The Tairona were a precolombian civilization in the region of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the present-day Magdalena and La Guajira Departments of Colombia, South America which goes back to the 1st century AD and showed documented growth around in the 11th century. The Tairona people formed one of the two principal groups of the Chibcha and were pushed into submarginal regions by the Spanish conquest. The Kogi indigenous people who live in the area today are direct descendants of the Tairona.
Knowledge sources about the precolombian Tairona civilization are limited to archaeological findings and a few written references from the Spanish colonial era. A major city of the Tairona and archaeological site is today known as Ciudad Perdida (Spanish for “Lost City”), it was discovered by treasure hunters in 1975. The Tairona are known to have built terraced platforms, house foundations, stairs, sewers, tombs, and bridges from stone. Use of pottery for utilitarian and ornamental/ceremonial purposes was also highly developed.
The Tairona civilization is most renown for its distinctive goldwork. The earliest known Tairona goldwork has been described for the Neguanje Period (from about 300- 800 AD) and its use within the Tairona society appears to have extended beyond the elite. The gold artifacts made comprise pendants, lip-plugs, nose ornaments, necklaces, and earrings. Gold cast Tairona figure pendants (known as “caciques”) in particular stand out among the goldworks of precolumbian America because of their richness in detail. The figurines depict human subjects – thought be noblemen or chiefs – in ornate dresses and with a large animal mask over the face. Many elements of their body posture (e.g., hands on their hips) and dress signal an aggressive stance and hence are interpreted as evidence for the power of the wearer and the bellicose nature of Tairona society.
The tribe known as ‘Los Kogui’ are today’s custodians of the Tairona culture. They have a population of approximately 12,000 people. The and are called the Kogi. The Kogi plant crops and live off the land. They prefer not to mix with outsiders. Few Colombians, or those from the outside worlds, are allowed to enter their mountain. They marry in their culture. The Kogi constantly move about from place to place, between their different abodes spread among the different levels of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. This is looked upon as taking care of their nutritional needs without abusing the environment.
The Kogi or Cogui or Kagaba, translated “jaguar” in the Kogi language are a Native American ethnic group that lives in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia. Their civilization has continued since the Pre-Columbian era. The Kogi language belongs to the Chibchan family.
The Kogi claim to be descendants of the Tairona culture, which flourished before the time of the Spanish conquest. The Tairona were forced to move into the highlands when the Caribs invaded around 1000 CE, according to the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress which allowed them to evade the worst effects of the Spanish colonization. Like so many ancient myths concerning holy mountains at the “centre of the world”, their mythology teaches that they are “Elder Brothers” of humanity, living in the “Heart of the World” (the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta). Those not living in the Heart of the World are called “Younger Brothers.” Their mythology suggests that these Younger Brothers were sent away from the heart of the world long ago, seemingly in reference to these same Carib people who are said to have originated from South America.
Kogi Mamas are chosen from birth and spend the first nine years of childhood in a cave in total darkness learning the ancient secrets of the spiritual world or Aluna. They are the priests and judges who control Kogi society.
All major decisions and shamanic work are done by Divination. All is the world of Aluna, so the Mamas see a reflection of the physical world first in the spiritual world. If Aluna is the Mother, then the Kogi listen to the Mother by divining. This lost technique of divination is what keeps the Kogi world in balance and order.
The Mamas – as with other spiritual tribal leaders around the world – are worried that the Younger Brother has not heeded the first warning. If the Sierra Nevada or the Mother dies, the world will also die.
They use the coca bush for many things. Myths reveal that it was the Aluna herself who instituted coca chewing among the Kogi and who gave a lime gourd to her first son, as a symbolic wife. Other myths tell that coca was originally discovered in the flowing hair of a young girl who let her father only participate in its use. An envious and jealous young man transformed himself into a bird and, after watching the girl bathing in the river, seduced her. When he returned home and changed back into human shape, he shook his hair and out of it fell two coca seeds.
Small plantations of coca shrubs are found near all Kogi settlements, and provide the men with tender green leaves, plucked by the women. All adult men chew the slightly toasted leaves, adding to the moist wad small portions of lime. Coca shrubs are planted and tended by the men but the leaves are gathered by women. Periodically the men toast these leaves inside the temple, using for this end a special double-handled pottery vessel. This ritual vessel made by a Kogi priest can be used only for the toasting of coca leaves.
When chewed with coca, lime is a substance which helps the mucous membranes in the mouth absorb the alkaloids in the leaves. The Kogi produce Lime by burning sea shells on a small pyre carefully constructed with chosen splints. The fine white powder is then sifted into a ritual gourd which is carried by all men.
The Lime container consists of a small gourd which is slightly pear-shaped and perforated along the top. While all lime gourds consist of the same raw material, the wood of the stick which is inserted into it, must correspond to the patriline of the owner. Each patriline uses a different wood taken from the trees belonging to certain botanical species. The length of the stick may vary from 20 to 30cms. and, together with the degree of surface polish, these various characteristics identify its owner. An initiated Kogi man will easily recognise the patriline of his companions, simple by looking at their lime sticks.
The symbolic importance of the lime container and its stick is manifold. In one, most important image, the gourd is a woman. During the marriage ceremony the mama gives the bridegroom a gourd with these words: “Now I give you a lime gourd; I give you a woman.” He then hands the bridegroom the lime stick and orders him to perforate with it the gourd at its upper end, thus symbolising the act of deflowering the bride.
Both men and women say quite openly that coca chewing has an aphrodisiacal effect upon male sexuality, and newly wed couples are very outspoken about this. Male initiation, marriage, and habitual coca chewing are three elements which coincide at a certain period in a young mans life. Young men sometimes say that they dislike coca chewing but most of them, sooner or later, yield to the pressures exercised by the priests and the older generation, and adopt the habit.
While slowly chewing some twenty or thirty toasted leaves, the man will wet the lower and slightly pointed end of the stick with saliva and will insert it into the gourd. Withdrawing the stick again he will put the adhering lime into his mouth. Immediately he will rub the stick around the top of the gourd in a circular motion. Eventually, this daily repeated action of rubbing the stick on the gourd surface begins to form a thin layered crust of yellowish-white lime that covers the upper part of the container. Some old lime gourds display a disc shaped accretion of up to 10cms. in diameter, carefully fashioned by the gourd’s owner.
The many symbolic meanings of coca chewing and of the physical objects involved in this act, form a coherent whole. In macrocosmic perspective, a lime gourd is a model of the universe; the stick when inserted, becomes a world axis, and knowledgeable men will be able to talk at great length, explaining the structure of the universe in terms of levels, rims or directions appearing on the gourd.
On another scale, the gourd can be compared to the Sierra Nevada; the lime-splattered upper part are the snow peaks, and the stick is the world axis. Certain mountain peaks, crowned with white, rocky cliffs, are the Sun’s lime containers, and so are all the temples and houses.
The coca plant is an integral part of the Kogi way of life, deeply involved with their traditions, religion, work and medicine. Perhaps the most ancient use of coca in South America is its employment in shamanistic practises and religious rituals. The mild mental excitation induced by chewing the coca leaves enables the shaman to enter more easily into a trance state in which he could communicate with the spiritual forces of nature and summon them to his aid.
Large scale deforestation and clearing of the jungle is posing a massive threat to the natural habitat of the Sierra Nevada and its flora and fauna. In recent years the sinister illusion of the marijuana cultivation practised by settlers from inland and fueled by encouragement by the Columbian and International mafia has destroyed vast areas of the jungle.
