Lessons from a Quechua Strongwoman : Ideophony, Dialogue, and Perspective [1 ed.] 9780816501793, 9780816528585

Citation preview

Lessons from a

Æuechua Strongwoman

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Lessons from a

Æuechua Strongwoman Ideophony, Dialogue, and Perspective

Janis B. Nuckolls

The University of Arizona Press Tucson

The University of Arizona Press ∫ 2010 The Arizona Board of Regents All rights reserved www.uapress.arizona.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nuckolls, Janis B. Lessons from a Quechua strongwoman : ideophony, dialogue, and perspective / Janis B. Nuckolls. p. cm. — (First peoples) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8165-2858-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Quechua language—Ecuador—Puyo (Pastaza)—Ideophone. 2. Quechua language— Ecuador—Puyo (Pastaza)—Lexicology. 3. Quechua language—Ecuador—Puyo (Pastaza)—Semantics. 4. Culture—Ecuador—Puyo (Pastaza)—Semiotic models. 5. Quechua women—Ecuador—Puyo (Pastaza)—Social conditions. 6. Quechua philosophy—Ecuador—Puyo (Pastaza). 7. Puyo (Pastaza, Ecuador)—Social conditions. I. Title. pm6309.5.p89n83 2010 498%.323—dc22 2010000875

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I dedicate this effort to my daughters Margaret Starling and Catherine Louisa Nuckolls

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Contents

List of Illustrations Preface

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Acknowledgments

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A Note on Transcription and Orthography Introduction

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1. On Riveting Objectivity

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2. On Ecological Dialogism

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3. On Nonhuman Role Models and New Correspondences 4. On the Nature-to-Culture Continuum 5. On Tenaciously Persisting

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Concluding Thoughts

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Appendix to Chapter 1

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Appendix to Chapter 2

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Appendix to Chapter 3

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Appendix to Chapter 4

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Appendix to Chapter 5

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Notes

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References Index

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Illustrations

1. Montalvo and Plaza Aray in Pastaza Province, Ecuador 2. The languages in Amazonian Ecuador and northern Peru 3. Ethnic label Andoa incised on outside of mukaha 4. Elaborate anaconda design

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5. Luisa Cadena surrounded by friends and family 6. Laughing with her hands

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7. Abstract anaconda design

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Preface

It was late June in 2008 when my family and I, squeezed into a pickup truck functioning as a taxi, were driving down the last stretch of a muddy dirt road along the outskirts of Puyo, Ecuador. We were closing in on our destination: a partly finished cinderblock house covered with a tin roof—the home of my closest Quechua-speaking friend, Luisa Cadena de Nuñez. It had been two years since our last visit, and I could barely contain my excitement at the thought of seeing the person whose life and words had taught me so much. Although she was not at home when we arrived, we were quickly directed by two of her grandchildren, who hopped in the back of our taxi truck, down a path leading to one of her agricultural fields. Our progress was soon halted by a river surrounded by steep banks. Traversing this short expanse of river was a rope bridge that looked barely functional to us, but which was quickly crossed by Luisa’s grandson, who ran ahead shouting and whistling, to tell her of our arrival. After about ten minutes I spotted her walking toward us, leading a small procession consisting of two of her sisters and an assortment of children and friends. She easily crossed the swaying rope bridge, machete in hand, and as soon as we finished giving each other hugs, she began to tell me her latest saga. There had just been a violent confrontation between members of her community and the police over the very land we were standing on. A number of Quechua-speaking people had been attempting to secure rights to live and grow food on this seemingly free terrain. Luisa’s son Robin, who was out of town at the time, had begun building a house. Only a week earlier, however, the police had arrived at dawn with orders to burn all of the partly completed houses as well as their contents, effectively ousting the would-be residents. The few people who attempted to fight the police order by throwing rocks had been

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jailed. The majority of the people, however, had simply watched traumatized, as they witnessed their hard work going up in smoke and flames. Luisa’s own response was neither violent nor passive. She asked to speak to the official in charge and was allowed to plead with him about her son’s house. She requested permission to take the house apart herself and keep the valuable materials, including the sheet of tin for the roof. Her request was granted and Luisa was obviously proud of having managed to wrest a concession from a colonel. This incident says much about her resilience to the difficulties and crises that have marked her life at various times. It also points to her extraordinary ability to use language persuasively, despite the fact that she has no literacy skills or formal education and, as an indigenous woman, almost no social status in Ecuadorian society. Her verbal skills make her an ideal subject and coarticulator of the ideas that underlie this book. Here is what it’s about.

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Acknowledgments

Many people and a number of institutions deserve heartfelt thanks for various kinds of assistance and support. The following granting agencies funded the research for this book at various stages: the Social Science Research Council, the National Science Foundation, the Wenner Gren Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright Commission of the United States. I began writing this book while working in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alabama, where collegial support and friendship from Michael Murphy, Jim Knight, Jim Bindon, Bill Dressler, Kathy Oths, Lisa LeCount, John Blitz, Allan Maxwell, and Jason de Caro meant a great deal. Michael Murphy was a particularly important font of wisdom and humor and provided critical help by running interference for me on many occasions. Since moving to Brigham Young University’s Department of Linguistics and English Language in 2007, I have been tremendously energized by the stimulating work and encouragement of colleagues and students. I also want to express sincere gratitude to our chair, Bill Eggington, for his unflappable humor and wit, and for his unfailing support of a sometimes inept new colleague. He has smoothed the way on several occasions, which made all the difference. Many thanks also to Phyllis Daniel, LoriAnne Spear, Alicia McCleve, and Emily Allen for much assistance with matters that seem to come up many times a day. I thank Dean John Rosenberg of the College of Humanities, whose administrative acumen and humanistic scholarship and vision have created a uniquely wonderful environment for all of us. Not two years have passed since I began here, but I am already deeply indebted to him for a number of reasons. In the current environment of economic crisis, it is hardly an opportune time to be soliciting funds for anything extra. Yet, when approached by my editor Allyson Carter, who expressed the

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University of Arizona Press’s unqualified commitment to publishing this book but also stated the need for authors to become fundraisers for their own work during difficult times, I sought help from Dean Rosenberg. He responded with extraordinary but characteristic generosity. I am extremely fortunate to have a small but very supportive network of colleagues whose work has greatly enriched my own. Thanks to Marleen Haboud of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador and the Universidad San Francisco de Quito for her energetic intellect and friendship. I have benefited so much from opportunities to interact with her and her colleagues and students at Católica. Mike Uzendoski’s insightful ethnography of Napo Quichua culture has expanded my perspectives on Amazonian Quichua linguaculture and poetics. Tod Swanson’s work and friendship and many stimulating conversations at the Andes and Amazon Field School have given my work more depth and insight. Tony Webster’s work on Navajo poetry has given me hope for the future of ideophony. Joel Sherzer and his colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin have made enormous contributions to my ability to share my data through the Archives of Indigenous Languages of Latin America. This has been an energizing and liberating resource for my publishing efforts. A special thank-you to Heidi Johnson, who has personally overseen the digitization of my data, and who once went to great lengths to help me share an archived song with my Quechua friends in Ecuador, when dialup Internet use was all that was available there. Whenever I felt anxiety about the wisdom of focusing an entire book on the words and life of one person, it was always alleviated when I remembered Paul Friedrich’s insistence on the value of the unique individual as an ethnographic linguistic subject. His influence is apparent in other important ways as well, and I am unable to put into words how grateful I am for his work. I could hardly give adequate thanks to Luisa Cadena, who has not only taught me so much but has become, over the years, my Quechua alter ego. Her stories and her way of life have given me a greatly enhanced appreciation for the extraordinary beauty and intrinsic interest of the natural world we inhabit. I am also very grateful to her sister Celia, who has functioned as our literacy liaison by reading my letters to her and writing her thoughts to me, over the years. My own family has provided much support and inspiration. They have always accompanied me to Ecuador, making my trips there so

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much more meaningful. My husband, Charles, has sacrificed several summers of writing time. My son, Will, would rather have been learning German than Spanish. My daughters, Margaret and Catherine, have missed their friends. Many thanks to Allyson Carter at the University of Arizona Press for her faith in this project early on. Thanks also to an anonymous reviewer who made many detailed and thoughtful comments on an earlier draft, which led to much greater clarity and precision, overall. I also heartily thank Mike Uzendoski for his reading of the manuscript and for his encouragement and valuable suggestions. BYU’s Humanities Publication Center has been tremendously supportive throughout all phases of this book. Sincerest thanks to Mel Thorne for steering me to such competent editing help. Valerie Holladay came to my rescue too many times to count, and Whitney Lindsley provided invaluable assistance with the maps. Chapter 4 consists of a revised version of an article that originally appeared in the Journal of Latin American Lore. I gratefully acknowledge the UCLA Latin American Institute for permission to include this material here. Thanks to the University of Illinois Press for permission to include the map of Ecuador that originally appeared in Whitten and Scott (2008), and to Cambridge University Press for permission to include the map of languages spoken in Ecuador, which originally appeared in Adelaar (2004).

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A Note on Transcription and Orthography

My representation of Quichua words aims to make their sound qualities as accessible as possible to readers who may not be familiar with standard practices for representing written forms of Quichua in Ecuador or with SIL-influenced practices. The pronunciation of the following consonantal sounds is comparable to their English language counterparts: p, t, k, b, d, g, ts, ch, s, sh, z, m, n, h, l, y, and w. The following sounds are represented differently from comparable sounds in English: ñ, as the first n in onion, dzh as the j in judge. The sound represented as r is pronounced like the r in Spanish perro. The palatalized sound represented by ly has no comparable sound in English. It is pronounced by saying an l and then immediately pronouncing a y sound along with it. The letter x stands for a velar fricative, as the ch in Bach, which often occurs in Quichua at the end of an ideophone that has undergone performative lengthening, usually to imitate an idea of spatial expanse or motion. A superscript h occurring after a stop consonant (usually a p, t, k, or b) indicates an aspirated sound, pronounced by articulating the consonant and then expelling it with a strong puff of air. Vowel sounds represented are: a, which is roughly equivalent to the vowel in cot; i, as in leek; ai as fight; au as in ouch; u as in root; and o as in open. All underlines and italics appearing in the Quechua texts indicate distinct speaker perspectives, which are explained in chapter 2.

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Introduction

In contemporary linguistic anthropological work, interlocutors construct, interpret, and negotiate meanings through processes and within frameworks that are largely human-centered. The novel contribution of this work is to show that the linguaculture of Quichua-speaking Runa in Amazonian Ecuador expands the boundaries of human-to-human interactions, because it is enmeshed within a symbolic ecology that allows for the possibility of shared affects, intentions, moral values, and meaningful, communicative interactions between humans and nonhumans.∞ I make my argument through the words of Luisa Cadena, whose strength is based on her knowledge and experiences with nonhuman nature. These narratives, many of which chronicle key life experiences, present her personal views of heroic accomplishments and endurances, new discoveries, and everyday ordeals of survival. She articulates these stories within an idiom or cognitive style that involves grammatical and pragmatic factors, as well as worldview-like assumptions. Her narratives are studded with a category of words linguists call ideophones, although there is no term for them in Quichua. My favorite definition of ideophones is the informal one that a student of mine once used. He said that ideophones ‘‘give a sense of life to language.’’ This characterization has a succinctness lacking in the scattered observations made by linguists who note that they are a typologically widespread class of expressions usually functioning adverbally or adjectivally and are defined, prototypically, with a constellation of features including reduplicated morphology, unique phonotactics, and expressive, sensorily grounded semantics with possible sound-symbolic associations. Onomatopoeic words like thwack, arf arf, and ka-ching are examples of English ideophones. I consider ideophones to be potentially universal, although some linguistic traditions, especially those of European languages, including English, are notoriously impoverished with

Figure 1. Luisa Cadena’s birthplace, Montalvo, and current residence, Plaza Aray in Pastaza Province, Ecuador. (from Puyo Runa: Imagery and Power in Modern Amazonia, University of Illinois Press, by Norman E. Whitten Jr. and Dorothea Scott Whitten)

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respect to ideophony (Nuckolls 2004b). I am intrigued by the implications of this, and I believe that their prolific use of ideophones is enmeshed within Runa peoples’ linguaculture, a term conceived by Friedrich to capture ‘‘the point of view implied by the discourse and actions of participants’’ (2006:55). This term is ideal, because it allows us to recast the problematic rift between language, including grammatical patterning and habits of speaking on the one hand, and cultural outlooks, including styles of cognizing as well as more encompassing cosmologies, on the other. Language and culture are neither in lockstep with each other nor totally independent of each other. By splicing two words together, the term linguaculture lexicalizes this insight by crafting a synthesis between two distinct phenomena, like a juxtaposed montage of cinematic visuals that creates a new reality for the viewer. A premise of this book is that Runa conceptions of nature are voiced within habits of speaking that are endangered because they are steeped in a worldview that is increasingly becoming marginalized.≤ Macdonald (1999) cites examples of young Runa men in the Napo Province who openly express their alienation from traditional ways of life that involve hunting and subsistence horticulture. My own ethnographic experiences among Quichua speakers of the Pastaza Province confirm Macdonald’s observations. In the summer of 2006, I became reacquainted with many young adults whom I’d originally met as babies living in the remote village of Puka Yaku, Ecuador. Many had migrated to the nearby towns of Shell or Puyo and were no longer living lives that were dependent upon expert knowledge of the land. By foregrounding ideophony as an endangered way of speaking, I hope not only to facilitate its survival but to present accounts of a traditional way of life that is being abandoned by young Runa men and women. This book offers translations of complete narratives and many narrative fragments recounted by Luisa, who now lives in Plaza Aray, Ecuador (fig. 1). By sharing the fascinating events chronicled by her stories, I intend to illuminate the conceptual underpinnings of Runa symbolic ecology, an ecology that is given voice, in part, through ideophones. The translated narratives presented here will make evident the fact that ideophony is significant for Luisa’s habitual ways of thinking about and presenting to others her knowledge of the world. In addition to ideophony, another key component of her speaking involves distinctions of voicing and perspective, which have been considered by many linguists of Quechua as examples of evidentiality. Quechua has three main

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distinctions that are widely believed to mark source of information. I argue that information source is implied by their primary function, which is to index a speaker’s point of view. Quechua-speaking culture requires that one indicate the source of one’s statement, whether it belongs to a speaking self of a speech event or to a speaking self of a narrative event, or arises from the stance of an other. From this concern emanates a dialogical ethos. The special form of dialogism evident in the texts I will present is indebted to Bakhtin (1981a) but has been adapted to accommodate Runa ecological conceptions, which are animistic. Runa are animistic in their view of the world because they believe that everything has a life force. It is not just people who are given voices in Runa habits of speaking. Nonhumans are often presented in narratives as having articulate thoughts and as sharing many of the same moral values, talents, and foibles that people recognize among themselves: love, sadness, strength, generosity, work, nurturing, indifference, altruism, cunning, predatoriness, stinginess, spontaneity, faithfulness, incompetence, and even prescience. This is compatible with the observation made by Descola (2001:108) that many Amazonian societies ‘‘do not establish marked ontological distinctions between humans on the one hand and most species of plants and animals on the other, since they all share a common set of humanlike attributes.’’ It is also compatible with the recent work of Swanson (2009), who has examined ritual songs and Quichua and Shuar myths about the origins of plant species. Both plants and animals are regarded as having once been humans whose relationships with other humans became critically estranged. He concludes that it is necessary for Runa to consider plants and animals as former humans, since it allows them to engage in relationships of exchange with them, the result being that people can receive both food and medicine from these former human beings. Runa, then, tend to focus on what is shared between humans and nonhumans, rather than on what is distinctive. Quichua-speaking Runa in eastern Ecuador encompass a number of historically distinct ethnicities, cultures, and languages. In general, they are grouped into two major cultural and linguistic divisions, the Napo Runa and the Canelos Runa. The Napo, also known as the Quijos, inhabit the northern part of the Central Oriente. The Canelos Quichua, named after the Catholic mission in Canelos on the Bobonaza River, live in the Pastaza Province. Steward and Metraux (1948) attribute the origins of the Napo Quichua to highland Chibchan-speaking peoples. Kohn

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(2002), citing historical evidence, suggests that Cofan and Omaguan people may also have been involved in Napo Runa ethnogenesis. Whitten (1976) states that the Napo Quichua have historically identified with the montaña region of Ecuador, while the Canelos Quichua seem to have originated from the east and southeast (fig. 2). Of relevance for this work are the Canelos Runa, who formed, according to Whitten, from a merging together of Achuar and Zaparoan peoples (1976.) During my first extended fieldwork in 1987–88, I encountered anecdotal evidence for the importance of one particular subgrouping of Zaparoans, called Andoans, who were credited with teaching Runa their fine style of ceramic painting in intricate geometric patterns.≥ In the summer of 2006, when I returned to Ecuador after a tenyear gap, I discovered a new appreciation for the Andoan cultural roots of Runa ways of life. ONAPE (Organización de Nacionalidades Andoas de Pastaza del Ecuador) had been formed, and I was approached by several people seeking help with the revitalization of the Andoan language. Despite the fact that a small number of people are clinging to the hope that it may be revived, the Andoan language is extinct in Ecuador. The term Andoa is, however, currently being used by many Runa who originate from the area surrounding Luisa’s birthplace in Montalvo, as a distinctive ethnic label. Luisa’s cousin Cezar Cadena manufactures drinking bowls called mukahas for the tourist art market in Plaza Aray, outside of Puyo, with the term Andoa incised on the outside (fig. 3). The term Andoas is found in the name of a small tributary flowing into the larger Pastaza River, as well as in the name of a settlement that can be found on a map in Whiffen’s The North-west Amazon (1915). Adelaar (2004:452) states that this settlement, located near the border between Amazonian Peru and Ecuador, was established as a Dominican mission by 1737. Reeve (1988:24) cites archival research that states that Luisa’s birthplace of Montalvo was originally founded as a mission by indigenous people from Andoas who were seeking to escape exploitation by rubber merchants. Runa traditional ways of life combine subsistence-based swidden horticulture, in which fields are burned and then cleared for planting, along with fishing and hunting. They also gather many kinds of wild fruits. As their territories become increasingly opened up to the global economy, they are becoming more enmeshed with those forces, through dependence on commodity goods and on opportunities for engaging in wage labor, and even on their own entrepreneurial ecotourism ventures.

Figure 2. The varieties of languages in Amazonian Ecuador and northern Peru. (from The Languages of the Andes, Cambridge University Press, by Willem F. H. Adelaar with the collaboration of Pieter C. Muysken)

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Figure 3. Ethnic label Andoa incised on outside of mukaha made by ceramicist Cezar Cadena, Plaza Aray, Ecuador. (Photo by Leigh Holden)

Although their dialect is related to Andean dialects, these Runa identify most strongly in a cultural sense with other lowland South American peoples, especially with Achuar, whom they frequently marry. Despite their heterogeneous background, Runa have a strong sense of themselves as a community of people distinct from other indigenous groups and from the dominant European culture of the Ecuadorian nation. Their construction of themselves as distinct is in part fueled by their awareness of the potential political power deriving from their ethnicity. And they have exercised this power. Along with other indigenous groups in Ecuador, Runa have, during the past thirty years, been extraordinarily active in mobilizations and debates within the Ecuadorian nation. Sawyer (1997, 2004) and Whitten (2003) provide recent anthropological analyses of current political activism among Runa. Whitten (2003) presents a comprehensive analysis of two major political events involving indigenous activities: the Levantamiento Indígena of 1990 and the Caminata, or March, of 1992. At the heart of these debates and activities are ongoing dialogues over indigenous peoples’ rights to exist as their own nations with self-determination within the larger Ecuadorian nation. Pivotal within these debates is the issue of land. When

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Quichua, Achuar, and Shuar organized a 240-kilometer march from the lowlands to the capital city of Quito in April 1992, one of their goals was to acquire legal titles to two million hectares of continuous rain-forest territory (Whitten 2003.) Although the march gained national and even international attention and generated much sympathy for indigenous goals, it was not entirely successful. In his discussion of the ultimate outcome of this movement, Whitten states that the Borja administration granted only about 65 percent of the land requested. Furthermore, and what is worse, according to Sawyer (1997), the government carved up the territory into apparently arbitrary geometric blocks, having no relevance to actual patterns of land use, or to historical or mythological understandings of place. The government’s inadequate response to indigenous demands is a symptom of a greater problem underlying the debates over land use. Simmering below the surface of these debates are conceptions of natural resources that cannot possibly be reconciled. The Ecuadorian government has a rational, marketplace view of its natural resources as commodities for the generation of capital. Runa see their land quite differently. Their traditional subsistence-based swidden horticultural practices are supremely well adapted for the rain forest ecosystem and cannot easily be altered without doing long-term, possibly permanent, damage to their surroundings. Moreover—and this is the critical point I want to emphasize here—to change their land use practices would necessarily involve changes in their cognitive models of the land, and their relations with it.∂ Runa see themselves in an affective relationship based on a sentiment of shared animacy with their land. Of particular relevance for this work is my claim that Runa express their sentiments of shared animacy by means of their language. Runa enact their alignments with nonhuman nature through performative foregrounding of ideophonically rendered perceptions, through the voicing of assertion-making perspectives, and through their representation of narrative events by means of quoted speech and dialogue, even when there could not possibly have been any actual speech utterances available to represent. Through these means, Runa frame nonhuman life-forms as analogous to humans, endowing them with an articulable voice and perspective. The idea that nonhuman life-forms have a capacity for expression is a foundational maxim underscoring Luisa’s narratives. Contained within this book, therefore, is an implicit analogy: ideophony is to nonhumans as dialogue is to humans. When Runa use

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ideophones to imitate the movements and sounds of rustling leaves or splashing water, or sturdy trees falling to the ground during a thunderstorm, they are expressing the animacy of these phenomena by representing their ability to display reactivity to forces within the surrounding environment. This reactivity is a fundamental quality of animateness or aliveness in Runa culture. Although people articulate ideophones, they are, in a sense, articulating another kind of quoted speech, that of nonhumans.∑ Ideophones represent a key component of this alignment, which is further buttressed by means of a grammatical subsystem requiring people to distinguish among different voices. The sentiments that underlie Runa alignments with the nonhuman world are not only expressed by means of language, however. They are tied to a cultural disposition which has a life of its own. This cultural disposition is ill suited to and inhospitably regarded by the world of public, political discourse. To understand indigenous conceptions of nature, it is instructive to listen to voices that are never heard in dialogues between indigenous spokespersons and officials representing the Ecuadorian nation. There has been a great deal of excitement and optimism generated by indigenous activism throughout Latin America, over hybrid forms of discourse combining indigenous genres and performances within national arenas of power, particularly in Brazil (Graham 2002; Ramos 1988; Turner 2002). In Ecuador, moreover, there has been much indigenous activism and increased participation by indigenous people in national-level political processes. All of these fascinating developments are worthy of linguistic anthropologists’ attention. Yet there is the real danger that only a very small percentage of indigenous people are going to have the talent and resources to speak in public arenas of power. An additional dimension of this problem is the necessarily impoverished form that indigenous public discourse may have to take when it is adapted for literate circulation. This problem has been aptly articulated by Ramos concerning Brazilian indigenous discourse designed for public protest (1988:222): ‘‘Frozen on the page, these speeches lose a gamut of communicative links with the audience—fleeting facial expressions, voice inflections, pitch, pause, speed, gestures, looks, innuendos of all sorts—only to gain the permanence of the recorded message, untrimmed, unqualified, unaltered. In the written version there is no mediating gesture, no sympathetic glance, no emphatic silence.’’ This work is an attempt to redress these imbalances at a critically opportune moment in the formation of indigenous public discourse within

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Ecuador. Now more than ever, it is essential to bring voices that are always at the front lines together with those that never have the opportunity to be heard. The expressive, performative features of ideophonic discourse make them highly dispensable in public discursive contexts. The restricted functions of ideophony in linguists’ own speaking cultures has also resulted in a kind of ideological erasure from linguists’ perceptions.∏ The neglected status of ideophones as a subfield within professional linguistics and anthropological linguistics makes them extremely vulnerable as a form of expression within the current climate of bilingual programs, and standardization and unification movements within Ecuador.

The Strongwoman Despite her inability to participate in national-level political dialogues, the woman whose voice dominates this text would never consider herself to be a disenfranchised individual. She exemplifies a type called the strongwoman. References to strongwomen, or sindzhi warmi, are scattered throughout the anthropological literature on Amazonian Quichua culture (Harrison 1989; Macdonald 1999:137; Sawyer 2004; Whitten 1976.) One of the most recent references comes from Sawyer (2004), who witnessed a group of about two hundred women marching from the Amazonian town of Pastaza all the way to Quito, in protest over aspects of the Ecuadorian government’s modernization policies. These women referred to themselves in Quichua as sindzhi warmiguna, or strongwomen. In my own ethnographic experience as well, the term strongwoman is typically self-designative. The first woman I ever heard applying this phrase to herself was Estella Dahua, a mother who supported her ten children by making pottery to sell in the tourist art market. I use this term the way I believe Runa intend it to be used, to refer to a combination of inner strength and physical energy. However, it means something more than the ability to withstand hardships. The strongwoman is not simply strong in the physical sense or stoically able to endure crushing emotional blows. Rather, the strongwoman is someone who conceives of herself as having an abundance of inner power, as well as physical strength, to change aspects of life that are not satisfactory. The critical point here is that she sees herself as an active force in her own destiny and exercises her agency. Weismantel synthesizes an array of evidence pointing to the existence of a type of strongwoman in the Andean highlands. The public market sellers called cholas are described

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as ‘‘forceful, energetic . . . fearless, astute, different and unpredictable’’ (Seligmann, cited in Weismantel 2001:57). She compares the cholas to the vast majority of women in Andean society, stating: ‘‘Most women, rich or poor, resent the autocratic behavior of husbands and fathers, but in a helpless fashion. . . . In contrast, the markets are full of women who slammed the door on oppressive domestic lives and actively pursued viable permanent alternatives’’ (2001:69). A few examples from the ethnographic literature on women in Andean societies point to exceptional female strength (cf. Allen 1988; Bourque and Warren 1981; Condori Mamani 1996). A notable difference between Andean and Amazonian strongwomen seems to be that Andean strongwomen do not publicly proclaim their strength, while Amazonian women frequently do. It may be the case that the strongwoman is a covert cultural category in the Andes, but an overt cultural category in the Amazon. The emphasis in Amazonian Runa cultures upon strength itself as a desirable quality for men and women both, and gained through a number of avenues, must also be noted. Muratorio (1991) constitutes a thorough treatment of the importance in Napo Runa culture placed upon acquiring strength through spirit helpers, through dream visions or psychotropically induced visions, through productive work in hunting or agriculture, and through communication with the reenergizing powers of the nonhuman lifeworld. Uzendoski (2005:46) discusses the principle of strength, addressing the complex matter of how strength is considered in relation to gender. He states that gender complementarity exists for Napo Runa, but that men are considered the dominant gender because they control knowledge, spiritual power, and also violence. My experiences among the Pastaza Runa support the idea of an ideology of male dominance. This is why the category of strongwoman is meaningful. Male strength is unmarked. Female strength is marked, which is why people take the trouble to call attention to it. Yet there are a number of factors that contribute to the ability of women to lead satisfying lives by controlling and changing circumstances that are not desirable. Yolanda and Robert Murphy explained some time ago that an ideology of male dominance does not necessarily lead to much actual control by men over women’s lives (Murphy and Murphy 1974.) Even in a society such as that of the Achuar, where men exercise what has been characterized as ‘‘an often brutal’’ domination of women, it is the case that widows and women who leave their husbands are able to exist quite well without men, as long as they have supportive kinsmen (Descola 2001:97).

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I want to explain now how a variety of cultural and material circumstances inhibit the development of too much male power over women in Runa society, thereby facilitating the existence of the strongwoman. Alongside their Christian belief in Yaya Dyus, ‘‘God the Father,’’ Runa see everything as having a kind of soul.π This includes obviously alive beings such as animals and plants, as well as the less obviously alive features of a landscape, such as waterfalls, rocks, and even small pebbles and stones. In addition to the visible world of nature, there are a number of invisible spirits of many different types, called supai. Supai are important in magical rituals conducted by shamans who call them forth and invoke their powers for the shaman’s own purposes. It is significant that many of these particularly powerful supai are described in shamanic songs as a supai warmi, which is translatable as ‘‘spirit woman or wife,’’ and that the shaman is essentially powerless without them. Macdonald (1999:33–39) reports that would-be shamans seek friendships with various supai women whom they encounter in the forest, and then again in their dreams. The term supai is also used to refer to a gender-neutral, powerful being or a general power that women may claim for themselves, in a very public way. Harrison (1989:134–37) documents a case of a woman singing about her power and strength, describing herself as a supai, which Harrison translates as ‘‘spirit force.’’ Certain aspects of marriage practices create favorable conditions for women’s quality of life. Postmarriage residence rules for Runa are flexible. Couples can reside with or near the wife’s family or the husband’s family, or they can go off to a distant territory by themselves. In marriage transactions, there is a high value placed upon the female member of the couple. Whitten (1976:131) reports that when a marriage is in the process of being negotiated between parents of the man and woman, that there is a definite expectation that the groom’s family will compensate the wife’s family for their loss of a daughter, typically with the groom’s labor, a type of bride service, performed on behalf of the bride’s family. If a woman is unhappy in a marriage, for whatever reason, she is free to dissolve the union. Consider, by contrast, the situation in highland Andean Peru for the wife of Gregorio Condori Mamani, a woman named Asunta Quispe Huamán, who, in trying to understand why she stayed so long with her first husband, an extremely abusive man, remembered the words of a woman who once employed her: ‘‘Now that you’ve gotten involved with this man, you must live and die at his side like a good Christian woman’’ (Condori Mamani 1996:119). For Amazonian Runa

Introduction

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women that I was acquainted with, this interpretation of Christian morality seemed to have little influence on their daily lives. Almost every woman I knew in Puka Yaku had borne children by more than one man. When I asked why they had ceased having children with their first partner, they often cited physical abuse or neglect as a reason for abandoning a union and taking another partner.∫ Aspects of traditional social organization contribute substantially to Runa women’s strong position. Although there is a division of labor in Runa society, it is rather flexible. In general, men hunt, fish, weave baskets, and do the heavy work involved in clearing a new section of land for gardening. Women do most of the weeding, planting, and harvesting of garden produce. It is perhaps because the forest is seen as female, insofar as it is metaphorically conceptualized as an infinitely abundant mother, that horticulture is seen as the primary domain of women. It is not unusual, however, to see men accompanying women on their daily treks to the gardens to help with the weeding, harvesting, or planting. Women are also in charge of midwifery, cooking, making pottery, washing clothes, and those aspects of child care that only they can handle. Although most shamans are men, there are scattered reports of women becoming shamans, and these women are widely believed to be among the most powerful practitioners. Perhaps one of the most important tasks to be accomplished in any household is the sole responsibility of women—the making of aswa. Aswa is a mildly fermented beverage that is a major source of carbohydrate energy for Runa. It is made from cooked manioc tubers, which are pounded in a large wooden vat. Portions of the cooked manioc are bitten off by one or more women, masticated for about a minute or two, and then spit into the collective vat. Mastication has the effect of contributing enzymes from the saliva, which act to ferment the manioc over a period of about twenty-four hours. The slightly sour mash is then mixed with water and drunk. By masticating the cooked mixture, a woman also contributes her signature substance, which she shares with others when they come to her house. Offering and drinking aswa are extremely important activities, full of stylized behaviors and ritualized sayings. During my first extended fieldwork in Puka Yaku, I never visited a household that did not have aswa to offer visitors. Even today, many Runa who have migrated to urban areas continue to make aswa, either by buying manioc in the markets or by somehow growing their own. The making of bowls for drinking aswa has developed into an impressive form of

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lessons from a quechua strongwoman

Figure 4. Elaborate anaconda design made by ceramicist Johanna Dahua, Puyo, Ecuador. (Photo by Leigh Holden)

aesthetic expression, which has provided novel sources of income to Runa women (fig. 4). Recently, men have begun to manufacture pottery for the tourist art market as well. Having discussed the general cultural climate in which the strongwoman has been able to grow, I will now explain how this kind of person can be identified. The strongwoman can be identified by her own claims to this status or by her self-proclamations of independence and strength. Harrison (1989:139–40) recorded a song in which the singer referred to herself as ‘‘half man and half woman,’’ enumerating all of the strengths, abilities, and talents she possessed, including the ability to keep standing, working, and enduring, no matter what. Macdonald witnessed a woman singing about her strength at a wedding, which caused some tension, as the song was understood to be a claim for a disputed tract of land (1999:137.) The strongwoman may be participating in modern ways of life that link her with the cash economy. She may be living in a small

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town doing low-skilled wage labor to help support herself and her family. Although the strongwoman may be seriously under-represented in modern, public arenas of power, she will, nevertheless, impress anyone she meets as a person who is self-possessed and secure, validated by accomplishments and strengths tied to traditionally valued practices.

Luisa Cadena I met Luisa during my first extended field trip in 1988. I asked her to teach me about the Quechua language by participating in a series of structured interviews designed to elicit grammatical information. It quickly became clear to me that she had taken very seriously my invitation to teach. Teaching, for her, meant sharing her life experiences through narratives. I did not imagine that my interviews would take up as much time as they did; they lasted five full months, during which time she recounted hundreds of personal experiences, myths, legends, assorted anecdotes, gossip, and songs. It has taken me a number of years to process these narratives and evaluate their significance. I believe they have great potential for illuminating fundamentally important issues in anthropology, particularly concerning the interfaces between nature, culture, and language that are salient for many Native American peoples (Basso 1985, 1995; Kohn 2007; Nuckolls 1996; Seeger 1981, 1986; Sherzer 1983, 2004; Uzendoski 1999; Webster 2006; Witherspoon 1977.) Because of the pedagogical spirit in which they were told, I have framed the book as a series of lessons, each lesson forming the subject of a chapter. It would be impossible to write the kind of book I wanted to write without acknowledging Luisa as an individual. I can only hope that the power of her personality comes through in my translations. Her stories exude energy and enthusiasm emblematic of her approach to life. When I first met her, she was renting a small house off the main road in the town of Puyo, earning money as a freelance laundress, so that she could pay for her two young sons’ education. The urban setting in which I discovered her was not one to which she was best suited. She adapted with incredible resourcefulness, however, and managed to replicate some of the most satisfying dimensions of her village subsistence life. She was able to secure land use rights from a Catholic priest for a small plot, which she planted with manioc, plantains, and an assortment of staple items that would have been costly to obtain in the town market. She

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traveled frequently enough between the town of Puyo and her village of Montalvo, so that she never lost touch with close relatives and family still there. I viewed these frequent trips of hers as a way not only to stay in touch with people but to reinforce her ties to place and refresh her sense of self. The many stories she told me, all of which were set in the area of Montalvo, the nearby village of Puka Yaku, or in the surrounding forests, accomplished similar goals through their telling. When recounting her experiences, Luisa transformed into an empowered cultural mentor to me, full of expert knowledge of the challenges and joys of living a life attentive to the rhythms and patterns of the nonhuman lifeworld. There are many interesting details about Luisa that will not emerge from these narratives. Her parents had only girls, and she was particularly close to her father. Several times in her life, she received a calling to become a shaman but suppressed the opportunities. She married a man from the highlands, a soldier named Tito Nuñez, and had nine children, seven of whom lived to adulthood. Although Luisa and her husband continue to be married to each other today, their relationship has been riddled with tension and conflict. I have heard only her side of the story, but I do know that Tito suffered a number of tragic and traumatic early life experiences that could explain at least some of what Luisa considers to be his major character flaws. Although not an indigenous person by birth, his father was a trader who had many contacts with indigenous people as he traveled throughout Amazonian Ecuador and Peru. When her husband was only a six-month-old infant, he was found clinging to his mother, who had died. As Tito’s father was unable to care for him, he gave his baby son to an Achuar couple to raise until he was thirteen years old, at which time his father decided to take the boy abruptly away and send him to live near Quito, in the household of Tito’s own older sister, who was at times physically abusive. Tito is now in his seventies, appears to have suffered strokes, and walks with difficulty. It was hard to imagine, looking at him in his weakened state in the summer of 2006, that he had once been an active soldier and reveler. Yet, as Luisa would constantly remind me, for most of their married life, he could not be counted on to use his monthly income for any of the family’s material needs. She was often forced to go hunting on her own to feed them, something that women with husbands are not supposed to have to do. It is also important to point out, though, that Luisa is the type of person who takes on difficult challenges and often manages to make things work in her favor.

Introduction

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None of these bits of information can predict or explain the fact that she also happens to be one of those extraordinary individuals who, by the power of her personal qualities, is able to test limits and explore boundaries. One of her own anecdotes serves to illustrate her unflagging personal strength. She and her husband were trekking through the forest with others, and her husband caught a small poisonous frog, which, he had heard, would be delicious if properly cooked. Proper cooking involves roasting the frog alive, causing it to die slowly and painfully, so as not to allow its poison to be released outside of its gland. Luisa was appalled by the whole process and was, in any case, not used to eating frogs. Runa tend to have fairly set rules about what they will and will not eat and are not particularly adventurous about trying new kinds of edible substances. Nevertheless, her husband attempted to force her to eat some of the frog meat. She reported her reaction to these attempts, telling me what she said to him: ‘‘If you beat me even to the point of killing me on this very spot, I will not eat it; for I am the owner of myself!’’Ω This reaction to her husband’s attempts underscores a key trait of her personality, that of her staunch personal independence. Yet, despite this quality, she never seemed like an isolated or marginalized individual. The vast majority of her stories concern her activities with others and reveal her prevailing spirit of conviviality. She is incredibly witty and ready to see the humor in any situation. What I am calling her strength and independence should not be construed as a kind of heavy-handed, selfaggrandizing individualism, either. Throughout her narratives she freely confesses to feelings of fear, vulnerability, and thunderstruck amazement. She was and continues to be someone who is easily moved to tears over another person’s plight. She has always cared deeply for others, particularly for children. In addition to raising her own seven children, she adopted three others of relatives who had abandoned them. When I first worked with her in 1988 she often came to my house in Puyo, accompanied by an assortment of little children she was gladly in charge of caring for on any particular day. This was also the case, most recently, in 2008, when she would come over with an assortment of grandchildren who diverted themselves with my own three kids, while she and I worked (fig. 5). Luisa facilitated my understanding of many aspects of Runa culture that would have been otherwise inaccessible. She shared many insights into the world of men’s activities, mostly through her hunting stories.

Figure 5. Luisa Cadena surrounded by friends and family. (Photo by Charles Nuckolls)

Introduction

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She often proudly proclaimed that she was as experienced in hunting and trekking as any man, and not afraid of anything. The comments of others supported this claim. Her strength of character is also evident in the narratives she related of her own experiences and those of her family members. So many of these stories are thematically linked by their concern for acts of strength, brave deeds, and overcoming difficult obstacles. I could not possibly, with this book, have done justice to her many interesting experiences. I did not include the story about how, in order to save her sister’s life, she had to threaten hospital workers in Ambato with police action, because they tried to prevent her from going inside to see her. For lack of space, I could not include the story of her standoff with a member of an indigenous organization, who tried to push her off a piece of land that had been loaned to her for growing her food. I would have liked to include also the story about how, as a little girl, when trekking through the forest with her older cousin, she cried but agreed anyway to give up the pet animals she had found and adopted along the way, so she could help carry all of the game they had caught. It is important to emphasize the fact that these stories are not just about Luisa Cadena. Centered as they are on the everyday challenges facing a subsistence-based swidden horticultural society, they are a particularly rich source of information on Runa conceptions of nature as revealed by their habits of speaking and cognizing. And it is these conceptions that will have to be faced squarely if any progress is to be made in their quest for land rights. An appreciation for Runa conceptions of nature involves coming to terms with the significance of ideophony, which is key for understanding the links between Runa conceptions of nature and their habits of speaking. My claim is that ideophony is highly congenial with the animistic underpinnings of Runa symbolic ecology. The work of Basso (1985) was the first to notice links between ideophony and animacy. She presents a typology of sound symbols and their place within a hierarchy of animacy for the Brazilian Kalapalo. In this conceptual framework, ideophonic sounds are part of a continuum of expressive possibilities ranging from music to spoken language to calls and noises. They can be onomatopoeic, as, for example, when linguistic sounds imitate nonlinguistic sounds, such as bird calls or songs. They may also imitate agentive beings’ manipulations of things and encounters with nonanimate substances, such as the sounds of objects as they make contact with other objects. Kalapalo ideophones may also be sound-symbolic of nonauditory events, such as liquid substances being

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hurled through the air, or of a perception of something being silently placed in a specific location. Basso states that onomatopoeic ideophones communicate some quality of the essence of inanimate objects and believes that speakers’ use of ideophones ‘‘is a way of making objects memorable even though they do not participate actively as agents in the story (1985:67).’’ I want to reinterpret her assessment of ideophones’ significance in a different way for Runa culture. For Runa, ideophony provides a voice for what may seem from our own perspective as relatively inert and manipulable substances, because in their view of the way the world works, everything has an essence of life: ideophones communicate the animate properties that are common to humans and nonhumans, such as movement, change over time, or any responsiveness or reaction to surroundings. Runa perceptions of such properties constitute one way of gaining detailed knowledge of their surroundings. An analogous claim about the significance of sound symbolism has been made by K. David Harrison (2004:206) for the nomadic herding Tuvan-speakers of South Siberia: ‘‘Subtle sounds made by water, snow, birds, marmots, crickets, and yaks are named, classified and interpreted by Tuvan herders to predict changes in weather.’’ Harrison also notes the importance of sound mimesis, more generally, for hunting calls and animal domestication songs that employ stylized sounds to bring about a desired mental state or behavior in an animal. Harrison’s findings are highly suggestive of links between the material and ecological world of Tuvan-speaking herders and the presence of ideophones in their language. Such links were suggested some time ago by Feld (1982), as well, between Kaluli ideophones and the rain forest ecosystem of Papua New Guinea. Runa use of ideophones reflects their extensive knowledge of their ecosystem. Moreover, their traditional subsistence practices, which are highly sustainable, deserve our attention at a time when concern over environmental degradation is at an all-time high. Luisa’s stories, as well as her cultural framework of assumptions, are relevant for us because they document and validate a way of life that has been meaningful and rewarding for her, and which we may need to learn from in the future. To help ensure the survival of these stories, I have made all of my complete texts available to the reader in the Archives of Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA), an electronic Web-based archive with worldwide access, based at the University of Texas, Austin (http://www.ailla .utexas.org/). I hope thereby to facilitate a climate of discussion, and mu-

Introduction

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tual sharing of research data and analyses. The preservation of Quichua linguistic data of all kinds will make people more aware of different varieties and genres of discourse. Once a piece of data enters the archives, it is legitimated by its very presence and becomes fair game for inclusion within policies and programs aimed at strengthening indigenous identity. If indigenous people are going to advocate effectively over such matters as land rights and language rights, their discursive forms must not be compromised. It is hoped that the archiving of Quichua oral forms will help to keep the richness of their speaking traditions in the forefront of people’s awareness and thereby help to keep their cultural traditions vibrant. This is critical at a time when many Ecuadorian Quichua people seem to be losing their habits of speaking Quichua (Haboud 2004).

Research Methods, Approach to Translation This book is based upon research in Ecuador during 1987–88, a brief trip in 1995, and summer research during 2006 and 2008. Data collection took place during all four periods. During the first period I took many notes while accompanying people who were going about their daily lives of work and relaxation. With their permission, I carried a tape recorder nearly everywhere so that I could collect as many samples of naturally occurring discourse in as many different contexts as possible. Although I tried to be helpful with chores like weeding and other agricultural tasks, I was rather useless in most practical respects. After a full year of collecting, recording, and observing, I began to conduct interview sessions with Luisa, whom I’d met while waiting all day for a flight out of Montalvo to the town of Shell. She was also on her way to Shell and passed the time telling stories and gossiping with others. At that time she was washing clothes to try to pay rent and buy food for herself and her two youngest children. She agreed to come to my house and work with me to try to help me make sense of all of my field notes. At that time I began a series of structured interviews. With a list of about two hundred verbs and about 50 of the most widely occurring ideophones, I asked her about the various collocational possibilities for ideophonic adverbs and verbs. Rather than simply answer my questions, many of which were based on impossible usages, she often felt compelled to tell narratives that a verb or ideophonic adverb seemed to catalyze. In the second set of interviews I just asked her to free-associate about a verb, saying ‘‘Now let’s talk about (the verb) ——————. How do you do

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it? When do you do it? Who do you do this with or to?’’ This generated many interesting stories, including the last two narratives of this book, about a jaguar attack and a land dispute. Stories gathered using this elicitation technique are all catalogued as Verb Portrait Stories in the notes. I also want to clarify how I have approached the translations of Luisa’s words. So much has been written about the problems that attend any translation that it is almost defeating to acknowledge all of them from the start, particularly when faced with the formidable precedents set by Friedrich, Hymes and Sherzer and Tedlock. The main problems that I have been concerned with revolve around the conflict between truth to some essential quality of the original utterance and readability and naturalness for the intended audience. Leavitt (2006:83), following Venuti (1995:19–20), and ultimately, Schliermacher (1813), has described these two strategies as domesticating and foreignizing, and he states that the domesticating strategy has been dominant in western literary traditions. I do not believe that a perfectly consistent position need be adopted. Sherzer (2004), for example, has veered toward ‘‘relatively literal,’’ or foreignizing translations of Kuna texts, which aim to capture essential poetic qualities of rhythm, sound, and grammar. The end result of his translations of myths, songs, and parables, however, is a highly engaging representation of his recorded material, which includes many ideophonic words representing sounds and movements. I use this approach, at times, in translating Luisa’s narratives. For some of Luisa’s stories, however, this approach is not optimally successful, because it may call so much attention to the distinctive grammar, especially the syntax, of Quechua, that the message content may fall through the cracks of a reader’s awareness. A number of Luisa’s stories are like snapshots of flashbulb memories. The term ‘‘flashbulb memory’’ was first coined by Brown and Kulik (1977) and has been refined by Neisser (1982). Flashbulb memories are those that seem extremely fixed and enduring because they juxtapose one’s experiences against momentous events, which, for Americans would be the assassination of President John F. Kennedy or the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. People who have lived through such events distinctly recall what they were doing as these events were unfolding. It sometimes seemed to me that much of Luisa’s life consisted of nothing but flashbulb memories, because she remembered so much of

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the minute details of her experiences. Her stories vividly recreate moments that are brought up over and over again by her and her family because they are so painful, wonderful, amusing, or poignant. At times, therefore, it seems appropriate to render the Quechua into a more readable English pattern, to convey an immediate-like apprehension of her meaning. Although none of my complete narrative translations are of myths, I make use of the analytic units used by many translators of Native American myths who follow either the Hymesian approach to units of text, based on particles and syntactic constituency, or the Tedlockian manner of attending to the auditorily evident pauses, silences, and intonational contours of the spoken word (Hymes 1981; Tedlock 1983.) As I personally recorded all of my texts, I feel a greater affinity for the pause phrasing approach pioneered by Tedlock. Yet I acknowledge the fact that these two approaches often yield quite similar units of analysis. Furthermore, having submitted some of my narratives to sound spectrographic analysis, I can attest that my subjective impressions of unit structures such as lines and verses were confirmed. What I had identified as pauses separating lines were evident, if quite brief, in the waveform versions. What I had identified as pauses separating verses were noticeably longer, and often marked as well by verbal particles at the beginnings of sentences and distinctive stress patterns on verbs that described the final event or action of a verse episode. In my translations, therefore, I use lines and verses consisting of groups of lines to chunk the narratives into sections. I numbered each verse and gave it a title, to lend greater coherence and readability to these texts. Each verse may be considered as a frame that coincides with a perspective on the narrative’s unfolding. The reader will occasionally notice a triple star (***) after a line, which indicates that there was an exchange between Luisa and myself that has not been included in the main body of the text. Some of these exchanges were quite brief, consisting only of a one-word question from me about who was doing what to whom. Sometimes, they involved a brief set of exchanges. In any case, the curious reader can consult the appendices after each chapter, which contain the full texts, including most of my starred queries as well as her responses in Quichua. Only a few questions by me were not transcribed in the appendix, because they digressed too much from the story’s theme. These can, however, be heard in the live data version of each story archived in AILLA.

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Plan of This Book Operating under the assumption that translation must come to grips with fundamental linguacultural issues, I have attempted, with this book, to devote each chapter to the linguistic and cultural analysis as well as the translation of a number of complete narratives and many narrative fragments. Central to chapter 1 is an exposition of ideophones. I discuss their typologically widespread features and also present short examples of ideophony used by Luisa that illustrate her remarkable capacity for experiencing what some would consider ordinary phenomena as vivid, aesthetic experiences. All of these examples also focus on the ways in which ideophony as a linguistic phenomenon is linked with an animistic conception of the world. The link between ideophony and animism is particularly salient in performative expressions that make use of intonational exuberance and shifts in reference to enact a sensory impression. In doing this Runa are able to express the reactivity of natural phenomena, which is a way of giving such phenomena a voice and a capacity for the expression of a perspective. Several short extracts from myths show how ideophones operate at critical narrative junctures. In such junctures, ideophones often serve as dialogical props, allowing nonhuman life-forms to speak with humans. At other key moments, ideophones serve to express a dramatic change in perspective, resulting from a mythic character’s new ontological status. When humans become nonhumans, their very first form of expression in their new incarnations is an ideophone, which expresses not only their new voice but often the name of that new voice. I conclude with speculations about ideophony’s neglect and marginality within anthropological linguistics. Chapter 2 tackles a major issue for a culturally sensitive translation of Quechua by examining a paradigm of suffixes that has often been misunderstood. I examine the contrast between the suffixes -mi and -shi, to show how their use underscores a perspectival principle in Quichua grammar. This perspectival principle is not, strictly speaking, encoding whether a phenomenon was witnessed or nonwitnessed, although these can be conventionally implied by the suffixes. Rather, the principle of perspective designates the voice that is making an assertion. This perspectivism is, I argue, fundamental to Runa-speaking culture and is used as an organizational principle for the full narrative that is translated here. This narrative presents a family tragedy, which, although it occurred when Luisa was a small girl, has been extremely vivid for her well

Introduction

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into her adulthood. This narrative illustrates my point that perspectivism is highly congenial with the ecological dialogism that is foundational for Runa understandings of nonhuman nature. Chapter 3 acknowledges the problem of translating the perspectives generated by seemingly contradictory complexes of affective mood that are generated by means of ideophony, dialogue, and perspective. I address this problem, first of all, by providing examples of ideophony featured in portrayals of the behavior of nonhuman role models. Luisa presents short depictions of the behaviors of tortoises, freshwater dolphins, and water turtles. What all of these depictions have in common is their relatively straightforward affective moods. I then present more complex examples in which the translation of mood is not at all simple, by sharing narrative extracts from Luisa’s experiences of discovering new correspondences between humans and nonhumans. She recounts two events in which she discovered new correspondences between people and pit vipers in one narrative extract, and between people and deer in another. Finally, she tells the story of her first childbirth experience which is interesting for the way in which she is encouraged to shift her perspective to cope with the pain by focusing upon a nonhuman role model. Chapter 4 expands upon the concept of perspective to show how multifaceted the perspectives on one nonhuman life-form, the anaconda, may be, and further, to reveal how anacondas are attributed with a number of perspectives of their own. The amarun, a term designating anacondas and boas, is viewed at one extreme as a predatory monster. What a number of Luisa’s experiences reveal, however, is that its behavior and habits are at times quite compatible with human social life. Luisa considers the amarun from a number of different perspectives that exhibit varying degrees of wildness and sociability. When translating a single text or extract, it is possible to miss these subtle nuances. I therefore present a set of narrative extracts and one full narrative. By juxtaposing these different ‘‘snapshots’’ of the amarun, I allow Luisa to present a wide range of her perspectives. Chapter 5 reveals how two of Luisa’s narratives emerged from my interview questions. This methodology generated many interesting accounts from Luisa and may be seen as one way of answering the challenge posed by Howard-Malverde (1997:9) to ‘‘look for new ways of producing cultural accounts—by elicitation, evocation, and dialogue— that stand to be less prepossessing than those produced by conventional

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textualising means.’’ These narratives are presented for the purpose of appreciating and admiring the knowledge, strength, and enduring connections among Luisa, her family, and the land they depend upon for their existence. The first narrative concerns a battle between her legendary grandmother Andrea and a jaguar that attacked her. The second narrative represents a battle between Luisa and a man, which took place many years ago in Montalvo, over land. She tells this story largely through representations of dialogues between herself, the man in question, her husband, and the officials who helped her prevail.

