Example of a Tai'hoa girl
Original Artwork
B. ENVIRONMENT
We thrive. We thrive here. Our forest is our everything, our
most sacred mother. That’s what our name for our forest translates to, Nursing
Mother. Because no matter where we go or what we do, the forest is always here,
all around us, holding us to her bosom and keeping us in her arms. The forest
is a mother to all. Everywhere you look, there are plants and creatures and
Tai’hoa and the ess’hy, the ghost
monsters. All are children of the mother.
That’s not to say that our forest keeps us safe. Far from
it. There are many dangers here, many ways that the forest can kill us. Take
the air for example. We have seen outsiders, the cheecamiari’hoa, they came and died. They could not breathe. They
did not have oughrama, our gills that
let us breathe in the forest’s air. Without our gills we would die.
The trees of the forest are our family, some of them we know
to be ancestors. Some are the ancestors of ess’hy.
And some are simply trees. The moryero
are the giant trees. They are too tall to see the tops of, and they are the
trees that shield us from the brightness of the sun. Our forest is always in
shadow, and this is good. Our eyes don’t work well in the brightness, which is
why they are so big, so that we can see well in the shadows and near-darkness
of our forest’s floor.
It rains a lot in our forest. From what those that have
climbed the moryero have told us, the
rain that falls on the tops of the trees comes in little drops that do not hurt
when they hit your skin. But when the rain from above falls on and collects on
the leaves of the giant trees, then it falls to the forest floor in the big
drops that hurt when they fall on our skin. When we need food, our hunters and
some of the ess’hy will hunt in the
rain, because there are creatures and animals that are not hurt by the rain
that the hunters can find. But if we do not have to be in the rain, we won’t
be. We’d much prefer to be under the shelter of our longhouses.
C. CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE
NORMS – We keep our feet on the ground. We go about our
business pleasantly and avoid confrontations. With the exception of the few the
climb the giant trees, the moryero,
the Tai’hoa don’t travel beyond our forest world. We are taught not to
roughhouse or bicker in our longhouses for fear of upsetting the godspirits.
And if food gets scarce, we always feed the Grandparents and children first. We
are a simple, colorful people.
VALUES – Our people value the elderly, as our forest doesn’t
allow many people to survive until an age when they may be considered a
Grandmother or a Grandfather. We try to be a peaceful people, keeping to
ourselves and caring for our families. Despite this, there are some disputes
amongst tribes and between the Tai’hoa and the ess’hy. We have to remain peaceful amongst each other, because our
entire tribe lives in a longhouse and bickering must not occur within the
longhouse for fear of upsetting the spirits.
WORLDVIEW - The Tai'hoa see the forest as a mother figure, personified in the godspirit Uveri. The forest gives us all we'll ever need, but at the same time she takes lives sometimes to placate grudges she holds or to feed her ess'hy children. The most important of all the godspirits, she is also the most vengeful. The Gathering at Six Trees is held to placate her every year in hopes of having a blessed year to come.
SYMBOLS
- The Blue Tattoos (a symbol of LIFECYCLES) – A key feature amongst my people are our bright blue tattoos known as asorril. These tattoos are used to mark significant events in our lives such as passing apprenticeship, getting married, have a child or children, moving to a new tribe, becoming a widow or widower, getting initiated into the enthdae’pol’ir or the sirana’pol’ess, and so on.
- Spirit Groves/ Soul Trees (a symbol of KINSHIP) – When a child is born, a seed from a tan’tas’ayrr tree is planted. These trees are our souls, and they are planted in spirit groves called tan’morysayh. If a village comes under attack, the Tai’hoa will flee to their spirit groves and defend these special trees with their lives. To lose one’s tan’tas’ayrr is to lose the will to live. Men who marry into a different village make pilgrimages to their home tribes once a year to tend to their spirit trees.
- Marriage Piercings (a symbol of MARRIAGE) – When a woman gets married, one of her ears is pierced through the cartilage and a metal hoop painted blue is put through the hole. A woman then continues to add blue hoops beneath the original one with each secondary husband she accumulates. If a man becomes a primary husband, his bottom lip is pierced near the corners and similar blue hoops are put through the holes. If a man becomes a secondary husband, two hoops are put through one of his nostrils.
- The Silver Crowns of the Enthdae’pol’ri (a symbol of GOVERNMENT) – When an elder woman is initiated into the Council of Grandmothers, she is presented with a metal crafted silver crown of leaves, the silver being found lodged in certain trees. When the Grandmother passes away, her crown is presented to her eldest daughter, and is passed down through generations. A family is considered well respected if they have a good number of crowns in their possession.
- The Six Trees (a symbol of RELIGION) – Once a year there is a gathering of all six Tai’hoa tribes at a place called Six Trees, where six moryero grow together, each one the ancestor to a creature that represents one of the tribes. During this gathering, rituals are conducted by the Councils of Grandfathers, treaties with certain ess’hy families are evaluated, and it is a place of reverence and merriment.
