ABSTRACT
Historically, tribes that had regular contact with one another knew each other's language and stories, often participating in one another's ceremonies. It still is common for a person, upon meeting someone of tribe that they have not come across before, to immediately begin swapping stories, describing traditions, dances and songs. Since the practice of dancing is so central to Native American spirituality, it is important to discuss it at some length. Dances and the traditional singing that goes with them serve a variety of purposes. They commemorate, exemplify and inculcate the natures, spirits and importance of various animals, and they represent the cycles of nature and human life. The existence of a god or gods is both fully known and essentially unknowable. Individuals exist as parts of the whole. To the extent that they are differentiable from the whole, they are so because they fulfill a part of the whole, having a purpose or purposes within the sum of things.
