Time and Memory in Indigenous Amazonia: Anthropological Perspectives

Due date: 07/03/2010

Time and Memory in Indigenous Amazonia Anthropological Perspectives

Edited by Carlos Fausto and Michael Heckenberger

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library ofCongreu Ca,aloging-in-Public:lIion Dma TIme and memory in indigenous ... .mnonia' anthropologic:o.l ptrspccli"cs/ edited

by CarlO$ Flll$IO and Mich.d Hctoril's and His/oricities in Amazo­

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. 2000a. as indio> linus do Bmsil. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar.

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2000b. "Local and Global History in Amazonia." Paper presented at the \X'enner­

Gren Conference, "The Ethnohistory of the So-Called Peripheries," American Society for Ethnohistory, London, Ont., October 18-22. _. 2001. lnimigosfiiis: Historill, guerra t Xllfla l llismo IIa Amazilllia. Sao Paulo: EciUSP.

ent". os il/dios Krlll}(i. Sao Paulo: Hucitec.

do Bmsil: Mito, himJria, emicidllde. Sao Paulo: Brasiliensef

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---, ed. 1992. Historill dor indios no Brasil. Sao Paulo: FAPESP,

Companhia da� Letras.

---. 1998. "POIllOS de vista sohre a Aoresta amawnica: Xamanismo e tradus:ao." Mana:

Cunha, Manuela Carneiro da, and Eduardo Viveiros de Ca.mo. 1985. "Vingans:a c tcmpo­ ralidade: Os lupinambas." journal de M Socier; des Americallistts 71:191-217. Denevan, \Villiam M . 2001. Cultivaud Landscapes ofNlltiw AmllZOllill lind tIJe Andl',: Triumph owr the Soil. Oxford: Oxford University

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1890-199,). Manuscript.

Fausto, Carlos, and John M onteiro, cds. Forthcoming. do Novo Mundo. Lisbon: Assirio e Alvim.

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Descombes, Vincent. [980. Modl'm Frrnc!J Philosophy. Translated by L. Scott-Fox and J.

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Erickson, Clark L. 1995. �Archaeological Perspectives on Ancient Landscapes of the Uanos de Mojos in the Bolivian Amawn.� In Archal'% gy ill the LowMlld Aml'riCilIl TropiCS,

"A guerra dos alfabetos: Escrcvendo linguas indigenas na Amaw­

nia." In Fausto and Monteiro, Tempos indios. FrancheHo, Bruna, and Michael Heckenberger, cds. 2001. aspovos doAlto Xingfl: Historia

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edited by PeTer W. Stahl, 66-95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Erikson, Philippe. 1986. �Alterite, tatollage et anthropophagie chez les Pano: La Belli­

Friedman, Jonathan. 1994. Cultflml ldentity and Globa/ Process. London: Sage. Gallois, Dominique Tilkin. 1994. Mlliri rl'visitaM: A rcinugraf'lO Mforllliem d� Mlla/pa

queuse Quete de soL" journal dr !d Socihi dFS Amiricansus i 72:185-210.

. 1996. La Criffi des Ili"rux: Marquagl' du corps (f dimarquagl's ethniqul" chez

D.C.: Smithsonian Instinnion Press.

Foster, Roben J. 1995. Social Reproduction and History in Me!dnl'sia: Mortuary Ritual, Gift Franchelto, Bruna. 1993. �A cdebras:ao da historia nos discursos cerimoniais kuikuro (Alto

---. 2005. Pllr-dea/ nlllllre (f culture. Paris: Gallimard.

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2nd printing, xi-xxxv. Sante Fe, New Mexico:

Fisher, William H. 2000. Rain Fo".sl Exchflllgl": Industry and Commullity 011 an Anlllzo­ lIillll Frolltier. Washington,

varo." L'Hommr 3) (2-4):[71-190. ---. 1996. thr Spears ofTwilight: Lift and Death in lhl' Amazon jungle. Translated

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Etlmohisrory. 2000. "Venezuelan Anthropology." Special issue, EtlJl/ohistory 47()-4).

Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Tinll' alld the Othrr: How Allthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.

en Amazonie." journal

de III Sociiti des Americanism 88:69-90.

Ferguson, R. Brian, and Neil L. Whitehead. t999. Prefuce to War in tbe Tribal Zone: Ex­

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Descola, Philippe. 1992. "Societies of Nature and the Nature of Society.� In Con{"{:pmal­

Dillehay, "fhomas D. 2000.

. 2001b. "Faire Ie mythe: Histoire, recit et transformation

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tradiriio oml do! Waiapi. Sao Paulo: NHII-USP/FAPESP.

Ganson, Barbara Anne. 200) . "!hI' Guarr(IJi under Spani sh Rule in the Rio dl' !d ['lalll. Stan­ ford, California: Stanford University Press. CaSsOn, R.1facl. 2000. "Quiripas and Mosracillas: The Evoludon of Shell Beads as a Me­ dium of Exchange in Northern South America." Etlmohisrory 47(3-4):581-609.

J4

Gtrlos FlllISto lind Michlla Hrdunbng"

Introduction

Giddens, Anthony. 1984. thr Constitution ofSocirty: Out/illt oftlu 7lJrory ofStrucmmtion,

Hill, Jona!han

cd. 1988a. Rtlhil/hng History and Mph: fltdigrnolls Sourh Amrncnn

Ptrfptcrivrs on thi PaIt. Urbana: UniversilY of Illinois Press.

Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Gordon, Cesar. 2.003. "Folhas palidas: A incorporaaimed oU(

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as central to Amerindian conceptions of temporality. In Yanesha thought, the present era is the age of time and history. It began with rhe loss of immortaliry and will end only with the restoration of immortaliry. It is, thus, inextricably as­ sociated with the miseries of rhe human condition but also, as we shall see, with the ne&rious consequences of alteriry. Yanesha people are engaged i n a battle

againsl the ravages of temporaliry. and they fight to transcend the human condi­ tion. Their fight against time and hislOry assumes tWO forms: the struggle against oblivion and the quest for divine salvation. lhese, however, are nor different phe­

nomena but n..,o sides of the same coin. lbere is no remembrance of the past that is not linked in one way or another 10 the hope for immortaliry, and there can be no salvation without remembrance of the past. Yanesha historical awareness is nurtured by these nvo drives.

Memory of Significant Others Among the Yanesha, what Daniele Dehouve (1993) calls the Struggle against

oblivion na lune contre I'oubli") has lirtle ro do with the West's obsession with not forgetting. Based on the oft-quoted dictum of Santayana that those who cannot remember their past are condemned to repeat it, Western societies have embarked on a crusade to remember £lIar involves not only the ruling classes but also all kinds of social segments and interest groups. This is manifested in the

proliferation of museums, libraries. and archives of all types that have benefited from the development of new electronic means of storing vast amounts of infor­

mation. The urge to remember is associated with the atrocities committed during the twentieth cemury in the name of political ideologies of diverse £)'pes. Simon Wicsenthal s 1989 appeal nOt to forget the Shoah, the Nazi massacte of the jC\vs. and to "build a defense against repetition" through remembrance, finds echo in '

Carolyn Forche's 1993 anthology of"poetry of witness," entitled precisely Agai"st Forgetting. In it she asks us to fight the "diseased complacency" of oblivion and protest against violence, for "The resistance to terror is what makes the world

habitable" ()2, 46). I suggest rhat the Yanesha's srruggle against oblivion is more about remem­ bering the past to remind us of who we are than to remind us of the barbarous and unacceptable. In other words, i r is more about ethnic awareness and iden­

tity

than abom political conscience and mobilization. Hill (1988:10) has already underscored the fact that "social otherness" is a central concern in indigenous representations of the past. Whitten (1988:301-302) has further argued dlat these representations often deal wirh social relatio nsh ips with "significan t others," who are classified in terms of relative cultural similarity and political power. Amer-

J2

Ftrmllldo s,/nll1s-Gmnrro

Timr Is Distast,

indian historical consciousness would be mostly about aherity and power. 1his certainly holds true for the Yanesha, among whom this concern is manifested in a series of myths that are set in the prcscm era and that refer to three significam others: the cannibalistic Pano people, the authoritarian Incas, and the rapacious white men (Santos-Granero 1988b:43)· As I have argued elsewhere, Yanesha memory of the past is kepi alive not only through myths (stTTparitats) and songs

(morrdim)

but also through such means

as topographic writing, ritual performances, and bodily practices (Samos-Gra­ nero 1998). Analysis of the discursive and nondiscursive means by which Yanesha people have kept the memory of these significam others, and a comparison with what we know of their relationships with them from historical documents, can reveal, I suggest, what the Yanesha consider imporram to remember. It can also reveal the ways in which Yanesha historical imagination proceeds in dle construc­ tion and reconstruction of the past, for as Aurore Bccquelin has argued, forgerting is "the motor of historical creativiry" (1993:34)· Memory of the Pano-speaking peoples is preserved in the myth of the Mue­ Hepen, a cannibalistic people that each year came upriver along the Pakazu River ro attack and eat the Yanesha of the Cacazu valley.� Yato' Caresa, also known as Yaro' Po'sholl, was a powerful meliaflOieit spirit in charge of defending rhe Yanesha. To prevenr Muellepen anacks, he used (0 pOSt guards upstream from rhe conAuence of the Cacazu and Yoncollmaso rivers, which was the limit of Yanesha territory. He paimed his Yanesha warriors with a magical ointment [hat made them invulnerable, allowing them to kill their enemies. Once, however, while pursuing the Muellepen ar night, Yaro' Caresa did nor have time (0 painr his warriors, and all of them were killed. Alone, and fearing that ifhe escaped he would nor be able ro resurrect his warriors, Caresa surrendered his mystical pow­ ers, allowing the Muellepen to kill him and cm his head off. Holding his head in his hands, he returned to the Cacazu valley, where he mystically hid with his followers in a lake known as Cacasano. Some of the elements of this narrative are corroborated by archaeological and documentary evidence. There is evidence that the ancestors of Pano-speaking peoples displaced the proto-Yanesha from the Ucayali River, pushing rhem up­ river along the Pachitea and Palcazu rivers to their final location along the Andean piedmont (Lathrap 1970:135). "n1ere is also plenty of historical evidence rhat in co­ lonial rimes the Pano continued to wage war against Yanesha and other Arawak­ speaking peoples. Such was rhe case of the Pano-speaking Conibo, who lived at the conAuence of rhe Pachitea and Ucayali rivers, and Cashibo, who inhabited the interior lands of the left bank of the Pachirea River. These peoples practiced funerary endocannibalism, which i n some cases involved eating the body of de-

