Native American Indian Heritage Month: Religions and Languages

From Religious Holidays and Calendars
Although many groups of American Indians honor different holidays and follow different seasonal cycles, the holidays listed are combined in one chronological list so that common themes may be more easily identified.

American Indian religious revivalist movement that spread through the Plains Indians and other ethnic groups in the 1890s.

Studies of the myths of North and South American natives, Australian aborigines, the peoples of S Africa, and others have revealed how widespread are many mythological elements and motifs.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Religion of some Native North Americans in which the hallucinogenic peyote button is used as the sacramental food. It is the most widespread indigenous contemporary Native American religion. Peyotism teaches an ethical doctrine much like those of the monotheistic religions. The peyote rite lasts from sunset to sunrise and has four major elements: prayer, singing, eating the sacramental peyote, and contemplation. The religion probably originated among the Kiowa in Oklahoma about 1890 and reflects the influence of traditional peyote use among Mesoamerican groups such as the Huichol.

Ceremonial feast of the natives of the NW coast of North America, entailing the public distribution of property.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
The classification "Native American languages" is geographical rather than linguistic, since those languages do not belong to a single linguistic family, or stock, as the Indo-European or Afroasiatic languages do.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Major group of American Indian languages originating from the northeast region of North America, south and east of Hudson Bay and along the northeast coast, and now spoken from Canada, across the USA, to Mexico. Algonquian includes over 30 languages, mostly divided into three classifications: Central, including dialects spoken by the Cree, Kickapoo, Chippewa, and Shawnee; Eastern, including the languages of the Micmac and Passamaquoddy; and Plains, containing the Arapaho, Blackfeet, and Cheyenne languages.

Language, one of the largest families of American Indian languages.

Member of an American Indian people living in the lower Colorado River valley by the mid-16th century. They gave their name to the Yuman branch of the Hokan linguistic family, a group of American Indian languages of California and western Mexico also spoken by the Maricopa and Mojave.