"Beginning probably in the 1730s and spreading South, North, and East from the Ohio Valley was an inter-tribal discussion on what encroachment by Europeans meant for Indians. The most influential philosophers of this movement were prophets of a new world order. The most famous of these was Neolin, the Delaware Prophet, who preached that the Indians had collectively sinned by adopting “White people’s ways and nature.” He told a Descartes-style story of sitting alone by the fire, “musing and greatly concerned about the evil ways he saw prevailing among the Indians” when a man appeared who taught him a pure religion that would restore all Indians to a right relationship with the cosmos. Thousands of Indians, seeking wisdom and ready to act, followed Neolin and other prophets in ritual vomiting, witch-hunts, and rejection of European tools and alcohol. Some followers, such as the Ottawa warrior Pontiac, resorted to war in order to jump-start the new Indian renewal.
The impact of colonial expansion, land dispossession, and the trading of goods, specifically
alchohol, was obviously destructive to the Native americans. Although sometimes the Delaware turned to the missions for help and shelter, there was another phenomenon that attempted to deal with colonial influence, and that was prophetic movements. "Prophets and prophecy are an integral part of Native American religions."A prophet or messiah traditionally arises to give hope and direction in times of adversity" (Champagne 675) In the late eighteenth century, a time when the Delaware were threatened by British domination, and continual colonial expansion, several prophets arose to deal with these issues. One is referred to as the militant prophet, Neolin (enlightened one). Neolin had a dream in which the Great Spirit told him that because the Indians gave up their native traditions and accepted goods from the Europeans, the path to heaven was blocked (Champagne 1043) He advocated a tribal coalition that would push back the encroaching British. It is believed that Pontiac an Ottawa chief, was influenced by the Delaware Prophet and subsequently battled the British.
During 1762 there were widespread crop failures and epidemic. At this moment, a native prophet, Neolin (Enlightened), arose among the Delaware villages near the Ohio River. His message - return to traditional ways and reject the white man's trade goods, especially rum. His teachings not only won wide acceptance among the Delaware, but spread to other tribes. To the Kickapoo, nothing could have made more sense, and they became some of his strongest supporters.
Delaware Prophet (dĕl'əwâr, –wər), fl. 18th cent., Native American leader. His real name is not
known. He began preaching (c.1762) among the Delaware of the Muskingum valley in Ohio. He spoke against intertribal war, drunkenness, polygamy, and the use of magic, and he promised his hearers that if they would but heed his words the Native Americans would be strong again and able to resist the whites. He prepared symbolic charts of his message on deerskin and left them in various villages to help his converts teach others. The religious fervor spread rapidly and is said to have been an inspiration to Pontiac. After the collapse of Pontiac's Rebellion (1763–66) the following of the Delaware Prophet waned and was largely superseded by that of the Munsee Prophet, who was in turn succeeded by the Shawnee Prophet.
The British made some attempt to calm the increasingly explosive situation, and in 1762 sent
Lieutenant Thomas Hutchins to Ouiatenon to speak to the Wabash tribes. In the course of the meeting, a Mascouten chief arose to ask Hutchins for supplies for his people who were ill and starving. Hutchins, of course, had nothing to offer except promises. At the same time, a prophet arose among the Delaware adding a religious element to the crisis. Neolin, the Delaware Prophet, taught a rejection of all European trade goods and a return to traditional Native American values. While Neolin did not actually advocate violence, his teachings were seized upon by Pontiac, the Ottawa chief at Detroit and a bitter enemy of the British. Throughout the winter of 1762-63, Pontiac organized a secret uprising which, when it struck the following May, captured six of the nine British forts west of the Appalachian Mountains.
1. Prophets and Messiahs
Movements of nativism (the assertion of traditional values in the face of foreign encroachment) and revitalization (the revival of traditional culture, often involving explicit rejection of European
civilization) have arisen, led by Native American prophets who claimed to have received revelation from the aboriginal deities, often in dreams and visions. These prophets have frequently shown evidence of Christian influence in their moral codes, their missionary zeal, and their concern for personal redemption and social improvement. Sometimes their teachings have led to military advances against European invaders. For example, in the early 1760s the Delaware prophet Neolin helped inspire the rebellion of Ottawa warrior Pontiac against the British. Similarly, the preaching of Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa bolstered the military efforts of his brother Tecumseh against the United States Army between 1808 and 1813. The revivals of preachers such as the Iroquois Handsome Lake in 1799 and the Salish John Slocum in 1882 spawned new religions—part native, part Christian—that have endured in their respective communities to the present day.
One of the most prolonged Native American uprisings took place in the Southwest under the leadership of a Tewa medicine man named Pop, who in 1680 led the various indigenous peoples of present-day New Mexico in a rebellion against Spanish missionaries and conquistadors. The Native Americans drove the Spanish out and kept them at bay for more than a decade. During the Spanish reconquest, the Hopi burned one of their own villages and killed its converted inhabitants rather than allow the reestablishment of Christianity as the official religion. To this day the Hopi pueblos, or villages, resist the influence of Christian religions, although some Hopi have been attracted to the Mormon faith. In hundreds of other cases, indigenous peoples of North America have defied Christian control or endured its presence with only apparent compliance.
2. Ghost Dance
New religious movements among Native Americans have at times taken on the character of crisis cults, which respond to cultural threat with emotional rituals. In 1889 a Paiute prophet named Wovoka foretold the imminent end of the current world order. Casting himself in a messianic role that seemed to be influenced by Christian imagery, Wovoka promised that if Native Americans would conduct a ceremony known as the Ghost Dance, depleted animal populations and deceased relatives would be restored. For several years, many indigenous peoples in the western part of North America performed the ceremony, even after United States Army troops massacred Sioux ghost dancers at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1890."http://www.angelfire.com/realm/shades/nativeamericans/nativeamericanreligions4.htm
"You complain ... that the animals of the Forest are few and scattered ... You destroy them yourselves for their skins only and leave their bodies to rot or give the best pieces to the Whites. ... You must kill no more animals than are necessary to feed and clothe you" http://www.american-native-art.com/publication/ottawa/ottawa1.shtml
