Amazonian Kichwa of the Curaray River: Kinship and History in the Western Amazon 1496228804, 9781496228802

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Landscape and Kinship in a Regional Society
2. Ayllu and Llacta
3. Runa on the Curaray River
4. The Ritual of Community
5. Ayllu across the Regional Society
6. Healing, Song, and Narrative
7. The Enduring Regional Society
Glossary
Notes
References
Index

Citation preview

Amazonian Kichwa of the Curaray River

Amazonian Kichwa of the Curaray River Kinship and History in the Western Amazon

Ma ry- ­E liz abe t h Re e ve

U n i v e r s i t y o f N e b r a s ka P r e s s  L i n c o l n

© 2022 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved The University of Nebraska Press is part of a land-­ grant institution with campuses and programs on the past, present, and future homelands of the Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe-­Missouria, Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Kaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Peoples, as well as those of the relocated Ho-­ Chunk, Sac and Fox, and Iowa Peoples.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021008767 Set in Whitman by Mikala R. Kolander. Designed by N. Putens. Cover: High water at Curaray, 1981. Photo by author.

To my parents, Dave and Reet, in memory

Co nten t s

List of Illustrations  ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. Landscape and Kinship in a Regional Society  23 2. Ayllu and Llacta  45 3. Runa on the Curaray River  67 4. The Ritual of Community  85 5. Ayllu across the Regional Society  107 6. Healing, Song, and Narrative  129 7. The Enduring Regional Society  155 Glossary 167 Notes 173 References 187 Index 197

Il lu str at ions

Maps 1. Northwestern South America  3 2. Amazonian Ecuador  4 Photographs 1. Aerial view of the Curaray River region, 1981  24 2. Purina house, 1981  33 3. A recently cleared chagra, 1992  50 4. Making a dugout canoe, 1981  51 5. A Runa house and pottery storage, 1982  52 6. The flooded Jista house, 1981  92 7. Warmi Jista Wasi during Jista preparations, 1982  93 8. Making Jista purus, 1982  94 9. Jista hunters’ camp, 1982  95 10. Jista procession in the plaza at Curaray, 1981  98 11. Bringing the priest to the Jista camari, 1981  99 12. Third day of the Jista—­Armana Punzha, 1982  100 13. Lanceros in the plaza at Canelos, 1981  104 14. Dove Jista puru, 1982  145

Acknow le dg me nt s

This book has been so many years in process that acknowledgments require a bit of a retrospective. First, I wish to thank my initial Runa hosts at Curaray, Carlota and Danilo, for facilitating our entry into the community in 1981, and who continued to support my research efforts in numerous ways throughout the time spent in Curaray. Heartfelt thanks go to my Runa neighbors at Curaray, especially Eva and Diosa, for introducing me to the daily life of women in the community, and to my “students” in a sewing class that I taught initially during fieldwork, for their humor, patience, and good fellowship as they worked to improve my grasp of Curaray Kichwa until I was conversationally fluent. I owe a debt of gratitude to the leadership of the community, who gave us permission to live among Runa at Curaray, and to the elders of the community, especially Honorio, Miguel, and Silverio, as well as Jorge and Cristobal, for sharing with me their wisdom and esoteric knowledge. In Puyo, the capital of Pastaza Province, and in the nearby town of Shell, several Runa families assisted my introduction to Runa life and to their vast kin networks across Pastaza Province. Finally, many thanks to Runa at Curaray, especially Alegria and her family, who welcomed me back to the community for a visit after a ten-­year absence, and ten years after that found me again in Puyo and Shell, where many Curaray Runa now live part-­time. Remembering me, my former neighbors picked up where we had left off so many years before, as if it had been only yesterday. I have taken the liberty of xi

creating pseudonyms for the various Runa individuals mentioned in the book to protect their identity in connection with the events described. I wish to thank my close colleagues in Amazonian anthropology, both those of my own “generation” and more recent scholars, for their continued interest in my work and collaboration on publication, in particular Jonathan Hill, Casey High, Mike Uzendoski, and Norm Whitten. My greatest debt of gratitude goes to Norm Whitten, who first met me as his new graduate student at the University of Illinois–­Urbana in 1978 and who has served as a mentor and friend throughout the years that have followed. Without his continued interest, encouragement, and intellectual challenge, this book would never have seen the light of day. The fieldwork upon which the book is based was funded by Fulbright-­ Hays, Organization of American States (oas), and Social Science Research Council (ssrc) fellowships. Archival research was supported by grants from the American Philosophical Society and Mellon Foundation. I am grateful for the funding support that made the research possible. Additional support came in the form of a two-­year course in Kichwa taught by Carmen Chuquín and Frank Salomon at the University of Illinois–­Urbana. The grounding in the Kichwa language gave me a tremendous advantage once in the field, facilitating my integration into daily life at Curaray, and provided the opportunity to begin in-­depth field research very quickly. Finally, I wish to thank my former husband, Stu Reeve, who, having never set foot outside the United States and knowing only a few words of Spanish (and no Kichwa), accompanied me during the eighteen months of initial fieldwork in Amazonian Ecuador. His presence greatly facilitated our acceptance as a young couple in the community of Curaray, his companionship kept me grounded in my research, and his unruffled attitude toward the minor catastrophes and triumphs common to fieldwork held us both steady. His continued encouragement over the years has helped greatly to sustain my interest in the fieldwork. This book is the result of multiple collaborations over many years. I hope that it will provide insights into the nature of Amazonian regional societies, a topic of enduring interest among Amazonian scholars.

xii Acknowledgments

Amazonian Kichwa of the Curaray River

Introduction

Amazonian Kichwa of the Curaray River is an exploration of the dynamics of regional societies within indigenous Amazonia and the ways in which kinship relationships define the scale of these regional societies. A number of Amazonian ethnographies contain references to regional linkages among kin groups. Yet scant attention has been paid to Amazonian cultural complexity revealed in the dynamics of a regional-­scale society. This study shows how a larger-­scale view of kinship relations contributes to our understanding of Amazonian regional societies. The book focuses on the dynamics of kinship at a regional scale by exploring social relations and concepts of landscape across Kichwa-­speaking indigenous communities within the central region of Amazonian Ecuador. The study is focused on two questions: How is an Amazonian regional society maintained—­by what social relationships? How is the landscape conceptualized and used within such a regional society? To explore these questions, I examine what Runa of the Curaray River said about their relationships with other indigenous peoples within Amazonian Ecuador: ideas of residence, patterns of migration between communities, the concept of “sitting-­being,” shamanic ritual as it relates to protection within a residence area, collective ritual celebration, and historical accounts of intergroup conflict as expressive of a regional view of society. The study demonstrates what can be learned by shifting the scale of kinship studies to a regional perspective, grounded in 1

recent advances in the understanding of kinship and landscape from our interlocutors’ point of view. The analysis is informed by work in the area of kinship as the fundamental viewpoint from which social relations emanate (Sahlins 2013), by perspectival analyses (Conklin 2001; Vilaça 2010; Viveiros de Castro 1992), and by work on indigenous concepts of landscape (Heckenberger 2007; Hill 2011; Santos-­Granero 1991). It is additionally informed by ethnohistorical accounts of long-­distance travel along major waterways that constitute regional social systems (Hill 2011; Hill and Santos-­Granero 2002; Hornborg 2005; Reeve 1994, 2014), indicating the historical depth of Amazonian regional systems. Although vast Amazonian regional social systems no longer exist, the mechanisms making such linkages possible are still extant among indigenous Amazonian peoples, even as regional societies are more limited in scale. Amazonian Kichwa of the Curaray River is set in a specific locale, the community of San José de Curaray, situated within Amazonian Ecuador. The book details ways in which Runa (Kichwa speakers) at this community, the Curaray Runa, are integrated within a wider regional society based on extended kin and formal friendship networks. Engaging with Curaray Runa voices, the book is focused at the level of the individual and extended family to illustrate the dynamic web of personal relationships that link together long-­established communities and ethnolinguistic territories. Curaray Runa express these connections in many ways, from accounts of former intergroup conflict to histories of settlement formation and intermarriage, to songs of displacement, to joking with each other about minor distinctions in speech or artistic expression. Such expressions, together with the elaborate etiquette surrounding visiting between communities and trekking to distant locales, are grounded in extended kinship and formal friendship networks that link Runa extended families within a regional society. This dynamic, large-­scale interrelationship among Runa extended kindreds has a deep history in Amazonian Ecuador, within a landscape of both spatial and temporal dimensions.

2 Introduction

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Map 1. Northwestern South America. Basic map taken from sections of the maps

South America and Ecuador Physiography 2011, Perry-­Castañeda Map Collection, University of Texas Libraries, online at Legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/Americas.html. Cartography by John Isom.

Map 2. Amazonian Ecuador. Basic map taken from www.codeso.com, 2007, with

additional features from Ecuador Instituto Geográfico Militar (igm) maps Provincia del Pastaza, Río Curaray and Provincia del Pastaza, Río Villano, obtained by the author in 1982. Cartography by John Isom and Alan Jia-­long Pong.

Amazonian Regional Societies

Regional societies exist throughout an arc formed by northern and western Amazonian river tributary systems. These regional societies are conceptualized in terms of kinship relations, forming a web of interconnections at the present time and in historic memory, across geographic space constituting a social landscape. Curaray Runa participate in a regional society that encompasses the Curaray River to the north, reaching southward to and including the Bobonaza River; with extensive kin ties to Achuar peoples to the south of the Bobonaza, and to Napo Runa in the north near Tena. In recent decades Runa have extended kin ties

4 Introduction

further, into Waorani kindreds occupying the lands between the Napo and Curaray Rivers. The Kichwa of Pastaza Province, Ecuador, form an ethnolinguistic group of which the Curaray Runa are members, and which was historically constituted from Sápara, Canelos Runa, Achuar, Napo Runa, Gaes, and Andoas peoples occupying a vast region of what is now Amazonian Ecuador. A regional society is clearly evident within this historically constituted group, which emerged through forming extensive kinship ties across the region of what is now central Amazonian Ecuador, in a process of ethnogenesis (Whitten 1976, 1985; Reeve 1988a; see also Hill 1996; Hornborg 2005; Hornborg and Hill 2011). From this core area, kinship ties have extended outward into other ethnolinguistic groups.1 This process is perhaps no more salient than at the community of Curaray, located at the confluence of the Curaray and Villano Rivers. The Curaray River area was the original home of several subgroups of Sápara Zaparoans. The Sápara who lived along the Curaray were decimated by disease, warfare, and the impacts of the Amazon rubber boom during the latter part of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, following which the remaining Sápara married into newly arriving Napo Runa families from the Napo River, and Canelos Runa as well as a few Achuar, Gaes, and Andoa, migrating from the Bobonaza River region.2 The existence of regional societies is by no means limited to groups formed through the process of ethnogenesis. Several Amazonian scholars writing about ethnolinguistic groups in the western and northwest Amazon have described such supra-­local kinship connections. Downriver from Amazonian Kichwa, Charlotte Seymour-­Smith noted that for the Shiwiar group of Achuar, the “apparently simple question of an ethnolinguistic unit . . . requires a careful study of the history of relations between different groups that participate in the regional social system” (Seymour-­Smith 1988, 231). For the group of Achuar having historic and ongoing ties into Kichwa kin groups, Norman Whitten (1976, 1985) and Norman and Dorothea Whitten (2008) have written extensively about Achuar alliance and intermarriage with Kichwa of the Bobonaza River.

Introduction  5

Others have pointed to the regional reach of kinship within a single ethnolinguistic group. Philippe Descola, who did fieldwork among the Achuar, described a smaller-­scale regional focus, a supra-­local structure that he termed the “endogamous nexus . . . [which] consists of from ten to fifteen households scattered over a relatively well-­defined territory, whose members are closely and directly related by kinship and affinity” (Descola 1994, 9). He goes on to say that it is generally a one-­day walk or canoe trip between nexuses. The Shuar also maintain “endogamous areas,” which are now formed as centros (communities). Half of all marriages take place between adjacent centros following alliances between families that persist for generations, but with occasional marriages to members of distinct groups or former enemies (Hendricks 1993, 11–­13). Similarly, for the Waorani, Laura Rival has noted the closure of endogamous units, called huaomani, into themselves, stating that alliance between two longhouses makes them huaomani, while if disagreement arises, they may become enemies (huarani). She states that “marriage therefore plays a pivotal role in the making and remaking of boundaries between endogamous units, and in defining the huaomani-­huarani configuration” (Rival 2002, 130). Both Descola and Rival point to a relatively small-­scale regional integration among kin and settlements maintained through marriage alliances and a perspective of outsiders as potential enemies. This is the regional system at its smallest scale. Following a period of extensive warfare among Waorani groups, peaceful contacts among formerly unknown or enemy groups enlarged the scale of Waorani society (Yost 1981). Casey High, writing about the Waorani during a more recent period, notes that today many Waorani choose to marry Kichwa speakers, bringing Kichwa and other “enemy” spouses to live with them. These Waorani-­Kichwa marriages are “part of a wider historical context of social transformation in Amazonian Ecuador” (High 2015, 122). The Waorani with whom he worked often talked about their interest in engaging in increased intergroup sociality with “dangerous and unknown” outsiders. Importantly, High notes that this interest correlates with a self-­perception of Waorani as living in a period of population growth and territorial expansion, creating kin linkages that extend beyond local households and villages 6 Introduction

(107–­8). High’s comments point to the historical trajectory of regional societies—­that they expand (and also contract) over time. Underlying the dynamic through which kin relations are formed are Amazonian concepts of consanguinity, affinity, and “enemy-­foreigner” elucidated by various scholars (see, e.g., Vilaça 2002, 2010; Viveiros de Castro 1992). The geographic space encompassed by the regional society and the number of ethnolinguistic groups within it are a matter of scale. Wider scales, larger regional societies, are exemplified by Kichwa of Pastaza Province. Writing about their neighbors to the north, the Napo Runa, Uzendoski (2005) notes that in addition to intermarriage with Kichwa of the Bobonaza and Curaray River areas, and on occasion Waorani, some Napo Runa have kin ties into Tukanoan groups of the Putumayo River area of Colombia. Similarly, the Aguaruna group of Shuar living south of the Achuar, in Peru, exemplify another large-­scale society, in which interregional marriage and frequent visits are creating ties with distant Aguaruna communities in the departments of Loreto and Amazonas, in eastern Peru (Brown 1986, 43). Well documented are the Tukanoan regional social systems of the Vaupés/Uaupés River area. Jean Jackson described the group of Tukanoans with whom she worked as having highly autonomous settlements, yet local exogamy produced a regional network structured along the lines of kinship, in which every Tukanoan is related or potentially related to all others through the sixteen exogamous language groups. Language groups occupied specific geographic areas, while simultaneously maintaining kin ties to other groups within their respective territories through intermarriage (Jackson 1983, 77–­79). Tukanoan regional society was also marked by interregional trade through local specialization, both due to the uneven distribution of highly desired resources, such as pottery clays, and through local craft specialization. Exchanges of locally produced goods were a feature of visits and ceremonies. Jackson was perhaps the first to observe: “It is evident that culturally homogeneous regional systems occur in many areas of lowland South America” (99). Janet Chernela has extended this idea, noting: “Gaps in understanding nw Amazon society are due in part to each study looking at a group as a closed system . . . Introduction  7

without fully taking into account the interdependences and fluxes characterizing the larger socioeconomic whole” (1993, 14). Regional societies exist also in historical memory and as expressed in ritual. For example, ritual power in Wakuénai Arawakan society, in the Rio Negro basin area, “is situated in the larger, regional context of ranked, patrilineal societies in the Northwest Amazon region” (Hill 1993, 33). Ethnohistorical documentation provides some idea of the grander scale of social interaction that shaped an arc around the northern and western Amazon. Jonathan Hill notes that the Wakuénai maintained relations of trade and intermarriage with eastern Tukanoan peoples of the Vaupés during the colonial period and formed part of “vast riverine, northern Arawakan societies that extended from the Central Amazon floodplains near Manaus up to the lower Orinoco Basin” (33–­34). This is regional society at a very large scale, a scale evident also in ethnohistorical documentation linking the Napo River peoples and peoples of the Marañón and Huallaga Rivers of northeastern Peru to the Upper Amazon River and from there upward into the Rio Negro region above Manaus (Reeve 1994). Farther east, in the region of Pará, Brazil, during the colonial era both mission community formation and extensive river travel were characterized by dense social networks maintained in a “uniquely resilient” regional culture along the main waterways of the Pará region (Roller 2014, 4–­5). In contrast, by the beginning of the eighteenth century any regional system that might have existed in the interfluvial area between the Tocantins and Xingu River had disappeared (Fausto 2012, 22). It is likely that the massive depopulation due to smallpox and measles epidemics, which moved through Amazonia during the 1700s, peaking in 1762–­72 and again between 1798 and 1800 (Taylor 1999, 239), coupled with slave raiding, completely destabilized former regional systems across Amazonia.3 In areas not subject to these destructive pressures, societies maintained “more or less open systems with more or less defined ethnic boundaries formed by a multiplicity of local groups, very often unstable and fluid, weaving multifaceted relations between themselves. The most stable of these appear to have been societies of the Upper Xingu and Upper Rio Negro regions” (Fausto 2012, 172–­73). 8 Introduction

Following the period of massive population decline throughout Amazonia during the colonial era, regional systems reemerged in altered form in several areas, particularly in the northwest Amazon region of what is now Colombia and Venezuela, and the western Amazon from northeastern Peru into Amazonian Ecuador (see, e.g., Hornborg and Hill 2011; Vidal 2002). These included multiethnic confederacies led by Arawakan groups, a regional multiethnic system characterized by multilingualism and extensive intermarriage in a process of ethnogenesis (Vidal 2002). These confederacies led by warrior shamans migrated across the region in continual efforts to evade colonial encroachment, forming regional trade patterns and political alliances anchored in a landscape of sacred places (Vidal 2000, 635). Arawakan people living in the Perené and Ucayali River region of northeastern Peru, near the Cerro de Sal, controlled salt mines, to which others traveled over long distances to trade for salt. The area was additionally a ceremonial center to which both Andean and Amazonian peoples from the Upper Amazon came together in a regional exchange network (Mihas et al. 2014; Santos-­Granero 2002, 31–­35; 2004). During both the pre-­Columbian era and later, following recovery from the population nadir of the 1700s, Amazonian societies have been characterized by extensive social network structures and the regional and supra-­regional movement of both trade goods and information, particularly along major rivers (Fausto and Heckenberger 2007, 17; Hornborg 2005; Zucchi and Vidal 2000). Political integration transcended ethnolinguistic boundaries across regional exchange networks and, during the pre-­Columbian era, even continental networks. The Arawakans, for example, served as intermediaries in vast regional systems across major portions of Amazonia during the pre-­Columbian era (Hill and Santos-­Granero 2002, 1–­24). Regionally extensive macro societies were characterized by ritual hierarchy, shared cosmology of sacred spaces within the landscape, and exchanges of prestige goods (Heckenberger 2002; Hornborg 2005). Adaptation and recovery of regional societies in the past two centuries indicates a resilience of Amazonian social forms that underlies shifts in the scale of regional systems over time. Evidence of this dynamic can Introduction  9

be seen in the experience of the Tupi-­Guarani-­speaking Parakaña living between the Xingu and Tocantins. The group split in two; one subgroup formed social units based on a large multifamily dwelling surrounded by swidden horticultural plots and divided by moieties, while the other subgroup became nomadic, lacking horticulture, living in small bands across a vast area and engaging in raiding warfare (Fausto 2012, 7–­8). Such flexibility in social form indicates the potential for scalar shifts within Amazonian societies. The situation of the Waorani may offer a parallel. The present study is focused on ways in which a larger-­scale view of kinship relations provides a complementary perspective as yet not elucidated within Amazonian ethnographies. It demonstrates what can be learned by shifting the scale of kinship studies to a regional perspective, grounded in recent advances in the understanding of kinship and landscape from our interlocutors’ point of view. The study examines dynamics of kinship at a regional scale by exploring social relationships across Runa communities within the central region of Amazonian Ecuador, extending outward to Achuar to the south and Waorani and Napo Runa to the north; from the Napo River to the Copataza and Capahuari Rivers and eastward to the Peruvian border, and including the principal towns at the base of the Andes mountains: Tena and Archidona in Napo Province and Puyo in Pastaza Province. The analysis presented here is informed by recent work in the area of kinship in which kinship is defined as “mutuality of being” (Sahlins 2013) and considered as the fundamental viewpoint from which social relations emanate. Sahlins defines mutuality of being as individuals who are “members of one another . . . involving such transpersonal relationships of being and experience, kinship takes place in the same ontological regime as magic, gift exchange, sorcery and witchcraft” (ix), to which can be added, at the collective level, ritual and celebration. Mutuality of being is intersubjective belonging, in which what one person experiences or suffers also happens to others. A kinship system is therefore “a manifold of intersubjective participations, which is to say, a network of mutualities of being” (20). Kinship constructed sociologically may be considered the same as kinship figured genealogically. Ritual co-­parents are kin, and nonrelated 10 Introduction

individuals living within the group will over time, through the experience of consubstantiality, become kin. Therefore, kinship is “highly performative,” and relationships may shift over time. As noted in the discussion of Waorani concepts of society, many of those where were former enemies are perceived now as kin or potential kin. The obverse is also true. Vilaça notes that for the Tupian Wari’ kin can be reclassified as (potential) enemies if close-­knit social ties are not maintained, a process she termed “enemization,” caused by “spatial distancing and a rupture in the exchanges of festivals and women” (Vilaça 2010, 304). A regional society is therefore a constantly renegotiated network of relations of kinship, based upon “what is locally defined as, in Sahlins’ terms ‘belonging to one another’ and ‘what is different and excluded’” (2013, 43). In this book I argue that while the network of kin relations defines the regional society, it is at the level of each kindred that “belonging to one another” versus “different and excluded” is conceptualized. In this way, multiple overlapping and seemingly conflicting strands of relationships crisscross a regional society and provide its members with the flexibility to reshape relationships continually at the societal level with other groups. Seen from this perspective, the nature of the ethnohistorically documented large-­scale regional societies becomes visible. These systems—­including those detailed for the Orinoco Basin to the Amazon River (Hill 2011; Hill and Santos-­Granero 2002; Vidal 1999, 2000, 2002); the Napo River (Reeve 1994; Uzendoski 2004a); eastern Peru (Santos-­Granero 2002); and for the region as a whole (Reeve 1994; Taylor 1999)—­were perpetuated through an ever-­changing network of kinship-­ type relationships, based on alliance and formal friendships, as well as kindred-­based socio-­political hierarchies. While these extensive regional societies, as described in ritual and in ethnohistorical documentation, no longer exist in practice, the perception of the vast social landscape marking each is still extant, expressed in myth, song, and ritual. At the same time the scale of active kin linkages has changed, bounded now by international borders and incursions of nonindigenous peoples. Kin-­based regional societies continue to exist; they are simply more limited in scale. Kinship at a regional scale expresses a dense web of social relationships Introduction  11

defined by concepts of territory, language use, and shared cosmology; and marked by individual expressions of belonging as well as collective expression through ceremony, visiting, and exchange. This book explores how social life is scaled similarly within a given society through all of these aspects, which emanate from a logic of kinship as mutuality of being. Although this book is based on a moment in time, on ethnographic data collected between the early 1980s and early 2000s, analyzing scale across the dimensions of landscape, kin ties, ritual, and personal expressions of belonging and being, it is important to note that scale is in constant flux; historic processes as well as contemporary political forces have shaped and are changing the scale of Amazonian Kichwa society, as they have been and are changing all Amazonian societies. Recent indigenous political organization across the Amazonian region could be explored as a new form of scalar integration. Much has been written about the political process of indigenous representation in Amazonian Ecuador over the past thirty years (see, e.g., Cepek 2012, 2018; Guzman-­Gallegos 2015; Mijeski and Beck 2011; Perreault 2002, 2003a, 2003b; Sawyer 2004; Uzendoski 2017; Whitten 2008, 2015, 2017; Whitten and Whitten 2011; Wilson 2010). These analyses have contributed to an understanding of political scaling—­what Carr and Lempert refer to as the study of how scales are “assembled, made recognizable, and stabilized through various communication practices; how scalar projects, such as political organizations, socially and ideologically unfold and to what effect as ‘scalar innovations’”; in which “institutions . . . are in the business of stabilizing and naturalizing scalar perspectives into scalar logics” (Carr and Lempert 2016, 25, 26, 31). What is meant by the term scale? Carr and Lempert have applied this geographer’s concept to anthropological theory, describing “scalar configurations [as] the outcome of socio-­spatial processes that regulate and organize social power relations,” and from theory within the discipline of sociology, the idea that inquiry needs to focus on “empirically tracking how social actors carve and cleave—­or scale—­their worlds” (2016, 19). From the individual actor to the workings of power relations at the societal level, scale matters. Carr and Lempert go on to note that scale 12 Introduction

has both temporal and spatial dimensions; that is, projecting backward in time and across space. These dimensions, I suggest, can be readily understood through a focus on kinship relations; indeed, kinship relations are precisely how scale is conceptualized within the Amazonian societies. As a core concept, anthropological analysis of scale extends from kinship outward to “tack back and forth between different ways of looking at the same things” (20). There is a locality (and time depth) to kinship and commensality; land has intersubjective relations with its living human occupiers. Scholars have demonstrated that the current distribution of Amazonian flora is largely a product of the activities of ancient peoples (see, e.g., Rival 2016, 95). Rival has described Waorani trekking as a way of reproducing society across time and space. The forest is seen by Waorani as having been transformed not only by their ancestors but by other peoples who have occupied these spaces (Rival 2016, 39, 49). She notes the example of Waorani discoveries of ayahuasca vines, which they view as evidence of the former presence of “long-­dead Záparo [Sápara] enemies,” vines growing in the forests that Waorani now occupy (49). These Sápara would likely be ancestors of a few of the Kichwa kindreds currently living on the Curaray River, at the community of Curaray. Similar observations have been made elsewhere in Amazonia. Amazonian peoples recognize the flora of the forest, as well as artifacts found there, as evidence of the activities of ancient peoples. For the Waorani, the locations of peach palm groves are part of a group’s social memory, their claim to that part of the forest. “The peach palm materializes as a critical link between past, present and future generations” (54). She goes on to add that “the forest, far from being a pristine environment external to society, exists as the product of the productive and consumptive activities of past peoples” (189). Landscape and kinship are intimately linked in the present and in social memory. Concepts of landscape in indigenous historical memory are evident in narratives and ritual speech. We could view landscape as kinship projected backward in time, as places of the ancestors within the regional society. As Heckenberger (2007, 303) has noted, “Landscapes . . . are peopled with memories, histories, stories of the past, which also represent and Introduction  13

perpetuate contemporary conditions of territory.” Writing about the Wakuénai Arawakans, Hill links concepts of kinship within landscape to ritual, noting that “significant features of the landscape are . . . recursively introduced as signifiers into the process of reproducing human social relations” (Hill 2011, 259). Similarly, for the Amuesha of Amazonian Peru, Santos-­Granero noted “the boundaries of Amuesha traditional territory are not [perceived as] geographical but social and religious. . . . Amuesha space is, and has been, created and re-­created through the process of interaction with both the environment and their neighbors” (1991, 91). The Study

The book is focused on ethnography of a single community with emphasis on what people said about their relationships with other peoples within the central region of Amazonian Ecuador. Most of the descriptive information presented in this study derives from intensive fieldwork carried out during 1981–­82 and supplemented by additional short-­term fieldwork in 1992 and brief visits between 2000 and 2004. As such, these data are historical. Although the community of Curaray has been largely outside major indigenous political mobilization subsequently taking place within Amazonian Ecuador, the region as a whole has undergone significant political shifts over this period of time, due in large part to a reintensification of petroleum exploitation and the indigenous political responses to these state-­sanctioned activities. The formation of indigenous political organizations within Amazonian Ecuador was very much a force in the region during my intensive field research in the early 1980s. Since then the movement has developed national and international reach, and has shifted focus to efforts at minimizing the impact of renewed petroleum exploitation within the region. (For a detailed treatment of these processes, see Cepek 2012, 2018; Sastre 2015; Sawyer 2004; Sawyer and Gomez 2012; Uzendoski 2017; Whitten 2008; Whitten and Whitten 2008; Wilson 2010.) Descriptive information, including vignettes, contained in this book are taken directly from my fieldnotes. All fieldwork, however carefully pursued through participation in the daily life of a community and familiarity 14 Introduction

with the local language, is an anthropologically informed interpretation of shared experience (Fabian 1983). Raw data abstracted from descriptions contained within fieldnotes become the basis of scholarly contributions through their subsequent analysis; an analysis constituting a second level of interpretation (Ingold 2011; Fabian 1983), which is inevitably influenced by current scholarly debates within the anthropological community. As such, any study can be viewed as an “interpretation of an interpretation” of lived, shared experience in which the objective is to make accessible to the scholarly community an understanding of other ways of seeing and doing. I followed initial fieldwork and publication of the results with an extended study of archival sources relating to the missionization of the western Amazon, encompassing what is now Amazonian Ecuador and northeast Peru, between initial Spanish contacts in 1541 and 1542 and the expulsion of the Jesuit Order in 1767. From this emerged an understanding of the regional social system extant during this time period (Reeve 1994, 2014). Archival research left unanswered the question: By what social forms was it possible to link together the indigenous peoples living within such a vast region over an extended period of time? To get at this question, I focused on ethnographic data from a specific community analyzed within a regional perspective. Concepts of kindred, residence, “sitting-­being,” shamanic ritual, collective ritual celebration, historical accounts, and concepts of landscape are all described within this regional perspective. The study investigates what can be learned by enlarging the scale at which anthropologists examine kinship relations, as grounded in recent advances in understanding non-­Western concepts of kinship and landscape. Fieldwork

June 4, 1981. Our bush plane found the grass airstrip along the Curaray River. Landing, we were surrounded by faces, some decorated with delicate tracings of black (genipap) face paint, peering into the plane to see who had arrived. Our hosts were there—­a married couple whom we had met on our previous trip into the community of Curaray. We had visited a Introduction  15

couple of months earlier, accompanied by members of our hosts’ extended kindred who lived in Puyo, the provincial capital of Pastaza Province. We had come the first time to attend the annual year-ending, new-­year-­ beginning Jista celebration, during which outsiders are welcome to visit. We had been granted permission to return, and so now we were here to stay. I watched as the plane took off, becoming a tiny speck disappearing into the Amazonian sky, going westward toward the towns and roads at the base of the Andes. Trekking to our hosts’ split palm house, we settled in to begin the fieldwork for which I had prepared over several years. The Amazonian Kichwa community of San José de Curaray was of tremendous ethnographic interest due to its unique geographic position between the Napo and Bobonaza Rivers; the fact that historically the Curaray River was known as the “river of the Záparos” or Sáparas (Pierre 1983); and because of the proximity of a totally unrelated indigenous group, the Waorani. Given my interest in interethnic relationships, it was for me an ideal field location in which to explore these relationships and their history. What had happened to the Sáparas of the Curaray? Were there any Sápara language speakers living in the community of Curaray? What was the relationship between Curaray Runa and their neighbors to the north, the Waorani? How many Curaray Runa traced their ancestry to Napo Runa and how many to the families living in the Kichwa communities on the Bobonaza River? Why had they come to live on this river and when? How did they maintain contacts back to their natal communities and regions? How many Curaray Runa were the descendants of the Sáparas? The choice of Curaray also provided a solution to the dilemma posed by the politically fraught situation manifesting itself at the time in the provincial capital of Puyo and within several Kichwa communities along the Bobonaza River. Located on the Curaray River, at the north boundary of Pastaza Province, the community of Curaray was decidedly isolated. It was about a forty-­minute flight by bush plane—­or a one-­week trek by forest path and river travel—­eastward into the Amazonian forest from towns at the base of the Andes. On arriving at Curaray, my former husband Stu and I sought ways in which to participate in the daily life of the community, while maintaining 16 Introduction

sufficient independence to stay focused on the research task at hand. (Stu had brought his own data from archeological fieldwork in the United States to analyze during our stay.) Simultaneously, I focused on contributing something of nonmonetary value for the people with whom we were living. Critical to this were several logistical decisions: first, having our own house as a retreat and fieldwork locus; second, having a skill to share—­for me, it was dressmaking—­which was of real and immediate value to women in the community; and finally, being imbedded within a sector of the community comprising several neighbors who were kin to our key interlocutors, themselves related to the Puyo Runa couple who first brought us to the community. After a short stay with our host family, we were able to rent a house directly across the river from their house cluster, in the center of the community through which most people passed at some point during the week, and with three neighbors who were part of the extended kin locus of our host family. Our home within the community was also ideal in that it was located at a significant distance from the non-­Runa sectors of the community, including the Catholic mission school and an Ecuadorian army garrison. Over time we found that non-­Runa residents at these locales rarely interacted with Runa in their own homes, and then only very politely and when expressly invited. The community of Curaray was divided at the time of our residence during the early 1980s into four sectors. Every Sunday people from all sectors came into the center of the community to visit, make purchases from those families that stocked a few items such as soap and fishing line, and to attend Catholic mass. Our house was ideally located. People whom we met during the week when invited to attend a work party (minga) would come by to visit. As I progressed in the speaking the Pastaza dialect of Kichwa, these visits became more meaningful.4 During the week one or another of my neighbors—­young women like myself—­invited me to go with them to work in their swidden horticultural plots (chagras) or, on occasion, to make pottery or to mine clay from the riverbanks for pottery making. During the first half of my fieldwork, as a contribution to the community, I held an afternoon class for women in dressmaking—­ attended by my neighbors and their kin in several other house clusters. Introduction  17

These sewing lessons became a time for gossip, merriment, and also a time for teaching me to speak Pastaza Kichwa properly. One of my neighbors was a master potter who took it upon herself to teach me to make mukawas (mucahuas),5 the highly decorated drinking bowls used by women to serve manioc beer (aswa), a staple of daily life. My other close neighbor, her sister-­in-­law, complemented this role by taking me to her chagra, teaching me to plant manioc, sharing her manioc with me and teaching me to make aswa. Thus, with my own pottery and my own aswa, and with the benches made by my husband, who is skilled at carpentry, we were in a position to entertain visitors properly. Curaray Runa quickly enveloped us in their daily lives. Within the first months of field research, we had been invited to and participated in a number of work parties and, in so doing, met people in all sectors of the community. I had learned to make both mild manioc aswa and strong festival aswa (vinillu) and been pushed to stop using Spanish, conversing only in Kichwa. At our neighbors’ suggestion, we had planted a chagra by hosting a work party of our own. We had learned the etiquette of visiting and moving around the community, doing so only when and where expressly invited, and by observing visiting patterns, we developed an understanding of kin relations throughout the several sectors of the community. In the later phase of fieldwork, I was introduced into more esoteric aspects of Curaray Runa life, as shamans invited us to observe curing rituals, later offering exogetic statements of their work; and women sang for me, songs of sitting-­being and of belonging. Additionally, I was able to work with older men in gaining insights into the history of the community as well as inter-­and intra-­ethnolinguistic group relations, information that became the foundation of my later work in the field of ethnohistory. Further Research

Leaving Curaray following the Jista celebration in which we had assisted, I spent a couple of months pursuing archival research in Ecuador, in order to add time depth to the histories that had been told to me and others during household visits to various sectors of the community. I 18 Introduction

worked through materials in the National Archives in Quito as well as the Dominican materials in archives in Puyo and Quito. This research became my principal focus in the following years, during which time I carried out research in both university libraries and Jesuit archives in the United States. What emerged from this work was evidence for far-­flung social ties across ethnolinguistic groups, from which I developed a model of a regional social system for Amazonian Ecuador and northeast Peru (Reeve 1994). A decade later, with my children now well along in school, I returned to Curaray with one of my original collaborators and her daughter, who had in the interim moved to the town of Puyo. Again I asked about the history of families in the community, and at this point I began to understand the underlying kinship dynamics that had sustained a regional society despite massive upheavals, from European infectious disease epidemics and periods of missionary activity during the Spanish colonial period to the Amazon rubber boom era in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Following this second round of fieldwork, I made several short visits to Puyo in the early 2000s, finding that many of my former neighbors at Curaray now maintained a dual residence pattern in Puyo and Curaray, in part to be able to access better health services and education for their older children, and in part because Waorani, their immediate neighbors to the north, had come into the Curaray River region on a couple of occasions and, I was told, murdered several individuals in shamanic revenge killings, leaving families in fear of further reprisals. Just which groups of Waorani these were was not clear; what was clear was Runa fear of possible further attacks. Yet there was an anomaly within these stories. My interlocutors insisted that one of the Curaray Runa families that had remained in Curaray would continue to visit a nearby group of Waorani with whom they had a rather tenuous kin tie based on abduction of one of their kinswomen decades earlier. Anomalies in data should never be ignored. On reflection, it became clear that the regional society was not formed from inter-­ethnolinguistic group alliances, or from an interrelated group of communities or villages; it was instead a complex web of kinship ties Introduction  19

maintained at the level of kindreds, extending both within and between ethnolinguistic groups, across a shared landscape having both spatial and temporal dimensions. Based on comparison of ethnohistorical and ethnographic data, it became clear that the scale of a regional society was not fixed, but variable, expanding and contracting in size and complexity as kindred groups responded to historical contingencies. Organization of the Book

Chapters in this book are organized to present distinct facets of the regional society from the point of view of Curaray Runa with whom I collaborated on a sustained basis, in some cases over several decades. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the Amazonian landscape in which Curaray Runa interact with others in the region and an introduction to kinship relations between distinct ethnolinguistic groups from the perspective of the expansion of Kichwa speakers across the central Ecuadorian Amazon over the last several centuries. Chapter 2 details concepts of kindred and residence, beginning with the married couple, then moving outward to the residence cluster, and expanding to uses of the regional landscape through extended kinship relationships. Chapter 3 focuses on the ways in which Curaray Runa tell their history, as narratives of intergroup conflict and belonging grounded in the concept of place of kindred origin, and movements resulting from historical conflicts and the impacts of European intrusion. Chapter 4 focuses on the annual Jista at Curaray as an example of an Amazonian regional celebration. The Jista is examined in terms of ritual preparations and the bringing together of kinship groups within the community and kin from elsewhere, who are welcomed into the celebration. The Jista is described as a celebration of the new year, its forest bounty, and the continuity of the regional society through renewed kin ties. Chapter 5 details Runa movement away from the community on treks to distant small settlements, meeting with extended kin at these settlements, and intermarriage with others from far reaches of the regional society. From these descriptions, a model of a kinship system at regional scale is presented. Chapter 6 shifts focus to esoteric knowledge—­to shamanism as healing and protection of the residence group and to women’s 20 Introduction

concepts of esoteric knowledge and sense of placement. It explores the idea of inner essence as expressed in art forms, linking to the view of landscape as a social space in which individual species have both an external form and an internal essence. The chapter ends with a presentation and discussion of several myths, in which the ideas of mutability of form and movement across a vast landscape are linked. Chapter 7 concludes the book. It begins with a brief review of regional social scaling through the indigenous political process over the last four decades in Pastaza Province and the concomitant expansion of regional society to include Amazonian towns at the base of the Andes; and, simultaneously, the emergence of non-­Kichwa speaking indigenous peoples within the regional society, who have made their presence known at a national and international level. The final sections of chapter 7 pull together the arguments presented in each chapter to detail a view of Amazonian kinship and landscape from a regional perspective, in which the scale of a regional society shifts based on historical contingency, while the process remains the same.

