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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY PUBLICATION NO. 10
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NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW THE SIRIONO OF EASTERN BOLIVIA
by ALLAN R. HOLMBERG
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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY PUBLICATION NO. 10
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW
THE SIRIONO OF EASTERN BOLIVIA by
ALLAN R. HOLMBERG
Prepared in Cooperation with the United States Department of State as a Project of the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation
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For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office Washington 25, D.C. - - - = = = = = = = = Price 65 cents
es UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE «+ WASHINGTON : 1950
II
LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, INSTITUTE OF SoctaL ANTHROPOLOGY, Washington 25, D. C., June 21, 1948. Str: I have the honor to transmit herewith a manuscript entitled ‘(Nomads of the Long Bow: The Siriono of Eastern Bolivia,” by Allan R. Holmberg, and to recommend that it be published as Publication Number 10 of the Institute of Social Anthropology. Very respectfully yours, Groraer M. Fostrsr, Director. Dr, ALEXANDER WETMORE, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
CONTENTS
PAGE PAGE Bhoneticpnotes === a. anes ae eee eee Iv Folk beliefs and science_.______.____.__-_____--- 46 EGLO CEO 1 ee er me eee le ee tL Numeration, mensuration, and time reckoning- 47 Setting ‘and peoples oss eaa- ose eee ane = 4 Social and political organization________________- 49
Physical typess2s---oeee-s=s2e ee saa eee ssa 8 Uhestam ily, == eee see ot ren oe 49 eGo) — que Ee See Ee ee ee 8 mhetextendedifamily 29s ss se = = sees ae eee 50 MRechnolopy:- sewer ee = eet hae een ses 11 Dheibandss:: 222-5 sas oc e se ea tee eee 50
Bite 2 ee re 8k he 11 Kanshipisystemme =. 2s. see ow a ees 52
Glueimanutacturess 2 oe ee ee 11 iKinshipsbehaviors— 22-5. 2 ee 56
Textile Industrics@ see === =e = ee ae 11 Social stratification= 2-22-22. 525-2 = eee 58
Ceramics Sa ee ee ee ee ae ee eee 12 Chieftainshipe ea) ees = ee oe 59
IW tensils = 2 gee eee en Se ee Sh ee 13 Law and social’ control___-______-=..22 222. 60
ALOIS. Sen ae ee a ea ee Se 14 inoroupicontict ==] 5222- os ae ee 61
WiekpoOns 225 5 een ee) ee eee 14 Warlarcoea= == = 22a a oes see ee 62
Housing______ MIRE ES on ee a ha pales 17 deh evlitercy ClesBei oes oy Se sae oe ee ee 63
Dress and/omament=— esse = ae = ee 19 SEye Ss Seo eS oe es Oe ee 63
Property < 2i22 ete sane Se see alo) aie 2 21 eprgductions. S== 22-5 222 ee eee ae 65 Hxploitative activitiess==9-=-—-s5-==-=s.s—--=—- = 21 Child birth?= 222-22 9s oan ee 9 ee 67
Seasonal cycleteeta- =e 9 See es 28 bs ee 21 Multiplerbinthst=s2ss5=_ 5- season 2 eee 70
Hunting 22h 220 ut SU ea, SYR SHTRORE 23 iAVcase*oli twins. 2!) 2ie ek aah 70
ISHN. ina eee eas eee ere 27 Patemity on. sees ea saa aa ee 73
Collecting... “res Ue Se ee ees 27 Naming=225522J22255 222525. 5ade pee ie 74
AOTICULLUTE = = cee eae oe le ee eee een 28 Infaneyeo lose 5-223 3- 2253252 222. ee 15
Amimal husbandryssesssan ao eee eee ea 29 Childhood! s2=.2:--.<s2254522-- ee east 77
Water and fuel aes seen ee eee 30 Puberty ites 5222. o-oo ones ee 80 Hoodvand ‘drink: <= s=s2 S82 22 oes ee te 30 Marriage: 2). -2.c5 2.22222 ee eee 81
Diet. < ces eee eo ee ee eee 30 Adulthood. 25.152. oe skh ee ee 83
Wood taboos-.ces22sse= 2 eee eee reas aes 32 Oldiagéev os. = 5222822052252 ee ea 85
Preservation and storage of food_-_--------- 34 Disease and: medicines= —.-— = -4sses 23 ee 85
Preparation of foodee asses sea— sae 34 Death and buriali_-_-__=------ ara fehy Ney np 87
Mating 4. 222 2 eee ae ees ee ee 36 Reliionyand maricuee a= sees ase aoe eee 90
INarcotics=.- oat oe Se eee see steel esees 37 Relipion== 23s -5 22-2 et ooo 8 ao oe eee 90
Wrinkin p22 ssn e 2 see eee eee 37 Mapi¢se tt ess lee se eee a ase ae ee 91 Routine activities of lifes 2s 2a 62-0 -- as. = 40 Dreams: =22= seasoh ee 22 eee ee 91
Waily round 2) 2-ss-s-seee 2 Seen he Eee 40 ‘Pheisoul Se e225. See ao eee 91
Work and division,ofdabor=s4------.-—---- = 41 Some problems and conclusions_________________ 92
Travel and transportation____.-_-__.-------- 42 Bibliography =asq sears = ee 100
Art, Music, and Gancingesss—=-22==42 4225545 44 in dexwes Fa 9 0 een oe oe ee 161
ILLUSTRATIONS PLATES (All plates at end of book) 1. Siriono hut, pregnant woman, and a 14-year-old boy. 5. Hunter leaning on pole, and cutting up a tortoise. 2. Siriono chief and his wives, and Siriono boys. 6. Cutting up and roasting monkey meat. 3. Method of carrying baskets by men, a boy drawing bow, 7. Mother carrying baby in sling, and decorations worn bringing in firewood, and hunter with curassow. by father of newborn child. 4, Hunters returning from forest with coatis and monkeys.
=
CHARTS
PAGE PAGE
. Lineal kinship chart Siriono (male speaking) - -- 53 3. Affinal kinship chart Siriono (male speaking) ___ 56
2. Lineal kinship chart Siriono (female speaking) -- 55 4, Affinal kinship chart Siriono (female speaking) __ 56 MAP
PAGE
i. Territory occupied bysthe\Siriono; in eastern Bolivia ...-2----- 22s) 2-2 oe ees ee ee ee 5
PHONETIC NOTE
In the pronouncing and writing of native words, vowels and consonants have Spanish values.
Exceptions to this are the following:
=ch as in chair. =g as in go. has in hat.
j as in joke. =k as in keep. N=ng as in sing. §=sh as in shop. w=w as in want. z=z as in zone.
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Nomads of the Long Bow
The Siriono of Eastern Bolivia
By Atitan R. Ho_mBere
INTRODUCTION
This study ' was carried out under the auspices of the Social Science Research Council, of which I was a predoctoral fellow in 1940-41. It had its origin in 1939, when I was associated with the Cross-Cultural Survey at the Institute of Human Relations, Yale University. While studying there, I was privileged to get considerable exposure to the cross-disciplinary approach to the problems of culture and behavior which was, and still is, being emphasized at the Institute, expecially by Drs. Murdock, Hull, Dollard, Miller, Ford, and Whiting.
As I continued my anthropological studies, it became more and more apparent to me, as to others, that a science of culture and behavior was most apt to arise from the application of tech- niques, methods, and approaches of several scientific disciplines concerned with human _ be- havior—particularly social anthropology, soci- ology, psychology, and psychoanalysis—to spe- cific problems. Consequently, in casting around for a subject on which to carry out field work, I began to search for one that would be especially adaptable to cross-disciplinary treatment.
While studying at the Institute of Human Relations, I became keenly aware of the significant role played by such basic drives as hunger, thirst, pain, and sex, in forming, instilling, and changing habits. Because of the difficulty of studying human behavior under laboratory conditions, our knowledge about the processes of learning has been derived largely from experimental studies of animals. However, the procedure, successfully employed in psychological experimentation, of depriving animals of food suggested that it might
1 The data in slightly different form were presented to the Graduate School of Yale University in partial fulfillment for the degree of doctor of philosophy.
be possible to gain further insight into the relation- ship between the principles of learning and cultural forms and processes by studying a group of per- ennially hungry human beings. It was logical to assume that where the conditions of a sparse and insecure food supply exist in human society the frustrations and anxieties centering around the drive of hunger should have significant repercus- sions on behavior and on cultural forms them- selves. Hence, I took as my general problem the investigation of the relation between the economic aspect and other aspects of culture in a society functioning under conditions of a sparse and in- secure food supply. More specifically, the prob- lem resolved itself into determining, if possible, the effect of a more or less constant frustration of the hunger drive on such cultural forms as diet, food taboos, eating habits, dreams, antagonisms, magic, religion, and sex relations, and upon such cultural processes as integration, mobility, sociali- zation, education, and change.
In our own society there are many individuals who suffer from lack of food, but one rarely finds hunger as a group phenomenon. For this reason a primitive society, the Siriono of eastern Bolivia, was chosen for study. The Siriono were selected for several reasons. In the first place, they were reported to be seminomadic and to suffer from lack of food. In the second place, they were known to be a functioning society. In the third place, the conditions for study among them seemed favorable, since it was possible to make contact with the primitive bands roaming in the forest through an Indian school which had been established by the Bolivian Government in 1937 for those Siriono who had come out of the forest and abandoned aboriginal life.
Be INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
I left for Bolivia on September 28, 1940, and arrived in the field on November 28, 1940. Be- tween November 28, 1940, and May 17, 1941, I worked with informants of various bands of Siriono who had been gathered together in a Bolivian Government Indian school at Casarabe, a kind of mixed village of Indians and Bolivians, situated about 40 miles east of Trinidad, capital of the Department of the Beni. At the time of my stay this so-called school had a population of about 325 Indians.
Following my residence in Casarabe, where I became grounded in the Indian language and those aspects of the aboriginal culture that still persisted there, I left in May 1941, to join a band of about 60 Siriono who were living under some- what more primitive conditions near the Rio Blanco on a cocéo plantation, called Chiquiguani, which was at that time a kind of branch of the above-mentioned school. Upon arriving at Chi- quiguani, however, I found that as a result of altercations with the Bolivians, the Indians had dispersed into the forest, and so I encountered no people with whom to work. Consequently, I returned to a ranch near the village of El Carmen. There I was fortunate in meeting an American cattle rancher, Frederick Park Richards, since deceased, who had resided in the area for many years and who had a number of Siriono living on his farm and cattle ranch. Through him I was presented to a Bolivian, Luis Silva Sanchez, a first-rate bushman and explorer for the aforementioned school, who offered to be my companion and who stayed with me during most of the time that I lived and wandered with the Siriono. In company with Silva I set out in search of the Indians who had dispersed into the forest. After about 10 days they were located, and they agreed to settle on the banks of the Rio Blanco, about 2 or 3 days’ journey up the river by canoe from the village of El Carmen, at a place which we founded and named Tibaera, the Indian word for assaf palm, the site being so designated because of the abundance of this tree found there. I spent from July 15 to August 28, 1941, at Tibacra, continuing my general cultural and Iinguistie studies, but under what I regarded as unsatisfactory conditions, since I had previously laid my plans and devoted my energies to acquiring techniques for observing a group of Siriono who had had little or no previous contact. Conse-
quently, I suggested to Silva that we go in search of other Indians. Finally, on August 28, 1941, I set out from Tibaera, in company with Silva and parts of two extended families of Indians (21 people in all), traveling east and south through the raw bush in the general direction of the Franciscan Missions of Guarayos, where we were told by the Indians tbat we might locate another band who had had little or no previous contact. After 8 days of rough travel, much of which involved passing through swamps and through an area which had long been abandoned by the Siriono, we joyously arrived at a section of high ground containing relatively recent remains of a Siriono camp site. My Indian companions told me that this site had been occupied by a small number of Indians who had come there in quest of calabashes about three ‘‘moons’”’ earlier.
Inspired by the hope of soon locating a primitive band, we silenced our guns and lived by hunting with the bow and arrow so as not to frighten any Indians that might be within earshot of a gun. We followed the rude trails which had been made by the Indians about 3 months earlier, and after passing many abandoned huts, each one newer than the last, we finally arrived at midday on the eleventh day of march just outside of a village. On the advice of our Indian companions, Silva and I removed most of our clothes, so as not to be too conspicuous in the otherwise naked party— I at least had quite a tan—and leaving behind our guns and all supplies except a couple of baskets of roast peccary meat, which we were saving as a peace gesture, we sandwiched ourselves in between our Indian guides and made a hasty entrance into the communal hut. The occupants, who were enjoying a midday siesta, were so taken by sur- prise that we were able to start talking to them in their own language before they could grasp their weapons or flee. Moreover, as their interest almost immediately settled on the baskets of peccary meat, we felt secure within a few moments’ time and sent back for the rest of our supplies.
Once having established contact with such a group, I had intended to settle down or wander with them for several months, or until I could complete my studies. I was forced, however, to abandon this plan when, after being with them for a day or two, I came down with an infection in my eyes of such gravity that I was almost blinded. Fearing that this infection would spread to a point
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG 3
that might cause the loss of my sight, and since I carried no medicines with which to heal it, I decided to set out for the Franciscan Missions of the Guarayos, about 8 days’ distance on foot, the nearest point at which aid could be obtained. Before leaving, however, I consulted with the chief of this new group (his name was Aéiba-edko or Long-arm) and told him that I planned to return and study the manner of life of his people. In the meantime, the Indians in our original party, knowing of my plan, had already convinced the chief and other members of his band to return with them to the Rio Blanco and settle down for a while at Tibaera, a plan which suited me per- fectly. Consequently, in the company of four Indians of this new band and Silva, I traveled on foot to Yaguart, Guarayos. After about 2 weeks of fine treatment at the hands of the civilian administrator, Don Francisco Materna, and the equally hospitable Franciscan fathers and nuns, I was able to rejoin the band, and we slowly returned to Tibaera, arriving there on October 11, 1941.
Besides what studies I was able to make of this band while roaming with them during part of September and October, 1941, I continued to live with them at Tibaera, except for occasional periods of 10 days’ or 2 weeks’ absence for purposes of curing myself of one tropical malady or another or of refreshing my mental state, until March 1942, when my studies were terminated by news that the United States had become involved in war 3 months previously.
As can be readily inferred from the account given above of my contacts with the Siriono, they were studied under three different conditions: first, for about 4 months, while they were living at Casarabe under conditions of acculturation and forced labor; second, for about 2 months, while they were wandering under aboriginal conditions in the forest; finally, for about 6 months, while they were living at Tibaera, where aboriginal con- ditions had not appreciably changed except for the introduction of more agriculture and some iron tools. During the course of my work, I made a complete ethnological survey of the culture, only part of which can be published here, although my attention was focused primarily on the problem of the sparse and insecure food supply and _ its relation to the culture. As my knowledge of the language and culture increased, I was constantly
formulating, testing, and reformulating hypotheses with respect to this problem.
Since Siriono society is a functioning one, three fundamental methods of gathering field data were employed: (1) the use of informants, (2) the recording of observations, and (3) the conducting of experiments. The first two methods were followed throughout the course of the work. Ex- periments, such as the introduction of food plants and animals, were performed during the latter part of the study, although the extensive use of this method was limited by the termination of the research,
The application of the above field methods was facilitated by the use of various techniques of which the following were the principal ones: (1) the use of the language of the people studied and (2) the participation of the ethnographer in the cultural life of the tribe.
When possible, data were recorded on the spot in an ethnographic journal, which was supple- mented by a record of personal experiences while in the field. As the group was small, everyone was used as an informant, and since most of the activities of the Siriono center in but one hut, data on the behavior patterns of almost everyone could be recorded. No paid informants were used, although gifts such as bush knives and beads were given. No Siriono was a willing informant; little information was volunteered, and some was consciously withheld. Had it not been for the fact that I possessed a shotgun and medicines, life with the Indians would have been impossible. By contributing to the food supply and curing the sick, I became enough of an asset to them to be tolerated for the period of my residence.
At the time of leaving the field (I had not finished my studies) I did not feel satisfied that I had gained a profound insight into Siriono culture. True, I had studied the language to the extent that I could carry on a fairly lively conversation with the Indians, but the time spent in satisfying my own basic needs—acquiring enough food to eat, avoiding the omnipresent insect pests, try- ing to keep a fresh shift of clothes, reducing those mental anxieties that accompany solitude in a hostile world, and obtaining sufficient rest in a fatiguing climate where one is active most of the day—often physically prevented me from keeping as full a record of native life as I might have kept had I been observing more sedentary informants
4 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
under less trying conditions. However, if I have contributed something to an understanding of these elusive but rapidly disappearing Indians, I shall feel more than satisfied.
This study would have been impossible without the help of many friends and various institutions. I am deeply indebted to the Social Science Re- search Council for providing the funds to carry out the field work; to Yale University (through the efforts of Dr. Cornelius Osgood) for granting me a Sterling Fellowship to write up the field data; and to the Smithsonian Institution for publica- tion of the manuscript.
To my teachers at Yale University I owe a pro- found debt of gratitude, especially to Dr. G. P. Murdock, who has been a friendly adviser since the beginning of the study. Dr. Murdock spent many hours patiently reading, criticizing, and editing much of the original manuscript. While living with the Siriono, I also had the benefit of his counsel, together with that of the late Dr. Bronislaw Malinowski, Dr. Clark Hull, and Dr. John Dollard, all of whom formed an advisory committee at Yale. These gentlemen were largely responsible for developing my interest in certain problems of this research, and all of them sent me many stimulating letters of advice and criticism while I was in the field. None of them is responsi- ble for any of its defects.
I wish to express my deepest appreciation to Dr. Alfred Métraux. It was he who was largely responsible for crystallizing my interest in the South American Indian and for my selection of the Siriono among whom to work. Dr. Métraux took a keen interest in this study from its incep- tion and gave me constant encouragement while I was in the field. An invaluable service was also rendered by Dr. Wendell C. Bennett, who acted in an advisory capacity when I started to write up my field notes, and by Dr. Clellan S.
Ford and Dr. John W. M. Whiting, who made many helpful suggestions and criticisms while I was preparing the manuscript. To my wife, Laura, goes the credit for patiently typing and retyping the manuscript.
While I was in Bolivia, many people helped me in the pursuit of my studies. I wish to express my thanks especially to Dr. Gustav Otero, of La Paz, then Minister of Education, for providing me with a letter of introduction to the Director of the Nucleo Indigenal de Casarabe; to Don Carlos Loayza Beltrin, then Director of the Nicleo, and Horacio Salas, then Secretary of the Niicleo, for several months of friendly hospitality; to Senator Napoleén Solares A., of La Paz, and Don Adolfo Leigue, of Trinidad, for comfortably sheltering me in the Casa Sudrez in Trinidad, Beni.
My life with the Indians at Tibaera was made possible through the valiant cooperation of Don Luis Silva Sanchez, of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Nothing I can say will express the gratitude I feel for this fearless Cruzefio who accompanied me for more than 6 months in the field under the most trying conditions. Had it not been for Silva, in fact, my life with the Siriono under aboriginal conditions would have been unbearable.
I am deeply grateful to the late Frederick Park Richards of El] Carmen for his bounteous hos- pitality and for generously providing me with the food and the mobility without which it would have been impossible to carry out my studies. I also wish to express my thanks to Don René Rousseau of Baures and Dr. and Mrs. Lothar Hepner, then of Magdalena, for many days of friendly hospitality and cordial companionship.
Finally, I should like to express my appreciation to the Siriono who, for the first time in their history, tolerated a naive but inquisitive anthro- pologist on his first extended stay in the field.
SETTING AND PEOPLE
The Siriono are a group of seminomadic aborig- ines inhabiting an extensive tropical forest area, of about 200 miles square, between latitudes 13° and 17° S. and longitudes 63° and 65° W., in northern and eastern Bolivia. The name applied to these Indians is not of their own origin. > They
? The origin of the name Siriono is unknown. Wegner (1934 b) has suggested that it came from the Siriono word siri, meaning “‘chonta palm,”’ but there is
no such suffix as ono in the Siriono language and the Indians are unacquainted with the name applied to them.
refer to themselves simply as mbia or “people.” But as they have been called Siriono since first contact, and have been thus designated in the lit- erature, I shall adopt the term.