Sliffiring, aud OblilJiqu

53

ceased kin (Maroni [1738J t988:180), and in others rhe cremation of the deceased and rhe ingestion of his or her ashes mixed with fermenred beer (Huerta [1686]

1983:121). Colonial sources state that rhe Conibo chopped off the heads of their enemies and ripped their hearts out to display them in their homes as a sign of their cour­ age (Rodriguez. Tena [1774J 1977:60). h is also said that they drank their enemies' blood mixed with fermented beer. None of these sources, however, asserts that the Pano ate war prisoners. Hostilities between the Yanesha and their Pano neighbors were so intense that well into the nineteenth century rhe Palcazu River continued to be a poorly inhabited area, a no-man's-land that acted as a buffer wne (sec, for instance, Ordinaire 1892). Interestingly enough, [he myth aboU{ [he Muel1epen omits what was the mOSt important feature of Panoan raids against Yanesha and other Arawak-speaking peoples: the capture and removal of women and children to he taken as wives,

adopled, or kept as slaves (Amich 1975:298). Neither this nor other Yanesha myths

referring to confrontations with ancient cannibalisric peoples make any reference to the abduction of women and children. Instead they stress the military, male

aspects of the relationship, extolling [he bravery and hattie feats of Caresa and his

warriors. In fact, an associated myth narrates how the Yanesha organized a war parry to punish the Muellepen for the death of Caresa. lhey attacked them on the Sungaroyacu, a triburary of rhe Pachitea River where the present-day Cashibo

live, and killed everybody except for a chief and tWO children, a girl and a boy. This, the myrh teller asserted, explains why tOday there are so few Cashibo left. The myth also omits the importance that Panoan polychrome pottery had in the lrading networks centering on rhe salt mines of the Cerro de la Sal. Although this kind of pottery reached the Yanesha through rhe mediation of the Ashaninka along the Ucayali-Tambo-Perene fluvial axis, they musr have known that it was

manufactured by the same people who raided them along the Ucayali-Pachitea­ Palcazu fluvial axis.

SeleClive memory, or rather selective forgening, also plays an important role in the myth of Enc, a semidivine figure thar represents the Inca people (Santos­ Gtanero 1991:73-74, 247-249).6 Enc was born of a Yanesha virgin impregnated by an envoy ofYato' Yos, the creator god, who wanted to provide his mortal creatures with a lOVing and compassionate leader. \'V'hen Enc became a man, he decided to find his divine failler. 10 StOP Enc from ascending ro heaven, Yaw' Yos sem his daughter Yachor Palla to marry him. Enc was a tyrant. He demanded from the Yanesha's priestly leaders a constant supply of feather mnics. If rhey failed w bring [hem, or if the feather runics were not well woven, he beheaded the leaders and replaced them with their eldest sons. Enc gave Yanesha men stone axes and

54

Ffrnando Smlfos-Grallfro

forced them to clear gardens for him. He did not feed his workers, but if one of them was found stealing food from his gardens, Enc ordered his decapitation. He paid his workers in gold and silver, which they rejected, as they had no use for it. Finally, he obliged his followers ro impose a fidelity test on their wives. Those

Til/l� Is DisfMf,

Suffirillg, and Oblivion

55

exchanges made with Andean peoples, exchanges that we know persisted long after the Spanish conquest (Tibesar 19)0). The only thing that Yanesha people " remember" is a unonexchange" or uantiexchange," namely, receiving useless stuff (gold and silver) for valuable work.

who were found guilty of adultery were also beheaded. According to the myth,

References to the white men (omnesha) appear in various myths.R The Yanesha

the creator god grew tired of Enc's crimes and punished him by depriving him of

attribute their origin to Ene's folly. On his way to heaven to retrieve his wife,

his mystical powers.

who had abandoned him, Ene opened the magical gates rhat kept the whire men locked in. He was in such a rush that he did not bother ro close them. He told

It is impossible to know the exact character of the relationship between the Yanesha people and the Inca Empire,' However, archaeological and early colonial documentary evidence corroborates many elements of this narrative, suggesting chat the ancient Yanesha experienced some form of Inca domination. We know, for instance, that to reinforce their domination, Inca rulers used to take as sec­ ondary wives high-ranking women from the peoples they conquered. Like Enc's mythical Yanesha wife, these concubines had the title ofpallil. We also know that the Incas obtained prized tropical forest products through a diversity of means, including colonization of the lowlands, subjection of Amawnian peoples, and establishment of trading relationships (Saignes 1985) . Chief among these products were coca leaves, hardwoods, and feathers; of the three, feathers seem to have been rhe most important. For instance, we are told that the Chupaychu, Andean neighbors of the Yanesha, had to provide the Inca annually with 120 persons

his four sons to lock the gates, but they did not obey him. The white men came out in great numbers. They killed Enc's sons Enca Capa and Huascar and took all his silverY It was thus that the Yanesha people were forced to share their lands with the white men. I-!owever, if it is true that the appearance of the white men was linked to Enc's fallibility, their success was, according to mydl, the direct consequence of the fallibility and lack o f devotion of the Yanesha themselves. It is said that Yompor Yompuer, one o f the brothers of the present-day solar divinity, whose body was half scone, told the Yanesha to take care of him because otherwise the white men would take him with them. When the white men came to see Yompuer singing and dancing, the Yanesha panicked and abandoned the divinity, who could not walk. The white men took Yompuer to their land, where they still venerate him.

to gather feathers as tribute, whereas they provided only 60 for the cultivation

For this reason, Yanesha myth tellers claim, the white men multiply while the

of coca leaves (Ortiz de Zl1l1iga [1)62] 1967:306). -rhe most skillful Chupaychu feather specialistS were sem co Curco, where they were exclusively devoted to

Yanesha grow fewer each day. In another myth it is said that when Yompor A'penerr, Our Father Milky Way,

making feather tunics and feather-ornamented weapons. The Yanesha remember mosrly che authoritarian, coercive aspects of their re­ lationship with the Inca Empire---a- relationship marked, according to myth, by despotism, economic exploitation, sexual policing, and an ourrageous curtail­ ment of personal autonomy. Omitted arc a series of elements that we know made a great impression on the imagination of other Amawnian peoples that had close contact with the Incas. There is no mention in the myth ofEnc, or in other rdat­ ed oral narratives, of such normally awe-inspiring Inca technologies as stonework, architecrure, hydraulics, and metallurgy. And there are no references to objects obtained from the Incas in exchange for Yanesha labor or Yanesha products, ex­ cept for a contemptuous reference to Inca gold and silver. No mendon is made of copper and bronze axes, which are so prominent in the mythologies o f other Amawnian peoples (Renard-Casevitz et al. (986), and which we know were im­ portant objects in [he long-distance trading networks linking the Andes with the Amazonian lowlands (bthrap 1973; Myers (981). At most, the Incas are credited with giving the Yanesha stone axes. In brief, there is no memory of the numerous

was about to ascend to the heavens, he asked the Yanesha people to follow him. As they would not, he asked them to allow at least one of thei[ children to follow

him, so that he could become as powerful as the divinities and could one day Come back to this earth to make the Yanesha immortal. But the Yanesha did not allow even this. In contrast, some white men followed Yompor A'penerr. They are now visible as bright stars in the summe[ night sky. This explains, according to myth tellers, why nowadays the white men have extraordinary creative powers and can invenc marvelous things, such as cars and other machines, whereas the Yancsha have no money and are as poor as orphans. The Yanesha contend that, thanks to the powers acquired from their diviniries, the white men multiplied so much that they soon occupied most of the Yanesha territory. By then most Yancsha had become like the whites, lOSing their native language, their sacred songs, and their traditional dress. Worse still, they no longer Worsh ipped the old divinities. Worried that his mortal creatures would disappear, the creator god sent his son Yompor Santo to make them immortal (Sanros-Gra­ nero 1991:80-83). However, in his eagerness to help the Yanesha people, Yompor

