"Our Grandparents Used to Say That We Are Certainly Ancient People, We Come From the Chullpas": The Bolivian Chipayas' Mythistory

In this paper I will study the story2 that the Bolivian highland Chipayas tell about their origin and past. This oral tradition is closely related to the present. Not only does it explain and justify why they live where they do and how they do, but it also explains their often tense relationship with their immediate neighbors, the Aymaras. In the story, mythical and historical discourse are fused in order to construct their ethnic identity. Before examining the narrative in detail, it is necessary to discuss briefly the two theoretical concepts that underlie my analysis: ethnic identity and mythistory.

the pride of belonging to a group and/or they can be a response to prejudice and discrimination, and in many cases both factors reinforce one another.The boundaries that result from this groupdefining process can be physical (reflected, for example, in the competition over natural resources or access to markets) as well as conceptual (manifest, for example, in a certain interpretation of the past or a tradition, be it invented or not).Because social and ethnic groups always interact with other groups, this construct affects and changes a group's internal perceptions of identity and at the same time influences how a group shapes its image of other, especially neighboring, groups.This construct also contributes to the image that these neighboring groups form regarding the group in question. 3

Mythistory
Both history4 and myth5 are normally verbal explanations of the past.They are used to construct socially and culturally relevant past events, are often related to public rituals, and are told by a narrator who tends to be a recognized representative of the group.Both history and myth claim to be authoritative and legitimate, and both highlight a continuing relevance of the past to the present and future.However, one of the most important tasks of myth is to interpret sociocultural values and give them meaning and importance in contemporary life.While history may be seen similarly, it is not typically used as a learning experience, although it may be intended as such.
The most distinctive differences, which have largely determined our basic conceptual separation of myth and history, are medium and author.Myth is usually transmitted orally (and can be supported by visual means, such as rock shapes or paintings and/or rituals that enact the myth).However, when we analyze it, it has almost always been transferred to and transformed into writing, most often by an outsider.History tends to be transmitted in writing, but it is frequently communicated through oral or visual means (such as exhibitions or television), and this was even more the case in the past, when paintings and oral discourse were the only means of conveying "history" to an illiterate audience.It is also often enacted in public ceremonies, for example in commemoration.In this sense there is no clear boundary between a "fixed" written transmission and a "fluid" oral transmission.
The other major difference is authorship.Myth has no identifiable authors; it is conceived of as a narrative that belongs to and is produced by the community, although, of course, it is practically impossible to study how myth develops over time in its own environment, without "outside" interference; therefore, little is known as to the function and role of the narrator and the audience in the shaping and reshaping of the text. 6History, on the contrary, normally has an individual as author, but once we start asking about the composition and editing process of a book, including the selection of sources as well as changes due to invited critique, the seemingly clearly defined authorship becomes elusive.
As I hope to have shown, the concepts of myth and history are not as far apart from each other as one might think.Therefore, the fused concept of mythistory7 seems to be a legitimate and adequate combination to describe socially relevant narratives, especially in the discourse of the indigenous population in contemporary post-colonial societies.Since the colonial period, with its indoctrination and teaching of European values and interpretations of the world, both myth and history have informed and modified indigenous concepts of how to understand and interpret the past.We also have to consider that European "history" was always intertwined with religious beliefs and interpretations and therefore must have been more accessible to those peoples who did not normally separate the "secular" from the "spiritual."Mythistory can be defined in the following way: it is (most often) a narrative construction of past events that are seen as relevant or even crucial for the creation, explanation, shaping, and maintenance of an ethnic group's identity and social cohesion.It is considered to be true, authoritative, and legitimizing and can/must therefore be modified and adapted to new circumstances. 8he origin story of the Bolivian Chipayas shows how both concepts, myth and history, have shaped the contemporary construction of the Chipayas' past, and that this mythistory is an important instrument for explaining and legitimizing their ethnic identity, in concrete as well as symbolic terms.The origin mythistory and early folk history 9 as told by the Chipayas themselves includes the following major themes: the ancient ancestors called chullpas and the reasons why the Chipayas are the most ancient people in the area, if not in the Andes; their migratory movements in the larger area where they live now, with explanation of the modern territorial limitations as well as neighborhood conflicts; and the particular surnames as a result of contacts with Aymara neighbors and Christian religion.By drawing on different kinds of constructions of the past, European as well as indigenous in form and content, the three themes are closely interrelated and situate the Chipayas in space and time.They also serve to explain their ethnic identity and legitimize territorial claims.

