Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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North America

Also Known As North American
The Americas and the Caribbean

The North American continent north of Mexico, the United States and Canada. Six traditions are placed here, and they divide sharply. Dine, Lakota and Inuit religion are indigenous and long predate the states now drawn over them. The Native American Church is a nineteenth-century peyote religion that incorporates Christian elements. Modern Satanism is a twentieth-century American invention. The entry called Native American Religion covers hundreds of distinct traditions in one row, which is a compression this scheme should not be read as endorsing.

Facts
Geography
Latitude
45 degrees north 1
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a large or historical region has no formal center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a precise boundary claim.
Longitude
100 degrees west 1
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a large or historical region has no formal center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a precise boundary claim.
Modern Area
United States and Canada 1
Traditions
Principal Religious Traditions
Christianity 2
Principal Religious Traditions
Indigenous North American traditions 2
Sacred and Liturgical Languages
Indigenous North American languages and English 3
Learn More
Indigenous Nations and the American Religious Laboratory

North America, the continent north of Mexico, holds two very different religious stories that its modern political borders obscure. The first and older is that of the indigenous nations, whose traditions long predate the states now drawn over them and whose diversity is immense: the sky-and-earth cosmology and Blessingway ceremonies of the Dine (Navajo); the sacred pipe, the vision quest, and the Sun Dance of the Lakota and other Plains peoples; the relationship with the animal world and the land of the Inuit of the Arctic. These are not a single religion but hundreds, bound loosely by a common emphasis on the sacredness of land and place, on ceremony and vision, on kinship extending to the non-human world, and on oral rather than scriptural transmission, and all of them survived, often underground, through centuries of dispossession, missionary suppression, and the trauma of the boarding-school era, to be reasserted in the modern period, sometimes with legal protection hard-won through cases over sacred sites and religious freedom.

The second story is that of the United States and Canada as a religious laboratory: a land whose disestablishment of religion and openness to immigration produced an extraordinary proliferation of new movements, from the Latter-day Saints, Adventists, and Pentecostals to Christian Science, the Nation of Islam, and countless new religious movements, alongside the transplanted churches of every immigrant community. North America thus juxtaposes some of the world's oldest indigenous traditions with the most fertile modern ground for religious innovation.

Salvage Ethnography, and What Was Taken with It

A great deal of the written record of indigenous religion in North America was made between the 1880s and the 1930s by ethnographers working on an explicit assumption: that the peoples they were recording were about to disappear, and that the urgent task was to collect everything before they did. The assumption was wrong. The nations are here.

The work produced under it is genuinely valuable and genuinely compromised. Ceremonies were transcribed, songs recorded on wax cylinders, and objects removed to museums, often from people under enormous pressure and sometimes without any meaningful consent. Knowledge that was restricted within a community, held by particular societies or particular sexes or released only at particular times, was published in volumes anyone could buy.

The pressure was not incidental to the recording. The same decades saw the Sun Dance and the potlatch prohibited by law in the United States and Canada, and children removed to boarding and residential schools where their languages and practices were punished. Ceremonies were being documented by scholars and suppressed by governments at the same time.

Later law changed the terms. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 established a process for returning human remains and certain sacred objects, and museums now negotiate access with the nations concerned.

The atlas treats restricted knowledge as restricted, and names a closed practice as closed rather than describing it from a hundred-year-old monograph.

Connections

Associated With

The family spreads across northern and eastern North America.

European settlement of North America crossed this ocean, and the crossing narrative entered its religious self-understanding.

Western Apache country is east-central Arizona.

Attested Here

Bear, Animals & Totems

Bear ceremonialism, including the ritual treatment of the killed bear, is documented across the northern peoples of the continent.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The centre of Plains ceremonial life, and the source of the Lakota sacred pipe.

Source God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, 30th anniversary editionVine Deloria Jr.

The trickster of the Great Basin, California and the Southwest, creator and fool in the same cycle.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Deer, Animals & Totems

The deer dance and the deer as a being that gives itself to the hunter under an agreement.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Water, swiftness and the coming of rain in Southwestern iconography.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The eagle carries prayers upward, and eagle feathers are restricted objects in law and in practice.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

First reported near Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1966-67, the Mothman legend is attested in North America.

The otter of the medicine bundle, and a helper in several origin accounts of the diving for earth.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Owl, Animals & Totems

Widely an omen of death, and among several peoples an animal it is dangerous to name at night.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The movement is North American in origin, though its literature travelled widely.

The Great Hare of the Eastern Woodlands, a creator and a trickster at once.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Raven of the Northwest Coast, who steals the light and is not thanked for it.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The first salmon ceremony of the Northwest Coast, which returns the bones to the water.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Spider Woman, who taught weaving and who is a creator in the Southwest.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Thunderbird covers distinct beings in a number of unrelated North American traditions, and the singular English name conceals real differences. Treating them as one pan-Indian sky god flattens traditions that do not agree with each other.

