The Why of Woo

As any weary parent can attest, two-year-olds are famously annoying for various perverse habits, not least their repetitive persistence in asking Why?  It could be argued that such interminable questioning never really ceases, but rather continues and becomes more complex and nuanced as we age.  Wondering why may be one of the defining characteristics of humans, a common trait of our species that drives much of our laudable creativity - and possibly our ultimate downfall.

For the very tiny (but increasing) percentage of humanity that is becoming aware of several self-induced catastrophes which are rapidly converging and threatening our increasingly precarious existence – certainly, civilization’s collapse, if not extinction of the entire biosphere - the question of why we are willfully committing ecocide often looms large.  The prospect of extinction seems to concentrate the mind marvelously, and generates a powerful urge to understand why and how we have managed to blunder into overshoot with our eyes wide open.  Once this is acknowledged, other questions tend to follow in a feverish rush – could this have been averted?  Is there something inherent in our genetic tendencies that leads inexorably to heedless growth?  If so, could we learn - or somehow evolve - to behave sustainably instead?

Among those disenchanted with the “progress” of modern industrial civilization fueled by capitalism (pollution, habitat destruction, social and economic inequality, and so forth), there has long existed a tendency to romanticize the “Noble Savage” as exemplifying a primitive and peaceful version of human social organization, more in harmony with the natural world and respectful of diversity.  Added to that fantasy now is a desperation that derives from the recent crescendo of dire warnings from climate scientists and ecologists.  Since this desire is faith-based and stubbornly rejects a wealth of evidence persuasively indicating that tribal life (whether agricultural or nomadic hunter-gatherer) was so often defined by violent conflict and conquest as to be considered universal, the adherence to those beliefs has become a secular religion.  Faith that “consciousness” can be deliberately altered by wishful thinking betrays a truly pathetic and sophomoric understanding of the tenets of biological evolution.  Such a quasi-religion can be designated Woo, and its proponents the Woo Woo.  That’s how I think of it, anyway.

There are innumerable examples of indigenous cultures that the Woo Woo claim to be peaceful and sustainable, but simply weren’t - although no amount of dissenting facts amassed from research can dissuade them otherwise.  It helps that they usually refuse to read any history, anthropology, archaeology, or primary sources and instead, stick to Woo Woo fiction writers who pitch myths as self-evident truths, merrily distorting the historical record to suit their hopeful readership.

Probably most people who have bothered to notice that we are destroying the biosphere detest this so much (a sentiment with which I heartily concur) that they are looking for salvation in some non-existent cultural prototype.  The problem with that is, when you carefully examine any culture without the rose-colored glasses, they look suspiciously JUST LIKE US.  Their herd instinct to belong (and to dehumanize the foreigner), impulse to amass material goods, and desire for status, is identical in intent if not scale.  It’s amazing how often the WooWoo forget that Europeans didn’t invent slavery, it existed, it was the norm for millennia, including all over Asia and among the indigenous Americas – and that’s just enslavement of other ethnic groups.  Enslavement of women and children is more frequent, and it was industrial civilization that abolished slavery and child labor, and established civil rights, enshrined in law.

Why does this matter?  There’s nothing wrong with harboring hope when it is based on a rational interpretation of what can reasonably be expected.  But to continue to hope when every trend, past and present, gives no basis for it is delusional.  Hope when it is accompanied by this peculiar delirium becomes what is derogatively referred to as hopium.  And despite the accusation that hopelessness leads to paralysis, it can be argued that the opposite is the case.  Hopium leads people to think that something will save us, and thus to do nothing substantive other than write on the internet and sign petitions.  Hopium leads to faith that no radical change or sacrifice needs to be made, because something external will rescue us - technology or outerspace aliens or Jesus or just as ridiculously, evolution itself.  Closely allied in dubious scholarship is  the conviction that the permanently elusive “change of consciousness” will transform the world.  The unsubstantiated belief that humans are capable of better, purer selves than those that now dominate the board rooms, executive political offices and military is another form of hopium…a ubiquitous tenet of the insidious, surreptitious religion called Woo.

Yesterday for the first time, I came across a Colombian tribe that is wildly popular with the Woo Woo, the Kogi.  Occasionally the concession is made that the Australian aboriginals, the Olmec and the Anasazi, did collapse due to overshoot - however the argument is that they learned from the experience and thus are proof that humans are not inherently doomed.  (There’s Hope!)  The Kogi are different in that it was an outside force - the Spanish - who decimated their earlier society, the Tairona.  My purpose in presenting research about the Kogi, past and present, is not to disparage them in any way, rather it is to highlight the difference between the reality of their culture – which has elements that would clearly be considered less-than-desirable by most objective standards - and the Woo Woo depiction of it.  The fairytale goes that the Kogi deliberately reject the evils of modern society in an arrangement that those corrupted, privileged heirs to white patriarchy could and should aspire to emulate.

Nobody would want to exonerate pillaging invaders and murderous conquerors, or diminish the severity of the suffering of displaced peoples.  The point I am trying to make is that the urge to expand, grow, dominate, and prevail is a human behavior evident in every tribe, group, society, economic system or culture.  It’s possible that, had the Spaniards not arrived and vanquished the populations in present-day Colombia in the most brutal massacres, sooner or later the Tairona and other indigenous nations would have gone the way of the Aztecs and Incas on their own.  The level of stratification in wealth and power rivaled the present-day, and the land was densely populated.  The degree to which materialism (disguised as spirituality) dominated the zeitgeist, was no different than today.

To summarize, what I found is that present-day Kogi derived from a society obsessed with material goods, personal adornment and status.  Individuals remain in thrall of the supernatural powers wielded by a few elite priests, who control them with threats of disease and death.  They Kogi continue with the rigidly misogynist traditions they inherited from their ancestors, with the sexes living strictly separate lives.  The training of children from infancy to be priests would be considered extreme ritual child abuse in most parts of the world…and PETA would not have approved of the bird abuse by the Tairona.  Today’s survivors eek out a fragile, anxious existence in an area that was deforested by their ancestors 2,000 years ago, where little wildlife remains.  Across South and Central American, many pre-Colombian societies shared a worship of the sun, moon, rivers, mountains and other aspects of Nature, to which they routinely offered ritual sacrifice of prisoners of war, slaves, children and young girls.

Below are some photos of the hauntingly beautiful Lost City.

“This remote site, founded around 800 AD, was rediscovered by archaeologists in the 1970s after gold idols and other objects began to show up for sale in Colombian markets. It was the largest center of a culture called the Tairona that emerged around 200 AD and endured until the Spanish conquest. Local Indians call the site Teyuna. In its prime the town had perhaps 2,000 inhabitants. Ciudad Perdida is now the focus of a major preservation effort of the Global Heritage Fund.” ~ Source

 “The site is in mountainous terrain and is centered around 169 stone terraces.”

 “The site can be reached only along this ancient road, with more than a thousand stone steps.”

“Like so much else about Colombia, it was caught up in and damaged by the civil war between the government and the alliance of leftist rebels and drug traffickers. In 2003, eight tourists visiting the site were kidnapped by rebels and held hostage for three months.”  The golden pendant is in the Louvre.

