Iroquoian Christianity

Highlander

Banned
I've got a large map project going (as in, it has been in the works for over a year), and now I'm feeling out a different aspect to it.

The most basic idea is that a Vinland colony survives just a tad longer, so that horses are released, along with other game. Although the colony withers, the inhabitants assimilated, and the whole thing is forgotten in the dustbin of history, the major differences have already been set in motion. Fast forward a few hundred years, when European powers begin searching out across the Atlantic. They find a powerful Haudenosaunee Empire, already immune to most of their diseases, and posses a version of the horse (smaller and more hairy than the OTL wild horse, the Mustang, as it is from Greenlandic stock).

My question is this: what could a possible merge of Iroquoian folklore and religion with Christianity look like?
 
Perhaps, if the empire is powerful enough, they get mistaken for Prester John? I know it's the wrong direction, but the world we generally accepted to be round at this point, so it's possible.
 
I suppose an important question would be if it was Protestant or Catholic Christianity. I vaguely recall studying how in the 1600s, the Jesuits and French Missionaries would purposefully intermingle (albeit Huron) lore and mythology with Catholic tradition to try and correlate the two, making it more acceptable to the Huron.

I am not an expert on the differences between Iroquois and Huron tradition, however I imagine it would turn out similarly, but without the Huron eventually dying out the entire process would develop that much more, I would assume.
For example, if I recall correctly there was some of the Indian myths merged with some of the traditions surrounding Mary in Catholicism; any story or native myth that could be fit or matched, even roughly, with a tradition of the Roman Church would be matched, in an attempt to tie them in together.

The Protestant religions present in the early stages, Puritan/Calvinist, were much much less willing to mingle tradition and lore, so I do not think it would end up being all that different from the historical, in terms of any mixture of beliefs that is.

I apologise I cannot help more, again, I am no expert on the matter, but that is what I would guess at.
 
Well the Jesuits were forced on the Iroquois after a defeat in war, as part of the peace. It split the population, as the Christian Iroquois left after some Jesuits were killed after a pandemic; they settled the other side of the St. Lawrence. For instance the Oneida have a centuries long tradtion of hymn singing in their own language. Anglican and the Quaker religion also made many inroads.

Also, a big mixing of Christianity and Traditional beliefs occurred when Handsome Lake began a new religion after our losses in the ARW. It was predominantly traditional in nature, but has many influences of Christianity.
 
Perhaps I ought to have made a distinction between mixing cultures in aesthetic matters (regardless of the influence they have) and essential matter.

Language would fall under the aesthetic group of things, as yes, even the Protestant groups were more than willing to modify those to fit the culture.

The difference lies mainly in the matter of essentials, where the Roman church was more willing to incorporate elements of native mythology under their own banner than were the Puritans, Quakers and other Calvinists who were very strong minded about the fundamental tenets of their religion.

One of the reasons the reaction to the Jesuits was so harsh could be that they had been enemies of the French right from the moment the French made an alliance with the Hurons. Without the Huron tribes, that will develop quite differently.
 
Well, they're de facto Protestant, having been converted when the Western Church was still whole but cut off from the Papacy for ~300 years. Whether they declare themselves Catholic or Protestant is going to be dependent on who they meet first and what sort of impression they come away with.

They're going to resemble Catholicism in that they believe that humans do not communicate with the Great Spirit directly but pray to lesser beings such as Thunderer and Three Sisters to carry their petitions to Him. (Yes, I know nothing in Catholicism is against praying directly to God. But this maps neatly onto the veneration of saints.) Keepers of the Faith were part-time positions and either gender, appointed by tribal elders in council, so what sort of "priesthood" emerges in the synthetic religion could go any number of ways. Actually, they're pretty big on gender equality in general. The Iroquois had a ritual very like confession, but conducted publicly rather than privately. Tobacco was burned ritually, and I can't imagine any Christian seeking conversions would make it a priority to speak against that; the annual animal sacrifice at Midwinter might be abandoned though. In general, their cosmology maps easily - omniscient, benevolent Great Spirit created the world, Evil Spirit is not strong enough to oppose him directly but keeps messing things up, prayer and confession, judgement after death and entrance to Heaven. Although "judgement" was a one-year process, and souls were believed to have made it to Heaven a year after death. I don't see anything that corresponds to the idea of original sin and redemption, though. Medicine is still probably a spiritual calling involving exorcising evil spirits, because I don't think the secular medicine of the Vinlanders would be advanced enough to impress them otherwise.

How to incorporate the idea of Christ into this? He can be cast as the Great Healer, but it's hard to see how He outcompetes local beliefs in that. Convincing people that they need His intervention for Judgement will be tricky - I suspect we see the rebirth of the Arian and Pelagian heresies.
 
I think you have the wrong tribe.

Of the tribes Europeans interacted with, the tribe that might have been closest to Vinland is the Mic Mac or their predecendants. (is that a word?)

Mic Mac mythology centers around the struggles between Glooscap and Beaver, If I remember correctly from my childhood. (i'll check the references later, It's late)

So Glooscap and (I think) his brother begin to play prominenetly in a NA revision of Christianity, and Beaver becomes more evil than a nuisance. Cape Blomoden (NS) becomes an allegory of Heaven or Jerusalem.

If you are going to go here, you need more information about the First Peoples. The Iroquois were nowhere near Vinland. They were in the New York / Ontario area. Even the Mic Mac were in Nova Scotia, not Newfoundland, but I have an emotional tie to them.;)
 

Highlander

Banned
Except subtly, the Vinland colony really has no short term effect on North America. The Micmac exist, but they aren't the dominant faction in the area. When Christianity seeps in is when the Europeans start to colonize around OTL New England.
 
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