Recipient Design Finally, I want to clarify the diverse audience targeted by this work. Anthropologists of Latin America will find that ideophony ramifies deeply with the nature/culture problematic that is becoming an increasingly important leitmotif within cultural anthropological discourse (Descola and Palsson 1996; Kohn 2005, 2007). As I am a linguistic anthropologist grappling with Quechua linguistic poetics, I am also projecting my writing toward a more specific slice of readership that can appreciate the wide-ranging ramifications of Luisa’s narrative discourse, and the foundational importance of ideophony, dialogue, and perspective for Pastaza Quichua culture.∞≠ Quechua linguists will find the exposition of the deictic nature of evidentiality in chapter 2 to be of interest, as the Quechua evidential paradigm has been the subject of considerable debate. Those who are concerned with the unique challenges faced by women in Latin American societies will find these stories from a contemporary indigenous woman to be of interest for their ability to reveal a life that is informed by traditional beliefs and practices, yet adapting to modernity with great astuteness. Indigenous South American women’s lives have not received much scrutiny within studies of narrative and life history, although men’s lives and stories have been given ample attention. This is especially true for Ecuador (Hendricks 1993; Muratorio 1991; Rubenstein 2002) and Brazil (Basso 1985, 1995; Graham 1995; Oakdale 2005). The reasons for this neglect are related to women’s minimal roles in public speaking. In many of these societies men occupy social roles, such as that of shaman or political chief, that legitimate their ability to speak authoritatively in public contexts. I present the words of Luisa Cadena not simply because she is a woman, but because she is an articulate and singular individual who, due to complex personal

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circumstances, has had to do more and learn more than many others in her community. Although she is bilingual in Quichua and Spanish, she does not read or write. Her personal-experience narratives are akin to the testimonials of Gregorio Condori Mamani and Asunta Quispe Huamán translated by Gelles and Martínez Escobar (Condori Mamani 1996). Luisa’s personalexperience stories are different from myth, but they are not simply historical accounts of chronologically and objectively factual happenings. They are selective tellings that foreground her or her immediate family’s struggles and conflicts with life-cycle events, nonhuman life-forms, and novel experiences. Yet some of these stories have a very mythic feel to them. This is particularly true for the story in chapter 4 about adopting an anaconda, because her perspectives seem to dissolve the boundaries between humans and anacondas as distinct types of being, only to have those boundaries reconstituted at the end by tragic circumstances.∞∞ A novel approach to the concept of performance as originally outlined by Bauman (1977) and further elaborated by Bauman and Briggs (1990) will engage students of folklore. Just as Bauman defines performance by first of all stating what it is not,∞≤ I would like to contextualize my concern with ideophony, dialogue, and perspective by explaining how this study is unique among previous treatments of performative discourse. First of all, Luisa does not occupy any socially defined performance role, nor do Runa have any specialized orators, although they do have shamanic curing roles in which an extraordinarily beautiful form of singing called takina is performed. An additional qualification is that ideophony is not a typical example of performance, nor is it even a genre in the strict sense of the word (cf. Bauman 1999).∞≥ Ideophonic performances may occur within recognized, performed genres, but they also occur during instances of garden-variety discourse among Runa. Whether occurring within the framework of performed or nonperformed utterances, ideophonic performances are context-invocative∞∂ moments in which nonhuman life-forms are endowed with a perspective that is articulated through tempo, pitch, intonational contours, and pauses. Ideophonic performances are thereby commenting on language and social life, but not concerning the usual topics of human-centered power and authority, political economy, and public institutions (Bauman and Briggs 1990). Rather, ideophones are commenting on a reconfigured conception of what counts as communication and what counts as social life.

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Also relevant to performance studies is the prevalence of dialogue and quoted speech in Luisa’s narrative accounts. Quoted speech or reported speech is, like ideophony, not an actual genre but is often identified as a defining feature of performed narratives, particularly in Native South America (Beier, Michael, and Sherzer 2003). Dialogues and quoted speech may also be considered as perspective-enabling devices, because they enact people’s affective alignments with one another. Basso (1995:295) has observed that Kalapalo narrators use quoted speech ‘‘to realize ideas of the emotional quality of interpersonal contact, which has a deeper truth for them than whether they are literally replicating speech.’’ This is true for Luisa’s narratives as well. And I would add that her concern for representing dialogue is also grounded in a deeply aesthetic appreciation. Luisa would have no problem with Bakhtin’s criticism of a ‘‘narrow poetics’’ that considers the practical speech of everyday life to be ‘‘artistically neutral’’ (1981a:260). Even though they occur in a radically different context than the novelistic discourse scrutinized by Bakhtin (1981a), quoted speech and dialogue in her narrative tellings reflect a dialogical aesthetic that enables her to inhabit a range of subjectivities broadly conceived. Her stories bring together a dynamic intermingling of voices that would not even be considered voices by Bakhtin. In his formulation it is ‘‘the speaking person and his discourse’’ (1981a:332) that is fundamental: . . . in the conversational hurly-burly of people in a crowd, everything often fuses into one big ‘‘he says . . . you say . . . I say . . .’’ (1981a:338). Luisa’s dialogues break through different kinds of boundaries than those that preoccupied Bakhtin. In her narratives, the concept of dialogism may be redefined as the meaningful engagements between a variety of life-forms, human and nonhuman.∞∑

i1i

On Riveting Objectivity

He [the historian] must ever remember that while the worst offence of which he can be guilty is to write vividly and inaccurately, yet that unless he writes vividly he cannot write truthfully; for no amount of dull, painstaking detail will sum up as the whole truth unless genius is there to paint the truth. —Theodore Roosevelt, ‘‘History as Literature’’

Introduction to Ideophones There was a look of amusement and embarrassment on the face of Alfredo,∞ the man who was helping me teach Quichua in the spring of 1993 at Indiana University. His suppressed laughter finally erupted as he confessed to my students and me that the utterance I had asked him to say was too much like ‘‘a woman’s way (of speaking),’’ and he couldn’t bring himself to repeat it.≤ We had just begun a lesson on ideophones, and the chapter I had written for this lesson contained many examples of ideophones I had heard from Luisa and many other people just a few years earlier. I’d never had this kind of response from him about any examples from previous chapters. Given the genuineness of his reaction, I realized that I’d just stumbled onto something significant. I was particularly excited to hear one of the first examples of metalinguistic commentary on ideophones from a speaker of Quichua.≥ Ideophones are a class of expressions found in most language families throughout the world.∂ They communicate by imitating a variety of subjective impressions spanning a range of sensory domains. Ideophones are typologically widespread in the world’s languages. Yet, anthropological linguistic acknowledgment of ideophony’s significance has been rather scarce. Notable exceptions are: Basso 1985, 1995; Feld 1982; Harrison 2004; Kohn 2005, 2007; Noss 2001; Sherzer 2004; and Webster 2006. Research on ideophones has traditionally been associated

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with African linguistics, from which the term originates. Doke (1935: 118) first defined the ideophone as follows: ‘‘a vivid representation of an idea in sound. A word, often onomatopoeic, which describes a predicate, qualificative or adverb in respect to manner, colour, smell, action, state, or intensity.’’ Although English is ideophonically impoverished (Nuckolls 2004b), examples of the ideophonic impulse may be observed in vivid descriptions by creative people such as cartoonists, architects, and others who invent unique combinations of sounds to describe unusual events and processes. As a lexical class, ideophones have been characterized by their expressivity, which is often attributed to sound symbolism (Nuckolls 1999). Although ideophones are functionally restricted in mainstream middle-class American culture, they are a significant form of expression, constituting a culturally sensitive performance style, in a number of linguistic traditions. Ideophonic performances are, however, distinct from what is typically understood as performance (cf. Bauman 1977; Bauman and Briggs 1990). They exist as fleeting moments of performance within discourse that may itself be minimally or maximally performative.∑ Kunene, writing about Southern Sotho, a Bantu language, says the following about ideophones’ performativity: The ideophone stands aloof from the connecting tissues, the sinews, and ligaments that flesh out the basic components of speech into a morphological, grammatical, and syntactic system. By thus isolating itself, it, so to speak, climbs the stage to become an act, thus removing itself from the ordinary run-of-the-mill narrative surrounding it. By its very nature, it imposes on the subject the function of an actor or performer whose surrogate is the narrator. The closest analogy is that of an oral narrative performer who from time to time ‘‘becomes’’ the characters he/she is narrating about and acts out their parts (2001:190). Kunene’s allusive, metaphorical description of ideophonic performance gives us a rare portrait of ideophony from a man who, as a linguist, an actor, and a native user, can comment from multiple vantage points. For the purposes of my overall argument about the perspectival significance of ideophony, his comments are particularly helpful. He states, in essence, that an ideophonic performer is like other performers who displace their subjectivity onto characters they are narrating about, thereby becoming those characters. It is the way in which ideophones

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make use of perspectival shift or, to adopt Goffman’s (1974) term, frame change that make them a bit incongruent for models of the way discourse is supposed to work. In models of conversation developed by Gumperz (1982) and clarified by Levinson (2002), contextualization cues are a prominent set of tools for crafting understanding. They are a natural class and are defined in part by their association with backgrounded components of discourse such as prosody, paralanguage, and nonpropositional content. For his notions of background and foreground, Levinson cites Bateson’s work on communicative channels, and the work of Silverstein (1981). It is their background status along with their loose association with formal features that enables contextualization cues to project frameworks for understanding between interlocutors. People engaged in conversation understand each other’s words by making sense of a combination of foregrounded, lexico-syntactic, propositional content, all of which is contextualized or nudged along in ways that are not yet well understood, by sets of cues, often prosodic, but also evident in certain linguistic forms as well as paralinguistic signals. With respect to their ideophonic performances, however, Quichua speakers depart from this model, because they reconfigure what are conventionally understood as background components into the foreground. Ideophonic performances bring prosodic and gestural features right into the foreground. When fully under way, an ideophonic performance involves intonational dynamism as well as iconic and indexical gestures, which are not at all out of interlocutors’ awareness, but directly in the spotlight of their awareness. Further, through their intonational dynamism and gestural modeling, ideophonic performances simulate rather than refer to sensations and perceptions. Insofar as they do this, ideophonic performances baldly call attention to a change in perspective. The speaking self of the speech event communicates by imitating and thereby becoming the force that creates a movement, sound, or rhythm. I have argued that ideophones constitute an involved style of speaking, but the involvement so described was between interlocutors (Nuckolls 1996). I have refined this idea further and consider the involved style of ideophonic expression in Quichua to be one way of invoking an alignment not only between discourse participants but between people and nonhuman nature as well (2004a, 2004b). Ideophones are contextinvocative and frame-changing devices that call attention to a momentary shift, usually from a human to a nonhuman perspective.

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Four Types of Ideophony This chapter attempts to account for Alfredo’s discomfort by analyzing ideophones as a type of cultural discourse that poses special challenges for the translator because of shifts in perspective. I explore this problem by presenting four types of ideophony used by Luisa. These four categories involve high-animacy ideophones, low-animacy ideophones, transanimate ideophones, and grammatical ideophony. Each section discusses the sound symbolism of ideophony and its links with various types of animacy and grammar. This is significant for theoretical understandings of sound symbolism, because thus far, the most acknowledged type of sound symbolism has been magnitude sound symbolism, and one of the most influential explanations for it has been the hypothesis of the frequency code proposed by Ohala (1994), who accounts for the magnitude symbolism of vowels, consonants, tones, and intonation. Ohala’s theory synthesizes data from many different languages, as well as from different mammalian species, to argue that high fundamental frequency is sound-symbolic of smallness, a nonthreatening attitude, and desire for the goodwill of the receiver, and low fundamental frequency is sound-symbolic of largeness, threat, self-confidence, and selfsufficiency (1994:343). Ohala hypothesizes that magnitude sound symbolism develops because of physiological changes at sexual maturation, which evolved as an adaptation for males to compete against one another for the favor of females. Whether or not one accepts the details of this explanation, magnitude sound symbolism has been so widely documented that it has achieved the status of a universal and is often mentioned in introductory linguistic textbooks as an exception to the principle of the arbitrariness of the sign. Yet other forms of sound symbolism certainly exist, although they are less widely acknowledged. The sound symbolism of motion is one subcategory that is frequently reported in linguistic descriptions of ideophones. Hinton, Nichols, and Ohala (1994) consider movement imitatives as a special subcategory of imitative sound symbolism within their broader typology. Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2006) has found that movement imitatives are an extremely large and productive class of ideophones in Basque. In Pastaza Quichua, ideophones communicate movement and motion while also indicating abruptness and termination, all of which is associated as well with ideas of volition and control (Nuckolls 2009). I therefore use the notion of animacy to refer to the way in which these concepts are interrelated in Pastaza Quichua ideophony. The term

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animacy refers here to a gradient scale of qualities. Ideophones exhibit high animacy when they imitate volitional controlled movements such as those made by humans and many nonhumans as well. Less animate forms of life, such as trees and other types of flora, exhibit qualities of aliveness involving movements that are more difficult to observe and relatively constrained by their natural surroundings. Less animate forms of life also manifest changes over time such as growth or efflorescence and responsiveness to their surroundings. For these reasons, a scale of animacy is necessary. While my scale of animacy makes no distinctions that would privilege human over nonhuman agents, it does recognize that humans and animals have more freedom of movement than arboreal forms of life. This concept of animacy has some correspondence with linguists’ conceptions of animacy but is motivated by very different explanatory goals. For linguists, animacy is a hierarchically based conceptual distinction that informs a variety of grammatical phenomena, including case markings, verbal agreement, and semantic roles, through a universal oppositional scale involving animate humans at one end and inanimate things at the other.∏ My own conception of animacy is intended to link the sound symbolism of ideophones with animacy as a cosmological construct. Animacy is sound—symbolically expressed through linguistic features of syllabic structure that are performatively embellished through intonation. The most salient aspects of syllable structure are the number of syllables and whether the final syllable is open—that is, ending in a vowel—or closed —that is, ending in a consonant. Syllable structure together with performative foregrounding by means of repetition, lengthening, and high rising terminal pitch are all exploited for the expression of ongoingness, repetition, resonance and reverberation, movement through pliable substances, various types of deformative actions and events, instantaneousness, duration, and termination. In the act of constructing such processes with ideophonic sounds, Runa are at the same time aligning themselves with them, momentarily becoming those sounds through their performances of them. It is this aligning-with-by-becoming-the-same-as that carves out a shift in perspective. Ideophones for High-Animacy Beings The first category of ideophony is roughly analogous to what Englishspeakers engaging in motherese do when imitating or identifying a highanimacy being, such as a cow, with a representation of a prototypical

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sound that it is understood to emit, such as ‘‘moo moo.’’ A written analogue of this first type can be found in abundance within books for preliterate children. I will explain what I believe our own cultural reasons for engaging in this type of ideophony are, in the final section of this chapter. For now I wish to present only a couple out of many examples from Luisa’s own experiences that feature her imitations of highanimacy beings. In previous work (Nuckolls 2004a:70–71), I focused on ideophonic representations of birds’ songs as a type of performance that Luisa engaged in for the purpose of aligning with the birds as social beings. I now discuss the linguistic features that help Luisa and others express the animacy of their world. Ideophones for the sounds or actions of high-animacy beings and happenings have a structure of at least two syllables that may then undergo reduplication or multiple repetition to communicate ideas of repeated actions or happenings. In addition to representing more animate beings, disyllabic ideophones are part of relatively complex representations of events. Complex events are those that involve more than one entity or being, one of which may be higher in animacy than another, and also events that are realized by some kind of duration in time, for example, a falling motion. A falling motion has more duration and therefore more complexity than a momentary tapping or a momentary grabbing hold of something, both of which take place instantaneously. The following description illustrates a complex happening involving high-animacy beings. It occurred at night when Luisa was fishing with her husband. They had just managed to spear a large turtle and her husband had gone to get help while Luisa stayed behind to make sure the turtle didn’t get away. While her husband was gone, she heard the sounds of multiple entities falling into the water not far from her. She describes this perception with the ideophone tsupu. Although she is frightened initially, she soon realizes that it’s a group of lomochas or pacas, which are Amazonian rodents: 1. Chiga kucha sapimanda uyakpi tsphuuuuuuu tsupu tsupu tsupu tsupu tsupu tsupu tsupu tsupu tsupu tsupuuuu tsupuuuu tsupuuuu tsupuuuu uyarimura. ‘‘And so from that end of the lake they were heard going tsphuuuuuuu tsupu tsupu tsupu tsupu tsupu tsupu tsupu tsupu tsupu tsupuuuu tsupuuuu tsupuuuu tsupuuuu.’’

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I analyze the disyllabic structure of the ideophone tsupu as a diagram of, first of all, the pre-fall state indicated by the first syllable tsu-, and then the moment of the fall, indicated by the second syllable -pu. This second syllable is often expressively aspirated to give an idea of the force of the fall, which is linked with an impression of the size of what falls. This second syllable is also frequently drawn out. Such expressive lengthening communicates the extended trajectory of whatever travels underwater. Besides expressive lengthening, there are other performative features that ‘‘color in’’ the scene. After the initial tsupu is uttered, the subsequent tokens of it are repeated to communicate multiplicity, and their repetition is quite fast, which communicates the rapidity of the animals’ falling. Ideophones as Dialogical Props: The Bulyukuku Hawk. Another type of high-animacy ideophony occurs in Quechua mythic texts, when extended dialogues between humans and nonhumans may take place. When mythic nonhumans communicate with mythic humans, they may do so by means of ideophones, which are then translated or paraphrased with human words. An instance of this type of exchange takes place in a story about the bulyukuku hawk. This hawk communicates with two orphans who are being cruelly starved by their caregivers. The caregivers suffer dire consequences as a result and experience an identity crisis and subsequent transformation into freshwater dolphins. In the following excerpt, the bulyukuku hawk instructs the children, telling them that he will ask them if the stingy people have fallen asleep by calling out his special ideophone. He then tells them to respond in words that inform him that they are either not yet asleep or are finally asleep. The children are told to respond, however, in a way that mimics the intonational contour and reduplication of the bird’s call. We have a situation, then, in which the ideophone mediates communication between the human and the nonhuman. It stands as a prop for a covert linguistic utterance, thereby humanizing the bird’s call. Her representations of the birds’ cries may be considered an example of what Bakhtin would call a stylization, since it contains two consciousnesses, the consciousness of Luisa, who represents ‘‘an artistic image of another’s language’’ (Bakhtin 1981a:362), and the consciousness of the birds whose calls are represented.π The ideophone’s reduplicated structure and intonational contour are then used as a kind of performative template to naturalize the children’s

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linguistic utterance, which is repeated, just as the ideophone was, and uttered in the same intonational contour as the ideophone. In this way, the children’s human language is made more birdlike and intelligible for the bulyukuku. The best way to appreciate the intonation of the bird’s call and its mimicry by the children, however, is to actually listen to the following exchange featuring the bird’s instructions to the children: 2. Bulyukuku dialogue 1. ‘‘I’m going to come to you both at night,’’ he said. 2. ‘‘I’ll ask, ‘Are they asleep? Are they asleep?’ 3. by saying ‘bulyukuku-kuu-kuu-kuu-kuu,’ ’’ he said. 4. ‘‘After I’ve said that you might say: 5. ‘They’re not asleep they’re not asleep they’re not asleep,’ ’’ he said. 6. ‘‘OK,’’ they said. 7. ‘‘A bit later you’ll be asked again,’’ he said. 8. ‘‘When I again say ‘bulyukuku-kuu-kuu-kuu-kuu’ 9. You might call to me, saying: ‘they’re still awake they’re still awake,’ ’’ he said. 10. ‘‘OK,’’ they said. 11. ‘‘And again I’ll call out ‘bulyukuku-kuu-kuu-kuu-kuu.’ ’’ 12. ‘‘If they’re then sleeping,’’ he said, ‘‘tell me, saying: ‘Now they’re asleep now they’re asleep.’ ’’ 13. ‘‘OK,’’ they said. When the stingy ones have fallen asleep, the bulyukuku swoops down and is said to drink their eyeballs. Upon waking up and realizing what has happened, they experience a crisis of identity. They can no longer live as humans, and so they then ponder a variety of options, all of which involve a radical transformation from their human selves. They finally decide to become freshwater dolphins, called bugyu. This transformative moment involves another subcategory of high-animacy ideophony. Ideophones Indicating a New Perspective: The Freshwater Dolphin. In Quechua mythology transformative moments from nonhuman to human are often foregrounded by means of ideophony. Ideophones occurring during such transformative moments may function as lexical emblems or sononyms for the new life-form’s name.∫ When this happens the

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ideophonic sound occurring at the transformation will provide linguistic material for the life-form’s new name. By uttering such a sound at the definitive moment when it changes, the new life-form is indicating the changed perspective by which it exists in the world. Let us return to the next episode in the bulyukuku narrative. Once the stingy ones decide to become freshwater dolphins, called bugyu, they immediately begin jumping into the river. The moment of transformation is described below. The first stingy ones who jump into the water are heard bursting out by the more timid ones who, encouraged by the sounds, jump in after them. The sound and force of their bursting out of the water is described with the ideophone bhu which is expressively drawn out to imitate the duration of the bursting. This ideophone becomes part of the new lifeforms’s name: bugyu. The arc that their bodies trace as they move through the air is described with the ideophone kar. The sound of their falling into the water is described with the ideophone tupu (a variant of tsupu in example 1). 3. Freshwater dolphin transformation 1. So then they stood there, just listening with only their ears. 2. And then just a little bit later there was a bhuuuu karrrrrrr 3. And then another: bhuuuuuuu karrrrrrr went and emerged. 4. ‘‘There! They’ve become bugyu! They are breathing like them,’’ the others say. 5. Another jumps in tuphuuu, and another tuphuuu, and another h tup uuu 6. Here bhuuuu, there bhuuuu, here bhuuuu, there bhuuuu bhuuu h b uuu 7. All of the Runa became bugyu. Ideophones for Low-Animacy Beings The next major category of ideophony is roughly comparable to action figure ideophony in English-language comics, and in some children’s literature. In English, action figure ideophony often features sound effects or movements made by low-animacy entities, including guns (bang), mechanical objects (click), or explosive devices (boom). Typically, low-animacy entities are being manipulated by high-animacy beings in such representations. Among speakers of Standard Average European languages, action figure ideophony is the most likely candidate for

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making it into the occasional usage of adults speaking with other adults, and usually has whimsical connotations. Among Runa this second category of ideophony is motivated by a desire to express the energies and reactivities of the less animate nonhuman world. Low-animacy ideophones are usually monosyllabic in structure and are descriptive of the ways that plants and plantlike substances, as well as very small forms of life such as insects, react to being manipulated by more animate beings. The ideophone tau occurs below in an example describing the sound made by a large tree trunk that is being worked on with a metal tool used by Luisa’s uncle, who is carving the tree into a canoe: 4. Pai tau tau tau tau tau tau tau tau asiolyang alyaukpi, aswata upik shamui nikpi . . . ‘‘As he was digging tau tau tau tau tau tau tau tau with his planing tool, I said, ‘Come and drink some aswa . . .’ ’’ We have here a complex event in the sense that a highly animate being in the form of a person is acting upon a less animate entity, namely, a tree trunk. Nevertheless, the description focuses on the less animate entity’s reaction to being acted upon. The ideophone tau describes each micromoment of the tree trunk’s hollow, resonant reaction to being struck by the man’s carving tool. A similar ideophone, kau, describes the sound made when stepping down on dried-up leaves while walking through the forest. In the following description, from a narrative in chapter 3, Luisa uses both kau and another ideophone, taras, to describe the same happening: a walk through the forest when it’s very quiet, allowing the sounds of dried-up vegetation to be heard easily: 5. Manachu chunlya akpi taras taras kau kau purishkas, karota uyarik an sachaiga? You know how when it’s quiet you can hear someone walking, going taras taras kau kau, from far away in the forest? In this depiction, we have two perspectives represented. The disyllabic ideophone taras represents the animate being walking through the forest. The initial syllable, ta-, imitates the act of moving one’s step down toward the ground, while the second syllable, -ras, imitates the rustlinglike sound of stepping down. The ideophone kau, on the other hand, rep-

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resents the hollow-like sonic reaction of the vegetation to being stepped upon. The juxtaposition of two ideophones to describe one happening allows Luisa to focus on this event from two different perspectives: that of the more animate being that is walking through the forest as well as that of the less animate vegetation that is responding to the presence of the more animate being. Both tau and kau communicate something about the dried-up, and no longer growing, stage of the life-form represented: tau of the tree trunk, and kau of the dried-up vegetation. Another ideophone, shau, also fits this pattern. It describes the ease with which dried bark peels away from a surface, or the way that latex that has been spread on a surface and dried may be pulled away as a whole sheet. Within the category of low-animacy ideophones, there are finer distinctions as well. Monosyllabic ideophones ending in a consonant may, by the nature of that final consonant, express grammatical aspect distinctions such as ongoingness or completiveness. Consider the ideophone tus, which describes the bursting of any small, fleshy type of thing, such as a berry (but also head lice), by a high-animacy being. The final consonant of tus is a fricative -s, which is a continuous sound and is expressive of the durative dimension of the burst. It is appropriate to have a continuous sound at the end of this word, for whatever explodes has to continue moving, because it has been displaced from a center. Another ideophone that structurally resembles tus is tsuk. Like tus it is monosyllabic and consonant-final. Tsuk is used to communicate an idea of the sound or sensation of something that has been definitively severed from its source, such as a tuberous vegetable broken off from its base or the heart removed from a palm tree. Typically, it describes what we would call in English a plucking motion, but it focuses on the resultative micromoment of the pluck. By its structure, the ideophone tsuk communicates that what has just happened has happened in a decisive and final way, in other words, a clean break. This is imitatively communicated by the final stop consonant, which, for a moment, completely stops the airflow. Transanimate Ideophones Some ideophones are used for both high- and low-animacy beings. If we consider the semantics of falling in Quichua, we find a number of ideophones that describe falling done by both low- and high-animacy beings. The essential meaning of the ideophone palay is that a collection of

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things falls in a pelting manner: raindrops, for example. But it also applies to the pellets defecated by sloths perched in trees, as well as to tears that emerge profusely or even heavy bleeding. Animals can throw seeds down in a pelting palay-like manner as well. Since falling is a somewhat complex happening, involving movement from one space through another, the disyllabic structure of palay is a fitting diagram of that meaning. Another disyllabic ideophone, patang, describes the moment when something that is typically high in animacy falls to the ground without losing its structural integrity. Ideally, when something falls to the ground patang, it does so without having the main qualities of its shape reconfigured or altered by the fall. If a large snake flings its tail out to catch something but misses its target, the snake’s tail would be described as falling to the ground patang. A person falling to the ground in a faint would fall patang. A bird shot and killed would fall out of a tree patang to the ground. Trees, which are less animate than all of the above, also fall to the ground patang. And there is a myth that describes ears of corn growing on their stalks so profusely that they also fall to the ground patang. The Transanimacy of Dzir: When Tree Sap Speaks. The ideophone dzir describes many kinds of frictional movements, such as scraping, rubbing, or sliding, which can be enacted by people, animals, fish, plants, even the earth itself, which is said to shake with friction, going dzir dzir dzir, during an earthquake. Although dzir is only one syllable, it is often reduplicated as dziri, which can undergo expressive lengthening and even multiple repetitions to describe a durative frictional movement. Long trailing complexes of vines are said to grow along the ground in a dzir-like way. Dzir is also part of an exchange between a human and nonhuman in a myth called the Tihiras anga or Scissor-Tailed Hawk Story. In this story the frictional movement of dzir indicates both a communicative exchange as well as a critical transformation that has just taken place from a human to a nonhuman form of life. There is a climactic moment in the story in which two sisters fail to follow two brothers’ instructions. The brothers instruct the sisters to bathe their mother in warm, not hot, water. The sisters do exactly what they are told not to do, however, and they end up melting their would-be mother-in-law down into the tree sap known as shilykilyu, which is used for glazing clay drinking bowls. This transformative moment features

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the ideophone tsiri, a variant of dzir, in the following sequence of events. When the two sisters realize what they have done, they scrape most of the sap off of the stool where the woman had been sitting, gather it into a ball, and throw it into the river. The brothers then arrive looking for their mother, and the sisters deny knowing anything about her. The brothers, however, are not fooled by the sisters’ attempted deception. They call out for their mother, whose little bits still remain on the stool where she was sitting at the moment she was transformed. These bits manage to utter the ideophone tsiririri in a tiny, high-pitched voice. 6. ‘‘What about our mother?’’ 1. ‘‘And what about our mother?’’ they said. 2. ‘‘Hm hm? she wasn’t here when we arrived,’’ they replied. 3. ‘‘You’re just saying that.’’ 4. ‘‘You bathed our mother with water that was too hot!’’ 5. ‘‘Mama! Mama!’’ they called. 6. Then from that stool where she had sat, she said ‘‘tsiriririri.’’ 7. Just this little bit of her remained, just a weak little bit was left. Even though the mother has been transformed into a seemingly inert substance, she is still capable of expressing an existential perspective, responding, however minimally, to the calls from her sons. The ideophone tsiri by which the mother indicates this perspective is particularly appropriate for her new form of existence, because now that she is shilykilyu, she will be used to glaze pottery. Glazing pottery with shilykilyu is done by sliding a chunk of it over a freshly fired and still quite hot pot. Like butter on a hot surface, it slides and melts itself all over the clay, thereby sealing its porous surfaces and giving the pot a shiny glazed appearance. When the mother, transformed into tree sap, utters tsiririri, she is articulating what from a human perspective will be her new, most characteristic behavior and form of being, that of frictional, sliding movement. Arboreal Emotivity: When a Tree Cries Gyaung. I have argued that there are no specifically arboreal ideophones, and that syllabic structure provides a scaffold for expressing a range of highly animate happenings or simpler and less animate events. I turn now to some evidence from everyday life for the expressivity of arboreal life. Arboreal forms of life do not simply react to being manipulated. While interviewing Luisa

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about the verb kuchuna, ‘to chop’, in 1988, she shared the following interesting description of the dramatic impression made by a tree that finally yields to falling after being chopped at: 7. Gyauuuuuuuunng blhuuuuuu puthunnng urmagrin. (Creaking) gyauuuuuuuunng and (falling) blhuuuuuu it goes and hits the ground puthunnng. We have here three ideophones, each describing a facet of the tree’s falling: its creaking sound, its falling movement, and its impact with the ground. The performative extension of vocalic sounds in gyaung imitates the prolongation of the tree’s creaking sound. The aspiration in blhu imitates an idea of the sudden rupture of the tree from its position in the ground. At the same time, the lack of consonantal obstruction in this ideophone’s word final position simulates the unrestricted falling of the tree trunk toward the ground. Finally, the velar nasal -ng in the second syllable of puthung, a variant of patang, imitates an idea of resonant, reverberative impact with the ground. I revisit this description from so long ago because when I reelicited this example from Luisa in the summer of 2008 during a discussion at the Andes and Amazon Field School in Napo, Ecuador, she interjected the comment that the sound gyaung was a type of crying on the part of the tree, which was said to be indicative of the future success of the agricultural field, on whose behalf the tree was felled. Ideophones That Do Grammatical Work Linguists have often expressed frustration over the difficulty of analyzing ideophones, due to their anomalous phonotactics, morphology, and syntax. The distinctions separating ideophones from comparable word classes include phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic criteria. There have been reports of phonological features unique to ideophones, including nasalization, devoicing, and syllabic trills (Samarin 1971:136). Also quite common are reports of sound combinations unique to ideophones or in violation of existing constraints, such as the palatalization of consonants in Japanese (Hamano 1994: 154.) Ideophones are morphologically special by their reduplication, that is, the complete repetition of a root, which communicates ideas of repeatedness over time and extension in space. Syntactically, ideophones

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are typically nonintegrated with respect to other sentential constituents. Noss (1975) cites examples from Gbaya, Sango, and Zande in which ideophones have an appositional function, supplementing what the predicate states. Ideophones may function as complete predicates, without verbal inflections such as person or number markers, and occur in ‘‘verbless contexts’’ (Alpher 2001:168). Perceptions of ideophones’ lack of syntactic integration can also be related to pragmatic factors. They can be set apart by pauses (Childs 1994), expressive intonation (Childs 1994; Newman 1968), and prosodic peaks (Alpher 2001; Kita 1997.) Despite their many anomalies, ideophones do exhibit patterned and rule-governed behavior, a fact that has been foregrounded by Newman (1968), who points to the integration of Hausa ideophones within the structure of augmentative adjectives. In the Pastaza dialect of Quechua, ideophones assist in the expression of a grammatical distinction called aspect. Aspect encodes temporal concepts such as momentaneousness, completiveness (also called perfectivity), and durativity (also referred to as continuous or progressive aspects). Ideophones assist in the expression of aspect because they encode ideas of perceptually salient experiences, such as the unfolding of sound, a path of movement through space, or the ongoing reverberation of a forceful impact. All of these perceptions arising from embodied experiences are, when performatively simulated, at the same time specifying the ongoingness or completiveness of whatever is enacted and are therefore deeply entangled within notional aspect as well as grammatical aspect. In the Pastaza dialect of Quechua, many combinations of ideophones and verbs function in ways that are analogous to phrasal verbs in English such as ‘eat up’, ‘walk in’, or ‘sit down’. In such collocations the ideophone functions to specify the aspectual completiveness of a verb, which would otherwise be understood as ongoing. In example 8 Luisa describes the way she fed a baby bird, by making little balls of masticated food that she would then insert into its beak. She describes the act of opening the bird’s beak, using the verb paskana ‘to open’ along with the ideophone ang, which is used exclusively for widely opened mouths. The ideophone ang functions like the particle ‘up’ in ‘open up’, to specify the complete extent of the act of opening. 8. Bulyuslya rasha ang paskasha ukwi ukwi ukwi satig arani. ‘‘Making little balls, and opening its mouth (up) ang, I would put them in, put them in.’’

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At the same time that an ideophone may be articulating grammatical information about the aspect of a verb, it may also be encoding semantic information inherent to a verb’s meaning, rather than simply modifying the action of that verb. It may, in other words, be possible to translate the ideophone and the verb as a semantically unitary entity, represented by a single English verb. The frictional movement ideophone dzir, for example, combines with several different verbs, yielding meanings that are lexicalized within one verb (Nuckolls 2001). I have represented some of these combinations in a simplified equational form below: 9. aisana ‘to pull’ + dzir (friction) = ‘to drag’ pitina ‘to cut’ + dzir (friction) = ‘to saw’ urmana ‘to fall’ + dzir (friction) = ‘to dribble, slide down’ When ideophones occur in such combinations, they are comparable to the open class of noninflecting lexical items that occur in compound verbs reported in some Australian languages (McGregor 2001; SchultzeBerndt 2001). When ideophones do grammatical work, encoding aspect distinctions such as instantaneousness, completiveness, and ongoingness, they communicate both expressively and precisely the riveting, vivid truths of everyday experiences.

Ideophones as Cultural Discourse I return now to the opening vignette, where Alfredo’s discomfort with ideophony was described. Ideophones are not, strictly speaking, used only by women. Men from Luisa’s village of Puka Yaku used them with unrestricted abandon. Alfredo’s assessment of ideophones as a woman’s style of speaking is best understood in light of the gendered nature of political participation. Political activity within a national context demands cognitive reframings that inhibit ideophone use. When ideophones are used by Runa who are comfortable uttering them, as they are by many women and men, they have a lyrical quality that captures the aesthetic appreciation and enjoyment of a perception, rather than an objectively detached version of a perception. I never observed ideophony in contexts involving verbal confrontations or arguments. It seemed, rather, that when Runa related ideophonically performed perceptions among themselves, they were in contexts where people’s attitudes were convivial and amiable (cf. Overing and Passes 2000; Uzendoski 2005).

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Because Runa men totally dominated national-level political processes when Alfredo made his comment, it made sense for him to think about women’s and men’s ways of speaking as distinctive. Participation in Ecuador’s cash economy may also have an effect on ideophony. If everything is translatable into an abstract monetary value, then the act of aligning oneself and connecting oneself with the world becomes irrelevant. Life in an urban context implies that all of the foregoing factors will take on more and more significance. If, as some have claimed, Ecuador is a country that has forgotten its agrarian roots and has essentially pauperized any group with close ties to the land, then the diminution of ideophones among people who are increasingly involved with political activism, educational policymaking and market economy activities makes a great deal of sense. Their new experiences with Spanish and, increasingly, English as well, are requiring Runa to redefine nature and to reframe their alignments. These observations accord with what has been described by numerous linguists working on languages in Africa. The factors most commonly cited for the diminution or disappearance of ideophones may all be connected with language shift as well: urbanization (Amha 2001; Childs 1994, 2001; Kabuta 2001), westernization (Mphande 1992; Watson 2001), and literacy (Kunene 2001). What is desperately needed is more work along the lines of Childs (1996), who conducted a sociolinguistic survey on attitudes toward ideophone use among Zulu speakers of South Africa. Childs discovered that urban-dwelling Zulu speakers wishing to convey an image of masculinity and toughness used a slang version of Zulu called Isicamtho, which was purged of any ideophones. He concludes that the diminution of ideophones among young Zulu speakers indicates a strong desire to shed their traditional identity. His study also alludes to the disturbing possibility that the disappearance of ideophones may point to the loss of a language’s vitality and ultimately to its demise.Ω Material conditions such as urbanism, literacy, and market economy activities do not by themselves explain these trends, however. The work of Webster (2006) on ideophony in Navajo reveals that it can survive and even flourish in new genres, such as poetry. Moreover, ideophony is quite robust in Japan, which is one of the most urban, literate societies in the world. Gomi Tarô (1989) has stated that ideophony is at least as significant for Japanese culture as are more widely recognized art forms such as kabuki and bunraku.

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We are dealing with a set of puzzling and contradictory observations. We don’t have a theory that explains how ideophones arise or decline (Vajda 2003). Ideophony seems to be stigmatized by many people who are experiencing some form of social and linguistic transition, but we don’t really understand why. The linguist Azeb Amha stated in a note that she was grateful to her mother for enlarging her list of Wolaitta ideophones considerably,∞≠ but only after ‘‘an initial protest against discussing them in public’’ (2001:61). Watson (2001:401) cites several sources that attest to the stigmatization of ideophones in African linguistic traditions, and which lay the blame upon western influences. According to Watson, African folk narratives translated under the influence of missionary-trained scholars are notably lacking in ideophones. Basque linguist Iraide Ibarretxe Antuñano has stated that although the Basque language is rich in ideophones, they are not widely used by young urbanites, are difficult to find information about in many linguistic descriptions, and are not integrated into the curricular programs for students learning Basque as a second language. This is true despite the fact that many Basque ideophones encode information about manner of motion and therefore add important information to a verbal predicate.∞∞ All of these observations point to the likelihood of ideophones disappearing among people who are undergoing language shift in nations where some form of western European language and culture has been dominant. I conclude, then, with speculation about ideophones’ significance for linguistic anthropologists. Ideophones are of marginal importance to the science of linguistics, and their cultural poetics has been mostly neglected by linguistic anthropologists. This neglect can be attributed in part to the restricted functions of ideophony in the spoken discourse norms of English and other European languages, as well as our own dominant ideologies about language use, which conceive of gesture and intonation as part of the contextualization cues that are backgrounded within a communicative event. When Luisa and members of her community engage in an ideophonic performance, they foreground their immersion in the process, event, or action they are imitating with sound. Kilian-Hatz (2001:155) states that ideophones collapse the difference between the ‘‘extra-linguistic event level and the speech level,’’ and adopts Von Roncador’s term Referenz-verschiebung, or ‘‘shift of reference,’’ to describe this phenomenon. The energy invested by Luisa into her performances is not unique to her speaking style. It was evident to me that most people in her community spoke with a similar kind of energy

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when using ideophones. I have argued that, underlying the use of ideophones by Runa who enjoy using them, is a disposition to perform by means of linguistic sound, a sentiment of animacy that is common to humans and nonhumans (Nuckolls 2004b.) Sound is an appropriate medium for expressing this sentiment because of its inherent properties. It is powered by movements in the speaker’s own body and is sculpted with a speaker’s own breath. Runa consider the breath, or samai, to be constitutive of a being’s life force. Ideophones may also be restricted in function within our own speaking culture because of their role in motherese and in picture books for children, where their use connotes a pedagogical simplicity. Such books are designed not so much to tell a story as to introduce children to certain cultural scripts, for example, taking a train ride or visiting a farm. At the same time, they introduce speaking and literacy as cultural practices by giving children the experience of making symbolic connections between spoken words, written words, and visual images. One of the most underappreciated functions of these books is to introduce children to animistic thought-worlds where nature is viewed as a society populated by animals wearing clothing, having humanlike social relationships with one another, living in humanlike habitations, and talking in a human language.∞≤ Within this animistic thought-world, the preverbal, preliterate child is introduced to various symbolic relationships having to do with spoken words in relation to visual images and orthographic representations. Ideophones help introduce children to the elementary principles of symbolization through their ability to articulate difference. In a well-worn framework, domesticated farm animals are each made to express distinctive and stereotypical sounds that identify them as cows (moo), pigs (oink), horses (neigh), or roosters (cock-a-doodle-doo.) These kinds of books represent one of the few examples within mainstream literate cultures where the use of ideophony is not stigmatized, but rather, expected.∞≥ The reasons for this are historically complex and may be tied to the emergence of childhood as a distinctive stage of life and to ideas of children as linked with a primordial state of nature. By the time a child reads at the level of a second- or third-grader, ideophones make only sporadic appearances within their texts. All of this suggests that there is a kind of cultural ontogeny embedded within this restricted use and subsequent abandonment of ideophony. We introduce children to a world of animism, which paves the way for a grasp of scientific objectivism

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later on. These two seemingly opposed cosmologies actually complement each other. This chapter has used Luisa’s words to make a number of points regarding the various kinds of perspectival alignments expressed by Runa through ideophonic performance. I have stressed their role in expressing a special kind of documentary truth value that has no exact equivalent within our own speaking culture. The neglected status of ideophones’ poetics makes it easy for us to underestimate their significance and to misunderstand the complex tasks they are called upon to accomplish. They are expressive of an affective stance that is also meant to be factually truthful, and even grammatically specific. This affective stance may involve the transposing of moral and social values, such as sadness or loss, that bridge any gaps between humans and nonhumans. They allow people to communicate about and express a momentary alignment with forces, beings, substances, and processes involving a range of animacies. The next chapter will present translated excerpts from some of Luisa’s and her family’s experiences, and one fully translated narrative. These experiences will help us understand some of the deeper significances of ideophony. Specifically, I want to draw out the concept of ideophonic alignment and explain how this alignment is grounded within a dialogical cosmology. Critical to explaining this cosmology will be the clarification of a grammatical issue within Quechua linguistics.

i2i

On Ecological Dialogism

[T]he intricate constructions consisting of quotations embedded in quotations place a heavy burden on the listener’s memory and imagination. He has to keep track of the speaker’s constantly changing perspective, which often moves outside the observable reality. —Willem F. H. Adelaar, ‘‘The Role of Quotations in Andean Discourse’’

The chikwan bird, or squirrel cuckoo, scientifically named as piaya cayana, is described in Canaday and Jost as having a ‘‘long tail, bright reddish color, and [a] habit of climbing around in the branches and vines of forest trees (1997:26.) I first became aware of it one day in 1988 while walking with my friend Camila in her agricultural field in Puka Yaku. Camila interrupted what I was saying to call my attention to this bird’s chirping. She told me, teasingly, that since the bird was saying ‘‘chi chi chi chi chi,’’ she could believe what I was telling her. If instead the bird had said ‘‘chikwan chikwan’’ while I was speaking, then, she said, she would not have trusted my words. Several months later I learned from Luisa that this bird’s chirping could also portend disaster.∞ Runa discourse is pervaded by a dialogical aesthetic. A distinctive dimension of this aesthetic is that Runa see themselves as engaging with a variety of life-forms, both human and nonhuman. My clarification of the dialogical nature of Runa discourse will make it necessary to present a brief summary of my reanalysis of one grammatical contrast— that of evidentiality, which has been the subject of some controversy. I then employ this reanalysis for the translation of a narrative concerning what was and continues to be, for Luisa and her family, a key trauma—the assassination of her Uncle Emisión by Achuar. Although it took place many years ago, this event continues to be revisited in

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conversations, dreams, and visions. Luisa’s telling of this narrative illustrates how principles of grammatical and discourse structure enable the expression of perspectives, which are performed through ideophonically expressed dialogues between humans and nonhumans, as well as a range of dialogue types that occur between people. To contextualize all of this most effectively, it will be helpful to discuss how Runa view knowledge and what they consider to be valid forms of knowledge. Unexamined assumptions about how knowledge is acquired and about the kind of knowledge most valued by Runa have contributed to misunderstandings about their epistemological concerns and have inhibited a clear understanding of the evidential component of Quechua grammar. Such misunderstandings can only be detrimental to the ethnopoetic enterprise of rendering their words into our words, a task that must come to terms with indigenous conceptions of knowledge. Knowledge for Runa is a source of strength, and the most empowering types of knowledge concern matters of life and death, health and illness, and survival under difficult circumstances. To some extent, Runa have relied on the specialized skills of shamans for answers to questions concerning such matters. Many Runa will, however, conduct their own independent investigations on issues revolving around their personal welfare, through ingestion of hallucinogens, particularly Banisteriopsis. Psychotropically induced visions bring about cognitive reorientations that are widely regarded as valid forms of revelation about health problems, difficulties in social dynamics, and a broad range of concerns that resist overarching categorization. Dreams are also significant, potentially, for their ability to portend, by means of a stock of conventional symbols, the unfolding of a day that may bring hazards, mishaps, or illness.≤ Dreams and visions are considered valid and legitimate for understanding life’s problems. Example 1 is from one of Luisa’s narratives concerning how she attempted to learn what had happened to her husband after he was attacked by Peruvian soldiers and lost in the forest for several months. She drank Banisteriopsis and experienced a vision of her husband, whom she described as speaking with her and assuring her that he would return. She then reported this experience to her family. Below is her representation of what she said to them. 1. Shamu-nga-mi! Come-3FUT-EV ‘‘He will come!

Mana wañu-shka-chu an! NEG die-PERF-NEG be-3 He’s not dead!’’