56

Timr Is DimIJr, Sliffring. r IIl1d Oblivioll

Frrnlllldl1 Smlll1S-Crtmrrl1

Samo came lO this earrh before finishing his period of acquisition of divine pow­ ers. When he arrived on this earth, he revealed himself to the only pious Yanesha man that was left. After the devoted man recognized Yompor Santo as a divine emissary, the Yanesha people starred multiplying rapidly. Yompor Santo gathered all the Yanesha in Merraro, where he taught them how lO live a correct and moral life. Yanesha built a large house for Yompor Samo and provided him with beauti­ ful co[(on tunics, feather crowns, and otherornamems. Unfortunately, Shellmerii., Yompar Samo's classificatory brother and the first Yanesha sorcerer, betrayed his confidence. He ordered the decapitation of many of his followcrs and evemually killed Yompof Samo himself. As Yompor Santo lacked full divine powers, he failed to make the Yanesha immortal. Moreover, after dying he was nOt able to rcturn to life as promised. Eventually the white men took his bones 10 the Andean tOwn ofTarm3; with them they made an image of him that they still worship. Yanesha representations of white men in these and other oral narratives and songs are full of references to histOrical "events," but they also comain some sig­ nificant omissions. The Yanesha version of the origin of the white men retains the fact that their arrival coincided with the demise of the Inca Empire. Attributing the origin ofthe white men to the fallibility ofthe Inca adds to the negative views that Yanesha people have about this personage. We find a similar anchorage in hislOrical events in the myth ofYompor SanlO, which is inspired by the hislOrical figure of Juan Samos Atahuallpa, a highland Indian who in 1742 led the Yanesha and their neighbors in a successful revolt against the Spanish (Varese 1973; Castro Arenas 1973; Zarzar 1989; Santos-Granero 1992b; Torre L6pe-l 2004). Juan Santos claimed that he descended from the Inca, the Sun, and the Holy Spirit, and that he had been scnt to eliminate Spanish oppression, fecover his kingdom, and guide his people (San Antonio 1750). He established his headquarters in Metraro, which became a SOrt of "Land without Evil" or "new Jerusalem" for his large following, consisting mostly of Arawak-speaking peoples-the Yanesha, Ashaninka, Ashcninka, Piro, and No­ matsiguenga. [n Merraro Juan Santos led an ascetic and spirirual life, surrounded by his pcrsonal guard and an elaborate protocol (San Antonio 1750). The rebel dressed like an Amazonian Indian. His followers constantly supplied him with fine corron tunics and other ornaments. Juan Santos died sometime in the 1760s. His tomb became an object of annual pilgrimages linked to lhe hope of his resur­ rection unril 1891, when his remains were removed from the tomb and taken to Tarma by order of the local governor, presumably to suppress his memory and crush indigenous resistance (Castro Arenas 1973:148�149). Together with these historical references, however. there arc some imponant historical omissions that raise imeresting questions about Yanesha historical

SJ

awareness. According to myth, Yompor Samo appeared in a time when the white men had occupied Yanesha territory, and most Yanesha had become like them. This is pardy validated by historical documentation. By the time Juan Santos ini­ tiated his revoh, the Spanish had been in the region for thirty�threc years, found­ ing numerous mission posts, a few military garrisons, and some big ranches, and reducing thousands of Arawak-spcaking Indians to Christian life. But the myth makes no reference either to the Franciscan missionaries, who were the main colonial agents in the region, or to mission life, which we know Yanesha people disliked intensely. Likewise the myth does not allude to the economic exploita­ tion to which the Yanesha and their neighbors were subjected by missionaries, colonial authorities, and large landowners, and which constituted an important element in Juan Santos's anticolonial discourse (Santos-Granero 1992b). Even more puzzling is the fact that dlere is no mention of the fatal epidemiCS that decimated the Yanesha during this period and that generated much unrest and many rebellions (Santos-Granero 1987). But most striking of all is the omission of the revolt itself. There is no mention whatsoever in the myth of Yompor Santo of a military confrontation with the whites. This is all the more surprising given that Juan San­ tos's was one of the largest and most successful Amazonian insurrections against Spanish colonial rule. So mucll so, it kept Spaniards and Peruvians away from the region for more than a century. Rather than historical "facts," what Yanesha people remember, I argue, are the emotions, feelings, and moods resulting from their relationship with significant others. It is a "history of the senses" (Taussig 1993), rather than a histOry of events. These sentiments afe linked with particular characterizations of orhers, which, as is generally the case, are sketchy and stereo-

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de

129

II Altering Bodies, Connecting Names

4

Sick of H isrory Conrrasring Regimes of Historicity in the Upper Amazon

Anne-Christilu Taylor

This chapter is abo m a regional system of rhe upper Amazon e mb racing the large

ethnic ensemble of rhcJivaro, their predominandy Quechua-speaking indigenous eighbors, and the white coionis[S serried throughout the aTea. It focuses on

n

1\\'0

contrasting ways of relating to change and to the narrative construction ofhisro­ ry: the one favored by rhe Jivaroan Indians, centered on rhe i ntraerhnic dialectics of vengeance and see mingly oblivious ro the texture of inrcrcthnic relations, the other rypical of the postconquest lowland Quechua formations and focused on rheir crhnogenesis as hybrid cultures. I will

arg

ue that these modes of co nstru i ng

the past arc in fuer i mcrdepende nt, as arc the cultu res thar produce them. The nature of Quechua societies is i n timately ried to the existence both of colonist settlements and of "wild" Indian rribes, just

as

the persistence of th e latter de�

pends on the development of indigenous buffer groups mediating between them and non-Indian outsiders. Likewise, the kind of history experienced and told by Jivaroan speakers is tighdy linked to the quire distinct history lived and narrated by the bearers oflowland Quechua culmre; each one is sustained by the other. My aim is to presen t a brief outline of the system and dynamics underlying the play of these compleme ntary regimes of histo ricity, as they existed between the late eighteenth century and the early 1980s. For reasons of space, I will nO[ aHempt

here to deal with earl ier or more recent developments. Much recent work on Amerindian ways of construing the past, and in par� ticular the history of relations with dominant non�lndian outsiders, focuses on

the mimetic appropriation by Indian societies of clements of Western culture,

and lays stress on the way processes of apparent �accul1Uration" come to form,

and be seen as, indigenous tradition. This approach developed in reaction to a

l

IJ4

Sick ofHislory; COllin/Sling R�gimtJ ofHistoricity

AIIII�-C "rislill� 7ilJlor

view-long entrenched in anthropology--Qf cultural change as loss of"aulhen­

13S

Thus, while Jivaroan forms of historicity seem, if they are vie'wed in isolation

ticity," as a negative mode of alteration of a supposedly pristine way of life. Such

from those prevalent among their indigenous neighbors, to belie the idea that Na­

a conception was open to criticism because it implied a stadc and essenrializing

tive American cultures thrive on change and the assimilation of trairs of foreign

vision of cuhure, and because it denied the Indians any form ofhisroric.11 agency.

origin, as soon as they are replaced within the regional system they belong to

However,

Carlos Fausto points om in his contribution, the contemporary ap­

they clearly reveal their kinship to the configurations described by Fausto, Vila�a,

proach to Indian forms of historicity also feeds on the structuralist herirage, in

Samos-Granero, and others. The originality of (his model of ahemare regimes of

particular on irs emphasis on rhe assimilation of the Other as a moccies of sipi, one of which jusl hapl>cns TO be cal led the "maru" monkey 3.

the

(l1/f1dl/lI sipi, Mdemon's lamarin.� Ctbutllil pygmata: pygmy marmOSCI, titf, kondro, 1(1).

'!he Matis also mention an animal they call manm sipi, rorely seen and characterized by its great "tameness" rather by its mo rp hology. Furthermore, the emphasis on the taming of tTlle kUJiibu by the lIIartl becomes doubly inwTcsting when we recall that it is this very bird that the mariwill Stt in their avian doubles, the macaws. Had we nOT already known, we could have guCSS ill lhr Nortb-Wesurn AmaZOIl. Uppsala: Almquist and Wikscll International.

Herbert. 19J7. �O culto aos monos entre os Kaingallg de Palmas." In Ensnios dt

tmologia brnsildm, 8-J3. Sao Paulo: Companhia Editora Nadonal.

7ht' Kalapllio ludiam ofet1llml Bmzil. New York: Holt, Rinehart

and \'(/inston. Boglar. Luis. 1958:t. �Urn Burial of the Brazilian Indians." Actll I:.llmogmplJim 6{J-4):347-

m·

---. 1959b. "Ein endokannibalischer Rims in Sudamerika." In Mis(tJJtI!/t1l Pall/ Rivrt, orrogl!lIlIrio diclltll, 1.:67-85. Mexico: Universidad N3Cional AUlonorna de Mexico. ---. 1959· "Some NOles 10 Burial Forms of the Brazilian Indians."

In Opl/SCI/Ia Etlmo­

logim Mrmorillt Llldol.lici Biro Sacra, edited by Tibor BOOrogi and Luis Bogl:tr, 159-163. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado. Cadog:tn, Le6n. 1950. "L1 enc.1fnadon

y la concepcion:

b muerte

y ]a rcsurr!:':ccion en

la poesla sagrada 'esoterica' de los Jeguaka-va Tenondi Pora-Giic (Mbya-Guarani) del Guair.i,

to (1551.-1608), miS5ionnaire jesuitc au Bresil." Arqlliws do Cmtro

Cullum! Cnloustr

Gl/lbmkiIl11 39:45-60. ill all Amaumiall Soritry. Transl:tted

terne rilUeI et espace politique chez les Yanomami du sud-est (Amazonie bresilienl1e).�

Basso. Ellen B, t973.

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Alben, Bruce. 1985. �Temps du sang, temps des cendrcs: Representation de la maladie, sys­

Baldus,

Sao Paulo: EdUSP.

Casuo, Eduardo Viveiros de. 1991.. From thr Ellrmy's Poim 0JVirw: HllmalliryIIlIdDillilliry

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Rouse, Irving. 1992. 7h� Taillos. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Uni\�rsiry Press. Santos-Granero, Fernando. 1998. �Writing History n i to ,he Landscape: Space, Myth, and Rimal in Contemporary Amazonia. � Amt:rican Ethnologist 2S(2): 128-148. Scaramdli, Franz, and KayTarble. 2000. "Cultural Change and [demiry in Mapoyo Buri­

al Pmclice in the Middle Orinoco, Venezuc1a.� Ethllohistory 47(3-4):705-729. Schaan, Denise. 2001. "[nro Ihe Labyrimhs of Marajoara Pottery: Status and Cultural Identity in an Amazonian Complex Society." [n McEwan, Barreto, and Neves, UTI­ known Amazon, 108-133.

