Category Archives: Indigenous People before Contact

Creation Stories: The Story of Mesh

Evolution, Indigenous People before Contact, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy

 

First Nations have an abundance of creation stories. Many of them are ancient stories. They have been passed down for thousands of years in the form of oral stories. One of the most famous stories, is the story of Mesh.

Innu are a First Nation in eastern Canada. The Innu are the indigenous people found in much of what we now refer to as Labrador and Quebec. At one time, they were to as the Montagnais-Naskapi Indians. They are not the Inuit (or formerly  ‘Eskimo’) who live further north.

The Innu have a creation story of Mesh (pronounced and often written ‘Mee’ in Innu). That story has passed down orally through many generations.  According to that story, two which  prehistoric fish, one male and one female, came out of the water. Eventually they grew legs which of course were much more useful on land.  Legs are often quite useless in water. This made them look like lizards, and together they climbed a tree. When they came down from the tree their bodies were covered in hair and they could walk like humans today. Some people believe, not entirely without some justification that this story told by Eruoma Awashish/Terre Innu  in the CBC series shows that Indigenous people understood the concept of evolution. Evolution is the story of change caused by organisms adapting to changed circumstances. Like the two fish.

Mi’Kmaq:  Cooperation or Competition

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Colonialism, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous People before Contact, Indigenous Treaties

 

As I said earlier, much of eastern Canada was Mi’Kmaq territory when Europeans first made contact.  And as I have already mentioned, the Indigenous people of North America have a deep attachment to the land they occupied. The attachment was so deep it is not an exaggeration to say it was, and is still, a spiritual connection. This is a critical difference between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people. A friend of mine said the attachment of Mennonites was the same. I have not noticed such a strong connection, but try to keep an open mind on the issue. I invite people to correct me.

 

According to Quenton Condo, a Mi’Kmaq  member on that CBC Gem series I already blogged about, the treaty of 1752 negotiated by the Mi’Kmaq and the British Crown was by the Mi’Kmaq intended to make sure that no one would interfere with the Mi’Kmaq way of life. The problem is, according to the Mi’Kmaq, that the non-indigenous people were not taught about the treaties in Canada and now react in anger and hate when they learn what it means. This is a failure of the Canadian educational system, he says.

“After all, how much did any of us learn about treaties in school? Frankly, in my case, even in Law School, I learned almost nothing about treaties. Now I know that treaties are very important. They have constitutional significance. And treaties are fundamental to learning about Canada.”

If we know nothing about treaties, we know nothing about Canada!

 My goal on this jaunt across Canada is to learn more about Canada. Therefore I have to learn more about treaties and will blog about them.

Although, that is their [Mi’Kmaq] interpretation, it has the ring of truth as far as I am concerned. Those treaties did not give them the right to hunt. They already had those rights which they inherited from their ancestors. That of course, follows from them being part of the land, which is a fundamental principle to most indigenous peoples in North America and elsewhere.

The Innu territory and Naskapi overlapped as well as Inuit and Cree. As one Innu woman said,

“At the time of our ancestors there were no borders. Our ancestors did not use measuring tapes to say, ‘This is yours,’ and ‘this is mine.’ The territory was shared amongst all the nations. And we shared it well.”

 

Indigenous people have always been willing to share.  Non-indigenous people were more aggressive. They started out willing to share, but then wanted to take over and impose their will. That is exactly what they did, and ever since Canada has had problems. The Innu woman also said that at one time there were plenty of caribou in their territory. Some said there were so many “it moved the mountain.” That would be a lot of caribou.

An unidentified woman on the CBC show said “Nations were intertwined in all aspect of our lives and in our approaches to sharing. This insured the survivals of our peoples.”

I don’t want to suggest that Indigenous People of the region were perfect. No one and no people are perfect. Not even Mennonites. Yet stories like this show the truth of those who say, people who live in places where survival is very difficult, like the Canadian north, have found that sharing works best for survival. This is what the traditional knowledge of the people of the region tells us. I can’t argue with this. This is a fundamental principle of survival.

