Trail of Feathers (31 page)

Ignacio’s wife put her newborn baby into the hammock, suspended across the room. Like many of the other Shuar women, she wore a faded red skirt, and a tee-shirt. She welcomed us, saying they were honoured to give strangers shelter in their Christian home. The Bible, she said, tells us to care for visitors as if they are your own kin. She hurried off to fetch a bowl of
masato
and some meat.

Fifteen minutes later she returned with a gourd of the beverage and a shallow wooden tray, which held a large quantity of rodent meat. As before, the
masato
was drunk first. Then the meat was passed to me. Ignaeio’s wife had a flare for cookery. She had decorated the rim of the dish with the rodent’s tail and feet. I wondered whether I was supposed to eat them. Perhaps, I suggested to myself, they had another purpose. We have all heard of how the Bedouin of Arabia serve camel and sheep eyeballs to important guests. The tradition of eating the eyes came about as a result of a misunderstanding. They were not a delicacy to be eaten at all, rather the eyes were an indication of the freshness of the meat. In a desert climate animal flesh goes bad quickly. A bright eye is a sign that the meat is fresh. British dignitaries visiting Bedouin encampments mistook the eyes for choice morsels, and gulped them down.

Thankfully, everyone steered clear of the rodent’s feet.

‘Tonight we have a special prayer meeting in Church,’ said Ignacio, once we had eaten, ‘we hope that you will join us.’

At San Jose, the busy cycle of village life came to a halt on Saturday night, and didn’t start again until Monday morning. Sunday was for prayer, and prayer alone. Christian evangelism might have come to the land of the Shuar, but some things hadn’t changed. The young men would still creep from the village long before the sun had brought the dawn. With their weapons at the ready, and a little
masato
paste packed in a leaf, they’d go hunting, dogs at their heels.

Although shotguns were the most sought after product from the outside world, they were expensive. And shot had severe disadvantages. It ripped the prey’s flesh to pieces, peppering it with lead. Worse still was the sound. One blast from a gun and all the surrounding wildlife was frightened away.

Ignacio reached up into the rafters and took down his preferred weapon. It was a blowpipe, about ten feet long.

‘I use this to hunt monkey’ he said, holding it to his lips. ‘I tip the darts with
curare
, and make a notch just before the end. When the monkey tries to pull out the dart, it breaks there, leaving the poisoned end in the animal.’

A quiver of darts could be made in a few minutes, tipped with
curare
and with a band of kapok as a flight. The high quality of the weapon was matched by the warrior’s accuracy. The Shuar are regarded as great masters in making and using blowpipes. Most can hit a bird or mammal at a distance of up to a hundred feet.

One story tells of a prominent American ornithologist who was collecting jungle birds in the 1960s, for a museum in the United States. The local people were keen to help him catch specimens, which would later be stuffed. One morning they brought him a selection of dead birds. He refused them politely, explaining that he required specimens without dart holes. Next day the hunters returned with more examples. There were no marks on them at all. The warriors had shot the darts through the birds’ eyes.

At dusk we escorted Ignacio and his wife to the church. My aversion to missionary practice led to a sense of unease. As far as I was concerned, an alien faith was eroding the traditions which had enabled the Shuar to survive for millennia. As we strolled down to the tin-roofed house of worship, Ignacio agreed that there was more illness now, than before.

‘In the old days,’ he said, ‘with feuding between one tribe and another, only the strongest people survived. The
Curandew
could save some people with powerful jungle plants, but anyone with a very bad wound died. The missionaries told us not to use plants, but to take the pills which they bring. Now people are forgetting which plants cure which illness. And,’ Ignacio continued despondently, ‘there’s so much illness.’

I asked what kind of afflictions.

‘Last year tuberculosis came to the village, and then whooping cough,’ he said. ‘More than ten children died. Soon after that, three more died from malaria.’

Ignaeio’s wife looked at the ground, and wiped her fingers over her eyes.

‘Our eldest son died two years ago,’ she said. ‘He was so weak that nothing could save him.’