Introduction  21

1

Landscape and Kinship in a Regional Society

Curaray Runa landscape extends across a series of river systems and intervening tropical forest areas within Amazonian Ecuador. Runa conceptualize and use this landscape for daily living, from dwelling sites and swidden horticultural plots outward to river and forest, and at the same time conceptualize landscape as “social” in terms of kindred linked to specific places across the region. The Amazonian Landscape

From the air, the central Ecuadorian Amazon appears as a vast forest broken by the thin strands of river systems and occasional clusters of buildings marking settlements. For the indigenous peoples of this region, this is not nature, but is rather a cultural space, a landscape made up of named places that have reference to historical events and peoples, plant and animal resources, and, unobserved from the air, a multiplicity of trails and small trekking locales stretching across the entire area. Curaray Runa participate in a regional society that encompasses the area from the Napo River to the north, southward and eastward to the Pastaza River. Hills, rivers, and trails through the forest are part of the space through which Runa move during their lives and which form geographic referents in local history. Ties of kinship extend across the region, incorporating the Kichwa-­speaking communities of the Bobonaza River with those of the Villano and Curaray Rivers as well as smaller rivers in 23

Fig. 1. Aerial view of the Curaray River region, 1981. Photo by author.

between. The regional society extends beyond this space, incorporating Napo Runa and reaching into kindred among the Achuar, Sápara, Andoa, and Waorani as well as a few Shuar. A regional society extending across a vast area of rivers and forest is maintained through a large-­scale kinship network. Scale has both spatial and temporal dimensions. Regionally conceived landscapes are integral to Amazonian societies and are marked by extensive modifications of the tropical forest over centuries, access to which is delimited not only by kinship relationships but by historical memory of specific events associated with specific geographic features, and linked to specific kindreds. Chapter 1 explores the first of these two dimensions—­the meaning of landscape and its embedded network of kinship relations across the regional society. Amazonian Ecuador: Rivers and Forest

Amazonian Ecuador is a land of dense tropical forest cut by slivers of meandering rivers. The rivers of Amazonian Ecuador are part of a fan-­shaped network of waterways draining east from the Andes and eventually turning toward the southeast in their onward journey to the Amazon River. The community of Curaray is located below 300 meters in elevation, in a true 24 Landscape and Kinship

Amazonian biotope marked by meandering rivers bounded by high bluffs and extensive beaches, beyond which is a periodically inundated floodplain forest dotted with muriti (Mauritius) palm swamps (moretales) and oxbow lakes. Much of the region has characteristics similar to those along the Curaray River. However, the regional society encompasses peoples living in areas of higher elevation, marked by stony clear rivers and poorer agricultural soils. The community of Curaray is situated approximately 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of the town of Puyo, capital of Pastaza Province. Historically isolated, it is still accessible only by small aircraft, a forty-­minute flight from the town of Shell, near Puyo, or via a multiday trek through the forest from the Bobonaza River or Upper Napo region to the Amazonian Kichwa community of Villano, and then down the Villano River by canoe. Today, because of the difficulty of travel, many Curaray Runa maintain a multisited urban-­rural residence pattern, living part-­time in the provincial capital of Puyo or neighboring town of Shell (named for Shell Oil during the early days of petroleum exploration). During my intensive fieldwork stay in the early 1980s, if there was no flight available to Curaray, the only option was to walk, or obtain a flight to the upriver community of Villano, then go by dugout canoe to Curaray. At that time there were few motorized canoes. River travel was done with paddles and poles, meaning a rapid descent but arduous upriver trek. On such treks, older Runa shared their intimate knowledge of the landscape—­both natural resources and information about which people had traditional rights to hunting and settlement areas along the way. On a return visit to Shell years after my intensive field work at Curaray, an older man recounted to a group of young men and women a trip that we had taken together many years earlier from the Amazonian Kichwa community of Villano downriver to Curaray. The Villano River is part of Curaray Runa landscape, with familiar natural resources and trekking patterns. The following vignette describes this landscape. Vignette: Down the Villano River to Curaray

We were two days traveling by dugout canoe, poling and paddling down the Villano River, headed for the community of Curaray. Bush planes flew Landscape and Kinship  25

on demand and in good weather to the dirt airstrip at Curaray, but the weather had been poor; there had been no flight out to the community of Curaray. After several days of waiting at the airport in Shell, four Curaray Runa and I took the one available flight, which got us as far as the community of Villano. Sometime very early the next morning, one of my Curaray Runa traveling companions secured a canoe from his compadre (see glossary) in Villano.1 As we poled down the stony, slow-­moving river, the men discussed the types of trees we were seeing on the riverbanks, the older man among us teaching the two younger men about them: types of ceibu, and the marañón utu. I asked about the birds we heard: the palanda pishku and the condor, the manga pishku with its hanging nest like a small jug, and about the monkeys, the ones making a sound like the howling wind. As we moved downriver, along the left bank appeared the site of Bolaplaya, with its cluster of houses. As we traveled farther downriver, the older man, whom I shall call José, identified the small rivers that flowed into the Villano: the Lupino, then the Lliguino, which was the halfway mark on the first day. In the afternoon we met several Curaray Runa on a trek with compadres and relatives from Villano. They were headed for the Lupino to stay until the time of the Curaray Jista celebration in March. Below the Lupino, José pointed out to the younger men a salt lick called Wangana Cachi. Then in the late afternoon we passed Guaman Playa, so named for the reeds there, which are good for making rafts to go downriver. Finally that day we reached the Callana Yacu, the river used at the time by Curaray Runa for hunting the food served at the Jista. At the Callana Yacu we saw the remains of Don Francisco’s fishing camp. Don Francisco was one of the very few Runa at Curaray who fished commercially. José told me that the lands between the Lupino and Callana Yacu were used at that time by both Runa and Waorani as hunting territory.2 We camped just below the Callana Yacu, sleeping out on the beach and mindful of the possibility that we were being watched by Waorani, who hunt and trek through this area. The next day in the gray dawning we were once again in the canoe. We entered a series of rapids (sas)—­José calling directions to the point man, who directed the canoe through the rapids with his pole. José knew each bend in the river and discussed these 26 Landscape and Kinship

and their oxbow lakes with the younger men, who asked what fish the lakes contained and whether or not there was a boa constrictor (amarun) resident in the lake. We soon came to the trekking (purina) houses of Curaray Runa, the first purina house belonging to José, then one owned by Runa from Quillualpa, the sector at the upper end of the community of Curaray on the Villano. We stopped at a purina house owned by a relative of one of the younger men. Here we cooked the fish caught in the early morning and some manioc from the purina house garden plot, which, as a member of the family, he was permitted to use. As we came into the sector of the community of Curaray located on the Villano River, one by one we left off our traveling companions at their homes, until arriving at the center of the community, where the canoe remained, to be returned to its owner in Villano another day. José knew the Villano River intimately, pointing out good places to hunt particular animals along the way; identifying small streams and rivers that flow into the Curaray; cautioning us regarding areas from which we might be observed by Waorani as we ran the waters near their hunting trails and lands; and finally, advising which kin groups had purina lands near the community of Villano, and near to Curaray, identifying the space in between as a shared hunting and fishing territory. These observations represent a moment in time, the trip having taken place in 1982. As the population of both Runa and Waorani has expanded, as petroleum exploitation in the Villano region has expanded, and as the Waorani have established a firm claim to the northern shore of the Villano River, pressures on these lands have increased. Now motorized canoes travel a river laced with byproducts of petroleum exploitation, yet Runa and Waorani continue to trek through these areas, and settlement continues to expand outward from communities such as Curaray, in a Runa-­Waorani shared concept of landscape. The Curaray Runa Landscape

Both the Villano and Curaray Rivers are the principal trekking areas for Curaray Runa. The community of Curaray sits at the confluence of these two rivers, extending along both sides of the Villano-­Curaray confluence. Landscape and Kinship  27

Household clusters of closely related kin (llactas) are located along the river. Each llacta is separated from others by sections of swidden horticultural plots (chagras), cleared by cutting and drying the forest underbrush. Within these chagras manioc and plantains, staples of the diet, grow in profusion alongside minor crops such as peanuts, maize, chili peppers, taro (“papa china”), banana, pineapple, and medicinal plants. Away from the river, llactas, and chagras, hunting and trekking lands stretch through the tropical forest east, west, and south into other Runa communities. Directly north of Curaray are the lands of Waorani peoples, into which Runa do not travel without an express invitation to visit their kin married into Waorani families. Runa communities along the Bobonaza, Villano, and Curaray Rivers have a similar structure. At the core of each Runa community is a Catholic mission site, accompanied by community buildings, including an elementary school. Runa communities are located along rivers and are composed of named sectors that stretch along the main river and in some instances back toward secondary rivers. As the population grows, additional sectors may develop their own centers. For example, at Curaray in the early 1980s there was only one school. Now, however, there are several schools, each located within a community sector. Community sectors are nominal divisions composed of interrelated households that form one or more llactas. At Curaray in the early 1980s there were two named sectors: Quillualpa, at the farthest extent of the community up the Villano River, and Shihuacocha, located upriver on the Curaray from the core area of the community. Within each of these two sectors resided a powerful shaman, his wife, and several of their married children in separate households. The shaman at Quillualpa was originally from the community of Sarayacu on the Bobonaza River, while the shaman and his wife who resided at Shihuacocha were from the Napo Runa area around the town of Tena. The core area of the community was settled by two principal llacta heads and their kin. These were older household clusters, dating from the time in which Runa from Canelos moved into the area after the Amazon rubber boom. Radiating from these central llactas were smaller llactas headed by older couples with 28 Landscape and Kinship

kin ties to Canelos, Sarayacu, and/or Napo Runa kindred. Significantly, in both the named sectors and central llactas resided older individuals who were Sápara, either originally from Curaray or from the Conambo River group of Sápara. Runa communities stretch along the major rivers and are divided into named sectors. However, it is the household cluster—­the llacta—­that is the fundamental settlement unit of Curaray and Bobonaza Runa society; kin-­based and with extensive ties to llactas in other Runa communities as well as ties to kin in other ethnolinguistic groups. Each llacta is made up of an older couple, some of their children, and inmarried sons and daughters-­in-­law. Each couple and their children maintain individual households within the llacta and their chagras nearby. The llacta is the geographic nexus within the regional society. Dense webs of interrelated kin occupy the regional society encompassed by Runa communities along the Bobonaza, Villano, and Curaray Rivers. The regional kin networks extend beyond these communities, such that some kin groups are linked to Sápara, others to Achuar or Andoas, and still others to Waorani peoples. Similarly, multiple linkages exist with Napo Runa from the Tena and nearby Archidona area. Trekking between communities and to isolated trekking (purina) sites are highly valued activities, permitting Runa to visit with their kin living elsewhere within the region. Purina sites are located in sparsely populated areas of the regional landscape, places between communities where game is plentiful and access is easier by kin living elsewhere. To go on purina is to share with these kin a life away from the community, with its church and school routine, a time for sharing fresh meat and esoteric knowledge from mythic space-­time (Unai) and beginning times (Callari Uras). Historically, shifting settlement from purina to community residence followed the seasons. Runa say that in beginning times, at the time of year when monkeys were fat, people went on purina, and when they were thin, people clustered together by large rivers. When the chonta (peach palm fruit) was ripe, people had a festival.3 Runa trekking defines a regional cultural landscape replete with locales that are important to what Whitten (1976, 141) has termed maximal ayllus, Landscape and Kinship  29

large extended family groups that share a common history, a place of origin, and continuity with their kin living in other communities. Knowledge of such places of origin and history are shared in the narration of landscape histories, to be explored in detail in chapter 3. Seasonal trekking is common to many Amazonian societies. Viveiros de Castro (1992) describes dispersal of the Tupi-­Guarani Araweté during the rainy season into the forest after the planting of the maize crop. In other seasons Araweté disperse on longer distance treks to collect turtle eggs and to hunt and fish. He notes that the annual cycle is an oscillation between village and forest, “between corn and tortoise” (95). Vilaça describes for the Tupian Wari’ a pattern of forest trekking to distant parts of their territory for about three months each year while the maize is ripening in their swidden horticultural plots. She goes on to note that villages are considered transitory, but maize swidden areas are permanent, remembered locales (Vilaça 2010, 34–­35). Hill (2011, 268) notes that the Arawakan Wakuénai go on annual and semiannual treks to remote hunting and fishing grounds, some of which also contain horticultural plots, and in some areas are located in old village sites. Closer to Curaray Runa, Rival (2002) has described in detail trekking patterns among the Waorani. To the northwest, the Cofán of the Avila area, as of the mid-­twentieth century, lived in small extended family groups from which they periodically came together at larger settlements, some of which were multiethnic. Yet unlike the Waorani, the Cofán maintained an oral history of earlier times in which they had lived in settlements of up to several thousand people (Cepek 2018, 60–­61). Trekking and settlement patterns across the landscape shift with changing historical circumstance. Curaray Runa explained to me that in beginning times, much of the year was spent in isolated settlements away from the major rivers, with little time spent in larger settlements. These settlements had been established as Catholic mission sites along major rivers during the past three centuries, providing sporadic access to European trade goods and refuge from predation by slavers, rubber merchants, and interethnic warfare. Runa communities developed as kin groups established llactas near the mission sites. With a greater permanence 30 Landscape and Kinship

of church and school functions in the twentieth and early twenty-­first centuries, and with improved access by road, motorized canoe, and small airplane, the community residence has become stable and the population has grown. In sum, settlement across a shared landscape has fluctuated within Amazonian Ecuador over time, but the ancient pattern of seasonal trekking characteristic of Amazonian indigenous societies remains an important aspect of Runa life. There is a clear seasonal cycle to the availability of forest and river resources. Seasonality alters uses of the landscape and defines a social cycle throughout the year. For Curaray Runa, major seasonal transitions occur with the advent of the rains and high river water in March, a period of wet and relative cold that ends in August. August through October is a time of low river waters and sun. Rains begin in November and December, and by January and February, forest fruits are abundant. In the region of the Curaray-­Villano confluence, the year is considered to begin with this time of abundance, with the return of rains and the birth of many tropical forest birds and mammals. Runa move across the landscape of the regional society based on seasonal abundance and scarcity. The period of abundance is the time of festival celebrations, marked by large gatherings of kin from across the regional society. The ending of one year and beginning of another is celebrated with marriages and renewal of kin ties across the region. During this time of festival gathering, the community of Curaray, together with those of Canelos, Pacayacu, and Sarayacu on the Bobonaza River, each hold a major celebration, called simply Jista. Immediately following these celebrations, Runa kin groups disperse into the forest for a brief period to go hunting and fishing. They return to the community during the wet and relatively cool period from April until mid-­July or August, when household activities focus on local hunting and gardening within the social sphere of the llacta. The daily round of subsistence activity is punctuated by work parties (mingas) held among kin and compadres, and by one-­to-­three-­day fishing, hunting, and gathering trips downriver and into the forest. Curaray Runa follow an ancient pattern of trekking across the Landscape and Kinship  31

landscape, hunting and gardening at isolated sites—­purina territories—­ for several weeks or, when feasible, for several months each year. They refer to this time as “going on purina”—­going trekking. Runa visit their trekking (purina) sites, which are shared with kin from other Runa communities. During my fieldwork, I found that many Runa with small children wait until August to go on purina, immediately after the closure of school for the year. Curaray Runa explained to me that their traditional movements across the landscape, in particular opportunities to go on treks, have been impacted by the school year. Education of children is highly valued, but the school year limits the amount of time that families can go trekking and stay at their purina locales away from the community, visiting with kin from elsewhere. At the end of the school year in July most families leave the community, traveling to their purina houses and chagras, located either upriver or downriver from the community. Families remain away at these sites, hunting, fishing, trading, and visiting with relatives from other communities until those with children in school must return for the beginning of the new school year. Older couples may remain for months at their purina sites. Traditionally, during the dry period characterized by low river levels, Runa trekked long distances downriver to distant beaches to gather newly laid river turtle eggs and to visit with distant trading partners and kin in these locales. Runa say that when the Pleiades becomes visible in the sky, it is the time for charapa turtles to lay their eggs along the river beaches. The eggs of the charapa, a large Amazonian river turtle, were highly prized for their oil content. October, November, and December into January were the most important times for the gathering of charapa eggs. This was a time of extensive river travel for many Amazonian riverine peoples. A regional society vast in scale, encompassing the area of what is now Amazonian Ecuador and northeastern Peru, was knit together through extensive treks, treks that took Napo Runa and Runa of the Curaray and Bobonaza Rivers as far as the upper Huallaga River to collect rock salt at regionally known and shared mines. Such travel is no longer possible. The 1941 conflict between Ecuador and Peru resulted in closure of their 32 Landscape and Kinship

Fig. 2. Purina house, 1981. Photo by author.

Amazonian border, after which Runa living on the Ecuadorian side were separated from their kin in Peru, and the historic pattern of long-­distance river travel came to an end. Trekking with kin is an integral aspect of Amazonian societies. For example, in central Brazil, the Gé speaking Kayapo villages of up to four hundred people disperse as people leave to go trekking. The trekking groups are based on moiety affiliation, indicating what Turner refers to as a “weak corporate structure at the level of village” (2017, 20–­21). Traveling and trekking are seen by the Nahua of Peru as a way to meet and exchange with others, including powerful others, and to acquire knowledge, as well as a means to “disentangle relationships” with others (Feather 2009, 77–­79). As Roller succinctly notes, “Seasonal rhythms of mobility and fixity have long shaped native Amazonians’ ways of belonging on the land” (2014, 11). In past centuries many Amazonian peoples went on long-­distance treks, treks remembered in their oral histories, songs, and ritual narratives. Such movements made use of major rivers in what Hill (2011, 269) describes as Landscape and Kinship  33

a “hydrocentric pattern” in which Arawakan-­speaking peoples followed main rivers, coastlines, and islands with shorter “bridges” across significant territorial areas. For peoples of the western Amazon, as well as the Arawakan speakers of the Rio Negro region, such bridges were formed by trails between the headwaters of major rivers. Hill describes such overland trails as shortcuts through the forest that linked affinally related groups and that served as “escape routes” in survival migrations during times of trauma, such as the Amazon rubber boom (266). Likewise, ethnohistorical data point to the prior existence of long-­distance trekking and trade along the river systems of the western Amazon from the Huallaga River in northwest Peru to the Napo River in northern Amazonian Ecuador (Reeve 1994, 2014; Taylor 1999; Uzendoski 2014a). Runa Communities within the Regional Society

The core of Runa regional society is encompassed by Kichwa speakers living in the Puyo area, along the Bobonaza River, in the Villano area, and along the Curaray River. In Puyo and in the communities of Canelos, Pacayacu, and Sarayacu on the Bobonaza River, Runa kindreds have long-­established ties with kin from both Achuar and Zaparoan (Sápara, Gaes, and Andoas) ethnolinguistic groups. The community of Pacayacu is the territory of former Zaparoan Gaes peoples. Here also are a few kin originally from the community of Andoas, located on the lower Bobonaza River. Andoas kin groups make up a significant proportion of the community of Montalvo, located downriver from Sarayacu. To the north of the Bobonaza River, the community of Villano was settled by Runa from Canelos, who have used the headwaters of the Villano River as trekking lands for centuries. Curaray, in contrast, was once part of the territory of Sápara people, the descendants of whom intermarried with Runa from Canelos and Napo Runa, particularly from the Upper Napo, as well as a few Achuar. Some kin groups in Curaray have ties to the western group of Waorani, their neighbors to the immediate north. Such kin ties extend across central Amazonian Ecuador, creating a large-­ scale regional society. As in many parts of the Amazon, Runa communities originated during 34 Landscape and Kinship

the colonial era as multiethnic mission sites from which extended families moved back and forth throughout a regional social landscape in trekking and longer-­distance travel and trading expeditions (see, e.g., Reeve 1994; Roller 2014, 5–­7). The oldest among the Curaray-­Bobonaza mission-­based multiethnic communities is Canelos, founded originally in 1581 by Dominicans (Whitten 2008, 7). Patterns of trekking, visiting, and marriage reflect the dynamic nature of Runa regional society. At Curaray during the early 1980s, I listened to stories of visits across the regional society. As Runa returned during September and October from treks to their purina territories or visiting in other communities, they talked about their origins in other communities and other ethnolinguistic groups. Runa women often joked with each other, teasing about the differences between Sarayacu and Canelos women, for example, or between Napo and Curaray women, but it was during and after the purina time that people remembered past journeys and their grandparents living in distant communities. When Curaray Runa talked about their kin, they mentioned ties to people living in other communities and numerous small settlements within Pastaza Province. They talked about linkages to other ethnolinguistic groups and their territories, in particular to Napo Runa and to Sápara. Both young men and young women often traveled to distant communities, finding spouses there. Upriver on the Curaray, many families had strong ties to the Napo River region as well as linkages to Zaparoan kindreds of Curaray or the Conambo River region. A powerful shaman from the Tena area and his wife lived in this part of the community. Along the Villano River sector of the community, many families talked of their origins in Canelos or Sarayacu on the Bobonaza River. Upriver on the Villano was a household cluster headed by a powerful shaman from the Bobonaza. When recounting the history of the area, an elder living on the Villano referred to this river as the river of Canelos, contrasting it with other peoples who had lived along the Curaray River. The Curaray was the historic territory of several groups of Sápara peoples. Some of these Sápara descendants lived in Curaray at the time of my fieldwork there. Runa who are descendants of Curaray Sáparas maintain Landscape and Kinship  35

a continuing identity as Sápara through oral narratives recounting their history, and some knowledge of the Sápara language as well. Along both the Villano and Curaray, a few women talked of their family as Sápara, who were “from here,” while others said that their older relatives had come from a Sápara group on the Conambo River. One older woman explained that her mother was Sápara. She had learned none of the Sápara language from her mother, who died when she was young, but some of her female relatives had learned a few words. Another woman there spoke a few words of Sápara. She explained that both her mother and father were “from here” and that the Catholic priest had given them a Spanish surname to replace their Sápara name. Sápara peoples (Zaparoans) were decimated during the period of the Amazon rubber boom, both as victims of raiding parties, which carried entire family groups into the rubber gathering areas of Peru, and also due to epidemic disease and intergroup warfare. Curaray Runa explained that before this time, there were several groups of Zaparoans living throughout the region on forest hill sites between the Bobonaza and the Curaray. Older men spoke about the Tayak, a former Sápara group living at Sápara Urcu in the forest. They said that one large ayllu from Andoas (a Zaparoan community) had gone to Pacayacu, historically the core area of the Gaes group of Zaparoans. As I listened to personal Curaray Runa histories of trekking, marriage, and movement for a natal community to Curaray, it became clear that a regional society extends across the entire central area of Amazonian Ecuador. It crosses the distinct ethnolinguistic territories of Curaray and Bobonaza Runa, Napo Runa, Achuar, Zaparoan speakers (Sápara, Gaes, and Andoas peoples) as well as (western) Waorani groups, uniting families while strengthening a sense of place within a community or settlement, and a sense of origin in distinct ethnolinguistic groups occupying specific territories within the region. Kin, Former Enemies, and Foreigners

At Curaray, elders talked to me about distinct extended family groups living within the eastern portion of Waorani territory. Among these 36 Landscape and Kinship

isolated groups are those whom Curaray Runa refer to as the “Killuchaki” auca (yellow foot enemy-­foreigners), who are also called Aushiri, and are possibly the same people as the “Pukachaki” (red foot) enemy-­foreigners. The Killuchaki are different from the Waorani, Runa said, because they have a muntun (a term meaning extended kin living together) of their own. They are a forest people, who do not come to the Curaray River, but formerly they had killed Runa here. Waorani had also killed Runa on the Curaray, and such former conflicts are part of family histories. Two of my neighbors recounted the deaths of their grandparents at the hands of the Waorani, when their families first came down the Villano River from the communities of Canelos and Huito and settled at Curaray. Even with this sense of fear and history of conflict, a few Runa families maintain kin ties with Waorani kindred. Nevertheless, Waorani are considered to be former enemies. The other groups, those living in isolation in the region between the Curaray and Napo Rivers, however, are considered to be enemy-­foreigners, outside of the regional society. Women also recounted stories about “thefts” of young women by nonkin. These had occurred in one family when a Waorani captured a Runa girl who later married into his family. After the marriage, this Waorani family group came to Curaray on a regular basis and established formal friendship ties with several families there. Not all cases of spousal theft are resolved within a single generation through establishment of formal friendships. In another instance, an older woman mentioned that she had a sister living on the Aguarico River, in Peru. She said lots of Shuar live there, on the Aguarico, and that this sister had been “stolen” in a marriage that had resulted in a still unresolved major interfamily conflict. The sister had been lost, taken out of the regional society with its interwoven kin linkages, linkages carried forward through the generations. Such a break might be resolved in a future generation through establishment of a formal friendship tie, but resolution, she said, was in no way assured. Formal friendship is an important way in which peoples of the western Amazon create a trading partnership and potential for a marriage alliance. Partnerships are formed couple to couple between couples who belong Landscape and Kinship  37

to otherwise unrelated or distantly related Runa extended families, or between couples from distinct ethnolinguistic groups. Formal friendship is a way of extending kin. It thickens the linkages that any couple maintains across the regional society. These ties are marked by the term compadrazgo (ritual co-­parenthood; see glossary) and, among Runa, include sponsorship of a child or young married couple, in concordance with Spanish tradition. Beyond the Runa regional society are peoples who do not frequently marry Runa but are considered to be potentially marriageable. Compadrazgo ties may be made between Runa couples and these others. What is striking, however, are the “outlier” marriages between members of distinct ethnolinguistic groups for whom intermarriage is not common. The Waorani, Shuar, Andean Kichwa, Europeans, and Afro-­Ecuadorians are all within this category. Such marriages form important “social nodes” linking Amazonian Kichwa to other peoples. Since the 1980s these marriages have become increasingly common, as Runa extend their kinship networks outward to these other peoples. Historically, multiple kin linkages across a regional society provided for those who are orphaned in conflicts to go elsewhere, marry elsewhere, and still be among kin. Young men (both Achuar and Waorani) who had been orphaned by conflict married into Curaray Runa families through their other kin links to Napo Runa. Women “stolen” in marriage by members of other ethnic groups also provided linkages outward for future generations, even as the women themselves were lost to these groups. Curaray Runa stories revealed a couple of instances of “outlier” marriages with families from the Andean region, bringing these new kin into Curaray. Through commensality—­the sharing of food, residence, life experiences—­and through their children, who share soul substance with both kin groups, adopted persons became kin. In common with other Amazonian societies, for Amazonian Kichwa, kinship is a process of becoming (Uzendoski 2014b, 133; Vilaça 2002, 2007). A few Curaray Runa were linked by family ties to Andoas people who live downriver from the Bobonaza communities and across the international border in Peru. Such links were important historically, I was told, 38 Landscape and Kinship

for the long-­distance treks that took Runa downriver as far as Iquitos and the Huallaga River in Peru. The closing of the border between Peru and Ecuador following the 1941 conflict created a difficulty for these long-­distance treks. People with whom I spoke, both in Bobonaza communities and in Curaray, lamented the loss of kin due to the closure of the border. Visiting and kin-­making actualizes landscape, which is why an international border closure was so significant, constituting for the Runa and those on the other side a loss of individuals as nexuses for ongoing visiting and for their potential contribution to kindreds. In summary, just as the llacta is the core residence unit, the extended kin group (ayllu) is the key node within Runa regional society. Ayllus transcend linguistic and territorial boundaries. Individuals become members of the llacta into which they have married. The llacta as a whole keeps alive relations with the ayllus of inmarried spouses through trading and visiting, and through marriage in a succeeding generation. Beyond intermarriage, formal friendship and compadrazgo relationships extend kin ties to other ayllus and to groups with whom intermarriage is infrequent. This dense web of relationships maintains an ongoing regional society across ethnolinguistic territories. Within this sphere, the Waorani, Napo Runa, Runa of the Bobonaza and Curaray Rivers, Sápara, Andoa, and Achuar all maintain distinct and clearly delineated territories defined by llacta, community, and trekking lands. While an individual may shift his or her residence through marriage, becoming a member of his or her spouse’s llacta, one’s natal kin remain kin, and the history of ethnic affiliation is passed from generation to generation. While community and ethnolinguistic territory are integral to concepts of place and origin, Curaray Runa organize their social universe based on ayllu and llacta ties. Couples reside with their kin in the llacta. Each llacta is made up of several members of two or more extended families (ayllu). The llactas of several related ayllus are grouped together into named community sectors. As these sectors grow over several generations, they take on the character of a community. An ayllu has members not only within a particular llacta and community but in llactas in other communities throughout the region. Ayllus interconnect all Runa communities as well Landscape and Kinship  39

as the more sparsely populated areas between them into a regional society. The regional society is a web of densely interconnected ayllus, including extensions of some of these ayllus into neighboring ethnolinguistic groups. Ayllu membership is at the core of any individual’s social world. Runa individuals and couples may travel for long periods of time to visit their ayllu living elsewhere. Runa may travel by bush plane, but more commonly use canoes and the dense web of forest trails between settlements to travel and visit members of their ayllu as well as compadres. As described in the vignette of a trip down the Villano River, older men know the rivers and surrounding forest well. Between the rivers flowing eastward, trails going roughly north-­south provide trekking connections between riverine communities. Like the rivers, trails are shared among people across the regional society. These trails have been in use for centuries, linking Catholic mission-­based communities on the Bobonaza River with the Curaray River settlements at its headwaters and the Catholic mission community of Curaray. Many trails lead also to smaller Runa settlements occupied on a temporary basis, which may over time become more permanent locations. Trails also lead southward from the Bobonaza into Achuar lands. From the headwaters of the Curaray there is a trail to the Napo Runa community of Arajuno. There is no direct trail from Curaray or Villano to other Napo Runa communities. Such a trail would need to pass through Waorani lands, which lie between the Curaray and the Napo Rivers. As noted, only Runa with kin ties to a specific Waorani family crossed into Waorani lands. In addition to frequent travel, both men and women often change residence to marry, or later in life due to interpersonal conflicts within the community, or to take advantage of opportunities elsewhere. Over the past two decades many Curaray Runa have established a residence in the town of Puyo or nearby town of Shell. In addition to providing access to higher education for children, a town residence facilitates access to medical care and a way to earn cash through labor or sale of goods (handicrafts, dried fish) in the local informal economy. Such multisited residence strategies are increasingly common throughout Amazonia (Alexiades 2009). Amazonian Kichwa kin and formal friendship networks are illustrative 40 Landscape and Kinship

of the dense web of relationships that historically characterized many Amazonian societies as regional systems (Fausto 2012; Hornborg 2005; Reeve 1994; Roller 2014; Uzendoski 2004a; Zucchi and Vidal 2000). Focusing on the ways in which Curaray Runa talk about these relationships permits a deeper appreciation of the dynamic nature of Amazonian regional societies, in terms of current indigenous agency, as well as insights into written historical accounts and indigenous narratives of the past. That said, there is clear evidence that many Amazonian societies existed in isolation, rather than extending regionally (see, e.g., Rival 2002, 2016). However, in some situations, it appears that these two potentialities of Amazonian society are historically contingent (see, e.g., Fausto 2012). In other words, groups of extended kin within a wider ethnolinguistic group may or may not choose relative isolation, depending upon the contingencies under which they live, including, for example, intrusion into traditional territories by extractive industries such as logging and petroleum exploitation. Historical Antecedents: Ethnogenesis of Runa within Pastaza Province

Amazonian Ecuador may be a particularly facile locale from which to discern the existence of regional societies among Amazonian peoples. The region was populated by distinct ethnolinguistic groups that, with the exception of the Achuar, Shuar, and Waorani, were exposed to periodic intense Spanish colonial pressures, including disease epidemics, missionization, and slave raiding, followed during the early Republican period by the dislocations of the Amazon rubber boom. These pressures appear to have stimulated intergroup warfare, adding to population loss and dislocation. During the Spanish colonial era in the western Amazon, indigenous warfare and flight from disease epidemics and slave raiders followed patterns with roots in an ancient regional social sphere, such that surviving families or individuals could move from one place to kin residing elsewhere and thereby escape the worst impacts of European incursions, or alternately, as documented in Jesuit records, move toward mission Landscape and Kinship  41

settlements where European trade goods could be obtained and some protection from raiding warfare and slave raiders was assured. During the Spanish colonial and later periods, the region became dominated along the Napo, Curaray, Villano, and Bobonaza Rivers by Kichwa speakers. Kichwa became a lingua franca within the western Amazon, possibly before European contact (Whitten and Whitten 1988). Survivors of the many small indigenous groups speaking distinct languages became Kichwa speakers. Amazonian Kichwa speakers emerged over several centuries as a dominant group through this process of ethnogenesis (Whitten and Whitten 2011). Yet Curaray Runa families retain histories of origins in other groups; as being Sápara, Gaes, Andoas, Canelos, Napo Runa, or Achuar. By the 1880s, during Ecuador’s early Republican period, explorers reached the Curaray region. Alfred Simson traveled through the region in 1886, followed in 1887 by Father Pierre, who described the Curaray as the “river of the Záparos” (Pierre 1983; Simson 1993). These Zaparoan peoples, by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, were embroiled in the Amazon rubber boom. Curaray Runa recall these times, naming the settlements established by rubber merchants on the Curaray and talking of the web of indebtedness in which indigenous peoples of the Curaray River were enmeshed (Reeve 1988b). Several groups of Sápara were engaged in rubber collecting. Runa say one of these groups was taken downriver to Iquitos in Peru and never returned, while the majority remained on the Curaray. Downriver from the community of Curaray, one hundred years ago a traveler would have encountered several rubber merchant settlements, which Curaray Runa refer to as haciendas, along stretches of the river as it wends its way to the Peruvian border. The haciendas and nonindigenous residents are long gone. Later, the major communities were Pavacachi, located midriver on the Curaray, and Lorocachi, nearer the border with Peru. In the 1980s Curaray Runa traveled this stretch of the river to hunt, fish, and visit with kin at Pavacachi and Lorocachi. This area is now frequented by eastern groups of Waorani, according to what my Curaray Runa interlocutors told me in the early 2000s. Regional societies are not only artifacts of history but continue to 42 Landscape and Kinship

exist across the northern and western Amazon. Uzendoski notes that Napo Runa adults know the kinship affiliations of hundreds of people, a knowledge that extends beyond Napo Runa kindreds into Runa kindreds of other Amazonian regions, eastward and south to the towns and lands along middle and lower Napo River, to Puyo Runa and Runa living in Curaray and Bobonaza River communities; and north and eastward into the Putumayo region of Colombia, an area of Tukanoan-­speaking people. Such relations are kept current through visiting and gifting, information sharing, and through providing help in times of need (Uzendoski 2005, 64). This is a regional reach of kinship ties comparable in scale and overlapping in part with that of the Bobonaza and Curaray Runa. In summary, regional kinship relations crisscross central Amazonian Ecuador. Explored in terms of concepts of landscape, the entire geographic region becomes a unified social sphere. The next chapter shifts focus to the local setting, examining the dynamics of kinship relations and residence within the community of Curaray, as integrated into the regional society.

Landscape and Kinship  43

2

Ayllu and Llacta

In a regional view of kinship and landscape, it is the extended kin group (ayllu) and residence cluster (llacta) that define social relationships across communities. Ayllu and llacta can be considered as the warp and weft of the regional society. Members of an ayllu live in communities and small settlements across the Curaray and Bobonaza Runa landscape, and some individual ayllu members live in other ethnic territories—­Waorani, Achuar, Sápara—­creating ties that can lead to additional inter-­ethnolinguistic group marriages as well as an extension of formal friendship (compadrazgo) ties to other ayllu members in other ethnolinguistic groups. In contrast, the llacta is the core residence group made up of members of two or more ayllus that have intermarried. Runa communities on the Curaray and Bobonaza Rivers consist of a number of llactas, each of which constitutes a labor-­sharing residence unit. Ayllu affiliation is given at birth, but llacta membership is fluid. Members of a llacta move in and out, especially if they go to live with a spouse elsewhere or if there is conflict among llacta members. The flexibility of the llacta membership, combined with a predominance of marriages across communities, strengthens and reinforces the regional society. This chapter explores ways in which residence, kinship, and complementarity between spouses in daily life create and sustain the linkages that define the regional society within the shared landscape of central Amazonian Ecuador.

45

The Couple’s Bond

At the core of Runa life is the couple, each spouse bringing ayllu connections to build the llacta. The llacta grows as the children of an older couple marry, bringing their spouses into the llacta as in-­laws, or marrying out to strengthen ayllu ties with other llactas. Yet the core of daily life remains with the couple. The complementary opposition of male and female pervades both symbolically, as in the annual Jista celebration, and in daily life. The opposition centers on the contribution of each spouse—­ the woman as provider of the essential food, manioc beer (aswa); and the man as provider of game and fish. These two foods symbolize sociability; the capacity to continue life force is essentially a bond with an affine. Vignette: “How We Live”

One day in 1981, at a collective work party (minga) in which two llactas had gathered together, an older man called me over from the women’s side of the house. He wanted me to understand the couple’s bond. He spoke slowly, asking me after each phrase a rhetorical question: Do you hear me? Do you understand? Here, I paraphrase what he said:1 Ñukanchi Runa rimanchi (We Runa talk about how we live). A man goes out hunting, looking for game to bring to his family. Returning home with the meat, he gives it to his wife, who serves him aswa. The man says to his wife that he plans to go for two months to visit a member of his ayllu in another territory, while his wife remains at home. He says that while he is away, other women will give him aswa to drink. When he returns to his wife, she gives him aswa. Then again he goes out hunting; finding no meat he returns home, begging his wife not to be angry. Even though there is no meat, she gives him aswa to drink. If people fight within the community—­if people are angry and a man and wife do not live happily there—­then they go off to live in the forest by themselves, just the man and his wife in their own house. Only in this way can they live in tranquility. 46  Ayllu and Llacta

The narrative makes clear four key elements of Runa life: the dyadic relationship between manioc beer and meat; the distinct roles assumed by the man and woman who form a couple; the importance of travel to visit kin in distant communities; and the freedom to leave a particular community and live elsewhere, even alone in the tropical forest, to avoid social conflict. The locus of productive life is the couple, seated in a place that is contingent upon conviviality within the llacta and community (see, e.g., Overing and Passes 2000). The natal ayllu of each man and woman forms a network of ties across the region upon which the couple may draw. The couple is the core household unit within a given llacta. The ayllu is the kinship network, regional in scope, into which each individual is bound, distinct from his or her spouse. All social relations derive from these nodes; the couple within a llacta, and their respective ayllus. Following Sahlins (2013), ayllu and formal friendships are the kinship bonds from which all social relations emanate. He notes: “Kinsmen are persons who belong to one another, who are parts of one another, who are co-­parent in each other, whose lives are joined and interdependent” (21). All kinship ties derive from the perspective of the individual (Conklin 2001; Vilaça 2010; Viveiros de Castro 1992); the individual as spouse, as member of an ayllu, and as resident within a llacta. As emphasized by the narrator, women and men produce within separate domains. The narrator identified the principal contributions of each spouse. For men it is success in hunting. For women it is the capacity to produce and serve aswa, made from the manioc grown in her swidden horticultural plot (chagra) and served in a decorated pottery vessel (mukawa) of her making. As such, each spouse adds value to life, ensuring its sustainability. In the intersubjective world of the household and llacta, value can be seen as “a consistent pattern of thought and action modeled on a complex, multistranded theory of kinship and subsistence transformation” (Uzendoski 2005, 4). As the narrator indicates, the most fundamental aspect of Runa life is the bond between men and women, as a couple sharing in the essential elements of life-­giving sociability. Of these elements, aswa is primary—­ without which, as Runa say, life is not possible. Women are responsible Ayllu and Llacta  47

for all aspects of aswa production, from planting of the manioc stems that grow tubers to processing tubers into aswa. This essential food is shared by women within the household and with guests. Men facilitate this life-­giving and social-­bond-­affirming daily activity through their labor in clearing land for chagras and in hunting game and fishing for foods to be served along with the aswa. Much of my fieldwork in 1981–­82 revolved around observing women in their daily tasks, participating when invited to do so, and helping with collective labor activities; for example, when the llacta group gathered to weed a large chagra. Daily life in the household and within the llacta revolved around a set of activities for production and sharing of foods, activities fundamental to sociability. Horticulture and Pottery Production

Women spend considerable time growing and harvesting food crops in their chagras. Runa practice a swidden-­fallow system in which chagras tend to have a directional creep as older sections are left fallow and newer sections planted. Ideally, a household maintains a dual strategy, having one or more chagras located in rich riverside soils and also in upland areas free from flooding, but with poorer soils. In addition to chagras near the llacta, chagras are often planted at purina sites, where the produce is shared with ayllu members from distant locales. All women maintain at least two, and up to six, chagras. The principal crop within the chagra is manioc, used as a root vegetable and in the making of aswa. Chagras are ideally located within a short walking distance of a woman’s llacta. While I resided at Curaray in the early 1980s, I noted that women went to their chagras at least twice a week, usually with their young children, to clear weeds and harvest manioc tubers. Chagras are an intimate part of the near landscape, surrounding llactas in a zone between households and the forest, or between the river near a llacta and the forest beyond. Llacta and chagra together form the domesticated landscape. The selection of ground for a new chagra ideally follows a two-­zone strategy, in which one chagra is located on a high river terrace and another on periodically inundated floodplain. The advantage 48  Ayllu and Llacta

of this two-­zone planting strategy is obvious. While the floodplain soils are highly fertile due to deposition of river sediments, they are also at risk of flooding. If manioc tubers are submerged for more than a few days, they rot—­the entire crop is useless. This is a high-­risk, high-­reward type of chagra. Alternately, the soils on river terraces are dry, eroded, and consequently less fertile. Manioc planted here is dependable, but the yield may not be as high. One of my neighbor’s chagras was in such a location. In helping her with the chagra work, I noted that she worked hard to enhance the fertility of the soil through weeding and then burning the tiny piles of weeds. I was told that manioc will keep well in the ground for up to two years, providing a stable food supply for the household. Runa are pragmatic about crop failure. While most chagras are planted with manioc and plantains, a chagra generally includes a variety of other plants. Runa experiment with a wide range of plants, including taro, beans, peanuts, maize, pineapple, and banana, to name a few, as well as with a number of medicinal plants. If a type of plant does not do well at a chagra site, it is not replanted there, as the soil is believed to be incapable of sustaining the crop. Maize and beans are said to do best in fertile, periodically inundated floodplain soils, while peanuts and pineapple do best in sandy soils found on higher ground. At Curaray, a new chagra was generally cleared at the beginning of the dry season, either by a household labor party (minga) in which ayllu, compadres, and llacta members were invited to participate, or through the labor of the household members alone. Men worked at cutting the underbrush and felling trees for the new chagra. Afterward, the underbrush was left on the ground to serve as mulch, and the felled trees were left to provide firewood once dry. Planting of manioc was done by women soon after the chagra space was prepared.2 While every household maintained at least one chagra planted primarily in manioc, other chagras might include a variety of crops. These were grown in separate sections of the chagra, or interplanted with manioc.3 The dry season was also a time for completion of specific tasks suitable to the low humidity and low river water. For women, this was an important time for making the large pottery vessels (tinaja) used to Ayllu and Llacta  49

Fig. 3. A recently cleared chagra, 1992. Photo by author.

store and ferment manioc mash. For men, the dry season was ideal for the labor-­intensive process of making a new dugout canoe. Several men worked together to fell a suitable tree, move it by river to a convenient beach, chop the rough shape inside and out, and then use fire to finish the hollowing and shaping of the canoe. During my fieldwork I observed that Runa traded back and forth with compadres living elsewhere various types of manioc and other plants, to see what might grow well in their chagras.4 It was not uncommon for a woman to have in her chagra various types of manioc traded from across the region through ties of compadrazgo. Returning from visits to ayllus in other communities or remote settlements, women often bring back a distinct variety of manioc with which to experiment in their chagra. Women are avidly interested in manioc varieties and their properties.5 It is the ties of kinship—­ayllu and compadrazgo—­through which manioc varieties flow across the regional society. While the chagra is part of the intimate sphere of the household and llacta, the types of manioc produced reflect the regional nature of kin ties and the sharing of locally abundant resources across the regional society. Such exchanges between ayllu 50  Ayllu and Llacta

