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Religious Beliefs of the Hopi

North American Indians share a belief in a supernatural being representing a god, and practice religions based in myth and rituals. They have a profusion of tales regarding the origin of the world and what makes nature work (Hultkrantz 30). The purpose of this paper will be to discuss one of these tribes, the Hopi of the Pueblo Nation, and its religious beliefs, with particular emphasis on the person, spirit or God who the culture thinks can control the weather or alter it. The research also will present this culture's view of the end of the world and compare it to others within the Pueblo and Indian nations.

The Pueblos, comprised of many linguistic families, are primarily found throughout the area now known as New Mexico. Sedentary agriculturists, they lived in stone or adobe community houses which made up villages called pueblos and were noted for their complex ceremonial calendar of rituals. "Among the 1>ueblos, cyclic rituals, which were intended to generate community health and wellbeing, were the ultimate prescribed rituals in their annual ceremonial calendars" (Jorgensen 257).

In 1>ueblo ideology, individual persons, kinship groups, and all elements of society were part of the important ceremonial cycle and the gods that were represented in the various rituals (Jorgensen 258). while certain crisis rites were public affairs, such as initiation ceremonies, death was a private ritual. It occupied a very special place in this belief system. "Death served to transform humans into ancestors, whereupon they became supernatural beings" (Jorgensen 258) . Some of the 1>ueblo groups, including the Tanoans

and Eastern Keres, made the mythological link between living and past generations explicit in acts and observances by sponsoring annual rituals to honor all dead ancestors (Jorgensen 258).

The Hopi tribe also had their own particular rituals and beliefs. As one of the oldest, if not the oldest., continuously occu...

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Religious Beliefs of the Hopi. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 15:54, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1690740.html