Native American Ways: Four Paths to Enlightenment

In this 4-in-1 omnibus edition, explore four Native American cultures, examining their lives, lore, and legends. Learn how they worshiped, lived in harmony with nature, and constructed unique social orders. Before Europeans invaded their homeland, these richly varied cultures thrived with a level of harmony with the land and dignity of spirit unmatched by modern Western civilization. Contained herein are The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees; Blackfoot Lodge Tales; Truth of a Hopi; and Navaho Myths, Prayers, and Songs. Now you can explore these four cultures and their mystic traditions.

James Mooney was an American ethnographer whose extensive fieldwork made him an important early scholar of Indigenous histories, languages, religions, and ceremonial traditions. Born in Richmond, Indiana, in 1861, he joined the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology in 1885 and spent several seasons among Eastern Cherokee communities in North Carolina. He learned the Cherokee language and documented myths, medicinal practices, sacred formulas, oral traditions, and the work of Cherokee healers and ceremonial specialists.Mooney later conducted research among the Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and other Native nations. His major works include Myths of the Cherokee, The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, and The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Although his interpretations reflect aspects of nineteenth-century anthropology, the linguistic and historical materials he recorded remain important resources for scholars and Indigenous communities.

George Bird Grinnell was an American naturalist, historian, ethnographer, editor, and conservationist. Born in Brooklyn in 1849, he studied zoology and participated in expeditions across the American West before becoming editor of Forest and Stream. Through years of personal contact with members of the Blackfoot, Cheyenne, and Pawnee nations, he collected historical accounts, traditional narratives, and observations of Plains life.Grinnell's books include Blackfoot Lodge Tales, Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales, and The Cheyenne Indians. He was also a leading figure in the early American conservation movement, advocating for the protection of the American bison and helping advance the establishment of protected public lands. His ethnographic writing must be understood as the work of an outsider shaped by his era, but the stories and historical materials he recorded remain widely studied. Blackfoot Lodge Tales was first published in 1892.

Edmund Nequatewa was a Hopi writer, interpreter, historian, folklorist, and museum researcher born at Shungopavi on Second Mesa in northern Arizona in the late nineteenth century. A member of the Sun Forehead Clan and connected by birth to hereditary ceremonial leadership, he possessed extensive knowledge of Hopi clan histories, migration traditions, ceremonies, and oral narratives. He later worked with the Museum of Northern Arizona, where he was valued as an interpreter of Hopi culture and an authority on its traditions.In Truth of a Hopi, first published in 1936, Nequatewa recorded origin traditions, clan migrations, sacred beliefs, and historical experiences from a Hopi perspective. His work is especially valuable because it presents Hopi traditions through the voice of a Hopi author rather than solely through an outside ethnographer. Nequatewa also contributed to the preservation and interpretation of Hopi history throughout his long association with the Museum of Northern Arizona.