Schaden, Egon. 1959. A milologia bmHm d� lribos illdigrlltlS do BrtlJiI. Rio de Janeiro: Ministerio da Educa�o e Cuhura. Silva, Alcionilio BrUzzi Alves da. 1955. �Os ritos funebres entre as tribes do UaupCs (Ama­ zones).� Antbropos 50:593-601. Stahle, Vera-Dagny. 1971-72. "Carreras ceremoniales con Ironcos entre Indios brasi1eftos.�

FolkloT( Amt:rictlIlO, 17:117-124. Sti rling, Matthew W. 1938. Historical alld Ethnographical Maurial 011 thr jivaro Jlldiam. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. Surrallk, Alexandre. 2000. "Passion, mon et maladie dans une culture amazonienne.� In

En substallus: TrxUJ pOllr FrrmfOist Hiritirr, edited by Jean-Luc Jamard, Emmanuel Turay, and Margarita Xanthakou, 387-396. Paris: Fayard. Taylor, Anne-Chrisline. 1993. "Remembering to Forger: I denliry, Mourningand Memory among the Jfvaro.� Mall 28(4):6U-678. ___

. 1996. �Une Coune hisloire de l'oub1i: Perspectives jivaro sur 1a mcmoirc des

morTS et ]a desrinee des vivants." AtciieTS 1779-88. ---. 1998. " Corps immorte1. devoir d'oubli: Formes humaines et traje.:::roires de vie

chez les Achuar." In Ln Production du corps, edited by Maurice Gadc1ier and Michel Panoff, 317-3}8. Paris: Archives Contemporaines. lhomas, Louis-Vincent. 1980. Lr Cada,,": Dr fa biologir n l'nllfhropologir. Pari5: Com­ plexe.

lcantins, Amonio Manocl. 1877 . ..Estudos sobre a uibu mundurucu.� Rrllista do JIISlilllto

HiUQrico r Grogrdjico Brnsildro 40(2l:73-161. Vidal, Silvia. 2000. �Kuwe Duwakalumi: The Arawak Sacred ROllles of Migradon, Trade, and Resistance." EtlJ//ohistory 47(3-4):635-667.

Viertler, Renate Brigitte. 1991. A rrftifiio dm almas: Uma illtrrprrttlfiio rlllolOgica dofill/eral

dOl illdios Bororo--Mtllo Grosso. Sao Paulo: HuciledEdUSP Vignari, Mi1ciades Alejo. 1941-46. "Censo oseo de paquetes funerarios de origen guarani.�

Rrllista drlMlIsro dr Ln Pinta 20):1-11.

Vilao;a, Aparedda. 1992. Commdo como grllt�: Formm do Cilllibnlisfllo wari'. Rio de Janeiro:

EdUFRJ.

---. 1998. �Fal.Cndo corpos: ReRexOcs sobre mone e c:lnibalismo entre os Wafi' a Iuz do perspeClivismo.� Rrvista d� Anfropologia 4t(l) :9-67. ---. 2000. �Relations between Funerary Cannibalism and Warf.ue Cannibalism: The Question of Predalion." Ellmos 6S(J):83-106. Wright, Robin M. 199}. "Pursuing the Spirit: Semantic Construction in Hohodene Ka­ lidzamai ChalliS for Initiation." Amrrilldia 18:1-39. Zcrries, Otto. 1960. "£1 endocanibalismo en]a America del Sur.� Rrvista do Museu Palliista 12:125-175·

XiI/guano Hrrotl, AlltnlOrs, and Orhnl

18$

managed and cultivated plantS; they have a general worldview that firs well with­ in what is described as Amazonian animism; they bedeck themselves with few "clothes," favoring instead body decoration and colorful waccessories"; they dwell in large pole-and-tharch houses, in settlements generally lacking any pcrmanem

9

standing srrUCHlres.

Xinguano Heroes, Ancestors, and Ochers Materializing (he Past in C hiefly Bodies, Ritual Space, and Landscape

Archaeology suggests that many basic demenrs of agricultural and fishing technology, house manufacture, and village configuration have ancient roots and were characteristic throughout the past millennium. Correlating archaeology and indigenous history also enables accurate placement of many of rhe ancient settle­ menlS mentioned in Kuikuro histories radiocarbon-dated to the sixteenth cenrury and soon after. When considered over the long term, the Kuikuro exhibit a variery

Michael Heckenberger

of features considered common if not eypical of small-to-medium-sized complex societies elsewhere in the world, although these features are underemphasized and underrepresented in twentieth-century ethnography. They live in permanent,

Memory is life, born� by livingsociclies foun(kd in its name. . ,

structurally elaborate settlement areas. TIley are densely settled throughoUT much

History. On [he olher hand, is [he I"«onslruclion. always problematic

of rhe basin, and suPPOrted by a productive agricultural and werland manage­

and inwmplcl(:. ofwhat is no longer. Memory is a pcrpclllally actual

ment system. They have a sociopoJidcal struCture that is dominated or "tOpped"

phenomenon, a bond lying us to [he elernal pm;!:nr: history is a representation of the pas!. Pierre Nor:!., "Between Memory and HislOry�

by a hereditary hierarchy. This hierarchy extends across rhe region within a peer society of hereditary chiefs who engage in formal exchange, intermarriage, and co-participation in chieAy rites of passage, all of which creates substantial differ­ ences in symbolic capital in the local and regional political economy. Hereditary chiefs nor only mediate these rituals but, in so dOing, often amass large surpluses of food stuffs and wealth for ritual paymcnts.2

This chapter explores aspects of cultural memory as expressed in discourse, ma­ rerial culture, and the builr environmclH among Xinguano peoples of northern Maw Grosso state. Brazil. Xlnguano refers 10 a plural society of closely related communities who occupy the basin created by the headwaters of the Xingu River, one of the principal sourhern rriburaries of the Amazon. Today most of their traditional terri[Qries are included in the Parque Indigena do Xingu (PIX). Since the nineteenth century, when Karl von den Steinen (1886, 1894) first described the region, Xinguano or Upper Xingu society has been composed of nine or more single or multiple-settlement communities. This essay focuses on one com­ munity, the Kuikuro, but describes feamres generally shared by mher Xinguano communities, which include rhree other dialect communities of Carib speakers (the Kalapalo, Matipu, and Nafuqua), three Arawak-speaking communities, and tWO Tupi-speaking communities. 1 The Kuikuro have much in common with other Amazonian peoples, as am­ ply documented in recent (post-l88os) ethnographic history: rhey are fisherfolk and manioc farmers, supplementing these staples with a diverse range of other

Xinguanos, in general, are thus notable among ethnographically known Ama­ zonian peoples for the degree ro which the ritual construction of persons is tied to real or imagined genealogy. History and cultural memory are activated, so to speak, by genealogy, specifically through performance of mortuary feastS and othcr chiefly rites of passage, which make present cultural memories of founding ancestors and "sediment" them in place. Not surprisingly, ancestor recognition and commemoration, or simply "ancesrraliry," is a keystone characteristic ofsocial and symbolic reproduction and the transmission of political power. Socialiey is rooted in inTernal hierarchies based on hereditary rank, which are legitimized within a regional structure of exchange, and local history takes on a hagiographic qualiey. Ranking leaders arc thus current "reproductions" of recent and distant ancestors, expressed through name transmission and exclusive control over ritual narrative and performance that invokes in diverse ways mOTe distant founding ancestors and ancient culture heroes. .! This personification of the past links living human subjects, and specifically,

the hereditary chiefs, individuals marked as being muti; or �chieAy," and ancient

Xinguano Hfl"()n, An{"�'ors. nnd Ot"�n

human ancestors (past tllleti). This line extends back in time to the creation of

28,

Xinguano rimal cycles also reAect different conception of time. Many perfor­

humans by the human-form crearors, who later transformed themselves into rhe

mances arc gcared toward communication with spirits, as in the case of tmdllhe

Sun and Moon, from the first human family (and first nneti; chiefs, who founded

masking rituals; orhers, like the chieAy rites of passage, notably initiations and

a special lineage, which corresponds to the anetau [plural] dire and their personal

mortuary feasts, reenact genealogical time and a rclarion with immediate ances­

histories). It is also unusual in regional ethnology in the degree to which the past

ror figures (Francheno ZOOI, Z003). Historical changes are also clear, particularly

is "privatized," or, in other words, ancestors are exclusive �properry" of living

in recent times, as historical consciousness was piqued by contact with national

chieAy individuals. Hereditary leaders are thus uniquely historical, the productS

society (see Turner 1991, 1993). Archaeology and early ethnohistory suggest that

and producers of history, since they embody collective histories, identities, and

precolonial indigenous history was punctuated with large-sale, dynamic changes,

cultural memory in a particularly direct way (Sahlins 1985). These patterns, al­

as was true throughout the colonial and national periods. Certain aspects of his­

though uncommon ethnographically in many partS of the Amazon, holds jm­

torical consciousness, which have been part and parcel of Xinguano historic­

ponant clues to understanding dle nature of large. serrIed populations scattered

ity and temporality throughout their hislory are "hot" (dynamic and historical)

widely throughout the region centuries ago. This essay brieAy explores twO aspects

and/or "cold" (cyclical and mythic) depending on context and perspective (Hill

of cultural memory: (I) historiciry (indigenous views on history) and, in particu­

1988). Persons and their moods change as they pass through events and places

lar, how chieAy subjects are constructed both as individuals and as model persons,

and contexts, punctuating history and giving it a dynamic or deictic quality,

living exemplars or iterations of ancestors, past chiefs, and therefore stand in a

within an overall theory of histOry that itself is Context- or mood-oriented

sense between humans and ancestors; and

(Basso

(z)

temporality (the way history and

time are remembered or "felt" in nondiscursive ways) and. specifically, how mate­ rial culture, rimaI performance. and the built environmem make the past present and visible as cultural memory.

