Father Sun,
explaining that within were thirty colours, all distinct energies that had
to be balanced in sacred ritual. The necklace was also the shaman’s house,
the place to which he went when he took yagé, the hallucinogenic potion also
known as ayahuasca. Once inside, the shaman looks out at the world, over the
territory of his people and the sacred sites — the forests, waterfalls,
mountainous escarpments, and black water rivers — watching and watching the
ways of the animals.
Long after Medem retired for the night, I
remained in his office reading a book that he had recommended,
Amazonian
Cosmos
, written by his good friend Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff,
Colombia’s foremost anthropologist, who was also a close colleague of
Schultes. It was from Reichel that I first learned of the importance of
rivers. For the Indians of the Vaupés, rivers are not just routes of
communication, they are the veins of the earth, the link between the living
and the dead, the paths along which the ancestors travelled at the beginning
of time. The Indians’ origin myths vary but always speak of a great journey
from the east, of sacred canoes brought up the Milk River from the east by
enormous anacondas. Within the canoes were the first people, together with
the three most important plants — coca, manioc and yagé, gifts of Father
Sun. On the heads of the anaconda were blinding lights, and in the canoes
sat mythical heroes in hierarchical order: chiefs; wisdom-keepers who were
the dancers and chanters; warriors; shaman; and finally, in the tail,
servants. All were brothers, children of the sun. When the serpents reached
the centre of the world, they lay over the land, outstretched as rivers,
their powerful heads forming river mouths, their tails winding away to
remote headwaters, the ripples in their skin giving rise to rapids and
waterfalls.
Each river welcomed a different canoe, and in
each drainage the five archetypal heroes disembarked and settled, with the
lowly servants heading upstream and the chiefs occupying the mouth. Thus the
rivers of the Vaupés were created and populated, with the Desana people
coming into being on the Río Papuri, the Barasana and Tatuyos on the upper
Piraparaná, the Tucano on the Vaupés, the Makuna on the Popeyacá and lower
Piraparaná, the Tanimukas and Letuama on the Miriti and Apaporis. In time,
the hierarchy described in the myths broke down, and on each of the rivers
the descendants of those who had journeyed in the same sacred canoe came to
live together. They recognized each other as family, speakers of the same
language, and to ensure that no brother married a sister, they invented
strict rules. To avoid incest, a man had to choose a bride who spoke a
different language.
Today, when a young woman marries, she moves to
the longhouse of her husband. Their children will be raised in the language
of the father but naturally will learn their mother’s tongue. The mother,
meanwhile, will be working with the children’s aunts, the wives of their
father’s brothers. But each of these women may come from a different
linguistic group. In a single settlement, therefore, as many as a dozen
languages may be spoken, and it is quite common for an individual to be
fluent in as many as five. Yet curiously, through time, there has been no
corrosion of the integrity of each language. Words are never interspersed or
pidginized. Nor is a language violated by those attempting to pick it up. To
learn, one listens without speaking until the language is mastered.
One inevitable consequence of this unusual
marriage rule — what anthropologists call linguistic exogamy — is a certain
tension in the lives of the people. With the quest for potential marriage
partners ongoing, and the distances between neighbouring language groups
considerable, cultural mechanisms must ensure that eligible young men and
women come together on a regular basis. Thus the importance,
Reichel-Dolmatoff wrote, of the gatherings and great
explaining that within were thirty colours, all distinct energies that had
to be balanced in sacred ritual. The necklace was also the shaman’s house,
the place to which he went when he took yagé, the hallucinogenic potion also
known as ayahuasca. Once inside, the shaman looks out at the world, over the
territory of his people and the sacred sites — the forests, waterfalls,
mountainous escarpments, and black water rivers — watching and watching the
ways of the animals.
Long after Medem retired for the night, I
remained in his office reading a book that he had recommended,
Amazonian
Cosmos
, written by his good friend Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff,
Colombia’s foremost anthropologist, who was also a close colleague of
Schultes. It was from Reichel that I first learned of the importance of
rivers. For the Indians of the Vaupés, rivers are not just routes of
communication, they are the veins of the earth, the link between the living
and the dead, the paths along which the ancestors travelled at the beginning
of time. The Indians’ origin myths vary but always speak of a great journey
from the east, of sacred canoes brought up the Milk River from the east by
enormous anacondas. Within the canoes were the first people, together with
the three most important plants — coca, manioc and yagé, gifts of Father
Sun. On the heads of the anaconda were blinding lights, and in the canoes
sat mythical heroes in hierarchical order: chiefs; wisdom-keepers who were
the dancers and chanters; warriors; shaman; and finally, in the tail,
servants. All were brothers, children of the sun. When the serpents reached
the centre of the world, they lay over the land, outstretched as rivers,
their powerful heads forming river mouths, their tails winding away to
remote headwaters, the ripples in their skin giving rise to rapids and
waterfalls.
Each river welcomed a different canoe, and in
each drainage the five archetypal heroes disembarked and settled, with the
lowly servants heading upstream and the chiefs occupying the mouth. Thus the
rivers of the Vaupés were created and populated, with the Desana people
coming into being on the Río Papuri, the Barasana and Tatuyos on the upper
Piraparaná, the Tucano on the Vaupés, the Makuna on the Popeyacá and lower
Piraparaná, the Tanimukas and Letuama on the Miriti and Apaporis. In time,
the hierarchy described in the myths broke down, and on each of the rivers
the descendants of those who had journeyed in the same sacred canoe came to
live together. They recognized each other as family, speakers of the same
language, and to ensure that no brother married a sister, they invented
strict rules. To avoid incest, a man had to choose a bride who spoke a
different language.
Today, when a young woman marries, she moves to
the longhouse of her husband. Their children will be raised in the language
of the father but naturally will learn their mother’s tongue. The mother,
meanwhile, will be working with the children’s aunts, the wives of their
father’s brothers. But each of these women may come from a different
linguistic group. In a single settlement, therefore, as many as a dozen
languages may be spoken, and it is quite common for an individual to be
fluent in as many as five. Yet curiously, through time, there has been no
corrosion of the integrity of each language. Words are never interspersed or
pidginized. Nor is a language violated by those attempting to pick it up. To
learn, one listens without speaking until the language is mastered.
One inevitable consequence of this unusual
marriage rule — what anthropologists call linguistic exogamy — is a certain
tension in the lives of the people. With the quest for potential marriage
partners ongoing, and the distances between neighbouring language groups
considerable, cultural mechanisms must ensure that eligible young men and
women come together on a regular basis. Thus the importance,
Reichel-Dolmatoff wrote, of the gatherings and great
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