Mythologies of the Chamacoco Tribe

The Chamacoco tribe (Ishír) are an indigenous people of Paraguay. Some also live in Brazil. The Chamacoco have two major divisions, the Ebytoso, who lived along the Paraguay River, and the Tomáraho, who traditionally lived in the forests. The Ebytoso converted to Christianity, while the Tomáraho have lived in marginal areas in order to preserve their traditional world views and lifeways. In the 1980s the Instituto Nacional del Indigena (INDI) resettled the Tomáraho in a community called Puerto Esperanza with the Ebytoso. The Chamacoco are also known as the Ishiro, Yshiro, Jeywo, Yshyro, Xamicoco, Xamacoco, or Yshyr people. Their autonym is Ishír. The term ɨshɨr (also spelled Ishir or Yshyr) properly means 'person', but now is also used with the meaning of 'indigenous' in opposition to the Paraguayan people, who are called Maro. According to the 2002 census the population yshyr in Paraguay that identified themselves as yshyr was 1571 people, mainly located in the district of Fuerte Olimpo in Paraguay, being the largest migrant group which is in the district Ygatimí (85 in 2002). According to data from the brazilian Social and Environmental Institute (ISA), in 1994, 40 individuals were living in the Indian Reservation of Kadiwéu in Brazil.

The name "Xamicoco" or "Xamacoco," recognized since the latter part of the 1700s among the probable ancestors of the present Chamacoco, is of obscure origin. Its degree of acceptance by the Indians is also unknown, although they prefer the name "Ishír." The designation "Chamacoco" is probably related to "Chamóc" or "Zamúc," the ethnonym of a group of the Zamuco Family. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Chamacoco occupied the northeastern corner of the Chaco Boreal, in the arid zone of Cerro San Miguel and the headwaters of the Río Verde in Paraguay. The retreat of the Mbayá-Kadiwéu to the eastern shores of the Río Paraguay allowed the Chamacoco to relocate up to the western shores of that river between Bahía Negra and Fuerte Olimpo (20° to 22° N); they retained the southern portion of the hinterlands from 40 to 50 kilometers to the coast. The Chamacoco language belongs to the Zamuco Language Family. As a consequence of sociopolitical factionalization and reciprocal hostility, four dialects can be distinguished: Ebidóso and Hório, in the Bahía Negra region; Héiwo, in the Fuerte Olimpo area; and Tomaráho, in the interior forested zones. In 1970 it was estimated that the combined Hório- and Ebidóso-speaking groups numbered 800 persons, whereas the Tomaráho did not exceed 200. Around 1930, however, the total Chamacoco population is believed to have been more than 2,000,

In economic, sociological, and mythological terms the Chamacoco are a symbiosis of very primitive hunters and gatherers—similar to those of Tierra del Fuego—but hunters with a dual organization and incipient agriculture, resembling the Gê of eastern Brazil and Mato Grosso. Present in Chamacoco culture are possibly also certain influences of the somewhat more intensive agriculturists of the plains of Chiquitos. First contacts with the Europeans occurred about the end of the eighteenth century, but simultaneously the Chamacoco were strongly influenced by the Kadiwéu whom they met on their journey to the Río Paraguay. Aside from imposing a regular tribute of slaves—and thus establishing a typical intertribal system—the Kadiwéu imparted to them some features of their political style, which was strongly martial and based on endogamous castes. Consequently, in addition to waging wars against neighboring tribes to capture slaves for their masters, the Chamacoco quickly learned to use the slaves for their own benefit, and, with their own rules of clan organization slackening, they also accepted the rudiments of hierarchic stratification and intertribal marriage. Around 1800, following the definitive occupation of their territory by Whites, the massive assimilation of the Chamacoco as salaried workers in the lumber industry and in ranching and the total overhaul of the Chamacoco tribal economy began. Although various social and political customs endured, albeit in a greatly altered form, the inception, in 1955, of the activities of the New Tribes Mission brought an end to the boys' initiation ritual and pertaining practices among the Hório-Ebidóso. Only among the Tomaráho subgroup are these still performed. Yet, at about the same time, the state of Paraguay ceded to the Chamacoco a reservation zone in Puerto Esperanza, an area more or less distant from Whites, where a major portion of the Ebidóso and almost the entire group of Tomaráho were concentrated. This important event had an invigorating effect on the faltering institution of youth initiation.

