In contrast to Africa, New Guinea, and Europe, native South America hasnot been the subject of an extensive analysis of witchcraft and sorcery,except perhaps in the Andean region where the interest of the CatholicChurch in the suppression of native religious practice produced "witch-hunts" in the manner of Europe, which often were inflected with a similargender bias. The ethnographies presented throughout this collection seek to documentand analyze such cases in order to understand the motivations, processes,symbolism, mechanisms, and dynamics involved. To intervene (i.e., to takeaction) in any of these cases is another question altogether, and here weemphasize that by the simple fact that in one case the victims are childrendoesn't make the case any more critical in terms of "human rights abuses"than any of the others. In nearly all cases, it is documented that the societiesin question have their own mechanisms and norms for dealing with suchcases, and in no way does the anthropologist have a responsibility tointervene. If any case demonstrates clearly the impact of nonindigenoussocieties as being responsible for a triggering of sorcery accusations orwitch killings, however, then we agree it is the anthropologist's obligationto act on his or her own society. Thus we limit our comments here to thepoint that the study of assault sorcery in native societies frequently revealsthe nature of violence at work in state societies. Any larger discussion ofethics would demand another volume and would include other practices thathistorically have "horrified" the West, such as cannibalism, headhunting,warfare, and torture-which likewise plague our own societies.