The small air vent above my head in the Cessna began to blow out colder air as we gained altitude. I tried to get more comfortable. I leaned back and thought more about what I was about to do and how different this trip was for me than for the others in the plane. The pilot was doing his day job and would be back home in time for supper. His father had come along as a tourist. Don Patton, the missionary mechanic accompanying me, was getting a minivacation from the hard work of maintaining the missionary compound. But I was flying to my life’s work. I was to meet for the first time the people I planned to share the rest of my existence with, the people whom I hoped to take to heaven with me. I would have to learn to speak their language fluently.
As the plane began to be buffeted by the midmorning updrafts—typical of the Amazon in the rainy season—my reverie was rudely halted by a more pressing concern. I was airsick. For the next 105 minutes, as we flew above the forest on breezes, I was nauseated. Just as I had willed my stomach to remain quiet, Dwayne reached back with a tuna sandwich, loaded with onions. “You guys hungry?” he asked helpfully. “No thanks,” I replied, tasting the bile in my mouth.
Then we circled the airstrip near the Pirahã village of Posto Novo so that the pilot could get a better look. This maneuver increased the centrifugal force on my stomach, and I was already using every bit of restraint I could draw on to keep from heaving. For a couple of dark moments before we landed, I thought that it would be much better to crash and explode than for this nausea to continue. I admit that this was a rather shortsighted thought, but there it was.
The airstrip had been cleared from the jungle two years before by Steve Sheldon, Don Patton, and a team of teenagers from American churches. To build a jungle airstrip like this, you must first fell more than a thousand trees. Then their stumps need to be pulled up, because otherwise the wood will rot in the ground, the earth over the stump will collapse, and some plane will lose its landing gear and perhaps all its passengers. After pulling these thousand or so stumps, some several feet in diameter, you need to fill in the holes left by the extraction. Then you need to make sure the airstrip is as level as it can be without the use of heavy equipment. If you are successful, you conclude this process with a strip thirty feet wide and six hundred to seven hundred yards long. These were roughly the dimensions of the Pirahã strip we were about to land on.
The day we flew in, the grass on the strip was waist high. We had no way of knowing whether there were logs, dogs, pots, or other things in the grass that could damage the aircraft—and us—on landing. Dwayne “buzzed” the strip once and hoped that the Pirahãs would understand, as Steve had tried to explain to them, that they should run out and check the airstrip for dangerous detritus (once a Pirahã house had been built in the middle of the strip and had to be torn down before we could land). Several Pirahãs did then go out and we saw them running off the strip with a small log—small, but enough to flip the plane end-over-end if we had hit it on landing. All turned out well, though, as Dwayne brought us in for a safe, smooth landing.
Finally, when the plane came to a stop, the windless jungle heat and humidity hit me full force. As I exited, squinting and woozy, the Pirahãs surrounded me, chattering loudly, smiling, and pointing with recognition at Dwayne and Don. Don tried to tell the Pirahãs in Portuguese that I wanted to learn their language. In spite of knowing almost no Portuguese, a couple of the men got the idea that I was there to replace Steve Sheldon. Sheldon had also helped them understand my coming by explaining to them in Pirahã, on his last visit, that a short redheaded guy was coming to live with them. He said that I wanted to learn to speak like they did.
As we walked down the path from the airstrip to the village, I was surprised to encounter swamp water up to my knees. Carrying supplies through warm, murky water, not knowing what might bite my feet and legs, was my first experience with the Maici’s flood stage at the end of the rainy season.
The most striking thing I remember about seeing the Pirahãs for the first time was how happy everyone seemed. Smiles decorated every face. Not one person looked sullen or withdrawn, as many do in cross-cultural encounters. People were pointing to things and talking enthusiastically, trying to help me see what they thought I might find interesting—birds flying overhead, hunting paths, huts in the village, puppies. Some men had on caps with the slogans and names of Brazilian politicians, bright shirts and gym shorts received from river traders. The women all wore the same type of dress, with short sleeves, hemmed just above the knee. These dresses had started out with different brightly colored patterns, but the colors were now obscured by a general brown stain from the dirt floors of their huts. Children younger than ten years of age or so ran naked. Everyone was laughing. Most touched me gently as they came up to me, as though I were a new pet. I could not have imagined a warmer welcome. People were telling me their names, though I did not remember most of them.
