The indigenous Canelos Quechua community in the Amazon continue to speak their own language and are generally bi-lingual with Spanish.
Quechua people still prepare and share their traditional foods & Chicha drink and they use the same medicinal plants their ancestors used.
Near Puyo, Ecuador we find the Canelos Quechua potters still creating original clay pottery as their ancestors did.
We also find a stunning variety of surreal forms, sculpted in clay including the Huri-Huri, an underworld spirit with a mouth at the back of his head to eat humans. The Puyo Supay or Puyo Spirit, a whimsical cloud figure, plays both verbally and visually with Puyo, the name of the town where we stayed that also means clouds in Quichua .
Quechua mythology holds that long ago, in mythic time-space, outsiders, as monkeys, tied up two beautiful women with palm fiber that turned into spiny vines. The toucan person, ‘Sicuanga runa’, was the only warrior able to cut these bonds, which he did with his strong, sharp beak, allowing the women to continue their mission of providing food and beauty.
They in return created him in his present-day form and colors. The imagery of Sicuanga combines the qualities of strength and beauty.
As a continuing symbol of protest, it still evokes the capability and power of Canelos Quichua people to break the bonds of political-economic ensnarement.
Female master potters are known as Sinchi muskuyuq warmikuna ‘strong visionary women’.
The woman potters acquire this knowledge at an early age, as they are transmitted from generation to generation.
The decorations painted on the ceramic pottery include geometrical motifs, realistic animals, or mythological characters.
The intriguing patterns are made perhaps even more appealing by the materials used to accomplish it: paint brushes are handmade, using locks of the artist’s hair as bristles.
This naturally thick, straight hair yields itself beautifully to a wide range of shapes and allows for the distinctive delicate lines found on Quechua pottery. According to archaeological records, this method has origins in pre-Colombian, Tupi Amazonian tribal pottery.
Clay is gathered from riverbeds and mixed by hand and/or by feet. The pottery is hand-built and pit fired.
The clay pottery is not glazed, but instead coated with a tree sap resin from the Shilquilu ruya tree (Protium fimbriatum).
The resin is rubbed on the ware while it is still hot from firing, leaving a varnish-like surface.