The Uru-Chipayas
As first documented in sixteenth-century Spanish sources, the people called Urus or Uruquillas by the colonial writers lived around the great lakes of what is today Peru and Bolivia: Lake Titicaca, Lake Poopó, and Lake Coipasa, on the rivers connecting them and on the socalled floating islands of Lake Titicaca.These people call themselves "water people." 10 In the past, this population was different from the surrounding herding and peasant Aymara-and Puquina-speaking groups because Uru subsistence was based on fishing and birdhunting, and because they spoke their own language.With Inca and later Spanish colonial resettlements the Urus lost much of their lifestyle, intermarried with the surrounding Aymara population, and by the beginning of the twentieth century had become reduced to small groups.The best known of these are the Urus who live on the "floating islands" of Lake Titicaca; they now speak Aymara and make their living mostly through tourism.The Urus of Irohito at the southern end of Lake Titicaca and the Muratos on the shores and islands of Lake Poopó have also lost their language.However, in their oral traditions, their clothing, and certain elements of their material culture the Urus maintain common cultural features.
The mythistory studied here is that of the village of Santa Ana de Chipaya (Illustration 1, Maps 1-3).On the Altiplano at a 3,670-meter altitude, efficient agriculture and animal breeding are limited by extreme day-night temperature variations, salty soil (Illustration 2), and inundations during the wet season (November to March).Therefore, many Chipayas migrate to work in Chile or eastern Bolivia; however, there is still a tendency to return to the community.Important features of self-identification are fishing and bird-hunting (Illustration 3) in and by the river Lauca that flows through their territory; round houses; a particular type of clothes, woven by the wearers (Illustration 4); and the Chipaya language.When asked what is most typical of their culture, they always mention these features.
However, bird-hunting and fishing are mainly carried out in the wet season to supplement a diet mostly composed of quinoa 11 and potato.Sheep, pigs, and llamas are bred and kept to supply wool and meat and may in a good season provide a modest income.Nowadays no one in the village lives in a round house and traditional clothing is only worn on special occasions.The only particularity the Chipayas have maintained is their language, which is spoken by almost all of the approximately 1,800 community members.The language is not related to any other language of the Andes; it is still fully functional, although increasingly endangered by radio and television, schooling in Spanish, and migration.Another feature familiar to everyone and one that seems little changed over the past century (ethnographic information began to be collected at the end of the nineteenth century) is the mythistory of their origin and remote past, which goes back to ancient times but also relates to their present-day lives.

Chipaya Mythistory
The Chipayas' mythistory consists of several episodes and has been published, among others, by Alfred Métraux in the 1930s (see Appendix, Text 1) and by Nathan Wachtel (1990).12A detailed version in Spanish, written by Fernando O. Martín Quispe, a youth from Chipaya, in his notebook was published in 1955.The late Porterie Gutiérrez' notebooks (and a number of sound files and transcriptions) that are available on the Internet also contain chullpa stories, among them several mythistories (see Porterie Collection 1982-85).Two texts collected by the DOBES team also narrate the story (Appendix, Texts 2 and 3).
During a workshop in Chipaya in 2002, all participants, mostly young men, knew this story and could narrate it themselves.Thus the interpretation of Chipaya mythistory can be said to have been relatively stable throughout a period of at least seventy years.Our consultants said that this mythistory is narrated like any other story-for example, when going out to the pastures or passing long days and nights there away from the village.
The story as a whole comprises three distinguishable episodes: the chullpa ancestors, the founding of the Chipaya, and the receiving of surnames. 13Drawing together the individual texts, Table 1 gives "the whole story" (this and the chronology were confirmed by one of our consultants and are reflected in the Porterie Collection texts).

Chipaya interpretation
Construction and justification of their ethnic identity and interethnic relationships through their mythistory (sources: field observations and Chipaya consultants).
First generation: chullpa ancestors • sensitive to the sun • agriculturalists The ancient chullpas lived by the light of the moon.They built their houses with the entrance towards the east so that the sun, which used to rise from the west, wouldn't burn them.They cultivated quinoa and cañihua. 14day they are mainly agriculturalists and herders.
First key event: natural catastrophe One day the sun rose in the east and burned most of them <M:1; C2:3>.

Second generation: Chipayas • herders of wild animals
One couple saved itself and started living in the water and used to come out only at night.They herded vicuñas15 <M:1; C1:3>.
The Chipayas consider themselves to be the only descendants of the most ancient people of the region, the chullpas.
• fishers, hunters, gatherers • resettlement • contact with Aymaras of Capilla Perdida area At that time they lived in Capilla Perdida (Lost Chapel), a different place from the modern village, and came to the lake that was close to where the village of Chipaya is now, in order to fish, hunt birds, and collect eggs <C1:1; C2:2>.Then they settled near the lake in order to make hunting and fishing easier, but thereby gave up their rights to Capilla Perdida, which the Aymaras then took over <C1:2>.
They are limited to a small village between the hills in the north and the (now reduced) lake in the south (see <C2:2> and Maps 2 and 3).16 • contact with Aymaras of Huachacalla • herders They received sheep from the Aymaras of Huachacalla, which multiplied to form a herd <M:3>.
The Chipayas say that they have tense relationships with the neighboring Aymaras; for example, they have to pay too much for the traditional plant used for thatching their houses; this is why they use corrugated iron.There are quarrels and fights over land rights.