The area of Bolivia inhabited by the Siriono is situated in the Departments of the Beni and Santa Cruz. It is roughly bounded on the north by the island forests, lying just south of the vil- lages of Magdalena, Huacaraje, and Baures; on
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG
- DELA SieRAa
Map 1.—Territory occupied by the Siriono in eastern Bolivia. 794440—50——2
6 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
the south, by the Franciscan Missions of Guarayos; on the east, by the Rio San Martin; and on the west, by the Rio Grande and Rio Mamoré. Within this extensive area the Siriono have lived and wandered in isolated pockets since the first Euro- pean contact with them in 1693.
Until the 1930’s, a great many Siriono were living in the island forests of the Mojos plains east of Trinidad and between the Rio Grande and Rio Pirdéy, but now most of these have become ac- culturated and are living under conditions of al- most forced labor on cattle ranches, farms, schools, and missions near Trinidad, Magdalena, Baures, El] Carmen, Guarayos, and Santa Cruz. Actually, almost the only unacculturated Siriono extant today are those occupying the forest country southeast of the village of El Carmen. Here, east of the banks of the upper Rio Blanco, is lo- cated a range of hills, locally known as the Cerro Blanco, near which wander a few groups of Siriono, who have as yet been unmolested by white contact. There may also still be some living between the Rio Grande and Rio Piréy, but these have not been seen by me.
The region occupied by the Siriono is character- ized by a tropical climate with two seasons, the wet and the dry. The former lasts from November to May; the latter from May to November. The annual mean temperature (no records available) runs around 73° F., with extremes of 50° F. during the cold south winds from Tierra del Fuego and 110° F. during the heat of the average day. Dur- ing the rainy season the climate is very hot and moist, with rains on the average of every other day; during the dry season the extreme heat of the day is tempered by cooler nights and occasional cold wind storms from the south. These ‘sures,’ as they are called by the Spanish-speaking natives of the region, are usually accompanied by rain and a very sudden drop in temperature. They generally last about 4 days and occur at average intervals of 15 days during April, May, and June. The prevailing winds, however, are from the north. The average rainfall is about 100 inches per year.
Geographically speaking, the Siriono country is situated in the eastern part of the vast plain, partly forested and partly pampa, lying between the Andes on the west and the Mato Grosso Plateau on the east. From south to north, this plain extends from the hill country north of the Gran Chaco to the low unexplored hills of Brazil
which lie just north of the Rio Guaporé. Within this area, from the Rio Blanco west to the Rio Mamoré, are located the extensive llanos of Mojos dotted with the island forests once occu- pied by the Siriono. East of the Rio Blanco, however, between the Rio Guaporé on the north and the Franciscan Missions of Guarayos on the south, is a vast and dense forest plain which runs for hundreds of miles, and within which the few extant Siriono still wander today. This plain contains occasional low ranges of hills, which are part of the same chain that runs into Brazil on the north and into the Chiquitos region of Bolivia on the south.
Except for the above-mentioned hills, the area generally is flat and only about 500 feet above sea level. Both the pampas and the forests are characterized by alturas—high lands that do not flood during the rainy season—and bajwras—low lands that do flood in the rainy season. The alturas are characterized by a resistant capping of partially decomposed lava, containing a top soil of coarse sand with occasional outcroppings of igneous rock. In elevation they lie some 75 feet above the bajuras, which are made up of a heavy clayey top soil and which are flooded during most of the rainy season. The alturas of the forest are considered to be the richest agricultural lands, while the bajuras of the pampa, since water stands in many of them the year around, are suitable for little more than grazing.
The outstanding watershed features of the re- gion are its numerous lakes and rivers. Of the former there are some 20 large ones in the Siriono country known to me, but which have not been named as yet. Around all of these lakes are ex- tensive flood lands, and stemming from each are brooks or arroyos which drain into other lakes or into the principal rivers of the area, the Rio San Martin, the Rio San Joaquin, the Rio Negro, the Rio Blanco, Rio Itonama (San Miguel or San Pablo), and the Rio Machupo. All of these rivers flow into the Guaporé (Itenez) before it joins the Mamoré (Madeira) in its route to the Amazon. The southwestern part of the area is drained by the Rio Pirdéy and Rio Grande, which also flow into the Mamoré. Although the rivers are numerous and of good size, the area in general is poorly drained; from the air during the rainy season it has somewhat the appearance of a huge swamp within which there are islands of high
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG 7
ground. All of the rivers follow very capricious courses and are of great age.
The environment, so far as is known, contains no mineral deposits of note. Gold has been re- ported from the region of the Cerro Blanco— which might be expected in view of the fact that gold is mined in the Chiquitos region to the south and has been mined in the Cerro San Simén to the north—but no deposits of significance have ever been worked. Stone is unknown in Mojos, although a poor grade of igneous rock is found along the Rio Itenez and the Rio Blanco. In the entire region there is no salt, coal, or petroleum.
Present in the area, but not in the abundance that most people are wont to imagine they exist in tropical forests, are the most common types of Amazon Valley fauna. The principal mammals are the tapir, jaguar, puma, capybara, deer, peccary, paca, coati, agouti, monkey, armadillo,
anteater, opossum, otter, and squirrel. Bats are a perennial pest. Land and waterfowl are numerous. The king
of these birds is the harpy eagle. Likewise pres- ent, and in greater numbers, are the king vulture and the black vulture, which are almost always seen high in the sky gliding like planes in search of carrion. Game fowl are also plentiful, espe- cially the curassow, guan, wild duck, macaw, toucan, partridge, egret, cormorant, hawk, peli- can, plover, kingfisher, trumpeter, spoonbill, and parrot. On the pampa one also frequently en- counters the South American ostrich and varieties of ibis.
Of the reptiles, alligators and tortoises are plenti- ful. Occasionally one sees a tegu or an iguana. More rarely encountered are snakes, including the anaconda, the fer-de-lance, the bushmaster, the rattler, and coral snakes.
The rivers and lakes of the area are well stocked with fish. Among the principal kinds are the palometa, the pact, the parapatinga, the tucunaré, several kinds of catfish, and the sting ray. Also present but rarely caught is the piraruct, the largest bony fresh-water fish in the world. Not infrequently seen sporting in the lakes and rivers are schools of fresh-water porpoises, which may come so close as to upset one’s canoe when travel- ing by water. There are few shellfish and mol- lusks in these inland waters.
Only one who has traveled in the region can appreciate the myriad forms of insect life that
harass the inhabitants. Since a great part of the country is swamp for at least 6 months of the year, mosquitoes of all kinds (and of which the area is never free) can breed unhampered, and, as night falls, these insects, together with gnats and moths, descend upon one by the thousands. During the day, when these pests retire to the swamps and the depths of the forest, their place is taken by innumerable varieties of deer flies and stinging wasps. When traveling by water during the day, one is also perennially pestered by tiny flies which settle on the uncovered parts of one’s body by the hundreds and leave minute welts of blood where they sting.
No less molesting are the ants, most of which are stinging varieties. The traveler in the forest soon learns what kinds to avoid. Especially unpleasant are those which inhabit the tree called palo santo, the sting of a few of which will leave one with a fever, and the tucondera, an ant about an inch in length whose bite causes partial paralysis for an hour or two.
In addition to the ants, mosquitoes, and flies, there are scorpions and spiders whose bites may also cause partial paralysis and for whose presence one must be continually on the lookout, and sweat bees, which drive the perspiring traveler to a fury in trying to escape them. Some mention should also be made of the wood ticks, which range in size from a pin point to a fingernail. During the dry season as many as a hundred may drop from a disturbed leaf on to a person as he passes by. One of the most common pastimes of the Indian children, in fact, is picking off wood ticks from returning hunters.
The flora, like the fauna, is typical of the Amazon River Valley. The forests may be char- acterized especially by an abundance of palms, among which the principal varieties are the mo- tact, assai, chonta, totaf, samuque, and cusi. All of these palms yield an edible heart and nuts or fruits, which constitute an important part of the diet of the Indians. No less important in this respect are other fruit trees, particularly the pacobilla, the coquino, the pacdy, and the aguai.
Of the trees not producing fruit few are used by the Siriono. An exception is the ambaibo, the fiber of whose bark is twined into string out of which the hammocks and bow strings are made. Abundant in the area, however, are such common Amazon Valley trees as mahogany, condurt, cedar,
8 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
bamboo, massaranduba, itatiba, mapdjo, bibosi, palo santo, ocho6, and rubber. Along some of the rivers there are also stands of chuchio (reed), from which the Siriono make their arrow shafts.
The pampa chiefly supports a grassy vegetation that is able to withstand extremes of wetness and dryness. Rows of palm are sometimes en- countered on the pampa, but more often than not these plains are barren of trees as far as the eye can see.
PHYSICAL TYPE
Because of the lack of accurate instruments while I was in the field, I was unable to record exact physical measurements of the Siriono. Roughly speaking, however, it can be said that the men average about 5 feet 4 inches in height; the women, about 5 feet 2 inches. The cephalic index falls within the range of brachycephaly to mesocephaly; the nasal index is definitely platyr- rhine.
Except in the cases of obvious crosses (the area has not lacked travelers, some of whom may have left their marks) skin color is very dark—almost negroid. The same may be said for the hair, which is not only jet black, but coarse and straight as well. The eyes are a deep brown in color; the Mongolian fold is marked.
Pilosity is not pronounced but is greater than in most Indian groups. Some of the men have well developed beards, and all have a full growth of pubic hair, with a lesser growth of axillary hair. Women show marked differences with respect to pubic hair; some have heavy growths while others have none at all.
Head hair is extremely thick on both sexes and grows to a very low line on the forehead. Children are always born with a full head of thick hair, and
the extension of the hair line to a point very low on the forehead is also very striking at birth.
Except for a very poor development of the lower legs, the Siriono are well-constructed physical specimens. Ontogenetically, they seem to fall within the normal human range. The men dem- onstrate a marked growth of the shoulder muscles as a result of pulling the bow; the women tend strongly to distended abdomens and pendant breasts, especially after childbirth. The protrud- ing stomachs frequently found in children are almost always due to hookworm.
As a result of the habit of picking up objects between the big and the second toe, most men and women possess well developed prehensile toes. One rarely sees an Indian retrieve anything from the ground with his hands that he is able to pick up with his feet.
An unusual physical characteristic among the Siriono, one which might almost be called a mu- tation, is the small hereditary marks which char- acterize the backs of their ears. These marks or depressions in the skin, which appear at birth, look as if a little piece of flesh had been cut out here and there. If a Siriono were in doubt as to whether he were talking to one of his countrymen he would need only to look at the backs of his ears to identify him. These marks do not appear in any of the crosses I have seen. Most of the Indians with whom I talked, however, were only vaguely conscious of this characteristic and had no explanation for it.
Another unusual feature of the Siriono is the high incidence of clubfootedness. This trait ap- pears in about 15 percent of the population. At some time in Siriono history this recessive char- acter has appeared and persisted because of the highly inbred character of the group.
HISTORY
The Siriono are an anomaly in eastern Bolivia. Widely scattered in isolated pockets of forest land, with a culture strikingly backward in con- trast to that of their neighbors, they are probably a remnant of an ancient population that was ex- terminated, absorbed, or engulfed by more civil- ized invaders. Their language, however, is Tu- pian, elsewhere spoken by tribes of a more complex culture, but here represented only by themselves and the Guarayu-Pauserna, whose dialects are
closely related. Traditions of friendship suggest that these peoples may once have been linked by a now obscure bond.
With the rest of their neighbors the Siriono show few affinities, cultural or linguistic. To the north and west live the warlike Moré, with whom they have had no contact. To the west are settled the Mojo, with whom they likewise have had little intercourse. Only in recent times have they asso- ciated with the Bauré and Itonama, who reside to
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG 9
the north and who have been acculturated since the days of the Jesuits. Whenever possible they avoid clashes with the so-called Yanaigua, who wander to the south and who occasionally raid them, killing their men and stealing their women d children. nalt is probable that the Siriono are of Guarani origin, that they have gradually been pushed northward into the sparsely inhabited forests they now occupy, and that in the course of their migra- tions they have lost much of their original culture. There is no evidence, cultural or linguistic, how- ever, to support the theory held by Nordenskiéld (1911, pp. 16-17) that they represent a sub- stratum of culture which once existed widely in the area they now occupy. The intangible as- pects of Siriono history still await reconstruction. Our previous knowledge of the Siriono, which is very scanty, dates from 1693, when they were first seen for a few days by Father Cyprian Bar- race. At that time the Siriono were occupying the deep forests in the southern part of the same region which they inhabit today. After first con- tact, and before their expulsion in 1767, the Jesuits probably made several attempts to missionize them. At any rate, in 1765 a few Siriono were coaxed into the mission of Buena Vista and were later transferred to the mission of Santa Rosa on the Rio Guaporé. So far as we know, no other attempt was made to missionize them until com- paratively recent times. Of these endeavors most have failed, not so much because of warlikeness, since this character has been falsely attributed to the Siriono, but because of their sensitivity to maltreatment and their adherence to nomadic life. In 1927, decimated by smallpox and influenza, a small group of Siriono was settled at the Fran- ciscan Mission of Santa Maria near the Rio San Miguel. This venture did not result in success. In 1941 I met many Indians in the forests between Tibaera and Yaguari who had formerly been living in Santa Maria but who had reverted to a nomadic existence because of what they regarded as unsatisfactory conditions of life at the mission.
3 All that is recorded of Father Barrace’s contact with the Siriono is the following: ‘‘It was not long before the holy man discovered another nation. After traveling some days he found himself amidst a people called the Cirion- ians. The instant these barbarians perceived the Father, they took up their arrows and prepared to shoot both at him and at the converts in his company, but Father Cyprian advanced up to them with so kind an aspect that their arrows dropped from their hands. He made some stay with them; and, by visiting their various settlements, discovered another nation called the Guarayans"” (Lettres édifiantes . . . , 1781, vol. 8, p. 105).
In 1935 American evangelists founded a mission for the Siriono at the site of an cold Mojo mound called Ibiato, some 60 miles east of Trinidad. By 1940 this mission had a population of about 60 Indians, but it, also, could not be called a successful undertaking, because of lack of funds and trained personnel. The same may be said for the Bolivian Government Indian School estab- lished at Casarabe—40 miles east of Trinidad—in 1937. However noble in its purpose, the function of this school ultimately resulted in the personal exploitation of the Indians by the staff, so that, through maltreatment, disease, and death, the number of Siriono was reduced from more than 300 in 1940 to less than 150 in 1945.
Of the remaining Siriono who have abandoned aboriginal life, a great many are living today under patrones on cattle ranches and farms along the Rio Blanco, Rio Grande, Rio Mamoré, and Rio San Miguel; others, who were captured as children in the forests, are now acting as servants in the villages of Magdalena, El Carmen, Huacaraje, and Baures. As to the distribution of the Siriono south and southwest of Guarayos, I have no in- formation because I never visited this area and the literature tells us nothing. However, the total population of the Siriono today is probably about two thousand.
Alcide d’Orbigny, the great French scientist and explorer, was the first writer of any importance to mention the Siriono. In 1825 he had an oppor- tunity to study a few captured Siriono at Bibosi, a mission north of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Since D’Orbigny’s remarks on the Siriono were the first of any significance ever to be published, I quote them in extenso:
Less numerous than the Guarayos, the Siriono live in the heart of dark forests which separate the Rio Grande from the Rio Pirdy, between Santa Cruz de la Sierra and the Province of Moxos; from 17° to 18° south latitude and about 68° longitude west of Paris. The Siriono inhabit a large area although, according to many captives from this tribe whom we have seen at the mission of Bibosi, near Santa Cruz, their number hardly reaches 1,000 individuals.
No historian has spoken of them; their name appears only in some old Jesuit letters. According to the informa- tion we obtained in the country, the Siriono are perhaps the remains of the ancient Chiriguanos, having since the conquest always inhabited the same forests. Attacked by the Inca Yupanqui about the fifteenth century, they were forced at the beginning of the sixteenth century to flee from the Guaranis of Paraguay who captured their settle- ments and, according to historians, annihilated them. Be
10 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
that as it may, it is possible that the Siriono, well before the Chiriguanos, had come from the southeast and had migrated into areas far distant from the cradle of the Guarani nation.
The Siriono live under the same conditions as the Guarayos and have about the same color, stature, and fine proportions, judging from the few we have seen. In general, their features are the same, but they have a more savage appearance, a fearful and cold expression which is never encountered among the Guarayos. Since they have the custom of depilating their hair we cannot say whether they have as bushy a beard as the Guarayos.
We have been assured that their language is Guarani, but corrupted to the extent that they cannot understand the Chiriguanos perfectly. As to their personality, it differs essentially from that of the Guarayos; they are so savage and hold so strongly to their primitive independence that they have never wanted to have contact with Chris- tians. No one has been able to approach them unarmed. Their forebears were gentle and affable, but these are less communicative. They live in scattered tribes which wander deep into the most impenetrable forests and live only by hunting. They build rude huts formed of boughs and know no other comforts of life; everything indicates that they live in the most savage state. They have no other industry than the making of weapons. These con- sist of bows eight feet long and arrows even longer, which they most often use seated, both the feet and hands being employed to shoot with great force; thus they are obliged to hunt only big game. Both sexes go entirely nude, with no clothing to burden them. They do not paint their bodies and wear no ornaments. On their trips they do not use canoes. If they have a river to cross they cut liana which they attach to a tree or to stakes placed for that purpose on the banks of the river. They wind the liana around tree trunks resting in the water, thus forming a kind of bridge which the women cling to in crossing with their children. Whenever they get the opportunity they attack the canoes of the Moxos and kill the rowers to obtain axes or other tools. This is all we have learned about this tribe, without doubt the most savage of the nation [D’Orbigny, 1839, trans., pp. 341-344].
José Cardus was the next writer of any sig- nificance to deal with the Siriono. In his book on the Franciscan Missions of eastern Bolivia (Cardus, 1886, pp. 279-284) he devoted about 5 pages to a description of the condition and culture of the Siriono in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Following Cardus, Nordenskiéld (1911, pp. 16-17) interviewed two Siriono on his 1908-9 expedition to eastern Bolivia, and on the strength of this published a 2-page article about them which, however, contains very scanty data. In 1910 Theodor Herzog (1910, pp. 136-138, 194-200) published a short account of the geography of the area which also embodies a few notes on the Indians. In 1928 Arthur Radwan (1929, pp.
291-296) wrote a brief description of Siriono culture which deals primarily with their contacts with the Franciscan fathers at Santa Marfa.
Some years ago, considerable stir was caused in the anthropological world by the publication of a series of articles and books by Richard Wegner (1928, pp. 369-384; 1931; 1932, pp. 321-340; 1934 b, pp. 2-34) on a month’s journey to the Siriono country—to the Siriono between the Rio Pirdéy and Rio Grande and to those of the Mission of Santa Marfa. In his various articles and books Wegner claimed to have discovered a primitive group of Siriono which he called Qurufigu’a, who possessed no language but whistling. Although this statement is patently absurd—I, too, have been with groups of Siriono who were uncommuni- cative for long periods of time—it should be pointed out that Wegner’s observations on the material culture, although not outstanding, are fairly accurate. However, his statements about language (or its lack), group classification, re- ligion, and other subjects do not check with my findings, nor with those of the Franciscan monk, Anselm Schermair (1934, pp. 519-521), who has written a brief article refuting the claims made by Weener. My own data substantially agree with those of Padre Schermair, in so far as he has published them. For many years this Franciscan father has been collecting a vocabulary of the Siriono language, but his works have never been published. They will be awaited with great interest.
In 1937 Stig Rydén spent 3 weeks collecting ethnological specimens and interviewing Indians at Casarabe. His results have been recently published (Rydén, 1941). Although the descrip- tions of his material collections are accurate enough, Rydén’s statements about the non- material aspects of culture are mostly inaccurate because he was probably deceived by staff mem- bers of the school at Casarabe into recording false information about the Indians. Moreover, lack- ing adequate primary data, Rydén padded his work with irrelevant speculations and comparisons which are largely meaningless for the reconstruc- tion of Siriono history.