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Besides shamanic divination, personal vision quests, and dream symbolism, there is an additional category of phenomena relevant for Runa conceptions of knowledge. Many of Luisa’s narratives of everyday experience include her observations and interpretations of auditory and atmospheric signs from nonhuman entities. That she considers these signals communicative is evident by her use of verbs implying a high degree of volitionality and agency, such as rimana ‘to speak’ and nina ‘to say’, to describe them. Luisa’s attentiveness to such phenomena entails a view of her world as nonrandomly enmeshed with a variety of forces and agencies. It is not only the words and actions of her fellow humans but the sounds and configurations of the nonhuman world, that matter in her interpretations of experience. When it comes to important matters, Runa do not inhabit a stochastic and capricious world, where bad things may happen without provocation. They seek to comprehend and explain what affects them most deeply. Their belief that the nonhuman world is meaningfully connected with their own lives is a constantly recurring theme in accounts of personal experiences. I refer to this belief as ‘‘the dialogization of nature.’’ The concept of dialogism is indebted to the Russian literary theorist Bakhtin (1981a) in whose work it is a defining trope for the aesthetic values of the novel. Central to Bakhtin’s exposition of the novel as a work of art is his recognition that a diversity of voices, speech types, genres, jargons, and national languages—in short, a dynamic juxtapositioning of utterances and utterance types—is distinctive of the novel. This dynamic integration is at odds with the tendency for language to be unified and officially regulated by powerful interests. By breaking through the boundaries of regulated use and allowing individuals to restructure their awareness of themselves and of the world, the novel achieves the status of a revolutionary work of art. Bakhtin’s translators Holquist and Emerson summarize the principle of dialogism: ‘‘Everything means, is understood, as a part of a greater whole—there is a constant interaction between meanings, all of which have the potential of conditioning others’’ (1981a:426). Linguistic anthropologists are uniquely situated to adapt Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism to novel frameworks for coming to terms with the ways in which meaning is negotiated. One case study from the linguistic anthropological literature, that of Duranti 1992, may be cited as an example of an approach to meaning that is highly congenial with the principle of dialogism, because he

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successfully demonstrates the inadequacies of an approach that depends upon western notions of the socially atomized individual—the intentionalist approach. In an intentionalist model, the meanings of utterances are generated by individual speakers, each with his or her motivations, goals, and beliefs, which are transmitted as self-contained, finished products, from one individual to another. Duranti exposes the intentionalist fallacy by showing that, for Samoans, it hardly matters that an orator did not intend with his words to make an empty promise of goods for his village. Although he may have uttered his words in good faith, the subsequent unfolding of events in which the promise was not kept was later interpreted by villagers as the orator’s fault, and he was personally disgraced as a result of this (Duranti 1992.) The concept of dialogism is meant to capture the insight that meaning is the result of dialogues, situations, and subsequent interpretations of what has been said, what has been done, and what has happened. Meaning emerges from multiple perspectives and voices. It is not, in this view, fully formed during the production of utterances. The concept of dialogism, then, accounts for such ideologies of language and meaning in which an individual’s words are the subject of dialogue, debate, and interpretation within social contexts of action. My own use of the term dialogism is indebted to current understandings. It will become apparent after the narrative featured in this chapter is presented that Runaspeaking culture places a high value upon dialogue and intersubjective interpretation. This claim accords with the work of Adelaar (1991), who first described a grammatical pattern involving a subcategorization between quotation complements and object complements. The Quechua verb nina ‘‘to say, state, report, think, plan, want’’ requires its complement clause to be represented as a quotation, whether or not any spoken utterances actually unfolded. Example 2 is taken from the narrative in chapter 5, about a jaguar attack on Luisa’s grandmother. During the attack, her grandmother manages to distract the jaguar into biting a stick. She later explains his biting as based on a mistaken perception that the stick was part of her body. Luisa uses the verb nisha ‘‘saying’’ followed by a quotation complement, to indicate what, according to her grandmother, the jaguar was thinking. 2. Pai-ga kikin, ‘‘runa-ta kani-ni,’’ ni-sha-shi kani-u-ra he-TOP real person-ACC bite-1 say-COR-EV bite-DUR-PAST chi kaspi-ta. that stick-ACC

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‘‘He, then, is thinking (according to grandmother) ‘I’m biting into a person,’ when he was actually biting that stick.’’ This feature of Quechua grammar is highly congenial with the occurrence of dialogue and intersubjective interpretation for Quechuaspeaking people. For Runa culture, however, this concept of dialogism must be expanded to include the signals, sounds, and atmospheric phenomena, which are invested with communicative capacities by Runa. It is not just the words and actions of human society that matter, but an entire ecological arena, encompassing the sounds and signs observed within nature. To refer to the unique qualities of signals that are interpreted by Runa as meaningful rather than random, but coming from sources that seem, from our perspective, relatively low in agency and volitionality, I adapt the term eventing from Whorf’s original usage within his discussion of Hopi metaphysics and grammar, where he used it to describe their nonstatic view of temporal and seasonal phenomena (Whorf 1956:147). Eventings in this chapter’s narrative include the way the sun shines while there is rain, the way shadows play, and the way fruits fall from a tree. Runa discuss such signs and sounds with one another, articulating many of them in ideophonic form. When Runa represent eventings with linguistic sounds in ideophonic form, they are acknowledging a kind of dialogue with nonhuman nature. Before embarking on the presentation of Luisa’s narrative manifestations of dialogism, it is necessary to explain how a systematic distinction within Quechua grammar works in concert with dialogism to help Runa sort out the different voices and perspectives within a narrative. This distinction has been referred to as evidentiality, and it presents a number of perplexing issues for the translator.≥

Evidentiality, Reported Discourse, and Viewpoint in Quechua Pastaza Quechua features a paradigm of suffixes that encode meanings that have been labeled as evidential. Although I will continue to use this term, my own analysis finds that the use of evidentials in Quechua is not primarily motivated by a speaker’s desire to indicate the source of information for making an assertion. Rather, Quechua’s evidential system works in concert with reported discourse to sort out the different voices and perspectives that may be articulated within myths, personal narratives, and everyday conversations. This claim constitutes a novel

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contribution to our knowledge of Quechua, because most previous analyses of this system have proposed that a speaker’s source of information as directly witnessed or not directly witnessed is at the heart of this distinction. My analysis adopts the position of Mushin (2001:17–19), who takes a broad approach toward the comparative analysis of reportative evidentiality in English, Japanese, and Macedonian narrative. She argues that evidentiality is a deictic, or shifting, system that indexes a speaker’s epistemological stance and, further, that information source as well as speaker commitment are secondary implications of this more central function of providing an orientation for a speaker’s subjective point of view.∂ She argues, further, that the distinction between source of information and speaker attitude toward source of information is not always clear and tenable, and she suggests that the problematic nature of this distinction is what underlies much of the confusion and debate over how to circumscribe and define evidentiality. For the Pastaza Quechua dialect, at least, information source is a conventional implicature of what has been called the direct experience morpheme. By comparing the alleged ‘‘direct’’ -mi and ‘‘indirect’’ -shi morphemes as they pattern in discourse, it is possible to show that the evidential system is governed by a perspectival logic. This perspectivism is further enhanced by the requirement for quotation complements, and also by Quechua speakers’ predilection for using dialogue in narratives. Their use of the -mi and -shi enclitics reveals that Quechua speakers take the trouble to sort out different voices and perspectives, which can be characterized generally as the ‘‘speaking subject’’ voice versus the voice of ‘‘the other.’’∑ If we adopt the more encompassing stance of Mushin (2001:82), which would allow that linguistic outputs are generated not only by sources of information but also by interactional settings, speakers’ goals, cultural conventions, and linguistic structures, all of which force speakers to adopt epistemological stances, then we can redefine evidentiality for at least one dialect of Quechua as marking speaker perspective rather than source of information. The Perspectival Patterning of Evidential -mi: Two Types of Speaking Self I now turn to an examination of the evidential system of Pastaza Quichua. The data that follow are drawn from naturally occurring conversations between Quechua speakers, with minimal interference from me,

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as well as dialogues between Luisa and me. Evidentiality in Pastaza Quechua features three enclitics or independent suffixes: -mi, -shi, and -cha. I will not give further attention to -cha, because its meaning is most unproblematic (it indicates that a speaker is uncertain about a proposition), and because it is one of the most infrequently occurring enclitics. Wherever it occurs, the enclitic -mi will be underlined. I will also underline the corresponding -mi-suffixed English form. The enclitic -shi and its corresponding translated word will appear in italics. The Speaking Self -mi of the Speech Event (Es) What I call the ‘‘speaking self’’ -mi of the speech event (Es)∏ is an independent suffix occurring at the end of a bound form. It is ambiparadigmatic because it occurs within two paradigmatic contrasts. It contrasts with the interrogative -chu, another enclitic suffix,π which focuses the topic of a yes/no question. When a yes-no question is asked with -chu, -mi is used to respond in the affirmative. The following two examples (from Nuckolls 1993:238) illustrate a conversational exchange with -chu and -mi that occurred while I was conducting fieldwork in Puka Yaku, Ecuador: 3. -Mi assertion (Es) to answer a yes/no question Yes/No question: Irma: Kay-chu puñu-g a-ngi? here-INT sleep-AG be-2sg ‘‘(Is it) here that you are a sleeper?’’ -Mi Assertion (Es): Nuckolls: Nda. Kay-mi puñu-g a-ni. yes here-EV sleep-AG be-1sg ‘‘Yes. It’s here that I am a sleeper.’’ In the foregoing exchange, I was the person uttering the reply and also making the assertion. Therefore, the use of -mi in this sentence involves me as both the speaker of the speech event and the person who asserts by means of mi. The making of an assertion by the speaking self of a speech event is not restricted to answering yes/no questions, however. The speaking self -mi of the speech event is used to make statements about factual matters, to express many kinds of subjectively based preferences and aesthetic evaluations, and even to make predictions involving some risk, none of which can be transparently linked to any kind

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of direct experience.∫ It is also important to emphasize the fact that within Runa culture, whatever is concretely contextualized, whether it is a dream, a psychotropically induced vision, or an eventing from nonhuman nature, may be asserted. By ‘‘concretely contextualized,’’ I mean whatever is understood to take place within their cultural framework of assumptions about the way the world works. For Runa, dreams, psychotropically induced visions, and portents or eventings from nonhuman nature are all credible and acceptable phenomena that lend themselves to assertion making by means of -mi.Ω In the next section I present examples where -mi is employed by the speaking self of a narrated event.∞≠ The Speaking Self -mi of the Narrated Event (En) The enclitic -mi may be transposed onto a voice within represented discourse.∞∞ When this happens, the speech event narrator’s voice is suspended, and the quoted speaker is allowed to take charge of making assertions. In such instances, I propose, the speech event speaker adopts the perspective of the narrated voice. Example 4 below features a representation of discourse from a personal experience narrative. In this example, Luisa as the narrator suspends her own speaking voice and adopts the perspective of the protagonist within the narrated event, making a -mi assertion through that character’s voice. Moreover, this example also shows that although Quechua lacks lexical verbs encoding semantic notions such as warning, threatening, and announcing, speakers may enlist the assertative function of -mi to modify the illocutionary force of a statement. The following example is taken from this chapter’s full narrative about the assassination of Luisa’s uncle Emisión. At the beginning of the story, the doomed man is reported to have been warned by his wife. To represent this warning, Luisa suspends her own voice and adopts the voice of the man’s wife to represent her words to him shortly before he was killed. 4. Speaking self -mi (En) to issue a warning Wañuchi tuku-nga-mi ra-u-ngui! kill become-FINF-EV do-DUR-2 ‘‘You’re going to be killed!’’ Luisa was not present at this moment in the narrative’s unfolding. The details of how her uncle was killed were related to her afterward by

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others. She therefore had no direct experience either with these words or with the events of the story at this point in its unfolding. Moreover, a ‘‘direct experience’’ interpretation for the wife’s use of -mi is also problematic here, because the man’s wife is making a prediction that, at this point in the narrative, is not yet a foregone conclusion. Luisa’s use of -mi makes sense here only if we assume that she is adopting the perspective of the speaking self of the narrated event, which would be her aunt, and is using -mi as an illocutionary modifier that, together with contextual factors, colors the assertative function of -mi with a warning.∞≤ In the section to follow I outline the functions of the -shi enclitic, which can all be described as voicing some kind of ‘‘other.’’ The Perspectival Patterning of Evidential -shi: Variable Voices of the Other The -shi enclitic has been labeled as a reportative (Faller 2003; Floyd 1994; Nuckolls 1993) and as a hearsay (Weber 1986) enclitic. I argue with examples that its core meaning may include all of these, but that its most pared-down semantic involves the notion of otherness: words spoken by a speaking self are framed as the words of an other. Often, words framed as other are representations of what someone other than the speaking self has uttered. The otherness encoded by -shi is not, however, restricted to the reporting of someone else’s words. Instead, the otherness encoded by -shi may articulate a variety of stances or perspectives assumed by a speaking self of a speech event or of a narrated event.∞≥ One of the functions of the other -shi that is most easily observed is its use to frame the words of traditional stories or tales.∞∂ A speaker’s use of -shi to tell these stories can best be understood as the adoption of a storytelling stance or perspective that frames a narrative as one told in another voice, that of tradition.∞∑ Such stories may exhibit considerable individual variation and even innovation. Yet an overall stance of authoritative otherness is what tellers want to convey. Even when people are not telling traditional stories, they may want to endow what they say with an otherness to give greater weight and credence to their words. Example 5 is a comment offered by Luisa that is taken from this chapter’s assassination story. She tries to explain her uncle’s unwillingness to do anything to save himself, by stating that his assassins had stupefied him with magical singing, making him incapable of wanting to save himself. She gives greater weight to her words by

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framing them with -shi as the words of someone else’s conventional knowledge about another group of people’s warfare practices. By deferring the responsibility for this utterance to someone else, she endows it with a greater authority. 5. The other -shi to express conventional knowledge Kanta-sha shamu-sha-shi wañuchi-k a-naun. Sing-COR come-COR-EV kill-AG be-3PL ‘‘They kill by singing as they come.’’ The otherness encoded by -shi may also be enlisted by a speaking self to make a claim without risking one’s good name or reputation. In example 6 Luisa distances herself from a statement to avoid the impression that she is personally involved in a type of magic considered embarrassing for most people when mentioned. In the middle of the chapter 5 narrative about an anaconda, I probed her about the anaconda’s value for love magic. She explained by describing the way it effortlessly attracts its prey to itself and then concluded by stating in the voice of an other authority that some of its body parts are used in love magic. 6. The other -shi to disclaim responsibility Chi raigu-shi pai-ba ñuktu pai-ba that reason-EV he-POSS brain he-POSS wira-ga simayuka a-g a-n. fat-TOP love charm be-AG be-3 ‘‘That’s why his brain and his fat are (used for) love charms.’’ One of the most interesting uses of -shi occurs when a speaker expresses puzzlement or wonder about something. Syntactically, such statements are structured as questions. As questions, they should make use of the -ta interrogative suffix, which is used for information questions in Pastaza Quechua. Interestingly, such questions do not feature this information-question suffix. Instead they feature -shi where -ta would be expected. This is an extremely common type of utterance in people’s experiential narratives, whether they depict themselves as having a puzzling inner-logue or as stating a question out loud. This use of -shi can be understood as based in otherness, because when something is not known, it is outside of one’s own competence.∞∏ A speaker’s use of -shi rather than the information-question suffix -ta marks this as a spe-

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cial type of question that is addressed to no particular person, as it is outside of the speaker’s competence, and outside of the competence of all other interlocutors as well. Whoever asks such a question is adopting a voice that is other in the sense that it deviates from the usual assertionmaking -mi voice of the speaking self. Example 7 is drawn from the chapter 5 narrative about an anaconda that was assumed to have wandered off after being wounded, and to have died. 7. The other -shi to express bewilderment Wañu-sha-ga mai-shi ismu-nga?? Die-COR-TOP where-EV rot-3FUT ‘‘Having died, where will he be (found) rotting away?’’ My final type of -shi voice that Quechua speakers may adopt fits best with the label reportative. The defining characteristic of reportative uses is that speakers report others’ words as others’ words. There is no attempt on the part of the speaking subject to displace his or her subjectivity onto another voice, as sometimes happens during dramatic moments of narrative, such as the moment featured in example 4 above. Instead, words or thoughts are represented as originating from an other. This use of the -shi enclitic often patterns within unforegrounded portions of narrative, as exemplified by example 8 below. In this example from the beginning of this chapter’s narrative, Luisa’s aunt Lola introduces the idea that the chikwan bird is speaking to her a lot. This statement, however, does not contain the dramatic salience achieved by subsequest utterances where Luisa inhabits her aunt Lola’s subjectivity by means of the -mi enclitic. 8. Chi-ga ña yhapa-shi chikwan rima-n ni-ra mikya Lola. that-TOP now lot-EV chikwan speak-3 say-PAST aunt Lola ‘‘Well, now, the chikwan bird is scolding a lot,’’ said Aunt Lola. In this example Luisa does present her aunt Lola’s words as quoted speech. It cannot, therefore, be said that the -shi enclitic represents indirectly quoted words, while the -mi enclitic represents direct quotes. Both enclitics are used to focus on the topic within a quoted statement. The critical difference is that the -mi enclitic is used to quote utterances that are of high dramatic significance within a narrative. When a speaking self abandons his or her own voice, becoming the speaking self of the

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narrated event, listeners are alerted to the fact that something very significant for the narrative’s unfolding is taking place. Whether words are spoken as a speaking self of a speech event or as a speaking self of a narrated event, or as the voice of an other, it is clear that the -mi and -shi enclitics cannot be assumed to correspond in any simple way with direct versus nonwitnessed experience, nor with direct versus indirectly quoted words. A speaking self of a speech event may utter words that he or she has never heard, as when mythic characters are quoted. Moreover, when a speaking self reports words as an other, those words may not have actually been spoken by anyone at all. Whether someone is speaking as a self or as an other, they are adopting stances for a variety of culturally appropriate and strategic reasons, as well as for discourse-aesthetic purposes.

Perspective, Dialogism, and Ideophony The distinction between -mi-suffixed assertions and -shi-suffixed assertions marks the viewpoint or perspective from which an utterance is stated. This grammatical perspectivism provides a framework within which the dialogical ethos of Quechua narratives may unfold. It is not whether the narrator witnessed a particular set of events that matters. What matters is the ability to distinguish between different narrative perspectives; -mi and -shi are not uniquely responsible for encoding perspectives within Quechua grammar. Adelaar (1997) has analyzed the semantics of the suffix -mu, which is used to describe a verb’s action that is oriented toward a speaker. Similarly, Quechua grammar encodes a distinction between proximal kai and distal chai, demonstrative pronouns indicating ‘‘this’’ and ‘‘that’’ respectively. The evidential suffixes are significant, however, in their ability to encode the perspectives from which words are articulated. Quechua utterances, then, may encode one, two, or more speaking voices. Each perspective is represented by a voice with varying capabilities for engaging in dialogues with other voices. I use the word voice in an encompassing sense, to include not only human subjects but the voicings that are articulated ideophonically, to simulate the forces and energies observable in nonhuman nature as well. These claims will be illustrated in the narrative to follow, concerning a family tragedy. The tragic event was the assassination of Luisa’s uncle, a shaman. Although it had been many years since his death by the time I heard about it, this event was extremely vivid in his family’s traumatic

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recollections. By way of background it is necessary to point out that conflicts between shamans with spiritual and political power have a long history among various ethnic groups in Ecuador. Such conflicts, termed ‘‘stateless forms of political process’’ by Salomon (1983:413), are rarely considered, however, for their effects on individual families. When a family member dies, that person’s death is usually attributed to a shaman’s sorcery, which means that physical retaliation will have to be undertaken. The following extended narrative presents a vivid look at Luisa’s family’s experience with the consequences of alleged magical aggression. It describes how her uncle Emisión was shot and killed by a small group of Achuar. This story exemplifies the principle of dialogism in a number of respects. It is not an exaggeration to state that dialogue between the major players of the story is a key resource for unfolding the events of the story. Almost every important development in this narrative is revealed through dialogue. Luisa even allows her uncle’s killers to speak and to explain why they are murdering her uncle, in a representation of their Achuar language. She presents the sounds of what they were reported to have said and then supplies translations of their meanings. This insertion of an Achuar voice into the narrative reminds one of Bakhtin’s reference to occasional appearances in poetic genres of heteroglossia in the form of a foreign language that ‘‘appears, in essence, as a thing, it does not lie on the same plane with the real language of the work: it is the depicted gesture of one of the characters and does not appear as an aspect of the word doing the depicting’’ (1981a:286–87). This story is also a critically important example of the principle of the dialogization of nature. Nature becomes ‘‘a theater of signification.’’∞π A central role is accorded to a bird’s chirping, which was believed to have warned people that danger was about. Moreover, a relatively complex communicative interaction is portrayed, in the form of a divinatory dialogue, between the bird in question and her uncle Emisión’s wife, her aunt Lola. Aunt Lola seeks to understand the nature of the disaster about to unfold, by uttering propositions that she wants the bird to affirm or contradict by means of particular kinds of responses. Finally, it is one of the densest examples of the dialogization of nature in my data. I use the concept of density to refer to instances when a message is communicated simultaneously by more than one entity. In this instance we have a bird as well as atmospheric eventings working in concert, in the narrator’s mind, to communicate a message of impending

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disaster. Tragically, the shaman’s wife and her comadre are the only ones who realize this at the time. They try without success to convince the shaman that the chikwan bird is warning of an attack. The following account describes this dramatic event, beginning with the chikwan bird’s initial warning. The story begins with Luisa’s recreation of her aunt Lola’s account of her own first suspicions triggered by the chikwan bird’s chirping. I present the complete, translated narrative, including the few questions of mine that interrupted the narrative flow, as well as the occasional comments by Luisa’s friend Jacinta (J), who accompanied Luisa to my house that day. The narrative is divided into sections that I have named with titles to indicate the various perspectives of different people who were present, and from whom Luisa, who was only a child at the time, constructed her own account. In my translation I use underlining to indicate a -misuffixed word, and italics for -shi-suffixed words. After presenting the entire narrative, I discuss the patterning of -mi and -shi, together with Luisa’s use of verbs meaning ‘‘to speak,’’ or ‘‘to tell,’’ all of which, I argue, help to embed and juxtapose different narrative voices. These different voices include human dialogues, inner-logues, and the ideophonically rendered voice of the chikwan bird, as well as the eventings of natural phenomena. The Chikwan Speaks I. The Setting 1. Well, my brother Ventura had come to the plaza with his sisters on a Sunday— (To Jacinta) Was it on a Sunday that they killed him? *** 2. Yes, it was on a Sunday that they killed my Uncle Emisión, on that day. II. What Aunt Lola first heard and thought 1. ‘‘Well, now, the chikwan bird is scolding a lot,’’ said Aunt Lola. 2. ‘‘Chi chi chi chi chi chikwan!’’ 3. ‘‘Speaking from the top of a tree, saying this,’’ he∞∫ told. 4. Then on a manioc branch he came to sit, saying ‘‘chi chi chi chi chi chi.’’ J: Now he was going to tell!

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5. Now he was going to tell about someone, the dear chikwan bird was. 6. Then she wondered, ‘‘Is someone going to come to kill?’’ 7. ‘‘Why,’’ she wondered, ‘‘does the chikwan speak like this?’’ *** 8. So then, as he had spoken like that, she exclaimed, ‘‘Oh no!’’ 9. ‘‘Is it you, maybe, that Auka∞Ω are coming to kill?’’ 10. ‘‘The Auka must have been heard to say that it’s you they have to kill.’’ 11. ‘‘You are going to be killed.’’ 12. ‘‘Let’s go upriver,’’ said Aunt Lola. 13. ‘‘It might be to you that he says chichichichichichichichichi,’’ she said. 14. ‘‘You’re going to be killed!’’ J: Now he has spoken. L: Now look, he has spoken! III. Aunt Lola’s second idea dismissed by the chikwan 1. ‘‘Oh no! What if it’s the children? What if it’s the water?’’ 2. ‘‘What if, coming, on their way back, they die?’’ 3. ‘‘Chikwan,’’ said that one. 4. (In other words) ‘‘You’re wrong to think that,’’ he said. IV. Aunt Lola’s first dialogue with Emisión 1. ‘‘No, then, let’s just go to the plaza and buy a little soap and come right back,’’ she said. 2. ‘‘Let’s go buy some soap,’’ she said. 3. ‘‘What for? You go! I’m lying right here.’’ 4. My friends are going to arrive (any minute) now to visit with me.’’ 5. ‘‘My friend Mariano is going to come,’’ he said. 6. He says, ‘‘Those guys are going to come to visit me.’’ V. Uncle Emisión’s state 1. He didn’t want to leave. 2. Inside of the hammock he hung hui, 3. Upriver, like this 4. His face turned sideways, looking upriver. 5. He was lying there awakening from an ayawaska daze 6. Looking over that way.

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VI. Other signs of trouble 1. Well, my mother and father had gone (from that house). 2. And what they saw by a ripe tree was what looked like a person they said: ‘‘a shadow of a person standing there.’’ 3. They said it made the ripened fruit fall putu putu putu putu. 4. ‘‘Oh no!’’ 5. ‘‘Look here! We who live are going to die!’’ 6. ‘‘Who stands there like that?’’ 7. ‘‘There’s nobody there,’’ they said. 8. Well then, Emisión said, ‘‘It’s just spirits, old spirits that are walking about.’’ 9. Drinking ayawaska, he just stays there. VII. Aunt Lola tries again 1. ‘‘You’re wrong!’’ 2. ‘‘The Auka are going to come right here to kill!!’’ 3. ‘‘Are you a useless brujo?’’ 4. ‘‘Look! Listen!’’ said Aunt Lola. 5. ‘‘No. It’s just spirits,’’ he said. J: Singing into the shell of a snail— L: Yes! Into a snail’s shell or a crab’s, one becomes like a rock, unable to move! No matter how much you want to get up there itself you just lie. They kill by singing as they come. VIII. What Aunt Victoria saw, heard, and shouted to Aunt Lola 1. Well, having said that, my Aunt Lola having stood there and said that 2. My late aunt, um, my Aunt Victoria, she was across the river, 3. Well, um, she was planting manioc cuttings. 4. Since it was Sunday, she wanted to plant quickly so she could come to the plaza. 5. She looked and heard the Auka: ‘‘Whhyy tuuu whhhyyyyyyy whyyy whyyy why why ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, why why why ha ha ha.’’ N: Who said that? L: The Auka who were coming to kill! 6. ‘‘Kumari Looola! A canoe, coming this way, filled with Auka lies there!’’ 7. ‘‘Maybe they’re coming to kill Kumba Emisión!’’

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8. ‘‘Go! Just take him and drag him and go! Get out of there!’’ 9. ‘‘Kumari Lola,’’ she shouted (to her). IX. What I, as a child, heard and saw 1. My aunt shouted that. 2. I was listening; I was just little then. 3. I was there minding the babies. 4. When moms would go to the chagra, we children would stay inside, caring for the babies. 5. Well then, she says, ‘‘Hooooo! Listen to what even the chikwan tells!’’ 6. That, what was it called? From that pond this rainbow, they call it arco iris? 7. Well, now it was arcing all across that little pond, going across, across, across, and across! 8. And you would have seen how the sunshowers portended danger, going shaaaiiiiiiii tutututu shaaaiiiiiii! X. The Auka arrive 1. Well then, my aunt, my late aunt shouted, but he wouldn’t listen: 2. ‘‘They are coming! Run away fast, Lola! The Auka have come! Lola! 3. Take him and go!’’ 4. ‘‘The Auka have come to kill,’’ she shouts. 5. While we stood right there and watched, right at our port they came and stopped! 6. (Shouting) ‘‘Why whyy whyy whyy, ha ha ha ha ha ha!’’ 7. The, um, kwung leaves that they’d spread, from the canoe 8. (they threw them) into the water, into the water, into the water. 9. A chuba skin was put on ling, 10. Another put on a sipuru skin ling, 11. Then they put on koto skins ling ling ling, 12. And whatever other animals did they bring to wear! 13. Readying their rifles zas zas zas! 14. How they ran! J: Hoooo! Oh my God! XI. Aunt Lola’s final attempt 1. ‘‘Just go!’’ Aunt Lola, maybe pulling him, went and dragged him. 2. ‘‘Let’s go! The Auka have come! It was true!’’

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3. ‘‘Let’s go! Let’s run!’’ 4. But he was just like a rock, unmovable. 5. ‘‘They’ve probably come to kill you!’’ 6. ‘‘Run! Go! Go!’’ 7. ‘‘As they’ve come to kill you, 8. ‘‘You (should be) afraid, being a shaman!’’ saying this, she told him. XII. The Auka and Uncle Emisión greet each other 1. Then one of them went up to him saying, ‘‘Huero amiko’’ 2. (which means) ‘‘Are you here friend?’’ 3. ‘‘Weren’t you getting drunk?’’ 4. ‘‘Hearing that you were getting drunk, I’ve come to visit you,’’ he said. 5. They all stood there drinking lon. 6. Then, Uncle Emisión said, ‘‘Enter. Come in.’’ 7. Then getting up and turning to look at them like this 8. (they fire at him) Thaaaaaaiiii thaaaaiii taiiiiii tai! 9. Oh Janet, you would just hear how it sounded 10. Thaaaaii taaiiii tun tun tun tun tun tun tun tun tun tun. N: Was it thunder? 11. It was their rifles! When they’ve caught human flesh it’s the ugliest possible sound: 12. Tuuun tun tuuun tun tuuuuun tun! XIII. How the Auka taunted Uncle Emisión 1. Oh my God! You would have heard them talking, just going 2. ‘‘Piti piti piti piti piti piti piti piti.’’ N: What is ‘‘piti piti piti’’? 3. They were saying, ‘‘Try try try, just try to get away!’’ 4. ‘‘You’ve been killing our people like this.’’ 5. ‘‘Now you can just feel what it’s like.’’ 6. ‘‘Look at what this is! Wanting to wear this≤≠ 7. You are here shooting people, and not listening,’’ 8. They say, said the ones who were there and heard this. XIV. Uncle Emisión’s last words 1. So then, having spoken like that, as we watched, they said, he got up slowly. 2. And we watched him raise his hand like this, saying:

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3. ‘‘Leave me now, you’ve shot me enough.’’ 4. ‘‘With just this I’ll die,’’ he tells them. 5. And having said that, he fell toamaaa face down. XV. How Uncle Emisión looked after being shot 1. We went to look. 2. And his fat, from having been shot, had become fuzzy, just fuzzy and then— N: How was it fuzzy? 3. Just fuzzy because his bones having broken, his fat becomes small. 4. And you would see how, from here, the aswa liquids that he had drunk poured out of his body! 5. And the, um, the fat like a chuba monkey’s fat, 6. It was a kind of yellow fat 7. That had come out of his body tsiiik tsiiik. 8. And, oh! How they’d shot his head making bits of his brain splatter all over! 9. You would wonder what kind of animal they had shot, if you could have seen him! XVI. How my grandmother pleaded with the Auka 1. Then they were going to kill Aunt Lola. 2. My aunt, now, how they shot holes all around her. 3. And my late grandmother pleaded with them, saying, ‘‘Having killed that man for a reason, 4. ‘‘Please don’t kill my baby who lives.’’ 5. My grandmother shouted that from inside the barbasco (leaves) where she had run to hide. XVII. What the Auka left with Emisión 1. And right over there Uncle Emisión, he was lying, dying. 2. Wanting to approach him, 3. And because they had given up firing directly at us, 4. And were just shooting holes through clothes, 5. We went to look at him. 6. What we saw was that he had fallen face down toamaaa. 7. And the blood— ***

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8. Just imagine how much bleeding you would see! 9. Aylya! From this crown of his head, you would see how the blood flowed out of there! 10. How was it possible for him to lie there with such blood, becoming so drenched in it? 11. By then he’d died. 12. Well, in his hand they’d left a small bundle of tobacco. 13. They’d left him holding some tobacco pulp. 14. Between his lips they’d also left some tobacco! 15. ‘‘With this you can stay here doing your shooting,’’ they said. 16. And that’s how they left him. 17. Then they walked at a leisurely pace back down to the river, 18. Calling ‘‘Tuuuuuuuuuuuuu, Emisiónnnnn!’’ 19. Shouting ‘‘Wiñita wiñita istaaa istaaaaa,’’ they stand there. XVIII. What Uncle Inacio heard 1. Well, my uncle, Uncle Inacio, was there! 2. (he heard them say) ‘‘Let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go.’’ 3. ‘‘Let’s go drinking, let’s get drunk now.’’ 4. ‘‘Let’s go, Emisiónnnnn,’’ they call to his alma as they are going. XIX. How Aunt Lola insulted the Auka 1. And then this is what my aunt shouted: ‘‘Ugly things! Liceinfested testicles!’’ 2. ‘‘Lousy Auka! Ugly, worm-filled stomachs!’’ Ay! 3. Insulting them, my aunt was oblivious, my aunt was, 4. To their shots, and how they kept firing at her! 5. Luckily, she hid behind the base of a big balsa tree where the ammunition just stuck to it. 6. Only one of their rifle’s bullets almost passed through to her. 7. With that she might have died! 8. But she just kept insulting them as if they were shooting little pellets of corn at her! 9. ‘‘Flat-faced! Crushed nose! Ugly old things!’’ 10. ‘‘You won’t live much longer either!’’ 11. Saying, ‘‘You’ll die soon!’’ she shouts at them. 12. And from downriver they just kept shooting at her, you see! 13. ‘‘Ugly testicles!’’ 14. ‘‘Auka testicles are nothing but lice!’’ [Luisa laughs]

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XX. My father comes and we all look at Emisión 1. That’s when we all went and looked, and my father came running. 2. My father was upriver; you know how they fish the shoreline, looking for shrimp? 3. That’s what he was doing with my mother, fishing upriver. 4. When they heard the rifles they came. 5. No matter how much my mother tried to keep him back, my father went to see! 6. Well, um, those ones took their rifles 7. And probably went back downriver, sounding ‘‘tuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.’’ 8. How quickly they were gone! 9. Seeing that, we also went to look. 10. Then, this is what we saw: 11. He was still going dziu dziu [pause] dziu dziu [pause]. 12. Just like animal flesh he was twitching. *** 13. Ay! My father says, ‘‘Tonight I’ll sing sadly through the night, drinking ayawaska, and greeting the dawn like a munditi bird!’’ 14. Now his dying was over! 15. Examining him we saw that even his head had been shot through with holes. 16. Ay! Now you would see how his brain tissue spilled out where the bullets passed through. 17. As they’d shot him through from here, he’d blacked out. 18. That’s how they finished him off, just finished him off completely. XXI. Aftermath 1. Well, then, who on earth was it that went to tell Brother Ventura and his daughters? 2. We listened and the late Elisa and her bunch could be heard just crying from upriver. 3. And then my sister Santa and her girls came, 4. As they had told his son not to come. 5. My brother Ventura did not yet come; he remained where he was. 6. And that’s about all I can remember. 7. Let’s see, did they keep him there until dawn? What did they do?

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8. I don’t remember; but I think they kept him there till dawn. 9. They kept him there, and the next day, I think, they took him to bury him. 10. Yes they took him away to bury him. 11. And there, right there is where my brother Cezar, having built a house, stays now, downriver. 12. He stays right there! 13. And that’s why I said to him, ‘‘Why are you staying where the Auka have killed?’’ 14. ‘‘You are going to be killed as well.’’ 15. ‘‘Go to a different place!’’ 16. ‘‘This is cursed ground!’’ I said. 17. After I said that, he told me, ‘‘Because that’s true, I’m going to remove myself, sister.’’ 18. Well, he hasn’t yet removed himself; right there he stays. 19. But he’s cleared a space next to you. 20. ‘‘That’s where I’m going to go to live,’’ he told me, ‘‘uchuchiku,’’ he told me. 21. ‘‘That’s where I’m going to live,’’ he tells me. 22. ‘‘Yes, get away from there, and go!’’ I said. 23. ‘‘What are you doing staying here?’’

Dialogue and Perspective in the Text The principle of dialogue underscores every significant happening in this narrative. For Runa, the ability to speak and articulate is fundamental to their dialogical view of the world. Even birds may be seen as communicating in ways that are analogous to the linguistic exchanges between people. By allowing different protagonists, both human and nonhuman, to articulate by means of linguistic utterances, including ideophonically rendered sounds, movements, or appearances, Runa express a complexly holistic view of their communicative and interpretive experiences. Dialogues between People Dialogues between people constitute the major technique used by Luisa to explain the unfolding of the narrative’s main events. Aunt Lola’s initial inner-logue in verse II begins a kind of dialogue with the chikwan bird. This in turn energizes the exchanges with her husband, Emisión, in

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verse IV, which are echoed by her Aunt Victoria’s warnings to both Lola and Emisión in verse VIII. The Auka speak to Emisión in verse IX, explaining why they are killing him. They even taunt him in verse XIV after he is shot. What is perhaps the most surprising act of discourse in the entire narrative takes place in verse XV, in the form of Emisión’s calm and utterly dignified confrontation with his own death. Right before collapsing, he tells his assassins that he will in fact die, and that they do not need to fire on him any more. The Auka continue their dialogue with Emisión’s alma, or death spirit, in verse XIX, taunting it as well, by suggesting that they all go drinking together. Luisa’s grandmother pleads with the Auka in verse XVI, pleading with them to not go and harm her baby, by whom she means Emisión’s grown son Ventura. Although Ventura was not present at the time, she was afraid that they might go after him as well and shoot him before anyone could warn him. Aunt Lola hurls insult after insult at the Auka in verse XX, even going so far as to threaten them, telling them that they would also die soon. The narrative ends with Luisa’s exhortation of her brother Cezar, who is Emisión’s brother and a powerful shaman in his own right, to move from that place where his brother was shot. Cezar is represented as replying to her suggestion in a positive way, though not in a very speedy time frame. In fact, it took Cezar many years to withdraw from that location. Given the importance of dialogue, it is interesting to note how few verbs Quechua has for specifying lexically the various illocutionary effects that may be inferred from the narrative contexts. The Quechua verbs that refer to speech acts include nina ‘to say’, rimana ‘to speak, tell’, kaparina ‘to shout’, and kamina ‘to insult with words’. The verb nina ‘to say’ is by far the most widely used verb in the narrative. It is used to represent the majority of quotative utterance tokens in this text. It frames the inner thoughts of Aunt Lola at the beginning of the narrative when she wonders about the chikwan bird’s soundings. It is also used to describe what this bird does when it sounds. Luisa uses nina to represent what the chikwan ‘‘says’’ when he goes chi chi chi chi chi. This verb is used so often in the narrative because it frames whatever utterances are reported to have been said. Whether Luisa is reporting what a speaking self of a speech event, a narrative event, or an other has said, nina ‘‘to say’’ is used to frame the words. The verb nina conveys a variety of illocutionary effects. I have therefore taken the liberty of using English verbs other than ‘‘to say’’ in some of my translations, to convey something of these various effects. In verse XVI, when Luisa’s grandmother

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begs the Auka to not go and hurt her grandson, I translate the verb nina with the verb ‘pleaded with’ in line 3. In verse XVIII when the Auka speak to Emisión’s corpse, leaving tobacco in his mouth, I translate their words to him in line 16 with the verb ‘taunt.’ The verb rimana ‘to speak, say, tell’ is used to report that an act of speaking has taken place. It is occasionally used to frame quotative speech, but is not used for this purpose nearly as often as the verb nina is used. However, its use may also convey a variety of illocutionary effects. In verse II, line 1, Aunt Lola uses rimana to remark to herself that the chikwan is ‘‘scolding’’ a lot. Given Luisa’s very rapid repetitions of the bird’s syllables in this particular verse, combined with her energetic, forceful pronunciation of the initial sibilants, I have translated this verb as ‘scolding’ to convey an urgency that would not be implied by mere speaking. In line 8 within this verse, when Aunt Lola wonders why the chikwan makes such sounds, I use the more semantically general ‘speak’ to translate this verb. I also translate rimana with ‘‘speak’’ when Jacinta says at the end of this verse, in line 17, that the bird ‘‘has spoken,’’ to give a sense of the momentousness of what has been uttered. The Perspectives Underlying Dialogues Luisa’s careful clarifications of the various perspectives from which all discourse emanates is obvious in the shifting back and forth between -mi and -shi suffixes. Her frequent use of the -shi suffix to frame the words of the account’s teller helps the listener to sort out what she is telling versus what others have told her. Since this story continues to traumatize her entire family, it is safe to assume that the events have been told and retold by a number of different people. While it is not too difficult to sort out Luisa’s different assertion-making selves, since she is speaking either as the speaking self of the speech event (Es) or the narrative event (En), the matter of the ‘‘other’’ voiced by the -shi enclitic is more difficult to untangle. The various -shi marked statements undoubtedly include voices laminated over voices. For a relatively simple example of perspective, consider the first line of verse II. Aunt Lola voices her concern, saying that the chikwan bird is scolding a lot, with -shi suffixed onto the adverb yapa ‘a lot’. This use of -shi indicates that, according to someone, Lola was reported to have said or thought these utterances. Line 3, however, contains one of the most complexly embedded statements in the entire narrative. Luisa is saying that somebody said that Aunt Lola said that the chikwan bird said something:

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3. Ña ruya hawa-manda ni-u-sha-mi, ni-sha-shi ni-n. now tree above-from say-DUR-COR-EV say-COR-EV say-3 ‘‘Speaking from the top of a tree, saying this,’’ he told. My translation may be understood as logically structured in the following way: ‘‘(I assert as speaking self -mi (En)≤∞ that) from the top of the tree he was speaking, saying (according to someone else) these words, (this is what) someone told.’’ Although my translation has simplified these perspectives, I have attempted to give an indication of the statement’s complexity through the use of underlining and italics, to help the reader negotiate the contrasts in perspective. Throughout the narrative, at key moments of drama, Luisa adopts the voice of the speaking self of the narrative event, quoting words that others said. Beyond shifting a listener’s perspective, the speaking self -mi (En) occurs during moments of high drama within the narrative. By displacing her subjectivity onto various dramatis personae, Luisa endows the quoted speech fragments with a naturalistic liveliness. In verse II, lines 11 and 14, when Lola is admonishing her husband, telling him that he is about to be targeted by Auka assassins, Luisa represents these words with -mi, to give the listener a feeling of a relatively unmediated representation of Lola’s words. Rather than reminding us that these are reports of her words, Luisa suspends her use of -shi to give us a feeling of a more direct representation of the words spoken, and at the same time, her use of -mi (En) seems to endow those words with a stronger mood of assertiveness. This occurs also in verse IV, lines 3 and 4, when Emisión replies in no uncertain terms that he will not leave, that she can go if she wants, but that his friends are coming any minute, to drink with him: 3. ‘‘Imawa? Ria kanga; ñuka siriunimi!’’ ‘‘What for? You go! I’m lying right here!’’ 4. ‘‘Ñukata pasianga, ñuka amigoguna, kunanmi paktamunga raunguna.’’ ‘‘My friends are arriving (any minute)now to visit with me.’’ Emisión’s assertive insistence that his friends will arrive at any moment contains an irony when we realize who is really scheduled to arrive at any minute. Although Luisa was a little girl when the events of this story took place, and did not have firsthand experience of these events, she tells the

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story vividly and clearly. If the -mi and -shi enclitics were primarily encoding direct versus indirect experience, one would expect the -shi enclitic to be far more prominent than the -mi enclitic. Overall, the -mi and -shi enclitics occur with the same approximate frequency.≤≤ Ecological Dialogues Luisa’s narrative represents Emisión’s death as something that was both inevitable and avoidable. It was inevitable because so many signals indicated that it would happen. It was also avoidable because Lola and others bothered to try to get him to save himself by leaving. The first warning is noticed by his wife, Lola, in verse II. Her initial impulse is correct. The bird is chirping a warning directed at her husband. She does, however, in lines 1 and 2, attempt to test the truth of this thought, by wondering whether the warning might have been meant for her children’s safety: 1. Mana pachalya; ima wawaguna, imachari yaku? ‘‘Oh no! What if it’s the children? What if it’s the water?’’ 2. Imachasha shamusha tigrasha wañungauna nin? ‘‘What if, coming, on their way back, they die?’’ She is wondering whether they might drown in the river on their way back. Luisa then represents the chikwan bird in line 3 as responding to this second idea with the sound ‘‘chikwan,’’ which she then translates into human language in line 4: 3. ‘‘Chikwan,’’ nirashi chi. ‘‘He said, ‘Chikwan.’ ’’ 4. ‘‘Yangami yaringi chita,’’ nira. ‘‘He said, ‘You’re wrongly thinking that.’ ’’ Luisa not only represents the bird’s chirping as human language, but also inhabits the utterance token by displacing her speaking self and becoming the voice of the bird as a speaking self of the narrative event, using -mi on the adverb yanga ‘wrongly’. Aunt Lola’s divinatory dialogue with the bird is the strongest example of ecological dialogism in this narrative. There are, nevertheless, several other significant eventings from the nonhuman world, which con-

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tribute additional commentaries from which Emisión’s state of danger may be deduced. In verse VI, lines 2 and 3, there are two eventings reported by Luisa’s parents. They see an unidentifiable, humanlike shadow standing near a tree filled with fruit, represented by the word yanan (an ideophone formed from the adjective yana ‘black’,’’ combined with the ideophonic adverbial suffix -n). The second eventing is the falling of the fruit, depicted ideophonically with repetitions of putu. 2. Rikulyaitashi pukushka ruyaga runa shinashi yanan shayarin ninaura. ‘‘And what they saw by a ripe tree was what looked like a person they said, a shadow of a person standing there.’’ 3. Putu putu putu putushi pukushkata urmachin nira. ‘‘They said it made the ripened fruit fall putu putu putu putu.’’ The final eventings that portend Emisión’s death are the rainbows and sunshowers noticed by Luisa in verse IX, lines 6, 7, and 8. She notices multiple rainbows arcing over a pond, and sunny day rain falling from the sky: 6. Chi, ima man, paiba kuchamandaga kai kwichi ‘‘arco iris’’ ninau? ‘‘That, what was it called? From that pond this rainbow, they call it ‘arco iris’?’’ 7. Ña chimba chimba chimba chimba chimba shayarisha ‘‘Well, now it was arcing all across that little pond.’’ 8. Rupai tamya shaaaiiiiiiii tutututu shaaaiiiiiii pahota rara, rikungi ma! ‘‘And you would have seen how the sunshowers portended danger, going shaaaiiiiiiii tutututu shaaaiiiiii!’’

Conclusion The principle of dialogism as used by linguistic anthropologists has the advantage of going beyond individually circumscribed notions of meaning, thereby offering a framework that emphasizes the socially accomplished nature of understanding. I offer a revised concept of dialogism that is designed to account for a communicative cosmology that expands the role of speaking and meaning making beyond human domains. Runa

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culture necessitates this revised ecological dialogism. I want to emphasize that speech, as linguists define it, is still the province of humans. In the immediately preceding narrative, what is presented by the narrator as a communicative exchange between the shaman’s wife and the chikwan bird is a form of divination involving the testing of propositions phrased as yes/no questions, which are confirmed or denied by certain procedures. In this instance, however, confirmation and denial are determined by the qualities of a bird’s chirping. Having said that, it is also necessary to point out that the preoccupation with defining language in a precise way is peculiar to scientific culture.≤≥ Runa are not so inclined to draw the lines between speech proper and communication in general. Their use of verbs that imply a high degree of volitionality and motivation, such as rimana ‘to speak’, nina ‘to say’, silbana ‘to whistle’, and kantana ‘to sing’, reveals their lack of interest in manning the barricades between human and nonhuman communication. The principle of dialogism articulates as well with the perspectival functions of -mi and -shi. Their perspectival, deictic nature has given rise to misunderstandings of the system. Because the deictic categories receiving most attention from linguists function to orient understandings that are often anchored within a speaker’s spatiotemporal perceptual field, some linguists have taken that perceptual field as intrinsic to evidential meaning.≤∂ This is why there are so many descriptions of -mi that include terms such as ‘‘eyewitnessed.’’ In reality, the immediate perceptual field of evidential usage is tied to its deictic, perspectival nature, rather than to its meaning as such. This is why linguists of Quechua have often become involved in a debate over whether the -mi evidential means direct experience, and by implication that one is convinced, or, conversely, that it means one is convinced, and by implication, that it is a direct experience.≤∑ This confusion has generated mistaken interpretations and oversimplifications of people’s discourse. Within the Quechua community, it is the case that many kinds of experiences that we would not consider direct were asserted by means of -mi. Events that have not yet taken place, as well as events that are projected to take place and are phrased as warnings or threats, are often asserted by means of -mi. Analyses of the -mi and -shi enclitics have not reconciled these types of usage with the notion of direct experience. I believe we can understand these apparently deviant cases by substituting a concept of concrete experience for direct experience. For Runa, what is concrete may be defined as whatever is contextualized within their cultural framework of understandings.

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Dreams, psychotropically induced visions, and eventings are as concrete as empirically verified and witnessed events are for us.≤∏ The -mi enclitic participates in two paradigms. It contrasts with the enclitic -chu to affirm what is questioned, and with the free form/enclitic chari/-cha, which indicates conjectural knowledge. In this function its core meaning is assertion based upon a speaker’s knowledge of the world, some of which may be verifiably witnessed and attested, some of which may not be. The other paradigm in which it occurs is the paradigm in which it contrasts with -shi. In this paradigm, the core meaning of -mi is ‘‘speaking self,’’ as opposed to the ‘‘other’’ meaning of -shi. This speaking self -mi, which is not always extricable from the assertion making -mi, must be defined with reference to the here-and-now of the speech event or the here and now of the narrated event, a requirement that may have generated a kind of false metalinguistic consciousness about its functions, linking its use with a notion of direct or eyewitnessed experience. The proposed analysis is offered in hopes that a reconciliation between two opposing points of view about -mi and -shi may be possible. A number of other scholars who have analyzed Quechua evidentiality have also included a notion of perspective in their accounts (DedenbachSalazar Sáenz 1997; Hintz 2007; Howard-Malverde 1988; Weber 1986), or offer analyses of evidentiality that presume a notion of perspective (Adelaar 1977). Outside of Quechua studies, perspective has been acknowledged as a significant principle motivating evidential use (cf. Haviland 1996). The sweeping typological study by Aikhenvald (2004:316– 24) also includes evidence for the perspectival encoding of evidentials in discourse. The concept of perspective may be inferred from one of the earliest accounts of evidentiality, that of Boas, who characterizes evidential suffixes in Kwakiutl as describing ‘‘source of subjective knowledge’’ (1911:443). By framing ‘‘source’’ as a subjective relation between a speaker and the world, Boas subsumes the notion of perspective within evidentiality.

i3i

On Nonhuman Role Models and New Correspondences

The hero should not be portrayed as an already completed and unchanging person but as one who is evolving and developing, a person who learns from life . . . —Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘‘Epic and Novel’’

In this chapter I focus on Luisa’s own remarkable life, through her narrative presentations of unconventional experiences and new discoveries. What I intend to demonstrate is that the complexities involved in translation go much deeper than a word class and a grammatical distinction. Ideophony, perspective, and dialogue may conspire together to produce some very complex moods constituting a narrative stance that is anything but unitary. It is worthwhile to remember Friedrich’s consideration of mood as a master trope, easily identified in syntactic incarnations such as the declarative, imperative, and interrogative, but powerful as well in the pervasive moods that are ‘‘egregiously difficult to analyze with our existing formal tools’’ (1991:31). It is at times impossible to identify a single pervasive mood in Luisa’s narrative tellings. There may be several stances that she adopts, and these stances may even be in conflict with one another. The difficulties of translating some of Luisa’s narrative moods can be traced to a number of factors (fig. 6). First of all, there is the matter of her open-ended outlook on the world. She is always willing to accommodate new bits of knowledge that may expand or complicate her perspective. She presents herself as an explorer and a student of the world who is constantly gleaning new insights. This is why her narratives often end by proclaiming what she learned from a particular experience. She displays an amazing willingness to learn about and experience life in novel ways, while at the same time never losing her equilibrium. Whatever she seeks to come to terms with, analogical relationships between humans and nonhumans provide

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the most general framework for her understanding. By endowing nonhumans with a perspective and an ability to articulate that perspective, often by means of ideophony, she allows for the possibility of meaningful dialogue with the world. What is meaningful for Luisa is not necessarily synchronous or logically consistent, however. Her openness to new experiences and perspectives often results in discoveries that cause her some apparent cognitive discomfort and practical inconvenience. I will present two narrative extracts that demonstrate the disparate strands of mood that can underlie her presentations of her knowledge of the world, and how she came to possess that knowledge. I then present a full narrative, detailing her description of giving birth to her first child. This complete narrative is of interest because she represents herself experiencing an extraordinarily challenging ordeal for the first time. What makes this process bearable at one of the most difficult possible moments is the cognitive trick that her aunt helps her to play on herself, by switching her experiential perspective, thereby displacing the severe pain. Before presenting the translations from these narratives, I want to show, with two short anecdotes, how Luisa makes use of analogies between the human and nonhuman lifeworlds to construct role models for everyday human behavior.

Nonhuman Role Models The following short excerpts illustrate relatively accessible moods. It is clear, when listening to these words, that definite moods are being communicated through the content as well as through discourse features of prosody and ideophony. The freshwater dolphins and the water turtle called charapa embody traits and behaviors that Luisa admires, while the tortoise called tsawata is described as a heartless and incompetent nurturer. Faithful Freshwater Dolphins We return now to one of the human-to-nonhuman transformations discussed in the first chapter: that of the stingy people whose eyes were drunk by the bulyukuku and who subsequently chose to become freshwater dolphins. Although the stingy ones who became dolphins were seriously flawed in their human character by their withholding of food from children, they suffer no stigmatized identity whatsoever as

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Figure 6. Laughing with her hands. (Photo by Janis Nuckolls)

freshwater dolphins. In fact, they become highly idealized exemplars of romantic love and devotion. They are so described in the following excerpt, because they typically travel in male–female pairs, always staying together. The playful abandonment with which they burst out of the water, described with repetitions of the ideophone bhux, effectively describes the force and beauty of their movements, which is their most distinguishing feature. The Quechua word nuspa, ‘wild, crazy’, adds to the idealized vision of the dolphins who are not only devoted to each other but spontaneous and playful as well. 1. How the bugyu play 1. The bugyu come from big rivers, from the Maranon, playing together. 2. These wild bugyu, bursting bhux bhux bhux,∞ 3. Climbing climbing climbing, 4. The wife and her husband play with each other. 5. These wild bugyu, wherrrre in the deep water together, will they go?

