When one thinks of Native American revitalization movements, most often the Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa, the religion of Handsome Lake at the turn of the 19th century, the Ghost Dance movement a hundred years later, and even the emergence of the Native American Church and its peyote culture in the 20th century come to mind, yet these nativistic movements that periodically revived Indian-centered religious practices had their origins on the upper Susquehanna River and the Ohio Valley in the middle of the 18th century among Delaware, Shawnee, and Iroquois peoples. Sometimes called the Indians’ Great Awakening, these reform movements had common elements. They were led by a variety of prophets and reformers who often had visions that provided instructions for religious and social solutions to the contemporary crises faced by Native communities. Spiritual leaders believed that the proliferation of disease among Native populations and scarcity of game experienced in the colonial period were part of their god’s punishment for bad behavior. Supposedly, Indians had become corrupt through their growing dependence on Euro-American economic systems, which caused a variety of social problems. To make the world right, Indians would have to abandon the vices that white people had introduced, especially the use of alcohol, and return to their past high moral standards.
In part a reaction to the introduction of Christianity and the increased missionary activities in the mid-Atlantic colonies, revivalists began to appear along the Susquehanna River by the 1750s. For instance, one Delaware woman in the Wyoming Valley, reacting to Presbyterian attempts to missionize, demanded that Indians separate themselves from white people. Still, even nativist reformers were influenced by Christian doctrine. They articulated a new theological structure of monotheism, claiming close ties to a supreme being rather than a pantheon of spirits. As they exhorted their followers to return to Native religious practices, reformers began to define Native moral behavior by reference to the immoral and hypocritical actions of white Christians, whom they blamed for problems within Indian communities. By the mid-18th century Native spiritual leaders were less concerned with ritual manipulation and appeasement of gods and spirits and more preoccupied with questions of individual morality and sin. They admonished Indians to reform their behavior or face the hell that awaited them in the afterlife.
One of the most prominent nativist reformers of the colonial period was the Delaware prophet Neolin, whom the English called the Imposter. In the 1760s he advocated a radical separation from white society, rejecting Euro-American trade goods and alcohol. He introduced a series of new rituals and devotions that included a diet to purify the body—in essence, physically purging white ways from Indian society. Pontiac, inspired by Neolin’s message, believed that the Indians’ god would help him fight the English and translated revivalism into a militant resistance movement in his 1763 uprising. Indeed, by the late 18th century religious revivalism became an increasingly important part of pan-Indian resistance that marked the relationship between Native Americans and Euro-Americans. The revitalization movements represented an Indian-based solution to the social problems of colonialism.
Further reading: Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
—Jane T. Merritt
World History