Finally, it should be mentioned that most of the extant data on the Siriono were admirably summed up by Alfred Métraux in 1942 (Métraux, 1942, pp. 110-114).
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG 11
TECHNOLOGY
Technologically speaking, the Siriono can be classified with the most culturally backward peoples of the world. They subsist with a bare minimum of material apparatus. Being semi- nomadic, they do not burden themselves with material objects that might hamper mobility. In fact, apart from the hammocks they sleep in and the weapons and tools they hunt and gather with, they rarely carry anything with them. What few other material objects they make and use are generally hastily fashioned at the site of occupancy. A brief account of the principal technological processes and manufactured articles, with their uses, follows.
FIRE
Fire making is a lost art among the Siriono. I was told by my older informants that fire (tdta) used to be made by twirling a stick between the hands, but not once did I see it generated in this fashion. Fire is carried from camp to camp in a brand consisting of a spadix of a palm. This spongelike wood holds fire for long periods of time. When the band is traveling, at least one woman from every extended family carries fire along. I have even seen women swimming rivers with a firebrand, holding it above the water in one hand while paddling with the other.
In the hut every family has its own fire on the ground by the side of the hammock. Dried leaves of motact palm are used to bring a fire to a blaze. Any dried or rotten wood serves as firewood (ndéa). ‘The logs are placed on the ground like the spokes of a wheel, the fire being made in the part corresponding to the hub. As the ends of the logs burn down they are pushed inward. Cooking pots are placed directly on the logs. No hearths are used.
GLUE MANUFACTURE
The only native “chemical” industry is the making of glue from beeswax (iriti). This prod- uct is used extensively in arrow making. The crude beeswax collected from the hive is put in a pot, mixed with water, and brought to a boil. While it is cooking, the dirt and other impurities are removed. The wax is then cooled and co- agulated into balls about the size of a baseball.
When desired for use, the wax is heated and smeared over the parts to be glued. It is gen- erally but not always the men who prepare and refine beeswax.
TEXTILE INDUSTRIES
String and rope are twined by the women from the inner bark of the ambaibo tree. The tree is usually cut down by the men, who remove the outer bark in strips, pull the inner bark from them, and carry this back tocamp. It is then thoroughly chewed by the women and placed on a stick over the fire to dry. The resulting shreds are twined into bowstrings, hammock strings, hammock ropes, and baby slings.
One of the most time-consuming activities of the women is the spinning of cotton thread (ninjfu). The spindle is made by the men from chonta palm. It is planed into shape with a mussel shell. It is more or less circular in cross section and about a half ich in diameter at the middle; it is pointed at both ends and is about 3 feet long. The whorl consists of a disk of wood or baked clay which is put on the spindle from the bottom end.
The women prepare the cotton for spinning. The balls of cotton are first collected from the plant and then pulled apart and flattened into paper-thin sheets about 6 inches square from which the impurities are picked out. The cotton is then ready for spinning. Durmg this process the woman is seated, usually in the hammock. The squares of unspun cotton rest on one thigh (a distaff is not employed) and the spindle on the other, with the whorl end resting on the ground at an angle of about 60°. The woman pulls a thread- like line of cotton from one of her squares, attaches it to the spindle, and spins it into thread by rolling the spindle on the thigh from the hip to the knee. As the thread accumulates, it is rolled around the bottom of the spindle. Cotton thread is employed extensively in arrow making, for wrist guards, in twining baby slings, and in decorating the body on festive occasions. It is generally coated with uruku, a red paint made from the seeds of Bizra orellana,
The hammock (kiza) is the principal article of furniture in every Siriono hut. Hammocks are made by the women from string twined from bark fibers of the ambaibo tree and are very durable,
12 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
lasting several years with the roughest treatment. In making a hammock a woman first digs two holes in the ground with her digging stick, as far apart as the length of the hammock is to be. Two posts about 5 or 6 feet long are then planted in the holes. The woman ties one end of her ball of string, previously twined, to the bottom of the post on her right, passes the string around the post to her left and back on the far side around the post on her right, and so on, continuing these winds, which are about one-fourth of an inch apart, up the poles until she calculates that the desired width of the hammock has been reached. The resulting warp strings form two series of parallel lines, one at the front and the other at the back of the posts.
The weft strings are made of the same material as the warp strings, but are finer twined than the latter. They are applied from bottom to top. The weaver places a weft string around the bottom warp string at the front of the posts and midway between them. She holds the warp string with her left hand and pulls both ends of the weft string tightly with the other hand to form two weft strands of equal length. She then takes the under strand in her left hand, crosses it over the upper strand which is held in her right hand, and then transfers each strand to the opposite hand, after which she pulls the twist tightly around the warp string. She then takes the first back warp string, pulls it over until it rests on the twist formed around the first front warp string, and gives the weft strands a second twist. She con- tinues alternately to gather up the warp strings from front to back until all of them are held in place by a weft string, the ends of which are finally tied into a square knot at the top of the hammock. Usually about a dozen weft strings, placed about 6 inches apart, suffice for a hammock. After they have been applied, ambaibo bark fiber is bound around the hammock about 4 inches from each end, and it is then ready for hanging.
Hammocks vary in size, but one shared by hus- band and wife will be about 6 feet in length and about 4 feet in width. It usually takes a woman a full day to make a hammock, once the string has been prepared. Hammocks are almost al- ways carried along on expeditions or hunting trips, but in case a person gets caught overnight in the forest without his hammock, a rude one is some-
times fashioned of liana in the manner described above.
Baby slings (erénda) are twined by the women in exactly the same way as hammocks, the only difference being that they are more often made of cotton than of bark-fiber string and that all the front warp strings are held together by one series of weft strings while those at the back are held together by another. During pregnancy a woman usually twines a new sling so as to have it ready when her infant is born, for a new sling is made for every child. Slings are about 3 feet long and 2 feet wide.
Baskets (indku) are plain and are made by the techniques of checkerwork and twillng. They may be classified into two types: those hastily constructed in the forest for carrying in game, wild fruits, or other products, and somewhat better ones woven for the storing of articles in the house. The former are always made of the green leaves of the motact palm (by either the men or the women) and are thrown away as soon as their purpose has been served; the latter are more carefully woven (almost always by the women) of the ripe leaves of the heart of the motact palm, and are a more or less permanent feature of every Siriono hut. Special baskets are made for stor- ing such things as feather ornaments, pipes, cotton and bark-fiber string, necklaces, calabashes, beeswax, and feathers for arrows and ornaments. When the band is on the march, the various small baskets are placed in one large basket and are thus transported to the next camping spot.
In addition to baskets, women occasionally weave mats from the heart leaves of the motact palm. These are used to sit on, to roll out coils of clay for pot making, and to wrap the bodies of the dead. Fire fans are also woven by the women. The Siriono do not manufacture any type of barkcloth, nor do they use hides for anything but food. Feathers are applied to arrows and are used to make ornaments for decorating the hair, but featherwork as an art is not practiced.
CERAMICS
The pottery industry is poorly developed, but rude, plain pots (7é0) are occasionally made by the women. Since more food is broiled or roasted than boiled or steamed, a family rarely possesses more than one pot.
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG 13
The banks of rivers serve as the principal source of clay. It is dug out by the women with the digging stick and carried home in baskets. In making a pot, the lumps of clay are first mixed with water and with carbonized seeds of the motact palm which constitute the temper. The resulting mixture is made into balls, from which coils for the sides of the pot are rolled out, and into disks, from which the base of the pot may be formed.
The base is molded, either out of a disk of clay (in case the bottom of the pot is to be rounded) or out of a small coil (in case it is to be more pointed). It is molded entirely with the fingers, and when finished is placed in a slight depression in the ground into which ashes have been put to serve as a cushion.
The rest of the pot is constructed by the coiling technique. After the base has been molded, the coils are rolled out one by one on a mat of motact palm and applied in turn. In making a pot a woman works the coils of clay together with her fingers, on which she frequently spits. In addi- tion, she employs the convex surface of a mussel shell called hitai to smooth out the clay. After one or two coils have been added to the base of the pot, it is generally left standing to dry for a day before others are added. In this way the pot does not lose shape by having too much weight at the top when the clay is wet. Thus several days commonly elapse before a pot is complete. Once finished, it is left to dry in the shade for about 2 days before it is baked.
Pots are baked in the hot ashes of an open fire. As each section of a pot hardens, it is turned slightly so as to bake another. To maintain an even heat, sometimes a pot is covered with green boughs and chips while it is baking. Since the method of baking is very crude, pots are very fragile and must be handled with great care. They vary in size from about 5 to 10 inches in diameter at the top and from about 8 to 14 inches in height.
Pipes (kedkwa), like pots, are made from a mix- ture of clay and carbonized seeds of the motaci palm. The entire pipe, including the stem, is molded from a single disk of clay, the fingers alone being used. As a woman molds the bowl she leaves at the bottom a small lump of clay from which the stem is later fashioned. After finishing
the bowl, she fashions this lump into a conelike shape and then inserts a palm straw into the bowl to make the hole for the stem. She then molds the lump of clay bit by bit around the straw until the stem of the pipe is of the desired length, leaving a little decorative projection at the bottom of the bowl which is called éka or teat.
After a pipe has been molded it is dried in the open air for a couple of days and then baked in the coals of a fire as is a pot. In baking, the straw in the stem is burned out, leaving a bole through which to suck the pipe.
Cieular spindle whorls are sometimes made by women from small disks of clay hardened in the open fire as a pipe or a pot is. Before they are baked they are fitted on to the spindle so that the hole in the whorl will be of proper size.
UTENSILS
Calabashes (yabéki) are prepared as drinking vessels in the followmg manner. A round hole about an inch in diameter is cut in the top of a gourd with the gouging tool. A small stick is then inserted, and the seeds are loosened and shaken out. The calabash is then washed on the inside and dried slowly in the fire, water being squirted on the outside from time to time to keep it from burning. Calabashes, though used primarily as drinking vessels, are also employed for making mead and for storing tobacco, feather ornaments, and animal teeth.
When calabashes are scarce, hollow sections of bamboo are sometimes used as drinking vessels, to store wild honey, and to make mead. They are simply cut to the length desired.
Mortars (mbia) are sometimes hollowed out of fallen logs that lie near camp, but sections of a log are never cut especially for this purpose; that is, a section of a log is not cut, set up, and hol- lowed out on the end for use as a mortar. To make a mortar, a hole is made in the side of a fallen trunk with fire, the charcoal being chipped out with a digging stick, which also serves as the pestle. Mortars are used principally for grinding corn for food and mead, and for grinding burned motacti seeds for temper for pots. They are never carried from camp to camp.
No spoons, plates, bowls, or bags are manufac- tured by the Siriono. Pots and baskets have already been described.
14 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
TOOLS
The digging stick (siri)—the only agricultural tool—is made by the men from chonta palm. After a section of wood has been removed from the tree, it is planed to the desired shape with a mollusk shell called uwruékwa. The digging stick is about 3 feet in length, 3 inches in width, and about an inch in thickness. The bottom end is sharp- ened so as to make it a more effective tool. The digging stick is used principally in planting and tilling, in grinding corn, in digging out clay for pots, and in extracting palm cabbage and honey.
The Siriono construct a gouging tool by hafting an incisor tooth of an agouti or paca onto a femur of a howler monkey. This tool is employed principally to gouge out the nock in the reinforcing plug which is inserted in the feathered end of the arrow. In using the tool the handle is grasped in the right hand with the tooth down. The plug is held in the left hand, and the tool is worked back and forth over it until a groove large enough to hold the bowstring is made. This tool is also employed in making holes in the root ends of the animal teeth from which necklaces are strung.
Some mention should also be made of the use of a mollusk shell, called urv%ikwa, and a mussel shell, called hitai, as tools. The former is used by the men as a plane in making digging sticks, spindles, and bows, while the latter is employed by the women to smooth out the clay when making pots. The mandible (with teeth) of the palometa fish also serves as a tool, being employed to sever the aftershafts of the feathers glued on arrows. Any piece of bamboo serves for a knife, but no work is done in bone, horn, shell, stone, or metal. Euro- pean axes and machetes have been introduced to those bands which have had contact, but under aboriginal conditions European tools are rarely encountered.
WEAPONS
The bow (ngidd) and arrow are the only weapons manufactured or used by the Siriono. Every adult male possesses a bow and arrows which he makes himself. So important are these weapons that when not hunting, a man, if busy, is most frequently observed making a new arrow or re- pairing an old one broken on the last hunt. A man’s bow and arrows, in fact, are his inseparable companions. When he is asleep in the house they rest upright against the frame pole to which his
hammock is tied, and when he is walking in the forest he is invariably seen with his bow and a bundle of arrows over his right or left shoulder, points facing ahead, in quest of game.
The wood from which the bows are made is a variety of chonta palm, called siri. This tree, when mature, is about 12 inches in diameter and has a layer about 2 inches thick of very hard, black wood just underneath the bark. It is from this layer that the bow is constructed. Although the material is relatively abundant in the environ- ment, before making a new bow a hunter will search for some time to locate a chonta tree which has the appearance of being of proper maturity and hardness. It is a rare tree that has just the right qualities. The wood must be firm and resilient and must withstand the maximum pulling strength of the hunter without breaking. Frequently I have seen a man spend a couple of days in the construction of a bow only to have it snap on the first pull.
After a suitable tree has been sighted it is felled. I have never seen this done other than with an ax, but one of my oldest informants told me that he had known chonta palms to be feiled by building a fire against the trunk until the hard layer had been burned through and then pushing the tree over. When a tree has been felled, a section of the circumference of the trunk, about 4 inches wide and as long as the hunter wants his bow to be, is cut out. Other smaller pieces of chonta may also be removed at this time, as this material is likewise indispensable in the con- struction of arrows.
Once the material has been taken out, work on the construction of the bow begins almost at once, before the wood dries out. Bows are plain and are made of a single stave. The making of a bow is a laborious process, as it is fashioned almost entirely by using mollusk shells, called wrtikwa, to plane the wood down. A small hole is first made in the surface of one of these mollusk shells. The edges around the hole are then worked downward with the grain, and the section of wood is gradually planed to the desired shape. If a man possesses a machete, he may first use this to give the bow its approximate shape by roughly tapering the horns, but the finishing is always done with the shell to avert the danger of splitting the wood. In planing down a bow it is held securely on the ground between the big and the second toe.
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG 15
In cross section a bow is roughly oval in shape, being about 2 inches in diameter in the middle and gradually tapered to a cross section of about a quarter of an inch at the horns. The inner side of the hard layer of the tree forms the belly of the bow, while the bark side forms its back. After a bow has been worked to the desired shape, a small amount of bark fiber from the ambaibo tree is wrapped around each horn to keep the string from slipping toward the limbs. The horns of the bow are not notched to hold the string.
The bowstring is twined by the women of am- baibo bark fiber. It is applied as follows. A permanent loop, which will just fit over one horn of the bow, is tied in one end of the string. A half hitch on the other end of the string is placed over the opposite horn and the string is gradually tightened by pulling on the hitch while bending the bow. This is done by resting what will be the top horn of the bow on the ground at an angle and grasping the other horn in the right hand; the left hand is thus left free to manipulate the string which is to be tightened. The inside of the left knee is then placed in the center of the belly of the bow, the foot resting on the back further down. By exerting pressure between the right arm, the knee, and the foot, the bow is bent to the desired degree, and the string is pulled tight by the left hand. To keep it tight a second half hitch is thrown over the first, above the fiber lashing on the horn. The remainder of the bow- string is pulled up the bow to just below the center and wound back around it and over the section of the string which runs up the limb. The end of the string is secured by placing it under a couple of the turns and pulling it tight. The bow is then ready for drawing.
If a hunter is right-handed, as are most of the Siriono, the bow is drawn in the following manner. It is grasped in the middle with the left hand. Because of its great length, the top horn is tilted at an angle of about 30° to the right of perpendicu- lar, so that the bottom horn does not rest on the ground. The hunter spaces his feet from 2 to 3 feet apart, the left foot, of course, always being placed forward.
The secondary release is employed in drawing the bow. The arrow is held between the thumb and first finger of the right hand; the remaining fingers assist in drawing the string. The left arm is held rigid, and the arrow shaft slides between
the thumb and first finger on the side of the bow to the left of the belly. The bow is drawn to a maximum distance allowed by the arms. As the bowstring passes his head, the hunter sights along the arrow to aim. He withdraws his head just before releasing the arrow, and the string flies by his face. He always wears a wrist guard of cotton string to avoid damaging his skin.
The stance indicated above is essentially the same whether one is shooting in a tree, straight ahead, or from a tree into water. If a hunter is left-handed, the procedure of drawing the bow is exactly the same, but reversed.
A new bow is always drawn gradually at first and is sometimes left for one night with the string taut before it is used, so as to give the wood a chance to expand gradually. A bow which is in service, however, is always unstrung following each day’s hunt.
After a new bow is made it needs little attention, except for a change of string, until it breaks or has lost its resiliency. The life of a sturdy bow may be a year or more, depending upon how often it is used. A hunter does not make spare bows. Only when his bow breaks or when it has been used so much that it has lost its life does he make a new one. Occasionally, when a hunter notices that his bow is drying out, he places it in water for several nights until its proper resiliency is restored.
Bows vary in size, depending upon the hunter, but all are long, perhaps the longest in the world. On the average they range between 7 and 9 feet in length, although I have seen one that measured 9 feet 7 inches. The Indians themselves have no explanation of why they use such a long bow, other than to say they were taught to do so by their fathers. They assert, however, that a short bow is no good. The explanation is probably to be sought in the manner in which the Siriono use the bow in shooting. It is bent to the maximum distance allowed by the arms before the arrow is released. If a short bow were used, it is likely that the wood could not withstand the strain of the pull or that the hunter would not have sufficient strength to bend it to the desired degree.
Although arrows, like bows, vary in size, only two general types are made: one, called wba, with a chonta head containing a lashed barb; the other, called tékwa, with a lanceolate bamboo head but containing no barb. The former type is used
16 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
almost exclusively for shooting smaller game in the trees, while the bamboo-headed arrow is reserved for killing the larger game on the ground. Chonta- headed arrows average from 7 to 9 feet in length; bamboo-headed arrows, from 8 to 10 feet. The arrows used by the Siriono are probably longer than those used by any other known people in the world.
Except in the case of an emergency or a shortage of material, arrow shafts (éhua) are always made of reed (Gynerium sagittatum). The plant is found in abundance along the banks of the rivers and at some points inland, but is only suitable for use in arrow making for about 2 months during the rainy season—in March and in April. Consequently, a whole year’s supply of not less than 30 reeds is usually harvested during these months. If aman runs out of reeds before the next season comes around, a species of bamboo may be substituted, but this material is considered inferior since it makes an inaccurate arrow.
Like bow making, arrow making is exclusively a task of the men, and, there being no specialists in this occupation, each man makes his own arrows. The reeds are first cut near the butt end and then eured. This is usually done by drying them gradually in the sun for about 4 days, but it may be hastened by the use of fire. Before an arrow is made, the shaft must be straight and dry. While the reeds are curing, a man prepares the other materials needed for the construction of an arrow: feathers, chonta or bamboo heads, beeswax, ete. Consequently, when the shafts are straight and dry, all materials are ready for the construction of an arrow.
A chonta-headed arrow is made in the following way. A shank of chonta wood about 18 inches in length, pointed at both ends, and of a diameter so as just to fit the hollow distal end of the reed, is fashioned with a mollusk shell called urtikwa. About one-half of this shank is coated with pre- pared beeswax called iriti and inserted up the hollow shaft for about 6 inches. The part of the shaft containing the shank is then loosely bound with ambaibo bark fiber and left to dry. While it is drying, a small conical plug (edja), likewise coated with hot beeswax, is inserted in the proxi- mal end of the reed. This plug contains the nock of the arrow. After both have dried, the chonta shank and the plug containing the shaft are bound securely in place. This is done with fine cotton
string which has been previously coated with paint made from ground seeds of uruku (Bixa orellana) mixed with saliva. To bind the shank, the arrow maker removes the bark fiber and begins to wind cotton string around the shaft about 4 or 5 inches from the distal end, continuing his winds downward until about 3 inches of the protruding shank have been covered; to bind the plug, he begins to wind cotton string around the shaft from the proximal end, continuing his winds about 3 or 4 inches down the shaft. The ends of the string used for lashing are coated with beeswax to hold them in place. The arrow is now ready for feathering. For this purpose only two kinds of feathers (é0) are used, except in case of emergency. All chonta-headed arrows are feathered with the large wing or quill feathers of the curassow, while bamboo-headed arrows are feathered with the large wing feathers of the harpy eagle. Informants were emphatic in stating that these are the only feathers ever used, and it was rare that I saw an arrow feathered otherwise. Occasionally, however, the feathers of one of the smaller varieties of guan are used.
