242 BULLETIN, PUBLIC MUSEUM, MILWAUKEE [Vol. 19 



ern Tradition are to be found in Asia. While the characteristic complex is 

 not to be found in toto among any particular group in Asia, some of the 

 elements are in much evidence in such hunting or herding-hunting peoples 

 as the Chuckchee and Koryak of Siberia. Particularly impressive is the 

 strong shamanistic complex with detailed resemblances to North American 

 shamanism. Here is found the same modus operandi of the shaman in 

 calling upon the spirits to enter the house and aid in curing or prophecy, 

 the use of jugglery and techniques such as ventriloquism, communication with 

 the aiding spirits by means of the drum and song, and other specific ele- 

 ments which appear in North American shamanism particularly in the 

 MacKenzie and Woodland areas. 



One of the chief purposes of this section of the report has been to 

 investigate the effects of a type of economy upon the attitudes of a people. 

 It has been shown, and seems both obvious and logical, that the agricultural 

 Indians of North America had a tendency to concentrate their religious 

 attention upon agricultural themes such as planting, harvesting, and fertility. 

 On the other hand, it has not been too easy to show that hunting peoples 

 tend to focus their supernatural manipulations and attention upon the prob- 

 lem of health. In fact, outstanding exceptions to this have been shown to 

 exist among certain of the Plains tribes. The most that can be said on the 

 basis of the facts is that in North America, hunting tribes directed more of 

 their attention and efforts in the realm of the supernatural toward the prob- 

 lem of maintaining health than did the agricultural tribes. 



The possibility of the correlation between type of economy and super- 

 natural life was first suggested to me in 1946 by Dr. Ruth Underbill who 

 was then working on that problem for the Southwest, and has since pub- 

 lished a very stimulating monograph on it (1948). Her thesis is that in 

 the Southwest, the agricultural tribes have tended to develop communal 

 ceremonies, and hunters, personal religious participation. She points out 

 (p. viii) that hunters are by the very nature of their work individualists. 

 That the hunter most successfully pursues his occupation alone, or at best in 

 small groups. "His great need is for individual skill and courage — phrased 

 as luck — and for health to carry on his arduous task. In this solitary strug- 

 gle with Nature, each man seeks his own contact with the supernatural, 

 finding his answer in the vision. The vision is sought, with greater or less 

 effort, by all hunting tribes, not only in the Southwest, but, I think, over 

 most of North America. In the course of contact and change visions can be 



