Ache Life History

The Ecology and Demography of a Foraging People

Kim Hill, A.Magdalena Hurtado

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351329224
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

The Ache, whose life history the authors recounts, are a small indigenous population of hunters and gatherers living in the neotropical rainforest of eastern Paraguay. This is part exemplary ethnography of the Ache and in larger part uses this population to make a signal contribution to human evolutionary ecology.

CHAPTER

1

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Life History and Demography

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The small group of women froze in mid-step just for a moment. “Kwiiiit … be quiet.” Then, they heard it again. Faintly in the distance was a sound that seemed like a bloodcurdling scream. Suddenly, pandemonium broke loose in the forest camp. Younger women shrieked and moaned as children scampered up nearby trees and began to wail rhythmically. “Aiei, Aiei, Aiei.” Infants in baby slings bawled as their mothers roughly jolted them while slinging off their carrying baskets and dropping them to the ground. Old women scowled and scolded and shouted in the direction of the men. “Get over there quick, he is screaming.” There was heated discussion. Was that a scream? Who could it have been?

They heard the rustling of leaves across the lagoon and hollered out, “Who are you? Who let out the shriek of a jaguar attack?” “I’m Membogi,” came back the reply. “Was it my brother who screamed?” Then, as they heard no more sounds the group slowly became calm again. Perhaps it was just the wind whistling through the bamboo.

As the day ended and the hunters converged on the small camp the women had laid out, a dreadful awareness came over Membogi. All the hunters but one were accounted for. Membogi’s older brother Achipurangi was missing.

The next day Kuchingi began to track Achipurangi from where he was last seen. After a few hours he found a guan that had been shot and left, along with all of Achipurangi’s arrows. The hunter’s bow was nowhere to be found. He picked up the fresh trail of a tapir and followed it along. Perhaps Achipurangi had shot the tapir and then left his arrows behind in order to crawl along the ground tracking it. Then Kuchingi came upon a startling sign. Large jaguar tracks were laid down on top of the tapir trail and what looked like the path Achipurangi had made in the vegetation while tracking the tapir. Maybe the jaguar had killed the tapir, jaguars often kill tapirs. Perhaps Achipurangi shot the tapir and then the jaguar came along behind too. Maybe the jaguar had bitten the tapir first and then Achipura tracked it down, hoping to finish it off. Then maybe the jaguar found him. Maybe after tracking the tapir Achipurangi turned back and then found the jaguar coming along behind in the same tracks. Kuchingi returned to the guan and roasted it in a fire. When Kuchingi started back he found many jaguar tracks only minutes old by a large stream. Then a bird was flushed out very close and made a cry of alarm. Kuchingi was sure the jaguar was very nearby; he ran back to the camp. The Ache never found Achipurangi’s body.

Back in camp, Pirajugi sobbed as the children hit her with sticks and lengths of vine. “Hit her,” commanded the old women firmly. “Hit her good—hit her.” “That’s enough,” countered some of the older men. Pirajugi was their godchild. She was the one whose essence they had helped form by providing meat to her mother when she was in the womb. She was the one whom they had named, and they would defend her as was the custom. Pirajugi was only seventeen years old and Achipurangi had been her first husband. Her belly was large with his child soon to be born.¹

The small band was camped near the banks of the Jejui Guasu, a large muddy meandering river that had created swamps and oxbow lagoons along its banks through millennia of tropical rainstorms and relentless wandering through the flat sandy alluvial soils of what had once been a huge inland lake. The band would not be able to cross the river now because it had recently flooded after three days of rain. Last time they had tried to cross in a flood, Chejugi’s baby had fallen in the water and was swept away while Chejugi looked on helplessly. Neither she nor any other adult in the band could swim.

It began to rain again. Normally the band would have begun to construct palm leaf shelters and stayed put for the rest of the day, but now everyone wanted to move, to distance themselves from the danger and from their sadness. Women and children were nervous and on their guard to avoid any provocation of the men, particularly the older men who had the scars on their backs that meant they had killed. Men were bylla, they had “lost their essence of humanness” because of the death, and they might fly into a fit of violence at the slightest provocation. The people plodded through the rain and mud until dark and then made camp. A fire was lit in the dry hollow of a large tree since no other dry tinder could be found. The men cut brush from the surrounding thickets with an old broken machete they had stolen from a woodcutter’s camp. Hurriedly they built a circular corral of brush around the camp. The jaguar would be heard if it approached during the night.

The leader of the small band was Tall-Bywangi and his wife Pikygi was the sister of Pirajugi. They were not present when Achipurangi disappeared. They had left the band to go off by themselves for a few days. Living in the same band at that time was one of their brothers, Javagi. Membogi, Achipurangi’s brother, was not yet fully adult, so he slept at the fire of his sister Chevugi, and her husband Kanjegi-the-bearded-one. Kuchingi was there along with his wife Kuaregi, and her old mother Kanegi. Kuaregi’s brother, Betapagi, was almost twenty-five years old but had no wife, so he slept at his sister’s fire. Also present were Kanje-the-stabber (he had run his wife through with his hardwood bow), Grandpa Bepurangi, Pirajugi’s father Brikugi, and a half-dozen others. The band was small, about nine men and seven women, plus a few adolescents and children. A much larger group of Ache was camped a short distance up the river. The leader of that group was Kravachingi-the-killer. He had earned his name by mortally wounding two men in club fights and from the several children he had killed in order to bury them with a deceased companion.

Early the next morning Tall-Bywangi’s group packed up and set out in the direction of the larger camp. There had been much bickering and scolding through the night, as men and women tried to assign blame for the tragedy. Kravachingi-the-killer would be enraged when he heard the news and might demand a club fight. Only Membogi and Pirajugi said nothing.