We entered the church. A number of uneven benches were laid out in rows on the mud floor, facing the front of the room. Although there was no electricity in the village, an expensive-looking hurricane lamp was hanging from the central beam,- a gift from the missionaries. As no one else had yet arrived, Ignacio took the lamp down and lit it. Outside, dusk was turning to darkness, and the jungle’s nocturnal creatures were readying themselves to feast.

Gradually, as darkness cloaked the village, the congregation gath ered at the church. The benches were soon crammed with honest faces. I could almost hear the missionaries bragging. They’d civilised a tribe of head shrinkers, and made God-fearing evangelists out of them.

Dressed in their best clothes, some in Wellington boots, the congregation of San Jose began their evening service with a prayer. They asked that the Devil keep away from their community. Then they thanked God for sending Richard and me to them. That night, as every night, they praised the Lord, fluttering their hands in the air, crying, ‘Hallelujah! Hallelujah!’.

With the hurricane lamp roaring in the rafters they ran about, jerking their arms hysterically, just as the missionaries had taught them to do. Only then, as a tambourine marked out a hypnotic rhythm, did they begin to sing.

They pounded out one hymn after the next, some in their Shuar language,
Achuar
, others in Spanish. The parts I could understand, spoke of truth, justice, temptation and of Jesus. Pausing between hymns, they shrieked in unison, over and over: ‘Hallelujah! Hallelujah!’

The tambourine stirred back into action. The church was soon resounding to a Shuar translation of
When the Saints Come Marching Home
.

Sitting beside me, Richard rolled his eyes. 

‘The ancient Shuar ballads,’ he whispered…

After late morning prayers Enrique took us to meet the village shaman. He lived away from the other houses, in a clearing on the edge of the jungle. It surprised me that such enthusiastic evangelists would still find a role for the
maestro
. Perhaps, I reflected, he was needed for his knowledge of
ayahuasca
. The missionaries had replaced natural remedies with little white pills, but had turned a blind eye to the Vine of the Dead. Mixing mind-altering flora with religion is nothing new. Many faiths throughout history have incorporated hallucinogens into their creed. Among them, the Zoroastrians of Persia, who once used the mysterious plant-based hallucinogen
haoma
in their rituals.

Christianity has accepted hallucinogens, too. Fd heard of the Native American Church, which was founded on the ritualistic use of the peyote cactus. It has more followers today than at any time in its history. The Church’s practitioners believe that the cactus enables them to cure sickness and to speak to Jesus.

Richard told me of a Christian
ayahuasca-using
sect, called Santo Daime.

‘It was started in the 1920s,’ he said, ‘when a rubber-tapper called Raimundo Irineu Serra was invited to take
ayahuasca
by Indians in the Brazilian Amazon. In a vision he saw a beautiful woman. Supposedly she was the Virgin Mary. Irineu called her “Queen of the Forest”.

‘Through visions she taught him hymns,’ he went on. ‘She told him to base a religion on her songs - which became his church’s doctrine. And she ordered him to spread her message to others. Santo Daime is enormously powerful over the border in Brazil,’ said Richard. It’s swept across the US and Europe, too’

‘But the Shuar’s faith is different,’ I said. ‘Evangelism and
ayahuasca
don’t mix, but coexist.’

The Vietnam vet’ swiped a furry caterpillar from his leg.

‘Those missionaries are clever as shit’ he said.
‘Ayahuasca’s
been around a lot longer than they have. Screw with it and they’ll be kicked all the way back to Tallahassee. They know that.’

Richard’s emerald eyes shone with anger.

‘When they messed with the Shuar’ he said, ‘the Spanish and the Incas had their butts kicked. But the evangelists have won the battle, and without a single death. They didn’t need weapons. Theirs was a different kind of war’ he said, tapping a finger to his brow. ‘They fucked with their minds.’

*

Bolts of sunlight ripped through the surrounding canopy, blinding me as I walked. A few feet into the undergrowth and I was gripped by the jungle thirst again. I put it down to dehydration brought on by the overpowering humidity. As I stared up at the light, I glimpsed a mossy branch of a
carapanuaba
tree. On it were growing a dozen orchids with rich yellow petals. Richard identified the alluring flowers as
Mor modes rolfeanum
. He said that each one represented a bird in flight. High above them, a nest of spider monkeys were calling. I wondered if it was their relative whose arm I had eaten two nights before.