But there are Aymaras who get married to Chipayas; Chipayas live in Aymara villages (information from an Aymara woman in Huachacalla; information from Chipayas).
Second key event: Christianization, learning Aymara = "civilization" They were discovered and captured.First they could not make themselves understood because they did not speak Aymara.A Christian priest gave them their surnames that are folk-etymologically explained as Chipaya <M:2; C1:3; C2:2>.
The Chipayas consider their surnames, given to them by a Christian priest (in colonial times), as typically Chipaya.In the explanation provided, the names derive from Aymara/Andean words (but etymologically not all of them do so; see Table 3).

Analyzing Chipaya Mythistory: Chullpas, Access to Land, and Names
The Chullpa Ancestors With respect to the past, the Andean peoples17 do not believe in a fixed point of origin of the world; rather, there has always been something in existence, but key events, mostly in the form of catastrophes, have produced generations of human beings who have come and gone (this belief can be found in early chronicles and still today, partly infused by Christian concepts). 18A common view of the past in the Andes is that of successive generations of ancestors, the ñawpa, machu (Quechua "ancestor"), or gentiles (Spanish "ancestor," implying "pagan") (Urbano  1980:117-19).Narratives tell us that there were ancestors who lived only by the light of the moon, and with the arrival of the sun (often equated with the Incas) they perished.In other versions of the narrative some people escaped and went to live underwater or in springs and have become malignant spirits. 19Yet another Quechua story tells that some persons escaped from being burned by the sun and went to the yungas (warm valleys of the eastern Andean slopes).Similarly, the Aymaras who are the Chipayas' direct neighbors talk of ancestors called chullpas, who were an ancient generation that perished when the sun rose first.The Aymaras themselves are a different people.This is reflected in the story of "Jesus Christ-Tatala and the Supay-Chullpas," told by the Aymaras from K'ulta (Bolivia).After fights between Tatala and the chullpas (Dillon and Abercrombie 1988:56), Tatala rises into the sky as the sun from the east, and the Chullpas die in their houses, burned and dried up by the heat.To this day, one can see their remains, and the sun, Tata Awatiri, continues to travel across the sky.Some of the Chullpas, however, managed to escape, by diving under the water of Lake Poopo [sic].These became the present day Chullpa people [in this case the Urus of Lake Poopó, also called Muratos, SD]. 20ile the origin stories vary among Quechuas and Aymaras, the chullpas still have a certain influence on them since they are related to the architectural remains of ancient graves called chullpas; coming into contact with them may have a negative impact: they can cause illness and death. 21The present generation of the Quechuas and Aymaras is a new post-machu/ chullpa generation that came into existence with the appearance of the sun 22 and replaced (in the literal sense) a dark past: an uncivilized, wild world was superseded by civilization, represented most clearly through the domestication of plants and the introduction of agriculture as well as Christianization.Thus the time of the machu/chullpa is conceived of as an era prior to the Quechua and Aymara, who are the descendants of a different people and generation. 23he Chipayas, on the other hand, narrate a similar and yet substantially different story of their origin.They see the chullpas as their own ancestors, whereas-as the above mentioned Quechua and Aymara narratives show-the Quechuas and Aymaras do not see themselves as descendants of the first generation (see Table 2 below).But chullpa is the name of the first generations of Chipayas (Text 3, <C2:3>): [Afraid of the Sun, which they believed to rise from the West,] they built the houses all oriented towards the East . . .but the sun never rose from the West.From the East rose the sun!The sun rays entered through the door.Then those who were on the hill burned.Thus the sun had risen with heat.Everything must have got burned.There wouldn't have been any harvest or any life.
Afterwards some of them died from hunger, having eaten wild straw, having eaten soft straw, being sad.Of those who were close to the lake, some of them, very few, would have saved themselves.Then afterwards we came [as descendants of those who survived].There are also our forefathers, grandparents [left]: nowadays the houses of the chullpas are [still] on the hills in this area.Those forefathers, our grandparents, they died because, living higher up, they could not get to the water. 24 the region that coincides roughly with that of the ancient and modern Uru-Chipayas, remains of graves are found, "circular, square or rectangular buildings of stone or adobe" (Isbell 1997:163), many of which contain skeletons (Isbell 1997, ch.5; see Illustrations 5 and 6 in the Appendix).These buildings are called chullpas.The Chipayas claim that these are the houses of their chullpa ancestors (see Text 3, <C2:3>).From the colonial European perspective the Uru-Chipayas-being fishers and birdhunters-were not of much use to the Spaniards; early descriptions are limited to the classic image of the barbarian.All we learn about their origins is what José de Acosta, a leading Jesuit intellectual, wrote at the end of the sixteenth century: "These Urus are so stupid that they themselves don't take themselves for human beings.It is said of them that when asked what people they were, they answered that they were not human beings, but Uros, as if it was a different species of animals." 26his opinion about the Chipayas and Urus became widespread and has been repeated endlessly.The Chipayas we spoke to still suffer from this image today (pers.comm., see also Text 2, <C1:3>).However, if we read Acosta's description against the background of the contemporary Chipaya origin mythistory, it acquires a different, and less derogatory meaning: they were not human beings because they were of an earlier generation that had almost completely died out with the arrival of the sun-except for the Uru-Chipayas!Even in the twentieth century, the Chipayas insist that they are the oldest (and therefore only legitimate) people of the Altiplano.
