Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
the singer. This not only created a forum in which listeners and singers
participate in a shared chain of feelings through the event described in
the lyrics, but it also foregrounded the social negotiation of the causal
relationships between event, place, and feeling.
The salt at Echoi slowly emerged as last season's rains evaporated. By
the middle of August, the salt was usually ready for gathering. This pro-
cess could be expedited by piling salty mud into small wooden frames
from which the water evaporated over the course of months. The annual
gatherings at Echoi often coincided with the first sightings of the Red
Star (
Guedo Carate
) and the first cries of the ritually powerful Nighthawk
(
Asojná
), recently returned from her seasonal migrations north. These
signaled the time for the main annual ritual of renewal. Ayoreo called
the place of this ritual
ore pajapidi
, or the bridge, and believed that it was
yoca'apacadi
, a place where the
ujopie
soul matter of
Asojná
remained.
This ritual, which has been described in detail by Heinz Kelm and Bernd
Fischermann, reconstituted the relationship between Human Beings and
the wider ecology of metaphysical forces. It marked the beginning of the
process by which the closed world of the dry season, with all of its strict
rules for human behavior, would transform into the open world of the
rainy season, a time of abundance and relaxed taboos. It was a time in
which adolescents were initiated into adult status, food items were gath-
ered and redistributed, and potent songs were performed.
7
In addition to Jnupi, seven other people told me they remembered
that there was a designated place in Echoi where Ayoreo regularly cel-
ebrated this two-day ritual. “In that place we had the fiesta of
Asojná
.
We all knew that place. If we heard
Asojná
, we did it there. Our fathers
and their fathers told us about that place.” Such ritual sites were con-
sidered to be places of lingering power and were avoided after the ritual
was performed. Moreover, Jnupi and the others were also able to re-
call years in which the people from more than one
uage
subgroup per-
formed the Asojná ceremony, a rite of annual renewal, together at this
place.
8
The Mists of History
I was astonished by these stories, not least because I had never previ-
ously heard anything about this place. Was it possible that I had failed
to pay sufficient attention, that my ethnographic sensibilities were not
sensitive enough? I asked Yoteuoi in Arocojnadi why this might be, why
elders rarely mentioned Echoi even in formal interviews with outsiders.