Source The Manitous: The Spiritual World of the OjibwayBasil Johnston

Turtle Island, the continent carried on a turtle's back.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The wiindigo belongs to Algonquian-speaking peoples of the northern forests, Anishinaabe, Cree, Innu and their neighbours, and is specific to a landscape where winter starvation was a real prospect.

Source The Manitous: The Spiritual World of the OjibwayBasil Johnston

The whale hunt of the Northwest Coast and the Arctic, and the ceremonies that surround it.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Wolf, Animals & Totems

The wolf as teacher and as the model for how a hunting band should behave.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Contains

Loma Linda lies in southern California.

The valley lies in the North American interior west.

United States, Regions
Source United States (Wikipedia)

Originated Here

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

The Great Lakes country of North America.

Source Ojibway HeritageBasil Johnston
Apache, Cultures
Source The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal MovementCecil M. Robeck Jr.
Source Proclamation 9558, Establishment of the Bears Ears National MonumentPresident of the United States
Source Public Law 91-550, 84 Stat. 1437 (Blue Lake, Pueblo de Taos)United States Congress
Cahokia, Sacred Sites
Source UNESCO World Heritage ListUnited Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Cayuga, Cultures
Source The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European ColonizationDaniel K. Richter
Source UNESCO World Heritage ListUnited Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Source Apache Stronghold v. United States, en banc opinion of the Ninth CircuitUnited States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Source Navajo Sacred PlacesKlara Bonsack Kelley and Harris Francis
Source Navajo Nation v. United States Forest Service, 535 F.3d 1058 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc)United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Source United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, 448 U.S. 371Supreme Court of the United States
Heathenry, Religions
Source American Heathens: The Politics of Identity in a Pagan Religion MovementJennifer Snook
Hopi, Cultures
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Inuit, Cultures
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Source The Mesa Verde World: Explorations in Ancestral Puebloan ArchaeologyDavid Grant Noble (editor)
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Lakota, Cultures
Source Annual Statistical Report of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, 2023 dataOffice of Archives, Statistics and Research, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventiststhe holders' own account
Source Satanism: A Social HistoryMassimo Introvigne
Source Fools Crow v. Gullet, D.S.D. 1982, affirmed 8th Cir. 1983United States District Court for the District of South Dakota
Source Devils Tower National Monument: climbing and the June voluntary closureNational Park Service
Source The Mesa Verde World: Explorations in Ancestral Puebloan ArchaeologyDavid Grant Noble (editor)
Mohawk, Cultures
Source The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European ColonizationDaniel K. Richter

The umbrella region for the many distinct Native nations, each catalogued individually where a dedicated religion exists, among them Lakota Religion, Dine (Navajo) Religion and Anishinaabe Religion.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The Four Corners country of North America is the Dine homeland.

Source Navajo Sacred PlacesKlara Bonsack Kelley and Harris Francis
Nettle, Plants
Source Plants of the World OnlineRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Ojibwe, Cultures

The Great Lakes country of North America is the Ojibwe homeland.

Source Ojibway HeritageBasil Johnston
Oneida, Cultures
Source The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European ColonizationDaniel K. Richter
Onondaga, Cultures
Source The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European ColonizationDaniel K. Richter
Source Haida Texts and Myths, Skidegate DialectJohn R. Swanton
Source Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24Knud Rasmussen
Sedona, Sacred Sites
Source New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular ThoughtWouter J. Hanegraaff
Seneca, Cultures
Source The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European ColonizationDaniel K. Richter
Source A new multistage construction chronology for the Great Serpent Mound, USAEdward W. Herrmann and others
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Sunflower, Plants
Source Plants of the World OnlineRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Source Myths of the CherokeeJames Mooney
Source Book of the HopiFrank Waters, with Oswald "White Bear" Fredericks
Source The Facts on File Encyclopedia of World Mythology and LegendAnthony S. Mercatante, revised and expanded by James R. Dow
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Tuscarora, Cultures
Source The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European ColonizationDaniel K. Richter
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Source Lakota Belief and RitualJames R. Walker; edited by Raymond J. DeMallie and Elaine A. Jahner

Plants Native Here

Heyoka, Figures
Source Lakota Belief and RitualJames R. Walker; edited by Raymond J. DeMallie and Elaine A. Jahner
Nettle, Plants
Source Plants of the World OnlineRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Source The Mesa Verde World: Explorations in Ancestral Puebloan ArchaeologyDavid Grant Noble (editor)
Sunflower, Plants
Source Plants of the World OnlineRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Plants Used in Ritual Here

Ayahuasca Vine, Plants
Source Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, 546 U.S. 418Supreme Court of the United States
Peyote, Plants
Source Peyote Religion: A HistoryOmer C. Stewart
Tobacco, Plants
Source Tobacco and Shamanism in South AmericaJohannes Wilbert

Regions Where This Is Principal

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Sky Figures Read Here

Ojibwe, Languages

The Great Lakes and the northern plains, on both sides of the Canada and United States border.

