the area is also notable for some of the most complex prehis-
torical cultures, such as Marajoara and Santarém. This entry
provides an overview of the religious systems of prehistoric
and contemporary indigenous peoples as well as of peasants
or caboclos.
PREHISTORIC CULTURES AND RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS.
Archaeological excavations at Marajó Island in the Amazon
Delta reveal the existence of a complex society of Mound
Builders spanning the period from roughly 500 to 1300 CE.
The abundance of ceremonial and funerary remains on the
higher mounds attests to the existence of political and cere-
monial centers. Differential burials, houses for the dead, and
possibly temples indicate ancestor cults. Marajoara ceramics
are marked by the use of animal motifs with clear supernatu-
ral and mythical connotations that modern studies have
sought to interpret in terms of Amerindian perspectivism.
The symbolism of death and rebirth, shamanic motifs, bina-
ry images, abstract geometric patterns, and bodily images are
all characteristic of Marajoara ceramics, indicating a complex
religious system (see Schaan, 2001). Similarly the prehistoric
Santarém culture at the mouth of the Tapajós was the center
of a great chiefdom from the tenth century to the sixteenth
century. Female fertility is a predominant element in ceramic
motifs; the famous caryatid vessels display bicephalous hu-
manlike zoomorphic figures (especially the king vulture), re-
calling the transformations experienced in shamanic trance
or in great collective rituals using psychoactive substances in
which great trumpets representing the divinities were played.
Finally, mention should be made of the many cemeteries
with large funerary urns discovered near the Maracá River
on the lower Amazon. These urns display anthropomorphic
or zoomorphic figures, with the anthropomorphic figures,
often female, being seated, decorated, and painted. It has
been suggested that the Maracá culture was linked to early
Arawakan populations that were possibly ancestors of the
Palikur.
BRIEF HISTORY OF CONTACT. The size and complexity of
Amazon floodplain societies astonished the first European
explorers in the mid-sixteenth century. Their populations
were dense, internally stratified, and settled in extensive vil-
lages capable of producing surpluses for a significant in-
tertribal commerce. The sociopolitical organization of what
observers called “provinces” was far more elaborate than any
indigenous society since then, with reports of local chiefs
subordinate to regional chiefs endowed with sacred qualities,
hierarchically organized lineages, sacrifice of concubines at
the deaths of chiefs, ancestor cults with the preservation of
the corpse through rudimentary techniques, and other evi-
dence of social and ritual stratification.
None of this resisted the advance of the European slave
hunters, spice collectors, diseases, and missionaries who, by
the end of the seventeenth century, had penetrated well into
the Amazon Valley. Their advance resulted in the dispersion
and captivity of a majority of the riverine peoples such that
the eastern Amazon was practically depopulated and infested
by diseases, as mission industries and towns struggled to sur-
vive. With the depopulation of the main tributaries, expedi-
tions penetrated ever farther into the interior to “persuade”
whole populations to relocate to ethnically mixed, mission-
run settlements. This process led to the formation of a
neoindigenous stratum of the population, whose original
cultural and linguistic differences had been neutralized, dis-
solving ethnic diversity into the homogeneity of generic In-
dians that eventually gave rise to the caboclo or mixed popu-
lation of the region.With the decline of colonial control by the end of the
eighteenth century, many peoples withdrew from colonial
settlements to reorganize and reconstitute their societies,
often in new territories and with new sociopolitical and reli-
gious forms of organization. From the mid–nineteenth cen-
tury until well into the twentieth, rubber extraction and ex-
portation became the dominant form of labor organization
in the Amazon, and with the severe droughts in northeastern
Brazil at the end of the nineteenth century, there was a mas-
sive influx of northeastern migrants into the Amazon region.
By the late twentieth century even the most isolated regions
of the central and eastern Amazon, which until then had
served as a refuge for many indigenous peoples, were invaded
by highways, miners, and ranchers.CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS RELIGIONS. The religions of
several peoples will be briefly considered. Those included are
the Palikur (Arawak) of the state of Amapá; the Araweté and
Juruna (Tupian) of the state of Pará; the Kayapó and Xikrin
(Ge) of the state of Pará; the Canela and Krahó (Timbira)
of Maranha ̃o; and the Arara (Carib) of Pará.Palikur (Arawakan). For the contemporary Palikur,
the creation and structuring of the universe and all that is
part of it is the work of the Christian God. They usually dis-
parage the beliefs of their ancestors, declaring that they were
superstitions, and cite as an example the constitution of the
universe in layers. In the early twenty-first century they
“know that the world is round.” Nevertheless they possess
a vast repertoire of myths that reveals a good part of their an-
cient cosmology.The myths can be divided into two categories: cosmo-
gonic myths that tell of the emergence of the Palikur and
their relations with the environment or with other ethnic
groups of the region, and those myths that speak of the rela-
tion with the “beings of the other world.” The myths are gen-
erally further classified into two types: “stories of the old
times, of the past, a long time ago” and “false stories.” They
always refer to a time past, in which the “true” belief, the
Christian religion, was unknown. At times, however, narra-
tors reflect and point out that the fact in question is real and
still occurs, revealing the ambiguity with which the Palikur
regard the myths. It is exactly this ambiguity that has allowed
for the coexistence of indigenous mythology with Christian
religion, but that has not occurred with the rituals, for which
reason they are no longer held. Myth is consciously relegatedSOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS: INDIANS OF THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN AMAZON 8627