The first man whose name I did remember was Kóxoí (KO-oE). I saw him crouching in a bright clearing off the path to the right. He was tending something by the side of a fire in the sun. Kóxoí had on ragged gym shorts and wasn’t wearing a shirt or shoes. He was thin and not particularly muscular. His skin was dark brown and lined like fine leather. His feet were wide, thickly calloused, and powerful-looking. He glanced up at me and called me over to where he was, on a patch of sandy ground, baking hot, where he was singeing the hair off a large rat-like animal. Kóxoí’s face was kind, with a broad smile that took over his
eyes and mouth, welcoming and comforting me on this day of new experiences in a new place. He talked to me pleasantly, though I didn’t understand a single word. In my still nauseous state, the pungent smell of the animal almost gave me dry heaves. The tongue of the creature was hanging across its teeth, tip in the dirt, with blood dripping down it.
I touched myself on the chest and said, “Daniel.” He recognized this as a name and immediately responded by touching his chest and saying his name. Then I pointed at the rodent on the fire.
“Káixihí” (KYE-i-HEE), he responded to the object of my pointing.
I repeated it back to him immediately (while thinking, Holy twenty-pound rat burger!). Sheldon had told me that the language was tonal, like Chinese, Vietnamese, and hundreds of other languages. This meant that in addition to paying attention to the consonants and vowels, I would need to listen carefully to the pitch on each vowel. I had managed to pronounce my first Pirahã word.
Next, I bent over and picked up a stick. I pointed to it and said, “Stick.”
Kóxoí smiled and said, “Xií” (il).
I repeated, “Xií.” Then I let it drop and said, “I drop the xií.”
Kóxoí looked and thought, then quickly said, “Xií xi bigí káobíi” (iI ih bigl KAo Bli). (As I later learned, this literally means “Stick it ground falls,” with the words in that order.)
I repeated this. I pulled out a notepad and pen I had put in my back pocket in Porto Velho just for this reason and wrote these things down, using the International Phonetic Alphabet. I translated the last phrase as “stick falls to the ground” or “you drop the stick.” I then picked up another stick and dropped both sticks at once.
He said, “Xií hoíhio xi bigí káobíi,” “Two sticks fall to the ground,” or so I thought at the time. I learned later that this means “A slightly larger quantity (hoíhio) of sticks falls to the ground.”
I then picked up a leaf and went through this entire process again. I moved on to other verbs, such as jump, sit, hit, and so forth, with Kóxoí serving as my willing and ever more enthusiastic teacher.
I had listened to tapes of the language given to me by Steve Sheldon, and I had seen some short word lists that he had compiled. So I was not completely unfamiliar with the language, even though Sheldon had advised me to ignore his work, since he was unsure of its quality, and though hearing the language was very different indeed from seeing it written.
To test my ability to hear the tones of the language, I asked for som
e words that I knew to be distinguished mainly by tone. I asked for the word for knife.
“Kaháíxíoi” (ka-HAI-I-oi), he said.
And then the word for arrow shaft.
“Kahaixíoi” (ka-hai-I-oi), he answered as I pointed at the shaft of the arrow at the side of his hut.
The field linguistics classes I had taken with SIL before coming to Brazil were very good, and I had found a talent for linguistics that I did not realize I had. Within an hour of working with Kóxoí and others (as interested Pirahãs surrounded us), I had confirmed earlier findings by Sheldon and his predecessor, Arlo Heinrichs, that there were only eleven or so phonemes in Pirahã, that the basic organization of their sentences was SOV (subject, object, verb)—the most common ordering among the world’s languages—and that their verbs were very complicated (now I know that each Pirahã verb form has at least 65,000 possible forms). I grew less worried about the situation. I could do this!