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6. Play play play play, they’ll go and circle around a big lake, 7. And again they’ll emerge at the head of the river, 8. At this head, at the Bobonaza River’s head. 9. They’ll play with each other bhux bhux bhux, not abandoning each other. 10. The bugyu (go) like this: 11. The woman leaps up high, and the man leaps up high. 12. That’s how they play together. 13. The bugyu play as they travel. 14. They don’t abandon each other. In another context, where the bugyu’s value as a love charm is explained, the habits of people are negatively contrasted and criticized. 2. The bugyu as love charm 1. It’s a verrrrry potent love charm,≤ the bugyu is. 2. The bugyu are not abandoners of each other. 3. No matter where they travel, they play together like this! 4. As for us, whenever we want to, we’ll abandon each other. The Heartless Tortoise and the Good Water Turtle Even negative role models are important for their power to reaffirm desired social values, by directing critical attention at those who deviate. The short description below contrasts the egg-laying habits of the tortoise and the water turtle. The water turtle is said to be a ‘‘heart possessor,’’ because she lays her eggs in one place, digging a hole in the sand near the river’s shore. The tortoise, by contrast, scatters her eggs all over. Luisa believes that the water turtle, by laying her eggs in one place near the shore, makes it easier for the hatchlings to swim into the water and rejoin their mother. She reasons that the tortoise’s hatchlings, by contrast, will have a far more difficult time surviving, because each is on its own. She lavishes greatest attention on her description of the tsawata, whose egg laying is described with repetitions of the verb wachana. In this description, the verb wachana takes on an ideophonic identity by undergoing repetition and intonational elaboration, all of which communicate an idea of an aspectually ongoing process. Here is how she describes these differences.

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3. The heartless tortoise and the good water turtle 1. The tortoise lays eggs, lays eggs, lays eggs, lays eggs,≥ 2. Abandoning them wherever, she goes, having laid those eggs. N: Really? Not in one place? 3. Not just making one nest. 4. But the water turtle has a heart! 5. She digs the ground, lays her eggs there. 6. And her babies go right into the water to their mother. 7. Not the other one, though! 8. In the forest (you’ll find) a laid egg, a laid egg wherever it occurs to her.∂ N: One egg here, another egg there? 9. Ooooh! Wherever it occurred to her, wherever she wanted to lay eggs! 10. Abandoning them, she goes! 11. I once found one of them in a termite’s house. 12. A termite, having built a house, inside of its house, it hatched. 13. The poor thing all by itself, as much as it is able to, grows. 14. That tortoise is a heartless one! The heartless tortoise and the water turtle function as contrastive role models. By abandoning her hatchlings and scattering them all over the forest, the tortoise supplies a negative image that functions to reaffirm standards for proper nurturing behavior. The behaviors of freshwater dolphins, tortoises, and water turtles, then, stand for positive and negative characteristics easily identified with moods that either embrace or condemn them. The moods with which Luisa constructs her descriptions are achieved, in part, through ideophony. Even a life-form such as the tortoise that is not salient for its sound-making capacity is allowed to articulate, through its ideophonically described movements, a perspective on nurturing. The idealized behavior of a couple is communicated through an exhilarating description of the power and beauty of the freshwater dolphins’ bursting and leaping out of water. I turn in Part II to descriptions that highlight Luisa’s discoveries of new correspondences between human and nonhuman lifeforms. Apart from the fact that they are new discoveries, they are different from the foregoing descriptions insofar as they are not characterized by a unitary affective stance. Both discoveries have in common the fact that they evoke complex strands of mood and affect, which pose formidable challenges for translation.

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Discovering New Correspondences I now present extracts from two narratives in which Luisa described new awarenesses of connections between people and nonhuman lifeforms. In addition to the fact that these are new discoveries, they have in common the fact that they are not particularly welcome discoveries. In the first narrative, there is some palpable cognitive discomfort, which is difficult to prove, although it seems obvious by the intonation in which her reactions to these discoveries are verbalized. In the second narrative, there is a new discovery that inconveniences her and some of her family as well, because it introduces a new dietary taboo. At the same time that it inconveniences her and her family, which suggests that they do in fact take it seriously, it also amuses them. The Motolo as Poison and Medicine The first instance describes the behavior of a highly venomous pit viper, the motolo. Luisa and her husband encounter four of these snakes while working a new agricultural field. This narrative includes a number of discoveries about the motolo. They observe the sounds it makes, which Luisa describes as a kind of ‘‘singing.’’ The principle discovery of the narrative has to do with the methodical way in which the motolo preys upon a partridge. Another discovery, which actually occurred after the narrative events, concerns the powerful medicinal properties of a pit viper’s body fat. The first discovery occurs at night. The sound of a motolo’s ‘‘singing’’ is heard shortly after they’ve already encountered and killed one of these snakes. They verify the identity of the sound by following it to its source, shining a light into a hole in the ground and discovering the snake inside. Realizing that there are many holes in the ground around them, they immediately set to work plugging them up as tightly as possible, to prevent further encounters with more of them. Shortly after plugging up as many holes as they can find, they hear the second snake ‘‘singing,’’ which Luisa describes ideophonically. 4. How a motolo snake sang 1. After tightly plugging them up we went. 2. And again we heard it singing: sar sar sar sar sar sar sar sar sar sar kux kux kux kux kux kux kux.∑ 3. Then after sounding like that it was silent!

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Luisa’s ideophones describing the snake’s singing are extremely lowpitched by comparison with her normal speaking voice. The lowness in her pitch may reflect her attempt to make the snake sound threatening. Luisa’s friend Jacinta was present at the relating of this narrative and interjected an explanation for the snake’s singing, saying that it sang because it noticed the sounds of people nearby. Luisa agreed with this assessment of the motolo’s motivation. Although neither Luisa nor Jacinta attempted to overtly characterize the singing as an intimidation tactic on the part of the snake, it would be reasonable to assume that’s what they were thinking. The discovery of the deadly snake is frightening enough. One of the most startling bits of new knowledge gained from this narrative, however, has to do with the motolo’s methodical way of preparing its prey for consumption. The motolo is watched by her husband, and then by Luisa, as it plucks the feathers from the partridge, one by one. Luisa quotes her husband, who is then described as supplying a hypothetical quote of his own, about the surprising nature of this initial discovery. 5. Discovering a motolo plucking a partridge 1. Well, come and look, Eloisa, so this is what a motolo does! 2. We might have said∏ ‘‘Isn’t this what a hawk has eaten?’’ 3. When (in fact) it was a motolo snake that was the eater! Luisa’s first detailed description below is from her husband’s perspective. She often mentions during the narrative that she had dreamed badly the night before and was therefore extra-cautious in approaching the snake. It wasn’t until her husband prodded her to go and see it that she mustered the courage to look for herself. I present the following representation by Luisa of her husband’s first glimpse of this activity because it includes the reactions of her friend Jacinta, who shared Luisa’s amazement, excitement, and horror over this discovery. The discovery that the motolo plucks its prey ‘‘as if it had hands,’’ and the comparison of this activity to the plucking of a chicken, suggest to both of them a scene that is uncomfortably analogous with human activities. Their level of discomfort is indexed by their whisperlike intonation, by the rapid pace of their commentary, and by the way they latch onto and repeat each other’s descriptions The letter J interjects Jacinta’s commentary. As always, my questions are introduced with N. Luisa begins with a description of the sound heard when the snake plucks the partridge’s feathers.

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6. First detailed description of motolo plucking partridge 1. L: So then, look, it went purus purus purus.π 2. J: It was plucking! 3. L: It was plucking purus!∫ N: What was it plucking? 4. L: It was plucking the partridge, the one it had caught! 5. J: As if it had hands! 6. L: As if it had hands! It was plucking with its teeth, he told us, 7. You should get my husband to tell you! 8. J: Like you would pluck a chicken. 9. L: It was plucking it like a chicken! Luisa does finally gather her courage to go and watch the snake with her husband. The following portion, therefore, is from her own perspective. She describes careful, methodical movements as it places its mouth on a feather using the ideophone tak, and then plucks it out with a purus. When its mouth becomes too full, it then spits out the bunch of feathers with the ideophone kkkh. 7. Second detailed description of motolo plucking partridge 1. I went (to look) even though I was so afraid, having dreamed badly. 2. And so I just looked from a distance, and I saw it pluck, sounding purus, 3. You know how when it’s quiet you can hear someone walking, going taras taras kau kau, far away in the forest? 4. Well, standing there and listening, it sounded purus purus purus. 5. ‘‘Go off to the side, don’t be afraid, his face is over there, near what he’s plucked,’’ my husband told me. 6. We went closer and closer and saw him just takΩ (put it in his mouth) and purus (pluck it out) 7. Tak (put it in his mouth) purus (pluck it out). 8. Well, he was holding the feathers in his mouth. 9. And then kkkkkh kkkkkh (spitting out),∞≠ 10. Just making his head go like this kkkkkh (spitting out). 11. And then the feathers, the entire bunch of them, the entire bunch fell out! After witnessing this scene Luisa climbs a tree while her husband kills the snake with a big stick. They examine the partridge, discover its

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unlaid eggs and take them, before burying its body so that whatever poison has seeped into it will not pose a danger to any children or dogs who might discover it. They drag the snake home, open up its body, and then throw its remains into the river. At this point Luisa expresses regret at not having known at the time about the value of the snake’s body fat. She has no apparent difficulty with the idea that one of the most venomous snakes of the forest, whose bite is absolutely deadly to most people, can also have a beneficial substance. Although she was uncomfortable with the discovery of the snake’s purposeful, methodical preparation of its own meal, she is pleased to report that its fat is an all-purpose remedy, which she states with conviction. 8. The value of a motolo snake’s fat 1. A motolo’s fat is one of the most valuable things in the world.∞∞ 2. What a valuable thing it is, look! 3. Just this little bit, just this little bit! 4. Is valuable for every remedy’s purpose. 5. Now I’m very familiar with all of this. 6. Now wherever I might kill one, I always take its fat! Luisa’s narrative describes the motolo as an adversary, which behaves in ways that are frighteningly analogous to human behavior. It sings, it plucks as if it had hands, and it spits out the feathers of the partridge the way a person spits. Finally, its own bodily substance is said to have the ability to cure all kinds of human illnesses. The Consequences of Killing a Deer The second new linkage of this chapter concerns not only Runa cultural beliefs and practices but those of the Achuar as well. Runa have a complex, ambivalent relationship with the Achuar, who speak an unrelated language and with whom they live side by side. On the one hand, the Achuar are looked down upon and considered volatile and aggressive. On the other hand, Runa trade actively with them for several practical necessities, such as blowguns, spears, and hammocks. I knew a number of Runa men, moreover, who had taken an Achuar wife. This section will illuminate a new connection between humans and nonhumans through a discovery about Achuar beliefs that Luisa became aware of. According to Luisa, the Achuar believe that spirits of deceased relatives can visit them in the form of deer, allowing the living some continued

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interaction with their loved ones. Typically, this interaction is achieved through communications received by the living in their dreams. If one sees a deer and then dreams of a deceased loved one ‘‘speaking’’ in the dream, then the deer will be considered the embodiment of that loved one. Although Runa do not usually take this belief seriously, as is evident by their enthusiasm for hunting and eating deer, they will allow themselves to be made uncomfortable by Achuar and will even succumb to pressure from them to not eat a freshly killed deer, as occurs in the following narrative extract. Moreover, some Runa will, at some level, accept the validity of this belief and will permanently modify their behavior. Luisa portrays herself in this latter category. She describes herself as someone who once relished eating deer meat but now abstains from it. Her rationale is explained through a summary dialogue, featuring generic Achuar voices speaking about their belief. Luisa’s depiction fits with a Bakhtinian social heteroglossia as it features an impersonal stylization that is nonetheless ‘‘pregnant with the images of speaking persons . . .’’ (1981a:331–32). 9. What Achuar say about deer 1. Before I enjoyed deer meat so much, especially its intestines! 2. I ate it without realizing what it was. N: And why do you say that? 3. Well, because of that, of what the Auka say: 4. ‘‘It’s a person, a person’s spirit.’’ 5. ‘‘It’s our grandfathers, our aunts,’’ say the Auka. Luisa’s complete abstinence from deer meat bespeaks an empathy for Achuar beliefs. Yet her attitude about the matter is not simply empathetic. She seems to take this belief seriously throughout the narrative, except for one key moment in its telling. What follows are extracts from a story related to her by her brother and sister-in-law, who, after killing a pregnant doe and bringing it to their house to prepare it for cooking, were confronted by a distraught Achuar woman. This woman accused them of killing the spirit of her daughter, who had once been a pregnant young woman with little children. 10. An Auka woman’s reaction 1. Well, after he had killed that deer, she arrived by canoe at my brother Cezar’s, just crying to the skies. N: Who did?

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2. That deceased woman’s mother! 3. So then, when she saw that deer she cried out, ‘‘Ayyy!’’ 4. ‘‘My child! Why did you-all kill her like this?’’ 5. ‘‘Now she’s lost forever!’’∞≤ 6. ‘‘Why did you kill her?’’ 7. ‘‘She should not have been killed!’’ 8. ‘‘You’ve killed my child!’’ 9. ‘‘(Just as) my child died while pregnant, 10. This deer you’ve killed is pregnant like that look!’’ 11. ‘‘This was not a deer! This was a person’s spirit.’’ 12. ‘‘Why did you kill her?’’ 13. ‘‘Now my child is gone forever.’’ 14. Saying ‘‘You (are the one who) killed her,’’ 15. She came to speak to my brother Cezar as he had killed that deer, said∞≥ my Aunt Santa. After presenting her sister-in-law Santa’s description of the distraught woman’s words. Luisa then shares a detailed account of the grieving woman’s interactions with her deceased daughter-turned-deer. It is not clear whether these details were related to her sister-in-law Santa by the distraught mother of the deceased daughter or, after the events of the story, by someone else familiar with the family. In any case, all of these details are voiced through the perspective of another teller. Being the expert raconteur, Luisa embeds them within the story for their narrative salience: 11. How the deer watched her former family 1. That deer would come from the agricultural field and just stare at them from outside the house. 2. They believed she was watching for her children. 3. She’d look at one and then go and look at another standing at the shore. 4. Bathing herself there, she would cause her mother to dream. 5. Whenever that deer came to watch like that, she (the mother) would dream: 6. ‘‘I came to see my children, Mama,’’ 7. Saying ‘‘Are they all right? I was watching them,’’ the spirit would say. 8. Whenever that deer came to watch, that woman would dream of her daughter.

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Luisa returns, below, to the account from her sister-in-law Santa. This extract includes a parenthetical reference to Luisa’s own laughter, which could be seen as undermining her professed respect for Achuar beliefs. 12. How brother Cezar happened to kill the deer 1. Well, seeing that deer one day, Brother Cezar’s dogs chased it and made it fall into the water. 2. As the dogs had made it fall, my brother and his wife thought of it as meat to eat and killed it. 3. Well then, Santa, my sister-in-law, had been splitting it open. [Luisa erupts into laughter] 4. Having already split it open, they heard someone paddling, paddling toward them from upriver and crying chiraaaaa! chiraaaa chiraaa!∞∂ 5. Wondering, ‘‘Who on earth has died?’’ 6. We just stood there and watched, afraid. Out of empathy for the Achuar mother’s feelings, Luisa’s brother and sister-in-law ended up selling the entire carcass to a nonindigenous colonist living in the area. Luisa’s laughter should not be interpreted as ridicule for the Achuar woman’s beliefs. Rather, it should be understood as emerging from the nature of the narrative situation. This is a type of mostawkward-moment-story that becomes humorous when enough time has passed. Luisa’s own sympathy and respect are affirmed by her professed abstinence from deer meat and are implied, as well, by her willingness to concede a perspective to the Achuar mother. This perspective is articulated through representations of the woman’s dialogues with others about her daughter. Yet, despite the sincerity of her empathy, Luisa cannot help being ensconced in her own perspective as well. The mismatch in frameworks for understanding the situation generates humor that seems to go against the grain of her respect. For Luisa, however, it is not necessary to homogenize the world with a consistent point of view. An understanding of the perspectives of others, whether they conform with, clash against, or simply coexist alongside of her own, is what interests her. My First Pregnancy I now present this chapter’s full narrative, in which Luisa relates the story of her first experience of pregnancy and childbirth. Throughout the story

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she foregrounds her changing perspectives on her condition. At various times she represents herself as ignorant, in denial, cognizant of, and finally, challenged to her utmost capacity, by the ordeal of giving birth. Perspective is also a tool she is told to use to cope with the extraordinary pain she feels when the baby is about to emerge. She relates how her aunt scolded her into this alternative perspective by getting her to think about mice giving birth, during her most excruciatingly difficult moments.∞∑ Although these words from her aunt are not of the same order as the elaborate ritualized childbirth chant sung by Kuna and described by Lévi-Strauss, they may be understood as serving similar ends: ‘‘The cure would consist, therefore, in making explicit a situation originally existing on the emotional level and in rendering acceptable to the mind pains which the body refuses to tolerate’’ (1969:197). This advice from her aunt is only one of the many examples of dialogue between herself and various others by which she communicates her changing outlooks. Ideophony helps her express the different ways in which her body reacts to the pregnancy, as well as the incipient communicative acts of the developing life inside of her, beginning with his first movements and ending with his initial cries after being born. Only at the end of her story does she reveal that this first of the nine children she bore died shortly after being born. The baby’s death, although not discussed by Luisa, may explain why the narrative ends on something less than a triumphant note. Unlike many of her difficult life experiences, this one does not end in an upbeat way by summarizing what she learned or accomplished. Her ability to endure this experience does not seem to give her much satisfaction or joy. I include it here because it complements all of her other triumphs, even if it is a bittersweet triumph at best. It illustrates, through Luisa’s aunt’s scolding words, the high expectations for bravery placed upon women who are told not to scream under any circumstances. This story also reveals her very human vulnerability. Luisa is anything but muted and stoic throughout this ordeal. She vividly describes her suffering. Her fear of dying from the pain she feels is expressed openly and repeatedly, to those helping her. This story also contributes a new appreciation to a nonhuman lifeform that rarely receives recognition. Putting aside Aesop’s tribute to the mouse in his famous fable about the lion and the mouse, we almost never hear much in the way of admiration for this creature. Yet Luisa’s aunt uses it as a role model, admonishing her to focus on this tiny being at the

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very moment when she is about to push the baby out. I believe her aunt is trying to help her switch her perspective by displacing it onto a much smaller version of her own experience, in order to minimize her extreme pain. This key moment in the narrative, when she is about to push the baby out, also reveals a side of her that I have not yet addressed: the matter of her syncretic cosmology. Although many of her ideas and beliefs do not mesh comfortably with mainstream Christianity, Luisa considers herself to be a Catholic Christian and credits God, referred to as ‘‘He,’’ with helping her to muster the strength she finally needs to push the baby out. 13. My first pregnancy I. What I first thought 1. When I became pregnant I said to my husband: 2. ‘‘Why in the world has our type (of thing)∞∏ left me?’’ 3. ‘‘Now perhaps I’ll never become pregnant,’’ I said. 4. I did not become pregnant zas (instantaneously). 5. Taking me, my husband stayed with me; 6. Then leaving, he went away from me. 7. And then he came, and after a year and six months I hadn’t become pregnant; 8. So people were saying to me (you must be) ‘‘infertile.’’ 9. Well then, my period just left me tas∞π completely. 10. When this happened I said ‘‘Now what’s to become of me?’’ 11. As our type of thing had left me 12. I thought, ‘‘Maybe it’s true; maybe I’ll never get pregnant.’’ 13. I was so dumb! II. What Señora Amelia told me 1. Well, after one month, let’s see, after twenty-five days, 2. My stomach, it rolled around in me so much. 3. I would sit and just wonder now what could be happening to me? 4. Then in the second month it shook me even more. 5. Then at three months my breasts stood up on me thak, as if full. 6. Señora Amelia said to me, ‘‘You are pregnant’’; that’s what she told me. 7. ‘‘You are going to have a baby,’’∞∫ she told me. 8. ‘‘Atsatsai! You’re wrong to tell me that,’’ I said. 9. ‘‘I’m telling you for sure; your breasts look like it,’’ she told me.

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10. Well, my breasts, right here, had become darkened. 11. So when I looked carefully at that I was surprised. 12. ‘‘In the morning press yourself,’’ she told me. 13. ‘‘There, near the bladder if you’re pregnant, you’ll feel a ball,’’ she told me. 14. So, in the way she had told me to do it, I pressed myself in the morning. 15. And there was a ball there!∞Ω 16. I was so surprised! III. What I told my husband 1. So then my husband came. 2. And he had brought cow meat. 3. Well, it even made me nauseous from far away. 4. Telling him ‘‘I can’t eat any; I’ll just feed you’’ 5. Cuz just handling it while cooking made me throw up and throw up. 6. And he said to me ‘‘Why?’’ 7. ‘‘Aren’t you having your period?’’ he said to me. 8. ‘‘No,’’ I said. 9. ‘‘For how many months have you not had your period?’’ he asks me. 10. ‘‘For three months,’’ I said; ‘‘with this month I’m going on three,’’ I told him. 11. ‘‘For two entire months and now I’m going on three.’’ 12. ‘‘Really?’’ he said. 13. ‘‘Why does it roll around so much in my stomach?’’ I said. N: How did it roll? 14. Dziu dziu dziu dziu dziu≤≠ is how a boy baby will bother one. 15. That’s how a boy baby might roll around. 16. So he told me ‘‘Well then, you’re pregnant.’’ 17. And then growing, growing, growing, and growing, the baby was coming along, look! IV. The pain in my heart 1. At birthing time it hurt me in my heart. 2. I said to Señora Amelia, ‘‘Why do I feel this deathly pain in my heart?’’ 3. ‘‘I feel like I might just die,’’ I said.

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4. ‘‘Why?’’ she said to me. ‘‘Isn’t it your stomach that hurts to give birth?’’ she said. 5. ‘‘It must be your stomach that hurts you, as you’re about to give birth,’’ she said. 6. ‘‘It’s not here in my stomach that it hurts, it’s here in my heart that it hurts,’’ I said. 7. ‘‘Atsatsai! You’re saying that (because you don’t know), being new at this,’’ she told me. 8. Well, the baby had risen up in me thaak,≤∞ up high. 9. Right at that time my husband came back from his work after being away. 10. I told my sister that I couldn’t, I just couldn’t stand it. 11. ‘‘I’m going to die from this pain in my heart,’’ I said. 12. So she asked me ‘‘Why?’’ 13. ‘‘Hm hm? Why ever does my heart hurt?’’≤≤ 14. ‘‘Is it maybe the month to give birth?’’ said a military doctor. 15. I told him, ‘‘Yes, it is.’’ 16. ‘‘During the birthing month, at that time, this baby will drop,’’ he said. 17. ‘‘This is what is hurting.’’ V. What my aunt said to me 1. Well, my aunt was a midwife, like a doctor. 2. So they went to get her, and she came. 3. ‘‘Lie down little mother;≤≥ let’s look at you,’’ she said to me. 4. It was six o’clock then. 5. She examined me. 6. ‘‘Pooohh!’’ 7. ‘‘You are going to have this baby; the baby has risen up high,’’ she said to me. 8. ‘‘You are going to have this baby now!’’ 9. So she examined me and got me ready. VI. How it felt when I began to give birth 1. And then it completely changed for me, tyam! 2. Now I felt it in my sitting bone: it hurt me as if I were being split apart kalya!≤∂ Ay! 3. You would have just seen how I wasn’t able to bear it. 4. ‘‘I’m dying!’’

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5. I talked like that, saying ‘‘I won’t live through this!’’ 6. It seemed to me that I was dying. 7. Then he rose up in me ton,≤∑ you would have seen! 8. And with fever, too, I was suffering. 9. These vaccination scars, these scars were festering, too. 10. And I was dying with fever! 11. Then, like I wanted to urinate, then, like I wanted to defecate . . . 12. Again it seemed like I needed to urinate and again to defecate. 13. I left, I came back, I left, I came back. VII. How my aunt scolded me 1. Then somehow, He gave me the strength I needed. 2. At eleven o’clock, He gave me the strength. 3. ‘‘Now grab hold of what we’ve tied here,’’ my aunt told me.≤∏ 4. Then she said ‘‘Holding on to these vines fortify yourself strongly’’ 5. ‘‘Compared to you, there are much littler mice giving birth≤π all the time!’’ she told me. 6. ‘‘You are a Runa person.’’ 7. ‘‘Grab hold strongly.’’ 8. ‘‘Don’t scream!’’ 9. ‘‘A woman should not scream, 10. Even if you are dying.’’ 11. ‘‘Giriririririri.’’ [clenching teeth] 12. ‘‘If you have to bite your own teeth, you must endure it,’’ she told me. 13. My aunt spoke angrily at me. 14. I grabbed tightly and wondered ‘‘What will fall out of me?’’ 15. And again I was going to die . . . I couldn’t bear it. 16. And he (my husband) was just lying on the bed afraid and tai,≤∫ absolutely still. 17. He was not helping me. VIII. How I finally gave birth 1. So then, they had me grab hold of Amelia. 2. My aunt again grabbed me in the middle of my sitting bone, raising me tak on my knees. 3. And my water fell with a thuuuuxx,≤Ω it gushed out.

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4. Once it fell, the baby also fell. N: Where did he fall? L: He fell on the ground N: Wouldn’t he have broken? 5. No, it was covered, covered with a mattress, nicely covered, and there was a blanket, that’s where we give birth. 6. Now the falling had passed for me. 7. Then they said, ‘‘What kind of a baby did she give birth to? Bring a candle.’’ 8. It was dark; one doesn’t usually birth in the daytime; 9. ‘‘Bring a candle; light a candle.’’ 10. ‘‘Look, it’s a boy baby!’’≥≠ 11. ‘‘I’ve given birth to a baby boy.’’ 12. After awhile the baby cried wawa waa waa waa waa waa waa. IX. Bathing and dressing the baby and me 1. Then I caught a feeling of death. 2. When the baby is to die, one catches a feeling of death. 3. Then I became utterly limp: iiiyuuu.≥∞ 4. And then my husband got up and came to me. 5. He heated some water, and brought it to me with soap and diapers. 6. He brought towels. 7. They cut the baby’s cord and bathed him, making him beautiful. 8. Once he was asleep, after that, they washed me also. 9. I changed into a nice clean dress. 10. After changing, then I went to lie down. X. My reaction to giving birth 1. We don’t give birth with a doctor, 2. Nor do we have nurses, 3. We can’t do it that way. 4. So that’s how I gave birth. 5. I was in shock. 6. I actually thought of leaving my husband. N: Why? 7. Well, being afraid of giving birth again, 8. And thinking: ‘‘If this is how I’m going to live, going through this again and again,

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9. It would be better for you to live somewhere, and I will go and live somewhere else!’’ 10. ‘‘How on earth can I go through this again! I almost died from this child!’’ I said. N: You didn’t want to get pregnant again? L: That’s how I was thinking, as I didn’t want to. N: Did it really hurt a lot? L: It hurt so much, the first one did. N: We have remedies to kill that pain. 11. You all (do it) with (the help of) those things; 12. We poor ones, there are no remedies or anything, for us. 13. We give birth with only our own strength. XI. The afterbirth 1. Then, after giving birth to my baby, 2. Then the blood, well, it was a little ball, but it felt as if something big was sitting there; 3. And with that Ayyy! until dawn I cried, you would see. 4. How I suffered! 5. So into a woven bag— 6. You all might call it a ‘‘shika’’— 7. We call it a ‘‘shigra.’’ 8. Filling it with ashes, my aunt came to warm me: 9. Warmth warmth warmth warmth. 10. They make a bundle with warm ashes inside clothing, then fill up a shigra bag with that. 11. After that warming, again: warmth warmth warmth warmth warmth. 12. After that, my husband warmed me with his underwear. 13. Having warmed me tak tak tak, then the blood began to flow out of me. 14. They rubbed me three times, then my husband too. 15. Warming up his foot he also stepped on me gently, 16. Slowly slowly slowly slowly slowly with warmth. 17. After all the blood had flowed out of me, then I slept well. 18. Oh, how it had hurt when that ball of blood was inside me! XII. What my husband said N: What did your husband say when he saw that baby? 1. Seeing that baby he became happy

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2. Seeing that baby boy. 3. He told me ‘‘I didn’t want a baby girl.’’ 4. ‘‘I wanted my first to be a baby boy,’’ he’d been saying. XIII. All of my children’s names 1. Then after that, after my baby boy, after that I had Eugenia. 2. After that, Robin, after that Nancy; 3. After Nancy, Grafico; after Grafico, Marlena; 4. Then Sonia Marisola who died; then Edwin, and then Wilmer. 5. Altogether, I’ve had nine, 6. Two have died and seven have lived. 7. A boy and a girl died.

Conclusion Nonhuman lifeforms are a significant resource for modeling positive and negative behaviours of people. The terms ‘‘positive’’ and ‘‘negative,’’ however, do not do justice to the range of reactions that people may have when confronting new or potentially dangerous situations. Because Runa people see their lives as so closely enmeshed with nonhuman forms of life, it can be difficult to untangle the complex of attitudes they project when discussing some of their key life experiences. Ideophony, dialogue, and perspective are part of their basic narrative tools for communicating conventional wisdom as well as for coming to terms with novel experiences. Luisa’s ideophonic descriptions of the motolo snake’s singing and plucking communicate affective overtones of threat, horror, and danger, all at once. The story about the deer artfully exploits dialogue and perspective to share the tragic and retrospectively humorous outcome of what began as an ordinary hunting experience for her brother Cezar. The story of her first childbirth makes use of all three tools to convey the rich set of reactions she experienced for the first time. While this chapter has presented some of the range of nonhuman lifeforms used by Runa to think about their own behavior, the next chapter focuses on one nonhuman lifeform, the anaconda, to show the varied range of attitudes, affects, and experiences that may circulate around this one being.

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On the Nature-to-Culture Continuum

To endow animals with human emotions has long been a scientific taboo. But if we do not, we risk missing something fundamental, about both animals and us. —Frans de Waal, ‘‘Are We in Anthropodenial?’’

The idea that nonhuman life-forms have a capacity for expression is foundational for the translation of Luisa’s narratives. The capacity for dialogical interaction is what makes it possible for every lifeform to have a perspective. This chapter expands upon the concept of perspective to show how multifaceted the perspectives on one nonhuman life-form, the amarun, a term encompassing both water and land constrictors, may be, and furthermore to reveal how these life-forms may have a number of different perspectives of their own (fig. 7). In keeping with Runa nomenclatural practice, I use the same term, anaconda, irrespective of whether a land-dwelling boa or a water-dwelling anaconda is being discussed by Luisa. That anacondas have different perspectives is also congenial with Runa belief in a unique lifeworld dwelling below the water’s surface. The amarun, a term designating anacondas and boas, is viewed, at one extreme, as a predatory monster. When it behaves in this way, there is little possibility for dialogical interaction. In such situations the anaconda either destroys Runa or is destroyed by them. Not all anacondas present Runa with such circumscribed behavioral responses, however. There are situations where an anaconda’s predatoriness can be managed by people without resorting to violence. Some of Luisa’s experiences have revealed, moreover, that the anaconda’s behavior and habits may be quite compatible with human social life. Luisa considers the amarun from a number of different perspectives that exhibit varying degrees of interactional possibilities. When translating a single text or extract, it is possible to miss these subtle variations. I therefore present a set of narrative extracts

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and one full narrative. By juxtaposing these different narrative portrayals of the amarun, I allow Luisa to present a wide range of her perspectives on them. This chapter also presents more evidence for Luisa’s experimental approach to life. The complete narrative ‘‘Adopting an anaconda’’ describes an episode from her own experience where she tested boundaries in a very novel way, by facilitating the integration of a baby anaconda within her household. To the extent that she is able to accomplish this, she endows the anaconda with its own perspective that arises out of a human social role—that of an affine. This was a singular experiment on her part. Runa will, from time to time, domesticate wild birds or tamarins. It was the first time I heard about an attempt to domesticate an anaconda. I have argued that this experiment allows us to question the Achuar people’s characterization of anacondas as presented by Descola (1994), who states that they occupy a single slot at the extreme end of his continuum of sociability (Nuckolls 2004c.) By fixing the anaconda onto the ‘‘lowest rung’’ of the communicative ladder, because of its predatory asociability, Descola overlooks the many dimensions of anaconda-ness that may be conceivable. I therefore suggest that we consider anacondas along two axes: a horizontal axis and a vertical one. The horizontal axis would position anacondas as a group with respect to other life-forms, according to their sociability at one end or their asociability at the opposite end. This horizontal axis is loosely analogous to the syntagmatic axis used by structural linguistics. I then propose, in addition, a vertical axis, which would place different types of a life-form in a column according to their varying qualities of sociability or asociability. This vertical column corresponds roughly to the paradigmatic axis in structural linguistics, which consists of a paradigm of words with similar semantic and grammatical properties. And so it may be that when Runa and Achuar consider anacondas in relation to other life-forms, they tend to dwell on their extreme asociability. When thinking about anacondas as a whole, however, it is evident that Luisa considers a rather broad range of behaviors, characteristics, and nuances. I therefore compare anacondas to one another through Luisa’s experiences and perceptions. Each of her narratives reveals the different perspectives from which Runa reflect upon or encounter anacondas. Luisa assigns different intentionalities, motivations, and moral values to each narrative anaconda, making evident her concern with a multifaceted, contextually varying being.

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Figure 7. Abstract anaconda design made by ceramicist Cezar Cadena, Plaza Aray, Ecuador. (Photo by Leigh Holden)

Anacondas as Predators I begin at the far end of my continuum with anacondas that would indeed fit Descola’s characterization as dangerous and solitary predators. Anacondas do attack people, unprovoked, from time to time. These anacondas are described as ruthless aggressors. There is little evidence from their narrative behavior that they have any affinities whatsoever with human social life. Nevertheless, these predatory anacondas are described and thought about with obvious enjoyment and enthusiasm, which has a number of ideological functions, not the least of which is to foreground the heroism of the people who encounter them. I present excerpts from four narratives, each describing a predatory anaconda. The full narrative that concludes this chapter presents the most sociable anaconda that Luisa has ever encountered.

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The Chain Saw Anaconda The most predatory anaconda in my narrative corpus is found in a legendary account. This story concerns a battle with a monstrous, irontooth-backed anaconda called the serrucho anaconda, after the Spanish term for ‘‘chain saw.’’ The story comes from Luisa’s early childhood recollections of her father’s and grandfather’s travel stories. The story’s events are framed within a historical context of active trading relations extending deep into Peru, as far east as Iquitos, and as far south as the Huallaga River. Many of these expeditions were conducted for the purpose of mining for salt. The salt journeys could last many months and would take them into much wider, deeper, and more dangerous river systems. These journeys provide the historic backdrop for a number of fantastic legends. Although many details are sketchy, the kernel events of the chain saw anaconda narrative are as follows. Canoes were being massacred in great numbers by a chain saw anaconda that would rise to the surface whenever a canoe attempted to pass by and saw the boat in half. Attempts to kill it were unsuccessful until outsiders’ help was enlisted. The outsiders, described as gringos from Lima, were finally able to kill it with some kind of death dust that they threw into the water. Many of the narrative fragments focus on the moment of the massacre, when the anaconda saws the boat in half. This particular moment is described with varying emphases a total of six times. Each description foregrounds a different perspective on the event. In the following extract, the ruthless efficiency of the anaconda is emphasized by means of the ideophonic description. Like a perfect killing machine, the anaconda is described as neatly and unproblematically sawing the boat apart. Reduplications of dzir describe the frictional aspect of the sawing motion. Tas describes the moment when the sawing apart has been completed. 1. Sawing a boat 1. So then, in the middle of the boat 2. It would cut, going dziriririririririri tasss. 3. Cutting it open as if with a chain saw. One description in particular emphasizes the viciousness of the anaconda’s attack by making it clear that a premeditated and carefully timed strike is being carried out. Here, Luisa describes the anaconda lying below and watching whatever passes over it.

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2. Watching from below 1. In the miiiiiddle of the deep area it would lie, he said.∞ 2. Then, noticing that people were there, it would rise abooooove. 3. And this is how it became as they were about to pass by, look! 4. Then it would just stick itself up wikaaaxlya,≤ and as the boat tries to pass by, 5. It cuts it apart chyu, right in the middle of the boat! Another description foregrounds the grim results of the serrucho’s act. All that is left of the victims is their pusku shungu, or ‘‘bubble heart,’’ the term for lungs, floating on the water’s surface. 3. Floating lungs 1. And then, straightaway, the boat is cut apart chyu!≥ 2. And as for the people, only their lungs would appear, polaaaaaxxlya.∂ 3. How many would be left floating? One fragment represents the perspective of the brave ones who tried, tragically and futilely, to get past the anaconda, knowing that the odds were against them. 4. Tragic attempts 1. Thinking ‘‘Let’s just try to pass by in one quick move,’’ 2. They were not able to do it. 3. Tak it touched and dzir it sawed (into their boat). 4. And despite their calls for help, there itself they died. The killing of the serrucho by the gringos receives scant attention. Once it is killed, however, the descriptions of it emphasize its monstrous qualities by focusing on the heaviness of its body. The following segment relates the perspective of the gringos, who are described as discussing the difficulty of hauling it out of the water, by commenting on the anaconda’s massive size and weight. 5. Heavier than everything 1. Saying∑ ‘‘Let’s see, how, just how should we do it?’’ 2. Wanting to pull it, they started to, but it was not pullable, Janet!

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3. It was like a cement log, heavier than 4. Everything, everything, everything in the world! After relating how the serrucho as well as its unborn offspring were pulled out of the water, Luisa ends the account on an artfully inconclusive note. The gringos who killed it are quoted as saying that they have to take them away for further study. The Mud Anaconda We now leave the domain of the legendary. The remaining narratives of this chapter all concern events from Luisa’s experience, or from the experiences of people she knew. The next narrative describes an attack on a man who was walking through the forest with his dog. An anaconda flings out its tail and tries to squeeze the man to death. He is able to save himself by grabbing onto a tree trunk until his wife comes to his rescue with her machete knife. As is true in the narrative about Luisa’s uncle’s assassination, in chapter 2, this narrative also reveals that a series of natural signals were believed to have occurred as a warning for what was about to happen. There were sun showers and there were warnings chirped by a chikwan bird and also a hummingbird. The aggressiveness of the attack is also evident in Luisa’s skillful depiction of a mood of danger created by an ironic contrast between the blithe innocence and lack of awareness on the part of the man and the very real danger of his situation. The anaconda is described below as lying in wait for the man and his dog. 6. Lying in wait 1. As he went to look, the anaconda, perhaps wrapping itself around the base of a vine, 2. Was lying there wanting to get that man or that dog. 3. Just positioning its head like this. In contrast to the calculated nature of the anaconda as it lies waiting to attack is the description of the poor vulnerable man, who is puzzled about why the dog barks. The man’s bewilderment is expressed through an inner-logue, articulated by a series of questions structured by parallelism.∏

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7. What is it? 1. And so the little dog was barking. 2. And the man wondered, ‘‘What is it seeing that it barks?’’π 3. ‘‘What could it be barking at?’’ 4. ‘‘Is it a tortoise?’’ 5. ‘‘Is it a snake?’’ 6. ‘‘What is it?’’ 7. ‘‘Is it an anaconda?’’ The man then hears the sound of the sudden lashing-out of the anaconda’s tail, which is rendered with the sound-symbolic adverb whax, and repeated three times. 8. Like a rope 1. He suddenly heard a whaaaaaaaaax 2. And in an instant, like a rope it had passed, look! 3. Whaaaax it had passed, it sent its tail whaaaaaxxx! Particularly significant regarding the viciousness of the attack is Luisa’s appraisal of its lack of motivation. She states that it is a senseless act, insofar as the anaconda was too small to have swallowed the man. 9. A senseless attack 1. Then killing him, perhaps, and not in any way being able to swallow him. 2. Leaving him there, it would have just gone. 3. Now how could it possibly have swallowed him? The Purawa Anaconda I turn now to an account which, although it is meant to terrify, contains the first suggestion within this chapter that anacondas may have some affinity with human social life. This narrative describes Luisa’s husband’s narrow escape from an anaconda and its subsequent pacification by a shaman. One technique for taming any malevolent force is to take a handful of dirt, blow on it and hurl it at the place in the water where the anaconda is believed to be lying. This is how Luisa’s cousin/brother, a shaman, tames an anaconda that has threatened her hunting party. Luisa

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introduces the first perspective of the story by reproducing the words that were given as warnings to her and her group when they first entered the area, by some Achuar people. These warnings are dialogically phrased as if they are answers to questions, which are then answered by mimicking the question and reasking it, saying in effect ‘‘I really don’t know.’’∫ The warning is reported as follows. 10. ‘‘A very angry anaconda’’ 1. Well, they told us, ‘‘Now here lies a very angry anaconda’’!Ω 2. ‘‘How many, perhaps, has it eaten?’’ 3. ‘‘How many balsa boats?’’ they said. 4. ‘‘How many people has it perhaps eaten here?’’ they said. 5. ‘‘A canoe that doesn’t float up to the surface 6. ‘‘Will be regurgitated three days later,’’ they said. 7. That’s what they said but I didn’t believe it. After Luisa’s husband and his hunting companions leave Luisa and her friend Lurintina in the forest to gather heart of palm, they guide their canoe across a lake and dock at the shore. Luisa’s husband, Tito, and his friend Lino then encounter the anaconda. Although they do not at first recognize it as such, they quickly realize how narrow their escape was when it apparently grabs their canoe and submerges it. Luisa’s reconstruction of what happened, based on her husband’s account, follows. I include the rather lengthy description of how the men came to realize that it was an anaconda that attacked their canoe, because it illustrates, again, Luisa’s use of perspective to describe how shockingly unaware the men were of the danger they were actually in. 11. A big rotted limb 1. So then, wondering, ‘‘What is in the water?’’ 2. ‘‘What is making waves, waves, waves, waves, waves waves, waves, waves, waves, waves, waves appear?’’ he said. 3. As he looked into a clear spot what he saw was a blackness. 4. ‘‘Just a big broken-off limb.’’ 5. ‘‘We thought it was just a big rotted limb that was lying there,’’ he said. N: What was lying there? L: An anaconda was lying there in the water, now listen! 6. Well, it was lying there,

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7. And as they were coming to a standstill (they stuck the pole in the ground) tsak. 8. My husband was at the rear, and Lino in front. 9. It might have eaten my husband, but Lino, he would have escaped. 10. And so grabbing onto the steering pole, 11. He’s still thinking, ‘‘It’s a stick in the water’’∞≠ 12. And my husband, dzas, quickly emerges onto the shore. 13. And thinking ‘‘I’ll hide the paddle,’’ he’s standing there in the forest. 14. And as for Lino he quickly grabs the steering pole. 15. Washing the tip of it tsupu tsupu, 16. He hammers it into the shore, ling,∞∞ putting it there to tie the canoe. 17. ‘‘I left it right there,’’ he said,∞≤ ‘‘pounding the steering pole into the ground ling.’’ 18. Inserting that pole ling inside the rope’s loop, and pounding it ling into the ground, grabbing my rifle. 19. And then! 20. ‘‘From underwater, how far, perhaps, was the water thrown with a thuuuuuuuuuu!’’ they said. 21. Then the canoe and everything, the canoe’s rope was cut apart chyu! 22. And the canoe is gone! N: (You mean) it let loose? L: I mean the canoe is gone! I’m saying that the rope was cut apart chyu, and that whole canoe was gone! N: Who cut it? L: I’m telling you it was the anaconda! Now it was lying there in the water, What they thought was just a rotted limb! The men watch the ripples and waves in the water and look for the canoe to reappear. When it becomes caught in a growth of vines hanging in the water, they manage to pull it onto shore and bail it out. Just as they are wondering how they will get by the anaconda to return home, Luisa’s brother Cezar arrives on the scene and informs them that he has taken

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care of the problem. The apparent ease with which he is able to tame the anaconda and send it back to the depths of the lake creates an impression of a very vulnerable and manipulable adversary, one that is willing to observe the rules of human magical practices. The second aspect of its sociability can be found in the reference to the anaconda’s having a social relationship in the form of a wife, to whom it is said to return. 12. Blowing on earth 1. So, like that, then, then, my brother Cezar had come. 2. Having told Brother Cezar ‘‘That’s what happened,’’ 3. He said, ‘‘Blowing on earth and flinging it, I’ve come,’’ he said. 4. ‘‘I noticed it was like that,’’ he said. 5. ‘‘I saw the waves,’’ he said. 6. ‘‘I was also afraid!’’ he said. 7. Now he had actually been at the other end of the lake, Brother Cezar. 8. He also had come just to shoot turkey. 9. Well, blowing on the earth, he flung it. 10. And those waves, they all passed; they completely subsided. 11. ‘‘He’s gone to be with his wife,’’ he said about that anaconda. The Manioc Anaconda With the fourth narrative we take a definitive step closer to the sociable and much less wild anaconda. This anaconda never seriously threatens Luisa or her family members. The story of how they discovered it is significant for the range of emotional reactions experienced by Luisa and her husband when they have two encounters, apparently with the same anaconda. Although they are menaced by it and are afraid of it during their first encounter, their fear quickly gives way to admiration for the patterns of its markings and its colors. 13. ‘‘How beautifully colored’’ 1. How beautifully colored he was! 2. It looked as if he had been painted with little markings the color of white earth. 3. From the tip of his little nose the whiteness went 4. (In a streak) shakaaaaaaaaa∞≥ all the way to the end of his tail.

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Luisa then addresses the issue of how to interact with the anaconda. Her husband decides not to kill it. His decision is reported to have been based on a feeling of solidarity and empathy for another creature that is looking for its next meal. 14. ‘‘Why should we kill him?’’ 1. So then my husband came and said, ‘‘Why should we kill this poor thing?’’ 2. ‘‘He just wants to go about, (let’s) leave him!’’ 3. We didn’t kill him. We left him there. N: Why didn’t you kill him? L: We just didn’t, we didn’t kill him. *** 4. ‘‘He also is going around hungry looking for food,’’ my husband said to me. 5. So, look, there he stayed, and we left. Three days later, while gathering fruit in the forest, Luisa and her children encounter the regurgitated remains of a bush dog, which they take to be the meal that the anaconda was unable to digest. 15. ‘‘Not even a single bite mark’’ 1. So then, however it was that I noticed him there, 2. A blackness was visible and I looked. 3. Now it was about three days after the last time we saw him. 4. And we went over to look and saw that there he had regurgitated! 5. He had eaten a bush dog! 6. The forest anaconda regurgitates right in the forest itself. N: He had not eaten all of it? 7. He hadn’t eaten any of it. 8. Not even a single bite mark will be found! 9. He swallows the whole thing ling. 10. If it starts rotting inside of him, he regurgitates all of it. 11. That’s the way the anaconda is. 12. Not even a morsel will stay inside of him. 13. After regurgitating, he goes and looks for another one to eat.

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These observations generate amusement, laughter, and wonder at a creature that is often inept at selecting a correctly sized meal. The reactions to this particular anaconda, then, are quite varied. It is an object of fear, admiration, empathy, and amusement. We come now to this chapter’s full narrative, ‘‘Adopting an anaconda.’’ This is Luisa’s personal experience with attempting to incorporate an anaconda into her household. Despite her repeated claims that she raised him from a baby, she would be the first to admit that he never once took food from her hand, nor did she ever actually see him eat anything he caught or killed. It would probably, in fact, be more accurate to title this narrative ‘‘Adopted by an anaconda,’’ since the anaconda seems to control the terms of their interesting relationship. What makes this narrative compelling is the range of roles bestowed on the anaconda by his human family. One of his main roles is that of a hunter and potential affine who seeks to attract the attention of her daughters with his gifts of freshly killed animals. He also has less central roles, including guardian of their fields, as well as that of the perfect pet, who allows people to stroke him. Adopting an Anaconda I. Weeding my pineapples 1. Well, one day I was digging and weeding. 2. And oh! How ripe my pineapples were! 3. I don’t just plant one pineapple. 4. I plant an entire portion with nothing but pineapple. 5. Having finished drinking up my manioc, 6. I dig instead for pineapple. 7. Well, the pineapples were bearing fruit so heavily, to the point of falling over pau. *** 8. So there, lying turned over, pau, was a ripe pineapple that one plant had borne. 9. And so plucking it I gave it to Lusaura, who was little at that time. 10. And so plucking it and giving it to Lusaura, giving her that pineapple. 11. Well, there were its leaves

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12. And there, near them I was digging out the weeds. 13. When I first saw him he went dzhararararara. 14. Ayyy! II. A beautiful baby anaconda 1. Pulling my hand away, and standing off at a distance, I said, ‘‘It’s an anaconda.’’ 2. Looking, just looking very closely, I saw his pattern of colors. 3. What a desirably [inhales] painted baby anaconda he was! 4. Here on his nose. *** 5. From its little tip, as if nicely drawn, you would have just seen the white line. 6. Then there was black, and then it looked as if he had been painted with red earth. 7. What a beautiful pattern! 8. He was a red-tailed baby anaconda. 9. What a desirably painted thing was lying there. III. We take him home 1. And so wrapping him in a mandi leaf, we took him. 2. Bringing him we saw that there was a tin *** 3. An entire tin 4. So bringing him with us, we put him in the tin. 5. Having put him in the tin, and catching a rat, a whole rat, 6. We would put it inside there. 7. We put babies, baby rats in there. 8. He would not eat! 9. No matter what, no matter how much, little pieces of meat, whatever we put. 10. He would not eat! *** IV. We let him go 1. Thinking ‘‘He’s going to die,’’ we opened the tin so that he might go. 2. Well, we opened it, during the second week, we opened it. 3. Opening it and wondering, ‘‘Now what’s the matter?’’

