Medicine Bundle Indian Sacred Performance and American
Literature, 1824-1932 (Hardcover) |Author: Joshua David Bellin|
From the Publisher: From the 1820s to the 1930s, Christian
missionaries and federal agents launched a continent-wide
assault against Indian sacred dance, song, ceremony, and healing
ritual in an attempt to transform Indian peoples into American
citizens. In spite of this century-long religious persecution,
Native peoples continued to perform their sacred traditions and
resist the foreign religions imposed on them, as well as to
develop new practices that partook of both. At the same time,
some whites began to explore Indian performance with interest,
and even to promote Indian sacred traditions as a source of
power for their own society. The varieties of Indian performance
played a formative role in American culture and identity during
a critical phase in the nation's development.