The spell of riddles among the Witoto

Overview & Synopsis

The Witoto of the Colombian and Peruvian Amazon possess a class of sung dances known as eeikɨ, a term the Witoto themselves translate as “riddle” or “enigma” (Spanish adivinanza). By means of this type of song, the invited dancers invite the “festival owners” (rafue naanɨ) – men belonging to the patrilineage of the head of the hosts, and their associates – to approach the circle and guess what the words of the song allude to. The youngest men generally make the first attempts to find a solution. Each time they fail, the leader of the singing dancers repeats the song with his companions providing the chorus, sometimes adding a few words to indicate the road to the solution. But ultimately the challenge is posed to the festival owner himself, whose knowledge is put on trial and who must prove himself to be a “true father”, in possession of the knowledge appropriate to his role as festival owner. Throughout the preparation and celebration of the festival, he represents the Father-Creator, the Father of all humankind, represented in turn by all the festival’s participants, who are called urukɨ - a collective noun related to urue, “child”. The German ethnographer Konrad Theodor Preuss, who was collecting Witoto mythology in 1914, also penned a commentary on the uuikɨ festival, “Festival of the Ball”, in which riddles were sung. His informant relates the following concerning the festival’s function and its riddles.