Mythologies of the Mocovi (Guaycuru) Tribe

The Mocoví (Mocoví: moqoit) are an indigenous people of the Gran Chaco region of South America. They speak the Mocoví language and are one of the ethnic groups belonging to the Guaycuru peoples. In the 2010 Argentine census, 22,439 people self-identified as Mocoví. Not much is known about them before the Spanish arrived. They were nomadic and lived off of their fishing, hunting and gathering. They hunted deer and rhea and slept on animal skins and flimsy shelters. They did not farm because the soil conditions were poor where they roamed and there was flooding. Trade routes were discovered in the Chaco forest, indicating trading and it was assumed they traded skins and feathers for gold, silver and copper objects. When the Jesuits arrived, they taught the Mocoví to farm with cattle and they became sedentary. In 1924, at least 200 Mocoví and Toba people were slaughtered during the Napalpí massacre. Argentina declared it a crime against humanity in 2019 and opened a 'truth trial' in 2022.

Mocovi Indians. The name is also written Ma-coblo, Meoconi, Mocoblo. They are a warlike and predatory tribe of Guaycuran stock, and are closely related linguistically to the Toba, Mbaya, and Abipon, their usual allies, settled principally along the middle and upper Vermejo River, in the Chaco region of northern Argentina, although they formerly extended their forays as far south as Santa Fe and even to the gates of Buenos Aires. In habit of life and general characteristics they resembled the rest of the tribes just mentioned, but were distinguished even beyond them, as Dobrizhoffer says, “in atrocity and steady hatred to the Spaniards. They seemed to conspire to ruin Tucuman, proving themselves formidable, not to solitary estates merely, but to whole cities”. They entirely destroyed the town of Concepcion and massacred its inhabitants. This special hostility to the people of Tucuman was due to the fact that years before a large number of Mocovi, who had been induced through the efforts of the Jesuit Fathers Altamirano and Diaz to come in from the war-path and had been organized into the mission of San Xavier, had been treacherously seized and distributed as slaves by the governor of that province. They received a temporary check in 1710 from Governor Urizar, who led a great expedition of over three thousand men against the Chaco tribes, with the result that several tribes made peace, while the Mocovi retired to the southwest and continued their raids in that quarter. Thirty years later, during a period of truce, some of the Mocovi became acquainted with the Jesuits of the College of Santa Fe, through whose influence they were won to friendship with the Spaniards, and the chiefs Aletin and Chitalin consented to receive Christian instruction together with their people. As a result the Mocovi mission colony of San Xavier was established in 1743 by Father Francisco Burges Navarro, thirty leagues from the city, and from a small beginning increased rapidly by accessions from the roving bands of the tribe, who were, from time to time, won over by the persuasions of the new converts. Prisoners captured in the various expeditions were also brought into the new mission, while many voluntarily took refuge there to escape pursuit. The Mocovi proved devout, tractable, and willing workers, and particularly competent musicians under the instruction of the German Father Florian Pauke, who organized a band and chorus whose services were in demand on church occasions even in Buenos Aires. With bell in hand, the chief himself, Aletin, acted as crier every morning to call his people to Mass, and took the lead in every task of difficulty. A third chief, who had long held out against the Spaniards and made war upon his mission kinsmen in revenge for their abandonment of the old life, finally came in voluntarily. In 1765 a second Mocovi mission, San Pedro y Pablo, was established by Father Pauke with another portion of the tribe which had until then continued hostile. At the time of the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 the two missions contained about 1200 Mocovi of whom all but a few were Christians. Deprived of their accustomed teachers, most of them finally rejoined their wild kinsmen in the forests of the Chaco. In 1800 the tribe was still loosely estimated at 2000 warriors or over 6000 souls. They are now reduced far below that number, but retain their tribal or-ganization and habits, though no longer hostile, and range generally along the western banks of the Parana. The best study of their language is Father Tavolini’s “Introduction al Arte Mocovi”.

