Caipora

The peccaries come through the undergrowth in one dark river of bristle and hoof, forty or fifty of them, clacking their tusks as they go, and at the very back of the herd rides something small enough to be mistaken for a child. It is not hurrying. It has all night, and the fireflies going ahead through the trees are working for it.

The name is a description rather than a title. In Tupi, caa is the forest and pora is the one who lives in it, so Caapora, and its softened form Caipora, say only this much: the dweller in the woods. Teodoro Fernandes Sampaio offered other readings in 1928, one who carries fire, or one who is shy and runs away, and none of them has settled the question. Luís da Câmara Cascudo held that Caapora was the masculine and Caipora the feminine, the sex of the thing turning on a single vowel, which is why so much of Brazil says a Caipora and means a girl. João Barbosa Rodrigues, working in the 1890s, thought Caipora was simply the vulgarised spelling, and that Kaapora was what people said in Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba and Ceará.

The Jesuits never wrote her down. For a being this widespread the silence is odd, and Cascudo said plainly that the ancestry of the Caapora is obscure. Antônio Gonçalves Dias was convinced by 1867 that she was the Kaagere whom André Thevet had met in the sixteenth century, another forest-dweller by name and an aspect of the Anhangá, a thing that came at night to do harm and could be held off with fire. The identification is neat and it is unproven. What is certain is that by the nineteenth century she was everywhere: through the Amazon, over the hills of Rio Grande do Sul, across the fields of Santa Catarina and Minas Gerais.

Nobody agrees on the body. Cascudo, sifting a century of collected accounts, thought there was rough consensus for a dwarf, dark-skinned and built like an indigenous child, sometimes a caboclinha with her hair falling over her, naked or in a tanga. Against that stands a run of collectors who found a giant. José Vieira Couto de Magalhães in 1876 recorded a large man covered in black hair. João Simões Lopes Neto said the same in 1913. Juan Bautista Ambrosetti met the hairy giant again in Paraná in 1917, and Cornélio Pires in 1921 wrote down a big fat cabocro, bearded and short-headed, with a flat snub nose, thick lips and a full face. In Ceará the head is bristled but the body is not, the teeth are sharp like a howler monkey’s, and the eyes sit in the dark like two embers. In Bahia she is a small cabocla, almost black, except at Ilhéus, where she is young, fair and beautiful. One Bahian tale makes her an old black man who takes tobacco and sends a lost traveller home on a freshly cut stick. Another makes her a hairy little boy of whom only one side can ever be seen.

The feet are the one useful test. Cascudo’s dictionary separates her from the Curupira on exactly this point: the Caipora’s feet face forward like anyone’s, while the Curupira’s are turned back to lay false trails. Even that is not safe. She has been given two right feet, a single leg like the Saci, one eye, and the round hoof-like print of the Pé de garrafa, depending on who was asked.

What she owns is narrower than it looks. She is lord of small game, the lesser animals that people actually hunt, and she has no dominion over birds. She does not guard the trees themselves, which is the Curupira’s business. Her mount is the forest hog, either the white-lipped queixada or the collared caititu, and she takes the largest of the herd or the last one at the rear. She has also been seen on a tapir, a porcupine, and in the northeast on a deer or even a rabbit, which rather gives away her size. A Timbira informant put her home in the hollow of a rotting tree. Others have her moving inside a whole travelling congregation of animals, snakes and insects included.

She can be bought, and the terms are known. Rope tobacco left at the trunk of a tree, best on a Thursday night before the hunt, with the words toma, Caipora, deixa eu ir embora. Cachaça works. So does a length of coarse baize. She likes plain mingau with no salt and no sugar in it, and she hates peppercorn enough that a peppered gruel will earn the giver a beating rather than a blessing. On a dark path the caboclinha does something simpler: she circles a traveller, round and round, holding out an empty pipe until the tobacco is handed over. None of these bargains is reliable.

What breaks the bargain is bad hunting. She is merciless about pregnant females and animals with young at foot, and about killing beyond need. Then the game simply is not there. She lays false tracks, calls in the voices of animals that are not present, sets traps, and walks hunters in circles until the light goes. Friday is hers, moonlit Friday especially, and Sundays and holy days are closed. On a Friday she waits in the ferns and the shot goes wrong, into a dog or into a companion. At Guarabira in Paraíba a man who hunted on a Friday found nothing but a juriti dove, shot its crop clean out so the innards fell, and watched the bird gather itself and fly away.

The Bahian tale goes further. A hunter drops several pigs with his rifle, and the boy arrives on his thin bony mount carrying a ferrão, a goad tipped with a sting. He walks along the line of dead animals striking each one, and each one gets up. On the last and largest pig he overdoes the blow and the sting snaps off. Later a stranger turns up at the blacksmith’s tent, quite ordinary to look at, asking to have a broken goad mended.

That resurrection is her signature power, and it comes by several routes: the touch of her pig’s snout, the sting on the goad, a branch of japecanga, or a spoken command. Her weapon is a whip of that same spiny Smilax vine, or of nettle, nettlespurge or favela, and she uses it on hunting dogs after luring them into the trees in whatever animal shape she pleases. The shapeshifting is unrestricted. Worst of all is what she leaves behind, a condition called caiporismo, in which a man who has met her fails at everything he attempts for the rest of his days. Ambrosetti collected the darkest version, a Caá-Porá with a pipe cut from a human skull and shinbone, who devours people by sucking them and leaves the intestines strewn about. Gonçalves Dias heard that she takes children into the rotten tree.

Her limits are the limits of her office. She trades, so she can be bought off, and the peppercorn shows she can be insulted into losing her temper and her usefulness. Birds are outside her reach entirely. In love she is jealous past reason, demanding absolute fidelity from the men she takes up with in Pará, Amazonas and Acre, and the thorny vine has been used to kill an ex-lover who went off and married elsewhere. Cross the southern border and she thins out badly: in Argentina and Uruguay she is only a ghost that turns into a pig or a dog, the name worn down from Caá-Porá to plain Porá, breathing fire to scatter the game. Cascudo set her beside the Mapuche Anchimallén, another protector of animals that took offerings and dealt out misfortune, and beside the Argentine yastay, a frostburned little fat man who keeps the guanaco herds with a black dog at his heel.

Cascudo’s own summary of the modern figure is the one that stuck. The Curupiras and the Caaporas ran together into a single Caipora, small, dark, robust, hairy, agile, a caboclinha with her hair covering her sex, hunting alongside whoever gives her tobacco and jealous beyond sense in love. The older and stranger versions did not die. They are still sitting in the notebooks, giants and dwarfs and one-eyed girls, waiting for someone to ask again.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Caipora?

The Caipora is a forest spirit of Brazilian folklore who owns and protects small game animals. She rides a peccary through the woods and decides whether a hunter finds anything or goes home empty-handed. Her name comes from Tupi and means roughly “the one who dwells in the forest”.

What is the difference between the Caipora and the Curupira?

According to Câmara Cascudo’s Dicionário do Folclore Brasileiro, the clearest difference is the feet: the Caipora’s point forward normally, while the Curupira’s are turned backwards to leave misleading tracks. The Curupira also guards the vegetation itself, whereas the Caipora’s authority covers small game animals and not plants or birds. In many regions the two figures have merged and stories told about one are told about the other.

How do you protect yourself from the Caipora?

The traditional method is an offering of rope tobacco left at the trunk of a tree, ideally on a Thursday night before hunting, with the words “toma, Caipora, deixa eu ir embora”. Cachaça and coarse baize cloth also work as payment. None of it is guaranteed, and hunting on a Friday, Sunday or holy day is likely to go wrong regardless.

What does the Caipora do to hunters who break the rules?

She makes the game vanish, lays false tracks, imitates animal calls to send hunters the wrong way, and whips their dogs with a thorny japecanga vine. She is hardest on those who kill pregnant animals or animals with young. A hunter who meets her may be left with caiporismo, a lasting run of bad luck that follows him through everything he tries.

Can the Caipora bring dead animals back to life?

Yes, and it is one of her defining powers. She revives shot game with the touch of her pig’s snout, a strike from her sting-tipped goad, a branch of japecanga, or simply a spoken command. In a well-known Bahian tale she walks down a line of dead peccaries reviving each one until the sting on her goad breaks.

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