Chugúpẽre Gajneone Cucha
Time for the Bird Festival – When to celebrate the Bird God: The signs that indicate it is time to celebrate the Bird Festival. When the following things come to pass (pop out) they bring the Bird. But first we must see all the signs. When we do, then it is time to prepare for the yearly festival when we worship the Bird. The Ayoreos know the Bird is near by the moon and the constellation called ‘deyade” in Ayore.
Other things that pertain to the Bird Festival are when:
- The leaves start appearing on trees; then the Bird will cry.
- The constellation ‘deyade’ is at the middle.
- The little “buriábia bird” starts to sing ¡buria-buria!
- The “pucatiajnane birds” also start singing.
- The armadillos come out of their houses and stay by them.
- The wasps hatch when the Bird cries. They attach themselves to twigs on trees. They build their hives.
(Cajoidé: When the wasps attach their hives to the twig, then it sprouts leaves.)
How to prepare for the Bird Festival:
The men who make preparations for the Bird Festival are called ‘Iyatade’; only grown men and their fathers participate in being ‘Iyatade.’ It’s the “Iyatade” that speak over the young men participants and get them going in the very beginning of the Festival. They say: “Wake up! Follow her! Chase after her! And when you do it, we’ll be very quiet.”
The participants don’t eat when entering the jungle. What we fear is that someone will make a mistake and start sucking honey and it will kill someone.
The “Iyatade” take handfuls of wild pineapple fruit from camp as they begin the preparations. They sit down, but when it’s light then they go to the place where they’ll prepare and they suck ‘dódode’ (a type of honey) in the woods. The ‘Iyatade’ drink from the water plant until they’re full there in the woods.
The young men fast and they don’t eat that day. They come back at noon (when the sun is in the middle). But some find honey quickly and they hurry back before the others. They take turns going out into the woods so they get the honey more quickly.
The “Iyatade” whip them with their whips. What we used for whips was wild pineapple string.
After one of the “Iyatade” whips someone, the person he whips can now drink water from the hollowed out log troughs that the ‘Iyatade’ prepared ahead of time. But he must spit out his first mouthful, for it belongs to the ground prepared for the trough. After that he can drink all he wants.
The “Iyatade” hollow out the log and put it where they decide to place it.
After a young man’s thirst is quenched they say he is ‘good’ (pure). Afterwards the young men can eat wild pineapple, which has been roasted ahead of time – they eat the meal from the leaves much like eating artichoke leaves by scraping the meal from the leaves off on their lower teeth.
But the ‘Iyatade’ do not throw away their whips yet. They have to wait for the other fasting young men to return. The “Iyatade” set their whips aside for the next ones coming back. They whip the young men by hitting their bottoms ‘knock, knock, knock’ with their whips.
The women take handfuls of the twisted off ‘doridie fruit’ for their husbands to eat. The women give them to their children to take to their fathers and they say: “These are for your father. Give them to him.”
An Ayoré woman might take the fruit herself to her husband and he eats what she offers to him.
When a husband comes, the mother will say to her child: “Get some of what I’ve cooked so your father can eat it.”
At the very start of the Festival the young men pull half-burnt sticks out of the fire that they have started west of the camp, and when the sticks are cool, they blacken their bodies with the carbon.
And as they do so, they say: “Great Bird, may finding honey not be hard for me.”
(Cajoidé pantomimes rubbing the carbon between the palms of his hands and then rubbing his arms; I asked him how I could say this in Ayoré; he says he doesn’t know.)
After they petition the Bird, and have finished blackening their bodies they leave to hunt honey.
They also wear their headbands, jaguar headdresses, neck adornments made of parrot feathers woven to look like a tail and long white feathers that stand up around their necks and other types of feather neck pieces.
The “Iyatade” who prepare things for the Festival also paint their bodies black with carbon. They do it in different ways.
It they bring back too much honey, the “Iyatade” store it. They put it in honey gourds. But they throw away what doesn’t please them, and what they discard is for Asojna, the Bird God.
The surplus honey is for Asojna – the name of the little night owl they worship, but often refer to only as The Bird.
When the ‘Iyatade’ are finished whipping the ‘youths that are fasting’ then they throw away their whips. They throw the whip toward the east-northeast for the ‘star people.’
Then we men ‘argue with the whip.’
(But the women keep quiet for they are fearful.)
When they argue they go like this: ¡hay-hay-hay! They keep this up for a whole day until the sun is almost down.
In preparing for the Festival we look for pools of water for we know that if it has rained there must be pools on the earth. “Wait for the ones who have gone for water,” they say to each other.
And then, when it gets hot, we continue our search for water in other places for we know now there are no pools of water on the earth, and so we must dig up water plants. We are only able to finish the Festival by filling the troughs with water from the water plants so that we can drink.
When we have completed the Festival, we’re ready to be finished, and we get quiet.
Cajoidé – Campo Loro, Paraguay – 1985.
Transcribed and translated to English by: Maxine Morarie.