ZOOS).

Basso (1985:61) neady captures critical elementS of indigenous Xinguano his-

wry:

history [isl a culrural form that combines narrative discourse with a theory of past events. . . . the Kalapalo sense of history is based as much upon ideas

Making History

about actors, their moods, motivations, and goals. as upon events. More­

The Kuikuro have diverse forms of narralive, as well as myriad ways in which daily and ritual practice are sedimenred in material culture and the built environment. Therefore substantial comextual variation exists in how the passage of time and cultural memory, including narrarive histories, afe experienced. To some degree, narrative moods or genres reflect different conceptions of time. There are nar­ ratives internally marked as histOrical gravitating around hiswrical personages. whereas others are marked as myths of "dawn time" prople. Although both of them are categorized as "real narratives" (akUia h�kllgll) , they arc distinguished by a contrast between a time "when we were already people" (kugei lehn kllknramilli) and a time "when we wefe all still spiritual beings" (itsekl'i gele kllkafmnim) (see Fausto er aI., forthcoming). Other verbal gentes contain a sense both oflinear and

over, actors arc treated in terms of their relationships to one another. the feelings they provoke within each other and the motives arising from these feclings. II is this focus that gives Kalapalo historical narrative a distinctly different character from that of contemporary European scholarship, in which personal motivation is subservient to generalized processes, forces, ideas, or interests that are held to exist in the abstracr, independently of individuals. It is similar to the "Grear Man" view of history, which strcsscs personal motivations as pivotal, but the Kalapalo emphasis upon inrerper­ sonal processes suggests that even this European view of history, like more modern ones, is concerned with differenr problems and manifests differing ideas of causality.

(mUfti itarifm) used by

All cultural forms of memory arc also structured by basic differences between

chiefs when receiving foreign visitOrs. This discourse recounts collective founder

groups, whether within a community, between communities (olomo), or benveen

genealogies that include elements of cosmogonic myths. but also the relations

Xinguanos (kugt) and more distant "others," including other indigenous people

of cyclical time. A notable example is the formal discourse

benveen language groups, through reference ro common ancestors, the founders

(ngikogo) or whites (kagaihn) (Basso 1995; Ireland 1988, 2001). One of the mOSt

of the local group (oromo), and Their chiefly peers in older times, who represent

critical dimensions of Xinguano constructions of history, memory, and identity

rhe ancestors of other otomo, as well as many specific features of landscape, social and rirual life, and nonhuman beings.4

is social alreriry based on rank-based distinctions. There are thus also aspecrs of Xinguano historicity [hat are deeply inAected by hierarchical notions of person-

288

XiI/guano HatH'S. Allenlol1. alld 01/"'"

MirlJar/ HNkmbt-rg..r

hood, specifically of chiefs as remade anceswrs. In rhis case, hiswry is a mode of generalized communication or exchange nor only between living persons but between types of persons, anceswrs and descendants, wirhin an ideology rooted in concepts of founder's or first-occupant identities. Alrhough nOt conforming exactly w the old-style Great Man view of history, as Basso notcs, this aspect of hisrory conforms w [hat type ofgreat-person histOry that Sahlins (1985) has aptly called "heroic histOry.� [t is this aspect of local conceptions of hiswry, [he past as embodied in high-ranking persons and places of the preselU, that is the focus here.

289

larger segments of sociery: the sum of the social �bodies" subordinate to them, framed in an idiom ofdescent from founding ancestors. This can be cast as a ques­ rion of how high or deeply one can engage group genealogy, within a regional so­ ciety of chiefs that has come down through time since the creation of humans.

In 1111('(i'ilnritiu, which is spoken only by primary titular chiefs in ritual events, the Olomo (emire local group) is referred m as "children" (knngl1muke), a use that reCiprocally defines chiefs as group fitthers. Aneti' ill1rbill deals specifically with named ancestors, but also with relations between generations, such as inheri­ tance of substances, places, and things, which become indelibly attached to certain individual and aggregate persons, constinning the basis of the "cosmo­

History and Hierarchy: Personifying and Privadzing the Past HistOries are good to hear, and every Kuikuro has at least some anecdmal knowl­ edge of hismry, but knowing the details of group hiswry is the business of the chiefs. As living extensions of orher chiefly persons, who are remembered in histories, they stand in a special relarion to creation stories, hiswries of found­ ing anceswrs and their deeds. The chiefly hierarchy itself is hiswry-defined in terms of social and spatial relations within chiefly kindreds, between rival chi cAy kindreds within and between communities, and between chiefs and commoners. It is clearly marked by the transmission of names, titles, ritualized dispositions, and places-that is to say, heritable "properries"-across genera­ tions. Hereditary leaders are like living ancesmrs, precisely because they have genealogies and, through these, come to legitimately embody founding ances­ tors of the group. History is dterefore not only a critical element ofsociality bur an important el­ ement ofpolitical strategy and power relations among the living, since the knowl­ edge of and right to recount group histories is a critical dement in political ac­ tion and rivalry. As nmed, Xinguano theories of hisrory focus on both nonlinear (cyclical or so-called structural, ecological, or mythical) and linear (genealogical and historical) conceptions of time, depending on perspective or context. -rhus it is critically imporranr [0 see how historical subjects, persons, arc constructed in ritual and daily life and, particularly, how some maintain control over ritual spaces and elire goods-symbolic and economic capital. The question is nor sim­ ply how society at large conceives of hisrory, as a collective pool of memory and experience, but also of who history is abom, who is interested in it or controls it. and how it is deployed. The formal speech of chiefs draws its force from the legitimacy of the past and lite historical relations of the people and things contained in narratives. This is a special kind of history. which focuses attemion on specific individual humans, notably chieAy persons, and how they encompass larger historical personages or

logical aurhenrication" of social hierarchies (Weiner 1992). -nnough the stanzas of chieAy discourse, a series of eight founding ancestors are invoked and ulti­ mately linked to the three chiefs that created the Kuhikugu alomo, a Single-Village community existing at the time Karl von den Steinen first recorded Upper Xingu society aroulld 1880. The ancestors named in one sequence of the mUfi' ilariilll belonged to ancieJ1[ houses ofOti Olomo, a large Village predating the foundation �f Kuhikugu Olomo, the ancestral origin place of the contemporary Kuikuro (see hanchetto 1992).5 The names recounted in these narratives, at least the final three, founders of Kuhikugu, remain in the Kuikuro pool of chieAy names, al­ though the ranking family through much of the rwentieth century was marked by other names (perhaps one day becoming the next in this list of specific Kui­ kuro ancestors). In this formalized discourse, the nature of supralocal social relations is also specified, phrased in terms of special gifting relations [Q other Olomo, specifi­ cally in terms of the unique village specialties including shell necklaces, ceram­ ics, prir.ed woods, salt, and other items used by :>Unguanos as prestations and barter items during ritual occasions related to imeractions �rween local groups (Franchetto 2003). [n various ways, such as by reference to and transmission ofnames, prestations,

�

and place, well as by the speech and gestures ofliving chiefs and by [heir posi­ . . tions III speCIfic places (houses, villages, regions) at specific times, chiefs are linked to ancestral Kuikuto lines leading back to founding creator beings. SpeCifically,

�ontemporary chiefs come to stand for, in the place of, the eight original found­ IIlg chiefs of the Kuikuro who "are no more," as they say in lite formal discourse,

creating a past [hat is isomorphic with their person and "codified through the . poetic resources of the Hueti' itflrbill" (Franchetto '993:95; see also 2001). This genealogy of chiefs provides the grammar for the ritual legitimization of chiefly

,'n" ancestors, a form of communication bcrween hun .. " 'nd .. Iso ancestors, btit a crystallizes the social relation berween and within groups based on actual social

290

MichlUl Htckmbagrr

Xi1lgW1II1) Hn'()(S. Allefftl)N. ,wd Ot/un

relations bel'\veen the speaker (one of principal chiefs) and listeners (the local group and represent:uivc chiefs of other olomo). The primary ritual context is dle sequence leading up to the mortuary feast

(�itsi� or more generally known by the gloss kltllrtlP, the Kamayura (Tupi-Gua­ rani Xinguano) word for feast and special wood of ceremonial mmks (made of wood of the divine human grandmother, who

was

created of this wood by her

father, the first ancestor of the human line). This rimal sequence is caralyzed by

al/eti' and rakes months to cycle through fully. The deceased (lIuti'is typically closely related to the speaker, who is the sponsor or "owner" (010) the death ofa senior

of the ritual. 111e ritual series confirms the high rank of egitsi' oto and creates a metaphorical and narrative link bel'\veen the living chiefs, rhe recently d

�eased

Kuikuro anet;' going back to the immediate ancestors of rhe group at Kuhlkugu, and more ancient culture heroes, principally Taogi, the creator or father of Xin­ guanos and other humans. At various stages, kin relations bel'\veen deceased and

�

living aI/eli'are reaffirmed, for instance in formal wailing where mourners call ut their kin relation, as children, siblings, parents, grandparents, or aRines, whICh are then mapped ontO space in ranked arrangements keyed to the movements and actions of living persons, their dwelling in space.

chronological marking, nor do they necessarily follow a precise sequencing of

�

events, places, and personages. Nonetheless, these discourses are imbued wit a . . linear, temporal quality in which reference to specific events and people IS cm .