Fig. 4. Making a dugout canoe, 1981. Photo by author.

members and their comadres are crucial to the ongoing experimentation with novel plants in the chagra. Such exchanges are likewise integral to the fabrication of the polychrome pottery bowls used to serve aswa. While in the house, when household chores are not pressing, most Runa women work at making pottery, primarily the aswa serving bowls called mukawa. The making of a mukawa is a skilled craft, and the result is often a beautiful piece of handiwork. However, the creation of a mukawa relies upon trade with comadres, especially trade for the red, white, black, and yellow pigments used to decorate the pottery, only some of which are abundant in any locale within the regional landscape. Therefore a beautifully decorated polychrome bowl is emblematic of the linkages that an individual woman has to kin and comadres across the regional society. The decorated polychrome bowls are used exclusively to serve aswa to family members and guests. Traditionally, girls as young as five or six began helping their mothers with pottery making and by the time they are ready to marry, many Runa women reach a high level of artistic expression in the creation of their mukawas. Designs applied to the mukawa bowl are always an individual woman’s expression of her esoteric knowledge Ayllu and Llacta  51

Fig. 5. A Runa house and pottery storage, 1982. Photo by author.

and links with the world of plants and animals. (See Whitten and Whitten 1988 for a thorough exploration of women’s esoteric knowledge as expressed in pottery designs.) Curaray Runa say that knowledge of fine decoration came from the Andoas group of Zaparoans, from the area of Montalvo on the Bobonaza River, an understanding corroborated by Montalvo Runa (Nuckolls 2010, 5). Both the clay for making mukawas and the coarser-­grained clay for making large manioc mash storage vessels (tinajas) are mined locally. However, Curaray Runa women said that the best pigments for making their pottery are located in distant rivers. Women traveled to visit ayllu or comadres where they could collect a large quantity of a particular pigment. While visiting, they prepared it by grinding the pigment into a powder, then wetting it and shaping it into thick rolls about eight inches long that dry hard and are easy to transport. I observed that on returning to her llacta a woman would cut sections from the roll to gift to Runa women who visited from other llactas within the community. One day visiting upriver, I spoke with a woman who had just returned from Lorocachi, a Runa community downriver on the Curaray. She had 52  Ayllu and Llacta

brought back with her several types of pigments to gift or sell. She had killu alpa (yellow pigment, which turns red in firing) from Lorocachi, puka alpa (red pigment) found around Mureticocha on the Rutuno River, north of the Bobonaza, and ruyak alpa (white pigment) from the Conambo River region. She talked about traveling to obtain the clay pigments. She explained that Runa travel to the Conambo to get the white pigment by first going upriver to the Runa community of Villano, then by trail down to the Conambo region, a one-­day walk from Villano. This white pigment, and another, a pinkish-­tinged white from Canelos, had to be brought over a long distance to Curaray. The black pigment, however, is found nearby in creek beds tributary to the Curaray. The tree resin glaze (shinkillu) used for the mukawas is also located far from Curaray. It can be found at the headwaters of the Villano and throughout the Conambo area. Polychrome pottery making is an ancient Amazonian tradition. Runa talk of finding pottery along river bluffs with markings unlike their own style, evidence of ancient other peoples who once lived along the Curaray River. Ethnohistorical documentation includes references to mukawas traded along the vast regional social system linking the area of Lamas, Peru, to the Upper Napo River. Today the regional linkages are truncated, confined to the Pastaza, Curaray, and Napo River drainages within Amazonian Ecuador. Yet locally abundant resources are shared across this space. Just as women trade and experiment with distinct varieties of manioc, they travel and collect, then trade clay pigments from specific local source areas within the regional landscape. The making of polychrome pottery necessitates travel and trade for pigments, so this ancient tradition can be seen as indicative of widespread and continual contacts with other peoples and locales. Obtaining pigments is among the activities that define the ongoing regional society for this part of the western Amazon. Hunting

Hunting, as the narrator said, is the primary responsibility of men. While I never participated in hunting during my fieldwork, and therefore have few data, I did note that men often went hunting alone during the day or arranged with a compadre to go downriver hunting and fishing overnight. Ayllu and Llacta  53

Men own the animal they kill and distribute the various portions of meat as gifts, according to the relative prestige or strength of social ties between the hunter and those accompanying him. Returning to the community after a hunt, the hunter shared surplus meat with other llacta or ayllu members. Through gifting, Runa men attempted to ensure the availability of at least some game meat in each household at frequent intervals, to be supplemented by whatever small game or fish were available near the community. Both men and women talked about the difficulty of hunting, commenting that due to the population density of the community, large game animals such as peccary, tapir, and capybara were relatively scarce within a day’s walk. During my fieldwork in the early 1980s, treks undertaken with kin or compadres to areas some distance from the community were necessary in order to obtain any significant animal protein. Runa did complain of meat starvation but used it metaphorically to indicate stressful social relations. For example, sometimes a person would explain that his family left a certain community because “there were only small fish to eat,” a harsh criticism reflecting a rift in social ties within the community. Curaray Runa complained about their Waorani neighbors, saying that there was nothing to eat because the Waorani directly upriver were “eating all of the meat.” However, as the narrator made clear, even if there is no meat, there would always be manioc, always aswa. Runa say that the old people, in beginning times, were strong enough to live just on aswa. In contrast to the difficulty of taking forest game, the Curaray River afforded easy access to a continuously adequate and seasonally abundant supply of fish. Often Runa men simply set out fishing lines in the river and waited for fish to bite. Large bagre (a catfish reaching up to four feet in length) were hunted from a canoe and were a favored food. Fish migrations occur seasonally and provided abundant protein in the form of both the fish and their eggs, which Runa prize as a delicacy.6 Sharing Life in the Llacta

The llacta is a domestic labor-­sharing group. While women share garden produce within their own household, men who are particularly successful 54  Ayllu and Llacta

in a hunt will distribute meat across the various households within a llacta. During my fieldwork in 1981–­82 we were nominally a part of the “beach group” llacta, and in this position, occasionally received a (sometimes quite large) portion of meat or fish. At the same time we were expected to lend a hand in cooperative labor parties (mingas) organized by the llacta head. Tasks such as collecting palm fronds and weaving them for a new house roof, or felling trees to clear a chagra, required a significant input of male labor, carried out in minga. Other tasks (to which we were called to assist with our minimal skills) included clearing a chagra or the church and school plaza of weeds. The minga work completed, the host household held a manioc beer drinking party, which could lead on to drumming, dancing, and drinking into the night. Minga

Runa couples called on llacta members, nearby kin, and compadres to assist during a minga. When a couple decided to hold a minga, it was the task of the woman to work for about a week prior, filling one to three large storage vessels with manioc mash for the strong aswa to be served after the labor was completed. Her husband went hunting for a few days to provide the meat that ideally balances the aswa with a meal served to the minga participants. Often the task for the minga was very small; people might hold a minga simply because they felt like hosting a social gathering among llacta members, kin, and compadres. The household minga provided an opportunity for the informal collective sharing of information, such as game sightings and recent kills, but might just as easily turn to a discussion of local politics. Such discussions were important for shared decision making and opinion formation. Older men might share narratives about beginning times. Women serving aswa and their female guests shared insights into relations within the Runa and non-­Runa worlds, through snatches of song about personal feelings and vision and through recounting personal experience. These conversations took place during the drumming, dancing, and aswa drinking of the minga party. A woman’s knowledge and prowess are measured in part by the ability to produce an abundance of Ayllu and Llacta  55

strong aswa. A minga is most successful if women begin to dance while men drum in a circle, proof that the aswa is strong enough to make the guests want to drum and dance. People invited to a household minga formed a labor-­exchanging group within which reciprocal invitations to participate in other mingas were made. Other couples within this group would hold mingas at future dates, inviting reciprocally those within the llacta as well as their own nearby kin and compadres. Minga parties articulated social bonds, extending from the couple who organized the minga through their complementary male/ female tasks, outward to llacta members, close kin, and compadres living within the community. Although scant reference to labor parties exists in other Amazonian societies, kin-­based shared labor as a reinforcement of conviviality is likely not unique to Amazonian Kichwa. Llacta Trekking

While hunting, fishing, and gardening on a daily basis was the work of each couple within their household, and mingas punctuated this routine with frequent larger gatherings, members of one or more llactas also occasionally went on short treks together. As with a minga party, collective gathering and fishing expeditions tied to seasonal availability of forest resources were a diversion from daily work and an opportunity to share among a wider kin group. During periods of seasonally available fruits, Runa went on all-­day gathering trips. Members of several households in a llacta trekked together into the forest to collect wild fruits, and to the edge of a muriti palm swamp (moretal) to locate the fatty white palm weevil larvae (willan), which live in the rotting pulp within the hard trunks of felled palms. (Fatty foods of any kind are prized by Runa in this tropical forest realm.) Any food gathered belonged to the individual who obtained it and was then shared with others. For example, in the collection of edible palm weevil larvae, or of flying ants, which swarm once a year and are considered a delicacy, or of edible fungus, the portion collected by each person was hers alone, to be shared with others as she saw fit. During my fieldwork we went out walking one day with our neighbors on a forest trail across two 56  Ayllu and Llacta

low ridges to the head of a small stream. There our neighbors collected a few small fish. On the way back we gathered forest fruits. This was a typical trek among llacta members, lasting just a few hours. Households periodically went on three-­day to one-­week short river hunting and fishing trips, usually traveling with visiting compadres or with ayllu members visiting from distant communities. During such a trip, people camped on beaches or utilized a convenient purina house overnight. Men fished en route and then hunted in the vicinity of the camp during the day while women searched the area to gather fruits, insects, or other foods, such as the soft white edible fungus (callullu), and worked to maintain a supply of firewood. Most fish and meat obtained on such trips was smoked on a babracot until cooked and dried, ready to be taken back to the llacta house. The families subsisted during this time on fresh fish, fowl, and on the entrails of larger animals, which cannot be preserved. The collective trekking was a way to solidify bonds of friendship and kinship among family living in distant communities. When invited by their kin, couples traveled to the llacta to which they had been invited, sometimes making a several-­day journey along trails or by river to get there. Once they arrived, the group of kin and compadres set out on a river trek to hunt and fish in areas between settlements. Vignette: Trekking with Compadres

A few months after we established residence in Curaray in 1981, the couple who had first brought us there from Puyo, whom I shall call Antonio and Clara, came to visit their compadres and to go on a hunting and fishing trip. We were invited to go along on the three-­day trip downriver on the Curaray, providing funds to purchase gasoline for the motorized dugout canoe. On the trip were the Runa couple from Puyo, their Curaray compadres, an older woman who was the mother of their comadre, and a young woman and her brother, who was about eight years old. Departing at around 3:30 in the morning, we talked quietly as we floated downriver in the early morning mist, past houses that were beginning to stir. A man’s voice from one house carried over the river, Antonio commenting, “He is narrating a story” (kari cuentana). Near dawn it started to rain, and we Ayllu and Llacta  57

stopped at the first purina house along the river. Here the women built a quick fire and dried their clothing, standing by its heat. At full daylight the rain stopped, and we went a bit farther downriver, at which point Jorge, Antonio’s compadre, said we could start the motor. Here the river was divided—­one side had high cliffs and the other had beaches. Two large catfish appeared in the water at this bend in the river. We stopped at the beach, where women dug in the soft sand for small crabs, which they gave to the children to eat. Jorge and Antonio caught one of the catfish, after which we stopped at another purina house, where the men cut up the fish while women served aswa made from manioc mash that they brought with them, followed by a meal of fresh catfish soup together with the four foods always accompanying a meal: boiled plantain and manioc, salt and chili pepper. Afterward we traveled slowly downriver and at midafternoon stopped and set up camp at a beach, the men constructing a tent, a drying rack, and a smoking rack. The cut-­up fish was set on the smoking rack and fishing lines were set in the river while the women cooked a meal—­again of catfish soup with plantain and manioc. After the meal, women served aswa, and then all retired early to sleep. In the early morning one of the men left to hunt, while the food from the day before was reheated and more soup was made. Around midmorning all had eaten. The hunter returned with a large game bird (powi). It had rained in the night and the river was rising, so we started back upriver, returning to the purina house where we had first eaten the catfish. The women again prepared a meal. After eating the men left to hunt while we worked at setting up camp—­bringing in firewood and fresh leaves to wrap around fish or the entrails of animals that were then baked in the fire; setting up drying racks; and bathing, washing clothing, and resting. Clara explained that travelers may use a purina house, and gather firewood and any wild food nearby, but must never dig the manioc from the chagra by the house, as this is for the owners. Late in the afternoon the men returned with a peccary (wangana), women served aswa, and then the men gutted and cut up the peccary, distributing meat to each couple, to the older woman, and to the young woman to take back to her family. Preparing the meat required cutting, 58  Ayllu and Llacta

singeing hair, washing, and then setting it to smoke. After cleaning, organ meat was wrapped in leaves and baked in the fire. This trip was not simply to eat fresh meat. Antonio’s compadre taught him about how to butcher a peccary properly, an opportunity not available in the peri-­urban areas around Puyo. The older woman sat up with the young woman late into the night, passing on Runa esoteric knowledge, talking quietly, and consuming Runa tobacco, while the rest of us retired to sleep. The young woman’s brother stayed close to Antonio while he was in camp, in a relation of younger to older brother, but did not accompany the grown men on the hunting trips. Early the following morning Antonio began a long discourse, telling his compadre about the tense indigenous struggles around land ownership that swirled through the Puyo area at that time.7 Later the two men returned, but with no meat to eat. The hunters were given aswa and a very small meal. We then headed back upriver to the community. It was raining again. The women collected grubs living in a rotten muriti palm log, which were eaten live, and also collected delicious palm heart. We arrived back at the community in a downpour and waited out the rain at our neighbor’s house. Following this three-­day trek, Runa talked with me about trekking. Many years ago, they said, people went on very long treks, both to trade and to visit with distant ayllu members. Young people went to be introduced to potential spouses. One day visiting with a family on the Curaray, an older woman, Olympa, recounted how she had gone as a girl with her family downriver on the Curaray to the settlement of Porvenir and then overland to the Tigre River. She said people on the Tigre are Runa—­that they spoke like the people here. Then from the Tigre she went to the Bobonaza, visiting in the community of Pacayacu, and from Pacayacu back to Curaray. She said that she met her future husband on the Tigre River. He was also on a trek traveling through the Tigre-­Corrientes area, having traveled from Pacayacu on the Bobonaza. Her husband then joined in the telling of this story, saying that “Achuales” lived on the Corrientes and that he could not converse with them. The older couple then talked to me about how people used to go on long treks, how the old people went Ayllu and Llacta  59

very long distances for many months. Now, because of the obligations of the school year, Runa cannot do that; people “are seated in their places,” they commented. Runa talk about travel in relation to concepts of time. This trekking took place during “old present times”; before the establishment of schools that necessitate families remaining in the community for most of the year. Ancient trekking from the Napo and Curaray to the Huallaga River in Peru is recalled by Curaray Runa as part of beginning times, before the Amazon rubber boom and the later blockage of river travel into Peru due to the closure of Peru and Ecuador’s Amazonian border. For Curaray Runa the regional society exists still, in the ways described here—­trekking with compadres and trading for locally abundant resources such as clays for pottery decoration. Yet the landscape has narrowed in geographic and cultural scale, from what was at one time a vast regional social system integrating a number of ethnolinguistic groups to the current regional society within central Amazonian Ecuador. Extending Kin: The Compadrazgo Tie

Following Sahlins’s concept of kinship as mutuality of being, we can consider formal friendships—­compadrazgo—­as a kinship tie: “Mutuality of being has the virtue of describing the various means by which kinship may be constituted, whether natally or postnatally, from pure ‘biology’ to pure performance, and any combinations thereof.” All means of constituting kinship are essentially the same (Sahlins 2013, 28). As Uzendoski notes for the Napo Runa, compadres expand and intensify kin networks outward or may be chosen to intensify existing ayllu relations (2005, 108). As we became integrated into the community I became aware of how important trading—­of objects and skills—­was to both women and men. Women maintained special ties to their extended kin or comadres in distant communities, through which they could obtain a range of pigments for pottery decoration and a variety of manioc types for their chagras, as well as sharing information and conviviality. Thus, in daily life, a wider network of relationships was constantly in play. It is through ayllu and 60  Ayllu and Llacta

compadrazgo relationships that the regional network of social relationships is constantly reinforced, constantly in motion. Formal or ritual friendship is common throughout Amazonia, a relationship formalized in a ritual double embrace by the two friends (Fausto 2012, 151–­52). Similarly, among Achuar, the amíkchi ritual friendship tie created between two couples is formalized during a ceremony in which the men embrace and the women embrace, each speaking of the importance of the friendship. Beyond the periodic exchange of goods common to formal friendship, for the Achuar the bond is considered a form of alliance (Uriarte 2007, 96–­98). Runa similarly formalize a compadrazgo relationship in a brief ritual in which the two couples join in a kneeling double embrace; men with men and women with women. I have seen this ritual performed both among Runa and, in Curaray, between Runa and Waorani. Waorani, Achuar, and Amazonian Kichwa acknowledge a bond of formal friendship in this simple ritual. The kneeling double embrace may be understood as a multiethnic shared ritual integral to the regional society of Amazonian Ecuador and in other areas of Amazonia as well. Amazonian Kichwa extend relationships beyond kin and residence group through ties of formal friendship. Formal friendship, which among Runa always takes on the fuller meaning of compadrazgo, is a way of growing a couple’s network of extended kin. Formal friendship is an extension of a consanguineal kinship tie, as brother or sister; and it is an ancient Amazonian form of kinship extension across ethnolinguistic boundaries within a regional society, a relationship activated as trading partnerships during travel into the territories of neighboring peoples. The compadrazgo tie is a European Christian overlay on the Amazonian Kichwa, Shuar, Achuar, Tukanoan, Waorani, and probably Zaparoan custom of formalized friendship (see Goldman 1963; Harner 1972; Reeve and High 2012; Uzendoski 2005; Whitten 1976; Yost 1981). Compadres may be chosen to reinforce existing ayllu ties, most often to reinforce an affinal son-­in-­law (masha) or less often daughter-­in-­law (kachun) link “to bring the spouse closer to the family,” Curaray Runa said. Often, however, these ties are made with non-­ayllu members, especially persons with whom the couple would like to initiate presentations or exchanges, Ayllu and Llacta  61

or with non-­Runa, including other indigenous peoples such as Achuar, Waorani, Napo Runa or, at times, nonindigenous school teachers, merchants, or military personnel. Formalized friendship may exist without this second ritual meaning attached to the relationship, especially if it is a friendship made between individuals from different ethnolinguistic groups. The tie is regarded as similar, however. The relationship ideally involves continual mutual gifting of goods and services. Ideally, it entails continual visiting between households and the exchange of gifts, as well as the opportunity to trek together, or to visit each other’s community. Formal friendships between members of distinct ethnolinguistic groups provide a path toward easing hostile intergroup relationships. As noted in chapter 1, conflicts between Curaray Runa and neighboring Waorani groups had occurred in the past. During my fieldwork the sameness of community life was broken when Waorani came to visit. Such visits were met by a combination of interest and anxiety. In the early 1980s a Waorani extended kin group lived far upriver at a settlement in a place called Golondrina Cocha (Golondrina). Waorani from Golondrina Cocha came into the community and established several formalized friendships with couples living at the center of the community. These were trading partnerships, without the European overlay of compadrazgo sponsorship of a child or a young married couple. The Waorani group from Golondrina Cocha always approached the community of Curaray with caution, stopping overnight at their own beach camp on the river, rather than within any Runa household. They would come down the Curaray River only as far as the mouth of the Villano, stopping to camp on the opposite side (on the Curaray) above the river confluence. From there they would proceed on foot during the day, returning to their beach camp on the Curaray at night. Waorani went from one household visit with a formal friend to another such household, exchanging some gifts with each, while reserving some items for others, and often demanding goods that they saw within the home. Although there was grumbling that some Waorani did not give much in return, Runa valued the friendship ties, which followed a long period of 62  Ayllu and Llacta

hostilities between the two groups in the Curaray-­Villano region. These Waorani also visited the heads of the two principal llactas at the center of the community to sell meat and handicrafts in exchange for such items as soap and shotgun ammunition. This was the Waorani group that also came each year to attend the Jista celebration. By the early 2000s, however, enmity between Curaray Runa and Waorani had once again been triggered by several killings of Runa men and women (see Reeve and High 2012 for a detailed discussion). While formal friendships open avenues whereby tensions between neighboring groups can be eased, at least temporarily, such friendships would have been integral also to long-­distance river travel. Historically, Runa traveled and traded over great distances, going downriver from the Napo, Curaray, and Bobonaza Rivers into the area that is now northeastern Peru. Runa remembered the long-­distance trekking that took place to obtain rock salt from high up the Huallaga and Ucayali Rivers as well as to trade for powerful blowgun dart poison (jambi).8 Far-­flung trade networks would have relied on formal friendships, as Runa spent months traveling long distances by river, crossing through territories of several other ethnolinguistic groups before reaching the headwaters of the Huallaga and Ucayali Rivers. During the period of Jesuit missionization of the western Amazon, the priests who established mission communities encouraged these treks, as rock salt was a valued commodity. The Jesuits were expelled from South America in 1767. Long afterward, these treks continued as a way of life in beginning times. The vicissitudes of history on the Curaray River have left unchanged the ancient pattern of regionally extensive ayllus and local settlement in llactas made up of intermarried ayllu segments. Runa keep alive the regional kin linkages through visiting and intermarriage and, importantly, extend their kin relationships through formal friendships in a process of “making ayllu,” as Runa express it. The regional society in which Amazonian Kichwa are embedded today is the core of what was historically a much more extensive regional system of interethnic interaction (Reeve 1994; Uzendoski 2004a). The Amazonian Kichwa regional society is quite distinct from that described for the northwest Amazon. There a regional system is clearly Ayllu and Llacta  63

articulated among Tukanoan speakers, being defined by patrilineal localized sibs and patrilocal rule of residence combined with settlement exogamy, in which the settlement itself is the core social unit within Vaupés society (Jackson 1983, 77). In contradistinction to the northwest Amazonian Tukanoan system, Amazonian Kichwa have no clearly defined locality or lineal system that determines an individual’s residence before and after marriage. There is a great deal of fluidity in llacta membership, commensurate with the degree to which individuals and couples replicate kin-­making commensal relationships with others in the llacta. If a rift occurs among llacta members, the coherence of the residence unit is threatened and may break apart, as our narrator affirms. Other western Amazonian societies exhibit similar flexibility. For example, Brown noted for the Aguaruna that the household was the most cohesive social unit and that Aguaruna kindreds are loosely structured and egocentric, not permanent corporate groups such as lineages. An Aguaruna individual’s kindred “may include people in all the villages of the Alto Mayo, but there is a tendency to reside with genealogically close or ‘true’ kinsmen . . . rather than more distant relations” (Brown 1986, 42). Similarly, Rival notes for the Waorani that a sense of belonging is shaped by proximity: kin are those living close by, rather than those most closely related genealogically. She notes that spatially distant kin are not forgotten; rather, they are considered a source of potential affines (Rival 2002, 115–­16). In short, this is a regionally extensive set of kin networks. In conclusion, for Runa society, sociability at its core is the couple’s bond. Couples and their children reside together in a llacta, usually headed by an elder couple and including some of their children and inmarried sons and daughters. Alternately, two brothers married to two sisters or two couples in brother-­sister exchange marriages may establish a llacta, a residence group pattern found elsewhere in Amazonia (see, e.g., Vilaça 2010, 37). There is great flexibility among Curaray Runa as to whether a man or woman goes to live in the natal llacta of a spouse. This flexibility is distinct from that of the neighboring Napo Runa, Achuar, and Waorani. Uzendoski notes that Napo Runa women predominantly go to live with the husband’s family after marriage. In contrast, Achuar 64  Ayllu and Llacta

men traditionally moved to the wife’s family residence. For the Waorani, residence after marriage tends to be uxorilocal, with a core residence unit formed around brother-­sister exchanges (Rival 2016, 50). Runa of the Curaray and Bobonaza Rivers exhibit the flexibility inherent in a regional society in which some members are Achuar and others Napo Runa. At Curaray were many inmarried Napo Runa men, and many inmarried women were from Bobonaza communities. Among Runa of the Curaray and Bobonaza Rivers, ayllu networks and heads of ayllu networks are associated with specific geographical places within the landscape. For the Napo Runa there are “founding kin networks of specific places in the Upper Napo landscape,” yet one ayllu flows across space into another; while the groups are not bounded, there is a father figure associated with each (Uzendoski 2005, 67). The attachment by kin groups to specific geographic locales was clearly articulated for Curaray Runa in their narratives of warfare and place. Historical memory of specific extended kin groups living in llactas headed by a shaman is retained in narratives of conflict and migration kept alive in retelling from generation to generation. These narratives form a corpus of knowledge from “beginning times” referred to by Curaray Runa as Callari Uras, and differentiated from “present times” (Kunan Uras) narratives from the remembered past of older Runa. Narratives of conflict and movement across the regional society are the focus of chapter 3.

Ayllu and Llacta  65

3

Runa on the Curaray River

Curaray Runa historical memory encompasses peoples and landscape across what is now central Amazonian Ecuador and northeastern Peru. In this chapter, narratives of conflict and resettlement are presented to illustrate the dynamics of regional interaction as transmitted in historical narratives by Curaray Runa. Ancestors of present-­day Runa lived in small settlements located on hills or along tributary rivers. Runa narratives keep alive these ancient roots, such that specific Runa ayllu members learn of their ancestry in other peoples—­as Canelos, Gaes, Andoas, or Sápara. Curaray Runa narratives tell of conflicts and movement of these groups, led by shamans and their warrior sons, across the region from the lower Bobonaza and Curaray Rivers to their headwaters, and the hills and tributary rivers in between. For Runa of the Bobonaza, historical memory extends southward into Achuar and Shuar areas to the Pastaza River (Whitten 1976, 1985; Whitten and Whitten 2008). Curaray Runa recount also historical narratives from the Amazon rubber boom as it unfolded on the Curaray River, linking Runa to areas of northeastern Peru along the Tigre River down to Iquitos. In conversations of personal family settlement, Curaray Runa told me of more recent events surrounding the resettlement of the Curaray River by Canelos and Napo Runa, who married into surviving Curaray Sápara families after the rubber boom era. These stories are replete with references to conflicts with their neighbors to the north, the Waorani. As a corpus forming Curaray Runa 67

historical memory, stories from all of these times reinforce for listeners the regional nature of their history and society. Amazonian peoples formulate undifferentiated mythic space-­time and distinctions between mythic, ancestral, and present times in various ways (Mihas et al. 2014, 4–­6). Curaray Runa talk about their history in a narrative format set in beginning times (Callari Uras). Beginning times are differentiated from the space-­time of myth (Unai) and the times of the present (Kunan Uras). Present times encompass the lived experience of Runa. Beginning times, in contrast, are the subject of historical narratives. Woven into beginning times narratives are references to a parallel mythic space-­time, which is beyond time, always present as a concept of the relationships of humans to the world of animals and spirit forces (Reeve 1988b, 2014). Beginning times narratives relate events that encompass the past as remembered from previous generations. They are related by older men quietly within their homes, as household members and a few visitors listen. Narratives convey to listeners past events from the perspective of the teller as a member of a specific extended kindred. As Heckenberger has noted, “Social relations are not based only on who persons are, but also, and perhaps more importantly, on who they were, where they came from in terms of ancestors, and what places they have been” (2007, 301). Runa narratives are set within a landscape of hills and rivers, such that named places far from present-­day communities are associated with past peoples and events. Elements of the landscape, for example particular hills, are signs that recall past events (Santos-­Granero 1998, 2004). Both mythic and historic narratives are integral to the process by which a people situate themselves, through stories in which ancestors moved and marked the landscape (Hill 2009, 149; Vidal 2000, 637; Whitehead 2003, 179–­201; see also Feather 2009, 77). “Landscapes . . . are peopled with memories, histories, stories of the past, which also represent and perpetuate contemporary conditions of territory” (Heckenberger 2007, 303). “History is then expressed, produced and reproduced in a historically defined landscape . . . [places] tied together through time and space by discrete humans and other beings” (300). Oral histories are tied closely to place 68 Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver

names throughout Amazonia, including memory of distant places through which the ancestors moved (Hornborg 2005, 591). Other Amazonian scholars have noted this process by which historical memory is preserved and transmitted through myth and ritual (see, e.g., Alexiades and Peluso 2009; Dudley 2009; Hill 1988, 2011; Kohn 2002; Santos-­Granero 1998; Vidal 2000; Wright 1994). The significance of particular places within the landscape is the focus of these narratives, “fixing and transmitting historical memory” (Chaumiel 2007, 273). The narratives that I recorded in Curaray Runa homes during 1981–­ 82 focus on the demise of specific groups of Zaparoan peoples through intergroup conflict in which shamans as leaders warred with each other. The battles themselves are associated with specific locales within the landscape, and the plight of the survivors is described as flight to other places. The narratives I heard were told by older men, each of whom identified his ethnolinguistic affiliation as confirmation that he possessed the knowledge conveyed in the narrative, and to identify his position in relation to the protagonists in the story. Sápara Histories

Among Amazonian Kichua living in communities along the Bobonaza and Curaray Rivers, Sundays are days set aside for visiting kin and compadres in distant parts of the community. It is in these settings that knowledgeable elders may transmit historical memory of specific events and places, reinforcing to the listeners who they are, how their kindred is “placed” within the regional society. Such storytelling connects people to each other, to the past, to cosmology, and to the landscape (Uzendoski 2014b, 125). The story itself gives meaning to specific places within the landscape by connecting these sites to ancient peoples and to mythic space-­time. During my intensive fieldwork in 1981–­82 I listened to several of these narratives on visits to llactas located at distant points within the community of Curaray. Vignette: The Demise of a Sápara Kin Group

My first research collaborators, Juan and Maria, knew that I wished to listen to elders in the community talk about Curaray Runa history. One Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver  69

Sunday during the dry season, they took me, together with other members of their llacta, in a motorized canoe up the Villano River to visit their compadres, Paushi and Graciela. I had not previously visited this llacta and was struck by the distinctive style of their home. Curaray Runa homes are traditionally open along all sides and often divided into ground-­level cooking and visiting areas and an upper level sleeping area. However, Paushi and Graciela’s was a single story house completely walled in with vertical split chonta (peach palm) boards. In common with other Curaray Runa homes, it was divided into a women’s area for cooking at one end and a visiting area at the other, each with its own entrance. Surrounding the main house were several other structures, including sleeping houses for two grown daughters and their husbands; and toward the edge of the clearing were two chicken coops. A volleyball net had been set up outside the visitors’ end of the main house. There was an area outside adjacent to the women’s side of the main house that evidenced extensive pottery making. Here were at least five new aswa storage vessels and a number of large ceremonial drinking bowls (mukawas), all as yet unfired. Inside the main house I saw that there were two fires in the center of the floor and one small fire to the side. These fires were constructed with three logs set like spokes of a wheel in such a way that one end of each met the others in the center, where the fire was kept burning. As the fire burned the log ends, the logs would be pushed toward the center such that the fire could remain lit, at least with embers, on a continual basis; very efficient in the damp misty Amazonian air. Along the house walls were two benches, one of which was actually an old helicopter rotor blade from the petroleum exploration days of the 1970s. The ceiling was very high, made of intricately woven palm fronds and completely blackened by smoke from the cooking fires. When visiting, men always sit together on one side of the visiting area while the women sit together on the opposite side. Juan and Maria were the marriage sponsors of our host’s daughter and son-­in-­law, who had been married just after the annual Jista that year. Through this compadrazgo relationship, they carried on active exchanges, in which meat, firewood,

70 Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver

and other household items were gifted back and forth. Juan’s natal ayllu was from Canelos. For Juan and Maria the compadrazgo tie strengthened an ayllu linkage by creating a closer relationship with a distant ayllu member also from the community of Canelos. After a while Juan prompted Paushi to speak about beginning times, asking, “Imashinata kausara kamba apayaya, maymanda tiara kamba yaya?” (How did your grandfather live, from what place was your father?) All of us sat quietly while he narrated a story about conflict in the region of Canelos on the Bobonaza River. As he told the story of a long-­ago intergroup conflict, his narration was punctuated by demonstrations. At one point he stood up and while chanting, danced a drop/turn dance. When talking about how they killed, he drew a circle representing a man’s chest in the dirt of the house floor. He drew a cross inside the circle, marking the location of the heart, and with a diagonal slashing motion of his arms, showed how a downward spear thrust would cut and kill. He ended the story with a personal validator, saying “I am Canelos.”1 He recounted the story, in part, as follows: In beginning times, the Sápara lived here. They killed with acachina, what we call lances, in the Sápara language called acachina. With these they killed in beginning times. With this they killed, they killed, they killed the auca [enemy-­foreigners, Waorani]. They all ran, terrified. Here they killed five, there four, there three died. There the women, lacking their men, ran to stay in the forest. There they stayed hidden, just four together, just three together. . . . In beginning times our llacta lived at Nalpi Yacu [Nalpi River]. At the Bobonaza River is the mouth of the Nalpi Yacu. There is where we lived. Tayak, they say, Tayak people, Tayak people lived there, across, up the Nalpi Yacu on Tayak Urcu [Hill].2 There at Montalvo [downriver on the Bobonaza] there is a place called Manga Urcu. There lived the Gaes, a Sápara group called Gaes. With the Gaes a war took place. They made war. There was Wagra Urcu. There the Uspa people were seated in their place. The Gaes fought against the Uspa people. There they

Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver  71

fought with the macana [wooden short-­sword]. At five in the morning they attacked, at six a.m. it was finished. The Gaes killing those Sápara at Wagra Urcu. . . . From Wagra Urcu they went on foot to the headwaters of the Nalpi Yacu. There they saw peccary [their enemies], there they ate peccary. Finishing the meat, they went to down to the Bobonaza River. There they saw a “guacamaya” [guacamayo—macaw parrot] at a lake. Just one guacamaya coming . . . waiting, they met it. From there stood a single chambira palm tree; falling tuk, tak, tuk, tak it came down to the Bobonaza, resting at the mouth of the Nalpi Yacu. Then came the Tayak, there they were like many peccary. There the Gaes killed the Tayak people. . . . There was the son of the Tayak leader, called Liquatipi, a big man, wearing a walinga [warrior sash worn across the chest] here, a walinga there, another walinga there. . . . The Tayak piled rocks, many rocks together at the head of the Nalpi. . . . There the Gaes of Manga Urcu were finished, killed off. This group of Sáparas were finished off. . . . Now at the head of the Nalpi Yacu there are only stones. The narrative begins with the identification of places—­hills and rivers; time—­beginning times; and the various Sápara groups involved in a series of conflicts. In the second section the event is related by reference to the parallels to hunting, the defeated are as peccary, eaten by the victors.3 At this point an augury in the form of a guacamayo parrot appears. In the third segment of each narrative the time frame switches to the present, with a comment that Canelos Runa no longer go to the head of the Nalpi Yacu, where there are only stones. With his final narrative comment, “I am Canelos” from the Nalpi Yacu area of the Bobonaza River, he validated his knowledge of the narrative events. Following the narrative, he talked about the survivors, those who were captured and went to live as adopted children of the enemy shaman, and how they married and began to rebuild their Sápara groups through marriage with “others.” Prior to the establishment of mission communities, all ethnolinguistic groups making up the regional society of Amazonian Kichwa, Zaparoans, 72 Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver

and Achuar were located in settlements headed by powerful shamans or political leaders. These settlements existed in a mosaic across what is now the central Ecuadorian Amazon. For Curaray Runa, the core of an individual’s sense of place resides with his or her natal llacta. It is located within the protective sphere of a particular shaman, and grounded in a wider territory, as defined by ayllu affiliation with specific features of the landscape. For this reason, when a man or woman marries and goes to live with the spouse’s family, he or she is expected to shift language and customs to conform to those of the spouse’s family. Nevertheless, the inmarried individual retains his or her natal affiliation with ayllu and place. Personal stories of origin are kept alive as a way to preserve the history of interrelationships among kindreds and wider ethnolinguistic groups in the region, from the point of view of any one individual. It is in the context of llactas headed by shamans that the history of intergroup conflict among and between groups of Zaparoans (Gaes and Sáparas), between Curaray and Conambo Sáparas, between Tayak people and others becomes clearer. Shamans dueled with other shamans, illness and death followed back and forth. Epidemic disease must have intensified these duels, as shamans and their followers within each llacta fought each other due to deaths within their families. Survivors of such conflicts fled or were captured and became integrated into their captor’s kindred. Rebuilding of kindred through marriage with enemy others is a fundamental characteristic of Amazonian societies (see, e.g., Rival 2016; Vilaça 2002, 2010; Viveiros de Castro 1992). In contrast to what Santos-­Granero (2009b, 225–­26) describes as an indigenous system of capture and servitude within regional systems of interethnic power relations, orphan adoption among Amazonian Kichwa was, and continues to be, based on the extensive kin networks that interpenetrate the various ethnolinguistic groups. Both forms of society are “open” in the sense of having inclusive kinship systems that facilitate the incorporation of outsider “enemies.” Rather than a situation in which captives were viewed as “pets” in a regional system marked by political hierarchy, the egalitarian nature of Amazonian Kichwa interethnic alliance provided for integration of captives as marriageable persons and potential nexuses to future amicable relations with their natal ethnolinguistic group. Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver  73

The preceding narrative is one of a corpus of texts recounting interethnic group strife among Sápara kindreds. While visiting with another Curaray Runa family, I listened as the household head recounted the conflict between Gaes and Sápara from the point of view of a Sápara descendant (see Reeve 1993–­94). As in the previous text, this storyteller ended his narrative with a personal validator, saying, “I am Sápara, my father was Sápara.” As Vilaça has observed for the Wari’, they consider themselves as a set of subgroups, rather than a single ethnolinguistic group. She notes that for the Wari’ all subgroups other than one’s own are considered enemies, and that warfare makes sense for the Wari’ only among others who share the same worldview (Vilaça 2010, 217–­18, 124). Warfare between shamanic leaders of distinct Sápara groups fits this Amazonian model of intragroup strife, remembered in the narratives from the perspective of descendants of specific subgroups, such as Canelos Runa of the Bobonaza and Sápara of the Curaray River. Runa at Curaray, similar to those living in the Pastaza-­Bobonaza region, experienced violent conflicts during the early part of the twentieth century. Assigning a chronology to these conflicts and dating them is beyond the scope of these narratives, but the time frame appears to coincide with the period of the Amazon rubber boom, with its attendant reintroduction of disease epidemics. It is possible, but unprovable, that conflicts led by shamans were exacerbated during times of these epidemics. While the cause of conflict is unknowable, the result was an extension of Zaparoan kindreds across the regional society, as survivors married into other groups and in that way, as the narrator comments, were increasing themselves. As narratives are kept alive through their telling within the llacta to younger kin and their marriage partners, ethnolinguistic group and kindred affiliation survives down through the generations. The Amazon Rubber Boom Era on the Curaray River

A second set of beginning times narratives belongs to the time of the Amazon rubber boom as it unfolded along the Curaray River. The atrocities of the rubber boom era as recorded elsewhere (Stanfield 1998) did not 74 Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver

occur along the middle Curaray River, the area that is for Curaray Runa part of beginning times. Narratives focus instead on the nonindigenous people who came into the region at that time and reference a clear distinction between the behavior of Runa and those nonindigenous people (Reeve 1988b). Over approximately forty years, from the 1880s into the 1920s, the world market demand for Amazonian rubber, derived from tapping of rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis) was at a peak.4 Hundreds of nonindigenous people traveled out to remote areas of the upper Amazon to establish rubber collecting enterprises, based on the location of rubber trees and managed through exploitation of indigenous labor. The most infamous of these enterprises was run by the Arana brothers on the Putumayo River (north and east of Amazonian Ecuador). Capture and torture of local indigenous people was described in a damning contemporary account by Roger Casement (1912). The rubber boom, particularly in this region, resulted in extensive population loss. Sulkin notes that in the central Colombian Amazon region, entire clans were lost during this time and that the survivors of formerly linguistically endogamous groups began to live together. Communities were formed from several clans and language groups, and marriage between members of distinct language groups became more frequent (Sulkin 2012, 151). Rubber collected here and in the western Amazon region was taken downriver to the port city of Iquitos and sold to merchants who transported it down the Amazon River, destined for other countries. It is said that one group of Sápara people was captured and taken downriver to the city of Iquitos during this time. However, the species of rubber trees commonly found in the area of the Napo and Curaray Rivers (Castilloa elastica and C. ulei), known as caucho, was distinct from Hevea brasiliensis, known as shiringa or seringa (Veber and Virtanen 2017, 25). Caucho, the more commonly found species along the Curaray, produced an inferior latex to that of the seringa more commonly located farther downriver. As a result, the nonindigenous people who established settlements along the Napo and Curaray Rivers relied on a mixed economic strategy that incorporated agriculture with rubber collecting. Along the Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver  75

