SOUTH AMERICAN INDIAN

member of any of the aboriginal peoples inhabiting the continent of South America. The customs and social systems of South American peoples are closely and naturally related to the environments in which they live. These environmental relationships are mediated by the systems of technology that the people use to exploit their resources. Four basic types of social and cultural organization of South American peoples emerge from the archaeological and historical records: (1) central Andean irrigation civilizations, (2) chiefdoms of the northern Andes and the circum-Caribbean, (3) tropical-forest farming villages, and (4) nomadic hunters and gatherers. Each type developed in its own fashion during thousands of years, and since the 16th century each has made a distinctive adjustment to the impact of European civilization. Early peoples, hunters and gatherers with no knowledge of agriculture, gradually worked their way across the Bering Strait in pursuit of food and meandered over North and South America in small, migratory bands for thousands of years. They reached Tierra del Fuego in approximately 6000 BC, after passing through the bottleneck of Central America, dispersing in the rugged terrain of the northern Andes, following the resource-laden Caribbean coastline eastward, and filtering southward through the tropical lowlands now making up part of Venezuela, the Guianas, and Brazil. They also hunted game through the highland basins of the central Andes and hunted and fished along the west coast of South America until they reached land's end. Additional reading Prehistoric South America is covered in Jesse D. Jennings (ed.), Ancient South Americans (1983); and in M. Coe, Dean Snow, and Elizabeth Benson, Atlas of Ancient America (1986). The question of how many people lived in the Americas when the Europeans arrived is addressed by William M. Denevan (ed.), The Native Population of the Americas in 1492, 2nd ed. (1992). Descriptions for the general reader of the major tribes in eastern and southwestern North America through Mexico to Andean South America may be found in Jamake Highwater, Native Land: Sagas of the Indian Americas (1986).Julian H. Steward (ed.), Handbook of South American Indians, 7 vol. (194659), is a monumental compilation of articles specifically on South American ethnography, archaeology, physical anthropology, and languages. Julian H. Steward and Louis C. Faron, Native Peoples of South America (1959), is a synthesis and updating of the previous work, written in a consistent theoretical framework. Articles of varying length on individual tribes and on language groups may be found in James S. Olson, The Indians of Central and South America: An Ethnohistorical Dictionary (1991). Lawrence E. Sullivan, Icanchu's Drum: An Orientation to Meaning in South American Religions (1988), describes the wealth of religions, ceremonies, and ideas. Indigenous religions of both continents are explored in ke Hultkrantz, The Religions of the American Indians (1979); and Denise Lardner Carmody and John Tully Carmody, Native American Religions: An Introduction (1993), both covering North, Central, and South America; and in Gary H. Gossen and Miguel Len-Portilla (eds.), South and Meso-American Native Spirituality: From the Cult of the Feathered Serpent to the Theology of Liberation (1993). Modern studies of South American communities are listed in Handbook of Latin American Studies (annual). Louis C. Faron The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica Evolution of contemporary cultures The European conquest A full appreciation of the force and nature of the European conquest of South America must take into consideration postcontact population trends among the indigenous societies. Today, there are at least as many people of overwhelmingly Indian ancestry as there were just prior to the European conquest, but the vast majority of these, approximately 7,000,000, live in the central Andes and represent a resurgence after a marked population decline following the conquest. Elsewhere in South America, Indian populations declined rapidly after contact with Europeans and, for the most part, have not increased appreciably since. This loss of Indian populations is related directly to the intensity of European exploitation and the density of the native populations in question, two principal factors in adjustments during the colonial period. Population decline was heaviest along the South American coastlines and major rivers, where Indian concentrations were greatest. Along the coasts of Brazil, the Guianas, Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador, where Europeans came in great force, the Indians were killed in large numbers, died in the course of enslavement, succumbed to new diseases, or fled into the hinterlands in depleted numbers. Conditions were similar along the great river systems, where native populations declined sharply in the first decades after contact with Europeans, their places being filled in the labour pools of colonial society by African slaves, who have made a great contribution to South America's mixed population. Indians who survived European intrusions are those small communities in the marginal, unattractive areas scarcely touched by soldiers and settlers. South of the tropical-forest area, in Argentina and Uruguay, where Indian populations were small and scattered, the coastal groups were again the first to succumb to conquest. In the Gran Chaco, resistance to Spanish settlement was fierce and temporarily successful, but, in time, these Indians were nearly wiped out by disease in mission centres and elsewhere, and the survivors were absorbed into the gaucho population that developed along with Argentine cattle raising. In Chile the Atacama and Diaguita Indians were rapidly suppressed and absorbed, as were the northern Araucanians (Picunche). The southern Araucanians (Mapuche and Huilliche) held out against white subjugation and developed a military organization to defend their heartland until the latter decades of the 19th century. Of the southernmost groupsthe Puelche, Tehuelche, Ona, Ymana, and Alacalufthose that are not literally extinct are virtually extinct. In contrast to the rest of South America, the highland populations of the Andes are today larger than at the time of conquest. They have maintained great cultural stability, have survived epidemics, and have continued to live in small farming and pastoral communities established centuries ago. Their population is steadily and rapidly increasing, and there is great population pressure on arable land, which constitutes a national problem in Bolivia and Peru. Effects of colonialism The kinds of changes induced by European conquest varied according to the intensity of settlement and exploitation, the density and organization of Indian populations, and the ecological adjustments made by the conquerors. Three examples of these variables may serve to indicate general trends.