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Ekuana is a wild tribe eking out its miserable existence in the forests of the Amazon. Driven by whites to the most inaccessible corners rainforests dominated by hordes of mosquitoes and crocodiles, these people live in the Stone Age, engaged in hunting and gathering. IN rare holidays, getting together, they perform strange rituals without music reminiscent of dancing. At the end of the festival they eat the powdered bones of deceased relatives, giving liberation to their souls.
The tribe of Makiritare, or Ekuan, as they call themselves, quite large and has about 10,000 people. They speak different dialects and are called differently, in depending on the habitat, which is also their abode homegrown spirits.
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The ecuans live in the jungle between Brazil and Venezuela, in Shabono villages. Shabono is a huge house in the form of a ring under canopy of palm leaves with open space in the middle. Impenetrable rain forests surround this thin ring of green the wall, and behind it begin the dangers – poisonous snakes, large predators and enemies are warriors of other tribes. In every village lives usually from 40 to 300 people, where each family occupies part of the gender under the ring canopy. Neighbors are not fenced off from each other walls, and life has a primitive communal character. If, for example, a couple wants to have sex, then they are removed in nearby forest.
Intra-family ties are strong and are treated with respect. A if betrayal happens, the husband punishes the opponent in a peculiar way. He hits the insolent head with a stick that is strength. Sometimes the blow is such that the unfortunate one falls mowed down and can remain crippled for life. Devoted husband entitled to a first strike, but if he
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missed, then the opponent can hit on his head, and then unfaithful girlfriend goes to the opponent. The loser will live in being alone a lot of time with a single friend – a dog. Perhaps then some compassionate widow will agree to hang his hanging box next to his hammock.
Small fires are constantly burning in every shabono. Often they just smoke, to scare away mosquitoes and other evil spirits, which flies visibly invisibly.
Ekuns do not burden themselves with clothing and go naked. Men hang their members with a special rope to emphasize maturity, and ladies wear various ornaments from feathers of parrots and colored shells. Women make up for lack of clothing a kind of piercing: stick long rods in the cheeks, noses and lips. Ecuans eat “what perfume will send” – bananas, fruits, vegetables, larvae, fish and animals. A special treat is meat of crab and spiders. The latter are eaten with a banana side dish. Savages well distinguish poisonous worms and caterpillars from edible. If if larvae with long hairs are caught, they are cooked on charcoal in palm leaves.
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Growing and collecting vegetables, gathering mostly women, and men are hunters. Indians for hunting they use mainly onions with arrows smeared with curare venom. But not everyone knows the secrets of its preparation, since it exists many taboos.
Unsuccessful relations with civilization left a mark in the ecuan language, and they call a white person a word that means all evil and treacherous. However, they pay the same for a good attitude. IN a Frenchwoman named Jungle lived side by side with this tribe Jeanne Ledloff, who later wrote a sensational book about features of parenting “How to raise a child happy.” This book formed the basis of fashionable pedagogical theory.
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Jeanne based her theory on the principles of education savages. She said that after the fourth expedition “… suddenly realized that she had not seen a single conflict between children or between a child and an adult. The guys immediately and willingly obeyed adults and often carried babies during play or work. “She concluded that the reason was that the children live in permissiveness and adults never scold their children.
Ledloff writes that she has seen very young children many times an ekuna playing alone on the edge of a cliff and in other unsafe places, but there have never been any accidents. She calls modern parents return to a natural approach to education young children, including prolonged breastfeeding feeding, sleeping together and carrying the baby all the time or in a special dressing.
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The funny thing is that in her book the Frenchwoman admires those savages whose life formed the basis of the most cruel film the horror Cannibal Holocaust filmed by Italian Deodato. This movie has been banned from showing in many countries. Indeed, the Indians, despite the “right” education, they have strange and cruel customs that lead to self-destruction. Generally in the jungle rules behaviors are harsh and parents teach children never to anyone forgive and immediately strike back. Rules of Courage prove useful if enemies come to rob the village and steal women.
Jeanne Ledloff herself noticed the Indians’ tendency to aggression, however, she was silent about this. She criticizes the modern civilized world for addiction to addiction. But for some reason does not write about the ritual drug addiction among the Indians, which has long become a part of their life.
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Indians constantly during ceremonies and during rest local hallucinogen – pina. Usually use the drug immediately after adulthood, and these procedures are part of their public structure.
In fact, the beginning of communication with the spirits is like serving in the army civilized peoples. Everyone should be able to do this, and you can speak confidently about mass magic in this tribe. Pins are mined from seeds of one of the tropical plants. Through the tube aborigines inhale the drug, “seasoning” this action with magic rituals, and immediately enter the supernatural world of spirits.
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Using a drug, everyone can temporarily become a sorcerer or the shaman. A simple warrior coming into contact with spirits can try to solve the problems of the tribe. He may suddenly start to chant some poetic texts, to dance or to think of oneself as a bird. Outwardly, he looks like a typical drug addict under a good dose. In general, the sight is not for the faint of heart.
If in the tribe someone is seriously ill, then here to help comes a professional sorcerer. Aborigines believe that the patient’s soul left him or was abducted by witchcraft. Only a shaman is capable find her and return to the body. In fact, the sorcerer is a doctor and a psychiatrist in one person. Of paramount importance in treatment is faith in his abilities, and the whole community, without exception, in which the sorcerer and the patient live. Usually a shaman evokes the spirit of a monkey, which can bring back a lost soul. The most interesting thing is that often the patient is really recovering.
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The most incredible customs are associated with festivals when the ecuana get together to communicate not so much with each other, how much with perfume. Usually celebrated during papaya ripening. Girls paint their bodies with plain patterns, but for men they don’t really care, because they take a lot of hallucinogen and their friends on this holiday are perfumes.
It all starts with weird male dances squatting, moreover without any musical instruments. Dancing, or rather crawling on squatting, they say recitative, screaming and howling. Some they immediately lose consciousness and are dragged away. Action can go into a fight, since the stoned soldiers are already nothing they think.
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The holiday ends with a very important ritual – a ceremony endocannibalism. Women painted in black carry baskets of bones of deceased relatives, and men – tree trunks, in which bones will be crushed for many hours into shallow powder. Savages believe that the soul of the deceased will wander in in the jungle, if relatives do not free her from earthly ties, eating this bone powder. It is mixed with banana gruel, placed in special kulchek from leaves, and relatives perform a ritual of absorption of this terrible mixture. Only with the last a piece of it, the soul of the dead will go to the afterlife.
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