Culture and Religion

All Eastern Woodland Algonquian peoples subscribed to a cycle of legend and myth regarding tricksters and “transformers” (powerful beings who created the earthly landscape) which could be recounted only during the winter months, when formidable spiritual agencies were considered to be underground or asleep. Differences in this respect were slight: Central Algonquian speakers merged the roles of trickster and transformer into a single personage called Menabosho, Nanabush, or Wiske, whereas the Eastern Abenaki, Malecite, and Mi’kmaq endowed their hero Gluscap primarily with transformer traits, leaving trickster attributes to lesser characters such as Snowshoe Hare or Racoon. Gluscap, a lone and clever leader, used his powers to benefit his people in times of crisis. He contended with evil beings who prevented his people from obtaining resources which were rightfully theirs, pitching his wiles against Half-stone Man, his perennial adversary. Odziozo, the Western Abenaki transformer, exhibited many of the same traits as Gluscap.

Origin myths, along with other folk beliefs, endowed the natural landscape with mythical figures and symbolic appeal. Even potentially threatening spirits bestowed benefits if approached in a respectful manner. Rites of divination using bones, also known as scapulimancy, were practised, and taboos existed regarding wastage of resources and the respectful treatment of animal bones. Storytelling, whether of a mythic character or based on events recounted from memory, often focused on the acquisition and control of power. Power might be obtained in several ways: by birth, through visionary experience, or by some vicissitude of nature. For instance, a child born with a cowl was considered to exhibit special aptitudes. Certain objects, because of their strange appearance, were viewed as capable of conferring good luck in specific pursuits. Among many groups, stone or clay concretions were considered the manufacture of little wild people who lived near water or on hilltops and could be used to divine the future. Not all powers were viewed as helpful, however. A possessor of dangerous, unpredictable power was termed a buoin among the Ojibwa or a buoin or puwowin in the Maritimes. European folk myths regarding witches influenced Mi’kmaq and Malecite stories about buoin.

The Potawatomi are the only Algonquian people in Canada who assigned children to a “senior” or “junior” side of a moiety, which divided their society into halves depending on each persons’s birth order and in keeping with certain dualistic cosmological beliefs. Even team membership in a gambling game which uses a wooden bowl, round-bone counters as dice, and sticks to keep score, known among the Potawatomi as kwesekenek (waltes or altestaken in the Maritimes), followed that division. In this the Potawatomi were closer to the Fox and Kickapoo than to Canadian Central-Algonquian speaking groups. Variants of this gambling game are played universally throughout the Eastern Woodland region and owners of bowls and counters are almost always women.

Modern Woodland Algonquian artists have produced various and exceptionally beautiful works by drawing on traditional themes and using traditional media in novel and unique ways. Artists and sculptors exhibit widely and their works hang in major galleries. The familiar school of Woodland art, which derives from the pathbreaking endeavours of Norval Morriseau of Lake Nipigon, Ontario, demonstrates but one ingenious facet of the wealth of creativity shown in recent years by the Woodland Algonquian community. This people has produced a number of writers and also excellent film-makers, among them Cathy Martin and Alanis Obomsawin, whose works, sponsored by the National Film Board, document native issues and culture.

Traditional Woodland Algonquian religious beliefs centred around the attainment and use of spiritual power. The Mi’kmaq or Malecite ginap displayed a kind of power which enabled a person to perform major feats, whereas the power of a shaman focused more on healing, divination, and, at times, shamanic retribution. The shaman’s art was shrouded in secrecy. Often ritual paraphernalia were kept in a medicine pouch and only revealed in ceremonial contexts. A shaman in treating a patient would blow, or suck through a bone tube over the affected part, to extract what was believed to be the source of the malady.

All Woodland Algonquians believed in a host of supernatural entities which governed every facet of the natural world. Many groups required a pubescent youth to fast in order to obtain a vision of a spiritual guardian who would accompany him for the rest of his life. The Mi’kmaq regarded the sun as the supreme being, a belief they may have inherited from Ohio valley natives who established satellite communities in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia about 1,500 years ago. Most societies revered the bear and performed specific rituals when this animal was killed or captured. Supernatural beings included the sun, moon, stars, thunder, animal “bosses,” a horned water snake, a water panther, powerful birdlike entities, a trunkless being who was all head and limbs, the little people mentioned above who resided near water or on hilltops, and cannibal giants such as Chenoo among the Mi’kmaq and Windigo among the Algonkin and Ojibwa. Certain islands and mountaintops were viewed as dwelling places of fearsome supernaturals such as the Abenaki bmola, a dreaded flying creature.

