reservation did not look to priests or ministers for leadership or guidance. Macgregor, Warriors without weapons, pp. 201–2.

92 De Mallie, Sixth grandfather, p. 60; Steltenkamp, Black Elk, ch. 6.

93 De Mallie, Sixth grandfather, p. 64.

94 Elk, Black, ‘Foreword’, in Brown, Joseph Epes, The sacred pipe, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953, pp. xix–xx.Google Scholar

95 William Powers, ‘When Black Elk speaks’, pp. 147–8.

96 Black Elk had steadfastly refused to perform it for Neihardt, despite the latter’s repeated requests. See De Mallie, Sixth grandfather, p. 15n.

97 Ibid., p. 91.

98 Bucko, Lakota ritual, pp. 83, 171; Marla Powers, Oglala women, p. 191; Waziyatawin Wilson, Remember this!, p. 117.

99 Some literature since the 1980s suggests this may be changing, e.g. Warrior, Robert Allen, ‘Canaanites, cowboys, and Indians: deliverance, conquest, and liberation theology today’, in Treat, ed., Native and Christian, pp. 93–100Google Scholar; Steve Charleston, ‘The Old Testament of Native America’, ibid., pp. 68–80.

100 McLoughlin, Cherokees and Christianity, p. 19. The Choctaw minister Steve Charleston described eastern Oklahoma as a ‘cultural patchwork quilt’ consisting of ‘dozens of tribes to go along with dozens of churches’, in Treat, ed., Native and Christian, p. 69. On the Navajo, see Cooper, Guy H., ‘Individualism and integration in Navajo religion’, in Vecsey, ed., Religion in Native North America, p. 79Google Scholar, and Vogt, Evan Z., ‘Navajo’, in Spicer, Edward H., ed., Perspectives on American Indian cultural change, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961, pp. 320, 324Google Scholar; Cochran, Dakota Cross-Bearer, p. 199.

101 E.g. Dale Stover, ‘A post-colonial reading of Black Elk’, in Holler, ed., Black Elk reader, pp. 127–47.