By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

At the onset of the 21th Century there was a general agreement among anthropologists that Native Americans are mostly descended from Paleo-Asians who migrated to the North American continent at least 15,000 years ago, and most likely as long as 30,000 years ago. Native Americans, who tend to emphasize their emergence here in the Americas, do not generally accept this anthropological model. Linguistic and genetic evidence indicates that the first of these waves of Paleo-Asian or Paleo-Indian hunter-gatherers arrived in North America following herds of game animals crossing the Bering land bridge between Eurasia and the Americas. This original wave of immigrants had spread to the tip of South America by 11,000 years ago. A second wave of immigration out of Siberia beginning between 12,000 and 14,000 years ago provided the basis for the Na-Dene and their descendants, known as the Athabaskan speakers. The third wave of immigration left Siberia beginning around 9,000 years ago and provided the basis for the Aleut-Eskimo cultures.

These three waves of prehistoric immigrants that provided the basis for Native American cultures had a subsistence strategy based upon a hunter-gatherer subsistence technology. The first wave is referred to as Paleo-Indians and big game hunters. These societies, which were organized in bands, must have had shamanistic practices, given the widespread presence of shamanism in Pa leo-Asian and Native American cultures, its presence tens of thousands of years ago in Eurasia, and the biological basis for shamanism.

These big game hunters and their cultures were replaced by what is called the Archaic cultural tradition, beginning about 10,000 years ago. The Archaic cultures, reflecting adaptations made to climatic and environmental changes, focused on the hunting of smaller animals and relied on more varied foods, particularly seeds, nuts, and grains. The Archaic cultures developed increasing social and political complexity, attested to in complex mound building, particularly in the eastern and southern areas. Increasingly complex religious organizations, reflected in monumental architecture and public ceremonials, may have begun to compete with shamanism. Archaic cultures mostly disappeared 3,000 years ago: some, however, persisted through European contact, as seen in the cultures of the Great Basin.

Beginning about 4,000 years ago, new cultural traditions emerged, based upon complex agricul­ture. Contention exists whether these agricultural traditions were invented in the eastern and southwest areas, or whether the agricultural traditions that developed there were diffusions from Mesoamerica. An agricultural lifestyle based on corn, beans, and squash led to the development of permanent settlements, regional economies, large population centers, and complex social organiza­tions. These agricultural societies, exemplified in the Mississippian Traditions, may have led to the formation of true states. Some of these cultures disintegrated shortly after 1500 B.C.E. as a consequence of the epidemic diseases that spread across North America in advance of direct contact with the Europeans. The complex agricultural societies survived in other parts and the Southwest. These agricultural communities developed other forms of religious activity, represented, in priests, whose social and sacred power came to supplant that of the shamans and their successors. These priests were allied with chiefs of lineages who controlled resources, the ritual calendar, and agricultural cycles.

Native American spiritual practices have often been globally characterized as shamanic. Such simplistic characterizations ignore the many different religious forms found among North American peoples and the substantial differences between many of those practices and the classic form of shamanism, observed in Arctic, or Siberian shamanism. And the term shamanistic healing for the diverse healing practices involving spirit relations and altered states of consciousness is one that is most recently used. Others have argued that many Native American religious practitioners are not shamans based on cross-cultural research, but again, rather more like healers and priests who place little emphasis on altered states of consciousness.

And in any case it has shown to be important to in any case distinguish the shamans of hunter-gatherer and other technologically simple societies from universally distributed "shamanistic healers," practitioners who use altered states of consciousness to interact with the spirits on behalf of community and clients.

Shamanic practices are well attested to in the cultures of the Arctic Circle, such as the Inuit (or Eskimo), called angakut and Greenland where they are called angakkoq, as well as in the hunter-gatherer and simple agricultural societies of the Southwest and Mexico. Inuit and Greenland practices reflect Shamanic features in the close links to animals and the souls of the dead, the inclusion of female practitioners, the soul journey, and the potential to do sorcery. The Greenland practices also emphasize the "dream time," reflected in the meaning of the term angakkoq. Here and elsewhere (among, e.g., the Yupik), training for the profession was open to everyone. The use of sacred plants-is also well attested to in some societies of North America like the "Yokuts and what has been previously referred to as the Huichol. Tobacco is such a widespread power plant in the Americas that it often goes unmentioned in accounts. Other plants such as those of the Datura species have also been widely used in North American practices. Datura was frequently used in initiatory rites that often included all of the populace, not just shamans. Other hunter-gatherer groups like those of the Great Basin cover Paiute, Shoshone, and Numic, that reveal the persistence of shamanic practices in North America into the twentieth century. Men and women alike could engage in the vision quest to obtain spirit helpers, often accessed through spontaneous dream experiences. Also among the different Yuman-speaking cultures of Baja California for example.

