www.UsHumans.net: Chapter 9
The gatherer-hunter way of life, and some cultural details of the Canela Indians of Brazil
There have been about 10,000 different cultures around the world. A group's culture consists of their instructions on how to do everything in life–and everything in life is done “the way it has always been done." Think of several things that you do “in the way they have always been done,” including the way you greet a friend or the way you enter another person's home. The cultural details of a group seem random to an outsider but require no explanation to a member of that culture. This is true of the details of your culture, too. Your child learns thousands of such details in just a few years, which makes learning the ten numerals, the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, and the handful of scientific principles seem trivial in comparison. Such a volume of knowledge simultaneously requires and takes advantage of a big brain.
Our newborn babies begin life with a slate clean of knowledge and experience. Their brains may even have to figure out that there is an external world which is separate from their internal world. In the first few months they are learning which of their muscles move which parts of their own bodies, and they quickly begin to smile. Within a couple of years they have turned themselves into walking, talking persons. Through their first years and decades, children learn the meaning of facial expressions, behavior for each of numerous social situations, and how to be a valued and contributing member of society.
Children have a strong urge to mimic everything they see their parents do and will learn the details of their culture with such fierce conviction that it cannot later be unlearned or too greatly changed. For example, would you consider using anything other than a wedding ring during your ceremony? If we are asked to change even a small detail of our way of life, we respond "but that wouldn't be right." We get a really bad feeling in our stomach if we even imagine such a change happening. When I was seven years old I once saw a front page newspaper article decrying social misfits: "Hippies chased out of city fountain." I felt that the world must be ending if other people behaved differently than I did. (Of course today I prefer to splash into fountains.) A newborn child can be taken from any place in the world and plopped into the middle of another of the world's cultures. That child will learn the ways of that single culture, feel right at home, and think that the other 9,999 cultures are "strange," including the culture of its birthplace. The only culture that a child thinks is not strange is the one in which she or he grew. This also means that no matter how much the world has changed during your lifetime, your children will believe that the "normal" world is that of their youth. This was true for the first generation of children to encounter each of farming, city life, factory work, cars, radio, television, computers, manorialism, kingdoms, war, dictators, and democracy. An event, such as a murderous war, that evoked great passion from people experiencing that event has much less effect on the children born soon afterwards. With each new generation, previous animosities can be forgotten.
Culture does change through the generations. There are noticeable changes every one hundred miles (160 km) and every one hundred years. You know well that the culture of your grandparents was different from that of your own. It is also true that people rarely make sudden and drastic changes in their culture unless forced to do so by an external cause–for example, the invasion of a migrating people who are settling into your homeland. Keep in mind that those of us humans who continue to live as gatherer-hunters today do so simply because they have never yet been forced by climate, neighbors, or invaders to change from their well-working system.
When farming was first invented about 10,000 years ago, the entire world did not instantly decide to abandon their gatherer-hunter ways. Even if a group of gatherer-hunters lived right next to a group of farmers, they still preferred to keep their old way of life. It took several thousand years for our farming ways to spread throughout the planet, typically spreading by just ten miles (sixteen km) per generation. In the same way about 250 years ago, when parts of the world first began to industrialize, people saw no reason to abandon their farming ways that had worked for as long as anyone could imagine. After 250 years, our industrial ways have spread to just a portion of the planet.
Our more elaborate culture is one way in which humans differ from the other primates. The study of the behaviors of today's primates gives us insight into those of our more-distant hominid ancestors. This chapter contains a somewhat detailed example of a particular culture in order to illustrate what is meant by culture, to hint at the depth of cultural detail, the range of cultural characteristics, and the richness of human cultural variation existing around the world. There are fascinating differences in the details of the daily lives of each group of persons. The cultural example given is that of a group of us humans who live (decreasingly) as gatherer-hunters at the edge of the Amazonian forest. This will also help us to see how all of us used to live before we began farming and then moved into the big city. Knowing something about gatherer-hunter ways also helps us better understand the magnitude of our subsequent shifts to full-time farming and then to factory work (these are the three subsistence styles by which we have lived). We will also begin better to understand our own culture along with its uniqueness and its arbitrariness.
In previous chapters we have seen that people everywhere are very nearly identical genetically and that the behavior of people everywhere is the same in that during most every moment we are caring for the well-being of our family and society. We simply want to laugh and joke with our spouse, family, friends, and neighbors, to pursue life, and to raise children. We all agree about the proper behavior between family, friends, and the neighbors within our social community: to do as the other did, and to expect the other to do what you did. All cultures agree that life's milestones include birth, puberty, marriage, and death, but each culture has different ways and rituals for celebrating these milestones.
A family or a group of friends can punish an errant member by ignoring that person, by leaving that person out of a social event, or by applying the "cold-shoulder." These small pressures are very effective because a human cannot live without social interactions. When a person breaks a social or cultural rule they are punished by ostracism, black listing, unpopularity, or expulsion. Expulsion is a life-threatening form of punishment because every group member knows that a person will not survive in the wild for long when alone. Since we know that we need each other, the health of the community is also of utmost importance.
Everyone likes to hear stories of their group's past. We all ask "how did we get here?" Each group of persons has developed mythological explanations for the origin of the people and their rituals, foods, tools, institutions, ways, and procedures. Some procedures include, home building, fire making, and food preparation. Myths also justify the existing society by prior precedence. Each myth explains how a specific reality came into being. Myths are taken as given truths handed down through countless generations and are as sacred to its people as the Tao Te Ching, Analects, Sutras, Bible, Koran, and Vedas are sacred to Taoists, Confucianists, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Hindus. Each person would feel much distress–they would feel that their own world was ending–if any part of their sacred texts or mythologies were called into question. Numerous myths can be found at www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html. For a multimedia production of the Inuit creation story, visit http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~mburtner/winterraven.html. An on-line version of Sioux mythology is at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/MclMyth.html. For African creation stories, visit www.afrikaworld.net/afrel/creation-in-atr.htm.
Each of us takes our own culture for granted and views all others as "strange." As you read about other cultures, you must try to forget your own and put yourself and your family and friends into the situations of these other peoples. Think what you would do in their place by trying to put yourself in their "shoes" and seeing the world from their perspective. When we see the world from another's viewpoint then we are ourselves enriched because we gain further appreciation of our own culture along with an increased tolerance for others. Experiencing another culture expands your mind. As we begin to see our own culture from the eyes of an outsider, we can then see the strangeness of our own ways. For example, in some cultures people throw rice after a wedding. The people of non rice-throwing cultures wonder why anyone would do such a thing while the people of rice-throwing cultures do not need to ask why they do this. They feel it is the correct thing to do because "it has always been done." Each culture contains thousands of such details. If you list the details of your own customs then you will also have a list of the things that surprise the people of other cultures because they do not do these things. Do the people of your culture clap at gatherings?
We use our imaginations to write novels about personalities and social situations but nobody's imagination has ever produced a society that is more interesting and unbelievable than any of our 10,000 cultures. It is a fascinating eye-opener to travel to another land that is "stranger than fiction." Many science fiction novels contain imaginative but partial descriptions of alien cultures.
We are not even aware of the ways in which we take our view of the world for granted. For example, there is a group of people who live their entire lives in a forest so thick that they can see a distance of only fifty feet (fifteen meters); they never have an opportunity to see more distant objects. When an anthropologist first took one man from this group out of the forest and pointed to people who were six hundred yards (meters) away, that man commented he had never seen such small persons before. He had never encountered distant people so he instead thought they must be small people.
