Flight of the Shaman

Flight of the Shaman

Jessie Oonark, Stone cut and stencil, 1970
The Winnipeg Art Gallery

The story of Ice Age Shamanism in America is written into the archeological record. This record has been buried and folded into the land of this continent over thousands of years making it a challenge to read. What we know from the archeological record is augmented by observations of contemporary, or more recent peoples, who practice what is believed to be a similar shamanic spirituality. In Canada, Alaska and Siberia the traditions of the ancient northern hunters persist today.

One critical skill of the Shaman is the Shamanic journey or flight. In the book, The Coming and Going of the Shaman: Eskimo Shamanism and Art, by The Winnipeg Art Gallery, Jean Blodgett, the Curator of Eskimo Art describes shamanic flight.

“Shamans could fly to the moon, to the sun, to the heavens, and to the underworld. They visited deities above the earth and below the sea. They flew or descended to the bottom of lakes and to the lands of the dead, both in the sky and underground. They might fly through space or around the earth. They were transported by spirit helpers and benign deities. They also traveled from one earthly local to another; from Canada to Point Barrow, from the Diomede Islands to St Lawrence, or even from Alaska to San Francisco and back.”

The Coming and Going of the Shaman: Eskimo Shamanism and Art
by The Winnipeg Art Gallery, Jean Blodgett, the Curator of Eskimo Art

The Mojo of a Red Tipped Spearhead

Link to: Mississippi Valley Archeology Center

The First American Religion: Shamanic Hunting Magic, cont…

At an archeology site in Colorado, the site of an ancient bison kill, Smithsonian archaeologist Dr. Dennis Stanford observed that the material used by one group of hunters for spear points came from over 180 miles away when excellent material for points could be found within 50 miles of the site. Again and again he observed evidence that supreme effort was taken to procure only the highest quality materials. “We see that over and over again, they were selecting for specific rocks. They have to be the highest quality. Now why that is, I'm not sure. I think it probably goes back to some of the ideas about respect for the game. These people are hunting mammoths and probably having to fend off saber-toothed tigers and cave bears. They've got some pretty wild critters out there that they're dealing with. And one way to deal with it of course is through magic - through more power - and you can get more power if you select the right rock, particularly colored rocks, it shows respect for your animals.” Dr. Stanford described the importance of color in a Clovis style spear point, “It was chosen for these colors, it was flaked to incorporate this red here at the tip. It has a prominent white stripe coming all the way across the center section.”


The ice age craftsperson would not have had a term, let alone concept, of art as we think of it today but clearly color was of great importance not only as visual symbolism but also as a potent ingredient of magic.

Religion in America - Ice Age Shamanism

My new blog, American Seeker, will follow the progress of my book, American Seeker: Exploring the Spiritual Landscape of America. It will include excerpts from my book-in-progress, plus other material and images that I find in my research that will not be in the book.

Woolly mammoth replica the Royal British Columbia Museum
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. ~ photo: Jonathan Blair/Corbis

The First American Religion: Shamanic Hunting Magic

What remain of America’s ice age hunters are their bones, their spear points and the blood red ocher used to mark their burials and sacred sites. Human beings did not evolve on the American continents. No one knows precisely when or from where the first migrants arrived but evidence shows that successive waves of hunters and gatherers came into North America from Eurasia during the last ice age, possibly 40,000 to 10,000 years ago.

With huge masses of the earth’s water bound up in glaciers, stone-age hunting groups followed their prey; mammoth, bison and deer, across a land bridge called Beringia where the Bering Strait now separates Siberia from Alaska. Many seem to have traveled through a corridor between two ice sheets as they migrated into North America along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains.

What they found here was a hunter’s paradise of verdant grasslands, lush forests and plenty of big game. And I do mean big, their prey included woolly mammoths as tall as a house, giant moose, bison a third larger than today’s breed and beavers the size of a modern bear. But their world also included grave risk. These hunters were competing for their meat with packs of wolves and saber-toothed tigers. It was the shamans both male and female who warned the people of danger, defined their place in the universe and guided them with visions.

Clovis Points ~ Tool of Ice Age Hunters in North America