Curaray, products were exchanged with Peruvian traders who traveled up the Curaray River in small boats (lanchas). Among the indigenous workers at these settlements were both Sápara and Kichwa speakers. Records by a traveler to the region at the time (Bravo 1907) indicate that local indigenous people were enticed by the loan of trade goods, and then compelled to work off the debt through their labor. Bravo noted that at times an indigenous worker might simply leave to go work at another settlement. Runa, however, speak about the debt as unpayable, as never being canceled.5 Beginning sometime in the late 1800s and continuing through the 1920s, rubber merchants maintained settlements, referred to by Curaray Runa as haciendas, along the length of the Curaray, from the Namo River below the community of Curaray downriver to the confluence with the Napo River. There were some six such rubber collection settlements along the middle and lower reaches of the Curaray and many more along the Napo River (Bravo 1907, 1920). Curaray Sáparas, together with Amazonian Kichwa peoples, worked for the Curarary River rubber merchants, living near their haciendas and making long six-­month to two-­year treks to the region of the Tigre River, a site of rubber exploitation, as well as to nearby headwater areas to collect the inferior types of latex found there. The Curaray was an extremely isolated backwater in contrast to the enormous rubber empires like that of the Aranas on the Putumayo. Throughout this time, no civil authority yet existed in the Curaray region (Bravo 1907), nor was there a permanent Catholic Church presence on the Curaray River. Periodic visits by priests and travelers, and trade with Peruvian merchants, were the only outside linkages reaching into this remote area. Detailed accounts of the rubber boom in the Curaray-­Napo region have been preserved in the writings of European visitors (Bravo 1907, 1920; Simson 1993) as well as in narratives passed down by descendants of the children (likely having both indigenous and European ancestry) of hacienda owners, who intermarried with Kichwa speakers and became Runa, and by descendants of Runa who worked at rubber extraction. During my fieldwork Curaray Runa talked with me about several haciendas that had existed downriver, the nearest having been San Antonio, which lay

76 Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver

about one hour by poled canoe downriver from the present community of Curaray.6 Runa maintain a memory of this time in stories about life at the haciendas. One Sunday in 1982 I went visiting again with Juan and Maria upriver to the home of their compadres. There we were told about life on the Curaray during the era of the Amazon rubber boom (see Reeve 1988b). Paushi began by listing the hacienda settlements and their owners, starting with those that had existed just below the community of Curaray and from there downriver. He talked about how rubber was collected, and emphasized the relation of indebtedness to the hacienda owner, in which huge quantities of rubber were exchanged for a single length of cloth and, he said, the debt was never paid off.7 They stole from us, he said, validating the story with his statement that as a young boy he lived downriver at Porvenir, one of the haciendas. He described how the Runa had collected rubber, going far into the forest to the headwaters of the Namo River, to the headwaters of the Cononaco, to the headwaters of the Jandiayacu. He said that on arriving at a rubber hacienda Runa were immediately subjected to a system of debt peonage. They were given cloth and a few tools and would then attempt to work off the debt thus incurred. Runa established residences near the hacienda but traveled to headwater areas to collect rubber, subsisting on toasted, dried plantain and manioc (cacayo and wariña). These excursions were fraught with danger. The circuits took Runa to the headwaters of rivers tributary to the Curaray where rubber trees were growing. In these locales Runa sometimes encountered Waorani-­speaking people.8 The Waorani are said to have retaliated against the intrusion into their territory by staging raids on the haciendas. For Paushi, it was conflict with the Waorani and the perpetual indebtedness of Runa to the hacienda owner that characterized Runa experience of the rubber boom along the Curaray River. Runa concepts of sharing and exchange are not encompassed within a relationship of debt peonage. The unfairness of the exchange, in which an enormous amount of labor returned only a bit of cloth is emblematic of the impossibility of incorporating nonindigenous people into the regional society. What the storyteller points to is greed, taking without giving, Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver  77

which puts the perpetuator of this unequal exchange in the category of a nonhuman being. As the demand for various types of rubber dwindled, most of the haciendas were abandoned. The nonindigenous people returned to the Andean highland cities from where they had come. With the collapse of the rubber market in the 1920s, followed by severe disease epidemics that swept through the region in the 1930s, and finally the closing of the Peruvian-­Ecuadorian border after 1941, the haciendas disappeared completely. With the exception of a small military garrison, no permanent civil, religious, or mercantile linkage to the nonindigenous world remained along the Curaray. A few of the children of those rubber merchants who had established haciendas on the Curaray remained and married Runa, becoming Runa themselves through adoption of the Kichwa language and Runa culture. As Vilaça notes for the Wari’, “Affinity was the means of incorporating not only enemies but also foreigners, who became co-­inhabitants and kin in the process . . . they gradually turn into consanguines” (2010, 301). The incorporation of a few descendants of rubber merchants appears to be a classic example of the creation of consanguines out of foreigners among Amazonian peoples. Vignette: Life on a Curaray Hacienda

One afternoon I visited the home of one of the descendants of a rubber merchant. Rosa’s home was located on the Curaray River at the downriver end of the community. Uniquely among Curaray Runa, she had in her home both a manioc squeezer (tipiti) and a sugarcane press, Amazonian craft materials that would otherwise be found much farther downriver. Using the tipiti, Rosa made dried manioc flour, locally called wariña, which she sold in small quantities to other Runa. She explained that the wariña is made with sweet manioc, peeled and left in water to rot, after which it is mashed, squeezed in the tipiti, and dried.9 Manioc flour is very durable and was historically used as a staple food during long-­distance treks throughout the Amazon. Sugarcane grows abundantly in the lower Amazon but is rarely cultivated by Runa. Here the sugar cane was pressed 78 Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver

into a liquid, than allowed to ferment into cane alcohol (guarapo), which is served by men of the house at festive gatherings. Rosa talked about the hacienda years, explaining that her ancestor, who was from a town in the Ecuadorian Andes, owned a hacienda on the Curaray River. The family sold balata and caucho, she said, both classes of tree sap. She explained that they had a few captured Waorani who worked at the hacienda. One of these, captured as a young boy, married a Runa and, according to Rosa, had descendants living at Curaray. She said it was people originally from here who went into the forest to collect rubber, and that they and their families lived near the hacienda, both adjacent to and across the river from the hacienda. They brought in rubber, which they sold to the hacienda owner, who paid them with goods. The rubber collectors “would drink as well,” she said. Then they went back to get more rubber. She talked about the riverboats that came up from Iquitos, Peru, with goods to sell in exchange for the rubber.10 She explained that her parents grew sugarcane and maintained a distillery for making cane alcohol, and that they also made honey and raised pigs and cattle. When she was young, she had traveled downriver on the Curaray where there were other haciendas, one near Pavacachi, one at Ceilán, one at Porvenir, in total about six on the Curaray River below San Antonio. All were in the rubber trade. Epidemic, Flight, and Return

Narratives of beginning times encompass the period up through the Amazon rubber boom. From this time to the present, Runa recount events as part of living memory (Kunan Uras), present times. When Runa talk about present times, there is no narrative framing, but rather discussion as part of everyday conversation. Curaray Runa recounted these events as part of their own experience of movement back and forth across the region; and of disease epidemics and spear killings that frame this experience. The distinction between narratives told to an audience of llacta members and visitors by an elder and stories that are part of lived recent experience is important to Runa. Beginning times narratives are passed down from elders to younger members of the llacta and ayllu with specific Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver  79

reference to ancestral places and peoples. These narratives are distinct from stories of mythic space-­time that are shared by several ethnolinguistic groups. Beginning times narratives are ethnolinguistic subgroup specific. The point of view therefore varies. There are several versions of the warfare that took place between the several groups of Sápara, just as there are distinct perspectives on the experience of the Amazon rubber boom. Stories told about present times, which include the recent past, are instead kindred specific. These stories are reflective of regional dynamics at the ayllu level. At Curaray, present times stories focus on the resettlement of the Curaray region following the Amazon rubber boom and a subsequent severe yellow fever epidemic. Sometime in the 1930s the epidemic swept through the Curaray River region. Although it is not possible to determine this with certainty, yellow fever was likely spread via nonindigenous traders who plied the Napo and Curaray Rivers, coming up from Iquitos in Peru. Visiting with the woman whose ancestors had maintained a rubber hacienda, I was told that as a child, she witnessed this epidemic. She said that people died every day, and that Runa fled upriver to the headwaters of the Villano River, or to Canelos, or to the Upper Napo River area. As fears of the yellow fever epidemic eventually subsided, Runa returned to the Curaray, motivated by the good hunting and fishing in this area rich in biotic resources. However, during this time of abandonment, Waorani families had begun to utilize the area for hunting. Curaray Runa talked about the subsequent conflicts with Waorani that occurred as they began resettlement of the region. In telling about their own family history, Curaray Runa insist that the Waorani were not here originally, that the Sápara of the Curaray threatened them and kept them away from the Curaray River area. The epidemic changed this dynamic as Sápara and Kichwa families fled the area to escape illness. Runa say that the area became superabundant in game resources, which attracted the Waorani into the region from their lands near the Napo River. Waorani began regularly traversing the forests around the Curaray and Villano Rivers. Rival (2016) corroborates this account for the Waorani. She notes in her discussion of Waorani history that their language is an isolate and that 80 Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver

they trekked along ridgetops between rivers occupied by enemy riverine peoples. The core of their ancestral territory was likely the Tiputini River, from where they expanded after the rubber boom to occupy most of the area between the Curaray and Napo Rivers (Rival 2016, 21, 105, 50). As the epidemic along the Curaray gradually disappeared and Sápara and Kichwa families returned, they came into conflict with the Waorani. Together with Runa from the Bobonaza River who were living at the settlement of Huito in the headwaters area of the Villano River, these Sápara formed one of the core groups that settled the community of Curaray. This settlement was augmented by the arrival of Napo Runa from the Upper Napo region; inmarrying men and women from the Runa communities of Canelos, Sarayacu, and Pacayacu on the Bobonaza and the small Runa settlements located at the headwaters of the Villano and Curaray Rivers; as well as a few Achuar originally from the Copataza-­Capahuari area. A Catholic mission was established at Curaray at this time. The pattern of resettlement at Curaray is similar to that of other mission-­based communities, a pattern dating back to the Jesuit mission period of the 1700s in this region (Reeve 1994) and to the settlement of Canelos by the Dominicans (Whitten 1976, 10). A core ethnolinguistic group or two distinct ethnolinguistic groups settled initially. The settlement, if stable, continued to grow as ayllus within the core groups brought in marriage partners for their children from other areas within the regional society, and some of their children went elsewhere to marry. Over time, the settlement then became one in a series of nexuses within the regional society. Interestingly, the core ethnolinguistic groups making up the cluster of llactas forming the initial settlement may not have exchanged marriage partners until others from the regional society with whom they had an alliance married into kindred at one of the other llactas that made up the settlement. This process was illustrated in my review of ecclesiastical marriage and baptismal records for the period of initial resettlement at Curaray after the epidemic of the 1930s. At the time of resettlement, intermarriage between ethnolinguistic groups at Curaray, as recorded in Dominican archives, reveal a systematic pattern of ethnic expansion as Kichwa speakers. In reviewing the Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver  81

ecclesiastical birth, marriage, and death records from this time, I found that Achuar and Sápara intermarried at Curaray, but always following a generation in which an Achuar married a Runa from the Bobonaza and a Sápara married a Napo Runa.11 In that way the two peoples were allied through the intervening generational alliance with a Kichwa speaker. This is the core meaning of the term runapura (Kichwa speakers among ourselves) that Curaray Runa use in describing their community. This settlement history illustrates the reach and cohesiveness of the regional society, perhaps nowhere more salient than at the community of Curaray, because of its comparatively recent resettlement history. Intergroup Conflict and Nodal Ayllus

Families who lost kin in the conflicts with Waorani during those early resettlement years recount with fervor these killings, saying that whenever Waorani encountered Runa along the Curaray River, they were killed, on the game trails or in their chagras. Specific deaths are remembered, always with the sense that the individuals were victims of aggression.12 No deaths of Waorani are mentioned in these accounts, so it is impossible to know if they ever occurred in self-­defense. Curaray Runa also did not speak (at least not to me) about the identity of the particular Waorani groups that occasioned these attacks. Rather, there was a general sense of grievance against Waorani as an ethnolinguistic group and as dangerous near neighbors. Casey High, in writing about the conflicts from the Waorani perspective, points to a similar sense of grievance, as Waorani view themselves as victims of violence, both within their ethnolinguistic group and with Kichwa, particularly as victims of Kichwa shamanic killings. By the 1970s, however, Waorani had begun to forge formal friendships with Napo and Curaray Runa, leading to several marriage alliances (Reeve and High 2012, 122–­24; Yost 1981). While some of my Curaray Runa interlocutors spoke about the deaths of their family members at the hands of Waorani during this resettlement period, others who had come into the community later were able to talk about this time with less passion and fear. One man, who in 1982 went with his family to visit Waorani at a settlement up the Curaray called 82 Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver

Golondrina Cocha, talked then of the conflicts that occurred as Runa moved back to the Curaray. He said: “At that time no Runa lived on the Curaray. Waorani came through the area. Then Runa came and set up a house, first living at the mouth of the Villano. The family lived right at the edge of the beach; they had a house yard (huasipungo) and their chagra right next to it. There they fought the Waorani; some died, many died, they said.” Another man recounted that the Waorani used to wander all through this area; they had their own trail. During the time of my fieldwork in the early 1980s a cautious rapprochement was taking place between Curaray Runa and their Waorani neighbors. One ayllu was invited to visit a neighboring Waorani group related through intermarriage. In turn, this group of Waorani made periodic visits to Curaray to trade with compadres and each year to attend the Jista celebration. As mentioned in the story told by Rosa, the rubber merchant descendant, a few Waorani children had remained at Curaray and married Runa.13 These intermarriages, as well as the extended ayllu of women captured and married into Waorani families formed nodes within a regional society through which hostile inter-­ethnolinguistic group relationships could be superseded at the ayllu level. While relations with the neighboring Waorani were improving during the 1980s, in subsequent years, Curaray Runa suffered attacks by other Waorani groups. I learned about these conflicts in my subsequent short field visits during the early 2000s.14 While the specific perpetrators of violence were never clearly identified to me, it was suggested that these may have been Aushiri, a Curaray Runa term for one of the groups living downriver from the group of Waorani with whom Curaray Runa were in contact. (For a detailed account of Waorani history and specific groups, see Cabodevilla 1994; Labaca 1988. For discussion of the conflicts with isolated groups, see Cabodevilla et al. 2004; High 2015.) In summary, historical memory kept alive through narratives of beginning times, together with the network of extended kin ties any individual maintains across the regional society, serve to perpetuate the mosaic of territorially based identities across a shared landscape, while leaving open the possibility for individuals and couples to join their kin in other Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver  83

places, adapting to the new locale their language, or making dialectical shifts within the Kichwa language, even as they may bring knowledge from elsewhere, such as the capacity of a woman to create beautiful ceramic aswa serving bowls. Beyond the movement across Runa communities, kin and formal friendship ties with members of other ethnolinguistic groups form nodes through which individual kindreds may extend their ties into the territories of other peoples, expanding the regional society, even as other kindreds with whom they are linked retain a memory of hostilities with these other peoples. As such, the scale of a regional society is flexible, with the potential for retrenchment or expansion through nodal intermarriage or its converse, conflicts between members of distinct groups.

84 Runa on the Cur ar ay R iver

4

The Ritual of Community

Community ritual celebrations are an important aspect of Amazonian societies. Essential to these celebrations is the bringing together of extended kin from across the locally conceptualized social landscape as well as nonkin with whom amicable relations are sought. Between late December and late March of each year, the major communities along the Bobonaza River and the community of Curaray each hold a celebration simply called Jista. The Jista is characteristic of an Amazonian community ritual celebration. These celebrations reveal the scale of the Amazonian Kichwa regional society through the gathering of distant kin, celebration of alliances including marriage, and openness to nonkin, who are welcome to visit at this time. As a collective ritual celebration, the Jista is dialogic, even polyphonic (Guss 2000), to the extent that it incorporates enemy outsiders and nonindigenous persons. The Jista is an ancient Amazonian celebration that takes place at the seasonal shift marking the end of one year and beginning of another, correlated with the fruiting of the chonta peach palm. Since the period of Catholic missionization, it has been linked additionally to the Christian celebrations of Christmas, Carnival, and Easter. While the Jista is rooted in ancient Amazonian festival traditions, Curaray Runa said that the Jista cannot be held without the presence of a Catholic priest. The ritual period of the Jista begins with preparation of large quantities of manioc beer and meat, and invitations to family and compadres, and a few nonindigenous people from outside the community. It culminates 85

in a multiday celebration. As such, it is characteristic of intervillage festivals across Amazonia (see, e.g., Jackson 1983, 59, 203; Mihas et al. 2014, 223–­25; Nimuendaju 1978, 107–­8; Rival 2002, 129–­51; 2014, 53, 56; Santos-­Granero 1991, 46). The key themes running through these Amazonian festivals are the invitation of outsiders into the community, celebration of kin-­based alliances, and the marking of a change in seasons, particularly as associated with the renewal of forest bounty. The festivals can be seen as a way of realizing the otherwise inchoate regional society and the landscape in which individual extended families are embedded. Three central themes define the experience of the Jista for both hosts and guests. The Jista brings together distant extended kin groups to visit, exchange news, and celebrate new compadrazgo and marriage bonds. Second, at Curaray the Jista occurs at the end of one cycle of seasons and the beginning of another. Finally, uniquely to Runa regional society, the Jista commemorates historic processes, including the relationship with the Catholic mission. My interlocutors at Curaray insisted to me that the Jista cannot take place without the presence of a visiting priest, whose role is to bless the food consumed during the second day of the three-­day celebration, and following the celebration, to formalize and record baptisms and marriages—­extensions of the regional kinship networks through marriage alliance and formation of new compadrazgo ties. In communities of the Bobonaza River, the celebratory period also commemorates former intergroup warfare. In the Runa communities on the Bobonaza River at Canelos, Pacayacu, and Sarayacu, a warrior celebration called Lancero Jista commemorates a past inter-­ethnolinguistic group conflict in that area. Lancero Jista is held concurrently with the Jista in which the priest participates. Lancero Jista is considered to be a separate celebration, extending the ritual from the three-­day period at Curaray to four days of celebration, terminating at the end of the Lancero Jista. Amazonian Regional Celebrations

In discussion of collective ritual celebrations, several Amazonian scholars have pointed to the regional reach of these events. In the Jista, it is 86 The R itual of Community

the very nature of kinship ties that is being explored and reaffirmed. As Sahlins notes, kinship is what is locally defined as “belonging to one another” in contrast to “what is different and excluded” (2013, 43). My most productive discussions of ethnolinguistic group histories took place just prior to the Jista, stories about distinct peoples told to me as I sat among llacta group listeners. As preparations for the Jista began, women talked about runapura, a term that means “Runa among ourselves”; that is, distinct ayllus collectively together, people who are inherently kinsmen who not only frequently intermarry but share a common origin in mythic time-­space. Among the men, during the collective hunt, my husband heard the men refer to each other as ala (ancient brother), a reference to the mythic twin brothers who through a series of adventures became forever separated. Within the terms runapura and ala are embedded core concepts of shared origin that define a regional society, the reach of which is made explicit during the Jista. Several Amazonian scholars have described collective rituals as a bringing together of distinct kindreds. In his seminal work on Canelos Kichwa of the Bobonaza River region, Whitten describes the Jista as an “ayllu ceremony,” the core meaning of the celebration for participants (1976, 165–­204). In contrast, Uzendoski notes that Napo Runa have no essentialized concept of being Runa, but instead consider themselves members of distinct muntuns—­groups that share both residence and kinship, and a “common spiritual, material, historical and political destiny” (2005, 15, 63). For Napo Runa, it is the marriage ceremony that unites distinct kindreds. There is no other parallel to the Jista. For the Tupian Wari’ of Brazil, relations of ritual exchange, celebrated in festivals, are signifiers of the kin ties between Wari’ subgroups, ties between kindreds who were at one time close kinspeople but who fell out with each other and no longer share a commensal existence. Festivals serve to maintain the ties that would otherwise degenerate into what Vilaça (2010, 31) refers to as a process of “enemization.” The process is reversible if festival exchanges are renewed. The Tupian Araweté recall festivals of strong maize beer and meat that brought together two or more villages. Although these no longer incorporate members of an extensive The R itual of Community  87

regional society, such maize beer festivals continue to be “oriented toward the outside” and remain for the Araweté “the culminating moment of sociability” (Viveiros de Castro 1992, 93, 123–­33, 140). Amazonian scholars have pointed also to the tensions that surround collective rituals, in which competition and even antagonism characterized the exchanges that take place during the celebration (see, e.g., Vilaça, 2010, 59–­68). As Fausto (2020) notes, a central concern of Amazonian rituals, including intercommunity celebrations, is uncertainty—­uncertainty of the outcome of ritual activity. Both Jackson (1983) and Chernela (1993) have written about the rich tradition of collective rituals that characterize the Tukanoan regional social system of the northwest Amazon. Jackson described the Dabucurí festival involving an exchange of meat and beer in which guests bring the smoked meat or fish and hosts provide the (manioc) beer. She noted that during preparations, guests feel significant pressure to provide sufficient meat to their hosts (1983, 202–­3). Chernela described a similar Po’oa exchange ceremony held between sibs across the region. She notes that the Po’oa exchange is an affinal ceremony held between wife-­exchanging sibs, during which gifts are exchanged (1993, 110–­22). The Waorani, neighbors of Curaray Runa, hold similar manioc beer (Eëmë) festivals that unite two longhouses as allies (huaomani). Allies are contrasted to “others” (huarani) outside this spouse-­exchanging unit. While the Eëmë festival celebrates a smaller scale kinship network than that characterized by the Tukanoans and Runa of the Curaray and Bobonaza Rivers, the principle of marking an alliance, particularly a marriage alliance, through a collective ritual that unites kin groups is the same. A Waorani Eëmë festival is carefully planned, involving an emissary with kin in both groups who proposes the marriage alliance, which, if agreed upon, sets the stage for the festival. Preparation involves production of strong, sweet manioc beer and quantities of smoked meat. The hosts are wife-­takers who pledge to initiate a new cycle of exchanges. The festival is fraught with danger, however, as a failed alliance can lead to violence. Rival notes that current sedentary Waorani villages “structurally correspond to feast groups” (2002, 13, 129–­51). Adding to this, 88 The R itual of Community

High notes that the Eëmë festival is now a village-­wide celebration that invokes for participants the social memory of an idealized past time in which households linked through kin ties invited each other to drink large quantities of manioc beer together, a time before the extreme violence that characterized recent Waorani history (High 2015, 89). For the Waorani, a clear distinction exists between the Eëmë festival, in which manioc beer is consumed, and the peach palm festivals, in which two or three related house groups came together for several weeks at their peach palm groves during the fruiting season (Rival 2002, 130; 2016, 56). Celebrations of kinship alliances characterizing the northern and western Amazonian groups are one of two distinct types; what Hill (1993, 13) describes as a dual ceremonial complex. The first is the large intervillage alliance festival. The second are smaller festivals involving ritual specialists and groups of closely related kin. What unites these festivals is seasonality. All take place during the time of abundance, associated with fertility (Fausto 2020, 77; Hill 1993, 13). For Tukanoans, the focus of these festivals is on the local sib or language group, featuring in common with the Wakuénai the playing of sacred instruments (horns) and collection of jungle fruits; and additionally, for Tukanoans, it is the time of male initiation ceremonies (Jackson 1983, 202; Hill 1993, 13). These two types of festivals together ensure the continuity of the society. The small kin-­based festival ensures the continued production of people and food. The large intervillage festival ensures the proper exchange of both these between groups of people (Jackson 1983, 202). Without an elaborate descent system, without initiation ceremonies, and lacking an endogamous focus to social organization, Runa of the Curaray and Bobonaza have merged in the Jista elements of these two types of ceremonies. The Jista is celebrated to ensure both continuity of the group as runapura and the productive landscape, as well as marking the marriage and intergroup exchanges essential to continuity of the regional society. An analysis of the events surrounding the Jista makes clear that the Jista exchanges are patterned on the essential male-­female, meat-­beer exchanges common to other Amazonian festivals that form the basis of marriage and household continuity. The R itual of Community  89

In common with other Amazonian festivals, the Jista celebrates a time of abundance. Seasonal shifts from scarcity to abundance, for example, were historically celebrated among Arawakans of northeastern Peru (Mihas et al. 2014). At Curaray the time of abundance corresponds not only with the fruiting of the chonta (peach) palm but with the spawning of fishes, such as the chalwa (bocachico), and the birth of monkeys and many species of birds. In the Ecuadorian Amazon region, indigenous peoples including the Waorani, Amazonian Kichwa, and Achuar associate the time of peach palm fruiting with a time of abundance.1 At Curaray the time of abundance coincides with danger, as during this time, heavy rains swell the rivers. As the Curaray River rises, it threatens to inundate homes and chagras, leaving people cold and hungry, and potentially destroying the community. Through drumming, dancing, and consumption of large quantities of strong manioc beer, the Jista draws participants into mythic space-time (Unai), in which animals and humans are mutable, and the great potential catastrophe of the Amazonian world destruction and world renewal (pachakutik) is “played with” in ritual.2 Curaray Jista

The Jista as celebrated in the community of Curaray during 1981 and 1982 took place over three named days: Sisa Punzha (Day of Flowers), Camari (Feast), and Armana Punzha (Bathing Day).3 The festival time began about two weeks earlier, with a conceptual division of the community into two halves—­a female and male celebration, designated by a female Jista house (Warmi Jista Wasi) and a male Jista house (Kari Jista Wasi). An upriver and downriver division is additionally associated with the festival houses; in 1982, the male house was downriver and female house was upriver. During the prior year’s celebration, a host couple (Chayuk Runa) was chosen for each of the houses.4 The couple planted manioc to be harvested for the festival manioc beer and began preparations for their Jista house. About a month before the Jista the couple invited others to serve as assistants during the intense fifteen-­day period of preparation leading to the three-­day Jista celebration. These assistants were young unmarried men and women, or couples affiliated by inmarriage or ayllu, 90 The R itual of Community

or simply recognized for their skill in hunting and pottery making. At the initiation of the preparatory period, the men departed on a collective hunt, while the women gathered in the Jista house to prepare strong manioc beer and to fabricate the many special pottery drinking vessels required for the Jista. The Jista is similar to Amazonian alliance festivals, with the notable exception that hosts are at the same time guests at the opposing house. The simultaneity of this festival hosting may be due in part to historical circumstance. Curaray Runa insisted to me that the Jista cannot take place without the presence of a Catholic priest, whose role in the festival is to bless the jungle meat during the feast day and to officiate at marriages and baptisms that take place immediately after the Jista. The priest has traditionally come once a year to perform the marriage and baptismal ceremonies. Timing of the Jista, in accord with other Amazonian festivals, is during the time of seasonal abundance, which coincides with the Christian celebratory period between Christmas and Easter, a time when the priest would most likely visit. Two months after our arrival in Ecuador in 1981 we were invited by Runa whom we knew in the Puyo area to attend the Jista at Curaray. This was a way to visit for a few days, and to propose my research to the community. For our Runa friends from Puyo it was an opportunity to visit their compadres at Curaray. Our bush plane landed on a hot, sultry afternoon. In the early dawn of the following morning, I heard the sounds of drums and cornetas (pottery horns), and after sun up, we started out in a motorized dugout canoe to visit the two Jista houses.5 The Jista takes place in Curaray in March, at the beginning of the season of river inundations, a time of seasonal transition filled with danger, when destruction by flood is the paramount danger. In 1981 at the initiation of the Jista the river had risen tremendously overnight, causing an inundation along both banks. Arriving at the Jista house, we saw that it was flooded. The Jista helpers and others—­a total of some fifteen men and women—­were moving huge pottery storage jars full of festival manioc beer out of the flooded Jista house. The huge storage vessels were being floated out to waiting dugout canoes. Men lifted the storage vessels into The R itual of Community  91

Fig. 6. The flooded Jista house, 1981. Photo by author.

the canoes, then poled each laden canoe upriver to a shaman’s house that stood well above the river water, and that now would serve as the Jista house. The group also worked hard and fast to move all of the other materials prepared for the Jista, which included three large carrying baskets filled with pottery bowls and figurines for serving the manioc beer, as well as the pottery cornetas, and blackware eating bowls (callanas). Vignette: Jista 1982

We had been living in Curaray for almost a year when we were approached by the Jista conveners (Chayuk Runa) and asked to serve as auxiliary helpers in the upcoming Jista celebration. I was responsible for helping the women to make ceramics and the enormous quantity of manioc beer required, and my husband went with the men to hunt for the Jista feast. We were chosen to assist in the Warmi Jista Wasi, where we were accompanied by our neighbors from two llactas located along the Curaray River. There is a distinction between Jista assistants and auxiliary helpers. The core group of assistants includes those with kin ties to the Chayuk Runa and each other, together with couples who are asked to help because they 92 The R itual of Community

Fig. 7. Warmi Jista Wasi during Jista preparations, 1982. Photo by author.

excel in the arts of hunting and pottery making. Auxiliary helpers are just that, not specially skilled and generally younger kin. During the preparations for the Jista, women dream and sing, entering a mythic space-­time of human-­animal mutability. Runa also think about beginning times, when the first Sápara, Gaes, Canelos, Achuar, and Napo Runa settlement occurred at mission sites such as Curaray. The preparation period is a ritual space in which participants attempt to see beyond everyday existence to merge knowledge from the present with that from mythic space-­time and beginning times. As women worked together in each Jista house during 1982, they discussed mutual kin ties as ayllupura (a group of ayllus together). At the same time, there was discussion about the relative capabilities of the upriver and downriver Jista houses for hunting and beer making, expressed in quiet conversation as a concern that the other Jista house would bring more meat or produce more manioc beer and, conversely, in the fear of envy—­all of which built tensions within each house during the preparation for the Jista.6 The intensive fifteen-­day work period began in March 1982 after the The R itual of Community  93

Fig. 8. Making Jista purus, 1982. Photo by author.

Warmi and Kari Jista conveners returned from a solo visit to the area where each planned to bring the hunters. A work party, called Yanda Minga (collective wood gathering), was then held in which invited guests brought to each Jista house sufficient firewood for the cooking of vast quantities of manioc and firing of numerous pottery drinking vessels. Immediately following the Yanda Minga, the men left for their hunting trip, while the women began work preparing the manioc beer and festival ceramic vessels, called purus. Each puru was a unique expression of the woman’s dreams and knowledge. It might take the shape of a bird, a fish, a seed, or other plant or animal. The purus were decorated with patterns from tortoise, anaconda (boa constrictor), flowers, or other design imagery and included a hole or spout through which the festival goer could drink the aswa. Women occasionally sang about the imagery of their purus, sometimes asking each other about the designs. After several days of river travel the men reached their hunting area. While each helper went daily to hunt, the convener and his auxiliary helpers worked at smoking and roasting the meat, drying skins, cooking, and 94 The R itual of Community

Fig. 9. Jista hunters’ camp, 1982. Photo by Stuart A. Reeve.

gathering firewood. During evenings men in the hunting camp smoked and snuffed Runa tobacco provided by the Chayuk to produce dreams of meeting with much game. At the camp men begin to refer to each other as “ancient brother”—­ala—­signaling the shared mythic space-­time origin of all men at the camp. As the pottery neared completion, the Chayuk warmi, now referred to as Jista amu (owner of the Jista) organized a minga to bring in the dried river cane, called pinduk yanda, which was needed to fire the purus. Before the arrival of the minga workers, the area of the house in which the aswa storage vessels had been set up was closed off with a framework of palm thatch, making a complete enclosure within the house, with a small entryway. The enclosure, called tinaja huasi, was made to keep the manioc beer from the sight of the visitors, as those from the other Jista house are said at this time to be envious of the quantity of manioc beer being prepared.7 After a week of steady work a messenger, who was also the principal drummer during the festival, traveled to the men’s camp. On his return the The R itual of Community  95

women listened to his account of the hunt and showed evident pleasure in the gifts of baby birds and animals (wibana) sent by their husbands to be raised in the household—­new life to be nurtured. At the hunters’ camp men were by now spending considerable time finishing and improving upon the costume of bird and monkey skins and the sicuanga (toucan feather) headdress that each was constructing to wear during the Jista. The women begin testing their newly finished cornetas, blowing the small horns for all of the community to hear. At this point in preparations, anxiety about the supply of meat and aswa for the Jista, about potentially being outdone by the other Jista house in quantity of meat and aswa, rose to a collective pitch. Anxiety about natural forces was also palpable, as women talked quietly about potential destruction through the unleashing of river waters—­carrying away homes and destroying manioc. After ten days of work, one of the older, more knowledgeable women had a dream. Early the following morning, she earnestly communicated this dream to the other women. “I dreamed,” she said, “that at the Jista the guests did not come here. There was no beach, the river had risen and inundated the house; there was no way to dance, so we danced at . . . punto.” (The point referred to is at the confluence of the Villano and Curaray near the old mission cemetery.)8 With the recounting of the dream, tension reached a breaking point; women laughed, and later that afternoon the women for the first time began serving each other the festival aswa. The anxiety centered on the rains, flood, and destruction paralleled fear of conflicts between people that could lead to schism or worse. On the final night of their trek the hunters painted each other with wituk (genipap) juice, fine lines decorating their faces. Heated and mixed with water, the wituk is invisible when applied but later turns black as it oxidizes. The women at the Jista house also painted themselves and each other with wituk, drawing designs of animal skins on their faces and legs, and then retired very quietly, rising around 3:00 a.m. to await arrival of the hunters. Emerging slowly out of the predawn mist, the men appeared, standing in canoes, silhouetted against the gray light, dressed in animal skin capes 96 The R itual of Community

and headdresses, drumming their arrival. On the beach the drummer and flutist began sounding the beginning of the Jista, “Ali shamunga” (They are arriving well). At the sight of the hunters’ canoes, the women began to blow their pottery cornetas, exclaiming excitedly on the costumes while the drummers circled, beating their drums. As the day dawned, visiting between the Kari and Warmi Jista houses began. The men and women who had served as assistants in the festival preparations were now collectively referred to as jisteros (Jista celebrants). At Curaray, as noted, the first day is called Sisa Punzha—­Day of Flowers. During the first reciprocal visit this day, jisteros carried flowers and palm fronds to decorate the church as the host and guest groups passed through the central plaza between the two Jista houses. By midmorning visitors from other Runa communities joined in the reciprocal visits back and forth between the two Jista houses. Near sunset, the four reciprocal visits were competed, the drumming and dancing stopped, and all jisteros returned to their own homes. The second day of the Jista at Curaray is Camari (feast of meat). On the day of the Camari all jisteros gathered by daybreak at their respective Jista houses. The dried, smoked meat that had been hung from the house rafters was lowered down and then cut up by the women helpers. An older couple who stood in the position of linking ayllus among the jisteros began cooking the meat, helped by younger men and women. Runa said that in this way, all of the ayllus cook together. While the meal was being prepared, the jisteros left to go to the church. The men entered the church, now decorated with flowers and palm fronds, carrying their drums and the pottery incense burners made by their wives, filling the air with a smoldering fragrant resin smell. The Warmi Jisteros emerged from the church carrying a statue of the Virgin, while the Kari Jisteros brought out the image of San José; both were held high in a procession down to the plaza. The men drumming, flutists playing, and the Curaray Runa catechist reciting a prayer created a cacophony of sounds as all walked together. A dancing and drumming circuit was completed in the mission plaza, the procession stopped, and the Jista amus announced their successors to sponsor the Jista the following year. The R itual of Community  97

Fig. 10. Jista procession in the plaza at Curaray, 1981. Photo by author.

These two couples then assumed the staffs of conveners—­a chonta pole decorated with red, yellow, black, and white toucan feathers and called Chayuj Sisana. The images of the Virgin and San José were then paraded back into the church, carried now by old and new Jista conveners together. The priest emerged from the church with the instructions: “Let the festival proceed.” All then proceeded to the Warmi Jista Wasi for the Camari—­the feast. The Camari meal was blessed by the priest. Jisteros and visitors from other Runa communities ate the meal after the priest and other nonindigenous visitors had left. Each visitor from another Runa community paid a small sum in cash to the hunters for the food. The cash was later distributed as “payment” for their “labor” as hunters.9 The ritual drinking, dancing, and drumming on reciprocal visits between the Jista houses that characterizes the first two days reached a crescendo of activity on the third festival day, called Armana Punzha (Bathing Day). The aswa-­serving men and women created chaos as they “played together” (pugllanchi), drumming, dancing, and serving aswa. 98 The R itual of Community

Fig. 11. Bringing the priest to the Jista camari, 1981. Photo by author.

Male servers doused their guests, shouting, “Tamia, tamia” (rain, rain), creating a deluge within the social sphere of the Jista house.10 Men and women played with costuming—­men wearing western-­style hats under the headdresses; women wearing men’s headdresses. The women concentrated on serving each other aswa, standing together, the server speaking quietly or singing softly some personal message to the drinker. As visits continued between the Jista houses, costumes were exchanged between the two sets of hunters, signaling the end of the year, when “everything changes.” In talking about the Jista, Runa stressed this point—­it is at the end of the festival when everything changes, and a new year begins.11 The dancing, drumming, and aswa-­serving fervor built during the afternoon of Armana Punzha. Suddenly the newly appointed Jista convener called “Stop,” ordering all the serving vessels to be broken. Selecting a suitable part of the thatch roof, standing inside the house, one by one the guest jistero men hurled the serving vessels up against the roof, attempting to pierce the woven palm thatch with potsherds that would serve as a reminder that the Jista took place at that house. They broke the purus, The R itual of Community  99

Fig. 12. Third day of the Jista—­Armana Punzha, 1982. Photo by author.

broke mukawas full of manioc beer, and the cornetas. As they threw the pottery, the men yelled, “The festival is ending” (jista tucurin). Once all the pottery was broken in the Warmi Jista Wasi, all went to the Kari Jista Wasi, where the pottery there was broken in the same way. Following this, the men again began to drum, their drums sounding now only heavy thuds from the aswa-­soaked drum skins, while women danced barefooted on a dirt house floor now turned to a beery mud mixed with sherds of pottery. The few remaining mukawas were used to continue serving until all of the aswa had been drunk. The two reciprocal visits between Jista houses ended with a final, third visit to the Warmi Jista Wasi. All participants then went to the river to bathe, returning to their houses at nightfall. The chaos had ended, normal social and cosmological order was once again quickly established, and a new year began. Music and Manioc Beer: Entering Mythic Space-­Time

At Curaray, Jista participants were encouraged through consumption of large quantities of manioc beer to “enter” mythic space-­time, to see beyond the quotidian world. Music, too, crosses into mythic space-­time. 100 The R itual of Community

After consuming large quantities of aswa, women sang quietly to other women, their songs telling of individual sorrows and strength; they were sicuanga warmi (toucan woman), urpi warmi (dove woman)—­strong conflict-­resolving women; women sad because they were living far from their family—­brothers, sisters, parents; or sad because their child had died. The song is part of Unai, that mythic space-­time in which humans and animals are interchangeable, so that the woman is the bird, the bird is the woman. Some songs were humorous, a woman joking and teasing another woman. Likewise, women thought of sound in their pottery making. Jista purus made in the shape of animals have open mouths; an animal calling out. Women sounded the pottery horns they had made before giving these to husbands arriving back from the hunt. Men who served as flutists had a repertoire of music played for each part of the festival, as in “ali shamunga” (they are coming well/happy) at the festival beginning. Men drummed, they said, “so that the spirit master of the forest would hear them.” Like women’s songs, the flute playing and drumming “enters” mythic space-­time where humans communicate with the nonhuman world. The Jista drummer and flutist are also the messengers—­going upriver during Jista preparations to bring aswa to the men and news from the women, and returning downriver with meat for the women and news of the hunters. While the Jista is replete with sound, the events depict a world in precarious balance. Men recalling ancient brotherhood ties may also remember past conflicts with other peoples. If the priest does not arrive, there can be no Jista, no bringing together of the community. As men and women share the bounty of their collective labor, they “play” with the forces of destruction, as rain and flood. As Runa said, the festival is an ending and a beginning. The Jista as Enduring Tradition

On the Bobonaza and in the Puyo area the Jista male-­female divisions are associated with the origin myth of all Runa as descendants of the male moon (quilla) and female common potoo bird (jilucu) (Whitten 1976, 168; Whitten and Whitten 1988, 39–­40). As such, for participants, the Jista is a The R itual of Community  101

ritual space in which non-­ayllu members are brought into a consanguineal relationship (Mezzenzana 2014). Memory of an ancient shared origin is foundational to the Jista for all Runa participants. The Jista affirms the extended kin ties that during beginning times knit together several ethnolinguistic groups at these old mission communities as well as across the wider regional society. In contrast to the Jista at Curaray, however, several Runa communities on the Bobonaza River have traditionally performed, simultaneously with the Jista, a warrior celebration called Lancero Jista. Lancero Jista on the Bobonaza

In Canelos on the Bobonaza River, the Lancero Jista has traditionally been celebrated together with the Jista for the priest at the end of December, around the time of Christmas. In 1981 I visited Canelos for the Jista, accompanied by Runa from Puyo. Canelos Runa explained to me that these are two distinct celebrations, although they take place simultaneously. They said that Lancero Jista is the “festival as the grandfathers had it” in beginning times, that it is a dance of war—­the dance steps enact the attack: Lanceros standing as a lightning bolt, then as a poisonous snake ready to strike, then turning and finally striking with the macana (wooden short-­sword) used in beginning times. The men do this special dance to flute music, and it is the flute player who directs and leads the men in the dance. The Lancero Jista commemorates an alliance with the Achuar of the Copataza-­Capahuari against the Chirapa, with whom they fought in beginning times (Whitten and Whitten 2008, 165). Descendants of the warrior who led this attack, which occurred in the late 1800s, now live in Canelos, Pacayacu, Sarayacu, and Teresa Mama on the Bobonaza River (Mezzenzana 2015, 132–­33).12 At Canelos the Jista traditionally takes place over four days. The first day is “Come all of you now to drink” (Kunan shamunguichu upina); the second is “Sending of flowers” (Sisa mandana); the third is “Festival feast” (Jista camari); and the fourth is “Feast of lances” (Lanca camari). Arriving just before the first day of the 1981 celebration, we learned that the hunters had gone to the same areas in which Canelos Runa travel on purina; some went to Villano River headwaters, others to Copataza River 102 The R itual of Community

in Achuar territory. My host explained that many Canelos Runa now live permanently out in the hills above Canelos, away from the community center, such that lands outside the communities were populated throughout the region. The talk was of beginning times, when, he said, women blackened their teeth with a type of cultivated seed and blackened their feet with wituk. My host recounted that men and women wore wituk and the red face paint made from the achiote fruit. The Canelos people used beaten llanchama bark cloth for long tunics (cushmas). Women wore a wrap-­around bark cloth skirt, dyed dark blue, called pampalina. They wore necklaces and stick earrings. He talked about how Runa had formal friendships, now called compadrazgo, long before the coming of Europeans. He said all lived in family groups on individual hills, away from one another. He then explained that in beginning times, the Canelos people went “as jaguars” through the forests to carry the Catholic priests to the Bobonaza. He said they carried these priests on their backs to the area that is now Canelos. When asked about the Lancero Jista, my host said that Canelos Runa fought a war against enemy others, and that the Canelos people won. He said now the war is forgotten; all of the elders who were enemies of each other are now dead. Now this generation has made friends to forget, he said. This conflict never reached up into the Villano-­Curaray area, so there is no Lancero Jista at Curaray. As the Jista at Canelos began, Lanceros, Jista amus, and their assistants went first to the church. The Jista amus delivered jungle meat to the priest, after which the Lanceros danced in the small plaza in front of the church. Visitors were then invited to the Jista houses. The celebration moved back and forth between the Kari Jista and Warmi Jista houses, as is done at Curaray. Lanceros traveled an independent circuit between the Lancero houses, one of which was the home of the Lancero Maestro (instructor), who served in this role each year. The Lanceros were costumed with rattles around the pants just above the knee, sounding as they danced. Each carried a short-­sword called puka caspi macana (red-­stick short-­sword) of his own making or one that had been passed down from his family. The The R itual of Community  103

Fig. 13. Lanceros in the plaza at Canelos, 1981. Photo by author.

dance was a heel-­toe step emulating how one walks through the jungle when near the enemy. The short-­sword was first held across the stomach, then the Lanceros switched with short-­sword held upward, then turning, danced again with short-­sword pointed down, up and down, crossing the dance area in a perpendicular pattern. When they stopped, each Lancero went to the men seated around the floor and marked X at their feet. During the entire dance, two male elders played the piwano flute and three drummed. The maestro sat, instructing the Lancero dancers. The Lancero Jista, like the narrative texts presented in chapter 3, keeps alive the memory of intergroup conflicts, even as the conflicts themselves are put aside in succeeding generations. Ancient Patterns, Inter-­ethnolinguistic Group Alliance, and Mission Settlement

The origin of the Jista celebration lies within the ancient Amazonian intervillage feast tradition. However, it reflects the historical experience of Curaray and Bobonaza Runa. The Jista celebrates the arrival of the priest, who is a powerful outsider and protector, and whose principal role is to ensure continuity of the historic mission community. His role is to officiate at new kin group alliances formed through marriage and baptism, and in so doing, formalize new kin and compadrazgo ties that knit together a community formed historically from several distinct ethnolinguistic groups. The division of community during the Jista into a female-­male duality recalls the origin myth of all Runa as descendants of the union of the moon and the jilucu bird in mythic space-­time. As such, Jista participants are ancient brothers. It mirrors too the complementarity of men’s and women’s roles, which ensure sociability within the household and llacta. The associated upriver-­downriver division creates a geography of social space that is inchoate during the remainder of the year. Nevertheless, it underlies a concept of community, of communal living that may reference the historic gathering of Runa ayllus from the Napo and Bobonaza, together with Sápara and a few Achuar at the mission site of Curaray. Such a community would likely fission without the presence of The R itual of Community  105

the Catholic Church, through the centripetal force of internal tensions between individuals and, by extension, their family groups. While the priest oversees the continuity of the mission community, it is the Curaray Runa who contend with the forces of cosmological destruction that could end not only the community, but the Runa themselves, together with the forest domain. Historically, it was Catholic missionaries who brought distinct family groups together to occupy a settlement and its surrounding territory. In a situation in which warfare, epidemics, and flight from the abuses of the colonial and later rubber boom periods created major stresses on dwindling groups speaking distinct languages, the mission served as a refuge, so long as the priest was present, and so long as he not only helped to protect the population as “missionized Indians” from the long reach of secular forces but also provided trade goods that empowered exchange with other peoples across the region.13 The Jista “makes sense” of the mission settlement created from interethnic marriage alliances, while it also references the friability of the mission settlement, as all could be destroyed through chaos. Underlying the celebratory nature of the Jista is a very real anxiety concerning reliance on a capricious spirit world that controls the availability of food resources, as well as anxiety around forming ties with nonkin, including former enemies who could become enemies again.

