Taushiros in the 20th Century

This week I was able to work in Iquitos with Amadeo García García, a speaker of Taushiro, a language isolate of northeast Peru. In addition to linguistic data, I was able to glean a number of important historical details regarding Taushiros in the 20th century, which form the bulk of this post.  The reader is also referred to Alicea Ortíz (1976).

Amadeo García García and ZJO in Iquitos (June 2015)

The traditional Taushiro territory of recent memory encompasses two drainages, the Huanganayacu (Taushiro: uwaxanoʔ) and Aguaruna rivers, which form right-bank tributaries of the middle Tigre River in the Peruvian Department of Loreto (Figure 1, 2).

Figure 1: Taushiro Territory in Loreto (boxed, center left)
(Map Courtesy of the Regional Government of Loreto)

Taushiro social organization appears to have involved patrilineally determined sibs or clans, in which members from different clans intermarried (and in which members of the same clan did not) and occasionally fought one another.  Two such clans remain, the atontutua and einontutua: before 1941, the former lived on a left-bank tributary of the Huanganayacu called the Ava Blanca (Taushiro: axaʔjanoʔ), and the latter lived in the extreme headwaters of the Aguaruna (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Detailed Taushiro Territory
(Map Courtesy of the Regional Government of Loreto)
(N.B.: some tributaries originally mislabeled)

The Aguaruna and Huanganayacu basins are likely exactly those two visited by Jesuit Tomás Santos in 1684 (see previous post here), in search of "Pinches" (the historical ethnonym for at least one Taushiro clan), who were later temporarily settled on the Pastaza River, where Jesuit presence and control were stronger.  If that is correct, then there at least two other Taushiro clans mentioned in the colonial literature, by Santos himself, the <asarunatoa>, which, given Santos' description of the journey, appear to have resided on the Aguaruna, and the <havitoa>, who resided on an upriver tributary, probably the Huanganayacu.  Another group mentioned by Santos that may have been Taushiro were the <cenicento>.  (Note the similarity in ending to the two extant Taushiro clans, which may be related to an existential suffix in the language that attaches to nouns.)

The colonial-era history of the Pinches is outside the scope of this post, but it is clear that the Taushiros, like other Amazonian groups, were severely affected by disease prior to entering into sustained relations with outsiders, including smallpox, measles, whooping cough, and the common cold (Alicea Ortíz 1976:6).  It is unclear to what extent they were affected by the rubber boom, but it is clear that Taushiros suffered from raids conducted by outsiders resident on the Tigre River as early as the 1920s, as reported by Tessmann (1930:583).

Von den P. am Huangana wurden einer Zeitungsnachricht aus Iquitos ("El Eco", 22. Setiembre 1926) zufolge eine kleine Anzahl im Walde überrascht und an den Tigre gebracht, wo man sie beschenkte und wieder zu ihrem Stamme entließ. Die Folge davon soll die gewesen sein, daß sie mehrere Balatasucher, die sich weiter ins Innere getraut hatten, überfielen und ermordeten.

[According to a newspaper article from Iquitos ("El Eco", September 22, 1926), a small number of Pinches on the Huangana were caught unawares in the forest and brought to the Tigre, where they were given away and later released to their own group.  A consequence of this must be that they fell upon and killed several balata-tappers [a latex] who had ventured further into the interior.]

Such raids are also hinted at by Alicea Ortíz (1976:7), who states that "in the past mestizos are said to have taken some members of the group to other places and they never returned" (translation mine).  During the Peruvian-Ecuadorean War of 1941, fighting broke out near Ava Blanca settlements -- with many Taushiros apparently killed by gunfire -- and the atontutua fled southward, coming to settle in the headwaters of Gómezcaño (Taushiro: nijoʔnoʔ), a left-bank tributary of the Aguaruna (Figure 2).  Prior to this point, there may have been seasonal migrations between the Ava Blanca and Gómezcaño.  The former is considered to be the older residence location, but the latter is considered the site where all Taushiros originated and spread from.  In the early 1950s there were three large houses in Gómezcaño with some 30 residents, but no elders.  (Amadeo for example, knew none of his grandparents.)

