Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (54 page)

The shaman has always been a node in this interethnic network of social
relations. Shamans seek to gain power from a variety of sources, including
other ethnic groups. There is a belief, for example, that the magic darts of
different groups are different from each other and can be extracted only by
one who possesses darts of that particular type; thus a Quichua shaman will
visit an Achuar shaman in order to exchange darts, or a Shuar will travel to a
Canelos Quichua shaman to buy them.' In the same way, darts are considered
more powerful if they have come from a great distance, so shamans in the
jungle are reputed to travel as far as the northern Andes to acquire them.9 Anthropologist Philippe Descola, as an exotic pale-haired stranger, reports being frequently importuned by Achuar shamans to share his darts with them.'°

Shamans from some ethnic groups have reputations as being particularly powerful or particularly skilled in certain areas of specialization, such as
love magic or sorcery. In the Amazon, most groups view others as being more
powerful shamans than themselves, and therefore worth learning from. The
Shuar say that the Canelos Quichua are powerful shamans;" the Cashinahua
say the same of the Culina.12 As one Amazonian Indian has put it, jokingly:
Wherever you go, the great brujos are elsewhere.13

While all shamans are competitors, who may at any moment find themselves locked in mortal combat, they are also pan-Amazonian in outlook. A
shaman faced with a difficult case may travel to drink ayahuasca with a powerful colleague, preferably far away, with a different culture and ethnic identity.14
Shamans from different ethnic groups may care for each other's patients, train each other's apprentices, and exchange visions, songs, knowledge, and
power objects, such as stones or feather crowns. An Achuar shaman, for example, traditionally had to undergo apprenticeship with established shamans
in different locations.' A Tukano apprentice was expected to live with a shaman of renown in a different region, for several months, even for a year or
more, while receiving instruction.,' Such communication among shamans
has been maintained for centuries.,?

Arrow Poisons

Very few indigenous peoples of the Upper Amazon still hunt with blowguns. But
using a blowgun and curare-tipped darts was an efficient way to put food on the
table; skilled hunters could even bring down small birds. The key, of course, was
curare, arrow poison, just as the key to fishing remains barbasco, fish poison.
Sticking a dart in a wild pig gives you an angry pig; sticking a curare-tipped dart
in a wild pig gives you pig soup.

Historically, there have been two primary types of curare used in the Amazon, which Europeans named not after their ingredients, which were a mystery,
but after the three types of containers in which they were stored. Tube curare,
stored in hollow bamboo tubes, was used primarily in Peru, Ecuador, and western Brazil and was made from the vine Chondrodendron tomentosum. Calabash
curare, stored in small gourds, and pot curare, stored in small clay pots, were
used primarily in Colombia, Venezuela, and Guyana and were made from Strychnos guianensis.

These arrow poisons were usually complex mixtures, incorporating not only
the primary active ingredient but also other plants, as well as snake venom, frog
venom, or venomous ants-as many as thirty ingredients, which varied from
group to group. The recipe was often kept as a commercial secret, in order to
maintain regional monopolies. The mixture of bark and stems was pounded,
boiled in water for about two days, and then strained and evaporated to become
a dark, heavy, viscid paste with a very bitter taste. Additional plant material
might be mixed in to make the preparation more glutinous, to stick more readily
to blowgun darts or arrows.'

Plants of the Strychnos genus contain strychnine, a convulsant poison, which
causes death by asphyxia because the respiratory muscles convulsively contract., Chondrodendron tomentosum, on the other hand, contains the primary
active alkaloids curarine and tubocurarine-the tubo- prefix is from storing the
curare in bamboo tubes-which interfere with the activity of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, blocking nerve impulses at the neuromuscular junction. The
result is the opposite of strychnine; rather than muscle contraction, tubocurarine produces limp relaxation of voluntary muscles. Death is caused by asphyxia
because the respiratory muscles are too flaccid to function .3

A person hit by a poison dart of this sort is awake, aware, susceptible to pain,
but unable to move. If breathing is supported by artificial respiration, recovery
is complete in about thirty minutes, when the alkaloid has been metabolized.

