Muiraquita
A muiraquitã (from Tupí muyrá mbyra "tree", "branch", "wood" and quit "knot") is a legendary, magical amulet made of green stone ( jade or nephrite ). Usually it represents an aquatic animal, e.g. B. a frog , a fish or a turtle , rarely simple cylindrical shapes. Muiraquitãs were considered valuable and were used as a medium of exchange between the tribes of the Amazon , the Orinoco and as far as the Caribbean .
Legend
According to legend, comes the muiraquitã of the Icamiabas , a legendary tribe amazon-like warriors that in somewhere Amazon region of Brazil should have their kingdom and already appeared in the reports of the first explorers. The Icamiaba formed the muiraquitãs from stones that they fetch from the bottom of a special lake on moonlit nights and are still very soft when they come out of the water. They give the amulets created in this way to their companions, with whom they connect once a year to produce offspring.
In the novel Macunaíma , Ci, the leader of the Icamiabas, gives the title hero a muiraquitã in the form of a caiman . Macunaíma loses the amulet. His attempts to get the Muiraquitã back into his possession are the common thread for the plot of this picaresque novel.
Green stones
Reports of magical, especially disease-healing, green stones are numerous and extend over a long period of time. Walter Raleigh already reports:
“These Amazones have likewise great store of these plates of gold, which they recover by exchange chiefly for a kinde of greene stones, which the Spaniards call Piedras Hijadas , and we use for spleene stones, and for the disease of the stone we also esteeme them: of these I saw divers in Guiana, and commonly every king or Casique hath one, which their wives for the most part weare, and they esteeme them as great jewels. "
“These Amazons have numerous gold vessels, which they received mainly in exchange for a type of green stone, which the Spaniards call Piedras Hijadas , which we consider to be jade and which we also appreciate for their healing powers. I saw many of these in Guyana , and in general every king or cacike has one of these stones, usually their wives wear it, and they are considered to be very precious stones. "
The French naturalist Charles Marie de La Condamine reported in 1745 that a tribe called Tupinambá at the mouth of the Rio Tapajós received green stones from the "women without men", the Cougnantainsccouima . Something similar is reported from the Amicouan at Oyapock in Guyana, where there are many of these green stones.
swell
- Alexander von Humboldt , Aimé Bonpland : Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New continent during the years 1799-1804. Volume 5, Part 1, London 1821, pp. 388-394 digitized
- Walter Raleigh: The Discoverie of the Large and Beautiful Empyre of Guiana. 1596. New edition: Transcribed, annotated, and introduced by Neil L. Whitehead. Manchester University Press, Manchester 1997
- Charles Marie de La Condamine: Relation abrégée d'un voyage fait dans l'intérieur de l'Amérique méridionale, depuis la côte de la mer du Sud, jusqu'aux côtes du Brésil et de la Guiane,… Paris 1745. Spanish new edition, translated by Federico Ruiz Morcuende: Relación abreviada de un viaje hecho por el interior de la América Meridional. Calpe, Madrid 1921
literature
- Arie Boomert: Gifts of the Amazons: Greenstone Pendants and Beads as Items of Ceremonial Exchange in Amazonia. In: Antropológica 67 (Sociedad de Ciencias Naturales La Salle, Caracas 1987), pp. 33-54.
- Astrid Steverlynck: To What Extent Were Amazon Women Facts, Real or Imagined, of Native Americans? In: Ethnohistory Vol. 52, No. 4 (Fall 2005), pp. 689–726
- Astrid Steverlynck: Amerindian Amazons: Women, Exchange, and the Origins of Society Amerindian Amazons: Women, Exchange, and the Origins of Society. In: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute , Vol. 14, No. 3 (September 2008), pp. 572-589
Individual evidence
- ↑ Steverlynck 2008, pp. 702f
- ↑ Apparently Raleigh means here Piedras del higado "liver stones ". See von Humboldt, Bonpland: Personal narrative. Vol. 5/1, London 1821, p. 388
- ↑ Raleigh: Discoverie. Manchester 1997, p. 24, 146. Quoted in: Steverlynck 2008, p. 698
- ↑ La Condamine Relación abreviada 1921, pp. 69ff