Feathering is done by the Peruvian cemented technique. Before a feather is put on, however, about 5 inches of the arrow shaft, below the lashing which secures the plug containing the nock, is coated with hot beeswax. Then the aftershafts of a feather are removed (the mandible, contain- ing teeth, of the palometa fish is used for this pur- pose) and placed over the soft beeswax along the shaft and in line with the nock. They are then lashed by winding at intervals between the barbs of the feather a very fine thread taken from a grasslike plant growing near rivers, called diéibi. Nowadays, when available, manufactured cotton thread is considered ideal for this purpose. After the feathers have been glued and lashed to the arrow shaft, the beeswax is smoothed out by rub- bing a wet thumbnail over it.
A single barb (erdsi), about one-half inch in length, is lashed onto the chonta shank of an arrow about half an inch from the point. Barbs are generally made from the hard stays which grow in the soft wood in the center of a palm tree which the Siriono call hindoéra, although chonta wood is also used sometimes. The barb is flattened on one end and lashed securely to the shank with fine cotton string coated with beeswax.
Bamboo-headed arrows are made in almost
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW
exactly the same way as chonta-headed arrows except that the bamboo head is lashed onto a chonta shank that is flattened on the distal end. Nowadays, bamboo arrowheads are cut out with bush knives, but formerly they were shaped with mollusk shells. They are glued to the flattened chonta shank with beeswax and lashed tightly to it with cotton string covered with uruku paint.
After an arrow has been finished it should have a certain twang when set in vibration. This is tested as follows. The maker grasps the arrow in about the middle of the shaft with his left hand and lifts it up to the height of his eye. While sighting along the shaft he grasps the nock end of the arrow between the thumb and first finger of his right hand and bends the shaft slightly toward his face. He then releases his fingers with a snap and the arrow, if a good one, vibrates with a twangy sound. An arrow which does not produce this sound when set in vibration is thought to be a poor one.
Arrows are always retrieved and are frequently damaged on the hunt. If the shaft of an arrow is broken, a cross section is cut off evenly on both sides of the break, and a pencillike rod of chonta palm wood, about 6 inches long and covered with beeswax, is inserted about 3 inches up the hollow shaft of one part of the broken reed. The pro- truding piece of the chonta rod is then inserted into the hollow shaft of the other part of the broken reed until both parts of the reed meet. To com- plete the job of mending, cotton string is wound around the shaft for about 3 inches over the break.
Some mention should also be made of the use of pieces of wood as weapons. Clubs are never manufactured but chunks of wood cut or picked up at random sometimes serve as clubs to kill wounded animals and to pound with.
HOUSING
To judge from the type of house constructed, the problem of shelter among the Siriono is not a serious one. Little time is spent in making a dwelling, nor when built does it comfortably pro- tect them either from the inclemencies of the weather or from the ubiquitous insect pests that continually harass them. The house, whether shared by the entire band or hastily erected by a single family or hunting party on the march, is always the same general type, although varying
HOLMBERG 17
in size and degree of completeness. It consists of a roughly rectangular frame of poles against which are set, at an angle but not bound together, the long leaves of the motacti palm. The house is thus but an elaboration of the most simple type of lean-to or wind screen.
No one person supervises the construction of a house. Before building one, a site is selected by general agreement. It must be near water and relatively free of underbrush but at the same time should contain a few sturdy trees to serve as up- right supports or columns upon which to lash the frame. Care is taken to select a spot which con- tains no dead or rotten trees that may fall over during occupancy. However, trees are never cut down to clear a house site; rather, the house is built around them.
After a site has been selected, the men go in quest of poles for the frame. Nowadays these are cut from nearby trees with machetes, but formerly they were doubtless hacked off with the digging stick. No particular type of wood is specified for the construction of the frame, al- though frequent use is made of soft chonta palm trunk and of heavy bamboo, which is abundant in certain parts of the area. The sturdiness and size of the poles for the frame depend upon the number of people who will occupy the house. They must be of sufficient strength to withstand the weight of all the people in the house, since their hammocks and gear are tied to the poles of the frame as well as to the trees onto which they are lashed. If the distance between the trees to be used seems too great to bear the weight that the poles will have to support when they are lashed between them, additional forked trunks are sunk upright in the ground by digging them in with the digging stick to add further support to the frame.
The poles, when cut, are lashed to the outer side of the trees and in the forks of the upright columns with lianas, which are wound several times around the poles and the supports until they are secure. This liana lashing is fastened with half hitches. The entire frame is bound to the trees and to the upright supports at a height of about 5 feet above the ground.
The next and final operation in house building consists merely in setting against the frame, at an angle of about 60° from the ground, several layers of the green leaves of the motact palm.
18 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
These leaves, which form both the walls and the roof, are placed with the butt end on the ground. As they are about 15 feet long, they bend rather sharply at the top, so that when they have been placed around the whole frame, the house has a somewhat conical appearance. Often the leaves are not long enough to meet at the top, thus leaving a gap through which the smoke from the fires between every two hammocks escapes, and through which the rain enters freely during a storm. The house contains no doors or windows; one merely works one’s way in through the palm leaves.
Nuclear families on a hunting and gathering expedition, when they may be absent from the band for from a few days to several weeks and are rather constantly on the march, take even less trouble in the construction of a nightly shelter. All they build is a rude shelter constructed like one side of the above-described house. The Siriono country is dotted with the remains of shel- ters erected by hunting parties that have stopped there for a night or two in their wanderings.
Having roamed over an extensive part of the area where the Siriono are accustomed to travel throughout the year, I can report that these are the only types of shelters that I ever saw built. When it rains, a shelter is improved to the extent that a few large leaves of patuji—a wild plant resembling the banana plant but not producing fruit—may be placed between the layers of mota- ct leaves and over the hammock where an individ- ual sleeps, but such improvisations are rarely adequate to give one a dry night of rest if the rain is more than a sprinkle. On occasions when it rains heavily—and this happens on the average about 2 or 3 nights per week during the rainy season—the Siriono grumblingly takes down his hammock and squats by the fire, which is always carefully protected from the rain by leaves of the patuju, until the downpour passes. Con- sequently, he undergoes many a sleepless night during the year.
The building of a house entails no magical procedure, and it is almost always exclusively a task of the men. Arriving at a new camp site, the women are usually immediately occupied in tending their children, unpacking their gear, carrying water, and kindling a fire for cooking what victuals the day’s march and hunt may have yielded. Meanwhile the men work cooperatively in cutting and lashing the poles for the frame.
The number of leaves placed against the frame, however, is largely an individual matter; if a man makes no move to cover that part of the frame where he will sleep with his family, no one else will bring leaves to cover his section of the house for him. At best, rarely more than two layers of leaves are placed over the frame. Moreover, a new house is never built larger than a size just sufficient to accommodate the people present at the time of building. If families are away from the band at the time, additional space is not pro- vided to accommodate them, and when they return they themselves will have to add a section to the main house.
The average house sheltering a band of from 60 to 80 people is approximately 60 feet long, 25 feet wide, 15 feet high at the center, and about 5 feet high at the frame. It can be constructed in about an hour’s time. Seldom is more than 15 minutes or a half an hour spent in the construction of a lean-to for the night.
Other types of buildings, such as cook houses, granaries, and club houses, are not built. A Siriono settlement consists of but a single hut, constructed in the manner described above.
The determination of why the Siriono maintain such an apathetic attitude toward house building and sheltering themselves from the unpleasant aspects of their environment, such as rain, cold winds, and insect pests, presents an interesting psychological problem. When first traveling with them, I was puzzled at why they even took the trouble to place a few leaves over their hammocks, since these seemed to offer them no visible pro- tection. On closer scrutiny, however, I found that the few leaves placed over their hammocks did protect them from twigs and small branches which are continually falling from tropical trees in the night. Moreover, placing a few leaves over the hammock protects them from the rays of the moon, which are believed gradually to cause blindness if they fall directly on a sleeper. Other than this, the shelters of the Siriono seem to offer them little protection.
The house is but sparsely furnished. The hammock is the principal article of furniture. Hammocks are suspended across the width of the house with bark-fiber ropes tied to the frame poles and columns. Household articles such as cala- bashes and baskets are suspended with bark-fiber string from the midribs of the palm leaves that
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG 19
form the walls and roof. Pots are left on the dirt floor. Houses are almost never cleaned. When they become unbearable new ones are built.
DRESS AND ORNAMENT
No clothing of any kind is manufactured or worn by the Siriono. The nearest approach to clothing—a custom probably adopted from the Brazilian Indians—I found among the eastern- most Siriono. Here I observed some young boys, and a few young men of puberty age, wearing a twined G string of bark fiber wound tightly around the waist; under this the foreskin of the penis is tucked so as to lengthen it. Where clothes have been introduced, however, they are greatly sought after, not so much because of modesty * but be- cause clothes both adorn them and protect them to some extent from the ubiquitous insect pests that continually harass them. ‘That they are mostly desired for adornment, however, is attested by the fact that no matter how many clothes they possess they always sleep stark naked at night when the insects are most abundant. Moreover, if a woman does possess a dress, before sitting down she always lifts it up and sits on her bare skin in preference to soiling her garment.
Even though they wear no clothing, the Siriono are rarely seen without some type of embellish- ment. Most commonly employed to decorate the body is a paint made from the seeds of the uruku plant, which is extensively used for ornamental purposes by many South American Indians. By spitting on the hands and mixing the saliva with a few uruku seeds a bright red paint is produced. This paint, which is never applied in any type of design, is rubbed especially on the face, but on some occasions the entire body is covered with it. Its function is both sacred and secular. Although its magical significance is of prime importance on such occasions as a birth or death, and in warding off illness, the body is covered with uruku for utilitarian reasons, namely, as a protection from insect bites and cold weather when mosquitoes are thick or when a cold south wind blows. Like the channel swimmer who shuts out the cold by
4In this connection, about the only thing a Siriono man is modest about is displaying the glans of his penis, and when standing around he is constantly tugging at the foreskin so as to lengthen it. Women likewise display little modesty, but when sitting on the ground they always cover the vulva with one heel,
covering his body with Vaseline, the Siriono does so by covering his body with uruku.
Next in importance to uruku for decorative purposes are various bright-colored feathers (é0) which are glued into the hair with prepared bees- wax (iritv). Like uruku, feathers are extensively employed to decorate the hair on festive occasions. It is important to note that the same types of feathers are always used no matter what the oc- casion may be: a birth, a death, a drinking feast, or a bloodletting rite. Those employed come from the toucan (red feathers from the back, yellow feathers from the breast, and white feathers from under the wings), from the curassow (downy white breast feathers), and from the harpy eagle (also the downy white breast feathers). Although there are many other brightly colored birds in the area—the macaw, for instance—the types men- tioned above were the only ones I ever saw used for decorative purposes. The underlying reasons for this, other than that the ancestors had followed the same pattern, I was never able to ascertain.
It is the women who pluck the feathers, prepare them into tufts, and glue them into the hair. In the case of the toucan, when the bird is killed the breast skin is always removed with the feathers, which are later plucked for decoration. In the case of the other birds mentioned, the desirable feathers are plucked after the dead animal has been brought to the house. The tufts are made by first binding 8 or 10 of the down feathers to- gether at the base with a piece of cotton string or bark fiber and then covering the binding with prepared beeswax. The tufts are glued to the hair by first softening the beeswax with a firebrand.
In addition to tufts of feathers, bunches of quills of the peccary, porcupine, and paca are sometimes glued into the hair of young boys so as to make them good hunters of these animals when they grow up.
Necklaces (éwi) are worn both for adornment and for magical reasons. Animal teeth are es- pecially favored in necklace making. When a coati is killed and after it has been cooked and eaten, the eye teeth are extracted with the fingers and small holes are gouged out in the roots of the teeth by the men, who employ for this purpose an eye tooth of a rat, a squirrel, or a paca hafted to the humerus of a howler monkey. After a suffi- cient number of teeth (no specified number) have been obtained, they are strung on a piece of cotton
20 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
or bark-fiber string by the women. The penis bone of the coati or the gristle from the back of the ankle of the harpy eagle is sometimes added as a charm to these necklaces, which are worn es- pecially by parents during the couvade period following birth.
Less often employed for making necklaces are the eye teeth of the spider monkey, which are drilled in the manner described above. Necklaces are sometimes made from the molar teeth of the peccary and the coati, but in such cases holes are not drilled in the teeth; they are merely tied to string which is placed around the teeth between the roots.
The hard black seeds of the chonta palm and toenails of the tortoise are sometimes drilled in the manner described above and are used for mak- ing necklaces. The base of the quill feathers of various birds, especially the parrot, the macaw, the harpy eagle, and the toucan, are also similarly employed. In the case of the toucan the wind- pipe may be dried, cut into sections, and strung into necklaces. Other products employed for making necklaces include small sections of young chuchio (the reed employed in arrow making), old hair wrapped in cotton string, sections of umbilical cord (also wrapped in cotton string and covered with beeswax), and even parts of dis- carded pipe stems.
Age, sex, and status differences do not affect the wearing of necklaces, although, as we shall later see, certain ones seem to be worn only on specific occasions.
Some mention should also be made of the wide- spread use of cotton string covered with uruku for magical and decorative purposes. This is wound around the wrists, the arms (above the elbows), the ankles, the legs (below the knees), and the neck of the father and mother after the birth of a child, and is worn for approximately a month thereafter. No rings, ear, nose, or lip ornaments are ever worn.
The only type of body mutilation found among the Siriono results from the practice of ceremonial bloodletting, which will be discussed more fully later. Suffice it to say here that the adult men and women are stabbed in the arms (the men on the inside of the arms from the wrist to the elbow and the women on the outside of the arms from the elbow to the shoulder) with the dorsal spine of the sting ray. When the wounds from these
stabbings heal, there remain a series of decorative scars, which are both tribal marks and signs of adulthood. Although bloodletting occurs on other occasions, the scratches made in the skin then are usually so superficial as to leave no scars.
No age, sex, or status differences are manifested in hair styles. The only exception occurs in the case of young girls (yukwdki), who have their heads entirely shaved before undergoing the rites to make them eligible for sexual intercourse and marriage. Young children receive their first haircut in the tribal style the day after they are born.
Hair is cut by the women with a piece of bamboo. There are no specialists who perform this task. A woman usually cuts her husband’s and her children’s hair, and her own is cut by a sister or a cowife. The hair is cut to a length of about a quarter of an inch all over the head. That over the forehead is pulled out, or shaved with a bamboo knife, to a very high semicircle. The ears are left exposed. In the back, the hair is cut straight across at about the level of the lobe of the ear. Haircuts are given about once a month, although the forehead and eyebrows may be depilated as often as every 10 days. For depilation the woman covers the tip of her index finger with beeswax and grasps the hairs between her thumb and index finger. After the hair has been removed, the entire forehead is covered with uruku, which acts as a healing balm. In the case of young children, to promote the future growth of the child’s hair, a few feathers of the harpy eagle or the curassow may be glued to the back of the hair after it has been cut.
The disposition of hair clippings varies with age. In the case of young children the hair is saved, wrapped in cotton string, covered with hot bees- wax, and tied around the neck of the child or his mother. The purpose of this is to promote the future growth of the child’s hair and also to prevent the child from becoming sick in the head. In the case of adults the hair is thrown away deep in the bush, although I also observed in Casarabe that it was sometimes buried in the ground just outside of the house. Informants told me that leaving old hair around was apt to cause headache. Nail clippings receive no special treatment.
Beards are more rarely cut than the hair, but occasionally they are shaved off completely to
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG 21
promote the growth of an even longer beard. Mothers sometimes glue a few beard hairs of the paca into their boys’ hair to insure that their infant sons will possess a heavy beard like a paca when they become adults. Hair from the beard, like that from the head, is discarded in the bush or buried. The same may be said of axillary hair, which is removed when present. On the whole, however, the Siriono possess little body hair, and most of what they do have is rubbed off by the brush of the forest. Pubic hair is never removed.
PROPERTY
The native concept of property may best be expressed by saying that the environment exists for the exploitation of all members of the band, and that the society recognizes the rights of own- ership only so far as this exploitation is pursued. In other words, the preserve of the Siriono is communally owned, but its products become individual property only when they are hunted, collected, or used.
Actually, little real property exists. What does exist is limited to the immediate possession, by a family, of a garden plot, by virtue of having cleared and planted it, or to the right to collect from certain fruit trees, by virtue of having dis- covered them. When a man comes across a new fruit tree, he may mark it with a notch; this will give him the right to exploit it (for one season at least) while it is bearing fruit. Such rights, how- ever, do not extend to hunting grounds, fishing sites, stands of arrow reeds, uruku trees, or cala- bash trees, all of which are regarded as public property. The house is both communally built and communally owned.
Since the material apparatus is sparse, holdings in movable property are few. As regards all of these possessions, however, individual rights of ownership are recognized and respected. Thus a man is owner of his bows and arrows, the animals which he kills, the maize or manioe which he raises; a woman is the owner of her pots, cala-
bashes, baskets, necklaces, feather ornaments— in fact, all of the things which she herself makes or collects. In some possessions, such as pipes and hammocks, which are used by both the hus- band and the wife, ownership, of course, may be regarded as joint.
The sparsity of material culture limits transac- tions in property largely to exchanges in food. However, these are not carried out on the basis of barter, or buying or selling. Such notions are foreign to the Siriono. Nevertheless, the giving of food does involve an obligation on the part of the recipient to return food to the donor at some future date. For instance, if a man hunts a tapir, which he is forbidden to eat for magical reasons, part of the meat may be distributed to members of his wife’s family. The next time the recipients hunt tapir they will be expected to re- turn meat to the original giver. This type of exchange is about the only property transaction that takes place in Siriono society. Marriages and divorces, for example, are not accompanied by an exchange of property. Borrowing or lend- ing almost never occurs; one’s neighbor rarely has anything that it would be useful to borrow.
As a consequence of not accumulating proper- ty—a notion foreign to the Siriono—the problem of inheritance is greatly simplified. Actually, it hardly exists, for when a person dies most of the things with which he has had intimate contact are placed with the body or thrown away. Thus one’s pots, calabashes, pipes, and feather orna- ments are left at the site where the body is aban- doned. Exceptions include hammocks, necklaces, cotton strings, and sometimes a man’s arrows, particularly if he has been a good hunter. These may pass to his son or to his brother, while the few possessions of a woman usually pass to a sister or a cowife, though they may also be in- herited by a daughter. Thus inheritance of possessions may be either patrilineal or matrilineal, depending upon the objects and persons involved. Succession to chieftainship, however, follows patrilineal lines.
EXPLOITATIVE ACTIVITIES
SEASONAL CYCLE
In contrast to most other aboriginal peoples of the area in which they live, the Siriono are semi- nomadic forest dwellers who live more by hunting,
fishing, and gathering than they do by farming. All of their economic activities, of course, are governed to a considerable extent by the seasonal changes which take place throughout the year. During the periodic inundations which last from
22 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
December to May, when the whole area, except for small islands of high ground, becomes one huge swamp, the mobility of the group is considerably impaired. Consequently, at the beginning of this cycle a stretch of high ground containing an abundance of palm trees and wild fruits is selected for occupation during the flood months, and the wild fruits are harvested as they mature. Such hunting as is possible (considerable game is attracted by wild fruits) is done, but fishing becomes a negligible activity, since the waters become turbid. The diet at this season of the year consists principally of wild fruit and vegetable food, and the band is a fairly cohesive social unit.