Each group of persons has unique personalities and experiences that in turn build the unique details of their culture. People create their own culture. The details of culture are slowly acquired, accumulated, and altered. Your current customs are the result of the experiences of all of your predecessors and their solutions to every problem they encountered, from the way you make and wash your clothes to the fork you use and the car you drive. We humans have a tendency to attribute later events to the food we have recently eaten. Everything from illness to divorce might be attributed to the food that an involved person did or did not eat. This results in the so-called taboos concerning the things that one can or can not eat at certain times.
Taboos are unique to each culture. The origin of such a cultural detail might happen in the following way. If a women was seen eating a certain item just before she had a miscarriage then this event can lead to a taboo against eating that item during pregnancy. It is easy to guess that many of our cultural details may have originated during such funny little coincidences. Except for the consumption of a poisonous plant or material, few actions have direct consequences. Suppose a lucky groom fell out of his hammock the night before his wedding, and then one week later he found out that his new mother-in-law was a nag. This might influence others to begin sleeping on the ground the night before their wedding in order to avoid a similar fate. If one recently married man breaks his favorite bow then this might be blamed on a sneeze during the wedding ceremony. If a sneeze or cough occurs during a wedding ceremony in your culture, what does it mean for the future of the newlyweds? Do you know the origin of the many details of your culture's wedding ceremony? Our animal brains have accumulated the ability to relate cause and effect, but we are not always right. You might have noticed a coincidence between two events in your own life. How many such events do you think you could recognize during your entire life, and how many cultural details could be produced at this rate by a group of one hundred persons throughout a one thousand year span?
Cultures also change through time. For example, a few centuries ago in Europe, dinner-table manners dictated that each pair of persons share a drinking mug, each of which was very expensive. Each person was expected to wipe their mouth on the table cloth before drinking. For them, anything else would have been considered strange. In Everyday Life in Early America, David Freeman Hawke says that among seventeenth-century English colonists in the New World, it was common for pairs of family members to eat from the same plate. Their descendants acquired new table manners.
Traditions often last for centuries. For example, everybody can recite the poem "Little miss muffett sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey" but nobody has a clue about the meaning of any of these words. The ancient Greeks wrote down the even-older "Homer's Odyssey." The Christian church has had the shape of a cross for many centuries.
Each culture has certain courtesies and many rituals and rites. Many activities can not be undertaken before such a rite is performed, including harvesting, hunting, fishing, warring, and the approach of each season. Some cultures believe that the seasons will not cycle or that the crops will not grow unless the proper rite is performed by people–that is why the world has people.
There is endless variety in our cultures. The members of some societies do not kiss and some use Kachinas to influence child behavior. Some peoples eat food as a family, others go off separately and keep their backs to each other while they eat, and in yet others men and women eat separately. The location of a newlywed couple's residence varies. Some move into the husband's family's home, others move into the wife's family's home, and still others obtain a new home of their own. Some cultures emphasize the role of the relatives from only the mother's side of the family, others emphasize just the father's, and still others emphasize both sides. The people of some cultures knock on wood, throw salt over their shoulder, are careful not to step on walkway cracks, and cringe for their future whenever they spot black cats walking under thirteen ladders. Why do you suppose they do these things? They will answer "Because it has always been so."
One feature of every culture is that each person is given one or more names. In the most humble cultures, a person never says his or her own name. Names have been around for a few million years–even our pets understand and react to names. The oldest written documents are full of names. Names can represent clan membership, such as the emu or the Jones clan. West Indian children are named after a prominent event that occurred near the time of their birth–for example, hurricane or Christmas. There are arbitrary names like Robert, see www.behindthename.com. There are many naming conventions. Names can be taken from relatives, occupations–for example, Smith or Glover–or the ownership of property–for example, the Earl of Oklahoma Gulch. Those of us who live in Iceland attach "whose son or daughter" to the end of the name. In some societies, a child is not named until a certain age is reached so that the name can be selected from the child's distinctive traits, such as "spinner." In Karnee, Lalla Scott, says that one young child was given the name "dot-so" because she liked to say "that-so." See also www.trailtribes.org/lemhi/naming-ceremonies.htm. In Ancient Egypt a child might have been named "God has proved gracious," "She belongs to me," "This boy I wanted," or "Miw," which means "little cat," see What Life was Like on the Banks of the Nile Egypt 3050-50 BC. Those of us humans who are Amish use few names. This results in so many persons having the same name that descriptive words are sometimes attached to a person's name to help keep them distinguished. In Classical Athens, a child’s name included the father's name and the name of the section of town in which the person lived because that town-section was very important to them. (For a current list of the most popular baby names in the U.S., visit www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/babynames.)
The following description of those of us humans who are Canela is a summary of The Canela (Eastern Timbira), I: An Ethnographic Introduction by William H. Crocker, which can be read online at www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/toc.htm, and The Eastern Timbira, by Curt Nimuendaju, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/literature_et.htm. You might like to read their entire books to get the full story. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History website at www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela has photos, video, and additional literature of the Canela. Nimuendaju‘s book describes Canela life during the 1930s while Crocker’s book and the Smithsonian website includes photos and information about more recent decades. See also www.socioambiental.org/pib/epi/canela/notas.shtm. For early film of traditional peoples, see the National Anthropological Archives at www.nmnh.si.edu/naa.
Crocker explains that in previous centuries, the Canela gathered seasonal fruits, roots, nuts, and berries from the area surrounding their home base, traveling as much as a three-day walk (60 miles or 100 km) in a 10,000 square mile (25,000 sq km) area. A portion of food was obtained by planting yam, sweet potato, manioc, corn, squash, pumpkin, melons, and peanut gardens at the edge of a stream close to the village. To begin a garden, forest trees had first to be cleared using stone axes and fire. The Canela also fish and hunt using similarly brainy tactics as do the Amahuaca, as discussed in Chapter 8. A talent for hunting is much appreciated. Nimuendaju quotes one uncle explaining his disapproval to his niece: “You want to marry him? What sort of game has he ever shot?” Today, the Canela are restricted to 10% of their previous food collecting area and so obtain 75% of their food from farming and the rest from gathering and hunting (for an overview, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/encyclopedia.pdf). The modern world has expanded to their doorstep, bringing new tools, clothes, indoor plumbing, and a money-based exchange system that is changing the Canela way of life. They are beginning to raise chickens and pigs to sell to fellow Brazilians and are also employed by and receiving aid from the Brazilian government. We will look at the Canela way of life as it was during the 1930s to see an example of one of our 10,000 cultures and to get a glimpse of the intricately-traditioned way we humans lived for the 100,000 years preceding our switch to full time farming. By nature, we are parenting mammals, social primates, cultural humans, and gatherer-hunters. Have the intricacies of our culture increased or decreased since we began farming and built civilization?
To learn the details of the culture of a specific group of people, an anthropologist will live with that group for many months. Anthropologist have lived with thousands of the worlds people and describe their understandings in ethnographic reports, such as those about the Canela. These reports help us see that the culture of a people consists of their recipes for "how to do to everything in life." If you find the following example to be fascinatingly "stranger than fiction" then you might enjoy reading more of these case studies.
The Canela live in Brazil. See www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/Timbira_map.pdf for a map and www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/figures/figure_5.jpg for a photo of children, houses, and trees. (A video clip taken from an airplane flying over a Kuikuro village can be seen at www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/301/5640/1710/DC1.) The Canela Indians live in a few villages (see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/images/environ_aerial.jpg for a photo of the Escalvado village) each having a few hundred residents.
Just as do you and every other human being, Canela parents live for their children, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/plates/ETplate22.pdf, make toys for them, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/plates/ETplate23.pdf, and help to raise the children of others. The Canela are together and see one another every moment of their lives. Each person knows the personalities of others well enough to predict their behavior under various circumstances. They know each other throughout their lives–from infancy, through the learning years of childhood, then parenthood, old age, and to death when aged in the 70s, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/figures/figure_16.jpg. Imagine living with the same group of one hundred persons or so for your entire life. We can expect that every village has the happy smiling ones, the jokesters, the storytellers, the bullies, the gymnasts, the slow-movers, the pleasant, and the unpleasant. For photos, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/images/fest_fishrun.jpg and www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_73.jpg. To see photos of the Canela individuals who explained their way of life to the anthropologist Crocker, you might like to visit www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_70.jpg.