From the early seventeenth century onwards, the native populations of the Maritimes and southern Quebec were introduced to Roman Catholicism. The majority still remain attached to a special form of Catholicism which shows a degree of syncretism with the indigenous belief system. Membertou, a prominent Mi’kmaq sagamore, accepted baptism at Port Royal in 1610 and numerous Mi’kmaq and Malecite have followed his lead. After the conquest of New France by Britain in 1760, an event that made the position of the Catholic Church difficult for more than a decade, the Mi’kmaq in particular chose to hold attenuated ceremonies on their own or to visit the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon to receive the sacraments from French priests. For over two hundred years, moreover, the Mi’kmaq have regarded the Roman Catholic festival of Sainte-Anne, held around 26 July, as a national holiday. Yet Mi’kmaq communities such as Shubenacadie have not been reluctant to consider assistance proffered by other denominational agencies, such as the several educational and settlement projects sponsored by the Methodist Walter Bromley in 1813–14.

Early missionary endeavours in the Great Lakes area during the French regime, by contrast, had little long-term influence on the resident native population. Apart from the Moravian Delaware, the Algonquians of southern Ontario remained unattached to any denomination until a remarkable camp meeting at Ancaster in 1823 recruited Peter Jones of the Mississauga nation as an advocate of the Methodist cause. During the next ten years, Jones’s preaching kindled interest among other southeastern Ojibwa, several of whom became energetic native exhorters. The Methodists established a number of Ojibwa model agricultural communities, of which the best known lay on the Credit River, near the present-day city of Mississauga. In the late 1830s and 1840s Roman Catholic and Anglican missionaries actively began proselytizing in the Lake Simcoe and northern Lake Huron areas, while Chief Peguis became the first Western Ojibwa chief to espouse Anglicanism at Red River, in what is now Manitoba. Yet, in most Woodland Algonquian communities, and particularly in the west, elements of the traditional belief system remained intact.

Shamanic practices may also be traced in the Maritime region. In 1778, despite the presence of a Roman Catholic priest, Malecite chief Pierre Thomas summoned shamanic powers to his aid in determining which side to ally with during the American Revolution. After lying motionless for almost an hour, Thomas rose and stated his preference for the British cause. In the mid-nineteenth century, Mi’kmaq held that performance of a certain dance called the neskouwadijik rendered the dancer invincible against bullets. These practices tended to be more individualistic than those in the Great Lakes region.

Among Eastern Canadian Algonquian-speakers, only the Mi’kmaq and Delaware have been recorded as holding major annual village ceremonies. In the Mi’kmaq springtime ritual, a woman tended a sacred fire for a specified length of time, after which she and the village chief participated in a revitalization ceremony. In one Delaware ceremony called the Big House Ceremony or gamwing, performed during planting and after corn harvest, men who had dreamed of a guardian spirit danced in a circle around two central fires to the beat of drums. At intervals a man would stop, recite a story about his spirit guardian, and then sing a song he had acquired during his vision experience. This ceremony survived into the early nineteenth century.

Ojibwa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi religious practitioners often belonged to the Grand Medicine Society, or Midéwiwin, or the lesser-known Wabano society, whose members manipulated natural phenomena in order to demonstrate power sufficient to attain specific ends. Wabano ritual involved the handling of fiery substances such as red-hot stones or coals. By contrast, the Midéwiwin, a ranked organization, required its adherents to pass through a number of stages en route to acquiring powers deemed capable not only of protecting and healing but also of reviving the world system. A third class of shamans, known as shaking-tent conjurors, consulted with spirits for curing, divining the future, locating lost persons or objects, and sometimes for shamanic retaliation against enemies. The conjuror’s ritual necessitated the construction of a small pole framework, covered except for the top. The shaman inside this structure acted as an intermediary with spirits who shook the tent as they entered. Shaking-tent conjurors and members of the Midewiwin and Wabano societies always worked for a fee.

All Woodland Algonquians used the sweat lodge for purification purposes and hunting rituals, as well as to obtain and demonstrate religious power. Since the 1960s this sweat lodge ceremony has been reintroduced and combined with practices from Plains or Iroquoian sources. The talking circle, burning of sweet grass incense, chanting, and drumming have become important elements of these contemporary ceremonies. Some reserves are split into factions between those who prefer to follow Christian practices and those who espouse the neo-traditionalist perspective. For instance, in the homes of devout Roman Catholics, funeral rites may last for two or three nights during which guests sing and recite rosaries. Among traditionalists, drumming, songs, and chanting occur in honour of the deceased.