A theme attested to in most areas is the access of both men and women to the status of shaman, although men generally predominated. Commonalities in their approach to the spirit world include the induction of altered states of consciousness through the use of drumming and chanting. The central role of relationships with a variety of spirits as the basis of shamanic practice and power is attested to across these numerous cultures. These shamans also had ambiguous roles as sorcerers who could kill as well as heal.

In addition to dangerous plant medicines, solitary vision quests, prolonged solitude, long treks in the wilderness, and being lost in the desert or tundra are said to produce contact with the spirits that trained the future shaman, although the subsequent training by other shamans is found in most societies.

In many cases there are very limited accounts of older traditions, from many including the Yupik they have maintained different kinds of practices before. Some, like the Pima, maintain they have lived through it, while others died out in the twentieth century. Piman shamans have traditionally acquired power in songs learned from spirits during dreams. They cure by smoking tobacco, sucking out intrusive objects and spirits, blowing their powerful breath upon the patients, and singing their curing songs in all-night ceremonies. Some evidence indicates that beliefs about shamanism continued among the Hopi after they became agriculturists, but the last famous shaman died early in the twentieth century.

There are many spiritual healing practices in North American cultures that do not resemble Shamanism as described by Eliade, though shamanistic elements are present. The Choctaw, Ojibwa and Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) all still provide examples of spiritual healing practices quite different from Eliade’s model that hence can be termed very problematic to say the least. One of the features of spiritual healing in these societies today is the presence of priests and chiefs, hereditary political leaders with religious power, more related to ritual than to altered states of consciousness, animal powers, and soul flight. The Choctaw priests and chiefs engage in practices associated cross-culturally with highly stratified and centralized agricultural societies. The Choctaw also believed in the presence of another kind of practitioner associated with complex societies, for example the witch, who was often killed for actual or suspected malevolent activities. Pueblo religious activities (including those of the Hopi already mentioned) also reflect the dynamics of more complex societies, with the Kachina society dancers and their ceremonial calendar.

Another change in shamanic practices occurring with increasing societal complexity is increasing specialization, reflected among the Ojibwa in the four different kinds of shamanistic practitioners (including some who only diagnose illness but do not cure). The Lakot also illustrate differentiations that may occur, including the differentiation of the "sorcerer," or "witch," from those who heal and perform community ceremonies. The Navajo illustrate this diversification of the shamanistic role, including hand tremblers, stargazers, and singers. With these more complex societies, there is generally a decline in the importance of the vision quest and of altered states of consciousness, often reflected in the belief that the practitioners of old were more powerful. Among the Hopi, for example, the vision quest is replaced with a ceremonial sponsor who makes it possible for the person to be initiated and trained.

Other dynamics of more complex societies, were "medicine societies," professional organizations and religious confraternities. These have significant non-shamanic features-payment for training, official recognition of professional status, and organizations that control access to the profession. These societies do, sometimes, maintain shamanic features such as a vision quest and power animals. But it is normally in their mythology, oral traditions, and artifacts that evidence is found of the shamanic practices of the past, which are also a way of enhancing shamanistic power in the present, as illustrated by oral traditions or also Yupik and Inupiaq Masks.

The decline, and even demise of shamanism among Native American societies was due to both internal and external factors, principally increasing societal complexity and the emergence of the power of priests, together with the impact of invasions and the imposition of Christian religious forms on native societies. The Christian mind-set of the Europeans meant that they tended to view Native American practices as forms of "devil-worship" or witchcraft. Consequently, violence was often used to eradicate these indigenous practices. In many cases, the shamanic traditions, as practiced in efforts to adapt to the changes imposed by outsiders, met with brutal repression.

A general decline and disappearance of in­digenous shamanic and spiritual practices was further produced by laws passed by the U.S. Congress in the late nineteenth century that made it a federal crime for Native Americans to possess medicine bundles and other sacred objects. Sedentary agriculturalists seem to have fared better, with their cultural matrix better able to adapt to colonization. They continued spiritual practices that emphasize ritual rather than altered states of consciousness.

 

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