Jungle Foods
Pasédaté’s Relatives: First of all Pasédaté wanted to tell about her family: Pasédaté’s real name is Tojúrua of the Picaneré Clan. Her daughter-in-law’s name is Toqué. Her younger brother’s name is Chicópode. Isoguié’s other name is Usúa.
Pasédaté is from the Ducodégosode (People of the Graves), so she, as a woman, is called Ducodégoto.
Her first husband’s name was Imocarãi and he died from fever. In describing his illness she said, “He was “food” for the fever.”
Her mother’s real name was Ocojnámene, of the Jnuruminé Clan. Her mother’s stomach became swollen and she died from intestinal complications. Her father’s real name was Yurané of the Picanerai Clan. He lived to be very old and died of old age. Pasédaté’s other brother is still living and lives at the Priest’s Camp and he is her only living relative. Long ago his real name was Iringai.
Her present day husband’s name is Dorojoi of the Chiquenóri Clan, father of Ojicurei. (He is affectionately called Presidente.}
Pasédaté’s real name is Tojúrua and this is where that name came from: When a man throws his wife out, he takes his things and fills his bag with them, and takes off “helter-skelter” along his way. So I guess you could call Pasédaté ‘helter-skelter”.
Text on food:
We twisted off doridie fruit from the plant, and scraped the pulp off the leaves with our bottom teeth. We harvested the dajudíe plant to make string from it’s leaves.
We sucked honey when we lived in the jungles. We hunted honey and chopped into trees to get the honey. We accompanied our husbands on the honey hunts.
My mother also twisted off the doridie fruit in her day. We also dug up water plants.
We ground up the seeds of watermelon and squash with our mortars and pestles. We cooked the seeds that we would grind. We sucked salt as we ate that food.
The meat of the wild pig (yacorenie) is very delicious, as well as anteater. We roasted anteater by digging holes for it. We lit fires in the hole. We only used coals from wood in our underground ovens. We roasted turtles, and whole families of small turtles all went in and we sucked on their meat.
When the wild meat was tough we boiled it. It gets white when we boil it, but we go ahead and eat it.
The pots we used were made of clay long ago. When they made their pots and jars they added the broken pieces of pottery to the clay mass.
Pasédaté – Campo Loro, Paraguay – 1988
Transcribed and translated to English by: Maxine Morarie