These curare alkaloids have two significant advantages for hunters. Since
they result in muscle relaxation, animals hit by the darts fall out of trees onto
the ground. Moreover, because these curare alkaloids are absorbed very slowly
from the intestine, animals killed by the poison darts can be eaten with impunity. The muscle-relaxing effect begins almost immediately upon hitting the
bloodstream, but death from respiratory arrest can take a few minutes for birds
and small prey and up to twenty minutes for larger mammals, such as tapirs.
When I was staying among the formerly head-huntingShapra in the borderlands
between Peru and Ecuador, I was told that it can take fifteen or twenty darts to
bring down a human being.

The strength of a batch of curare can be tested in a number of ways-for
example, by counting the number of times a frog can jump after being pricked or how many trees a monkey can leap after being hit. One-tree curare is very
potent; three-tree curare can be used to take down live animals to be kept in
captivity.4

Biomedicine has been profoundly interested in the neuromuscular properties of the curare alkaloids. Tubocurarine has been studied for its use as a
muscle relaxant in surgery, reducing the need for deep anesthesia, and as an
aid to intubation or ventilation. A number of synthetic analogues have been developed, including succinylcholine and pancuronium, both of which have been
used in executions by lethal injection .5

NOTES

1. See generally Davis, 1996, pp. 209-215; Dewick, 2001, pp. 324-327; Jones, 2007,
pp. 29-30; Neuwinger, 1998, pp. 71-76; Prance, 2005, pp. 141-144; Schultes,
1989, pp• 34-35.

2. Flomenbaum, 2002, pp. 1383-1384; Harris, 2007; Henry, Little, Jagoda, & Pellegrino, 2003, pp. 152-153; Lewis, 1998, p. 985; Williams, 2004.

3. Dewick, 2001, pp. 325-326; Lattin & Fifer, 2002; Neuwinger, 1998, pp. 75-76.

4. Dewick, 2001, p. 324.

5. Denno, 2007; Dewick, 2001, pp. 325-326; Lattin & Fifer, 2002, pp. 286-289.

Even though mestizo shamans are very individualistic, there is also a network of relationships among them, which may include transmitting new information or knowledge. Anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna notes that such
shamans often know others who live many kilometers away, and that shamans who live in the city have a communication network with those living in
remote areas of the forest. One reason for these networks is that shamans are
subject to magical attack by more powerful shamans, and a shaman who has
been attacked may turn for protection to a shaman more powerful still.,' Another reason is the satisfaction of knowing that their untimely death will be an
affront to their friends and will be avenged.19

THE UNIQUENESS OF THE UPPER AMAZON

A remarkable feature of the Upper Amazon culture area is that it is a center from which radiates a larger culture area characterized by the use of psychoactive plants and fungi in shamanic work. These extensions spread
westward across the Andes, eastward into Brazil, northward to the Mazatec
and Huichol cultures of Mexico, and farther north into the Native American
Church, which is in many ways a northerly extension of Huichol peyote use.

R. Gordon Wasson's well-publicized discovery-it was a front-page story
in Life magazine-that Mazatec shaman Maria Sabina still used the ancient
psychoactive mushroom teonandcatl in her healing rituals, coupled with the
remarkable popularity of the early works of Carlos Castaneda, unleashed an
abiding fascination with the use of psychoactive substances in religion generally and shamanism in particular.20 But I think there is reason to believe that
the extended Upper Amazon culture area may be uniquely characterized by the
use of psychoactive plants and fungi in shamanic work, and that attempts to
establish such use elsewhere-primarily in Siberia and North America-have
failed to be persuasive.

Now, there is no question that psychoactive plants and fungi are widely
used in indigenous cultures around the world. The question we are asking
here, however, is not whether they are used, but whether they are used by shamansfor shamanizing. And that raises a number of considerations.

Sometimes, of course, psychoactive plants or fungi are used outside any
ceremonial context at all-for recreation, say, or to alleviate fatigue. For example, the hallucinogenic fungus Amanita muscaria, often called fly agaric, appears to have been most frequently used in Siberia outside of shamanism-to
get a glimpse of what the shamans see, to prepare for all-night bardic performances, to alleviate the fatigue of heavy labor, or for recreational inebriation
at weddings and feasts.21