Chamacoco is a Zamucoan language spoken in Paraguay by the Chamacoco people. It is also known as Xamicoco or Xamacoco, although the tribe itself prefers the name Ishír (which is also spelled Ɨshɨr, Ishiro, Yshyr) and sometimes Jewyo. When the term Ishiro (or yshyro or ɨshɨro) is used to refer to the language, it is an abbreviation for Ishir(o) ahwoso, literally meaning 'the words, the language of the Chamacoco people'. It is spoken by a traditionally hunter-gatherer society that now practices agriculture. Its speakers are of all ages, and generally speak Spanish or Guarani as second and third languages. Verb inflection is based on personal prefixes and the language is tenseless. For example, chɨpɨrme teu dosh means "the kingfisher eats fish", while chɨpɨra teu wichɨ dosht means "the kingfisher will eat fish." Nouns can be divided into possessable and non-possessable. Possessable nouns are characterized by a prefixation whereby the noun agrees with the possessor or genitival modifier. There is no difference between nouns and adjectives in suffixation. The syntax is characterized by the presence of para-hypotactical structures. The comparison of inflectional morphology has shown remarkable similarities with Ayoreo and Ancient Zamuco.

The concretion of Chamacoco religious thought, including concepts of purity, impurity, and sacredness, divine beings, and mythological events, is derived from a vision of the world centered in the mystery of the contrast death/life, conceived of as asymmetric phases of a unitary process. Religious tenets are also grounded in the dichotomies disharmony/harmony and nonconditioning/conditioning, which shape the contours of many cognitive patterns prevailing in the culture. Apart from a now-otiose creator being, divinities of the hunt, and a profuse series of demonic entities, the characteristic deities of the Chamacoco are the Ahnábsero. Arising from the depths and initially revealed to the women, these gods form a complex pantheon headed by a feminine figure. The adventures of the Ahnábsero and their deaths at the hands of men form a rich mythological saga in which the gods become the original authors of the ethics code and the founders of cultural institutions. The evangelical influence of the New Tribes Mission has become very strong, but it is quietly resisted by the most traditionalist factions. In earlier times, aside from the diverse specialists in magic, the endogamic clan of the Carancho assumed a central sacerdotal role. Scorned in daily life, its members conducted the main purification rites of the ceremonial cycle. The White missionaries have failed to establish an Indian priesthood. The debilübe áhmich, or ritual celebration of the Ahnábsero, lasts the entire rainy season, coinciding with the initiatory seclusion period for boys. Whereas some ceremonial activities require the active participation of women, a good part of the almost thirty different ceremonies of the ritual is conducted exclusively by men. These consist of dramatizations of the drought and wet weather, of natural resources and economic practices that are linked with one another, of fundamental religious tenets, and of ceremonies for the expulsion of impurity. The actors wear masks, paint their bodies according to complex symbolic codes, and don exquisite feather decorations. Apart from body painting and decorative featherwork, mention must be made of the manufacture of Bromelia -fiber cloth, the plaiting of palm fronds, and an extensive repertoire of religious, magic, and funerary music. Together with a complex cosmology of seven celestial and several subterranean planes inhabited by various distinct divinities who initiate shamans, there is a great diversity of specialists in magic. Besides healing and causing sickness, they are also responsible for rain and abundance in the natural world. Sickness is attributed to the interference of extraterrestrial beings, the violation of taboos, or soul loss. Curing is accomplished by means of massage techniques and suction, as well as by ecstatic flight in search of abducted souls. Western medicine, however, is gaining increasing acceptance. Death in advanced age is seen as an almost "natural" link between the mental weakening of the elderly and the lack of reason among the dead. The Chamacoco believe in a subterranean region, osépete, where the deceased live an existence without joy or appeal. Villages used to be abandoned following a death, and widowers remained in isolation until their hair, which had been shorn off, started to grow again. The interment of the cadaver created a fictitious kin relationship with the member of the complementary clan who performed this duty.