Shuar Mythology

One afternoon after Cesar and I had finished eating lunch, he brought out a series of hand drawn pictures of various monsters from Shuar mythology and explained them to me a little bit.

The Iwia is essentially a crazy cannibal that lives in the jungle. Cesar said they have a smell that can knock a man out and they hunt children for the most part. The Ecuadorian government has an elite jungle unit called "iwia" made up of Shuar soldiers. They draw their name from this monster and from what Cesar told me they are an especially deadly bunch, with both Shuar traditional warfare and modern tactics. This statement holds more weight when you know that the Shuar have never been conquered. Neither the Inca nor the Spanish conquistadors were able to  defeat the Shuar in the jungle. When the Spanish made their first forays into Shuar territory, they broke through several skirmishes and made camp on a river. The Shuar then went upstream and put a poisonous plant into the water which drifted downstream and killed many of the Spaniards. The next day the Spaniards left and never returned. Jungle warfare is often abrupt, brutal, and deadly for those not raised in the jungle.

The Jurijri is a human like monster that lives at the behest of forest spirits. The first encounter with the Shuar occurred with two brothers and their wives one day as they were out hunting. The brothers were excellent hunters and had amassed a bountiful harvest during the day. They created a fire to cook with and soon set to the task of cooking the various different animals they had killed. One of the wives went to go collect firewood for the fire, and while she was out in the forest a spirit appeared in front of her. It asked her why her party had killed so many of it's brethren. Angered, the spirit said that it would send soldiers to kill them at midnight unless they hid themselves in a tree surrounded by fire. The wife ran back to camp and warned her company about what she had witnessed. Neither the two brothers nor the other wife believed her and continued cooking their feast. The wife prepared a tree as an escape, then rejoined the others to eat and sleep. At midnight the wife was awoken by a furious rainstorm. Lightning and thunder ripped through the sky and the wife knew that the spirit had come to seek vengeance. She woke her companions then ran to the tree she had prepared. Once in the tree she couldn't see through the dark and the rain, but none of her companions joined her in the haven. When morning broke, the woman got down from the tree and inspected the camp. Their shelter had been ripped open and there were footsteps leaving camp. She followed the tracks and eventually came across a cave. She peeked into the cave and saw a group of people sitting around a fire eating her companions.
Horrified, she ran back to her village and told the town what she saw. No one in the town believed her, and they blamed her for killing her husband and his brother. However, they needed proof so they traveled to the cave to verify what happened. When the group arrived at the cave they saw the remains of the feast and the group of people asleep. Angered, they went back to the village, armed themselves, returned, and killed all the people in the cave as revenge. When they checked the dead bodies they found that the Jurijri had another mouth behind their hair on the back of their head that they used to eat the Shuar. As the Shuar were about to leave, a small girl walked into the clearing. She didn't speak, so the Shuar assumed she was some escaped pray of the dead Jurijri. They took her back to their camp and gave her food to eat. The girl wouldn't eat in front of them, but when they turned their backs the food would disappear almost immediately. After a few weeks in the village, the Shuar left the girl in charge of a young child while the mother went to look for food. When the mother returned the child was gone. Suspicious, the Shuar checked the girl and found blood on her hands so they killed her. Behind her hair was a mouth. She was another Jurijri. After that Jurijri commonly live in remote caves and eat Shuar who come across them in the jungle.

 The chikiaku iwianch is a rather strange monster. Cesar said that it only materializes on the night of the full moon and stands with its arms out and looks up at the moon. It is said that those that can run between its legs get special powers, however the chikiaku will try and scoop you up with its arms and eat you if you try. What makes it more scary is that it's about 3m tall.

Cesar referred to this one only as "diablo" the Spanish word for devil. He told me that this diablo has been seen on multiple occasions in recent years. One year at the Macas foundation festival a child saw a man dancing in the middle of a crowd, however, his feet were the wrong way. He brought this fact to the attention of the mother. When the mother looked the man had disappeared. Cesar also said he had seen the tracks of this monster. It lives deep in the jungle away from civilization. It prefers swampy terrain, which is where Cesar saw the foot prints. He told me if you see the monsters footprints you have to walk in the direction they face in order to get away from it. If you go the opposite direction you'll eventually find the monster. I am under the impression it eats people because Cesar said that if you encounter it you are supposed to give it your shirt with a knot in it. It will try and put the shirt on and this will give you time to escape.

The ujea is a weird mix between a bear and a human. Apparently the Shuar used to hunt these. As you can see in the picture the stench was enough to knock a grown man unconscious. These aren't dangerous to humans as they eat the nectar of flowers.

This last one is a particularly brutal form of iwianch. This one has lost its arm in an accident or a fight. It thinks if it can find its old arm it can put it back and be whole again. To this end it goes around ripping off arms of Shuar to see if they fit on its body. Cesar told me that for a while there were organ harvesters that killed several children in a different area and this type of iwianch was blamed. When the Shuar caught the group of people that were actually committing the crimes they thought they were this monster and killed them all. I think the moral of this story is to never wrong a Shuar because the retribution is usually swift and very lethal.