Below I have copied excerpts with links from some of the most interesting research I have found about both the ancient Tairona and the Kogi, for those who would like to read that sort of thing.  If not, you can skip to a documentary embedded at the bottom of the post, America Before Columbus.  Seems like a great film for Thanksgiving weekend!  Photos are from a 2008 edition of Smithsonian Magazine. I absolutely do not begrudge the Tairona access to watches, cell phones, the electricity evident in the light switch and wires bisecting the landscape, or the new government-subsidized health clinic pictured below.  But it does undercut the idea that they are or want to reject the products derived from industrial civilization.

The Tairona were prolific artisans, whose skill in sculpting gold is unrivaled.  It turns out that they were already fierce warriors long before contact with Europeans, which enabled them to rebel against the Spanish invasion for almost a century until they were finally defeated.  Far from walking away from civilization voluntarily, the ancestors of the Kogi fled into mountainous jungles too dense and steep for the Spaniards to pursue.  In the last decades to their “younger brothers” – us – to preserve the earth, much admired by the Woo Woo, has its roots in the profound trauma they suffered at the hands of the Spanish, which they remember as if it were yesterday.  Their current condition is more like a five-century long case of post-traumatic stress syndrome than spiritual enlightenment - and I say this with great respect for one of the major basis for their warnings to the world – their trees are dying.

The following description of the Kogi is taken from a blogpost which is representative of a typical Woo Woo snapshot of tribal life:

“The Kogi know secrets about nature that would make our scientists rethink their ideas on the environment and the universe. They have a presence about them that commands respect. The power of their mind is beyond comprehension.”

“Why do they call themselves the Elder Brothers and how can we learn to live in the spiritual world that this lost tribe lives in? Eight years ago I saw an amazing video called ‘From the Heart of the World, The Elder Brothers Warning.’ It was about a unique indigenous community that lived in Northern Colombia who say they are keeping the world in balance. I was so impressed with these people because they are still living with the same spiritual values and traditions of their ancestors. But the ecological warning the Kogi shared touched a nerve and made me realize they may be right.”

There is nothing in these passages that is exactly false, although it is unsubstantiated whether the Kogi “know secrets about nature that would make our scientists rethink...”.  I cannot fathom what “...the power of their mind is beyond comprehension...” could possibly mean, but what is true is also the part that torpedoes the adulation (or would, if the Woo Woo bothered to look beyond their preconceived notions) – the Kogi are “…still living with the same spiritual values and traditions”.  The thing is, those traditional values and traditions are not exactly what the Woo Woo value.

The Kogi, like the Tairona they descend from, live in a rigidly hierarchical society - amid the desolation of a thousand years of slash-and-burn agriculture, which began long before the Spanish conquest, that has denuded the mountains of forest.  But the Blogger blithely continuess:

“The Kogi believe they are the ‘Elder Brothers’, the guardians of life on Earth. ‘…Through their mind power and meditation they keep the world in balance. They live in ‘Aluna,’ an inner world of thought and potential. They are now concerned because their Mountain is dying.”

“Everything about their history and religion is passed down through oral instructions and their lives are run by the spiritual leaders or Shamans named ‘Mamas.’ The Kogi Mamas are chosen from birth and spend the first nine years of childhood in a cave in total darkness learning the ancient secrets of the spiritual world or Aluna. They are the priests and judges who control Kogi society. All major decisions and shamanic work are done by Divination. All is the world of Aluna, so the Mamas see a reflection of the physical world first in the spiritual world. If Aluna is the Mother, then the Kogi listen to the Mother by divining. This lost technique of divination is what keeps the Kogi world in balance and order. The Mamas are worried that the ‘Younger Brother’ has not heeded the first warning. If the Sierra Nevada or the Mother dies, the world will also die.”

Much is made of the worship of the “Mother” as though that implies the Kogi aren’t patriarchal.  The author doesn’t mention that men completely dominate women, there are all sorts of restrictions for them that do not apply to men, and further, it presents the “spirituality” as something rather wonderful when it was, and remains, the mechanism by which the people are subjugated by the elite.  She also glosses over a truly horrendous forced isolation of selected children from birth.

Even The National Geographic evades what amounts to kidnapping and child abuse by calling it “arduous initiation”.

“In an arduous process of initiation that can take up to 18 years, young acolytes are taught the values of their society, among them the notion that their spiritual work alone maintains the cosmic (or as we might say, ecological) balance.”

A 2010 essay about the Kogi documentary states:

“Concealed in the harsh mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta of northern Colombia, live the indigenous Kogi Indians. It is these mountains the Kogi have occupied since the first century. Surviving through foreign invasions, missionary incursions, and environmental changes, the culture of the Kogi remains fully intact. Over 1,000 years later, the Kogi continue to sustain their traditional culture by keeping the traditions of their ancestors. Although there are no extensive records or details of the Kogi way of life, the art and ancient ruins that have been unearthed aid in telling the story of this reclusive people. However, scholars' primary focus is on the way the Kogi view nature and the environment. As a people who rely on the mountains, the role of the environment is invaluable for surviving and preserving the Kogi's cultural identity.”

“…The Kogi, for the most part have remained unchanged for nearly 1000 years. Despite struggles with Spanish invasions, the Colombian government, and modern day guerillas, the Kogi culture has resisted and remained intact. Their devotion to their land and the well-being of Mother Earth is unwavering which is what makes them so unique and so capable of resisting incursions. Their wisdom and spirituality, perhaps never heard of before is insightful and yes, prophetic. What is most impressive is that the Kogi are able to tell the state of Mother Earth just from the changes they are experiencing on their land. They know that it is the greed and disregard for Mother Earth’s well-being that will eventually destroy the world if the nations of the world do not do something about it.”

A very recent article (October 29) What Colombia’s Kogi People can teach us about the environment in the Guardian gives some background:

“Deep in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains, surrounded by jungle (and guerrillas, tomb raiders and drug traffickers), live 20,000 indigenous Kogi people. A culturally intact pre-Colombian society, they've lived in seclusion since the Spanish conquest 500 years ago. Highly attuned to nature, the Kogi believe they exist to care for the world – a world they fear we are destroying.”

“In 1990, in a celebrated BBC documentary, the Kogi made contact with the outside world to warn industrialised societies of the potentially catastrophic future facing the planet if we don’t change our ways.”

“They watched, waited and listened to nature. They witnessed landslides, floods, deforestation, the drying up of lakes and rivers, the stripping bare of mountain tops, the dying of trees. The Sierra Nevada, because of its unique ecological structure, mirrors the rest of the planet – bad news for us.”

“The Kogi don't understand why their words went unheeded, why people did not understand that the earth is a living body and if we damage part of it, we damage the whole body.”

“Twenty-three years later they summoned filmmaker Alan Ereira back to their home to renew the message: this time the leaders, the Kogi Mama (the name means enlightened ones), set out to show in a visceral way the delicate and critical interconnections that exist between the natural world.”

“The resulting film, Aluna, takes us into the world of the Kogi. At the heart of the tribe’s belief system is ‘Aluna’ – a kind of cosmic consciousness that is the source of all life and intelligence and the mind inside nature too. ‘Aluna is something that is thinking and has self-knowledge. It’s self-aware and alive.’ says Ereira. ‘All indigenous people believe this, historically. It's absolutely universal.’”

