The Akha Way
BUT THEY REMEMBERED enough of the old ways to be guided by them. The people followed the Akha Zah, the “Akha Way,” which emphasized everyday rituals and stressed strong family ties. They believed in a form of animism, in which all beings and many locations or objects possessed a spirit. Thus, both people and rice were considered to have souls. Rice was the most important food item and was a crucial part of Akha rituals, in which ancestor spirits were asked to help provide a good harvest. Every house had an ancestor shrine. All their rites were designed to maintain harmony, fertility, and continuity. As anthropologist Deborah Tooker observed, “The drawing of Akha village boundaries served to protect village inhabitants from negative external forces.” Each village traditionally had at least two “spirit gates” to ward off threatening spirits and entice favorable ones.
Much of what we know of traditional Akha beliefs and daily life comes from an extensive ethnography written by Paul W. Lewis—an American Baptist missionary and anthropologist who with his wife, Elaine, worked among the Akha in Burma from 1947 through 1966, and subsequently worked with the hill tribes in northern Thailand from 1968 through 1989. The Human Relations Area Files at Yale published his Ethnographic Notes on the Akhas of Burma in 1969. Anthropologists Leo Alting von Geusau, Cornelia Kammerer, and Deborah Tooker also did field work in Akha villages in the late 1970s and early 1980s, adding new insights into their way of life.
In late 1980 and early 1981, writer Frederic V. Grunfeld and photographer Michael Freeman spent three months in an Akha village down the mountain from Doi Chang; they published a book, Wayfarers of the Thai Forest: The Akha, the following year. Grunfeld concluded:
It gradually became clear to me that underlying the apparently random and spontaneous nature of Akha village life was a complex tissue of the unwritten rules of Akha Zah. These govern the villagers’ relations with each other, with animals, with the natural world and its powers: they specify the correct way of doing everything, from building a house to laying out a village, from planting the rice to serving a meal, from welcoming the new year to dealing with outside communities. For the Akha, therefore, there is no real distinction between the level of ritual or prescribed behavior and the level of secular daily life.
Paul and Elaine Lewis made a similar observation in their lavishly illustrated 1984 book, Peoples of the Golden Triangle: “The Akha Way determines how they cultivate their fields and hunt animals, how they view and treat sickness, and the manner in which they relate to one another and outsiders. It is all embracing.”
An Akha folktale explains that long ago, the different tribes took baskets to receive their customs from God. All the other tribes carried loosely woven or torn baskets, but the Akha brought finely woven baskets suitable for carrying rice. That is why they have more detailed customs than the Lisu or other hill tribes.
If all humans lived as the Akha did and embraced the same belief system and way of life, there would probably have been no wars to displace them, since they seldom fought with one another. Murder was virtually unknown, although they did practice infanticide, smothering twins at birth, since they were considered “human rejects,” along with babies born with the wrong number of fingers or toes. The house in which such children were born was burned, and the parents were treated as though they were guilty in some way.
Paul Lewis heard of one instance in which the Akha purportedly resorted to violence against adults. Around 1955, Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) soldiers (nationalists who fought against the Chinese Communists) camped in an Akha village in Burma, seven of them lodging with the village priest. “Some of the village children came running and told him that the soldiers were taking wooden decorations off the village spirit gate and using them in their fire for cooking rice and curry.” When the priest objected, the soldiers beat him and “told him he was crazy.” Back at his house, the priest recited his entire genealogy, then asked God and his ancestors for help. “He then took up his machete, and he and his son killed all seven men in his home, and then went up and killed the four men at the gate.” Though the soldiers had guns, they couldn’t shoot, presumably because the ancestor spirits prevented them. But in general the Akha preferred to use their wits rather than force against their enemies.
The Justice System
THE AKHA HAD a relatively informal, common-sense justice system and no jails. The elders and the headman would hear both sides of a case and pass judgment, usually within a day. If the trial lasted several days, waiting for witnesses to return from a trip, for example, the headman might be bribed. If the people uncovered evidence of bribery, however, the headman would often be ousted.
There were three levels of crime. A minor offense would involve stealing small things from a person’s house, such as firewood, or killing someone’s chick if it strayed into the wrong garden. Such cases were often dropped, or the fine assessed as free drinks for the elders. A more serious offense was actually entering someone’s house to steal something. For that, the offender had to give a pig, return the stolen goods, and sometimes pay a fine. If they stole something from the bamboo section containing the ancestor altar goods, they also had to pay for a ceremony that involved a spirit priest and various sacrifices. The third and most serious offense was “wronging another’s wife”—that is, adultery. Paul Lewis asked if murder would also fit into this third category, and the answer was affirmative, but “perhaps there are not enough murders in Akha society that they categorize it along with the more ‘common’ crimes.” For these more serious offenses, a water buffalo or two pigs would be assessed.
In the vast majority of the world, suicides outnumber homicides. Human beings seem to be unique among animals in their tendency to kill themselves. Yet it was almost unheard of for an Akha to commit suicide. “As to the Akha’s attitude toward suicides from other tribes,” wrote Lewis, “they always seem dumbfounded that anyone would do such a horrible thing.”
