Native American Religion in Early America

Links to online resources:

Rutgers University Religion Department
With its links to three rich metasites on Native American religion, this is the place to start for serious study by high school students and teachers. This site provide links to hundreds of resources on general Native American culture, including religion.

Smithsonian Institution: Native American History and Culture
A bibliography of 31 titles on Native American religion, spirituality, and medicine is included here, in addition to research resources and exhibitions on Native American culture. Part of the valuable FAQ pages of the Smithsonian Institution.

Native American Spirituality
A brief primer on the common elements in Native American religions, provided by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.

Native American Religion and Mythology: Online Historic Texts
These primary documents are first-choice resources for teaching European Americans’ perspective on Native American religion and culture in the late nineteenth century. From the vast collection of documents Making of America from the University of Michigan.

• 1869. Tah-koo wah-kan; or, The gospel among the Dakotas, by Stephen Return Riggs.
• 1876. The myths of the New world; a treatise on the symbolism and mythology of the red race of America, by Daniel Garrison Brinson.
• 1877. The Indian miscellany; containing papers on the history, antiquities, arts, languages, religions, traditions and superstitions of the American aborigines…, by William Wallace Beach.

The “Eliot Bible” Translated into Algonquian
John Eliot, a missionary known as the “Apostle to the Indians,” published his Algonquian translation of the Bible in 1663. A color page of this “Eliot Bible”—the first complete Bible printed in America—is reproduced on the exemplary website American Treasures from the Library of Congress.