As one Anishinabe man, Andrew “Stitch” Manitowabi, said about his people, “As an Anishinabe people we don’t go by boundaries. We use the language of speaking Anishinabe which extends into the United States in the Quebec area and northern Ontario.” This is a very different approach to determining territory.

The Anishinabe, like most Indigenous people used the language of sharing, not the language of boundaries. Non-Indigenous people did not always realize that, resulting, sometimes, in serious misunderstandings between the parties. In this country we still live difficultly with that misunderstanding. It has never gone aay.

Mi’Kmaq learned to cooperate.  Non-indigenous people must also learn.

 

 

Religious Snobs

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Indigenous People before Contact, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy

Jacque Cartier and his men were impressed with this rock. Who could blame them? They were not so impressed with the people. That was white supremacist bias.

The Europeans who arrived in North America were also snobbish about religion. As Barbara Huck said in her book, “Europeans had a remarkable intolerance for other religions and a deep conviction that their particular brand of Christianity was the only true faith.” They were also often reluctant to acknowledge the help they had received from the inhabitants. As Huck explained, “

 

“By 1545, the difficult climate and hatred of the Iroquois (prompted by the barbarous treatment of the very people who had more than once saved French lives, convinced the French to end for a time at least—their first foray into the “new world.””

Of course, as we all know they came back. When they came back to eastern Canada, they were a little smarter. They realized the wealth on this continent was not so much in precious minerals but other treasures. As Huck said,

“When they returned, at the beginning of the 17th century, they were driven by the same motives—a search for glory, souls, and gold—but the gold was now recognized to lie not in glittering metal but in soft lustrous fur. By 1600 the trade in fur, particularly beaver fur for felting, by seasonal fishermen was so lucrative that many visited the coastal shores to fish for fur rather than cod and a succession of noble were petitioning the French crown for the right to participate—or better yet, monopolize—the trade in North America.”

 

But I think even Huck missed the real treasure. The real treasure was to be found in the remarkable people of North America, their astounding knowledge and understanding of the natural world around them, and the deep spiritual truths that knowledge triggered. That to my mind, was the real unappreciated treasure of North America. It is still under appreciated to this day.

Snobbery is hard to overcome. Even when it is irrational.

 

Sharing is Caring

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Indigenous People before Contact

Great Blue Heron in Mi’kmaq territory

 

The Mi’kmaq were the original settlers of what we now call the Maritime Provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. They were not exclusive occupiers everywhere but they occupied a large of it. They had their own form of government and each community had their own leader known as Saqamaw (pronounced sah-ha-mahw) which is the Mi’kmaw word for “respected older person” or Elder.  Of course, not all older persons are respected.

 

The Mi’kmaq had their own laws and a comprehensive knowledge of the plants growing around them in their territory. Many of those plants were used to create medicines.  According to Theresa Meuse in her book, L’nu’k the People: Mi’kmaw History, Culture and Heritage, “They lived in communities that revolved around the idea of sharing with one another.” Sharing was fundamental to whom they were. Sharing came naturally to them.

 

They called themselves L’nu’k their word for ‘the people’. I am always amazed at how often a First Nation around North America name themselves “the people”. Meuse said, “When Europeans started coming to North America the Mi’kmaq welcomed them with the greeting, nikmaq, which means “my kin-friends.”  They immediately saw strange people as kin. I find that amazing. Amazing and wonderful.  But these feelings were not always reciprocated.

John Cabot and his crew sailed west from the English port of Bristol to Newfoundland in 1497. He and his men went fishing not far from what the French later called Gaspésie, where we were traveling,  but even closer to the south coast of Newfoundland. Cabot reported codfish so thick in the Grand Banks that the fish could be caught by lowering baskets from the side of the ship. Soon European fishers from England, Spain, and Portugal were flocking to the region for the bounty of fish. The French came soon as well. At first the fishers salted the fish on board their vessels, but in time they set up shore stations to make “dry fish.”  These were lightly salted and sundried. Cod was easy to keep and store and as I know personally, delicious to eat.  As Barbara Huck said in her wonderful book, Exploring the Fur Trade Routes of North America, the fish “soon became Canada’s first major export to the world.”