106 The R itual of Community

5

Ayllu across the Regional Society

Among Amazonian Kichwa, peaceful kinship relationships generating abundance are the essence of life. In my conversations with Runa in Curaray and in Puyo, my interlocutors stressed the idea of living tranquilly as an ideal, living among kin without strife. The narrator quoted in chapter 2 stressed the harmony of the spousal bond as a key to life. Tranquility in the household, in the llacta, within the community and across the regional society is made possible through harmonious multistranded kinship ties. Such harmony promotes an abundance of life. In an inquiry into the meaning of living well for indigenous Amazonian peoples, Fernando Santos-­Granero (2015) concludes that what he terms “public wealth,” as a measure of well-­being, is at its essence for Amazonian peoples the vitality of the group. It is an abundance of vitality and conviviality, and what can be glossed as transformative energy shared across all beings. For the Napo Runa, the highest value in life is kinship relationships (Uzendoski 2005). Puyo Runa link value to concepts of beauty, which include quotidian life sustained through deep knowledge of the tropical forest and rivers that sustain life (Whitten 2015). In these formulations it is vitality, a positive life force, expressed equally in tranquil kin relationships and in deep knowledge, that promotes well-­being of the kin group within the forest and riverine landscape.

107

Amazonian Kichwa Regional Kin Networks

Peaceful relationships between kin and potential affines are essential to a regional society, as Runa crisscross the landscape, visiting kin on purina or kin living in other communities. Young people go traveling to meet potential spouses, older married couples go to visit relatives, and compadres follow trails and cross river systems to visit and trade with each other. Not only do individuals move back and forth across this landscape, but such movement is made highly dynamic by the existence of communities in which ayllus having distinct historical roots co-­exist. As noted in earlier chapters, Runa communities along the Curaray and Bobonaza Rivers have been constituted historically from several ethnolinguistic groups, including Canelos, Achuar, Napo Runa and Sápara, Gaes, and Andoas Zaparoans. Among the Achuar, there are bi-­ethnic settlements of Achuar and Kichwa speakers that are either completely integrated, as occurs on the upper Conambo, or ethnically separated but living quite close together, as on the upper Corrientes in Ecuador and upper Tigre River in Peru. Such multiethnic settlements are very old (Descola 1994, 21). None of this is exceptional—­the movement of people who are members of distinct groups, or subgroups, back and forth across a regional landscape is a core aspect of many Amazonian societies. As noted in the introduction to this book, while much attention has been paid to Amazonian kinship systems, including exogamous patrilineal systems, little attention has been paid to Amazonian cultural complexity revealed in the dynamics of a regional-­scale society. Trekking with Kin and Meeting Marriage Partners

For Curaray Runa the Jista marks the end of one year and beginning of another. It lies conceptually opposite the time of purina—­literally “to trek”—­during which families leave to visit a remote area away from the community settlement, to hunt, tend small chagras, and visit with kin from other communities. Formerly, the purina time extended for many months after the Jista. Now, for families with children, it is restricted to the school vacation time. Runa leave the community during the interim 108 across the Regional Society

between school years. The need for children to attend school keeps young families in the community between mid-­October and July. Most households have one or two purina territories, houses and chagras located upriver or downriver on the Villano or Curaray, or on another river system, but always away from communities. Runa go on purina as often as they can, sometimes only for a week or two. Runa said that they go “to eat fresh meat,” because the hunting and fishing away from population centers is so much more successful. Runa also said that purina time is best suited to teaching their children “our cultural knowledge” (ñukanchik yachana), including knowledge of the Amazonian riparian and rain forest ecosystem as well as knowledge from mythic space-­time and beginning times. Purina time unites households that might otherwise interact infrequently but that share close ayllu and/or compadrazgo ties. Traditionally, many Puyo-­Canelos and Villano-­Curaray kindreds share the area of the headwaters of the Villano River and its tributaries as purina territories. Runa from the Bobonaza River communities of Sarayacu and Teresa Mama share the Rutuno River, while others in Canelos and possibly Sarayacu share a common purina territory with the Achuar of the Copataza River. At Curaray each llacta or group of llactas making up a community sector shared a specific purina territory, in concert with the ayllu affiliations of its members. The same pattern occurred in Canelos (Guzmán-­Gallegos 1997, 148) and likely in other Bobonaza communities. During my fieldwork in 1981–­82 a number of households at Curaray maintained purina houses and chagras below the community along the Curaray River. Several other kin groups in Curaray had purina sites near the area of the upper Curaray and its tributaries adjacent to Waorani lands. During this time the area of the Curaray River downriver from Curaray to the community of Pavacachi was utilized by most Curaray Runa for short hunting and fishing trips and was especially important for those Runa who did not possess a purina territory elsewhere. Purina trekking is a key aspect of the dynamics of a regional landscape. Where people trek and with whom they gather are ayllu specific. Gifting and trading are important to these visits. Women exchange various types of manioc, gifting bundles of short manioc stems for planting, and trade across the Regional Society  109

for the pigments and resins used in pottery manufacture, the various types of which occur naturally in some areas but not in others. Ideally, a purina territory is located on a river known to have abundant fish and surrounded by well-­drained sandy soil in which manioc is not likely to rot if flooding occurs while the owner is away. Purina territories may contain a cluster of houses. Usually, three or four homes belong to ayllu members; together they form a small, named settlement (tambu). At purina time Runa may travel to other communities as well to visit their kin. Purina is also a time for forming new ayllu linkages. A young person may visit a community with his or her family while on purina and then decide to marry there. At other times two people from distant communities meet at a third community while visiting and decide to marry. Recall from near the end of chapter 2 the story told by an older couple living in the downriver sector at Curaray in which they explained that they had met while on purina, when they were young. He was originally from Pacayacu. During a trek to the Tigre River, he said, he had met his future wife, who was from Curaray. Like him, she was visiting kin on the Tigre River. They subsequently married and went to live in Curaray. In another sector of the community a woman said she was from Sarayacu. While traveling to the community of Villano as a young woman, she met a young man from the Napo River. When they married, they went to live in Curaray, where he has relatives but she does not. In common with other Amazonian societies, the ability of individuals to move between communities is based on having kin with whom they can stay during their visit. Mobility based on wide-­flung kin linkages is a key aspect of a regional society. Marriage is conceptualized not simply as the creation of a life-­ producing and life-­sustaining unit between spouses but as a formal linkage between two ayllus. Among Napo Runa the term auya is used to describe this tie. It references an alliance made between two ayllus connected by marriage, a unity of a duality in which two ayllus combine substance through their children. Over time, the relationship transforms into a single ayllu as the original couples in an auya relationship die, and children of the married couple (the grandchildren of the auya couples) 110 across the Regional Society

are born. Auya is a higher order relation than is compadrazgo, but both types of relationships are marked by symmetry and caring (Uzendoski 2005, 74, 92, 111–­12, 115). For Napo Runa, the term muntun comprises both ayllu and auya as substance relations in which affinity becomes consanguinity, such that parents are “cross-­substance” in a muntun, creating “substance” in their children (Uzendoski 2005, 115). The terms auya and muntun are not, to my knowledge, used by Curaray Runa to describe their ayllu linkages, although muntun is used in reference to Napo Runa and possibly other Napo region kinship groups, suggesting that for Curaray Runa, formal marriage alliance is less significant than outreach across a regional society through marriage, with ayllus having both a distinct ethnic origin and historic core territory. That said, people of the upper Napo are interested in marrying people from the lower Napo, what Napo Runa describe as “exchanging ecologies and people” (Uzendoski 2004b, 885) Waorani have similar concepts of substance sameness and difference in marriage and transmission to children. In Waorani-­Kichwa households the Kichwa spouse is not expected, for example, to observe the same taboos as the Waorani do within the household because they are not of the same kinship group—­or even the same origin in mythic space-­time. However, if the taboo must be observed to ensure the well-­being of a child of the Kichwa-­Waorani couple, then both spouses would observe the taboo because the child is regarded as sharing substance, a consanguineal linkage (High 2015, 142). Marriage often requires that one or the other spouse change residence. While most Runa women prefer to remain close to their natal llacta, women do marry into a distant community if their husband brings them to join his kin. A number of the women with whom I interacted regularly during my fieldwork had married men from Curaray and were living at Curaray in their spouses’ llactas. These women were from the Bobonaza communities of Canelos, Pacayacu, or Sarayacu. Runa explained that if both of a girl’s parents are alive, the new husband goes to live with her and her family. However, if one parent is no longer living, the girl will go to live with her husband and his family. This strategy maximizes the opportunity that a young couple has to live in a llacta among a lot of ayllu across the Regional Society  111

members. Often a widowed parent will join the couple at this residence site. Here he or she serves in the all-­important role of teacher, purveyor of ancestral knowledge and wisdom. While marriage may take men or women away from their natal ayllu and llacta, visiting back and forth sustains these ties—­visiting during the Jista, at a purina site, or simply when opportunity arises to travel to their natal llacta. In summary, purina and visiting between communities sustains a regional society of interconnected kin groups across a vast area of Amazonian Ecuador. At the same time, this mobility ensures access to scarce and unevenly distributed resources, such as pottery pigments. It is a way, also, for young people to meet potential spouses. Additionally, it provides an escape for individuals and families from stresses inherent in community life, an opportunity to live tranquilly. Runa said that purina is highly valued also because it allows their children to live “just among Runa” (runapuralla) and to learn Runa cultural knowledge. Extending Kin: Interethnic Marriages

Runa regional society is grounded in memory of kindred origins in distinct ethnolinguistic groups, or subgroups, and associated with a specific locale within the landscape. In Bobonaza communities, Canelos Runa married Achuar, Gaes, and Andoas people. The area around Pacayacu on the Bobonaza River is likely an ancient seat of Gaes, who separated from their kin living farther downriver on the Bobonaza near Montalvo. Yet another Zaparoan group occupied and continues to occupy a section of the Tigre River. The Catholic mission site of Andoas, on the Bobonaza just beyond the border with Peru, is the ancient seat of Shimigaes and of Andoas peoples who share kin ties with a few Runa on the Bobonaza and in Curaray. On the Curaray, Sápara married Napo Runa. Marriages at Curaray also took place between members of Achuar and Sápara kin groups, but only in the second generation, after each parent married a Kichwa-­speaking person. In this way, adopting the Kichwa language and ethnic affiliation facilitated the establishment of far-­flung interethnic ayllu linkages. Runa explained that the Sápara of the Curaray area went on long treks to visit the group living near Montalvo, where they apparently also 112 across the Regional Society

traded with and intermarried with Andoas people living there. However, as indicated by the narratives that older men related during my fieldwork at Curaray, ancestral ethnic affiliation continues to be maintained, even as the original language is replaced by Kichwa. Such ancestral roots are recalled at purina time. As discussed in earlier chapters, the Curaray was once a core area of Sápara people. Former Sápara groups along the Villano included those of the Lahuano, Tzapino, and Nushiño Rivers, while those of the Curaray included the Auriocuri at the mouth of the Villano and the Guanino at the Namo River, who claimed territory on down at least as far as the present site of Lorocachi. Descendants of these Sápara subgroups became Kichwa speakers at Curaray. On the Conambo lived a very different group, said by descendants of the Curaray Sáparas to have included Runa who, through intermarriage with Sáparas and learning the Sápara language, became Sápara. They constitute one of two Sápara groups living in the Conambo River region. Some Curaray Runa said that they have kin among the Sápara of the Conambo. Another distinct group of Zaparoans, the Gaes, live in the region to the north of Montalvo near the Bobonaza River. Many of their kindred also live in and around Pacayacu on the Bobonaza. From there a few have married into ayllus at Curaray. These Gaes became Kichwa speakers. This history illustrates the flexibility of Kichwa ethnogenesis; the shift from Kichwa speaker to Sápara on the Conambo suggests that not all of those who became Kichwa speakers continued in succeeding generations the further expansion of Kichwa-­speaking kin groups, but in some instances constituted the expansion of Sápara, absorbing Kichwa speakers. The pattern of shifting language affiliation through intermarriage can occur therefore in both directions: Sápara to Kichwa, as at Curaray, and Kichwa to Sápara on the Conambo. In turn, this means that language is tied to place—­to territory. This shift would imply that ethnogenesis (Hill 1996; Hornborg and Hill 2011) as Kichwa-­speaking peoples has not been historically unidirectional, as several distinct peoples “became” Runa, but that it is a far more fluid process, in which Runa, over several generations and moving to a conserved ethnic territory, can “become” others. It also across the Regional Society  113

implies limits on shifts in identity, on the concept of ethnogenesis. While individuals are expected to adopt the language of their affines when they go to live with a spouse’s kin group, one’s natal kindred and their place of origin remain with individuals as part of who they are, and such knowledge is preserved in historical memory. Amazonian Kichwa of the Bobonaza and Curaray River systems have long practiced interethnic marriage between several groups that formerly maintained distinct territories and often hostile relationships, or a studied ignorance of each other’s existence, such that, as one Curaray Runa commented to me, “We would pass each other in the forest without speaking.” Historic vicissitudes of slave raiding, missionization, and later the Amazon rubber boom, all within the context of mass death due to repeated waves of epidemic disease, resulted in multiethnic Runa mission settlements and a regional reach of kinship ties that stretched into farther distant ethnolinguistic groups occupying river systems to the north, south, and east of this region. A similar pattern has been noted for the Aguaruna of northeastern Peru. Interregional marriage and frequent visits formed linkages with distant Aguaruna communities within a vast area of the Peruvian departments of Loreto and Amazonas (Brown 1986, 43). As Seymour-­Smith noted for the Shiwiar of the Corrientes River region in Ecuador, interethnic marriages were viewed as “useful nexuses” with other aspects of the social system. The Shiwiar view Kichwa speakers as potential affines, commercial partners, and powerful shamans. However, Kichwa never participate in the Shiwiar conflicts that characterize a complex of internal political factions (Seymour-­Smith 1988, 218, 224). This is an important distinction, as interethnic formal friendships are conceptually outside the dynamics of the group itself. Multistranded ayllu linkages, and especially the formation of formal friendship ties, illustrate ways in which a far-­reaching regional interaction sphere might have been sustained before the disruptions of the colonial era and subsequent Amazon rubber boom. Following the decimation of indigenous populations during the colonial era through disease, displacement, slavery, and starvation, all of which stimulated interethnic conflicts, kinship linkages and formal friendships allowed survivors to join their 114 across the Regional Society

kin among neighboring indigenous groups. As indigenous populations began a long recovery, the closing of the international border between Ecuador and Peru has, since 1941, terminated most of the long-­distance travel and trade that defined the ancient regional interaction system. The pattern of multigenerational intermarriage between several ethnic groups across a vast territory can be contrasted with that in which a single ethnolinguistic group, although divided into several subgroups, retained control of a vast territory. Historically, these peoples sought refuge deep in the forest, from where they defended their lands by attacking intruders. To the best of our understanding, the Waorani are one such people—­ made up of several groups speaking mutually intelligible dialects of the Waorani language (Wao-­terero) but having only sporadic interactions even with each other. Several such groups living between the Napo and Curaray Rivers have remained in isolation. The Waorani refer to these people as Tagaeri and as Taromenani. While they are considered outside the networks of intermarrying longhouses, the Waorani concept of kinship and affinity is linked to the potential for creating wider social ties to these isolated groups as well as to Kichwa speakers (High 2015, 106–­8, 143–­45). Curaray Runa said that the Sáparas of the Curaray historically kept the Waorani from entering the Curaray River area, until the area was abandoned in the 1930s due to a yellow fever epidemic. In contrast, on the Napo River during the first half of the twentieth century, several groups of formerly isolated Waorani people began to engage in trade with their Napo Runa neighbors. Even as Waorani considered non-­Waorani peoples (kowori), to be a threat, they accommodated the kowori presence, engaging in sporadic rather than formalized trade, as well as raiding of Runa homes for goods, and in a few instances captured young Runa women who became Waorani wives. Raiding occurred with some frequency between 1940 and 1960, ending around the time of Christian evangelical missionization (High 2015; Yost 1981). One Runa woman who was captured as a child and later married a Waorani was instrumental in the establishment of trading and visiting ties between Curarary Runa and a group of Waorani living upriver at the settlement at Golondrina Cocha. This Runa woman was a member of an across the Regional Society  115

ayllu that had a llacta at Curaray, and she was therefore able to forge a link between her Runa kin at Curaray and her Waorani husband’s kin group. This ayllu linkage made it possible for the Waorani group at Golondrina Cocha to form friendship ties with their neighbors at Curaray during the 1980s and 1990s. As discussed earlier, the Waorani group visited Curaray every few months to trade with formal friends and also to attend the annual Jista celebration. In 1982 these Waorani invited their Curaray Runa relatives to visit Golondrina Cocha. Putting aside years of distrust, and despite much trepidation, these Runa decided to make the visit, which was the culmination of increasingly warm ties between the two extended families. This Runa ayllu was unique in Curaray. Other Curaray families remembered kin lost in attacks by Waorani during the early years of community resettlement, following the yellow fever epidemic of the 1930s. The cautious inter-­ethnolinguistic group ties formed between Curaray Runa and Waorani during the 1980s were influenced by wider currents within Ecuador and beyond. By the early 1980s indigenous people throughout Ecuador had formed political organizations by region or ethnicity in order to gain political and legal representation at the national level. However, when the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza (opip) was formed, the Waorani groups did not join. At the time Curaray Runa spoke of their refusal as a sign of potential hostility, a refusal to allow outsiders into their territory. In subsequent years the Waorani formed their own indigenous federation, the Organization of Waorani Nationalities of Amazonian Ecuador (onhae), and boundaries were clearly demarcated for the Waorani Ethnic Reserve (High 2015, 5), removing any ambiguity in territory formerly shared with Curaray Runa. In the early 2000s several Curaray families suffered attacks by one or another of the Waorani groups. Nevertheless, in my discussions with Curaray Runa at that time, they insisted that the Runa and Waorani families tied by marriage continued to visit each other. What became clear is that social interaction takes place primarily, in indigenous understanding, at the level of extended families. These extended families maintain ties of friendship and alliance in spite of conflict between the two indigenous groups at particular locales. Throughout the history 116 across the Regional Society

of inter-­ethnolinguistic group interaction, such linkages would have facilitated the reestablishment of wider amicable relations between such groups in future generations, beginning with the expansion of formal friendship ties with the kin of kin. A Model of Kinship

The regional society defined by extended kin groups living in various settlements and marked by ongoing visiting and exchanges exists alongside the possibility of attack and, in the past, outright warfare between groups. The wars discussed in chapter 3 no longer take place. However, attacks and killings of Curaray Runa individuals and their immediate family by Waorani occurred again in the early 2000s. The Waorani attacks are said to be in retaliation for Waorani deaths caused by Kichwa shamans. It was shamans, Runa say, who led the conflicts between Zaparoan groups that resulted in the demise of at least one of these groups. Survivors went to live among distant kin in Runa settlements. These conflicts were between Zaparoan subgroups led by shamans and warriors and did not involve other ethnolinguistic groups. Survivors went to live with Kichwa-­ speaking kin in other locales. This was possible because Runa-­Sápara intermarriage had taken place for generations. As one older Curaray Runa man explained, speaking of his own Sápara ancestors: “Women, when they married, went to live with the man’s family. She became part of the man’s household group. All the uncles, brothers, grandfathers lived together. Women came from each territory; they were taken from each territory. Our women went there to live with them. If a Runa man took our [Curaray Sápara] woman, he would learn Sápara, the children would grow up Sápara. This is how it happened on the Conambo [among one group of Conambo Sáparas] and on the Tigre River. They were women takers, they increased themselves.” The description of marriage patterns indicates that, as already noted, ethnicity is linked to specific territories. Kichwa speakers became Sápara speakers through marriage to a Sápara and residence in Sápara territory. Conversely, Sápara became Kichwa speakers through marriage to Kichwa and residence at mission sites such as Curaray. Yet, as mentioned, memory across the Regional Society  117

of ethnic group origin is retained. As one Curaray Runa elder expressed it: “We were Sápara, both my father and uncle were Sápara. We grew up as Sápara, but my mother was Kichwa. Then the priest [at the community of Curaray] encouraged us to become Runa and so we took on a Runa name [surname].” Like many Amazonian tropical forest peoples, Zaparoans appear to have maintained patrilocal longhouses in which two or more brothers lived with their inmarried spouses. These inmarried women “came from elsewhere, from all over,” Runa explained. Yet, as we have seen, while some Curaray Runa are descendants of Zaparoan Sápara or Gaes people, others are descended from Napo Runa, Canelos Runa, and in a few instances Achuar extended family groups. It is these extended family connections, remembered as ayllu history and reinforced through ongoing intermarriage, that create the network of social relations defining a regional society within a landscape in which specific regions are associated with ancient occupation by distinct ethnolinguistic groups. Comparing Amazonian Regional Societies

The regional society characterizing the Amazonian Kichwa and neighboring groups, with the exception (at least historically) of the Waorani, is quite distinct from what had been described in scholarly studies of the northwest Amazonian Tukanoan and Arawakan groups. These regional societies center around formalized patrilineal sibs. Among the Arawakan Wakuénai, hierarchically ranked phratries composed of five or so patrilineal sibs share as a common ancestor a set of mythic brothers (Hill 1993, 9). The Wanano group of Eastern Tukanoans of the Vaupés/Uaupés constitute a single descent group within which are ranked localized patriclans or sibs, typically located within a single settlement. Both rank and principles of intermarriage requiring language group exogamy govern social life in a highly ordered and stratified regional society made up of “brothers” and “marriageables” (Chernela 1993, xi–­xiii, 4, 23). The Arawakan Wakuénai history states that having first traveled downriver, and later been forced to flee back upriver to their ancestral territories, they created kin ties with Tukanoans. While the Wakuénai phratries were territorially bounded, the 118 across the Regional Society

central Vaupés Tukanoan phratries were geographically dispersed, making it possible that a few Tukanoan kin groups might have been absorbed into Wakuénai phratries (Hill 1993, 47). Chernela notes that Wanano warriors supported Arawakan chiefs, and were also “wife-­givers” to Arawakans, such that the Wanano formed part of a “regional-­based chiefdom in which Arawakan leadership predominated” (1993, 27). Among Arawakans, an understanding of the regional reach of this system was inculcated during initiation ceremonies. In Wakuénai initiation ceremonies, for young women, the stress was on commemorating linkages between specific localized sets of patrisibs and sacred places within the upper Rio Negro region; while for young men, the ceremonies stressed knowledge of linkages between the upper Rio Negro phratries and Arawakan polities that, prior to the nineteenth century, were located at a great distance in regions of the Orinoco and Amazon River basins (Hill 2011, 263–­64). For peoples of the Rio Negro and northwest Amazon, it is in the context of multigenerational marriage alliances within a highly structured kinship system that knowledge of the regional reach of society was passed on during initiation ceremonies. During the catastrophic upheavals of colonial era disease epidemics and slave raiding, followed by the Amazon rubber boom, Arawakans retreated from the Amazon River up into its northern tributaries. From there they maintained a multiethnic regional society. A distinct response to catastrophic changes experienced during the colonial era and rubber boom was isolation. Conklin notes that the Wari’ had little or no contact with other indigenous groups for many decades prior to contact with nonindigenous outsiders during the latter part of the twentieth century. The Wari’ isolated themselves, the majority marrying within their own subgroup. Subgroups were not formalized clans or lineages. For that reason, affiliation could be changed as individuals chose to identify with different subgroups in different contexts and at different points in their lives, living wherever they had kin who would accept them. Rather than lineages or formal descent groups, it was convivial kinship ties that provided the “glue” holding Wari’ society together (Conklin 2001, 24, 28, 38). As noted earlier, the Waorani appear to have adopted a similar isolation in across the Regional Society  119

response to the social stresses that stimulated internal warfare. However, as has been discussed, in recent decades western groups of Waorani have formed formal friendships and occasional marriages with their Kichwa-­ speaking neighbors, in effect increasing the scale of Amazonian Kichwa regional society. Importantly, regional societies are flexible in scale. While defined and maintained through ongoing and remembered kinship linkages, the scale of the society can change over time in response to historical contingencies. As the regional scale changes, so do concepts of social landscape—­that space inhabitable or conversely “out of bounds” to a specific group in relationship to their neighbors. Curaray Runa and Waorani, for example, continue to maintain very clear limits to the forest areas each may traverse while hunting or traveling to visit kin in other communities. In recent years Curaray Runa have lost access to an area upriver that had been prime hunting land during the 1980s but which is now part of Waorani lands. At the same time, Waorani-­Runa marriages are desired by Runa in part because of resultant access to good hunting in Waorani lands. As Vilaça notes for the Wari’, social distancing is a process of “enemization” resulting from a rupture in the exchanges of festivals and marriage partners, a process that is reversed by living in proximity to a former “enemy” and by resumption of marriage exchanges. This is a physiology of transubstantiation and metamorphosis from enemy to kin (Vilaça 2010, 304, 316). A similar process, based on inter-­ethnolinguistic group alliance formation, underlies Curaray Runa narratives of conflict and the celebration of the Lancero Jista, as these commemorate past hostilities that have been resolved and set aside in subsequent generations through intermarriage. Similarly, this process is now taking place between Amazonian Kichwa and Waorani. Runa say that prior to the conflicts that led some Sápara individuals to join Kichwa kin at Curaray or on the Bobonaza, this large group had little contact with Runa. Sápara descendants explain that although in some cases they occupied the same territory, they lived apart from each other; the Sápara did not interact with the mission-­based Runa. They did not speak each other’s languages, and if and when they met, it was in some 120 across the Regional Society

area far from main settlements, while on trek. The Runa say, however, that when the two peoples met, they exchanged (goods) peacefully, even to the extent of occasionally arranging marriages. It is this pattern of gifting and occasional intermarriage that preceded the multigenerational intermarriages that followed at the community of Curaray and on the Bobonaza River. Conflicts between Sápara groups were left off as former enemies intermarried in succeeding generations. To live tranquilly, Runa must be able not only to live with their neighbors free of strife but also to move across vast territories, visiting others without conflict. The period following the Zaparoan wars is remembered as a time of peace. Speaking again about beginning times, the Curaray elder who was Sápara said: “Before, we did not know how to paint mukawas. Women just put on killu alpa and ruyac alpa [yellow and white pigments] and shinkillu [a resin sealer]. The knowledge of painting came from Montalvo [on the lower Bobonaza]. We used to purina to that area. We used to have huge feasts together. They used to live peacefully together, brothers, uncles, gumbas [compadres].” From the narratives of Curaray elders about beginning times and the present-­day interactions between Curaray Runa and Waorani, a model of kinship as it existed historically across a vast regional interaction sphere emerges, a social sphere that was much greater in extent than the current closely knit regional society. This regional interaction sphere would have been held together through formal friendships and occasional marriage alliances that served as nexuses linking a number of ethnolinguistic groups occupying vast territories. In beginning times, peoples of the region that is now Amazonian Ecuador maintained such vast ethnolinguistic territories. Within each of these territories smaller groups were led by powerful shamans. Within these groups, extended families lived in llactas—­small clusters of individual houses—­or in longhouses occupied by a number of couples and their children. Both llactas and longhouses were established some distance from others, often being located on hilltops in the forest. From these sites family groups went on long treks to visit relatives living in distant river systems, and to gather turtle eggs, trade for blowgun dart poison, and, high up on the Huallaga and Ucayali Rivers in Peru, trade across the Regional Society  121

for rock salt. Traveling would have required formal friendship ties with other peoples. Such ties linked together individual couples across vast areas of the regional interaction sphere. These ties were strengthened through marriage exchanges. Additionally, the presence of kin across an ethnolinguistic territory and into territories of other peoples helped to facilitate the survival of individuals who were victims of intergroup strife, as they could take refuge among their kin living elsewhere. Overlaid on the regional interaction sphere were mission communities and extractive activities at sites occupied by nonindigenous peoples, as occurred during the Amazonian rubber boom. Residence at a mission community or a rubber hacienda concentrated the llactas of unrelated kin groups together at these sites. In some cases, such as at Curaray, this resulted in intermarriage in succeeding generations among the kin groups clustered together. In other cases, such as at Andoas, divisions appear to have been maintained by distinct ethnolinguistic groups. From these sites a regional society emerged that was composed of several ethnolinguistic groups, members of whom intermarried, or married in the first generation Kichwa speakers and in succeeding generations became consanguines—­became kin. Within Amazonian Ecuador yet another type of social sphere existed in which an ethnolinguistic group remained isolated from other peoples, such that small extended family groups together occupied a distinct territory. Such peoples were forest-­dwellers, living away from major rivers that provide opportunity for long-­distance river travel and exchange with other peoples. The various groups of Waorani traditionally followed this interaction pattern, as did many others who remained unknown to all but their near indigenous neighbors. Apparently, however, there is an inherent flexibility in this pattern. While eastern groups of Waorani (Tagaeri and Taromenani) remain in voluntary isolation, the western group of Waorani has over the past seventy years been in contact with their Kichwa neighbors (Cabodevilla 1994; High 2015; Reeve and High 2012; Yost 1981). It is possible that this shift represents an inherent flexibility among Amazonian peoples; either to remain engaged in ongoing exchanges with 122 across the Regional Society

their neighbors, or to remain isolated within an area circumscribed by river systems, as the example of isolated groups within Waorani territory suggests (see also Fausto 2012 for the Upper Xingu region). Such strategies appear to be historically contingent. In this sense, generalizing to Amazonian societies, enmity is a given condition, while affinity is an intermediate relationship through which consanguinity is constructed (Carneiro da Cunha 2007, xii; see also Santos-­Granero 1991, 166). Yet, as Lévi-­Strauss (1943) notes, in some cases enemies who were feared and raided were also those with whom a group intermarried and exchanged high value gifts, a shift from enmity through affinity toward consanguinity. Incorporating others, including enemy others, is critical to social reproduction (High 2015, 143). For societies to undergo expansion of their population, the ability to reach out and initiate or reinitiate exchanges with those considered to be enemies is critically important. As part of that process, nodal extended families with ties to both groups play a key role in the initiation of these exchanges. Such processes underlie the historic shifts in scale of regional societies. Rifts in the Social Sphere

Within Curaray and Bobonaza Runa regional society, if a family experiences sustained social conflict or a sudden disaster, they may move for an extended period to their purina home, even to the extent of bringing in distant kin and establishing a new community. According to Runa with whom I spoke on a visit to Curaray in 1992, this occurred when the Curaray River rose to unprecedented levels during a prolonged period of intense rains. The llacta of one of my interlocutors along the Villano River was completely destroyed as flood waters tore down the houses and in the process severely injured the older man who was llacta head. This llacta group then moved to a purina territory. Internal social conflict may result in a similar movement of kindred from an entire community sector to a new site. In the early 2000s, according to my interlocutor from Sarayacu, a split of this nature occurred in Sarayacu as one sector left to establish a new community near their purina territory on the Rutuno River. Rifts in the social sphere are a part of the fabric of Amazonian societies, across the Regional Society  123

as groups engaged historically in outright warfare and today engage more commonly in shamanic attacks resulting in the death of an “enemy.” Flight from danger is made possible through extensive regional kin ties. For Curaray Runa, conflicts with the Waorani form a narrative of victimhood. Attacks on kin in generations past are recalled when new killings threaten. In the early 2000s Runa spoke about an attack that had taken place upriver from the community of Villano, at Chapana (Piticocha), in which a group of Waorani killed a shaman. This killing followed the death of two Waorani, one taken by a boa constrictor and the other bitten fatally by a scorpion, it was said. During another attack, a shaman and his entire family living on the Villano River were killed. There had been a minga party at a nearby llacta, which this family had not attended, so they were alone that day and vulnerable to attack. After this killing, the Waorani who had visited frequently at Curaray abandoned their settlement at Golondrina Cocha. Curaray Runa passed through a time of fear of more killings. Shamanic attack is frequently cited as the initiation of more overt hostilities. In 2002 I was told that another shaman had been killed by a group of Waorani. The reason given by Runa who discussed this killing was that this Waorani group had grown significantly, having many children, but that several of these children had died. The deaths were attributed to shamanic attack, and the death of this shaman was considered a revenge killing. Yet by 2004 Curaray Runa living in Puyo said that everything had become calm again, there had been no more killings “because everyone is dead”—­that is, all the shamans had been killed. The Waorani group that had formerly lived at Golondrina Cocha continued to visit at Curaray from time to time. I was told that they also come during the Jista, together with another Waorani group from the community of Toñampari. By the early 2000s many Curaray Runa families had begun living most of the year in the city of Puyo, maintaining a multisited residence pattern that is increasingly common in Amazonia (Alexiades 2009). In addition to the advantages of access to healthcare, cash income, and high school education for their children, they said that the single most important motivation for their migration had been fear of Waorani attacks in the community of Curaray. Yet among those families who previously built 124 across the Regional Society

enduring ties through intermarriage, the same pattern of exchange continues. The same Runa who visited their Waorani kinsmen during the early 1980s continue to visit and intermarry with these Waorani families now living in the Nushiño River area. Importantly, Curaray Runa saw no contradiction in this pattern of interaction. In fact, it appears that such ties remain the basis upon which more amicable relationships could be built in the future with a number of Curaray Runa families. The extension of friendship through a “node” in the inter-­ ethnolinguistic regional society potentiates the expansion of kinship ties among people of distinct ethnolinguistic groups, a process that has been historically important for Runa of the Curaray and Bobonaza. Such possibilities are greatly enhanced through multisited residence in towns. In Puyo, the capital of Pastaza Province, members of various Runa communities cluster their residences by community of origin, forming entire neighborhoods. Yet the intense interaction of the urban center brings Runa from many places together and facilitates the formation of compadrazgo ties. Such ties strengthen and embellish the kinship nodes across the regional society. In this sense, the city of Puyo has become incorporated within the Amazonian Kichwa social landscape; Runa llactas within Puyo are part of the regional society. Sharing as Kin-­Making

For Amazonian peoples, proximity generates likeness (Vilaça 2002, 2012). Living together, eating together, and working together create shared substance. For Amazonian Kichwa, “others” can become Runa through this process of commensality, living as Runa in a Runa household. Such transformation takes place over time. It is a fluid, mutable, and potentially reversible process. Commensality is at the core of life in the Runa llacta. As individuals marry into the llacta they become part of the group as in-­ laws, while their children merge the ayllus as one. The regional reach of Runa society extends through the complex interlocking web of kinship linkages, but the making of kin is a process grounded in the llacta, in a specific locale. Curaray Runa history and residence patterns are based upon extended across the Regional Society  125

kin groups that are regional in scale. Mutability of form, potentiating transformation of nonkin to kin, underlies a process through which people with distinct ethnolinguistic origins “became” Runa while maintaining an historic identity as members of a distinct ethnolinguistic group. At the core of the regional society is each person’s natal ayllu, members of which are located in a number of communities, across river systems and in remote settlements. This web of interrelations across the region is augmented by a spouse’s ayllu network, such that both individuals and couples are potentially highly mobile, able to visit kin in distant locales and to change residence if social tensions within a particular community prove to be too stressful, disrupting the ideal of a tranquil life. Such linkages compound over several generations, as Runa marry back and forth between ayllus, often linking distinct ethnolinguistic groups. Curaray Runa historical memory of llacta establishment is part of beginning times knowledge. Narratives of settlement at Curaray incorporate ideas about the transformability of non-­Runa persons into Runa, the impermanence and friability of such transformations, and their outright failure at particular historic points. Curaray Runa narratives of interactions between Runa and rubber merchants and between Runa and Waorani illustrate this social dynamic of friability. Personal family narratives focus on “making kin” (Vilaça 2002) out of those from other territories, such that intermarriage with Napo Runa, Zaparoans, and Achuar is a process of incorporation of individuals into Curaray Runa llactas. Runa insist that those who marry into a Runa llacta must behave as Curaray Runa. For Napo Runa, this is marked through shifting speech to the Pastaza dialect of Kichwa as spoken in Curaray.1 For Zaparoans, historic memory of ancestry in a specific Sápara group is retained while these former Zaparoans “became” Kichwa. For the few Achuar living as spouses in Curaray Runa llactas, memory of Achuar origins is maintained alongside other ancestry, for example, Napo Runa. In contrast to Sarayacu and perhaps other Bobonaza River communities, however, the Achuar language is never spoken in Curaray. Curaray Runa do not travel regularly to Achuar territory, and Achuar rarely visit Curaray. Conversely, Runa in Puyo and Canelos do not speak of their Sápara ancestory.2 126 across the Regional Society

Runa stress transformability of Runa and non-­Runa statuses such that a non-­Runa person who learns to speak Kichwa and live as a Runa, raising children who are Runa, becomes Runa. Comments about such a person tend to stress how a particular individual is “now Runa.” On the other hand, in a different context they may refer to the same individual as non-­Runa, a negative statement that is often substantiated by citing behavior antithetical to Runa norms, or by reference to the common origin in mythic space-­time that Runa share and that separates them conceptually from persons with a distinct origin, such as the Waorani. During the 1980s, as ties grew stronger between Curaray Runa families and the neighboring group of Waorani, Curaray Runa began to reflect on distinctions between themselves and the Waorani people. Runa commented that the Waorani wear no genipap face paint to decorate their faces because they are not Runa, and although they make aswa, it is always sweet, never fermented into the strong aswa made by Runa women for special ritual celebrations and for cooperative labor parties. Such expressions of alterity and fear of future attack underlay the tensions apparent during Waorani visits to Curaray. Conversely, Waorani maintain that Runa are not like them, being critical of the behavior of some Runa now living in Waorani communities (Reeve and High 2012). At the time of my fieldwork in the early 1980s the neighboring Waorani became formal friends with some Curaray Runa couples, yet always with the potential to return to the status of enemies. Once friendship ties were established, these Waorani were free to travel to the community of Curaray to visit and exchange meat and handicrafts for items such as cookware and shotgun ammunition. During these visits, Runa commented that these Waorani were becoming more like Runa, building houses in the style of Runa homes, rather than traditional longhouses, and learning to use canoes, traveling rivers as well as along their ancient forest trails. Nevertheless, when the Waorani group visited, Runa would quietly comment to each other about past killings, remaining watchful and fearful, speculating as to whether or not killings might resume in the future, which in fact happened in the early 2000s. Waorani-­Runa formal friendship and occasional intermarriage across the Regional Society  127

exemplify the making of kin, reversing the process of “enemization” (Vilaça 2010), creating friendships with those having a distinct origin (as the Waorani are considered to have), extending through individual ayllu ties the reach of a regional society. This process, however, is fraught with potential for failure, for a reversion to enemy status and a shrinking back of the regional reach of society. It is an example of the flexibility of scale inherent over time in Amazonian regional societies. The twentieth-­and early twenty-­first-­century history of Waorani and Curaray Runa interaction follows a pattern that, I suggest, characterizes inter-­ethnolinguistic relations in the past. While warfare appears to have been linked to shamanic attacks, abduction of women and children created the potential for interfamily ties in future generations between ethnolinguistic groups. The flight of individuals to escape further violence and the ability to “hide” an identity through joining their kin among Amazonian Kichwa augmented existing multistranded regional kindreds. These strategies defined the process of Kichwa ethnogenesis and the formation of a tightly knit regional society within central Amazonian Ecuador.

