A certain anthropological tradition tends to interpret the symbolism of hunting as a way of expressing the ambivalence, or even the troubled conscience, that all humans are supposed to feel upon killing animals. While this interpretation appears legitimate in the framework of modern societies, marked since the 19th century by a profound evolution in the sensitivities pertaining to this domain, the same does not appear to be true for pre-modern societies, who may very well not share the same morals as late 20th-century Euro-American citizens. The way indigenous peoples deal with hunting in the Amazon illustrates how the relationship to animals there is determined less by a range of universal feelings than by behavioral schemata rooted in this cultural area's characteristic cosmological, ontological, and sociological systems.