The Chipayas have always been considered a special case: as we have seen, more often than not in a negative sense of the classical "other" or barbarian.Their own mythistory, although not static, has been conservative in the sense that the basic content has not changed.It is an excellent example of how it is not necessarily the text itself that undergoes changes but its interpretation by others or even by the authors themselves.Thus the reputation of the Chipayas as being non-humans (which was already in place and probably created by the imperialist and utilitarian Incas 27 ) fit into the Spaniards' ideas of all kinds of odd beings populating this foreign world-not too far from the earlier ideas of people without heads, and the ever-persistent Amazons and cannibals (cf., for example, Amodio 1993).At the same time it was a handy "misunderstanding" that helped the dominant Spaniards to further marginalize the despised Chipayas.

Gaining and Losing Land
The catastrophe of the sun was survived by a small group of people, the ancestors of the modern-day Chipayas.These survivors moved between two ecological areas: the hills (Capilla Perdida) in the north and the lake in the south (Text 2, <C1:1-2>; Text 3, <C2:2,4>; see also Maps 3).Through these migratory movements they lost their land rights farther north and were finally confined to the lake area.Ever since, access to a variety of land and soils for different subsistence strategies has been a problem for the Chipayas living in the midst of Aymaras.
This episode can be explained in terms of century-old struggles between the Chipayas and their Aymara neighbors over land, which Wachtel (1990:336-48) corroborates with a detailed presentation and analysis of colonial documentation that dates at least to the seventeenth century.At times the Chipayas became servants of the Aymaras and were even used by them to pay off the Aymaras' mita (tribute in form of labor) obligations by being sent to the mines-for example, when they had lost an animal they had to pasture and had thus created a debt.On the other hand, there were times when Chipayas and Aymaras had reciprocal agreements for land and pasture use.
Today land is still contested by Aymaras and Chipayas.Sometimes stones are thrown at the neighbors.Title deeds are the subject of court litigation. 28It would be interesting to see what claims are the basis for the court cases for title deeds.In many Andean documents the only justification for owning land is that it has belonged to the owner "since time immemorial," an argument that is very clearly presented by our narrator: "We are the real established ones here, from before.They [the Aymaras] are people who came.[Added by the narrator in Spanish: THE BOLIVIAN CHIPAYAS ' MYTHISTORY 197 27 The colonial sources are mentioned in Dedenbach-Salazar Sáenz 2007a:4, n. 5.

Surnames
Chronologically most recent is an episode that narrates that the Chipayas went to Sabaya, a neighboring Aymara village, in order to "help" build the bell-tower (Illustration 7).There they were captured and baptized, receiving their surnames from a Christian priest (see Text 2, <C1:3>, see Table 3).Thus they explain their surnames through their first contact with Christianity and through the difficult language situation in which they found themselves.
Although all the names are still seen today as typically Chipaya, not only are there many families of Aymara and of European descent that have these names, but in the story itself it is also made completely clear that they derive from Aymara, as Aymara words are referred to as their origin (see Text 2, <C1:3>, footnotes 48 and 49).Moreover, some of the names are Spanish. 31On the one hand, this narrative is a recognition of the century-old domination of the Chipayas by Aymaras and Europeans; 32 on the other, identifying with Aymara and European surnames and appropriating them as their own makes the Chipayas-although as descendants of the chullpas so essentially different from other Andean peoples-part of the larger Andean world.The imposition of the names through baptism can be seen as a key act of marking the Chipayas as the "vanquished," but the Chipayas themselves see this introduction to Spanish culture (language, baptism, surnames) as a step towards civilization (see Text 2: <C1:3>).
What may look like an arbitrary array of folk etymologies actually represents the historical complexity of Andean society: the mixing of ethnic groups, such as Chipayas and Aymaras; the imposition of Spanish conventions and religion; and the translation, adaptation, and re-interpretation of this religion by the Andean people.Moreover, the uncertain origin of the Andean words (probably Aymara and/or Quechua) shows even more ancient underlying interethnic contact.This episode reflects European chronology: colonialization and Christianization; whether it does so by drawing on Andean ways of building memory or reflects colonial-era Christian teaching is unclear-probably a combination of both.On the other hand-like the others-it is aetiologial since it explains not only the modern surnames, but also, and importantly, Christianization and the interrelation of the Chipayas with old Andean traditions (for example, hunting with bolas), with their Aymara neighbors (some surnames are frequent in the Aymara population), and with the Spanish and Christian world (in the case of the Spanish surnames).However, in order to relate clearly this variety and multiplicity of influences back to themselves, the explanations are mythistorically and folk-etymologically derived from the Chipaya language. 37As individual narrators have partially different "typically Chipaya" surnames, it is possible that certain families or ayllus (communities; territorial or kin groups within a community) create folk-etymological explanations for their own group's names.