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4. Removing him from that tin, we put him nearby. 5. And he was lying there in a little mound. 6. Well then, we forgot about him 7. And then he was gone! 8. Where did he go? [almost whispered] we wondered. 9. We looked and we looked and he was nowhere. [on an inhlation] 10. Searching with everything we could, we finished and he was still gone! 11. Thinking, ‘‘Well, he’s gone,’’ we gave up.∞∂ V. We see him in the thatching of our house roof 1. Well then, three weeks later 2. We looked up at the roof of the house. 3. Uuuuuuuuuuu [something is heard]. 4. ‘‘What does it look to be?’’ 5. ‘‘Is it something dying?’’ 6. ‘‘What is it? ‘‘Look up there!’’ said Kumari Dilviña. 7. ‘‘Is it a snake?’’ 8. ‘‘What kind of a snake?’’ 9. ‘‘It’s a house snake.’’ 10. ‘‘It looks like it’s portending,’’∞∑ she said. 11. ‘‘Where???!!!’’ I said. 12. ‘‘No! It’s my baby anaconda! That’s what it looks like.’’ 13. ‘‘Yes! It’s my baby anaconda!’’ N: He had climbed to the roof? L: He had climbed to the top; you know how beams are at the crown of the roof? There he was going about, (sliding) dziuuuuuuuuuuu. N: Is that right? 14. ‘‘Yes, it’s my baby anaconda,’’ I said. 15. ‘‘What should we do? He’s slithering about up there.’’ 16. ‘‘Where might he go when he lies?’’ VI. A rat hunter in the roof 1. He was a baby like this when he came down. 2. Coming down, you know how sticks and things are leaning there for him? 3. Then at night he’d been going dziuuuuu back up there. 4. And the rats would just go

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5. tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik. 6. That’s how the rats would sound. 7. I would turn the lantern on tas and look. 8. And when I looked, ayyy! There were so many rats! 9. That’s how he gathers them. 10. That’s why his brain and his fat are love charms.∞∏ N: Whose fat? L: Well, the anaconda’s fat. Fasting, they make a love charm out of it. N: So he gathered the rats? *** 11. You would have seen so many rats, 12. Just going tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik. .

VII. An anaconda’s charisma 1. Lying there, how he gathered those rats together! N: Really? L: That’s how he would gather them! 2. Just looking up there in amazement, we would sit quietly watching. 3. And then one would squeal tsi tsi— N: Weren’t the rats afraid of the anaconda? L: Maybe they were afraid but maybe they wanted to come close anyway. 4. He, that’s how he gathers them. 5. With his, with whatever it is, he draws them. N: What is it that he has? L: What is it? How ever does the anaconda have this ability? 6. That’s why he, he especially, is able to draw animals toward himself, when he’s hungry, from anywhere. 7. He’ll just be lying by himself, and they think he’s tame. 8. Then he’ll grab hold pak and ling swallow it whole. N: Really? So it’s his fat that’s a love charm, right? Then what else is? L: His brain is too, yes. N: So then what happened?

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VIII. A hunter for us 1. So then, look, like that. 2. Just a little bit later, he grabbed one, making it go tsi tsi tsi tsi tsi tsi tsi tsi. 3. What we saw was that he had wrapped himself around one like this. 4. He had grabbed a rat [whispering]. 5. And then we said, ‘‘He’s got one, now he’ll eat.’’ 6. But when we woke up in the morning, we saw it just stretched out, lying on the ground! 7. That’s what we saw when we noticed the rat. 8. You would have seen them at the entrance to the house! 9. One over there stretched out, another here stretched out, another there stretched out. 10. He had practically piled them up, he’d killed so many! N: He didn’t eat them? L: He did not eat them, just imagine! 11. After it had sounded like so many up there, then suddenly just silence: chun! 12. As if only three or maybe four would still be heard. 13. Then again three nights later, again, a lot came. 14. So then we wondered what is he going to do? ‘‘He’ll eat,’’ we think. 15. In the morning we went to look, and he’s just killed more of them, leaving them stretched out. 16. So then, look! Killing all of the rats, he would then come down. 17. And the children would be sleeping here and so, coming down, near their feet, 18. He would pile himself up and sleep. 19. These kids would shout, ‘‘Widzaa! Widzaa!’’ 20. So it was probably a boy anaconda; a boy∞π would have wanted the girls. 21. He apparently wanted to do it to them! N: To the children? L: To whatever! N: Really? By whose side would he lie? L: Beside my children Marlena and Luzaura, by their side he would sleep!

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N: The anaconda?! L: The anaconda! Right by their side! Right by their side! 22. The boys were sleeping in beds here and there. 23. He never bothered those boys! 24. It was the others that he would bother, by coming next to them. 25. When he curled himself up next to one of the girls, this big thing, being cold, 26. She would wake up shouting, ‘‘Widzaaa!’’ 27. And then grabbing him, we would put him inside of a tin. 28. Grabbing him, we would put him inside of a tin. 29. Then opening it up in the morning, we let him out so that he might eat. IX. Expanding his range of prey 1. And this is how he grew, Janet, he grew! 2. Well, he got as big as this! Just think! N: Uh huh, from that little bit. L: From a little thing I raised him to this size, just think! N: But did he kill all of the rats for no reason, and not eat any of them? L: Did he perhaps just eat one? What was he doing? Did he go to the forest and eat? In what way was he managing? How will we ever know? But that’s how he killed them and threw them down. 3. Well, one day a cat came wandering by. 4. Wherever did it come from? 5. Whose was it? It had been Don Medina’s, I believe. 6. Well then, he killed that cat, leaving him all stretched out straight, like a stick. 7. How startled we were! 8. But we heard that he had caught something and made it cry out. 9. Whatever it was, whatever, 10. I just lay there listening and wondering, ‘‘Are they fighting?’’ 11. Just lying there listening I fell asleep. 12. In the morning what we saw was that the cat 13. Had been tightly strangled and stretched out. 14. And his tongue, sticking out tshaiiiii was a deathly black color. 15. As he had died. 16. He had killed it, look!

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17. Its tongue sticking out. 18. He had strangled it so that its tongue was just out of its mouth. X. Rabbits and birds for my girls 1. And then one time, when it was just dark, 2. The children went to bring small pieces of wood from under the drying platform. 3. Well, they found a rabbit too, with its tongue sticking out. 4. He had also killed that one [whispered]! 5. And its eyes also bulged out tsixxx from being strangled. 6. Then, my old comadre Marina, you know that deaf old woman who lives over there? 7. She took it and nicely roasted it. *** 8. That Marina, cleanly skinning it, said how full of fat it had been!∞∫ 9. Roasting it till its fat sizzled wisss, and cooking manioc. *** 10. You would have seen what a desirable meal they ate! 11. The anaconda was thinking that he was catching it for the girls.∞Ω N: The anaconda? 12. Wanting them and catching it to give to them, yes, that’s what he was thinking. 13. He was hunting and giving these gifts to the girls. N: Which girl did he give to? [we both laugh] L: To my daughters, perhaps, he gave. N: Where did he throw these rabbits? Beside them? L: Catching the rabbits on the ground he’d leave them all stretched out there. N: Wanting your daughters? L: Wanting my daughters he gave. [she laughs heartily] N: And so then? 14. And so that’s the kind of thing he did, look! 15. And so like that 16. He did something just like that another time. 17. What was it, let me think, they had gone to the water to wash off the manioc. 18. And what they saw was that bird called a pau bird.

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19. The one that goes ‘‘pau chaulya chichu chichu.’’ 20. Well, dying it lay there, stretched out across the path.≤≠ 21. While traveling along the ground perhaps, he’d caught it pak and killed it. 22. The children plucked and roasted this big thing he’d caught for them. *** 23. That’s what it was like! How I’ve cried about my baby anaconda. XI. A caretaker for my chagra 1. He was like a person, the way he would care for our house. 2. And then, you know how I had that little chagra right beside my house? 3. Right across from it? 4. He even crossed over to there, look! 5. Crossing over there he killed a rabbit. 6. The children, at night time 7. They would run to the chagra searching for rabbit. 8. Wondering where he might have killed one. 9. They would bring three, four, of them back! 10. Not just one! 11. Wherever was he killing them? Was he coming to eat them in our chagra? 12. What might he have been doing? 13. How amazed I was about all of this! 14. ‘‘So is that what he has killed!’’ I would say 15. I’ve never seen him do it, in all the days I’ve been raising him. 16. I have never seen him do that. 17. So look, they would take those rabbits 18. Luzaura took one. 19. Marlena took another. 20. My littlest took another. 21. Kumari Marina yet another. 22. They retrieved four of them altogether, one time. 23. One of them was a real big old rabbit that they brought. 24. They peeled it nicely to cook it. 25. Beautifully roasting it, you would have seen how well they ate, cooking potatoes and manioc with it.

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26. And so that’s how he lived, giving food. 27. Well, the squirrels were just gone from the chagra near my house. 28. Whereas before, you would have seen how much of it they used to eat! 29. What we call squirrels≤∞ are thiiis big. 30. They have such big bottoms, look! 31. Well, we can eat them, you know! 32. People do eat them! 33. So look, Comadre Marina told about what looked like a baby squirrel, lying all sprawled. 34. A baby squirrel. 35. Just right here he had strangled it right here, and it had been lying all sprawled out. 36. So she takes it and beautifully peels it, you would just see! 37. To make a beautiful soup with it, she wrapped it in leaves. 38. And that’s how, killing, he would throw them and leave them for us. *** XII. A desirable pet 1. So then, people began pestering me so much, saying ‘‘Sell him to me.’’ 2. Now everyone asked me. 3. People from the highlands, capitans and tenientes would ask me. 4. He would go hanging and and gliding along the arms of people who came to buy pineapples. 5. When they asked, ‘‘Señora, is this your pet?’’ 6. I said, ‘‘Ah hah! From a baby this big I’ve raised him.’’ *** 7. So then, these highlanders in order to buy him 8. Would say, ‘‘So let’s buy him.’’ 9. Some of them said to me, ‘‘Let’s buy him for five thousand.’’ 10. Some of them said, ‘‘Señora, we’ll buy him for six thousand.’’ 11. When they grabbed hold of him tak he wouldn’t bite. 12. Raising his little head up, he’d lie there 13. Flicking his tongue in and out ling ling ling ling ling ling ling ling ling. 14. They would hold him, wrapping him around their arm and stroking his head nicely.

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15. ‘‘Señora, sell him to me!’’ 16. ‘‘No matter how much you ask, I’m buying him from you!’’ they’d tell me. 17. ‘‘Because you’ve raised him from a baby, he’s so wantable,’’ they would say. 18. And he was! If we were sitting around here or by the fire, sitting around and eating 19. He also would lie next to us, mounding himself up beside us, look! 20. Then if we’d get up suddenly zas, he also would uncoil himself, and wherever we’d go 21. He’d follow in that direction! The anaconda really is a person! 22. He also would come, 23. If we, perhaps, would sit to drink or to do anything, on a bench, say, 24. He would come to lie underneath the bench! 25. Well, to see this for themselves, 26. Who was it, maybe some highlanders, some wives of officials came. 27. Hugging him here and wrapping him around their arms, nicely stroking him. 28. He would lower his little head. 29. How nicely, like a little bird, they would stroke him 30. And how beautifully painted he was! 31. Once a capitan even came saying, ‘‘Give him to me,’’ ‘‘Sell him,’’ 32. ‘‘My wife is pregnant,’’ he came and told me. 33. Well, the children cried loudly, ‘‘Widza!’’ out of stinginess. 34. ‘‘But who will hunt for us?’’ they said. 35. Not wanting to give him up, they cried, just imagine! *** 36. Seeing how my children cried at the thought, they stopped asking. 37. Fearing for these children 38. Wondering ‘‘Who will feed them?’’ (they stopped asking). 39. Well, silently I stood there watching. 40. Then pleading with them, I said, ‘‘Ay! It’s a pregnant woman, children!’’ ‘‘We should sell to her!’’ 41. I was the one who was angry with them. 42. Even though I spoke like that, they didn’t want to lose him to those people.

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XIII. Show and tell 1. And so that’s the kind of thing that would happen, as he was going about like that. 2. And worrying that someone might steal him, when we were not there 3. Inside of a big tin, inside a tin this big 4. We put him in ling, covering it nicely, putting it up high. 5. And piling things on top, we left him to go to the chagra. 6. Well, it was some soldiers who came looking for him, said my comadre Aida, who lived right next to us. 7. As her children were home they would hear and notice everything over there.≤≤ 8. Well! How are they going to find him? 9. When we returned we’d open the tin. 10. We would be the ones to open it. 11. We had even put water there for him to drink, 12. But he wouldn’t drink, just like a tortoise won’t either. [whispering] 13. He just would not drink! 14. No matter what [strong emphasis] we gave him, he would not eat, that anaconda! 15. Not on this earth, would he eat from a person’s hand! 16. So, they would come like that, but as we didn’t want to sell him, they stopped! 17. And I would nicely put him in the tin container, covering it, and then I’d go to the chagra! 18. Well then, this Maxi, who can’t speak well, he’s Kumpari Luis’s son. 19. Do you know this Maxi? N: Which Luis? L: Blanco! N: I don’t know that Maxi. What happened? 20. When he was just a youngster going to school, look! 21. He told them, ‘‘My aunt has an anaconda.’’ 22. And they asked, ‘‘Does your aunt really have an anaconda?’’ 23. Then, saying, ‘‘Your mother, does she . . .’’ to my . . . let’s see, which of my children≤≥ had he asked? 24. Was it Grafico . . . maybe it was Irminia?

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25. Which of my children were in school then? I can’t really remember. 26. Well, this Maxi had perhaps said, ‘‘It’s true.’’ 27. But my children said, ‘‘No! [with great emphasis] It’s not true!’’ wanting to protect our anaconda. 28. But then, after my children denied it, that Maxi said, ‘‘Ah ha, I see my aunt,’’ he said. 29. ‘‘My aunt, an anaconda,’’ he said, as he could not speak well. 30. ‘‘I mean a boa,’’ he said. 31. Then that teacher said, ‘‘Go and bring it before I give you a beating!’’ 32. This teacher who’s named Pedro, he lives here now; he’s very nasty! *** 33. So then look, these schoolchildren take the entire container, 34. And covering it, they carry it to school. 35. Well then, my children had gone to urinate. 36. Well then, those children pierced him, running a spear 37. Right through him, through him, through him, through him, through him [mournfully] 38. Having gone to urinate, my children then came, they told me, and happened to see this. *** 39. So then the children came, and Luzaura, 40. Crying and putting him back inside the tin they brought him. 41. When they put him in there he was in such a weakened state. N: So the teacher killed him? L: The children did it, after enjoying having a look at him, because they thought we will be stingy, keeping him for ourselves. But he ordered the schoolchildren to do it, telling them, ‘‘They don’t want to share him with anybody.’’ That ugly devil, that’s what he was! XIV. We bandage his wounds and give him to his elders 1. So they brought him back and he just lay at the foot of our stepladder. 2. His little intestines just poking out of him, looking so pitiful. 3. Upon arriving they cried ‘‘Mommyyy!’’

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4. ‘‘This is what they’ve done, killing our anaconda!’’ they cried to me. 5. Saying ‘‘Where?’’ and looking, 6. I could tell by touching him that this poor thing was still alive, and so his intestines, 7. I pressed them, ever so gently, back inside. 8. Pressing them back inside of him, and wrapping a cloth bandage all around him pak. 9. And making it snug, tak, 10. I did that at each place he’d been pierced, wrapping a cloth bandage around each place. 11. Having done that, um . . . 12. Even though the bandages became loosened, he just lay there as if dead. 13. Then I had a thought [hopefully]: ‘‘Let’s go put him in the water.’’ 14. ‘‘He is not one to die.’’ 15. ‘‘His elders will cure him,’’ I said to the children. 16. So then the children went and put him (on top of a rock) in the water. 17. And the water level rose Lhhhhiiiiiii≤∂ [low, breathy, almost whispered] much higher. 18. The water in this little pond rose tak, just think! *** 19. Well then, we looked where they’d put him, and he was gone that anaconda was, he was gone! 20. So his elders had taken him. 21. His elders had taken him, look! 22. Then we forgot about him! 23. When we remembered again, we wondered, ‘‘Where, having died, might he lie, rotting away?’’ 24. We searched downstream for him; we searched upstream for him. 25. There was no sign of his having died anywhere! 26. Well, that’s good, I thought; that means his elders took him away to heal him. 27. So then, look, now one month later, some soldiers, were, uh, 28. You know the top of the hill near where we lived?

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29. As there was overgrown pasture there, they were weeding. 30. So as they were cutting, um . . . 31. It was at the base of a twig that my Masha Tomas≤∑ found him. N: The anaconda? 32. The anaconda with his piercings healing, and puckered together sipu sipu sipu sipu. 33. They took him but didn’t care for him. 34. They killed him. He’s dead now. XV. Found and lost again 1. Those idiots, making a cage. 2. They had made a cage this big. 3. Inside of that they put food for him. 4. And so, if there was nothing in there, (they thought) ‘‘Rats, birds, he eats everything.’’ 5. He didn’t eat! 6. Even though he didn’t eat, they didn’t take him out. 7. The anaconda died of hunger. *** 8. They had killed him. 9. So then Tito told me he had said to Tomas, ‘‘Give him to me.’’ *** 10. So then, Tito came and told me that he had said, ‘‘Give him to me,’’ but ‘‘They did not want to give him to me,’’ he said. 11. They told him, saying ‘‘He’s taken now,’’ said Tito. 12. Having become well again, he might have come back to me. 13. He would have come! [very emphatic] 14. As he was just lying there, they found him and took him. 15. Making a cage, they put him inside. 16. He was the size of a manioc anaconda. *** 17. That’s what they were saying, according to Tito. 18. ‘‘I was listening to them,’’ he said. 19. And so I told them, ‘‘No! This is the one my wife raised.’’ 20. ‘‘This is right where they pierced him at the school.’’ 21. And I told them, ‘‘This is where she wrapped the bandage around him,’’ he said. 22. And so he had healed all puckered up: sipun sipun sipun sipun. 23. With scars and everything.

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24. So I went to their house on Sunday to see. 25. Well, it was my anaconda. 26. They had had him inside of a cage. 27. ‘‘Give him to me; he’s mine,’’ I said. 28. ‘‘Why should I? He was found. He’s my husband Tomas’s; he’s the owner.’’ 29. She was saying, ‘‘Isn’t this the owner?’’; she was being stingy with me, Señora Julia was. 30. I the owner went to ask! 31. They didn’t want to give him to me. 32. So he hadn’t died, no matter how much they stabbed him 33. Even through his intestines, that anaconda. 34. That’s why I say, ‘‘He’s not one to die,’’ having seen it for myself. 35. And so that’s how he had healed himself! 36. Those people were so stupid with that poor little thing! 37. I was so angry! 38. Think! Who would have done such a thing, keeping him in a cage for a month? 39. Upon looking at him, he had become as thin as a stick.≤∏ 40. The anaconda portends; wherever he dies he portends they said. 41. How will he live when he has nothing to eat? 42. So that’s how he had died!

Conclusion By comparing a number of narrative extracts, I hope to have facilitated an appreciation for the complexity of Runa/anaconda interrelations. These translated portraits of anacondas, juxtaposed together with the complete narrative, present an extensive range of possible affective stances that people may adopt with respect to anacondas, and project as well a range of values, behaviors, talents, and foibles that anacondas may exhibit. They may be ruthless predators, capricious and senseless killers, vulnerable adversaries, and innocuous and inept consumers, as well as potential affines, skilled hunters, caring guardians, faithful companions, generous helpers, and helpless victims. The full narrative ‘‘Adopting an anaconda’’ reveals the complex variety of perspectival stances that narrators may adopt. Luisa’s use of perspectival shifts is a constant reminder of the close attention she gives to the origins of words

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and the perspectives implicated by those words. In the next and final chapter, I present two full narratives. The first concerns an encounter between Luisa’s grandmother and a jaguar that attacked her. Unlike the anaconda, the jaguar has no comparable range of roles. It is always a cunning, stealthy antagonist with no affinity whatsoever for human social life. Only shamans are believed capable of manipulating or controlling its behavior through magic. Ordinary people seek only to avoid it. Ever the student and teacher, Luisa uses her grandmother’s experience to explain what she learned from this conflict. The second full narrative concerns a battle that resonates with current conflicts over land. It represents, unfortunately, a new type of dialogue that is becoming increasingly prominent in Runa experience.

i5i

On Tenaciously Persisting

Luisa often chooses the Quichua verb awantana ‘to persist, endure’ to describe how she has managed to survive some of her most difficult experiences. For this reason I have used the theme of persisting as the title of this last chapter. For Luisa, persistence is a key virtue, referring not only to stubbornly defending oneself against any kind of assault and never giving up no matter how hard and long the battle but also to mustering the presence of mind to exercise one’s intellect to the utmost in the middle of an attack. The two full narratives presented here concern situations where persistence was heroically manifested by her own grandmother, and also by Luisa herself. The first narrative recounts an experience endured by her paternal grandmother, Andrea Dahua, a woman who has achieved a kind of official status as a symbol of Andoan womanhood. I discovered her grandmother’s legendary status in a book about the Andoans that had been put together by ONAPE and published in 2005 by an official government office, the Subdireccion Provincial de Cultura de Pastaza. Within this book is an entire chapter devoted to her grandmother Andrea. When I read sections of this book to Luisa, she dismissed some of the minor details about her life, such as her actual place of birth, but the essence of her character was, according to Luisa, correct. Luisa also confirmed the correctness of a drawing depicting her with a jaguar hide around her shoulders, and carrying her preferred weapon for fighting—a stick. Also correct is the written description of her as someone who fought with jaguars. Luisa had actually told me one of these stories eighteen years earlier, and it is this story that I present in translation below. According to Luisa, her grandmother Andrea was attacked by a jaguar as she was trekking through the forest. She behaved, during this attack, in a way that was extraordinarily intelligent, valiant, and tenacious. She was said by Luisa to have successfully survived the attack in part because she

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was able to interpret and predict the jaguar’s intentions by watching its movements. What Luisa has learned from her grandmother’s experience in this situation is that the direction in which the jaguar is about to leap at one can be predicted by the way in which it positions its body while squeezing and clawing the earth with its front paws. It will claw at the earth off to the side of its opponent just before it intends to leap toward that opponent. By repeatedly reading the jaguar’s movements and intentions and leaping out of the way, right at the moment it was about to catch her, she bought herself some time. She noticed at one moment a huge buttress vine protruding out of a tree that she had squeezed behind for protection. While in the thick of the battle, she also managed to scream at the jaguar, trying to scare it away from her. Although the screams did not scare it away, they were heard very faintly by her brotherin-law, who translated this barely perceptible auditory image into the sound of a little dove, until he got closer and realized who it really was. This narrative was generated during a series of interviews that involved my reading a list of Quichua verbs to Luisa and asking her to freeassociate about the kinds of activities, specific examples of activities, and personal experiences of activities referred to by the verb in question. I catalogued these interviews as a series of verb portraits. We were talking about the verb kishpichina, which means ‘to free or to save someone from something,’ which immediately reminded her of this story. Jaguar Attack I. Introducion N: Now let’s talk about kishpichina ‘to free, to save.’ L: ‘‘As she was calling out so sadly I went to save her,’’ one might tell. 1. So sadly she was shouting Ayyy! 2. As she was calling out ‘‘chui chui chui chui,’’ I went— 3. Well, it was a jaguar that was attacking a Runa woman, ah hah! 4. That’s what it did to my grandmother. 5. To my own grandmother. II. My grandmother Andrea 1. My grandmother was such a trekker, going everywhere, like a man would. 2. Just like a man, she would go hunting alone, and even sleep in the forest.

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3. Digging up barbasco to peel it, she alone∞ would fish with it wherever she was. 4. She would go off somewhere spending three nights fishing. 5. Afterward she’d come. 6. She would carry one lance with her. 7. It was called a pala lansa. 8. Carrying that she’d go trekking. 9. As long as she had that she wouldn’t be afraid. III. How the jaguar first came at her 1. And so she, as she was approaching the top of a hill, you know how the jaguar climbs hills? 2. You know how there are these hills, right? 3. And so we come this way. 4. And as for the jaguar, well, here perhaps a big tree was standing. 5. At the base of the tree it was waiting for my grandmother. 6. At the base of the tree. 7. From there, it leaped at my grandmother, just imagine! 8. It leaped, going thhhuuuxxx≤ as it whizzed by. 9. Well, my grandmother remained in place, and the jaguar just rolled down the ravine. *** 10. It went down the ravine. 11. Letting go of her basket over there. 12. Shouting at it ‘‘chui chui chui chui chui.’’ 13. It would leap here at her this way, and she also would leap that way, away from it. *** 14. Her pala lansa, well, it broke off cham.≥ [pause] So it was not spearable. 15. All she had was the stub of her knife; where might the knife blade have been? 16. So she’s shouting ‘‘chui chui chui,’’ trying to scare him away. *** IV. A helpful mishearing 1. Well, my uncle heard that! And so listening, and having heard that, 2. He said that it sounded like the puskuyu bird going ‘‘chui chui

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3. luspumbui luspumbui luspumbui.’’ *** 4. And then listening he could hear: ‘‘chui chui.’’ 5. And then it sounded as if grandmother’s voice was almost all dried up. V. How my grandmother got squeezed behind a vine 1. She had gone and squeezed herself underneath the base of a tree. 2. Well, as it had squeezed her into the base of the tree, a vine perhaps goes out of it like this, look! 3. As that vine was there, she went and plastered herself behind it, my grandmother did. 4. As she was lying here, it was only able to bite the vine! 5. Otherwise, it might have bitten off a piece of her head. 6. It might have killed my grandmother. *** 7. Well then, once again and again and again and again it leaps, and my grandmother— 8. She is completely exhausted, her mouth wide open, her skirt in tatters! 9. And she’s still shouting ‘‘chui.’’ *** VI. My uncle arrives on the scene 1. When he listened it seemed to be a man; but then he thought, ‘‘No!’’ 2. ‘‘It might be my mother who is going along; she’s come to trek with us, so I’ll go meet her.’’ 3. Then listening again, he knew it was grandmother who’d been saying ‘‘chui chui chui chui chui.’’ 4. Hearing grandmother, oh man!∂ my uncle just ran toward her. 5. So he ran toward her and she was there, her voice. 6. And even her neck was all dried out, and she had been clawed! *** 7. Now listen to how my grandmother got saved! 8. So, as he came, he said ‘‘I’m coming I’m coming I’m coming!∑ Damn you!’’∏ 9. ‘‘From your laziness my—’’ ***

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10. Well then, grandmother. 11. Although it had trapped her, making her squeeze behind that vine, she, miraculously, with her little bit of broken stick, she found her lance. 12. As she had let go of it, she found it, like, right nearby. 13. Now the jaguar had pressed my grandmother. 14. And my uncle was just arriving. 15. And as the jaguar grabs hold of it tak, look! my grandmother jabbed him from inside. 16. My grandmother jabbed him. *** 17. He then, is thinking, ‘‘I’m biting into a person’’π when he was actually biting this stick. 18. And it just sounds khau as he bites the piece of stick that had been lying there. 19. So he didn’t bite grandmother, he bit here, at the stick instead. 20. So then right in the middle, here, grandmother jabbed the jaguar 21. Jabbing him, (he went) ‘‘OOOOooooooooo!’’ 22. That big thing went rolling rolling rolling down the ravine. 23. Thinking that he had perhaps killed grandmother, my uncle took up his blowgun. 24. And with his blowgun 25. He didn’t even think about grandmother; he went after the jaguar. 26. He did not try to get her up, he didn’t even think about that. 27. He thought she’s already been killed.∫ 28. (because) My grandmother had become chun (so quiet). 29. ‘‘Well, he’s already eaten (grandmother),’’ thought my uncle.Ω 30. And as she got up and looked, she saw that he was shaking that puma right there! 31. What is he going to do? With his blowgun, right in its little nose chaxxxxx 32. He inserts the bone of the blowgun inside liiing! 33. This blowgun made of chonta wood 34. Went in like that. 35. And right then and there as he was shaking and rolling around. 36. He took his knife, cut a stick and killed it! 37. He killed that jaguar. 38. Having killed him, they gathered firewood, little pieces of it.

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39. They searched all over for it, and piled it up, 40. And right there they burned the jaguar. *** 41. Yes and my grandmother was just bloody, her head was full of blood. 42. She might not have lived, having been so clawed. 43. Her head, here, um here, and there she had been clawed. 44. And here she’d been clawed, my grandmother had. *** 45. Then, taking what he’d harvested, my uncle went. 46. Well, his blowgun had become just a piece, and his dart quiver was missing. 47. That’s how they went. VII. Lessons learned about what not to do∞≠ 1. That’s how jaguars wait. 2. That’s why, when walking alone, I’m so afraid of big vines, Janet! 3. You know how at the top of hills, it’s full of vines? 4. I won’t go there! 5. Instead, I’ll circle behind and go along the path where there are no vines. 6. Because I’ll think that a jaguar will be waiting for me in the vines! 7. Another danger is above; you know how when there’s wind, and branches have fallen, 8. One of them will catch up high? 9. There also, up high, they wait! 10. That’s how they, from up high, will come and crush one, and bite one, going tus! 11. Then it’s killed you! 12. That’s what the jaguar does to eat! Fighting for My Land Luisa has, throughout her life, been able to grow, hunt, track, and gather a good deal of what she and her family eats. Her oldest daughter, Eugenia, told me that when she was a little girl, she would have to get up at six o’clock in the morning to go to their fields and guard them from various pests. As their rice was particularly vulnerable to birds, Eugenia’s job was to watch the field and chase the birds away from dawn to

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dusk. Despite the hard work involved, Luisa has always found horticultural work to be immensely satisfying. Although she now lives in a land cooperative outside the town of Puyo, she continues to maintain several fields or ‘‘chagra-s’’ where, with help from her sisters, she can grow manioc, plantains, sugar cane, pineapples, beans, and many kinds of potatoes. Eighteen years ago she was maintaining chagras in Montalvo as well as outside of the town of Puyo, where she rented a small living space so that her children could attend school there. She has now completed her move out of Montalvo. When I asked her why she chose to move permanently out of the village where she was born, she explained that she had experienced health problems when she lived there and found it easier to take care of herself near Puyo, with its ready access to hospitals and doctors. Luisa is now the registered owner of a very small parcel of land in a cooperative called Plaza Aray, outside of Puyo. One of her chagras is about a mile’s walk from her house. She gained access to this particular chagra because the owner had gone to Spain and asked a doctor in Puyo, who employed Luisa’s daughter, to look after the land. Luisa’s daughter asked the doctor if her mother could use the land, and the doctor agreed. This complicated account repeats a pattern of good luck on her part and manifests her talent for finding people who sympathize with her plight. She told me the names of all the people who have let her work their land since she made her move out of Montalvo. She has never been asked to give anything to any of these people in return. In one case, she stayed on a piece of land for a total of ten years, after which time the owner apologized for having to ask her to leave so that he could build a sugar cane processing plant for his children to operate. Luisa has always been extremely proud of her ability to sustain herself and her family through her extensive expert knowledge of swidden horticulture. No matter what kind of story she is relating, she never misses a chance to impress upon me the wealth of foods she has enjoyed because of her hard work and knowledge. The following story was first related to me eighteen years ago, while I was conducting my Verb Portrait interviews. She recounts how a man who was in a compadrazgo relationship with her and her husband tried to encroach upon land in Montalvo that Luisa was growing food on, so that he could raise cattle. This conflict is interesting for many reasons. It shows how complex the relationships between indigenous people, nonindigenous colonistas from the highlands, and government officials can be. Throughout this story, even when Luisa is describing this man as a

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supai, which I translate as ‘‘devil spirit,’’ she never stops referring to him as ‘‘Kumpari Roja.’’∞∞ The man in question has a complex identity, as he is an immigrant colonista but is married to and has children with an indigenous woman from another community. The other colonistas in the area take Luisa’s side, rather than the side of their fellow colonista. Further, Luisa manages to get government officials to come to her aid and expel this man from her land, not just once, but twice. I had often wondered just how she pulled it off, being a member of a category, that of ‘‘indígena,’’ that suffers much social stigma in Ecuador. While going over this narrative with her during the summer of 2006, I learned that she had actually known the IERAC officials in Puyo personally because she had been working for their wives, doing their laundry. I suspect that their wives were so impressed by her honesty, energy, and wit that they probably lobbied heavily on her behalf. The narrative is structured not as a chronological sequence of actions, but as a series of statements, dialogues, arguments, and counterarguments among Luisa, her husband, the man named Roja who encroached upon her land, his wife, Rosa, who first asked Luisa’s permission to borrow a piece of land, the IERAC officials who came to investigate, and an assortment of minor characters whose words are enlisted for dramatic effect. Introduction N: Now let’s talk about loathing. What do you loathe? How do you loathe? Whom do you loathe? L: [Laughs] We get angry with each other, and we loathe each other, if my husband and I— 1. When he’s gotten drunk, I loathe that, I mean I loathe him, when he gets angry with me. 2. If he doesn’t get angry with me, I don’t loathe him. 3. Then there are others who speak to us, they insult us, they say unbelievable∞≤ things. 4. They act stingy about land; in that case, we become loathed because of land. I. Synopsis 1. That’s what we went through with Kumpari Roja. 2. He almost came at my husband with a knife, because of being stingy over land. ***

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3. (What happened was that) we entered that land first, 4. And then he made pastures and pastures and pastures and pastures, 5. And after that, as if he were the owner, he began pushing us out. 6. I in fact entered there first. 7. I made three complete agricultural fields, even building a little house. 8. After that he entered, after we had entered. II. First dialogue with IERAC 1. I even came to the IERAC office, and had them come out here two times 2. As we again were not living at all well, because of this problem. 3. Well, they said to him, ‘‘Are you still doing these things?’’ 4. ‘‘We should send you back to your land in Ambato,’’ they said. *** 5. ‘‘Who first entered?’’ he said; IERAC had called us in an official request. 6. They arrived at our lyakta, and as we had all gathered there, he said: 7. ‘‘Señora Nuñez,’’ he said to me. ‘‘Señora Eloise de Nunñez.’’ 8. Then I said, ‘‘Present.’’ 9. Then he said, ‘‘Señor Luis Roja.’’ 10. ‘‘Because of problems between you two I’ve come’’ he said. 11. Having said that, another then said, ‘‘Who is the owner of the land?’’ 12. ‘‘Who entered first?’’ he said. III. How Roja presents himself to the IERAC officials 1. ‘‘I am Roja,’’ he said; ‘‘I am a moneyed person,’’ he said; ‘‘I am rich,’’ said Roja. *** 2. ‘‘To make cattle pastures I threw seeds,’’ he said. 3. ‘‘I have cows,’’ he said; ‘‘I have a store,’’ he said; ‘‘I have a bar,’’ he said. 4. ‘‘I have outboard motors,’’ he said. 5. ‘‘All they know how to do is make chagras that turn into weeds.’’ 6. ‘‘They make nothing but fields of weeds,’’ 7. ‘‘What’s the use of that?’’ he said.

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IV. How Tito responds to Roja 1. He stood there chun (silently), listening to what Roja said. 2. ‘‘OK, good,’’ he said, ‘‘But that’s not what we asked,’’ he said. 3. ‘‘Now who first entered this land?’’ 4. Then my husband, who was standing there, said ‘‘I (did).’’ 5. ‘‘I entered first,’’ he said. 6. ‘‘Nobody had any chagras near here,’’ he said. 7. ‘‘Afraid (that this land might be used) for cattle pastures, nobody made chagras here.’’ 8. ‘‘And so my wife had first outlined a field, cutting a line of trees,’’ he said, ‘‘taxxx.’’∞≥ *** 9. ‘‘She had cut the outline of a field and we worked all of it,’’ he said. 10. ‘‘From that point Clara made a chagra,’’ he said. 11. ‘‘From that space Celia made a chagra,’’ he said. 12. ‘‘Where-all did we perhaps make chagras? Where did we NOT plant things?’’ 13. ‘‘All three of us together.’’ 14. Saying, ‘‘I am the one who wanted no one to bother me, 15. I entered there first,’’ he said. 16. ‘‘He came to land that I alone had been working,’’ he said. V. How Roja and his wife first deceived Luisa 1. That’s how Kumpari Roja effectively threw me out of Pamba where I had been before. 2. Wasn’t it there that I was growing rice, I was! *** 3. Well, that was when Kumari Rosa asked me 4. Saying, ‘‘In just a little bit of your weeds let me make a chagra, Kumari.’’ 5. I was so dumb! 6. I said ‘‘Yes, we’re family, Kumari, go ahead and make a chagra.’’ 7. So she made a chagra, and afterward she planted gamaloti ling ling ling∞∂ from the boundary of my field onward. *** 8. After that she wanted to make another chagra and said ‘‘Kumari, can I use this little space?’’ 9. ‘‘No!’’ I said. ‘‘Don’t make a chagra now,’’ I said.

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10. ‘‘Don’t! I don’t like the way you’ve planted gamaloti like this!’’ I said. 11. ‘‘I don’t make chagras for cows.’’ 12. ‘‘I plant corn, I plant rice, plantains, I plant manioc.’’ 13. ‘‘Look here at my chagra,’’ I said. 14. ‘‘Thinking that this perhaps was how you wanted to make your chagra, 15. I told you to make a chagra here,’’ I said. 16. Well then I got sick, and came here.∞∑ 17. Then after about six months of living here I went back to look and saw that everywhere 18. That I had first made my chagra 19. Now what a big ugly devil spirit he was, this Kumpari Roja! 20. The plantains I’d planted were growing, the corn and everything, the corn, the rice, had become yellow and ripe. 21. And I had told (my family), saying ‘‘Harvest it,’’ and I left it for them. 22. Well, he had let his cows loose everywhere! *** 23. And the cows had eaten the rice, the corn, and the manioc. 24. Only the plantains were left. 25. Where it had been left clear, he had planted gamaloti everywhere, look! *** VI. Luisa confronts Roja 1. So, with this, I went and spoke angrily at him, look! 2. ‘‘Ok, fine, pay me what it’s worth to me’’ I said. 3. ‘‘I am not rich like you, I don’t have money, 4. ‘‘I work with just my hands, with just my sweat, 5. ‘‘We don’t have any person working for us,’’ I said, ‘‘like you.’’ 6. ‘‘So that my children can eat, I work,’’ saying those things I spoke to him. 7. ‘‘Oh! Did you think that was your land?’’ (said Roja) 8. ‘‘The government gave it to me.’’ 9. ‘‘This land was a gift to me from the state.’’ 10. ‘‘They gave it to me, saying ‘You make a cattle pasture here,’ ’’ he said. 11. Saying those things, he almost knifed me, look! In the chagra!

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VII. Second dialogue with IERAC officials 1. Telling those things, I came here and gave a report to the IERAC people. 2. So then, having done that, I brought the official person with me. 3. They sent an official person 4. After that, I entered. 5. Then I had the IERAC officials come. 6. The one I had brought then asked like this. 7. ‘‘Who was first?’’ he said; well then, um, Tito spoke. 8. ‘‘This is how he encroached upon me at Pamba; that’s why I don’t want him next to me.’’ 9. ‘‘Having removed him from my side he didn’t like it, and so, wasting another piece of land, he follows me,’’ he said. 10. And I also spoke like that. VIII. How Don Serjio, Don Medina, and Don Luzuriaga spoke on our behalf 1. Then Don Serjio, Don Medina, and Don Luzuriaga (also spoke on my behalf, saying) 2. ‘‘It is certainly true that it’s her rice chagra.’’ 3. ‘‘She is a hardworking woman,’’ they said, helping me. 4. ‘‘Just as they said, he is pasturing his cows here now.’’ 5. ‘‘It is true that he took everything away from her,’’ they said. 6. ‘‘And now he follows her here,’’ they said. 7. He stood tai absolutely still. 8. What can he say? *** IX. Roja tries to manipulate the IERAC officials 1. ‘‘Because of these problems we’ve come,’’ said the IERAC man. 2. ‘‘Now who is the owner here?’’ he said. 3. Having said that, um, my husband said, ‘‘I entered.’’ 4. ‘‘When no one else had made a chagra, when no one else had even made a path, I made a chagra.’’ 5. ‘‘In order to make a chagra we encircled an area ting∞∏ like this.’’ 6. ‘‘He’s turned everything into a cattle pasture,’’ he said. 7. ‘‘Now go and look at how the gamaloti grows,’’ he said. 8. ‘‘OK then.’’ 9. ‘‘Come with me,’’ he (Roja) said. ‘‘Let’s go with me first, first go with me, let’s go,’’ he said.

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10. ‘‘Let’s go look by me,’’ he said. 11. ‘‘I’ve done lots of work,’’ he probably said. 12. ‘‘Whatever you want, however many millions you’ve planted, whatever you’ve done, 13. I haven’t come on your behalf.’’ 14. ‘‘Señora de Nunez brought us here,’’ he said. *** 15. ‘‘We haven’t come for you.’’ 16. ‘‘We were brought here for Señora de Nuñez.’’ 17. ‘‘Because of these problems we’ve come,’’ he said. 18. ‘‘After seeing her land we’ll circle around yours,’’ he said. 19. He stood tai, absolutely still; what can he say? *** 20. ‘‘Come now, and go and show where this is,’’ they said to me. 21. We went then, my husband and I, we went. *** X. The IERAC officials tour Luisa’s chagra 1. So then we went and once we arrived, then, having arrived, 2. I went and showed them my fields that had become weeds: this one, and also this one, and also this. 3. They were full of chonta trees, full of chonta trees, one had cacao trees planted. 4. I then showed them my manioc, my plantains, and the little bananas I’d planted. 5. Behind those I went and showed them two hectares that I’d cut for rice. 6. And all of my manioc taxxx! Now it had become ready to drink! 7. Celia’s also tax! Clara’s also tax!∞π 8. Wherever you looked it was so beautifully green. 9. That’s what it was like when we had them come. 10. ‘‘This is it,’’ I said. 11. ‘‘Before a single person had entered here, I entered.’’ 12. ‘‘As he had stinged∞∫ me so much, out of land, I came here,’’ saying this, I spoke. 13. ‘‘We can’t have a chagra anywhere.’’ 14. ‘‘Making a chagra with a little bit of government land, I was living,’’ I said. 15. ‘‘As he had stinged me of land.’’

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16. Saying, ‘‘This is just how he threw me out of land over there,’’ I spoke. 17. ‘‘So let’s go now, this is his now.’’ 18. So we went and looked at where we’d cut. 19. From one end to another it was cut. 20. ‘‘You’ve worked as hard as an animal, señora,’’ he said, ‘‘making your chagra here.’’ 21. ‘‘Yes,’’ I said. ‘‘I’m going to plant rice, because I have children,’’ I said. 22. ‘‘For my children it won’t be enough to just plant rice,’’ I said. 23. ‘‘Making a chagra with my own hands I feed my children,’’ I said. 24. ‘‘I don’t need anything else,’’ I said. *** 25. Kumpari Roja had waited for me wherever I had cut. 26. Now I, here, where I had cut land for my rice, and wherever it was long. 27. He, then, here, from the outside, had cut a pasture. 28. In another place, now there, where the cutting had been finished, like this, pasture grass was growing. 29. So then they arrived where things had been planted. XI. The IERAC officials scold Roja 1. ‘‘All right, you have been (too) ambitious!’’∞Ω he said. *** 2. ‘‘From now on, wherever this poor woman has made her chagra, you may not enter!’’≤≠ 3. ‘‘You are suspended; you must leave here; do not make any more pastures!’’ 4. ‘‘Because she is the owner!’’≤∞ 5. Then they went to another place where he had outlined a pasture. 6. ‘‘As you entered and made a field where you wanted, did you ask her?’’ 7. ‘‘She is the owner from now on!’’ *** XII. How Roja threatened us 1. Now silently, chun, he stood there, as they had suspended him for the second time. ***

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2. So then, having done that we came, and after having come, 3. To my husband he said, ‘‘You all are being stingy with land,’’ saying this, drunken, 4. He almost came in our house to attack us with a knife. *** 5. Yes, wanting to kill, he couldn’t get in, because of the wire fence around our house. 6. Well, at that time, my son Robin, also, was there. 7. So then I went with a candle. 8. And my son said, ‘‘Be careful, Mama, or you’ll get hurt,’’ he told me, ‘‘he’s got a knife.’’ 9. I did not go with a knife. 10. I had a whole tire, this thin, 11. In case he wanted to kill, I went to fight with him. *** XIII. How Luisa responds to Roja 1. So then I said, ‘‘What kind of a person are you?’’ I said. 2. ‘‘To come at me this way?’’ 3. ‘‘Come and fight if you want, with your hands’’ 4. ‘‘Fight with my husband with your hands,’’ I said, ‘‘not with a knife.’’ 5. ‘‘That’s the way men should fight,’’ I said. 6. ‘‘What kind of a person are you to be fighting with a knife?’’ 7. ‘‘Is this your land?’’ I said. 8. ‘‘This is my father’s father’s, my grandfather’s land,’’ I said. 9. ‘‘And it’s also my mother’s father’s land,’’ I said. 10. ‘‘I am the owner of this land, according to the late Loberto,’’ I said.≤≤ 11. ‘‘My grandfathers made this a place.’’ 12. ‘‘This is where my fathers lived; it’s their place. *** XIV. More insults from Roja 1. ‘‘I am going to kill all of you! Longo-s Jivaro-s!’’ 2. And to me he said: ‘‘Longa; India; Jivara!’’ 3. ‘‘I’m going to kill all of you!’’ 4. ‘‘No one will be able to say anything to me once I kill them.’’ 5. ‘‘I am Roja! I am from Ambato!’’

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6. ‘‘Well then, go! If you’re from Ambato then just go back there’’ (I said). XV. Luisa has the last word 1. ‘‘Don’t stay here!’’ I said. 2. ‘‘Just go go go to your place,’’ I said. 3. ‘‘Go,’’ I said; ‘‘Why do you want to stay here bothering people?’’ I said. 4. ‘‘Didn’t they suspend you?’’ I said. 5. ‘‘What more do you want? You have been prohibited.’’≤≥ 6. Well, Luzuriaga had sent an official notice. 7. Saying that Kumpari Roja had to be ousted. 8. We had been called to the IERAC office. 9. So I came. 10. He also came with his son. 11. We, Leticia and I came out.≤∂ 12. As for my husband, where might he have been? I don’t remember. 13. So just the two of us left and came out. 14. Well then, I told how he had almost come at my husband with a knife. 15. Saying ‘‘You all are being stingy with land,’’ that’s how he replied. *** 16. So then, look, having said that, having spoken like that we came to this office. 17. Well, when we came, he had already come carrying a jaguar hide in a bag.≤∑ *** 18. We sat together, like I’m sitting with you, Kumpari Roja, Leticia, and I. 19. He had come with his son that little Jaime, and then with a younger son he came. 20. Kumari Rosa had come but she didn’t enter. 21. Kumari Rosa does not belong to Montalvo.≤∏ 22. Her people come from the mouth of the Tigri River. 23. That’s where they come from; that’s where they grew up. 24. We, on the other hand, are true Montalvoans, from our fathers, grandfathers, everybody!

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25. They don’t have rights, those who were born wherever. 26. Well then, as we had all been called together like that, he came. 27. [inhales] Ayyyyy! You would have heard what he said standing there with his hands on his hips: 28. ‘‘Longas, Indias, Jivaras,’’ he said. 29. And then about my husband: 30. ‘‘Indio! Longo!’’ he said. 31. ‘‘You are poor,’’ he said. 32. ‘‘You have nothing!’’ [with vehemence], he said. 33. ‘‘I am Roja and I am rich,’’ he said. 34. ‘‘That’s why I have cattle, I’m going to increase my cattle,’’ he said, ‘‘wherever I want!’’ 35. ‘‘I will get rid of them! I am going to push them out,’’ he said about me. 36. That’s how he spoke to me, look! That ugly thing. 37. Chun, without a sound, the official sits there like you are just sitting. 38. He is quietly sitting and writing. 39. Not saying anything he sat there he did, and then he spoke what he’d been thinking. 40. ‘‘OK! That’s it! I don’t want to hear another word from you,’’ he said. 41. He stood up suddenly, zas, 42. ‘‘OK, you are rich.’’ 43. ‘‘You are a millionaire.’’ 44. ‘‘You have outboard motors.’’ 45. ‘‘Start up your motor and take your canoe and go!’’ 46. ‘‘Go downriver’’ 47. ‘‘Go and look for free land!’’ 48. ‘‘If you want to, go look there, at the entire forest.’’ 49. ‘‘Go and make pasture; go and stay there, increasing your herds of cows!’’ 50. ‘‘But don’t bother this poor thing!’’ 51. ‘‘She is to make chagras and work,’’ 52. ‘‘Her rice and everything, she is to plant.’’ 53. ‘‘What did you think you were doing, just making a pasture?’’ 54. ‘‘Do not bother her work! Go!’’ 55. ‘‘Go and look for land!’’

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56. ‘‘Don’t bother her in any way, anymore,’’ he said. *** 57. ‘‘Now don’t you bother her.’’ 58. Chun (silent) and tai (absolutely still), he stood there. 59. I said to them: ‘‘Being like this, speaking like this, he almost came at me with a knife.’’ 60. ‘‘To act like that is no good,’’ I said. 61. ‘‘My father’s father, 62. ‘‘My mother’s father, 63. ‘‘My father and my mother are the owners of this land.’’ 64. I said, ‘‘Their very own pilchi trees are standing there.’’ 65. ‘‘They are that place’s owners, there.’’ 66. ‘‘On my mother’s, my grandfather’s land I emerged,’’≤π I said.

Conclusion These two stories reveal much about Runa values and the ways in which their values transcend any particular species. When Luisa’s uncle comes to the rescue of her grandmother, he doesn’t just silently kill the jaguar. He scolds the jaguar, uttering imprecations, and is represented as lecturing him for being lazy. He uses the term ukatsayashka, which I translate as ‘lazy weakness’. Hunting dogs who are not able to find prey are described as ukatsa, which Luisa defines with the synonym kilya ‘lazy’. Roja’s predatoriness is not very different from that of the jaguar. It is made obvious by Luisa’s depiction of him as someone who takes advantage of those who are weaker. This is evident in his attempts to encroach upon her land, and also in his brandishing a knife, which is mentioned several times by Luisa in the narrative. Although Luisa does not directly accuse Roja of laziness, it is obvious that he suffers from this fundamental defect. When she represents herself, in verse V, as someone who doesn’t have people work for her,she speaks volumes about his character flaws, without directly labeling them. By constantly foregrounding her own hardworking nature and enlisting the supportive comments of others, she defines herself and also, in the process, defines Roja as lacking the qualities that she possesses. Both Roja and the jaguar are depicted as opportunistic predators who take advantage of those perceived to be weaker. Luisa’s stories are heartening reminders that even those who are at an intitial disadvantage may have the capacity to fight back and stand up for themselves.

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I have used the words of Luisa Cadena to focus on three features of Quichua linguaculture: ideophony, dialogue, and perspective. Although these three features represent distinct linguistic forms, usages, and morphological categories, they also overlap and complement one another. Ideophony represents a type of dialogue that entails a perspective. Ideophones are words that communicate succinctly through their sound qualities. These sound qualities involve both the sound segments of the ideophone as well as the intonational elaboration that performatively simulates a sound, movement, or visual pattern. The frequent occurrence of ideophones with gestures suggests that they function as semiotic fulcrums. They are like hinges that link together the verbal and the gestural, as well as the expressive and the grammatical. Ideophonic performances, in their most minimal instantiations, involve some kind of intonational foregrounding, together with a slight pause that sets the ideophone off from the rest of its utterance. Performative foregrounding may at times become so important—as when the chikwan bird in chapter 2 utters its portentous cry—that the ideophone gives its speaker a way of bridging another kind of divide: that between human and nonhuman expression. Ideophones express the animism of the sentient world, not only by serving as dialogical props during highly dramatic life experiences but also by expressing the reactivities of substances. Within linguistic anthropology, ideophones are a neglected topic within a marginal subfield of inquiry. What is worse, the use of ideophones is tied to a cognitive style that is not congenial with the norms of national dialogue and political discourse in Ecuador. This means that they are likely to be abandoned or disparaged by Runa who become advocates for their own cultural causes. Alfredo’s embarrassment when I asked him to use ideophones in a classroom context, as I related in the opening anecdote of chapter 1, is thus explained.