Daily activities, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/dailylife.htm, always include morning and afternoon men’s council, sleep around 10 p.m., singing and dancing in the plaza from 3 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. and again in the afternoon, work, siesta, swimming and bathing, football, and log racing (for video of a Canela log race, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/video.htm). Women nurture children, farm, and collect firewood and water. Every morning, men work together to repair roads, maintain village boundaries, harvest rice, or help on someone’s farm. See www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/plates/ETplate27.pdf for photos of trumpets and www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_65.jpg for photos of rattles and horns and www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/plates/ETplate25.pdf for photos of dancing. See www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/plates/ETplate13.pdf for artistically decorated ear plugs and wrist bands. Daily life includes, dancing, singing, music, and art.
The homes of a Canela village are arranged in a circle surrounding a central, common area with paths connecting each home to that center. For photos, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/images/environ_aerial.jpg and www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/images/environ_plaza.jpg. The circle is about 300 meters (yards) wide; its central fifty meters (yards) are used for socializing and for ceremonies. This circular layout is of the utmost importance. (What does a circle “with no beginning or end” symbolize in your culture?) Following the Canela sense of symmetry, the homes of certain pairs of persons are placed on opposite sides of the circle, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/ETch2.pdf.
Nimuendaju says that a village is located on level ground of hard clay (for dancing) and is placed within one kilometer (0.6 mile) of the water supply, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/images/daily_water.jpg. Crops and wood are obtained for about ten years from the surrounding area until travel to crop lands and trees is farther than twelve kilometers (2 miles) and then the village is moved. After the villagers have been away from an area for ten or twenty years, its trees and the fertility of its ground will have returned so the village may return to that former location. The Canela plant numerous water-hording burity palms (Mauritia flexuosa, see www.css.cornell.edu/ecf3/Web/new/AF/pics/Mauritiaflexuosa1.jpg) in nearby valley floors so that water will be available even if a drought occurs. They also stock the watercourse created by them with fish.
Throughout the planet, we humans have made mud and grass (wattle and daub) houses. Those of the Canela, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_07.jpg ,are not too different from those of the Cahokians or of the Meieval Europeans. Men build the homes that are then owned by women. For house construction, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_10.jpg. An old racing log might be placed in the doorway to keep out domestic pigs and a palm mat is lowered to close the doorway at night. Food can be kept out of reach of dogs by placing it on a high platform attached to the house. Certain objects can be stored simply by thrusting them into the thatched wall or roof. A house typically lasts for several years before showing wear. (Surely the other villagers will tease you when your hut is getting old.)
Typically, beds are the only piece of furniture inside the home and are made of burity leaf stalks placed closely together on beams supported by four, forked posts. A bed might hold one person or a whole family. Girls might have their own bed. Boys prefer to sleep outside unless it is raining. Another burity mat might serve as a blanket, but the feet are left uncovered and are warmed by a fire kept near the bed. Decorated blankets are cleaned when dirty but more-simple blankets are simply replaced when dirty. During the day, the beds serve as sitting and as eating places, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_09.jpg for photos of house interiors. (We will see in the coming chapters that throughout the world, the bed was about the only piece of furniture in homes until the Industrial Revolution made other items affordable.) During nice weather, people like to sit on mats outside the home and will sleep outside on them until cold air wakes them to move indoors. In some villages, people sleep in hammocks while in yet other villages, people do not builds post-supported beds and instead sleep on the ground between two mats.
There is an indoor fireplace used for boiling and an earthen oven placed outdoors several meters (yards) away from the house. Fire is preferably replenished from a neighbor’s fire; otherwise, it is created by holding a stick against a block and then rapidly turning the stick between one’s palms (for a photo of fire drilling, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/plates/ETplate5.pdf ). These fire sticks are carried when traveling at night. Recently, more modern sources of fire are being used. Women gather most of the firewood as small sticks and leave the men to carry the occasional, large piece.
All the peoples of the world agree that the proper behavior among the family, friends, and neighbors of the society is to do as the other does. Each culture differs only in the fine details. Proper behavior for the Canela include being open, not being egotistical or arrogant, sharing freely, being generous not stingy, not being mean or angry, not talking bad of others or verbally abusing a person to decrease his or her self-image, avoiding actions that might start rumors, maintaining peace and harmony, staying in favor with members of the opposite sex (until recently, most everyone conducted extra marital sex involving many partners on a continual basis), and striving for the approval of others–especially those of your own age group. The Canela say that shame keeps a person from acting contrary to tradition. Nimuendaju says that the Canela allow one to be only “a little bad.” (Remember that “good” behavior is that which is common–that is, near the peak of a bell-shaped curve–to all group members.) Canela do not want to be shamed or to lose face by lying or stealing and believe it is evil to seek revenge against another member of the group. Do you agree that these are proper behaviors? Crocker says that the Canela value peace-making and problem-solving within the group but sometimes conduct seasonal battles of revenge against neighboring groups.
Crocker explains that Canela individuals live “more for the good of the society through the available social activities than for self-gratification.” To maintain society, Canela prefer to walk away from confrontation. Nimuendaju explains that the Canela refrain from extremes of behavior. For example, public display of affection is avoided. Jealousy or anger raised to the point of avoidance can not occur because daily rituals soon require the two opponents to be singing and dancing together. Avoiding extremes keeps the mutually dependent group together. (Imagine the mutual way of life that you and ten other families would together create.) Older generations have much influence over the younger ones, and each person strives for the approval of the members of his or her own age group. Crocker says that a person doing well in his or her social roles will be sexually rewarded by several other persons. Canela adhere to the tradition governing every action: performing a task in a unique manner is considered egotistical and evil because it might unravel society. (Today’s infusions from the rest of the world cause the same social tension for the Canela as occurs whenever a people are forced by outsiders to change their trusted ways.) People also follow the orders of family heads, elders, group leaders, and the chief. Nimuendaju reports that “a person will not perform an inherited and relished duty until the proper leader orders it to be done.” The ordered person then feels that he or she has the support of the group. (Have you ever refrained yourself until seeing that it was ok with the rest of the group?) The Canela maintain peace and harmony within the group through constant joking, singing, sharing “the fun of the moment,” sports, dancing, and ritually condoned extramarital affairs. Nimuendaju says that those having a talent for buffoonery join the clown society. Clowns also behave in a slightly incorrect way that emphasizes the proper way, see the crooked house of the clowns at www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/images/fest_crooked_house.jpg.
Breaking a social rule results in an immense response from other people. For example, except in the case of abuse, a divorce can not be obtained after having married a virgin. Nimuendaju describes how one man seeking such a divorce resisted social pressure through several days of discussion until “two members of his age class seized him by his arms, dragged him at a trot to his wife’s house, while the other classmates followed behind, laid him on the bed beside his wife, and made the two intertwine arms and legs. Thus the affair was settled. I witnessed the scene myself; the culprit’s face is unforgettable: he almost died of humiliation and offered not the least resistance.”
Crocker says that unresolved arguments are settled through meetings of elders, trials between families, and interventions by ceremonial chiefs. Aggression is not permitted. Boys are not allowed to fight nor are larger boys allowed to bully smaller boys. If a fight between two men results in a broken bone, eye damage, or the loss of blood then a penalty will be imposed on the man causing the damage and his entire family will be shamed. Crocker did not see a serious fight in twenty years. In fact, parents do not strike their children except as punishment for repeating the most extreme behavior. They are then struck on the palm.
