Was the clash between the cultural forms of two diverse life-ways that began when Columbus  landed in North America part of God's Plan?  Was it God's Plan to replace the forms of centripetal societies which for thousands of years were shaped by the "elementary forces of the environment" with the Biblical forms of Christianity?  

 

Unknown to those came to the New World from the East (Columbus,  Puritans, and settlers), it was to be a clash between centrifugal cultural forms like the nuclear family which compelled its sons and daughter to leave father and mother and go West versus diverse centripetal societies which inserted each individual into a web of kinship which compelled its sons and daughters to remain at home because the survival of the whole was dependent on the particular function each was ascribed to fulfill. 

 

Now when Isaiah declared that the Lord prophesied saying: "From the East .....I summon a man to fulfill my purpose. What I have said, that I will bring about; what I have planned, that I will do" (Is. 46:11), the prophesy applied to the destruction of Babylon by a man from the East whose name was Cyrus the Great.  

 

Now since it was the desire of the Creator that the Gospel be preached to all nations, might not God have summoned a man from the East to destroy the life-ways which had rejected the Orders of Creation and which had replaced positive Universals for living with negative particulars which were in fundamental opposition to the way things ought to be? 

 

It is interesting to note what Columbus said about his mission.

 

"No one should fear to undertake any task in the name of our Saviour, if it is just and if the intention is purely for His holy service. The working out of all things has been assigned to each person by our Lord, but it all happens according to His sovereign will, even though He gives advice. He lacks nothing that is in the power of men to give Him. Oh, what a gracious Lord, who desires that people should perform for Him those things for which He holds Himself responsible! Day and night, moment by moment, everyone should express their most devoted gratitude to Him." 

 

“O Lord, eternal and omnipotent God, Thou hast, by Thy holy word, created the heavens, the earth, and the sea; blessed and glorified be Thy name; praised be Thy majesty, who hast deigned that, by means of Thy unworthy servant, Thy sacred name should be acknowledged and made known in this new quarter of the world.”

 

Unknown to those who settled in the new world, they were unaware that the life-ways they were confronting were in fundamental opposition to God's Design for living. They were confronting societies which had rearranged the internal structure of the nuclear family, merged lineal relatives with collateral, threw away logic, and created new kinds of intimate groups that functioned as "families."  Finally, they replaced a personal Absolute whose name was I AM and worshiped an impersonal thing in the sky, the sun, rather than the sun's Creator. 

 

 

New Cultural Forms Enters the New World

 

When the Puritan colonists landed in the New World, their leaders were fully aware that "Formes are essential without which things cannot be," the most important forms being that of the nuclear family and its internal structure.   The nuclear family and its internal structure were the ultimate forms, the "Mother Hive" upon which to build a just and creative society.  

However, unknown to them, they were entering a continent unlike that of England. It was a continent which had, at some point in history, rejected God's Design for Living and decided to go "their own way" (Acts 14:16). The nuclear family and its internal structure were not ultimate,

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Since the settlers  believed the Bible had revealed the nuclear family and its internal structure to be a Universal Constant against which every other family type might be measured, they refused to surrender the Universal for new kinds of "family" forms,  forms, which unknown to them, were shaped by the external infrastructural pressures of the New World which the apostle Paul called the "elementary forces of the environment" (Col. 2:8).   

 

As students of the Bible, they believed there existed Orders of Creation, the most important one being the internal structure of the nuclear family which made the covenantal dyad of husband-wife its dominant dyad.  

 

A dominant feature of this kind of family structure was self reliance on the part of the individual.  More importantly, this individualism was linked to the Biblical teaching that "man was created in the image of God" and "possessed God-given rights which cannot be taken away from him by men, society, or traditions.  To express this uniqueness he must have freedom and, to safeguard his right, his due is equality." 

 

Anthropologist Gilbert McAllister explains the problem of definitions this way. "The term 'family' then, in the fixed sense  in which we usually think of it, cannot be applied to the Kiowa-Apache (as well as any other tribe on the Continent). The family was a larger unit, a very closely knit but, within the bounds of this group,  rather variable and fluid. ...The members of this group were bound by indissoluble bonds of kinship based on matrilocal residence."  

 

In contrast, the settlers were practicing a rule which said that every newly wed should "leave father and mother" and set up an independent household free from parental and kin control. 

 

Now the Puritans were entering a Continent in which the nuclear family had been swallowed up and rendered ineffective and powerless by new kinds of diverse family structures, all of which were shaped to "fit" the environment. This meant, any shift from one part of the Continent to another entailed changing "family" structures.  In the New World, the cultural norm was for the internal structure of the family to "fit"  whatever environment in which it existed. 

 

So when pioneers for whom the nuclear family represented an Order of Creation moved into the Great Plains, they didn’t, like the tribal societies which moved from the East to West before them,   restructure their family and make its form of the family “fit”  their new environments.  If the Puritans did, it would have been a sign that they too had rejected both God’s  Universal design for living and had decided to go "their own way" (Acts 14:16).   

