The Yakama have maintained many traditional beliefs. Many involve rituals and festivals surrounding salmon, roots, and berries. Others are religious revitalization movements that were developed in postcontact times.
Some Yakama participate in the Waashat Religion (also called the Washani Religion, Longhouse Religion, Seven Drum Religion, Sunday Dance Religion, or Prophet Dance). The origin of this religious movement is uncertain, but it probably is associated with the arrival of whites or an epidemic in the early 19th century and the teachings of a prophet or “dreamer-prophet” who had experienced an apocalyptic vision. One of the rituals is the Waashat (or Washat) Dance with seven drummers, a feast of salmon, the ritual use of eagle and swan feathers, and a sacred song to be sung every seventh day. It is not known at what point Christianity came to influence its aboriginal form.
In the 1850s, the Wanapam Indian Smohalla used the earlier Waashat rituals as the basis for what has become known as the Dreamer Religion. He claimed he had visited the spirit world and had been sent back to teach his people. His message was one of a resurgence of the aboriginal way of life, free from white influences, such as alcohol and agriculture. He established ceremonial music and dancing to induce meditations of a pure, primitive state. He also predicted the resurrection of all Indians to rid the world of white oppressors. Smohalla claimed that the truth came to him and his priests through dreams, thus the name Dreamer Religion.
The Waashat Religion spread to other tribes of the region as well and influenced other religious revitalization movements. One that drew on it is the Indian Shaker Religion, or Tschadam, founded in 1881 by John
Slocum (Squ-sacht-un) of the SQUAXON, a Salishan people of the Northwest Coast, still practiced among the Yakama. The name was derived from the shaking or twitching motion participants experienced while brushing off their sins in a meditative state, a ritual introduced to the religion by Slocum’s wife, Mary Thompson Slocum. The religion combined Christian beliefs in God, heaven, and hell with traditional Indian teachings, especially the Waashat Religion.
In 1904, the Klickitat shaman Jake Hunt founded the Feather Religion or Feather Dance, also called the Spinning Religion. This revitalization movement drew on elements of both the earlier Waashat Religion and the Indian Shaker Religion. Sacred eagle feathers were used in ceremonies, one of which involved ritual spinning, hence the name Waskliki for “Spinning Religion.” The Feather Religion, although still active among other tribes of the region, is no longer practiced by the Yakama.
World History