“Many Kogi Mama are raised in darkness for their formative years to learn to connect with this cosmic consciousness and, vitally, to respond to its needs in order to keep the world in balance. ‘Aluna needs the human mind to participate in the world – because the thing about a human mind is that it’s in a body,’ explains Ereira. ‘Communicating with the cosmic mind is what a human being’s job is as far as the Kogi are concerned.’”

“The Kogi people believe that when time began the planet’s ‘mother’ laid an invisible black thread linking special sites along the coast, which are, in turn, connected to locations in the mountains. What happens in one specific site is, they say, echoed in another miles away. Keen to illustrate this they devised a plan to lay a gold thread showing the connections that exist between special sites.

They want to show urgently that the damage caused by logging, mining, the building of power stations, roads and the construction of ports along the coast and at the mouths of rivers – in short expressions of global capitalism that result in the destruction of natural resources – affects what happens at the top of the mountain. Once white-capped peaks are now brown and bare, lakes are parched and the trees and vegetation vital to them are withering.”

“‘The big thing in coastal development in this area is the ‘mega-projects’, especially the vast expansion of port facilities and associated extensive infrastructure to link new ports to large-scale coal and metals extraction and industrial plant such as aluminium smelters,’ says Ereira.”

“In a poignant scene in the film, CNN footage from September 2006 shows the Kogi walking for miles to protest against the draining of lagoons to make way for the construction of Puerta Brisa, a port to support Colombia's mining industry.”

“What happens at the river estuary affects what happens at the source, they say, over and over again. ‘The Kogi believe that the estuary provides evaporation that becomes deposited at the river source. So if you dry up the estuary you dry up the whole of the river source,’ says Ereira.”

“In the film, the views of the Kogi are backed up by a specialist in ecosystem restoration, a professor of zoology and a world leader in marine biology. ‘Along this stretch of coastline, you have a microcosm for what is happening in the Caribbean and also on the rest of the planet,’ says the latter, Alex Rogers, of Oxford University, on camera. ‘Their view that all these activities are having an impact at a larger scale are quite right.’”

“It’s not all doom and gloom: the Kogi end the film on a message of hope: don’t abandon your lives, they say, just protect the rivers. But how to do that? One way forward is to engage the Kogi (and other indigenous communities who have an understanding of environmental impacts) in environmental assessment plans. The Tairona Heritage Trust has also been set up to support projects proposed by the Mamas. But Ereira stresses, ‘The Mamas are very clear about how we should take notice of what they say. Listen carefully, think, make our own decisions. They don’t want to tell us what to do.’”

“‘I would hope that ordinary people will come away from the film feeling empowered to express what they already know – which is that the planet is alive and feels what we do to it,’ he says.”

“‘Everybody who is a gardener in this country already has a Kogi relationship to the earth but they don’t necessarily have a language to express that. They have an empathetic relationship to the land and what grows on it, and that empathy is what we have build on.’”

Unfortunately, there is no way to protect the rivers without abandoing our lives.  It is our lives - so many - and the way we live them that is killing the rivers, the trees, and everything else.

The Museo del Oro website has some revealing contemporaneous translations:

“This can be seen in the description by the chronicler Friar Pedro Simón (1574 - 1628?) of the Caldera valley on the northern slope of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, even though it has never been possible to identify exactly where this valley was....‘And if there really is a paradise on earth in these indian lands, then this could be it……, this place which has been given two names by us, Caldera and San Marcos Valley. It is crowned by high peaks, and from the summit to the very depths there must be eight leagues, in places less, with crystal-clear gold water in the streams (which slither like glass snakes down from the peaks to the very bottom of the valley), the ridges and deep gorges all covered by large indian villages, with the smiling faces of the indians themselves visible everywhere, more than a thousand large houses, each one inhabited by a family. But the most pleasing sight was the large number of plants, maize, sweet potato, cassava, yams, pumpkins, chillies, cotton fields and groves of trees, almost all of them fruit trees, with apples, papayas, guavas, plums, pine nuts, bananas and many others, also timber for their homes and for burning in the ‘devil’s huts’, where […] the fires were kept burning all the time with smelly wood, in these huts and in others where they kept their jewellery, feathers and blankets and where they held their strangely grand parties and dances […], cleanliness and curiosity, as in the yards that were paved with enormous polished stones, their seats likewise made of stone, or their paths a third of which are paved with slabs. In one village there was a well-carved stairway with six or seven steps a ‘vara’ high, and another narrow one leading up to it where they stood to watch the parties that were held down below in a large, well-paved yard. Sometimes I speak in the past and sometimes in the present, because some of these things are still there but others have disappeared without trace’.”

“‘But what stands out above all the cleanliness and curiosity of these people are the blankets woven in various colours on the loom. There was no indian or woman who did not have sets of jewels, ear rings, necklaces, crowns or rings for the lower lip, all made of fine gold, and fine, well-cut stones and strings of beads. All the young girls wore four or six gold necklaces weighing from twelve to fifteen ‘castellanos’. Their everyday clothes consist of two painted cotton blankets; when they walk, they carry fans made from palm and feathers. They made large pools by hand in the streams, for bathing in’.”

From the Colombian Institute for Anthropoly and History:

“There were so many things made from feathers and they were all so curious that I really cannot recall them all: hoods in the form of ‘mucetas’, roses, flowers, fans, winnows, bodices covered with feathers, large 'mohanes' covered likewise with feathers or with precious stones, lined bonnets, tiger-skin suits. They bred parrots, macaws and hummingbirds just for the feathers, which they plucked every year.  Others they killed with blow guns and slender arrows for the same purpose….”.

“….The women spun rapidly and finely, while the men wove slowly and very curiously. One soldier said he had seen an apiary in that valley with more than eighty thousand hives, and in fact there were ten thousand houses and in each one there were upwards of ten people. There were large pots or pitchers that they made very sweet honey in, because it came from the flower of the guama tree, tiny bees, not in honeycombs but in large wax bags that smelled of flowers. There must have been around two hundred and fifty villages and they all obeyed a chieftain called Guacanaoma, although each one had its own chieftain or ‘mohan’. In fact, the whole of Caldera was one long party, with dancing, cleanliness, delight and laziness…”

From wikipedia:

“Tairona was a group of chiefdoms in the region of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in present-day Cesar, Magdalena and La Guajira Departments of Colombia, South America, which goes back at least to the 1st century CE and had significant demographic growth around the 11th century.”

“The Tairona people formed one of the two principal linguistic groups of the Chibcha family, the other being the Muisca. Genetic and archaeological evidence shows a relatively dense occupation of the region by at least 200 BC. Pollen data compiled by Luisa Fernanda Herrera in the 1980 shows considerable deforestation and the use of cultigens such as yuca and maiz since possibly 1200 BC.”

“However, occupation of the Colombian Caribbean coast by sedentary or semi-sedentary populations have been documented to have occurred by c. 4000 BCE. Ethnohistorical data shows that initial contact with the Spanish was tolerated by the Tairona but by the 1600 CE confrontations built and a small part of the Tairona population moved to the higher stretches of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. This movement allowed them to evade the worst of the Spanish colonial system during the 17th and 18th centuries. The indigenous Kogui, Wiwa, Arhuacos (Ijka, Ifca) and Cancuamo people who live in the area today are believed to be direct descendants of the Tairona.”

