Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2008, Page 50
puzzled by white seekers who wanted to join in their rituals. ―We are not doing anything
special or better than their religions offer,‖ he said. Of course, his uncles would politely turn
away these errant white folks.
Less strident but more thorough than Kehoe, Philip Jenkins offers a clearly written,
impressively researched historical survey of the same early conflict with Native religion and
controversial modern assimilations of Indian spirituality in white or non-Indian society.
Beyond the history, he offers useful sociological insight and criticism. Kehoe‘s book covers a
mere 125 pages, while Jenkins fills more than 300 with nearly 500 endnotes that contain an
average of 5 to 10 references per note! Jenkins‘ companion book to Dream Catchers is
Mystic and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History, published in 2000.
Indeed, he covers much of the same territory in Dream Catchers but with his eye keenly on
Native American or Indian culture throughout.
Jenkins begins Dream Catchers at the point of early contact between primarily a Protestant
Christian culture and American Indians in the east. These Christian missionaries saw proto-
Christian tendencies among most Indians, but they also noted superstitions and ―diabolical‖
practices. In their view, Indians worshiped a Great Spirit, but they needed to know who God
really was. By the late 19th century, evolutionary theory among American intellectuals
implied that Indians were merely ―children‖ in their spiritual awareness and not diabolical.
Further developments by the 1920s, inspired by insights from psychology, interest in Asian
religions, and the occult renewal ennobled a number of activists to flip the equation: Indian
spirituality might be superior and closer to primordial truth than anything the Western
religions had to offer. Some would claim that Turtle Island (America) was populated
originally by people from ―Red‖ Atlantis.
Jenkins covers this latter period through his focus on the lives and activism of Mabel Dodge
Luhan, Alice Corbin Henderson, D. H. Lawrence, and others who settled in the Southwest,
especially in New Mexico. Indians did benefit politically from all this positive attention, but
the syncretism non-American Indians applied to their religions muddled popular
understanding and appreciation. The work and commentaries of Frank Waters, Carl Jung,
and Jack Kerouac, for example, helped Westerners to absorb Indian ideas as if they were
part of a primal mystical pool shared by all ancient religions. According to Jenkins, it was
Frank Waters with his immensely popular The Book of the Hopi (1963) ―above all who made
the Ganges flow into the Rio Grande.‖ Waters‘ syncretism included his reverence for the
pseudo-Sufi teachings of the controversial Gurdjieff, which Mabel Dodge had introduced to
him.
Jenkins examines pseudo-Indians such as Sun Bear and neoshamans such as Michael
Harner as examples of the next wave of popularization of Indian spirituality, from 1960 to
1980. These New Age entrepreneurs established a workshop industry mainly attended by
middle- and upper-class whites seeking the Indian experience. By the late 1960s, red power
arose along with black power and the Hippie movement, which combined American and
Asian Indian spiritual ideas and costumes into their loose spiritual style. Jenkins notes that
while New Age Whites scrambled to claim any drop of Indian blood that flowed through their
ancestry and any past life as an Indian, few if any sought black blood or black African lives.
Indians were somehow more ―spiritual‖ by nature. I noted this same prejudice in 1976 when
I worked as an art instructor at a large penitentiary in New Mexico. Although racial tension
existed between Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics, they all seemed to leave the Indian
prisoners alone. One Hispanic prisoner told me that inmates shared a special reverence for
the Indians and their suffering under the dominant society. He noted that Indians have
―spiritual power.‖
Jenkins addresses the current status of Native spirituality in his last two chapters. He writes
that Indians have both absorbed New Age notions that define their culture and reacted
puzzled by white seekers who wanted to join in their rituals. ―We are not doing anything
special or better than their religions offer,‖ he said. Of course, his uncles would politely turn
away these errant white folks.
Less strident but more thorough than Kehoe, Philip Jenkins offers a clearly written,
impressively researched historical survey of the same early conflict with Native religion and
controversial modern assimilations of Indian spirituality in white or non-Indian society.
Beyond the history, he offers useful sociological insight and criticism. Kehoe‘s book covers a
mere 125 pages, while Jenkins fills more than 300 with nearly 500 endnotes that contain an
average of 5 to 10 references per note! Jenkins‘ companion book to Dream Catchers is
Mystic and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History, published in 2000.
Indeed, he covers much of the same territory in Dream Catchers but with his eye keenly on
Native American or Indian culture throughout.
Jenkins begins Dream Catchers at the point of early contact between primarily a Protestant
Christian culture and American Indians in the east. These Christian missionaries saw proto-
Christian tendencies among most Indians, but they also noted superstitions and ―diabolical‖
practices. In their view, Indians worshiped a Great Spirit, but they needed to know who God
really was. By the late 19th century, evolutionary theory among American intellectuals
implied that Indians were merely ―children‖ in their spiritual awareness and not diabolical.
Further developments by the 1920s, inspired by insights from psychology, interest in Asian
religions, and the occult renewal ennobled a number of activists to flip the equation: Indian
spirituality might be superior and closer to primordial truth than anything the Western
religions had to offer. Some would claim that Turtle Island (America) was populated
originally by people from ―Red‖ Atlantis.
Jenkins covers this latter period through his focus on the lives and activism of Mabel Dodge
Luhan, Alice Corbin Henderson, D. H. Lawrence, and others who settled in the Southwest,
especially in New Mexico. Indians did benefit politically from all this positive attention, but
the syncretism non-American Indians applied to their religions muddled popular
understanding and appreciation. The work and commentaries of Frank Waters, Carl Jung,
and Jack Kerouac, for example, helped Westerners to absorb Indian ideas as if they were
part of a primal mystical pool shared by all ancient religions. According to Jenkins, it was
Frank Waters with his immensely popular The Book of the Hopi (1963) ―above all who made
the Ganges flow into the Rio Grande.‖ Waters‘ syncretism included his reverence for the
pseudo-Sufi teachings of the controversial Gurdjieff, which Mabel Dodge had introduced to
him.
Jenkins examines pseudo-Indians such as Sun Bear and neoshamans such as Michael
Harner as examples of the next wave of popularization of Indian spirituality, from 1960 to
1980. These New Age entrepreneurs established a workshop industry mainly attended by
middle- and upper-class whites seeking the Indian experience. By the late 1960s, red power
arose along with black power and the Hippie movement, which combined American and
Asian Indian spiritual ideas and costumes into their loose spiritual style. Jenkins notes that
while New Age Whites scrambled to claim any drop of Indian blood that flowed through their
ancestry and any past life as an Indian, few if any sought black blood or black African lives.
Indians were somehow more ―spiritual‖ by nature. I noted this same prejudice in 1976 when
I worked as an art instructor at a large penitentiary in New Mexico. Although racial tension
existed between Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics, they all seemed to leave the Indian
prisoners alone. One Hispanic prisoner told me that inmates shared a special reverence for
the Indians and their suffering under the dominant society. He noted that Indians have
―spiritual power.‖
Jenkins addresses the current status of Native spirituality in his last two chapters. He writes
that Indians have both absorbed New Age notions that define their culture and reacted
