Native American Pantheon

Think there would be a way to create a Greek, Roman or Egyptian style pantheon in North America.

Haokah: God of War
Kokopelli: God of Fertility
Thunderbird: God of Storms
White Buffalo Calf Woman: God of Messengers and Travellers
Raven: God of Trickery and Illusions

Basically, the Native American tribes mash all their varying traditions of these gods into a large pantheon.

Anymore Gods, or Ideas on the subject?
 
There are serveral such panthea.

Created, naturally, by white folks with more time than sense.

I can't see any form of syncretism developing across all of North America. Too many cultural differences, not enough of a unifying force in play.
 
There are serveral such panthea.

Created, naturally, by white folks with more time than sense.

I can't see any form of syncretism developing across all of North America. Too many cultural differences, not enough of a unifying force in play.

Not to mention the low population density in most of North America north of the Rio Grande...
 
How did I even begin to know that's how some people would respond to this. I was asking a question to see how it could have been made to happen. Apparently, that went right out the window the moment other people entered the equation in this thread.
 
If we're talking about doing this for all of the Native American groups, that would be one large Pantheon. Or do you plan on trying to merge dieties that have similar functions?
 
That's why I'm asking you guys, I was trying to think of cross-tribal dieties that are similar, such as how the Egyptians and Romans ended up borrowing beliefs and gods from each other. which eventually just mashed together, from what I understand, I could be wrong.
 
That's why I'm asking you guys, I was trying to think of cross-tribal dieties that are similar, such as how the Egyptians and Romans ended up borrowing beliefs and gods from each other. which eventually just mashed together, from what I understand, I could be wrong.

Still a LOT of differences between the different groups. The thing with the Romans, Greeks and Egyptians was that they amalgamatted all the old local and tribal gods into one pantheon--and then started borrowing ideas from each and adding that to a pantheon that was already established when they started interacting with each other.

To pull it off with the Native Americans, you need a 'unifying group' to mash all of the local religions together, each with their own creation myths and gods and whatever. Doable I suppose but until you come up with a plausiable way to do so.

This site might help
 
Each tribe pretty much had its own pantheon.

To achieve what you're looking for, I'd think you'd need to find out which tribes would be in a position to become most dominant. They'd absorb other tribes around them, borrowing a little but more likely spreading their own pantheon.

The Iroquois League, for example, contained several tribes that shared a lot of their gods in common. If they absorb other Iroquoian peoples, they might adopt a few gods they didn't have before while the new tribes would assimilate into the religion of the larger confederacy.

Same thing might happen with the Algonquin speaking peoples and the Souian speaking peoples if they start to come together. Eventually, you'd have larger groups that would start to influence one another, sharing gods like the Greeks and Latins did.
 
That's why I'm asking you guys, I was trying to think of cross-tribal dieties that are similar, such as how the Egyptians and Romans ended up borrowing beliefs and gods from each other. which eventually just mashed together, from what I understand, I could be wrong.

Not really. The ancient world was still a place of many distinct regional deities with an overarching philosophy rationalising their multitude. That, I think, could be achieved in time, but only if you take an early and massive POD.

Eastern woodlands and the Mississippi culture are good candidates for a beginning of syncretic developments. Exchange between larger groups can create a shared 'main pantheon' of Gods everybody worships while local deities remain unaffected. You still need to create better communication across the continent to make it spread, so I'd say an early introduction of horses and metalworking, prior to contact with any Abrahamic tradition. Call it the Romans, Carthaginians, Celts or Iberians. That goves the locals several centuries to absorb the disruptive effects of these introductions and creates the social upheaval required for large-scale religious change. In the long run, settled societies will win out over horse nomads, but the nomadic tribes will make contact across the plains possible and trade and exchanges develop. I still think there will be several panthea rather than one, but you could get a situation closer to the ancient world.

An alternative POD I could offer is that Indian Independence leads to civil war. That way, by the 1960s people associate India not with spiritualism and gentle pacifism but with massacres and ethnic violence on a horrendous scale, with Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, Naga, Baluchi, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Sinhalese andsoonandsoforth at each other's throats. That way, the 1960s counterculture does not have Buddhism or Hinduism, Krsna Consciousness or Zen to embrace and in much larger numbers flocks to neopaganism and neoshamanism. By the 1990s, a lot of former hippies are in middle-class or better jobs as preactising neopagans, and neopagan charities distribute largesse to their 'co-religionists' worldwide. Numerous large organisations subscribe to the idea of a 'syncretic Native Americanm belief system' emerging to unify the nations, and many of the economically worst hit reservations have embraced it to get stupid white folk to build them schools, temples, cultural centres, seminar homes, roads and airstrips. Europeans pay thousands of dollars to fly out to the Holy Mountain and pray, much like todeay Nepal is cashing in on Buddhotourism.
 
here's a POD

Professor Barry Fell (America B.C., etc) is correct. Phoenicians, North Africans/Libyans, CeltIberians and others extensively traded with and settled North America as early as 1500 B.C.

not only would this make the American Indians resistant to Euro plagues, but when their motherlands fell, the cultures would possibly, slowly, intermix with the indians into a hybrid culture.

up and down the east coast and great lakes, you have former mining and metallurgy colonies now acting as cores of new civilizations and cultures, and spreading down the mississippi, colorado and rio grande. hell, maybe even have china and japan settle the pacific coast as Fusang, while you are at it.

that injects numerous very differnt forms of polytheism into the mix, all of them semi or totally cohesive, instead of the rather nebulous traditional native mixes ...

how does that sound?

incidentally, you might want to read America B.C. and the sequels. the theories don't hold up much water to scholarly opinion, but they do make good use of some of the weird ruins and things scattered across the northeastern US and canada. there is also They Came Before Columbus by Ivan Van Sertima : http://www.amazon.com/They-Came-Before-Columbus-Presence/dp/0394402456

anyway, i thought this might help you out a bit!:)
 
look at meso-america. it already pretty much had a pantheon of sorts, with different cultural grups spanning millennias interacted and blended religion. look at kokopelli and quetzaloatl
 
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