From the Tairona Heritage Trust website:

“The Circum-Caribbean tribes which Steward placed at the top of a cultural hierarchy existent at the time of the Conquest included those Chibcha speaking groups which inhabited the northern part of South America, and extended into Central America. The Tairona civilization belonged to this Chibcha group.”

“The Chibchas were one of successive waves of migrating groups. The Mesoamericans (Indians originally inhabiting Central America),who arrived in approximately 1200 B.C., introduced the cultivation of corn, and were followed by a second wave in 500 B.C. Between 400 and 300 B.C., the Chibchas travelled from Nicaragua and Honduras and reached Colombia shortly before the Arawaks arrived from the south (Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay). Near the end of the first millennium A.D., the warlike Caribs migrated from the Caribbean, supplanting the Chibchas in the lowlands and forcing them to move to higher elevations. By the 1500’s, the Chibchas, were divided into two principal groups: the Muisca, located in the plateaus of Cundinamarca and Boyacá , and the Tairona, who settled along the northern spur of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the present-day La Guajira Department. The Tairona formed a confederation of two groups, one in the Caribbean lowlands and the other in the highlands of contemporary Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The lowlands Tairona fished and produced salt, which they traded for cotton cloth and blankets with their highlands counterparts. Both groups lived in numerous, well-organized towns connected by stone roads.”

The Taironas

“Steward's view that the Tairona, as Circum-Caribbeans, were at the pinnacle of American cultural development at the time of the Spanish Invasion, is endorsed by Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff who described them as '... a native tribe which had reached a level of cultural complexity equal, if not superior, to the Muisca culture of the Andean highlands of the interior.' (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1974: 290). (Reichel-Dolmatoff (1912-1994) will be quoted extensively in these pages. An Austrian emigré to Colombia, he and his wife Alicia did anthropological and archaeological fieldwork all over Colombia. He started doing fieldwork in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the 1940's and continued through to the 1970's. His work was largely published by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), both in English and Spanish, and his ethnographies of the Kogi are the definitive work about them. Prior to his work, Preuss had studied the Kogi at the turn of the century, but for only a short period, for most of which he was ill. Reichel-Dolmatoff can lay claim to being the founding father of Colombian anthropology.) At the time of Invasion, they possessed most of the Circum-Caribbean features mentioned in the previous document, to which can be added goldsmithing ability which still arouses the admiration of contemporary goldsmiths who try, unsuccessfully, to replicate the refinement of their original pieces.”

“In general, the Circum-Caribbeans ‘suffered from the European Conquest perhaps more drastically than any other American Indians. They became ethnographically, if not biologically, extinct, in the Antilles, Venezuela and much of Colombia. Only fragments survive in isolated areas of Colombia and of Central America. Many of the survivors retain a predominantly Indian culture, but it lacks all essential features of the native Circum-Caribbean culture and presents an interesting case of deculturation. The Spanish Conquest dislodged the tribes from their native habitat, especially on the coasts and the more favored highland areas, and threw them back into submarginal lands where subsistence could not support large population clusters or special classes of artisans, priests, warriors, and nobles. At the same time, the Spanish government seized political controls from the native nobles, and Spanish military power put an end to warfare, thus destroying the class structure... The distinguishing socio-religious factors were thus destroyed, and the more elaborate craft products in weaving, metallurgy, ceramics, building arts, and the like lost meaning, for they had been designed largely for the native upper classes. There remained only a simple folk culture: simple farming people, an unstratified society, shamanism, and unelaborate textiles, ceramics, and other craft products made for home consumption. The surviving tribes retain a native culture which resembles that of the Tropical Forest peoples who have also simple technologies and a simple socio-religious pattern.' (Steward in Lyon 1974: 14).”

“The Taironas experience of Conquest was in some ways peculiar to the general scenario described above and is the subject of the next document.”

Spanish Invasion

“Relations between the Spanish and Indians were not always unfriendly, and European goods reached native settlements in fairly large quantities as presents or as a result of trade. As early as 1529, an expedition under Pedro de Lerma was offering the Taironas agricultural tools of iron, and also ‘many beads, many combs, knives and scissors, coloured hats, caps, and shirts finely worked at the neck’. Another list of 1536 included shirts, doublets, coloured caps, axes, spades and hoes. Wine was also a popular article of trade. By 1572-3 the Indians were becoming more sophisticated in their wants, and we find a Tairona chief from the Bonda region (who already wore a sword and dagger) asking for arquebuses, gunpowder and shot (Castellanos). Like any other prized possessions, European articles were placed in Indian tombs as funerary offerings.”

“Spanish demands, however, increased. ‘The Spanish settled on the coast, and used Indians to work their farms. They demanded gold, and the Indians gave it. And when the Indians ran away, and went up to the Mamas in the mountain to escape, the Mamas gave them more gold and said, “Give it to the Spanish, and go back to work. Because without the fish and salt that you send from the coast, the rest of the Sierra cannot live.” The Spanish squeezed the Indians ever harder. But in 1600, after nearly a century of co-existence, a new governor in Santa Marta provoked a major uprising.’ (From the narrative to ‘From the Heart of the World - the Elder Brothers’ Warning’.)”

“‘It was the arrival of the Catholic fathers after the initial conquest which sparked off the rebellion, because they forbade the continuance of the religious rites of the Indians.’ (Tayler 1997: 10). In 1599, Governor Juan Guiral Velón confronted the Tairona leader, Cuchacique, in a decisive campaign which broke the back of lingering Tairona resistance and the remnants of their society, decimated by war and introduced diseases, retreated into the heights of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.”

“Mama Valencia is the Kogi Mama responsible for remembering history. This is how he describes the effect of Spanish Invasion in the narrative to the documentary. ‘People used to live in peace, all over this land. We, the Older Brother, had no problems with the Younger Brother at all. Always in peace, in peace, in peace. That’s how it was. And then he arrived. Younger Brother arrived, and he started to kill us, and to destroy. They set dogs on us. We were terrified and the people panicked and didn’t know what to do and just ran wherever they could. That’s how it was. Things fell from our bags as we ran and scattered everywhere. Falling. Scattered. Our finest things. And when we stopped and we looked - hey - everything was gone. Nothing left.’ (Transcript: 12).”

[Notice the revisionist history – “People used to live in peace, all over this land.”  The evidence is overwhelming that the Tairona were  “extremely warlike” before the Spaniards arrived – that is the reason they were able to resist them for a hundred years.  Another tribe who successfully resisted the Spanish was the Jivaro, head-hunters of the Amazon, likewise fierce warriors - I just cannot resist digressing slightly with the following:

“Early Spanish chronicles relate that in the year 1599, the Jivaros banded together and killed 25,000 white people in raids on two settlements. In particular, the massacre of the Logrono stands out as particularly ruthless. The attack was instigated over the natives being taxed in their gold-trade. After uncovering the unscrupulous practices of the visiting governor, molten gold was later poured down his throat until his bowels burst. Following his execution, the remaining Spaniards were killed along with the older women and children. The younger useful women were taken as prisoners to join the clan. The settlement itself was raided and burned to the ground. From this point onward, the Jivaro Indians remained unconquered despite the fact that they inhabited one of the richest regions in South America for gold deposits. The Jivaro's fierce fighting reputation and head-shrinking practice continued to discourage outsiders from entering their territories.”]