Myths explain the origin, preparation, and use of most every food and tool. For example, there is a myth that explains the origin of maize and the knowledge of its use. There are myths to explain the origin of each element of daily life, including container making (see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/images/daily_basketmaking.jpg), fishing with nets, poisons, and arrows ( see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/images/daily_fishing.jpg), house building (see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/images/environ_building.jpg), farming (see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/images/daily_farmplot.jpg) and the origin of the Canela people. This last myth might be based in fact as it describes the possible splintering of a previous group over an accidental arrow shot to the arm of a boy. (If you lived in a group of several families and someone hurt your child then your extended family, along with other extended families, might choose to separate from the offending family.) The knowledge of the techniques, tools, ceremonies, and procedures forming the Canela way of life are passed down to each new generation. Myths explain the origins and sacred nature of the ways of the people and answer the questions "Where did this come from and what is the source of its power?"
Croker says that one myth comparing the Sun and Moon explains the origins of people and the differences between individuals and also the origins of the work people must do to operate tools–for example, to clear trees for a garden plot–that the Sun used to put in motion whenever it wanted before interference from the Moon stopped the motion of those tools, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/part_4.htm#IVC. Myths also explain how at first, the Canela were the only people on the Earth, but they did not know how to use collectable or cultivated plant foods and did not know how to make a bow and arrow or how to use fire. They simply wandered the forests eating rotten wood and sun-dried meat. One person was held captive by a fire-using Jaguar but escaped and took fire-coals to the people who have used them ever since. Later, Star-woman came down from the sky and taught the Canela how to prepare fruits and vegatables. She then took a Canela back to the sky with her as her husband. (Could this be based on the actual visit by a woman who taught the Canela, fell in love, and then left with a husband?)
The Canela say that each night the Sun travels under the earth to return to its rising position. This is true and makes sense but it is not fully accurate. (Could it be that each day’s sun is not the same sun as appears on any other day, and that one encounters thousands of suns throughout a lifetime?) The Canela describe the time of day in terms of the sun, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/tables/table_06.gif. Whenever the moon is darkened by an eclipse, the Canela shoot fire-carrying arrows towards it. Without fail, this always rekindles the light of the moon (in Chapter 14, we’ll see the equally successful approach used in medieval China). For information about the astronomical knowledge of ancient civilizations, you might like to read Ancient Astronomers by Anthony F. Aveni.
Crocker explains that a Canela is firstly a member of the nuclear and of the matrilineally extended family and that the brother-sister bond comprises “the most serious interpersonal loyalty.” In one part of the Kheetuwaye pageant, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/helpinghands.pdf, sisters hold their younger brothers to protect them from “soul snatchers.” While uncles particularly help nephews, and aunts particularly help nieces, there is a general solidarity of the extended family against hostile forces. The members of your extended family will come to your assistance whenever the need arises (as we have seen to be the case for every primate). For example, one might need help for food because the day’s hunt was unsuccessful or need help because of a squabble with others. When threatened, a person might point out to the offender that he or she “has many relatives.”
Uncles sponsor the ear-piercing ritual for their nephews, and they help during other festivals. The Pepye festival for young men is meant to instill self-control and fortitude and to increase strength, knowledge, and perception, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/helpinghands.pdf. The young men are secluded in a room within their own house during this time. For their nephew’s use during this seclusion, uncles build behind the house a fenced-in yard containing a latrine. Crocker says that during this seclusion period, the youths rarely talk with anyone except their uncles who lecture them on traditions, the youths must never walk in the yard lit by sunlight or moonlight unless they cover themselves with mats or cloth, they must not step on twigs or dead leaves, they must not be seen by a person having an “evil eye,” they must not talk with women who have just had sexual relations, and they must not eat meat or drink certain vegetable juices. (Why do you suppose the Canela do these things? They will answer “Because it has always been so.”) Crocker explains that the Canela firmly believe that a young man becomes an adult only by following these procedures and they firmly believe that breaking these rules causes the youth to be a poor hunter, to be unable to withstand the midday sun, and that he will not be able to speak with ghosts as would be required for him to be a shaman. Crocker explains that the restrictions form a helping hand that enables the young man to stand on his own legs. The uncle decides when the young man is ready to leave the seclusion room to become an adult. This challenging ritual matures a person.
A specific, extended family has the right to perform a given ritual, but if they fail to carry out their duties then they have let down the entire village and the council of elders will give the rights for that ritual to another extended family. Since it honors the entire extended family, they provide food for a village-wide ceremony whenever a family member is selected to be a sing-dance leader, a town crier, or a ceremonial chief. Under other circumstances, the entire extended family sometimes must pay a penalty for the bad behavior of one family member.
Canella consider blood relatives to be more important than relatives by marriage, but also know that marriage builds relationships between extended families. In previous centuries, marriages were sometimes planned or “arranged” to build such relationships. The agreement was made while the bride and groom to-be were children, and then the two families exchanged gifts as the children grew. To the disappointment of the arrangers, either of the promised persons could break the contract simply by marrying another person when they grew up.
Crocker says that whenever two families have a difference, they keep the peace by holding a public discussion. Your own family might have had the experience of squabbling with another family that is a fellow member of a group. Such arguments can disrupt the entire group and threaten its existence. When both families value membership in that group then both want to smooth their differences. For a group of gatherer-hunters, their very lives depend on the maintenance of peace within the group. Throughout human existence, every gatherer-hunter group consisting of a number of families has had to keep the peace between families. In the most extreme but rare of arguments, in 1903 one Canela group split into two after the revenge killing of a sorcerer suspected of killing by witchcraft. (Nimuendaju says that at least 124 years had elapsed since a murder occurred in the region.)
Crocker explains (see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/part_2.htm#IID1b) that the various aunts and uncles each have special roles in naming, kidding, loving, socializing, disciplining (see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/figures/figure_14.jpg), conducting food restrictions, and advising their nieces and nephews. Parents supply the bulk of child rearing and are supportive and permissive in raising their children. In addition, Nimuendaju says that the Canela consider both sexes to be equal in importance in that they know neither matriarch nor the enslavement of women, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/ETch3.pdf.
Food getting, and agricultural ceremonies
Those of us humans who live the gatherer lifestyle typically spend about two hours collecting the day’s supply of food. It surprises today's big city dwellers when they learn that gatherer-hunter peoples require so little time to collect a day’s supply of food. How long it would take you to collect about ten handfuls of food, which is a day's supply, from nearby fruit trees and streams and such? How long it would take you to pick the bucketful of berries that would be more than enough food for the day?
The Amazonian rainforest has abundant, gatherable food. Still, the traditional peoples who live there today grow a good portion of their food by farming manioc and such. (The many steps needed to process bitter manioc into edible flour are shown in photos at www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/manioc.htm.) The Canela live east of the Amazon River’s watershed and its abundant food resources and have been farming for many centuries. They continued to gather, fish, and hunt until the modern world confiscated 90% of their lands. They still hunt to acquire meat used in ceremonies, but it often takes many days to find an animal. Crocker says that the Canela believe that if a hunter kills too many of a certain species of animal, then they will “throw” a disease at him.
Nimuendaju lists traditional Canela crops, including yam and sweet potato, which comprise their staple foods, along with manioc, arrowroot, gourd, and horse beans. The various crops are mostly mingled together in one field, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/ETch2.pdf. After contact with Brazilians, they also began planting beans, Far Eastern rice, pineapple, African watermelon, Mediterranean oranges, banana, lemon, sugarcane, mango, cayenne pepper, and papaya. The Canela myth describing the origin of maize is identical to the maize myth of other peoples in the region and shares aspects with the myths of Carib peoples of Guiana. This tells us something about the spread of corn farming and about ancestry of the Canela.