As their justice system implied, the Akha believed in personal property. People could sell their houses if they moved to another village, but they had to give some of the money to the village, half of which went to a community fund and half to the elders. They could also sell their fields or gardens. If someone was fined for a crime but had no money to pay, the elders could force him to sell a field or animals.
If a villager asked to borrow something, then a neighbor was obliged to lend it, though that didn’t apply to someone from another village. If the borrowed item was lost or broken, it was supposed to be replaced. Since the person who did the borrowing was often very poor, that sometimes didn’t happen. If a poor person was repeatedly fined and couldn’t pay, he could be kicked out of the village.
In the past, there was one disturbing form of property. The impoverished Akha would sometimes sell their children into slavery to another Akha, though such servants were treated as part of the new family and were freed when they later married.
Superstition
THE AKHA BELIEVED that their world was filled with spirits, some of whom could be helpful, but many of whom were potentially dangerous. They were divided into “inside” spirits, who existed within the village gates, or the “outside” spirits of the jungle. Although the Akha could no longer see them, they could tell when the spirits were active at night, because the dogs would bark and howl. The Akha developed elaborate rituals to placate or frighten away malevolent spirits. Because the spirits feared saliva, for instance, the Akha would spit when anxious. Spirits were also afraid of fire, gunshots, and the sharp edge of a machete.
Nonetheless, one had to be on guard against offending the spirits and incurring bad fortune. Similar to the Chinese practice of feng shui, the Akha believed that the placement of people and objects was crucial. The cemetery had to be located far from the village in the forest, for example. Villages were built on a slope, with the lower section associated with impurity.
Although the Akha collected a variety of healing herbs and practiced folk medicine, they relied heavily on
spirit priests, as well as a shaman who could go into a trance and visit the spirit world, a kind of hell below the earth. The shaman could discover which spirit was eating someone’s stolen soul and what meat the spirit might prefer as a substitute. Then an appropriate chicken, pig, or goat would be sacrificed. They had many other superstitions as well. If a cow or dog climbed up on the roof of a house, for instance, it was considered a bad omen, since a household spirit was luring them there. Once a year, each family would make an offering to this spirit. If the shadow of a flying crane fell on someone, that person would be partially paralyzed. Seeing two snakes entwined or two crabs skittering in opposite directions were bad omens.
Smallpox and other contagious diseases were of grave concern. If an Akha had visited a village where an epidemic was raging, he would perform a “follow-me-not” ceremony as he neared his own village, to keep the illness from following him home. The entire village might perform an epidemic protection ceremony. If the plague were some distance away, they might just sacrifice a chicken, but if it were nearby, they would kill a large black dog, mounting its snarling head atop the village gate. Lewis recounted that in 1950, he witnessed such a ceremony—but the villagers also asked him to send a vaccinator to protect them.
When a contagious disease did break out in their village, each Akha family would make little clay models of all their animals, including a person riding a horse, to represent the plague riding out of the village. Then they put the clay figures in a dish, where everyone would spit on them. All the dishes were brought to the village priest, who would sacrifice a white rooster, giving some of the meat to the figurines. Then he would say, “There is no place for you here. Go to a place where there is plenty of room. There is no means of getting food here. Go to a place where food is plentiful.” The villagers would then throw the clay figurines into the jungle.
The Akha would sometimes wear an amulet or take finely ground herbs to treat or prevent illness. But when they did get sick, they remained stoical. They had no concept of resting to get over a disease. They would keep on working until they simply couldn’t go on.
Village Life
THE AKHA WOULD choose a village site near a good water source and fertile land where they could establish their fields. A wide avenue led down the center of the village, convenient for driving animals out to pasture, and a bypass path always led around the village, to be used during special religious ceremonies that weren’t to be interrupted, to carry sick people, or to be taken by someone just passing through. If visitors chose to go through the village, they were obliged to stop and have tea in someone’s house, where they would often also have their legs and arms massaged after walking a long way.
The men assembled the bamboo and wood for a new home, while the women cut grass stalks to make the thatch, carrying big bundles on their backs. When all was ready, the head of the household would call villagers together to build the house, which usually took several days. During the construction, a dog had to be sacrificed and eaten, which disgusted some other tribes, who called the Akha “dog-eaters.”
The head householder dug the first hole for the main post. Digging holes was a perilous enterprise, since a human shadow should never fall into a hole, which would bring bad luck. The householder sprinkled water, three pinches of rice, salt, ginger root, and egg into the main posthole. A partition divided the men’s side, in the front, from the women’s. The ancestor shrine would be hung on the women’s side of the house near this post. Houses were sturdy and easy to repair. The thatched roof had to be replaced every seven or eight years. Up to thirty people could live in an extended family home, though usually ten or fewer lived there.
Great care was taken in preparing a field for one of the fifteen varieties of rice the Akha grew. First they marked the field, hoping for an auspicious dream that night. The men then cleared the underbrush with their machetes on an appropriate household day. The night before and night after the householder cut the first tree in the field, tradition dictated that he and his wife had to refrain from intercourse.
