P. Aspelin The ethnography of Nambicuara agriculture

In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 135 (1979), no: 1, Leiden, 18-58

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THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF NAMBICUARA AGRICULTURE

In his recent contribation to !&e controversy over Lévi-Strauss' eho- graphy of Nambicuara subsistence and residence (Aspelin 1976, 1978; Lévi-Strauss 1976, 1978), Price ( 1978) cites additional useful information from some of the few smces which deal with the Nambicuara during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He also presents one version of one of the Nambicuara myh regarding the origin of agriculture. In dl of this, he may have missed the point, however. The question is not whether or nat he Nambicuara grew anyrhing at al1 at &e .time of Lévi-Strauss' visit, nor for exactly how long they had done so, nor where thair cultigens originally came from, since Lévi-Strauss (e.g. 1955:332, and 1978), Price (e.g. 1978) and myself (e.g. 1976) al1 agree that the Nambicuara have for metime been to at least some degree dependent on domestimted plant foodstuffs. Rather, the question before us is relatively how important was agriculture in their dier in the recent past, specifically at the time of Lévi-Strauss' visit in 1938? In his basic works on the subject, Lévi-Strauss (as cited in Aspelin 1976) originally stated that Nambicuara agriculture was simply supplementary to their gathering and hunting and that their agricdtural efforts and production were concentrated in the rainy season and essentially non-existent during the dry season. I have taken and continue to take issue with these and with several other specific (but important) points in Lévi-Strauss' Nambicuara

PAUL L. ASPELIN took his Ph.D. in anthropology at Cornell University in 1975. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Cleveland State University, and currently Visiting Professor in the Post-Graduate Program in the Social Sciences at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (Florianópolis, SC 88.000, Brasil). His main interests are South American ethnology, economic anthropology, and the anthropology of tourism. Recent publications include: 'The anthropological analysis of tourism', Annals of Tourism Research IV/3, 1977, and Projeto Uruguai: Os Barramentos e os fndios, with Silvio Coelha dos Santos, Aneliese Nacke, and Regina W. Schmjtz da Silva, Florianópolis: UFSC, 1978. Prof. Aspelin's regular address is: Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio, 44115 U.S.A.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 09:51:55PM via free access The Ethnography of Nambicuara Agriculture 19 ethnography, finding his statements regarding these specific items gener- ally misleading. Price's article, as I have mentioned, doesn't really speak effectively to many of [these concerns. This present article attempts to place Professor Lévi-Strauss' account of Namlbicuara subsistence in &e context of the rest of the ethnographic record over a relevant pericd of time, in the spint of our continuing mutual attempt to perfect ow extant ethnographic information insofar as possible? As Professor Léd-Strauss himself has recently wriitten:

Should it be proven lthat the rhythm of Nambikwara economic life was more complex athan it then looked to be, that lthey were more agriculturalist and less nomadic than they appeared during the single dry season that I spent among them, I would have nothing to object (1978:157).

It would seem to me that the most useful manner in which to approach this particular task would be to establish the relative importance and quality of Nambicuara agriculture from &e time of their fint effective contact with neo-Brazilian society in 1909-11 (depending on the area in question; see Anonymous 1916:289ff.; Magalhäes 1941:189, 481, 490; Rondon 1922:103; and Rondon 1947:47) up mtil the present. In order to do his, I have compiled and analyzed in chronological order al1 of the qualified reports available to me regarding he relative importance of Nambicuara agriculture from 1908 rhrough about 1973, ~thirtyyears both before and after Lévi-Strauss' own field research among hem in 1938. This period seems to me to be much more relevant to a discussion of these aspeuts of Lévi-Strauss' account than lthe much earlier periods represented by the accounts of Joäo Leme do Prado and the others mentioned by Prke. The published accounts of 5the "Rondon Cornmission", as Coronel clater General) Rondon's organization was generally known, are particularly useful in this regard since they were written by those 'with firstdhand and often extensive knowledge of the Nambicuara, whom they first effectively contacted in their explorations of northwestern Mato Grosso at the beginning of rhis period. Rondon first discovered the farm plots or roças of the Nambicuara during lhis second expedition, in 1908. His rist expiorations, in 1907, had brought him to the Jumena River from the east. Although he saw some Namlbicuara from a distance at that time, and was attacked by some of them as well, he did nat encounter any of itheir villages or roças that first year. This fitexpedition ended at the Juruena (see, for example,

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Rondon 1922:7-29). Appmaching the Juruena from the southeast in 1908, however, Rondon found several Nambicuara villages, most of which had been evacuated only a few hours or a few days before he reached them. Those whose agricultural characteristics are discussed in sufficient detail cto merit au attention here are shown by Roman numerals in Figure 1. The first two suoh sites (I and 11) were reaahed on August 23, 1908. They are known in Rondon's accounts as the Aldeia do Mandaguary and the Aldeia do Roceiro, respectively. Between 'the first, where he found some evidence &at it was its inhabitants ahat had attacked his party in 1907, and the second, he found an old, overgrown roça, showing the use of steel tools apparently obtained by force from some rubber-gatherers who had attempted to enter the Juruena basin a few years previously (Rondon n.d.:121). Next to the sectmd village or aldeia, a new roça was found. Rondon was clearly impressed with both &e size of (&is new roça (relative to the size of its correspondent village) and &e quality of its execution: it was clean, neat, and better-done than those of most Brazilians he had seen (Rondon n.d.:12lf.; cf. also Rondon 1922:32ff. and Anonyrnous 1916:311). After crossing the Juruena, Rondon found several more villages, in- cluding one directly to lthe west which he narned the Aldeia do Ranch50 (VI); it also showed signs of the use of steel tools (Rondon n.d.: 138). Although he came across yet another village (VII) between the Aldeia do Rancháo and the teminal point of lthe 1908 expedition just beyond Campos Novos, no description af tihe roças at that village is available. In 1909, Rondon complated his exploration of the tenitory to be transversed by the telegraph line he had been commissianed to build from Cuiabá to Santo Antônio do Madeira, through 1415 kilometers of virtually unknown territq (as measured from his supply depot at Tapirapoan; Rondon n.d.:339). Rus, lhe continued in the direction of his initia1 explorations, beyond Campos Novos, through the regians where he would later, between 1911 and 1914, establish the telegraph station of Vilhena, the pastures of Tres Buritís, and the telegraph stations of José Bonifácio and Baráo de Melgaço, and then, having at ehat point left the territory of the Nambicuara, on to the Madeira River to the northwest (Magalháes 1942133237-239). The Campos de Commemoraçáo de Floriano, where the telegraph station of Vilhena was later established, is sthe watershed for drainage basins running southwest, west, north and northeast. In attempting to

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[After Price 1972:23 and Rondon 19521

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determine which route to pursue from that point on, given that at this time no one knew for sure where any of those rivers would ultimately lead, Rondon called a halt for 51 days to reconnoiter the area more fully (Magalháes 1941 :289). Wlhile doing so, several Nambicuara were seen from a distance and several smal1 hunting-shelters discovered, since this was apparently a favorite hunting-spot for some nearby village(s). The only village discovered at this time, however, was one found in the second week of August, 1909, by Lt. Lyra, some fifity-five kilometers to the northnortheast (on the (headwatersof ,&e Rio Ananáz, later called the Rio Tenente Marques). This village, called the Aldeia do Mangabal (VIII), was sunounded by fourteen roças containing large-scale plan- ting~ of manioc, beans, corn, cará (Discorea sp.), potatoes, peanuts, araruta (Saranthe rnarcgravii Pickel; Mors and Rizzini, 1966:144), and catton. It had been evacuated only a few hms before the explorers actually reached it (Rondon n.d.:23Of.). Before Lyra had set out on his exploraitions to the northeast, several Nambicuara had been surprised wMe hunting near Rondon's main camp in &e Campos de Commemoraçáo. Later that day, July 6th, two Nambicuara baskets were found in that Same area, containing, in addi- tion to &e usual items of dmestic use such as boûtle gourds, resins, and stone axes, several [oodstdfs including a gourd full of manioc soup, a clay pot full of refined manioc starch (called \tapioca in English and either rnaniquéra or rnainicuéra or, more recerntly, polvilha in Portu- guese), half a ~baskedulof fresiily grated manioc dough, tobacco, unicum (Bixa Orellana), several kinds of beans and potatoes and a few other objects (Rondoli 1922:52f.). A similar event occurred on September 5th, 1909, near &e place where the telegraph station d José Bonifácio was later established in 1912. In addition to some of athe foodstuffs previously identified in the Campos de Comrnemoraçáo, these baskets conitained prepared manioc cakes, called beijú, as wel1 (Rondon n.d. :230,248-51). ?;he members of these expeditions were obviously timpressed with what they were able to observe of the agricultural practices of the Nambi- cuara. Rondon, as a matter of fact, quite often searched-out old Nambi- cuara roças, or areas which had been burned by fires originally started by the Nambicuara as they prepared their roças, in which to pasture his numerous pack-animals or through which to proceed with &e exploration for, or constxuation of, .&e telegraph line, since they were usually full of grass on ~hichhis animds could feed, easier to move through than dense forects, and, in many areas, both numerous and contiguous. Al-

Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 09:51:55PM via free access The Et hnography of Nambicuara Agriculture 23 though uhere is some question as to whether al1 of these so-called "Cimpos Indigenas" were actually man-made, just as arguments als0 abound regarding the man-made origins of the ather savannah areas of centra1 Brazil, the important point here is that Rondm was impressed enough wilth what he aotually saw of the agricultural endeavors of the Nambicuara to believe that they could have created Same of these savannahs. Some of ithem certainly were created through such a process, such as that around the Mamaindê village labeled "F" in my earlier map (1976:20), which was founded in 1958: the old roça areas there are now an open, grassy savannah (Rawitscher 1942, 1944; Rmdon n.d.: 145; 1916:65, 137; 1922 :61; Roosevelt 1914b3258; Saint-Kilaire 1831; etc.). Although Rondon and ~hisc~lleagues had not y& actually come into personal "contact" with the Nambicuara, they had abserved their agri- cultural activities to involve a large number of different cultigens, some of which they feBt might originally have been obtained from neighboring tribes or from escaped daves (as Price mentions), in times past; to be practised m a large scale (although certainly other uibes had greater or lesser plantations), with great care, in some cases using steel implements (especially further to @heeast) wihich had been obtained through conflict with rubber-gatherers or heir Paressi neighbors; and to provide them with many of these agricultural foodstuffs, including manioc, even during the height of the "dry" season, in July and August (and into early September). In 1910, in one of his first major public statements regarding his three years' work, Rondon himself said that "bheìr numerous artifacts, constnictions, and rogas reveal ,hem ,t0 be a capable, intelligent, and hard-working people" (1922 :102, my translation). The overall impres- sion provided by these accounts does not coincide very wel1 with the situation later reported by Professor Lévi-Strauss. Observations of Nambicuara agriculture dunng the three years of their "pacification" (1901-11 ) are relatively scarce, due to the only sporadic and lirnited contact which gradually began to occur during that time and to the faot ithat &e Nambicuara villages and their roçm described earlier, along the path of the telegraph line, had been zibandoned in 1908 and 1909, as mentioned previously, so &at oppontunity to observe their agricdtural activities temporarily declined? Dunng the dry season of 1910, Dr. Murillo de Souza Campos (1936: 72-105) was assigned to the Juruena crossing, i\n order to deal with an outbreak of beriberi among the men working to build the telegraph post and related structures there, at that time. Of the eighty men employed in this activtity, thirty-six came down with severe beriberi, of whom four

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died and nineteen had to be removed to Cáceres for further care. One of lthe major causes had to be their inadequate diet, he concluded, since they depended for food on the provisions shipped by boat from Argentina or southern Brazil t0 Tapirapua and thence by pack-oxen overland. Many times, the food shipments would be delayed for monrhs for various reasons, during which time the workers would be left to ~theirown devices, with nothing to eat but their crwn pack-animals. Several times during this period (the reference is specifically to July, Iglo), "some men went hunting and others went to harvest manioc from the roça of the Nambicuaras at the Aldeia do Rancháo" (1936 :75, my translation), which, although not inhabited, was still frequented by the Nambicuara, who in August of that Same year wounded two of the telegraph line workers in that vicinity ( 1936 :105). Thus, alrhough the Brazilians didn't have enough to eat themselves, there was still enough manioc lebt in a partially abandoned, at least two-year-old, nearby Nambicuara roça, in the middle of the dry season, to offer some suppont to 80 hungry Brazilian workrnen. Although only indirectly, this seems to me to say something positive about the relative adequacy of Nambicuara agriculture at this time. Even more directly, &ere is Dr. Canpos' statement ~that,of al1 of the Nambicuara whom he examined after heir "pacification" in late 1911, none showed any signs whatsoever d beriberi themselves (1936:53). By late 1911, the Nambicuara in the Juruena-Campos Novos region were frequent visitors to the telegraph camps, dlthough they still hadnyt permitted the Brazilians to visit their villages. For example, Dr. Campos himself once became lost in the confusion of streams surrounding Campos Novos but, luckily, chanced upon a group of Nambicuara who were on heir way home from there, where they had gone to trade for steel tools. Mthough they were happy to show him the way 'back to his camp, othey were adamant in not allowing 1l-h to follow them to theirs (Campos 1936:51). However, m the basis of the peaceful contact5 which he had with the Narnbicuara in October of 1911 at Campos Novos and in December of that saime year at the Juruena station (see also Magalhäes 1941 :65) and at the Jmena-Juina junction, as wel1 as from the accounts of two soldiers who had been captured and held for some time by the Nambicuara, and from his visits to ktheir abandoned roças, Campos concluded &at they had huge appetites, eating everything available to them. They appeared not to fee1 nausea or repugnante at: anything, eating flies, grasshoppers, rats, the fine soil found at the entrance to antsy nests, wild seeds, fruits, and honey, and especially appreciated the

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They grow manioc, corn, cará, etc., using the most primitive of processes. They cut down the trees using stone axes, burn them, and plant around the burned trunks. In this they employ great force and tenacity (1936:48, my translation).

In 1912, after Rondon's personnel had succeeded in entering into peaceful cantact with many of the various Nambicuara bands located along the path of the telegraph line (which at that time ended at Três Buritís), Professor Edgar Roquette-Pinto, of the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, spent several months among them. He was able to visit several Nambicuara villages, including that of the farnous (or infamous) "Coronel" Cavagnac on the Juina and one belonging to the northern Nambicuara near Três Buntis. The results of his research are particularly interesting, here, since in many ways Roquette-Pinto may be said to be the fitanthropologist to have studied &e Nambicuara (Faria 1959). Having left Rio de Janeiro in July, Roquette-Pinto (1935:60, 157f.) was anxious to finally get to meet some of rhe Nambicuara as he ap- proached &e telegraph station at Jumena, in mid-September, having passed by the large roças, now apparently abandoned, first discovered by Rondon in 1908 (I, 11) just to the southeast. Much to his dismay, how- ever, the Nmbicuara hadn't been here for quite some time. Anxious to cover as much territary as possible before the beginning of the rainy season, he pressed on to the next station, at &e Juina River. There, he found the same story he would also find at Três Buritis and José Bonifácio, although not at Campos Novos, where the Rondon Commis- sion had for the previous &ree years been developing a ranch with pasture, plantings, and domesticated animals of various sorts to provision the troops that made it that far dong the line. The unusual drought of that year had destroyed not only much of the Indians' plantings of manioc, but the pastures which the Rondon Comrnission relied upon for feeding the pack-animals which brought their foodstuffs al1 the way from Tapirapoan. Although the Indims iound it necessary to engage in a lot of extra hunting and gathering (of honey and ather things) that year, in order lto make up for the produce lost from their agricultural plant- ings, mthey still found it possible to provide the telegraph workers with some of their own con and processed manioc, which the Brazilians greatly appreciated. Since the Brazilims could trade nothing in return, for no shipments of their food or other supplies had arrived in a long

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time, the Nambicuara finally decided &at this was a losing proposition and mtherefore hadn't bothered to visit rheir poorer neighbors for a month or so. Most likely, rhey were als0 busy preparing heir own roças for the onset of the rains and the busy period of planting which that entails (Roquette-Pinto 1935:161; cf. als0 pp. 168-171 ) . During his visits with rhe Nambicuara who came to see him at Carnpos Novos and (finally) at Três Buntis, and his visits to their villages, Roquette-Pinto found that they would and did eat almost anything (from his point of view), although those in the José Bonifácio area seemed to rely more on agricultural products (corn and manioc) than did those of the Juruena River region. He seems ~eallyquite amazed at the variety of the Nambicuara diet: beans, cará, corn, cotton, manioc, potatoes, tobacco, and urucum were grown, while ant's earth (from which ants construct their huge nests), anteaters, armadillos, capivara (Hydrochaerus), deer, duck's eggs, fish, grasshoppers, honey, the larvae of bees and butterflies, lice, lizards, many wild fruits, monkeys, mosquitos, mules (stolen ,from the Rondon Cornmission), mushrooms, paca (Coelo- genis), wild pineapples, rats, snakes, and tapirs were hunted or gathered, as the case might be (Roquctte-Pinto 1913:383; 1917:360; 1935 :178, 226-236, 245-247, 272-276, 292f. Cf. also Campos 1936, as discussed above) . It appears that Roquette-Pinto's awn first-hand obse~ationof the Nambicuara in late 1912 allowed him to more accurately judge the relative importance of the various components of Nambicuara subsistence than he had been able to do solely from an examination of Rondon's ethnographic collections in the Museu Nacional and from' talking to Rondon himself while the latter was in Rio during 1910 to complete the official Relatórios of his three years' explorations (Roquette-Pinto 1935: 60),for, in a paper presented to the International Congress of Ameri- canists in London just before he was to visit the Narnbicuara, Roquette- Pinto (1917:358) had said they "live by hunting; but they aiso plant corn, cará, potatoes, manioc, and beans (1913:383)". Clearly, his under- standing of the relative contribution of hunting versus agriculture to the Nambicuara diet shifted strongly in favor of the latter on the basis of what he himself saw in his researches among them, for even though he found the northern Nambicuara lto rely somewhet more on agriculture than those in the vicinity of the Juruena River, al1 of the Nambicuara he saw seemed to him more reliant on agricubture than on hunting and/or gathering :

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They subsist primarily on agricultural products; one of the para- doxical charactenstics of this population is the development of agriculture in their generally backward situation. . . . they are indeed expert agriculturalists ( 1935 :226, 245, my translation).