Husbands clear plots for crops, usually clearing one to two hectares (2.5 to 5 acres), and then both spouses do the planting. Wives own the fields in that it is reserved for their use until the shrubs have grown tall because they have stopped using it. Women also do most of the weeding and all of the harvesting. For photos of women carrying maize and baskets filled with crops, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/images/daily_burden.jpg and www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/plates/ETplate5.pdf. A single woman may own a field that is cleared by her male relatives but a single man never owns a field. The plots of the female members of an extended family are often adjacently located. A row of maize is used to separate adjacent plots. Crops are not harvested in one bundle; instead, a few day’s needs are collected while the rest remains stored “on the wine”for later use. Boys use slings to hurl objects at any birds trying to eat the crops. They also trap them, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/plates/ETplate17.pdf. If not kept at bay, birds and cows will eat the entire crop. Today, crop fields are also surrounded by logs to keep out the cattle of Brazilian ranchers. Crocker says that people having food share with those who do not
The agricultural year begins when the Pleiades star cluster is seen on the western horizon just after sunset. (Throughout the world, people notice that both the stars and the seasons move together through an annually repeating cycle; unfortunately in our big cities today, we can’t see many stars.) There is then just enough time to clear land and to plant seeds before the seasonal rain first occurs. A man, whose maternal home must be located on the east side of the village circle, leads a number of agricultural ceremonies, beginning with the planting ceremony, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_53.jpg. He places a painted gourd bowl filled with maize kernels in the center of the plaza and then people dance around it. After those seeds are planted in his wife’s field, other families begin planting their own fields. When maize has grown to a height of one meter (yard), a ceremony is held to induce the moon to keep parasites away from the crop (since it is usually outside anyway). Everyone claps and sings the proper phrase and then dances from north to south across the plaza at night under the full moon. A portion of each year’s crops are stored away for seeding the next year’s crops. To keep insects away from those seeds, they are stored in a tightly-corded jar, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/plates/ETplate19.pdf, that is sealed with wax and hung from the indoor, smoke-filled rafters.
The Canela worry that a lunar eclipse during the rainy season will ruin the crops. This worry likely became part of Canela culture during a past occurrence of this coincidence. (By the way, at any location on the earth, eclipses repeat in an eighteen-year cycle because the tilt of the moon’s orbital plane has that period.) After being learned the hard way, for how many generations do you think this concern would last?
The same person leading the planting ceremony also leads the harvesting ceremony. A hunting party first fetches meat to be used in this ceremony. Then the wife of the ceremony leader takes ears of maize from her field and gives it to him in the plaza. That maize is prepared and given to the councilors. Nobody is allowed to consume any maize before the councilors have tasted it and certified its maturity. Some of the maize husks are then made into shuttlecocks, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_66.jpg, that are bounced by palm among a group of players trying not to let them touch the ground. (Nimuendaju reports that a village in the distant Parnaíba basin and the Kraho people also play this game, indicating past village, individual, or cultural dispersals.) After midnight, men use the husks to cover the points of unfeathered arrows that they then throw at each other. These ceremonies are also much fun.
We humans naturally accumulate ceremonies for our activities because they combine our cultural and social nature. Ceremonies bind together the people of a culture. Nimuendaju explains that ceremonies are of utmost importance to the Canela, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/ETch4.pdf. Ceremonies consist of detailed actions that are very meaningful to the practioners. Within each culture, members can always think of the proper way to do anything. (Do you know anyone who plays a role in setting or following ceremonial tradition?) Every farming group conducts a ceremony to accompany the planting, protecting, and harvesting of their crops. In the U.S. today, few of us are farmers but we still celebrate Thanksgiving Day as it binds our society. How many ceremonies does your culture conduct?
For the Canela, childbirth occurs indoors with the help of an elderly matrilineal relative, see page 106 at www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/ETch3.pdf. (Since birthing assistance is nearly universal, one might suspect evolution of relying on it for our social species and its big brained infants.) The helper ties the umbilical cord with cotton, cuts it with an iron knife, paints the cord with urucu (Melipona scutellaris) juice, and places araca bark juice on the cut (see www.dcce.ibilce.unesp.br/~cleonice/araca.jpg for a photo of an araca tree). The child’s mouth is cleaned and the mother is taken outside and washed but she is not to be painted. The afterbirth is buried at the inside corner of the house and the mats on which the mother had lain while birthing are taken by her own mother and jammed into the fork of a nearby tree, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/figures/figure_3.jpg, where they are left to be consumed by the next wildfire. As she puts the mats in the tree, she asks the sun to keep the baby from harm. A Canela mother rarely lets go of her new child for the first few months of its life. (By the way, a woman might induce an abortion by eating certain plants if the father abandons her during pregnancy.)
The father waits outside during the delivery because men must not see a birth. After the birth, his wife lies on her side while he sits on her hip to “press back together her pelvic bones.” During the pregnancy, he prepared the birthing mats and placed other mats around the bed to create a seclusion space in which the couple will remain, except for bathroom breaks, with their newborn separated from everyone else until about one month after the child’s navel string falls off. Until it falls, the mother wears a red urucu painted burity belt. The navel string is saved to be given to the child when he or she reaches the age of four. The child places it into a hole of a sucupira tree (see www.arvores.brasil.nom.br/cerrd/sucupt.htm) and grows to be as strong as the tree.
During the pregnancy, both parents do the things believed to ensure the health of the child. During seclusion, the parents are not to paint or decorate themselves, cut their hair, scratch themselves with their fingers (instead using small sticks, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_67.jpg), or eat any of several, sepcific types of meat. When eating sweet potatoes, they must save the skins in a basket carried behind the house. Nimuendaju explains that they must not gnaw on leg bones or the child’s umbilical cord might rupture. They must not eat parrots, doves, armadillos, or sarimas (for a photo of this bird, see http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/Birds/Facts/FactSheets/fact-redlegseriema.cfm). The mother must not eat the honey of tiuba bees (Melipona compressipes fasciculata) unless it is mixed with manioc flour, otherwise she might have a miscarriage. They must not kill a snake if they encounter one. The father must avoid singeing a paca or he might cause a miscarriage. Do you suppose that these sad coincidences occurred once in the past and caused the origins of these taboos? For how many generations does a taboo typically last in a culture? While the newborn is growing into an adult, many problems he or she has is fully believed to be caused by things they parents have or have not eaten, and corrective dietary steps are taken.
Why do you suppose the Canela do these things? They will answer "Because it has always been so." These are the specific steps that those of us humans who are Canela have found to best guarantee the health of the mother and child. To do otherwise, risks everything. In the coming chapters, we’ll discuss the birthing procedures of medieval and colonial times and see that they also contain numerous but different details. Each human culture defines the “right way” to do everything from simple actions to relationships and the ceremonies for life’s milestones. For example, can you describe the right way to send birthday cards? For how long should a recipient save a birthday card? Cultural details vary but people do not: Crocker explains that a Canela mother's primary goal is to take care of her children, feed them, socialize them, and keep her family happy. We can be sure that a Canela parent will often tell his or her spouse "Well it's you she takes after."
Each human is especially susceptible to disease during its first year of life. For this reason, the people of most every culture have an infant-growth seclusion period in which the newborn and mother grow visibly strong while separated by a wall from the rest of the world. We can imagine that this technique was discovered as one determined mother kept her child away from the rest of the village. The care and nurturing of our children is of utmost importance for us. In fact, we can gauge the success of our society and of our entire civilization in terms of the percentage of our babies who survive infancy due to our combined efforts, see Chapter 22.