The band moved for two days, and when they arrived at the site of the larger camp it was abandoned. Kravachingi-the-killer had crossed the river before the rains, and his band was far to the south, toward the place where parrots came to eat mud. In that same direction enemies with rock-shooting-thunder had recently killed Ache. Kravachingi’s group would move quickly and quietly until they reached the bamboo forest. Tall-Bywangi’s band continued to move about on the north side of the river, making a new campsite each night. Every day or two they saw tracks of the jaguar that had devoured Achipurangi. Jaguars often followed Ache bands for days, but one that had recently killed was a serious concern. People were edgy and the hunters seldom strayed far from the band.

Pirajugi married Betapagi after a few days. He had talked sweetly to her every day, bringing her palm hearts and asking if he could sleep at her fire. He stayed near her late at night, whispering jokes and stories long after other band members had dozed off. At first she refused him. He was ugly and a lackluster hunter. But other band members began to pressure her, insisting that she should remarry. She finally relented but continued to be plagued by the question that had haunted her since the day Achipurangi died. Betapagi would bring her baby into the world, but was he a willing father to another man’s child?

Pirajugi didn’t have to wait long for the answer. Her baby was born in camp a few days later, and all the Ache examined it carefully. Young children crowded close to watch the birth and touch the baby as their mothers rebuked them and pushed them away. Every man of the band was present except Betapagi, who had departed with his bow as soon as his new wife began to show signs of labor pain.

The baby was small and had very little hair on its head. The Ache felt little affection for children born without hair. No woman volunteered to cradle the baby while the mother recovered from the birth. No man stepped forward to cut the umbilical cord. The signs were clear, and it took only Kuchingi’s verbal suggestion to settle the point. “Bury the child,” he said. “It is defective, it has no hair.” “Besides, it has no father. Betapagi does not want it. He will leave you if you keep it.” Pirajugi said nothing, and the old woman Kanegi began to dig silently with a broken bow stave. The child and placenta were placed in the hole and covered with red sandy soil. A few minutes later the Ache packed up their belongings and Grandpa Bepurangi began to break a trail through the undergrowth with his unstrung bow. Pirajugi was tired, but she had nothing to carry, so she was able to keep up without difficulty. Women cried softly as they walked through the forest. “Ooooooh Kuajy maiecheve. …” “Our parents and grandparents who took care of us. …

That night it rained hard, and it rained much of the next day. People remained in camp and cut nearby palm trees to extract the edible fiber, which was full of starch. Pirajugi ate only palm hearts and rested. Betapagi brought some palm fiber for his new wife to eat but then set off to probe the area for armadillo or paca burrows. The following day the sky cleared and the men were off early to hunt. They set off, doubling back down the same trail from where they had come, back towards the spot where Pirajugi had given birth. In a short time they reappeared, panting and gasping, and they conversed excitedly. The dead baby was gone. The jaguar had come during the rain and dug it up. It had been eaten, along with the placenta. The men were agitated. They wanted to cross the large river immediately and join the larger group to the south. Everyone agreed, and a trail was cut in the direction of the river. The men hunted nearby as the band made slow progress through a bog filled waist deep with water from the recent rain, and children stayed especially close to their mothers. It would not be possible to cross the river, and the jaguar continued to follow the band, always just out of sight.

The band stopped in a high spot and made a camp. They cut saplings and brush to make a thick corral around their chosen spot. If the jaguar came at night it would make plenty of noise and give them time to prepare. Kanjegi-the-bearded-one went further out into the forest looking for branches. Suddenly he shrieked and ran back to camp. The jaguar had attacked him, but somewhat timidly, and he had managed to escape. His shoulder was bleeding. The men continued their work on the brush corral and nobody went out to hunt.

For two days the Ache remained in their brush corral. Nobody hunted, and little food was found in the area. Children cried from hunger. They had been sleeping in trees since the day Kanjegi-the-bearded-one was attacked. That night the camp was quiet. Little game had been killed, so children dozed off early, and the men did not joke or sing. The moon was small, and the forest was as black as the inner reaches of a deep cave. Everyone was sleeping soundly when the night resounded with an awful shriek. Pirajugi let out a high-pitched squeal and was silent. The men fanned up the flames on their fires and women and children began to cry. Some children climbed into nearby trees and their mothers stood just below. Then as the flames danced higher they saw the source of commotion. A large female jaguar stood in the bushes at the edge of the camp with Pirajugi’s body dangling from her mouth. Pirajugi’s skull had been neatly pierced and she was lifeless. A roar went up as men and women bellowed at the top of their lungs and men rattled their bows and arrows. Some men took aim to shoot, but the jaguar dropped her prey and escaped into the night.

The band was spooked. They spoke in hushed tones of Achipurangi’s words. Only days before he disappeared he had said to his wife, “I had a dream that I will not come back again. I will eat your unborn child and then I will eat you. I will not return.” Now Achipurangi’s dream had come true. It was exactly as he had told his wife. Others began to speculate that the jaguar was the same one they had raised as a cub. That one had been freed when it became too large, but it had no fear of people. It used to follow along behind the band as a cub, just as this one was doing now.

The next day the Ache remained in their brush corral. Grandmother Kanegi told her son-in-law Kuchingi, “Tonight there will be a very tiny slice of the moon. Wait in a tree and shoot the jaguar.” That night they took extraordinary precautions. Brush was cut and piled high in a large circle around the campsite. Extra firewood was cut, and flames were fanned high through the night. Kuchingi did wait i...