Interpreting Chipaya Mythistory: The Creation of Community Cohesion and Identity
The episodes of the story that relate migratory movements and surnames show that according to their memory the Chipayas have always lived in a tense relationship with the Aymaras.It seems that the Aymaras were also in the area from early times (our consultant <Text 2, C1:3> refers to Sabaya as always having existed).According to Chipaya mythistory, contact and tension were present in the remote past when the Chipayas became limited to a small territory by Lake Coipasa.At that time Aymaras and Chipayas apparently belonged to different "kinds" of people (not unlike what is reflected in the Acosta narrative): the Chipayas moved about in the darkness and lived from fishing, hunting, and gathering, whereas the Aymaras lived by daylight and were herders and peasants.An indication of the complex interpretation of the past is the place called "Capilla Perdida" ("Lost Chapel").The Chipayas lost the place to the Aymaras because they forgot to go back regularly.It was originally their place, yet it is designated with a Spanish place name and may have received the qualifier "lost" when the Aymaras took it over.
Contact was not always conceived of as negative, yet the story says that the Aymaras gave the Chipayas sheep so that they could start breeding animals (see Text 1: <M:3>).The Chipayas mainly construct their difference as a disadvantage.They went to Sabaya to help build the bell-tower of the church.They belonged to another era, literally to the night, so they could not work during the day, which robbed them of the opportunity to interact with their neighbors.They had to work at night and were eventually captured by the Aymaras (with the same means used to capture wild animals).Contact could only be established once the Chipayas had learned Aymara.The Aymaras collaborated with the Spaniards, first against the Chipayas by capturing them, then through accepting their baptism by the priest, so that the Chipayas could be transformed from "uncivilized people" into Christians and thus integrated into contemporary humanity.Two of the names, which are of Spanish origin, refer to the way the Chipayas were captured, by lasso-Lázaro, and by enclosing the person within walls-Paredes; two other names, however, are of Aymara origin and refer directly to Christianization: one person was "sprinkled," that is, baptized, and is therefore called Huarachi; the other one was "saved" (using in Aymara the Spanish word salvar, but in Chipaya the Aymara word qispi-) and therefore becomes Quispe.However, by assuring that the names are typically Chipaya, in mythistory the boundaries between Spanish, Aymara, and probably also Quechua origins become blurred.Anything "really" (in our terms) identified as Aymara or European becomes Chipaya; the other is integrated into one's own naming system, and non-Chipaya names are given a Chipaya etymology (which linguistically is not Chipaya), thus creating a unique identity, different from everyone else and yet closely related to the neighbors.Of course, such cognomens also occur in Aymara families, but in contrast to those they are the only Chipaya surnames: community members with other Aymara names, such as Mamani, are declared not authentic Chipaya. 38n this way the Chipayas' uncivilized status and identity is transformed and literally translated into a civilized, Christian status and identity.Plate (1999:7) captures this appropriation of the other as follows: "The other, by definition, cannot be defined.If the other can be discussed and thereby brought into the symbolic order, it ceases being other."Applying this idea to the cultural sphere of the Chipayas and their neighbors, we can say that they bring the other into their own symbolic order and thereby blur or even dissolve clear boundaries of identificationthe Aymaras cease to be other because the Chipayas use Aymara names (at least names explained through Aymara words).In a way, the Chipayas incorporate the others into their own cultural identity while at the same time maintaining them as others by laying claim to the names as specifically Chipayas'.Clear identifying boundaries fade and modern Andean society with its fusions and tensions is thus explained and justified.
Variants in the overall discourse of Chipaya mythistory show the complexity of shifting meaningfulness.The versions we recorded clearly depict the Chipayas as uncivilized and the Aymaras as their enemies, whereas the 1955 narrative shows a more peaceful image: the Aymaras were appreciative of the secret help with the construction of their bell tower and wanted to get to know the helpers; the Chipayas wanted to belong to the Aymaras and become Christians, and they therefore helped build the tower (F.Quispe 1955:136; also E. Quispe 1985:4).Eduardo Quispe (idem) also makes it explicit that the priest ordered the Aymaras to capture the chullpa-Chipayas.The explanations found in the older stories are missing from the modern stories probably because they have been lost, but it is possible that for the Chipayas there is hope now that the situation can be changed through political action, and therefore an explanatory framework that is more conciliatory has been replaced by a more confrontational one.
