Sweat Lodge

A sweat lodge is a structure and the ceremonies associated with that structure, in which steam is produced for the purpose of creating a hot, moist environment in which participants congregate to sweat. Structures such as this include the sauna of Scandinavian and eastern European cultures, but the term is more familiarly used to refer to the structures of Native Americans and Canadian First Nations. The temazcal is a similar structure used in Mexico and Central America. Sweat lodges, saunas, and similar structures, when used for ceremonial purposes, are examples of ritual purification, a practice found in many cultures and religions that predates the modern germ theory of disease. Ritual purification practices include the baptism ceremonies of Christianity and the use of holy water for purification; misogi, the ritual bathing of Shinto; the many ritual washing practices of Judaism; the washing before prayer mandated by Islam; and the [Page 2032]bathing in the Ganges River in Hinduism. Although not all forms of ritual purification involve a source of water, it is notable that many do.

Across cultures, the specific form of the sweat lodge varies from a permanent standing structure to a temporary or mobile structure to a hole dug in the ground and covered in planks. Steam is usually produced much as in a sauna: by heating stones and pouring water over them to create steam. The use of the sauna by Finnish immigrants in the American colonies has been credited as the catalyst for the friendship between Finns and the local Native Americans. Although not all Native American cultures use sweat lodges, they are found throughout the United States and are not limited to one region, religious group, or language group.

Among Native Americans, the sweat lodge may be a ceremony unto itself or it may be conducted as part of a larger ceremony. It may be reserved for special purposes or it may be used as a healing remedy; early European reports commented on the frequency with which some tribes used the sweat lodge for most physical ailments. The sweat lodge is usually attended in simple clothing, and offerings of special or sacred plants are typically made. Because of the danger of participants passing out from the heat and from dehydration, a helper usually remains outside the lodge, monitoring the proceedings. In some cases, the helper is also the fire keeper, though this is usually an inside participant. Risks of the sweat lodge include not only heat exhaustion and dehydration but also smoke inhalation or suffocation in cases where the fire is kept inside or upwind from the lodge. Using the wrong kind of rocks can result in explosions, caused by expanding air pockets or moisture.

The hot-rock method described above is the most common sort of Native American sweat lodge and was the method used by central Plains tribes, as well as by tribes throughout the Southwest, the Great Basin, and the woodlands of the east. Structures could be either temporary or permanent; usually they were permanent, unless the culture was a nomadic tribe, in which case they were usually made from pliant tree branches driven into the ground and bent into a dome shape before being covered with skins. Rocks were heated in a fire outside the structure, carried into the structure on sticks or with other tools, and placed in a depression dug in the ground. Within this broad description, specifics were usually of significant symbolic importance. For example, among the Lakota, the entrance to the sweat lodge faces east, the direction of the dawn, associated with wisdom and the source of life. The Kiowa build their sweat lodges with a specific number of reeds, 12, because of the ritual significance of the number in their belief system. Farther west, in California, the creation story of the Wintu tribe includes a sweat lodge built by the creator deity. Among the Ute, sweat lodges were used to prepare for the peyote ceremony.

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