An estimated 3,500 Mocoví live in the departments of O'Higgins, Chacabuco, Fontana, and San Lorenzo in the southern part of the province of Chaco, and in the departments of Garay, Obligado, San Javier, San Justo, and Vera in the northeastern part of the province of Santa Fe, in Argentina. Linguistically they belong to the Guiacuruan Family. When conquered by the Spaniards, the Mocoví lived in the middle reaches of the Río Bermejo. Toward the end of the seventeenth century they began to migrate southeast to occupy the plains between the lower Bermejo and Salado rivers. Beginning in 1743 the Mocoví came under the influence of Franciscan and, especially, Jesuit missionaries who attracted thousands of them to their colonies. The Indians obtained cattle, and the missionaries began to transform the Mocoví (who were by then equestrian) from migratory hunters and gatherers into sedentary farmers. Today, all Mocoví settlements are in permanent or frequent contact with centers of Western civilization, where they work as farmers, ranch hands, migrant harvesters, lumberjacks, laborers, and domestics. As a result of this prolonged and intensive contact, the Mocoví have become increasingly assimilated into the Argentinan hinterland population, their culture has undergone substantial change, and fewer than half of the modern Mocoví have retained their native language. Although a fair amount of ethnographical information has become available since the middle of the eighteenth century, the Mocoví have remained one of the least-studied aboriginal societies of the Gran Chaco. Although the Mocoví usually preferred to live without shelter, they sometimes built temporary camps consisting of windbreaks made of stick frames covered with skins. They also slept on skins. Mocoví subsistence depended heavily on hunting, fishing, and collecting; farming was of little importance. Armed with bows and arrows, lances, spears, bolas, or clubs, men pursued game alone or in groups, or they conducted collective drives from horseback by encircling the animals within a wide area and driving them toward the center, where they were killed by hurling clubs at them or by clubbing them at close range. Mocoví hunters also built a light fence around a space between two thickets. Inside they placed a fresh animal skin covered with flies as bait for rheas. When the birds entered the encircled area through an opening in the fence, the hunters closed it with string and captured them. Automatic spring traps in combination with pitfalls were sometimes set, and caimans were speared or harpooned along the river banks. The favored species of game animals included deer, peccaries, and rheas. The first hunter to hit an animal became its owner, whether or not he actually killed it.

Mocoví is a Southern Guaicuruan language spoken mainly in eastern Chaco Province, central and northern Santa Fe Province, and southern Formosa Province in the northeast of Argentina. There are between 4,000 and 7,000 speakers of Mocoví out of a population of about 12,000 Mocoví people. It is one of the official languages of Chaco Province, along with Spanish, Toba Qom and Wichí, and is spoken by people of all ages. In Santa Fe Province, Mocoví is spoken mainly by older people, while young people are more likely to speak Spanish. Mocoví is called moqoit or moqoit la’qaatqa by Mocoví people. It was first documented by Lafone Quevedo, who published a grammar of the language in 1892. A way to write it with the Latin alphabet was developed by missionaries in the 1950s, based on a spelling system they developed for Toba Qom. The Bible has been translated into Mocoví. As part of efforts to revitalise the langauge, there are classes for Mocoví adults to learn to read and write their language. The language is also taught in secondary schools, and used as a medium of instruction in primary schools, particularly in Charata and Villa Ángela in Chaco, and Melincué and Recreo in Santa Fe.

The Mocoví language is a Guaicuruan language of Argentina spoken by about 3,000 people, mostly in Santa Fe, Chaco, and Formosa provinces. In 2010, the province of Chaco in Argentina declared Mocoví as one of four provincial official languages alongside Spanish and the indigenous Qom and Wichí. The Mataco-Guicurú language family is a group of 11 indigenous languages of the Americas spoken in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, comprising two subfamilies with a total of approximately 100,000 speakers distributed in the Bermejo, Pilcomayo and Paraguay river basins. Other languages of the family are extinct and some others are threatened with extinction. In the province of Santa Fe, it is used mostly by the elderly Mocoví population. Among adults, bilingualism is widespread and among young people Spanish is preferred. In the province of Chaco, the Mocoví language and culture are carefully preserved. Writing in the Mocoví language was non-existent until the 1950s, when a group of missionaries developed a Latin alphabet writing system for the Toba language, which was later adapted to Mocoví for the translation of the Bible by Alberto Buckwater. This writing system is still based on correspondence with Spanish orthography, so it contains some of its irregularities.

