Machi healers and the Ngillatun
Among the Mapuche, the machi (usually a woman) is the healer and intermediary with the spirit world, climbing the carved rewe pole in trance; the ngillatun is the great community prayer ceremony for balance and abundance.
1674 CE · -38.74, -72.60 · status: account
The account
Colonial chroniclers, including the Jesuit Diego de Rosales in his history of Chile completed around 1674 (the approximate date used here), described machi healing and community rogations, often hostilely. Both practices continue today across Araucanía and Argentine Neuquén, and the machi's drum, the kultrun, is a central Mapuche symbol. The pin marks Temuco, at the heart of Araucanía.
The sceptical view
Colonial descriptions were written by missionaries hostile to Mapuche religion; modern ethnography, written with Mapuche communities, gives a fuller picture.