Tsewa's Gift: Magic and Meaning in an Amazonian Society.

AuthorHernandez Martin, Jorge

In 1541, the conquest of South America was in full swing. It is the year when Gonzalo Pizarro, brother of the ultimate conquistador, Francisco Pizarro, and Francisco de Orellana, spurred on by the desire of finding the fabled cinnamon fields, launch their expeditions across the Andean mountain range that rises above Quito's altiplano, accompanied by soldiers, slaves, dogs, pigs, llamas, and horses.

But there was no cinnamon. After the devastation caused by weather, terrain, the conquistadors' inexperience, and the defense put up by the people who lived on the other side of the Andes, Pizarro and Orellana separate. Pizarro returns to Quito believing that he had been betrayed, while Orellana goes on to find--one year after the beginning of the expedition--the "Great Serpent Mother of Men," the Amazon River.

Gaspar de Carvajal, a Dominican priest who accompanied Orellana, has left us a detailed account of the expedition and its occasionally bloody encounters with the Amazonian inhabitants. Carvajal's account is typical of his time. What he sees from the boat in which he and his fellow explorers travel is not yet the "noble savage"; it is a human being who ignores the way to Christian salvation, and it is here where the prelate sees his fundamental difference.

Carvajal attests during this trip to the existence of Amazons, the ferocious female warriors of ancient Greek legends. "They go about naked, covering their private parts with skins, carrying in their hands their bows and arrows, doing as much war as ten Indians," writes Father Carvajal. Carvajal's vision would give name to the region that Orellana and his companions had explored in 1542.

The Indians who Pizarro and Orellana had encountered during the initial stages of their expedition, from the Coco River to the mouth of the Napo, belonged to the Shuar tribe, a group that, together with the Huambisas, the Achuars, and the Aguarunas, make up the Great Jivaro Nation, which today extends from eastern Ecuador to north central Peru. It is the descendants of the Aguarunas who are the subject of the important research conducted by anthropologist Michael Brown in Tsewa's Gift.

Many well-known anthropologists have noted that the world of the Amazonian Indian is a magical one. Alfred Metraux wrote: "The Amazonian Indian tends to feel the presence of supernatural beings in any manifestation of Nature whose uncommonness or majesty surprise him." In the accounts of travelers and scientists, the...

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