The Great Spirit

In the first one hundred years after Columbus’s voyages of discovery, the Native American Indians population was decimated. It was estimated that the Native population was around eighty million, a hundred years later it was estimated to be around eleven million.

This decline in population wasn't from disease. The primary cause was genocide! The Spanish conquistadors arrived at the conclusion that the Native Americans were sub-human, they were sub-human because the Spanish did not believe that they had souls. There fore it was acceptable to enslave and murder them!

This genocide greatly crippled the ability of the settlers to have a labor pool. Crippled only to the point of the importation of slaves from West Africa.

The determined protestant settlement of North America showed an arrogance coupled with greed and compounded by racial bigotry that was enough in itself to fuel a genocide that even the notorious gestapo would admire.

The arrogance of the colonists intent on destroying the culture of the Native American's was coupled with a religious certainty, science and protestant work ethic which was a disastrous equation for the first Americans.

The Puritans came to the new lands in search of religious freedom and a state founded on christian principles. They were fanatical with their religious fervor however they were unable to tolerate people of a different creed and culture.

The Puritans sought the New World for a state of reformation, but there was nothing in their history to prepare them for this. The author and civil rights activist Daniel N Paul states that “compassion among the Europeans for Aboriginal Americans was non existent. Yet when recording their relationships with the Tribes they described the generosity that the Aboriginal peoples showed toward them.”.

These Native Americans were and their descendants still are, deeply spiritual; a people who had always sought spiritual guidance; they lived in harmony with the land and all it's creatures.

The Native Americans believed that the Great Spirit lived in all of the creations in the world, the land, animals, vegetation and people.

“There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of the leaves in the spring, or the rustle of the insects wings ...what is the meaning of life if man cannot hear the cry of the whippoorwill or the argument of frogs around the pool at night? Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of earth! If man spits on the earth he spits on themselves. This we know—the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that connects the family. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people...The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man...Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man. We are part of the earth and the earth is part of us. The murmur of the water is the voice of my fathers father. The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The air is important to the red man because all things share the same breath...We know that the white man does not understand our ways...The earth is not his brother but his enemy, when he has conquered it he will move on.

His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert...Perhaps it is because I am a savage that I can't understand. What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone man would die from loneliness of spirit. For what ever happens to the beasts will soon happen to man.

Crazy Hoarse dreamed and went into the world, where there is nothing but the spirits of all things. That is the real world that is behind this one, everything that we see here is something like a shadow from that world.

All things are the work of the Great Spirit. We should all know he is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains and all four legged animals the winged people: and even more important, we should understand that he is above all peoples and things.

The foundation of the Native American life is their spirituality, it affects everything from the way they enter a room to their sense of honor, there wasn’t a difference between the material and spiritual world. Their spirituality controlled their actions in war and in peace, within families and relationships with others.

It was the basis for their courage, hospitality, courtesy to the strange people from across the sea. These strange looking people, who appeared to not have the ability to survive, in this new world, which the Great Spirit offered to them.