Skip to main content

Describe Native American Ioway Indian religion and beliefs.

The Iowa Tribe is the same as the Ioway Tribe—Native Americans of the Great Plains.  Their culture was comprised of elements of the Plains and Woodland tribes, which were nomadic and developed an equestrian culture.  This Indian tribe is the original people of Iowa and southwestern Minnesota.  The heritage of the Ioway mixes the blood of other tribes, like the Omaha, the Missouri, the Sauk, the Meskwaki, and the Otoe, as well as French traders and American farmers.  Few records survive as to Native American religions, and not many books were written about this tribe, but it was known that each clan had its own story of its creation.


Their rituals included the Sweat Lodge, the Vision Quest, and the Sun Dance Ceremony.


They gave names to the elements and powers of Nature, and they celebrated life through dancing. The naming of a person derived from a handful of sources: you were given a name as an honor from another tribe; you were named according to your birth and sex; once a child was old enough to stand unassisted, the elders of the clan could bestow a name on it; or an achievement or talent could earn a person a name, or perhaps an oddity about that person’s features.


The Iowa had seven clans, and the number seven was important to them.  The original seven (though Beaver and Snake were mentioned in the old writings) were: Black Bear, Buffalo, Elk, Thunder Eagle, Owl, Pigeon, and Wolf.


The Iowans recognized the seven cardinal directions, and each direction had a deity associated with it.  Their image of the Earth was that it was an island that rested on the back of a turtle, thus the name for Earth came to be Turtle Island.  The Earth was feminine and referred to as their Mother, with the Sky as Father.  Between these two poles, one could travel to worlds above and below.


They used medicinal plants like sage and sweetgrass, which were also used in ceremony.


Spirits, good and bad, lived throughout the land, but trees were considered generally beneficent and not cut down because they could trap evil spirits.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more