In addition to learning the language, I wanted to learn about the culture of the people. I looked first at the spatial layout of the houses. The village arrangement seemed to make little sense at first. There were huts clustered in different places along the path from the airstrip to Steve Sheldon’s old home, now mine. Eventually, though, I realized that all the huts were on the side of the path closer to the river. And they all had views of the river from bend to bend. They were built close to the riverbank, none more than twenty paces from it, and parallel to it lengthwise. Jungle and undergrowth surrounded every home. There was a total of about ten huts. Brothers lived near brothers in this community (in other villages, I later learned, sisters lived near sisters, and in some villages there didn’t seem to be any obvious kinship pattern of settlement).
After unloading our supplies, Don and I began to clean a small space in Sheldon’s storeroom for our small pile of supplies (cooking oil, dried soup, canned corned beef, instant coffee, some salted crackers, a loaf of bread, some rice and beans). We walked with Dwayne and his father back to the plane after they had taken pictures and looked around. Don and I waved as they took off. The Pirahãs screamed with delight when the plane lifted up, all shouting, “Gahióo xibipíío xisitoáopí” (The airplane just left vertically)!
It was about two in the afternoon. And I felt for the first time the surge of energy and sense of adventure that comes naturally on the Maici with the Pirahãs. Don went to put Steve’s imported Sears & Roebuck fishing boat (a wide, stable, aluminum boat with a cargo capacity of nearly one ton) into the river and test the outboard engine. I sat down in the middle of a group of Pirahã men in the front room of Sheldon’s house, which was built like a Pirahã house, though larger. It was raised on stilts and had only half walls—no doors, no privacy, except in the bedroom for the children and in the storeroom. I got out my pad and pencil to continue language learning. Each man looked fit, lean, and hard—just muscle, bone, and gristle. They were all smiling broadly, and it seemed almost as if they were trying to outdo one another in their expressions of happiness around me. I repeated my name, Daniel, several times. One of the men, Kaaboogí, stood up after huddling with the others and addressed me in very rudimentary Portuguese: “Pirahã chamar você Xoogiái” (The Pirahãs will call you OO-gi-Ai). I had received my Pirahã name.
I knew that the Pirahãs would name me, because Don had told me that they name all foreigners, since they don’t like to say foreign names. I later learned that the names are based on a similarity that the Pirahãs perceive between the foreigner and some Pirahã. Among the men there that day was a young man named Xoogiái, and I had to admit that I could see some resemblance. Xoogiái would be my name for the next ten years, until the very same Kaaboogí, now called Xahóápati, told me that my name was now too old and that my new name was Xaíbigaí. (About six years after that my name was changed again to what it is today, Paóxaisi—the name of a very old man.) As I learned, the Pirahãs change names from time to time, usually when individual Pirahãs trade names with spirits they encounter in the jungle.
I learned the names of the other men there—Kaapási, Xahoábisi, Xoogiái, Baitigií, Xaíkáibaí, Xaaxái. The women stood outside the house looking in, refusing to speak, but giggling if I spoke to them directly. I was writing down phrases like I drop the pencil, I write on paper, I stand up, My name is Xoogiái, and so on.
Then Don got the boat motor started and all the men ran out immediately to ride with him as he did a few circles in the river in front of the house. Looking around at the village, I suddenly found myself alone, and I noticed that there was no central village clearing, just two or three huts together, nearly hidden by the jungle, connected to other houses in the village by narrow paths. I could smell smoke from the fires burning in each hut. Dogs were barking. Babies were crying. It was very hot at this time of the afternoon. And very humid.
Now that I was working among the Pirahãs, I was determined to record language data as quickly and carefully as I was able. But each time I asked an individual Pirahã if I could “mark paper” (study—kapiiga kaga-kai) with them, although they would happily study with me, they would also tell me about another Pirahã I should work with, saying, “Kóhoibiíihíai hi obáaxáí. Kapiiga kaagakaáíbaaí.” I began to understand. There was some guy named Kóhoibiíihíai who would teach me to speak Pirahã. I asked my missionary colleague if he knew someone by this name.
“Yes, the Brazilians call him Bernardo.”
“Why Bernardo?” I asked.
“The Brazilians give all the Pirahãs Portuguese names because they can’t pronounce the Pirahã names.” He went on, “This is the same reason, I suppose, that the Pirahãs give all outsiders Pirahã names.”
