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| The tshenkutshen. © Shakarasa, who states here that 'You are free to use this if you wish,' on DeviantArt |
In 1999, Spanish cryptozoologist Angel Morant Fores carried out cryptozoological fieldwork among the Shuar people of Ecuador, detailed by him
here. On his return, he was
able to report on a number of Ecuadorean cryptids previously unknown
in the literature, including the
esakar-paki (a peccary),
shiashia-yawá,
pamá-yawá,
tshenkutshen,
entzaeia-yawá,
tsere-yawá,
jiukam-yawá,
"jungle lion," (all cats) and
ujea (a
bear-like animal). The information he received about these
cryptids, including descriptions and sightings, can be read online in
archived versions in Spanish and English. Instead of simply repeating
this information, this post will present more obscure information
about these cryptids – principally folkloric and etymological facts
– found in various anthropological publications. This information,
taken as it is from folklore and heresy, should be considered less
reliable than the firsthand accounts gathered by Forés. The “new
information” does little or nothing to help identify these animals,
but is worth compiling in one place anyway.
An opening note: the
Shuar term “yawá” is
usually translated as “tiger” (that is, jaguar or puma) and is
most commonly applied by the Shuar as a suffix to cats, including
many of the cryptids discussed below. However, it does not always
refer to cats; it may simply mean any carnivorous mammal, and one
Shuar-Spanish dictionary incorrectly translates the word as “dog”.
In fact, the Shuar name for the dog either is yawá or
ends in yawá, proving
that the appearance of the term in a cryptid's name does not
necessarily mean the animal is regarded as a cat.
The best-known of the
cryptids revealed by Forés must be surely be the “rainbow tiger”
(or jaguar), the tshenkutshen. This cryptid was described as a cat like
a jaguar with some very unusual features, including stripes of red,
white, and yellow across its chest; remarkably simian hands with flat
palms; powerful arms; a hump atop its shoulder; and leaping, arboreal
habits. The colour of its coat is inconsistent between eyewitnesses;
according to some, it is black; others say it is white and speckled,
like the shiashia-yawá. An animal with these exact features
(and a white spotted coat) was allegedly shot by Macas settler
Policarpio Rivadeneira in the jungles of Cerro Kilamo in 1959. In
light of its non-feline characteristics, the fact that its name lacks
the suffix yawá (“tiger”)
seemed significant, suggesting that the Shuar themselves did not
actually regard it as a cat.
The first thing I
discovered about this cryptid was that “tsénket” is
actually the Shuar word for the number seven. Working off of this
lead and trying out different spellings of “tshenkutshen”
brought up nothing, so I moved on to another of the Shuar's mystery
cats – and, in the first book I found, Elke Mader's Metamorfosis
del Poder (1999), I came across a list of Shuar cats which
included the “tsenkútsenku,”
which, alongside “tsenkútsen,”
(and, in one case, “tesenkutsen”)
appears to be the favoured spelling for this cryptid's name amongst
anthropologists.
Some
of the works mentioning the cryptid refer to it as the
tsenkútsenku-yawá,
including
a Shuar-language story, which might seem to confirm that it is in
fact seen as a feline animal (but remember that yawá
does not always refer to cats). The
Nombres
de los Mamiferos del Ecuador
(2004) says that tsenkutsen-yawá
does literally mean “rainbow tiger,”
and
although
I have been unable to definitely establish the meaning of the Shuar
“senku”
or “sen,”
(having said that, the similar Shuar word “senta”
might be translated as “ribbon” - “seven ribbons” = “rainbow”
in idiom?) this etymology makes sense based on the first part of the
name – after all, rainbows have seven colours. The name also shows
that, although the multicoloured stripes are not always mentioned in
the sources below, they are an intrinsic part of the animal. Other
sources give the Shuar word for rainbow as “tuntiak,”
so perhaps tsenkutsen
is
a more idiomatic term. Alternatively, Ortalli Sanga suggests that the
name is derived from the word “tsenkup”
(the common squirrel monkey Saimiri
sciureus),
presumably in reference to the animal's arboreal habits.
The
Nombres
de los Mamiferos del Ecuador
defines it as a very dangerous melanistic jaguar which lives in the
trees, and sees it as more mythological than real. The
Glosario
Patrimonio Inmaterial also
confirms the basic description of the tsenkútsenku
as a “very fierce” black,
red, white, and yellow-striped cat, and
Mundo
Shuar
(1980) adds that the colours on its chest are those of the ave
predicador,
the
toucan.