Thus, during September and October (when the rains finally came) of 1912, Roquette-Pinto, the only other available source of extensive and reliable information regarding the Nambicuara at this time, found them to rely largely on the products of their agricultural efforts, in spite of the serious drought of that year having disrupted their normal agricultural production and in spite of his observations having been made during exactly that penod of time when (as I have previously demonstrated, 1976:10, 15) roça production is necessarily at an ebb in this part of Mato Grosso, anyway, due to the growing cycles of these particular crops. Their agricultural repertoire was diverse, productive enough to share with the impoverished Brazilians even during this period of crisis, and supplemented by a wide range of hunted and gathered gourmet treats. Both Rondon and Roquette-Pinto concluded that the Nambicuara were excellent agriculturalists: time, patience, interest, care, hard work, and succes seem to be the appropnate words to use in discussing their descriptions of Nambicuara agriculture from 1908 through 1912. This does not seem to be tme for Lévi-S-aus' description of the situation in 1938, however (but cf. Lévi-Strauss 1976:32). Subsequent reports from various observers do little to change my opinion of the productivity of Nambicuara agriculture at this time. An anonymous publication entitled Misszo Rondon ( Anonymous 19 16) verifies the continuity of these impressions over the period from 1907 through 1914. Although this purports to consist of a series of interviews by a newspaper reporter with Rondon lbself, it is clearly the work of one of Rondon's most dedicated assistants and biographers, Arnilcar A. Botelho de Magalhaes, who accompanied Rondon on many of his expe- ditions and who was later in charge of the central headquarters of the Rondon Commissicrn in Rio de Janeiro (Magalháes 1942a:345n.). It describes the roças of the Nambicuara as "as wel1 made as the best of those of our own people; carefully worked and vast [in size]" (Anonymous 1916:311f., my translation). When considered in the context of their other statements about the relative importante of agriculture in their diet, both Campos' and Roquette-Pinto's descriptions of the great variety of non-domesticated foodstuffs used by the Nambicuara seem to suggest that their gustatory habits, which have inspired so much amazement in alrnost al1 of their

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observers, might be due as much to preferences of taste as to the injunc- tions of necessity. My own experience ammg the Mamaindê tends to confirm this to a large degree: many of the things which the Mamaindê most relish are those which I suspect most members of their observers' culture would find strange, disgusting, and only acceptable under con- ditions of the utmost necessity. Many insect larvae, in particular, are especially prized (as Pyreneus de Souza also found; 1920:393). There is an interesting statement to exactly this effect, which I wil1 not bother to quote here in extenso, in Miss60 Rondon:

. . . to the products of their roças, even though abundant and well- varied, as we have already seen, they do not hesitate to add wild fmits and the meat of animals caught while hunting or fishing, but, going even further, to al1 of this they add a great number of insects and diverse larvae, mts, wasp larvae, reptiles, the earth of their fireplaces and of anthills (Anonymous 1916:3 16-319, my translation). Although many other tribes of Brazil eat some of these things, too, this report continues, most of theml eat only some, but not all, of the vaxious members of any particular "species". The Nambicuara, however, eat them all. Likewise, many Western people eat many things which many Indians wouldn't touch: the French even eat snails, although they would probably turn up their noses at a plateful of bee larvae. The only difference between the French and &e Nambicuara, then, is that the Nambicuara enjoy a wider selection of gourmet treats (Anonymous 1916:319f.). Perhaps, as among great chefs, there was some sense of rivalry between these particular gourmets, such that Léi-Strauss may not have been able to fully appreciate the delicacy of the Nambicuara's recipes but saw them rather as "le manger de la vache enragée", as the consequence of necessity :

Dans lle folklore nambikwara, l'expression "manger des sauterelles", récolte infantile et féminine, équivaut au français "manger de la vache enragée" (Lévi-Strauss 1955:329). One further fact from the early ethnography of the Nambicuara is als0 worth our mentioning at this point. The prirnary staple of the Narnbicuara, according to Miss60 Rondon, is manioc, particularly in the form of manioc cakes. Manioc dough is taken everywhere they go, so that, as soon as they stop, the women may prepare fresh manioc cakes, baking them underneath the hot coals of their fires. But, if they wish to

Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 09:51:55PM via free access The Ethnography of Nambicuara Agriculture 29 preserve the dough for later use, they place it on a babracot to dry slowly over a low fire (Anonymous 1916:320f.). I find no mention in these early accounts of the Nambicuara burying their manioc cakes in the ground to preserve them, as Lévi-Strauss originally said they did. Most other referentes to Nambicuara agriculture between the time they were effectively "discovered" by Rondon and the time of Lévi- Strauss' researches are unfortunately rather sketchy. One is that of Theodore Roosevelt, who, together with Coronel Rondon, explored one of the major rivers (thereafter known as the Rio Roosevelt) flowing northwards from the Campos de Commemoraçáo de Floriano in early 1914 (e.g. Rondon 1916:61-78). In doing so, Roosevelt met several parties of Nambicuara along the way and stopped for a few hours at one village of Northern Nambicuara located between Três Buritis and José Bonifácio (Roosevelt 1914a:313). His several accounts of this expedition (1914a, 1914b, 1915, etc.) indicate only that he thought that ". . . thty are fairly good cultivators of the soil . . ." (Roosevelt 1915:lOl) . The year after Roosevelt's journey, the river immediately to the east of the Rio Roosevelt was explored under the direction of Lt. Marques de Souza, who was killed in the course of this attempt by 'then un- contacted Tupian people, several days after leaving Nambicuara ter- ritory. While proceeding slowly down that river, then known as the Ananáz and subsequently as the Tenente Marques, he used the presence or absence of indications of the use of steel axes and machetes as an indication of whether he was still in Nambicuara territory or not; Rondon had done this, too (Anonymous 1919:257; Rondon 1916:68, 74). By 1915, the use of steel cutting-tools was sufficiently Mdespread among the Nambicuara that it could serve as an indication of Nambi- cuara geographical distribution. Although I have not been able to find an indication of the exact number of such steel tools provided them through Rondon's pacification efforts, doubtlessly some stone tools con- tinued to be used in many parts of their temtory even after that time, especially in those areas which Rondon's efforts did not directly touch. Nonetheless, the impact of steel tools on the agricultural production processes of the Nambicuara must already have been Mdespread and substantial by this time (Souza 1920:394). Thus, it seems to me that there is clear and convincing evidence of the relative importante and quality of Nambicuara agriculture at a time which would touch the lives of many of the Nambicuara whom Lévi- Strauss, Oberg, Price, and myself knew, and I would therefore find this evidence considerably more useful, if not more convincing, ,than that

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much earlier material which Professor Price has sought to bring to bear on this issue. Information regarding Nambicuara agriculture during the 1920's is very sparse indeed. The only really useful account from this period is that of Mrs. Arthur F. Tylee, the only survivor of the massacre of the Protestant mission station at Juruena in November of 1930. According to Mrs. Tylee, they had begun their work there in October of 1925. Four months before that, six people from Juruena had gone to one of the nearby Nambicuara villages, for food was in short supply at the telegraph station and the situation had become urgent. They went with some care, for the "big chief" [apparently Cavagnac] was said to be angry because, he apparently had said, his brother had been killed by an official of the line shortly before. They never returned, nor did the Nambicuara again appear until February of 1926.3 Since the employees of the telegraph stätion had been converted to Christianity by the missionaries, however, they allowed the Nambicuara to leave freely, rather than killing them there and then in retribution! In October of 1926, the food situation was again acute for the Brazilians and the missionaries at Juruena, so that al1 of the men spent most of their time hunting and fishing and tending their one smal1 manioc patch (Tylee 1931 : 1-36). Several times during these months [from July rhrough October, 19261 the Indians came to the [Juruena] station bringing grated mandioca which they cal1 by the Portuguese word massa and the starch from the rnandioca or povilho formed into balls. From these products a sort of bread or flat cake can be made which is not unpalatable if the ingredients have been properly cleaned and not allowed to ferment (Tylee 1931 :37). Once again, the agricultural food products of the Indians were sought out by the neo-Brazilians (and in this case the Americans as well) gathered sound the telegraph stations waiting for food supplies from Cáceres and Cuyabá, which often never carne. Once again, just as during the time of Murillo de Campos' and Roquette-Pinto's researches fourteen to sixteen years earlier, the roças of the Nambicuara were called upon to supply the Brazilians during the heigh't of the dry season and, once again, this seems to have occurred during an especially prolonged and severe drought which may be assumed to have taxed the roças of the Indians to some degree as well. Rat the Brazilians wodd think of attempting to procure some food from the Nan-ibicuara under such circumstances in 1925 and would continue to trade for such food during an equally difficult dry season in 1926 seems to me to speak well rather than poorly

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of the relstive quality of Nambicuara agriculture in this area at this time. Nonetheless, it remains true that both Lévi-Strauss and his French companion, Jean Vellard, have reported a considerably different state of affairs for 1938 than the accounts which we have just reviewed indicate thirty years lbefore then or than I have reported to exist thirty years aftenvards. As far as I know, theirs are the only extant accounts of Nambicuara subsistence practices for the 1930'~~outside of a few rather subjective reports by the Protestant missionaries who had returned to re-establish the mission of the martyred Tylees (e.g. Meader 1937).4 Of the four members of L&-Strauss' team, only Vellard and (especially) Lévi-Strauss himself have published very ex ten si vel^ regarding the Nambicuara. Lévi-Strauss' wife, Dina (D. Léi-Strauss 1938), had to return to France early due to an eye infection, and his Brazilian companion, Luiz de Castro Faria, has published (as far as I know) only a very brief comment regarding them (1951) which, not surprisingly, is very similar to Lévi-Strauss' own position.' Vellard says much the same thing as Lévi-Strauss:

Cette tramparence [of ,the rivers in the Nambicuara region] rend la pêche difficile, et les Indiens vivent pauvrement de la cueillette, de petite chasse ôt d'un peu de manioc (1965:92).

Although perhaps not as useful as the imrnediately preceding state- ment in his own words, athe following report of Vellard's lecture on "Los indios ñamibikwara de Matto Grosso" on October 31st, 1941, at the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales de Buenos Aires, appears in at

I least two separate sources and may thus be considered reasonablly re- presentative of his opinions as expressed on that occasion:

Tfheregion, dry, half desert, covered by a low and tough vegetation of twisted trees, offers few resources ,to the Indians: very little game, some wild fruits, . . . and, above all, palm nuts, a resource valued by the Indian. But frequently hunger wil1 strike among the Indians, obligating them 'to collect grasshoppers and the larva of butterflies and other insects . . . Their social organization, added Dr. Vellard, corresponds to their material culture. They are col- lectors of natura1 products and have remained stationary in the stage of the horde, bringing together a smal1 number of families and not having permanent camps (Anonymous 1941-42 :l 162f. ; cf. Anonymous 1942 ; my translation and emphasis) .

