Language Contact and Documentation: Contacto Linguistico y Documentacion

138 Mutua Mehinaku & Bruna Franchetto
3.8 Jamugikumalu
The term Jamugikumalu is Arawak, Yamurikumalu, again with the adaptation
of the alveolar tap for the Carib uvular flap. It means ‘Hyper-Women-Chiefs,’
recalling the akinhá recounting its origin. Like Tolo, it is a ritual performed
exclusively by women. 11
Listening to the songs performed in the Jamugikumalu festival, we can
establish that most of them are in Carib and a minority in Arawak. The songs
are those taught by the spirit-animals to the Jamugikumalu during their voyage
below the earth, before they climbed to the surface at different points of the
Carib Upper Xingu territory, heading towards what would be their land and
their village. Below we provide one example in Carib and another in Arawak:
Ongogu – Rufescent Tiger Heron (Tigrisoma lineatum):
Uotipügü otohake
My food is matrinxã fish
Uopekugu igapisu
My food is wolf fish
Ũ büngetüingi iheke
So it does not choke me (with its bones)
Oooh oooh
Alua (Ajua in Kuikuro), ‘bat’:
Alua ihoho kuhehe
Alua inukanatu eheee
IamBat
The animals helped to compose the Jamugikumalu songs. The festival’s origin
narrative itself contains the sequence of songs that are performed in the festival:
the Carib and Arawak languages merge and alternate the whole time.
3.9 Ahugagü
The (A)hugagü ritual recalls the origin of pequi and of betrayal, with the involvement
of various itseke at the moment of discovering the pequi tree. As it
was something new, many animals wanted to be its owner and feed off its
fruits, but Tãugi and his brother Aulukuma prevented other animals from eat-
11 See Basso (1985) and Franchetto (1999) for ethnographies of the mythical and ritual sides
of Jamugikumalu.