�

cal. Even if it is nOi the central message in much indigenous historicity, there IS an obvious linear feel to much of history, both in genealogical and serdement genealogical

� Ieme l� ts d�mi­

nate not only the narrative structure but performance overall, Illcludtng mual

and bodily orientations. Poedc speech and formalized actions in life crisis rituals bring about a metaphorical shift, a �prismatic effect," to a higher level of cyclical or social time.

the liVing, for ritualized performance and daily practice. These histories provide a bridge to even older ancestors, culture heroes (ancient chiefs), back to the dawn of time, since the central ceremony ofXinguanos, what distinguishes them as kllg�, the people, was given to them by laogi. I n the beginning, when Taogi created humans, JUSt prior to transforming him­ self into the sun and lighting the world, he and his twin brother, Alukuma, later the moon, took down the mummified body of their dead mother, Hsangitsegu, hanging in the rafters and brought her back into the world of the living, just for a day, before she was allowed to die definitively, marking the first death in the an­ cestral line of humans. Upon her bodily transformation she became min, a spirit, and founded the village in the sky where all Kuikuro ancestors go after death (see Carneiro

[989).6 This dealh

and rebirth of the divine grandmother of humanity

was the beginning of the egitJi' cycle. She was commemorated in the first

rgitsi'

ritual. Hsangitsegu and her younger sister were made from kllflrup wood (IImgifi i n Kuikuro) and animated b y her creator and farher, the cultural hero Kwantingi' (Mavutsinin, in Kamayura), who was himself half tree and half bat in parent�

HistOries of heroes and other ancestors are not only or even primarily about

aneti' itarlilU,

world," since it is the histories of which they form a part that provide the script for

age. Hsangitsegu was made to be given in marriage to the chief of the jaguars,

Prismatic History and the Dawn Time

history. In ritual performance of the

Z91

�

Several major momentS and performative episodes are noted that sp ci

� re�a.

tions bel'\veen humans and ancestors. At these times, this mctaphoncal

,

pns­

matic" effect turns one type ofperson, at least briefly, into another. Chiefly ances­ tors and their immediate descendants undergo a process of "transcorporeality,"

�

whereby they come to stand for specified others: as immediate ancestors offU(u e

alll'li' �kttgll and as bearers of certain goods (cran specializations) that mark baSIC distinctions of rank and community affiliation. Ancestors thus have agency upon the living, or social relations, in the same way spirits do in a kind of "mirror

NitSllegi, who fathered her offspring, the twins Taogi and Alukuma. Through the coupling of the sun with his mother's sister, the great�great-grandparents of contemporary chiefs were born. Taogi made Xinguanos in the image of him� self and his maternal family, and gave them their material culture, adornments, dances, and especially the great mortuary feasts, which made them human, kllg�. This ritual complex of chieAy prerogatives and personhood is today the exclusive preserve of chiefs. Subsequently rhe twins transformed themselves into the sun (GitO and moon (Ngune), nOt only providing light to the dawn-time world bur also creating the origin point or birth ofhislOrical rimes, the age of kug�, which is marked by the fiTS( death, Hsangitsegu, after which things could die. It was also rhe first egitJi'.

Making Chiefs Hierarchical conceptions of social rclations, dependent as they arc on legitimate ties with ancestors, arc inevitably tied to issues of history, the inheritance of the pasf. As earthly manifestations of ancesual lines of power, chiefs link contempo� rary individuals with collective history and ultimately with the founding ances� tors of Xinguano society itself. All Kuikuro have ancestors, to the extenr that re­ cent forebears are remembered in one way or another, but some can be described

192

Michnd Hulrmbnga

as ancestors themselves, not only parents and grandparents but apical figures through which group genealogy is remembered. As apical descendants ofprevious chiefs, the firstborns of firstborns, flt/efi" ekugu are apical ancestOrs of the living groups, and collective history becomes situationally isomorphic with chiefs, as

Xingwmo H,TWS. Allus/ors. und Orhl'1l

�9J

of (he founding Xinguano ancestors-are the QlIe/f ekllgll, the "true" male chiefs, and (he itankgo (Singular and plural), or high-ranking women. Of Heroes and Houses

aggregate subjens. History (md subjectivity are constructed through the flt/etall

[n complex Kuikuro conceptions of personhood, hierarchy is rooted in the dis­

(plural of fllleti) and the social linkages they embody.

tinction of seniority, temporal precedence. In social settings, this distinclion is

Public or group memory is enacted in ritual performance. spatial orientations,

often expressed as �shame" (hisem�), being in a state of humility, deference, or

and pracdce, though the mediums of the human body and material culture, as

respect to a social superior (elder): to parenlS, older siblings, and chiefs, as well as

much or more than it is remembered in discourse. Temporality, in large part,

affines.1 This extends to the temporal sequence, encoded in the complicated Xin­

refers [Q how history and time arc remembered or wfeh" in nondiscursive ways or

guano naming systems, which sequentially juxtaposes parents, children, grand­

ways not explicidy conceived as hisrory. It insinuates itselfinto every aspect oflife

parents, and grandchildren. These names embody not only individuals but social

as well, in elements of feeling, dwelling, and perception. Material cuhure, ritual

personages.

performance, and the built environment all make the past presenr and visible as

Formalized rank distinctions and defined elite status, wherever they are widely

cultural memory, and ritual contexts are "turned on," so to speak, by the cerrain

recognized as legitimate, depend to a large degree on actual genealogy. Social rank

individuals who animate and afe animated by the major rimal events. In a local sense, space and society come to a point in many ritual occasions,

is framed in an idiom of descent, but requires little depth of aCTual genealogical

the center of a concentric circle (the plaza), the axil mlllldi and center of public

scent-being one step closer to founding ancestors-becomes a primary dimen­

knowledge: legirimacy is tied to specific recent anceSIOTS. In these sociecies. de­

life, and the tip ofa pyramid embodied in the great chiefs. As I have argued, this

sion in the definition of social idencities and boundaries. Actual genealogical

inrerplay creates historical links between current and ancient chiefs, the sym­

links are often lost after three or four generations, but only the relationships with

bolic rebirth of Xinguano sociery, which mythically "naturalizes" hierarchical

immediate predecessors are needed to establish linkages with deeper genealogies,

social relations. It does so by bringing the hisrorical process under direct scru­

which over time are pruned down (Q a few critical individuals, as is common among societies without written records.8

tiny in the context of "making" chieAy sons and daughters intO chiefs and chiefs inro ancestors. These ritualized actions reproduce and redefine space through

Individuals reckon descent differently based on rheir position in the exist­

the s!Tucrured movements of people, and notably those of high rank; specific

ing chiefly hierarchies: high-ranking individuals place far greater emphasis on

places are personified, and the people who occupy them become, or come to

issues of genealogy and birth order than do most people, and are able (Q recount

stand for, fathers, representatives, ancestors-in mher words, founders-as well

genealogical relations to specific chiefly figures going back more than a hundred

as leaders; the words and bodily deployments of the chief's performance draw

years (Francheno '992; Ireland '996). Lower-ranking individuals often place so

history onto their person; there are no mher great chiefs, they are all gone, as the mUfi' itarHiu states of recent anceslOr5, so that JUSt the speaker remains, in place,

little emphasis on genealogy as to be characteri2ed by a "genealogical amnesia"

the chiefly or "heroic" I (Francherro '993, 1996a, 1996b; see also Rumsey 1999;

of individuals of greater and lesser substance-great chiefs, recognized already as part of a historical "sociecl of chiefs; mher chiefly persons, who may be inau­

Sahlins '985). Changes of body or person, social and symbolic construction, are most directly at issue. In the case of high-ranking persons, this includes nOt only direct exchange between things and persons of similar proportions bur also more generalized exchange between social beings of all kinds, including ancestors, other human communities, and nonhuman beings. The interactions between past and present ancestors, like that between (he generations ofparenlS and children in initiations, involve rhe �replacement" of old ancestors (older chiefs) with new ones. The im­ mediate sons and daughrers of the founding Kuikuro chiefs-and, through them,

(Gregor '977). The historical result on the ground is the definition of a hierarchy

gurated based on relations to the great chiefs; and commoners. One step closer to true ancestors thus means that chiefs are the ancestors of the local group, and through them more comprehensive sociohislOrical partitioning is mapped over communiries. "The pyramidal structure, although complex in terms ofhistorica1 performanc­ es and social dynamics, can be viewed as an extension over time and space of a simple separation of elder (superior) and younger (inferior) siblings, based on primogeniture, since SHang mutr are ideally ,he firstborn sons and daughters of

Xinguallo ffaon. Anrnton, alld Otllnl

Z9f

firstborn parents, traced cognadcally. The hierarchy thus relates to the depth one

relations are based on the bilateral (cognatic) transmission of names, tides, and

engages history as expressed in group genealogy (the founder's principle). This is

ritual prerogatives. In the Xinguano case, titles and prerogatives are not con­

defined by who can know, speak, and perform histories. -rhus, an older sibling is

trolled by individual muti" families, but can pass between high-ranking families,

closer

forebears than a junior and a senior line (firstborns) closer than a junior

depending on acmal social rclations and who holds power and auehority at any

line, leading back to the founders of the village, the local group, and broader

given time. Over the long term, there is no Single dominant lineage, hue inm:ad

population clusters. This temporal sllccession is also implied in spatial and ritual

competing HOlLses that at any moment in time arc themselves reoriented into

arrangcmeIHs of hOllses, settlements, and small regions.

internally hierarchical social bodies.

m

-fhis creates an upper tier of high-ranking individuals, a peer community of

In the present case, this has added significance in light of the regional and hier­

men and women who are unquesdonab[y strong in chieAy blood and are sepa­

archical nature of descent of all kinds: the self-scaling and metonymical qualities

rated (allni) from the rest of society. These individuals inherit names and po­

ofXinguano social formations, or, in other words, the iteration of cultural systems

sitions dirccdy from anccsmrs and, through the course of their lives, come ro

through time or across space. Thus we find households combined into Houses,

"own" communal and sacred things--objects, structures, spaces, ritual knowl­

which compose partS of peer communities that are sdll greater Houses, extending

edge, language-as they attain political stature. Principal among dried or "sit­

on up to the whole of the Xinguano people, the maximal "moral person," which

ting" chicfs are aneri

is thus organized on basic principles grounded in family and domestic life.

