"The earth is my mother - and on her bosom I will repose."
-TECUMSAH
"Mother Earth, as she had existed in North America, cannot be adequately
understood and appreciated apart from the complex history of the encounter
between Native Americans and Americans of European ancestry, nor apart from
comprehending that the scholarly enterprise that has sought to describe her
has had a hand in bringing her into existence, a hand even in introducing her
to Native American peoples." And thus is the thesis of University of Colorado
religious studies professor Sam Gill.
Is nothing sacred? According to Gill, in his recently published book "Mother
Earth," that which is sacred shall be well-documented and grounded in hard
evidence and can often be attributed to some form of Euro-American influence.
Gill's thesis is that the term "Mother Earth," defined as a creator goddess
nearly universal throughout Native American religions, has only recently come
into existence as a central theological figure in these religions. However,
he does accede to a metaphorical use of this term in the more distant past. "I
am arguing that though the structure of Mother Earth may be primordial and
archetypal, historically this structure was not formally identified nor did it
take on importance until recently, that is, within the last hundred years."
Although he does not question the firm establishment of this figure in the
Native American world today, he does question her antiquity, and more
importantly, he questions the validity of other scholars' research and works
that assume or prove her antiquity as a creator goddess.
Gill begins with the reasoning which led to his thesis and produces a skeleton
on which will hang the body of his book. He notes several female figures of
various Native American myths and religions, but he finds scanty concrete
evidence of an antiquated Mother Earth figure, which seems to him curious
because of the universal scholarly belief he encountered otherwise. "A rich
variety of female figures whose stories and characters are often complex and
sophisticated will be found...Most of these many Native American female
figures will be seen as manifestations of [Mother Earth], though but a very
few common examples illustrate the distinctive character that has been
assigned to her."
Chapters two and three center on two quotes often cited as evidence of Mother
Earth. The first is that of TECUMSAH, a Native American of the early and
mid-19th century who tried to form an alliance of tribes to protect native
American lands. He is quoted as saying, "The a earth is my mother - and on
her bosom I will repose." Gill claims a changing public sentiment regarding
Native Americans assigned a folk-hero status to Tecumsah, and this quote, from
unofficial records of treaty negotiations in 1810, appeared somewhat
coincidentally eleven years later, published for the first time. Although he
found no official record of the quote, he did find an extensive reliance on
these words, in other, later versions of the same quote and later research of
the negotiations, to point to a belief in Mother Earth. Thus Gill believes
the quote to be an historical one invented by Euro-Americans and places a
heavy doubt as to whether Tecumsah actually uttered those words. He goes on
to invalidate research of Mother Earth dependent on that quote.
Chapter three is of much the same character, questioning a widely used quote
by Smohalla, a Wanapum Indian, "You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a
knife and tear my mother's bosom....?" Gill believes that the Native
Americans used this quote by Smohalla to contribute substantial proof of
Mother Earth but in the process took it too far out of context. Here Gill is
not as much questioning the validity of the quote, although the reliability
of documentation comes under fire, as he is claiming a very different
contextual meaning than evidence of a theological Mother Earth figure. He
attributes the meaning's adaptation to Native Americans feeling white
pressures on their lands, customs, languages, and traditions; Native Americans
were searching for a base of authority from which future paths could be
followed thus the extensive use of this quote by them. Gill allows the earth
as mother in a metaphorical sense but not in a theological one. In other
words, he allowed that people may have related aspects of their lives to the
earth as mother, but he does not believe she has always been revered in
religious ceremonies as a theological figure. A quote from this chapter, page
55, best sums up his contention, "It is clear in light of other historical
contexts, that even the earliest statements referring to the earth as
mother... were made in response to the threat of the loss of land on an
enormous scale." Thus Native Americans created Mother Earth only in response
to white pressures on their societies.
Chapters four and five examine the Luiseno and Zuni/Pueblo creation stories,
both of which are heavily relied upon for evidence of Mother Earth and Father
Sky as creators of the world. "Two tribal cultures, the Zuni and Luiseno, are
the ones most commonly cited as evidence for the existence of Mother Earth.
Each of these cultures, and their religious traditions... become two more
episodes of the Mother Earth story." The ethnographic recordings of Zuni
creation stories are, according to Gill, biased at best and stories about
stories at the worst,and to ascertain that Zuni beliefs are representative of
all Pueblo beliefs is irresponsible. In the case of the Luiseno, Gill sees a
female personification of the earth but does not believe this proves Mother
Earth as a major creator. He researched other possible evidence for an early
theological link to Mother Earth but found nothing more substantial than what
has already been presented.
Thus Gill has spent the first two-thirds of his book disproving the universal
assumption that the earth mother has always been an important theological
figure. he has done this by thoroughly dissecting the major evidence used to
support such a theory. However, he reveals a somewhat condescending tone with
this quote at the end of chapter five. "Furthermore, what has been revealed
in this study is the notion of Mother Earth as a Native American goddess has
been created to meet the various needs of Americans of European ancestry."
These 'needs' are defined as the need for the white man to feel superior, to
have evidence of primitivism, thus inferiority, at which he can point.
The scholars' part in the creation of a Mother Earth deity is researched next.
Gill says the assumptions by scholars from 1873 to 1983 that Mother Earth has
been well-established since antiquity are precariously based on few,
unreliable sources. Some of these scholars are Edward Tylor, Andrew Lang,
Albrecht Dieterich, Mircea Eliade and Ake Hultdrantz. They, the scholars,
have conjured and constructed this image of Mother Earth from little hard
evidence, therefore Gill contends this goddess has been interpreted into
being or actuality. He believes this construction of reality was possible
because the scholars never questioned the validity of Mother Earth in the
first place. Therefore, it had remained an untested hypothesis. Gill uses
this chapter to display his contempt for what he deems as grossly incomplete
scholarly research and, it often seems, for those Americans of European
ancestry. He would have that this story was largely created to effect a
hierarchy, to demonstrate a primitive thinking on the part of Native Americans
when compared to Euro-Americans thus supporting oppressive relationships. I
question here his assumption that all the scholars he cited and quoted had
intentions, conscious or unconscious, to develop and or support an oppressor/
oppressed relationship through their research and writings.
Gill credits the Native Americans as the other primary source of Mother
Earth's recent creation. Only after contact with Euro-American influences and
expectations was the Mother Earth concept developed among Native American
peoples. "Mother Earth has come to be a major goddess to the Indians within
this century and that her development has been necessarily dependent upon the
crises caused by Americans of European ancestry but also upon
European-American interpretations and expectations of Indians and their
religions." He believes that not until mid-20th century is there a true,
clear reference to Mother Earth in Native American religions. Again the
argument that Mother Earth was created to demonstrate a difference between
races is used, but this time it is the Native Americans creating to be
different and superior, to have a superior way of life; she evolved as a
common identity to which Native Americans needed to grasp. An interesting
note to this chapter is that a man named Sun Bear is quoted in support of
Gill's argument but no mention is made, in fact the opposite is stated, of the
little respect many in the Native American community hold for this man.
I believe Gill gives an acceptable, if not accurate, argument of his thesis
and findings on the American story of Mother Earth. Each chapter is
well-researched and documented with a thorough attention to details. My
question then would be what holds more importance, his disproval of an
antiquated Mother Earth deity and the time when she was actually personified
as such? Or could the antiquity of the philosophy, beliefs and traditions
behind the concept, which he supports and believes, be more important. This
book suggests convincingly that Mother Earth is not well-documented, but Gill
states there was a pre-European existence of a Mother Earth type philosophy,
which seems more important and relevant to the understanding of Native
American religions and cultures.
I am a new student of Native American religions and have had some personal
experience with one, and from the beginning I have come across and grasped the
term and meaning of Mother Earth. But, despite my naivete, I don't believe I
was misled as to her definition or universality; instead, I have sought out
and concentrated on the values behind the name. In concentrating on what is
not so important to understanding Native American religions, this book
actually helped me to understand more clearly what is really important.
Native Americans have felt and celebrated close ties with the earth for
centuries due to the interdependence of economy, religion, ecology and
survival
resulting from early horticultural and hunting patterns. Therefore they
depended upon and revered the earth and Great Spirit as a provider of life and
survival, and eventually the influences and pressures given in Gill's book
brought out and defined this reverence. Is it possible that in proving his
thesis, Gil could have been less negative and adversarial? Although careful
to state he is not trying to "denigrate or dilute" the beliefs of Native
Americans, Gill has successfully torn up most Euro-American scholarly work
assuming or proving this concept of antiquity in the last two centuries, but
again where does the importance lie? Maybe someone should ask the Native
Americans.