One of the major distinctions that can be made between the tribal religions taken as a group and the Christian religion that underlies Western secular thought is the extent to which the two views were dependent on the idea of history. The western preoccupation with history and a chronological description of reality was not a dominant factor in any tribal conception of either time or history. Indian tribes had little use for recording past events; the idea of keeping a careful chronological record of events never seemed to impress the greater number of tribes of the continent. While the Indians who lived in Central America had extensive calendars, the practice of recording history was not a popular one further north. 'The way I heard it' or 'it was a long time ago' usually prefaces any Indian account of a past tribal experience, indicating that the story itself is important, not its precise chronological location. That is not to say that Indian tribes deliberately avoided chronology. In post-Discovery times, some tribes adopted the idea of recording specific sequences of time as a means of remembering the community's immediate past experiences. The best known method of recording these experiences was the winter count of the Plains Indians. A large animal hide, usually-buffalo, would be specially tanned, and each year a figure or symbol illustrating the most memorable event experienced by the community would be painted on the hide. Gradually the hide became filled with representations of the years, and it would be maintained as long as there were people who could remember what the figures and symbols meant.

One could not find a very accurate concept of history in the winter counts. In general they indicated the psychic life of the community--what was important to that group of people as a group. The chances of a continuous subject matter appearing on a winter count were nil. One year might be remembered as the year that horses came to the people, the next year might be the year when the berries were extremely large, the year after perhaps the tribe might have made peace with an enemy or visited a strange river on its migrations. The chances of a series of political or military events being recorded year after year as in the Western concept of history was so remote as to preclude the origination of history as a subject matter of importance. One recent Sioux winter count, for example, does not mention a number of important treaties, and one does not even mention the battle with Custer....

Lacking a sense of rigid chronology, most tribal religions did not base their validity on any specific incident dividing human time experience into a before and after. No Indian tribal religion was dependent on the belief that a certain thing had happened in the past that required uncritical belief in the occurrence of the event. Creation, gifts of powers and medicines, traumatic events, and the lives of great religious leaders were either events of the distant past and regarded as such or the memories of the tribe were still vivid and occupied a prominent place in the people's perspective and under-standing of their situation. Salvation and religious participation in communal ceremonies did not depend on the historical validity of the event but on the ceremonies and powers that were given to the people in the event.

 
From God Is Red. (Fulcrum, 1994)