¹ For essays that review literature about shamanism see Nowak, Margaret and Durrant, Stephen, “Introduction,” The Tale of the Nisan Shamaness: A Manchu Folk Epic, Publications on Asia of the Institute for Comparative and Foreign Area Studies (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977), pp. 3–30.Google Scholar The authors of this essay conclude that shamanism is best described as a kind of art form. Also see Hultkrantz, Åke, “Introduction: Ecological and Phenomenological Aspects of Shamanism” in Backman, Louise, Studies in Lapp Shamanism, Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1978), pp. 3–35.Google Scholar In this essay, Hultkrantz offers the following definition of shamanism: “The central idea of shamanism is to establish means of contact with the supernatural world by the ecstatic experience of a professional and inspired intermediary, the shaman.” Hultkrantz itemizes four necessary constituents in his definition: “the ideological premise, or the supernatural world and the contacts with it; the shaman as the actor on behalf of a human group; the inspiration granted him by his helping spirits; and the extraordinary, ecstatic experiences of the shaman” (p. 11).

² See, e.g., Hooker, Thomas, “The Soul's Exaltation” excerpted in Salvation in New England: Selections from the Sermons of the First Preachers, eds. Jones, Phyllis M. and Jones, Nicholas R. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977), pp. 103–06;Google ScholarCotton, John, Christ the Fountaine of Life in Salvation in New England, pp. 72–73.Google Scholar Although Cotton wrote this sermon before migrating to New England, and although his passionate spirituality became more constrained after the Antinomian crisis of 1636-38, Christ the Fountaine of Life describes the kind of religious experience many New England Puritans thirsted after. The Poems of Edward Taylor, ed. Stanford, Donald E. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960);Google ScholarEdwards, Jonathan, “Shewing What Are Distinguishing Signs of Truly Gracious and Holy Affections,” A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, ed. Smith, John E. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), pp. 193–469.Google Scholar

Although Puritans aspired to sainthood, they found that the direct claim to it involved a kind of spiritual pride uncharacteristic of the true saint. While they were unwilling to claim sainthood for themselves, they were ready to point it out in one another and diligent in encouraging one another in their journeys toward God.

³ The midwinter ceremonial of the Kwakiutl Indians of Vancouver Island is one example of this. See Goldman, Irving, The Mouth of Heaven: An Introduction to Kwakiutl Religious Thought (Huntington, NY: Robert E. Kreiger Company, 1981), pp. 86–97.Google Scholar Hultkrantz finds that many of the ritual practices that characterized Algonquian Indians of the northeast woodlands were shared by hunting peoples of the northwest like the Kwakiutl (Hultkrantz, Ake, The North American Orpheus Tradition: A Contribution to Comparative Religion, Statens Etnografiska Museum Monograph Series [Stockholm: Calson Press, 1957], pp. 208–14Google Scholar).

⁴ See Slotkin, Richard, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), p. 124.Google Scholar

⁵ The seventeenth-century observer John Josselyn compared one of these potions to opium and noted that some of the English had learned to use it. See Simmons, William S., “Southern New England Shamanism: An Ethnographic Reconstruction” in Papers of the Seventh Algonquian Conference, 1975, ed. Cowan, William (Ottawa: Carleton University, 1976), pp. 220–21.Google Scholar

⁶ Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, trans. Trask, Willard R. (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964;Google Scholar orig. 1951), p. 315.

⁷ Tequanonim's statement is quoted in Simmons, p. 235. Passaconnaway is described in Wood, William, New England's Prospect, ed. Vaughan, Alden T. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977;Google Scholar orig. 1634), pp. 100-01.

⁸ God's Plot: The Paradoxes of Puritan Piety; Being the Autobiography & Journal of Thomas Shepard, ed. McGiffert, Michael (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1972), pp. 136–37.Google Scholar

⁹ “In my Solitary houres in my dear husband his Absence,” Poems of Anne Bradstreet, ed. Hutchinson, Robert (New York: Dover, 1969), pp. 74–75.Google Scholar

¹⁰ “Personal Narrative,” excerpted in Jonathan Edwards: Basic Writings, ed. Winslow, Olga (New York: New American Library, 1966), pp. 87, 93.Google Scholar

¹¹ For discussion of the sacred use of language in North American Indian cultures, see Austin, Mary, “Introduction,” The Path on the Rainbow: An Anthology of Songs and Chants from the Indians of North America, ed. Cronyn, George W. (New York: Liveright, 1934;Google Scholar original 1918); Austin, , The American Rhythm: Studies and Reexpressions of Amerindian Songs, 2nd ed. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1930;Google Scholar 1st ed. 1923); Momaday, N. Scott, “The Man Made of Words” (1970), Literature of the American Indians: Views and Interpretations, ed. Chapman, Abraham (New York: New American Library, 1975), pp. 96–110;Google ScholarKroeber, Karl, “Poem, Dream, and the Consuming of Culture” in Smoothing the Ground: Essays on Native American Oral Literature, ed. Swann, Brian (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 323–33.Google Scholar

¹² See Salisbury, Neal, “Red Puritans: The ‘Praying Indians’ of Massachusetts Bay and John Eliot,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 31/1 (January 1974), 27–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ See Drinnon, Richard, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building (New York: New American Library, 1980);Google Scholar and Turner, Frederick, Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit Against the Wilderness (New York: Viking, 1980).Google Scholar