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, where
"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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