“Our Grandmother,” Kokomthema, is the Shawnee female Creator. In their book The Encyclopedia of Native American Religions, Arlene Hirschfelder and Paulette Molin report that Kokomthema is:
“The female deity of the Shawnee people who gave them a code of laws and most of their principal religious ceremonies.”
Arlene Hirschfelder and Paulette Molin also report:
“It is believed that Kokomthema sometimes appears on earth to observe the performance of Shawnee religious ceremonies.”
Hunting was a vital part of Shawnee subsistence, and religious rituals were an important part of hunting. In his book The Shawnees and the War for America, Colin Calloway writes:
“In the Shawnee world, humans and animals communicated, hunters dreamed the whereabouts of their prey and offered prayers to the spirits of the animals that gave their bodies so that the people might live.”
In order to maintain the harmony between humans and the animal people, and between humans and the plant people, it was necessary to conduct certain rituals to keep the world in balance.
Among the Shawnee, boys would go out into the woods to fast and to seek a spirit helper at the age of 12-13. According to James Howard, in his book Shawnee! The Ceremonialism of a Native American Tribe and its Cultural Background:
“The spirit helper would give the faster instruction in some area, which was usually healing, and also would promise aid in future years if the faster would call upon it in the proper manner.”
The Shawnee were originally given their bundles by Our Grandmother at the time of creation. Since that time, items have been added to the bundles. According to James Howard:
“Each of the sacred bundles is assigned to the care of a designated custodian, who is always a man,…