Very little knowledge of the language and culture of the Mocovi Indians prior to the arrival of the Spanish. The indigenous tribe Mocovi thrives in the Chaco Province and Santa Fe Province of Argentina, being of nomadic in nature the tribe occupied areas of Bermejo River southwest down to Salado River.They basically fish, hunt, and gather food for their subsistent. Bows and arrows, spears, lances, bolas, or clubs were used to hunt and nets, harpoons and fishing lines for fishing. They hunted deer, pre carries and rhea. The Mocovi people did not place importance in shelter, however setting up camp with sticks used as windbreakers and draped with animal skins was sufficient. Animal skins were used to sleep on. Farming was not favourable due to poor soil conditions in times of dryness and flooding in their area. Trading was evident from trade routes discovered in the Chaco forest. They traded skins and feathers with other indians to obtain gold, silver and copper objects. Upon the arrival of the Jesuits, Macovi settlers were given cattle and were taught how to farm. That made the Mocovi Indians sedentary in their area.

The Mocovíes (in Mocoví: Moqoit) are an indigenous people in Argentina detached from all the Guaicurú. Its language is part of the Mataco-Guaicurú linguistic family and endures in some of the areas that inhabit the provinces of Formosa, Santa Fe and del Chaco. Before the arrival of the Spanish colonizers, they lived primarily on hunting and gathering. They were a very warrior people, who took the opportunity to attack different cities. The Mocoví peoples reside exclusively in Argentina. At present, after the migrations of the second half of the twentieth century, they live in communities located in the south of the province of Chaco and in the center and north of the province of Santa Fe. These migrations respond to the search for better working conditions and generate the dismemberment of communities and the formation of new groups of diverse origin, mostly constituting nuclei near important urban centers (Santa Fe and Rosario for example). The Mocovi language is spoken in the provinces of Chaco and Santa Fe (Argentina). In general, in the case of Santa Fe, the Mocovi occupy semi-rural and / or peripheral-urban spaces. The vitality of the language varies according to the geographical region. Gualdieri (2004) considers that in the Chaco area the degree of vitality of the Mocovi language is greater than that of the Santa Fe zone and recognizes that age is the most important variable with which current sociolinguistic behavior is linked. The Mocoví peoples have been going through a long time (and with greater intensity in the Santa Fe area), a process of de-culturalization, which is reflected, among other dimensions, by the progressive loss of the language. In the case of the Mocoví aborigines of the Santa Fe area, the use of this language is restricted to increasingly closed areas. As a consequence of this, a determination of the linguistic spaces circumscribed to the familiar is generated. The language is functional in cases such as the dialogue between older marriages within their homes or the encounter between friends in situations of visits or meetings of few members. The age parameter is transcendental and generational lines can be drawn quite clear to delimit the linguistic behavior of these peoples. Entering the twentieth century, hunting and gathering activities were replaced by work in works. Although it is very difficult to reliably estimate the places where they are settled by the process of ethnic invisibility and cultural assimilation, the Aboriginal Chaco Colony (department Twenty-five of May, Chaco) can be highlighted, in some neighborhoods of Rosario, in the Mocoví district of Recreo ( Gran Santa Fe), in some parts of the province of Buenos Aires, such as the Mocoví Community of Berisso. The current number of Argentines who consider themselves Mocovíes differs according to the source between 5000 and 40 000 people, being about 4500 speakers of the language. Since 1995 the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs (INAI) began to recognize legal status by registering in the National Registry of Indigenous Communities (Renaci) to indigenous communities in Argentina, including Mocoví communities.