Rapé Manchineri

Manchinery Tribe

The Manchineri are a tribe that lives mostly in the Brazilian territory, in the Mamoadate Indigenous Land and in the Cauchal Guanabara Indigenous Land.

The Manchineri share with the Piro, from the Peruvian Amazon, the Aruak language (from the Maipure branch) and a large part of their social and cosmological system.

Among the Manchineri, the basic family consists of the grandfather, grandmother, children and grandchildren. When they do not all live in the same house, they occupy nearby residences, in the same land. However, each pair has a separate plantation.

Manchinery and Chamanism

The word that the Manchiney use to designate the shaman is «Karrunhoti.»

«There was a Karrunhotí. I went alone to kill to take «cipó». I only went with who I was going to cure. He tied a hammock on the tree and drank. The next day the person was fine. He was the same as the Tuxau [the political chief], he was more than the Tuxau. I knew other things different from the Tuxau. He would put the hammock and start singing, and when the time came he would say «come here». There came the one who was sick, what he could get out of him, what he could not suck. The next day was fine. (Charuto, son of a famous Manchineri shaman, Ananias Batista).

A sign that the subject can be initiated in the acquisition of the techniques of shamanism is the encounter with supernatural beings, who teach the shaman’s apprentices, such as the «Caboclinho del Mato», mainly during ayahuasca sessions.

According to cosmology, the «Caboclinho del Mato» is a small man who lives in the bush. He was an Indian who became enchanted by so much taking the grass. He was transported to the spiritual world with his physical body, without going through death. He is also the one who administers, for example, how much can be hunted.

The acquisition of the power of a Karrunhotí, before being conquered, is transmitted to the person a physical or spiritual being. The process of Karrunhoti formation is a means by which the body and mind are prepared to perceive and receive knowledge.

Manchinery Cosmology

For the Manchineri, the «other worlds» are mixed with this, without distinguishing clear barriers. They manifest according to the state of consciousness in which the individual finds himself. Although these alterations do not necessarily pass through the use of hallucinogenic substances, the rise of this state comes with the use of ayahuasca, quite common among the Manchineri.

In the beginning of time, the people of the «cipó» (lianas) were transformed into enchanted beings, because they were taken alive to heaven. These beings help the shaman in his tasks. But to be able to go to heaven it is necessary to abstain from the world of hunting. Initiation as a shaman makes the subject a bad hunter, because you can converse with the animals and recognize relatives in them, making it difficult to kill them.

According to mythology, ayahuasca was discovered in the following way: a shaman finds a being in the bush, the «cipó» who before identifying himself as such claims to be a person of the female gender. The «cipó» tells the shaman how he should proceed to prepare it and with what he must mix it – with leaves and spices – so that the effect is complete.

According to the Manchineri, the incorporation of salt into the diet (the result of contact with non-indigenous people) represents the end of the capacity for transforming humans into diverse beings. Nowadays, men no longer transform themselves into animals because they have salt in their bodies. The salt, when it emerges, breaks what was previously a continuity between the sweet and the bitter.