After all the trees and brush were cut, they were left to dry for several months; then the men decided, in consultation with nearby villages, on the day for burning the new fields. The Akha week had twelve days, named for different animals—sheep, monkey, chicken, dog, pig, rat, buffalo, tiger, donkey, rabbit, fox, horse—each with its own characteristics and rules. For instance, no one could put a post into the ground on Tong La, the day of the donkey. The best days to start a fire were: Kheu (dog), so that the fire would jump like a dog; Yah (pig), so that the fire would root around; or Home Yah (monkey), so that it would spread quickly. Kha La (tiger) was a bad day, since the fire might burn incompletely, in stripes. Boys would set the fire with beeswax, then blow buffalo horns to summon the wind. When the fires had burned out, the village priest or an elder would call out, “Tomorrow don’t go anywhere. We are going to have ceremonial abstinence for the fire.” This was to assure that the fire would not burn anywhere it should not.
Because rice was the staple crop, great care was taken to make sure that the soul of the rice field was not frightened off. Hand hoes were used for weeding—never machetes. Chicken sacrifices were made in the small “spirit hut” near the field, though the poultry could be taken back home to eat that night. Every aspect of the agricultural cycle had its own carefully prescribed rituals.
In addition to rice, the Akha also planted cotton, peanuts, soy beans, chili peppers, squash, cucumber, cantaloupe, pumpkin, tomatoes, greens, beans, onions, ginger, barley, gourds, sunflowers, tobacco, indigo, poppies, and banana trees. They made alcoholic beverages from corn and rice, though most public drinking occurred during the New Year’s celebration or at weddings. One or two men in a village were often known as heavy drinkers. Many Akha smoked tobacco in pipes, and a few chewed it. Others chewed betel nuts, though they had to purchase or trade for them. Opium, made from poppies, was mostly used as a medicine or painkiller, but some men became addicted to it. Young men usually did not smoke opium, because then no girl would want to marry them. Once a man was addicted, he usually became useless as a provider and needed money to feed his habit.
In addition to growing their food, the Akha kept domesticated animals such as water buffalo, pigs, goats, and chickens. Dogs and monkeys were both pets and potential food if the need arose or if a ritual sacrifice was necessary. They kept cats to control rodents, while caged parakeets or other jungle birds were apparently just for pleasure. The Akha men were great hunters and trappers. “Even when the men are not actually hunting,” noted Paul Lewis, “they talk about it constantly.” Their favorite game animal was the barking deer. Young boys usually drove the deer toward the older men, who were waiting with their crossbows or homemade guns. Boys shot birds with slingshots, while men put up a large net to capture flocks as they funneled through a narrow passage. A spring-pole snare caught larger fowl. They also built traps for bamboo rats and other small game. A sharp stick was set to impale wild boar, tiger, or deer, though these traps were also dangerous for unwary people. Hunters were respectful of mountain spirits and left some of the kill for them, saying, “You all eat. Don’t let us be afflicted by spirits. May that which is good never cease, and that which is bad never be encountered.”
The Akha also fished, though without hooks. They would attach a liana vine to a stick and weave an earthworm into the end of the vine to attract a fish, then swoop under it with a net or basket. Others made dams in streams and diverted the fish into nets. Yet others specialized in catching fish with their bare hands by reaching into holes on the bank, though they risked catching a poisonous animal as well.
They also sought out other wild edibles, including herbs, wild apple, mango, cherry, raspberry, and chestnut, along with various leaves and flowers. They ate bamboo shoots and tendrils from particular vines. They dug up wild yams if short of rice. Birds’ eggs, spiders, cicadas, grasshoppers, praying mantises, and grubs were all collected and consumed. Mushrooms that grew on logs
, rocks, and trees were mostly edible, but they avoided ground mushrooms, many of which were poisonous.
Akha boys would catch a wasp, tie a string to it, and then race after it to find its nest, where they would dig up the larvae to eat. In a similar way, villagers could follow bees and smoke them out for their honey.
Women performed most of the domestic chores, rising at dawn to pound (husk) the rice, fetch water, cook, gather firewood, cut and carry 10-foot-high bundles of imperata grass for thatch, and forage for wild edibles. They spun cotton and made cloth that they dyed, embroidered, and appliquéd. Girls began to learn such tasks by the time they were seven years old.
The meals, during which the oldest male always ate first, and the women and children last, were tasty and varied, prepared in a wok or stew pots, with spices (hot or mild), mushrooms, roots, flowers, game birds, pork, chicken, or crunchy fried termites. Every meal featured nourishing mountain rice. Other dishes might include pickled beets, wild honey, omelets, or curries.
Through the Seasons
THE AKHA CALENDAR had twelve months that corresponded roughly with their Western equivalents. Thus, the first month of the year, Pare Lar Bar Lar, paralleled January. Since most readers will find it easier to refer to their own calendar months, those are used here. In January, they prepared agricultural land by weeding and felling trees. February was the month for rest from much labor, as well as a month for courting. Women spun cotton thread, weaving and embroidering blouses and skirts. In March, the onset of the three-month dry season, it was very hot and time for the burning of the fields.
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