 

It is likely that trade with locals began soon after that. Probably, the local Beothuk and Mi’kmaq were interested in exchanging things for the European knives. Europeans were good at producing technology. However, Europeans like Jacque Cartier, who came from France were slow to appreciate the smarts of the local people. In 1534 Cartier wrote that the Iroquois he met along the shore of the Gaspé Peninsula “had not anything above the value of five sous, their canoes, and fishing nets excepted.”

 

Yet the Europeans kept coming. Perhaps they wanted to know what was beyond the mouth of the very large river (the St. Lawrence). Perhaps they hoped it would lead to the Pacific Ocean, where they might sail to China, a land of untold riches they had heard about. They probably hoped to find similar wealth in Canada.

Mi’Kmaq:  Cooperation or Competition

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous People before Contact, Indigenous Treaties

 

Mi’kmaq are among the many First Nations that inhabited the Atlantic region in Canada, and inhabited the coastal areas of the Maritime Provinces including Gaspé and most of the land east of the Saint John River. This traditional territory is known as Mi’gma’gi  (Mi’kma’ki).  Mi’kmaq people have occupied their traditional territory, Mi’gma’gi or , since time immemorial (at least 10,000 years) and continue to occupy much of this land including Newfoundland as well as parts of Northern New England as far as Boson.

It would be nice if Canadians and Americans could get rid of their supremacist attitudes. Too often they think they have a monopoly of spiritual and economic insight. If we did that, we could have a true pluralist country, where all types, or races, or cultures were welcomed.  By that I mean a society in which many states, or groups, and principles coexist. For example, including religious pluralists where not one group benefits from claiming it is the fount of all wisdom. That would be a tolerant society. Then we could all benefit from each other’s knowledge and would not feel threatened by it. We would not concern ourselves with delusions of supremacy that we all have. These are delusions which we must learn to avoid.

According to Quenton Condo, speaking on the CBC Gem show, Telling Our Stories,  the treaty of 1752 negotiated by the Mi’Kmaq and the British Crown was according to the Mi’Kmaq intended to make sure that no one would interfere with the Mi’Kmaq way of life. The problem is, according to the Mi’Kmaq, that the non-indigenous people were not taught about the treaties in Canada and now react in anger and hate when they learn what it means. This is a failure of the Canadian educational system, he says.

After all, how much did any of us learn about treaties in school? Frankly, in my case, even in Law School, I learned almost nothing. And treaties are fundamental to learning about Canada. If we know nothing about treaties, we know nothing about Canada!

Although, that is their interpretation, it has the ring of truth as far as I am concerned. Those treaties did not give them the right to hunt. They already had those rights which they inherited from their ancestors. That of course, follows from them being part of the land, which is a fundamental principle to most indigenous peoples in North America and elsewhere.

The Innu territory and Naskapi overlapped as well as Inuit and Cree. As one Innu woman said,

“At the time of our ancestors there were no borders. Our ancestors did not use measuring tapes to say, ‘This is yours,’ and ‘this is mine.’ The territory was shared amongst all the nations. And we shared it well.”

 

She also said that at one time there were plenty of caribou in their territory. Some said there were so many “it moved the mountain.” That would be a lot of caribou.

An unidentified woman on the CBC show said “Nations were intertwined in all aspect of our lives and in our approaches to sharing. This insured the survivals of our peoples.”

I don’t want to suggest that indigenous people of the region were perfect. No one and no people are perfect. Yet stories like this show the truth of those who say, people who live in places where survival is very difficult, like the Canadian north, have found that sharing works best for survival. This is what the traditional knowledge of the people of the region tells us. I can’t argue with this.

As one Anishinaabe man, Andrew “Stitch” Manitowabi, said about his people, “As an Anishinaabe people we don’t go by boundaries. We use the language of speaking Anishinaabe which extends into the United States in the Quebec area and northern Ontario.” This is a very different approach to determining territory.

The Anishinaabe, like most Indigenous people used the language of sharing, not the language of boundaries.