Thus, from ihis first account, we learn that the Nambicuara have trouble fishing because the rivers are so clear, so that they must live poorly from

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collecting, small game, and a little manioc, while, were we to have con- sulted only the second, it would appear that they have absolutely no agriculture at all, and very little game, fruits, or social organization either, but are rather obliged to spend their time gathering grasshoppers and larvae to fend off their frequent hunger. From reading these accounts, we might begin to wonder if perhaps Lévi-Strauss, Vellard and Castro Faria had unwittingly rnanaged to plan a trip through Nambicuara territory during a period of particularly damaging drought, which could therefore be seen to reaccur, very curiously, coincidentally wih each of he expeditions since the time of Rondon which have ~leftus records of their irnpressions of Nambicuara subsistence practices at these times. Somehow, although I wil1 adrnit to not being familiar with what literature may by now exist regarding such periodic climatic oscillations in northwestern Mato Grosso, this seem5 rather unlikely. It seems more likely to me that each of $theseobservers was sirnply struck just as strongly by the very substantial desiccation of the normal dry season in this part of the world as they were by the wide variety of wild foodstuffs enjoyed mby their Namibicuara hosts. Considering that in at least two of these instances, those recounted by Roquette-Pinto and Mrs. Tylee, the Narnbicuara continued to supply the Brazilians with agricultural produce during these supposedly unusually critica1 periods, the drought would have had to have been ltruly exceptional in Lévi- Strauss and Vellard's time to so radically alter the picture from that which we have previously seen. As Price has suggested, agencies of the Brazilian government were relatively inactive in the Nambicuara area dunng the 1930's. The Indian Protection Service (Serviço de Protecao aos fndios, or SPI) Posts in the area were gradually abandoned, as funds for their operation dned up. Nonetheless, in 1941, Rondon was able to reactivate this organization in northwestern Mato Grosso, with the re-opening of the Posts at Utiarity and the Juina crossing and the development of plans for a Post at Tres Buritis, which apparently never opened (Rondon 1941). The new Juina Post, als0 called the Pôsto Urutáo, after the name of the small stream on which it was located, was actually 12 ,km. ~tothe nofih of the old telegraph station at the Juina crossing. It was inaugurated in January of 1941 (Mon~teiro1941 ) . Unfortunately, there are few references to Nam- bicuara subsistence or mobility patterns in the correspondence regarding this Post. It was short-lived, for early in 1942 it was movcd further int0 the heart of Nambicuara territory, to the place where the telegraph line began to climlb out of the so-called Serra do Norte int0 the Campos de

Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 09:51:55PM via free access Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 09:51:55PM via free access 34 Paul L. Aspelin being exploited by rubber-gatherers working for Manoel Lage and other Brazilian siringalistas, as the entrepreneurs who llay claim to a particular area of seringa (rubber trees) are called (Marcondes 1941). The seringalistas desired to retain contra1 over as many of the Indians as possible, in order to exploit their labor. To further complicate the problem, Protestant missionaries, challenged by the martyrdom of the Tylee mission, continued to attempt to establish $themselvesin this area, while the Jesuits established themselves at the Juniena in the Tylee's place (França 1945b). Afonso was not too happy with the Protestant missionaries at Vilhena and Campos Novos at this time because, he said, they were depriving hirn of his help (França 1943d)! In short, the Indians' attention was lbeing drawn in several directions at once at *this time: ethe SPI Post, rubber-gatherers, missionaries, and their own pursuits al1 clamored for their attention and their labor. Any statements which we might then find regarding their agricultural productivity at this time should be evaluated in the light of al1 of these factors. Dwing the first year or two of Afonso's administration, food was in short supply at Espirro since, although he and his Brazilian SPI em- ployees (and the Nambicuara who worked for hirn at rhis time) were busy opening new roças, these would not be able jto produce anything until he following year. Apparently Marcondes had opened little if any roça in his brief stay at Espirro, and Alípio even less, so that it was necessary to buy a large roça located near Vilhena from Manoel Lage, the seringalista (França 1943d), since atransportation was not available to bring the food supplies which the goveinment had destined for Espirro from the warehouse at Utiarity where they were being stored (França 1943e; Anonymous 1943b). In an attempt to find other sources of food both for the many Nambicuara who came to visit and (in accordance with traditional Nambicuara hospitality ; cf. Price 1977 :l 26 and Souza 1920:397, 403) expected to be fed by their hosts and for the Brazilian employees working there, Afonso persuaded the particular group of Nambicuara that had become most attached to the post to periodically visit their colleagues who had remained in their villages on the "Rio Roozevert" [sic] to bring large quantities of food back to the Post. The amount of food involved was so substantial that at one time Afonso had them open a road through nine kilometers of virgin forest and build a bridge over the Rio Roosevelt 25 meters long with built-up approaches totalling an additional 140 meters, so that he wuld reach their village with a mule train (which had come from Utiarity) in order ta bring back al1 of the manioc flour

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which they had prepared there for that occasion, in December of 1944 (França 1944b). When he got there, he says, he became ecstatic upon seeing the huge area which they had cultivated, for it would clearly provide more than enough manioc to provision the Post without in any way prejudicing their own village consumption (França 1945a). A similar expedition had also been planned in December of 1943; however, it is not clear whether the mules arrived so that it could actually take place (França 1943e). Once again, the Nambicuara, whose roças are supposedly so meager, according to Lévi-Strauss, that they won't even support the Nambicuara themselves very well, are called upon to help support the Brazilians who have intruded into their midst, just as they did in the times of Roquette- Pinto and Mrs. Tylee. As a matter of fact, Afonso found so much food to be had there, above and beyond that necessary to feed the Indians them- selves, that he says it was impossible to carry al1 of it back to the Post even with the use of the mule train which he had brought supposedly for that specific purpose.' Afonso's information here should als0 be placed in the context of his continual griping about the difficulties he had in persuading the Indians to work in the roças at the Post. Most of them complained, few would work very steadily, many fled and had to be chased and brought back (França 1943d, 1943e, 1946, 195313). Many were bound, beaten and whipped and he had at least three killed for not working for kim or for inciting the others to flee his persecution, according to an anonyrnous document (Anonymous 1955) subrnitted to the directors of the SPI in Cuiabá and to &e Indians' accounts of these events as well. In spite of his gnimbling, Afonso was able to entice or coerce a considerable amount of work out of them, as witnessed by the report of 'bis supervisor's visit to the Post in 1946 (Monteiro 1946). Although severely criticizing Afonso for kis llack of attention to some of the other necessary aspects of super- vising an SPI Post, Monteiro found its land to be fertile, the game plentiful, he Indians hard workers, and the farms both well kept and very large in proportion to the number of Indians. Given the many demands placed upon the Indians' attention at this time, as discussed above, Afonso's utilization of the Nambicuara roças on the "Roozever" in 1943 and 1944, his enthusiastic evaluation of what he saw when visiting there, and the State SPI Superintendent's evaluation of the Indians' agxicultural efforts at Espirro hardly seem consonant with Lévi-Ctrauss' account of their agn'cultural productivity some five ato eight ' years earlier. Were Lévi-Strauss' opinion in accordance with those we

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have found for the years immediately preceding his researches, we might suppose that the situation had later somehow drastically changed with $he coming of the Pôsto Pyreneus. Since, however, the reports available from the SPI sources during the 1940's seem to agree much more with the earlier accounts than with Lévi-Strauss', we might suggest, on the other hand, that there might be some problem regarding Lévi-Strauss' account itself, or the circurnstances under which that account was abtained? Essentially, only two primary sources regarding Nambicuara subsistence are available for the period betweer, Lévi-Strauss' visit in 1938 and the opening of &e federal highway through Nambicuara territory in the early 1960's (see Ferreira 1961), outside of the SPI material which we have just reviewed? These two, Kalewo Oberg and Lajos Boglár, share some interesting things in common: a) neither of them ventured beyond Utiarity, so that each had to rely upon the resources (Nambicuara and othenvise) available &ere for their information regarding these people; b) both of them conducted their brief researches during the dry season alone; and c) both of them contend that the Nambicuara subsist primar- ily by gathering. In reviewing the infomation which they have provided on the basis of their expeditions of 1949 and 1959, respectively, we should therefore keep clearly in mind that Utiarity is not within the territory which the Nambicuara then defined, had previously defined, or now define as theirs.* Those Nambicuara who were at Utiarity were there as guests forty or more kilometers int0 the homeland of the Pareci (Ano- l nyrnous 1916:82), one of their traditional enemies, with some of whom l they continued to be on sufficiently hostile tem for the Pareci to kil1 and steal their women until at least he late 1960's (Cecil Cook, Jr., personal communication), although this statement wil1 obviously vary depending on the particular bands or villages of Ndicuara and Pareci in question. Their behavior as observed at Utiarity cannot, therefore, be considered representative of what they might do in their own homelands, in the absence of the inter-ethnic stresses presented by the Pareci, the missionaries, mbber-gatherers (cf. Gow-Smith, as cited above), explorers, telegraph employees, and other assorted Indians and non-Indians to be found at Utiarity's mission boarding school and other facilities, depending on the particular year in question. Both Oberg (1953) and Boglár (1962a, 196213, 1969, 1972, etc.) thus suffered from essentially the same sort of limitation of vision which Gow-Smith, Lévi-Strauss, and Vellard had suffered. They al1 had a bad case of what we might cal1 "telegraphitis", that particular restriction of

