AÇAÍ PRODUCER

A long time ago, there was an Amazonian indigenous tribe that due to scarcity of food was always in great difficulties. And, as the tribe population was growing day by day, Chief Itaki decided to sacrifice all the children who were born from that day on. But one day, Itaki’s daughter, Iaçá, gave birth to a beautiful child. Very soon, the Tribal Council gathered to ask for the sacrifice of Iaçá’s daughter.

His father, a real warrior, did not hesitate to comply with the order. When she knew of her child’s fate, Iaçá implored her father to save her daughter’s life, but Chief Itaki kept his word and the child was sacrificed.

Iaçá became a recluse in her tent, staying there on her knees for almost two days, begging Tupã to show her father a way in which it would not be necessary to repeat the sacrifice of innocents. Then, in the middle of the night, she heard a child crying..

She approached the tent door, and saw her daughter smiling at the foot of a palm tree. She ran towards her, hugging her, but just found the palm tree because the child had mysteriously disappeared. Iaçá, inconsolable, cried until collapsing.

The next day, her body was found embracing the palm tree trunk. She was dead, but her face was radiating a soft smile of happiness; at the same time, her inert big black eyes were staring at the top of the palm tree. Chief Itaki noticed that the palm tree that was once inexistent, was coming to exist in abundance in the forest, and had a bunch of black berries.

He ordered his tribe to pick the little fruits up, knead them in a large bowl of wood, thus obtaining a reddish juice. He thanked Tupã, and by reversing the name of his daughter Iaçá, he named the juice Açaí (which means “crying palm tree”), and then suspended his order to sacrifice children.”

Source: Icoaraci