 

Indigenous People of the East Coast: territory and spirituality

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous People before Contact, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy

 

 

In and around Rimouski we began our journey into Indigenous territory in eastern Canada. Before the trip to Eastern Canada started, I had been watching a television series on CBC Gem that I found very informative and interesting.  I came to appreciate, as I did not before, and certainly did not appreciate in 1967 when I traveled to Quebec with my buddies, that there are many interesting stories to tell about Indigenous peoples.   And until recently, they were not able to tell those stories themselves. Thanks to this series at least some of those stories have been told.

This film series begins with an admonishment that the stories of the indigenous people who live in eastern Canada, as it is now called, were not told by them but by others. They want us to hear their stories from themselves. Otherwise, we won’t hear the truth. So you will be hearing these stories second hand, from me, but you can go to the series and get the stories straight from them without my interpretation. I do not want to appropriate their stories, but as Niigaan Sinclair, a professor of Indigenous studies, and an Anishinaabe of Manitoba  once told me, I should consider telling my friends what I know because they are unlikely to listen to him or any other indigenous person. So that is what I am doing. But the key point is these are there stories which I have heard.

This series lets them tell those stories so we can understand who they are. And obviously, they wanted to tell their own stories. We should let them do that. We should not stand in their way.

They have been called, savages, Indians, aboriginal, indigenous, First Nations, First Peoples, native Americans, or native Canadians, but as one Innu man said, if you are not sure what to call them, the best thing to do is ask the person you are talking to what is the name of his or her group and he or she can tell you. Use that name.

The various Indigenous Peoples reflected in this CBC documentary are as follows: Innu, Atikamekw, Naskapi, Inuk, Kanien’kehákka, Abenaki, Wolastoqiyik, Anishinaabe, Wendat, Eeyou, and Mi’Kmaq.

The various territories of those people are called: Nadakina (for Abenaki), Mi’Kma’ki (for Mi’Kmaq), Innu (for Nutshimit) Nionwntsïo (for Wendat), Maliseet (for Wolastoqiyik), Nitaskimant (for Atikamekw), Nunavik (for Inuk), (for Kanien’kehákka), Eeyouistchee (for Eeyou), Wiikwemkoong (for the Anishinabe territory). I hope I got these names right.

As one Indigenous person on the series said, here is a fundamental fact:

 

“To understand who we are you need to understand our special relationship with the land. It is an intimate and powerful bond that we want to keep alive.”

 

As was said by the narrator, “Since the time of our ancestors we have always shared our territories between our different peoples.” That is important too. The Indigenous people were always willing to share. They were never militantly exclusive.

Added to that, the Indigenous people who were interviewed, said, “Our territory is our identity. It is impossible to survive without your territory.” As a rule, Indigenous people have an identity that is tied to the land. The people and the land cannot be severed from each other. I don’t think the rest of us can understand anything about the Indigenous People if we don’t understand this fundamental belief.

 

As Stanley Vollant, an Innu physician eloquently explained,

“My story and that of my nation are written within the territory. They are written with its rivers and the toponomy of its lakes. I am the territory and the territory is me. It is a sacred relationship. For us it’s impossible to be indigenous, Innu, without Nitassinan.”

 

As one indigenous young Wendat man, from Wendake, Brad Gros-Louis.  put it:

“At one time, First Nations people lived solely off of harvests. And the meats for which we hunted and fished. The territory served to feed you and your family. Today, for me, being indigenous means being a champion of nature, speaking in the name of animals, speaking in the name of the forest, being a guardian of the sacred, of the territory. What makes a good hunt, is that the moose you kill, the moose that you harvest, you will care for it as if it is your baby. Its meat is the priority. We use every part of the animal. When I go hunting and harvest an animal, I take the time to thank it, I take the time to treat it with respect, to do things properly. Everything around us is alive. Everything around us deserves respect.”

 

As Joséphine Bacon, an elegant Innu woman, from Pessamit said

“When I say Assi in Innu, I see the earth, but if I envision “Nutshimit” I see a lot mor than that. I see everything: the forest, the lakes, the rivers, moss, lichens, the horizon, and the animals that feed me. We do not own the land because Nutshimit takes care of us. It is where our identity lies, where our soul lies.”

 

I have heard others, like Chief Seattle say, “we do not own the land, the land owns us.”

