Chachi

By IAN SKOGGARD

Cayapa, Chachi, Kayapa, Nigua, Cha’pallachi, Cha’pa

The Chachi live along the Rio Cayapas and its tributaries in northwest Esmeraldas Province, Ecuador. Their self-ascribed name, “Chachi” means “true people.” The Chachi are among the last aboriginal groups in western Ecuador. The confluence of the Cayapas and Santiago Rivers lies at 1° 5’ north latitude and 78° 59’ west longitude. The area is tropical rain forest with temperatures ranging from a nighttime 65° to 75° Fahrenheit and daytime of 70° to 90° (21 to 25 degrees Celsius.) Rain is a daily occurrence and blue skies are rare. Estimates of annual rainfall are between 24.63 and 26.46 feet.

In 1998 there were 8040 individuals living in 1457 families.

The Chachi language, Cha'palaachi, is in the Barbacoan linguistic stock of the Paezan subfamily and Macro-Chibchan family. Some linguists see a similarity with Mayan language. Cha'palaachi has an agglutinative morphology, case marking, and a Subject-Object-Verb word order. It is written using the Latin alphabet.

Chachi history and origins is somewhat obscure. Chachi oral tradition claims a highland origin in the Ibarra region. Prompted by the Spanish invasion in the 1530s, they migrated to their present home, displacing the Indios Bravos, the original inhabitants. One story has them arriving by the sea. However some ethnohistorians argue a longer settlement history in the region and Chachi claims of an Andes origin to be nativist mythmaking. They see what appeared to be abandoned villages closer to the mountains are in fact uninhabited ceremonial centers. They offer an alternative scenario that the Chachi occupied the coastal regions but were pushed up river by growing population of marooned slaves. The earliest contact with the Spanish occurred in the 1590s when a Chachi chief visited a Spanish outpost in the Andes to request aid against incursions by coastal peoples. In 1597, the Spanish priest Gaspar de Torres descended into Chachi country to proselytize and baptize villagers. Early Spanish accounts place the Chachi on the upper Santiago River. In 1809, the traveler W. B. Stevenson found Chachi living along the Cayapas River, suggesting they migrated there in the late 18th Century. According to archaeological evidence, the Chachi settlements on the Cayapas River are recent and support a migrant history.

The Chachi live along the rivers and tributaries of the Cayapas basin. The interior is uninhabited and travel is difficult. The rivers provide the main avenues of communication and commerce. Single homesteads are found up and down the river banks with clearings to grow vegetables and sugar cane. The Chachi house is rectangular in shape, some as large as 90 by 40 feet, and made from Guayacan hardwood, which is somewhat resistant to termites. Because of frequent floods, homes are built off the ground using a post and beam construction with bamboo stringers and palm wood flooring. A gabled roof is thatched with tagua palm. There are no walls. The underside is used for storage.

Fishing, hunting and farming are the main subsistence activities. The Chachi grow maize, plantain, sugar cane, sweet manioc, taro-like tuber, squash, pineapple, beans, and bananas. Fruits grown include papaya, oranges, lemons, sapote, guabo, and cherimoya (custard apples). The major staple is plantain which is usually boiled green and then mashed to form a pulp to which other ingredients such as fish and meat can be added. Ripe plantain is eaten raw. Pigs are raised in remote land in the interior. Men hunt on a regular basis such game as large and small rodents, jaguars, pumas, monkeys, squirrels and armadillos. The Chachi also eat toucans, wild turkeys, and hawks. Fish and shellfish are caught by a variety of methods using nets, spears, traps, drugs, hooks, and even dynamite.

At one time, the hard tagua nut used for shirt buttons before it was replaced by plastic provided a source of income. Between the world wars, rubber became an important commodity. After the Second World War, bananas became the major export item. Hardwood trees are also a cash crop.