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When Luisa uses ideophones to represent the sounds and signals of life-forms that seem, from a human perspective, highly animate and volitional, they are most obviously like a kind of dialogue. Even when ideophones are used to encode grammatically aspectual moments of an instantaneously realized action, such as the briefly resonant sound of tapping something while grabbing hold of it, they communicate the germ of a dialogue, by capturing the resonant reactivity of one entity ‘‘responding’’ to another. Their concern for such reactivities makes evident the animism of the Runa conceptual world. This animism is also expressed by the frequent use of dialogue to represent subjective perspectives of nonhumans. Both the jaguar attacking Luisa’s aunt and the anaconda adopting her household and family are ascribed their own thoughts, reported as inner-logues that are structured as quotation complements that help explain their actions. Dialogue is omnipresent in all of Luisa’s narratives. Dialogues between characters help explain each narrative’s significant happenings and help move the narratives forward. Every individual, both major and minor within a narrative, is given a voice: whether that voice is only a signal or an index of a nonhuman lifeform’s reactivity to being manipulated; whether that voice is the unintelligible sound of someone speaking another language; or whether that voice is only the barely felt movements of a newly developing life. Given the overall significance of representing varieties of voices that any narrative may feature, it is not surprising that the grammar of Quichua provides categories for distinguishing various perspectives. The enclitic suffixes -mi and -shi provide tools for marking the perspectives underlying one’s words. These suffixes are not present in every sentence. Yet even the briefest narrative will need to use them, particularly a narrative that reports words spoken. Luisa’s stories feature constant shifts between these suffixes. Although it is most common to distinguish two different perspectives through contrasts between -mi and -shi, it is possible to specify more. Luisa’s utterances have laid to rest the idea that the use of -mi and -shi is mainly about ‘‘direct’’ versus ‘‘indirect’’ experience. Her use of these suffixes reveals the subtle nuances by which authorial assertions and disclaimers may shift to accommodate the expression of hope, certainty, bewilderment, wonder, warning, or threatening. Finally, I want to acknowledge all Runa, male and female, who live lives requiring knowledgeable alignments with nonhuman nature. Luisa stands out as a particularly strong woman because she is able to articulate her experiences so eloquently. Anyone dropping in on her in her

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present circumstances, without knowing her stories, would be tempted to underestimate her talents, strengths, and intellect. She currently lives in a partly finished house with a roof made of tin. She struggles with health problems that are not uncommon for someone her age. She is also challenged by financial troubles and the many ongoing sagas of personal difficulties experienced by her children and grandchildren. Yet, the moment she begins to tell one of her stories, saying ‘‘Rikungi! (Look!)’’. . . or ‘‘Kunan uyangi (Now listen. . .),’’ Luisa becomes an expert citizen of a world that is bountiful and beautiful, yet dangerous and unpredictable, endlessly challenging but intelligible. I end by letting her have the last words. What follow are some of my favorite examples of memorable things she’s said: ‘‘My flesh is like an anaconda’s, and the anaconda is like my family.’’∞ ‘‘They said (about me): ‘You are as traveled in the forest as any man and not afraid of anything; You go and have a look (at it).’ ’’≤ ‘‘How will I ever name for you all of the drinkable fruits of the forest? There are just too many!’’≥ ‘‘You know how when it’s quiet you can hear someone walking, going taras taras kau kau, far away in the forest?’’∂

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2. Bulyukuku dialogue (Tape IIIA, Transcript File, pages 107–8) 1. ‘‘Ñuka kangunata tutami shamunga rauni,’’ nishkashi. 2. ‘‘Ña puñudzhu? Ña puñundzhu? 3. Nishami bulukuku-kuu-kuu-kuu-kuu,’’ nisha, nishkashi. 4. Chiga nikpi kanguna kontestawangichi 5. ‘‘Charak mana puñundzhu mana puñundzhu mana puñundzhu ningi,’’ nishkashi 6. ‘‘Ari,’’ nishkauna 7. ‘‘Unaipi kuti tapushkanguichi,’’ nirashi 8. ‘‘Ñuka bulukuku-kuu-kuu-kuu-kuu,’’ nikpi 9. Charak likchariaunmi charak likchariaunmi, nisha rimawangui nirashi. 10. ‘‘Ña,’’ nishkauna 11. ‘‘Kutilyata ñuka bulukuku-kuu-kuu-kuu-kuu,’’ nikpi. 12. Ña puñunmi ña puñunmi paiguna puñukpi, niwangi,’’ nishkashi. 13. ‘‘Arii,’’ nishkauna. 3. Freshwater dolphin transformation (Tape IIIA, Transcript File, page 111) 1. Chiga uyashaaashi shayanaura pobreguna rinrimalya. 2. Chiga unai amishka unaipishi bhuuuuu karrrrrr 3. Shukbas bhuuuuuuu karrrrrrrshi lyukshigrinaura. 4. ‘‘Chai! Tukunaunmi, samanaunmi,’’ nikguna. 5. Shukbas tuphuuu shukbas tuphuuu shukbas tuphuuu 6. Kaima bhuuuu chima bhuuuu kaima bhuuuu chima bhuuuu h b uuuu bhuuuu 7. Win runashi bugyu tukunaura.

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6. ‘‘What about our mother?’’ (Tape IA, Transcript File, page 15) 1. ‘‘Ñuka mamagaya?’’ nishkaunashi. 2. ‘‘Hm hm? Ilyashkai shamunchi,’’ nishashi nishkauna. 3. ‘‘Yanga ningichi!’’ 4. ‘‘Ñuka mamata rupakta rasha chi armachiparangichi!’’ 5. ‘‘Mama Mamashi!’’ kaparinaura. 6. Chiga chi bankuiga ‘‘tsiririririshi,’’ nira. 7. Kailya wawai sakirishkara, api wawa.

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‘‘The Chikwan Speaks’’ (Tape VIII, Transcript File, pages 488–92) I. The Setting 1. Turi Venturaga paiga lyaktata shamushka, panigunawanga Domingo pundzhaga [To Jacinta] Domingo pundzha wañuchik anya? N: Montalvo lyaktata? L: Montalvo lyaktata Montalvo lyakta. Domingo pundzhachu wañuchishka an? 2. Nda, domingo pundzha wañuchishka man wañu- hachi- Emisiónta kasna pundzha. II. What Aunt Lola first heard and thought 1. ‘‘Chiga ña yhaaapashi chikwan riman,’’ nira Mikya Lola: 2. Chichichichichi chikwan! 3. ‘‘Ña ruya hawamanda niushami,’’ nishashi nin. 4. ‘‘Lomo ramai tiyarik shamun,’’ nira: ‘‘chichichichichichi.’’ J: Ña rimangashi raura! 5. Ña rimangashi raura, runa ima asha, pobre chikwanga. 6. Chishi nira, ‘‘ima pita runachu wañuchun shamunga rau?’’ 7. ‘‘Imanashata kasna chikwan riman?’’ nirashi. N: Pita kasna nira? L: Ñuka wañushka Mikya Lola. 8. Chiga nikpi, ‘‘mana pacha!’’ 9. Kan imatacha Auka wañuchik shamunga raun? 10. Kantami wañuchina, Auka uyariun. 11. Kantami wañuchi tukunga raungi. 12. ‘‘Haku hanakta,’’ nishkashi Mikya Lola. 13. ‘‘Kandacha chichichichichichichichichishi nin,’’ nira pai.

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14. Wañuchi tukungami raungui. J: Ña rimai pasan! L: Ña rimai pasan riki! III. Aunt Lola’s second idea dismissed by the chikwan 1. ‘‘Mana pachalya, ima wawaguna, imachari yaku, 2. ‘‘Imachasha shamusha tigrasha wañungauna?’’ nin. 3. ‘‘Chikwan,’’ nirashi chi. 4. ‘‘Yangami yaringi chita,’’ nira. IV. Aunt Lola’s first dialogue with Emisión 1. ‘‘Mana, haku! ñukanchis lyaktamanda habon wawagunata randisha, tigragrishun,’’ nira. 2. ‘‘Habonda randigrishun,’’ nirashi. 3. ‘‘Imawa? Ria kanga ñuka siriunimi.’’ 4. Ñuka amigoguna, ñukata pasiangaka ña kunanmi paktamunga raunguna. 5. ‘‘Mashti, amigo Marianomi shamunga raun,’’ nirashi. 6. ‘‘Chiguna pasianga shamuwanga raunguna ninshi,’’ nira. V. Uncle Emisión’s state 1. Mana munashka. 2. Amanga warkushkaiga hui, 3. Kasna hanakma 4. Ñawi asha, tintilin yaku hanakma. 5. Ayakta machasha pagarisha siriura, 6. Chaima rikusha. VI. Other signs of trouble 1. Ñuka mama, ñuka yaya rinaura. 2. Rikulyaitashi pukushka ruyaga ‘‘runa shinashi yanan shayarin,’’ ninaura. 3. ‘‘Putu putu putu putushi pukushkata urmachin,’’ nira. 4. ‘‘Mana pacha!’’ 5. ‘‘Kausakta wañunga raunchi, kaima riki!’’ 6. ‘‘Pita kasna shayarik?’’ 7. ‘‘Ilyanmi,’’ nishkauna. 8. Chiga nin ‘‘ayaguna, mauka ayaguna puriunguna,’’ nirashi. 9. Ayakta upisha tiyauka.

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VII. Aunt Lola tries again 1. ‘‘Yangami ningi!’’ 2. ‘‘Kaitami wañuchinga raun Auka!’’ 3. ‘‘Yangachu brujo angi?!’’ 4. ‘‘Rikwi! Uyari!’’ nirashi Mikya Lola 5. ‘‘Mana. Ayaguna man,’’ nirashi. J: Churui kantasha— L: Ah ow! Churuya! apangurai! churui, rumi, mana, mana hatarinai Masna hatarisha nishas, chilyaita siririnai! Kantasha, shamushashi wañuchik anaun. VIII. What Aunt Victoria saw, heard, and shouted to Aunt Lola 1. Chiga chasna nisha, mikya Lola chasna nisha, shayaushkai, 2. Ñuka wañuk mikya, mashti, mikya Victoriaga, chimbaii, paiga, 3. Mashti imatai, lomo kaspita tarpuushka! 4. Domingo pundzha ña ukta kai lyaktata shamungawa nisha. 5. Chiga rikukpi ‘‘whhyy tuuu whhhyyyyyyy whyyy whyyy why why ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, why why why ha ha ha.’’ N: Pita kasna nira? L: Aukaguna! Wañuchingawa shamunguna. 6. ‘‘Kumari Looola! Aukami kanoa hunda shamusha chai sirin!’’ 7. ‘‘Kumba Emisioónda cha wañuchinga shamunaun!’’ 8. ‘‘Ri! Apasha, aisasha, ri! Apasha ri!’’ 9. ‘‘Kumari Lolashi,’’ kaparira. IX. What I, as a child, heard and saw 1. Mikyaga kaparira. 2. Uyaurani, ñuka, ichilya marani chi urasga. 3. Wawata charisha, tiyaurani. 4. Mamaguna chagrama rikpi, wawa samiga wawata ukwi charisha tiyak aranchi, ñukanchi. 5. Chiga ‘‘Hooooo! Chikwanbas rimanata uyai!’’ 6. Chi, ima man, paiba kuchamandaga kai kwichi ‘‘arco iris’’ ninau? 7. Ña chimba chimba chimba chimba chimba shayarisha! 8. Rupai tamya shaaaiiiiiiii tutututu shaaaiiiiiii pahota rara, rikungi ma!

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X. The Auka arrive 1. Chiga mikya, wañuk, mikya kaparisha, mana uyarachu, 2. ‘‘Shamungunami, ukta kalypaichi! Lola! Aukami shamun, Lola! 3. Aisasha ri!’’ 4. ‘‘Aukami wañuchinga shamuk,’’ kapariun. 5. Ñukanchis rikulyaita pirtoi shayarik shamunaura! 6. [Shouting] ‘‘Why whyy whyy whyy, ha ha ha ha ha ha!’’ 7. Mashti kwung panga mandashkata, kanoamanda 8. yakuma yakuma yakuma shitanaura. 9. Chuba karata ling, 10. Shuka sipuru karata ling, 11. Koto karagunata ling ling ling, 12. Imagunatacha, ima animalgunatacha aparinaura! 13. Ilyapata zas zas zas! 14. Ima shinalyan kalypanaura! J: Hooo! Ay Dyus Yaya! XI. Aunt Lola’s final attempt 1. ‘‘Ri!’’ Aisashacha Mikya Lola aisagrirashi. 2. ‘‘Haku! Aukami shamun, cierto mashka!’’ 3. ‘‘Haku! kalypashun!’’ 4. ‘‘Ña rumi shiiiina.’’ 5. Kantacha wañuchinga shamungunai. 6. Kalypai! Ri! Ri! 7. ‘‘Kanta wañuchinga shamukpi, 8. Kan bruho sami, mandzhaungui!’’ nishashi nira. XII. The Auka and Uncle Emisión greet each other 1. ‘‘Huero amiko!’’ nishashi nigrira. 2. ‘‘Tiyaungichu amigo?’’ 3. ‘‘Mana machauurangui kanga?’’ 4. ‘‘Machaunshi nishkata uyasha kanta pasianga shamuni,’’ nisha, 5. Lonta upishashi shayariñaura. 6. ‘‘Yaikwichi! Shamwichi!’’ ninshi. 7. Hatarisha, kasna rikunga rauta 8. Thaaaaaaiiii thaaaaiii taiiiiii tai! 9. Ay Janelya, uyangima yanga 10. Thaaaaii taaiiii tun tun tun tun tun tun tun tun tun tun. N: Rayu?

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11. Ilyapa! Ña runa aichai hapishkaga hiridzata uyari ak ashka: 12. Tuuun tun tuuun tun tuuuuun tun! XIII. How the Auka taunted Uncle Emisión 1. Ay Dyus mia, uyangi ma, yanga 2. ‘‘Piti piti piti piti piti piti piti piti.’’ N: Imata ‘‘piti piti piti’’? 3. L: ‘‘Kamai kamai kamai kamai kamai kamai,’’ 4. ‘‘Kasnatami runata wañuchisha tiyangi’’ 5. ‘‘Kanga kamai kamai!’’ 6. ‘‘Kai man, riki! Kaita aparisha nishami’’ 7. ‘‘Kanga runata shitasha, mana uya—’’ 8. ‘‘(Mana)uyasha tiyangi!’’ nishashi rimaunguna, niungunami, uyakgunaga. XIV. Uncle Emisión’s last words 1. Chiga chasna nishka ñukanchi rikuuuuuulyaitan dzaaaas shayarisha, kasna rara 2. Rikuranchi kasna makita rauta: 3. ‘‘Sakiwaichi, ichilyata ilyapawaichi.’’ 4. ‘‘Kailyanmi wañusha,’’ nishashi nin nira. 5. Nikga toamaaa [pause] urmashkara. XV. How Uncle Emisión looked after being shot 1. Rikugriranchi. 2. Wiraga tsidzin ilyapashkamanda ña tsidzinlya tukushkara, chi washa N: Ima shinata tsidzin? 3. Ña tsidzinlya tulyuguna pakirikbi ichilyayak mak ashka runa. 4. Rikungima kaimanda aswa upishka yakugunami lyukshira! 5. Mashti wiraga, chuba wira shina 6. Kilyu wirata chari ashkan 7. Chi tsiiik tsiiik lyukshishkara. 8. Umaguna, kaimanda uktuguna, pacha, pawa pawa y il apashkaunara! 9. Ña ima animaltacha ilyapashkaunara rikungima!

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XVI. How my grandmother pleaded with the Auka 1. Ñashi Mikya Lolata, ñuka mikyata wañuchinga raura, 2. Ña mikyaga, ima shinalyata kaigunatas, pulu pulu y il apashkaunarashi. 3. Wañushka apamama ‘‘karilyata wañuchik chi musuku, karimi kausaiwan, 4. ‘‘Ñuka wawata ama wañuchipangichichu!’’ nisha 5. Ñuka apamama, barbasco ukumanda kaparira, mitikusha kalypak, XVII. What the Auka left with Emisión 1. Chailyai siririra, wañuuun siriura, paiga. 2. Shamusha nishka, 3. Chimandashi ña apuntashpalyata sakishkauna, 4. Batalyata pundzhan ilyapashkaunara, 5. Rikugriranchi. 6. Rikuk toamaaa urmashkara. 7. Rawai– N: Toama? L: Toamami ña kasnama nawita rasha urmashkara. J: Yaya Dyus. N: Yaya Dyus shina? L: Nda. 8. Yari, rikungima, rawaita ailya ayyyy! 9. Ailya kai koronamanda, ima, kaibimi rawaiga wamburishkara, rikungima! 10. Imata shina rawai rawailya rawailyami tukusha siriushkara? 11. Ña wañui pasashka. 12. Chiga, kaibiga makiibiga tabako maitu. 13. Tabako anzitami hapichi sakishkaunara! 14. Shimigunaimi hapichi sakishkaunara 15. ‘‘Kaiwan kasna rasha shitasha, tiyangi,’’ nishashi, 16. Chasna rasha sakishkauna. 17. Alyimaaaanda urmagrikguna yakuta 18. ‘‘Tuuuuuuuuuuuuu! Emisiónnnnn!’’ 19. ‘‘Wiñita wiñita istaaa istaaaaa,’’ kaparisha shayariunguna.

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XVIII. What Uncle Inacio heard 1. Chiga, chibimi Hachi Inacio, ñuka hachi aura! 2. ‘‘Haku haku haku haku haku.’’ 3. ‘‘Kunanga haku upigrishun! Machagrishun!’’ 4. ‘‘Haku, Emisiónnnnnshi ’’ almata kayasha riunguna. XIX. How Aunt Lola insulted the Auka 1. Chiga ñuka mikyaga: ‘‘hiridzaguna, pigli lulunguna!’’ 2. ‘‘Piglilulun Aukaguna, hiridza tuku wiksaguna!’’ Ay! 3. Kamisha mikya mana uyakpiga, mikyia, ñuka mikya maga 4. Ilyapata ashka, imata shinan kachashkauna! 5. Hatun balsa sapi t`ukwi, manashi balsaiga munición tyapiklya y l utarishkara. 6. Shuklyami focil balata chi mashtibi churashkara kasi pasashkara. 7. Chandzha wañuk marai! 8. Paina sara muyuta shina ilyapakpis kamiuuurami. 9. ‘‘Mata nawi ruku! mata singa ruku! hiridza ruku!’’ 10. ‘‘Mana kanbas unaita kausanguichu!’’ 11. ‘‘Nalyami wañungi!’’ nisha kaparin. 12. Illap—uraimandas ilyapauuraunmi, rikunguima, 13. ‘‘Hiridza padza lulun!’’ 14. ‘‘Piglilulun, Auka rukuguna!’’ [Luisa laughs] XX. My father comes and we all go look at Emisión 1. Chi, ña rikugriranchi, ñukanchi, yaya kalypasha, yaya shamura. 2. Ñuka yaya hanakmami lindosta manachu, hambik anau shiyuta? 3. Chasna ñuka mamanga hanakma hambiu. 4. Ilyapata uyasha shamunaura. 5. Shamusha, yaya, ña, mama masna hapiulyaita, rira, yaya rikungawa! 6. Mashti, imatari, ña chimi ilyapata apasha 7. Pai chari uraita ‘‘tuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.’’ 8. Ima timpu ri pasanaun, riki! 9. Chiga rikun, ñukanchiwas riranchi. 10. Chimi chasna rikunchi. 11. Chara dziu dziu [pause] dziu dziu [pause]. 12. Animal aicha shinami dzirmarishaaaaa. N: Imata dziu dziu? L: Kuti kausak wañuita rashaga rapiyarisha, ña dziu dziu dziu dziu.

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13. Ay! Yayalya ‘‘kunan tutalyata lyaquilya takisha munditi shina pagaringa, ayakta upishaga,’’ 14. Ña wañui pasan! 15. Rikukpi, umatas sirapata kaimanda ilyapashka, kaita pulu. 16. Kaiman pasashkara, aylya ña ñuktu, ima shina lyukshishkara, rikungima. 17. Kaimanda ilyapashka, kaita tutarashi. 18. Ña kaima tukuchishka mara, tukuchishkalyata. XXI. Aftermath 1. Chiga piii chari rimagrira, kunan kai turi Venturagunata paiwa ushushigunata? 2. Wañushka Elisaguna, chi uyakpi hanakmanda wakashaaaaaaa, uyarimunaura. 3. Ña ñuka ñaña kai Santaguna sultira shamun, 4. Ama shamuchun churiga nikpi. 5. Mana shamushka chara turi Ventura sakirishka mara. 6. Chiga, chigamalya yarini. 7. Chi, chichu pagarichinaura, ima chari? 8. Mana yarini; chibicha pagrichinauraya, 9. Kunan pagarichi, kayandicha apanaura ña pambangaka. 10. Pambanga apashkaunara, nda. 11. Chibi, chilyaita turi Cezar wasisha tiyanya, kunan uraibiga. 12. Chilyaita tiyan! 13. Ñuka chi raigu ‘‘imata kai Auka wañuchishkai, kan tiyangi,’’ nirani. 14. ‘‘Kandasmi wañuchi tukungi!’’ 15. ‘‘Shuk pistoi tiyai!’’ 16. ‘‘Kaiga ña maliashka alypa man!’’ nirani. 17. Nikpiga, ‘‘shinakpita anchuringa rauni pani,’’ niwara ñukata. 18. Mana anchurishka chara, chilyai tiyan ña. 19. Pero ña chaglyashka kanba laroiga. 20. ‘‘Chima ringa rauni pani,’’ niwara, ‘‘uchuchiku,’’ niwara. 21. ‘‘Chimami risha tiyanga rauni,’’ niwan. 22. ‘‘Nda, anchuri, ri!’’ nirani. 23. ‘‘Maima, imata rashata kaibi tiyangi?’’

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1. How the bugyu play (Tape VIII, Transcript File, page 445) 1. Bugyuguna hatun yakumanda, Marañonmanda, puglyamunaun. 2. Nuspa bugyuguna bhux bhhux bhux 3. Sika sika sika 4. Pai warmian, pai karian puglyanakumunaun. 5. Nuspa bugyuguna maaaiii kucha ukutas pariulya? 6. Puglya puglya puglya puglya, hatun kuchata muyugrinaun, 7. Kutilyata lyukshinaun yakumatas, kai uma, 8. Yaku Bobonaza umatas. 9. Bhux bhux bhux puglyanakunaun, mana ichunakunaun paina. 10. Bugyuguna kasna 11. Warmi hawata saltan, kari hawata saltan. 12. Chasna puglyamunaun. 13. Puglyasha bugyuguna purinaun. 14. Mana ichunakuk chanaun. 2. The bugyu as love charm (Tape X, Transcript File, page 581) 1. Sssindzhi simayukashi an, paiga, bugyuga. 2. Mana ichunakukchu aun. 3. Ña kasna maitas puglyasha purik! 4. Ñukanchi, ima nishata ichunakushun. 3. The heartless tortoise and the good water turtle (Verb Portraits, Tape GA, tuvyana ‘to hatch, burst’) 1. Tsawataga wacha wacha wacha wacha, 2. Ichusha maibis rin paiga wachasha N: Cierto? Mana shuk puestoi? 3. Mana. 4. Shuklya tazinta rasha, charapaga shunguyuk man!

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5. Paiga alypata alyan, chi wachan. 6. Pai wawaguna yakuta mamakta rina an. 7. Paiga mana! 8. Sachaiga wachashka wachashka mai paita wachanayak. N: Shuk lulun kaibi, shuk lulun chaibi? 9. Ooooh! Paita wachanayashkai, wachanayashkai, maibiawas, ichusha rin! 10. Ichusha rin! 11. Chitaga kumishin wasi! 12. Kumishin wasishka, kumishin wasi ukwi, pai tuvyan. 13. Pobrega pailya pai ushashpa wiñan. 14. Tsawata! Shungu ilyak man! 4. How a motolo snake sang (Tape VIII, Transcript File, page 496–97) 1. Ninhaaanda tapashka washa riranchi. 2. Uyakpi kutilyata sar sar sar sar sar sar sar sar sar sar kux kux kux kux kux kux kux kantak asha. 3. Chi uyariukpi chun! 5. Discovering a motolo plucking a partridge (Tape VIII, Transcript File, page 499) 1. Chiga Eloisa shamui! Kasnachu motologa! 2. ‘‘Kaitachu angami mikushka,’’ nik ashkanchi. 3. ‘‘Motolo palomi mikuk ashka.’’ 6. First detailed description of motolo plucking partridge (Tape VIII, Transcript File, page 499) 1. L: Chiga, riki purus purus purus. 2. J: Pilaun! 3. L: Purusshi pilaushka! N: Imata pilaushka? 4. L: Chi yututa japishka! 5. J: Makiyuk shina! 6. L: Makiyuk shina pilaushkashi kiruwan, nira. 7. Ñuka kusata kwintachingima! 8. J: Atalyata shina. 9. L: Atalyata shinashi pilaushka!

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7. Second detailed description of motolo plucking partridge (Tape VIII, Transcript File, page 499) 1. Rirani, mandzhaulyatami rirani iridzata muskushka asha. 2. Chiga karomandalya rikurani, rikukpi purus, 3. Manachu chunlya akpi taras taras kau kau purishkas, karota uyarik an sachaiga? 4. Chiga, shayarisha, uyakpi, purus, purus, purusta uyarin. 5. ‘‘Laroi rik, ñawiga chima man; ama mandzhaichu pai pilaushka,’’ niwara. 6. Riranchi riranchi rikukpi yanga tak amulin purus; 7. Tak amulin, purus. 8. Chiga, kargami wilyma shimii. 9. Chiga kkkkkh kkkkh, 10. Yanga umata kasna rasha kkkkkh. 11. Chiga wilyma chi intirui, chi intiruimi urman! 8. The value of a motolo snake’s fat (Tape VIII, Transcript File, page 502) 1. Mundo valik ak ashka motolo wira. 2. Ima valikshi ak ashka, riki! 3. Kailya wawa! Kailya wawa! 4. Tukwi rimidiyu raigu valik ashka. 5. Ñuka kunanga ña alyi pacha yachashka mani 6. Kunan wañuchisha wirata apana mani maiii! 9. What Achuar say about deer (Tape VIII, Transcript File, page 453) 1. Ñaupa tarugata gustuta mikuk arani chundzhulindi. 2. Mana alyi yuyaiwan mikuk chani. N: Imangawa? 3. Kuti, chasna, chiga, Aukagunaga: 4. ‘‘Runa man! Runa alma man.’’ 5. ‘‘Ñukanchi apa yaya, ñukanchi mikyaguna man,’’ nik manaun Auka 10. An Auka woman’s reaction (Tape VIII, Transcript File pages 455–56) 1. Chiga, tarugata wañuchikpi cielolyan wakashashi kanoan paktara Turi Cezarbi.

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N: Pita? 2. Auka warmi, paiba mama! 3. Chiga tarugata rikushaga Ayyy! 4. ‘‘Ñuka wawalya! Imawata kasna wañuchipangichi?’’ 5. ‘‘Ñuka wawata kunanga wiñaimi chingaripan!’’ 6. ‘‘Imawata wañuchipangi?’’ 7. ‘‘Mana wañuchinachu an, 8. ‘‘ñuka wawatami wañuchipangi!’’ 9. ‘‘Chichu ñuka wawa wañura 10. ‘‘Chasnalyatami chichu tarugata wañuchipangi rikwi!’’ 11. ‘‘Mana kaiga tarugachu an. Runa alma man.’’ 12. ‘‘Imawata wañuchipangi?’’ 13. ‘‘Kunan wiñai chari ñuka wawaga chingarin.’’ 14. ‘‘Kanmi wañuchipangi nishashi tarugata wañuchikpi 15. Turi Cezarta rimak shamura, nirami Santaga. 11. How the deer watched her former family (Tape VIII, Transcript File, page 455) 1. Chi tarugaga chagramanda shamun rikukshi ashka ñawin wasi chindamanda. 2. Paiguna yuyaipi paiba wawatashi rikun. 3. Rikun, shukpi rikugrikpi, yakuwa pataishi shayauuun ashka. 4. Armauushashi muskuchik ashka pai mamata. 5. Chi rikuk shamukpi muskukshi ashka pai. 6. ‘‘Wawagunata rikunga shamurani mama,’’ 7. ‘‘Alyilyachu anaun?’’ nisha ‘‘rikuurani,’’ nishkashi alma. 8. Chi taruga rikukpi pai ushushitashi muskug ashka. 12. How Brother Cezar happened to kill the deer (Tape VIII, Transcript File, page 455–56) 1. Chiga kuti, Turi Cezarba alykugunaga katishaga, yakuma urmachishkauna. 2. Urmachikpi, ‘‘mikuna aicha,’’ nisha wañuchishkauna. 3. Chiga ñuka, ñañaga partiushka! Santa [Luisa erupts with laughter] 4. Partiukpi, hanakmandaga tauna tauna, chiraaa! chiraaa chiraaashi wakamu nin. 5. Pishi wañu nishashi mandzharisha, 6. Rikushaaa shayaunchi.

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13. My first pregnancy (Tape II, Transcript File, pages 79–84) I. What I first thought 1. Ñuka wiksayausha nirani ñuka kusata: 2. ‘‘Ima raigushi ñuka, ñukanchi sami sakiriwan?’’ 3. ‘‘Kunanga mana chari wawayashachu kausasha,’’ nirani. 4. Ñuka mana zas wawayashka chani. 5. Ñukata ñuka kusa hapisha tiyawara; 6. Kasnalya sakisha riwara. 7. Chimanda shamura, año seis mesta kausaranchi, mana wawayarani; 8. Chiga ‘‘machura’’ niwak anaura ñukata. 9. Chasnamanda ñukanchi samiga tas chingariwara. 10. Chingarikpi, nirani, ‘‘kunanga imata tukuni?!’’ 11. Ña ñukanchi samiwas chingariwan 12. ‘‘Cierto chari mana wawayana ani,’’ nirani 13. Modo! II. What Señora Amelia told me 1. Ña shuk kilyalyai, ña, a ver, vienti-cinco diaimi 2. Wiksaga yapami kushpariwara. 3. Yarishaaa sakirirani, ña ‘‘imashi kasna tukuni?’’ 4. Ña ishkai kilya, astan kushpariwara 5. Ña kimsa kilya, chuchuga thak shayariwara 6. Señora Amelia niwara, ‘‘kanga chichu mangi,’’ niwara; 7. ‘‘Wiksayaungimi,’’ niwara. 8. ‘‘Atsatsai! Yangami, niwangi’’ nirani. 9. ‘‘Ciertota nini; chuchu(ta) rikurin,’’ niwara. 10. Chiga, chuchuiga, kaita shinki ña tukuwashkara; 11. Chiga alyi rikushaga manzharirani. 12. ‘‘Tutamanda kamaringi,’’ niwarami; 13. ‘‘Chimi ishpa puruiga bolanga kan chichukpi,’’ niwara. 14. Chi, ima shinata niwan, nisha, tutamanda kamarirani wiksai. 15. Bola mashkara! 16. Manzhariranimi ñukaga! III. What I told my husband 1. Chiga paiga shamura. 2. Chiga wagra aichata apamushkara; 3. Chiga, kuti karomanda milyanayawara.

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4. ‘‘Ñuka mana mikushachu; kanlyata karauni’’ 5. Nisha makimalya rasha kaima kwinauni kwinauni, yanusha. 6. Pailya, ‘‘imanasha?’’ niwara. 7. ‘‘Kanga, mana ungungichu?’’ niwara. 8. ‘‘Mana,’’ nirani. 9. ‘‘Masna kilyata mana ungungi?’’ niwan. 10. ‘‘Kimsa kilyatai’’ nirani ‘‘ña kaiwan kimsami riuni,’’ nirani. 11. ‘‘Ishkai kilya intiru, kimsawan riuni.’’ 12. ‘‘Cierto?’’ niwara. 13. Imawa chai yapa wiksai kushpariwan?’’ nirani N: Ima shinata kushparira? 14. Dziu dziu dziu dziu dziu kilyachik an kari wawa. 15. Karimi chasna kushpariu ma. 16. Chiga ‘‘shinashaga wiksayuk mangi’’ niwarami. 17. Ñaa wiñasha wiñasha wiñasha wiñasha wawaga riura, rikwi. IV. The pain in my heart 1. Wachana uras, ñukata shungu nanawara. 2. Señora Amelia ‘‘imawata chai shungu wañunata nanawan?’’ 3. ‘‘Pacha wañusha chari’’ nirani 4. ‘‘Imanasha?’’ niwara. ‘‘Mana wachangawa wiksa nanaun?’’ niwara. 5. ‘‘Wiksami kandaga nanaun, wachangawa,’’ niwara. 6. ‘‘Mana kaimachu nanan; kaipimi nanawan,’’ nirani. 7. ‘‘Atsatsai! Mushuk asha, chasna niungi,’’ niwara. 8. Chiga, wawaga ña thaakmi hatariwara, hawama. 9. Chiwan pariulya, ñuka kusa tarabanamanda ña shamura. 10. Ñuka ñaña mana usharanichu, ña mana usharani. 11. ‘‘Ña shungu nanaiwan wañuni,’’ nirani. 12. Chiga ‘‘imanasha?’’ niwara. 13. ‘‘Hm hm? Imanasha chari shungu nanawan?’’ 14. ‘‘Wachana kilyawan, imachari an?’’ nirami amilitar 15. Chiga nikpi, ‘‘Ndayya.’’ 16. Wachana kilyawanga fechagunaimi kai urmanga raun,’’ niwara. 17. ‘‘Kaiga nanachiunmi.’’

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V. What my aunt said to me 1. Ñuka mikya mara partera, doctor shina. 2. Apangawa rinaura; chiga shamura. 3. ‘‘Siriri mamaku kamashun,’’ niwara. 4. Ña las seis mara. 5. Kamawara. 6. ‘‘Pooooh!’’ 7. ‘‘Wachangami raungi; wawa hawaimi hatarishka,’’ niwara. 8. ‘‘Kanga wachanga raungi kunanga!’’ 9. Chiga kamawara, alyichiwara. VI. How it felt when I began to give birth 1. Ñukaga ña tyam! 2. Ña chai sintirani siki tulyu: kalya rashka shina nanawara ña ay! 3. Mana awantaranichu rikungima; 4. ‘‘Wañusha!’’ 5. ‘‘Mana kausashachu!’’ nirani kasna. 6. Ña wañunata shina yachiwara. 7. Ton pai hatariwara, rikungima! 8. Kalenturambas wañurani. 9. Kai vakunashkawas kaibi vacunashka, kaita ismushka marani. 10. Kalenturambas wañurani! 11. Ñaaa ishpanayak shina, ismanayak shina, 12. Ishpanayak shina, ismanayak shina yachiwara. 13. Rirani, shamurani, rirani, shamurani. VII. How my aunt scolded me 1. Ñaaa Pai munaita fuerzata kuwara. 2. Las onzemi, ña fuerzata kuwara. 3. ‘‘Ña hapiringi kunan kai watashkai,’’ niwara ñuka mikya. 4. Chiga ‘‘kai angoi hapirisha, siiinzhita hurzaringui!’’ 5. ‘‘Kanmandawas yalyi, ichilya ukuchami wawayashami tiyan!’’ niwara. 6. ‘‘Kanga runa mangi.’’ 7. ‘‘Sinzhita hapiringi.’’ 8. ‘‘Ama kaparingichu!’’ 9. ‘‘Mana kaparina chan, warmiga 10. Wañushawas.’’

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11. ‘‘Giriririririri.’’ [clenching teeth] 12. ‘‘Kiruta kanirishama awantana an,’’ niwara. 13. Mikya piñawara. 14. Hapirani ‘‘imata urmawanga?’’ 15. Ña, ña wañuna, mana usharanichu. 16. Paiga kayutuma siriun manzharisha tai. 17. Mana yanapawaunzhu. VIII. How I fiñally gave birth 1. Chiga, Ameliata hapisha kai hapiwanaura. 2. Mikya kutilyata hapira, kai chaupi siki tulyu, kunguriwan tak mashtisha alsawara. 3. Chi wawa yaku thuuuxx wawa yaku urmak ara. 4. Urmashkan, wawawas chaima urmaura. N: Maita urmara? L: Wawa alypai urman. N: Mana pakirirachu? 5. Mana, mandashka maun, kauchuta, mashti sumak mandashka, hawai pacha mandashka man; chaipimi wachaun. 6. Ña urmai pasawara. 7. Chiga, ‘‘Ima wawatata wachan?’’ nisha, velata apamui. 8. Aamsai, mana punzhalyaichu wachan; 9. ‘‘Velata apamui, velata japichi,’’ 10. ‘‘Rikungui kari wawa mashka!’’ 11. ‘‘Kari wawatami wachani.’’ 12. Unaipi wawa waa waa waa waa waa waa. IX. Bathing and dressing the baby and me 1. Ñuka wañuita hapirani. 2. Wawa wañunai wañuita hapina man. 3. Chaimi iiiyuuuu tukurani. 4. Chi ñuka kusa hatarisha shamura, 5. Pai yakuta apagrira, kunichira, habonta apamu, pañalgunata, 6. Toazhagunata apamun. 7. Sumak wawata ña rasha, pitinaura, armachinaura. 8. Puñunai, chi washa ñukatawas mailyawara. 9. Alyi bata wawa ña sumak kambiyarirani, 10. Kambiyarishka huasha ña siririgrirani.

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X. My reaction to giving birth 1. Ñukanchi mana doctorwan wachak chanchi, 2. Ni infermera mana wachanchichu, 3. Mana ushanchichu ñukanchi. 4. Chasna wacharani. 5. Manzharirani. 6. Ña ichusha yarirani karita. N: Imawa? 7. Kuti wawayasha, manzharisha, 8. ‘‘Kasna chari pasasha, pasasha, kausasha,’’ nisha, 9. ‘‘Mejor kambas kan kausai; ñukas ñuka kausasha 10. ‘‘Pacha! Kasi wañuni wawa!’’ nirani. N: Mana kutilyata wawayanata munarangichu? L: Mana munasha, chasna niuni N: Yapa nanarachu? L: Yapa nanak ashkara, pundaga. N: Ñukanchi rimidiugunata charinchi chi nanaita wañuchingawa. 11. Kangunaga chiwan; 12. Ñukanchi pobre, ima rimidiu, imas ilyak. 13. Ña amo hursalyawanmi wachak anchi. XI. The afterbirth 1. Chi washaga, wawa wachashka washaga, 2. Rawai randi, wawa bola ruku shina tiyariwara rawaiga; 3. Chaiwan, ayyy! Pagariktami wakarani, rikungima 4. Imata chari sufrirani! 5. Shigrai, ushpata hundachira 6. ‘‘Shika’’ ningichi? 7. ‘‘Shigra’’ ninchi ñukanchi. 8. Chaipi ushpata hundachisha, ñuka mikya rupachiwak shamura: 9. Rupak rupak rupak rupak. 10. Rupak ushpatami lyachapai kipinaun, shigrai hundachinaun. 11. Chi washa kai rupachiwan, rupak rupak rupak rupak rupak; 12. Chi washa pai ñuka kusa pai calcon sezhon rupachiwara. 13. Tak tak tak rupachishkai; ña rawaiga ña urmai kalyariwara. 14. Kimsa kutin pai kakushkauna ña kariwas. 15. Kaita rupakta rashami kariwas chakiwan aitanaun, 16. Itsaaanglya, itsannglya itsaanglya itsannglya itsaaanglya rupakta.

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17. Win rawai urmawara, ña chai puñurani alyita. 18. Ima nanak chari ashkara, rawai bola tiyashka! XII. What my husband said N: Imata nira kamba kusa chi wawata rikusha? 1. Chi wawata rikusha paiga kushiaunmi 2. Kari wawata rikusha. 3. ‘‘Warmi wawata mana munaranichu,’’ niwanmi; 4. ‘‘Kari wawata pundata munarani,’’ niunmi. XIII. All of my children’s names 1. Chi washa ña, ñukaga kari, chi washa Eugenia. 2. Chi washa Robin, chi washa Nancy; 3. Nancy washa Grafico; Grafico washami Marlena; 4. Chimanda Sonia Marisola wañushkata, chi washa Edwin, Wilmer. 5. Lyambumanda ñuka nueveta charini, 6. Ishkai wañushka, siete kausak. 7. Kari warmi wañushka manaun.

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1. Sawing a boat (Tape XI, Transcript File, page 621) 1. Chitaga chaupi lanchaiga 2. Dziriririririririri tasss! Pitig ara 3. Ña siruchuwan shinashi pitig ara. 2. Watching from below (Tape XI, Transcript File, page 625) 1. Chhaauupitami siriun, nishkashi. 2. Runataga chaibishi musian ña hawamaaaaaaaa 3. Ña kasnashi tukun, paina pasanaiga riki! 4. Chigama, chi wikaaaaxlyaiga, ña paassanga shina chaupi barkoishi 5. Ña chyu pitik ara. 3. ‘‘Floating lungs’’ (Tape XI, Transcript File, page 622) 1. Chiga ña chai kuskaiga chyu! 2. Runaga pusku shungulyashi polaaaaaxxlya. 3. Masna runa tuputa wamburig ara? 4. Tragic attempts (Tape XI, Transcript File, page 627) 1. Ña shuj rrrhuuurai pasashun nishas, 2. Manashi ushak chu anaura. 3. Paina tak! Dzir! 4. Kapariulyaita wañurauna chaiii! 5. Heavier than everything (Tape XI, Transcript File, page 628) 1. ‘‘A ver, imanangashi, a ve, ima, ima shinashi rashunchi,’’ nishashi 2. Pai nishashi aisanata kalyariñaura ña manashi aisaibak chara, Janet! 3. Ña cemento pulyu shinashi ashka 4. Tukwimanda [inhales] tukwi tukwi mundomanda!

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6. Lying in wait (Tape IV, Transcript File, page 180) 1. Chiga rikugrikpi paiga pilyurisha chari angu sapii siriuraya, 2. Kunan runata chi alykuta hapisha nisha. 3. Umalyata kasna rasha. 7. What is it? (Tape IV, Transcript File, page 180) 1. Paiga chi alyku wawa kaparin. 2. ‘‘Imai rikushata kaparin?’’ 3. ‘‘Imatashi kaparin?’’ 4. ‘‘Tsawata chan?’’ 5. ‘‘Palo chan?’’ 6. ‘‘Ima?’’ 7. ‘‘Amarun chan?’’ 8. Like a rope (Tape IV, Transcript File, page 180) 1. Chi uyarishkanga ña shurai whaaaaaaaax. 2. Lican shinashi kasna pasachig ashka, riki! 3. Whaaaax pasachishka, chupata kachashka paiga whaaaaxxx! 9. A senseless attack (Tape IV, Transcript File, page 180) 1. Ña wañuchishka chari, mana imaina nilypusha. 2. Chaii sakisha rin. 3. Iminata chasna nilypug mara kunan? 10. ‘‘A very angry anaconda’’ (Tape IV, Transcript File, page 191) 1. Kunanga ‘‘kaibiga yapa piña amarunmi sirin!’’ 2. ‘‘Masnata chari mikun?’’ 3. ‘‘Masna balsata?’’ ninaura. 4. ‘‘Masna runata chari mikun kaipi?’’ ninaura. 5. ‘‘Mana ña kanoa mana wamburig 6. ‘‘Kimsa pundzha washai kwinak man,’’ ninaura. 7. Kasna nikpi ñuka mana kiriranichu. 11. ‘‘A big rotted limb’’ (Tape IV, Transcript File, page 193) 1. Chiga, ‘‘ima yaku ukwiga, ima shina chan?’’ 2. ‘‘Olas olas olas olas olas olas olas olas olas olas olasshi rikurira?’’ nira. 3. Rikukpi kasna chuyaiga yanaaan. 4. ‘‘Kaspi pulyu ruku chari.’’ 5. ‘‘Ismu kaspi ruku siriun,’’ yaranchishi nira.

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N: Imata siriun? L: Amarun siriushka, yaku ukwi, kunan uyangi! 6. Chi siriushka 7. Chiga painaga shayarigrisha tsak. 8. Ñuka kusa sikii aushka, Lino pundai. 9. Ñuka kusata chari mikuk marai; Lino kishpin ma mara pai. 10. Chiga taunata hapishaga 11. Paiga ‘‘kaspimi,’’ nisha, 12. Ña ñuka kusa dzas lyukshisha, paiga, ña lindosmami. 13. Kawinataga ‘‘pakasha’’ nisha, shayaushka chi sachaiga. 14. Linolyami taunata dzas apashaga. 15. Tauna sapita tsupu tsupu mailyasha 16. Lingshi klabaushka ña, churaushka watangawa, 17. ‘‘Chilyanshi ara,’’ nirami, ling klabakga 18. ‘‘Taunata chi waskai ling churasha ling klabakga, pai ilyapata hapisha—’’ 19. ‘‘Chaimai!’’ 20. ‘‘Ukumanda thuuuuuuuuuu maita chari yaku tuksin?’’ ninaurami. 21. Kanoandi, kanoa waska chyu! 22. Kanoa ilyan! N: Kacharishka? L: Kanoaga ilyan! Chyu pitirishka ña ilyanmi nini chai intirumandashi rikushun! N: Pita pitira? L: Amarun nini ña chai ukwi siriushka Paina ‘‘ismu kaspimi,’’ nishkauna. 12. Blowing on earth (Tape IV, Transcript File, page 197) 1. Chiga chasnaiii, turiga shamuuuushka, turi Cezarga. 2. Turi Cezarga, ‘‘chasnami tukun,’’ nikpi, 3. ‘‘Alypata pukusha shitasha shamuni,’’ nirami. 4. ‘‘Musiyarani,’’ nira, paiga ña chasna. 5. ‘‘Olasta rikurani,’’ nira. 6. ‘‘Maita cha mandzharirani ñucas!’’ nira. 7. Paiga ña kikin kucha, pundai maushka, turi Cezarwa. 8. Paiwas shamuushka pawata ilyapangawalyata. 9. Ña chiga pai pukusha shitashka. 10. Olasga win pasara tas sakirira. 11. ‘‘Paiba warmiishi rin,’’ nira, chi amarunda.

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13. ‘‘How beautifully colored!’’ (Tape IV, Transcript File, page 187) 1. Ima munai pintashka chari araya! 2. Ruyak alypata ña quieres huahuata 3. Munai singa punda wawata, awishka shinan kai singa pundamanda 4. Shakaaaaaaaaa chupa pundaimi rira pai ruyakga. 14. ‘‘Why should we kill him?’’ (Tape IV, Transcript File, page 187) 1. Chiga, ñuka kusa shamura: ‘‘Imawata wañuchishun pobreta?’’ 2. ‘‘Yanga puriuta nisha, sakii!’’ 3. Mana wañuchin ña chailyai sakiranchi, mana wañuchiranchi. N: Imawa mana wañuchirangichu? L: Mana wañuchiranchichu, mana wañuchiranchichu. N: Imawa? 4. ‘‘Saki! Paiwas raikasha puriun,’’ niwara. 5. Chai sakirira, riki; riranchi. 15. ‘‘Not even a single bite mark’’ (Tape IV, Transcript File, pages 189–90) 1. Chi, ima shina yachikpi chari, 2. Yanaaan rikurikpi, kasna rikurani 3. Ña masna pundzha chari ñukanchi rikushcamanda, kimsa pundzha mara. 4. Chiga rikurikpi chaipi kwinashkara. 5. Sacha alykuta mikushkara! 6. Pai, sacha amarunga sachalyaita kwinak ashka N: Mana win mikurachu? 7. Mana win, mana nishukta kanishka, mana tiyangachu 8. Mana nishukta kanishka, mana tiyangachu 9. Ling nilypuk man pai. 10. Ismukpi, win kwinan. 11. Chasna man amarunga. 12. Shuk pitilyas pai wiksai mana sakiringachu. 13. Chasna kwinasha, shukta randi maskan mikungawa. 16. Adopting an anaconda (Verb Portraits, Tape F, shamuna ‘to come’) I. Weeding my pineapples 1. Chiga, alymauurani. 2. Chiwilya pukush—ay!

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3. Ñukaga chiwilyata mana shuklyata tarpuk chani. 4. Shuk piti intiruta puru chiwilyata. 5. Chi lomo upinata tukuchishka washa 6. Chiwilyama randi alymaurani. 7. Chiga, chiwilya pau urmashka mara aparishka. *** 8. Chiga, pau siriushkai pukushka chiwilya apamushkara. 9. Chita ishkusha Luzaurata kuni chi uras Luzaura ichilya mara. 10. Chita ishkusha kusha kuti chi chiwilya. 11. Paiba panga ara 12. Chitami alymauurami kiwata. 13. Rikukpi ‘‘dzhararararara’’ mi, nira. 14. Ayyy! II. A beautiful baby anaconda 1. Makita alysasha chingama shayarira ñuka ‘‘palomi,’’ nirani. 2. Alyi, alyi ricukpi moronnn! 3. Mmmunai [inhales] pintashka amarun wawa mara! 4. Singata kai. *** 5. Kai wawamanda alyi aisashka shinalya mara rikungi maralyas ruyakta. 6. Chi washata yana, chi washataga puka alypan pintashka shinalya. 7. Ima munai muru! 8. Phuka chupayuk amarun wawa. 9. Ima munai pintashka cha siriushka. III. We take him home 1. Chitaga mandi pangai [ends on a high pitch] kipisha apamuranchi. 2. Apamusha latami tiyara. *** N: Mana mikurachu? L: Mana mikurachu. *** 3. Intiru lata 4. Churasha apamusha latai churaranchi. 5. Latai churashaga ukuchata apisha intiruta apisha 6. Chaii churaranchi.