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the vision which is due to seeing the world of the Namibicuara through the narrow slit of the thin path cut by the telegraph line through an otherwise inaccessible and hence unknown world. Gow-Smith (see note 3, above), Oberg, and Boglár each had a particularly acute variety of this, which might best be called "stationitis", wherein the three-dimen- sional world of the Nambicuara is reduced even beyond the two-dimen- sional perspective symptomatic of telegraphitis to a uni-dimensional perspective in which that world is seen from a single point alone. Were the point in question the "navel" of he Nambicuara world to begin with, dis might produce a particularly insightful view of that world, as in Zuidema's study of the Ceque System of Curco (1964) for example. Since the point in question is no more than tangential to the Nambicuara world which these authors have sought to understand in general, how- ever, this distortion of theù vision due to "stationitis" seems to be more obfuscating than elucidating, at least regarding the phenomena we are considering here. I suspect that further investigation might als0 show similar distortions due to this limited perspective in other aspects of their ethnographies, as well.l0 I have already discussed Oberg's position regarding these questions in my article d 1976, since, as I made clear at that time, Oberg's position on these issues is essentially no different from Lévi-Strauss'. Boglár's position, however, yet remains to be discussed. He also ob- tained his research data during &e dry season (in 1959) at the Jesuit mission of Utiarity from some members of Price's "southern" Nambicuara who were temporarily camped there at that time (Boglár 1960:89)?' Following Lévi-Strauss, he reports the Nambicuara to $e essentially sedentary during the agricultural rainy season and dispersed and nomadic during the dry season, when they support themselves by hwting, gather- ing, and fishing (Boglár 1962a:141; 1969:237; 1972:217 and 221). On the other hand, he thinks that the fact that they are primarily gatherers may be a factor in theù favor, for they wil1 therefore be less likely to adopt those major changes usually offered by Western culture through the stable, sedentary, long-term contacts which the Nambicuara's seasonal mobility precludes (Boglár 1962a:143; cf. als0 Fuerst's comments on this point, as cited above) . Throughout Boglár's account, however, there runs the disconcerting thread of great changes in this eastern area. After coming ,to the mission station at Utiarity, he says, these Namibicuara stopped planting their own I roças so that they could work on the mission's in return for the products of the industrialized economy which only the missionaries could supply.

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Now, when they work the land, they no longer work as a group for a common and mutually beneficial goal, nor is it any longer their own land; it is another's, from' which theg have been voluntarily alienated. Even so, to the degree that they do continue to engage in their tradi- tional activities, their newly acquired Western tools serve only to increase the speed of heir efforts rather thui their productivity; there aren't enough of (these new items to go around, so that those who don't have them simply stand around and wait for those who do to do al1 the neces- sary work, which can now be done much more easily (Boglár 1962b: 23 ff.). Although I would not wish to accuse Boglár of the cavalier air of a Gow-Smith, we must certainly question how much of &e behavior which he has reported as typical of "the Nambicuara" actually existed outside of &at particuiar Nambicuara group ~hichhe saw at Utiarity in such an advanced state of alienation. At Utiarity for only a brief stay; during the height of the dry season, once again; and once again relying on essentially he same group of idormants which Lévi-Strauss rdied upon and which almost everyone who went to Utiarity relied upon because they were more welcome there than among their fellow-Nambicuara, among whom at least their leader had the reputation of being rather untrustworthy; and moreover utilizing the work of Lévii-Strauss and Oberg as his specific guide as to what to investigate (Boglár 1969:237); how could Boglár's accounts be considered any more independent of Lévi-Strauss' suggestions and the forces affecting the formation d Lévi- Strauss' ideas than were Vellard's and Castro Faria's? (Cf. alm Fuerst 1970:315; and Price 1972 :134.) It seems to me that we might much {betterconsider Boglár's account of the Nambicuara as a description of a "margid" Nambicuara group, rather than of the "Nambikwara: a Brazilian marginal group?" (Boglár 1972). I seriously doubt that his comments on Nambicuara subsistence shmld be considered very representative of the other Nambicuara when his obse~ationswere made of a group which he says were no more than hired hands on somdbody else's plantation. Another anthropologist, Desidério Aytai, alm visited the Nambicuara on several occasions during rhe 1960'~~after the federal highway through norrhwestern Mato Grosso was opened or partially opened. His first visit to &e Nambicuara occurred only four years after Boglár had visited Utiarity. In July and August of 1963, and again in June and July of 1966, Aytai visited the Mamaindê viliage labeled "F" in my earlier map of Mamaindê village locations (Aspelin 1976:20). In June and July of

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1964, he visited a village of the southwestern-Nambicuara speakers on the headwaters of rhe Rio Sararé, in the Same area later visited (in 1968) by iboth René Fuerst and David Price. In July of 1967, he visited anoîher southwestern-Nambicuara-spe&ng people living on the head- waters of the Rio Gailera and the southern-Nambicuara-speakingpeople of the village of Serra Azul. His publications on the Nambicuara-speakers (1964, 1965, 1966, 1967-68) shed additional light on the question of the quality of Nambicuara agriculture. His article on he sacred flutes of rhe Nambicuara (1967-68) speaks to the inportance of agriculture in Nam- bicuara ritual and vice-versa, for example. In that context, he transcribes another version of one of the Nmbicuara myths regarding the origin of agriculture and abserves, as Price should have noted, that the indigenous nature of al1 of the crops mentioned in that myth speaks in some way to the antiquity of the myth, as wel1 as the myth speaking to the antiquity of their agriculture. I suspect both are right. Likewise, in that Same article, Aytai mentions rhat during his visit to &e Sararé area in 1964, he found them to have lkautiful plantations of sugar cane and orange trees, without really having been in prolonged pacific contact with the (probable) Brazilian sources of those cultigens at all. On he other hand, he says, the Ndicuara of Serra Azul had never planted rice bdore he was there in 1966. This certainly seems to support my contention that the origins md development of Nambicuara agriculture must be specifically studied for each group in question, rather rhan by attempting to generalize about the process at this time, as Price l has attempted to do. Professor Aytai has als0 very kindly written me several letters regarding these questions, which I take &e liberty of citing here:

By the end of July the Marnaindê hardly have anything else to eat [from heir roças] besides manioc. We examined their plantations and did not find anything else except non-nutritious plants such as tobacco, cotton, and urucum. They, consequently, had to leave for their wanderings to look for roots, fruits, and venison . . . We never found any storage of food in &e Mamaindê village except for the immediate consurnption of the next few days, and for $he beijú on several moquéns pabracots]. The Same is not txue for the Sararé who, beyond some smaller storages in their huts had special huts for the storage of corn. The Galera Indians had huts with an I attic area which was full of corn and possibly other food, too . . . It seemed to me [again regarding the Mamaindê] rhat during their stay in the village agriculture was iby fax- the most important techriique to get food, and huntiilg would have been negligible but

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:for the high protein concentration of meat (letter of May 28, 1971). The fndios do Galera. . . have nicely kept and large plantations, and . . . they repeatedly asked ,me to send them seeds for planting . . . The Nambikuara of Serra Azul . . . had plenty of meat. . . [and the] Sararé . . . had nice and large plantations (letter of September 17,1971).

On four separate occasions, in four separate Nambicuara villages of fow distinct Nambicuara bands, Professor Aytai found heir roças alive and wel1 and prospering, to various degrees, during four different dry seasons. Even though two of these, the Sararé and Galera, were still on only the most tenuous of tem with the outside world at that time, so much so &at they spoke no Portuguese and were very wary of their visitors, they were still interested in obtaining additional cultigens to add ro their existent inventory, if possible. I would prefer, however, to keep the Sararé md Galera peoples somewhat apart from our discussion of Narn- bicuara agriculture at this point, just as I did in 1976 and 1978, con- sidering rheir very great reliance on corn rather than on manioc, as Professor Aytai has mentioned just above. Even so, we should note in passing that Aytai describes their roças as in general large and well-kept in both cases, both in tihe height of the dry seasm, after the corn harvest. Aytai's information regarding the Mamaindê is even more germane to our discussion of Nambicuara agriculture as seen by Lévi-Strauss, since Lévi-Strauss worked among people very similar to the Mamaindê, as both Price and I (1978) have previously mentioned. Although manioc is $he only crap growing in the Mamâindê roças dunng the dry seamn, Aytai says, rhere is still enough there to provide most of rhe food eaten by those people then in the village. Their manioc was not stored iby lburying it in the ground, nor by keeping it in special storerooms, although beijzí (manioc cakes) for the next few days was stored on babracots in people's houses. Even though their diet lfrom the roças would be somewhat monotonous at this time, roça food was available in sufficient quantity to feed the villagers and in sufficient quantity to be stored for several days in advance of its use. Certainly, the Mamaindê enjoy variety in their diet; as we noted when discussing Roquette-Pinto's observations of Nambicuara culinary delights, variety is their spice of life. Certainly, then, people would leave the village to hunt, gather wild plants, *fish,relax, and travel, al1 of which they enjoy as much as anyone else. Perhaps they might also fee1 sorne shortage of protein in their diet, Aytai additonally suggests, and rhus,

