CUNA RELIGION. There are perhaps forty thousand Cuna Indians today, living mostly in the San Blas Reserve on Panama's Atlantic coast, with small groups along the interior Bayano and Chucanaque rivers and in three villages in Colombia. The Cuna survived the traumatic but ephemeral Spanish conquest of the Darien Isthmus (modern-day Isthmus of Panama) after 1510. They are thus one of the few remnants of the flourishing pre-Columbian chieftaincies of the circum-Caribbean. The Cuna maintained their autonomy partly by allying themselves with the buccaneers who harassed the Spaniards.

Cult Organization

Institutionally, Cuna religion is organized in both communal and shamanic cults. The communal cult is maintained by the village chiefs (sailakana), who chant from oral mythological texts known as Pap Ikar ("god's way") some three nights a week to the assembled village. Official interpreters (arkarana) explain the arcane language of the chants, using homilies on contemporary morality...