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7. Wawa ukuchawata churaranchi. 8. Maaana mikuk chara! 9. Imatas masna, aicha piti, imata churakpis 10. Mana mikuk chara! *** IV. We let him go 1. ‘‘Wañungami,’’ nisha paskaranchi pai richun, nisha. 2. Ña paskaranchi ishkai semanai paskaranchi. 3. Paskasha mandzhai, ña ‘‘ima man?’’ 4. Chi latamanda surkusha chima churaranchi. 5. Ña ton montonasha siriura. 6. Chi kuti kungariranchi 7. Ilyan! 8. Maitashi rin? ninchi. [almost a whisper] 9. Maskanchi maskanchi ilyan. [on an inhalation] 10. Tukwitan tukuchiranchi maskasha ilyan! 11. ‘‘Ña rinmi,’’ nisha sakiranchi. V. We see him in the thatching of our house roof 1. Kimsa semana washai 2. Rikukpiga wasi koronata. 3. Uuuuuuuuuuu [something is heard]. 4. ‘‘Imata shina rikurin?’’ 5. ‘‘Wañuichu apiwan?’’ 6. ‘‘Imatan rikwi hawama!’’ nira Kumari Dilvina. 7. ‘‘Palo chan?’’ 8. ‘‘Ima palotan?’’ 9. ‘‘Wasi palo man,’’ nira, mana kuchira(?). 10. ‘‘Tapiatami rikurin,’’ nira. 11. ‘‘Mai???!!!’’ 12. ‘‘Kuti mana! Ñuka amarun wawa aun,’’ nisha rikurin. 13. ‘‘Nda! Ñuka amarun wawa mashka!’’ N: Wasi hawai sikara? L: Hawata sikashkara ña chi wasi korona bigas an? Chaitan dziuuuuuuuuuuu puriushpa. N: Cierto? 14. ‘‘Nda ñukanchi amarun wawa man,’’ nishkani. 15. Imainata rashun? Puriun. 16. Pai chari maipi ririasha siririn?

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VI. A rat hunter in the roof 1. Ña kasna wawai raikumura. 2. Raikumu manachu kaspiguna churashkaguna ak an? 3. Chita dziuuuuu tuta riushkara. 4. Ukucha yanga 5. tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik 6. ukucha uyarin 7. Linternan tas rikurani. 8. Rikukpiga ukuchaga ayyy! 9. Pai chasna tandachin. 10. Chi raigushi paiba ñuktu paiba wiraga simayuka ak an. N: Pibas wira? L: Kuti chi amarun wirai. Simayukatashi rak anaun sasisha. N: Tandarira ukuchagunata? 11. Ukuchata rikungima 12. Yanga tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik tsik. VII. An anaconda’s charisma 1. Pai sirishkata ima shina ukucha tandarira! N: Cierto? L: Chasna tandachik ashka! 2. Mandzharisha rikushaaa, ña kasilla aranchi 3. Unailya tsi tsi— N: Mana mandzharinaura amarunda ukuchguna? L: Mandzharisha chari, riku gustaungunachu? 4. Pai paishi tandachin 5. Paiba paiba mashtiwan aisan. N: Paiwa pai ima ima mashtiwan? L: Iman, imandashinashi charik an amarunga? 6. Chi raigushi pailyashi animalguna pai raikashaga aisan maimandas. 7. Pailya siriushkaishi mansu shan. 8. Chita pak hapisha pai ling mikug an. N: Cierto? Pai wira simayuka, manachu? Chimanda imata? L: Paiba ñuktushi pai ah au. N: Chimanda imata pasara?

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VIII. A hunter for us 1. Chiga riki chasna, 2. Unailyai tsi tsi tsi tsi tsi tsi tsi tsi hapira. 3. Rikukpi ña kasnami pilyushkara riki! 4. Ukuchata hapishkara [whispered]. 5. Chiga ‘‘hapinmi kunan [transitioning out of whisper] mikungami,’’ ninchi. 6. Rikukpi chutaan! Tutamanda pagarishka 7. Rikukpi ukuchaga, 8. Rikungima wasi punguga! 9. Shuk chaima chutang shuk chaima chutang shuk chaima chutang. 10. Imatacha montonashkara wañuchisha! N: Mana mikurachu? L: Mana mikuuuurachu riki kaima! 11. Chi thhhukwi uyarisha siririkca chun! 12. Yanga kimsa shina chusku shinalyami uyarik an. 13. Kuti kimsa tutaiga kutilyata ashka uyarik shamura. 14. Chiga ‘‘kunan imatashi ranga rausha?’’ ‘‘Mikunga,’’ ninchi. 15. Tutamanda rikugrikpiga chuthaaklya wañuchik! 16. Ukuchata ña win wañuchishami raikura riki! 17. Raikusha wawaguna kasnai puñukpi kai chakii 18. Eeuu montonarisha puñuk ara. 19. Chi wawaguna, ‘‘Widzaaa! Widzaa!’’ kapari anaura. 20. Kari amarun dzhari ara; karishi warmita munak an. 21. Ranaktashi munak an! N: Wawata? L: Ña imatas! N: Cierto? Piba laroi siririra? L: Ñuka wawaguna kai Marlenaguna, kai Luzauraguna laroi puñuk ara! N: Chi amarun?! L: Amarun! Paina larolyai! Paina larolyai! 22. Kari wawaguna kayutu kayutu puñunguna. 23. Chita mana kilyachiunchu! 24. Painatami kilyachik ara ña paina laro. 25. Warmita shukpi kaibi montonarisha chi kasna ruku ña chirilya 26. ‘‘Widzaaa!’’ kapariun 27. Chai uras hapishaga lata ukuma churak aranchi.

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28. Chai uras hapishaga lata ukuma churak aranchi. 29. Chanda pundzha paskasha sakiranchi pai mikuchun nisha. IX. Expanding his range of prey 1. Ñaaa wiñara Janet kasna wiñara. 2. Ña kai intiru tukura riki! N: Um um chi ichilyamanda. L: Ichilyamanda kai tuputa wibarani riki! N: Dinu, win ukuchaguna yanga wañuchira? Mana mikura? L: Mana mikurachu pai mikun. N: Ima shinata? Imata mikura chi amarun? L: Paiga pai chari shuklyata mikun? Pai imata mikun? N: Ah ah! Ashkata wañuchira, shuklyata mikun. L: Shuklyatachu mikun? Ima sachamachu mikun? Pai imaina ag ara? Imatata yachasha? Ña chasna wañuchisha shitara. 3. Chiga shuk gato shamushka pasiangawa. 4. Maimanda charisha shamura gato? 5. Piwak ara? Don Medinawakshi ashkara. 6. Chi gatota kasping [pause] wañuchishkara. 7. Imata cha mandzhariranchi? 8. Pero uyaranchimi kapariktaaa hapira. 9. Imata, imata pasakpi, ima, 10. Makanakuungunachu nisha uyashaaa siririrani. 11. Uyashaa sirik puñurana. 12. Tutamanda rikukpi gatoga 13. Tai pilyushka chutang. 14. Wañu shhinki kalyulya 15. Tshaiiiii wañushkara. 16. Wañuchishkara riki! 17. Kalyu lyukshikta, 18. Kalyulya tsaixxxxx pilyushkara. X. Rabbits and birds for my girls 1. Chimanda tutalyaita 2. Wawaguna ña pata ucuma yanda wata apangawa tukwi rik anaura. 3. Kunihotas kalyulya tsik 4. Chitas wañuchishkara! [whispered]

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5. Ñawilya tsixxx pai pilyukpi ñawi lulun tsik lyukshik ashka. 6. Apakguna, Kumari Marina kai surdu apa wawa tiyan? 7. Apakga, sumak rupachin. N: Kunijo? L: Kunihota mikuk manaun Ñukas mikuk mani, kai wiba kunihota, mana sachata charak mana. N: Kamba wibashka chara? L: Mana! Sacha chari shamurai riki! Wañu—amarun ña hapishka nik! 8. Chai Marina sumak lyuchusha, ima wirashi ashkara! 9. Wislya kangasha mikun lomota yañusha. N: Imata wislya? L: Wirai gustu shutushaya kosarik an. 10. Chita rikungima munaitami mikunaun. 11. Pai yuyaibi hapishashi kun warmigunata! N: Amarun? 12. Munashashi hapisha ku pai yaibi, nda. 13. Kasashashi ku warmita. N: Maikan warmita kura? [we both laugh] L: Ñuka ushushiguna cha kunya kunan. N: Maibi shitara chi wañushka kuniho? Paiba laroi? L: Kunihu, kunihota alypai hapisha, chutang wañuchi sakishkara. N: Kamba ushushita munasha? L: Ñuka ushushigunata munashashi ku. [she laughs heartily] N: Chiga? 14. Chasnami rara riki! 15. Ña chasna 16. Shuk urasga shina. 17. Imashti imata yari, yaku yakuta imata lomota mailyangawa. 18. Rikukpiga pau pishku: 19. ‘‘Pau chaulya chichu chichu.’’ 20. Chutan! Wañushashi siririn chi nambipi. 21. Pai wañuchiun alypai puriutacha pak hapin ña. 22. Chita wawaguna pilakguna cosa ruku hapishkata kaima. N: Ima mundo kasak amarun! L: Ima mundo kasak amarun chari ara riki! 23. Ña chasnaaa! Ima alyi chari wakarani, ñuka amarun wawa.

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XI. A caretaker for my chagra 1. Ña runa shina mak ara, wasita kwirak ara. 2. Chimanda chi laroi chagra wawa wasi pungui? 3. Ñuka chimba purai, kaibi chagrak arani? 4. Chima chimbashkara riki! 5. Chimbasha hasta kunihota wañuchira. 6. Wawaguna tutalyai 7. Kalypak anaura chagrata maskangawa kunihota. 8. Ña maibishi wañuchi asha. 9. Kimsa chusku apamuk anaura! 10. Mana shuklyata! 11. Maibi wañuchisha, chagraichu mikungawa shamun? 12. Imata cha? 13. Imata chari mandzharirani ñuka! 14. Kuti ‘‘chasnachu wañuchik ashka,’’ nishai kuti. 15. Mana rikuk arani wawa ñuka wiñashka pundzhamanda 16. Mana rikuk arani chita chasna rashka. 17. Chiga apamunaun rikungima, 18. Luzaura shuk, 19. Marlena shuk, 20. Ñuka wawa shuk, 21. Kumari Marina shuk, 22. Chusku kunihota apamunaun. 23. Shukga kikin kanashka kuniho rukuta apamunaunya. 24. Yanun sumak lyuchunaun, 25. Sumak kangasha rikungima paina mikukta lomota yanusha papata yanusha. 26. Ña chasna karasha kausak ara. 27. Ña lomo ukucha (squirrel) ukuchaga ilyag mara chagraiga wasi pungu chagrai. 28. Naupaga yhhhhaaapa mikuk mara rikungima! 29. Lomocha ukucha nishka khhasna ruku man 30. Mutyu siki ruku chitaga! 31. Mikuk manaun, kaima rikwi! 32. Mikuk manaun! 33. Riki chita Kumari Marina chaima lomocha wawa shinashi kalyan siriushka nira. 34. Lomocha wawashi.

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35. Ña kailyatashi pilyushka kaimaga kaimaga kalyan siriushkara ña kalyan. 36. Apan sumak lyuchun, rikungima! 37. Sumak kaldota shinalya maitusha paiga. 38. Ña chasna wañuchisha shitak ara! N: Chimanda imata pasara? L: Kunan uyangi, chasna. XII. A desirable pet 1. Chiga yhhhapami tapuwak anaura, ‘‘randichiwai,’’ nisha! 2. Ña tukwimi tapuwanaura. 3. Hawalyaktagunai kapitanguna, tenienteguna tapuwanaura. 4. Shukpiga ña warkuta liiiiiiiii pai riushkaimi shamuk anaura, chiwilyata randinga. 5. Chiga ‘‘señora kanba wiba chan?’’ nikpi 6. ‘‘Ah ah kasna wawamanda ñukanchi wibashka man,’’ nirani. N: Dinu mana pacha paita kararangi! L: Mana karana chan amarunta. N: Kanda lyakisha sakirira? L: Pai ñukanchita lyakisha ñukanchita. Ñukanchi lyulyuku chawawatas kausakta hapisha pai laroi churakpis, Mana mikuk chara, nini, mana mikuk, mana. Wañuchisha churakpis, mana mikuk chara. Ña aichata piti piti rasha, ima aichagunata chawa aichata churakjpis, mana mikuk amarun chara kaima riki! Sino pai chari hapisha mikuk. Ña chimi ishkai, kimsa semanata charishkai chari kachariranchi paita. Yanga chichachu mikugrira, riki! 7. Chiga, chi hawalyaktaguna randinata 8. ‘‘Ña randishunchik,’’ nik anaura. 9. Shukga ‘‘cinco mil randishun,’’ niwanaura. 10. Shukga ‘‘seis mil señora randishun,’’ niwanaura. 11. Tak hapinaura mana kanin. 12. Uma wawata hawai rasha siririn, 13. Kalyuta ling ling ling ling ling ling ling ling ling. 14. Ña kasna pilyuchisha umata sumak lyambushawan charinaun.

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15. ‘‘Señora randichiwai!’’ 16. ‘‘Ña masnatas tapuwai ñuka randishkangi,’’ niwanaura. 17. ‘‘Ña kan wawamanda kasnata munachina wawamanda wibashkaga.’’ 18. Ñukanchi mikusha tiyaukpiga ñukanchi kaima tiyaukpi nina cucha imai 19. Paiwas ñukanchi laroi monton montonarisha siriwara, riki! 20. Ñukanchi zas hatarikpiga paiwas paskarisha ñukanchi maita chari rin? 21. Chitami apanakusha rik ara: rrruna man, amarunga! 22. Paiwas shamuk ara, 23. Ñukanchi chari, ña, upinga imanga tiyarinchi, bankui, 24. Banko ukwi siririk shamuk ara! 25. Chiga chita rikungaka, 26. Señoraguna, kai oficialba señoraguna shamunara! imalya hawalyakta chari, 27. Kaima kipi pilyuchisha, sumak lyambusha, sumak rakpi. 28. Urai uma wawata ña sumak 29. Ima pishkuta shinami kuyak anaura, 30. Ima munai pintashka chari ara! 31. Masque ‘‘kuwai randichiwai,’’ 32. ‘‘Ñuka warmi wiksayuk man,’’ niwak shamura kapitanga. 33. Chiga, wawaguna widzakta wakaunguna, mitsasha 34. Kuti ‘‘pita kasanga?’’ nisha. 35. Mitsaasha [forcefully] wakaunguna riki! N: Kamba wawa? L: Um um. 36. Chi wawaguna wakakta rikusha sakinaura. 37. Mandzharisha 38. Pita karanga? 39. Chiga ña chunlya rikusha ñuka shayarani. 40. ‘‘Ay chichu wawaguna! Randichinchi!’’ nisha. 41. Ñukalyami piñauni. 42. Chiga chasna nik, mana munawanaunchu, perdinga. XIII. Show and tell 1. Chasnaaa chaiyayaaa, chasna purikpi. 2. Ñukanchi ilyashkaimi shuwangauna nisha, 3. Lata ukwi kai intiru hatun lata ukwi

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4. Ling churasha sumak tapasha chai hawailyas. 5. Tukwita montonasha sakisha chagrata rik aranchi. 6. Chiga maskak shamukshi anaura kushkugunami larolyaita Kumari Aida. 7. Ña tukwi chaimashi uyariungunami ma wawaguna tiyauk. 8. Chai! imaita tupangauna? 9. Ñukanchi shamusha paskak aranchi. 10. Paskak aranchi chi. 11. Yakutasmi churak aranchi, upichun nisha 12. Mana upik chara, tsawata shina. [whispered] 13. Mana upik chan! 14. Ima kuushkatas [emphasis] mana mikuk chan, amarun! 15. Mana pacha, runa makimanda mikungachu! 16. Chia chasnami shamun, mana, ñukanchi mana munakpi, sakinaura! 17. Latai sumak hundachik tapasha chagrata riiiranimi! 18. Chiga kunan kai Maxi mana alyi rimak, Kumpari Luis churi? 19. Maxita riksingichu? N: Maikan Luis? L: Blanco! N: Mana riksik chani paita, Maxita. Imata pasara? 20. Chi wawa asha escuela risha, riki 21. ‘‘Ñuka tiya amarunta charin’’; 22. ‘‘Ciertochu amarunta charin?’’ 23. ‘‘Kamba mamaga,’’ nishashi ñuka, ñuka . . maikanda tapushkara, escuelai . . . 24. Maikanta, Grafico chara? Uh, Irminia? 25. Chitaga, maikan wawagunashi anaura ñukaguna escuelai? 26. Chiga, cierto chari nikpi 27. ‘‘Mmmana!’’ [with great emphasis] amoguna rimashkauna mitsasha. 28. Chiga nikpi, ‘‘ah ah, ñuka riki tiya,’’ nishkashi. 29. ‘‘Tiya amarun,’’ nishka paiga mana alyi rimaka, ‘‘ñuka riku huvealla tiyutini.’’(?) 30. ‘‘Osea boashi,’’ nishka. 31. Chiga ‘‘vaya traer antes que no te doi fuete,’’ nishkashi kai profesorga. 32. Kai Pedro kaibi man iridza!

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*** 33. Chiga chi wawaga riki latandishi 34. Escuela wawaguna tapasha risha markanshi. 35. Paina ishpangawa rishkauna 36. Chigamaga wawagunaga 37. Pasa pasa pasa pasa pasashi lansan tuksishka. [mournfully] 38. Rishashi shamuranchi ninaura ishpangawa rikuna chanda ñuka wawaguna. N: Wañuchinaura??? L: Ña winnnn wañuchishkauna pasa chundzhulis Ima wawa chasna rapanaurai Ña ima mundo piñanakushkata cha kanda kwintauni. 39. Chiga, wawaguna shamushaga, Luzauraga, kaiga ñukanchi cha ag man nisha. 40. Ñawimas wakasha lata ukulyaita churasha apamushkauna cha. 41. Kasna apiilyai churashkauna. N: Chi professor wañuchira? L: Wawaguna chasna rashkauna gustashka washa paina mitsangaunami. ‘‘Kaita mitsasha kausana,’’ nikpi chasna escuela wawagunata mandashka. Iridza supai! XIV. We bandage his wounds and give him to his elders 1. Chiga apashka chaka sapi. 2. Chundzulilya lyukshiktaaami siriushkara. 3. Paktamuran, ‘‘Mamii!’’ 4. ‘‘Amarun kasnami rasha wañuchik,’’ nisha wawaguna wakawanaun. 5. ‘‘Mai,’’ nisha rikukpi 6. Pobre charak takakpi kausan nishkara chita chundzhulita 7. Ukuuuumami nitirani. 8. Ukuma nitishaga, mashti tispagarawan pak 9. Hapichirani tai 10. Chi tuksishkagunai apichirani karambiwan hapichirani tispagarawan. 11. Shina rashkak mashti imatari, 12. Paskachishka tukukpis, chaibimi siririra ña wañushka shina. 13. ‘‘A ver, yakwii churagrichi.’’ [hopefully]

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14. ‘‘Paiga manashi waaaañuk chan.’’ 15. ‘‘Paiba rukumi hambinga,’’ nirani wawagunata. 16. Chiga yakwii churagrinaura ñuka wawaguna. 17. Lhhhhiiiiiii [low, breathy, almost whispered] mi. 18. Hundara rikwi undashka shina puhayachira! N: Puhaya—? L: Yakuwawa tak puhara riki! N: Imata puhara? L: Hundamura, hundamura, ña! Chita hundamushkata puhashka nik anchi yaku wawata. 19. Chiga rikukpi chi paina shitashkalya ilyan amarun, ilyara! 20. Ña apashkaunara pai rukuguna. 21. Pai rukuguna apashkaunara riki! 22. Kungariranchi! 23. Wañushaga maishi ismunga? 24. Yakuwawatas urailya maskanchi yaku wawatas hanaklya maskanchi. 25. Mana mai wañushkalyas tiyarachu! 26. Bueno! ‘‘Pai rukuma apashka hambingawa,’’ nirani. 27. Chiga rikwi, ña shuk kilya washa soldadoguna, 28. Ñukanchi tiyashka urku punda ara? 29. Chita pasto kiwa akpiga pikaurauna. 30. Pikau—mashti—imatayari— 31. Ramo sapiishi tupara ñuka masha Tomas. N: Amarunda? 32. Amarunta chi tuksishka hambiriun sipu sipu sipu hambirishkandi. 33. Apapashkara pero mana wibashka chanaun. 34. Wañushka man, wañuchishka. XV. Found and lost again 1. Paina modoguna howlata rasha lomo amarun shashkara, aicha amarun. 2. Howlata kai intiru rukuta rashkaunara. 3. Chai ukwi satishkaunara. 4. Chiga paina ‘‘ukucha, pishku, tukwimi kun’’ chi ilyakpi. 5. Mana mikushka! 6. Mana mikusha paina mana surkushkauna, 7. Wañushka amarun raikaiwan.

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N: Lata ukwi? L: Paiguna mashtishka howla ukwi. 8. Wañuchishkaunara. 9. Chiga, Tito niwara: ‘‘kuwai, mashti, imatayarai Tomas—’’ N: Masna tiempo sakinaura amarun chi mashti ukwi? L: Shuk kilya. N: Ima modoguna! L: Modoguna rikwi! Painaga churak shashkauna, ukuchata, Mikumi nik shashkauna lyukshisha chari ak ara! ‘‘Imanashashi mana saksan?’’ ‘‘Imanashashi mana kwinan?’’ Nik shashkauna Mana mikuk chara runa hapishkata!! Mana mikuk chara! Chiga raikaiwan wañushka ña kai intiru ruku maraya Ña hatun Phuuu! Kaimanda chi tupu suni mara riki! Ña rukuyaurami. N: Dinu cierto, kamba wibashka chara? L: Ñuka wibashka tuksishkaguna siñaldi. 10. Tito kwintawak shamura ‘‘kuwai nikpi, mana munawan,’’ nira. 11. ‘‘Apa nin kunanga,’’ nishashi nin nira. 12. Alyiyashka washa cha shamupan ma mara 13. Shamun ma mara! [very emphatic] 14. Chaii siriuta tupasha apasha. 15. Paiga howlata rasha churashka. 16. Lomo amarun tupu amarun. N: Lomo amarun chara? L: Ah ow lomo amarun shashka 17. ‘‘Chasna nishashi ninaun,’’ niun pai. 18. ‘‘Uyaunishi,’’ nin. 19. Chiga ‘‘Mana! Kaiga ñuka warmi wibashka man.’’ 20. ‘‘Kasnalya kaitata escuelai tuksishkaunara.’’ 21. ‘‘Chita pai espagrarachuwan hapichishkara nishashi nirani,’’ nira. 22. Chiga ‘‘sipun sipun sipun sipun alyiyashkara,’’ nira. 23. Ña siñaldi tiyan 24. Rikunga rirani domingo pundzha paina huasii. 25. Ña ñuka amarunlyata ashkarai 26. Chiga Ña howla ukwi chariushkaunara 27. ‘‘Kuwai ñukawak man,’’ niranimi.

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28. ‘‘Imawa? Tupashka man ña ñuka Tomas man pai amo’’ a . . . eee! 29. ‘‘Kailyachu amoga’’ niun Señora Julia mitsawara. 30. Amo tapugrirani ñuka! 31. Mana munawanaurachu 32. Mana wañuk chan masna pasa pasa 33. Chundzhulita tuksikpis amarun. 34. Chi raiguta mana wañuk chan nini ñuka, rikuk asha. 35. Chasna shinalya hambirishkara! 36. Chiga paiguna modoguna pobre alyi! 37. Rabiaranimi! 38. Yari pita shuk kilyata paiguna chi howla ukwi charishkauna! 39. Rikukpi kaspiingshi wañushka. 40. Tapianmi amarunmi tapian maita amarun wañuk an nishkashi. 41. Imatata mikushata kausanga pobre? 42. Kasna wañushkara!

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1. Jaguar Attack, Tape E, kishpichina ‘to save, to free’ I. Introduction N: Kunan kishpichina. L: Pai lyakilyaaa kapariukpi kishpichigrirani nik anaunya. 1. Lyakilya kapariuuuura ayyyyyyy! 2. ‘‘Chui [pause] chui [pause] chui chui’’ kapariukpi kish— 3. Chiga puma hapiun runa warmita, um hm! 4. Ñuka apa mamata chasna rak ara. 5. Ñuka apa mamata. II. My grandmother Andrea 1. Ñuka apa mama maiiitas kari shina purikshi ara, 2. Kari shina pai sapalya kasasha puñugrisha 3. Barbascota pilanata, alyan, pailyashi hambisha, maibiwas. 4. Kimsa pundzha rishashi hambirisha puñugrik ara. 5. Chi washa shamun. 6. Shuk pala lansatashi charik ara. 7. Iru pala lansa nishka. 8. Chitashi markasha purik ara. 9. Chiwanshi pai mana mandzhak ara. III. How the jaguar first came at her 1. Chiga pai, pai pundayamukpiga, pumaga kasna urku, manachu sikamun an? 2. Kasna urku an no cierto? 3. Kaita shamunchi. 4. Pumaga kaichari hatun ruya shayaun ma, 5. Ñuka apa mamata chi sapii pai chapaushka. 6. Ruya sapiibi.

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7. Chaimanda ñuka apamamata saltashka riki! 8. Saltakga, thhhuuuxxx saltak. 9. Apa mamaga kaima sakirikpi, pumalyashi waikuta bolarisha rira. N: Cierto, ima shinata? L: Osea, riki kai chari auni? ñuka apamama sikamura, riki, kaita. N: Pai makibi. L: Mana! Urkuta! Urku kasna man, no cierto? Chiga ñuka apa mamaga ña urku rukuta sikamurai na kaibi aura. Pumaga ña urku pundayanai riki ruya sapii chapashka. Kaimanda ñuka apa mama shamutaga, saltashka. Ñuka apa mama pai ukuma sakirikpi, pumaga washai saltakga dzir! 10. Waikutashi rira. 11. Apa mamaga ashangata chaima kacharishaga. 12. ‘‘Chui chui chui chui chui.’’ 13. Pai saltan kaita, paibas, pai saltan kaita, paibas. N: Puma? L: Pumawan shina makanakura 14. Pala lansaga cham! [pause] pakirishka, mana tuksiklyaita 15. Kuchilyu pulyutai, mai kuchilyushi aurai? 16. ‘‘Chui chui chui—’’ L: Chui ningaya kapariun, mandzhachisha nisha kapariugai, ‘‘chuii! chui!’’ Maita nikpi chari puma mandzhanga, dinuga mana mandzhangachu, Janet! Kaiga mandzhaunzhu, Kaiga uyaundzhu, chasnami ‘‘miyauuuu! miyauuu!’’ Lyaukarishaaa, barbasta lyamburishaaaa, kaibi ñukanchichu Ima nishashi, mana uyangachu Janet! N: Cierto? Mana mandzhangachu? L: Mana maaandzhakchu an! Mana mandzhak mana mandzhak L: Ñuka kamashka ashkani. IV. A helpful mishearing 1. Chiga ñuka hachi uyaushka! Uyasha, uyakpi 2. Puskuyu shinashi uyarira: ‘‘chui chui’’ nishka: 3. ‘‘Luspumbui luspumbui luspumbui.’’ N: Ima luspumbui?

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L: Puskuyu nishka kantak an, palomita sachai. 4. Chiga uyakpia: ‘‘chui chui.’’ 5. Kungas wiiiiin, ñuka apa mama ña chakirishkara. V. How my grandmother got squeezed behind a vine 1. Chi ruya sapiishi nitigrishkara 2. Chiga ruya sapii nitikpia, ango chari kasna rai riki, 3. Kai ango ashka, kaibi nitigrikpi, apa mama. 4. Kai siririkpi paiga chi angolyatashi kanira! 5. Dinu ashaga umatashi pedazota kanig mara, 6. Ñuka apa mamata, ña wañuchik. N: Puma angota kanira? L: Pumashi angota kanira. N: Ima nasha mana sikara ruyata? L: Imainata sikanga, logarta kukpitaya. 7. Ña shuk rurai shuk rurai shuk rurai shuk rurai saltaun paiga [inhales]: apa mama— 8. Chaima win, ang, sambayashka ña pampalinawas lok rishka! 9. Ñuka apa mama ‘‘chui.’’ [on an inhalation] N: Kamba hachi shamura? L: Mana paiba masha, ñuka hachi shamushka. VI. My uncle arrives on the scene 1. Uyakpiga runa ashka, ‘‘Mana!’’ 2. ‘‘Ñuka mamachari riun,’’ nisha paina tupangawa rishka puringawa shamuka. 3. Chiga uyakpi apa mama ashka: ‘‘chui chui chui chui chui’’ niushka. 4. Apa mamata uyak pachaga hachiga kalypamushka. 5. Kalypamukpi akpi apa mama shimi asha. 6. Kungawas win chakirishkata shilyushkara! N: Shilyushkarachu?! L: Shilyushka! Rawailya kaita shilyushkara, kaitashi shilyushkara. Ña imata kuchilyuwan shinashi shilyushkara apa mamata, Chanda kaita shilyushkara, kaita. 7. Ñuka apa mama kishpishka riki! Ña imamanda 8. Shamushkai! ‘‘Shamunimi shamunimi shamunimi carajo!’’ 9. ‘‘Kamba ukatsamanda ñuka—’’ N: Ukatsamanda?

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L: Ukatsamanda runata kaibi mikusha puriungui hiridza nisha shamushkata. N: Imata ukatsa? L: Ukatsa, Kilya! Kilya nisha chasna niun, shamushka 10. [inhales] Ña apa mama, 11. Apamamaga ña nitiklyaitashi paiba milagroga pai pakirishka kasnalya kaspi wawayukshi ashka, lansata tupashka 12. Ña kasna kachakga, paibi nishka shinashi hapishka. 13. Ñuka apa mamata naa pumaga nitishka. 14. Ña hachiga paktamura. 15. Pai tak hapikga, riki, ukumanda pai tuksishkata apamama, 16. Ñuka apa mama tuksishka. N: Kan—Chi puma kamba apa mamata hapishka?! L: Ña nitishka! Nitishka, alypai! N: Chimanda kamba apa mama. L: Ñuka apa mama kasna paiga kaspitashi maskaura apa mama. Chiga lyangakga pai pakishkatashi hapira chi rihonta. Rikukpi rihonshi ashka. 17. Paiga kikin, ‘‘runatan kanini,’’ nishashi kaniura chi, ima man?—‘‘kaspita’’ 18. Khau uyaringatashi kanira kaspi pulyushi siriushkara chaita. 19. Chimandashi apa mamata mana kaita kanira, kaitashi kanik mara. 20. Chaiga chaupi kaibishi tuksishka apa mama pumata. 21. Tuksishka OOOOooooooooo! 22. Rukuta waikuta pacha bolarisha bolarisha bolarisha. 23. ‘‘Apa mama wañuchira chari,’’ nisha hachi pukunata tyam volteachisha. 24. Pukunawan 25. Manashi apa mamata yarachu pumatashi apanakura. 26. Manashi hatarichi nimata yarachu, 27. ‘‘Wañuchin pasanmi, nirashi. 28. Ña chun!-shi tukura apa mama. 29. Ñuka hachi ‘‘Ña mikunmi,’’ nirashi apa mamata, 30. Rikukpi chaibishi kushpariushkara pumaga! 31. ‘‘Imatata rangaya?’’ Pukunawanga chaupi singa wawa chaxxxxx 32. Pukuna tulyuga ukutaga liiing! 33. Pukuna chunda manya 34. Chasna rishka.

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35. Chailyaita, pai chaibi kushparisha rauta, 36. Kuchilyuta pitikga kaspita pitikga, wañuchishka! 37. Wañuchishkai pumata. 38. Wañuchishaga yandashkauna, yanda pulyuta, 39. Maima maskashkauna, yandasha, montonasha, 40. Chaibishi rupachinaura pumata. N: Pumata 41. Nda, ñuka apa mama rawaiiiilya, uma rawai rawaimuilya. 42. Manashi kausana ma tiusishka chara, 43. Uma kai, mashti kaita, kai kaita tiusishkara 44. Kaitashi tiusishkara, apa mama, ñuka apa mama. N: Chimanda kamba apa mamata pita kishpichira? L: Ñuka hachi! Wañushka hachi Wandi, Wandi Dios. Ah ah, paishi kishpichira. 45. Chiga apasha rishkaya, ñuka hachiga, pilanata bas aparisha. 46. Ña pukunaga pedasoshi tukushka, matiri ilyan. 47. Ña rishkauna. VII. Lessons learned about what not to do 1. Chasna man, pumaga chapak an. 2. Chi raigumi sapalya purishaga, hatun anguta mundo mandzhag mani, Janet, ñuka! 3. Urku pundai angumuilya an? 4. Mana chitaga rishachu! 5. Washata, angu ilyashkata muyuchisha ñambima lyukshigrik an! 6. Puma chapawangami, nisha, angui! 7. Dinuga hawai, waira, manachu urmashkai 8. Shukga hawata kaspi an? 9. Chibiwas hawaii chapak man! 10. Hawamanda ña ima shina tus nitik shamun 11. Ña wañuchishka! 12. Chasna rashashi mikuk an pumaga! 2. Verb Portraits, Tape G, chignina ‘to insult, to loathe’ Introduction N: Chignina. Imagunata chigningi? Ima shinata chigningi? Pita chigningi? L: [laughs] Ñukanchi piñanakunchi ñuka kusa makanakusha, chigninakunchi, 1. Pai machakpi, ñuka odiani, osea, chignini paita, ñukata piñakpi.

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2. Ñukata mana piñakpiga, mana paita chigninichu. 3. Chimanda chima, ñukanchita rimanaun, kaminaun, ushashkata rimanaun. 4. Alypata mitsasha, chigni tukunchi, alypamanda. I. Synopsis 1. Kumpari Rojawan chasna kausak aranchi. 2. Ñuka kusata kasi pikak shamuk ara, kuchilyuwan, alypata mitsasha. N: Roja? L: Nda! N: Kamba kusa paita mitsara? 3. Ñaupa chi alypata yaikurani, ñuka, ñukanchi, 4. Chiga paiga potrero potrero potrero potrero 5. Chi washaga, amo shina, ñukanchita pai tanganata kalyarira. 6. Ñaupa ñukami chai yaikurani, chagrarani kimsa chagra intiruta maita wasirani. 7. Chagrarani kimsa chagra intiruta maita wasirani. 8. Chai washa pai yaikura, ñukanchi yaikushka washai. II. First dialogue with IERAC 1. Ñuka shamurani IERACta, ishkai kutin yaikuchishka mani IERACta, 2. Ñuka kuti ña paigunawan yapa mana alyi kausasha. 3. Chiga ‘‘ña kunanlya kasna rangichu?’’ 4. ‘‘Kandaga kamba alypamami kachashun Ambatota,’’ ninaura; pai man alypama, porque ñuka— N: Pi? Roja chasna, Roja alypa amo? L: Mana, ñuka! 5. Pita ñaupa yaikura nira oficianai kayachira IERAC! 6. Ña win tandariranchi ñukanchi lyaktai paktara, paktasha, nirami, 7. ‘‘Señora Eloise, Señora Eloise de Nuñez,’’ nihuara. 8. Chiga ñuka nirani, ‘‘presente.’’ 9. Chi nira, ‘‘Señor Raymundo Roja.’’ 10. ‘‘Kanguna ishkaiguna problemamanda shamuni,’’ nira. 11. Chiga, nikpi, nira, ‘‘pitan chi alypa amo?’’ 12. ‘‘Pita ñaupa yaikura?’’ nira.

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III. How Roja presents himself to the IERAC officials 1. ‘‘Ñuka mani,’’ nira Roja; ‘‘kulykiyuk mani,’’ nira, ‘‘riko mani,’’ nira Roja. N: Chasna nira? L: Chasna nira Roja, um hm. 2. ‘‘Ñuka potrerota rasha shitani,’’ nira. 3. ‘‘Wagrata charini’’ nira, ‘‘tindata charini,’’ nira ‘‘salonta charini.’’ 4. ‘‘Motor de aguata charini’’ nira. 5. ‘‘Paiguna chagranaun purun yachanaun, chagranaun.’’ 6. ‘‘Purun yachanaun.’’ 7. ‘‘Chiga imata valinga?’’ nira. IV. How Tito responds to Roja 1. Chun uyasha shayara, pai imata rimangata. 2. ‘‘Bueno,’’ nira ‘‘pero mana chita tapunchi,’’ nira. 3. ‘‘Pita ña ñaupa chi alypai yaikura?’’ 4. Chi ñuka kusa shayaun, ‘‘ñuka,’’ nira. 5. ‘‘Ñuka ñaupa yaikurani,’’ nirami. 6. ‘‘Piwas chi laroi mana chagrata charinaurachu,’’ nira. 7. Pototorota mandzhasha, piwas mana chagrak chanaura. 8. ‘‘Chasnai ñuka warmi sikindzhigrishkara,’’ nira, taxxx. N: Sikin— Sikin? L: Alypata sikindzhigrirani, kanda sarunda kwintaurani. 9. ‘‘Sikindzhigrishkara,’’ nira ‘‘chita win chagraranchi,’’ nira. 10. ‘‘Chi pundamanda Clara chagrak ara,’’ nira. 11. ‘‘Chi pundamanda Celia chagrak ara,’’ nira. 12. Mmmaita chagrata cha chagraranchi? 13. Kimsandimanda. 14. Chiga ‘‘ñuka mani,’’ nira, ‘‘ñuka piwas ama y kil achiwanauchun,’’ nisha. 15. ‘‘Ñuka chima yaikurani,’’ nira. 16. ‘‘Ñukalya tarabaushkai pambai shamura,’’ nira. V. How Roja and his wife first deceived Luisa 1. Chasna kichuwara Kumpari Roja Pambai ñuka charik arani ñaupa. 2. Kailyatachu arrozta tarabak arani ñuka! N: Imata raura? L: Kunan uyangi.

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3. Chiwan Kumari Rosa tapura 4. ‘‘Kamba purunwata chagrachiwai kumari,’’ nisha, 5. Modo mani! 6. ‘‘Ari, ailyupuraga, ari, chagrai kumari,’’ nirani. 7. Chagrara, washaga gamalotita ling ling ling pundamanda. N: Ling ling ling ima? L: Nda, tarpui pasan gamalotita, gamaloti, wagra mikuna Chi washa— N: Wagra mikunata tarpura? L: Nda. 8. Chi washa shukta, chagrara ‘‘Kumari kaiwawata?’’ 9. ‘‘Mana!’’ nirani. ‘‘Ama chagrangichu kunanga,’’ nirani. 10. ‘‘Ñuka mana gustanichu gamalotita kasna tarpushkata,’’ nirani. 11. ‘‘Ñukaga, mana kanguna shina wagra raiguchu chagrauni,’’ 12. ‘‘Ñukaga sarata tarpuni, arrozta tarpuni, palanda, lomota tarpuni.’’ 13. ‘‘Ñuka chagrata rikwi,’’ nirani, ‘‘kaima 14. Chasna chari chagrana nisha kantaga. 15. ‘‘Kaita chagrai,’’ nirani ñuka. 16. ‘‘Kaita shamurani; chasnami ungurani. 17. Sukta kilya chari kaima kausan; rikugrikpiga win, 18. Ñuka punda chagrashkara, 19. Ña ima hatun hiridza supai man kai Kumpari Roja! 20. Palanda tarpushka tukura, sara tukwi, sara arroz, kilyu shina ña kasna wiñaura. 21. ‘‘Palyangichi,’’ nisha, sakirani. 22. Wagrata kacharishkaga win! N: Mikushka? 23. Wagra, wagraga mikushkara arrozta, sarata, lomota. 24. Palandalya sakirishkara. 25. Chai chushak tukushkaiga win! Gamalotita tarpushkara rikwi! N: Wagra mikuna. L: Wagra mikunata tarpushkara ñukawakpi. VI. Luisa confronts Roja 1. Ñuka piñanakugrirani kaiwanta rikwi! 2. ‘‘Bueno pagawai, ñukata valiwanmi,’’ nirani. 3. ‘‘Mana kan shina rico,’’ ‘‘mana kan shina kulykiyuk chani,

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4. ‘‘Ñukaga ñuka trabajos, ñuka makilyami, ñuka sodorlya man, 5. ‘‘Mana pi runabas mana tarabanchichu,’’ nirani ñuka ‘‘kan shina.’’ 6. ‘‘Ñuka wawaguna mikunga, ñuka tarabani,’’ nisha rimarani paita. 7. ‘‘A kasna kamba alypa chan chi? 8. ‘‘Ñukata estadoguna kushka mani.’’ 9. ‘‘Estadoguna regalashka mani, ñukata kai alypata. 10. ‘‘ ‘Kan potrerota rasha tiyai,’ nisha kushka mani,’’ niwara. 11. Nisha, kuchilyuwan kasi pikawara, riki, chagrai. VII. Second dialogue with IERAC officials 1. Chaigunata kaima kuk shamurani partita, IERACgunai. 2. Chiga, shiña rasha naupa oficiowan kaimanda aparani, ña 3. Oficiota kachanaura. 4. Chi washa, yaikurani. 5. Yaikuchirani IERAC gunata. 6. Yaikuchishkaga tapura, chasna: 7. ‘‘Pitan ñaupa?’’ nirami, chi, ah um, Tito kwintara. 8. ‘‘Ñuka laroi kasna mirawara Pambama; chi raigu paita mana gustani.’’ 9. ‘‘Ñuka laromandaga anchurichu, mana gustanchu shuktas chasnalya kichusha ña ñukata paiga apanakuriwan,’’ nira. 10. Ñukas chailyaita rimarani. VIII. How Don Serjio, Don Medina, and Don Luzuriaga spoke on our behalf 1. Don Serjio, Don Medina, Don Luzuriaga 2. ‘‘Cierto man pai man arroz chagra.’’ 3. ‘‘Pai man tarabak warmiga’’ niwanaura, yanapawanaura. 4. ‘‘Chasnata kai kunanga wagralyata shayachin.’’ 5. ‘‘Cierto man winta paita kichushka man,’’ ninaura. 6. ‘‘Kunan kaima apanakun,’’ ninaura. 7. Tai shayarira. 8. Imata ninata ushanga? N: Roja? L: Roja, nda.

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IX. Roja tries to manipulate the IERAC officials 1. ‘‘Chi problemamanda shamunchi,’’ nira. 2. ‘‘Kunanga pitan chibi amo?’’ nira 3. Chiga nikpiga, mashti, ñuka kusa ‘‘ñuka yaikurani,’’ nira. 4. ‘‘Mana piwas ñambilyas rashkaichu, mana piwas chagrashka, ñuka chagrani.’’ 5. ‘‘Chagrangawa ña muyuchishkata ñukanchi kasna ting.’’ 6. Potrerota win rai pasashkara,’’ nira. 7. ‘‘Kunan gamaloti kasna wiñau rikugrichi,’’ nira. 8. ‘‘Bueno.’’ 9. ‘‘Ñukakta, punda rishun ñukakta ñukawakta haku,’’ nira, 10. ‘‘Ñukakta rikugrishun,’’ nira. 11. ‘‘Ñuka ashkata tarabashkata,’’ chari nira. 12. ‘‘Kan munashaga, masnatas millonarioga tarpwi, imatas rurai, pero 13. Mana kan raigu shamushka chani.’’ 14. ‘‘Señora de Nunez ñukanchita apagrishka man,’’ nira. N: Apagrishka? L: Nda, ñukan paigunata yaikuchirani. Ñuka ishkai kutin IERACta yaikuchishka mani Kunan riki, paina masna yaikunaun, masna shamunaun, [exasperated] Yaikuchinata ushanaundzhu riki! N: Pi? Roja? L: Nda, Kumpari Roja, Kumpari Galvez rimak shamuuuunguna apashun nisha Kunan maita ushangaunachu? N: Paiguna documentacionta charinaun. L: Nda, paiguna paiguna alypa raigu painas. Chiga, chasnaimi shamun. N: Pi? L: Chi Kumpari Roja nira ‘‘ñukawakta haku,’’ nira. 15. ‘‘Mana! Mana kamba raigu shamushka chanchi.’’ 16. ‘‘Kai Señora de Nuñez ñukanchita apagrishka man.’’ 17. ‘‘Kai problemamanda shamushka manchi,’’ nira. 18. ‘‘Paiba alypata rikushka washami, kambakma muyurimusha,’’ nira. 19. Tai shayarira, imatata ninata ushanga? N: Chimanda imata nira chi oficial.

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L: Chiga ñukanchi apasha riranchi. 20. ‘‘Ña haku kunanga maibi akpi rikuchigri,’’ niwanaura. 21. Riranchi ñuka, ñuka kusa, ña riranchi. N: Chimanda imata pasara, ima shinata alyichinaura? L: Kunan uyangi, alyichinga raunchi. X. IERAC officials tour Luisa’s chagra 1. Kunan riranchi, paktachigriran, ñaaa paktashkamanda 2. Rikuchigrirani kai ñuka purun ñuka purun, ñuka purun kaiwas kaiwas. 3. Chundayukmuilya, chundayukmuilya, shukga cacao tarpushkayukguna, 4. Rikuchi rirani lomo, palanda, guinea tarpushka. 5. Washai rikuchigrirani, ishkai hectariata waktashkata, arroz raigu waktashka. 6. Lomoga taxxx! Kunan upina tukuk mara! 7. Celiabas tax, Clarabas tax! 8. Maita virdi shinalyami sirira. 9. Chasnai yaikuchigriranchi. 10. ‘‘Kai man,’’ nirani. 11. ‘‘Kaita piwas mana yaikushkai, ñuka yaikusha, 12. Paina yapa alypata mitsakpi, ñukas kaima shamurani,’’ nisha rimarani. 13. ‘‘Mana maipi chagranata, mana ushanchichu.’’ 14. ‘‘Estado alypa wawai chagrasha kausak arani,’’ nirani. 15. ‘‘Paina alypata mitsakpi.’’ 16. ‘‘Ñukata chima kichuwakpi,’’ nisha rimarani chasna. 17. ‘‘Mana, kunanga haku, kaima man, paiba.’’ 18. Ñukanchi waktashkai rikuchigriranchi. 19. Pundamanda pigikta sapii. 20. ‘‘Ima animaltata chagranga raungi señora.’’ 21. ‘‘Nda,’’ nirani, ‘‘arrozta tarpunga rauni, ñukaga wawayuk mani,’’ nirani. 22. ‘‘Ñuka wawaguna raigu mana paktarinchu, arrozta ranisha karangawa,’’ nirani. 23. Ñuka makiwan chagrasha ñuka wawagunata karak mani,’’ nirani. 24. ‘‘Ni imatas mana ministinichu’’ niranimi. N: Chimanda imata pasara?

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25. Kumpari Roja ña pai waktashkai chapawashkara. 26. Ña ñukan- ñuka arroz raigu waktashka kaibi, suni aukpiga, 27. Paiga kaibi ña chindamanda waktashka maun shuk potrerota. 28. Shukga ña chaima waktai pasashka kasna potrero wiñaun. 29. Chiga paktanaura, ña chiwas tarpuushka mara. XI. IERAC officials scold Roja 1. ‘‘Bueno. Kan mashkangi ambisioso,’’ nira. N: Ambisioso? L: Ah ah, alypamanda, alypaniru ashkangui, nira. N: Chasna ninaura— L: Chasna ninaura IERACga N: Rojata? 2. ‘‘Kunanga pugri pai chagraushkai, ama kanga satirichu!’’ 3. ‘‘Suspendido, kaibi sakirichun; ama mas potrerota rangichu!’’ 4. ‘‘Por que pai man amo!’’ 5. Shukbi rikugrinaura, kaita pai sikindzhishkata. 6. ‘‘Kan yaikusha chagrashkangi kamba munaita tapurangichu paita?’’ 7. ‘‘Pai man amoga kunanga!’’ N: Imata nira Roja? L: Imatata ninga? XII. How Roja threatened us 1. Ña chun shayarira; ña chai ishkandita suspendinaura. N: Ima wata chara? L: Pai masna watai? Unai man poooh! 2. Chiga, chasna rasha shamuranchi, shamushka washa, 3. Ñuka kusata ‘‘alypata mitsasha tiyangichi,’’ nishaga, machashaga, 4. Kasi pikak shamura wasii. N: Roja?! L: Nda! Kumpari Roja! N: Kuchilyuwan? L: Kuchilyuwan! N: Kamba kusata wañuchingawa?! 5. Nda, wañuchisha nisha, alambrashka mara. 6. Chiga ñuka Robin ñuka churiwas aurami. 7. Chiga ñuka velawanta rirani

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8. Chiga ‘‘yasha mama, chasna kuchilyuwan ña pikai tukungi,’’ niwara. 9. Ñuka mana kuchilyuwanlyata rirani. 10. Kai intiru tobota charini, kasna ñañuta. 11. Ñukaga makanakungata rirani wañuchina munakta. N: Tobo wawa? XIII. How Luisa responds to Roja 1. Nda! Chiga nirani, ‘‘Imata angi, kaibi, kanga,’’ nirani, 2. ‘‘Kaibi ñukata risha?’’ rimarani. 3. ‘‘Munasha shamui, makimuilya shamui makanakuk shamui, 4. ‘‘Ñuka kusawan’’ nirani, ‘‘ama kuchilyuwanga.’’ 5. ‘‘Chi man karipura makanakuk,’’ nirani. 6. ‘‘Kanga imatangi, kuchilyuwan makanakuk?’’ 7. ‘‘Kamba alypa chan kaiga?’’ nirani. 8. ‘‘Ñuka yayawa yayawa apa yaya alypa man,’’ nirani. 9. ‘‘Chanda ñuka mamawa yayawa alypa man,’’ nirani. 10. ‘‘Ñuka mani alypa amoga, wañuk Loberto niushka,’’ nirani. 11. ‘‘Ñuka yayaguna lyaktashka.’’ 12. ‘‘Ñuka yayaguna tiyashka lyakta man chi.’’ N: Imata nira Roja? L: Uyangima pai rimakta. XIV. More insults from Roja 1. ‘‘Wañuchishkangichimi; Longo; Jivaro’’; 2. Ñukatas: ‘‘Longa! India! Jivara!,’’ 3. ‘‘Wañuchishkangichimi!’’ 4. ‘‘Mana piwas wañuchikpi, niwanganachu ñuka.’’ 5. ‘‘Roja mani, ñuka, Ambatomanda mani!’’ 6. ‘‘Ri! Ambatomanda ashpaga ri!’’ XV. Luisa has the last word 1. ‘‘Ama kaibi tiyaichu!’’ nirani ñuka. 2. ‘‘Ña ri ri ri kamba lyaktata,’’ nirani. 3. ‘‘Chaii asha kunandi ri,’’ nirani, ‘‘imata nishata kaibi kanga kilyachik tiyangi?’’ nirani. 4. ‘‘Mana kanta suspendinaura?’’ nirani. 5. ‘‘Imata nishata, kunanga kanga mashtingi,’’ nisha. 6. Kuti oficiota rasha, Luzuriaga kachara.