Enrique pointed to a long-house in the distance. 

‘That’s where Alberto, the shaman…’

Before he could complete his sentence, a slender man slipped from behind a
cecropia
tree. He was holding a sloth by the armpits. At first I didn’t look at the man, the shaman, as I was so captivated by the sloth. It moved in slow motion, wielding its wiry, hair-covered arms through the air like sickles reaping wheat. Its expression was haunting, wide-eyed with dimpled cheeks. Never had I come across an animal with a face so trusting, in circumstances so uncertain.

As we tramped down the path towards Alberto’s
maloca
, I took my eyes off the sloth, and looked at the shaman. Like the other Shuar, his features were delicate and exact. Had I met Alberto, or any of the other villagers, on the Mongolian Steppes I wouldn’t have looked twice. The only difference was the ring of macaw feathers which crowned him. His face was typically East Asian, testimony to his ancient ancestors’ march across the frozen Bering Straits ten millennia ago. His hands were curiously scarred, their skin chequered with uneven lines.

When Enrique introduced us, I asked what would become of the sloth.

‘I am taking him to Ramon,’ said the shaman, ‘my teacher. He lives two days up the river.’ ‘What will
he
do with it?’ ‘Ramon needs its head,’ said Alberto. Richard silenced me before I could protest. ‘Is your teacher an
ayahuasquero’’
he asked.

Alberto snapped a cecropia twig as he walked, stowing it under his arm.

‘Of course Ram
õ
n’s an
ayahuasquero’
he replied. ‘He’s known throughout Loreto. He’s old, with many children, but his visions are strong. When he takes
ayahuasca
, his spirit flies across the jungle.’

‘He flies?’

‘Yes,’ said Alberto, ‘he flies … over the trees, across the water, like a bird, to the other world. To the real world. There is no greater
ayahuasquero
alive. Some people say that at night he flies…’

‘In his mind?’

‘Not only in his mind,’ said Alberto. ‘Por
el aire
, through the air.’

A rush of blood warmed my back. Although I disliked the idea of taking the sloth’s head, the thought of the great
ayahuasquero
was uplifting.

The shaman welcomed us to his house. He led the way up the ladder onto the bamboo floor. I climbed up behind him, followed by Enrique and Richard. The sloth was deposited in one corner with the
cecropia
branch. He curled an arm around the leaves, drowsily hooking them up to his mouth.

No
masato
was served at the shaman’s
maloca
. He was not married and so had no one to prepare it. I thanked God for his bachelorhood. A pot had been left in the middle of the room. Inside it were a dozen or so long flowers, yellowy-orange in colour. I recognised them as
datura
, the plant of which Cabieses had forewarned me. He had called
datura’s
tubular flower ‘The Trumpet of the Devil’. I learned later that, in Europe, they are sometimes known as ‘Angels’ Trumpets’.

Alberto noticed my interest in the flowers.

The missionaries bring bottles of syrup and pink and white pills’ he said, ‘but they have nothing as powerful as
toé, datura
. Their medicine is like a child before it has learned to walk. It has hope, but is so young and frail.’

I made note of Alberto’s remarks. But it wasn’t until I read a book by Mark Plotkin weeks later, that I realised how right he was. Plotkin (in
Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice)
says that of the world’s 250,000 or so plant species, only about 5000 have been screened in the laboratory to determine their therapeutic potential. There are, he says, 120 plant-based prescription drugs currently on the market. They are derived from only 95 species.

The shaman picked one of the
datura
flowers from the pan and held it in his fingers.

‘To
é
,
’ he said, ‘it can give life or take life. Like
ayahuasca
, we trust it and have learned from it. And we have used it to travel, to fly…’

'To fly to Jesus,’ said Enrique.

Alberto regarded the chief with a poisoned stare. I sensed his hatred of the missionaries, and all they had brought. He invited me to take
datura
with him; he was about to prepare some. Richard, a die-hard test pilot when it came to hallucinogens, backed away. He added to Cabieses’ warning.

‘Half a cup of the stuff and you’ll be dicing with the fuckin’ Devil,’ he said. ‘It’ll send you flying up through the trees, over the clouds, to Lalaland.’