In sharp contrast to the sedentary mode of life during the rainy season is its nomadic character during the dry season. After the crops have been harvested in April and May and after the waters have begun to recede in June, the entire band may
start out on a hunting and gathering expedition, wandering from lake to lake, from stream to stream, exhausting the wild life of each as it travels. Consequently, meat, fish, and wild honey become more prominent in the diet at this season of the year, and the band becomes a loose social unit.
When the next rainy season arrives, the band may return to the same spot occupied the year before or it may move on to another. This depends largely on the quantity of food available. Having wandered for years over the same large area, the Siriono possess many sites containing old gardens, uruku trees, calabash trees, etc., to which they may return from time to time in their wanderings.
Table 1 is a calendar of the chief economic activities carried out and the principal foods eaten throughout the year.
TABLE 1.—Calendar of chief economic activities and principal foods eaten
Month Activities Foods eaten
Januaryses==s--- 22> Hunting and collecting; little or no agricultural work; group usually | Game; palm cabbage; motacd fruits. sedentary because of the rainy season.
Webruary...<-22-) “+ -< Hunting and collecting; harvest of maize planted in November; harvest of | Game; palm cabbage; motacti fruits; papaya; maize; some wild fruits begins; group sedentary because of rainy season. manioc; coquino; aguaf; hindoera; gargatéa; pac&y;
pacobilla,
Marehis.5< +: 2.2.2. Hunting and collecting; no agricultural work; principal harvest of wild | Game; palm cabbage; motact fruits; papaya; maize; some fruits; group sedentary because of rainy season. manioc; coquino; aguai; hindoera; gargatéa; pacdy.
Aiprilesss ceo 2ekeccs Hunting and collecting; group still sedentary; harvest of wild fruits almost | Game; palm cabbage; motacti fruits; papaya; coquino; over; little or no agricultural work. aguas; little maize and manioc.
Mayices2-25--25.22 Hunting and collecting; harvest of chuchio begins; making of new arrows; | Game; palm cabbage; motacé fruits; little manioc; maize group begins to be more nomadic; possible replanting of maize. and papaya.
June sso seen ee east. 4 Hunting and collecting; extended families become more nomadic; hunting | Game; palm cabbage; motacti fruits; little manioc; maize expeditions; fishing begins; harvest of chuchio terminated; almost no and papaya; some fish and wild honey. agricultural work; band as a whole may decide to migrate to other spots for better hunting and fishing.
VOlY soos 2eos2 oe sass Usually on the march; hunting and fishing; no agricultural work--_-------- Game and fish; palm cabbage; wild honey; motacd fruits;
cusi nuts; some camotes.
Agust...2-2--22s2515 Usually on the march; may return to eat camotes and fresh maize planted | Game and fish; palm cabbage; wild honey; camotes; maize; in May; hunting, fishing, and collecting chief economic activities; drink- cusi nuts; motact fruits; also a fruit called ndia, ing parties occur because of abundance of wild honey.
September-_-__-____- Usually on the march; hunting, fishing, and collecting; many drinking | Game and fish; palm cabbage; wild bee honey; motact parties. fruits; camotes; little manioc or maize; turtle eggs.
October=-=2 2. Hunting and collecting; clearing small plots for planting; during this | Game; fish; palm cabbage; motact fruits; some camotes; month the group usually selects a site to weather the rainy season. little manioc, maize, or papaya.
November-._----.---- Hunting and collecting; most of the planting occurs in this month; maize, | Game; little fish; palm cabbage; motact fruits; few other manioc, cotton, and tobacco are sown; since agricultural activities are vegetable products, limited, they interfere little with hunting and collecting; fishing stops because the waters begin to rise and become turbid.
December... ---...--- Rainy season begins in full force; no agricultural work; hunting and col- | Game; palm cabbage; motacd fruits; few other vegetable lecting are the only important activities; wild fruits have not yet begun products. to ripen.
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG 23
HUNTING
No other activity of the men can match the importance of hunting. The temper of the Siriono camp, in fact, can be readily gaged by the supply of game that is daily being bagged by the hunters; there is rarely ever equaled that joy which follows a successful chase or that discontent which fol- lows an unsuccessful one.
Around every Siriono hut there are trails, scarcely visible and marked only by an occasional bent leaf or twig, spreading out in all directions. On any morning just before daybreak it is a common sight to see the naked hunters, bows and arrows over their shoulders and perhaps with a piece of roast manioc in their hands, silently fading into the forest in all directions in quest of game. Some go alone; others in pairs; still others (as Many as six or seven) may join together to go in quest of a troop of peccaries or a band of spider monkeys.
Besides his bow, each hunter takes with him about eight arrows—five with a barbed chonta head to hunt small tree game and three with a bamboo head to hunt larger ground game. As he leaves the hut the hunter walks silently but rapidly through the forest so as to arrive early at those spots such as water holes most likely to contain game, and as he goes along he searches the branches above him and the forest around him for a stirring leaf or a snapping twig that might indi- cate the presence of game.
Almost all animals of the environment except snakes are hunted, and various techniques are employed to bag game, depending upon the type of animal one encounters. Since the bow and arrow must be depended upon exclusively, and since the quarry must be close to be shot with such a cumbersome weapon, the Siriono is a master at both stalking and imitation. He can imitate to perfection the whistle of a bird, of a monkey, of a tapir, or the call of a peccary. There is not an animal sound of the forest, in fact, which he does not know and is not able to skillfully imitate. In hunting guan, for instance, he whistles like one of the young; if there is a guan within hearing, it is brought within range of the bow by this means. 1 have frequently seen guan brought to a branch within 10 feet of a hunter, and on one occasion, during the mating season, I saw one brought so
close by this method that it was actually caught alive in the hunter’s hand.
So as not to disturb his quarry, a hunter re- frains from talking when in quest of game and communicates with his companions largely by whistling. This specialized language has become so highly developed among the Siriono as to en- able hunters to carry on limited conversations, and it is often used to advantage. On one oc- casion, when I was hunting with two Indians along the banks of a brook, my companion and I, who were on one side, suddenly heard a whistle from the opposite bank, along which the third member of our party was walking. We stopped immediately and my companion answered the whistle, to which the other replied in turn. After several moments of whistling conversation my companion selected an arrow, put it in his bow, walked a few feet ahead, aimed into a tree, and released the arrow. Down fell a curassow, much to my surprise. What had occurred was that our comrade on the other side of the brook could see the bird, which was not visible to us, but it was out of range of his bow. As it was possible for us to get in range, he indicated by whistling the loca- tion of the bird, so that it was relatively easy for my companion to walk to the spot and shoot it.
Other types of cooperation between hunters have developed because of unusual circumstances encountered in the jungle. The area, for instance, contains many tall trees in which game is some- times situated at such a height that it is out of range of the bow. If a hunter is alone he will usually be forced to pass up such game, but if a companion is with him they may cooperate in making an effort to secure it. This is done in the following manner. One of the hunters slings his taut bow over his back and climbs up the tree to a branch that is within range of the animal. If the trunk is of such thickness as to prevent him from climbing directly up the tree, a sapling is cut and bound to the trunk with ana. He then climbs this sapling until the branches of the tree can be reached. Once in position to shoot the animal, he signals to his companion below, who puts an arrow into his bow and releases it with just enough force to reach the hunter aloft. The latter, as the arrow goes by, grabs it, puts it in his bow, and shoots the animal. This is by no means a common method of hunting and is practiced only in case the animal in the tree is one
24 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY:
not likely to move, such as a female howler monkey whose male companion has been killed. However, I witnessed it several times while I was living with the Siriono, and in each instance the game was bagged.
The animals most frequently bagged are monkeys, of which there are several kinds in the area. Most abundant is a species of capuchin monkey, called keN. If a hunter comes back from the chase with anything, he is most likely to have one or two keN in his catch. These monkeys travel in groups as large as a hundred, and, as there are always many young ones in the band, their whistling can be heard from a great distance away. Upon hearing these sounds, the hunter stops and whistles like the monkeys (I was never able to distinguish the whistle of a monkey from that of a hunter), gradually bringing them closer to his post. By hiding behind a tree, he is usually able to shoot one or two before the rest of the band sees him, becomes frightened, and begins to disperse. When this occurs, he selects one of the larger monkeys and gives chase, trying to drive it into the open where it can be shot. If in flight the monkey hides momentarily in the thick foliage above, the hunter tries to rout it out by tugging on one of the lianas which grow to the ground from almost every tree. Getting into position to shoot one of these monkeys, however, is not easy, as they move from tree to tree with great rapidity and stop only momentarily. More- over, the underbrush below is extremely dense with lianas and spines, so that a hunter’s progress is often impeded to such an extent that he loses his prey.
Next in abundance to the keN are the long- haired, black spider monkeys called ervibat. These are more highly prized than the keN because of their size (10 to 20 pounds). Spider monkeys are especially valued during the rainy season, because at this time they are very fat from eating the wild fruits that mature in February, March, and April. Sometimes these monkeys have as much as a half- inch of fat on their bellies.
Spider monkeys are chased and bagged in the same manner as the above-mentioned keN but are less difficult to shoot because of their greater size and sluggishness. They often await their fate, shaking the branches of a tree at the hunter. Nevertheless, they may cause the hunter a con- siderable amount of trouble, since they generally
PUBLICATION NO. 10
break his arrow between their hands when dying and, once dead, they are able to hang to a branch with their strong prehensile tails for as long as 24 hours, thus forcing the hunter to climb the tree to retrieve them.
A third type of monkey that contributes con- siderably to the food supply is the howler or téndi. Unlike the spider monkey, the howler does not travel in large bands but in polygynous family groups that vary in size from a male and two fe- males to a male and six females. When hunting the howler, an Indian usually tries to bag the male first; the females will not then move from the area, and he can hunt them down one by one. After the male has been killed, the females often cluster together high in a tree, from which they do not move, and the aforementioned method of cooperative hunting can be applied to kill them.
In addition to the types of monkeys already mentioned, there are three smaller varieties that the Siriono occasionally hunt but which do not contribute much to the food supply. These are a small owl monkey, called yikina, and two varieties of squirrel monkeys, called gifeti and ngi. They are hunted in the same manner as the others, being chased from tree to tree until they are bagged.
Next iu importance to monkeys in supplying meat for the camp are the numerous land and waterfowl of the area. These include, chiefly, several varieties of guan (ydku), curassow (bitoN), macaw (kirinde), toucan (yisddi), parrot (yikdna), duck (yé), cormorant (miNgwa), partridge (ndmbu), hawk (ngida), egret (gwarisi), and vul- ture (urtibu). On the pampa there are other large birds, such as the South American ostrich (ngiddéibaia), but as the Siriono with whom I lived were strictly a forest people, these were never hunted. All birds are shot with the bow and a barbed, chonta-headed arrow. They are usually brought into range by careful stalking or by imitating their calls.
The pursuit of the collared peccary (tai) and the white-lipped peccary (éidsw) constitutes an important part of the chase and contributes much to the meat supply. The former, which are usually observed foraging in the forest in groups of from 2 to 10, are quite abundant, and the latter, which are sometimes found in bands of as many as 200, are not infrequently encountered.
Collared peccaries are usually heard rooting
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG 25
nearby as one goes through the forest. Upon discovering them the hunter prepares his bow for the kill, imitates their call, and shoots them as they come within range, aiming for the heart or the neck.
White-lipped peccaries can be discovered a great distance away, both by smell and sound. Moreover, they are one of the few animals that the Siriono spend days in tracking down and are also one of the few that are sometimes hunted coop- eratively. As band peccaries are accustomed to follow a leader, and to root up almost everything as they go along, to track them down is not a difficult task.
To originate a cooperative peccary hunt some hunter must previously have sighted fresh tracks relatively near camp, say within a half day’s distance on foot. On the day following the report, the hunters set out, using the person who dis- covered the trail as a guide. They take with them only their bamboo-headed arrows (tdkwa), as only these are effective in killing such a large animal. Arriving at the trail, they follow it until they can hear the noise of the peccaries, which is not unlike the sound of distant thunder— the reason perhaps that the Siriono have asso- ciated thunder with the falling of peccaries to the earth.
After the band has been discovered, the hunting party stops and lays plans for the kill. If the chief is present—he is always one of the best hunters—other members of the party usually accept his method of attack. A band of peccaries is always approached against the wind, so that the hunters will not be discovered. If it is possible to come up from behind the band, this is considered the best strategy. In any case, an attempt is always made to circle the band so as to kill as many peccaries as possible. Some hunters ap- proach from the rear; others from either side. The signal for the kill is given by the hunter first getting in position to shoot: the arrows then begin to fly from all directions. Each hunter usually picks a fat peccary for his first arrow. If possible, the leader of the band is also killed, not only because it is generally the biggest boar but be- cause the band will thus have greater difficulty re-forming and the other peccaries will be easier to lal.
On a chase of this kind a hunter usually uses up all the arrows he has brought with him, but if
there is still game around this does not deter him from continuing the hunt. He may continue the attack with a club picked up at random or cut in the forest. I have even seen hunters catch young peccaries with their hands and bash their heads on the nearest tree or drown them in a water hole that happened to be at the site of the kill.
After the band has dispersed and the principal kill has been made, strays are run down and slain. It is only after no more animals are available that the slaughter is stopped. The hunters then meet at the place where the kill began, dragging all the game to that spot. If the day is yet young, i. e., before noon, if the kill is such that it can be carried home, and if the camp is not far away, they may set out for the house at once. Usually, however, they decide to remain overnight in the forest and roast the meat. If it is late in the day, they spend most of the night preparing and roasting the game, and on the following day, after an all night feed, carry the roasted meat to the camp in rude motactii palm baskets. In case raw game must be left in the forest for a night, the viscera are removed, and the carcasses, covered with palm leaves, are tied in a tree to safeguard them from ants and jaguars. On the following day the women are sent to bring in the game.
The Siriono who wander in those regions west of the Rio Blanco, where there is open country, frequently encounter the large pampa deer (kitkwandisu). Those who inhabit the forest country east of the Rio Blanco most often meet a smaller variety of forest deer (kiikwa).
When in quest of the pampa deer, the hunter tries to reach the pampa as early in the day as possible. On arriving at the open country, he may sight bis quarry a great distance away. Deer are relatively easy to stalk, as the tall grass of the pampa (frequently higher than one’s head), as well as the ant hills, provide an almost perfect blind. The naked hunter must proceed cautiously, however, else the knifelike blades of some of the pampa grasses will cut his skin to ribbons. In killing deer the hunter always aims for the heart.
The tapir (eakwantit) is the largest animal in the area, and since its carcass yields the greatest amount of meat of any animal, it is considered the greatest prize of the chase. Because of the undeveloped hunting techniques of the Siriono, and because the tapir does most of its feeding at night, when the hunter is fast asleep, it is rarely
26 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
bagged. Only four were killed by the Indians at Tibaera during my residence of about 8 months, although many more were shot.
Even at daybreak, when the hunter is alert, the tapir has already retired to sleep in the spiny, liana-covered underbrush into which it is difficult for the hunter to penetrate, and since he possesses no dogs to rout his prey, he rarely runs across one in his wanderings. Moreover, a tapir is hard to kill and, when discovered and shot, frequently escapes into a swamp where the pursuer dares not venture.
The few tapirs that are killed are usually shot while they are asleep. They are often detected by a short shrill whistle which they make at this time. They may also sometimes be located by the call of a small bird, known to the Siriono as eakwantii iéa, which accompanies the tapir and lives largely by eating the wood ticks from its body. The call of this bird is a clear sign to the Indian that there is a tapir not far away. Once the sleeping animal is discovered, the hunter sneaks up quietly to within a few feet and shoots it in the heart with a lanceolate bamboo-headed arrow. Ifa feeding tapir is discovered in the day- time, the hunter conceals himself in the brush near- by and whistles like another tapir until the animal comes within range of his bow. He then aims for the heart and having released his arrow gives rapid chase until the bleeding animal falls.
The alligator (yikdri ekwdsu) is one animal which is truly abundant in the area, particularly during the dry season when the waters are low and when they lie on the sand banks to sun themselves or come further inland to lay their eggs.
Alligators are hunted both with a bow and arrow and with a club. Arrows are employed when alligators are in the water with their heads up for air; clubs, when they are lying in the open sunning themselves. When shooting an alligator, which is difficult to kill, the hunter aims either for the eye or for the region just back of the shoulder. After being hit and threshing around for some time in the water, the animal usually comes to the surface and can then be retrieved. If not, the hunter may wade in, taking with him an arrow to locate the beast by feeling around on the bottom. Once the animal is located, the hunter goes under water, grasps it by the tail, and slowly drags it ashore. As these reptiles sometimes live for an hour or two after they are shot, considerable time is allowed
to elapse before any attempt is made to retrieve them. In case they are encountered in the open they are clubbed on the head until dead.
Newborn alligators are sometimes used by hunters to attract the mother. When a young alligator is caught it begins to cry for its mother, who, upon hearing it, comes running out of the water to retrieve it. The hunter, waiting on shore, strikes the mother over the head with a club as she comes up the bank. By imitating a young alligator a hunter can often produce the same result.
Alligator hunting is regarded as a precarious business, and the hunter takes care so as not to get bitten. While I was living at Tibaera an Indian named Eabokéndu (Father-of-Long-Hair), while fishing at the edge of a lake, was surprised by an alligator and bitten on the upper leg. He saved his life by jabbing the point of an arrow into the alligator’s eye, but was left with a nasty wound that did not heal over for several months.
Coatis are generally killed in the trees with barbed chonta-headed arrows. When a troop is discovered, a hunter is rarely able to kill more than one before the rest of the band takes to the ground in flight. When this happens, the hunter drops his bow and arrows and gives chase through the brush. I have seen coatis overtaken in this fashion. They are seized by the tail and their heads bashed on the ground, or they are hit with a club picked up at random. Not infrequently a hunter is bitten or gashed by the sharp eye teeth of the coati while making his catch.
The jaguar (yékwa) and the puma are rarely encountered in the forest. They are mostly found on the pampa. Only one large jaguar and three small ones were killed by the Indians while I was living with them. Jaguars are shot, either in the trees or on the ground, with bamboo-headed arrows.
The giant anteater (antandiga), being a slow animal, is generally killed with a club. Only in case one is discovered in a tree is it shot with a bow and arrow. The same may be said for the smaller variety (antanbija). The honey bear when encountered tapping a hive of wild bee honey is shot with the bow and arrow.
Armadillos (tdtu) are usually routed from their holes with a long flexible midrib of motacti palm, and are clubbed as they come out. If caught out- side their holes they are shot in the head with an
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—-HOLMBERG Qa
arrow. The same methods are used with the paca (titimi). The agouti (taikw) is more generally shot while feeding on wild fruits which have dropped from the trees in the forest.
Most hunting is done individually or in groups of two or three. Game is carried in from the forest on the hunter’s back. The animals are bound together with liana and suspended from the hunter’s head with a tumpline of liana. Each hunter carries in his own game.
FISHING
Unlike many of his South American Indian contemporaries, who developed or adopted the fishhook, traps, nets, or poisoning as methods of catching fish, the Siriono does all his fishing with the bow and arrow. His less developed tech- niques consequently shut him out from a large supply of fish that is found in the area, and has limited fishing largely to the dry season, the months of July, August, September, and October, when the rivers and lakes are low and the waters are clear. At this time there is an abundance of fish in the low waters around the rapids, and these are caught either by shooting them with the bow and a barbed chonta-headed arrow or by stabbing them with an arrow.
Although I have seen some 15 edible varieties of tropical fish, the Siriono rarely attempt to catch more than four: catfish, bagre, bentones, and yeyt. Occasionally, one of the larger fishes, such as the pact, is shot when feeding on chonta fruits that have dropped into a river or stream, but this is rare.
Around the edge of lakes, the usual method of catching fish is to wait in the overhanging branches of a wild fruit tree that is shedding fruit on which the fish are feeding. As the fish come up to eat the fruits, which either fall naturally into the water or are thrown in by the fisherman, they are shot with the barbed chonta-headed arrow and pinned to the bottom. Since the arrows are very long and the branches are low, the hunter to re- trieve his catch merely reaches down and ex- tracts the arrow, the fish being held by the barb. With patience and by occasionally changing his position a man can shoot as many as a dozen fish in a day by this method.
