Taussig, Michael T. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man:
A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago, 1986. An explora-
tion of shamanism and religious healing in the Colombian
Putumayo region in the context of regional histories and ex-
periences of violence. Offers compelling evidence of the
power and presence of indigenous religious beliefs and im-
ages in the Colombian national imagination.
Tello, Julio C., with Prospero Miranda. “Wallallo: Ceremonias
gentílicas realizadas en la región cisandina del Perú central.”
Inca 1, no. 2 (1923): 475–549. Written by the father of Pe-
ruvian archaeology and published in the anthropological
journal he edited, this article gives detailed descriptions of in-
digenous ritual practices in the central highlands of Peru,
comparing them with the pre-Columbian religion.
Wilbert, Johannes, and Karin Simoneau, eds. Folk Literature of
South American Indians. 7 vols. Los Angeles, 1970–. A con-
tinuing series containing compilations of myths from the Bo-
róro, Warao, Selk’nam, Yámana, Ge, Mataco, and Toba In-
dians. It contains materials from the classic, early
ethnographies of these groups as well as from more recent an-
thropological studies. It is annotated by Wilbert, who has
also published extensively on the mythologies and cosmolo-
gies of indigenous groups in the Orinoco.
Wright, Robin M. Cosmos, Self, and History in Baniwa Religion:
For Those Unborn. Austin, Tex., 1998. An excellent example
of new historical work on indigenous religion, including dis-
cussions of shamanism and its relation to mythic and historic
consciousness and the Baniwas’ conversion to Protestantism.
DEBORAH A. POOLE (1987 AND 2005)
SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS
This entry consists of the following articles:
INDIANS OF THE ANDES IN THE PRE-INCA PERIOD
INDIANS OF THE COLONIAL ANDES
INDIANS OF THE MODERN ANDES
INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST AMAZON
INDIANS OF THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN AMAZON
INDIANS OF THE GRAN CHACO
SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS: INDIANS OF
THE ANDES IN THE PRE-INCA PERIOD
The Andean region is formed by the Andes mountain range,
which extends the entire length of western South America.
This region can be divided into three geographically con-
trasting subareas: the highlands, the coast, and the eastern
cordillera. In the highlands the intermontane valleys lie at al-
titudes of between three and four thousand meters. These
valleys were the places in which the Chavín (tenth to first
centuries BCE), Tiahuanaco-Huari (eighth to tenth centuries
CE), and Inca (fifteenth century CE) cultures flourished. In
the region along the Pacific coast, composed mostly of low-
lying desert plains, life was concentrated out of necessity in
the valleys formed by the rivers that drain from the highlands
into the ocean. The coastal valleys in the Peruvian sector of
the Andes region were the cradles of cultures such as the
Moche (second to eighth centuries CE), the Paracas-Nazca
(second to eighth centuries CE), and the Chimú (twelfth to
fifteenth centuries CE), who devised colossal irrigation works
that enabled them to bring extensive areas of desert under
cultivation. The dramatic, abruptly changing topography of
the eastern cordillera is covered by dense tropical vegetation.
Peoples of the intermontane valleys entered this region and
built the cities of Machu Picchu and Pajatén, and they ter-
raced vast areas of the rugged, wooded hillsides to gain land
for cultivation and to prevent erosion.
The sheltered agricultural cultures of the Andes have in-
terrelated since ancient times. The areas where such cultures
did not develop, although geographically “Andean,” are not
considered part of the Andean cultural region. The territory
of the central Andes—basically equivalent to present-day
Peru—became the center of the Andean cultural process.
The northern Andes (parts of present-day Colombia and Ec-
uador) was the scene of the Quimbaya and Muisca (Chibcha)
cultures and of the earlier Valdivia culture, which may have
given the initial impulse to the entire high-Andean culture.
More than ten thousand years have passed since human
beings first trod the Andes. The earliest settlers were hunters
and Neolithic agriculturalists. By the third millennium BCE
there appear incipient signs of complex cultures, such as that
of Aldas on the northern coast of Peru, whose people built
monumental temples. During the second and first millennia
BCE, the appearance of Valdivia and Chavín represented the
first flowering of developed culture, which set the foundation
for the developments that eventually culminated in the Inca
empire. By the time that Europeans arrived in the Americas,
the Inca empire stretched for more than four thousand miles
along the western part of South America, from southern Co-
lombia in the north to Maule, in south central Chile, in the
south. The empire passed into Spanish dominion in 1532,
when Atahuallpa, the thirteenth and last of the Inca sover-
eigns, was beheaded. From then on, the breakdown of indig-
enous Andean cultural values is apparent.
SOURCES OF DOCUMENTATION. Study of Andean religion
rests on two principle sources: the reports of early chroniclers
and the archaeological documentation that presents a visual
record of Andean civilizations. A number of chronicles exist
that were written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
by Indians, mestizos, and Spaniards (who based their ac-
counts on the reports of native informants). There are also
other reports—files relating to the prosecution of cases of
“witchcraft”—that remain scattered in archives, mostly un-
edited. The detailed reports composed by the “eradicators of
idolatries” are of special value. For the most part, the chroni-
clers’ accounts are interwoven with evident prejudices of di-
vers origin.
Even though the archaeological and iconographic evi-
dence is scanty, it may be that the conclusions drawn from
it are founded on a firmer basis than are those derived from
chroniclers’ reports. Naturally, study of iconography requires
specific hermeneutic methods, especially when drawings are
heavily loaded with symbols or are confusingly executed.
Present-day Andean religious practices (especially in ruralSOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS: INDIANS OF THE ANDES IN THE PRE-INCA PERIOD 8599