128 across the Regional Society

6

Healing, Song, and Narrative

For Curaray Runa, kinship relationships are fundamental to quotidian social life as well as historical memory and celebrations such as the Jista. In this chapter the fundamental nature of kinship relations is explored from the perspective of shamanic ritual, personal esoteric knowledge and power as expressed in the concept of “sitting-­being,” and mutability of form as human or nonhuman, to which concepts of place and being are intrinsic. Shamans extend protection from illness to the llactas within their territorial sphere. Women sing of placement—­of sitting-­being and power—­and of longing for distant kin. Shamanic performance, pottery design, and body painting are overt expressions signaling an inner essence. In an Amazonian worldview in which outward bodily form counts for very little, behavior is the demonstration of inner knowledge, power, and kinship with other beings. Not form but behavior gives identity to a being; Runa emphasize power as a capacity to “see” this being, with a tacit implication of its transformability. Intrinsic to sociability is the capacity to continue life force. This capacity is essentially a bond with an affine. Both healing shamanism and hunting are ways of reaching outward to animal and spiritual affines; and both bring life continuity to the llacta. Shamanism and hunting are within the masculine domain. For women, sociability is defined in consanguineal terms, including ties to chagra plants as children, and to their own children as continuity of both llacta and ayllu into future 129

generations. Intrinsic to consanguineal forms of sociability is the concept of sitting-­being—­a concept of social placement which is a central theme of women’s songs. Through shamanism, song, graphic art in pottery design, music, and the telling of stories from mythic space-­time and beginning times, Runa reference deep cultural knowledge of themselves as intimately linked to other beings within the biosphere. Each expression is a communicative event, telling the listeners or viewers about this personal connection, and, particularly in song and shamanic curing, seeking to influence relationships across the regional society. Stories from mythic space-­ time and beginning times illustrate concepts of human and nonhuman mutability and sociability, concepts that apply equally to the biosphere (Descola 2013) and to interrelationships between ethnolinguistic groups and between indigenous and nonindigenous peoples. Shamans are seen as having the capacity to take the form of animals. Shape-­shifting is both a principle of shamanism and a concept inherent in ideas about kinship and sociability. The manifest form of each species is a mere envelope that conceals an internal form, which is visible to the eyes of the particular species (such that jaguars, for example, see other jaguars as human) and to powerful seers such as shamans (Viveiros de Castro 1992, 1; see also Viveiros de Castro 1998, 471, cited in Uzendoski 2005). For both Napo Runa and Runa of the Curaray and Bobonaza, the relationship between the (killing) shaman and jaguar spirit is one of adoption. Like famous killers, the jaguar spirit is seen as an orphan; the orphan is like a predator (Uzendoski 2005, 157), which has the ability through its solitary, nonsociable position to take without repayment (Descola 1994).1 Therefore the shaman is both a source of sociability in his protection of the llacta, through healing powers, and a killer of others through spirit force, a nonsocial being, from the perspective of those outside the llacta and its constituent ayllu segments. Shamans, as such, are grounded in landscape, defenders of specific places as well as their inhabitants. The historical narratives presented in chapter 3 illustrate this idea. In beginning times, Runa and Zaparoans lived throughout the region encompassed by the Curaray and Bobonaza Rivers, in small 130 Healing, Song, and Narr ative

settlements—­llactas—­each headed by a shaman and his wife. Beginning times narratives are stories of the conflicts between these small groups of people, between the shamans as they dueled with each other. Such open conflicts have long since been let go, and Runa say that the succeeding generations have created friendships with each other, setting aside these earlier conflicts. Nevertheless, in the larger communities in which a number of llactas are clustered today, individual Runa sometimes struggle to contain interpersonal conflict. As in all tightly knit communities, jealousies and perceived slights can lead to ill will, and ill will in turn raises suspicions of mal intent. Living in this way, Runa say that they are not tranquil, are not living well. When an individual becomes ill and is not healed with simple medicines, there are fears of spiritual attack causing illness. It has always been the role of the shaman to mediate such attacks against members of his llacta. Healing Power: Transformation and Vision

Across Amazonia indigenous peoples maintain strong traditions of shamanism, linked to the power of mutability and transformability of human and animal spirit beings and to the capacity for individuals, through rigorous training, to acquire spirit forces that they can then call on for assistance in both curing and killing. Shamans seek to identify the cause of illness through trance states and vision-­inducing hallucinogens. Shamans may also send spirit forces outward to cause harm. These fundamental understandings of the nature of shamanism inform traditional ideas about illness and curing across Amazonia (see, e.g., Fausto 1999, 2012; Uzendoski and Calapucha-­Tapuy 2012; Whitehead and Wright 2004; Whitten and Whitten 2008). Unexpected deaths and serious accidents among family members within a llacta can be interpreted as resulting from the ill will of a distant shaman. The narrative of Sápara demise begins with a contest between two opposing shamans. While such conflicts no longer trigger outright warfare, the tension underlying a view of the interpenetrability of spirit forces and quotidian life informs understandings about the value of shamanic curing, understandings which are held by Curaray Runa and many Healing, Song, and Narr ative  131

other peoples. The Achuar, for example, consider Amazonian Kichwa shamans to be very powerful. They likewise view shamans among the Kokama-­Kokamilla of the Marañón, Huallaga, and Ucayali Rivers and the mestizo shamans of the city of Iquitos as very powerful. An Achuar may purchase shamanic knowledge from all three—­Amazonian Kichwa, Kokama-­Kokamilla, and mestizos (Uriarte 2007, 106–­7). While such knowledge is highly respected, it is also feared. As is apparent in the relationships between Waorani and Curaray Runa, for example, deaths of children among the Waorani have been blamed on Kichwa shamans and used as rationale for attacks on Kichwa shamans and their families.2 Once Curaray Runa were comfortable with our presence in the community, my neighbors began to speak to me about illness and healing. Two very distinct types of healing were practiced at the time of my fieldwork in the 1980s. First, people with common illnesses would seek out an herbal healer. It is generally women who have the knowledge to cure with specific plant teas and mud or plant plasters. Women skilled in this type of medicine heal common illnesses and injuries, such as chest congestion and wounds caused by machete cuts, and also serve as midwives to help smooth the process of labor during childbirth.3 This type of medicinal practice is an everyday occurrence, quite distinct from shamanic curing sessions. A patient may go to see a shaman if not improving after treatment by an herbalist or may do so concurrently with such treatment. In common with many traditional societies of the Americas and Siberia, Amazonian Kichwa shamanic curing aims to reveal the hidden source of an illness. Among Amazonian Kichwa, illness is conceptualized as being transmitted to an individual in the form of a chonta (peach palm) dart sent by an animal spirit controlled by the enemy shaman. The dart is said to pierce the person and cause illness (Whitten 1976, 1985, 2008). The shaman sending illness is often paid to do this by the aggrieved party. To “see” the illness lodged within a sick person’s body, the shaman consumes a brew made from the ayahuasca vine, supplemented with other plants. The resulting hallucinations are experienced as movement through space, in which the shaman travels to call on his spirit helpers, in the shape of animals who assist in divination of the illness. Once detected, 132 Healing, Song, and Narr ative

the illness is removed by sucking at the point at which the illness lodged in the patient’s body. Taking the illness into his mouth, the shaman goes outside and blows it out and away from the llacta of the afflicted person. Vignette: A Shamanic Curing Session

In 1982 I was invited to observe a healing practice that involved both an herbalist and a shaman. At a minga party following collective work clearing weeds from one of my neighbor’s chagras, Maria, who was a skilled herbalist, was asked to treat a young boy. The boy was another neighbor’s young son. He was suffering with a badly swollen face. Maria warmed a bundle of leaves in the fire and then pressed them on his face. The boy’s mother, Gloria, was concerned also about other symptoms. She asked the host of the minga party if she had any yaji (a type of plant used in preparing the brew that a shaman drinks to provide his visions). The minga host agreed to provide some yaji, which was then gathered from the far end of the house yard where it had been stored, wrapped in plantain leaves. Gloria explained to me that she would go to the shaman living nearby on the Curaray River to ascertain how to cure her son. She said the shaman’s brother-­in-­law was visiting from the Napo, and that there was no more powerful yachak (shaman) at Curaray. This visiting shaman was a strong and knowledgeable person from the Napo, she said, implying that Napo Runa possess powerful shamanic knowledge. Gloria asked me to help cook the yaji at her house, together with her mother, who, as an older, knowledgeable woman, knew how to do this. Gloria’s mother first sent her out to the nearby forest to collect ayahuasca.4 After a search, Gloria finally found the bundle of cut vines that had been left hidden near a forest trail. Returning, she instructed me to bring an aluminum pot of water into her house. I was then asked to bring in the yaji bundle, after which Gloria’s mother told her to bring the ayahuasca into the house. We worked at scraping the vines, removing the bark and rotten sections. The vines were then cut, and the cut sections split lengthwise, making several sticks out of each vine. Gloria’s mother then layered these together, first the ayahuasca sticks, then the yaji leaves, then on top more of the ayahuasca sticks, placing each layer carefully in a cooking Healing, Song, and Narr ative  133

pot while her daughter built up the fire. She explained that the yaji was male and distinct from ayahuasca, which was female, or “male-­female.” Setting the mixture to cook, Gloria urged me to return to the minga party and to ask her husband to procure Runa tobacco. Around 5:00 p.m. the next day, while visiting Gloria, I asked about the curing session. She suggested that I go and ask the wife of the Curaray shaman if we could attend. She was the sister of the visiting Napo shaman. At the Curaray shaman’s house, we were given a meal and permission to attend the session. We returned at dusk. The visiting Napo shaman, who was to perform the curing session, was resting. From inside the sleeping room, someone sounded a short blast on a flute and beat a drum fast three times. At dark, the drum was beaten again, and the Napo shaman emerged from the sleeping area. Yawning and stretching, he greeted each person in turn, then sat by the fire where Egma, the Napo shaman’s sister, and Gloria were working, preparing Runa tobacco cigarettes (cut tobacco rolled in tobacco leaves). Gloria’s husband served the ayahuasca-­yaji brew to the Napo shaman and then drank some himself. The shaman sat on a high shaman’s stool (bancu), the rest of us sat in a semicircle facing him. The men talked quietly about mundane aspects of life, especially non-­Runa life—­school and town life. As the effects of the brew began to be felt, the shaman’s sister instructed that all fire be extinguished. The shaman whistled (silbana) at first, then began the shaman’s song (takina). As he began whistling, he shook a leaf bundle, then started his takina. He began almost inaudibly after yawning and sighing. The takina lasted some thirty minutes. He then stopped to work at removing the illness where he saw it had lodged in the boy’s body. He talked quietly at length with Gloria, who was seated by her son, facing the shaman. After talking with Gloria, and smoking Runa tobacco, he began again to sigh-­whistle, whistle, then sing again. This second takina lasted again about thirty minutes. He called to a “tutapishku supai kuraka” (the master spirit bat), then “razu-­urku kausak rumi” (the high snow-­mountain dwelling stone), and others. At the end of this takina, he worked again to remove the illness and then gave a long speech to the boy’s father. Afterward, he got up to go out with assistance, as he could barely stand. Returning, he showed the boy’s parents three 134 Healing, Song, and Narr ative

stones that he had in the tobacco water bowl. (He later explained to me that these stones were passed down from father to son. He said one of his came from the stomach of a boa constrictor, and one appeared etched with a bird-­like figure. He explained that in the forest he had found very large stones which he could not carry, but with which he “made friends, embracing them,” as in a formal friendship.)5 He worked a bit more to remove the illness, to clear it completely away. Following this, he sang and whistled a bit more, but did not enter into a takina. Finally he stood up and began a chant, blowing and waving the leaf bundle over all of us. He then began talking again, mostly about life, how one lives, continuing until about 5:00 a.m. as light began dawning. The shaman’s healing session centered on his capacity to draw in toward him spiritual beings having the capacity to help the shaman see the source of the illness. In this, the shaman draws on his ability to see the unseen, to see beyond quotidian reality into the inner essence of the illness. In seeing the illness, he can remove it, and in so doing restore life to the individual and protect the llacta from harm sent by enemy others. This is a central role in sociability—­ensuring the continuity of life for the individual in the llacta through repulsion of harm sent by enemy others.6 The power to do this comes from affinal type ties with female spirit forces who assist the shaman to travel and see the source of the illness. The shamanic performance itself signals to all present his power, demonstrated not so much in his appearance but in his behavior, signaling the essence of his being—­a being with the capacity to travel great distances while seated on his shaman’s stool, and to call spirit beings to help him, while repulsing those beings who would do harm. The shaman’s healing session is an overt sign of his inner essence. Shamanic Exegesis

Following this session, the Napo shaman visited our house and talked with me about curing. He explained that there are three types of ayahuasca: cilo (sky), sacha (forest), and yaku (water). When a shaman drinks the brew, he learns which of these three it is. As a person becomes a shaman, he learns first one, then the others until he has made a friendship with all Healing, Song, and Narr ative  135

three; all three are female spirits. With all three, the shaman is protected from all sides—­he cannot be killed and his children will not die. In his exegesis the Napo shaman emphasized the process of becoming a shaman as the formation of relationships with female spirits and indicated that only very powerful shamans attain the ability to manage all three of the spirits of ayahuasca as separate points of power. He then said that each spirit appears as a woman, sometimes pulling the shaman toward the water, sometimes toward the forest, or floating in the air. As the shaman experiences this in his trance, he learns which spirit it is. He said that pacts are made with the master spirit of the forest, which he termed pishkuri, and master of the water animals, which he termed atacapi. Atacapi is large, totally round and enormous. It inhabits river headwaters.7 He said that the shaman whistles when he is looking to discover the form in which he will sing. Then, beginning the song, he is in the air, moving all around, looking all over. This is why it is very hard for others to hear him, because he is very far away. Then he calls spirits; he is in the forest. When he sings of the mountain, he is seeing this—­he is there. He sings identifying each spirit as it approaches; some are male, but most are female. When all are there with the shaman, no malignant spirit can approach. Then the shaman sings of knowing—­knowing all, but he must sing this only if he has the power to do so, otherwise he will be challenged by another shaman. Then in the second song he is in the water, identifying the spirits there. He explained that some spirits are stronger than others. They come to look over the person and show where the illness has entered the body, identifying the points so that the shaman can remove the illness. The shaman follows their direction; he is like an intermediary between the spirits and the ill person. He keeps calling the spirits until it is indicated to him that the illness is out and that the person will not die. The shaman is leader of the spirits he calls in his song. In his song he travels down the Curaray and up the Napo, if it is water. If it is forest, he travels up over the hills, going from peak to peak blowing a horn (corneta) as he reaches the top of each peak. Finally, a shaman may travel underground, emerging back up at the end of the song. The shaman

136 Healing, Song, and Narr ative

returns to the patient as the vision weakens; he then works to remove the illness, and the vision returns. He went on to explain that all Runa have a shield (lurira), which is a defense against spirit attack. When this shield is lowered, illness can enter the body. Illness moves around a llacta until it finds a vulnerable body. He said that the shaman has a very strong defense, covered on all sides (like an upside down tea cup, he demonstrated), while the rest of us have a shield like a piece of paper. He said that illness may hit the shaman’s children. The shaman can repel malignant forces that have been sent and also malignant forces that are just floating around. Finally, he explained that shamans also command forest and water master spirits and can control them, for example bringing fish by controlling the “giver of fish.” A very powerful shaman has the capacity to protect not only himself but also his children and other llacta members from harm sent by enemy others. The shaman’s power is therefore a form of sociability whereby he can ensure continuity of ayllu and llacta through his ability to see and send away spiritual forces, in order to repel harm sent by others and also ambient harmful forces. The Napo shaman extended this idea by talking about the spirits of the forest and water that he has the capacity to manipulate, both to protect the llactas, as in the case of the atacapi that remains buried through a pact between shamans to control its destructive force, and by controlling forest and water master spirits to call to the game and fish essential to continuity of life force of the llacta. In that sense, the shaman is the ultimate protector of collective life, of sociability. His protection extends through his llacta and the surrounding landscape. At Curaray during my fieldwork, there were two powerful shamans, one living at the upriver extent of the community on the Villano River, near Killualpa, and the other upriver on the Curaray River. The Killualpa shaman was said to be from the region of Sarayacu on the Bobonaza, while the shaman on the Curaray was a Napo Runa from the Tena area. A pact among shamans across river systems or forest regions can protect even larger-­scale landscapes, as on the Napo and Bobonaza Rivers, where the resident atacapi in each river is kept buried by shamanic pact.

Healing, Song, and Narr ative  137

Knowledgeable Women: Living in “Two Times”

Just as shamans can be said to see beyond the quotidian world and enter a world of spiritual power that is part of mythic space-­time, women also express their knowledge, the capacity to “live in two times,” as one older Runa woman expressed it, through song and pottery design. Such consciousness-­altering substances as datura and Runa tobacco, as well as very strong aswa, are consumed by both men and women to see the unseen—­as in a dream or vision—­and thereby to gain esoteric knowledge.8 Very knowledgeable women, older, experienced women, are able to see without the use of such substances and are considered to be very powerful.9 Pottery Design

The designs on pottery aswa serving bowls (mukawas) are expressions of a woman’s visions, her dreams (Whitten 1985; Whitten and Whitten 1988). Mukawas are used by the women who make them to serve aswa to their kin, llacta members, and visitors. Aswa is considered as the essential food, without which life is not possible. In her capacity as aswa maker and server, a woman is a giver of life to others. In this sense, the serving of aswa is a fundamental act of sociability. As she does this, she also demonstrates her knowledge of the unseen “beyond time” world of spirit forces through the designs on the serving bowl. This is an overt signaling of her inner essence as a knowledgeable, and therefore powerful, woman. Mukawas are designed with animal and plant motifs as well as geographic features such as river bends. Each element of a design has a meaning, a sign of place or reference to an animal as a sentient, human-­ like being. Runa consider that the mukawa, as an expressive form, is beautiful if it is imbued with esoteric knowledge. If it is not, the form is not significant (Whitten and Whitten 1988; Whitten 2015). In that sense the design may or may not be especially pleasing to the Western eye, but its “beauty” lies in its power to communicate vision. Women who are master potters are said to “live in two times”; living in the present and also in mythic space-­time.10 138 Healing, Song, and Narr ative

I spent some time on two return visits, in 1992 and again in the early 2000s, with a master potter, Venencia. She explained that the “skin” (cara) of any animal depicted on a mukawa should have three colors—­ red, black, and white. The boa constrictor and both land and water turtles (sawata and charapa) are commonly depicted; but animals without these colors, such as the deer, are not good as a design for a mukawa. She then told me that in beginning times women did not paint these designs, but simply made lines with their fingers, smearing the paint on the bowl. An older man told me in 1982 that knowledge of fine ceramic design came during beginning times from downriver on the Bobonaza, from the area around Montalvo. Now, Venencia said, women paint carefully, creating a design with the major lines (mama churana) laid down first, then filling it in (aisana) with fine black lines. To look pleasing, the design must be bounded and enclosed by the mama churana. Animals depicted on the mukawa as skins are seen as spirit forms. On one of the visits to Venencia’s house I brought photos of some of the pottery she had made and sold over the years. The photos were taken when I visited a businessman in Quito to see his private collection of Amazonian Kichwa pottery. Venencia recognized among the photos which mukawas were hers and which were made by other women. These photos were highly evocative for her. Seeing the photo of each of her mukawas, she explained what each design meant; during what phase of her life she had made the piece—­unmarried, newly married; and a figure depicting a hat as like the one her father wore when he was alive. It seems that she remembered the designs she was using at each point in her life—­designs that communicated something about her life then. As I handed over the photos to her, she showed them to her daughter, saying she would teach her daughter to paint in the same way. What Venencia was indicating as she looked through the photos is that the designs on mukawas are linked not only to the esoteric knowledge of the woman at the time she made the pottery piece but also to her relationship to others within her ayllu and llacta at that particular time. In this sense the mukawa is a statement of sitting-­being; of how the woman sees her position within her llacta and ayllu. This is what Healing, Song, and Narr ative  139

she communicates to others as she serves them aswa. The mukawa is a visual representation of a women’s inner essence; the act of creating the bowl is the behavior signaling this essence; and the serving of aswa is an ultimate act of sociability—­the capacity to continue the life force of her ayllu and llacta and gift life to visitors from other llactas and communities. Women’s Songs

Women’s vision is frequently expressed in personal songs. Women sing to each other, quietly during minga parties and during the Jista, as strong aswa helps to open the space to dreaming visions. Songs reference mutability of form; the women are birds or other animals moving through space, or sitting or standing in place. Songs evoke the woman’s vision of her social situation and may be sad or humorous, sometimes joking with the listener. Women’s songs are sung directly to a listener, who is always another woman. Sometimes a woman will sing a song about the listener in a joking manner, but more often a woman will sing about significant events in her life that have made her sorrowful or given her joy. The recipient of the song is asked to listen carefully, although the song may also be directed to those who are not present, such as kin in a distant community. I heard lamenting songs about a child who was going to die, and humorous songs about a woman’s comadre. Songs in these social settings are sung very quietly, so that only the women clustered nearby to listen can hear them. The songs are sung often as a single phrase, a single breath, almost as a narrative put to a high-­pitched chant sound. Songs may be several phrases, as when a woman sings about her social circumstances—­a minga, eating a lot of aswa, inviting a comadre to her house. Such songs are happy and end with a joke or twist of meaning at the end, but are always sung very quietly.11 In working daily with women, sometimes a woman would invite me to listen to and record one or more of her songs. Songs expressed a woman’s sense of place among her kin and were often songs of power or songs of longing. During the time of the Jista, Felicia, one of the assistants, said she wanted to sing to me, but not in the Jista house—­instead privately, in my house. She came by and sang a song about displacement—­about 140 Healing, Song, and Narr ative

being far from her llacta, going to Curaray to live with her husband. She permitted me to record her song, a portion of which follows: Wakcha Warmi (Orphan Woman) I am going from my llacta / I am going from my llacta I will not see my mother / I will not see my father Now I am going / Now I am going I am going from my llacta / I am going from my llacta I go to my husband / I go with my toldu [bed covering] I can do this / I can do this To Curaray I go I will not see my mother / I will not see my father I have no ayni [reciprocal help from kin] During a visit to her house she told me that a woman could sing as “toucan-­hair woman” (Sicuanga akcha warmi mani). She said a woman’s hair is like the feathers of the toucan, but this is distinct from the toucan feathers that men use to make headdresses. She said that women also sing as wangana warmi (peccary woman), urpi warmi (dove woman), taruga warmi (deer woman), Huallaga cachi warmi (Huallaga salt woman), yana puma warmi (black jaguar woman), hurihuri warmi (foreign spirit woman), and several others. Many years later, when I was working with Venencia, she asked me to record a number of these songs as she sang them to me in her home in Puyo. She sang for me peccary woman, toucan woman, deer woman, and machin monkey woman, among others. In each of these songs, she sings from the perspective of the animal. Sicuanga Warmi (Toucan Woman) I am Toucan Woman / I am here I am eating / I see you You cannot kill me / With your blowgun With your poison dart / You cannot kill me Healing, Song, and Narr ative  141

She sang the same type of song for other hunted species: deer, monkey, and peccary. Each of these songs reference how the particular animal/ woman is living and what they are eating. The theme for each of these animals hunted by the Runa for food is the same, being the statement: I am a powerful and alert animal, eating well, living well. I am powerful and can escape harm. The hunter has no power to kill me. I will live. Sung by a woman, the words suggest several ways in which such power can be interpreted. However, the fundamental meaning is that from the animal’s perspective the hunter is powerless to kill. This, then, can be interpreted as a song of feminine power. Women’s songs are statements of sitting-­being and of their personal power to ward off harm. The concept of sitting-­being to convey social placement in terms of ayllu and llacta at a particular point in time is common to other Amazonian societies. Here placement can be defined as “a spatial dimension of personhood” (Chernela 1993, 51, 83). The songs may lament the loss of kin; lament displacement to a llacta far from one’s own kin and llacta, as in the first example; or a sense of belonging and bringing other kin to the singer, as I heard one woman sing when her brother visited during the Jista. Alternately, the songs may focus on a concept of sitting-­being as a powerful forest animal, as in the second example. Other songs common among societies of the western Amazon are private, directed at spiritual forces with the power to assist in bringing about a personal desired change; for example, the songs a woman sings in her chagra to encourage plant growth and also to assist in childbearing (Guzman-­Gallegos 1997).12 In this sense chagra plants are as children of the woman who plants them; songs sung by hunters attract game animals that are as affines of the men who hunt them (see, e.g., Descola 1994, 324; Uzendoski and Calapucha-­Tapuy 2012, 79–­95; Uzendoski et al. 2005; Uzendoski 2014b). Songs can be said to “weave human and non-­human relations . . . into a shared ontological frame” (Uzendoski 2014b, 125). Songs are also sung to attract and hold a desired partner (Brown 2014, 97). Finally, songs may focus on traveling—­going to visit across long distances, such as the Huallaga salt woman song.13 In sum, 142 Healing, Song, and Narr ative

songs are about sitting-­being—­the singer’s view of her social position among others; about movement across social space, across the landscape; or privately to attract the spiritual beings that give the singer power to ensure continuity of life forces. Making Visible an Inner Essence: The Art of Body Painting

Face and body painting, done by both men and women for festival events or for travel, is another design form in which highly stylized animal representations are combined with simple lines and filled-­in spaces. Most often Runa paint with the juice of the genipap fruit (wituk) using a chonta palm stick to apply it to the face. The juice is applied in the evening. Overnight it oxidizes, turning black and revealing the design that has been painted. Runa paint the face usually with a line across the bridge of the nose and along both cheekbones, which may be elaborated with a second line and crosshatching, and then fill in space at the forehead or chin. There are many variations on the lines and crosshatching, which could represent a type of animal, such as an owl. To complete the design, Runa may blacken an area of the forehead or chin. For important events, in addition to face painting, men and women painted their legs and arms. Here a person might depict the skin of a fish, such as a large catfish. Sometimes women paint similar designs on their faces using the pulp of achiote fruit, making a red paste. At Curaray during my fieldwork in 1981–­82, I saw women do this when going to the chagra to plant manioc. Men did the same when going to the forest to hunt. In both cases, the face paint was a way of communicating inner essence to spirit forces, to attract them, as for example the hunter attracts the female spirit of game animals, and the woman working in her chagra seeks to communicate with the master spirit of garden plants. When traveling to visit kin or compadres in distant communities, and for minga parties, both men and women painted their faces. Here again, in conjunction with consumption of large quantities of strong manioc beer, people were demonstrating the capacity to see beyond the quotidian world and to signal to others, through imagery in the painting, their essential self and a sense of sitting-­being in the social world of the llacta, community, Healing, Song, and Narr ative  143

and regional society. The most elaborate painting—­of both the face and legs—­was done for the annual Jista celebration. Runa took on the form of various animals through the designs on their legs and faces—­again signalling an inner being not visible as the outer human body. The body exists in relation to others in a constant state of transformability, just as the cosmos itself is transformable. There is an overlap in some human and animal subjectivity, but humanness is a specific condition (Turner 2017, 167, 171). Face and body painting may be interpreted as a visual sign of such blended states of being. However, another interpretation is important in understanding face painting. Among the Candoshi and Achuar, there is a relationship between specific designs applied with red achiote paste to the face and membership in a particular descent group. Designs are transmitted from generation to generation in the same way as are kin-­ group names, and linked to transformative power (Surrallés 2007, 349). Shamanic performance, pottery design, body and face painting, songs, and musical instrument playing all index a world in which spiritual forces act upon humans, and humans may appear in essence, and as signaled in expression, as animal spirits in a “beyond time” mythic space. Runa interpret mythic space-­time as accessible through night dreams, through vision states induced by datura or ayahuasca, through the artistry of song or playing of musical instruments, in pottery designs, collectively in ritual performance such as the Jista, and even while walking in the forest, where Runa may encounter nonhuman spirit beings. Such encounters signify a crossing into the domain of mythic space-­time. In all of these ways, mythic space-­time and beginning times interpenetrate daily life in the present. Mythic space-­time may also be called up into the present, as in women’s songs, in order to send a message—­to communicate—­ with others far away. One of the Jista assistants sang of herself as a dove, flying to bring back her husband, and then depicted her dove-­self in an anthropomorphic pottery vessel for drinking festival aswa. Personal expression is a means by which Runa signal their inner essence as powerful and knowledgeable persons. The pervasiveness and importance of multiple forms of personal expression—­in shamanic performance, pottery design, body and face painting, songs, and playing of 144 Healing, Song, and Narr ative

Fig. 14. Dove Jista puru (festival ceramic vessel), 1982. Photo by author.

musical instruments—­point to the core idea that outward physical form of a person counts for very little. It is only in expressive behavior that a person is truly known to others. Such understanding is an essential component of sociability, of concepts of social placement and the ability to protect and nurture the life forces essential to continuity of the llacta and kin group. Mutability of Form: Humans, Animals, and Sociability

Powerful individuals within Runa communities are repositories of knowledge about mythic space-­time and beginning times. These concepts of time and space are “mythoscapes” (Wright 2013), encompassing beings, ancestors, and the lived landscape as knowledge. Such knowledge at its core is not simply memory but “involves the continual creation and experience of underlying truths . . . creating lines of mutual relations that define an interspecies world” (Uzendoski 2014b, 126). Stories are set in mythic space-­time in which time is defined in terms of “repeated peregrinations of all beings and where space is constituted by movements of encounter and departure of the various animate things” (Mezzenzana Healing, Song, and Narr ative  145

2015, 54). The capacity to interpret and manipulate experience and knowledge from mythic space-­time is associated with beginning times people. Older, knowledgeable Runa men are called upon to speak about beginning times. In the telling, the narrator shifts back and forth within a single text between mythic space-­time and beginning times, including also personal validation of the speaker’s knowledge with reference to present times. Mythic space-­time stories are similar across Amazonia as referents to a state in which animals and humans are interchangeable and in “human-­ like” communication. At the core is the view of beings as having an overt appearance that may be very different from their essential nature. Within the corpus of myths shared widely across Amazonia is the story of twin brothers (Métraux 1946; Carneiro 2009). For Amazonian Kichwa this myth is about a struggle between and elder and younger brother, in which the younger brother consistently disobeys the direction of the elder, leading to one catastrophe after another, and eventually to their permanent separation as two stellar beings, the evening and morning stars, which never meet in the celestial sphere. While the story of the twin brothers is a foundational myth for many Amazonian peoples, other stories revolve around the theme of animals that were originally human or vice versa, and how the outward appearance was shed, or conversely, how the current appearance is an outward form covering a distinct nature. Underlying the mutability of form is a view of animals and humans as following the same social relations, relations of consanguinity, affinity, alliance, and predation. Amazonian sociality extends beyond human interactions to incorporate relationships with spirits, with various plants and animals, and with certain meteorological phenomena (Santos-­Granero 2009a). As Descola remarked, “Nature is governed [from the Achuar point of view] by the same social relations as those set in the house. Nature is therefore neither domesticated nor domesticable, but simply domestic” (Descola 1994, 323). He goes on to note that some animals are more sociable than others; for example, the howler monkey is promiscuous and therefore out of bounds of normal social relations, as are apex predators. He notes that “the most dangerous of these solitary killers are the

146 Healing, Song, and Narr ative

jaguar and the anaconda, with whom only shamans manage to contrive some agreement” (325). In this sense, then, myths told within the framework of mythic space-­time reference a world in which human sociability extends into the animal and plant worlds such that “mutuality of being” encompasses the landscape. Following Sahlins (2013), this implies that what happens to one being, what one being suffers, is also experienced by others. Therefore, killing of an individual is seen as a theft from the collectivity—­the collective body. When the jaguar or shaman kills, it is a form of theft from the kin group that must be avenged. Reciprocity through affinal alliance and life-­sustenance among consanguines become paramount orienting frameworks for both quotidian existence and understanding of the mythic space-­time that interpenetrates daily life. Among the corpus of texts from mythic space-­time are brief stories that deal with the theme of animal-­human social interaction; interaction that is terminated when either the animal is discovered to be human, or the obverse, when the true animal nature of the human is revealed; and of the disaster that results from failure to see an animal as human or vice versa. For Curaray and Bobonaza Runa the revelation of the being’s true nature signals a shift from mythic space-­time to beginning times. From this time frame comes knowledge of human-­animal distinctiveness and mutability. Yet referenced within the beginning times texts are events associated with the mythic space-­time that is both “beyond time” and interpenetrates the present through dreaming and vision-­seeking (Reeve 1988b). In each case, at the moment of discovery, the animal or human is transformed into its present form, signaling a transference through this knowledge from beginning times. At this juncture affinal and consanguineal distinctions are learned, as is knowledge of the original ancestors from which all animals and all Runa are descended. Yet mythic space-­time is ever present, accessible in the present, such that animals encountered during walks in the forest might be human, and humans can transform into animals. A story about the vampire bat is illustrative of animal-­human mutability. While I was visiting the community of Canelos on the Bobonaza River during 1981, my host recounted this story:

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Chimbilacus [vampire bats] once were Runa. At a festival, Runa were dancing and drumming. Many single, good women had prepared aswa and were serving. Seated among the men being served by these women was a Runa without a nose. His face was covered with a scarf, it is said. This Runa would not drink during the day. When he was discovered to be a vampire bat, he became angry. From this bat, all vampire bats are descended. This bat was a Runa, but now he is a Callari Uras supai [spirit from beginning times] who wants very much to eat Runa. There are other animals that were once Runa, becoming animals in beginning times. Puyo Runa say that the ardilla (squirrel) and the tijeras anga (swallow-­tailed kite) were once Runa. In Curaray at the Jista house one of the women making a puru explained that the sawata (land turtle) and the chalwa anga (fish hawk) were once Runa, but that the chalwa fish was not. Runa were also transformed into animals. Such mutability went two ways. An older man said that once, a Runa ate an amarun (boa constrictor) egg and consequently became a yacu runa (water spirit person). Such stories illustrate the mutability of human and animal form in a cosmos seen as united by shared substance, as vitality or life energy, a concept that appears to be shared among Amazonian indigenous peoples (Santos-­Granero 2015). The Myth of Twin Brothers

Amazonian Kichwa share with a number of other Amazonian peoples an origin story that centers on the exploits of twin brothers (see, e.g., Carneiro 2009; Chaumiel 2007, 273; Métraux 1946; Uzendoski 2014a).14 This story is focused on a failure of sociability, a lack of affinity expressed as an incestuous union that produced twin brothers, and then the inability of the younger brother to obey the instructions (and see the wisdom) of his older brother. Such failures led to permanent separation. As this story is so widespread in Amazonia, it would be worthwhile to reflect on its possible origin within former Amazonian societies that were ordered around hierarchical exogamic patrilines, a level of complexity that would point also to the possible existence of vast regional social systems across 148 Healing, Song, and Narr ative

large geographical areas; a history preserved, for example, in Arawakan Wakuénai myth and male ritual initiation ceremonies (Hill 1993). For Amazonian Kichwa, Runa are descendants of a union between the moon and his sister. Once the sister discovers the identity of her lover, they are separated forever, the moon man ascends into the sky, and his sister is transformed into the jilucu bird (common potoo, a nightjar). Even now, Runa say, she can be heard calling out to her lover when the moon is full. As told to me in Curaray in 1982, the story continues in this way: After Jilucu smears wituk on the face of her lover and thereby discovers his true identity as her brother, she wanders in search of her “husband-­ brother” and comes upon a house of jaguars. When she entered there an old jaguar-­woman hid her in a large cooking pot. When the male jaguars returned to the house, they said they smelled a human. Finally, the woman [who was pregnant from her husband-­brother] is discovered and she becomes the wife of the old jaguar-­woman’s son. She was told to pick ticks from her husband’s fur [and eat them]. Her mother-­in-­ law again helped her, instructing her to eat a bit of carbon each time instead of the tick. She did this until she ran out of carbon and spat out a tick. At this, her jaguar-­husband discovered that she was truly human. He became angry and killed her, eating her in a meal shared with the other jaguars. They did not eat the guts, which the old jaguar-­ grandmother hid. Hiding them, she cut out the children, two boys, from the womb. She reared them, keeping them hidden. One day the two boys [now grown] were wandering in the forest and found a jaguar. Killing it, they cut it up, putting first the head, and then the rest of the body into a cooking pot. Eating the meal, they came finally to the head. As they ate the head, two hummingbirds came by, one flying in one direction, the other in the opposite direction, crossing each other. They each said to the boys, “You are eating the head of your mother” [the old jaguar-­woman who had reared them]. The two boys tried to capture the hummingbirds and almost got one of them. From this place the two brothers had been hearing a tac, tac sound in the Healing, Song, and Narr ative  149

forest. They had though it was their “mother” cutting wood, but when they went to see, they found it was the guts of the old jaguar-­woman “mother” that had been making a sound like the chopping of wood. The story then continues with the exploits of the twin brothers. At this point, the two brothers “see” that they have been living with jaguars, but are human and understand that the jaguars killed their own mother. Seeing this, the two brothers leave the house of the jaguars and set out to kill all jaguars. There is a conflict between the older, knowledgeable brother and the younger brother, as the older brother gives the younger one instructions that he refuses to follow. Again and again, as the brothers travel downriver and across rivers, the younger brother fails to follow instructions and finally, due to this failing, has his leg bitten off by a large black caiman. His brother finds the caiman and cuts out the leg so that his younger brother can walk again. After a long time, he finds the soul of his younger brother as an edible fungus growing out of a log on a beach located far away, on the Huallaga River in Peru. The story emphasizes that jaguars and humans in mythic space-­time saw each other as humans and lived in social units as do humans today. It emphasizes the disaster that occurs when social hierarchy, in the form of an elder brother instructing a younger brother, is ignored. Finally, it introduces a concept of a vast regional landscape, as the brothers travel great distances from the Napo into what is now the Peruvian Amazon. The narrative continues, but it shifts to beginning times with references to treks in which Runa traveled and traded with other indigenous peoples far to the south and east along the Huallaga River (Mezzenzana 2015, 74; Pierre 1983, 189; Reeve 2014; Simson 1993, 104; Uzendoski and Calapucha Tapuy 2012; Whitten 1976, 211). There are multiple versions of the travels that the twin brothers undertook from the Napo, Curaray, and Bobonaza Rivers downriver and then up the Huallaga or, in the version following, up the Ucayali River, to collect salt. These narratives merge a mythic space-­time of Runa origins with the historic treks made by Runa to collect salt and suggest that the trekking pattern is ancient.

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An older knowledgeable man in Curaray narrated the twin brothers’ long-­distance trek, in part, as follows:15 With the canoe, the brothers traveled the world, from Ecuador trekking and reaching the headwaters of the Ucayali River in Peru. There lived a huge, Runa-­eating hawk; its name was mishawa anga, that type of hawk. It could carry off an entire person to eat. It was here that [the brothers] trekked, high up the river, hiding inside a rubber coating made like a ball.16 There they came to the end of a beach. Tac, they were picked up [by the hawk], up to a high hill, there to a naked hill. The hawk rested, sleeping, twelve hours sleeping. There a grandmother caterpillar came, carrying them down, with their eyes closed. With their eyes closed they came down to earth [from the hawk’s nest]. In this way only one, the older brother, came down. The younger brother [opening his eyes] fell into the water. There he was lost. Aiii . . . the older brother was left all alone. From there [traveling] he came to a large beach. There rested a tree trunk. There was a macha fungus. . . . The fungus was coming out of the tree. [When touched], “Aou, brother,” it said, appearing like an ear. Here is your brother. Here they met again. There the two were together again. They trekked, trekking now across the world, going up, climbing upriver. Then the brothers said, “We will encounter the world.” There the younger brother rested. The other went on. From there forward they did not meet. They could not meet. Narrative Framing of Sociability

The twin brothers myth merges with memory of historic treks for salt that Runa undertook up through the early twentieth century to the rivers of northern Amazonian Peru. The rock salt mines were a gathering place for indigenous peoples throughout the vast area of the western Amazon (Mihas et al. 2014; Santos-­Granero 1998). This trade was encouraged by Jesuit missionaries during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Reeve 1994).