“As much gold having been looted from the Sierra as they wanted, Spanish presence in the province diminished, and the remaining indigenes were left, with only some missionary incursions, to reconstitute their society. It was not until 1875 that there was any attempt to re-establish a colonial administrative presence there again. It is this protection afforded by their harsh environment that allows for the argument that the descendants of the Tairona, and especially the Kogi, represent a special case in the history of South American indigenes.”

Gold-smithing

“In pre-Hispanic times, as at present, small-scale mining may have been a part-time occupation carried out during the dry season when stream beds were exposed. Some localities, however, supported specialist communities of full-time miners and smiths. The most renowned site of this kind was Buriticá, in the mountains of northern Antioquia. Buriticá was a true industrial centre, exploiting both alluvial and vein gold, and exchanging the surplus for food and other necessities and in the surrounding villages, the Conquistadors found workshops for melting down the metal, with crucibles, braziers and balances to weigh out the gold. The chronicles do not distinguish between the melting of bulk metal, and the melting of gold as a preliminary to making trinkets and jewellery, but the general impression is that Buriticá exported both finished items and raw metal to be worked up elsewhere. Some gold and jewellery was exported to the Quimbaya and Muisca peoples, but most of it was traded northwards to Dabeiba, where a community of specialist goldsmiths grew up on the basis of imported raw material. From Dabeiba, a trade route led to the Sinú and supplied the entire coastal region from Urabá to Cartagena. At places along the route were market centres where professional merchants exchanged coastal products (fish, salt, cotton cloth) for Sinú jewellery and ingots of raw metal from Antioquia.”

“Most of the gold used by the Indians was obtained using only the simplest equipment: fire-hardened digging sticks to break up the earth, and shallow wooden trays (bateas ) in which to carry and wash it. Spanish chronicles also note that streams were sometimes diverted to expose the gold-bearing gravels of their beds and that the Indians dug shafts to reach the gold-bearing quartz veins of the cordilleran regions of Caldas and Antioquia. The mines of Marmato (Caldas) are mentioned in sixteenth-century documents, and tools made of tumbaga were found there. During the nineteenth century, the British engineer Robert White visited Los Remedios in Antioquia (once the richest town of its size in the Indies), and discovered an extensive area of mine shafts, spaced some 3.5 to 4.5 metres apart, each shaft no more than one metre wide. White estimated that thousands of men could have been employed there. The deepest shafts had steps cut in the sides, and went down as much as 24 metres. The sloping shafts (inclined at about 30° ) were up to 36 metres in depth, and so narrow that a man could not turn round in them. Each shaft was a simple tunnel, with no side galleries and no attempt at shoring or ventilation.”

[I cannot find any reference to slavery or child labor but the descrition of the tunnels doesn’t sound like a place anyone would willingly work.  But maybe that’s just my claustrophia talking!]

“The Tairona region was flourishing and produced goldwork of a standard still admired by goldsmiths today. The Sinú was one of the richest and most populous areas of Colombia. More than 100,000 hectares of land were covered with a corduroy pattern of artificial ridges, providing well-drained fields for maize and root crops. Pedro de Heredia describes a temple big enough to hold more than a thousand people, and containing twenty-four wooden idols covered with sheet gold. Most of the raw material would have come from Buriticá and Dabeiba and the Spaniards noted that Sinú gold was of fine quality, containing some silver but little copper.”

“Radiocarbon dating shows that Muisca metalwork was nine hundred years old by the time the Spaniards reached Bogotá. The Spanish were enthusiastic in their descriptions of this fertile area situated in the high, temperate plateaux of Cundinamarca and Boyacá. The individual towns were organised into two loose federations, one in the north ruled by a chieftain with the title Zipa from Bogotá and the southern by another lord, the Zaque, from Hunsa. Not much remains of their presence because the houses were all built of wood.  In the aftermath of the failed rebellion and retreat into the mountain, the Taironas ceased to use or fashion gold.”

“The middle Magdalena Valley, the ancient Tolima region, was the home of two distinct Indian groups; in the north the Panches, bellicose headhunters and permanent enemies of the Muisca, and in the south, the Pijao, also warlike but skilled goldsmiths. Typical gold pieces are flat, stylised human figures terminating in crescent- shaped bases - traces of the Tolima style are evident in Popayán work.”

20th Century Kogi

“Kogi society is strictly hierarchical. At the top are the Mamas (derived from ‘mamos’ or sun), the spiritual leaders or priests, whose education is one of the most remarkable aspects of their society . Ideally, future priests are chosen by divination and undergo their training from birth. Full education lasts 18 years and takes place in special caves in the Sierra, during which time the ‘moros’, or trainee priests, are deprived of daylight as far as possible.”

Pre-invasion

“It is generally agreed that South American indigenes, who numbered 14 m. at the time of the Spanish Conquest, are derived from Mongoloid expansion, mainly hunters and gatherers, via the Bering Straits about 20,000 years ago. Rapid development was initiated around 2,600 years ago by the growth of agriculture. ‘The greatest cultural development occurred in the central Andes with the Inca Empire, which at its height encompassed about 1,000,000 square miles and had a population of about 6,000,000. The Chibcha in Colombia were probably the next most developed culture’ (NEB. 1991. Micropaedia. vol. 11: 37).”

“Some features of Circum-Caribbean tribes were: intensive farming, fairly dense population; stable settlements usually dispersed around religious centres; a class system in which status was accorded priests; government as contrasted to informal social controls of the kin group; the beginnings of multi-village states, federations or realms; special privileges accorded to chiefs, i.e. extra wives, obeisance of subjects, riding in a litter; priest-temple-idol cult; celestial and astral deities; religious mounds, altars, offertories and shrines; wattle-and -daub houses, causeways, aqueducts, canals, defensive works and stone buildings; loom weaving of domesticated cotton cloth garments.”

Historical Dictionary of Colombia by Harvey F. Kline, source

p. 6

“The Tairona were a lowland tribe occupying the foothills of the mountains and rarely populating areas above an altitude of 1,000 meters (3,280 feet).  The dense population (perhaps having as many of 700.000) lived in large nucleated villages situated i te mountain folds, often in a strategic position for easy defense.  The principal tows were Bonda and Pcigueica, both inhabited by thousands of indigenous people, and for some of the valleys the chronicles mentioned hundreds and even thousands of houses.”

p. 463

“Tairona Indigenous Group.  A lowland indigenous group occupying the foothills of the mountains and a strategic position for easy defense.  Knowledge sources about the pre-Columbian Tairona civilization are limited to archaeological findings and a few written references from the Spanish colonial era…The Tairona built terraced platforms, house foundations, stairs, sewers, tobs, and bridges foam sonte.  Use of pottery for utilitarian and ornamental purposes was also highly developed.”

“The Tairona were an extremely warlike people but military leadership was disorganized and, as a rule, every village had it own guerrilla warfare, rarely joining forces with others.  It took the Spanish the better part of a century to subdue the Tairona who, after periods of uneasy peace, rebelled repeatedly against the invaders.  The last great rebellion occurred in 1599 and was suppressed in 1600 after three months of fierce battles in which all resistance was broken and the tribe apparently ceased to exist as a unit.”