Another source of fish, and perhaps the principal one, are the small ponds and streams which fill up with water and fish in the rainy season but
which dry up in the dry season and offer the fish no means of escape. When the waters are drying, the fisherman walks through a pond catching the fish with his hands, stabbing them with an arrow, or hitting them on the head with a stick.
Although almost all of the Siriono today possess fishhooks, I rarely saw them actually used. Since they have no watercraft of any kind, it is impos- sible for them to reach the deep water where a fishhook would be of special advantage to them. Moreover, since they are not a river people, and since most of their camps are inland, fishing is not. an important activity nor does it contribute much to the food supply.
COLLECTING
In the total economy, collecting ranks next to hunting in importance. This activity is partici- pated in by both the men and women, and since much of the collecting is done by nuclear families, children get an early education in spotting and gathering edible products from the forest. Al- though women and children do considerable col- lecting while the men are off hunting in the forest, when it involves tree climbing they are always accompanied by the men. Now that iron tools have been introduced, many of the wild fruit trees of the area are being destroyed, because the natives find it easier to cut them down than to climb them when harvesting fruits.
Of all of the products collected, palm cabbage (kigia) is the most important. Practically all of the palms of the region yield an edible heart, but motactii is the most abundant and one of the easiest from which to extract the kigia (the tree is always cut down). It provides a constant source of vegetable food. This palm, moreover, produces a fruit (yuktdi) about the size of an egg, which grows in bunches, and which also forms an important staple in the diet the year around. When pickings are especially slim these two prod- ucts, although not very nourishing, can always be relied upon to tide the Indians over until a more substantial diet can be obtained. As we shall see later, the importance of the palm cabbage is reflected in the magical aspect of the culture, its collection by women being occasionally pre- ceded by a magical bloodletting rite.
Other palms, besides yielding a comestible heart the year around, also bear fruits which mature in a more seasonal cycle than the motact. During
28 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
February, March, and April, the small red fruits of the chonta palm (siriba) are collected. At this season of the year the Indians also devote them- selves to gathering the fruit of a palm not unlike the motacti which they call hindoéra. In extract- ing these fruits, which grow in bunches, the tree is climbed and the cluster pulled down.
During the months of July, August, and Septem- ber there is an abundant harvest of the fruits of the samuque palm (ffba) and of the nuts of the cusi palm. These latter, which are usually col- lected on the ground after they have fallen from the trees, are one of the most nutritious wild foods found in this part of the Amazon Valley. The fruits of the assaf (tibaéra) and the totaf (korondia) palms, which are extensively used by the whites of the region for making wine, are not collected by the Siriono with whom I lived.
In addition to the above-mentioned palms, there are many other fruit-bearing trees which seasonally add their crops to the Siriono food supply. Pre- dominant in the months of February, March, and April are the fruits of the coquino (iba), the aguai (ibadisa), the gargatéa (dikisia), pacdy (itNga), wapomo (asambdkwa), pacobilla (:dayd), cocao (ibiro), ballau (fiéiba), and paquié (tibdr7), as well as unidentified wild fruits which the Siriono call mbéa, tikarta, and tartima. There is only one other fruit of any importance gathered in the dry season. This is an acid fruit known to the whites of the region as mbis and to the Siriono as ndia.
In collecting wild fruits the men climb the trees and throw them down to the women waiting below. This often entails considerable work as the trees are sometimes of such size that it is necessary to lash saplings to them in order to climb them, and it is frequently hazardous since a man is liable to fall from a branch while picking the fruits. If the fruits are not located too high in a tree, however, a man may fashion a rude hook by bending over and binding with liana the top end of a midrib of a motact palm leaf, which can then be used to pull the fruits down from the tree. People usually eat their fill at the site of a fruit tree before loading their baskets to carry back to camp.
The digging of roots and plants and the grub- bing of worms are almost negligible occupations among the Siriono, and provide hardly any part of the diet. The same may be said for the collect-
ing of insects, which was never done insofar as I observed. Certain varieties of shelled inverte- brates—a mollusk called urékwa and a mussel called yisitta—exist in the region, but these are likewise not sought for food, although their shells are gathered for tools. Several species of tortoise (konémbi) are extensively collected for food. These are highly prized, as they can be tied up and cooked when desired.
Like other tropical forest Indians the Siriono are fond of extracting the honey (hidou) of wild bees, which is the only ‘sweet’? they possess. It is relished not only as food but for the making of mead as well. Honey is avidly sought, especially during the dry season when it is most abundant. In searching for honey, the Siriono do not go so far as to follow bees to the hive, but men out hunting, or collecting with the women, are most skillful in spotting wild beehives, which are usually located in hollow trees that are still standing. If the honey is not extracted when sighted, the person finding it returns later to do so.
In extracting honey the tree containing the hive may or may not be cut down. In any case, a hole is made—nowadays with an iron ax—below the spot where the honey is located. The combs are then removed with the hands and the honey wrung from them into calabashes. Before the in- troduction of iron tools, the hole where the bees entered the hive was enlarged by using fire and the chonta digging stick. The removal of a hive of wild honey often took as long as an entire day. Besides collecting the honey from the hive, the Indians save the beeswax, which is prepared for use as cement in arrow making.
AGRICULTURE
Although agriculture has been practiced for many years by the Siriono (they may originally have been a strictly nomadic people), it has never reached a sufficient degree of development to prevent their remaining a fairly mobile people. On the whole, its practice is subsidiary in the total economy to both hunting and collecting. One of the reasons for this may be that the game supply of an area becomes scarce before the rewards of agriculture can be reaped, thus entailing a rygra- tion of the band to other areas to search for game. Moreover, the sheer physical effort involved in adequately clearing a patch for planting is enor-
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG 29
mous, as all labor of this kind is done with the digging stick and fire. Hence the Siriono have doubtless experienced greater rewards from the collecting of wild vegetable products and fruits, some of which, as we have seen, are available and abundant the year around, than they have from the practice of agriculture, whose yields are sporadic and uncertain.
At the time of my stay, the Siriono with whom IT lived under aboriginal conditions were planting the following crops on a limited scale: maize (a soft red variety, unique in the area), sweet manioc, camotes, papaya, cotton, and tobacco. Here and there throughout the area of their wanderings, they have also planted calabash and uruku trees. According to one of my oldest and best informants, Embtita (Beard), both cala- bashes and tobacco had been introduced in his lifetime, which would be within the last 50 years. Of the other plants, however, he emphatically stated that his father had told him that they had been given to the tribe by Moon (the mythological hero) and were thus very old in Siriono culture.
No magical practice accompanies either the sowing or the harvesting of crops, and what plant- ing is done is largely a family affair and not an activity in which all members of the band coopera- tively participate. Both man and wife work jointly in clearing and burning over a small plot, frequently just outside of the house, in which they sow, also cooperatively, a few plants or seeds of maize, manioc, papaya, camotes, cotton, and tobacco. These plots are seldom over 50 feet square, and most of the work in them is done with the digging stick, the only agricultural tool. Today, of course, machetes are commonly em- ployed in clearing a plot, but the digging stick is still extensively used in planting.
Little attention is paid to the time of year in sowing, although more sowing is done at the begin- ning of the rainy season than during the dry season, probably because the group is less mobile during wet weather. However, I saw maize, manioc, papaya, and tobacco planted the year around. Camotes, on the other hand, I saw planted only during March and April, these being harvested in July and August. Once plants are sown little attention is paid to them until harvest.
Although a more or less permanent Siriono hut is encircled by familial garden plots, by no means are all gardens planted just outside of the
794440—50—3
hut. A hunter who is accustomed to going periodically to a certain lagoon, for example, to hunt or shoot fish, may plant a small garden there so as to have vegetable foods available when he returns on subsequent trips. I used to make hunting trips with my friend and informant, Erésa-ednta (Strong-eyes), and his five wives and children to a lagoon about 2 days’ journey on foot south of Tibaera, where he had maintained garden plots for many years. These hunting parties, which frequently included his two brothers and his fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law and their families, would often last 2 weeks, during which time we would make our headquarters at his gardens. While the men hunted around the lake, the women would tend the few plants and gather what produce they had yielded. Other hunters maintained similar plots on other lakes and would frequently repair to them with their families to hunt, tend their gardens, and eat. Excess produce, such as a harvest of maize, is sometimes stored at the site in rude motact baskets, so as to have a supply available on the next trip. Generally, however, little movement takes place until most of the crop has been eaten because of the difficulty of carrying it any great distance or the uncertainty of returning to the same spot for some time afterward.
ANIMAL HUSBANDRY
The Siriono possess no domesticated animals. Even the dog has not been introduced to the groups still wandering in the forest, although its existence is known through some individuals who have had contact with the outside. The general reaction to the dog, by those Indians who had had no contact with it, was one of extreme fear, This is not to be wondered at since the dog and the jaguar are called by the same term, yékwa. When I asked informants why the two were called by the same name, they invariably called my atten- tion to the similarity between the footprint of a jaguar and that of the dog.
Although domestication is an art foreign to the Siriono, the young of various animals are some- times captured alive and brought home as pets; under such conditions, however, I have rarely seen them live for more than a day or two, as they are very roughly handled by the children and are given no food. Consequently, they serve as morsels for some old man or woman for whom
4
30 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
pickings are slim. Generally, the young of animals are killed immediately after the mother is killed. I was told by informants at Casarabe that young animals were sometimes raised to adulthood and then killed for food, but while living with the less acculturated groups J never saw a single instance in which this occurred. When we were settled at Tibaera, for example, I myself tried to raise several howler monkeys, a coati, a young tapir, and a baby anteater—never, however, with any success, because they were soon killed and eaten by their Indian wards. These would then give me some such excuse for their dying as having been smothered by smoke in the night or having escaped into the forest. In all instances, I was
able to establish that they had been killed and eaten while I was absent.
WATER AND FUEL
There are plenty of rivers, lakes, and streams in the territory of the Siriono that contain a fresh supply of water the year around. Even when one is traveling through the bush during the height of the dry season one can usually find a water hole, a stream, or a brook from which to drink. Camp sites are always located near these spots. No wells are ever dug.
There is likewise no shortage of firewood. The forest is full of dead and rotten trees that make excellent fuel.
FOOD AND DRINK
Two of the most frequent expressions that one hears around a Siriono shelter are: ‘‘Ssedidkwa titi” (“My stomach is very empty”) and “ma nde geri” (“Give me something”’). To the latter may be added an appeal for some delicacy, such as a piece of tapir or peccary meat, a bit of wild bee honey, or whatever else to eat someone may have around. But since the attention of the Siriono is most frequently and forcibly focused on his stomach, requests for anything but food are rare. Not infrequently the unlucky hunter, while resting from an unsuccessful chase, is re- proached by his wife for not having brought home more game, and, invariably, as one leaves for the hunt, the women and children call after him such commands as ‘Bring me back the leg of a peccary”’ or “Bring me back some tapir meat.”
DIET
The environmental and cultural conditions which exist among the Siriono are most favorable for giving rise to a strong anxiety about questions of food. It would seem, in fact, that of all the basic drives demanding satisfaction for survival, hunger is the one most frequently frustrated. The supply of food is rarely abundant and always insecure. Game is not plentiful; the techniques of hunting, fishing, and agriculture are very limited; patterns of food storage do not exist. Consequently, eating habits depend largely upon quantities of food available for consumption at the moment. When food is plentiful people eat to excess and do little else; when it is scarce they
go hungry while looking for something more to eat. Starvation, however, never occurs. There are times when the Indians go for days on a diet of motact fruits and palm cabbage, but these seem to be adequate for subsistence until game can be hunted. I know of one instance in which a party of Indians survived for 18 or 20 days on a diet of nothing more than palm cabbage and a few wild fruits collected from the forest. Since they were on the march during this time, and were thus using up a great deal of energy, they exhibited definite signs of undernourishment after their journey.
While I was living at Tibaera, my attention was called one afternoon to the arrival of seven Indians (two men, two women, and three chil- dren) who appeared to be especially thin and emaciated. After giving them some food, I inquired as to the reason for their semistarved condition. One of the men told me that they had run away from the Government School at Casarabe, situated about a hundred miles east through an uninhabited forest and plain that contained no trails, and that they had been with- out food for “many” days. This struck me as strange, inasmuch as the men were carrying their bows and arrows and the lands through which they had come were known to contain considerable game, including wild cattle which occasionally stray from the herds that wander on the plains of Mojos. Their hunger, it turned out, resulted not from the lack of game but from a lack of fire. After leaving the school, they marched at a rapid
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG 31
pace for a day or two to escape pursuit, after which they became so fatigued that while they were sleeping heavily one night their fires became extinguished. Since the Siriono have lost the art of making fire, and will not eat raw game under any conditions, this party was left with the alternative either of returning to the school and being severely punished for running away or of striking out in the direction of settlements which they knew to exist on the Rio Blanco and being rewarded by obtaining fire and freedom. While making the journey to Tibaera, they were reduced to a diet of a few plants and wild fruits which they found along the way, and because of the young children they were considerably impeded in their progress. Thus the journey, which would normally take about 6 to 8 days to complete on a full diet, lengthened to a period of 18 or 20 days because of the meager diet on which they were forced to exist. One of the men told me that if they had not arrived when they did they might well have starved to death.
Circumstances like those just mentioned rarely occur, but it is not uncommon for the Siriono to go for several days at a time without eating meat. My notes are full of statements to the effect that there was no meat in camp for periods of 2 or 3 days, and when I myself was on the march with the Indians, I passed, in common with my com- panions, many meatless days. The longest of such periods that I recall endured for 4 days, dur- ing which time we were reduced to a diet of cusi nuts, palm cabbage, and motact fruits. At this time we were wandering through a particularly sterile piece of high ground on which no game was sighted. When we finally did run across a band of wild peccary late one afternoon, we were all so fatigued that we were unable to give adequate chase and thus bagged only about half as many animals as we might have killed under more favor- able conditions.
While first living at Tibaera, I kept records of the amount of game hunted and consumed by the band for a period of 3 months—during August, September, and October, 1941. At this time there were about 50 adults living there, and no meat was being introduced from the outside. During August and most of October I kept the records myself, but during September and the first 8 days of October I was wandering with another group of Indians in the forest, and the
records were kept by a Bolivian employee of mine who stayed at Tibaera. The daily amount of meat hunted, by whom secured, and the approxi- mate quantity, i. e., estimated gross weight, were noted. The exact distribution of the meat to each individual was impossible to record, but the dis- tribution outside of the extended family was noted when it occurred. On the basis of the total popu- lation, the approximate consumption of meat per individual per day is shown in the following tabulation:
Month (1941): (ial pounile) Augusts-4- 222 oan 2S Sco s 0. 56 September. - =.=. =.sssssce2n25 . 53 Octobersin = sso ee eee . 36
After my return from the forest in early October I was accompanied by 94 more Indians, so that keeping records of the amount of meat hunted and consumed by the entire group became so compli- cated and time-consuming that I was forced to abandon it. However, the figures above give a rough estimate of the quantities of meat consumed daily by the average Siriono. The noticeable decrease for the month of October was probably due to the fact that the Indians were more active in clearing land—to be planted in the month of November—than in hunting. Although I have no reliable data on meat consumption for the other months of the year, it is probably less during January, February, March, and April than at other times, because of the difficulty of travel during the rainy season.
The figures above represent the amount of meat hunted by the Indians with bows and arrows. The data, of course, are not strictly accurate, because the weight of the meat had to be estimated and the number of people present in camp was not always the same. During this period some hunters would be gone for 3 or 4 days at a time, when it was impossible to keep records of their catch, and on some days perhaps not all of the catch was recorded. But even allowing for a large margin of error, the average Indian probably eats less than a pound of meat per day.
During August there was no meat in camp for 11 days; in September for 9 days; in October for 12 days. The most persistent hunter was out for 16 of the 31 days in August, 12 of the 30 days in September, and 19 of the 31 days in October. The majority of hunters averaged from 10 to 12
32 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
days a month. To be sure, the conditions at Tibaera were not in all respects aboriginal. In- formants told me, however, and my observations under aboriginal conditions seem to bear them out, that a man goes hunting on the average of every other day throughout the year. On the odd days he rests, repairs arrows, eats (if he has any food), etc.
While I was wandering in the forest with a group of Indians, when I too was hunting with a rifle and shotgun, the amount of meat consumed by the group rose considerably. I have records on this only for September 1941, a large part of which I spent on the march with parts of two extended families of Indians (21 adults in all) and one Boli- vian companion in search of another band. Dur- ing the first 11 days of the march, when most of the hunting was done with the rifle and shotgun, our meat consumption averaged 2.2 pounds per individual per day. After we had rested several days with another band and continued the march, our meat consumption jumped to 4.1 pounds per day for the last 15 days. J am inclined to believe that the increase was largely due to the fact that with a rifle and shotgun we were able to bag more big game, like tapirs, alligators, and peccaries, than the Indians would have been able to kill with their bows and arrows. Part of the increase, of course, may have resulted from the fact that we were wandering in areas richer in game than most and that we were hunting every day, but the superiority of the rifle over the bow and arrow was almost certainly a factor. When game was sighted, the Indians would almost always call on my Bolivian companion or me to shoot.
Although meat is the most desired item in the diet of the Indians, it is by no means the most abundant. Maize, sweet manioc, and camotes (when available) constitute a very important part of the food supply. Maize is eaten especially during the months of February and March. By the end of March the supply of maize, except for the few large ears that are saved for seed, has generally been exhausted. Sometimes, though rarely, maize is replanted in May to be eaten in July and August. Manioc, once planted, takes from 8 months to a year to mature. These restless natives seldom sow fields of any size, since they will often not be on hand to reap the benefits. Frequently in the Siriono territory one runs across old gardens containing edible stands of manioc
PUBLICATION NO. 10
that had been abandoned before the product was mature. When available, however, manioc is eaten the year around. Camotes constitute a heavy part of the diet during July, August, and September. The supply is never great, however, and is usually exhausted soon after the harvest. Papayas are generally available in small quantities the year around because the plant readily grows wherever seeds are dropped. The Indians seldom plant papayas. From their habit of swallowing the seeds of the ripe fruit, new plants automatically spring up after the seeds are expelled in the excre- ment. The area surrounding an Indian hut is thus rich in papaya trees.
Supplementing the diet of meat and agricultural products are numerous varieties of wild fruits already referred to which mature during January, February, and March. These, coupled with maize, supply sufficient food for the semisedentary rainy season, when the meat supply is reduced.
Food seems to be scarcest at the end of the rainy season (May and June), when there are few available wild fruits and when the waters are still too high to allow extensive migration. It is also scarce at the beginning of the rainy season (Novem- ber and December) before the maturity of wild fruits and agricultural products.
FOOD TABOOS
With the exception of snakes and insects, almost everything edible in the environment contributes to the food supply. The reason for not eating snake meat, however, does not rest on magical or religious grounds; the Siriono believe, since a snake is able to kill by poison, that anyone who eats snake meat is also apt to be poisoned. This taboo applies not only to all poisonous snakes, such as the bushmaster and the rattler, but is generalized to include even nonpoisonous ana- condas, which often reach a length of 20 feet and could contribute considerable meat to the food supply.
I was presented with two favorable oppor- tunities to break down the taboo on snake meat, but in both cases the experiments failed. In the first instance, I killed a bushmaster about 8 feet in length just outside of the house. Since I was badly in need of a waterproof pouch in which to carry my powder and shot, I decided to remove the hide and to try to make one. While skinning
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—-HOLMBERG 33
the reptile, I noticed that it was particularly fat, and since I had no oil with which to keep my arms greased I decided to fry down some snake fat for this purpose. Also, since I had never had the opportunity, I decided to taste some of the meat. I made a point of frying a large steak in front of the Indians so that they could readily observe everything that was going on, and after this was done I sat down in a hammock and ate it in full view of the chief, who had not only warned me not to eat it but who, I am sure, expected me to drop dead at any moment. Fortunately, no ill effects resulted. On the following day I ate some more, but though I tried my best, I was unable to get a single Indian to try a piece of the meat. Some days later I had occasion to bake some corn muffins, and since I had no lard at the time I decided to make them with snake grease. After they were done the chief came around, and I offered him one. He began contentedly to munch it. After he had eaten about half, I could not resist the tempta- tion to tell him that the muffins contained snake fat, whereupon he immediately jumped out of the hammock, put his finger down his throat, and threw up every bit of the muffin he had eaten. For weeks afterward he reminded me of the trick I had played upon him and was skeptical of eating any food that I offered him until he was certain that the snake fat was gone.