In approximately 1958, the atontutua jointly settled with the einontutua on the Aucayacu (Taushiro: awanoʔ), another left-bank tributary of the Aguaruna (Figure 2), at the behest of Cesario Hualinga, a Jivaroan patrón who extracted lechecaspi (a wood) and balata (a latex) from the region.  Hualinga took two Taushiro women as wives, both likely born in the 1930s,  He gave only clothes and alcohol in exchange for work.  In approximately 1965, another patrón, Felipe Vásquez, came into the region.  He was in the business of lechecaspi, peccary and ocelot hides, game meat, and monkeys (for sale).  In return, he introduced shotguns into Taushiro communities, as well as radios, machetes, and axes.  (Traditionally, machetes were made from peach palm wood and axes from stone.)  In approximately 1970, oil exploration was begun in the neighboring Corrientes basin, and a pipeline was built eastward through Gómezcaño to Bolognesi, a settlement on the Tigre (in exchange for fariña, sugar, and milk); in fact it passed directly through the swidden of Amadeo's mother!  Apparently at the behest of the oil company, Summer Institute of Linguistics missionary-linguist Daniel Velie visited the Taushiro in 1971, and subsequently sent in Neftalí Alicea Ortíz, a Puerto Rican missionary linguist, to carry out linguistic and bible translation work with Amadeo.  Interestingly, Alicea Ortíz (1976:8) indicates that most atontutua were at this time monolingual, while the einontutua were "much more bilingual and [preferred] Spanish, except with women and one monolingual elder man" (translation mine).  This difference probably points to a longer history of contact with Spanish-speaking patrones in the Aguaruna basin than in the Huanganayacu basin.  In 1971, another (unknown) patrón took all einontutua to work on the Lejía, a left-bank tributary of the Tigre outside of traditional Taushiro territory, severing regular contact between the two groups until some came to reside in the regional center of Intuto years later.  As of 1976, there were 6 adult atontutua, 6 adult einontutua, and 6 mixed einontutua-mestizo children.  Following conversations with Amadeo, these figures are probably overly conservative.

Strikingly, Taushiros appear to have had no contact with other indigenous groups in recent memory, prior to their interactions with patrones.  Indeed, Amadeo did not venture to the Tigre River for the first time until roughly ten years of age (~1960).  This isolation allows for the recovery of numerous traditional practices, which are summarized very briefly in the remainder of this post.  Houses were constructed from thatch of the irapay palm and built directly on the ground, with four foundation poles (Sp. horcones) and holes in the upper reaches to allow smoke from interior cooking fires to escape.  The interior was illuminated with torches using copal, a resin.  Taushiros wove hammocks, mats, net bags (from chambira palm), and sieves (from ungurahui), but not mosquito nets.  Among alcoholic beverages, Taushiros only consumed masato made from peach palm, and not from manioc (as is more widespread), even though they cultivated it.  The masato was stored in wooden trough-like containers resembling canoes covered with plantain leaves to permit fermentation.  Other cultigens included sweet potato, plantains, bananas, maize, peach palm, guava, caimito.  They hunted with spears, clubs, blowguns, and disguised holes in the ground serving as traps, and they fished with spears, line and hook (made from chambira and perdiz bones, respectively), barbasco, and traps.  Bows were not used, nor were canoes, but instead rafts.  Food was cooked in pots made from mud, and cooking techniques included boiling, roasting in plantain leaves, and smoking; frying was not practiced, nor was toasted manioc flour produced.  

There seems to have been no substantial pottery tradition, but artistic traditions such as music included quena flutes and drums, and body painting with huito and achiote was practiced.  Men wore a cushma (a tunic-like garment) that reached to the knees, and women wore a skirt only; both were woven from chambira.  Taushiro shamans were capable of both curing and cursing by invoking helper spirits and consuming ayahuasca (the use of which was, in traditional mythology, revealed to them by the spirit of an armadillo), ojé, and toé, but they did not use rattles, shamanic stones, or ladders.  The deceased were buried directly in the ground wrapped in a hammock, with the head facing toward the sun.  Subsequent to burial, a fire was made on top, the house of the deceased was burned, and all residents moved to a new location.  Other mythological narratives will come in a later post.

REFERENCES:

Alicea Ortíz, Neftalí. 1976. Apuntes sobre la cultura taushiro. Lima: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Tessmann, Günter. 1930. Die Indianer Nordost-Perus: Gründlegende Forschungen für eine systematische Kulturkunde. Hamburg: Friederischen, de Gruyter and Co.