Breastfeeding lasts two years, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/part_3.htm#IIIA2, sometimes four. (So that a mother can naturally concentrate on one child at a time, she is biologically less likely to conceive again while breastfeeding. This improves the life of the existing child and family.) Some Canela say it is best to wean the child between the times in which it begins teething and walking. Throughout these years, a child is continually held at the breast. The home contains the families of all the daughters of an elder woman, and the children of the household are taken care of by the women of the household. Any woman might nurse any child while its mother leaves to collect firewood and such. If a mother becomes pregnant while still nursing a child, she weans immediately because the Canela believe the fetus needs the milk. Crocker explains that Canela life is practically stress free and that this way of life begins at once. If a child is upset, it will be distracted by being given the breast of any woman. Misbehaving or endangered children are distracted not coerced, punished, or commanded. A child is weaned by using solid food to distract it away from the breast.
Infants aged eleven to fifteen months are stood to encourage walking. They are also encouraged to dance and to shake rattles. Crocker explains that, as in any culture, babies learn to talk by listening to their parents and imitating them. Kanzi learned this way, too. In Chapter 9 we saw that speech involves the movement of as many as seventy-five muscles (see www.phon.ox.ac.uk/~jcoleman/peat.qt).
Rules are followed when naming the child, who might not be named until as old as two years. Ideally, the names of a maternal uncle go to his nephews and the names of a paternal aunt go to her niece, but this occurs mostly when two children can be reciprocally named. Through the generations, a name travels back and forth across the plaza, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/figures/figure_35.jpg for girls and www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/figures/figure_36.jpg for boys. The Canela dearly value the transmission of names through the generations and are troubled if a name has no inheritor. The death of a person upsets this sequence of name transferences. Sometimes an object given as a gift is named by applying the same set of rules as applies to the naming of people.
Every cultural group of persons recognizes puberty to be one of life's major steps and feels that both seminal and menstrual fluids are special. Blood from within our bodies is usually seen in only the most dramatic of life's events. When the biological reasons for menstrual fluid are not fully understood by a cultural group of persons then this event is often considered to be among the most amazing of phenomenon. We will always be amazed by the process of birth.
In most of the world’s cultures, adolescents are secluded from the rest of society for a period of several days to several weeks. During seclusion, the young adult will stay either in a separate living quarters used for this purpose or in a section of the home that has been temporarily separated by walls of plant or cloth material. Typically, these young adults must obey food taboos while in seclusion. The seclusion period is a time of transition from which an adult emerges. Most every culture celebrates this transition with some sort of ceremony.
For the Canela, independence from parents begins with being taught the proper ways of adulthood by so-called “disciplining-aunts” for girls or “disciplining-uncle” for boys. Life distinctly changes as adolescents leave behind carefree play, but more so for boys than for girls. The disciplining uncle teaches the young man which foods should or should not be eaten to obtain strength and a keen awareness of the senses, suppresses his jealousies, and for a time allows him to have sex only with older women. This uncle also arranges the ear-piecing ritual for his nephew, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_25.jpg and www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/canela/canela1.htm
The Canela share a regional belief that a young woman’s first menstruation is not possible unless sexual intercourse has occurred, but there are known persons for whom the reverse order occurred. For several days after her first menstruation, the young woman must not eat meat, manioc paste, or flour or she will risk causing her hair to turn gray prematurely. If her first intercourse, which must happen outside the village, has occurred instead of her first menstruation, then neither she nor the young man must eat these foods. After his first sexual intercourse, the man’s advising uncle tells him that he must remain secluded at home for a week and from then on, sleep either in the plaza with the other single men or sleep in his future wife’s house. He is to never again sleep in his mother’s house unless he is sick or divorced. After intercourse, the couple are considered to be married. If the man refuses, his family must pay an indemnity, but sometimes, the woman’s family instead pays the would-be husband to stay away.
Two adolescents who enjoy the company of one another will begin sleeping in the same bed together for a portion of some nights. They do not have sex. (In Chapter 15, we’ll see a similar “bundling” custom among the people of early nineteenth-century New England.) This constitutes an engagement that becomes marriage when intercourse occurs. The marriage relationship starts small and grows by steps through time. About 5% of boys marry between the ages of ten and fourteen–one-third between fifteen and nineteens years. By age twenty-nine, 90% are married. Girls marry at a younger age. One-quarter of girls marry between the ages of ten and fourteen and 90% by age twenty, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/demography.pdf. Offspring usually do not occur until a young woman reaches her later teens. (For humans, the chance of conceiving are very low until the later teens, highest during the mid twenties, and impossible after menopause.) Until offspring are born, both the man and woman freely have other sexual partners–as is common among “tribal” Amazonian cultures. Still, extramarital sex is not freely permitted because witnessed adultery is grounds for divorce. When children are born, the marriage becomes a complete relationship lasting at least until the youngest offspring is mid-adolescent. Extramarital sex then decreases because the parents are now busy caring for their children.
After marriage, the groom moves into his wife’s house that also holds the families of her sisters. Nimuendaju explains that if that house is full or if the groom is unusually independent then they will build a home next door. The sisters of the house are related by blood and so dominate daily happenings while newly arrived husbands have a small influence. If a newly arrived husband is generally disliked, he remains but is simply ignored. In contrast, a wife never spends a night in the home of her husband’s mother’s house, except when her husband is taken there while sick. For the first few years, the newly arrived husband speaks to his in-laws only through his wife. He helps feed his new household while continuing to play an advisory role in his own mother’s house. In this matrilineal residence, wives are safe from a tyrannous husband and husbands organize against henpecking. Couples who grow old together are role models esteemed by the community.
The eldest men and women are esteemed. They are not addressed by their name but are always called grandfather or grandmother. Young people show respect by giving way and by waiting to be asked to speak. Nobody ridicules an old person’s frailty.
We all know that death is part of life. When illness brings death, a Canela will die in his or her mother’s house. A widow does not cut her hair, put on makeup or wear decorations, speaks only with the members of her own house, remains in bed, and laments daily for her lost husband. Mourning lasts one month or more. (How does your culture mourn such loss?) Nimuendaju says he once saw an intense argument when a woman took a new lover just one week after the death of her husband. A lamenting person falls to the ground, rhythmically speaking gibberish for several minutes. This recurs during the coming months whenever something reminds one of the lost person. Nimuendaju says that men running a log race will drop their log mid-step to join in the cries of others who are lamenting a lost one.
The dying person lies on mats in the middle of the house, feet toward the door, while the next of kin gather around, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_30.jpg. A female relative gives a brief lament at the moment of death and then all the relatives of the deceased, but not other villagers unless the deceased is a chief, gather around. About an hour later, the relatives sit on mats placed next to the deceased, and begin lamenting the loss. The body of the deceased is prepared by cutting the hair, plucking eyebrows, smoothing the features, and putting on decorations. If the deceased is a child, then he or she is held in the lap of each of the nearest relatives, who cry. The room fills with blubbering and the rapid chanting of the women, maternal uncle, and maternal grandfather who say ”When you were still alive, I was very fond of you, but now I don’t want you anymore! Don’t return here!” The widow or another women may work herself into such a frenzy that she attempts suicide by diving onto her head. If the sick person dies in the morning then the burial occurs that evening, otherwise the burial happens in the morning after an all-night lament. The deceased is wrapped in the mats on which he or she had been lying. The mats are then tied around and suspended from two poles to carry the deceased to the cemetery. (For photos of the sequence of events comprising a funeral, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_31.jpg.) The relatives remain mourning in the house as the deceased is carried to the grave.
