These simplistic stereotypes obscured the complex reali-
ties. In fact, some Native Americans in the South remem-
bered Tecumseh as a prophet himself. And it is clear that he
and Tenskwatawa both drew upon key ideas from previous
intertribal resistance movements, movements that had fused
prophetic teachings with political goals to rally Native com-
munities facing new forms of domination. In other words,
Tecumseh fought with everything he had to defend the cul-
tural and political sovereignty of American Indians.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance: The North American
Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815. Baltimore, 1992.
Edmunds, R. David. The Shawnee Prophet. Lincoln, Nebr., 1983.
Martin, Joel. Sacred Revolt: The Muskogees’ Struggle for a New
World. Boston, 1991.
Sugden, John. Tecumseh: A Life. New York, 1997.
White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Repub-
lics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. New York, 1991.
JOEL W. MARTIN (2005)
TEHUELCHE RELIGION. [This entry discusses the
religious system of the Aónikenk, or southern Tehuelche Indi-
ans.] Known as the Aónikenk (“southerners”), the southern
Tehuelche Indians inhabited the region of Argentine Patago-
nia, which extends east and west from the Atlantic Ocean to
the foothills of the southern Andes and north and south from
the Chubut River (43° south latitude) to the Strait of Magel-
lan. The ethnographic data used in this essay come primarily
from fieldwork done in the 1960s, when the surviving Aó-
nikenk population was estimated to number about two hun-
dred, although barely seventy were still speaking their own
language, which is part of the Araucana-chon family.
Until their final biological, social, and cultural annihila-
tion—due to pressures exerted by the Araucanian peoples to
the north and to European conquest and colonization during
the nineteenth century—they were nomadic hunters with set
patterns of movement, encampments, and territories. Their
displacements were subject to seasonal variations: summer
hunting in the coastal region was accompanied by a certain
social dispersion, whereas the western areas of Aónikenk ter-
ritory were associated with more stable winter settlements
and some degree of population concentration. The Aónikenk
were subdivided into three groups, with a varying number
of exogamous patrilineages; their residential pattern was
patrilocal. There are numerous gaps in our knowledge of the
religious system of the southern Tehuelche, but an imposing,
if fragmentary, mythology stands out. By the time travelers
began to be familiar with Aónikenk mythology, it had al-
ready begun to disintegrate, in part because it was forbidden
to share it with outsiders.
COSMOLOGY. The mythic chronology speaks of four ages.
The chaos of the first age is expressed in the image of a deep
sea (the Flood?) or of a thick, wet darkness. During the sec-
ond era, the high god—known variously as Weq.on
(“truthful one”), Kooch (“heaven”), the Old One, and the
Everlasting One, among other paraphrases—creates and
gives order to the cosmic elements. Third is the epoch of
Elal, the young god who shapes the earth, performs the onto-
logical schism between undifferentiated and differentiated
reality, and makes possible present-day human life with his
ordering of technoeconomic, social, ritual, and ethical phe-
nomena. His actions cover the end of the mythic era and
mark the transition to the fourth age, the present one.
The cosmology describes the world as a system of four
superimposed strata: the celestial sky, the atmospheric sky,
the earth, and the subterranean region. The first is consid-
ered to be the highest, the second and third are rated ambigu-
ously, and the last stratum is ranked the lowest. The cardinal
points are rated similarly: the east is the best, the north and
south are ambiguous, and the west is very bad.
RITUAL. No form of cult to the high god is recorded. The
women possessed a repertory of sacred songs, dedicated to
Elal and to Moon and Sun and their daughter, that were
transmitted matrilineally. The canonical and reduplicated
form of periodic exhortations given before hunting expedi-
tions, which were uttered loudly by the chief of the local
group, suggests the transformation of an ancient prayer ad-
dressed to Elal, inventor of hunting weapons and techniques.
Moon is the feminine deity who rules over periodic and
alternating processes: menstruation, gestation, the life cycle,
and the tides. During the new moon and eclipses, the mem-
bers of the community would assemble behind their tents
looking to the east; the women intoned the song of the deity
and addressed prayers to her, begging her to “return to illu-
minate the world,” to grant them health, longevity, and good
luck.
The song to the daughter of Sun and Moon was includ-
ed in a rite for regulating high tide. This rite is related to an
episode of Elal’s cycle that associates the tides with the
daughter’s animistic states. According to it the goddess was
transformed into a siren; her excitement over the maternal
apparition was linked to high tide during the first quarter of
the moon, and her unhappiness during the last quarter to low
tide. The life cycle was marked by rites of passage: birth, pu-
berty initiation, marriage, and death were culturally mean-
ingful milestones. The events of the life of Elal symbolically
reflect these experiences, suggesting in both instances evolu-
tionary stages of understanding, with special powers gained
at each stage.
The ritually and mythically significant classification of
colors is based on the white-red-black triad. The highest op-
position sets up white and black as symbols of life and death
(or concealment), respectively. Newborn babies were ritually
painted white, while gravediggers (a strictly female role) were
painted black. The lowest opposition, according to a hypoth-
esis formulated by Carlos J. Gradin (1971, p. 113), contrast-TEHUELCHE RELIGION 9029