The Piggies

The colonists' nickname for the Pequeninos of Lusitania.

"Piggies" is the nickname the human colonists of Lusitania give to the Pequeninos, the planet's sentient forest dwellers, because of their porcine snouts. They appear in Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind.

Lore & Background

The first crisis between humans and piggies is the death of the xenologer Pipo, who is found cut open; his son Libo later dies the same way. The killings were misunderstandings: the piggies believed that humans, like themselves, pass into a "third life" as trees. Ender Wiggin learns this when he comes to Lusitania as a Speaker for the Dead.

Reader's Guide

Named piggies include Rooter, the most inquisitive of them, his son Human, whom Ender brings into the third life as a fathertree, and Planter, who in Xenocide insists on being deprived of the descolada to prove that pequenino sentience does not depend on it.