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like many other lowland South American tropical forest peoples depen- dent primarily on manioc (which is notorious for the relatively low protein content of most of its processed forms; cf. Coursey and Haynes 1970), hunt and gather in order to provide this essential input for their diet, as many politically more circumscribed peoples are presently unable to do (e.g.: Carneiro 1968; Gross 1975). Any such prablem d protein shortage, however, is not sirnply seasonally incident and seasonally absent, as Aytai also realizes, but rather varies continuously with the nutrition of the various parts of the Nmbicuara's roca production (and other factors). This is, of course, essentially what I ,have been saying al1 along. Ia addition to Aytai's researches, the decade of the 1960's also saw a considerable amount of extensive first-hand research among the Nambi- cuara by several &er anthropologists, including: a) Cecil Cook, Jr., from 1965 through 1968 (see Price and Cook 1969); tb) David Price, from 1967 through 1970 (Price 1972) and from 1974 through 1976; and c) myself, from 1968 through 1971 (Aspelin 1975) ;in addition to René Fuerst's two months' research in 1968, fallowed by his several very short visits to various Narnbicuara villages in 1970 under the auspices of the International Red Cross (Akerren et al. 1970:23-27)?2 The opinions of the first three of these regarding Nambicuara sub- sistence should by now be quite clear, insofar as I have cited Cook's opinion in my article of 1976 and as Pnce (1978) has just recently expressed himself again regarding this. They needn't be repeated again here; they essentially agree with me. Mr. Fuerst's most extensive contact with the Nambicuara was with the southwestern-Nambicuara-speakers, again in the Sararé River area (Fuerst 1969, 1970, 1971). As we have just seen from Aytai's accounts, these people are really somewhat different from those Lévi-Strauss and I have been discussing, sine both rhe Sararé and the Galera (to continue to use those genera1 taxons) rely most heavily on corn, which is sub- ordinate in importance to manioc among the rest of the Nambicuara. l Their subsistence practices may therefore als0 vary in accordance with I this substantial variation in their subsistence crop (base. Since Price spent several months in this area at exactly the Same time that Fuerst was I there I am sure that he \vil1 wish to deal with Fuerst's opinions regarding Nambicuara agriculture and mobility at some other time, when the nature of agriculture among the southwestern-speaking Nambicuara pople might be more relevant than it is here (cf. Fuerst 1969:l l l). Thus, we have reviewed fully seventy years of opinions regarding the '- quality and irnportance of Nambicuara agriculture, covering a period

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some thirty years before and methirty years after Lévi-Strauss' own research. This review of the avaiiable evidence clearly shows that Lévi- Strauss' opinion stands out as anomalous among al1 of the accounts of this particutar aspect of Nambicuara culture which we might consider as reliable and representative. The reports of the various members of the Rmdon Comrnission, Roquette-Pinto, Theodore Roosevelt, Mrs. Tylee, rhe Pôsto Pyreneus, Desidério Aytai, CecZ Cook, David Price, and myself al1 disagree with Lévi-Strauss. Al1 of these reporters, with the partial exception of Theodore Roosevelt, share one obher feature in common: they each spent a considerable amount of time among the Nambicuara, in Namibicuara territory itself. Al1 of &e reports reviewed here which agree with Lévi-Strauss, on the other hand, were written by people who had only very brief contact with the Nambicuara under considerably unnatural circurnstances, usually outside of Nambicuara territory; these include Gow-Smieh, Oberg, Boglár, Fuerst (e.g. 1970 :3 19; and 1971: 9-14; with whom I wil1 let David Price argue, as mentioned above), and, of course, Castro Faria and Vellard, who accompanied Lévi-Strauss on his expedition and therefore presumaSly shared many of the Same ex- periences through which Lévi-Strauss' understanding of rhe Nambicuara was formed (D. Lévi-Strauss 1938). What about Lévi-Strauss' account? It does not seem to fit at al1 wel1 with those other accounts which seem ta me ethnographically useful in this regard; it seems supported only by rhose which I think likewise victims of restricted vision, yet he spent nearly four months among the N~bicuaraand traveled right through the center of their vast temtory (D. Lévi-Strauss 1938:384). However adequate this contact might have been for an analysis of other aspects of Nambicuara culture, it was unfortunately too restricted regarding hese particular ones of interest to US here to have produced an adequate data base for their analysis.13 It seems to me that Lévi-Strauss' original description, categorization, and analysis of Nambicuara subsistence patterns are misleading and in some places erroneous, when compared witk the rest of the available evidence. This part of $is eth'nography does not appear to be supported by rhe rest of the ethnographic record and I really do not think that 1938 was a sufficiently anomalous year (in terms of drought or internal politica1 factors) to have accounted for the differences he reports.14 Thus, we must once again ask ourselves, how could this have occurred? In my article of 1976, I suggested that the primary reason for this problem was that Lévi-Strauss (just as Oberg) had never visited "a functioning Nambicuara roça", and that he therefore had to rely on

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what he could ascertain from infonnants and what he could otherwise infer regarding Nambicuara agricultural practices and their productivity. To some degree, I was wrong, and I &ank Lévi-Strauss (1976) for calling this to my attention in such a gentlemanly fashion. To another degree, I was right. Let's take the wrong first. Lévi-Strauss is quite right in pointing out that he had indeed visited a Nambicuara roça, and I must apologize for simply having forgotten this. In this regard, I was wrong. His visit to that roça is discussed in the chapter of Tristes Tropiques entitled "Leçon d'EcritureW (1955:337- 349). There is also a photograph of it in 'La Vie Familiale et Sociale des Indiens ~knbikwara'(1948a:132). Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any explicit statement regarding his visit to this roça in 'La Vie Familiale . . .', although he does mentian here (1948a:40, 87, etc.) his visit to the village ~hichin Tristes Tropiques (loc. cit.) is mentioned in conjunction with it. His description of this visit, although brief, suffices to place it in the Juruena River region (1948a:36), to the northeast of the Juruena crossing (1955: 338; bui cf. 1976:32), among those Nam- bicuara whom the Rondon Cornmission and the SPI both found to be bhe most difficult to work with (Rondon 1925, 194-6:27; França 1943d; etc.), who had killed the Tylee party in 1930 (Lévi-Strauss 1948a:124; 1978:158), and whom Roquette-Pinto had found to rely les on agricul- ture than their northern (Nambicuara) neighbors (Roquette-Pinto 1935:178). Lévi-Strauss' photograph of thk roça shows a rather barren, approxi- 1 mately circular, area which has apparendy been cut with steel axes and in which no signs of he planting of corn, non-manioc tuberous crops (such as cará, etc.), beans or the like are to ~beseen (although this might simply be a factor of &e quality of the reproduction of the photograph), albhough some manioc is visible. This trip dates to the first week or two of July, however (Lévi-Strauss 1948a:49, 99, 107), when we would not expect to see any of these other things anyway, for the vines of the non-manioc tuberous plants would have withered (although their tubers might have remained useful for some time), the corn would have been harvested in April and May (although some stalks shouild have been seen), and only the fava beans would still have plants big enough to be seen in this photograph (although they are usually grown in a tangle of supporting branches in mepart d the roça which didn't burn as cleanly as the rest and &e part ~hownin Lévi-Strauss' photograph is too clean for hem) . The manioc, however, seems surprisingly sparse for this time of year,

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both in terms of the number and size of the plants and in terms of the density of the foliage af each one (although this might be more a factor of where the photographer was standing than of the roça per se). Although the only really accurate way to compare the productivity of manioc plantings is by measuring their actual product (Aspelin 1975, chapter 3), rather than by the size of their superstructure (since the Nambicuara do not cook and eat the leaves which are actually the most nutritious part of he plant; Rogers 1965), it is certainly fair to say that Lévi-Strauss' roça looks rather meager. It looks as if it had been only sparsely planted to begin with or as if it had already been quite heavily harvested somewhat early in &e season, before the plants had actually reached their optimum growth and then replanted by simply sticking the cut stems (complete with their leaves) back into the grou,nd where the old plant had tbeen (Aspelin 1976). Ris causes the plant to retain a constant height for several months, while it re-establishes its root system, before it begins to again generate starchy tubers and to again increase its foliage. This is often done when harvesting a first crop and, although the second year's crop is not quite as productive, usually prwides a very uselul yield. Therefore, it is possible that Lévi-Strauss' first crop rnay dready have been harvested beginning in April or May, resulting in the growth pattern we see here. If this were the case, how- ever, then that year's crop would have been harvested too early to have achieved its maximum potential (Aspelin 1975:103f.), which might in- deed indicate that the harvesters were pretty hungry, as Lévi-Btrauss says. In order to more fully evduate this, one wodd have to know the size and . condition of the other roças also used by this village at this time, since he speaks of them elsewhere in rhe plural (1955 :339; 1976:32). mesize of the one shown certainly seems inadequate to support the forty-three people whom Lévi-Strauss claims were "resident in this village during the rainy season" (1948a:46f.). How do we explain al1 of this? Hopefully, Lévi-Strauss himself wil1 continue to add to the available evidence, (but at present it seems that either: 1) he and Vellard rnay have seen only some of this villageJs roças and at 'least this particdar one rnay have recently been partially re- planted; 2) this "village" rnay have been abandoned for some time and this may have been only a partial planting in a re-bumed plot; 3) the group rnay really have had inadequate roça production due to politica1 factors specific to their band or to a drought which rnay have been more or less generalized throughout Nambicuara territory at that time; 4) this particular band of Nambicuara rnay simply have been less agriculturally-