Source Ethnologue: Languages of the WorldDavid M. Eberhard, Gary F. Simons and Charles D. Fennig (eds.)

Societies Attested Here

Founded and headquartered in the United States and taught by post, which is how it reached members far outside the lodge cities the older orders worked in.

Source A History of the Occult TarotRonald Decker and Michael Dummett

A society of one campus. It takes fifteen Yale seniors a year and has never chartered a chapter anywhere else, which is what separates it from the national fraternities it is usually grouped with.

Source Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of PowerAlexandra Robbins
Source Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of PowerAlexandra Robbins
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024
  • s.v. regional geography
  • Originated Here: Western Apache
  • Originated Here: Lakewood Church, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
  • Originated Here: Washington National Cathedral, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
  • Originated Here: Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
  • Originated Here: Ebenezer Baptist Church, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
  • Originated Here: Touro Synagogue, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
  • Originated Here: Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
  • Originated Here: Hsi Lai Temple, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
  • Originated Here: Islamic Center of Washington, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
  • Originated Here: Angelus Temple, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
  • Originated Here: Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
  • Originated Here: Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
  • Originated Here: Trinity Church Wall Street, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
  • Originated Here: Tremont Temple, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
View the Source
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005The geography of religions
Quote, The geography of religions
General reference for the extent of each region and for the traditions placed within it.
View the Source
3. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
John Bowker (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997Indigenous and new religions of North AmericaView the Source
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
Book of the Hopi
Frank Waters, with Oswald "White Bear" Fredericks, Viking Press, 1963Originated Here: The Hopi Emergence Myth
The Facts on File Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend
Anthony S. Mercatante, revised and expanded by James R. Dow, Facts on File, 2004Originated Here: The Zuni Emergence MythView the Source
Plants of the World Online
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
  • Plants Native Here: Sunflower, Stored origin-region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
  • Plants Native Here: Nettle, Stored origin-region property on this entity, cited to this source: Europe, Asia, North America and North Africa
  • Originated Here: Sunflower, Stored origin-region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
  • Originated Here: Nettle, Stored origin-region property on this entity, cited to this source: Europe, Asia, North America and North Africa
View the Source
New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought
Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Brill, 1996Originated Here: Sedona, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North AmericaView the Source
Proclamation 9558, Establishment of the Bears Ears National Monument
President of the United States, Office of the Federal Register, 2016Originated Here: Bears Ears, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North AmericaView the Source
Apache Stronghold v. United States, en banc opinion of the Ninth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 2024Originated Here: Chi'chil Bildagoteel (Oak Flat), Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North AmericaView the Source
Devils Tower National Monument: climbing and the June voluntary closure
National Park Service, United States Department of the InteriorOriginated Here: Mato Tipila (Devils Tower), Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North AmericaView the Source
United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, 448 U.S. 371
Supreme Court of the United States, 1980Originated Here: He Sapa (The Black Hills), Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North AmericaView the Source
Fools Crow v. Gullet, D.S.D. 1982, affirmed 8th Cir. 1983
United States District Court for the District of South Dakota, 1982Originated Here: Mato Paha (Bear Butte), Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
Public Law 91-550, 84 Stat. 1437 (Blue Lake, Pueblo de Taos)
United States Congress, United States Government Publishing Office, 1970Originated Here: Blue Lake, Taos Pueblo, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North AmericaView the Source
Navajo Nation v. United States Forest Service, 535 F.3d 1058 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc)
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 2008Originated Here: Dook'o'oosliid (The San Francisco Peaks), Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Movement
Cecil M. Robeck Jr., Thomas Nelson, 2006Originated Here: Azusa Street, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
UNESCO World Heritage List
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO World Heritage Centre
  • Originated Here: Cahokia, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
  • Originated Here: Chaco Canyon, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
View the Source
The Mesa Verde World: Explorations in Ancestral Puebloan Archaeology
David Grant Noble (editor), School for Advanced Research Press, 2006Originated Here: Mesa Verde, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
A new multistage construction chronology for the Great Serpent Mound, USA
Edward W. Herrmann and others, Journal of Archaeological Science, 2014Originated Here: Serpent Mound, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North America
Annual Statistical Report of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, 2023 data
Office of Archives, Statistics and Research, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 2024Originated Here: Loma Linda, Stored region property on this entity, cited to this source: North Americathe holders' own accountView the Source
Satanism: A Social History
Massimo Introvigne, Brill, 2016Originated Here: Luciferianism, Stored origin-place property on this entity, cited to this source: Western Europe and North AmericaView the Source
American Heathens: The Politics of Identity in a Pagan Religion Movement
Jennifer Snook, Temple University Press, 2015Originated Here: Heathenry, Stored origin-place property on this entity, cited to this source: Iceland, Britain and North America
United States (Wikipedia)
Contains: United States, Introduction
Quote, Contains: United States, Introduction
is a country primarily located in North America
View the Source
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