 

Charles Api Bellefleur an Innu from Unamen-shipu said this:

 “the forest ensures our well-being. Look at how beautiful it is [he was standing in Innu territory]. It feels good to be here. I know the name of every tree, birch, aspen, white spruce. I know the legends of this land, the stories which have enfolded here, this is where I feel alive. Its where I still live today.”

 

 

As Matthew Mukash, Eeyou (Cree) from Whapmagoostui, said,

“Every valley, every part of the winding river has a name Every mountain, every hill, every hill has a name here, and those names are for reminding us how our ancestors survived so that we can have life today. The land tells the story of your ancestors.”

 

The connection between the land an ancestors is also considered sacred.

North American Farmers: Not What you Think

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, civilization, Colonialism, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous People before Contact

 

Speaking about the east coast and central regions of Canada which we visited on this wonderful trip we could try to answer Barbara Huck’s challenge to her challenge  to imagine a land where people just 500 years ago lived in towns and villages that were very different than we previously believed.  The people were not savages, as some of the Europeans erroneously believed. They were members of a thriving civilization.   As Huck explained,

“They tilled the soil and grew a remarkable array of crops—corn, squash, melons, beans, and tobacco. Not far away, the lakes and rivers were full of fish and the forests abounded with game. The women of this land did much of the fishing and farming; the men, for the most part, had other interests. While their wives and sisters and mothers planted and tilled the soil and cared for the children, the men travelled far from home, trading north and south, hunting, and as often as not, fighting. Theirs was a powerful nation, with many allies and intentions of expanding across a great river at the edge of their land.”

 

 

This all reminded me of what our guides taught us on our trip through the Africa;  often the women carry water and other vital goods on their heads, while the men sat around under trees and discussed important matters.

But who were these farmers Huck described in her book?  They were not Europeans as we might have thought. They were wholly indigenous. This is how she described them:

“The farmers were Iroquoian—the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk—who by 1500 occupied a large territory south of the St. Lawrence River and would soon unite to become the Five Nations Iroquois. To the north were Innu and their Algonquian speaking allies, from the Mi’Kmaq of the Atlantic Shores to eh Anishinabe of the Upper Great Lakes.

These cultures differed from one another as much as Scots differ from Spaniards today, or Finns from French. Some North American societies were settled and agrarian, others were seasonably mobile; some turned to the sea for their livelihood, others lived off the bounty of the inland plains.

As in Europe today, the societies of 15th century and 16th century North America spoke dozens of different languages. And like their modern counterparts most of these languages could be traced to a handful of common language groups.”

These Iroquois nations got together and created a democratic system of government that the framers of the American constitution were inspired by when they created what is often called the world’s first constitutional democracy. These Indigenous People y were certainly not savages.

The Origin of Agriculture: An Ojibwa Story

Indigenous People before Contact, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, New Attitude to Nature

 

This is an Ojibwa story about the origin of agriculture among a people of great hunters. A young man or boy was taken out by his grandfather to a Vison Quest.  A vision pit was dug for him and he had to stay there in the wilderness for 4 days and 4 nights without food.

His grandfather and grandmother prayed for him, but before he went in he had to undergo rites of purification in the sweat lodge. It was hoped his dream would have healing in it or medicine. But this boy had no dreams so when he was done a Sky Being came down to visit him in tassels and plumes and they wrestled all day.

Even though the boy was weak from lack of food and water, under neath him there was tremendous earth strength. When he wrestled the Sky Being it was like the earth and the sky were wrestling together.

This happened for 3 days and they wrestled each day. The Sky Being had weakened from the exercise and was about to die and asked to be buried and asked the boy and his father to tend to his grave and keep it clear of weeds. As a result, there grew corn in the grave and it looked like in tassels and plumes. This is how corn became so important to Ojibwa people. In some sense at least it is how they moved from the Hunter Gatherer stage to the stage of agriculture. In the story the corn is born out of a person. It is not from a person like ourselves but it is a person from the sky.  In this way, “agriculture is born out of a wrestling of heaven and earth.”  That is a fabulous story.