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oriented than the others; 5) Lévi-Strauss may have underestimated the productive potential of manioc in a roça which othenvise looks "com- pletely dry md abandoned due to the season", as Aytai (ietiter of September 17, 1971) described &e Mamaindê roças he saw during @he dry seasons of 1963 and 1966 (which, however, continued to supply an adequate amount of manioc then just as did those which I observed dwing &ree years' dry seasons several years later, and just as did rhose observed in the dry seasons d 1909 by Lt. Lyra, 1910 lby Campos, 1912 by Roquette-Pinto, 1946 by Monteiro, and those which helped support Tylee dwing the dry season of 1926). A last possibility should alm be considered, narnely 6) their roças rnay actudly have been adequate for their subsistence, in accordance wifh the patterns discussed abwe frcm other sowces, but Lévi-Strauss may have been unable to ascertain this if the band that he was working with in this area had decided to spend aii or most of its time with him, in order not to miss out on any of the "goodies" he was distributing. It may therefore have been too far away from its roças to utilize those foodstuffs (especially manioc) which were available there, as much as it would have othenvise. On the other hand, Lévi-Strauss mentions in both accounts of his visit to thk village and its roças (op. cit.) that the Nambicuara who were taking him there ran out of food along &e way; he specifically says in one account that they ran out of manioc (1948a:87). We are thus led to wonder where they might have gotten that manioc from: if they were on the way to their village, had they brought it thence in the first place? Had they obtained it from the Brazilians at the telegraph station of Jumena, from which this expedition apparently began (1955:338; but cf. 1976 :32) ? Or, had they obtained it frcm another of heir roças located at another site, or from the village of some neighboring Nambicuara whom they had visited? According to Lévi-Strauss passages which I quoted from the English version of Tristes Tropiques in my article of 1976 (p. 4), and accarding to his statement that "Mais pendant 7 mois 'de l'année, le manioc est rare. . ." in 'La Vie Familiale.. .' (1948a:55), they shouldn't have had this manioc to run out of, in the first place. I think that the most likely resolution of this question wil1 involve a combination d these factors. It seems to me most likely that (a) the group in question had a series of roças in several separate areas, as most of the other Nambicuara that I know usually do, in order to minimize &e deleterious effects of chance on tiheir plantings in any one year and in order to make the best use of the special terrain required for some types of crops (lor example, bananas and manioc do not rhrive in the

Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 09:51:55PM via free access 46 Paul L. Aspelin same area, for their moisture requirements are different; cf. Aspelin 1975:86f.); (b) Lévi-Strauss did not see al1 of those roças, and that at least the one which he photographed was not one of those which were the most productive at that time, but was one which had been rather heavil~depleted and possibly partiall~replanted in manioc, although some other crops (such as fava beans) might still have been found there; (c) he may not have been able to fully evaluate the productivity of those manioc plantings which he did see, due to the difficult circumstances surrounding his visit (as wil1 be mentioned below) ; (d) the group which had atta~heditself to Lévi-Strauss was clearly somewhat possessive of his company (witness the headman's manipulation of LWi-Strauss' gifts when a larger gathering was formed, over the headman's objections, at Lévi-Strauss' request; 1948a :89; 1955 :338f.), and, as Price has suggested as wel1 (1972:134), may have decided to temporarily forgo the pleasures of a full stomach (since, according to the Mamainde, you can eat al1 of the fruit and game you want, but only beijú and manioc soup wil1 fill you up; Aspelin 1975:l 25) in order to monopolize Lévi-Strauss' largesse dwing the month &at he was to spend wirh them (1948a:48). I would not think, however, &at a drought had devastated the agriculture of this band any more than the dry season normally affects al1 Nambicuara roças, nor that thís group had recently been attacked and forced to move to a new location in Mnhich they had not yet had time to establish tiheir plantatims, for I find no record of either of these two events in any of &i-Strauss' or Vellard's accounts. It is really quite strange that Lévi-Strauss (e.g. 1976:32) found no constructions whatsoever at &e "village" where these roças were found, and thus it seems especially likely (in addition to al1 of the foregoing) that (e) Lévi-Strauss wasn't really taken to their current "village" at all, but to another (older) location, one of several which ihey maintained to varying degrees (Lévi-Strauss 1948a:36), such as Roquette-Pinto had seen dong the way to the village he visited in 1912 (as cited by Price, 1978). Lévi-Strauss seemed to fee1 that this particular group was a fragment of a slightly larger one which had recently fallen out over the question of leadership and broken up into several smaller groups which then each went iheir separate ways (1948a:36). This seems a reasonable assumption, given what I have been told by &e Nambicuara about the personality of the leader of that particular group (or faction, as it should technically lbe called) with whom Lévi-Strauss had thrown in his lot, and it is certainly in conformity wibh what we understand of the processes of Nambicum village politics today (as @hesehave recently been discus-

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sed by Price, 1976). 'Bus, although they probably hadn't actually been forced to abandon their original village area, their relationships with their former (and future) colleagues were apparently at that moment at a low point, Lévi-Strauss lelt, and this was probably one af rhe reasons they had come to visit Utiarity just then. I suspect that the atmosphere at this "village" was as tense as he describes it to be as much for this reason as because of the possibility which he raises that meof those united there at his request may never have seen a "white man" before (which I dabt). He personally lfelt this tension to revolve around his presence; in a sense it did, for if he hadn't called hem together to receive his presents, they might not have come together again for some time, at least not until their internal problems had been to some degree resolved: Le chef de la bande hésitait [de] organiser une sorte de rendezvous avec d'autres bandes, parentes au alliées . . . ; il n'était pas sûr de ses invités . . . Nous n'étions pas rassurés, les Indiens non plus; . . . Personne ne domit: on passa la nuit à se surveiller poliment (19553338f.; cf. also 1948a:36,89). The cause of this discomfort was probably in their past history, how- ever, rather than heir present visitor. In &is light, I doubt that the headman of Lévi-Strauss' faction coultl have organized such a rendez- vous at heir current village. He might himselif have been somewhat unwelcome in that village at that time or, if he were welcome there, some of his intended guests tmight not have been. A more neutral site, one with the basic amenities of some food, water, and good sand for 1 sleeping, yet conveniently located for al1 of the various members of the forrner larger group and SU& of their neighbors as could be persuaded to come, would be ideal. What better place bhan a fonner village site, no longer inhabited but with some roças ~hichwere still partially being used? After dl, how would the Frenchman and shis friends know the differente: they had never seen the other village against which to compare it in the fint place. In short, although Lévi-Strauss may indeed have seen a Nambicuara roça, it appears from lhis photograph that the one he saw was not a very useful one, even though he says they were al1 '%el1 kept" (1976:32; we are told nothing in particular about the others, however). It also appears rhat he was probably not able to observe very much regarding its actual utilization, during the twenty-four tense hours which he spent in that anxious atmosphere. This is very simply to say that lfds observations were probably not really representative of the productivity of agriculture among even the particular group of Narnbicuara from which he ob-

Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 09:51:55PM via free access 4,8 Paul L. Aspelin tained them in the first place. Since, however, &is was the only set of Nambicuara roças which he was able to observe, it is understandable, though still unfortunate, &at he might rhen have extended whatever opinion he formed of hem to the rest d the Nambicuara (cf. Roquette- Pinto 1935:178). We can &USsee how it might have been possible for Lévi-Strauss to arrive at the conclusions which he did, in &e best of conscience and regardless of any "theoretical" interpretations which he may or may not otherwise have utilized at the time in order to make sense of the myriad of information which he found about him in the world of the Nambicuara. Therefore, I must once again disagree with Price (1978) in this regard (cf. Aspelin 1978) : not with hhis understanding of the importante of agriculture among the Nambicuara nbut with his understanding of how Lévi-Strauss would come to disagree with US conceraing it. For Price, it is because Lévi-Strauss is an artist. Should we say the same thing about Oberg, Boglár, (Fuerst,) Vellard and Gow-Smith? Rather than have so many artists running around, it seems to me &at the reasons for these ethnographic differences must be sought in their ethnographies, as I have attempted to do here. I appreciate the beauty and inspiration which I find in much d Lévi-Strauss work, but I would aot ascribe those problems which I have discussed here entirely to that beauty. Rather, I would ascribe them to the base upon ~hichit was built. Simply calling the ethnographer by another name does not change the nature of his work (my apologies to Willim Shakespeare). In the case of his work among the Nambicuara, Lévi-Strauss is clearly first and foremost an ethnographer, and, considering the circumstances surrounding his visit among them (cf. Leach 1976:12, and Lévi-Strauss 1978:156), a very irnpressive one, at that.

NOTES

My research among the Mamaindê/Nambicuara, from 1968 through 1971, was supported by the Cornell university Latin American Studies Program and the National Institute of Mental Health (USA). The name of the Nambicuara has been variously spelled by different authors: Price uses Nam- biquara; Lévi-Strauss uses Nambikwara; I prefer Nambicuara. The Second Reuniäo Brasileira de Antropologia, in 1955, proposed Nanbikuara [sic] as a standardized spelling (Cámara Jr. 1955). This point is not worth arguing about, however (see Lévi-Strauss' 1946). One of the people most intimately involved with the ongoing efforts of contact and pacification during this early period was Lieutenant Antônio Pyreneus de Souza, after whom the Indian Protection Service's Nambicuara Post was later named (although most of its employees seemed unable to spel1 Pyreneus'