“The Tairona culture had an urban development with public worlds such as temples, agricultural terraces, irrigation, and paved roads.  Nowhere else in Colombia was there such economic efficiency, architectural development, and religious integration.”

The following is and excerpt from the 1990 book, The Sacred Mountain of Colombia’s Kogi Indians, by Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff.  Reichel-Dolmatoff spent decades studying the Kogi, as well as working tirelessly for their benefit.

p. 2 Introduction

“…apart from these sporadic trade relations the Indians are largely self-supporting leading an austere and withdrawn life in their often badly eroded mountain-folds.  In many parts of the Sierra Nevada the food resources of one single local environment are insufficient for subsistence, and for this reason the families own house at different altitudinal levels, moving periodically to the cold highlands to tend some small potato fields, and descending again to the temperate valleys where manioc, plantains, sugarcane and fruits can be harvested.  Small plantations of coca shrubs are found near all settlements, and provide the men with tender green leaves, plucked by the women.  All adult men chew the slightly toasted leaves, adding to the moist wad small portions of lime.  The nutritional status of the Kogi is, then, a very precarious one; there is practically no game, and fish are very scarce in the swift-flowing mountain streams; protein resources are few, and although the starchy crops like plantains and manioc provide a fairly permanent food supply, a chronic state of malnutrition appears to be the rule.”

Tairona Helmeted Warrior Deity

The following notes are attributed to David Wilson, Professor in the Anthropology Department of Southern Methodist University, and appear largely based on the extensive field work of Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff.

The Kogi and their Tairona Predecessors:  Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

“History/Background:

Contacts between the Kogi and Western culture probably date to the earlier 16^th century, from the time Santa Marta was founded in 1525. From this time on to ca. 1600, the Spanish interest was focused on the northern slopes of the Sierra Madre because it was famous as an area where gold artifacts were very abundant. By 1600 the region was abandoned by the Spaniards and was left, once again, to the original inhabitants. Since that time, the heaviest influence on Kogi culture has been the European crops that were introduced to the area. The Spanish language has hardly affected the Kogi, and their language has remained basically unchanged. Some men do speak limited Spanish, although the women speak very little if any. Today, the entire area of the Sierra Nevada remains indigenous, except for scattered European settlements located at the lowermost edges of the range. “

“The Mountain:

The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is an extraordinary geographic phenomenon, since very few mountain ranges rise so abruptly to such heights within a short distance from the sea—from sea level this part of the Andes rises to 19,000 feet within 26 miles (ca. 40 km). The mountain forms a trilateral pyramid with the southeastern edge the widest, the northern slope falling down to the sea, and the western edge leading less abruptly down to the Ciénaga Grande and the marshy edges of the Lower Magdalena River. Nature of the Landscape: There is little level land in Kogi territory, and settlements generally are located in valley bottoms overlooking rivers. Also, there is little forested land on the slopes around Kogi settlements.”

“Outsiders’ view of the Sierra Nevada: For centuries it was seen as a sort of “lost paradise,” a place where there were enormous riches to be found and characterized by extremely rich soils …In Reichel-Dolmatoff’s opinion, however, the area is not all that rich. Like other Andean highlands, there are areas of good soil and areas of bad soil, but his overall assessment is that the soils are inferior:

1. Layers of humus on its lands are generally very thin

2. Little forest cover

3. Much rainfall and erosion

After centuries of slash-and-burn cultivation, most of the slopes that are farmed by the Kogi are devoid of trees and now covered with grass.”

“POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE: In the 16th century the area was more heavily populated, with the Tairona people farming maize, beans, and yuca. They also had access to the nearby ocean, which provided protein in the form of mollusks and marine animals.”

“TERRACES: In some of the valleys there are great numbers of artificial cultivation terraces dating to prehispanic times, but no cultivation is practiced on them. The Kogi will not farm these terraces …”

“KOGI SUBSISTENCE: Although maize was important in the Tairona diet, one rarely sees maize growing in Kogi fields. Although they value it highly as a food, they say that it doesn’t do well in their plots, producing stunted crops. And, although the soil on the ancient fields is black and suitable for such crops, the Kogi have tabooed the use of these fields. Instead, the fields play a ritual role as sacred sites where offerings are made. If someone were to plant his crop there, the Mámas would immediately intervene to stop such a sacrilege. As for planting crops on the terraces inside an ancient center (like Buritaca, or ‘La Ciudad Perdida’), the Kogi view these places as being filled with devils. Indeed, if a Kogi finds an ancient potsherd while tilling his (non-terraced) fields, he may well abandon the field as being filled with evil spirits. Finally, farming as they do on lower slopes near rivers, their fields become subject to periodic flooding and destruction when the rivers and streams overflow their banks.”

“PLANTING AND HARVESTING: The men do the initial work of cultivation and weeding, although man and wife work together to plant the seed and harvest the crops.”

“DIET: Cut off from access to the sea by modern Colombian settlements and unable to practice animal husbandry due to their constant vertical movement, the Kogi are essentially vegetarians. Meat is eaten perhaps once a year, on occasions when an ox or cow is slaughtered, at which time everyone in a village participates in the feast.”

“Reichel-Dolmatoff also mentions that the banana, introduced by the Spaniards, nearly completely replaced maize.”

“DIET: At 5-6 years old, the boys are separated from the girls; and the girls, who eat with the women, eat far better than the boys who, together with the men, do not eat well. Because of this, the women tend to be plump (the Kogi ideal) and healthy, whereas the men tend to be skinny.”

“LEAN PERIODS: Although the Kogi consider their land to be rich and productive and, thus they never want to move out and go elsewhere, during the decade of the 1940s when Reichel Dolmatoff carried out his research they were experiencing both good years and bad years. Bad years came about either because of excessive rain or drought, and during these years whole harvests were lost. And, because of this the Kogi always expressed uncertainty about the future, the next harvest.”

“COCA CULTIVATION: The planting and weeding of coca is done by the men, but the women carry out the harvest. Since coca grows only in the sub-tropical zone, planting and harvesting take place year-round. After harvesting, the leaves are toasted inside the ceremonial house. The use of coca is absolutely forbidden to the women, and only chewed by the men after they have gone through the initiation rites into manhood.”

“OTHER SETTLEMENTS: Most people have their fields at some distance from the settlement, anywhere from a 15-minute walk away to as much as a day’s walk away.”

“Each family has two dwellings which face each other, one for the husband and one for the wife and children. Neither the wife nor the husband may enter the other’s structure, and the wife cooks food for all in the open space between the two dwelling.”

“MAIN SETTLEMENT: these do not have any sort of fixed plan, as house are grouped more or less randomly around the ceremonial house. There are no streets and no central plaza. The main settlement is nearly deserted during the weekdays, only being occupied on weekends.”

OTHER STRUCTURES IN THE MAIN SETTLEMENT: Women, girls, and pre-pubescent boys sleep here during the times of visit to the main center.