Canoe-making is a major manufacturing activity, a skill that men learn at an early age. Canoes are made on site from timber cut in the interior using an ax and adz. Paddles are fashioned using a machete. Other objects made from wood are a variety of benches, dolls, and musical instruments. Baskets are made from materials from various plants. Utensils are made from gourds and clay. Chachi grow their own cotton from which they spin yarn and weave cloth. Since the 1960s, the Chachi have relied more on trade to secure readymade utensils and clothing.

The rivers are avenues for commerce. Chachi buy sewing machines, shotguns, cloth, watches, ready-made clothes, cosmetics, medicine, lamps, rice, sugar, and soft drinks,

Women do housework, cook, childcare, spin and weave cloth, make baskets, mats, fans and pots. Women and men work the fields together. Men hunt and fish, and women gather wild foods.

According to government, the Chachi tribal sections own the land in their territory. Any outsider must buy or rent the land from them in order to use it. Chachi can obtain extra land by clearing the forest. As there are no deeds to land, intensively working the land is the surest means to maintain ownership. A household’s landholdings are usually scattered, sometimes a day’s travel away and requiring a temporary shelter on the site. Land can be given to young men as an early inheritance. Poaching by outsiders is a problem.

The main kin group is the kindred. Descent is bilateral and residence is mostly bilocal with some neolocality. The Chachi have adopted the Spanish compadrazgo system of relationships, which intensify existing kinship relationships or create altogether new relationships. An example of the latter is a traveling merchant from the coast may ask to become a compadre of a local Chachi resident, in order to have access to free meals and accommodation. Compadrazgo relationships are formed at baptism, nail-cutting ceremonies and marriage.

Chachi kinship terminology is a basic bi-Eskimo system with some Hawaiian cousin terms, although the latter seems to have changed over time to an Iroquois type of cousin terminology. For example, Barrett (1909) recorded no distinction between the terms for mother’s or father’s sisters, or between father’s or mother’s brothers, whereas Altschuler’s (1965) does show unique terms for each. Altschuler’s data also shows equal terms for cross-cousins and distinct terms for parallel cousins.

Courtship involves nightly visitations, singing of love-songs, until a marriage announcement is made. Wife-capture is not uncommon. Fiestas are an opportunity for couples to meet and begin their courting. In some cases a local official is asked to arrange a marriage. Aging bachelors might be surprised with a bride by impatient kinsfolk. Widows and widowers can remarry. Divorce is made difficult, especially for women, but is not impossible. Wealthy individuals can have more than one wife. Weddings are an occasion for feasting and dancing

Relationships within the family are affectionate and close. Children are taught to respect their parents. Sibling relationships are particularly close. Brothers learn to work together. Men and women work the fields together. The wife controls the purse strings. Grandparents help with household chores and childcare. The domestic unit can include grandparents or in-laws and other relatives, who may be temporary residents. Nuclear family units occupy their own space in the house and will cook and eat separately from each other.

Only children who have consistently helped work the land will inherit it.

Children are wanted and indulged, albeit teased by adults. Punishment is rare. Infants and toddlers are confined in the house for safety reasons. Toilet training occurs early before infants can control themselves. Children begin wearing adult clothing at age three. Strict modesty is practiced from age five on. Boys begin school at seven or eight years of age, whereas girls remain in the household to do chores and childcare, and learn to make pottery, baskets, and other articles. There are no rites recognizing puberty for boys or girls. Boys begin to learn the skill of canoe making, often fashioning their own small-scale replica. Attaining the skill of canoe workmanship is one sign of adulthood. No shame is accorded menstrual discharge and sexual activity begins after menarche.

The Chachi are divided into are four territorial sections, each centered on a ceremonial center, where fiestas are held and deceased members of the section are buried. The number of sections has grown from one when Stevenson visited in 1809, to three when Barrett did his fieldwork in 1909, and to four at the time of Altschuler’s fieldwork in 1960.

The Chachi are largely self-governing. Each territorial section has three levels of officials, including a hereditary chief, or uñi (gobernador in Spanish), sub-chief, or casawa’lyī (gobernador nuevo), and officers of the law (tca’itala), who help settle disputes, maintain order, especially at fiestas, and arrange marriages.

