One object of this book is to partially fill an empty niche in the literature on South American mythology and cosmology. In addition to many bodies of primary and secondary texts on regional myths, there have recently emerged some impressive and detailed ethnographic analyses of the myths and world views of specific cultures.PerhapsthebestoftheseareT.Turner’smanuscript(1968) on the relation of myth to social organization among the Northern KayapoofCentralBrazilandWeiss’s(1975)studyofmythand cosmology among the Campa of eastern Peru (Vasquez 1978). Bridging this intensive delineation of the mythical worlds of individual tribes to a set of related tribes within a specific culture area is Reichel-Dolmatoff’sCompellingsynthesisofDesanacosmology (19710 and its articulation with Tukano thought generally in the Vaupes region of the northwest Amazon in Colombia (1975). The next progression in the bridge, Levi-Strauss’sanalysisofmythical themes among many tribes of the South American lowlands (1969, 1973, 1978), leaves a distinct hiatus in the scaffolding. The gap is one between, the specific analysis of myth and cosmos among individual and related groups on the one hand and a highly general comparative analysis of individual themes across a whole set of groups on the other. I intend this study to place a few trusses between these spans by relating the mythological model of specific characters among one tribe, the Shipibo of the Peruvian montana, to a generalized model involving the same mythical figures derived from the South American low One object of this book is to partially fill an empty niche in the literature on South American mythology and cosmology. In addition to many bodies of primary and secondary texts on regional myths, there have recently emerged some impressive and detailed ethnographic analyses of the myths and world views of specific cultures.PerhapsthebestoftheseareT.Turner’smanuscript(1968) on the relation of myth to social organization among the Northern KayapoofCentralBrazilandWeiss’s(1975)studyofmythand cosmology among the Campa of eastern Peru (Vasquez 1978). Bridging this intensive delineation of the mythical worlds of individual tribes to a set of related tribes within a specific culture area is Reichel-Dolmatoff’sCompellingsynthesisofDesanacosmology (19710 and its articulation with Tukano thought generally in the Vaupes region of the northwest Amazon in Colombia (1975). The next progression in the bridge, Levi-Strauss’sanalysisofmythical themes among many tribes of the South American lowlands (1969, 1973, 1978), leaves a distinct hiatus in the scaffolding. The gap is one between, the specific analysis of myth and cosmos among individual and related groups on the one hand and a highly general comparative analysis of individual themes across a whole set of groups on the other. I intend this study to place a few trusses between these spans by relating the mythological model of specific characters among one tribe, the Shipibo of the Peruvian montana, to a generalized model involving the same mythical figures derived from the South American low-One object of this book is to partially fill an empty niche in the literature on South American mythology and cosmology. In addition to many bodies of primary and secondary texts on regional myths, there have recently emerged some impressive and detailed ethnographic analyses of the myths and world views of specific cultures.PerhapsthebestoftheseareT.Turner’smanuscript(1968) on the relation of myth to social organization among the Northern KayapoofCentralBrazilandWeiss’s(1975)studyofmythand cosmology among the Campa of eastern Peru (Vasquez 1978). Bridging this intensive delineation of the mythical worlds of individual tribes to a set of related tribes within a specific culture area is Reichel-Dolmatoff’sCompellingsynthesisofDesanacosmology (19710 and its articulation with Tukano thought generally in the Vaupes region of the northwest Amazon in Colombia (1975). The next progression in the bridge, Levi-Strauss’sanalysisofmythical themes among many tribes of the South American lowlands (1969, 1973, 1978), leaves a distinct hiatus in the scaffolding. The gap is one between, the specific analysis of myth and cosmos among individual and related groups on the one hand and a highly general comparative analysis of individual themes across a whole set of groups on the other. I intend this study to place a few trusses between these spans by relating the mythological model of specific characters among one tribe, the Shipibo of the Peruvian montana, to a generalized model involving the same mythical figures derived from the South American low-lands as a whole. This book is not just the obligatory comparative section of an ethnographic analysis that appears after the individual system has been worked our; it is an attempt to do both things at once: to construct a plausible local model and to relate it to a general regional model that will subsume it.