pt. 2 (1951):137–308. Examines how ritual establishes social
equilibrium among the peasants of Chucuito, Peru. Includes
detailed description of ritual paraphernalia.Urton, Gary. At the Crossroads of the Earth and Sky: An Andean
Cosmology. Austin, 1981. Examines the astronomical system
of Misminay, Peru, to understand celestial cosmology of
modern Andeans. Shows how celestial formations interrelate
with the agricultural and ritual calendars.
Valdizán, Hermilio, and Angel Maldonado. La medicine popular
peruana. 3 vols. Lima, 1922. An encyclopedia of minerals,
plants, and animals used in healing and ritual.
Wachtel, Nathan. The Vision of the Vanquished: The Spanish Con-
quest of Peru through Indian Eyes, 1530–1570. Translated by
Ben Reynolds and Siân Reynolds. New York, 1977. An ac-
count of the structural disintegration of Inca society and cul-
ture during the early years of the conquest. Illustrates how
a present-day fiesta in Oruro, Bolivia, enacts this drama.
New Sources
Bolin, Inge. Rituals of Respect: The Secret of Survival in the High
Peruvian Andes. Austin, 1998.
Gade, Daniel W. Nature and Culture in the Andes. Madison,
1999.
Larson, Brook, and Olivia Harris, eds. Ethnicity, Markets and Mi-
gration in the Andes: At the Crossroad of History and Anthro-
pology. Durham, N.C., 1995.
Van Cott, Donna Lee. Indigenous Peoples and Democracy in Latin
America. New York, 1994.
JOSEPH W. BASTIEN (1987)
Revised Bibliography
SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS: INDIANS OF
THE NORTHWEST AMAZON
In principle, the Northwest Amazon includes, as its southern
limits, the region from approximately the Middle Amazon,
around the mouth of the Rio Negro, to the Upper Solimo ̃es;
all of the Rio Negro and its northern tributaries, including
the Parima mountain range, up to the upper Orinoco Valley;
and an arc connecting the Upper Orinoco to the Upper
Solimo ̃es. Historically, the societies that inhabited this vast
region, at least at the time of Spanish conquest in the six-
teenth century, were far more numerous than they are today,
and far more complex in terms of their social and political
organization and interrelations amongst each other. Un-
doubtedly, their religious organizations and institutions were
more complex as well. Sixteenth-century chroniclers left tan-
talizing notes describing the existence of chiefdoms and
priestly societies in the Amazon floodplains region that were
similar to those of the circum-Caribbean region.
The usefulness of these notes for understanding native
religions at the time of conquest is, however, limited and
subject to much guesswork. Scholars are not even certain
which languages many of these societies spoke, much less
what their religious beliefs were. Modern archaeology is just
beginning to uncover the rich complexity of these societies
and may, in the future, provide important elements for un-
derstanding their religions. In any case, it is certain that the
vast majority of the societies of the Rio Negro, the main
northern tributary of the Amazon that connects with the
Orinoco via the Cassiquiare Canal, were Arawak-speaking
peoples. There were also significant numbers of Tukanoan-
speaking peoples in the region of the Uaupés River and its
tributaries; forest-dwelling Makuan peoples in a vast region
from the lower to the upper Negro; Cariban-speaking peo-
ples on the tributaries of the upper Orinoco; and Yanomami
populations in the mountainous forest regions north of the
Rio Negro.
EARLY HISTORY OF THE REGION. A survey of the first histor-
ical sources and the earliest recorded traditions of the socie-
ties of Northwest Amazon indicates the widespread distribu-
tion of a ritual complex involving the use of sacred flutes and
trumpets, masked dances, and the practice of ritual whip-
ping, associated with a mythology the central themes of
which included initiation, ancestors, warfare, and seasonal
cycles marked by festivals. Early observers noted that this rit-
ual complex was of central importance, and that the guard-
ians of the sacred trumpets formed an elite priestly class with
a supreme leader who was also a war chief. There are indica-
tions of ceremonial centers where rituals were celebrated
among societies of different language groups.
The evolution of this complex was drastically truncated
and transformed by the advance of the Portuguese and Span-
ish slaving commerce in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies. Many of the most powerful chiefs were co-opted into
destructive wars to obtain slaves, thus irremediably fragment-
ing political-religious formations, as well as leaving vast parts
of the Northwest Amazon region depopulated, as people
were herded into mission-run settlements, where they were
forced to adapt to Western culture. By the late eighteenth
century, even with a brief respite in the advance of coloniza-
tion, many of the surviving societies had been introduced to
Christianity and had adopted its calendric festivals, if not its
belief system, into their religious patterns.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, as an early
reaction to exploitation by merchants, pressures from mis-
sionaries, and the waves of epidemics that decimated the In-
dian population, a sequence of prophetic movements and re-
bellions broke out in the Northwest Amazon region.
Dressing as priests and identifying themselves with Christ
and the saints, prophet-shamans led the people in the
“Dance of the Cross,” a fusion of traditional rituals with ele-
ments of Catholicism that promised freedom from white op-
pression and relief from the “sins” that were believed to be
causing the epidemics. While many of these movements suf-
fered repression, the prophetic tradition continued among
both Tukanoan- and Arawak-speaking peoples until well
into the twentieth century in areas that escaped the attention
of missionaries and government officials.
CONTEMPORARY PEOPLES AND THEIR RELIGIOUS TRADI-
TIONS. For the indigenous peoples of the Northwest AmazonSOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS: INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST AMAZON 8621