Five hundred years later, the Chipayas, or at least some of them, are now empowered, by the descendants of the colonial powers, with the classical Western capacity to read and write.However, they maintain their oral tradition, and they adapt it-as they did before, and as the Spaniards did for their purpose-to their immediate concerns.An example of this adaptation is our consultant's opening of his narrative where he relates Chipaya mythistory geographically and thereby culturally to Lake Titicaca, several hundred kilometers further north, and to Lake Poopó, a considerable distance to the east (Text 3, <C2:1>): I will tell of the life of our forefathers, narrated by the grandfather, narrated by our forefathers.We always lived on this big lake, on the Titicaca, also on the Poopó, also on the Coipasa, we always lived on the lake, it is said.We came from the North, from the big Lake Titicaca, the Desaguadero, along that river we arrived at Oruro, at the lake of Oruro.And we, one group, came from the West, from the Lauca, as we now call the river. . . .
From the introductory information disclosing that the forefathers had told this story, the listener (or reader) receives the impression that this is ancient memory.While that may be so, there is some indication that it was only in the twentieth century that the Chipayas integrated this knowledge into their own version on the basis of what anthropologists told them.Alfred Métraux (1931:100) and Nathan Wachtel (1990:226-32, 280) 39 state that the Bolivian Titicaca Urus, the Chipayas, and the Muratos did not have any knowledge of each other.But by the beginning of the twenty-first century, the consciousness of sharing the same culture has become part of the political discourse of the Uru-Chipaya groups (as demonstrated in a meeting in Oruro witnessed by the author in July 2005).It strengthens their new or re-found identity as an "Uru nation."Looking at present-day life in these villages, the Chipayas have little in common with the Urus and Muratos: in terms of subsistence they no longer depend on water-based fishing and hunting (and have not for many years), but rather on herding and agriculture; with respect to their own language, only the Chipayas speak it at present.However, historical documentation, and also photographs from the first decades of the twentieth century, show similarities in architecture and clothing, and the strong relationship with water that the Chipayas still feel is a further indicator that they once formed part of the Uru "aquatic axis" (Wachtel 1990:350-57).Rather than an invention of a joint tradition, this seems to be an externally stimulated memory of a shared past, re-incorporated into contemporary mythistory by our narrator.
One of the issues that many indigenous groups have to deal with is title deeds for their land.In the case of the Chipayas, this is above all their need to gain or at least not to lose more fertile land to the neighboring Aymaras.This is a matter where the antiquity of their origin plays an important justificatory role.Based upon being the sole descendants of the primeval era, they automatically have land rights that go back much further than those of any other Altiplano group.Thus the chullpa story serves a timely purpose, namely to make and justify territorial claims.
The narratives show that the Chipayas construct their mythistory in order to portray themselves as the most ancient people of the region.Their area is practically defined through their mythistory: the lake to the south (Coipasa, which was larger than it is now), the barren plain where Chipaya lies, and hills in the north (Maps 3).This construction implies their ancient rights to live there.In spatial terms this can be seen as an indigenous method of mapping the territory; in terms of chronology the most ancient memory is designated, an era that we would call "prehistoric times."The fact that there are still burial buildings called chullpas conserved in the Altiplano, some close to Chipaya, connects the present to the past and at the same time creates a physically existent territory that is justified by oral, mythistorical tradition and visual, archaeological evidence.

Conclusions
The Chipaya mythistory as a whole fulfills a number of functions: it explains the delimitation of the territory (which is still in dispute, more land recently having been formally claimed by the Chipayas); it also explains both the tensions with the neighboring Aymaras over territory as well as the continuing relationships with them, as they intermarry and Chipayas live in Aymara villages.The mythistorical narrative also establishes permanent relationships with the Aymaras and mainstream Bolivia (formerly Christian-Spanish society) through the Spanish and Aymara surnames, which at the same time are distinctly Chipaya because of the etymologies provided.What may at first look like a curious and arbitrarily blended composition turns out to be a meaningful and therefore community-strengthening explanation for who the Chipayas are, why they are who they are, and why they are where they are-in other words, a coherent mythistoriography.
Their origin is conceived of as special and different from the other surviving Andean peoples, and yet their more recent identity-through their names-is closely related to their Aymara neighbors and the dominant Spanish-language-based national culture.This close relationship with, and in part direct interpretation of, mythistory as relevant for present-day life explains why it is common knowledge today.Chipaya mythistory is used to explain a complex identity that involves Andean as well as European roots and that relates the people to their neighbors by interlacing important events and concepts.Thus a mythistorical narrative ties together what is vital to Chipaya self-comprehension and definition: an origin rooted in their present territory, the explanation of their close relation to the aquatic world, and the reasons for their being hunters and fishers as well as peasants and herders.At the same time, all these achievements and self-defining elements root them in Andean prehistoric and colonial society, relating and attaching them to their neighbors and providing explanations for their ambiguous relationships.