So I waited all day for Bernardo/Kóhoibiíihíai to return from hunting. As the sun began to set, the Pirahãs started talking loudly and pointing to the farthest bend downriver. In the fading twilight, I could just make out the silhouette of a canoe and paddler coming toward the village, hugging the bank to avoid the strong current of the main stream of the Maici. Pirahãs from the village were yelling to the man in the canoe, and he was replying. People were laughing and excited, though I had no idea why. As the man tied his canoe at the bank, I could see the reason for the excitement: a pile of fish, two dead monkeys, and a large curassow on the floor of the canoe.
I walked down the muddy bank to the canoe and spoke to the arriving hunter, practicing a phrase I had learned that afternoon: “Tii kasaagá Xoogiái” (My name is Xoogiái). Kóhoi (Pirahãs shorten their names much as we do in English) looked up at me, his arms crossed over his chest, and grunted without emotion. Kóhoi’s features were more African than the Asiatic features of so many Pirahãs, such as Kaaboogí, who looked Cambodian to me. Kóhoi had kinky hair, light black skin, and chin stubble. He was reclining in the canoe, yet the tautness of his muscles made it clear that he was ready to move quickly as he eyed me subtly. He appeared stronger than other Pirahãs, though he was no taller or heavier than any other man in the village, so far as I could tell. The squareness of his jaw and the firmness of his eye contact gave him a look of confidence and control. As other Pirahãs came running to get food, he handed out parts of animals with instructions as to who should receive what part. He had on orange pants but no shoes and no shirt.
On my second day I began to work with Kóhoi in the mornings at a table in the front room of the Sheldons’ large jungle house. I spent the afternoons walking about the village, querying various Pirahãs about their language. I continued to follow the standard linguistic mono lingual method for gathering data when no language is spoken in common: pointing, asking for words in the native language, and then writing down whatever response the native speaker gives, hoping it is the right one. Then practicing that immediately with other native speakers.
One of the things about Pirahã that immediately fascinated me was the lack of what linguists call “phatic” communication—communication that primarily functions to maintain social and interpersonal channels, to recognize or stroke, as some refe
r to it, one’s interlocutor. Expressions like hello, goodbye, how are you?, I’m sorry, you’re welcome, and thank you don’t express or elicit new information about the world so much as they maintain goodwill and mutual respect. The Pirahã culture does not require this kind of communication. Pirahã sentences are either requests for information (questions), assertions of new information (declarations), or commands, by and large. There are no words for thanks, I’m sorry, and so on. I have become used to this over the years and forget most of the time how surprising this can be to outsiders. Anytime someone visits the Pirahãs with me, they ask how to say these things. And they stare suspiciously at me when I say that the Pirahãs have no such forms of communication.
When a Pirahã arrives in the village, he or she might say, “I have arrived.” But by and large, no one says anything. If you give someone something, they might occasionally say, “That’s right,” or “It is OK,” but they use these to mean something more like “Transaction acknowledged,” rather than “Thank you.” The expression of gratitude can come later, with a reciprocal gift, or some unexpected act of kindness, such as helping you carry something. The same goes when someone has done something offensive or hurtful. They have no words for I’m sorry. They can say, “I was bad,” or some such, but do so rarely. The way to express penitence is not by words but by actions. Even in Western societies, there is considerable variation in how much we use phatic communication. Brazilians used to tell me when I was learning Portuguese, “Americans say ‘thank you’ way too much.”
On my second afternoon in the Pirahã village, after a long day of language learning, I got myself a hot cup of strong black instant coffee and sat down at the edge of a steep bank to gaze at the Maici. Several Pirahã men had gone fishing with Don in the boat, so the village was quieter. It was about 5:45, the most beautiful time of day, when the sun glows orange and the river’s reflective darkness stands out against the rusty color of the sky and the luxuriant spinach green of the jungle. As I sat idly watching and sipping my coffee, I was startled by the sight of two small gray porpoises jumping in sync out of the river. I had no idea that there were freshwater porpoises. Almost immediately, from around the bend came two Pirahã canoes, their riders paddling for all they were worth, in pursuit of the porpoises, trying to touch them with their paddles. It was a game of tag, porpoise tag.
Don't Sleep, There are Snakes Page 2