 

Unlike the tribes of North America, the majority of these pioneers entering the Great Plains were operating on a covenantal principle of mutual trust and faith in a Heavenly Father who would provide in any kind of environment. For them the nuclear family was the basic unit of society. But it was also a form that only worked if society declared: "in God we trust." 

 

In contrast, the Plains Indians relied on a very different kind of family structure as well as religious forms like the annual Sun Dance which provided individuals and opportunity to set themselves apart "to thank the sun for past favors and to petition for protection and future blessings." Also, unlike the tribes of the Plains, they, as a people, did not ascribe functions to their collateral kin, whereas the Plains tribes did. 

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In the one case, the extended super-family and magic supplied society's needs;  for the other, society's needs were provided for by a nation of God-fearing, praying families who declared: "In God we trust."  For the latter,  God was the ultimate Provider, not the web of kinship relationships and religious forms they practiced to compel Almighty Nature, especially the sun, to act on their behalf.  

 

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The Making of Vows to the Sun

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"For the tribes of the Plains, the annual Sun Dance ceremony provided both males and females the opportunity to devote themselves to the sun by making vows. Like the Israelites, the tribes of the Great Plains practiced the making of vows.  But the nature of the vows they made were vastly different.  The Israelites made their vows to a personal Absolute Being called Yahweh. The tribes of the Plains made their vows to a created impersonal thing, the sun.

 

At the end of the Sun Dance Ceremony, "young men who had made vows to the sun were presented in the medicine lodge to fulfill them."  In 1947, anthropologist John Ewers heard Heavy Head relate how he, when a young man, made a promise to the sun. He recounted that upon entering an enemy camp to steal a horse, "he looked up to the moonlit sky and prayed, 'If I have good luck and get home safely, I shall be tortured at the sun dance.'"    But before the sun could answer his prayer, he first had to fulfill his vow and be tortured. 

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HIs testimony of the ordeal sixty years later was:

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"Rawhide ropes were brought out from the center pole and tied to the skewers in my breast -- the right side first, then left side.  Red Bead grabbed the ropes and jerked them hard twice.  Then he told me, 'Now go to the center pole and pray for your vow to come true.' I walked up there.  I knew I was suppose to pretend to cry, But oh! I really cried.  I hurt so much.., 

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I leaned back and began and began dancing, facing the center pole.  I felt just like the pole was pulling me toward it. I danced from the West toward the doorway of the lodge and back.  Then when the skewers didn't break lose, the old men realized that the incisions were made too deep. As I started dancing again the left side gave way and I continued dancing only with my right side holding,,, The second rope gave way and I fell to the ground.

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The three old men cut off the rough pieces of flesh hanging from my breast.  They told me to take the trimmings and the sagebrush from my wrists, ankles, and head and place them at the center pole as my offering to the sun. This I did.

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Sun worship is a custom that has been going on for a long time.  It was practice by the nations living in Canaan. But it was a practice which Jehovah condemned. So before going into the "promise land," Jehovah told Moses:

 

In one of the cities the Lord your God is giving you, there may be a man or woman among you who is doing what the Lord considers evil. This person may be disregarding the conditions of the Lord’s promise by worshiping and bowing down to other gods, the sun, the moon, or the whole army of heaven. I have forbidden this. When you are told about it, investigate it thoroughly. If it’s true and it can be proven that this disgusting thing has been done in Israel, then bring the man or woman who did this evil thing to the gates of your city, and stone that person to death (Deut. 17: 2-5).

 

Now as colonization expanded, laws were passed to outlaw the Sun Dance both in Canada and the United States of America.  This was intended to force Native peoples into assimilating with European culture, and to suppress indigenous practices like the Sun Dance because they inflicted self-torture as part of the ceremony.  It didn't work.  They continued to "suppress the Truth within them by their wickedness (Rom. 1:18). Any settler who knew his Bible knew that those who worshipped the sun should "be stoned to death."  

 

Under pressures from the military and settlers, in 1887 the Sun Dance was prohibited by the government. But America was a Republic, not a theocracy.  "It wasn't until the late 1970s that the Sun Dance became legal again in the United States. With the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1978, which was intended to preserve the cultural and spiritual legacy of Native peoples, the Sun Dance once more was legally permitted in the U.S." 

 

 The lesson?  Whenever man and society replace God as Provider in order to relieve their anxieties over existence, they must 

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1. Replace God’s Universal Design for Living "written on their heart" with a man-made design shaped by "elemental forces" of their environment.  Submitting to its pressures, the Kiowa-Apache replaced the nuclear family with an intimate group called the "band." 

2. Ascribe certain functions to individuals needed for the performance of a mechanistic society whose cultural forms "fit" the environment.

3. Reduce a Jahweh to an impersonal thing or force.  The Kiowa-Apache had reduced Absolute Being to the sun which they worshipped.  From Jahweh's perspective they deserved death. 

4. Create religious forms and rituals like the Sun Dance which provided individuals the opportunity to compel the Sun-God  to act  on their behalf.

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But there is Good News: Instead of destroying the Indians of the Plains, the Bible informs us that "God has locked all people in the prison of their own disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all (Romans 11:32). That mercy was manifest in the lives of hundreds of missionaries who left the security of family and friends to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ. 

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