The Monkey
Puzzle Tree Harvest
by
William Moult
From The Steel Crown No. 6 -- Copyright 1997 NAARS
Paulina, the lonko's wife, reached another ladle full from the square
wooden barrel and filled the enamel mug once more. She passed it over to me and
I took another swig. It was a bit like watery porridge with the tang of out of
date yogurt. I was having chavi or muday, a drink of fermented monkey puzzle nuts made specially for occasion. From my position on a bench inside
the Lonko's cubicle I looked out at the dancers as
they tripped their way around the sacred monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucano) in time to the drum beats, pipe blowing and
chanting of the assembled Pehuenches.
Every January, the 25 or so
families of the valley gather together to celebrate the nguillatun.
That's the Mapuche name for the summer festival cum
prayer meeting that goes on nonstop for three days and nights at Quinquen about
The festival site consists
of a semicircle of cubicles made from wooden poles dressed with branches of the
ire tree. For the nguillatun each family sets up home
in a cubicle bringing all the food drink and blankets they will need for the 3
day event.
The men did not appear to
put on any special clothes but many of the women were wearing colorful dresses and scarves as well as traditional Mapuche silver jewelry like the trarilonko necklace, big dress pin (punzon),
long silver linked breast piece (sikell or akucha), and silver earrings (chawai).
I chatted with Ricardo the lonko or chief of this community. By now he had passed me
some mate, the tradition herbal tea drunk all over Argentina, but here in Chile
particularly used by Mapuches. As I sucked the hot
liquid through the metal straw he explained to me what was going on in the
circle.
Groups of six men at a time
took it in turns to dance round the ring. As they flapped their capes and
nodded their heads to the sound of the music they simulated the dance of the
South American ostrich (choique), which today can
only be found in Chilean Patagonia many miles south of here. The dance
expresses the close link many Mapuches feel to
nature. The Pehuenches believe that all the
components of their environment are invested with spirits which must be
appeased or venerated to promote a happy and successful life.
In Mapuche
mythology different animals have different properties. The puma or South
American lion (nahuel) is one of the most noble animals whereas the miniature deer (venudo), the skunk (shani), the coipu (koip) and the hare (marra) are associated with bad luck. They say that pregnant
women should avoid the frog (ponono).
The music at the nguillatun was provided by the various traditional
instruments: the drum (kultrun) which has a wooden
body and a leather skin marked with a cross to represent the four seasons of
the year, the trumpet (trutruka) usually made from a
cows horn, the two-tone whistle (pifilka) and the
Jew's harp (trompe).
Close to the monkey puzzle
tree in the center of the circle a goat was tethered
to a stake, to the other side sheep was similarly fastened up. These animals
were tokens and would remain in position throughout the festival. A little
while later Paulina served me a salad of tomatoes and onions together with
boiled potatoes and invited me to cut a piece of meat off the large piece of
flesh which impaled on a steel spike was gently roasting in front of the fire.
It was horse meat. The day before I had been present at the slaughter of the chosen
animal under the trees at a small farmstead a few miles away. The horse
was butchered by a group of men and women from the valley. Everyone helped
prepare the big animal for eating. The men butchered the heavy muscle tissue
and sawed through the animal's big bones while the women and children busied
themselves with cleaning the horses intestines in the
nearby stream. These would be used later to make sausages.
Alvaro, the man in charge
of the slaughtering and butchering, told me that it was his horse that had been
killed and that now each family would buy meat from him to take to the nguillatun. At first I didn't take him seriously when he
said that God had indicated that this animal was to be killed for the festival
but he admonished me for my disbelief and stressed that this was really the
case.
Alvaro also explained that
to honor the occasion of the slaughter of this
special horse we were to eat a little part of it immediately. A sword spit and
camp fire like the one at the nguillatun was set up
and small bits of the horse were duly sampled by all present. Lemon juice was
added to blood drawn from the horse and the mixture was seasoned. Called achis, the coagulated blood was passed around for everyone
to try.