On the second occasion, my Bolivian companion, Silva, killed an anaconda of about 20 feet in length. Conditions for introducing snake meat at the time were favorable since little game had been secured for several days. But even under these circumstances, although I myself again set the example, I was unable to convince my Indian companions to try it. They showed no compunc- tion, however, about either hunting or eating the buzzards which fed on the carcass of the snake, and for several days thereafter buzzard became a prominent part of their diet.
Apart from snake meat, bats, and a few poison- ous insects there are few things the Indians refrain from eating. Although not constituting a promi- nent part of the diet, such things as head lice, wood ticks, and grubs are swallowed without compunction.
Theoretically, a man is not supposed to eat the flesh of an animal which he kills himself. If a hunter violates this taboo, it is believed that the
animal which he has eaten will not return to be hunted by him again. Continued breaches of this taboo are consequently supposed to be followed automatically by the sanction of ill-luck in hunting. This rule may formerly have been an effective mechanism by means of which to force reciprocity in the matter of game distribution, but if so, it has certainly lost its function today, for the disparity between the rule and its practice is very great indeed. Few hunters pay any atten- tion to the rule at all, and when they do it is only with respect to larger animals, such as the tapir and the harpy eagle, that are rarely bagged any- way. In the case of smaller animals, such as coati and monkeys, I never saw hunters show any reluctance to eating those that they had killed themselves. Embtta, one of my older informants, told me that when he was a boy he never used to eat any of the game that he killed, but that nowa- days the custom had changed and that it was no longer possible to expect meat from someone else who hunted it. It thus seems that through a gradual process of change hunters have discovered that eating their own game does not necessarily result in poorer luck in hunting but, rather, in greater satisfaction to the hunger drive. The reinforcing experience of eating one’s own game has thus caused a partial break-down in an old tribal custom.
The few food taboos that do prevail among the Siriono have almost exclusive reference to the ani- mal world. Agricultural products and wild foods collected from the forest are never taboo; they can be eaten on all occasions, by all age groups, and by both sexes. Free of all food taboos, including cer- tain kinds of meat which are forbidden to others, are the aged, that is, those who have passed child- bearing age or possess grown children. Since the Siriono do not practice fasting of any kind, even ceremonially, the aged can thus eat anything at any time.
There are, in fact, certain meat foods that are supposed to be eaten only by the aged. These include the harpy eagle, the anteater, the owl monkey, and the howler monkey. Since the aged usually get only the left-overs of other food, the society thus seems to have provided for them in some way by reserving these animals exclusively for their use. Under conditions of need, however, I have frequently seen them eaten by people who were not supposed to eat them; only when
34 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
other animals are relatively plentiful are the taboos strictly observed.
Apart from the above-mentioned food taboos there are few others. Since these latter will be discussed on the occasions when they prevail they will not be mentioned here.
PRESERVATION AND STORAGE OF FOOD
The preservation of food is almost unknown. In this tropical climate fresh meat must be cooked within 8 hours after it is killed in order to prevent spoilage. The Siriono, moreover, have no salt with which to preserve meat, nor have they developed any techniques of drying and smoking meat to ren- der it edible for more than 2 or 3 days. Consider- ing the rude methods by which game is bagged, of course, the catch is rarely so large that it cannot be easily consumed within a day or two. If, however, the amount of game is greater than can be immedi- ately eaten, the excess meat is left lying on a low platform under which a fire is kept smouldering to preserve it. It thus remains edible for about 3 days. But since no hunting takes place when one has meat on hand, the immediate surplus is never replenished. Hence even under the best of con- ditions the Indians can never be sure of possessing a meat supply for more than the 3 days that it can be preserved by their crude methods.
Foresight in another respect does exist. On hunting and gathering trips the Siriono like espe- cially to encounter tortoises, because these can be collected and preserved alive over considerable periods of time. Tortoises are relatively abundant in the environment, and a lucky hunter may some- times return with as many as 8 or 10 of them, each of which may weigh from 8 to 10 pounds. They can be tied up with liana and kept alive for about a week, thus insuring a man and his family a meat supply for as long a time. In instances of this kind, one or two tortoises are usually butchered each day. In the meantime the hunter spends his time eating and loafing and does not go out on the hunt again until the supply is exhausted. I have seen hunters who, under these conditions, rarely moved from their hammocks for an entire week.
Maize is the only agricultural product that is ever stored in any quantity. Immediately after each harvest the various families tie their surplus ears of maize (in the husk) on to poles in the shelter. At this time a few of the larger ears are
selected and put away in a basket for seed; the rest are gradually eaten until the supply is ex- hausted. Since crops are never very large, the surplus quantity of maize rarely lasts for more than a month after harvest. Thus, although two crops may be planted by a family during the year, maize is actually eaten in abundance for only about 2 months, that is, for about a month follow- ing each harvest.
Manioc and camotes also are not stored, nor is the former made into flour. Both manioe and camotes are dug from the ground and eaten as they mature. When manioc is extracted, a few of the tubers may be planted at the same time so as to have some plants constantly maturing, but under aboriginal conditions the supply of both manioc and camotes, like that of maize, is never very abundant, and when the crop is mature it is quickly exhausted. It is a rare family that has manioc to eat the year around (I never knew of one), or camotes to eat for more than a month or two after the harvest.
Wild fruits and other edible forest products are likewise never preserved or stored. Once the season of wild foods has passed they are not eaten again until the next season comes around.
With respect to the food supply in general it can be said that, except for certain agricultural products like manioc, maize, and camotes, re- serves for more than 2 or 3 days are never built up. Fortunately the environment offers a constant source of some foods, like palm cabbage, so that even though hunger is often intense starvation is never imminent.
PREPARATION OF FOOD
Little care is taken in dressing game, which is done either by men or women. Animals with hair, such as monkeys and peccaries, are first singed whole in the fire, and the burned hair is then scraped off with the fingernails or with a small section of a midrib of a motact palm leaf. The animal is then gutted with a sharp piece of bamboo after which the whole carcass is sometimes (but by no means always) perfunctorily washed before it is cooked. Birds are hastily plucked and then singed in the fire and gutted. If an animal is small it is usually cooked whole, but if it is too large for a pot (or too large to roast rapidly) it is quartered or cut up into smaller
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG 35
pieces with a bamboo knife. Armored animals like the armadillo and tortoise are usually thrown in the fire and left there to roast in their shells. Fish are never gutted before they are cooked, nor are the scales removed.
The division of labor as regards cooking varies a great deal, depending upon the circumstances under which the food is being prepared. Every- one knows how to cook, even young children.
Cooking is an art learned very early in life. When traveling with his mother and father, a child is often given a cob of corn to roast, some motacti fruits to roast, or a morsel of viscera to cook for himself. In fact, whenever animals are being cut up, there are always young children (as often boys as girls) around, waiting for some tidbit, which they then take to a fire and roast for themselves. Such morsels they share with no one else.
While in camp, when the group is fairly settled, most of the cooking is done by the women. This is especially true if the preparation of the meal involves the grinding of maize or other vegetable products that are sometimes mixed with the meat and cooked in a pot. On the march, however, when pots have been temporarily stored and when most of the food is roasted, the men take as active part in cooking as the women. In fact, the roasting of meat often falls entirely to the men, especially since they may be off on the hunt several days without the women and thus be forced to barbecue the game before returning to camp.
No condiments of any kind are used in cooking. Even salt (no deposits of this product are found in the area) is unknown to the Siriono living under aboriginal conditions. Evidently the foods they eat contain enough salt to produce the hydro- chloric acid necessary for digestion.
I introduced salt to some Indians for the first time, and they expressed a distaste for eating it. By using small quantities in cooking, however, they soon developed a craving for it. In some instances this craving (once the Indians have become accustomed to using salt) has become so great as to become an important factor in estab- lishing and maintaining friendly relations with the whites. The late Frederick Park Richards, an American cattle rancher living near El Carmen,
who was one of the first white men to establish permanent relations with the Siriono in the Rio Blanco area, told me that when he first came to the region in 1912 he was able to maintain peaceful relations with the Indians for years before they permanently settled down with him on his farms in 1925 by conditioning them to eating salt. I myself, however, have traveled with primitive groups when all of us went without salt for as long as 43 days without suffering any apparent ill effects from such a diet.
Actually, little emphasis is placed on the prepara- tion of food. Depending upon the time, place, type, and quantity of game, it may be roasted or baked in the ashes of the fire, broiled on a spit or babrecot, or boiled or steamed in a clay pot. Some vegetable foods, such as maize, are prepared by grinding before they are cooked, and, of course, many nuts and fruits are eaten raw.
The following is a list of foods and the ways they are prepared.
Foods:
Meats... -.»s¥s iM Never eaten raw; always broiled, roasted, or boiled; sometimes boiled with maize, manioc, or camotes.
Bishisa sees Aue cee Never eaten raw; almost always
roasted on babrecot with scales and guts; sometimes boiled.
Maize. bs22 -_efyo4= Never eaten raw; roasted in husk when young and tender; roasted on cob when mature and hard; sometimes ground up and boiled with meat or made into corn- meal cakes.
Manioes=;-. 15-46 Never eaten raw; peeled and boiled, sometimes with meat; roasted in peel in hot ashes.
Camotes= - = 22-2 Never eaten raw; boiled in peels, sometimes with meat; usually roasted with peels in hot ashes.
Papaya: - 54592 -4 Always eaten raw.
Palm cabbage_-_--- Eaten raw but frequently boiled with meat.
Motact fruit_-__.___ Never eaten raw; always roasted.
INUts eeeae ee Always eaten raw.
Coquino fruit____- Do.
Chonta fruit___-_-_ Always boiled.
Aguaf fruit__-_--- Always roasted.
Hindoéra fruit____ Do.
Gargatéa fruit____ Do.
Pacdy fruit---+-_- Always eaten raw.
Cac4o fruit__-___- Do.
Ndfa fruit. -_.-_-- Do.
36 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
EATING
It is difficult to establish a schedule of meal hours among the Siriono because of the insecure nature of the food supply and the nomadic character of life. People eat when they have food, and under these conditions they are just as apt to eat during the night as during the day. In fact, more food is consumed at night than at any other time be- cause hunters and collectors are away from camp most of the day and for reasons which we shall examine in a moment.
The principal meal is always taken in the late afternoon or early evening. Other eating is mainly of the between-meal type, and occurs at all hours of the day or night. I was constantly surprised to find, throughout my residence among the Siriono, that food which had been left over from an evening meal was invariably gone by morning. Frequently, moreover, after the eve- ning meal has been eaten, a pot of food is put on the fire to cook during the night, and this, too, has usually disappeared by morning.
The habit of eating during the night grows not only out of the necessity of hunting and collecting during most of the day but also out of a reluctance to share food with others. When meals are taken during the day, a crowd of nonfamily members always gathers to beg for morsels, and though little attention is usually paid to them, they do, nevertheless, constitute an annoyance. By eating at odd hours during the night, when nearly every- one else is asleep, an Indian not only gets more food but also avoids the nuisance of having others around to beg it from him. While I was on the march with the Siriono, my Bolivian companion and I were forced to follow the same practice. We found that it was impossible to eat in peace during the day, because we were constantly hounded by children and adults who claimed that they were hungry. The fact that we, too, had not eaten made no impression on them. Con- sequently we ate the greatest portion of our food at about midnight, when almost everyone else was asleep. A few of my loyal Indian companions, who developed a certain interest in my welfare, used frequently to wake me in the middle of the night to share food which they hated to display during the daytime because of the possibility of their having to divide it with someone else. When we were settled—I then sometimes had a supply
of certain foods—it used to amuse me to note how my Indian friends would suggest that they come to my house and eat at night when the others would be fast asleep.
Strictly speaking, the Siriono possess no eating utensils. A broken calabash may sometimes be used to scoop food from a pot or even to eat from, but such utensils as plates and spoons are not manufactured. Generally speaking, everyone participating in a meal eats from a common pot. Chunks of meat, pieces of manioc, and the like are picked out of the pot with the hands, but when the meal consists of gruel or a soup the food is generally scooped out of the pot by using half-shells of motaci fruits as spoons. Food is also sometimes distributed for consumption by pouring it out on leaves of patuji, a plant resem- bling the banana. The distribution of food rarely goes outside of the extended family. Within the extended family, however, the distribution of food does not follow any strict pattern. Each nuclear family cooks its own food and the head of the house usually gets the back of an animal; his first wife the two hind legs. Other parts of an animal are usually distributed without reference to status within the family.
Eating takes place without benefit of etiquette or ceremony. Food is bolted as rapidly as possible, and when a person is eating he never looks up from his food until he has finished, so as to avoid the stares of begging onlookers. The principal goal of eating seems thus to be the swallowing of the greatest quantity of food in the shortest possible time.
Appetites for particular foods are few. There is a preference for meat over all other foods and a preference for fat meat over lean meat, but the cook book of the Siriono is almost devoid of recipes. I have seen a man eat hawk with as much gusto as partridge, and I never heard an informant speak disparagingly about any food regarded as edible by the Siriono.
The quantities of food eaten on occasions are formidable. It is not uncommon for four people to eat a peccary of 60 pounds at a single sitting. When meat is abundant, a man may consume as much as 30 pounds within 24 hours. On one occasion, when I was present, two men ate six spider monkeys, weighing from 10 to 15 pounds apiece, in a single day, and complained of being hungry that night.
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG 37
NARCOTICS
The only narcotic used by the Siriono is tobacco (éro), which is smoked in clay pipes, whose manufacture has already been discussed. Both the men and the women smoke, although it is always the latter who make the pipes (kedkwa) and prepare the tobacco. Children do not smoke until after they have reached the age of puberty.
Just when the Siriono adopted tobacco is not known, although it certainly does not seem to have been aboriginal with them. As already mentioned, one of my oldest informants said that it was received from the whites while he was still a child, which would date its adoption by this particular group of Siriono at some time within the last 60 or 70 years. (The literature tells us nothing on this point.) Other informants at Casarabe, however, told me that when there was no tobacco available other leaves were smoked, but what these were I was never able to determine. The forest Siriono with whom [I lived at Tibaera saved seed and planted tobacco regularly with the rest of their crops, and they smoked no other kind of leaf. Wild tobacco, moreover, does not grow in the area.
After the leaves of tobacco have become mature they are picked by the women and are slowly dried on a small mat, made from the heart leaves of the motactii palm, which is placed on supports over the fire. Once dried the leaves are powdered in the hands and the tobacco is ready for smoking. The supply of powdered tobacco is stored in a small calabash, which is topped with a piece of corncob.
All smoking is done in the house. It is con- sidered bad form to smoke while on the hunt, as it is believed that animals will be driven away by the smell. Most smoking thus takes place while the Siriono are resting in the hammock or having drinking feasts, and hunters almost always smoke immediately after returning from the forest to stave off hunger until they are given some food.
The pipe is filled and lighted by placing a small live coal on top of the tobacco. The pipe is grasped by the stem (the bowl gets very hot) with either the right or the left hand. When smoking, the head is slightly tilted back, since the pipe stem protrudes downward from the bowl. The smoke is sucked into the mouth only (no inhala- tion) and is blown out in short rapid puffs by
794440—50-—_4
withdrawing the pipe and extending the lips. When there are several people around, the pipe is passed from one to another. When the pipe ceases to draw well, it is cleansed with a straw from a heart leaf of a motact palm.
The Siriono do not seem to be much addicted to the use of tobacco. However, its role in the drinking feast is important in aiding the partici- pants to arrive at a semidrugged or partially intoxicated condition. During the drinking feasts for women I often heard them singing impromptu songs about pipes and tobacco which indicates that this drug may have some further magical significance that I was unable to ascertain. To- bacco, however, is never used therapeutically.
DRINKING
Since the Siriono wear no clothes, and conse- quently perspire little, they are able to withstand long periods of time without water. Thirst, more- over, is almost never a problem to them, because wherever they wander they can find water holes or streams from which to drink, and if one can- not be found there are almost always lianas and stems of plants from which a considerable water supply can be obtained. Consequently the In- dians rarely carry water with them when they are on the march,
At camp sites, water is brought to the house by women or children in calabashes or in sections of bamboo, which also serve as drinking vessels. If a thirsty Indian comes upon a water hole while in the forest, he plucks a leaf of patuji to drink from. In doing this once in the company of Kénda, one of my youthful informants from Casarabe, I inadvertently dropped my leaf into the water when I had finished drinking. He snatched it up and threw it away in the forest, saying that the leaf of the patuji contained an evil spirit and that if one threw his leaf into the water after drinking one would become sick. Although the ideas about water and thirst have not been crystallized to a point where I was able to get much information about them, I did observe that all Siriono followed this practice when drink- ing from holes in the forest.
Accompanying the frustrations of forest life are occasional drinking bouts, which vary in frequency with the quantity of wild bee honey available. Since this product is most abundant in the dry season—after the flowering of the plants and
38 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
trees—most of them thus occur during the months of August, September, October, and November.
Mead is made from a mixture of cooked corn meal (or cooked manioc or cooked camotes), water, and wild bee honey. It is always made by the women. The maize is first ground up fine in a mortar. The corn meal is then mixed with water and boiled in a clay pot until it becomes thick gruel. The hot gruel (not masticated as by many South American Indians) is then emptied into calabashes (containing only a small round hole at the top), each of which is about half-filled with cold water, until they are filled to about four-fifths of their capacity. After the gruel and the water have been thoroughly mixed with a small stick, about half a cup of wild honey for each quart of mixture is added to the calabashes. The honey is then stirred into the mixture, and the holes of the calabashes are loosely stopped with leaves of patujti to keep out flies and to allow some air for fermentation. The calabashes are then stored (undisturbed) in hanging baskets for about 3 days, when the brew is considered to be of sufficient force (about the strength of beer) to be drunk.
In making other types of beer the same process is followed, the only difference being that manioc (or camotes) is substituted for maize in making the gruel. To increase the strength of the beer, to make it more nourishing, and to hasten the fermentation process, boiled or baked corn-meal cakes are sometimes added to the brew.
Calabashes are considered to be the most suit- able type of vessel for fermenting native beer, although when there was a shortage of these vessels I observed that it was fermented in long sections of bamboo.
The making of mead is accompanied by con- siderable excitement and bustle. Great care is taken to see that the mixture turns out all right. There are always plenty of children present hoping to get a bit of the honey, and the women usually do not lack helpers, since jealous neighbors, gen- erally uncooperative, offer their services in the hope that they too will get a chance to partake of the honey while the mead is being made. More often than not they are brushed off and return to their hammocks unrewarded.
Drinking bouts usually start informally. The man possessing the liquor invites a number of his male relatives to join him in consuming what beer he may have on hand. Bouts generally start in
the afternoon, and, depending upon the quantity of liquor available, may last until far into the night or even be continued on the following day. The participants squat in a circle near the host’s ham- mock, and as a calabash of mead is passed around, each in his turn drinks heavy draughts before passing it to the next person in the circle. The drinking is always accompanied by continual smoking of clay pipes (also passed around the circle), which ultimately contributes as much or more to the resulting intoxicated or drugged con- dition as does the somewhat light and nourishing native beer.
As a drinking feast progresses, the Siriono, who is a very uncommunicative fellow when sober, be- comes an animated conversationalist, a performer, and a braggart. At the opening of the bout the talk usually turns to the merits of the liquor. One of my more poetic informants, Krésa-ednta (Strong- eyes), used to say, in describing the liquor at the start of almost every drinking feast: ‘Yesterday it was without force, like water or like earth, but today it has great strength.’”’ As the effects of the drinking and the smoking begin to be felt, one or more of the participants breaks out in song, usually impromptu and related to some exploit of which he is particularly proud, such as the killing of a tapir or a harpy eagle. Another may be engaged in discussing the desirability of looking for a new wife (always a young one or yukwdki) or of casting out the shrew he now has. As the mood gets mellower everyone joins the singing, and when the party has reached an advanced stage almost everyone is singing a different tune at the same time.