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Jesuit missionaries played a key role in stimulating long-­distance travel and trade, probably harnessing ancient trading routes to obtain salt and blowgun dart poison used as a medium of exchange throughout the region of the western Amazon. Such travel would have required an existing network of long-­distance relations with other peoples. The narratives of trekking to the Huallaga (and Ucayali) are an important part of the history of Amazonian Kichwa people. Amazonian Kichwa have for centuries engaged in regional trekking to obtain highly desirable resources (Reeve 1994; Simson 1993), confronting dangers from other beings, which were encountered on such a trek. To travel by poling and paddling a dugout canoe from the Curaray-­Napo or the Bobonaza-­Pastaza downriver to the Marañón and then westward to the mouth of the Huallaga or Ucayali and then upriver would have required many months. The Runa would have camped each night in territories of other ethnolinguistic groups. While we cannot determine the exact time frame of these travels, Jesuit documentation references these travels from the Napo River from when they first came into the region as missionaries in the 1630s. Jesuits built their mission system in the ecclesiastical province of Mainas, encompassing most of what is now eastern Ecuador and northeast Peru, on existing interethnic trade patterns, so it is quite possible that the travel referenced in the preceding story was a very ancient pattern. Certainly the salt mines, both along the Huallaga and famously in the Ucayali headwaters near the Perené River (Mihas et al. 2014; Varese 1973), would have been a draw for peoples from the entire region.17 The travel would have required some familiarity with peoples along the route, including as mentioned earlier, trade in other goods such as blowgun dart poison and possibly mukawas. In sum, sociability across species and within a vast regional social system are key referents within the stories from mythic space-­time, merging into accounts that reference the reach of this regional system in beginning times. The stories therefore expand the scale of sociability across a landscape that is populated by animals that are like humans as well as by the kin groups and settlements discussed in earlier chapters. The landscape itself expands in scale to include the river systems of what 152 Healing, Song, and Narr ative

are now Amazonian Ecuador and northeastern Peru, a scale that must be understood as the historic reach of societies in interaction with each other across this vast geography. The scale of society as related in stories of mythic space-­time and beginning times underscores the potentiality of reconstructing in quotidian time linkages that dissolved in the trauma of the Amazon rubber boom and interethnic warfare of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Social scale is flexible, contracting and expanding with the vicissitudes of history. In conclusion, shamanism, personal expressions of esoteric knowledge and of sitting-­being, and mutability of form can all be analyzed from the perspective of a regional society integrated by concepts of being and belonging across the human and nonhuman landscape. Behavior, rather than bodily form, is conceptualized as indicative of true nature and true relatedness, true kinship, across the landscape.

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7

The Enduring Regional Society

The preceding chapters provide a broad overview of a regional society through analysis of kinship and placement, collective ritual celebration, esoteric knowledge, and concepts of landscape, historical consciousness, and relations with nonhumans. While the focus of the discussion is on Amazonian Kichwa, specifically Curaray Runa, the chapters illustrate a regional-­scale society across Kichwa communities within central Amazonian Ecuador and extending into neighboring ethnolinguistic groups. Amazonian scholarship has tended to focus on localized studies; however, a view of sociability and landscape at the regional scale provides a complementary perspective. This has been demonstrated for the northwest Amazon and the Rio Negro region (Chernela 1993; Hill 1993, 2011; Hill and Santos-­Granero 2002; Jackson 1983; Santos-­Granero 1991; Vidal 1999, 2000, 2002), and may be applicable to societies elsewhere in Amazonia.1 Recent work on kinship and placement provides a theoretical grounding for the analysis of Amazonian Kichwa regional society.2 The analysis is additionally informed by ethnohistorical data, as corroborated by Curaray and Napo Runa myth and song, preserving memory of a far greater regional social sphere extant at least through the late nineteenth century. While this vast regional sphere linking Amazonian Kichwa with peoples of the Huallaga and other rivers of northeastern Peru is lost to time, the mechanisms for making such linkages possible are still extant. Chapter 7 integrates the themes explored in previous chapters 155

through an examination of the contemporary shifting social scale. The concluding section summarizes the arguments supporting the view that Curaray Runa are embedded within an Amazonian regional society. Amazonian Kichwa Regional Society in the Early Twenty-­First Century

As the twentieth century came to a close, and during the early years of the twenty-­first century, Amazonian Kichwa regional society shifted scale in three ways. The first is the adoption by many Runa ayllus of a multisited residence pattern that incorporates urban and peri-­urban residence with residence in indigenous communities and isolated forest and river settlements. Second has been the establishment of regional-­level indigenous political organizations through a political process shared across Latin America and supported by international organizations. Finally, scale has shifted yet again most recently in the emergence of “old peoples,” ethnolinguistic groups that had seemed to disappear over the past century, emerging as political forces with claims to land and culture distinct from that of Amazonian Kichwa, yet very much part of the regional society. Multisited Residence: Urban Life and Landscape

Many Amazonian Kichwa are increasingly developing a multisited residence pattern in which indigenous community and llacta residence, and associated purina territories, are maintained alongside residence in urban or peri-­urban sectors of provincial centers. The pattern is typical of other areas of Amazonia, in which households move between rural living, with its seasonal fishing, farming, and collecting activities, and residence in a peri-­urban area, maximizing the flow of people and information between urban and rural settlements (Roller 2014, 210). There are often large kin-­based networks involved in increasing common migratory flows (Pinedo-­Vasquez and Padoch 2009). For Amazonian Kichwa of the Curaray and Bobonaza Rivers, Puyo is the urban center to which many have gone to establish residence. All the linkages across Pastaza Province are melded in Puyo, together with ties to nonindigenous peoples, whereby Runa, Shuar, Achuar, and some Sápara and Waorani form and maintain compadrazgo relationships with one another and with nonindigenous peoples.3 Within 156 The Endur ing Regional Society

the peri-­urban areas, wherever possible, Runa locate in neighborhoods near their kin, some of whom may be from other communities. Other kin remain in the community, where they continue to access purina territories as well as maintaining a home and chagras within their llacta. In a scaling up of inclusiveness, incorporating “others,” Runa have extended their social networks across a new space, a new urban and peri-­urban landscape. Primary among reasons for an urban residence are access to education and healthcare. Puyo and the nearby town of Shell provide opportunity for young people, especially those seeking to obtain a high school education. Recently, access to a university education at the Universidad Estatal Amazónica also became available. Puyo is the locus of several indigenous organizations’ offices and the well-­spring of indigenous protest from Amazonia into Andean Ecuador. The town of Puyo grew rapidly from the 1980s into the twenty-­first century and remains the seat of power for the indigenous political movement within Pastaza Province. In Puyo ubiquitous and enduring relationships exist between indigenous and nonindigenous people. In the continued struggle to secure rights to land and respect for their language and culture, Amazonian Kichwa have become proficient within this “zone of interculturality” (see Whitten 2008, 238), working day-­to-­day alongside nonindigenous people, while continually asserting their own distinctiveness. By the early 2000s many of the Curaray Runa with whom I had established deep ties in the 1980s and 1990s were living in Puyo and surrounding areas. While visiting with these Runa, I often met others with whom I had worked, who were visiting their kin in these urban settings. A multisited residence strategy can be seen as a modern manifestation of the regional social sphere that had at one time extended southward and eastward toward the lower Napo, Curaray, Tigre, and Pastaza Rivers on into the Peruvian Amazon. Now the movement is westward to towns at the base of the Andes and, in a few cases, up into Andean towns such as Otavalo. Indigenous Political Organization in Pastaza Province, 1979–­2019

The regional society described in the proceeding chapters undergirds the recent development of what can be interpreted as a new scale of social The Endur ing Regional Society  157

integration, expressed through the movement for recognition of indigenous rights to land, language, and lifeways in Pastaza Province. Scale has both temporal and spatial dimensions (Carr and Lempert 2016). The indigenous political movement in Pastaza has been carried out at a provincial scale, projecting both backward to ethnolinguistic origins and forward toward an imagined future for the people and landscape of Amazonian Ecuador, a future that is devoid of destructive outside forces, particularly rampant petroleum exploitation. There is a paradoxical relationship between international laws and charters, as well as national laws and constitutional support for indigenous rights, on the one hand, and on the other hand intensification of extractive industry activities in the Amazonian region of Ecuador and elsewhere across Amazonia (Sawyer and Gomez 2012, 2).4 The extractivist economy as practiced in Amazonian Ecuador imposes a new mode of economic exploitation of resources on indigenous communities, undermining Runa “lived values and practices” (Uzendoski 2017). Cepek (2018) has provided extensive documentation of the deleterious impact of petroleum exploitation in the Upper Napo region on the indigenous Cofán ways of life. In Amazonian Ecuador the 1990s and early 2000s witnessed a florescence of indigenous organizations, assisted by ngos and intergovernmental organizations in projects aimed at gaining recognition of language, culture, and territory, and additionally, funds for sustainable development projects such as ecotourism. At the same moment, the political movement for self-­determination generated a force for indigenous protest. The indigenous uprising of 2001 created “a flow of life force and memory from the past into the future. This is pachacutic, the transformation” (Uzendoski 2005, x). The Napo Runa linked this uprising to a 1578 revolt led by the shaman-­warrior Jumandy against Spanish colonial abuse of indigenous peoples in the Upper Napo region. Jumandy’s essential life force (“spirit”), joining with that of other revolt leaders of earlier generations, was seen as a source of strength and knowledge, connecting the Napo Runa to the power of past natural, mythical, and historic beings (Uzendoski 2005, 147–­52). The Waorani have drawn on another historical image of power, that of the warrior, to express resistance to outside 158 The Endur ing Regional Society

intrusion into their lands. In 2003 Waorani youths dressed and performed as warriors during the Indigenous Nationalities Day festival of Pastaza Province. The Waorani performance matched spectators’ expectations concerning the symbolic place of Waorani within the regional interethnic social world. As such, the performance took place within a “highly visible arena of interculturality” (High 2015, 63, 67). Within Pastaza Province, the indigenous organization of specific relevance to the Curaray Runa was the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza (opip), formed originally in July 1979 as the Federation of Indigenous Centers of Pastaza (fecip). The organization’s leaders worked over a number of years to gain acceptance by indigenous communities throughout the province as their political representative. opip intended to incorporate all indigenous people of Pastaza Province under its umbrella. However, as I witnessed in Curaray during 1982, the Waorani were opposed to incorporation into a Kichwa organization and, in 1990, formed a Waorani indigenous organization, the Organization of Waorani Nationalities of Amazonian Ecuador (onhae). In subsequent years the Sápara broke away, forming two separate organizations. Following that, several other ethnolinguistic groups that maintain distinct territories within Pastaza Province established their own organizations, gaining recognition at both the national and international levels. Initially many Curaray Runa were also opposed to joining opip.5 However, during my fieldwork in 1982 I saw the debate shift. With the inclusion of a member of a prominent Curaray ayllu as well as inclusion of the brother of an important Curaray llacta head in the organizational leadership of opip, the community of Curaray agreed to join. It would seem, then, that a key aspect of opip as a regional organization was leadership that reflected the dense web of kin networks across the Kichwa communities of Pastaza Province. In the growing scale of indigenous political organization, opip became one of several indigenous organizations of Amazonian Ecuador united under the umbrella of the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Amazonian Ecuador (CONFENIAE), which in turn became part of the wider Ecuadorian indigenous organization, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (conaie).6 Beginning in 1990 conaie organized a series of The Endur ing Regional Society  159

national-­level protests (see Whitten 2008, 2017; Whitten and Whitten 2008, 2011). Protests surrounded issues of recognition of indigenous rights to traditional lands, language, and culture in what has been termed “indigenous contra power.”7 Protests were focused against rampant and destructive petroleum exploitation in the Amazonian region (Sawyer 2004; Sawyer and Gomez 2012).8 conaie has opposed extractive activities, particularly petroleum exploitation, in the Ecuadorian Amazon due to the negative effects it generates on indigenous communities and ancestral lands. The visibility of the indigenous movement in Ecuador stimulated interest among nongovernment organizations, both within Ecuador and internationally. Nongovernment organizations (ngos) began to supply significant funding for the support of the indigenous organizations and their community-­level projects. Indigenous organization leaders greatly expanded their reach, traveling throughout the Americas and western Europe as guests of ngos and representatives of their people in the struggle for indigenous rights. At the same time, conaie moved into the national political arena. In 1995 conaie reached out to nonindigenous progressive social movements within Ecuador, joining together to form the political party Pachakutik. The party was in fact a social movement, with the full title of Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement–­New Country (mupp-­n p) (Mijeski and Beck 2011, 4–­9). As a result of the success of this political party, indigenous people began to serve in various positions within the Ecuadorian government. Following the florescence of opip as a regional organization for Kichwa speakers within Amazonian Ecuador, its subsequent dismemberment proceeded alongside the rise of smaller organizations based on ethnolinguistic group affiliation. At the present time many of the ethnolinguistic groups of Amazonian Ecuador, which together constitute a regional society, have established their own representative indigenous organizations. As these organizations gain visibility, they increasingly work on their own behalf directly at the national and international levels. At present Napo Runa, Sápara, Andoa, and Achuar are each represented within their territories by an indigenous organization. Kichwa communities are now part of a new regional grouping as the Kichwa Nation of Amazonian Ecuador. 160 The Endur ing Regional Society

Indigenous political mobilization is a process of social scaling. The political process can be seen as a “scalar innovation” that at its core involves “the manipulation of accepted relations of scale [as in regional kinship ties] so as to achieve particular ends.” In this sense, the development of a shared discourse with respect to indigenous lifeways and modernity is an example of how scaling takes place at “event boundaries” in which social relations are “forged, figured and sorted by actors through their discursive practice. . . . Institutions such as political organizations, work to stabilize and naturalize scalar perspectives into scalar logics, as a claim of encompassment” (Carr and Lempert 2016, 24, 26, 30). We can conclude that the significant success of indigenous political mobilization within Amazonian Ecuador, including its subsets created along lines of ethnolinguistic identity, is rooted in the regional society based on a dense web of kinship ties that have been “scaled” to create a powerful political force. Emergence of “Old Peoples”: Ancestral Territories and Languages

To recap discussion of the regional society, recall that Curaray Runa ayllu ties extend in a dense web of interrelationships across Amazonian Kichwa communities and into the territories of neighboring ethnolinguistic groups. The extended kin networks are further strengthened by formal friendship and compadrazgo ties, which are maintained by couples across the region. Ancient ethnolinguistic territories remain salient and are now recognized through representation by indigenous political organizations. As detailed in the preceding chapters, Curaray Runa trace their personal histories to several distinct ethnic groups: Napo Runa (particularly to families in the Tena-­Archidona region); Canelos Runa and Gaes from Canelos, Pacayacu, and Sarayacu; Sápara from the Curaray or the Conambo River; and a few Achuar from the Copataza-­Capahuari region and Andoa from the lower Bobonaza. At Curaray, inmarried spouses from other areas “become” Curaray Runa while being from, and maintaining family history in, other Amazonian Kichwa communities and llactas or other ethnolinguistic groups. Ethnolinguistic affiliation is rooted in “place,” in the llacta, the community, the river system, and across the The Endur ing Regional Society  161

broader ethnolinguistic territory that is the origin place of one’s ayllu. In some cases these territories cross provincial boundaries. Notably for the Andoa, Sápara, and Achuar, the ancient ethnolinguistic territory includes communities on both sides of the international border between Peru and Ecuador. The historic antecedents of the regional society in the western Amazon are evidenced in ethnohistorical documentation dating from the time of Catholic mission building in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This documentation indicates that before the advent of European expansion into the western Amazon region, with its attendant disease epidemics, slave raiding, and missionization, many ethnolinguistic groups occupied distinct territories in a mosaic across both riverine and interfluvial areas. Groups that were related linguistically were in some cases interspersed across this vast region among others speaking unrelated languages. Tupian peoples dominated the principal rivers, while others such as the Jivaroans occupied vast culturally and linguistically co-­terminus areas (Reeve 1994). The historical documentation of ethnolinguistic groups, however, is incomplete. Europeans documented their travels along the major rivers, traveling most often with one indigenous group to meet with their allies. The vast interfluvial areas and their peoples remained outside of this history. The Waorani appear to have been one such ethnolinguistic group (Rival 2002). Jesuit documents from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are replete with references to ethnolinguistic groups in the western Amazon; among those within what is now central Amazonian Ecuador are the Andoas, Gaes, Canelos, Quijos, and Sápara (Reeve 1994; Taylor 1999; Whitten 1976). These peoples largely disappear from the European historical record by the early twentieth century. However, these “old peoples” reemerged at the beginning of the twenty-­first century, still living within their ancestral territories and, in several instances, speaking languages that are known fluently only to a few elders. In addition to those peoples referred to in the Jesuit documents of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, another group, the Achuar-­speaking Shiwiar, have made their presence known to outsiders. This reemergence and new emergence 162 The Endur ing Regional Society

process is in part a response to new threats to territory and cultural integrity brought about by incursions of colonists, petroleum workers, illegal loggers, and others into their territories. It is also in part a response to the opening of dialogue at the national and international levels concerning the rights of indigenous peoples to their traditional lands, language, and culture. Among these reemerging and emerging groups within central Amazonian Ecuador who maintain political representation at the provincial level are the Sápara, Andoa, Quijos, and Shiwiar.9 Perhaps best documented is the emergence of Sápara people into the national and international political sphere (Bilhaut 2011; Viatori 2009). In 2001 unesco recognized the Sápara Nation as part of the intangible heritage of humanity for its oral traditions and other aspects of its culture. Through the efforts of an Ecuadorian linguist and five elders fluent in the Sápara language, and through efforts to record oral traditions, Sápara language and culture have retained their vitality.10 In 2003 the Andoa people living in Ecuador organized as the Organization of the Andoa Nation of Pastaza, Ecuador (ONAPE) (Nuckolls 2010, 5), gaining official recognition by confeniae in 2004. Those communities within Pastaza Province are primarily Kichwa speaking, with a few elders who can speak Andoa. Through the work of linguists collaborating with elders, the Andoa language is now well documented, yet the possibility of petroleum exploitation threatens both the Andoas and Sápara.11 Most recently, in 2013, the ancient people of the Upper Napo, known historically as the Quijos, organized as the Nación Originaria Quijos (naoki).12 Also emergent are the Shiwiar, an Achuar (Chicham)–­speaking people of the Corrientes and Tigre River areas, who now maintain a representative’s office in Puyo. Conclusions

Runa continue to marry across an enduring regional society, reinforcing kin ties to their families in other communities. Trading partnerships—­ formal friendship and compadrazgo relationships—­allow individual men and women, as couples, to form further ties to nonkin, distantly related kin, or kin of affines. During times of purina, ayllu members go outward, The Endur ing Regional Society  163

sometimes together with compadres, to reunite in forest locales with kin and compadres from other community centers; and conversely, during the time of the Jista, extended kin and those with ties of formal friendship or compadrazgo come from across the region, visiting with their kin in the community holding the Jista celebration. The Jista additionally allows an opening for foreigners—­those with no kin ties—­to participate for a few days in a community celebration. Over and over, Runa stressed that the Jista was not for “us,” not for the Runa just among themselves. It brings in the outside—­historically, to renew the tie to Catholic Church power and its role in consecrating marriages, new alliances between extended families being a key aspect of Amazonian celebrations. More recently, the Jista celebration has opened Runa knowledge to tourists, who witness an Amazonian Kichwa celebration within a Runa community. Maintaining a regional social system across distinct ethnolinguistic territories necessitates the transference across generations of a memorial record. Past alliances, past wars and deaths, capture and marriage, language and territory are transmitted in narratives to younger Runa within the llacta. These are histories from beginning times, but beginning times events are very much part of the present. This is a vital present—­powerful, having its own agency, with the power to shape the future. The future will emerge from beginning times through mediation of action in the present to maintain social ties and ethnolinguistic group identity and territory across the vast network of trails, rivers, and increasingly roads that encompass the Pastaza region and beyond. Potentially, additional “old peoples” will emerge with their own identities intact, reclaiming their link to the records of long dead Jesuit priests, and their place in the ancient history of the region. The creation of regional indigenous political organizations is evidence that such efforts can shift scale, such that ayllu, community, and members of distinct ethnolinguistic groups can be incorporated at a regional scale for political representation. The history of the rise, florescence, and dismemberment of opip is illustrative of a scaling process fraught with internal centripetal forces, reminiscent of the dynamics of Amazonian alliance formation at smaller scales. 164 The Endur ing Regional Society

In conclusion, the nature of Amazonian regional societies can be seen through Curaray Runa daily life, patterns of residence and kin reckoning, concepts of landscape, historical memory, collective celebration, esoteric knowledge, and recent political movements. Viewed through this perspective, regional societies integrated through far-­flung kin networks are likely characteristic of other areas within Amazonia. Curaray Runa beginning times narratives coupled with historical documentation from Amazonian Ecuador suggest that regional societies shift scale over time, expanding and contracting in response to historical contingencies. Yet the fundamental mechanism is that of extending, or alternately negating, kinship with others. The discussions presented in preceding chapters suggest ways in which a regional society is conceptualized through kinship relationships across a shared social landscape, and that this concept of kinship is based on the behavior of beings—­both human and nonhuman. The analysis of Amazonian Kichwa regional society began with an exploration of these themes from the perspective of the social landscape of central Amazonian Ecuador focusing on the fundamental kindred unit—­ the ayllu—­and core settlement—­the llacta—­as these shape Curaray and Bobonaza Runa communities and the regional society. It then explored Runa concepts of sociability upheld as an ideal within the marriage bond, and of ayllu and llacta in which ayllu is at the core of the regional society, extending kin networks through marriages with ayllu members from other communities and neighboring ethnolinguistic groups, and through compadrazgo and formal friendship linkages across the social landscape. Moving beyond quotidian life, the analysis focused on historical memory as shared within the llacta, in which ayllu identity is affirmed in stories of conflicts with other peoples, and the very nature of being human is asserted through the narrative framing of events. In a theme common to Amazonian ethnographies, that of collective celebration, the annual Jista at Curaray was discussed as a celebration of regional kinship ties that is nevertheless contingent, in constant flux as kin may fight and become enemies, and as new marriage alliances are formed, together with new compadrazgo relationships. The fear of failure to reciprocate properly between hosts and guests and of world chaos The Endur ing Regional Society  165

in destructive floods signals uncertainty of the outcome, threatening the tranquility and vitality essential to continued life and social well-­ being. The themes of tranquility and abundance were further explored as grounding for integration of the idea of scale in regional societies with kin relations in a shared social landscape of river, forest, and town, and with the creation of abundance through making kin of “others.” Esoteric knowledge and its expression in shamanism, women’s songs, and body decoration were discussed as overt signaling of an inner essence. Shamanic practice is an ancient and enduring form of healing and protection of the kin group and llacta against harmful forces within the social landscape. Women’s songs express concepts of sitting-­being as evocative of an inner personal essence and statement of placement within the llacta, community, and regional society. Linking these concepts within the framework of sociability, ancient mythic narratives common to other Amazonian societies were explored as expressions of the emergence of humans and the reach of their movements across a vast social landscape during mythic space-­time and beginning times. The concluding chapter returned to the theme of scale within regional societies through a brief summary of recent shifts in Curaray and Bobonaza Runa lifeways, incorporating the peri-­urban sphere within the social landscape, and extending the reach of the regional society to national and international awareness through political action, while simultaneously other ethnolinguistic groups have emerged as political forces within Amazonian Ecuador. The recent political coalescence and fragmentation suggest that scalar processes at work in contemporary Amazonian Kichwa society are dynamic. This dynamic complexity in scale appears to be a central characteristic of regional societies.

166 The Endur ing Regional Society

Gl o ssar y

aisana: fine black lines drawn on a mukawa (pottery drinking bowl) ala: ancient brother alpa: soil or clay; for example, puka alpa is a red clay pigment used in pottery decoration amarun: boa constrictor, anaconda amíkchi: term in the Achuar language denoting a formal friendship tie aswa: manioc beer Armana Punzha: Bathing Day, the third day of the Jista at Curaray auca: foreigner, foreign atacapi: spirit animal in the shape of a giant ray or coiled boa constrictor said to live in river headwaters aya: soul ayahuasca: vine used in the preparation of a hallucinogenic brew imbibed by shamans ayllu: extended kin group ayllupura: a group of ayllus together bancu: shaman’s stool cacayo: grated dried plantain callana: blackware pottery bowl used for food Callari Uras: beginning times, encompassing times within historical memory

167

cauchu: Castilloa elastica and C. ulei. Sap from these tropical forest trees was collected during the Amazonian rubber boom. chagra: swidden horticultural plot chagra amu: spirit master of garden soil chalwa: a kind of fish chalwa anga: a fish hawk chambira: type of palm tree; chambira leaf fibers are used to make hammocks and net carrying bags charapa: large Amazonian river turtle Chayuk Runa: Jista conveners, host couple Chayuj Sisana: staff of Jista convener, chonta pole decorated with toucan feathers chimbilacu: vampire bat cilo: sky chonta: The peach palm. Boiled chonta fruit is made into a type of fermented drink. The very hard wood of the tree is used in house building and in the making of weapons. chonta uras: the time of ripe peach palm fruit cocha: lake comadre: ritual co-­parent, woman compadre: ritual co-­parent, man compadrazgo: Ritual co-­parenthood, a term used by Runa and neighboring peoples to denote a formal friendship, which among Runa includes sponsorship of a child or couple at their marriage. corneta: pottery horn datura: plant used to make a hallucinogenic brew imbibed by Runa for vision-seeking guacamayo: macaw parrot guarapo: sugar cane alcohol huasca (waska): vine huasipungo: house yard jambi: blowgun dart poison jilucu: nightjar, common potoo bird 168 Glossary

Jista: Annual ritual celebration of extended kinship ties and the Amazonian seasonal shift marking the fruiting of palms and birthing of animals as the start of a new year. The word jista derives from the Spanish word fiesta. Jista amu: “owner” of the Jista, Jista convenor Jista camari: festival feast jisteros: the group of men and women who work to prepare for the jista kari: man Kari Jista Wasi: male festival house killa (quilla): moon kowori: term in the Wao language for non-­Waorani peoples Kunan Uras: present times, being within the lived memory of an individual llacta: residence group composed of several individual households that share close kinship ties lancha: small river boat; used during the Amazonian rubber boom to convey rubber and goods lurira: shield macana: wooden short-­sword mama churana: major lines drawn on a pottery drinking bowl (mukawa) mestizo: person of mixed race, in Amazonian Ecuador generally referring to a person having both indigenous and European ancestry minga: collective work party mukawa (mucahua): decorated polychrome pottery bowl used to serve manioc beer muntun: An extended kin group living together. Curaray Runa occasionally use this term in reference to other peoples. muriti: (Mauritius) palm pachakutik: world ending and renewal pinduk yanda: dried river cane firewood pishkuri: master spirit of the forest piwano: a type of flute pugllanchi: “we play together,” describing festival activities punzha: day Glossary  169

purina: Literally “to trek,” the term denotes time spent away from the community, hunting and fishing with extended kin, including kin or compadres from other communities. puru: Decorated polychrome ceramic vessel usually in the shape of a plant seed, fungus, animal, or a human face, created for serving strong festival manioc beer during the annual jista celebration. runa: Literally meaning “person,” it is the term that Kichwa speakers use to refer to themselves. runapura: Kichwa speakers or Runa people among ourselves runapuralla: “just among Runa” sacha: forest sas: rapids sawata: land turtle sicuanga: toucan parrot sicuanga warmi: toucan woman shinkillu: glaze or resin sealer shiringa, seringa: rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis silbana: shaman’s whistling sinchi: strong Sisa Punzha: Day of Flowers, first day of the Jista celebration supai: spirit takina: shaman’s song tambu: small named settlement tijeras anga: swallow-­tailed kite tinaja: large ceramic vessel in which manioc mash is fermented and stored for the making of manioc beer tinaja wasi (huasi): enclosure for storage vessels containing manioc beer tipiti: manioc squeezer Unai: mythic space-­time urcu: hill urpi warmi: dove woman varayuks: Staff holders; the varayuk holds a leadership position within a community. vinillu: strong festival aswa 170 Glossary

wakcha: orphan walinga: warrior sash worn across the chest wangana: peccary willan: palm weevil larvae wariña: dried manioc flour warmi: woman Warmi Jista Wasi: female Jista house wasi: house wibana: baby birds and animals wituk: genipap fruit, the juice of which is used in face and body painting yachak: shaman, knowledgeable person yaji: plant used in a brew imbibed by shamans yaku: water yaku runa: water spirit person yanda: firewood Yanda Minga: collective firewood-­gathering work party

Glossary  171

No tes

Introduction 1. Amazonian Quichua (Kichwa) is classified within the northern branch of Peripheral Quechua, which includes Quichua spoken in Amazonian Ecuador and northeastern Peru (Chachapoyas in the Department of Amazonas and Lamas in San Martín; Mannheim 1991, 11). Within Peripheral Quechua, Curaray Runa speak Pastaza Quichua, which is also spoken by Runa living in the town of Puyo and along the Bobonaza River, and including the areas in between the Curaray and Bobonaza Rivers. Peripheral Quechua may have spread into this region from the area of San Martin in northeastern Peru (Whitten 2008, 14). In contrast to Pastaza Quichua, Napo Quichua is spoken by Runa of the upper Napo River, while Runa of the lower Napo speak a variant, Avila-­Loreto dialect of Napo Quichua. These dialectical distinctions mirror cultural variations within Amazonian Kichwa society (Uzendoski and Calapucha-­Tapuy 2012, 102). The major language families of Amazonia include Arawak, Tupí, Tukanoan, Panoan, Carib, and Macro-­Jê. Smaller language families spoken by ethnolinguistic groups within Amazonian Ecuador and adjacent areas of Colombia and northeastern Peru include Jivaroan, Zaparoan, and Western Tukanoan, while languages classified as isolates include Waorani and Cofán (Aikhenvald 2012, 1–­20, 40–­45). Further into northeastern Peru, Amazonian Kichwa people came in contact during the colonial era with ethnolinguistic groups speaking Tupian languages (Omagua and Kokama-­Kokamilla). 2. I have chosen to refer to the various groups of Kichwa speakers within Amazonian Ecuador by using terminology based on community or river of residence. Runa throughout the region refer to others by community of residence. Thus those from the Bobonaza communities are from Canelos, Sarayacu, Pacayacu,

173

or Montalvo, generally with reference to being a man or woman from that community (e.g., Sarayacu warmi means a woman from Sarayacu). However, Runa have no commonly used term to refer to all Kichwa speakers of both the Curaray and Bobonaza Rivers. In this book, I have chosen the descriptive term Amazonian Kichwa to include Napo Runa and Runa of the Bobonaza and Curaray Rivers, and the phrase Runa of the Bobonaza and Curaray Rivers in contrast to Napo Runa, when making that distinction. Scholars have utilized Pastaza Quichua (Kichwa) or Canelos Quichua, which is common in the literature for the region; however these are not terms used by Kichwa speakers themselves. The term Canelos Quichua is not an accurate description of the Curaray Runa, among whom there are as many people from the Napo region as there are from Canelos and other Bobonaza communities. Additionally, significant numbers of people at Curaray are of Sápara origin. With all of the preceding clarification, it is important to note that indigenous political organizations of Kichwa speakers within Pastaza Province self-­refer as Pastaza Kichwa, but this is a reference to Pastaza Province, rather than a river system. 3. One estimate of the pre-­Columbian population of greater Amazonia is five million indigenous people (Newson 1996). 4. While a graduate student at the University of Illinois I had the benefit of a two-­ year course in the Imbabura dialect of Kichwa, taught by Carmen Chuquín and Frank Salomon. 5. A note on spelling: up until very recently, Kichwa words have been rendered by scholars by using a Spanish orthography. For example, Kichwa was spelled Quichua. In this book, I have responded to recent shifts in this practice by conforming to a rendering of Kichwa words using an English orthography. 1. Landscape and Kinship 1. The ritual co-­parent (compadrazgo) tie between Amazonian Kichwa couples is an important way in which to extend consanguineal-­type ties to nonkin. Terms of reference are compadre for men and comadre for women. 2. This area was in later years formally demarcated and a legal boundary was created between Kichwa and Waorani lands. 3. Throughout the region the most important forest fruit is the peach palm. This oil-­rich tree fruit begins to be available in January. It is eaten boiled, or after boiling, mashed and made into a highly nutritious drink. Peach palm is prized not only for its fruit but also for the very hard straight-­grained wood of the tree itself. The peach palm has been planted by Amazonian peoples since time immemorial.

174 Notes to Pages 8–29

2. Ayllu and Llacta 1. All translations from Kichwa to English are by the author. 2. The planting of manioc is done quietly by a woman alone or with her mother in a ritualized manner. Wearing red face paint, achiote (maduro), she works while singing quietly to the chagra amu, the spirit master/owner of garden soil. After the planting of manioc and several other crops, certain work and dietary restrictions are followed that are said to aid the growth of the young plants. 3. Of these crops, I was told that maize is always planted and tended by men. In Curaray, especially when intercropped with manioc, maize is planted in holes with a digging stick, unlike the broadcasting technique used by Achuar and Puyo Runa. Maize is insignificant as a food crop. It is eaten roasted on the cob or as popcorn as a treat, but its primary use is to feed the household chickens to ensure egg production. Maize is also an important gift or sale item between ayllus. 4. For example, within her chagra one of my neighbors had four types of manioc, which she identified as ichilla lumu (little manioc), mika mama (mother of honey), kuska tullu lumu (straight bone/stem manioc), and auca lumu (foreign manioc). She was also growing two types of taro in the chagra, papa jivara and mandi, as well as pineapple. 5. This was often a topic of conversation among women during minga parties. I learned that papaya lumu is from Montalvo, while mika mama, kuska tullu lumu, rita lumu, wanduj lumu, puka lumu, and auca lumu are all from Curaray. Some types of manioc, such as papaya lumu, which is sweet and bright yellow, are preferred for eating, while others, such as wanduj lumu, are preferred for making festival aswa (vinillu), because of their ability to produce strong fermentation. 6. By the early 2000s, however, Curaray Runa complained that contamination from the petroleum exploitation activities upriver near Villano was killing the fish. The Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza (opip) has since worked with petroleum companies demanding improvement of production techniques to thereby reduce the amount of pollutants entering the rivers of Pastaza Province. 7. This conflict resulted from a policy adopted by the Ecuadorian government at that time to encourage colonization of the Ecuadorian Amazon region. Indigenous political leaders were able at a later date to settle the conflict over land tenure in the Puyo area. 8. During the time of Jesuit missionization of the region (1638–­1767), and perhaps well before that, it was Tucuna (also spelled Tikuna or Ticuna) living Notes to Pages 46–63  175

along the Upper Amazon who produced and traded powerful blowgun dart poison (jambi) throughout the Western Amazon. An older Runa explained that in more recent times, as these treks ceased, very strong jambi was obtained instead from Lamas, Peru, located far up the Huallaga River. Nonindigenous traders were said to have brought this jambi as far as the community of Montalvo, downriver on the Bobonaza, from where it was traded into other Bobonaza communities. He explained that a trader out of Sarayacu on the Bobonaza used to bring it to Curaray. He then explained that this jambi from Lamas was strong enough to kill a peccary. The elder of the family we visited in Canelos told me that they had traded mukawas for jambi, perhaps an explanation for the similarities between the mukawas of Lamas and those of the Bobonaza. Several Runa men commented to me that locally made jambi is weak, able to kill only small game. 3. Runa on the Curaray River 1. Evidentiality, the marking of how people know what they are telling, is essential in many Amazonian languages (Aikhenvald 2012, 387). In the Kichwa language the source of one’s statement must be indicated (Nuckolls 2010, 4). In narrating this story, the teller used a “witness” form of validation by stating his direct relationship to the information. He did not use the phrase “nishka nin” (it is said) in ending his statements, a form employed commonly by Curaray Runa in the telling of myths. 2. The Tayak were ancient inhabitants of the Bobonaza River region, near Canelos and Sarayacu. 3. This animal-­human transformation accords with the notion that certain animals such as wooly and spider monkeys as well as peccaries are “seen” as persons when they are hunted. There is no implication of cannibalism; the meaning is illustrative of the Runa concept of mutability of animal and human form. Such mutability references mythic space-­time. Mythic space-­ time is a time of ancient origins remembered in myths about first people. I translate Unai as “space-­time,” or “time-­space” (Reeve 1988b), because Unai exists also in the present, in places imbued with the knowledge and power of these ancient times. It is also present in that sense that Unai is accessible in dreams and in vision states. 4. The rubber boom era in Amazonia ended in 1912–­14 with the price collapse as Asian rubber plantations became profitable. Exportation of rubber gathered in Amazon forests ended by 1921. 5. For a detailed and nuanced view of indigenous relationships with rubber merchants, local elites, and the state in the Mojos region, see Van Valen 2013.

176 Notes to Pages 71–76

6. Bravo (1907) described the prosperous estate called hacienda San Antonio as consisting of three main buildings and eleven indigenous residences. Both banks of the river were under cultivation, the produce including sugarcane, rice, tobacco, and the local subsistence crops, in addition to cattle. There were in total 58 European men, women, and children and 118 indigenous men, women, and children. Bravo estimated a migrant population of some 300 white and indigenous rubber workers in the area as well as traders and their peons who traveled the river (1907, 62). 7. This system of indebtedness, termed enganche, was used throughout the Amazon during the rubber boom. 8. Waorani territory extends across the vast area between the Napo and Curaray Rivers. As the rubber trees were located in the headwaters areas of rivers flowing into the Curaray, contacts between Waorani extended family groups and Runa and Sápara rubber collectors were not unusual. 9. The manioc from which manioc flour (fariña) was made throughout the Amazon Basin is termed “bitter manioc” and is high in prussic acid. This manioc was processed by first soaking, then leaching out the prussic acid through a manioc squeezer (tipiti), before being dried into manioc flour. The manioc grown in Amazonian Ecuador is “sweet” manioc, needing no special processing before consumption. It is therefore indicative of the long-­distance connections between this region and the Amazon Basin that the tipiti was here in use to produce manioc flour, which would have been a staple food for rubber collectors on their treks through the forest. 10. Two larger river boats, the Carolina and the Alicia, reached as far as the hacienda San Antonio in the middle Curaray. Only the smaller riverboat, the Argentina, went up to the area just below the present day community of Curaray. 11. See Bautizos: Curaray-­Villano, in the Dominican Archives, Puyo-­Pastaza, 1925–­1961. 12. Waorani also remember the violence of these times. Personal biographies of violence are told as part of Wao experience as a way to contrast changes in relations between ethnolinguistic groups and between the elder and younger generations of Waorani (High 2014, 35–­36). 13. This Waorani group visiting from Golondrina Cocha included a Kichwa woman abducted as a child. The group had been living on the Cononaco River and were brought by Dayuma, who was a relative, to the area of Toñampari. Later this extended family established the site at Golondrina Cocha. I was told by one of the women with whom I worked closely that the abducted woman is a close relative of three women living at Curaray and that the ayllu is from Notes to Pages 76–83  177

Canelos. She also mentioned that the father of another woman, her neighbor, is Waorani, and that he had come to live with the priest here as a young man. He then married here. From these kin ties, Waorani developed formal friendships and trading partnerships with various people on the Curaray. She explained that after forming these ties, the Waorani family group settled at Golondrina Cocha. 14. Several dramatic changes occurred at Curaray following this period. In the early 2000s Curaray Runa now living in the Puyo area talked about a number of killings that had taken place—­of shamans and their families killed on the Villano and on the Curaray by Waorani, or perhaps by their “Aushiri” neighbors to the east. A general fear of further attacks had galvanized the community of Curaray, and many families had left to reside in the Puyo area. The Waorani settlement of Golondrina Cocha had been abandoned. 4. The Ritual of Community 1. See Descola (1994, 49), for the Achuar. For the Napo Runa, who do not celebrate the Jista, the time of ripe peach palm fruit, chonta uras, is the preferred time for marriage ceremonies, as food is most abundant during this season (Uzendoski 2005). 2. The fear of floods and destruction is real. As Runa prepared for the Jista in 1992, they spoke about recent devastating floods. One older Runa talked about how the river rose almost to the upper level of his house, flooding all of the low-­lying land along the river. In one llacta a house was washed away down the river, and two other houses collapsed on the sleeping occupants. Severely injured Runa were evacuated by helicopter, as no airplane could land on the flooded airstrip. Other Runa described how the water sounded in waves hitting against the house, making it shake as in an earthquake; everyone retreated to the upper house level, keeping their fire there. The animals fled to high places, they said, although some got caught in the branches of the trees that had been uprooted and were racing down the river. Runa said that the animals shivered with cold and hunger, but the flood was good for fish, which could go inland to additional food sources. People were hungry, cold, and afraid that chaos had come, a world ending. The flood lasted eight days. There was no food during this time. In the end, all the low-­lying manioc and plantain gardens had been submerged for so long that the food growing there was rotten. 3. For data on the Jista in the Puyo area and Upper Bobonaza communities, see Whitten 1976, 165–­202; 1985, 187–­212. For data on the Jista as celebrated in Sarayacu, see Mezzenzana 2014.