“CEREMONIAL HOUSE: Covers more area than the other houses and is taller, reaching 7-8 meters in height. It has two opposing doorways, while the other dwellings have only one. Inside the roof are place at least four, and sometimes more, shelves of thick wood which represent the different ecological levels that are exploited by the Kogi. This structure is built in such a way that on two days of the year (the spring and fall equinoxes) a ray of sunlight shines down through a hole in the roof and, as the day progresses, traces an equatorial line across the floor between the opposing doors of the structure. When the families are in town, it is here in the ceremonial house that all the (post-pubescent) men sleep in hammocks slung from the ceiling.”

“Mode of Reproduction:

POPULATION ESTIMATE: 2000 persons (distributed over 1500 km²), so population density for the 1940s would have been 1.3 persons/km².”

“SEX RATIO: Of all births, there were 16% more boys than girls, a situation which does not equal out later in life since Reichel-Dolmatoff counted 118 men for every 100 women, equal to a sex ratio of 118. Nevertheless, he noted no preferential female infanticide.”

[note:  there is no other physical explanation for such an extremely skewed ratio other than female infanticide or neglect.]

“COCA CHEWING AND SEXUALITY: Although coca chewing is thought to enhance the sexuality of younger men just past puberty, the Kogi say that later it reduces the desire for sex and causes impotency. All this is good, since the Kogi say that sex is bad and dangerous, and that the suppression of sex is an important and desired effect of chewing coca. For this reason, however, the younger men try to avoid chewing coca, but the mámas and other men often criticize them for not chewing it.”

“SEXUALITY: The physical weakness of the undernourished and coca-drugged men causes sexual tension with the women, and Reichel-Dolmatoff noted a high frequency of sexual aberrations among the Kogi: female and male homosexuality is present, he says, in all villages and incest within the nuclear family is also high.”

from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

“AESTHETICS: The Kogi live a very Spartan life, as no decorations are placed on any of their artifacts (gourds, ceramics, musical instruments). Nevertheless, the Kogi have a sense of beauty in the natural world around them. Valleys and mountains are considered beautiful, while beaches, the sea, and the selva are considered ugly. The men consider themselves to be ugly, skinny, and dirty, while the women think of themselves as nice-looking.  The men also think the women are beautiful, especially when they are fat, have long hair, large eyes, and large breasts. Anything in the natural environment that is ‘fat’, such as animals or trees, is also seen as beautiful.”

“COMMUNAL WORK: All work on (ancient) roads, bridges, or irrigation facilities for fields is carried out by communal work projects in which the families of one or more settlements participate.”

“MARRIAGE: The general rule is that a man may marry anyone who is not related to him as mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, or aunt. Several generations back, a man could not marry a cousin (either cross or parallel), but marriage with (first) cousins was common at the time of Reichel-Dolmatoff’s study. The Kogi are generally monogamous, with men and women marrying between the ages of 14 and 18 years old.”

“RESIDENCE RULE: Residence is matrilocal, usually, after marriage, and the man lives in the house of his in-laws, being obligated to work for them for a period of one or two years, the end of which is determined by the mámas. After that, the young couple lives neolocally.”

“GENDER TENSIONS:

The women see the ceremonial house as their great rival, as they wish that the men would stay with them at home.  A women may even pretend to be ill so that her husband will stay home. The anti-aphrodisiac qualities of coca are well known. Overall there is much tension between man and wife.”

“From an early age, a man learns that women are dangerous, that they represent the forces of instability and chaos. Indeed, after marriage men consider their wives to be the greatest stumbling block in their attempt to acquire knowledge (about the Ancient Ones). Such knowledge, they feel, is the only way to acquire security, serenity, and the guarantee that the Cosmos will continue to exist (!).”

“… So, as the ceremonial house increasingly takes over the man’s attention, he pays less and less attention to his house and his wife and children, and to ‘real’ life as he opts for the coca-drenched world of the Ancient Ones. But the great obstacle is that the men live in the real world, which requires the production of food and the sexual act to keep the Kogi viable as a population. So, women are dangerous but indispensable, sex makes the men tired but they do desire it nonetheless, and food is a futile pleasure, here now and gone a little later. Finally, the men consider the women as being less responsible for societal maintenance than are the men, since it is assumed they “know less,” just as younger people know less than older ones.”

“STATUS:

…for the men is achieved only as a function of obtaining and increasing one’s knowledge of religious esoterica, including the Ancient Ones.”

“POWERS OF THE MÁMAS:

Every village has two or more mámas. They care for the village in every way, controlling everything including the fertility of people, the land, society, and the cosmos.”

“The way they control society is simple: namely, through the threat of illness, hunger, and sterility from the supernatural powers in their cosmos.  When a máma is going to die earthquakes and eclipses take place, and these are signs of the approaching end of the world.”

“TRAINING TO BE A MÁMA:

· Those who would become ritual specialists were divined at birth

· A boy was taken to a máma’s house and treated differently from all other children:

-- Had to sleep in the day, stay up all night

-- Could not see the sun

-- Bodily functions had to be controlled until nightfall

-- Then he was taken to the ceremonial house and kept there separated from the rest of society.

-- His teachings were carried out only at night, by firelight.

-- At four or five years old, he was given gold ornaments and a mask to wear that could never be taken off again at night, his hair was permitted to grow long, and he was not permitted to play.

-- He became the máma’s son

-- Nine years after the start of his training, the boy was ready to make a decision to become a full- fledged máma.

-- During the next nine years, he went through puberty, was given a poporo, and the máma spoke to him about sexuality, marriage, and rituals.

-- He had still not seen daylight, nor a woman or any person other than the máma

-- Then, eighteen years after the beginning of his training, he was permitted to go outside during the daytime to see people, light, houses, sun, and women for the first time.

-- Everyone saluted him in veneration, but would not converse with him when he went near them.

-- He was considered, like all other mámas, to have received his powers and wisdom from the Mother”.

“EFFECTS OF CHEWING COCA--

The Kogi say the following about it:

1. It causes mental lucidity that helps during ceremonies and with religiosity in general, or in conversations, personal rites, and collective rites. A man who chews coca becomes animated, and his memory and speaking abilities are enhanced.

2. It helps the men talk about the Ancient Ones.

3. It causes insomnia, which is good, since it helps a man stay up for hours if not days on end, and the most prestige comes to those who can talk about the Ancient Ones in this manner.

4. It reduces the effects of hunger, which is especially felt during the long ceremonies when a man may not consume any food

5. It reduces the desire for sex during a man’s middle and later years of life, eventually causing impotence, which is good.”

“BOY’S PUBERTY RITE:

-- Each initiate is given his poporo

-- The máma says that this gourd represents a woman, the young man “marries this woman” during the ceremony, and he perforates its top in an imitation of the ritual deflowering of women.

n The stick represents the male sexual organ, so that the introduction of the stick into the gourd and the rapid movements employed in extracting the coca are symbolic of sexual intercourse.

n The máma then tells the initiate that this symbolic act should be substituted as much as possible for the actual act of sex, which is bad”

“PUBERTY RITE:

Reichel-Dolmatoff notes that ‘all the necessities of life and all of its immense frustrations are concentrated therefore in this little gourd instrument which for the Kogi signifies food, woman, and memory.’ Given this belief, it is rare that any Kogi man is ever seen without his gourd, lime, and coca bag.”