While Chipaya architecture, clothing, and even language are losing importance as vital means of self-identification, the mythistorical narrative is ever-present, and the memory of the chullpa ancestors and what followed after their disappearance still has a palpable effect on people's lives, in their names as well as in their relationship with the neighboring Aymaras.Chipaya mythistory reinforces the feeling of commonality, of belonging to a community.It separates the group from others and at the same time ties it to them.
As for the narrators of Chipaya mythistory, the basic content is known by every member of the group.For some it is simply a story one knows (like the language one speaks), without necessarily applying it consciously to any practical purpose.Others use the mythistory to propound their particular point of view, like Wachtel's consultant who gives a pentecostal version that integrates elements of Chipaya mythistory into his scenario of the end of the world, when, as in the ancient times, only some people will survive: after the disappearance of the sun and the moon, a fire-rain will come and the survivors will be like the chullpas (Wachtel 1990:636-37). 40or yet others, the narrative becomes an overt historico-political instrument in their interaction 42 Rather than applying strictly syntactical criteria for marking units in the texts, I have opted for a mixture of phrases/clauses and rhythmic units that emphasize stylistic features.One of the most important issues in some circles of the Chipaya community is the alphabet.Toward the outside it is used as a symbol of identity, uniqueness, and unity.At the request of the community, the Bolivian government through a ministerial resolution declared the alphabet the Chipaya linguistic committee had elaborated as official (Anonymous 2005a, cf.Dedenbach-Salazar  Sáenz 2007b).Despite this token of unity, different alphabets are being used.Deeper tensions within the village surface when some community members boycott each other's alphabets in order to highlight their disagreement.The texts in this Appendix follow their authors'/creators' orthographical conventions. 43The text was first published in Spanish by the Swiss anthropologist Alfred Métraux in 1931 (112-13), dictated to him in Chipaya by the "oldest man of the tribe" ("el hombre más viejo de la tribu"); he then had it translated into Aymara (112).The Chipaya text appeared in a French (Métraux 1935b) and in a Spanish version (Métraux 1935c).I made the English translation from the Chipaya text (published in Métraux 1935b), and it was then verified by our consultant (C2).I have kept Métraux's original transcription.He explains the Chipaya sound system and his orthography (1936:340-42) and mentions it also in 1935a (89-90): "č correspond au «ch» espagnol, š au «ch» français; ǰ est une affriquée qui en français serait transcrite par «dj»; x est le «j» espagnol et l' le «ll» ou l mouillé de la même langue.Le signe combiné k x est une mi-occlusive dont la détente produit un son voisin du «j» espagnol . . .."Although Métraux (1935b:398) considered the text to be a disfigured and altered fragment of an older myth, the present setting of the text shows a certain stylistic pattern.
When the sun sank at night, coming out of the water, they would walk around.

<M:2>
A man saw the chullpas, and he went to tell the authorities.
From one sheep they multiplied, Tsi usakistan mirinitakalǰä, then there were many sheep.al'anekstan tamakisiǰa usa.
In the old times, the chullpas had not had sheep; Tuki tiempo anatakalǰä oiwičis čulpaki; they cultivated cañahui and quinoa.kañavi, k x ula čaknitakalǰä niki.
They started living [appeared] in this village of Santa Ana, in a bare place.
In the old time they lived over there in Sabaya, the Chipaya people.
Toki tiempo Sabayakis tękis šelxni Čipaya.Well, I will tell a story of the lives of the ancestors.bueno werh tshi k'int'asaćha tukita timpu mathñillaź qamta In very ancient times this village of Chipaya did not exist, they say.
tukit tuki timpuki ti chipay wathak tiw ana źelatćha khićha The village was in the north, where Capilla Perdida [Lost Chapel] is, it is said; wathaki nawkh uźa kapilla perdida khita so there was the village.xalla niwkhutakiź wathaki 208 SABINE DEDENBACH-SALAZAR SÁENZ 45 Métraux comments that he was told that the blessing was to make them abandon their nocturnal life (1935b:397). 46One evening the then seventy-two-year-old man came to see us to tell us about his life.He insisted on being audio-recorded, and when he had finished his well-prepared life story, I asked him spontaneously about the origin of the Chipayas.He then told us-a collaborator and myself-the following story, first in Chipaya, then in Spanish.This is my translation of the Chipaya narrative (after having had it transcribed and provided with a draft translation by a Chipaya consultant, I verified and reworked the transcription phrase by phrase with another consultant).The alphabet used is very close to the official one and has been developed among project members and consultants.eCompanion: http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/27i/dedenbach-salazar_saenz#myGallery-picture(11) And there was a lake here.neqhśtan teqhś tshi qota źelatkiź Here, by the shore was a lake, a big lake.
teqhśi tï ti thïkiś qota paqh qota There were fish, birds, eggs.neqhś ch'iśnaka weślanaka śiñinaka źelatź So those Chipaya people used to come here, it is said, to fish and to kill birds.
neqhśtan uźaśaq qaqhćhan kapilla perdida khita xalla niwkhu That was very far away-they got tired; neqhśtan aźkinpacha xayraśśiki so they, the people, built a house over here, a small house.