178 Notes to Pages 83–90

4. This is similar to the preparations for a festival noted for the Tupian Areweté, in which a ritual hunt precedes the beer festival, and one couple is elected to prepare strong maize beer. They are the “owner of the beer,” the sponsoring couple (Viveiros de Castro 1992, 123, 124). 5. The blowing of horns or trumpets at the initiation of a ritual celebration appears among the Tupian Araweté as well. Viveiros de Castro notes that at the beginning of a beer festival in which one village hosts another, an instrument made from a coil of babascu leaf is played (1992, 126). 6. In Sarayacu, Mezzenzana (2014) notes that women within the Jista house compete with each other. This did not occur at Curaray; rather the sense of inability to live up to expectation of their complementary role in providing for the Jista focused on fear that the other Jista house would contribute more food and aswa. 7. During preparations for a celebration, the Tupian Areweté similarly prohibit the viewing of pots of fermented beer (Viveiros de Castro 1992, 123, 124). 8. For Napo Runa, a symbol of such destruction is the anaconda. As master of the water world, it is considered to cause flooding, while at the same time being the primary source of all life (Uzendoski 2004b, 887). At Pacayacu, Whitten observed during the final festival day the anaconda symbolically brought onto the land, flooding it with ancient water power (1976, 194). 9. In his discussion of the Tupian Araweté beer festival, Viveiros de Castro notes that the festival lasted one or two days, after which the guest’s wife hands over a portion of meat as “payment” for the beer (1992, 129). 10. Viveiros de Castro also notes the importance of forced drinking, in which individuals who are not festival owners or their near relatives must consume a large quantity of maize beer, strong beer being what he terms an “exobeverage.” Among the Achuar, collective drunkenness is thought to bring about a deluge of rain (Descola 1994, 49). 11. The Jista at Curaray takes place around the time of the Catholic feast day of the Annunciation. In medieval Florence, Italy, and perhaps elsewhere in medieval Europe, the New Year was celebrated on the date of the Annunciation. At Curaray, the “new year” may reference both the ecological shift to abundance and an ancient Catholic tradition. 12. For a detailed discussion of the Lancero Jista and conflict with the “Chirapas,” see Whitten and Whitten 2008, 163–­66. For the Jista at Canelos, including the Lancero Jista, see Guzmán-­Gallegos 1997. 13. A review of the history of missions in the greater region of the Napo to Huallaga River systems reveals that the ideal of the mission as a haven from warfare and abuse and as a source of trade goods was met only sporadically Notes to Pages 90–106  179

and that mission populations returned to smaller settlements away from Spanish colonial influence when the priest failed to maintain the mission (Reeve 1994). 5. Across the Regional Society 1. The Amazonian Kichwa spoken at Curaray has slight dialectical variations from the Pastaza dialect of Amazonian Kichwa as spoken in the Puyo area. See Nuckolls 1996; see Nuckolls and Swanson 2020 for a linguistic analysis of the Pastaza dialect. 2. See Whitten 1976 for a detailed discussion of the several ethnolinguistic groups comprising Runa communities along the Bobonaza River, and the important distinction maintained by Runa in this area between “ali Runa”—­associated with Catholic mission community life—­and “sacha Runa,” forest-­dwelling person. 6. Healing, Song, and Narrative 1. Killing is a form of theft, and in this sense the jaguar is a paramount thief. An orphan has no way to return a gift, principally the gift of a spouse, as he or she has no kin with whom to make a marriage exchange. This idea helps to explain the deep ambivalence with which Amazonian peoples regard orphans, as well as shamans, and their animal others—­jaguars. 2. See High 2015, 155–­66, for a discussion of the complex attitudes of Waorani toward shamanism and Kichwa shamans. 3. The plants used in this type of healing are generally grown near the house in the house yard. My neighbor Maria had extensive knowledge of this type of curing. She also used “Western” medicines, such as aromatic rubs to reduce chest congestion and aspirin for minor pain. 4. The older woman directing the preparation of the ayahuasca brew pronounced both ayahuasca and yaji with the added “j/k” possessive form in Kichwa. Ayahuasca is then rendered as ayajhuasca (in Spanish orthography), meaning literally “vine that possesses a soul.” 5. Most spirit stones are small and are brought out by a shaman during a curing session to help them see illness. In Puyo I was told that men must prepare such a stone by imparting their own soul substance into it, in order to make themselves “owner” of the divining power of the stone. This is done by blowing tobacco smoke onto the stone; then the substances which one has inside that have been acquired by drinking datura are imparted into the stone. The stones are red, white, or black and are either male or female. I was told that

180 Notes to Pages 126–135

a young man (usually a shaman’s son) who wants to learn fasts for up to a month, eating just plantain gruel and learning from a shaman and the shaman’s “friends”; that is, the spirits that help the shaman in divining illness. The stones are found while “dreaming” and wandering in the forest under the influence of datura. They are found only in water, in small streams. Once a stone is found, the budding shaman must impart his own soul to the stone, or it will be useless. The stones then protect the shaman from attack by other shamans. I was told in the Puyo area that shamans also use stones to send illness back where it came from, and that sometimes shamans duel with each other, and at such times the stones may collide in midair. I was also told in Puyo that people in Otavalo in the Ecuadorian Andes do the same thing with stones, but that the stones come from the Pastaza area. 6. The concept of protection of a settlement is common to other Amazonian societies. For example, Cepek (2018) notes that the settlement of Dureno where he worked was settled under a shaman who protected it. 7. In Curaray my interlocutors from the Napo region described atacapi in this way. However, on the Bobonaza, atacapi is described as a four-­headed anaconda, which is depicted in this way also in ceramic imagery. 8. It was explained to me that strong (sinchi) and knowledgeable (yachak) women use tobacco to see the unseen. The Runa tobacco leaves are put in a gourd bowl of water for about an hour, after which the liquid is snorted into the right and left nostrils. If the woman takes a little, she will see as in dreaming; if she takes a lot, she will be as one drunk, waving the head around, dreaming strongly, and seeing visions. Men do not use tobacco in this way. 9. A shaman and any men with him at a curing ceremony consume ayahuasca brew, but the vast majority of women do not take ayahuasca. In talking about beginning times, however, one older man said that beginning times women, even young, single women, consumed ayahuasca to become knowledgeable; but he said this is no longer done. I was told, however, of one female shaman who used to live up near the community of Villano. The role of shaman had been passed to her when her shaman husband died. Her son later became a shaman. 10. In addition to mukawas, women decorate aswa storage vessels, using a specific set of animal designs. However, these are never the same as those used on a mukawa. Aswa storage vessels are decorated with symbolic representations of jungle animals, such as monkey, jaguar, or deer. Smaller such vessels made for sale, however, are painted like mukawas and may additionally be decorated with heads, depictions of spirits calling out, or “eyes” with which to see outward.

Notes to Pages 135–138  181

11. For a detailed discussion of Napo Kichwa women’s songs, see Uzendoski 2014b, Uzendoski et al. 2005. For an analysis of women’s power through speech, see Nuckolls 2010. 12. Chagra songs are directed to the spirit force of the chagra and growing things, and are sung so that the manioc will grow well, and also to help a woman have children. While I heard many of the first type of song, the chagra songs are very private, not sung for other Runa to hear. 13. Uzendoski and Calapucha-­Tapuy 2012 recorded a Napo Runa woman singing Huallaga Woman, a version of which I recorded from a Canelos Runa woman. 14. Carneiro (2009) notes that the twins/brothers myth has been recorded among Carib and Panoan as well as Tupi-­speaking peoples. In all these versions the twins are born of a woman captured by jaguars; the woman dies but the twins escape from the jaguars and go on to attempt to kill all jaguars and have other adventures, finally going into the sky as celestial beings. 15. See Reeve 2014 for a different version of this narrative recounted to me by another Curaray Runa elder. 16. There is a story told in Montalvo of an anaconda that attacked the canoes of long-­distance travelers from the Napo-­Pastaza, cutting them in two as they entered a certain place on the journey to collect salt. It is said that the anaconda was destroyed by “gringos from Lima” (Nuckolls 2010, 101–­3). 17. The Upper Perené Arawakans controlled salt extraction and salt trading networks among their neighbors (Mihas et al. 2014, 148, 226) The Yanesha and Ashaninka were the only people entitled to extract and process salt into cakes to trade as a type of currency throughout the region. Others, such as the Conibo, brought polychrome ceramics and textiles to exchange for salt (Santos-­Granero 2004, 97–­109). Blowgun dart poison, made by the Tucuna (Tikuna), was also traded as a kind of currency throughout the region. 7. The Enduring Regional Society 1. Hill (1993, 34) describes a regional network of relations with other peoples in which the Wakuénai formed part of “vast riverine Northern Arawakan societies that extended from the Central Amazon floodplains near Manaus up to the lower Orinoco Basin.” Likewise, Santos-­Granero (1991, 91) states that “the boundaries of Amuesha traditional territory are not geographical but social and religious. . . . Amuesha space is, and has been, created and recreated through the process of interaction with both the environment (the productive process) and their neighbors (the process of interethnic interaction).” Amuesha society was organized around a priest-­temple complex in which those living closest to the ceremonial center were most directly influenced.

182 Notes to Pages 140–155

“In this way, the Amuesha priests were able to generate a moral community which encompassed several Amuesha local settlements and even portions of neighboring ethnic groups” (Santos-­Granero 1991, 287). 2. To quote Sahlins (2013, ix), kinship involves “transpersonal relations of being and experience, [and] kinship takes place in the same ontological regime as magic, gift exchange, sorcery and witchcraft.” 3. See Whitten and Whitten (2008) for a detailed analysis of Puyo Runa interculturality. 4. The fight for indigenous rights has been carried successfully to the international arena. A worldwide effort by indigenous peoples culminated in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2007. In Ecuador the adoption of a new constitution in 2008 enshrined the rights of indigenous peoples to their language and culture and declared Ecuador to be a plurinational country. The constitution granted the right of indigenous peoples to use of their ancestral languages and customs within their territories, so long as in doing so they did not violate the rights of all Ecuadorian citizens under the constitution. The 2008 constitution established, in addition to Spanish, both the Shuar and Kichwa languages as “official languages of intercultural relations” (Mijeski and Beck 2011, 122). Simultaneously with the granting of these constitutional rights to indigenous peoples within Ecuador, the Ecuadorian government moved forward with plans to lease petroleum exploitation rights within the Amazonian region, exercising the state-­owned right to all subsurface resources. Currently, the indigenous organizations of the region are struggling to prevent the entry of petroleum exploitation activities on their lands. The process of indigenous political organization is not unique to Ecuador. The experience of Amazonian peoples of Ecuador has taken place within the context of indigenous political movements in neighboring Peru and Colombia, as well as across the Amazon and other regions of South America, within Central America, and worldwide among indigenous peoples. Indigenous activism in Amazonia has been the subject of numerous analyses (see Veber and Virtanen 2017; Warren and Jackson 2002). There are likewise several analyses of indigenous movements in Ecuador at the national level (see Hutchins and Wilson 2010; Mijeski and Beck 2011; Perreault 2002 and 2003b). 5. Curaray Runa objected initially to inclusion into opip as it was regarded as having its origins among the Shuar, who had established a political federation years earlier and who were regarded as enemies, as outside the sphere of Curaray Runa regional society. The objection also focused on which institution had the right to represent Curaray Runa interests to the national society. Up Notes to Pages 155–159  183

until this time, that right had been granted to the Catholic Church, which had long sustained this intermediary role. Since the early twentieth century at Curaray, and on the Bobonaza, priests have ministered periodically to the community by performing marriages and baptisms and organizing the labor service for the year through appointment of mission labor organizers called varayuks (staff holders), while attending the annual Jista celebration. Within Amazonian Ecuador during the 1960s through 1990s, some priests in this region, notably the Salesians working among the Shuar, were active in promulgating indigenous rights. The Shuar Federation, the first in Amazonian Ecuador, was originally organized through the efforts of these Salesians. By the 1980s, however, indigenous organizations were pushing hard for direct representation and for self-­determination. Direct representation at the national and international levels characterized the florescence of the indigenous movement within Amazonian Ecuador. 6. While provincial level indigenous organizations focused on obtaining funding for projects to improve their constituent communities, the umbrella organizations began to develop a national-­level dialogue in support of indigenous rights to land, language, and culture. The national level organization, conaie (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador) was formed in 1986 through the joint efforts of CONFENIAE and the Andean indigenous organization ecuarunari. 7. Norman E. Whitten Jr., 2016, “Indigenous Contra Powers and Transformations in the Indigenization of Modernity,” paper presented in the panel Contemporary Amazonia: Twenty-­First Century Research, during the International Symposium on Indigenous Languages and Cultures of Latin America (ilcla) Conference, Ohio State University, October 2016. 8. opip has focused considerable effort over a number of years on preventing petroleum exploitation within the province. However, currently there are two exploitation platforms near the community of Villano (Sawyer 2004; Guzmán-­Gallegos 2015). A road now goes into the petroleum exploitation area. 9. By 2004 two additional ethnolinguistic groups, the Arabela and Iquitos, located in northeastern Peru, had reemerged and formed organizations for representation at the national and international levels. 10. The political organization anazppa encompasses ten Zápara (Sápara) communities in Ecuador. The organization has gained recognition of approximately 361,000 hectares of tropical forest as a portion of their once vast Zaparoan territory (Pachamama Alliance website, 2018, www.pachamama.org). The Sápara lands are within the area between the Pindoyacu, Conambo, and

184 Notes to Pages 159–163

Corrientes Rivers. Additionally, there are several Sápara communities located downriver, in the Peruvian province of Loreto. Sápara in the Zaparoan language means “people of the forest.” Amazonian Kichwa have long married into Sápara communities, but as described in chapter 4, the communities and individuals within them identify in this territory as Sápara, while contributing their own histories to that of Sápara communities as a whole. 11. The area occupied by Sápara is located within two petroleum exploitation blocks designated by the Ecuadorian government in 2013. Sápara leadership, together with the ngo Pachamama Alliance (www.pachamama.org), is fighting to prevent petroleum exploration on Sápara lands. The Andoa likewise face the effects of oil exploration. The community of Andoas and a second community, Nuevo Andoas, are near one of the petroleum exploitation fields in active production within the Peruvian Amazon. 12. The following organizations may be searched online, although only conaie has a website: Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Amazonian Ecuador (CONFENIAE); Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (conaie), www.conaie.org; Nación Originaria Quijos (naoki); Organization of Andoas People of Pastaza, Ecuador (onape); Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza (opip); Organization of the Waorani Nationality of Amazonian Ecuador (onhae); and Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement—­New Country (mupp-­n p).

Notes to Page 163  185

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Ind ex

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. abundance, 31, 89, 90, 107, 166, 178n1, 179n11 acachina, 71 achiote fruit, 143, 144 Achuar: background and overview of, 4, 5–­6, 161–­62; face painting and, 144; Jista and, 102–­3; kinship and, 108, 109, 112, 118, 156; language and, 126–­27; marriage and, 64–­65, 112, 126, 178n1; regional society and, 34, 38; resettlement of, 81–­82; ritual friendship and, 61–­62; shamans and, 132 Aguaruna, 7, 64, 114 ala, 87, 95 Amazonian Ecuador map, 4 Amuesha, 14, 182–­83n1 anaconda, 147, 179n8, 181n7, 182n16 anazppa, 184n10 ancient brothers, 87, 95 Andoa: emergence of, 162–­63, 185nn11–­ 12; pottery of, 52; regional society of, 5, 34, 36, 38, 112–­13, 122. See also Zaparoans

Andoas (town), 34, 36, 112, 122, 185n11 animal-­human transformation. See mutability of form animals, 138–­39, 141–­44, 146–­48, 149–­51. See also specific animals Arajuno, 40 Arana brothers, 75, 76 Arawakans, 8, 9, 34, 90, 182n17. See also Wakuénai Arawakans Armana Punzha, 90, 98–­100, 100 Ashaninka, 182n17 assistants, Jista, 90–­91, 92–­93, 97 aswa: couple’s bond and, 46, 47–­48; making of, 18, 48, 127, 175n5; mingas and, 55–­56; pottery and, 18, 51, 138, 144, 181n10; ritual celebrations and, 85, 88–­92, 93–­94, 95, 96, 98–­101, 179n7; sociability and, 138, 140; trekking and, 58; visions and, 138 atacapi, 136, 137, 181n7 Aushiri, 37, 83, 178n14 auxiliary helpers, 92–­93, 94 auya, 110–­11 Avila-­Loreto dialect, 173n1

197

ayahuasca, 13, 132, 133–­34, 135–­36, 180n4, 181n9 ayllu: beginning times narratives and, 79–­80; couple’s bond and, 46–­47; Jista and, 87, 93, 97, 105; kinship and, 29–­30, 60–­61, 63, 65, 114, 116; marriage and, 73, 81, 110–­12, 116, 125; nodal, 83–­84; regional society and, 37–­40, 45, 50–­51, 126, 128, 165; sitting-­being and, 139–­40, 142; sociability and, 130, 137, 139–­40; trekking and, 109–­10 beer: maize, 87–­88, 179n4, 179n10. See also aswa beginning times: Jista and, 93, 102, 103; knowledge and, 109, 121, 126, 145–­ 46, 181n9; mutability and, 147–­48, 150; narratives of, 65, 68, 71–­72, 74–­75, 79–­80, 83; pottery design and, 139; present and, 144, 164; scale and, 165; sociability and, 130–­31, 152–­53, 166; trekking and, 29, 30 behavior (and inner knowledge), 129, 135, 140, 145, 153, 165 “belonging to one another,” 11, 87 blowgun dart poison, 63, 152, 175–­76n8, 182n17 Bobonaza River, 4, 16, 34, 71–­72, 102, 108, 112, 173–­74n2 body painting, 96, 103, 143–­44 book overview, 1–­2, 14–­21 border closure of Peru and Ecuador, 32–­33, 39, 60, 78, 115 Bravo, Vicente M., 76, 177n6 Brown, Michael, 64 Callana Yacu River, 26 Callari Uras. See beginning times Camari, 97–­98, 98–­99, 102

198 Index

Candoshi, 144 Canelos (place), 34, 35, 53, 71, 81, 102–­3, 109 Canelos Quichua, term of, 174n2 Canelos Runa, 5, 102–­3, 112, 118, 161. See also specific aspects of canoes, dugout, 50, 51 Carneiro, Robert, 182n14 Carr, E. Summerson, 12–­13 Casement, Roger, 75 Catholic Church: indigenous rights and, 184n5; missionization by, 15, 41, 63, 81, 105–­6, 151–­52, 179–­80n13; mission sites of, 28, 30, 40, 81, 104–­5, 112, 178–­79n13; priests and, 86, 91, 98, 99, 103, 105, 106, 184n5; ritual celebrations and, 85, 86, 91, 106, 164, 179n11 celebrations, ritual. See ritual celebrations Cepek, Michael, 158, 181n6 chagras: about, 28, 48–­49, 50, 58; face painting and, 143; flooding and, 90; gender roles and, 47–­48; manioc types and trading and, 50–­51, 175n4; mingas and, 55; songs and, 142, 182n12 Chapana (Piticocha), 124 charapa, 32, 139 Chernela, Janet, 7–­8, 88, 119 chimbilacus, 147–­48 Chirapa, 102 chonta (peach palm): about, 13, 174n3; abundance and, 90; celebrations and, 29, 85, 89, 178n1; face painting and, 143; as home walls, 70; poison from, 132; poles of, 98 Christianity, 61, 85. See also Catholic Church clay (pottery), 52–­53

Cofán, 30, 158, 173n1 collective rituals. See ritual celebrations commensality, 13, 38, 64, 125 community sectors, 17, 28–­29, 39–­40, 109, 123, 156 compadrazgo: about, 10–­11, 37–­38, 174n1; kinship and, 39, 47, 60–­64, 70–­71, 114–­15, 125, 163–­64; ritual celebrations and, 86, 103; trading and, 50–­51; trekking and, 57–­60; urban residence and, 156 Conambo River, 36, 53, 113 Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (conaie), 159–­60, 184n6 Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Amazonian Ecuador (confeniae), 159, 163, 184n6 conflict, intergroup: haciendas and, 77; kinship and, 37, 38, 114, 117; narratives of, 67, 69, 71–­74, 103, 105, 120, 131; ritual celebration and, 86; Waorani and, 77, 80–­81, 82–­83, 123, 177n12; Zaparoans and, 120–­21 Conibo, 182n17 Conklin, Beth, 119 Cononaco River, 77, 177n13 co-­parenthood, ritual. See compadrazgo Copataza River, 10, 102–­3, 109 cornetas, 91, 92, 96, 97, 100, 136, 179n5 Corrientes River, 59, 108, 114, 163, 185n10 costumes, 96–­97, 99, 103 couple’s bond, 46–­48, 64 crops (in chagras), 48–­51, 175nn2–­5. See also specific crops Curaray River: about, 4–­5, 16, 23, 24, 27, 40, 54; flooding of, 90, 123; haciendas on, 79; rubber boom and, 67, 74–­76, 78, 177n8; trekking and, 109

Curaray Runa: background and overview of, 2, 4–­5, 14–­18, 19, 173–­74nn1–­2; conclusions on, 161–­ 62, 163–­64, 165; houses of, 52, 70; kinship and, 43, 126–­27; landscape and, 23, 24–­25, 27–­34, 120; moon and, 149; narratives of, 67–­69; opip and, 159, 183n5; regional society and, 34–­36; traveling to, 25–­27; urban residence and, 157. See also specific aspects of curing, 129, 130–­37, 180n3, 180n5 Dabucurí festival, 88 dancing, 56, 102, 103–­5 darts, poison, 63, 132, 152, 175–­76n8, 182n17 datura, 138, 144, 180–­81n5 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (United Nations), 183n4 depopulation, 8, 75, 114–­15, 174n3 Descola, Philippe, 6, 146 dreams, 96, 138, 144, 147, 176n3, 181n8. See also visions drumming, 54–­55, 97–­101, 105, 134 dry season, 49–­50 dual ceremonial complex, 89 dual residence, 19, 25, 40, 124–­25, 156–­57 Ecuador, 24–­27, 32–­33, 39, 183n4 education, 32, 40, 157 Eëmë festival, 88–­89 endogamous nexus, 6 enemization, 11, 87, 120, 128 enemy-­foreigners, 7, 37, 71, 85 enganche, 76, 77, 177n7 epidemic disease, 8, 36, 41, 73, 74, 78, 80, 114 esoteric knowledge, 51–­52, 129, 138, 166

Index  199

ethnogenesis, 5, 42, 113–­14, 128 ethnolinguistic territory, 161–­63, 164 face painting, 15, 103, 127, 143–­44 Fausto, Carlos, 88 feast days, festival, 97–­98, 98–­99, 102 Federation of Indigenous Centers of Pastaza (fecip), 159 fieldwork, 14–­18 fish and fishing, 54, 56–­58, 137, 175n6 flooding, 49, 90, 91–­92, 92, 96, 123, 178n2, 179n8 flute playing, 101, 102, 105 food: couples and, 46–­48; crops and, 48–­54, 175nn2–­5; flooding and, 178n2; Jista and, 93, 96, 98, 179n6, 179n9; meat, 54–­55, 57, 58–­59, 88, 96, 97, 179n9. See also hunting; and specific foods foreigners, 78, 164; enemy-­foreigners, 7, 37, 71, 85 forests, 13, 23–­25, 24, 30, 31, 56–­57, 136–­37 former enemies, 6, 11, 37, 121 friendship, formal. See compadrazgo fruits, 31, 56–­57, 89. See also achiote fruit; chonta (peach palm); genipap fruit Gaes: about, 5, 112, 113, 162; intergroup conflict and, 71–­72, 74; regional society of, 34, 36, 113. See also Zaparoans genipap fruit, 15, 96, 143 gifting, 52–­53, 54, 62, 70–­71, 96, 109–­10 Golondrina Cocha (Golindrina), 62, 82, 115–­16, 124, 177–­78nn13–­14

200 Index

haciendas, 42, 76–­79, 177n6, 177n10 healing, 129, 130–­37, 180n3, 180n5 Heckenberger, Michael, 13–­14, 68 herbal curing, 132, 133, 180n3 High, Casey, 6–­7, 82, 89 Hill, Jonathan, 8, 14, 30, 33–­34, 89, 182n1 historical memory, 13, 67–­69, 83–­84, 117–­18, 126, 164, 165 horns, pottery, 91, 92, 96, 97, 100, 136, 179n5 hosting, festival, 88, 90–­91 Huallaga River: missions at, 179–­80n13; regional society and 8, 155; shamans and, 132; trekking and, 32, 34, 39, 60, 63, 122, 152, 176n8; twin brothers myth and, 150 huaomani, 6, 88 Huito, 37, 81 hunting: about, 53–­54; couple’s bond and, 46, 47, 48; Jista and, 91, 94–­95, 95, 96–­97; mingas and, 55; sociability and, 129; song and, 142; trekking and, 30, 31–­32, 57, 58; Waorani and, 120 hydrocentric pattern, 34 illness and curing, 131–­37, 181–­82n5 indebtedness, 76, 77, 177n7 indigenous rights, 158, 160, 163, 183n4, 184nn5–­6 initiation ceremonies, 89, 119, 179n5 inner essence, 129, 135, 138, 140, 143–­45, 166 interaction sphere, regional, 114, 121–­22 intermarriage, 7, 38, 81–­82, 83, 112–­18, 121, 122, 128 Iquitos, 39, 42, 67, 75 isolation, 41, 115, 119–­20, 122–­23

Jackson, Jean, 7, 88 jaguars, 130, 147, 149–­50, 180n1, 182n14 jambi, 63, 132, 152, 175–­76n8, 182n17 Jesuit missionaries, 63, 151–­52 Jista, 90–­100; anxiety about, 96, 106; Armana Punzha, 98–­100, 100; background and overview of, 20, 31, 85–­86, 89–­90, 105–­6; body painting and, 144; Camari, 97–­98, 98–­99; conclusions on, 164, 165–­66; flooding and, 91–­92, 92; kinship and, 86–­87; Lancero Jista, 86, 102–­ 5, 104, 120; mythic space-­time and, 100–­101; preparations for, 90–­91, 92–­97, 93–­95; priests and, 86, 91, 98, 99, 103, 105, 106; Sisa Punzha, 97; as a tradition, 101–­6 Jivaroans, 162 Jumandy, 158 Kichwa language, 112–­13, 180n1. See also Kichwa speakers; languages Kichwa Nation of Amazonian Ecuador, 160 Kichwa speakers, 42, 81–­82, 113 killing as theft, 147, 180n1 Killuchaki, 37, 83, 178n14 kinship: background and overview of, 4, 10–­12, 129; compadrazgo and, 60–­64, 163–­64; conclusions on, 163–­64, 165; formal friendship and, 37–­38; individuals and, 47; llactas and, 125–­26; marriage and, 37, 38–­39; regional society and, 117–­23, 155; ritual celebrations and, 86–­87, 105; scale and landscape and, 13–­14; trading and, 50–­51; trekking and, 57; well-­being and, 107 kneeling double embrace (ritual), 61

knowledge: esoteric, 51–­52, 129, 138, 166; mutability and, 145–­46, 147; purina time and, 109; shamans and, 130, 132; vitality and, 107; women and, 138 Kunan Uras, 68, 79–­80, 146, 147, 164 labor parties, 18, 31, 49, 55–­56, 94, 95 Lamas, 53, 176n8 Lancero Jista, 86, 102–­5, 104, 120 landscape, Amazonian, 23–­43; background and overview of, 13–­14, 23–­24; Curaray Runa community and, 27–­34, 33; Ecuador and, 24–­27; flexibility of, 64; narratives and, 68–­69; sociability and, 151–­52. See also regional society languages, 173n1; ancestral territories and, 161–­63, 184n9; groups of, 7, 75; indigenous rights and, 183n4; kinship and, 126–­27, 180n1; shifting of, 78, 83, 113–­14. See also specific languages laws and charters, international, 158, 183n4 Lempert, Michael, 12–­13 Lévi-­Strauss, Claude, 123 living well, 107 llactas: about, 28–­29, 30, 31, 70; couple’s bond and, 46–­47; food and, 48; purinas and, 109; regional society and, 39, 45, 125–­26, 165; sense of place and, 73; shamans and, 131, 137; sharing life in, 54–­60; sitting-­being and, 139–­40; trekking and, 56–­60 Lliguino River, 26 Lorocachi, 42, 52–­53, 113 Lupino River, 26 lurira, 137

Index  201

Mainas, 152 maize, 30, 49, 175n3 maize beer, 87–­88, 179n4, 179n10 Manaus, 8, 182n1 manioc: chagras and, 48–­50, 174nn4–­5, 175n2; flour, 78, 177n9; gifting of, 109–­10; songs and, 182n12; squeezer, 78, 177n9; trading of, 50; trekking and, 58. See also aswa maps, 3–­4 Marañón River, 8, 132, 152 marriage: ayllus and, 110–­11; couple’s bond of, 46–­48, 64; interethnic, 7, 38, 81–­82, 83, 112–­18, 121, 122, 128; language and, 117; purinas and, 110; rebuilding kindred through, 73–­74; regional society and, 6, 37, 38–­39; residence and, 111–­12; ritual celebrations and, 86, 88, 89, 178n1 maximal ayllus, 29–­30 measle epidemics, 8 meat, 54–­55, 57, 58–­59, 88, 96, 97, 179n9 memory: historical, 13, 67–­69, 83–­84, 117–­18, 126, 164, 165; social, 13, 89 men: canoes and, 50; chagras and, 49; hunting and, 53–­55; Jista and, 90, 94–­95, 96, 101, 102; sociability and, 47–­48; trekking and, 57, 58–­59 Mezzenzana, Francesca, 179n6 minga, 18, 31, 49, 55–­56, 94, 95 missionization, 15, 41, 63, 81, 105–­6, 151–­52, 179–­80n13 missions, Catholic, 17, 28, 30, 35, 40–­42, 81, 114, 122 monkeys, 26, 146 Montalvo, 34, 52, 121 moon, 149 movement of people, 108, 110, 123, 176n8

202 Index

movements, political and social, 157–­61, 163, 165, 166, 183–­84nn4–­6 mukawas, 18, 47, 51–­52, 53, 100, 138–­40 multisited residence, 19, 25, 40, 124–­25, 156–­57 muntun, 37, 87, 111 music, 100–­101, 102, 144–­45. See also songs; and specific instruments mutability of form, 72, 93, 101, 130, 131, 140, 145–­51, 176n3 mutuality of being, 10, 12, 60, 147 mythic space-­time: about, 29, 68; inner essence and, 144; Jista and, 90, 93, 95, 100–­101, 105; mutability and, 144–­47, 150, 176n3; pottery and, 138; sociability and, 130, 153, 166 mythoscapes, 145 myths, 101, 105, 146–­51 Nación Originaria Quijos (naoki), 163 Nalpi River, 71–­72 Napo Quichua language, 173n1 Napo River, 4–­5, 10, 23, 53, 76, 115 Napo Runa: background and overview of, 4, 5, 174n2, 179n8; kinship and, 7, 24, 29, 43, 60, 87, 107, 161; language and, 126; marriage and, 64, 65, 87, 110–­11, 178n1; memory and, 158; resettlement and, 67, 81, 82; shamans and, 130, 133. See also Curaray Runa; and specific aspects of narratives: beginning times and, 65, 68–­69, 74–­75, 79–­80, 83, 116; conclusions on, 165, 166; of couple’s bond, 46–­47; of intragroup conflict, 65, 71–­74, 130–­31; myths as, 101, 105, 146–­51; overview of, 67, 69; of rubber boom, 74, 76, 78–­79, 126 Nationalities Day festival, 159 nature, 146–­47

new year, 99, 179n11 nongovernmental organizations (ngos), 160, 185n11 northwest Amazon regional society, 63–­64 northwestern South America map, 3 Nushiño River, 113, 125 “old peoples,” 156, 162, 164 Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza (opip), 116, 159, 160, 164, 175n6, 183n5, 184n8 Organization of the Andoa Nation of Pastaza, Ecuador (onape), 163 Organization of Waorani Nationalities of Amazonian Ecuador (onhae), 116, 159 orphans, 38, 73, 130, 180n1 outlier marriages, 38–­39 Pacayacu, 34, 36, 112, 113, 179n8 Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement–New Country (mupp-­n p), 160 Pachamama Alliance, 185n11 palm weevil larvae, 56 Parakaña, 10 Parâ region, 8 Pastaza Province, 16, 25, 156–­58, 159, 174n2 Pastaza Quichua, 173–­74nn1–­2 Pastaza River, 23, 157 patrilineal sibs, 118 Pavacachi, 42, 109 peach palm fruit. See chonta (peach palm) peccary, 58–­59, 72, 141–­42, 176n3 Peripheral Quechua, 173n1 personal expression, 144–­45 Peru, 32–­33, 39, 60, 173n1

petroleum exploitation: impact of, 27, 41, 163, 175n6; political movement against, 14, 158, 160, 183n4, 184n8, 185n11 Pierre, Father François, 42 pigments (pottery), 51, 52–­53, 121 Pindoyacu River, 184n10 pinduk yanda, 95 planting strategy, two-­zone, 48–­49 political movements, indigenous, 157–­61, 163, 165, 166, 183–­84nn4–­6 political organizations, indigenous: background and overview of, 12, 14, 116, 185n12; in Pastaza Province, 159–­60, 163, 164, 184–­85nn10–­11; in Peru, 184n9; scale and, 156. See also specific organizations polychrome pottery. See pottery Po’oa exchange ceremonies, 88 Porvenir, 59, 77, 79 pottery: design of, 138–­40, 144–­45, 145; Jista and, 91–­92, 99–­100, 101; making of, 51–­53, 52; women’s role and, 47, 49–­50 power: pottery and, 138; of shamans, 129, 132, 135–­36, 137; of songs, 140, 142–­43 present times, 68, 79–­80, 146, 147, 164 pressures on Amazon peoples, 41–­42 priests, Catholic, 86, 91, 98, 99, 103, 105, 106, 184n5 puka caspi macana, 103–­5, 104 purinas: about, 29, 33, 48; as alternate residences, 123, 156; trekking and, 27, 32, 58, 108–­10, 112 purus, 94, 94, 95, 99, 101, 145 Putumayo River, 7, 43, 75, 76 Puyo: about, 25, 34, 157; dual residences in, 19, 40, 124–­25, 156; indigenous land struggles in, 59, 175n7 Puyo Runa, 107, 148, 175n3

Index  203

Quijos, 163 Quillualpa, 28 raiding: slave, 8, 36, 41–­42, 114; for wives and goods, 115 regional interaction sphere, 114, 121–­22 regional society, 4–­14; ayllus and, 37–­40, 45, 50–­51, 126, 128, 165; background and overview of, 4–­10, 19–­20; comparison of, 118–­23; distinctness of, 63–­64; in early twenty-­first century, 156–­63; historical antecedents of, 41–­43; interaction sphere of, 121–­22; interethnic marriage and, 112–­17; kin, former enemies, and foreigners and, 10–­12, 36–­41; llacta and, 29; locality and, 13–­14; scale and, 12–­13; social sphere, rifts in, 123–­25 research, 15, 18–­20 resettlement of Curaray region, 80–­82 residence changing, 40, 46–­47 rifts in social sphere, 123–­25 Rio Negro, 8, 119, 155 ritual celebrations, 85–­86; Lancero Jista, 86, 102–­5, 104, 120. See also Jista ritual co-­parenthood. See compadrazgo ritual friendship. See compadrazgo Rival, Laura, 6, 13, 30, 64, 80–­81, 88 rivers of Amazonian Ecuador, 24–­25. See also specific rivers river travel, 25–­27 roles of men and women, 46–­54, 105 Roller, Heather, 33 rubber boom, 36, 41–­42, 74–­79, 114, 119, 176n4, 177n7 rubber collection settlements, 42, 76 rubber trees, 75

204 Index

Runa. See Canelos Runa; Curaray Runa; Napo Runa; Puyo Runa; and specific aspects of runapura, 82, 87 Rutuno River, 53, 109 Sahlins, Marshall, 10, 11, 47, 60, 87, 147, 183n2 salt, 9, 32, 58, 63, 150, 151–­52, 182n17 San Antonio hacienda, 76, 177n6, 177n10 San José de Curaray, 16 Santos-­Granero, Fernando, 14, 73, 107, 182–­83n1 Sáparas: background and overview of, 5, 13, 16; emergence of, 163, 184–­85nn10–­11; landscape and, 29; marriage and, 112–­13, 117–­18, 120–­21; narratives of, 69–­74, 176n1; political organization of, 159; regional society of, 34, 35–­36, 42, 115; resettlement and, 80–­82; rubber boom and, 75–­76; shamans and, 131. See also Zaparoans Sarayacu, 34, 35, 109, 123, 179n6 scalar innovation, 12, 161 scale: background and overview of, 11–­13, 24; political organizations and, 157–­58, 159, 161, 164; shift of, 120, 156, 165; sociability and, 152–­53 schools, 28, 32, 108–­9, 157 seasonality, 30–­31, 33, 49–­50, 54, 56, 86, 89–­90, 91 sectors, community, 17, 28–­29, 39–­40, 109, 123, 156 Seymour-­Smith, Charlotte, 5, 114 shamans: background and overview of, 28, 129–­31; healing by, 131–­37, 180n5; intragroup conflict and,

72–­73, 74, 117; killing and, 19, 72, 124, 147; protection by, 129, 130, 137, 166; women as, 181n9 shape shifting. See mutability of form sharing life, 54–­60 Shell (town of), 25, 40, 157 shields, 137 Shihuacocha, 28 shinkillu, 53, 121 Shiwiar, 5, 114, 162–­63 Shuar, 6, 7, 37, 38, 183–­84nn4–­5 sicuanga headdresses, 96 Simson, Alfred, 42 Sisa Punzha, 97 sitting-­being, 129, 130, 139–­40, 142–­44, 166 slave raiding, 8, 36, 41–­42, 114 smallpox, 8. See also epidemic disease sociability: aswa serving and, 140; background and overview, 129–­30; couple’s bond and, 45, 47, 48; mutuality of being and, 146–­47; narrative framing of, 151–­53; regional society and, 155, 165, 182–­83n1; shaman and, 135, 137 social rifts, 54, 64, 123–­25 songs: background and overview of, 129; inner essence and, 144–­45; of shamans, 134, 136; of women, 101, 138, 140–­43, 166 spirits, 130, 131–­32, 135–­39, 143, 144 spirit stones, 135, 180–­81n5 sugarcane, 78, 79 Sulkin, Carlos Londoño, 75 swidden-­fallow system, 48 Tagaeri, 115, 122 takinas, 134 Taromenani, 115, 122

Tayak, 36, 71–­72, 176n2 Tena, 10, 28, 29 terminology of Kichwa speakers, 173–­74n2 theft, spousal, 37 Tigre River, 59, 67, 76, 102, 110, 112, 117, 157, 163 tinaja huasi, 95 tinajas, 49–­50, 52 tipiti, 78, 177n9 Tiputini River, 80–­81 tobacco, 95, 134, 138, 180n5, 181n8 toucan feathers, 96, 98, 141 trading: background and overview of, 7, 8, 9; of crops, 50–­51; formal friendship and, 63; importance of, 60, 163; kinship and, 121–­22; of pottery and pigments, 51–­53; purina trekking and, 109–­10; during rubber boom, 76; sociability and, 151, 152, 182n17; with Waorani, 115–­16 trails connecting settlements, 40 tranquility, 107, 121, 166 transformability. See mutability of form travel to visit ayllu, 40 trekking: body painting and, 143–­44; Curaray Runa and, 25, 27; to the Huallaga, 152; landscape and, 29–­34, 35; llacta and, 56–­60; long distance, 59–­60, 63; purina, 108–­10; twin brothers myth and, 150–­51 Tucuna (Tikuna, Ticuna), 175–­76n9 Tukanoans, 7, 89, 118–­19 Tupian Awaweté, 87–­88, 162, 179nn4–­ 5, 179n7, 179n9 Tupian Wari’, 11, 30, 87, 162. See also Wari’ Tupi-­Guarani Araweté, 30 Turner, Terence, 33

Index  205

turtles, 32, 139 twin brothers myth, 146, 148–­51, 182n14 two-­zone planting strategy, 48–­49 Ucayali River, 9, 63, 132, 150, 151, 152 Unai. See mythic space-­time unesco, 163 Universidad Estatal Amazónica, 157 uprising of 2001, indigenous, 158 urban residences, 156–­57 Uspa, 71–­72 Uzendoski, Michael, 7, 43, 60, 64, 87, 182n13 validation, 71, 72, 74, 146, 176n1 vampire bat, 147–­48 varayuks, 184n5 Vilaça, Aparecida, 11, 30, 74, 78, 87, 120 Villano, 25–­26, 34, 53 Villano River, 23, 25–­27, 34, 35, 53, 109 visions, 131, 133, 136–­37, 138, 140, 144, 147, 181n8. See also dreams Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo, 30, 179n5, 179nn9–­10 Wagra Urcu, 71–­72 Wakuénai Arawakans, 8, 14, 30, 89, 118–­ 19, 149, 182n1. See also Arawakans Wanano, 118–­19 wangana, 58–­59, 72, 141–­42, 176n3 Waorani: background and overview of, 5, 6, 7, 13, 16, 19, 162; as enemies, 37, 40, 63, 80–­81, 116, 117, 124–­25, 132; as friends, 62–­63, 83, 127–­28;

206 Index

Golondrina Cocha, 62–­63; isolation of, 119–­20, 122–­23; kinship of, 64; landscape and, 26, 27, 28, 30, 120; marriage and, 111, 115; political organizations and, 116; regional society and, 34; during resettlement, 82–­83, 177–­78nn12–­14; residences of, 65; ritual celebrations and, 88–­89; rubber boom and, 77, 177n8; warriors and, 158–­59 Waorani Ethnic Reserve, 116 Wari’, 11, 30, 74, 78, 87, 119, 120 wariña, 78 well-­being, 107 whistling (shamanic), 134, 136 Whitten, Dorothea, 5 Whitten, Norman, 5, 29–­30, 87, 179n8 willan, 56 wituk, 96, 103, 143 women: as healers, 132; Jista and, 90, 93, 94, 94, 96–­97, 99; pottery and, 47, 49–­50, 138–­40; roles of, 46–­48, 49–­53, 105; as shaman, 181n9; songs of, 101, 138, 140–­43, 166 work parties, 18, 31, 49, 55–­56, 94, 95 yaji, 133–­34 Yanda Minga, 94 Yanesha, 182n17 yellow fever epidemic, 80, 115 Zaparoans: conflicts and, 117; demise of, 69–­72; marriage and, 118; regional society of, 34, 35–­36, 42, 126, 184–­ 85. See also Andoa; Gaes; Sáparas