The notion of cyclical time was crucial to Native Americans. For them, sacred events recur again and again in a pattern that repeats the cycles of the celestial sphere.
Time does not progress along a linear path but moves in a cyclical manner so as to provide an enclosure within which events occur.
Past, present, and future all exist together because the cycles turn continually upon themselves.
The progression of time along a developmental path was a concept foreign to Native Americans until the Europeans forced them into history.