According
to Marco Vinicio Rueda, there are a total of nine extant myths
regarding the tsenkútsenku,
but only one story, which
can be found in a number of works, is recounted. In the most
concise version, as told in Los
Nombres Shuar (2000) by
Carmelina Jimpikit and Gladys Antun', a hunter is killed with a
single bite by a tsenkútsenku
hiding
in a tree, and his sickly brother sets out to take revenge, summoning
some other Shuar and building a trap – baited with his brother's
scant remains – with which to trap the predator. The plan is
successful, and the tsenkútsenku
is caught and killed. In one version of the story, the hunter beheads
the tsenkútsenku
and takes the head to a sacred ceremony, alarming several women, and
in vengeance for this desecration, an angered spirit either takes the
form of a tsenkútsenku
and
kills the Shuar, or creates many more tsenkútsenku
on the Earth. Full-length versions may be found in Rueda's Setenta
Mitos Shuar
(1983) and Siro Pellizzaro's Arutam:
Mitología Shuar
(1990), which both contain details not found in the other. According
to one anthropologist, the story probably exists to illustrate the
usefulness of traps, and how to hunt very dangerous animals.
The
story itself doesn't really give any new information about the
rainbow tiger, beyond further confirming that it is indeed regarded
as extremely dangerous. Also, its call might sound like “Tsara!
Tsara! tsara! tsara!,”
or that might be it's attempt at mimicking a monkey call – the text
is a little unclear.
The ending of the story does also imply that the rainbow tiger was
not regarded as a rare animal when the myth originated, as the
conclusion to one version has the tsenkútsenku
actually being multiplied, and the sacrilegious hunter is blamed for
unleashing this “great evil” upon the land: one might almost read
the tale as an origin myth for the cryptid. Rueda's notes also
provide some more details. He confirms the information given to Forés
regarding its arboreal habits, writing that “it
jumps from one tree to another and does not walk on land,”
(however, in one version of the story, it drags the body of the
hunter to a cave to eat, and is later seen drinking from the river).
He also states that it ordinarily travels in pairs, which reminds me
of the Brazilian giant black jaguar onça-canguçú,
which is also said to have a white “bib,” though it does not
otherwise resemble the rainbow tiger. In fact,
throughout the story, the tsenkútsenku
itself is referred to simply as a black jaguar more than once. There
is actually no mention of it's most striking characteristic – the
rainbow stripes which give it its name – in this tale at all.
Finally,
the rainbow tiger is mentioned in a Shuar poem included as the
frontispiece of Letras
Indígenas en la Amazonía Peruana
(1993) by Ricardo Vírhuez. In the poem, the gloating narrator states
that he is as “fierce
as a tsenkútsenku
tiger,” showing that the rainbow tiger's ferocity is or was
proverbial among the Shuar.
There
are some non-feline possibilities for the tshenkutshen,
mostly founded on its strange simian characteristics: a carnivorous,
superficially cat-like primate; a giant procyonid similar to the
olingo; or even a surviving sparassodont marsupial, thought to have
gone extinct in the Pliocene. On the other hand, if it is indeed a
cat, one animal which, it is sometimes
speculated, may best explain this cryptid, is a giant form of margay
(Leopardus
wiedii;
first suggested by the owner of the website Messybeast and TheMorlock
on DeviantArt).
There are still more discrepancies and questions regarding the
tshenkutshen.
Why do different sources describe it with different coat colours and
patterns? Why do no other sources mention the simian paws, strong
arms, and fatty hump described by Rivandeneira? And why does the old
Shuar myth make no mention of its rainbow chest, despite that feature
apparently giving it its Shuar name, instead describing it merely as
a “black jaguar” – unless the stripes were sufficiently well
known to not warrant a mention?
One
piece of information may go some way towards explaining some of these
discrepancies. When I first came across the spelling tsenkútsenku,
I took it to be the same thing as the tshenkutshen/tsenkútsen
because
their descriptions were so similar, and Glosario
Patrimonio Inmaterial and
Mundo
Shuar also
explicitly describe the tsenkútsenku
(not
tsenkútsen)
as a rainbow-striped animal. However, the Nombres
de los Mamiferos del Ecuador seperately
lists the tsenku-tsenku-yawá
as
a very aggressive cat which lives in trees near rivers, alongside
the tshenkutshen.
Tsenku-tsenku-yawá
is
presumably the same thing as the tsenkútsenku,
but are they both also the same thing as the original rainbow jaguar,
tshenkutshen,
or have are they distinct creatures which have been confused by
various authors? Alternatively, have the authors of Nombres
de los Mamiferos del Ecuador mistakenly
split one animal into two on account of the spelling differences?
