Namacade
The Totems were made in Rainy Season:
When they had a lot of produce from their gardens, they would put some of it at the foot of the Totem.
This is how they made their Totems
They would dig around the cactus that was chosen for the Totem, and kept it whole. Bad things would happen if it broke. (Cactus’ break apart easily.) The men would chop it down because of the thorns. They used metal tools for chopping it down.
The cactus was taken to the middle of camp and let down into a hole that they had dug for it. When it was upright in the hole, everyone gathered around the Totem.
The men would wear all of their adornment paraphernalia. When they came before the Totem no one talked or made noise. People from other villages might sneak up on the Totem participants, that is the reason they kept quiet, they didn’t want the people from other villages to know they had a Totem.
They would shake their heads and make their tied-back hair move back and forth. They would paint themselves with the powder that came off the red stone called carodé. The strings on their sandals were also painted red.
Designs were painted on the Totem. They would paint the marks pertaining to the various clans on the Totem—some that Cajoide mentioned were the following:
Jnuruminone – pajei carubode (strings worn around the waist)
Picanerane – pajojode (?)
Cutamurajane – pedobicaidie (?)
Dosapéode – yajogaroi (skin of the anteater)
Posorajane – gogogoi carigode (big bird’s tail feathers)
Étacõrone – suarecari (parrot tails)
Small axes were used to make cuts on the red stone called carodé, and if the stones broke while cutting them, this meant they wouldn’t be able to kill ‘non-ayoré’ victims. So they would cut the stones very carefully. (The killing of the civilized was very desirable to an Ayoré man at that time.)
The young men and older men would all dance in front of the Totem, using the same steps of the dance used in the ceremony to free them from the guilt of having shed blood called ore tãrei ome.
They would sing to the Totem and petition it to give them things. They would wear their neck feathers and their jaguar headdresses.
Folding their hands, they would chant loudly: who-eeeeeee, who-eeeeeee, who-eeeeeee. They treated the Totem as though it were their grandmother and would say, “Grandmother, you washed me and initiated me into your clan. I know that you will not deny me, but will give me what I ask for.”
They would keep this up night and day for a long time. They would shake their gourd rattles and chant. They would rub the palms of their hands together as they mentioned other groups. (Cajoide pantomimed this.) Nothing was thrown away. If they discarded anything, that meant that harmful things would latch onto them and kill them.
Widows – Chequé abai toguedie
When their husbands would die they would grab snail shells and hit each other on the head with them. They would put the dead husband in his wife’s large round bag to bury him.
Lightning – Ajnorane
After a person was killed by lightning, when they heard thunder, they would say the thunder was the words of the one who had been killed by lightning. (Because Dujuábidé was killed by lightning, they would hear thunder and say: “That’s Dujuábidé talking.”)
Cajoide – Campo Loro, Paraguay – 1985.
Transcribed and translated to English by: Maxine Morarie.