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7. Chiga ñuka, kumpari Roja lyukshinauchun, nisha. 8. IERACga ña oficinama kaima kayachi tukuranchi. 9. Chiga, shamurani, ñuka, 10. Paiwas shamura, paiga churindi. 11. Ñukanchi Leticialyan lyukshiranchi, lyukshi, 12. Ñuka kusaga maima chari ara? Mana yarinichu. 13. Chi ñukanchi ishkailya lyukshiranchi, shamuranchi. 14. Chiga ‘‘chasnami ñuka kusata kasnami kasi pikan’’ nirani 15. ‘‘Alypata mitsashkaunguna, mitsasha tiyangichi’’ nisha, ñukama. . . N: Chi? 16. Chiga riki, chasna nisha, chasna nisha rimashka, shamuranchi kai oficinai. 17. Chiga shamukpi, paiga puma kara bolsanmi shamushkara. N: Roja? Roja? 18. Uh ah Kumpari Roja, ñukanchi kasna Litician, kanwan shina tiyariranchi. 19. Shamura paiga churindi chi wawa Jaime, shuk kipa churiwan shamura. 20. Kumari Rosa shamushka mara, pero mana yaikumurachu. 21. Mana pai pertinenciandzhu, Montalvoi, Kumari Rosa. 22. Si no Tigri Yaku punguta pertinencianaun, paigunaga. 23. Chaima lyukshik manaun, chaima wiñan. 24. Ñukanchikga kikin Montalvoi ñukanchi yayayuk, apayayayuk tukuyuk manchi! 25. Mana derechota charinaundzhu, paiguna, mai lyukshishkata. 26. Chiga chasnai shamushan, kayachi ña kushkai shamura. 27. [inhales] Ayyyy! Uyangima pai rimakta kai hapirisha shayarira Ayyyyy: 28. ‘‘Longaguna, Indiaguna, Jivaraguna,’’ nirami. 29. Ñuka kusatas 30. ‘‘Indio! Longo!’’ nirami. 31. ‘‘Pobre,’’ nirami. 32. ‘‘Imatas mana charin!’’ [with vehemence] nirami. 33. ‘‘Nukaga Roja mani, rico mani,’’ nirami. 34. ‘‘Chi raigu wagrata charini, wagrata mirachinga rauni,’’ nirami, ‘‘maita!’’ 35. ‘‘Ñukami paita tanganga rauni,’’ niwara; ‘‘Ñukami kichusha!’’ Ñukami kichusha!’’

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36. Kasna niwara, riki, iridza! 37. Chun! Licenciadoga kan shina tiyaukga— 38. Licenciadoga chun, kilykasha tiyara 39. Mana imatas nishachu tiyara; pai—pai shungu yashkata rimara. 40. ‘‘Ña ichilya man! Mana mas kamba shimita uyanata munanichu,’’ nira. 41. Zas shayarira, shayarisha, 42. ‘‘Bueno, kan mashkangi rico!’’ 43. ‘‘Kan mashkangui millionario!’’ 44. ‘‘Motoryuk mashkangi!’’ 45. ‘‘Motorta hapik, kanoata hapik ri!’’ 46 ‘‘Uraima!’’ 47. ‘‘Maskagri mashti terreno librita!’’ 48. ‘‘Chaima kan munashaga, intiru sachatawas rikukga.’’ 49. ‘‘Potrerota rasha, rikuga riku wagrata mirachisha tiyagri!’’ 50. ‘‘Peru pai pobrita, ama kilyachichu!’’ 51. ‘‘Pai chagranata, pai tarabanata,’’ 52. ‘‘Pai mashka arrozta tukwita tarpuk.’’ 53. ‘‘Kanga imatata ningi potrerolyata?’’ 54. ‘‘Pero pai tarabana, kan ama kilyachichu, ri!’’ 55. ‘‘Chaima maskagri alypata!’’ 56. ‘‘Ni imas ama kilyachingichu,’’ nira. N: Imata nira? 57. ‘‘Ña ama kilyachingichu,’’ nira. 58. Chun! Tai! shayarira 59. Ñuka nirani: ‘‘kasnashami, kasna rimashami, kasi pikagrira,’’ nirani. 60. ‘‘Chasna rana mana valindzhu,’’ nirani. 61. ‘‘Ñuka yayawa yaya, 62. ‘‘Ñuka mamawa yaya, 63. ‘‘Ñuka yaya, ñuka mama alypa amo manaun.’’ 64. ‘‘Paina pilychi chimi shayarin,’’ nirani. 65. ‘‘Paiguna manaun chaipi lyaktayukguna chaibi.’’ 66. ‘‘Ñuka mani chaibi lyukshik,’’ nirani, ‘‘ñuka mamaguna, apayayaguna alypai.’’

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Introduction 1. The term Runa denotes ‘‘person’’ in Quechua and is commonly used as an ethnonym by Quechua-speaking people to refer to their cultural group. Throughout this work I switch back and forth between using the term Quichua, which specifies the Ecuadorian dialects, and Quechua, which emphasizes the transnational linguistic continuities. The variety of Quechua represented in this work is Quechua IIB, following the classifications of Torero (1974) and Stark (1985). Details of the relationships between the main branches of the Quechua language family can be found in Torero 1974, Parker 1969 and 1971, and Mannheim 1991. Stark 1985 concerns the classification of Ecuadorian dialects. 2. Ideophones are considered to be an endangered form of expression in many African linguistic and literary traditions as well. The African linguist Lupenga Mphande (1992:119) uses the term ‘‘textual genocide’’ to describe the attitude that excludes ideophones from serious consideration and use by linguists and writers. 3. I am indebted to Rebecca Gualinga (personal communication, Puyo, Ecuador, 1988) for this insight. 4. I am indebted to Descola (1994) for this insight. 5. I am not the first person to consider ideophones as a type of quoted speech. Oakdale (2005:93) includes onomatopoeic words in a ritual narrative from a Kayabi shaman within the speech modality of quoted discourse. 6. The concept of erasure is borrowed from Irvine and Gal 2000. 7. Compare Descola’s (2001:98) statement on Achuar animism: ‘‘Most cultivated plants as well as game animals are considered as ‘persons’ (aents), endowed with reflexivity, intentionality, and a social life and moral code of their own; they possess a ‘soul’ (waken) which makes them receptive to the messages addressed to them by humans through the medium of anent (magical songs).’’ 8. Even without the influence of Christian morality, it is not always easy for other Amazonian women to end a marriage. Brown (1985:137) reports that among Aguaruna it is men who have freedom to dissolve unions. Women who attempt to do so face significant obstacles and may risk violent recriminations. 9. In Quichua: Kan ñukata makasha, kai pambai wañuchikpiwas, mana mikushachu; ñuka kikin amo mani! 10. The significance of dialogue and dialogicality for Quechua culture has been treated by Mannheim and Van Vleet (1998). Beier, Michael, and Sherzer (2003)

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consider dialogue to be a prominent defining feature of Native South American discourse. 11. Reeve (1988:26–27) mentions human-to-nonhuman transformability as an element of mythic thought among Curaray Runa as well. 12. Bauman’s negative characterizations were necessary because of the centuries of philosophical and literary misconceptions about oral modes of communication and aesthetic forms more generally. His argument for the intrinsic aesthetic merit of verbal art states, among other things, that it is not a deviation from literal truth, or a deception, or dependent upon prior written forms. 13. Other than myth and biographical narratives, more traditional performative genres that have been the focus of analysis by linguistic anthropologists of Native South America include: ritual wailing and lament (Briggs 1993; Graham 1986); political oratory (Graham 1986, 1995; Urban 1986) collective singing (Graham 1986, 1995; Seeger 1986); shamanic curing/therapeutic songs (Oakdale 2005; Seeger 1986; Sherzer 1983, 2004); proverbial sayings (McDowell 1989) and love magic songs (Harrison 1989; Seitz 1981; Taylor and Chau 1983). 14. I borrow this term from Levinson (2002) who uses it to characterize the work done by contextualization cues in a Gumperzian approach to discourse analysis. 15. For a discussion of the need to reconfigure anthropological thought around human and nonhuman interactions, see Kohn’s recent conceptualization (2007) of an ‘‘anthropology of life,’ in which he outlines a preliminary set of considerations relevant to our thinking about semiotic processes.

1. On Riveting Objectivity 1. This is not his real name. 2. His exact words were: warmi tono man. ‘‘It’s a woman’s tone.’’ 3. Mannheim (1986:54-5) has noted the ‘‘very limited lexicalized metalanguage for talking about language’’ in Southern Peruvian Quechua as well. 4. The existence of scattered reports of ideophony in Amazonian South American languages suggests that they may actually be more widespread (see Gabas Jr. 2007, Gregor 1977, Popjes and Popjes 1986, Koehn and Koehn 1986, van der Meer 1983). 5. Their performativity, moreover, is not an ‘all or nothing’ phenomenon. Ideophones undergoing fully blown performances are keyed by intonational and gestural indices as well as preceding or following pauses. These are all graded phenomena and may receive varying emphases. 6. See Comrie 1989 for detailed discussions of animacy hierarchies. 7. Quechua’s pronominal system is congenial with a presumption of nonhuman consciousness as well, since it features one form pai for masculine, feminine and nonhuman entities. 8. It is interesting to note for comparative purposes the findings of Marttila (2008: 135) who discovered that in Finnish bird vocabulary, onomatopoeia is a common element in the genus name of the species. 9. Ideophony does not bear the dubious honor of being the only endangered way of speaking. Jane Hill’s (1987) work on honorific usage among Nahuatl speakers in Mexico reveals that this complex system may be expanded or contracted, depending

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upon whether people speak using a ‘power code’ version of Nahuatl or a solidarity code version. 10. Wolaitta is an Omotic language spoken in Southern Ethiopia. 11. This is from a group communication related within a discussion on sound symbolism. 12. The concept of animistic perspectivism is borrowed from the work of Viveiros de Castro (1998). See Kohn (2002) and Uzendoski, Hertica and Calapucha Tapuy (2005) for discussions of animistic perspectivism among Napo Runa. 13. The only other example of a genre requiring ideophony is the comic book featuring action figures.

2. On Ecological Dialogism 1. Basso (1985:91) states that among the Kalapalo, musical qualities inherent to certain birds’ calls are believed to create the unfolding of unfortunate events at some future time. 2. Compare Brown (1985),Tedlock (1987) andMcDowell (1989). 3. The following section constitutes a brief summary of a more detailed argument found in Nuckolls 2008. 4. The overlap between evidentiality and deixis was also noted some time ago by Hanks (1984), who argued that the deictic system in Yucatec Maya is built around an evidential core. See also Schlichter (1986), who argues for the recent development of deictic evidentials in Wintu. 5. A preliminary version of this argument was laid out in Nuckolls 1993, where I first described the evidential system as perspectival. The argument is presented in detail in Nuckolls 2008, where I borrow the term ‘‘speaking self’’ from Mushin (2001). 6. The distinction between the speech event (Es) and the narrative event (En) is indebted to Jakobson ([1957] 1984), who first used this difference to define major grammatical categories of the Russian verb. 7. The enclitic -chu is also part of a periphrastic negative construction: mana. . . -chu 8. Nuckolls 1993 supplies several examples that would not occur if -mi’s use were simply tied to a speaker’s immediate perceptual field or direct experience. 9. I stand indebted for this insight to stimulating discussions with Tod Swanson during an Andes and Amazon Field School session. 10. Mushin (2001:13) uses the terms ‘‘conceptualiser’’ and ‘‘experiencer’’ for my ‘‘speaking self (En).’’ 11. I use the term ‘‘represented discourse,’’ rather than ‘‘quoted speech,’’ because it avoids the implication that what is said is an actual mapping from what has been heard. Another term, ‘‘quotative,’’ is used by Michael (2008). 12. See Faller (2004:3), who defines evidentials as ‘‘operators that code a relation between the speaker and the proposition expressed.’’ In this particular example, one might analyze the meaning of -mi here as: speaker asserts that something that is bad for addressee’s welfare is true. 13. Michael (2008:158) describes a variety of stances that Nanti quotative utterances may adopt, stating that moral, evaluative stances are individuated and

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emphasized through quotatives. In such instances otherness is most accurately viewed as a stance adopted by a speaking self, rather than as a representation of someone else’s discourse. 14. Traditional narratives include various kinds of stories—many having an obvious Amazonian origin, others more likely derived from European folktales, and still others that may be hybrid forms blending indigenous mythic stories with biblical themes. See Nuckolls 2003 for an analysis of one such hybrid story. In addition to -shi, speakers may employ a special past-tense form, -shka, which has evidential-like meaning that blends as well with aspect and tense (see Nuckolls 1996:51). 15. Compare Bakhtin’s characterization of authoritative discourse as discourse that is distant from itself: ‘‘The degree to which a word may be conjoined with authority—whether the authority is recognized by us or not—is what determines its specific demarcation and individuation in discourse; it requires a distance vis-à-vis itself (this distance may be valorized as positive or as negative, just as our attitude toward it may be sympathetic or hostile)’’ (1981a:343). 16. Floyd (1994) notes that in Wanka Quechua riddles and challenges, people will use the reportative -shi in formulaic questions suffixed with -shi. He characterizes this use of -shi as ‘‘impending revelation.’’ Although I am not aware of comparable genres in Pastaza Quechua, the concept of impending revelation may be viewed within my explanatory framework as a type of otherness as well, because it is based on knowledge that is outside oneself. 17. I am indebted to McDowell (1989:65) for this phrase, which he employs to describe the elaborate complex of Inga beliefs revolving around animals and physiological and atmospheric processes. 18. Although the gender of this bird is not stated, I translate the pronoun pai as ‘‘he’’ whenever it is used to refer to the chikwan bird, in keeping with the convention among many speakers of English of adopting a default masculinity when referring to nonhuman life-forms. 19. Luisa uses the term auka to describe the Achuar. This term is also used for the Waorani. McDowell (1989:118) observed this term among the Sibundoy and describes its various resonances, which include connotations of heathen-ness, fierceness, and beastliness, and traces it to the mid-sixteenth-century chronicle of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. 20. The assassins are taunting and humiliating Emisión by making fun of his ability to kill with sorcery. They put a headdress on his head, which is typically reserved for men who are celebrating or engaging in aggression. 21. In this case, the speaking self is the voice of her aunt Lola. 22. -Mi-suffixed forms occur a total of thirty-five times while -shi-suffixed forms occur thirty-two times. 23. Hockett’s (1960) article is a foundational piece in this regard, because it defines human language with thirteen design features, some of which are also found in nonhuman communication systems. 24. I am indebted to Mushin (2001:6) for the observation that there has been an emphasis on spatiotemporal deixis in linguistic studies. 25. Faller (2003) summarizes the debate and attempts to bypass this conundrum

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by suggesting that there are ‘‘gradations of observability’’ and ‘‘encyclopedic knowledge’’ that may license the use of -mi under less than ideal circumstances. 26. McDowell (1989) features an analysis and inventory of sayings grounded in a concrete orientation, as well as metapragmatic assessments by Sibundoy themselves on the reliability of these sayings.

3. On Nonhuman Role Models and New Correspondences 1. The ideophone bhux is used exclusively to describe the bugyu’s bursting. 2. Luisa uses -shi to make this statement from someone else’s perspective, I believe, for strategic reasons. Romantic attraction is a subject of considerable embarrassment and rarely discussed openly. For Luisa to make this statement from her own perspective using -mi would constitute an open admission on her part that she was proficient in love magic. 3. The uninflected root wacha of the verb wachana ‘to lay eggs’ undergoes multiple repetitions, each instance simulating the laying of an egg. I consider this to be an ideophonic use of a nonideophonic verb that becomes ideophonized through its performative repetitions. This type of adapted ideophony is attested in numerous African languages as well (Voeltz and Kilian-Hatz 2001.) 4. Here Luisa uses the desiderative suffix -naya with the verb wachana ‘to lay eggs,’ which literally translated would be: ‘to her the desire to lay eggs occurs’. 5. I never encountered the ideophones sar or kux used by Luisa to describe the snake’s singing in any other story told by her or anyone else. 6. It is clear that Luisa intends to communicate that this is a surprising discovery. This is obvious through her intonation as well as by her use of the perfect -shka of surprise on the verbs describing the snake as an eater and as having eaten: mikushka ‘has eaten’ and mikuk ashka ‘was an eater’.’’ Luisa uses -mi on the word for hawk, anga, as a speaking self -mi (En), to inhabit her husband’s subjectivity. 7. Purus is a variant of the ideophone pus, which is formulaically associated with the verb pilana ‘to pluck’. Here, the more complex form purus may be interpreted as communicating, through its first syllable, the movement toward the partridge and, by its second syllable, the moment of plucking the feather outward from the partridge. 8. Luisa uses -shi on purus because this section of the account is related through the words of her husband. 9. Tak is an ideophone with many senses (Nuckolls 1996.) Here tak communicates the punctual moment when the snake’s mouth makes contact with the partridge. 10. This narrative features my only examples of this ideophone kh for the snake’s spitting sound. 11. She says, somewhat hyperbolically: Mundo valik ak ashka, motolo wira ‘‘A motolo’s fat is one of the most valuable things in the world.’’ In the next line, the presence of the -shi suffix probably indicates that she intends her words to be validated by an other. 12. Here and following, lines 5–14, Luisa becomes the speaking self (En) in the person of the Achuar woman. 13. Here, the use of -mi on the verb indicates that Luisa is asserting from her own perspective what her sister-in-law reported the Achuar woman to have said.

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14. Chira is another, from the author’s perspective, ‘‘unique’’ ideophone. The more typical, formulaic ideophone for a crying sound widza may be reserved for a surprised or frightened crying out, while chira is probably for a sorrowful lamenting cry. 15. The connections between mice and childbirth have been noted by Siskind (1973:167), who mentions a story told by Sharanahua in Amazonian Peru about a mouse spirit who taught her human cousin to give birth. 16. ‘‘Our type (of thing),’’ ñukanchi sami, refers to her menstrual period. 17. Tas is a widely used ideophone communicating an idea of completiveness. It occurs with many verbs and functions like particles such as ‘up’ in ‘eat up’, ‘tie up’, etc. in English. 18. The shifting, deictic nature of -mi is evident here and throughout this narrative. As Luisa is telling the entire story from her own vantage point, she adopts -mi here to become the speaking self (En), in the person of Señora Amelia. 19. Luisa uses the perfect form, saying ‘‘bola mashkara’’ to indicate her surprise. 20. Dziu is a variant of the ideophone dzir, which expresses an idea of a frictional movement. 21. Here, the punctual-moment-of-contact meaning of tak is semantically extended to describe an expanse of contact that occurs when something is filled to utmost capacity, such as a clay storage jar. Here, it is her stomach that is filled by the baby. 22. Luisa’s use of another question to rearticulate or echo her sister’s question that Luisa herself has no answer for is a common response form in everyday discourse. 23. The diminutive -ku is suffixed to mama. 24. The ideophone kalya describes the deep vertical dimension of a splitting or fissuring open. 25. The ideophone ton communicates an idea of something completely filled. Unlike tak, however, ton does not typically communicate the subjective feeling of being filled the way tak does. It is usually a filled-ness that is viewed by someone who is not directly experiencing this quality, but observing it as an onlooker. Luisa uses ton here to communicate a kind of objective perspective on her state. 26. The preferred method for delivery is to have a woman kneel on the ground, legs apart, arms reaching above the head, and grabbing onto ropes or vines secured from support beams. 27. I translate ichilya ukucha (lit. ‘little rat’) as ‘mouse’, assuming that for Runa, the difference between mice and rats, which belong to different species, is captured by the adjective ichilya ‘little’. 28. The ideophone tai characterizes an action or condition as nondynamic, and may be related to the adverb tailya ‘tough, hard’. See Nuckolls (1996:255–56) for a discussion of this ideophone’s wide semantic range. 29. The ideophone thux may have been invented by Luisa. Nevertheless, it fits the template for descriptions of durative events insofar as it features a continuous sound in the form of a final velar fricative consonant that undergoes performative extension to communicate an idea of the gushing out of the water as it broke. It is also used in chapter 5 to describe the movement of the jaguar as it sails past Luisa’s grandmother. 30. She says: ‘‘kari wawa mashka,’’ using the -shka of surprise on her verb. 31. The ideophone iyu communicates an idea of limpness through its gliding pronunciation, and through its lack of any consonantal obstruction.

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4. On the Nature-to-Culture Continuum Author’s Note: Parts of this chapter originally appeared in Nuckolls 2004c. 1. Luisa’s use of -shi on this verb indicates that the fragments she relates here come from her father’s recollections, which most likely came from her grandfather’s stories. In her use of -mi on chaupi ‘middle’, she becomes the speaking self (En), in this case, most likely, her grandfather. 2. The ideophone wikan describes anything that, through vertical prominence, distinguishes itself from its surroundings, such as a person standing alone or a stingray’s tail lifted up. Here it is expressively lengthened with velar frication and the emphatic adverbial suffix -lya to describe a dramatic image of the serrucho rising out of the water. 3. The ideophone chyu communicates an idea of a clean break, when something is definitively severed from something else. 4. The ideophone polang describes the moment when something emerges from underwater to the visible surface. Here it is expressively lengthened with velar frication and the emphatic adverbial suffix -lya, translatable as ‘‘just.’’ 5. Although she follows this verb with a quotation complement, she does not use -mi on any of the words in the quote because of the wondering and inner questioning of the statements, which, as explained in chapter 2, are always focused by means of -shi because they are unanswerable questions. 6. As it happens, the extracts I have chosen for the mud anaconda narrative have almost no perspectival marking through evidential enclitics, even though they are used throughout the narrative. It sometimes happens that narrators will establish a perspective with -mi and -shi, and then leave off using either enclitic for a stretch of discourse, until the perspective shifts, or until the narrator wishes to reestablish the perspective. The semi-obligatoriness of -mi and -shi has been noted in other dialects of Quechua as well (cf Floyd 1994 :160, Hintz 2007:52). 7. This use of -shi is an example of the -shi of bewilderment discussed in chapter 2. 8. The answering of a question with another question which mimics the original is a common strategy in everyday conversation and has a number of pragmatic function, including the communication of both empathy and evasiveness. 9. Here Luisa takes the voice of the Achuar, becoming the speaking self (En). 10. Here and following, Luisa becomes the speaking self (En) of her husband’s voice. 11. Here Luisa adopts -shi to report her husband’s words, thus setting the stage for her own voice to reemerge in the immediately following line. 12. Luisa switches to her own speaking self (Es), asserting that this is what her husband said. 13. The ideophone shaka typically describes a long splitting or tearing. Its semantics are extended here to describe a long streak of color on the anaconda. 14. This use of -mi, as well as that of the first line in this verse, is a special use of the speaking self of the speech event (Es). Here, Luisa engages in what Bakhtin might call ‘‘internally persuasive discourse,’’ as opposed to authoritative discourse (1981a:345). This distinction captures the difference between discourse that is external (authoritative) and discourse that is ‘‘half ours and half someone else’s.’’ In both cases, the intertwining of her words with others’ is represented as a quotation complement in

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the original Quechua: (wanungami nisha sakiranchi ‘‘saying ‘‘he will die’’ we opened it’’ and Ña rinmi nisha sakiranchi ‘‘then saying ‘‘he’s gone’’ we gave up’’). I have translated both sentences as emanating from mutual thoughts. 15. The verb tapyana is translated as ‘portending’ to describe a situation where people frame natural events and occurences as signals to be read for their relevance with respect to human affairs. In this utterance someone in Luisa’s house is articulating the belief that the presence of a snake inside one’s house is a portent of something. McDowell (1989:69) states that the Inga believe that the presence of a snake in a house indicates the impending death of a harmful shaman. 16. Luisa uses -shi in her discussion of the anaconda’s relevance for love magic, because she wants to lend authoritativeness to what she says and also because she wants to distance herself from any implication that she is a practitioner of this type of magic. 17. Luisa’s use of -shi here may be an attempt to distance herself a bit from this statement, possibly because she sensed extreme interest and perhaps incredulity on my part. 18. Here -shi represents the perspective of Marina. 19. Here -shi may represent the perspective of the anaconda, or the perspective of an unnamed other authority. 20. -Shi represents the perspective of her children who related this story to her. 21. The lomocha was identified by Luisa as a type of squirrel, Deppe’s squirrel, Sciurus deppei, plate 21 in Emmons (1997). 22. This line and the immediately preceding line are a bit unusual in that both contain contrasting perspectives within one predicate—that of Luisa as the speaking self (En) that is the quoted voice of her comadre Aida, as well as Aida’s voice as an other. I believe she bifurcates Aida’s voice in this way because she needs to acknowledge that this part of the account originates in another’s voice and also because this is a key moment in the narrative that, because of its intrinsic interest, merits representation as quotative discourse. 23. All of the -shi marked forms in this section are based on the perspectives of her children. 24. This is a rare instance of an ideophone suffixed with -mi. Here, Luisa is becoming a speaking self (En), in the voice of her child who related this dramatic moment. 25. Tomas is not his real name, nor is Julia the real name of his wife. Masha is the term for ‘‘son-in-law.’’ Here it refers to a fictive kin relationship. 26. Luisa adopts the voice of an other when commenting on the anaconda’s thinness probably because the words were those used by her husband as a commentary on the anaconda’s state. Another possibility is that she is attempting to soften the impact of a boldly critical observation about the anaconda’s physical appearance by stating it from an other’s perspective.

5. On Tenaciously Persisting 1. As she did not personally know her grandmother, Luisa tells most of this narrative through someone else’s words, focusing her utterances with -shi. 2. The ideophone thux is comparable to other ideophones such as wax, which,

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through word final velar frication, simulate the motion of something moving through space. In this instance, it is the jaguar’s entire body. 3. The ideophone cham describes the way something breaks off, rather than the way something is chopped off deliberately, as does the ideophone chyu. 4. Here I translate the exclamatory pacha (lit. earth!) with the expression ‘‘Oh man!’’ for a more natural-sounding English expression. 5. As this is an extremely dramatic moment in the narrative, she heightens the excitement by becoming the speaking self -mi (En), in the voice of her uncle, who shouts ‘‘shamunimi shamunimi shamunimi!’’ 6. I translate her use of the Spanish imprecative carajo as ‘damn you’. 7. Even the jaguar is allowed to have his own thoughts which are expressed as quoted innerlogues. 8. Here, and in the next sentence, she allows her uncle to articulate his own assertion-making voice with -mi. 9. Eating is a common metaphor for killing. 10. Now that she is concluding, she switches to her own speaking self (Es), using -mi to focus on her statements, except for the very last sentence, where she reminds the listener that the story was told from someone else’s perspective. 11. This is not his real name. 12. I translate ushashkata, which is the perfect form of the verb ushana ‘to be able, to be possible’ adverbialized with -ta, as ‘unbelievable’. 13. Here she uses tak in its completive sense, accompanied by an expansive gesture with outstretched arms, to indicate the extent to which their agricultural field was spread out before it was encroached upon. 14. Each instance of ling is meant as an insertion gesture, describing the way her comadre Rosa planted the cattle pasture grass. 15. She is saying that she had to leave Montalvo and seek medical care in Puyo. 16. The ideophone ting is used almost exclusively to describe the bounded expanse of space defined by an agricultural field. 17. Each of these instances of the ideophone tax conveys the expansiveness of the fields. 18. Although it is slightly awkward in English to use the word stingy as a transitive verb, I translate the Quechua verb mitsana in this way to convey the important stigma attached by Runa to people who act this way. 19. She represents his words as a combination of Quechua and Spanish: ‘‘Bueno. Kan mashkangi ambisioso nira.’’ 20. Here she uses Quechua exclusively, even though the official would undoubtedly have spoken in Spanish to Roja. 21. In these statements she mixes Spanish and Quechua: Suspendido, kaibi sakirichun; ama mas potrerota rangichu; por que pai man amo! 22. Loberto was a trader who, although not indigenous, had been held in high regard by all for his fair treatment of indigenous people. 23. Here she searches for a word which she doesn’t find, and so turns mashti ‘thing’ into a verb: mashtingi. For clarity, I used ‘‘suspended,’’ because I believe that was the word she was trying to think of.

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24. She refers to the town of Puyo here. 25. This is a final attempt on the part of Roja to manipulate the officials with bribery. He hopes that a valuable jaguar hide may sway them in his favor. 26. Here Luisa’s voice takes an official-sounding perspective in that she borrows the Spanish verb pertenecer ‘to belong’, saying: ‘‘Mana pai pertinencianaundzhu, Montalvoi, Kumari Rosa,’’ as if she is speaking about Rosa’s outsider status from an official juridical point of view. 27. The verb lyukshina ‘to emerge’ is a metaphor for birth.

Concluding Thoughts 1. Verb Portraits, Tape D, verb muyuna ‘to circle’. 2. Tape VI, ‘‘The double-edged machete,’’ Transcript File, page 240. 3. Verb Portraits, Tape F, verb upina ‘to drink’. 4. Tape VIII, ‘‘Making a new chagra,’’ Transcript File, page 499.

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i

i

i

Index

Achuar, 5, 7, 99, 159, 204n19, 205n12, 207n9; animism, 201n7; beliefs of, 86–87, 89; and politics, 8; society, 11; voice, 61 activism, 8–9. See also Runa, political activism Adelaar, Willem F. H., 5, 49, 52, 60, 77 adverbial suffixes: -lya, 207n2; -n, 75 affects, 82 African linguistics, 30 agency, 51, 53 Aguaruna, 201n8 Aida, 180, 208n22 Aikhenvald, Alexandra, 77 aisana, 44 Alfredo, 29, 32, 44–45, 143 alignment, 31, 48 amarun, 98 Ambato, 132, 140 Amha, Azeb, 45, 46 anaconda, 25, 97; adopting an, 14, 27, 109–24; characteristics of, 100–109, 112, 114–16, 123; perspective of, 25, 98–99, 207n6; as pet, 117, 170–84; portraits of, 58–59, 123; sociability, 107 Andoan, 5 Andrea (grandmother), 125–29, 142 anent, 201n7 ang, 43 animacy, 8–9, 32–33, 47, 202n6 animism, 47, 143, 144, 201n7, 202n6, 203n12 anthropology of life, 202n15

appearances, 70 arboreal emotivity, 41; ideophones, 41– 42; life, 41 Archives of Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA), 21, 23 asociability, 99 aspect, 43 assassination: of John F. Kennedy, 22; in Quechua, 149–56; of Uncle Emisión, 49, 56–57, 60–61, 153–56 aswa, 13 Auka, 63–69, 71–72, 152–56, 204n19; woman, 159–60 authorial assertion, 144; disclaimers, 144 authoritative discourse, 204n15, 207n14 author trips, 17, 21, 42; in 1987–1988, 17; in 1995, 21; in 2006, 21; in 2008, 17, 42 awantana, 125 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 4, 28, 78; authoritative discourse, 204n15, 207n14; dialogism, 51; Emerson (translator), 51; Holquist (translator), 51; social heteroglossia, 61, 87 Banisteriopsis, 50 Bantu, 30 Basque, 46 Basso, Ellen, 19–20, 28, 203n1 Bauman, Richard, 27, 202n12 between human and nonhuman: analogies, 79; communication, 40, 49, 53,

222 between human and nonhuman (cont.) 76; connections, 83, 86; correspondences, 82; dialogue, 35, 50; relationships, 78 bhux, 205n1 blhu, 42 Boas, Franz, 77 Borja administration, 8 Brazilian Kalapalo, 19 Briggs, Charles, 27 bubble heart, 102 bugyu, 157 bulyukuku, 79. See also dolphin story Cadena, Cezar, 5, 7, 71, 106–7, 156, 160, 169 Cadena de Nuñez, Luisa, xi, 1, 3, 15– 18; birthplace of, 2; Cezar, 106; characteristics of, 16–17; children’s names, 166; current residence, 2; dialogues, 26; Eugenia, 130; family of, 16, 26, 49, 56–57, 60, 104–5; grandmother, 124–25, 128–29; health problems of, 145; ideophony of, 26, 83–84, 90; life experiences of, 15, 25, 90, 98, 103; life of, 1, 16, 78, 99; narrative discourse, 26; narratives, 8, 15, 17, 18–26, 28, 88, 97, 99–104; pregnancy story, 161–65; religion of, 91; response to police, xii; Robin, 139; Tito, 17, 104–5, 108, 131–32, 136, 140; translation of narratives, 98; worldview, 78 Canelos Runa, 4–5 chagra, 116, 131–32, 136, 141, 195 chai, 60 cham, 209n3 chari/-cha, 77 chaupi, 207n1 chignina, 189 chikwan bird, 49, 76, 103; The Chikwan Speaks, 61–70, 73–75 childbirth story. See narratives, My First Pregnancy Childs, G. Tucker, 45 chira, 206n14

Index cholas, 10–11 Christian morality, 13 chyu, 207n3, 209n3 colonistas, 131 completiveness, 39, 43–44. See also ideophones, grammar of conceptions of knowledge, 50–51 contextualization, 31, 56 continuous aspect. See durativity cosmology, 48, 75, 91 cultural conventions. See linguistic outputs cultural ontogeny, 47 cultural poetics, 46 Curaray Runa, 202n11 Dahua, Estella, 10 Dahua, Johanna, 14 de Ayala, Felipe Guaman Poma, 20 de Castro, Viveiros, 203n12 deer story, 86–89, 97, 160 deixis, 76, 203n4, 204n24 density, 61 Descola, Phillipe, 4, 99–100, 201n4 devices, 28, 31; context invocative, 31; frame-changing, 31; perspectiveenabling, 28 devoicing. See ideophones, phonological features of dialects. See Pastaza Quechua dialogical aesthetic, 49 dialogical cosmology, 48 dialogical props, 143 dialogism, 4, 25, 53–54, 60–61, 75; ecological, 53, 74, 76, 149, 203; and meaning, 52; of nature, 51, 61 dialogism and dialogue, 27, 62, 78, 90, 97, 201n10; between author and Luisa, 55; of Luisa Cadena de Nuñez, 28, 90; divinatory, 61; ecological, 74; between human and nonhuman, 35; with nonhuman nature, 53; between people, 70–72; summary, 87 dialogue, 124, 143, 144, 202n10 direct experience morpheme, 54. See also enclitics

Index dolphin story, 80–81 dreams, 50–51, 56, 77, 87 Duranti, Alessandro, 51–52 durativity, 43 dzir, 40–41, 44, 101 dziu, 206n20 ecological conceptions. See Runa, conceptions ecological dialogism, 53, 74, 76, 149, 203 ecosystem, 8 Ecuador, 6, 8, 42, 61, 143; agrarian roots of, 45; fieldwork in, 55; government, 8; language varieties, 6, 201n1; Puka Yaku, 44, 49, 55 Edwin. See Cadena de Nuñez, Luisa, children’s names Emerson. See Bakhtin, Mikhail Emisión, Uncle, 71, 73, 75, 150, 204n20 enclitics, 144; analyses of, 76; -chu, 55, 203n7; -mi, 54–57, 59–60, 62, 73– 74, 76–77, 144; -mu, 60; -shi, 54– 60, 62, 72–74, 76–77; -ta, 58 encoding, 44 English, 45–46 English-language comics. See ideophony, action figure eventings, 53, 56, 62, 74–75, 77 evidentiality, 3, 49, 53–55, 77, 203n4 evidential paradigm, 26; suffix, 60; system, 203n4 evidentials, 203n4, 203n12 experience narrative, 56, 58 experiencer, 203n10 eyewitnessed experience, 77. See also direct experience morpheme Faller, Martina, 57, 203n12, 204n25 falling motion, 34 feeding bird story, 43 Finnish bird vocabulary, 202n8 Floyd, Rick, 57, 204n16 folklore, 27, 46 foreignizing, 22. See also translations

223 frame change, 31. See also perspectival shift Friedrich, Paul, 3, 22, 78 Gomi, Tarô, 45 grammatical aspect distinctions, 42, 44 Gualinga, Rebecca, 201n3 Gumperzian, 202n14 gyaung, 42 hallucinogens. See Banisteriopsis Hanks, William F., 203n4 Harrison, K. David, 12, 14, 20, 29 Hausa ideophones, 43 heartless tortoise story, 101–2 heteroglossia, 61, 87 high-animacy being, 33–34, 37, 39 high-animacy ideophones, 32, 35–36 Hill, Jane, 202n9 Hinton, Leanne, 32 Hockett, Charles, 204n23 Holquist. See Bakhtin, Mikhail Huamán, Asunta Quispe, 12, 27 human-to-nonhuman transformations, 79 human vulnerability, 90 Hymesian approach, 24 Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iride, 32, 46 ichilya ukucha, 206n27 ideological functions, 100 ideologies of language, 52 ideophones, xvii, 9, 20–24, 27, 29–30, 37, 42, 201n2, 201n5, 202n5, 205n5, 205n6, 205n9, 205n10; characteristics of, 35–36, 43; combinations of, 44; as cultural discourse, 44; definition of, 1; as dialogical prop, 35; disyllabic structure of, 34–35; grammar of, 42–44; high-animacy, 32, 35–36, 39; as lexical class, 30; low-animacy, 32, 39; and manner of motion, 32, 46; monosyllabic, 39; and movement, 82; neglected status of, 10; new perspective, 36; other languages, 20, 32, 43, 45–46; perfor-

224 ideophones (cont.) mance, 34, 46, 48, 143; phonological features of, 42; pragmatic factors of, 43; structure of, 40; transanimate, 32, 39; universality of, 1 ideophones, Quechuan: bhu, 37; bhux, 80; dzir, 40–41, 44, 101; iyu, 206n31; kar, 37; kau, 37, 39; kkkh, 85; putu, 75; shau, 39; tak, 85, 121, 165; taras, 37; tau, 37, 39; tsuk, 39; tsupu, 34–35, 37; tupu, 37; tus, 39; yanan, 75 ideophony, 27–28, 78–79, 97, 143, 202n4, 202n9, 205n3; action figure, 37, 203n13; analogy, 8; attitudes toward, 45; of Luisa Cadena de Nuñez, 24, 90; endangered, 3; in English, 30; features of, 10; and performance, 30–31, 46; restricted functions of, 10, 46; of Runa, 19–20; sound symbolism; of, 32; stigmatization of, 46– 47; and voice, 62 IERAC, 131–32, 136–38, 190–96 illocutionary effects, 71–72; force, 56 impersonal stylization, 87 indexical gestures, 31 indígena, 132 indigenous identity, 21 indigenous peoples, 7, 9, 19, 21 Inga, 204n17, 208n15 inner-logue, 58, 62, 70–71, 103, 144 instantaneousness. See grammatical aspect distinctions intentionalist model, 52 interactional settings. See linguistic outputs intersubjective interpretation, 52–53 intonation. See ideophones, pragmatic factors of intonational contour. See ideophones, characteristics of intonational elaboration, 143 intonational exuberance, 24 Isicamtho. See ideophones, other languages Iyu. See ideophones, Quechuan

Index jaguar, 144, 209n7 Jaguar Attack, 52, 126, 185–89 Jakobson, Roman, 203n6 Japanese, 42, 45 kai, 60 kalya, 206n24 Kalapalo, 203n1 kamina, 71 kantana, 76 kaparina, 71 kh, 205n10 Kilian-Hatz, Christa, 46 kilya, 142 kishpichina, 126, 185 knowledge, 50, 77, 79 Kohn, Eduardo, 29, 202n15, 203n12 Kuchuna, 42 Kumpari Roja, 131, 134–35, 137, 140 Kuna texts, 22 Kunene, Daniel, 30, 45 Kwakiutl, 77 land, 7–8; conflicts of, 124; confrontation of, xi, xii; cooperative, 131 language shift, 45 Leavitt, John, 22 Levinson, Stephen, 31, 202n14 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 90 lexical emblems, 36 lexical verbs, 56 lifeforms, 49, 83, 99; nonhuman, 51, 74, 82, 90, 97–98 ling, 209n14 linguaculture, 1, 3, 23. See also Runa linguistic outputs, 54 Lino, 105, 106, 169 Loberto, 139, 209n22 Lola, 59, 61–65, 68, 70, 72, 74, 149– 52, 204n21 low-animacy being, 39–40 low-animacy ideophones, 32, 39 lyukshina, 210n27 Macdonald, Theodore, 3, 14 manner of motion. See ideophones, other languages

Index Mannheim, Bruce, 202n3 marriage practices, 12 mashti, 209n23 mashtingi, 209n23 mastication, 13 McDowell, John H., 202n13, 203n2, 204n17, 204n19, 205n26, 208n15 metalinguistic commentary, 29; consciousness, 77 -mi. See enclitics Michael, Lev, 28, 203n13 mikuk ashka, 205n6 mikushka, 205n6 mitsana, 209n18 momentaneousness, 43 monosyllabic ideophones, 39 Montalvo, Ecuador, 5, 16, 21, 26, 131, 140, 149, 198, 209n15, 210n26 morphology. See ideophones, grammar of motherese, 33, 47 motivation, 99, 104 motolo snake, 84–86, 97, 158–59 movement imitation, 32. See also sound symbolism Mphande, Lupenga, 45, 201n2 mukahas, 5 Muratorio, Blanca, 11 Murphy, Yolanda and Robert, 11 Mushin, Ilana, 4, 54, 203n5, 204n24 My First Pregnancy, 89–97 myths, 4, 23–24, 39–40, 53, 202n13, 204n14 Nahuatl, 202n9, 203n9 Nanti, 203n13 Napo Quichua, 4–5 Napo Runa, 5, 11, 203n12 narrative event. See speaking self narratives, 27–28, 53, 98, 109, 204n14; Adopting an Anaconda, 109–123; anaconda, 58–59; battle with man, 26; The Bulyukuku Hawk, 35–36; The Chain Saw Anaconda, 101–3; The Chikwan Speaks, 61–70, 73–75; The Freshwater Dolphin, 36–

225 37, 79–81; frog, 17; The Heartless Tortoise and the Good Water Turtle, 81–82; husband lost in forest, 50; Jaguar Attack, 26, 52, 126; The Manioc Anaconda, 107–9; motolo, 83–86; The Mud Anaconda, 103–4; My First Pregnancy, 79, 89–97; The Purawa Anaconda, 104–7; ScissorTailed Hawk, 40; turtle, 34; When a Tree Cries Gyaung, 41–42; When Tree Sap Speaks, 40 nasalization. See ideophones, phonological features of Navajo, 45 nina, 51, 71–72, 76 nonhuman lifeforms, 27, 51, 74, 82, 90, 97–98 nonhuman nature, 56, 60; world, 74 nonhuman role models, 79, 90, 157 nonwitnessed experience, 60 Noss, Phillip, 29 Nuckolls, Janis, 203n3, 203n5, 203n8, 204n14, 206n28 Nuñez, Tito, 16, 105, 122, 134, 136, 183, 191, 193 nuspa, 80 Oakdale, Suzanne, 201n5 Ohala, John, 32 Omotic language, 203n10 ONAPE, 5, 125 ongoingness, 39, 43–44. See also ideophones, grammar of onomatopoeia, 19, 30, 201n5, 202n8 orthographic representations. See symbolization otherness, 57–58. See also the other pacha, 209n4 Pai, 204n18 pala lansa, 127 palay, 39–40 paradigmatic axis, 99 paradigm of suffixes, 24 paralanguage, 31 parallelism, 103

226 paskana, 43 Pastaza Quechua, 43, 53–55, 204n16 Pastaza Runa, 11 patang, 40, 42 pau bird, 115 pause phrasing approach, 23 pauses. See ideophones, pragmatic factors of perfectivity. See completiveness performance, 27–28, 46, 48 performative discourse, 27 performative expressions, 24 performative foregrounding, 33 performative genres, 202n13 performative repetitions, 205n3 perspectival shift, 31, 123 perspective, 3, 25, 27, 41, 70, 89; of anaconda, 99; contrasts in, 73; as coping tool, 90; and moods, 78–79; as narrative tool, 53–54, 56–57, 97, 105; underlying dialogues, 72 perspectivism, 25, 54, 60 pertenecer, 210n26 phonotactics. See ideophones, grammar of piaya cayana. See chikwan bird pilana, 205n7 pitina, 44 Plaza Aray, Ecuador, 3, 131 polang, 207n4 portents, 56 postmarriage residence rules, 12 progressive aspects. See durativity prosodic peaks, 43 prosody, 31 psychotropically induced visions, 50, 56, 77 Puka Yaku, Ecuador, 3, 13, 16, 44, 49, 55 purus, 205n7 pus, 205n7 Pusku shungu, 102, 131 puskuyu bird, 127 putu, 75 Puyo, Ecuador, xi, 3, 15–17

Index Quechua, xi, 8, 10, 23, 29, 39, 77; comparable pronunciation, xvii; evidential paradigm, 26; linguistic data, 21; linguistic poetics, 26; linguistics, 48; linguists, 26, 76; myths, 4, 36; pronominal system, 202n7; quechua/quichua distinction, 201n1; songs, 4; source of information, 4; Southern Peruvian, 202n3; speakers, 3, 31, 59; syntax, 22, 56; three distinctions, 4; verbs, 1 Quichua, 39, 125, 144; grammar, 24, 50, 53, 60 Quispe Huamán, Asunta, 12 quotation complement, 52, 54 quotative speech, 71–72, 203n11, 204n13, 208n22 quoted speech, 28, 203n11 reactivity, 144 reduplicated. See ideophones, characteristics of reduplication, 34, 42 Reeve, Mary-Elizabeth, 5, 202n11 Referenz-verschiebung. See shift of reference reportative voice, 59 reported discourse, 53 represented discourse, 56, 203n11 resonant reactivity, 144 rimana, 51, 71–72, 76 ritual behaviors. See aswa Roja, Kumpari, 131–32, 134, 138, 142, 190–99, 209n20, 210n25 Roja, Rosa, 209n20, 210n25 role models, 79, 81–82, 90, 157 Runa, 1, 3, 13, 29, 124, 201n1; beliefs of, 12, 47, 51, 76, 86–87, 97–99; conceptions, 4, 19, 144; culture, 5, 9, 11–12, 17, 53, 56, 142; definition of, 201n1; dialogism, 49, 53, 75–76; discourse, 27, 70, 76; division of labor, 13; ideophony, 8, 20, 33, 38, 44, 47–48; and knowledge, 50–51; men, 11, 45; Napo Province, 3; nomenclatural practice, 98; Pastaza Prov-

Index ince, 3–4; perspective of, 25, 99, 203n12; political activism, 7–8, 45; relationship with Achuar, 86; relationship with anaconda, 123; relationship to nonhuman, 4; society, 7, 12; -speaking culture, 24, 52; symbolic ecology, 3, 19; traditional life, 3, 5; values, 142; view on land, 8; women, 13–14; worldview, 4 Russian verb, 203n6 samai, 47 sar, 205n5 Sawyer, Suzanne, 7–8, 10 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 22 Schlichter, Alice, 203n4 scientific objectivism, 47 semantics, 39, 43–44 semiotic fulcrums, 143 Señora Amelia, 161, 164, 206n18 Serrucho, 102–3 shaka, 207n13 shamans, 50–51, 61–62, 71, 76, 124; curing roles of, 27; songs of, 12 Sharanahua, 206n15 Sherzer, Joel, 22, 28–29 -shi. See enclitics shift of reference, 46 shliykilyu, 40 Shuar, 4, 8; myths, 4 Sibundoy, 204n19, 205n26 silbana, 76 sindzhi warmi, 10 sindzhi warmiguna, 10. See also Quechua Siskind, Janet, 206n15 social heteroglossia, 87. See also Bakhtin, Mikhail sononyms, 36 sound combinations, 42. See also ideophones sound qualities, 143 sound symbolism, 32, 34, 40, 42, 84 Southern Sotho, 30 Spanish, 45, 209n6, 209n20, 209n21 spatiotemporal deixis, 204n24

227 spatiotemporal perceptual field, 76 speaking self, 31, 54–60, 71, 73, 77, 203n5, 203n10, 204n13, 204n21, 205n6, 205n12, 206n18, 207n1, 207n9, 207n10, 207n12, 207n14, 208n22, 208n24, 209n5, 209n10; and narrative event, 57, 60, 71, 73, 203n6; and speech event, 57, 60, 71, 203n6 speaking subject, 54 speaking voices, 60 spectrographic analysis, 23 speech event. See speaking self Standard Average European languages, 37 Steward, Julian, 4 strength, 10–11, 17, 19 strongwoman, 10–11, 14–15 stylization, 35 subjectivity, 59 subsistence practices, 20 supai, 12, 131 supai warmi, 12 Swanson, Tod, 4, 203n9 swidden horticulture, 5, 8, 19, 131 syllabic trills, 42 syllable structure, 33 symbolization, 46 syntactic integration, 43 syntagmatic axis, 99 syntax. See ideophones, grammar of tai, 206n28 tak, 206n25, 209n13 takina, 27 tapyana, 208n15 tas, 206n17 tax, 209n17 Tedlock, Dennis, 22–23, 203n2 the other, 54, 72, 77 thux, 206n29, 208n2 Tihiras anga. See narratives, ScissorTailed Hawk ting, 209n16 Tito. See Nuñez, Tito Ton, 206n25

228 transanimacy, 40 transformation, 37, 40, 79 transformative moment, 36, 40. See also ideophones, high-animacy translations, 22–25, 73, 78–79, 98 tree cry story, 41 tree sap story, 40 tswata, 79, 81 Tuvan-speakers, 20 Ukatsayashka, 142 urban context, 45 urbanization, 45 urmana, 44 ushana, 209n12 ushashkata, 209n12 Uzendoski, Michael, 11, 44, 203n12 verbal art states, 202n12 Verb Portrait Stories, 22 Victoria, 64, 71, 151 visions, 50–51, 56, 77. See also dreams; psychotropically induced visions visual images. See symbolization voice, 51–54, 57, 59–62 voicing, 3 volitionality, 51, 53, 76

Index wacha, 205n3 wachana, 81 Wanka Quechua, 204n16 Waorani, 204n19 Webster, Anthony, 29, 45 westernization, 45 whax, 104 Whitten, Norman, 5, 7–8 widza, 206n14 wikan, 207n2 Wintu, 203n4 Wolaitta, 46, 203n10 women, 13, 26, 29, 44. See also Runa, women yanan, 75 yanga, 74 yapa, 71 Yaya Dyus, 12 yes/no questions, 55, 76 Yucatec Maya, 203n4 Zande, 43 Zaparoans. See Andoan Zulu, 45

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About the Author

Janis Nuckolls is an anthropological linguist with field experience primarily in Amazonian Ecuador, province of Pastaza. She received her graduate training at the University of Chicago, receiving her PhD from the department of Linguistics in 1990. Her research interests have generally focused upon the cultural poetics and grammar of Quichua verbal practice and the role of ideophones and grammatical categories such as aspect and evidentiality in the expression of attitudinal alignments with nonhuman nature. Her publications include the book Sounds like Life: Sound-Symbolic Grammar, Performance and Cognition in Pastaza Quechua (Oxford University Press) as well as a number of articles in journals such as the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Language in Society, the Annual Review of Anthropology, and Semiotica. Her most recent article, ‘‘Deictic Selves and Others in Pastaza Quichua Utterances,’’ appeared in Anthropological Linguistics. Her current research project, funded as a Fulbright Teaching/Research grant, has involved assisting with the creation of a master’s degree program in indigenous languages for Quichua teachers in Ecuador, with a significant component of teaching to be done in the Quichua language. Nuckolls has also been the recipient of research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the National Science Foundation, and the Wenner Gren Foundation. Her future work includes more collaboration with the archiving of her Quechua language data, all of which will be available at AILLA: the Archives of Indigenous Languages of Latin America (www.ailla. utexas.org).