In
fact, the above-mentioned book lists a number of very obscure,
possibly cryptozoological cats from Shuar lore – mostly defined as
“mythological” – including the white jaguar wampúwash-yawá;
the yampikia-yawá
with its “somehow different” fur; the blue-furred sechá-yawá;
and the intriguing juríjri-yawá,
a cat which lives in caves and is very fierce, but which is
nonetheless domesticable. Perhaps these cats are simply myths, or are
now extinct, because they don't appear to have been mentioned to
Forés. On they other hand, the first three probably would not be new
animals anyway, as there are a wide range of jaguar colour morphs
reported from South America, which are usually considered seperate
species by local people. The juríjri-yawá
sounds more like its own animal, but if it is or was real, it may
well be some known species; as noted above, “yawá”
does not imply that the animal is necessarily a big cat, nor even a
cat at all, only a carnivorous mammal. Incidentally, a monster named
juríjri
also
appears in the afformentioned Shuar poem, when the narrator brags
that “I
can eat you while you sleep like a juríjri,”
but based on other sources, this may be a different creature to the
supposed cat. The Los
Shuar y los Animales
also includes another mystery animal, the giant black-and-white cat
uunt-yawá.
Although
it's the tshenkutshen
that has monkey-like characterstics, it's another of the mystery
“cats” reported by Forés, the tsere-yawá,
which now turns out to have some connection with monkeys. This
cryptid was described simply as a brown-furred “one
meter long semiaquatic cat which is said to hunt in packs of 8 to 10
individuals”.
Karl Shuker has speculated on his blog that this animal may actually
be the small-eared dog or zorro (Atelocynus
microtis).
By all accounts, it is not very simian at all –
and yet the word “tsere”
is in fact the Shuar term for either “spider,” or a sort of small
monkey (probably the white-fronted capuchin Cebus
albifrons,
though some sources say a marmoset or a night monkey), giving us a
basic etymology of “monkey-tiger” or, apparently considered much
less likely, “spider-tiger”!
Los
Shuar y los Animales describes
the tsere-yawá
simply as “a kind of tiger”. Metamorfosis
del Poder also
mentions the tsere-yawá
(giving
the etymology as “monkey-tiger”), but provides no details. The
same goes for the white speckled, medium-sized cat shiashia-yawá,
as well as the suach-yawá
(the black jaguar, which appears in another Shuar poem). The Nombres
suggests that the shiashia-yawá
or shia-shia-yawá
may
be the oncilla (Leopardus
tigrinus),
which is spotted, but has brown fur.
Then
there's the entzaeia-yawá
(“water tiger” or “river tiger”), a man-eating, cow-tailed
water cat which may be one of the aquatic “sabre-toothed cats”
reported from elsewhere in South America, though it doesn't seem to
have long fangs. There's little new to say about this one, as the
etymology of its name was already known, and I can find no new
stories regarding it beyond a Shuar-language text. The
Nombres,
in which it is listed as the entsáya-yawá,
only says that it is very ferocious and probably mythical, and that
the name is also used to refer to caimans, and to the greater grison
by the Shuar-speaking Achuar. Los
Shuar y los Animales
reveals that there is another Shuar “water tiger,” the
black-furred wankánin-yawá,
but since this isn't described, it may be some smaller known animal,
and Forés' original description of the entzaeia-yawá
already listed black as one of its many colour morphs.
Similar
to this in habits and in lack of new information is the pamá-yawá
(“tapir
tiger”), a very large grey-furred water-cat which is supposedly the
only predator in the jungle big enough to hunt tapirs. In
the Nombres,
the pamá-yawá
is
simply a “big fierce jaguar”.
Moving
quickly on, we come to another pack-hunting cat (besides this and the
tsere-yawá,
other mystery pack-hunting cats of South America include the Guyanese
waracabra tiger and the Peruvian jungle wildcat), the jiukam-yawá,
an animal for which Forés could find no eyewitnesses. According to
some sources, “jiukam”
signifies a “famous tiger”; others say that it is a term derived
from “jiu-jiutin,”
meaning “flexible”.
There
is little new to say about the esakar-paki,
a very small and aggressive peccary which has reddish fur and lives
in groups of fifty or sixty individuals near the Peruvian border –
other than that famed zoologist Marc van Roosmalen has described (not
in the taxonomic sense of the term), from Brazil, a species of
peccary which is small, orange-furred, and lives in groups. Could
this be the same animal? Los
Shuar y los Animales aslo
lists the “ferocious and dangerous” esakar-paki,
alongside a grand total of seven other peccaries (many of which may
just be colour morphs or life stages), when only two species are
currently known from Ecuador.
Passing
over the “maned lion” (perhaps identical to the “Peruvian lion”
of Peter Hocking), we come to the ujea,
which Forés described as a bear-like animal which reminded him of a
ground sloth, though as he could find no first-hand accounts of the
animal, he could not give a detailed description. There is more
information, much of it contradictary, available about this creature,
which is regarded by anthropologists as a demon and not an animal,
than about any of the other cryptids covered here except the
tshenkutshen.
Some of the “new” facts suggest a possible connection with the
mapinguari, and tend to strengthen the identification of the ujea
as a surviving (or now-vanished lingerling?) ground sloth.