ninaka ni źonaka neqhś tshi qhuya qhuychikiź teqhś tshi qhuyalla That little house must have been called ch'ipha.ni qhuyallak ch'ipha khitatakiźni Then, they also made a boat of rush, so they could enter the lake.Wachtel (1990:222) shows that the bell-towers are mallku, powerful beings, following in power and importance the highest mountain peaks (cf.57-58).From the perspective of the Sabayans themselves the bells were particularly important because they sounded three times in order to mark the arrival at mass of Tata Sabaya, the patron spirit of the Sabayans, who resided in the mountain of the same name.Once, when Tata Sabaya arrived late and the priest had started mass without him, Tata Sabaya locked the priest up.When he was freed, he excommunicated Tata Sabaya and the whole village.The village fell into decay and was repopulated later (Rivière  2008:98-99).Maybe both stories contain the same element-the necessity to rebuild the bell-tower-but contextualize it in different ways that are meaningful to each group.
An interesting parallel with Chipaya mythistory is Lorenzo Inda C.'s narrative on Uru mythistory, which tells how the church of Jesús de Machaca kept falling apart while it was being built.Therefore, sacrifices (animal and human) had to be made, and Urus were abducted and sacrificed there, so that the church-according to Inda C.  (1988:29)-was built with the blood of the Urus (cf.Astvaldsson 2000:253).While this story seems to differ substantially from the Chipayas' relation with the church in Sabaya that they wanted to help to build, the unstated outcome is similar: a difficult relationship with the neighbors and yet a certain affiliation with them through being part of the process of building the churches in the neighboring Aymara villages. 49Said first in Chipaya: "werhki sïllakiś" (sïlla, "sun" in Chipaya); then partly in Aymara (underlined): "lupillar qamirita nayaxa" (lupi, "sun" in Aymara).Because the priest did not understand Chipaya, the Chipayas had to use the Aymara word for sun. 50The first time the Spanish loanword salvar is used, then the Aymara word qispi-: "tshik hasta xaśik ni salwayćhan nik hasta qhxispićhan entonces qhxispi." 51One of our main project consultants told us this version of the Chipaya origins and past.He is a Chipaya native speaker, lives mostly in the village, and is in his forties, married, with children; he is literate in Spanish and Chipaya.The story was told by him to our team for audio-recording (not spontaneously, but prepared overnight).It was then transcribed by another speaker.Later the narrator himself provided it with a literal translation into Spanish and "corrected" the Chipaya orthography; the present transcription follows the official alphabet (but with some corrections).Finally, I translated it into English, taking the narrator's own Spanish translation into account as well.
We always lived on this big lake, ućhunakki ti lagu ti chawkh qota on the Titicaca, also on the Poopó, also on the Coipasa, titicaca niźaśa ti popo niźaśa ti qhuypaś qota we always lived on the lake, it is said.qotkiśpan ućhun qaminćhu qaminćhumtaź khila Thus they said: xalla nuź khiñitaćha We came from the North, it is said ućhunki uźätan thontaź khila from the big Lake Titicaca, ni titicaca chawkh qotkiśtan the Desaguadero, along that river we arrived at Oruro, at the lake of Oruro. to the version narrated by our other consultant ed along the rivers and lakes, the Chipayas came pilla Perdida.Then, during the nights, they went n 7).They were caught by the Sabayan Aymaras.priest and were baptized.Then they went away anso de Dios and Jilapata-until they founded itory, confined by their Aymara neighbors who 52 We live in a small territory; ućhun qamćha qolta yoqallchiś around us are our neighbors who have stolen our land, they have taken it from us.
ućhunakä muytata khiñi ućhunaka wisinunakaź źothźta yoqa qhañta That is how we live.xalla niźtaź ućhun qamćha <C2:3> The grandparents also used to say: niźaśa mathñillaki khiñitaćha After concluding this episode of the past, the n ancestors who had survived the arrival of the su have chullpa graves (Illustrations 5 and 6).T where they do, delimiting themselves from th comes as much from the narrator's story itse ancestors: narrator returns to the different places where his un may have gone to live; some of these places he end emphasizes the Chipayas' right to live he surrounding "newcomers."The legitimation elf as from his sources, the grandparents, and
gives the figure of 44,184 hectares as Chipaya land.The discrepancy between what the community has and what it claims seems too vast to have any chance of becoming reality.
Having come from the North and live to stay by the river Lauca, at a place called Cap to help build the Sabaya bell-tower (Illustration There they received Christian surnames from a to live in different places-among them Desca Chipaya.Now they live in a very limited terri take away their territory: They must also have gone through the Great Flood because they lived before it.niźaśanichijñimach'a watchiźlani xalla nïź tukita qamta.That's what they told us.xalla nuź kint'iñitaćhaWe, [that is] our forefathers, the chullpas, lived only by the light of the moon.
This is why we come from the chullpas.