Toponymic evidence for a Maina-Candoshi connection

In this brief post I would like to put forth two bits of linguistic evidence that suggest that the Jesuit-era ethnonym 'Maina' (or 'Mayna') originally denoted a population that spoke a language very closely related to Candoshi, a language of northeast Peru that is today best considered an isolate.  During the colonial, Jesuit and modern periods, the term Maina has been used haphazardly to refer to at least four distinct linguistic groups (the details of which I will not review here): Jivaroans, Candoshis, Cahuapanans (the Jebero) and the Omuranos.  (My personal interest in this issue derives from recent work on Omurano.)  For example, see the woefully inadequate Spanish-language Wikipedia page on Omurano, here.  The confusion that has plagued the linguistic literature probably has its roots in Hervás y Panduro (1784:61), a Spanish Jesuit who never came to the New World, who lists the following languages as related to Maina: Chapo, Coronado, Humurana [read: Omurano] and Roamaina (likely a group closely related if not identical to the Omurano -- more on this in a later post).  Further confusion has likely resulted from assumptions based on the geographic proximity of the above-mentioned linguistic groups and certain descriptions of Maina territory.

To be clear, Veigl (2006[1798]:107), arguably one of the clearest, most insightful and best organized of Jesuit chronicles, gives the following description of Maina territory (translation mine):

Su primera ubicación se encontraba en las tierras situadas al norte del Marañón, desde la ribera oriental del río Morona, en ambas márgenes del Bajo Pastaza, hasta las regiones en que nacen los pequeños ríos, el Nucurai y el Chambira.

[Their first location was in the region to the north of the Marañón, from the eastern bank of the Morona River, including both banks of the lower Pastaza, continuing on to the region in which the small rivers, the Nucuray and the Chambira, are born.]

These geographic details are important, because a significant piece of evidence regarding the linguistic history of the Mainas comes from the name of a major gorge along the upper Marañón, known as the Pongo de Manseriche.  This narrow pass lies just below the mouth of the Santiago River, a major tributary of the Marañón that immediately precedes the Morona.  That is, it is just upriver of what Veigl gives as the "start" of Maina territory.

Importantly, Figueroa (1986[1661]:278) has the following to say regarding the same geological formation (translation mine):

Decian tambien en su gentilidad que antiguamente, bajando un Dios por el Marañon y subiendo otro de abajo por él, para comunicarse abrieron el Pongo.  En este Pongo, en una peña alta y tajada que ocasiona vno de los passos más peligrosos que tiene, y lo llaman Mansariche [sic], por los papagayuelos de esse nombre que en ella se crian, decian estaba en lo alto de ella el Yñerre (es el nombre con que los maynas llaman á Dios), en una cueba, donde tenia por muger á un culebron grande de los que nombran Madre del agua...

[In addition, they used to say during their time as heathens that, long ago, when a God descended along the Marañón and another ascended it from below, in order to communicate with one another, they opened the Pongo.  In this Pongo, along a high and and steep rock outcrop, which brings about one of the most dangerous passes along this river, which they call Mansariche [sic] because of the small parrots of that name that live in it, they used to say that up high lived Yñerre (the name which the Maina give to God), in a cave, where he had as his wife a large serpent which they call Mother of the water...]

The name Manseriche is very similar to the Candoshi word mantsiirchi (Tuggy 1966:201), which denotes a species of parakeet known in colloquial Spanish as pihuicho (likely the white-winged parakeet Brotogeris versicolurus).  The fact that Figueroa directly claims that this toponym received its name from a species of small parrot makes this similarity all the more tantalizing.  Furthermore, the Maina word Yñerre provided by Figueroa is similar to the Murato (a Candoshi dialect) word for 'mother' that I transcribed from a speaker in 2011 as [aˈɲeiɾe] (cf. Tuggy's aniari (ibid.:1)).  I would like to suggest that what Figueroa claims to be the Maina word for 'God' is actually a word meaning 'mother' (cf. Tuggy's apaarich 'God' (ibid.:2), which is not similar).  In order for this story to work out, we have to say that Figueroa slightly misunderstood this facet of Maina mythology, namely that the word Yñerre did not refer to a god who had a serpent wife, but to the serpent itself, which, importantly, he claims they referred to as a type of mother anyway.  This does not seem far-fetched.

Incidentally, the white-winged parakeet surfaces again in relation to a river I just spent quite a bit of time on, the Urituyacu.  In Urarina that river is referred to as masu akaʉ, where masu means 'pihuicho' (see above) and akaʉ means 'river'.  In fact, this is likely just an Urarina translation of the Quechua name -- uritu 'pihuicho' and yacu 'water' -- which dates at least to 1766 or 1767, when a Jesuit mission was founded there under the same name.  Conspicuously, the Urituyacu basin lies just between the two downriver tributaries that constituted the western edge of Maina territory as described by Veigl, namely the Nucuray and Chambira.  This leaves open the possibility that the Quechua toponym may actually be a translation of an even older Maina, or Candoshian, toponym.

References:

de Figueroa, Francisco. 1986[1661]. Ynforme de las misiones de el Marañón, Gran Pará ó río de las Amazonas. In Various, Informes de jesuitas en el Amazonas. Iquitos: Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonía Peruana (IIAP) y Centro de Estudios Teológicos de la Amazonia (CETA).

Hervás y Panduro, Lorenzo. 1784. Catalogo delle lingue conosciute e notizia della loro affinitá, e diversitá. Cesena: Insegna di Pallade.

Tuggy, John. 1966. Vocabulario candoshi de Loreto. Lima: Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL).

Veigl, Francisco Xavier. 2006[1798]. Noticias detalladas sobre el estado de la Provincia de Maynas en América meridional hasta el año de 1768. Iquitos: Centro de Estudios Teológicos de la Amazonia (CETA).