The grave is dug about two meters (six feet) deep by a volunteer who is a member of the same eastern or western exogamous half of the village as was the deceased. In some of villages of the region, the body is placed in a circular grave facing east in a sitting posture, while in other villages the body lies on his or her back in a rectangular grave. In previous times, the body may have been first buried behind the house of his or her mother. The cemetery is 1,500 to 2,000 meters (yards) away. No belongings are placed in the grave. If the deceased is a woman, then on top of her grave are placed objects such as her carrying basket and a gourd bowl, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_66.jpg. The funeral ceremony changed somewhat just a few decades later, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/part_4.htm#IVB3 for Crocker’s discussion.
The Canela believe that if the deceased had not eaten during his or her last days then the shadow of the deceased will go once more to his or her mother’s house for food. To prepare for the visit, relatives simulate a hunt, make a meat pie, and at nightfall place it with a gourd of water on a scaffold behind the mother’s house. An old man watches the pie until he hears a rustling of its leaves and then announces: “He has already eaten.” The councilors then have the pie taken to the plaza where they eat it.
The Canela believe that every living creature–maybe a plant, too–has a shadow or soul, but the soul plays no part during life. At death, the soul leaves the body and, with the other souls, continues a life comprised of the same daily routines as before death. About all that is different is that they don’t eat and rarely speak–producing only the occasional shouts heard in the distance. The souls of deceased relatives gather around a dying person and sometimes convince him or her to adopt their ways, which is why that dying person has stopped eating or speaking. These souls accompany the dead person to the cemetery, and after burial, lead the deceased’s soul away. The soul of a deceased maternal uncle usually accompanies the soul of a deceased infant. (We can imagine a grieving Canela say: “Uncle Kapropey is leading her away now.”) Along the way, the soul must cross a river by walking over a thin, swaying tree. If the soul slips off then it will become an aquatic animal. (A slippery tree belief also occurs on the other side of Brazil, 1,000 kilometers [600 miles] away.) Souls of the deceased help their living relatives by appearing in their dreams to warn of danger and by clearing poisonous snakes from their path. They sometimes appear for an instant during the day.
Nimuendaju explains that a chief is essentially a peacemaker (Canela chief’s are always male), see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/figures/figure_18.jpg. His main function is to settle disputes so that harmony is maintained in the village. The chief does not rule, command, punish, assert, invent new rules, exercise political control, wear a badge, receive extra food, or interfere in private affairs because the proper ways of life–tradition, culture, and ceremony–dictate all activity and behavior. When a dispute between two individuals occurs and escalates, the extended families of both persons become involved. If their differences can not be settled during an inter-family meeting, then a chief becomes involved. He will engage either a recognized mediator or a person with special ties to both families to find a solution that satisfies everyone lest the mutually beneficial village split. If the chief’s decision is requested then it is held binding because, as Crocker explains, to do otherwise would bring the disapproval of everyone–especially members of the opposite sex–and some loss of future food distributions. Chiefs are selected because of the personal character they have demonstrated through the decades. They have earned respect through their maturity, conciliatory nature, and oratorical ability. The village has one to three chiefs serving different functions. They do not seek personal power and serve without rivalry. Crocker also describes how the political system and its leadership changed through time to deal with the invasion of eighteenth-century Europeans, nineteenth-century ranchers, and twentieth-century Brazilians.
Each Canelan is a member of a handful of societal moeties, each of which consist of half the village population divided in a specific way. For example, a person might be a member of the east half, that includes his best friend, and a member of the “green” half, which does not include his best friend. A person in the U.S. today might be a Republican, a member of the Rotary club, and a member of the Funny Hat Society, each of which consists of differing members. Canela groupings differ from this U.S. example in that each comprises half the population.
Each morning, the council of elders, consisting of one or two dozen older men, meet with the chiefs to plan the events of the day, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/part_3.htm#IIID. A Canela chief can do nothing without the approval of the council of elders. Together they might decide that today, the two halves of an age-group will go hunting in two separate areas, harvest rice on two separate family farms, or work on two separate sections of a road; they might decide that everyone should instead work with their families on their own farms or in their own houses; or they might decide that the entire village should go work a few days for nearby Brazilians or prepare for a festival by disbanding and hunting for a couple weeks. Chiefs and council meet again in the afternoon to plan upcoming festivals and to discuss issues. The council might temporarily assume certain duties for a new or weak chief.
Meetings begin with informal chatting on the plaza edges and then move into formal discussions at the center of the plaza. Informal talking consists either of back and forth conversations or of everyone listening to a single storyteller. Men enjoy talking in detail about hunting. They also discuss the latest gossip concerning love affairs and such. During the meeting’s formal discussion, one person at a time speaks for three to ten minutes in the order determined by strength of personality. Topics of formal discussion in the evening might include such things as a young man trying to leave his wife, cattle breaking into a farm, unresolved inter-family disputes, or a Canela being harmed while traveling in a big city. When facts are sought during a formal discussion, rumors are often found to be groundless. The formal discussion typically lasts for about one-half hour but difficult issues might be discussed for ninety minutes. The meeting leader then summarizes the discussion and might pronounce conclusions. To show agreement at the end of the meeting, everyone calls in unison in a voice that rises for four seconds and then falls sharply for two seconds. The town crier then sings out to the village the decisions made at the meeting, and the plaza is cleared for the evening sing-dance.
Shaman cure, but witchcraft causes misfortune
Shamans exist in all gatherer-hunter and farming cultures. (In Chapter 15, we will examine their role in nineteenth-century New England.) Shamans fully believe that they can communicate with the spirit world, heal sick people, and explain or even end a recent misfortune. Shamans often go into an excited state sometimes influenced by drumming or even hallucinogens. To watch on-line videos of shamans at work, you might like to visit www.digitalhimalaya.com/collections/thangmiarchive/thangmifilm.php. See also The Akha Way at www.archaeologychannel.org/content/video/Akha300k_R.html. The shaman goes about daily life with the rest of the community but assists others when they are in need. As a result, they are among the most respected members of the community.
A shaman is not a priest. Priests lead the traditionally set ceremonies of a world religion comprised of members who sit and watch. In The Reshaping of Everyday Life 1790-1840, Jack Larkin explains that “shamans are not charlatans but are practitioners of procedures that are believed to work and that shamans perform these procedures on patients, not fools.”
A shaman is not a witch. Until a century ago, gossip of witchcraft comprised much of daily conversation throughout the entire planet. (In Karnee, Lalla Scott mentions some accusations of witchcraft that occurred in Nevada during the early 1900s.) Witchcraft is assumed to have has occurred only if misfortune singles out one person though others should have been affected–for example, if the home, farm, or health of one person is suddenly troubled or damaged but not those of neighbors. If just one person becomes ill after eating from a communal pie then witchcraft is suspected. If several persons walk along the river but only one person falls in and becomes sick, then people might assume witchcraft has occurred. Crocker says that if a Canela shaman tries to charge a high service fee then people suspect him or her of using witchcraft to cause illness or death, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/part_4.htm#IVD.
When a person is ill, a shaman is sought to effect a cure by removing or driving away the infecting spirit or entity. This nearly always works. The secret to much of the curing power of a shaman is our own immune system. It enables us to recover from all but the worst illnesses without any medical intervention–often despite that intervention. In most of today’s incidents, medical assistance serves only to shorten the duration of an illness that our immune system would have cured on its own. In traditional societies, the causal spirit might appear as bits of material in the hand or mouth of the shaman.
In Canela society, shamans are believed to be able to see and communicate with the souls of the dead, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/ETch5.pdf. Canela shaman typically have specific powers, such as the ability to cure chest pain or find lost objects. In most societies, shaman teach their techniques to young people who have shown promise or interest, but Canela shaman are trained directly by the spirits. Canela are also unusual in that they try to cure themselves before seeking the help of a shaman. In an unsystematized manner, each person tries any sort of plant material to cure their own illness. When sought for a cure, Canela shaman use their mouths to suck disease out of the patient’s body, rub charcoal on the body of the patient, blow over them with tobacco, or use their hands to remove sickness that is then thrown into the wind, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_29.jpg.