 According to Professor Moriarty, in Ancient Greece, the corn was also a person. In fact this is the Mediterranean tradition. Moriarty explained that

“In Greece the corn was a divinity and the earth was Gaia another divinity. In the Old Testament God is totally transcendent. Sometimes that is unfortunate because it means that all value is now in the super celestial world. All value is divine value and it’s in super celestial world. And that means that the earth is basically just raw material and we can only   look at it with an economic eye. But in this vision of it, the earth it itself a goddess. And the corn is a goddess. If the corn is a goddess than I am going to treat it sacredly. I am going to respond sacredly to it. When I take my sickle to the garden, I know that I am cutting down the goddess. When I broadcast the seed I know that it will grow into the goddess. But we have totally de-personalized corn. It has just become another economic proposition—economic material for us. And that is a pity.”

 

Now from the European perspective  that is a new attitude to nature.

Commonage Consciousness: An ecologically better way of being on the earth

Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous People before Contact, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, Indigenous--Indian Act, New Attitude to Nature

 

There were some ways in which Europeans had a completely different attitude to things than the Indigenous people of North America they encountered when they first had contact with each other.  For one thing, as I have been saying, they had a completely different attitude to nature.  Closely associated with that, was that they had a completely different attitude to property—at least real property (land and buildings). Europeans believed in private ownership of land. That idea was foreign to Indigenous people. Indigenous people believed in tribes or first nations having rights to land. Not individuals. That has had a profound impact.  The idea of private property is part of capitalist society. At least it has always has been so until they encountered the Indigenous people and recently, with the rise of capitalism in Communist countries or formerly communist countries such as China.

The Indigenous idea of property held in common was blessed by the Parliament of Canada when it enacted the Indian Act in the late 19th century as it tried to assert jurisdiction over First Nations in Canada. That notion is still part of the federal law in Canada since then, even though it has been criticized by some.

Professor John Moriarty though considers the issue from the perspective of a poet. As he said:

“It is time now in western Europe to reinstitute Commonage consciousness. We have to reinstate it in a way that would reinstitute a new sacrament. Unless we reinstitute commonage consciousness, then we are going to continue to inflict appalling damage to the earth. That is a story that could take us into an ecologically better way of being on the earth.”

 

When Moriarty went to the hills in Connemara  Ireland and saw no fences, he was awe struck. Moriarty noted how people thought it was a big deal to take down the Berlin wall between 2 European political systems, communism and capitalism. Was that really such a big deal? John Moriarty did not think that was a big deal.

 

However, Moriarty thought “it was hugely important to take down the wall between us and blades of grass, between us and trees, between us and the stars, between us and everything that is.” That is an entirely new attitude to nature, at least for non-Indigenous people.

 Talking about an Indigenous nation in North America, Moriarty said

 “the Blackfeet did not see the difference between them and the buffalo. They saw what was common between them and the buffalo. And what is common is grace. What separates us in a way is trivial but what we have in common is grace and immense.

 

Moriarty wants to take us back from our “us and them consciousness” to a commonage consciousness and then we will be walking the earth in a more beautiful way.”

 

 

Moriarty says the world will not reveal itself to a scientist who confronts it only as a scientist, or to a theologian. The world will reveal itself to a Saint Francis of Assisi who will walk out naked into the world and says “Brother sun and sister moon.” Some Christians had a similar point of view.

We must recognize that we are all kin with all creatures on the earth. As he said, “What else is this Blackfoot Indian story but an amplification of the story of Saint Francis of Assisi?”

We must learn that the sun is our brother. The moon is our sister. The fire is our kin. We must consider what we have in common. Consciousness is common. Moriarty liked the idea of the English novelist and writer D. H. Lawrence who said we should “take a great arc back into the past and come forward.”

As Moriarty said, “It is only to someone who walks beautifully on the earth that the earth will reveal itself.”

 

Ancestral Spirituality

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Arizona, Indigenous People before Contact, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, religion

Great House

Like many other Indigenous people of North America in a number of other places, the Great House of the Ancestral People of the Sonoran Desert was carefully aligned with the sun. In fact, 17 different astronomical observations could be made from the Great House.  First of all, the house was carefully aligned between North and South.

 

There was also a round hole “window” that once each year lined up perfectly with the sun on the day of the summer solstice. Another rectangular hole carefully marked the spring and fall equinoxes.

