Individual and Society in Guiana: A Comparative Study of Amerindian Social Organisation (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology)

Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology General Editor: Jack Goody

51 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY IN GUIANA

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Individual and society in Guiana A comparative study of Amerindian social organization PETER RIVIERE University of Oxford

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521264532 © Cambridge University Press 1984 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1984 Re-issued in this digitally printed version 2007 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Riviere, Peter. Individual and society in Guiana. (Cambridge studies in social anthropology; 51) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Indians of South America - Guiana - Social conditions. 2. Carib Indians - Social conditions. 3. Social structure - Guiana. I. Title. II. Series: Cambridge studies in social anthropology; no. 51. F2380.R57 1984 305.8'98'0881 84-7691 ISBN 978-0-521-26453-2 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-26997-1 paperback

Contents

Acknowledgments

1 Peoples and approaches

vii

1

2 The settlement pattern: size, duration, and distribution

15

3

30

Village composition

4 The categories of social classification

42

5

Aspects of social relationships

54

6

Autonomy and dependency

72

7 The individual in society 8

Guiana society and the wider context

87 101

Notes

110

Bibliography

115

Index

121

Acknowledgments

This book relies very heavily on the information and ideas of others. I am deeply grateful to all the authors whose works form the basis of my own, and above all to those who provided me with additional help and encouragement in the course of conversation and correspondence. The degree of scholarly cooperation that I have received has impressed me greatly. Thus when I say that I accept full and sole responsibility for any misrepresentations and distortions of their works, I mean it with greater sincerity than most such conventional declarations seem to suggest. I also wish to acknowledge a Personal Research Grant from the Social Science Research Council of Great Britain, which allowed me the time in 1979-80 to lay the foundation of this book.

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1 Peoples and approaches

This work has three aims, all of which reflect the present state of ethnographic research in Lowland South America. Although late as an area to receive intensive ethnographic attention, this lateness has not lacked its advantages. Untrammeled by the deadweight of earlier works cast in outmoded anthropological fashions, the ethnography of the area has been characterized in the past decade by an enormous vitality, not only in the quantity of its production but also in the quality of its ideas. It is time to take stock of what we have got and where we stand before pushing on. In a small way, and with reference to only part of the area, this book is intended to be a contribution to that stocktaking. These remarks are as true for the Northeast region of Lowland South America as they are for the area as a whole, and it is on this region, referred to as 44 Guiana" and more closely defined below, that attention is focused. Although early accounts by missionaries, travelers, and scientists are often valuable and informative documents, and indeed are the sources for Roth's masterly and comprehensive surveys (1915, 1924, 1929), intensive anthropological fieldwork in the region dates only from the 1930s with Gillin's study (1936) of the Barama River Caribs. After that there was a slight hiatus until Butt, Fock, and Yde started work in the 1950s. Their publications heralded a spate of works that has continued until the present. There is evidence to suggest that we are about to enter a lull in this activity, and, even if this is not so, the time seems ripe to attempt an overview of the rich information now available. The value of such an exercise must be judged by the aims of this work. In the first place, it is designed to provide an introduction to the region, and I have attempted at this level to fulfill the needs of an undergraduate or postgraduate course on South American Indian ethnography. The second aim, slightly more ambitious, is to identify the essential elements and relationships in Guiana social organization. At this level I am basically addressing my colleagues who work in Guiana and on whose information this study is entirely dependent. Third, and most ambitious of all, I seek to make some suggestions that are relevant to the wider study of Lowland South American society. Work in other regions of the Lowlands has progressed to the point where it is time for similar studies to that 1

Individual and society in Guiana undertaken here. At this level, the study is, so to speak, an attempt to provide the Guiana piece in the jigsaw (or mosaic) that forms Lowland South American society. To some extent these three aims are dependent on one another. It is obvious that a competent introduction to the region requires the successful delineation of the essential ingredients. At the same time, failure to portray an accurate picture will undermine the value of the work as a contribution to the wider comparative study. I The region, referred to as Guiana, that is the focus of this book, is the "island" of northeastern South America (see map). It is that area of land surrounded by water: the Amazon River, the Rio Negro, the Casiquiare Canal, the Orinoco River, and the Atlantic Ocean. Its greatest east-west extension is approximately 1,200 miles, and north-south 800 miles. Politically it is divided between Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, and French Guiana. The Amerindians with whom I am concerned live mainly along the watershed that divides the rivers that flow into the Amazon from those that flow into the Orinoco or directly into the Atlantic. The ethnographies from which this study is compiled relate mainly to the Aparai, the Waiyana, the Trio, the Waiwai, the Wapishiana, the Macusi, the Pemon, the Akawaio, the Ye'cuana, the Piaroa, the Panare, and the Barama River Caribs. There are, however, exceptions to this. For example, the study includes reference to the Maroni River Caribs who live near the coast, but excludes from consideration two of the most populous groups who dwell within the region. These are the Warao and the Yanoama. The reasons for excluding these two groups are not the same in both cases, although the principle is. It is that they differ in certain quite specific ways from the other groups in the region, although at the same time they share many features. The Warao social organization is characterized by an idol-temple cult reminiscent of the Circum-Caribbean region, an Hawaiian relationship terminology, and a subsistence economy based on the moriche palm pith. The Yanoama group is composed of a number of subgroups, among whom considerable variation exists. Some of these subgroups exhibit a social organization very similar to the other peoples of Guiana, whereas others contain features not found elsewhere. Furthermore, the size as well as the variation makes the Yanoama a highly appropriate subject for a separate study. To some extent these exclusions are arbitrary but they are not less so than the inclusions, and the selection of Guiana as forming some sort of entity, a subculture of the wider Lowland South America culture area, requires some justification. Before providing this, it must be stressed that there is no assumption that the forms of social organization that characterize the region are not found elsewhere, because they are. Nor is it assumed that the region forms some sort of watertight

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