Native Americans believed that balance and harmony should pervade their relationships with the environment, from the sky to the underworld and all beings in between. For that reason, the negative was as important as the positive. The Polynesian term for the dangerously charged sacred, there spelled tabu, is used by Native Americans to refer to forbidden or circumscribed relationships, which can involve special beings, places, and times.
Overly intense identification between beings was controlled by the imposition of taboos. Throughout the Pacific Northwest, the parents of newborn twins were forbidden to take them near water, because the words for "twins" and "salmon" were the same. Since both symbolized dualities (such as return and rebirth), their equation was particularly strong, and, at least until the twins became mature human beings, the infants had to be kept spatially and emotionally separated from the fish to prevent their fusing. Parents were willing to make the arduous overland detours that this taboo entailed because twins, once fully grown, could use their special relationship with salmon to bring bounty to their communities.
In general, taboos served to temper such intensities of connectedness among beings. For example, a Dunneza (called Beaver by whites), a hunter of British Columbia, blessed by power from the Spider spirit, avoided the sound of plucked strings, as from a fiddle or guitar, because the strings on such instruments were much like spider webbing and their sound could cause the hunter to be overwhelmed by his or her identification with Spider, often fatally. Indeed, a being's most characteristic feature was often most subject to the moderating influences of taboo. Spider webbing, for example, gained attention rather than the creature's eight legs or some other less distinctive feature.
Among farming nations with large populations and complex institutions, taboos define memberships in corporate groups such as clans. Thus those belonging to the Deer clan had to be especially careful with that species, often avoiding killing or eating venison so as not to consume what was in some sense an ancestor. In consequence, of course, each clan thereby contributed its totemic life form to the sustenance of the larger community. In some cases, taboos defined tribal membership—as for example, did the ban on murder among Cheyennes. By following that injunction tribesmen ensured that they would not pollute their national Four Sacred Arrows.
Shrines and other sacred places in the landscape, particularly so-called holy homes, where a spirit was believed to dwell, were approached with all caution. General taboos applied to them, included fasting, thirsting, and praying so as to appear "pure" to the supernatural being inhabiting such places. Some places could not be looked at, except under special circumstances, and most required that some offering be left as a gesture of respect.
Not all taboo relationships lasted a lifetime. In certain cases—for example, when hunting, fishing, or gardening—special injunctions lasted about four days. Similarly, at life-cycle events like birth, puberty, marriage, and death, taboos applied to the person directly affected—along with relatives considered close enough to be equally intensely involved in the process—for only a set time.
Jay Miller
Lenape
Lushootseed Research