“KOGI ATTITUDES ABOUT THE CEREMONIAL HOUSE: The Kogi men view the ceremonial house as the womb of the Mother, the originator of all life and the Kogi. When they go into the ceremonial house, therefore, they see themselves as inside the Womb of the Mother. When they lay down in their hammocks, they are inside her placenta. Thus, the ideal place for the Kogi men is to return as

much as possible to her womb, lying inside her placenta.”

“THE COSMOS: “The cosmos has the form of a very large egg, with its point toward the top. Inside this egg lie the nine levels of the world, which are like giant round plates. We live on the middle plate. Every one of the nine levels contains a sun, a moon, stars, and

people. In the highest, tiniest world lives a race of giants. In the lowest world a race of midgets. Our earth is the ninth daughter of the Universal Mother  black earth. Long ago, only Kogi lived in this world. then came the whites who chased and persecuted them,

bringing illnesses and badness. These whites came from some lower world, and this is why they were bad.  The whole egg, this cosmos, is very heavy. It is placed on two large beams and four men hold it up, two of them On the east and two of them on the west. Below the world there is water. At the level of the water, floating on the surface, is a huge beautiful flat-topped rock. Upon this rock the Mother is seated.”

“She is nude. She gives food and water to the four men, and cares for them. She has to take care of them to make sure they don’t get tired, and this is her only task. Once in awhile, one of the four change the beam from one shoulder to the other. At that moment, the earth shakes. For this reason, it is bad for anyone to throw rocks or roll them from mountaintops, or that women move during the sexual act. For if these things are done, then surely the egg will fall off the two beams and destroy the world.”

“ANXIETY ABOUT THE CONTINUED EXISTENCE OF THE WORLD:

According to the Kogi, the course of the universe, the path of the stars, the change of seasons, sun and rain, and with them, fertility and growth, are not guaranteed nor is their continued existence certain. Instead, their existence and continuation are dependent upon proper individual and communal focus on religion. If the individual and society live in accordance with the cultural norms, then the universe will continue its course, winter will follow summer, day will follow night, and the rain will follow the sun, women will be fertile, and illness will claim no victims. But, if society strays from this path of righteousness, if moral codes are forgotten or not followed, then the world will end.  At various times of the year, on the occasion of the solstices and the equinoxes, elaborate ceremonies are carried out. The object of the solstice ceremonies is to ‘make the sun turn around’, that is to say, to implore the sun to return once again to its house.”

“The object of the equinox ceremonies is to celebrate planting and the harvest. But, there is nothing joyous about these ceremonies; instead, the Kogi exhibit a profound preoccupation for their success [they are ‘tinkering’ with the Universe].  This success depends upon innumerable ritual prerequisites of a personal nature, including dietary restrictions, sexual abstinence, fasting, insomnia, baths, and confession so that everything will be ‘in its place.’ And, it is only the men who are in charge of this, as women are almost entirely excluded from the ceremonies themselves.”

The following is taken from a 2003 publication by Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, “Gold and Power in Ancient Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia”, which is a fascinating and comprehensive source for the role of gold in the ceremonies and dances of the Tairona, traditions that have carried through to the Kogi today.  Fundamentally, like many other civilizations in Central and South America where the metal was plentiful, they worship gold and regard it as sacred.  Why this is seen by the Woo Woo as “spiritual” but Wall Street’s worship of gold is not, I cannot explain.

“Pedro de Aguado, writing in 1581, describes the appearance of the Indians in the sixteenth century, before the old customs had disappeared:”

“‘Their persons are much adorned with objects and jewels of gold. The men wear ear-ornaments, each of which weighs 15 and 20 pesos, and caricuries in their noses, hanging from the cartilage in the middle, and great chaguales, which are like round plates and half moons on their chests. And around their necks they put many kinds of beads made of bones and shells and green stones, which are much appreciated among them, and beads and metalwork made of gold.  The women wear much the same jewels as I have described for the men, including very large bracelets and hanging items of gold, and on their legs above the ankles and on their calves they wear big beads of chaquira [shell], gold and bone, as much as each one’s husband can afford, and they also wear these on the fleshy parts of

their arms. Similarly, on their chests they put certain moldaduras [cast figures?] of gold, and with these they go covered.’ (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1951: 83)”

“In a 1629 account, Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa describes the dress of the coastal Indians:”

“‘The clothing of the Indians of the Diocese and State of Santa Marta consists of shirts and painted cotton blankets; they wear gold earhoops (orejeras), bits of gold in their nostrils, gold plaques and eagles on their breasts, with pebble bracelets, and gold pieces on their wrists and insteps. The caciques and principal men with more wealth than the others, wear also fine round precious stones and gold jewels. The Indian women wear petticoats and painted cotton blankets, lavishly adorned and decorated with gold jewelry and other precious stones.’ (Vázquez de Espinosa 1942: 316)”

“One of the most detailed descriptions of Tairona costumes is provided by Simón in his account of the Valle de la Caldera in the sierra. He refers to feather capes, sleeveless vests covered with feathers, feather fans, garments made of jaguar pelts, cotton clothing of various colors and designs, and, of course, gold objects. ‘There was no woman who did not have a set of jewelry, ear ornaments, necklaces, crowns, lip plugs, moquillos [translation uncertain] of fine gold, fine and well made stone items, and strings of beads. Around their necks all the girls wore four or six moquillos of gold, weighing from 12 to 15 castellanos’ (1882–92, 5: 191).”

[My guess is that they are describing only the wealthy who presented themselves, not the working poor.]

“Other Spanish documents mention eagles, parrots, birds, frogs, figures of zemis, devils made in gold (Friede 1951), and a jewel representing two men ‘in that diabolical and unspeakable act of Sodom.’ (Oviedo, cited in Bray 1978: 45)”

“War costumes and ceremonial costumes followed this same general pattern. Castellanos describes the Tairona warriors of the sierra: ‘their heads adorned with long feathers, golden diadems on the foreheads. On their chests were pectorals or disks that caught the rays of the sun, with other jewels . . . hanging from their ears and noses. They were painted with annatto (a red dye from Bixa orellana] . . . and had bows and arrows in their hands’. (1955, 2: 539).”

“Several archaeologists have commented on the indicators of rank and wealth evident in the quality of domestic housing.  In her comparative study of the architecture at Buritaca 200, Pueblito, and Frontera, Patricia Cardoso points out that the largest and best-constructed house-rings tend to occupy privileged positions near the centers of the sites and also have richer contents. In particular, she identifies a number of large rings, located close to temples or ceremonial structures, whose contents include buried ritual paraphernalia.  Several archaeologists have commented on the indicators of rank and wealth evident in the quality of domestic housing.”

Burial sites also indicate a great disparity of wealth:

“Masks and gold regalia also play a role in the training of apprentice priests, as the Teiku story indicates. The training is arduous and is carried out under the tutelage of experienced mamas, in seclusion and darkness, over two nine-year cycles. At the age of four or five, the child apprentice is given his first gold ornaments: bracelets, rings, and necklaces of gold and stone beads. A year or two later he receives his wooden dance mask and feather crown, and his gold ornaments are augmented with necklaces and pectorals. Dressed in this regalia, for hours on end, night after night, the children are taught the dance steps, the cosmological recitals, and the elements of the creation story that together constitute the Law of the Mother.  It is this knowledge that will give the boys status and power in the community when they become fully-fledged mamas.”