Sometimes, too, psychoactive plants are used in a ceremonial context that
does not involve shamanizing, such as in an ordeal or initiation. For example,
the iboga plant, Tabernanthe iboga, is a central feature of the Bwiti religion, a
revitalization movement in west-central Africa.22 At low doses, iboga acts as
a stimulant.13 Its ability to suppress fatigue is of value at Bwiti ceremonies
other than initiation, where participants must dance all night; low doses of
iboga lighten the body, they say, so that it can float through the ritual dances.24
But in initiatory rituals, very large hallucinogenic doses of iboga are ingested,
in order for the initiates to contact the spirits of dead ancestors, to experience passing over to the land of the dead, to see the bwiti-that is, at once,
the superior deity, the ancestors in the realm of the dead, and the great divine
beings of the Christian pantheon.25 It is only for purposes of initiation that
sufficiently massive doses are ingested-fifteen to fifty times the normal threshold dose-to cause hallucinations, with the intention to "break open
the head" of the initiate.21 This does not appear to be a shamanic use.

We also find, surprisingly often, that psychoactive plants are used not by
shamans but, rather, by nonshamans attempting to emulate shamans, by using psychoactive plants or mushrooms that shamans themselves do not use.
Among the Siberian Koryaks, for example, ordinary people at one time would
ingest fly agaric in order to attain visions like those of shamans, who apparently did not need it.17 Among the Chumash and other indigenous peoples
in south-central California, it can be important to acquire a dream helper, not
just for shamans but for ordinary people as well: Falcon helps gamblers, Bobcat can help hunters, Otter can make one a good swimmer, Roadrunner helps
midwives. Sometimes a dream helper appears in an ordinary dream; this is
especially true for shamans, whose powers first appear in dreams during
childhood. Conversely, to obtain a dream helper, common people rely heavily on Datura, which plays only a marginal role in the acquisition of shamanic
power .28

And outside of the Upper Amazon culture area, shamans often claim that
they do not need to ingest psychoactive substances in order to shamanize. Tatiana Urkachan, an eighty-two-year-old shaman in Kamchatka, told visitors
that she never ingested the fly agaric mushroom herself, for she was too powerful a shaman to need it.29 The Siberian Chukchi too believe that fly agaric is
for weak shamans.3°

We also have to look carefully at the relevant physical effects of the psychoactive plant or fungus claimed to be used by shamans, to see whether those
effects are consistent with the demands of the shamanic performance. For
example, small doses of fly agaric mushroom produce mild euphoria, suppression of fear, and feelings of increased strength or stamina; after ingesting the mushroom, for example, novelist Tom Robbins says he felt "invincibly strong," filled with "euphoric energy."31 However, doses large enough to
cause hallucinations-which appear to occur only rarely and sporadicallyare physically incapacitating, with effects including drowsiness, confusion,
muscle twitches, loss of muscular coordination, and stupor. It is difficult to
see how a shaman could put on a physically demanding shamanic performance under such

In the same way, iboga, at sufficient dosages, acts as a hallucinogen; but
the massive dose required to cause hallucinations is physically debilitating.
Anthropologist James Fernandez notes that "initiates display a gross reduction in their ability to moderate or program motor activity." They eventually fall over and have to be carried to a special area where the visions are experienced.33 Their bodies are described as inert-a condition incompatible with a
shamanic performance.34

There are two separate questions here that are often conflated. One question is whether any particular shamanic culture, other than the one I have
defined, currently uses psychoactive plants or fungi for shamanizing, or is
reported to have used them for that purpose during the period for which we
have historical records. A different question is whether, based on the answer
to the first question, we can make legitimate inferences about the role of psychoactive plants or fungi in the origins of shamanism, or in its practice during
prehistoric times.

Let us deal briefly with the second question. In order to make an inference
from current practices, or the written record, to the practices of prehistoric
shamans requires us to adopt the odd affectation of European colonialism
that indigenous people are without history-that, unlike Europeans, they are
unchanging in their isolation and innocence. But the assumption that indigenous practices are unchanging is demonstrably false-indeed, demonstrably
false during the five hundred years within which indigenous practices have
been recorded. We know, for example, that by the time the first European travelers brought home descriptions of Siberian shamanism, it had already been
influenced by centuries of contact with Buddhism, Islam, and Russian Orthodox Christianity.35 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Chukchi
people from Siberia had contact with Inuit people from Alaska, through Russian trading posts within traveling distance of the Bering Strait.36 We have no
direct evidence of what Siberian shamanism-or, for that matter, any indigenous shamanism-might have been like before that time.