The MITOLOGY OF THE TSÁCHILAS

Formerly, the Tsáchilas were known as the colorados (or "yumbos"). This is how our grandparents used to say, when they told their story transmitted from parents to children, that they came from a distant place, after many of their relatives had died from yellow fever and smallpox. The event happens in the following way: they lived in a place called Tulipe, today where they were infected with the aforementioned disease, in villages and groups of families. While there, they began to die and seeing that many were dying, they began to perform ceremonies: energy cleansing, medicinal plant baths, and Ayahuasca ceremonies (in the mother tongue of the Tsáchilas: "Nepi"). At the moment of hallucinating with Nepi's ceremony, they began to observe a reddish fruit that could save the life of the entire community. The next day, after finishing the ceremony, they went into the jungle to look for such a plant, and they found the achiote, "mu" in Tsafiki. Returning to the village in Tulipe, Shaman Tsáchila decided that everyone had to paint their bodies with achiote: children, women and men. And after 8 days of ceremonies, they noticed that they were healing and decided to leave the Tulipe place towards new horizons, today in the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas.