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The Jakaltek Maya blowgun first caught my attention when I worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Jacaltenango, Guatemala, from 1976 to 1980. I researched the blowgun more fully in Jacaltenango in the summers of 1986 and 2002. After seeing blowguns depicted on pre-Columbian Mesoamerican pottery, I realized that the blowgun needed to be studied more closely to understand its importance in Maya culture.
Blowguns (long, hollow, wooden pipe-like tubes) are used in many parts of the world, including the Americas. Because of the similarities found in ammunition, construction, and hunting techniques, an ongoing debate persists as to whether the blowgun was invented independently or spread through diffusion. Although blowguns were used for hunting and as weapons in the past by Native Americans (Alegre 1841; Oviedo y Baños 1941 [1824]; Simon 1882-1892; Vargas Machuca 1892; Veytia 1836), today they are primarily used to hunt birds and small animals among the Maya. Blowguns were also known in Medieval Egypt and Europe (Blackmore 1971). They are still used in Ceylon, Japan, Melanesia (Endicott 1969), Southeast Asia (Kuchikura 1988), and southern India (Hornell 1924). For an excellent and comprehensive geographical survey of blowgun use, see Stephen Jett (1970, 1991).
Today blowguns are rarely used in Mesoamerica, having been replaced by slingshots and firearms. To protect small game, particularly the quetzal bird (the Guatemalan national bird), legislation was passed in the 1930s outlawing the use of the blowgun in Guatemala. Although this law was hard to enforce in rural areas such as Jacaltenango, it was one of the reasons for the decline of blowgun use in Guatemala (Shook 1946).
THE BLOWGUN IN MAYA MYTHOLOGY
Most Mesoamerican hunters use the blowgun to hunt birds, using unfired clay pellets, seeds, or darts for ammunition. Whereas non-poisonous darts are used today by Native Americans of the U.S. Southeast to hunt birds and small animals, South American hunters usually employ poisoned darts, enabling them to shoot a variety of larger game (Bianchi 1976). The darts used as ammunition in the Old World were very similar to those of the Americas. Although most South American blowguns use poisoned darts for ammunition, the Indians of the Río Jurva and the Colorados sometimes use pellets (Nordenskiold 1979; Sprinzin 1928). Sigvald Linné (1939, 1942) and Carroll Riley...