The Calusa Indians and Their Masking Ceremonies The southwest coast of Florida used to be inhabited by the Calusa. “It seemed that by any contemporary measure the Calusa Indian people had been complex when Spaniards arrived in the 1500’s…The Calusa king ruled over all of South Florida from his capital town on Mound Key. According to Spanish accounts, the Calusa had permanent towns, tributary relations, wealth accumulation, social stratification, royal sibling marriage, an elite military, human sacrifice, engineered canals, high mounds, well-developed art and music, and a religion that included elaborate rituals, a trinity of spirits, and life after death” (Marquardt 2) During the time that Spain ruled Florida, the Spanish explorers …show more content…
Rogel called the Calusa masked displays fraudulent and revealed the secrets of the masked performers. Like Oz was revealed in the Wizard of Oz, the Calusa characters were revealed to show dancers hiding behind costumes. He almost started a battle over this revelation. In 1697, another Christian mission of Franciscan priests attempted to set up shop in Calusa Territory. Father Lopez, the mission’s leader, described seeing a “house of masks”. I will discuss, and give details of, a mask found at Pineland Site Complex later in this paper. During the Franciscan’s short stint in Calos, the Calusa were observed participating in their masked performances every three nights, inside the house of masks. It appeared to be group theater. The Spanish missionaries tried to convert the Calusa to Christianity for years. They realized that converting the Calusa was a hopeless battle in the end. They said the Calusa were idol-worshippers, who kept their idols in temples. The missionaries were obviously looking through a spiritual lens. Maybe they were just masks in a communal building. Remember masks were used for a wide array of reasons, from performing spiritual embodiment to the joyfulness of nonspiritual amusement. If the Calusa account was given to us by someone other than
It was August 14th, 1791 when the first plantation building was set aflame by black slaves. This was all a part of the Bois Caïman ceremony. (Shen) The Bois Caïman ceremony was a Vodou ceremony led and performed by Dutty Boukman, a Vodou priest. The Bois Caïman ceremony was said to have been a ceremony where the slaves were to get together in Morne-Rouge, and to finalize the planning of the revolution. While the ceremony has become a legend-type story, and it is hard to discern what is real and what isn't, many accounts of that ceremony tell that there were Vodou deities present, animal sacrifices and a raging storm. (Shen) The ceremony, with the celebration surrounding it, was meant to lift the spirits of and give hope to the Haitian people. The Haitians used hope to motivate them, and with much fighting, many fights of which were led by Dutty Boukman, they were able to gain their independence. Of course, some of that hope was taken away when the French told the Haitians that they would only get their independence if they paid the debt of 150 million French Francs to France. But if there were any complications in the fulfillment of the payment, the French would be rescinding their recognition that Haiti was an independent country. (Popkin 152) The Haitians
I learned a lot more facts about how the Timucua Indians came about. In the 16th century people living in northeast Florida spoke timucuan; that’s why they were known as the
... A few photos of Tenochtitlan and warriors headdresses, clubs and obsidian blades would increase the pleasure 10 fold. Also in places the author tends to divert to other Ameriindian cultures and use their ritual practices as examples. These comparisons can bring the ritual practices of a 500 year extant culture into modern day belief.
When the Europeans first migrated to America, they didn’t know much about the ancestral background of the different types of the Indian tribes that were settled in Virginia and along the East Coast. Many of the Indian tribes became hostile towards the colonist because the colonists were interfering with their way of life. This lead the natives to attempt to destroy the frontier settlements. Many forts in this area were erected to protect the settlers and their families. One the historical land...
9. Palmer, Colin A. Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1570-1650. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976.
Varner, John G. and Jeanette Varner., trans., ed. The Florida of the Inca. Austin: U of Texas P, 1951.
Bowden’s idea of why this happened focused mainly on the old misunderstood traditions of the tribes living in Mexico. He shows how the friars, churches and icons took the blunt of the revolts force. Bowden points out the religious differences and similarities be...
Bartolomé de Las Casas begins by providing a vivid description of each land being invaded by the Europeans and the type of peopl...
Castillo, Edward D. “Short Overview of California Indian History.” California Native Americans Heritage Commission. April 12, 2012.
Callery, Sean. The Dark History of the Aztec Empire. New York: Marshall Cavendish Benchmark, 2011. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Scholars Woodrow Wilson International Center for. “The Mystery of Aztec Sacrifices.”
Pages one to sixty- nine in Indian From The Inside: Native American Philosophy and Cultural Renewal by Dennis McPherson and J. Douglas Rabb, provides the beginning of an in-depth analysis of Native American cultural philosophy. It also states the ways in which western perspective has played a role in our understanding of Native American culture and similarities between Western culture and Native American culture. The section of reading can be divided into three lenses. The first section focus is on the theoretical understanding of self in respect to the space around us. The second section provides a historical background into the relationship between Native Americans and British colonial power. The last section focus is on the affiliation of otherworldliness that exist between
Some aspects of them went extinct, some changed and some stayed just as they were thousands of years ago. The cultures of native California tribes have experienced dramatic change under the direction of Spanish, Mexican and American rule. In each instance of rule there was an effort to assimilate the native Californians until the “old ways” were forgotten. As a result, languages – Sapir-Warf theory’s “distinct worlds” – were lost forever. What we newly see is native culture as a work in progress. How well native people of California could adapt to the conditions set by those in charge determined what from their cultures remained, changed and ultimately perished. I argue that nothing could have helped the native Californians preserve their cultures
“Rituals and Traditions; It Takes a Tribe,” written by David Berreby and “Indians: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History” written by Jane Tompkins, both exemplify a typical controversial topic in the United States of America today. The US prides there self on the basis of freedom, and how Americans are made up of individuals with backgrounds from all around the world. Many consider the US to be a “melting pot”, a society where cultures are just blended together and not recognized fully on their own, where as others consider the US to be a “salad bowl”, where people of international cultures hold fast to their traditions and practices and coexist with the cultures around them. Both authors of the readings propose that generally speaking,
Native American Ritual Dancing “It has often been said that the North American Indians ‘dance out’ their religions” (Vecsey 51). There were two very important dances for the Sioux tribe, the Sun Dance and the Ghost Dance. Both dances show the nature of Native American spirituality. The Ghost Dance and the Sun Dance were two very different dances, however both promote a sense of community.
Trinbago Unified Calypsonians’ Organisation (TUCO). "Calypso History." August 05, 2011. http://www.tucott.com/index.php/calypso-history (accessed November 02, 2013).