In particulars of cosmology, ritual, and paraphernalia, shamanism in South America has obviously been shaped by, and has adapted to, local environments and local historical and cultural processes. Nevertheless, in its mental universe and its dialectics and techniques of the sacred, South American shamanism exhibits similarities not only within the subcontinent but to shamanism in North America, the Arctic, and Siberia, indicating historical relationships that must date back to the early peopling of the Americas. This suggests that the basic ideology of shamanism may be sufficiently fundamental to the human condition to have favored its survival over enormous distances in time, space, environment, and social context.

General Motifs of Ecstasy

Shamanism and religion among the Selk'nam (Ona), Yámana (Yaghan), and Halakwalip (Alacaluf) of the Tierra del Fuego, on the southernmost edge of South America—all presumably descended from the earliest migrants to the...