'

ekugll ("true" or "great" chiefs; and female itnnkgo), notably

named "owners" (oto), the IJ//gogo oto (the «owner of rhe middle") and the eli 010

At one level, the chief is primus inter pares among the household heads of

(the "owner of the village"), and, by extension, their heirs and coleaders: younger

multiple, chieAy 110nchieAy, Houses, bue at a higher communal level, the chief

brothers, nephews, and especially sons and daughters. These men should have

is symbolically situated at the apex of a pyramid, as head of the village, village

mastery of the full complement of chieAy knowledge and demeanor and be able

clusters, or even the region, within a society of chiefs that includes all apical

m conduct the principal chieAy rituals; those who have learned to perform the

ancestors (founders), including the first (dawn.timc) kindred.' While the local

chieAy discourse (anni' itnriiill) have to formally rcce.ive the messengers of peer

group (aloma) is the equivalent of the chief's maximal house, it is also highly fac­

communities.

tionalized and multicentric. 1hus, what at one level or in one context seems fairly

A second tier is composed of weaker and ascendant political figures, "smaller" chiefs

({lI/eli· il/sofio)

crystalline, pyramidal, and centric evaporates into a more amorphous, multicen­

who, while having special rights and prerogatives-spon­

tric, and "Aat" arena of competing interests and interests groups by changing rhe

soring rituals, labor projcC(s, orarion-are subordinate to primary chiefs. These

scale, perspective, and time frame. This does nor negate, however, the underlying;

secondary figures achieve prominencc and move toward greatness (mufi' rkllgu)

hierarchical organization of social relations.

by acting as the temporary sponsors of lesser rituals such as men's masking and Aute rituals, and female rituals, based on the inclusive hierarchy, including men

The Morruary Feasts

and women, that relates to the slfength of one's claims to aI/eli· status.

People are not simply born into or positioned along a developmenral line, but

Birth order is critical in households, composed of "heads" and their local kin­

are socially consnuctcd through discourse and performance. People are reborn or

dred ("bodies"), or what Seeger (t977) termed corpormi desmugrollp;: "substance

"grow" by dwelling in and animating certain spaces and objects, and high-ranking

lines" based on parentage and residence. Birth order is itself a form of temporal

people in parricular arc specially marked through chieAy life-crisis rituals, exdu·

marking, which over time exalts certain "lines," but these do not correspond to

sive to the aI/rtF and conducted each year. -n'e process of chief-making and the

a narrow definition of lineages, nor do they depend entirely (nor even closely in

reproduction of hierarchy begins through birthright, but it is in ritualized actions

some contcxts) on actual biological relatedness. Such social logic or configura­

that hierarchy is most clearly expressed and negotiated-in ornamentation, bodi­

tions arc more commonly known IOday as House societies, following Levi-Strauss

ly and spadal orientations, and demeanor. Hisrory is most visibly "calibrated� to

(e.g., 1987; see Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995)·

changing conremporary social and political conditions and group composition

-Ole chieAy House is organized around a core group of high-ranking men and

through the performance of chiefs in rituals, particularly those that commemo­

women linked through common descent, which men and women share equally

rate or "replace" ancestors (sec Wagner 1989). Individual status is constructed or

ahhough they differ significantly in political and economic terms. Hierarchical

augmented in an indelible way. Exclusive wealth items, including objects, designs,

196

Mieharl H«krllbrrgrr

XinglUlIlI' Hmm, AneNton. and Ofh�,.,.

spaces, structures, narratives, chiefly dialect, and even corporeal dispositions in formal settings, become the properry of specific persons, in their lifetimes, and are exclusive ro the

ll1utnu

order is also replicated in the order of boys' initiation. In the

297

tiponbi;

boys sit

on stools, oriented hierarchically out from a center, proportioned to their social

elite. These items become inalienable possessions of

"size." They wear {he Oifllflp� and full-feather headdresses, unlike the rest of their

chiefs that both represent and perpetuate social hierarchies, which are reinvented,

cohorr of initiates. These headdresses, the sunlike yellow and red diadems, and

although not "zeroed," with each passing, each ritual birth and death.

the Oifllflp� are also placed atOp the

In ritualized discourse, as noted, at cenain moments in the ritual cycle the founding ancestors are invoked as key founding figures when chiefs literally come

klltlrup

trunk representing deceased chiefs.

The resemblance between the initiate chiefs and the initiate ancestor (the deco­ rated

kuarup

trunk) is striking, and in dlese rimals of passage these hierarchies

to stand in their places-in houses, villages, and ritual spatial organil.1dons-and

are inscribed on the ground and in materials, perhaps the most graphic being the

speak for or represent them. As community "representatives" they form or em"

form, size, and uni<Jueness of the things placed on and around chiefly bodies. An

body a critical strand of composite history, being seldom absent from discursive

example is the set of small, medium, and large ytllltlpi; ceremonial pors used in

and spatial group memories, and history is a primary focus of their knowledge. They are specialists in group history and the conduct of rituals dIal reproduce the collectivity, since it represents their legacy and the reason they deserve to have one in the first place. In the most exemplary of these rituals, chieRy mOrtuary feasts

the ear-piercing festival among the Waura, Arawak-speaking Xinguano. Similarly, the three benches ofchiefs that sit before lheir people, rhe guest oromo, during the culminating wrestling matches, are a graphiC representation of hierarchy. In short, the deployment of chieAy bodies and, through them, all other bodies is always a

(rgitsi) and initiarions (riponhi), distinctions of rank and ancestry are emphatically

critical aspect ofthe rituals. "nle sites of these rituals, of social and symbolic repro"

and graphically represented throughout the year-long cycle.

duction, arc critical nodes not only of Space but of cultural memory, as places.

Chiefly performance is as much corporeal and spatial as spoken, and com­

The way visiting participants in these rites are also precisely partitioned into

bines diverse repetitive and serial elements (see Bourdieu 1977). 111is materiality

pie-shaped configurations around rhe plaza circle is another example of how so­

focuses attention on successive reorientations of specific social bodies in place

cial relations are inscribed in place, in this case reRecting the necessarily supralocal

and material cuhure, particularly when the social body itself is rejuvenated in riles of passage, particularly the de::.th of chiefs. In the

kuarup,

(inter-otomo) character of these rituals. The outside is taken here to have diverse

history is literally

meanings: ancesrors and their in.laws, Olher Xlnguano groups, or potentially

wrinen OntO the bodies, choreographed by and embodied in chiefs and (heir

even more distant "others," meaning "fierce Indians" and, today, "white people"

movements and actions in structured space---or, in mher words, how they dwell

(who have diversified extensively over rhe past twO centuries and include numer­

in or inhabit the world. In fact, chiefs are paraded before all. The old chiefs (now

ous and varied members of nonindigenous cultures). Gifting is an important

true ancestors) and the living chiefs (newer versions of the deceased ancestors) are

element of these diverse external relallons, and chiefs also mediate the outside

situated in ritual spatially and socially. A temporal order, a procession of "owners"

through gift-giving. Ritual or economic exchanges of prestige goods, including

(the founders of the

aroma)

represented as owners

(oto)

of rites of passage, is also

necklaces, headdresses, benches, and particularly such chiefly trappings as jagua­

perpetuated, as is the geography of the spaces through which they Aow. "nlese

rotooth necklaces, jaguar�skin diadems, cerrain special earrings, and communal

spaces, in

symbols like the blackwood bow, are a critical manifestation of chieRy authority

rum,

can be defined by successional "offices" that chiefs hold through

their lives, including being oto of formal structures, such as major roads, bridges, communal weirs, the doors of the ceremonial house and Ihe central house. rhe plaza cemer, the chief's house, and the village itself.

"I he principle of centrism permeates all ritual arrangements. Take, for instance, the benches stretched in a line when the kindred of deceased chiefs, for whom a

klltlrup

is called, are bathed by the community to wash away the sadness of the

death, thus releasing the community from formal mourning. 111e principal or

and political power. Today the wood idols stand above the recently burled chiefs. They arc dressed as living

kugr should

also be, wearing belts, necklaces, headdresses, and paints,

and they are given food, participating one laSt time ill the world of the living. The body of the divine mother, so to speak, is consumed productively by each subsequent generation not only through lhe

kuartlp

idol, occupied brieRy (one

night) at the culmination of the egitu. but in all chieRy constructions, including

principals sit in the middle, with the ranked order of their kindred(s) on either

the men's house and particularly the house of the chief

side, an order that will be duplicated in the placement of the klltlrup trunks, with

of the dead

the one or twO principals in [he middle and a ranked order on either side. This

(lafiu),

(tajinr)

and the house

an hourglass-shaped structure over [he special grave, which

itself comains diverse symbols of chiefly rank. Chiefs bring certain objects and

298

XillK"'u!O Hfl'(J($, AlIcntor1'. lind Others

Michad Hukmbergrr

299

through social and spatial proximity, come to control or otherwise occupy chieAy status in the historical group of "great chiefs." Access w wealth is a function of prestige, first and foremost, and diverse specialists are required to meet the demands of ritual and daily consumption, including not only chiefs (ane/i) but shamans (Mati), artists and skilled crafts­ men (ologi) , singers, dancers, and others. However, without a surplus ofsymbolic capital, inalienable properties such as names, titles, and esoteric knowledge, it is impossible to command or even strongly inAuence the primary cycles of socio­ symbolic reproduction, and thus the collective identity and memory. Specialties can provide the means to mobilize alternative political strategies, but these must be legitimized through ritual recognition of degrees of chieAiness to enter into the dominant political Aows of competing houses. Wealth items, espeCially pres­ tige goods, are not the exclusive property of elite persons, only rotating between ranked chiefs, but clearly chiefs have an advantage in the quantities and qualities of goods they control. We can expect that even greater exclusivity was present in Fig. 9.1. Kuarup Irunk idol of recently deceased chief in monuary feas!.

the past, in both spatial and material dimensions, given the much larger popula­ tions and the lack of industrial tools, notably metal, gUllS, bikes, and motors, among other modern luxury items. It is not only in the context of chieAy life-crisis fituals that these distinctions afe important. "The chief also delivers hortatory discourses, meanr ro cajole or praise basic Kuikuro values, which are not so much preached as performed through appropriate deployment of his body and his voice-for instance, late at night in the plaz.1, all alone, when only he can be heard. '111e commanding directionality of political oration and the authority of myth-history most eloquently express themselves, discursively, in chief's language and, corporeally, in ritual orchestra­

substances onto themselves, which reAecr an ancestral power that only chiefs can use. Chiefs are positioned in the place of these ancestral beings, and exclusively use not only the kuarup wood but also the body parts of jaguars, the paternal kin of the creawrs, as well as the spaces where these things are placed.

tion (Franchetto 1993, 1996a, 1996b, 2001). Ancestors thus ultimately define what are traditional values, or the "right" and "wrong" way to be a person, since chiefs are refractions of ancestors who act the way they do because important personages did so in the past.