The chief, whose authority is supreme, adjudicates disputes and metes out punishments. The tca’itala help to apprehend the offender and bring him or her to the chief’s house where the case is heard. Rules regarding marital relations are strict, although difficult to enforce. Theft and murder are rare.

Conflict occurs over marriage, sexual transgressions, and land. Because claims to land are based both on kinship and labor, conflicts over land use are common, although usually a compromise solution is reached. Cases of incest, adultery and polygyny are clearer cut with regard to right and wrong, however punishment is hard to carry out.

The Chachi beliefs are a syncretic mix of Catholicism and animism. They faithfully follow the sacramental rites of baptism, marriage and burials. They do not practice confession. Each tribal group has their own church where they practice the rites. The Chachi take seriously the moral proscriptions of the Catholic Church, especially those concerned with sexual behavior. They regard the mulattos and whites as grave sinners and that only they, the Chachi go to heaven. The Chachi also believe that each and every animate being, including humans, have a soul, which can leave the body at anytime and will remain on earth after death. Spirits can occupy inanimate or animate objects.

The shaman can heal as well as kill people. Anyone may become a shaman through an apprenticeship and eventually acquiring one’s own special spirit. Shamans also exorcise spirits from homes and places by blowing tobacco smoke and spraying alcohol concoctions. A shaman’s tool kit includes a wand, a bottle of rum and palm juice decoction, and a number of smooth black stones.

Every infant within a few months of birth is baptized by a priest. The child’s godparents (compadres) is chosen at this time. Easter is the most important holiday followed by Christmas and both are the occasions for feasting. The Easter fiesta observed by Barrett lasted five days. It involved praying the rosary, penitential rites of self-mortification using paddles and whips, dancing, procession of saints, and feasting.

The Chachi artifacts are highly decorated. They incorporate geometric and figurative designs in their mats, baskets and cloth, and painting on pottery, paddles and canoes. There is also a tradition of body painting. Chachi carve a variety of dolls in shape of humans and animals. Musical instruments include drums, rattles, flutes and xylophones.

Hot beeswax and leaves are applied to wounds. Specialists set broken bones. Illness is attributed to soul loss, spirit possession, or witchcraft, for which a shaman is consulted. Malevolent spirits come from small stones, fragments of ancient pottery, and animals. Shamans use magical stones, figurines, and words to affect a cure. Western medicine is also used sometimes together with native cures.

There are many causes of death, but sin is not one of them. The punishment of sins takes place after death. At death the family gathers and cleans the body, and dresses it in its finest clothing. The corpse is then placed in a coffin. Wailing summons all neighbors to the home. Games and music are part of the funeral ceremony. The coffin is then transported to the ceremonial center where it is interred. Infants are buried inside the church and adults are buried just outside it in consecrated ground. One of the three personal souls goes to heaven after being judged and punished by Jesus. Another soul wanders the earth bringing harm to those it encounters. The third soul remains in the grave. Family members usually abandon the house if the deceased was an important person. A memorial feast is given several years after death.

Altschuler, Milton. 1964. The Cayapa: A Study n Legal Behavior. Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan.

Barrett, Samuel Alfred. 1925. The Cayapas Indians of Ecuador. Indian Notes and Monographs, No. 40. New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation.

De Boer, Warren. 1995. Returning to the Pueblo Viejo: history and the archeology of the Chachi (Ecuador). In Peter W. Stahl, ed. Archeology in the Lowland American Tropics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 243-262

Ecuador Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos. 2012. Nacionalidad Chachi. http://www.inec.gob.ec/inec/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=420&func=startdown&id=1076&lang=es. Accessed August 14, 2012.

Moreno Navarro, Isidoro. 1979. Ecología y sociedad de los Cayapas de Esmeraldas: los patrones de asentamiento. Paris: Société des Américanistes.

This cultural summary was written by Ian Skoggard in May, 2012.