Gajnoque Quedéjna
Strange Ant Hill
What finished off our forefathers was the Strange Ant Hill:
It’s said the children’s fathers were hunting for honey. And their children were playing with the dirt of an Ant Hill. They were sucking their mother’s genitals. The boys were sucking their father’s genitals. And it’s said the Strange Ant Hill disapproved of them and finished them off.
It killed all of them and only one was left alive.
They say he ran off and climbed a *chúrumei tree. (A small tree with thorns.) And he said: “This kind of tree (with thorns) is not found by the river.” They say he slept in the branches of the ‘chúrumei’ tree all night long. At daylight he left.
He ran till he reached the large village of the *Chamacoco tribe who are friends of the Ayoré. It’s said he fell down when he got to their village square. And it’s said they all got down on the ground (where he’d fallen).
They asked him: “Has something happened to your parents?”
And he answered: “The Strange Ant Hill has finished our parents off and all of them are dead.”
They asked: “The one who finished off your parents, what did she do?”
This is what he answered: “The one who finished off my parents it going to come, but long before she gets here you will hear the eerie sound of her approaching, and a great wind will arrive. Ducks and other water birds will also come first. All of this will happen first.”
And, they say the people made a barricade of trees to surround them. And they dug trenches in front of them. And there were five barricades.
And then they heard the eerie sound approaching and they said: “¡Set a barricade on fire!”
Water kept coming, and wasn’t stopped.
And the boy said: “The Strange Ant Hill that finished off our parents has arrived.”
They began to defend themselves and lit the first barricade.
They attacked and lit the second, but the water just kept coming and didn’t retreat. They lit the third and it still didn’t retreat. With the fourth the water knew it was about to lose. This one, the fifth, was lit and the water went back completely.
There are now no more rivers in that part of the jungle, and it was all the Ant Hill’s doing. They claim the fires they lit that day is the reason why the rain doesn’t ‘bite’ the ayoreos now. So, they do not tell this story because they want it to rain.
*Chamacoco –another indigenous group whose language and culture are similar to that of the Ayoré.
Oidabiade – Campo Loro, Paraguay – 1988.
Transcribed and translated to English by: Maxine Morarie.
