Page:The American Indian.djvu/236

190 In literature the term shamanism specifically applies to the religious culture of Siberia. There we find a complicated conception of seventeen or more worlds in one of which human beings reside. Communication between these worlds can be made only through shamans conversing with the spirits of the dead. The typical shamanistic feats in Siberia are states of ecstasy, trembling, sweating, contortions, ravings, fits, etc. The shaman of the New World also manifests many of these reactions, particularly in those regions where there are no separate priests. The trances and ravings of the Eskimo angakok and the Tlingit doctor have an intensity comparable to those of the Siberian shaman, apparently much more so than have the methods of the page in the Amazon country. Yet, these abnormal psychic activities are to some degree the stock in trade of all shamans, only that when ritualism rises, they become relatively less important.

Turning now to the priesthood, we find it most characteristic of the Inca, Chibcha, and Maya-Nahua centers. The priestcraft of the Maya, for example, illustrates the maximum development of ritualism where each day and night in the yearly cycle had its required rituals. Of the intermediate tribes, we may cite the Pueblo of the north with their far less elaborate, but yet complete, yearly round of ceremony and on the south the Araucans of Chile who make sacrificial offerings at every turn. The tribes of the lower Mississippi had also a ceremonial cycle and maintained rude temples as did also the natives of the West Indies. But as we move outward in both continents from these centers, the rituals quickly shrink to a small residue, with the exception that on the North Pacific Coast they are to a degree recurrent. In view of all this, one cannot escape the conviction that the existence of the great Inca and Maya centers of priestcraft is responsible for many specific features of New World ritualism. In these centers, one of the chief functions of the priests was the making of sacrifices. Innumerable birds, rabbits, fruits, and even leaves of plants were offered up from day to day in one ceaseless round. The occasional human sacrifice was but an