More
than any of the other Shuar cryptids documented here, the ujea
seems to inhabit a border region between jungle reality and jungle
mythology. Most anthropological sources describe it without physical
detail as a generic monster or demon which is frequently said to be
colossal and nocturnal. According to the
Glosario
Patrimonio Inmaterial,
it is a nocturnal “gorilla-like” monster which is so dangerous
that Shuar women and children feared to go out at night, though it
could be speared to death from the doorways of houses, which it was
too large to fit through. Other books describe it vaguely as a giant
monkey or human.
These
accounts are at odds with a description and illustration of the ujea
by a Shuar, a certain Cesar who was a guide for a world-travelling
blogger. Here is that blogger's description of the ujea,
as given to him by Cesar:
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.
Other
characteristics mentioned in different works include nocturnal
habits, a terrifying call, and a cave-dwelling lifestyle
(Metamorfosis
del Poder
refers to the ujea
as a “neanderthal”).
Besides
the fact that the Shuar once hunted ujeas
suggesting they were considered animals and not demons (but did the
Shuar stop hunting them because they went extinct, or for some other
reason?), this information also suggests a possible link with the
mapinguari, which is also famously noxious – as are the Peruvian
segamai
and Brazilian kida
harara.
Also, although they're most likely just there to show that the animal
is unhygenic and smells bad, it's interesting that the mapinguari is
also described as being followed by swarms of flies. But having said
all that, an overpowering, even fatal odour is also a quality of
other South American mythical creatures which clearly are not ground
sloths – including the iwia,
another Shuar being illustrated at the top of the linked blog post –
so this alone would not be enough to link the two cryptids. The other
behavioural characteristic given, the consumption of flower nectar,
also probably owes more to mythology than reality, and might perhaps
be based on the animal's long tongue. Interestingly, there is a (very
jolly-sounding) Shuar song about the ujea
entitled “Ujea (jungle caretaker),” a title which also suggests a
very different view of the animal to the ferocious, feared monster
described above – a view similar to that taken of the mapinguari by
some Brazilians, who view it as a defender of the rainforest which
punishes hunters who kill more animals than they need to.
But,
noxious stench and mapinguari connections aside, it's the
illustrations in the above-linked article, made by the Shuar Cesar,
which actually provide the best evidence that the ujea
may indeed be a ground sloth. The illustration of the ujea
really shows a creature which seems half-man, half-ground sloth. It
has a general human form (but is on all fours), with only somewhat
hairy limbs, face, and undercarriage, and human hands, feet, and
genitals. But some of its other features are suggestive of a ground
sloth – a mane of shaggy red hair on the head and back; some very
heavily hooked claws on its five fingers; and what appears to be a
long, giraffe-like tongue. And although the angle prevents me from
being certain, the head looks pretty elongated (I also have to wonder
what, if the ujea
is or was a real animal, led to the “half-human” part of its
appearance. Perhaps it was capable of walking bipedally?)
The
ujea
also appears in an old Shuar myth. In this story, it is a ferocious
predator which almost wiped out the Shuar by eating their women and
children, though it also ate a fruit called the yash
el caimito.
Eventually the hero Kunamp tricked it to its death, luring it with
this fruit to cross over a rope tied across a crevice, a rope which
Kunamp cut when the ujea
was halfway across, sending the monster plummeting to its death. Does
this mean the ujea
is no longer a denizen of the forest? Similar stories are told across
the Americas of dangerous monsters and enemy tribes being vanquished,
and the former stories often seem to refer to animals known only from
the fossil record. Cesar's account said that the Shuar “used to”
hunt the ujea.
And of course, Forés could find no eyewitnesses who claimed to have
seen a ujea:
surely such a large animal, even if it were very rare, would be seen
on occasion if it still existed.
Nevertheless,
there is one relatively recent (1980's) account of an apparent ground
sloth sighting from Ecuador, though it's specific location within the
country is unstated, and more details about the sighting itself are
currently unavailable to me. The eyewitness, a colleague of
cryptozoologist J. Richard Greenwell, claimed to have seen a 10' long
shaggy-haired quadruped, with a head like a horse, rear up onto its
hind legs to feed on vegetation beside a cave. As Karl Shuker notes,
this animal “very
much [resembled]
a ground sloth”.
Finally,
it should be mentioned that the book Los
Shuar y los Animales describes
two different types of bear, both of which are “large” and edible
(i.e. hunted by the Shuar), in the forests where only the spectacled
bear (Tremarctos
ornatus)
is currently recognised. The first is supposedly the spectacled bear
itself, the chai
or
chae,
which is 1.20 metres at the shoulder (where the spectacled bear does
not reach 1 metre), hairy, and lives in the mountains feeding on
fruits. The second, the nankupchai,
is black and eats birds and fruits. This same work also lists six
different kinds of armadillo, where only four are known.