In gatherer-hunter societies, each individual makes their own tools and decorations from the raw materials readily available in the surroundings; these items are not purchased from someone else. Everyone makes their own clothes, shoes, and baskets and such. The extended family or the entire community combines efforts to construct homes and do any chores that are larger than can be accomplished by a lone person. All of the gatherer-hunter peoples of the world have egalitarian societies devoid of rich and poor. Each individual's effort directly feeds and provides for his or her own family and group. For those of us who live in the big city, our efforts indirectly provide for our families and group as we are paid to do specialized work.
The Canela use tropical tree branches, bark, and leaf parts to make a great variety of utensils, including headbands and girdles, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/plates/ETplate10.pdf, wristlets and sashes, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/plates/ETplate11.pdf,fans and baskets, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/plates/ETplate12.pdf, combs, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/plates/ETplate20.pdf ,and carved club handles, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/Eastern_Timbira/plates/ETplate36.pdf. Crocker shows some steps in making these, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_18.jpg, and some additional items, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_61.jpg. He also shows the 1970s influx of modern tools, see www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/literature/monograph/plates/plate_55.jpg.
Our biological, primate heritage includes millions of years of life in closely-knit social groups consisting of interacting extended families whose very lives were mutually dependent, as we see occurring in Canela society. We see also that the leading members of Canela society meet each day to decide which village chores need to be done and what should be done to prepare for future events. Is that how you and ten or twenty other families living together would cooperate, or would each family act independently of all others? When is it possible to be independent and when is it not? Are you independent in the big city today? Is it “everyone one for themself” because no person needs anything from any other person? The pooling of efforts is as old as the first social system because nothing except that pooling builds social systems. We pool efforts on any task larger than can be handled by a lone person. Our biological ancestors first pooled efforts in looking for food and watching for predators. Do you see any pooling of efforts in Canela society? In your own? Do you see any aspects of the primate social system in that of the Canela? Of your own?
In the big city today, we have few tasks that are larger than one person can handle alone–most chores require but a few seconds. Moving-day might evoke an exchange of assistance. Big city dwellers sometimes get an ill feeling about our seemingly insufficiently connected society. Neighbors still help each other the instant a need arises but it often requires a natural disaster to produce situations which are larger than a single person can handle alone. We then see public expressions of our innate predisposition to exchange assistance and are relieved to feel that we are members of a society after all. Some of us become choked up whenever we see the exchange of assistance occurring as traffic makes way for an ambulance. Our mutually beneficial exchange of help today merely occurs in a less directly visible manner as each of us contributes our live’s efforts to the operation of our society by working our daily job. Our civilization is the sum of the efforts of each of us. Our lives seem more independent of the other members of our community but our mix of specialized occupations actually makes us more interdependent today than we have ever been in the past. If you live in a big city, you would not have food or clothes if not for the farmers, processors, and retailers who make it in exchange for your own work. Our interdependence is visible as the traffic comprised of everyone going about their daily jobs that combine into our civilization. Each of us contributes our live’s efforts to the operation of our mutual civilization.
Our biological ancestors accumulated culture through a few million years. From the time of the first humans some 200,000 years ago to the time at which we began to be farmers about 10,000 years ago, we were gatherer-hunters who mentally found exploitable animal behaviors and exploitable plant characteristics. We did not hunt solely with our feet and teeth as did other animals. Our culture consists of our recipes for how to do everything in life and it comprises thousands of details, as we see occurs in Canela culture. Our culture is passed down through the generations and is modified through time. What do you suppose is the number of facts that a child must learn to know how to do everything in life? What is the number for a chimpanzee, giraffe, or eagle? How does that number for your culture compare to that of Canela culture? Are the actions of the Canela people consistent with our mutual biological heritage, as described in the previous chapter? Your major concerns in life might be the health and happiness of your family and community. Are those also the major concerns of Canela and of our earlier hominid ancestors? Do Canela lives and your own differ only in the details of culture?
Gatherer-hunters spend just two hours per day finding food and prefer to live near a variety of food sources. A variety is found, for example, when living in a forest which has a stream or lake and nearby mountains. Besides there being differing types of animals at differing elevations, the time at which fruits and nuts ripen also varies with elevation. For examples in Utah, visit http://historytogo.utah.gov/prehistory.html.
Gatherer-hunter bands consist of a handful of cooperating, extended families and contain a total of twenty to two hundred persons. These bands are not isolated from each other. They meet to trade and to hold ceremonies and such–and to fall in love (we typically have formal rules requiring us to find spouses outside our own group). Some raw materials are exchanged between bands separated by hundreds of miles (kilometers). Each band member knows each of the other members well enough to be able to predict their actions. Since the lives of each member depends on the continued functioning of the band, no person's behavior is allowed to get out of line without being discouraged by everyone else.
Typically, the family heads within each band discuss subjects important to the entire band, including such things as moving to the winter food area or choosing the date in which to hold a ceremony with a neighboring group. The family heads then come to a mutual agreement about their plans. There is no king or queen who dictates actions and there is no structured government. Bands sometimes grow and split, sometimes merge, and sometimes terminate.
We will see through the coming chapters that the overall way of life of us humans has occurred in just three general subsistence styles: gatherer-hunters, farmers, or wage-earners who both make and purchase goods. We have so far met the knowledgeable hunting–or rather, animal harvesting–techniques of the Amahuaca and the cultural details of the Canela. We'll meet the world’s first farmers and city-dwellers in Chapter 12. In Chapter 15 we will have a close look at the large impact upon the way of life of the people of the United States as they changed from farming to wage-earning during the years 1800 to 1900. As you read of each of these three subsistence styles, try to compare their levels of social and economic equality, the health and well-being of the members of society, equal access for all to education and to the benefits of group membership, their sense of belonging to the community, the level of their satisfaction of with being a member of a mutually beneficial community, and the feeling of control held over one’s own life and continued welfare. This will help us gauge the level of our success through time in together improving the lives and possibilities of all of us.
The cultural details of the Canela way of life give us an example of the fascinating differences in the way of life of different groups of us humans and allow us to begin to see ourselves from the eyes of an outsider. We then gain respect for every group of us humans and see that other groups do not contain "toy people," see Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion An Anthropological Study of the Supernatural Edited by Arthur C. Lehmann and James E. Myers, but thinking and feeling human individuals who are really just like us in that they share the same desires and concerns. Often, those of us who are big-city wage-earners have trouble seeing those of us who are either gatherer-hunters or self-sufficient, single-family farmers as anything but "toy people" who are not fully human because they are living a "backwards" way-of-life. You might like carefully to compare your largest concerns and goals in life and your most cherished aspects of life with those of the Canela. You might also compare the concerns and actions of your extended family with those of the Canela.
The ancestors of each of us used to live as gatherer-hunters–some of us still do– with a culture as detailed as that of the Canela. It is the way every generation of our ancestors had lived from the time of the first humans until our invention of farming. Seeing that the ancestors of us wage-earners who are living in the big city today had been gatherer-hunters in the past helps us to understand that today's gatherer-hunters and farmers are real people, too. All of us just live, love, worry, and care for our children. When an outside intrusion presents itself on our way of life, we just try to minimize its effects. As you ponder the differences and similarities between yourself and gatherer-hunters and the members of cultures such as the Canela, you are pondering what it is to be human: that is the purpose of this book.
Since we have seen that the genetic makeup of any two persons on the planet differs by only about 0.1%, this means that a newborn Canela infant has the nearly the same human talents as does a newborn from your own hometown. A child from any group is equally likely to have a level of talent that is among the highest of all of us. In fact