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name correctly by then). Pyreneus had accompanied Rondon in his initial explorations from 1907 through 1909 (Magalháes 1941: 26f.) and after that was in charge of the pasturelands (invernada or jazenda) at Campos Novos and of the Telegraph Commission's transportation network from Jumena t0 Vilhena, between September, 1911 and February, 1912 (Souza 1920). Later, he guided Roquette-Pinto in his expedition to the Nambicuara from July through August of 1912 (Roquette-Pinto 1935: 60f., 157, 286f., 298) and then continued his work of exploring other parts of Mato Grosso under Ron- don's direction, elsewhere, through 1916 (Magalhaes 1941: 17-26). Pyreneus' account of the Nambicuara (Souza 1920) is second only to Roquette-Pinto's in the breadth of its coverage of Nambicuara culture at this time. Unfortu- nately for our purposes here, however, Pyreneus' published comments regard- ing Nambicuara subsistence activities are ambiguous and contradictory regarding their location in time, place, and the band affiliation of those Nambicuara being described. He says at one time, for example, that the Nambicuara "always have in their houses a large stock of manioc cakes and corn . . .", but in the next breath says that "very often, however, I have found them in complete misery, starving . . ." (Souza 1920: 396f., my translation and emphasis). It seems to me that these two statements are logically contra- dictory: they can't "always" have a houseful of beijú yet "often" be found completely miserable and hungry, for the one simultaneously precludes the other. For this reason, I have reluctantly not included Pyreneus' account in any detail here. Mr. Francis Gow-Smith visited the Jumena telegraph station shortly after this incident, while collecting Brazilian materials for the Museum of the American Indian in New York. His account of the Nambicuara suffers from al1 of his communication with them having been in sign language (!) and from only having met with them at the telegraph station for a few days. None- theless, he said, the Nambicuara were the most primitive Indians he had thus far visited, ate practically raw food, and lived in "lean-to's" in the most dismal of al1 of the places he had visited: "the ground is not fit for culti- vation", he said. He does report, however, that the six Brazilians had gone to get honey, manioc, and game. Presumably, the other Brazilians told him this. The weather, he said, had been "unusually dry'' and there was no pasture for the pack-animals, so the inhabitants had been without food for two or thee months (Gow-Smith 1927: 164ff.; cf. also Anonymous 1927, Rondon 1925, and Santos 1925). "YOU have never seen a wild Indian - neither had I. Let's look at them a minute that their ugliness may be engraved on our minds. The first impression we receive before we can see them - what is that smell?" (Meader 1937: unpaginated). Meader then goes on to say that they live on wild fruit, meat, and wild honey. 5 Castro Faria (1951: 24), in the only statement I have seen of his on this question, at least recognizes the discrepancy. between their position and earlier reports. He thinks that the Nambicuara had changed in this regard, specifi- cally since their description by Roquette-Pinto twenty-six years previously. Their contact with Brazilian society, he says, had "deculturated" them, breaking their traditional economic equilibrium and making them more mobile (cf. Lévi-Strauss 1976). This was apparently shown by their abandonment of more sturdy, sedentary houses in favor of windscreens, used previously only in hunting and gathering. I wil1 deal with the issues of Nambicuara housing types and permanence in more detail in a future paper, but suffice it to say

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for now that many things obviously affect the types of houses built in any place at any given time, of which agriculturai or non-agricultural production is only one. Both windscreens and other types of housing were in concurrent use long before the time of Roquette-Pinto (see the references cited in Price, 1978), both were in use at the time Castro Faria and Lévi-Strauss were there (see Castro Faria's photographs, 1951: figs. 4, 5, and 6), and both continue to be used today. Unfortunately, regarding our present discussion, Castro Faria hasn't pro- vided any details as to what he thought the economic situation of the Nambi- cuara actually was in 1938, nor what specific economic changes he thought had occurred during the previous period, so, although we may infer that he found them less agricultural than Roquette-Pinto, he doesn't actually say that, since he only talks about "economic equilibrium" and mobility in general terms. Any more specific discussion of his brief remarks is therefore not really possible at this time. 6 We might also suspect Afonso to have been working seringa in this area, and to have actually had the road made and used the mules to bring his rubber out, but I have no specific information to that effect. He had indicated that there was a lot of (previously untapped 7) rubber in the Espirro area itself, and may have been occupied enough in that area alone (França 1943~). Later, there are indications that he was exploiting the Indians in gathering rubber in the Camararé area (França 1953a), although that was probably under the auspices of Marcos da Luz at Campos Novos (Luz 1954). At about the Same time, Afonso's son-in-law Faustino began to exploit Indian labor in his seringal on the Rio Melgaço, to the west (Silva 1954), although he may have begun this as early as 1944 (França 1944a). The accounts of Roosevelt and Rondon's descent of the Rio Roosevelt in 1914 also indicate that seringa didn't really become very abundant along the Roosevelt until just beyond Nambicuara territory, north of the Salto Navaitê (Rondon 1916: 63, 66, 69). It remains possible, therefore, that Afonso's story of the trans- port of this much food is indeed accurate. The Same holds true for Castro Faria's argument regarding Nambicuara "deculturation" (see note 5, above). Although possible, it seems very curious that they would have "deculturated" only for the period of Lévi-Strauss and Castro Faria's visit and then suddenlv have "reculturated" once aeain. A L4 more detailed discussion of Nambicuara culture change may be found in Aspelin (1976, 1978) and Lévi-Strauss (1976). s Several secondary sources were published during this period, of course, as wel1 as several delayed reports of earlier first-hand researches. The later reports of the Rondon Commission (Rondon 1946, 1947; Magalhäes 1941, 1942a, 1942b; etc.) are examples of such delayed publication; these have already been dealt with as appropriate during the time span to which their reports refer. Other later publications of an entirely secondary nature, such as Métraux' section on the Nambicuara in his Native Tribes of Eastern Bolivia and Western Matto Grosso (1942: 153-158), merely restate what has already been said by one or another of the primary sources which we have already reviewed. Métraux, for example, seems to draw almost exclusively on the brief material on Nambicuara subsistence already published by Vellard (1939) and the obviously almost identical unpublished opinions of Lévi- Strauss (with whom he was working at the time), apparently overlooking that material in the works he cites by Roquette-Pinto (e.g. 1935, which he cites in the edition of 1917), Rondon (1947, which he cites in the edition of 1913), Missáo Rondon (Anonymous 1916), and Pyreneus de Souza (1920),

Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 09:51:55PM via free access The Ethnography of Nambicuara Agriculture 5 1 which seems to contradict his colleagues' opinions on these matters. Badet, on the other hand, (1951) clearly sides with the members of the Rondon Commission, such as Colonel Amilcar A. Botelho de Magalháes (op. cit.), whom he interviewed for his book, with Roquette-Pinto, and the like. Métraux' discussion of the seasonality of Nambicuara subsistence activities (1942: 154) and Badet's map (1951: 88f.) of the location of some of the tribes contacted by the Rondon Commission illustrate this clearly. None of these secondary sources are therefore very useful here. In his expeditions of 1907, 1908, and 1909, in which he used Pareci guides from Diamantino or Tapirapoan al1 the way to the Madeira River, Rondon had many opportunities to discuss with the Pareci their relations with the Nambicuara and to visit with them several sites of ancient battles between the two tribes. I wil1 not bother to fully discuss al1 of these materials here; most of them are to be found in Rondon's first Relatório (n.d.) of these explorations, wherein he says that although the territory between the Jumena and the Papagaio (on which Utiarity is located) had fully belonged to the Pareci until their decimation by the "Paulista" bandekantes who raided them for slaves in the early 1700'~~if neither the Pareci nor the Nambicuara effectively occupied it at present, but continually warred throughout it, it must then be considered a neman's land or neutrai territory between the two tribes (e.g. Rondon n.d.: 93). It doesn't really seem correct, therefore, for Lévi-Strauss (1948b: 361) to claim that the "region of the Nambicuara . . . extends northwest from the Papagaio River . . .". In addition to having found the wakalitksú group near Utiarity, and thus perhaps having concluded on that basis that the region between the Jumena and the Papagaio was Nambicuara territory (even though the wakalitksú themselves said that their homes were along the Juruena, where Lévi-Strauss himself later visited them, as discussed below), Lkvi-Strauss may also have been misled by an ambiguous statement of Pyreneus de Souza's: The Cocuzús [i.e.: the easternmost Nambicuara] . . . have a lot of houses . . . in the Cangas Forest area, among the headwaters of the Camararezinho, Primavera, and Vinte de Setembro Rivers and on both sides of the Juina, Fonniga and Jumena Rivers. [next paragraph] The Cocurús go as far as the telegraph station of Utiarity (1920: 402, my translation and emphasis) , although it seems to me that Pyreneus merely meant to say that they travelled as far east as Utiarity to visit the Brazilians there, under the protection of the telegraph commission. Unfortunately, others (such as Métraux 1942: 153) seem to have reified and perpetuated this error. I have used the Rio Uátiáuiná (or Rio do Caior), approximately half-way between the Juruena and the Papagaio, as an approx- imate divisor of the hunting ranges of these two groups, following Rondon's record of his obsenrations and his discussions with his Pareci guides (e.g. n.d.: 51-57). It should also be mentioned here, while we are diicussing geography, that the Rio Papagaio does not extend north of the 12th parallel, so that it be- comes difficult to see how Lévi-Strauss (op. cit.) could say that it forms the eastern bench mark for a northern boundary for the Nambicuara that stretches along the 11th parallel from the Rio Roosevelt "to the Rio Papagaio" (although the Jumena, into which the Papagaio flows at 12' south, might serve this same purpose). René Fuerst has correctly pointed this out regarding their analyses of "Nambicuara acculturation" in the atypical area of Utiarity, for example (Fuerst 1970: 315).

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l1 I regret that I do not read Hungarian and that I have therefore not been able to read Boglár's publications in that language (e.g.: 1966). I assume his position therein to be consistent, however, with his other articles published in French, German, or English, before and after those in Hungarian. l2 Fuerst had attempted to visit the southwestern Nambicuara in 1966, but was unable to reach their villages at that time. Grünberg's statement (1966: 151) regarding Fuerst's visit to the "Mamainde" in the spring of 1966 is thus an error (see Fuerst 1969: 111). l3 Professor Lévi-Strauss also recently suggested that this might have been the case: Nothing could be farther from my mind than to try to defend my ethno- graphy at al1 costs in the face of conflicting evidence. I am too aware of the limitations in time, accessibility of the natives, linguistic communi- cation and mere security to which I was subjected in a difficult region, forty years ago (1978: 156). l4 Fuerst unfortunately gives the impression in several places that Lévi-Strauss' research among the Nbbicuara took place in 1939 (e.g. Fuerst 1969: 110), whereas Lévi-Strauss' expedition actually began in May of 1938 and left the territory of the Nambicuara at the close of September, 1938 (D. Lévi-Strauss 1938: 384).

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