While sitting around the
fire at the nguillatun, clouds of dust wafted through
the cubicle doorway and horses hooves thundered amid the banshee cries of
riders. About 20 men rode repeatedly around semicircle of cubicles. The lead
riders carried flags, one blue with a white crescent and the other yellow and
green. Ricardo said the riding keeps evil spirits at bay.
Early in the mornings
during the nguillatun time was set aside for praying.
At this time all present would kneel down or stand facing the young monkey
puzzle tree and recite prayers and place sacred objects and relics at the base
of the tree. Although I had been invited to attend the nguillatun,
it was intimated to me that the prayers were the most private moments of the
festival and so I made myself scarce at those times.
About six weeks after the nguillatun I returned to Quinquen
to witness another important part of the Pehuenche
year. At the end of March and throughout April the monkey puzzle trees give
their fruit.
Each family in the valley
had its own area of trees where they go to collect the nuts. Usually these
trees are a distance from the smallholding. During the nut season Juan Segundo
and his family take their ox cart up a steep track
climbing the side of the mountain behind their house. For the duration of the
harvest they stay in a simple wooden cabin called a veranada
only a short distance from the trees
The abundance of piones, as they are called in Spanish, varies from year to
year. 1996 was a good year. On the female trees the fruiting body appears as a
large light green prickly pineapple. If the nuts inside don't fall to the
ground of their own accord there are two options open to the Pehuenche harvesters. A stone attached to a homemade
leather rope can be thrown against the tree to shake the branches or someone
nimble like Juan Segundo's son Gonzalo can use the same rope to climb the tree
with a wooden pole and bash all the pineapples in reach to knock out the nuts.
Most monkey puzzles don't
have many branches at ground level, so the trick is climbing that first bit,
after that things get a bit easier. As a conifer, the
branches of the monkey puzzle tree are arranged a bit like a ladder. Gonzalo
was able to climb right up to the top. He suddenly appeared in almost comical
fashion like an angel on top of a Christmas tree and after soon after piones were showering to the ground in all directions. The
rest of the family were then all put to work putting
the nuts into bags.
Traditionally the piones have been a source of food for the Pehuenches. Each nut, about the size of a Brazil nut,
tastes like a chestnut. They are too hard to eat raw and are usually boiled in
water until soft. They are sometimes roasted in a cast iron pot over the fire
and can also be ground up to make a flour or meal for
use in cooking.
Once harvested the piones can be stored for a length of time loose or another
method which I didn't see involves a hole being dug close to a stream which is
then filled with nuts and flooded with water.
Nowadays the pion harvest is a useful source of cash for the Pehuenches. Traveling merchants
will buy nuts and take them down to sell in the towns of the central valley. The
price paid is generally affected by the nature of the harvest in a particular
year. The season I was with Juan Segundo was a good one and his family
collected more than a tonne of nuts but only sold them for around 25 cents per
kilogram. Most collectors are eager for cash and are keen to sell the nuts at
the first available opportunity and this has frustrated efforts by some to
develop a communal store in an attempt to control the supply and improve the
price.
The nut gathering is
usually over in 3 or 4 weeks and it's not just the people of Quinquen who are busy. All the communities within reach of
monkey puzzle trees take part in this harvest. Further east for example, where
and the land takes on the aspect of the Argentine plains and the River Bio-Bio
begins to flow, at Pedregoso there are no trees. So
for the duration of the harvest the whole community packs its bags and camps
out under the trees in an unclaimed area of monkey puzzle trees some
By the end of April it's
getting colder and the days are shorter. In former days the Peheunches
were a more wide ranging people. In winter many would
leave the high valleys and go down to other lands to the east or west. Nowadays
the Peheunches of Quinquen
remain the whole year in the valley and so when the snow finally comes they are
often cut off for months at a time. Narrow horse tracks through snow drifts
sometimes several meters high are the only way to get about.
As Juan Segundo and Ricardo
sit round the fire with their families they'll be hoping that the winter won't
be too severe and that next year will the monkey puzzle trees will have plenty
of nuts.
William Moult is a
member of the NAARS. He spent time with the Peheunches
and Mapuches working for Television
North American Araucanian Royalist Society