This chapter discusses the prosodic systems of South American native languages. It provides the state of the art of the current knowledge and lays out promising directions for future research. The main focus of the discussion concerns the phonetics and phonology of word-level prosody, given the limited information about prosody beyond the word in this part of the world. A typology of stress, tone, and mixed systems is presented that summarizes the main typological studies to date and suggests new, relevant parameters. The chapter further explores the most salient typological parameters in relation to geographic regions and linguistic families. The majority of South American languages appear to have only stress, followed by restricted tone systems. Finally, the chapter suggests directions for future research, emphasizing the need for more acoustic studies, the use of quantitative methods, and an approach within a framework of experimental or laboratory phonology.