In Xinguano society, wealth items are generally not passed from generation to generation as heirlooms, and thus hierarchical kin relations are defined, as often as not, by inheritance of rhe past (history) rather than vice versa-that is, by who actually inherits general chieAy prerogatives, such as objects, spaces, ritual orienrations, and manners of speaking, rather than who could or should. In performance, and through objects and body design as well as names and allu­ sion to founding ancestors of the local group, and through exclusive use of ritual knowledge and objects handed down from ancient ancesrors and ultimately from creaLOr beings, high-ranking persons come to embody ancestors. What is priva­ tized, however, is not things bur hisrorical persons and living individuals who,

Making Landscapes The way corporeal, social, ecological, cosmological, and ritual time combine to precipitate cultural memory is both situational and structured by tradition. It involves both present actions and their articulation with the residues of past ac­ tion (material culture and built environment). Extending histories beyond rhe specific memories of living persons hinges on questions of practice and landscape. In lilis scale, the focus changes from what is said to what people do, to their lived experience. This temporality is suggested in Seeger's 1977 benchmark article on

JOO

Xillguallo H(1'()/'J, Allasrull", and Of/Jrll"

Michael Hrckmbrrger

JOI

Suya conceptions of space and time, framing the issue of personhood in ways

Social relations are nO( based only on who persons are bur also, and perhaps

not anticipated by either rhe eco-functionalist or the structuralist tendencies that

more importantly, on who they were, where they came from in terms of ances­

had dominated regional anthropology. In particular Seeger points to the contex­

tors, and what places they've been. Equally critical is who they will be, or should

tual, processual, and historical elements of the built environment and, notably,

become, because of how they replace, fall short of, or exceed the ancestors of old,

suggests the importance of "body language" or corporeal deixis. Specifically, he

preserved in narrative memory: chiefs, shamans, bowmasters, and other great

notes situationally different actions in ceremonial settings and at nonceremonial

persons. Chiefs in particular arc always remembered in place, like crearion-story

times when divisions of space exercise less rigid control over individual anivilies.

heroes. Chiefs are chiefs precisely because they are oto, owners of public architec­

This cartography graphically represents a unique cultural history (Santos-Gra­

ture and works and ritual, and because they are in or even «of� these special, ritu­

nero 1998). A5 Seeger recounts, part of being educated as a novice was to learn

alized places-the taJifi:, the kuakutu, the hugogo, the kllarllp wood trunk-where

the names of the places he visited (I977). 111is knowledge is learned as much

they are legitimized and divided further by use or not of special ornaments and

from dwelling as from hearing, and common experience links people (including

designs such as the blackwood bows, the jaguar-claw necklaces, and jaguar-skin

researchers) with other people, from any time.

and sunlike feather diadems.

The present case resonates particularly strongly with the Suya, not just because

TI1e plaza settlemenr is the most explicit text or manual of group history and

southern Arawak and Gc speakers share central plaza organization, generically,

its making, as the positions manifested by different social bodies define history

but since the Suya are ao geographically and historically close. Among Xinguanos,

to make it conform, in fairly exact terms,

specifically, Basso notes: "Stories about ancestors and ancestral places constitute a

places of ancient occupations arc remembered, nOt only by physical relationships,

to

the relations between the living. The

narrative bridge leading from actual experiences in recent times to the stories of

nor by the communities who inhabit them, but particularly by the critical events

the very distant past" (2001:296, my rranslation). The split that gave rise to the

and individuals who lived there, remembered in chiefly discourse and narratives

Kuikuro, for instance, is well remembered in a variety of stories, some of which

(see Basso 1995). The greatest among these places, (hese passages of Xinguano his­

are related to chiefs named in chiefly discourse. Other chiefly names pertain to

tory, are the plaza villages, remembered by the chiefs who reigned and died there,

older times, in the mid-eighteenth century, when the white men were "ferocious"

the chiefs for whom the elaborate mortuary feasts are held.

and attacked various Xinguano senlements ancestral to the Kuikuro, and others

Hierarchy, in particular, is always linked to spatial distributions, such as where

go back yet farther, to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when even older

one walks, talks, sits, sleeps, or eats. Like persons, not all houses are constructed

ancestral villages were occupied and abandoned (see Francheno 2001; Hecken­

the same: some arc larger, more finely constructed, and more elaborate. Design

berger 2005). These names of persons and places not only are recounted in the

decisions have much to do with personal preferences or motivarions, as well as the

chiefly discourse, the anerY itariflu, but are permanent markers of past settle­

support available to any individual building a house. Not surprisingly, however,

ments, whereby the memory of the settlement is, to some degree, isomorphic

the houses of principal chiefly families, headed by the primary village chiefs, arc

with the major chiefs of that place. These stories and names from the past also

typically bigger and better. They are also positioned in key areas of the domestic

form a pool of historical resources that chiefs draw from to make points about

rillg, corresponding to cardinal poims and the orientation of the plaza and its

the past.

formal causeways. 111is is important because positioning is as much a community

Ancestral places and the historical figures and events they emplace not only

as a personal decision.

frame hiswrical consciousness bur also constitute a kind of cultural language

111e Xinguano "true" house (line) is also a history, and it is made according to

of history, analogous to the utterances, stanzas, and sequences of narrative his�

very exacting building standards: each space, each post, beam, stave, and door

tory. In Xinguano systems of language and knowledge production, one can get

has

virtually anywhere, and by extension to anyone, by following out the logic and

true house likewise follows a highly regular pattern, with specific domains marked

architecture of landscape. History is thus expressed, produced, and reproduced in

according to gender and functional differences, notably a central public area and

a historically defined landscape of greater and lesser places, special settings, and

a peripheral domestic area. It also marks the hierarchical relations that character­

a

name, and each is positioned in a highly standardized way. The layout of a

locales, tied together through time and space by the specifiable actions of discrete

ize all houses, expressed in where one sleeps or stores one's things. 11le hammock

human and other beings.

of the highest-ranking individual in each of tWO household divisions is situated

J01

Micluul HTC/rm/xrgTr

Xinguol/I) Hnwl, Anmlon, olld Olfurs

along the long axis of the house; the one on the right, as one comes though the from door, is the higher ranking of the nvo-the house "owner"

(ii"t Of0).

111e village is highly differenri:ued and oriented to these selfsame principles: as noted, the most sacred of all village space is the pla7�1 core (hI/gogo), which, insofar as it is "owned" by a single chief, can be seen as an incarnation of that individual(the Imgogo Of0) and more importantly of the office he represelHs. [n other words, the plaza, men's house, and cemetery arc institutions representing central and established practices, relationships, or organizations of society; they are also monuments ro chiefs, both to living chiefs who own them and to the

JOJ

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___

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\ Contributors

Jean-Picrre Chaumeil is senior research fdlow ar the Centre National de la Recherche Scienliflque (CNRS). Philippe Erikson is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Paris X-Nanterre. Carlos FausfO is associate professor

ll(

the Programa de P6s-Gradua�ao em

Antropologia Social, Museu Nadonal, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, and researcher at Brazil's Conselho Cenrro Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvi­ menw Tecnol6gico (CNPg). Peter Cow is professor of anthropology at the Uni'versiry of Sainr Andrews. Michael Hcckcnberger is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Florida. Eduardo Kahn is assistallt professor of anthropology at Cornell University. Fernando Santos-Granero is sfaff scientist at the Smilhsonian lropical Research Institute. Anne-Christine -[:1ylor is senior research fellow at tbe Centre National de [a Recherche Scielllifique (CNRS) and director of the research and educational division of Paris's new Musee du quai Branly. Aparecida Vila,a is associate professor at the Programa de P6s-Graduac;:ao em Amropologia Social, Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, and researcher at the Consclho Centro Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimcnto Tt.'CnoI6gico (CNPg).

General Index

Aa;uhuralion, Kii. S. II. 16.

n, -'0. 79, IB,

Animal mulel, xiii. 21, 106-11, 1 15-Z1, 12.4-15 Animism, [07-S, 2.85. y�also l'erspKliviSm

18t-S), [95-96. Ilj. j07

Mliniry. xii, SI, 107. 119, IP, 2j6-37. 245.

Anthropophagy. 17, 8j, 9S. Su111.jo, 251, 255, 267

YUkp.>., 257

neuna, 150, 169

Yurimagua, 265, 267

TImbif:l. 16 1

Zapara, 1 55