CLASSIFICATIONS OF REALITY – Besides the world that we see
within the forest, the Tai’hoa know that there is a strange, bright world
beyond our mothering forest, that the spirit world resides above the moryero, and that there is a hidden
world of ancestors and ess’hy beneath
the forest floor in a giant cave. These bright world and the spirit world are
frightening to Tai’hoa, places that mothers use as threats to make their
children behave. But the hidden world is a dream, where we all wish to go when
we pass away.
D. SOCIAL STRUCTURE
GOVERNMENT – There are six Tai’hoa tribes spread throughout
our forest. In charge of each group is a Enthdae’pol’ir,
a council made up of the elder women of the tribe. These enthdae, or grandmothers, resolve arguments and hear out the
complaints of the tribespeople. Equal but opposite of the enth’pol’ir is the sirana’pol’ess,
the holy men that lead their villages in our religious endeavors. The rothrael make
up the hunters of our people. In times of tribal disputes or battles against
the ess’hy, the hunters also act as
warriors, protecting first their village and second their village’s spirit
groves. The varves’wor are
the small group of herdspeople that watch over the domesticated flocks of
creatures that make up parts of our diet. And finally there are the eng’taigha, our craftspeople. Amongst these people are the
longhouse builders, the furniture makers, the tattoo artists, and the
weaponsmasters.
RELIGION – Led by the sirana’pol’ess,
which translates to the grandfather council of ghosts, the Tai’hoa worship a
pantheon of four godspirits known as the sayh’ghayee:
Uveri, the Nurturing Mother and the goddess of the forest; Ielmu, the god of
creatures, animals, and the ess’hy;
Tyenthine, the god of rain, thunderstorms, and hunting; and Coelis, god of
family and protection. Each god is called upon and worshiped in a series of
festivals and holy days. Coelis is the only god that is not a nature deity, and
he is the only one that is seen as constantly on the side of our people. The
others are thought to come and go as they please, and may curse or hold grudges
on individuals or tribes as they see fit.
MARRIAGE – When a Tai’hoa girl comes of age, whenever the enthdae’pol’ir deems her old enough,
suitors supply her mother with gifts according to their craft, i.e. hunters
supply meat and furs, herdsmen give baby animals, and craftsmen give
assortments of objects. The girl’s mother then chooses from amongst the suitors
a man that she finds compatible with her daughter as well as someone who will
be able to care for her properly. There is a ceremony in the village’s spirit
grove uniting the couple. This man, however, will only be the girl’s primary
husband. With her husband’s consent, other men that fancy the girl may present
gifts to the primary husband, to the girl, may help raise the girl’s children,
and may have sexual intercourse with her. Men and women receive certain body
piercings to signify that they are married. Suitors from tribes other than the
girl’s home tribe make for more attractive matches as they offer brand new
starts for the girl.
KINSHIP – In our traditions, we trace our lineages through
our mothers. There are two words for a child’s fathers, one for their mother’s
primary husband and one used for their mother’s secondary husbands. There are
words for big brother, big sister, little sister, and little brother, terms
used amongst children birthed from one woman, as they may not have the same
biological father. Other than the nuclear family, we refer to any other Tai’hoa
person with terms that describe friends: near friend or far friend, depending
on whether they are part of our home village or not; old friend or young friend
depending on age; and big friend or small friend depending on how close they
are to us. And when a Tai’hoa begins to get silver hairs amongst their black,
they are to be referred to as Grandfather or Grandmother, except by their
children, and this is the highest term of respect amongst our people.
LIFECYCLES – A child is born into one of our six tribes, and
they are raised by their mother, their mother’s primary husband, and their
mother’s secondary husbands, all of which will care for the child and its
siblings. As it grows, the child might show an interest in the craft of its
mother or of one of its fathers. When this happens, the child is ritually put
into an apprenticeship with another adult in the village, and thus that becomes
the child’s craft. After a certain number of years in apprenticeship and ritual
testing by the enthdae’pol’ir, the
child graduates from apprenticeship and takes on working their craft fulltime,
building a reputation and honing their craft.
E. CULTURAL EMPHASIS
A lot of our worldview revolves around the forest,
family, and spirits. We have words for all sorts of different kinds of trees,
for plants, and for creatures; for our various friends and siblings and
craftspeople; and for godspirits and ess’hy
and ancestors. These are all things that mean a lot to us or that affect us
greatly. Take the ess’hy for example,
the enormous ghost monsters that live in our forest. They speak tai’hoaka, so we can communicate with
them. But we have words for what type of creature they are, whether they are
good or bad, benevolent or evil, and from what part of the forest they’re from.
Some have even given us their names, and we know the names of their family
groups. The same goes for trees and people.
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