While attending these drinking feasts, I tried my best to record a number of these songs, but I was never able to set down more than snatches of them because of the bedlam and the darkness existing at the time. Moreover, since most of the participants, following a drinking bout, were victims of alcoholic amnesia, brutal hangovers, and high anxieties, it was impossible to get much co- operation from them in this matter later.
At every drinking feast of any size most of the nonparticipating members of the group are as- sembled at the edge of the circle. The spectators amuse themselves listening to the songs and the conversation, commenting on the course of the feast, and waiting for the participants to get drunk enough so that they can sneak a drink now and
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—HOLMBERG 39
then. Children are always present, eagerly await- ing the emptying of a calabash, since it is then passed to them to drain the dregs. The women are almost always in the background watching over their husbands, because they are quite certain from previous experience that the party will end in a brawl. This is always the case when there is sufficient liquor. A man deep in his cups will turn to another (it may be his brother, uncle, his son-in-law, or even his father-in-law) and insult him with some such phrase as “ Htémi titi nde” (“You are very lazy’’) or ‘‘ Ai i tendé gatw”’ (“You never bring me meat with any fat on it”). He will be answered in the same vein, and a fight will soon break out. The Siriono do not fight with their fists at this time; physical aggression is expressed in the form of a wrestling match, in which one participant tries to throw the other to the ground again and again until he is too exhausted to rise. Since the contestants are usually so drunk that they cannot stand up, these wrestling matches frequently terminate with both of them passed out on the floor much to the merriment of the spectators. Not infrequently, however, one or the other (or both) falls into one of the innumerable fires in every Siriono hut and gets badly burned.
When the party reaches the fighting stage the crying women intervene and try to stop the fights. At this time they too come in for their share of aggression and not infrequently are struck forcibly by their husbands. However, I heard of only one case in which a man murdered his wife in one of these drinking bouts. This happened approxi- mately 15 years ago, the wife being shot through the heart with an arrow. Although overt aggres- sion runs high during drinking feasts, after they are over the participants usually suppress their angry feelings within a few days’ time, and all is normal again until another drinking bout takes place. Insofar as I observed little sexual activity takes place during or immediately after drinking feasts. Participants are usually too drunk to indulge in sex.
When a considerable supply of honey is avail- able, drinking bouts are timed so as to take place every few days until all the liquor is gone. For lack of honey, however, not more than a dozen are likely to occur during the year. A man who has given a feast expects to be invited to and is expected (wants) to attend those given by the people who participated in his. As most of the
people who take part in these feasts are near relatives, this almost always happens.
In only one instance did I notice that the aggressions of the drinking feasts were the direct cause of strained relations for a long period of time. During a bout in August 1941, Eantandu (Father-of-Strong-one), a chief, insulted and wrestled when drunk with Erésa-eénta (Strong- eyes), his cousin, or father’s sister’s son, over questions of food. KEanténdu when drunk told Erésa-eénta that he never brought him any food, that he never hunted spider monkeys, that he was lazy, that he was evil, etc. Although neither participant knew much about what he was doing, a wrestling match ensued in which Erésa- eAnta got badly burned in the fire, and he was unable to get out of his hammock for several days. As a result of this fight, about which Erésa-eanta was later told by his wives and brothers, strained relations persisted until January 1942, when I first saw the two together again at a drinking feast given by Eant&andu—one which, incidentally, did not end in a brawl, as the liquor ran out. After recovering from the first drinking feast, Erésa- eanta with a couple of his brothers and their families remained away from the band for long periods of time, hunting, fishing, collecting, and attending their gardens at a nearby lake. Although the party returned to Tibaera from time to time for a few days or a week, Erésa-e4nta would have no relations whatever with Eantandu, even though their respective wives were friendly enough. After relations had been reestablished at the second drinking feast, however, the two con- tinued on friendly terms.
Like the men, the women too have their drink- ing feasts, but these do not usually terminate as roughly as those of the men. In five of these feasts which I observed, singing was the prominent feature apart from the drinking and smoking. Although the women accused each other of having had sexual relations with one another’s husbands, most of them had reached such an intoxicated condition by the time these accusations were made that they were placed in their hammocks to sleep it off.
In only one instance did I observe mixed drinking. This involved three old women and their husbands and brothers. On this occasion, however, only a few calabashes of mead were available, and the party was not organized in any way.
AO INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
ROUTINE ACTIVITIES OF LIFE
DAILY ROUND
“Karly to bed and early to rise” is the motto of the Siriono, who usually retire to their hammocks as soon as night falls and who are up and about before the crack of dawn. Actually their day begins a couple of hours before dawn. Retiring as they do about 7 or 8 o’clock in the evening, they are generally awake by 3 a. m., when they begin to sing impromptu songs as they engage in the routine of roasting a cob of maize, a piece of manioc, or some camotes, or of warming up a pot of food left over from the night before. Such activity is continued until daylight, by which time they have eaten and the day’s work has begun.
In the early morning a Siriono hut must be ap- proached with caution so as to avoid stepping on the innumerable piles of excreta that have been freshly deposited just outside of the house during the night. Although adults retire to a respectable distance from the house to defecate during the day—there are no special latrines—their nightly behavior in this respect is restricted by the intense darkness, the annoyance of insect pests, and the fear of evil spirits, and they seldom go very far from the house. Moreover, the excreta are rarely removed the following day, but are left to gather flies, to dry up, or to be washed away by the rain. Thus after a few weeks’ time the immediate en- virons of the house become rather unbearable to the unaccustomed. The only care taken in this respect is to avoid defecating directly in the house, on the trails leading out from the house, or within about 10 yards of a water hole.
The activities of the day begin with little ceremony. Such health and cleanliness measures as washing the teeth, face, or hands, or combing the hair, at such an early hour of the morning, are quite unknown to the Siriono. True, one may go to the hole or a brook for water early in the morning, but it will be used for drinking or cooking. Moreover, at this time of day almost no attention is paid to one’s neighbor, This is clearly reflected in the native language, which contains no such salutations as “Good morning” or ‘Good night,” and it is rare to ask a neighbor how he slept the night before or to inquire of a sick relative whether he has improved during the night. Most early morning preoccupations, in fact, revolve around the happenings in one’s immediate family, within
which, however, neither loud conversation nor squalling children ever seem to be lacking. Espe- cially are complaints registered: one may have been bothered by mosquitoes the night before; another may have been bitten by a vampire bat; a third may have burned himself, having fallen out of his hammock into the fire during a night- mare.
On a typical day, when settled or on the march, the men are off to hunt at the break of day. If they have not had time to eat before they leave, they may take with them a piece of roast meat, maize, or manioc, to munch as they go along the trail. When men remain at home, they usually occupy themselves in repairing arrows, making bows and digging sticks, ete. If the band is fairly settled at the time, the men hunt in all directions from the house, but if the group is on the march, the hunters usually proceed in a circuitous route through the forest in the direction of the camping spot decided upon for that night. In any case the women are usually left behind to care for the children and to carry out the routine household duties or, if on the march, to pack up the gear and transport it to the next camping spot. As camps are rarely moved during the rainy season, and not more often than every 10 days or so during the dry season, a partial stability is maintained over considerable periods of time.
While the men are out hunting, the women may be occupied in any number of routine house- hold tasks, such as bringing in firewood, grinding corn, cooking, weaving baskets or mats, coiling pots, drying tobacco, or repairing hammocks. Tbe women also devote a considerable part of the average day to the spinning of cotton string, which is extensively used in arrow making. Since most of these household duties are pursued around the hammock and the fire, gossip and conversation are freely indulged in throughout the day, and there is almost always a pot of something cooking on the fire with which the women and children nourish themselves while the men are gone.
The men usually return from the hunt between 4 and 6 o’clock in the afternoon. Some type of food has already been prepared, awaiting their arrival, and while the men are eating, the women occupy themselves in dressing the day’s kill for the evening meal, which will be eaten as soon as it
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—-HOLMBERG 41
can be cooked. If darkness has not descended, a bath and sexual intercourse frequently follow the dinner, after which the Indians retire to their hammocks to smoke, play with the children, and talk until sleep overtakes them. Fatigued by a day of work or of walking in the forest, most members of the camp are asleep by 8 o’clock, unless there is to be a dance or a drinking feast.
WORK AND DIVISION OF LABOR
Labor is not a virtue among the Siriono. They are relatively apathetic to work (tdba tdba), which includes such distasteful tasks as house building, gathering firewood, clearing, planting, and tilling of fields. In quite a different class, however, are such pleasant occupations as hunting (gwdta gwdta) and collecting (déka déka, ‘to look for’’), which are regarded more as diversions than as work. This is not to be wondered at, since these latter pursuits are more directly and immedi- ately connected with the urge for food than are the more distantly rewarding labors of agriculture. What seems to be true, to put it psychologically, is that the responses of hunting, fishing, and col- lecting have been and are more immediately reinforced than those of agriculture.
When food, especially meat, is plentiful, little work is performed. What people like best to do at this time is to lie in their hammocks, rest, eat, indulge in sexual intercourse, sleep, play with their children, be groomed, sing, dance, or drink. Free time is rarely employed in improving the house, although rain is expected, or in enlarging a garden plot, although the supply of food is insecure. When the immediate needs for food have been supplied, a person is neither much criticized for doing nothing, nor much praised for occupying his time in constructive labor.
Besides the immediate desire and necessity for food, the incentives to labor are few. No prestige is gained by building a better house or a larger garden, both of which may have to be abandoned on the next move. It would seem, in fact, that the nomadic character of the band is the principal reason for not working, because the results of one’s labor can rarely be carried with one.
The nuclear family is the basic work group. Although considerable cooperation in the per- formance of duties takes place between members of an extended family, there are few tasks whose
performance necessitates the cooperation of all members of the band. The nearest approach to such cooperation occurs when the band is on the march—when a new camp site has to be cleared or when a new house has to be built. But even in carrying out these tasks, members of an extended family join together to clear the part of the site which they will occupy or to build that section of the house where they will live. In this simple society the ties of kinship are strong. Within the family, the division of labor follows normal lines of age and sex, except that the duties performed are neither as highly differentiated nor as sharply defined as in many preliterate societies. The peculiar circumstances prevailing in this environment and culture sometimes demand that a person perform temporarily, at least, tasks that might otherwise be delegated to the opposite sex. Thus, although cooking is normally the role of a
TaRLE 2.—Distribution of labor according to sex
| Men and
women | Women | Men
Activities
Collecting Clearing-- Sose ae Planting: 222-2205. st et sisst Fs ee RE Milling -t<. 2 tso anes cass dices feos Harvesting---.- ----
Dressing game J533 Burdenicarryingi..2-----2--5=--— = =!
XXXKKXKX
G@ookings.- 42.322 sch SEE 28h SH ke Caring for children_ - Spinning thread _-_-_- Twining 'string-=.2-22 21: 22. 9. e228 ste Mwintn gibOWwStTing. 7493-2 -=2 each eo ae Twining hammocks - Twining baby slings- Carrying water Collecting firewood-- -.---=.=2="-----=_-22--. Extracting: clays2:2-— bhi 2 dee Pot making------
Pipe making Weaving mates! : te Sere ge ss2 sean 2 Weaving: fire/fans!2 2-2 = &oS=S 5 babes Ln Weaving baskets -- pas Making mead_---------------- Preparing feather ornaments_- aS ae Strintingmecklaces*--se---se]=--—- a vanc--> mosign cote Cutting and depilating hair-__ ----__--------
Extracting honey Bip eral Weaponjmaking?? 040 -2i:t~ Sout te 285 E Tool making (spindle, digging stick, ete.)_. -|_- Houseibuildin pees. 9 - = sane een ema Bridge making 3-22 _/222 ccf sitt_ simi Refming beeswax-- 2-2. soo -cee coe ae Preparing utensils (calabashes, mortar and pestle; ete.) Ps - ses ssets se Soke ee 2 ae ee. ere Re oN aoe ase x<
42 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
woman, when the men are off on the hunt it is they who must barbecue the meat. Similarly, although basketry is the art of women, men must sometimes make baskets in which to carry home game.
On the whole, however, the sex division of labor follows the pattern presented in table 2.
TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION
Although rivers and lakes abound in the terri- tory traversed by the Siriono, all movement and transportation take place on foot, overland. Considering that the water courses are extremely abundant, that the Siriono are constantly crossing rivers and streams in their wanderings, and that there is no lack of excellent materials in the en- vironment from which to build canoes, it is surprising that they have remained unique, as compared with their immediate neighbors, in not constructing watercraft of some kind. Even though they are not a river people—their camps are usually located inland—the number of lakes and streams in their territory would seem to justify the use of watercraft, not only as an ad- junct to foot travel, but as a means of augmenting the food supply as well. Since much of the ac- tivity related to the food quest, during the dry season particularly, centers around the lagoons and streams, canoes would be of great advantage in fishing and in stalking waterfowl. It would seem, in fact, that the lack of canoes can only be explained by such hypotheses as that they have never tried to build them or that attempts to build them have proved unrewarding.
The trails (fiénda) over which transportation and hunting take place are not built; they simply grow up from use. A hunter may strike out in a general direction through the forest in quest of game, and as he follows his meandering course, avoiding dense growths of underbrush where travel is difficult and going around fallen trees tbat may impede his progress, he bends over a few leaves and twigs. In his travels he may en- counter a water hole, a stream, or a lake where hunting is good, and if this be the case, he may return again and again to the same spot, some- times with his tribesmen, until by frequent use a new trail is formed. When a new camp site has been settled, trails grow up rapidly as a result of hunters and collectors making food recon-
naissances in all directions from the house, Those routes yielding game are traversed again and again, while those proving sterile are immedi- ately abandoned.
Trails are never cleared and are very poorly marked. About every 15 feet or so a small plant or a piece of brush is bent over to the right of the direction in which one is proceeding. Thus one can always tell in which direction the trail runs or was made. Except in the cases of trails which connect one camp site with another, the network of trails roughly follows the pattern of a wheel. With the camp site as the hub, a trail goes out along one spoke and returns by another. A great deal of crisscrossing and overlapping, of course, do occur.
It is impossible for the uninitiated to follow these rude paths. Since most Indian hunting trails lead out from a hut and back to it, one must make many sterile attempts in trying to trace the course of a band from one abandoned hut to an- other, before striking the path that connects two houses. Even when I was traveling with Indians of the same tribal group, I found that they, too, were never sure whether a newly discovered trail was an abandoned hunting trail of another band or whether it might actually lead us on to the spot where the band was settled.
When on the march the Indians do not move ereat distances in a single day. The lack of good roads, the necessity of crossing swamps and streams, the impediment of young children who must be carried or who cannot walk rapidly, the burden of the gear—the hammocks, the pots, the baskets, the calabashes, the food, ete.—all hinder progress considerably. When lack of food or water forces a band to move, the members usually average not more than 8 or 10 miles a day, and since they stop to rest, hunt, and gather at each camping place, movement of the entire band does not usually take place more often than every 4 or 5 days. Unless there is some definite objective toward which they are traveling, they exhaust the wild life of an area as they travel.
While I was living with a band on the march for about 6 weeks during September and October 1941, while they were traveling from a camp site northeast of Yaguart, Guarayos, to Tibaera on the Rio Blanco, it took them about a month to travel about a hundred miles. Movement of the entire band took place on the average of every 3
NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW—-HOLMBERG 43
days. There were nine camps between the starting point and the objective, which means that on days when movement took place approximately 10 miles were covered. It is difficult, however, to make any generalizations as to the amount of travel done by a band, since so much depends on the food supply in the area. Some camps may be abandoned within a few days’ time, while others may be occupied for more than 6 months. I visited some 50 sites that had been variously occupied and abandoned during the past 20 years.
The amount of band travel, however, cannot be taken as a measure of the amount of travel done by individual hunters or by family groups. Hunters may cover as many as 40 miles a day in their quest for game, and when nuclear families are away from the band on hunting and gathering expedi- tions, they, too, may travel great distances in a single day. I have made trips with a man, his wife, and young child when we walked as many as 25 miles in a single day.
When on the move, men cooperate with the women in carrying the family burdens, which are packed in carrying baskets woven from the green leaves of the motactii palm. These baskets are carried on the back, being suspended from the head (women) or shoulders (men) by a tumpline of liana.
Considerable weight may be transported by these methods. The average pack for a man or woman runs around 60 or 70 pounds. When meat is being transported in from the forest, I have seen a man carry up to 200 pounds on his back for a distance of 10 miles without exhibiting a great deal of fatigue. When the Siriono are traveling or carrying burdens, however, brief halts are usu- ally made about every 2 hours for purposes of resting.
Young children are carried by the mother in a sling which is slung around her shoulder. The baby sits in the sling with its legs astride her hip. When marching in the forest a man may some- times relieve a woman in carrying the children, but he will never enter camp carrying ‘‘female possessions.”
On the march the men, with their bows and arrows over their shoulders, go ahead of the women. If game is sighted they temporarily drop their loads and give chase. By the time the next camping place is reached, they have generally killed some animals for the evening meal.
In walking over the narrow paths, the Indians march in single file and walk with the toes pointed inward at an angle of about 45° to prevent sticks and thorns from bruising the tender skin between their toes. Because of this habit, the Siriono have become a really pigeon-toed people.
Although no type of watercraft is manufactured or used, rivers, swamps, and streams offer little hindrance to travel except during the rainy season, when most of the country becomes one continuous body of water. But as already noted, little movement takes place at this time. Even in the dry season, however, there are brooks, streams, and swamps to cross in every day’s travel. Since the bodies of waters are low at this season most of them can just be walked through, but if the water is found deeper than the height of one’s head other means of crossing must be resorted to.
The most common method of crossing a deep stream is to fell a tree from one bank to the other. If the stream is fairly wide, a tree may be felled from either bank. If this does not prove feasible, a heavy liana may be tied to trees on both banks— one individual swims across with the liana—and the people pass from one side to the other by going hand over hand along the liana, the body being buoyed up by the water. It is interesting to note that D’Orbigny (1835-47, vol. 4, pp. 343-344) first called our attention to this method of crossing the rivers more than a hundred years ago. When crossing streams or rivers, burdens are generally placed on the head to keep them dry, and the children are carried astraddle on the shoulders.
A great many streams become stagnant during the dry season, and are covered with a dense blanket of water grass. These growths are usually so thick that one can walk quickly over their tops without sinking into the water below. But for aid in crossing such streams saplings or bamboos are sometimes laid on top of the grass so as to make a temporary bridge.
When all other methods prove to be of no avail in crossing a river or a stream, swimming is resorted to. The Siriono are excellent swimmers. They swim with a crawl stroke, as well as ‘‘dog fashion.” In spite of the abundance of palometas and alligators, every child of 8 knows how to swim.
Finally, it should be mentioned that in crossing deep rivers or streams, people usually cover their genitals with one hand so as to protect them from the palometas which infest all of these waters.
44 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 10
They also step with care so as to avoid sting rays, whose stabs leave nasty wounds.
ART, MUSIC, AND DANCING
Art, apart from the song and dance, has re- mained at a very backward level among the Siriono. Beyond the stringing of necklaces, the painting of the body (without design), and the decoration of hair with feathers, no attempt is made to embellish anything. Most objects of the culture, in fact, seem to have a purely utili- tarian reason for existence. Pottery is not only rude but plain. Such things as bows and arrows and calabashes are never decorated. Moreover, the idea of portraying some aspect of the culture, realistically or symbolically, by drawing, painting, or sculpture is completely foreign to these Indians.
What has been said of art can also be said of the instrumental aspect of music. Not a single type of musical instrument is known. Not even such rhythm-beating instruments as rattles or clappers are employed, nor is anything ever hung on the body to make noise to accompany singing or dancing. All music, in fact, is vocal. Singing does, however, play an important role in the culture.
Early morning singing, which makes it impos- sible for anyone to sleep after it starts, is a definite