 

As well one square window lined up with the Lunar Standstill that occurred every 18.6 years. What is the Lunar Standstill? For the first half of each year, the moon rises during the day in phases from near-full to a mere thin crescent, rising earlier each month from early afternoon to early morning. In July, the moon rises between the rocks as a nearly invisible new moon around dawn. From August through November, the waxing moon rising between the rocks, ranges from crescent to nearly full. Moonrise continues to come earlier each month, from just before dawn to just before sunset. Finally, the full moon rises between the rocks at sunset near the Winter Solstice in December. The duration of the moon’s passing between the spires was different for each rising but generally lasted from five to fifteen minutes.

 

The moon’s orbit of Earth oscillates or wobbles, gradually causing the moon to rise at different points on the horizon over the years.  Actually, I never learned that the orbit of the moon around the earth is not as perfect as I thought. The entire cycle of the wobbling moon takes 18.6 years, and apparently the Ancestral people of the Sonoran Desert understood these imperfections, because they had observed. Even though I have never observed them. Have you?

 

At the termination of each of the swings of the moon, the moon seems to pause for about 3 years! There was such an apparent pause in 2021 and one in 2004.

 

At each end of its swing, the moon appears to pause for about three years, rising at the same point on the horizon before beginning to move. The cycle is complicated. That apparent pause is called the Lunar Standstill. There are places in North and South America where the indigenous people noticed these movements and sometimes built structures to take these movements into account. They paid a lot of attention to how these movements aligned with local landmarks such as rocks rising above the horizon.

 

No one is sure exactly why these alignments were produced, but they do show the sophisticated knowledge of astronomy that the Ancestral People had. I have my own theory.  Religion at its foundation is about connecting people to each other, other creatures, and the world. These alignments help establish these connections.

 

 

When we get the glorious opportunity to visit a place like Casa Grande or one of the other sacred sites of North America we can’t help but wonder who were these amazing people who built these astounding canals and structures and then watched the sky so intently. What were they looking for in the sky? Those first Spanish missionaries asked the locals here why that was the case, but the indigenous people had a difficult time explaining it to the newcomers. Perhaps they thought the new arrivals were too ignorant to understand.

 

To indigenous people of the American Southwest, as in so many other places around the world, the fundamental notion of spirituality and religion came from the notion of connection. That was always, at least until recently, the basis of religion around the world. In India the original meaning of the word “religion” comes from the Indo-European word “religio”, which means connection or linkage. Religion is what connects us. It connects us to other people, and it connects us to the world.

 

In many North American languages, the name for the tribe means “the people”.  In other words, we are the people. Many North and South American people saw the connection between them and the world in how the stars or other celestial bodies aligned with the lives of people. It connected them to each other. It was the same with the ancestral people of the Sonoran Desert.

 

Unfortunately, adherents to some of the monotheistic religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam forget the importance of connection and instead concentrate on what divides us from other people or the world. They see religion as something that makes them superior to others. In my opinion when this happens religion has gone off the rails, and in fact, in some cases is not actually religion at all, but its opposite.  Religion can become sacrilegious!

 

These odd alignments are all part of the mystery about the purpose behind the Great House.  It took an astonishing amount of human labor to create the house, but it was abandoned within about 75 years, even though the Ancestral People inhabited the area for more than 1,000 years. According to Rose Houk,

 

Modern archeologists have observed such an alignment of the sun through a “window” in an upper room of Casa Grande, marking the summer solstice. They have suggested that the “great house” may have been used as an astronomical observatory, one of several ideas about this enigmatic, imposing structure that stands out in the desert of central Arizona. Others have seen the four-story building as a fort, a granary, or a silo.  Whatever the truth, the Casa Grande’s significance was recognized early on when it became the nation’s first archaeological preserve in 1892.

The indigenous people here who consider themselves the descendants of the Ancient Ancestral Sonoran Desert people call this sacred place Siwan Wa’a Ki. To them it is a place to come and sing songs to the Huhugam Spirts. The non-O’odham call this sacred place Casa Grande Ruin. It was well known to their people and was mentioned in the O’odham legends.

What is clear is that this is a place Great Spirit.