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Adu ñũshĩwu/Alma de majás/The Lowland Paca Spirit

  • Item identifier: 2018-33.021
  • Date: 03 Jan 2014
  • Contributors: María Miranda Llergo (consultant); Kelsey Neely (researcher, donor)
  • Language: Yora (mts)
  • Place: Sepahua, Sepahua, Atalaya, Ucayali, Peru
  • Description: One .wav file, with accompanying .eaf annotation file. María Miranda Llergo narrates the story of Adu ñũshĩwu, the Lowland Paca (Cuniculus paca) spirit. A man kills a paca and brings it home to his wife to eat. The following day he goes fishing with his eldest son, leaving his wife and younger children at home. A paca spirit takes the form of a woman and comes to their home. The human woman offers the spirit some paca meat, and she gets insulted, insisting that she cannot eat her husband. When the woman asks the spirit to pick her lice, the spirit bites her neck, breaking it. The man and his son return to find the paca spirit has killed the entire family. This traditional narrative was volunteered by the speaker and performed extemporaneously.
  • Availability: Online access
  • Collection: Materials of the Yaminawa Language Documentation Project
  • Repository: Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
  • Suggested citation: Adu ñũshĩwu/Alma de majás/The Lowland Paca Spirit, 2018-33.021, in "Materials of the Yaminawa Language Documentation Project", California Language Archive, Survey of California and Other Indian Languages, University of California, Berkeley, http://cla.berkeley.edu/item/26507.

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