Don't Sleep, There are Snakes

by Everett, Daniel L.

  What Joaquim could not have known was that one village of Pirahãs did not accept him or any of the Sete residents as either close friends or as having legitimate claims to the land they occupied. The material differences between his way of life and Pirahã culture only distanced him further from the Pirahãs, and this village considered him an inferior interloper.

  The Apurinãs made the tragic discovery of these Pirahãs’ real estimation of them by a very indirect route. It began with a feud that developed between the Apurinãs and the Colário family, a group of traders that did business with them and the Pirahãs.

  The Colários, ostensibly evangelical Christians of the Assembly of God denomination, enjoyed dealing with the numberless, preliterate Pirahãs who would accept exchange goods in a volume far below market value for Brazil nuts, latex, sorva, kopaiba, and other jungle products. But they discovered that the Apurinãs followed market prices closely on their short-wave radio, prices that the Brazilian channel Radio Nacional announced daily.

  One day the Apurinãs warned the Colários, who operated three boats, not to return to Ponto Sete, because they were cheats. When Darciel Colário defied this ban and returned, the Apurinãs opened fire on his boat with their shotguns. They destroyed many of his trade goods and shot holes in the cabin on his boat. Colário escaped injury by hiding behind his stove. He managed to turn his boat around without standing up and exposing himself to the blasts of shotgun pellets and beat a hasty retreat down the Maici. The Apurinãs thought that they had taught him a good lesson.

  But the Colários were not successful river traders because they were pushovers. They were not going to take this lightly. Armando Colário referred to all Indians as bichinhos, little animals, and would certainly want revenge against these subhumans who had attacked his son. And his son Darciel’s ethics were no different from his father’s. I had myself threatened Darciel because he got the Pirahãs drunk and encouraged them to steal from me. I walked onto his boat the next time he came and told him that if he came up the Maici again I would throw him off, burn his boat in front of him, and let him swim back (intemperate braggadocio from a twenty-seven-year-old missionary). After I left the Maici to return to UNICAMP, the Colários put their plan for revenge into action.

  Darciel and Armando decided to enlist the Pirahãs to help them teach the residents of Sete a lesson. They found some willing Pirahãs, a group of hotheaded teenagers led by Túkaaga (a name borrowed directly from the Portuguese tocandeira, a large stinging ant), son of Xopísi, the most prominent Pirahã at the village of Coatá, just downriver from Sete. Darciel legitimized these teenagers’ desire for adventure and their desire to show their toughness by giving them a new shotgun to drive off the residents of Sete. Darciel and his family wanted unfettered access to the Brazil nuts, hardwoods, and other jungle products near the Apurinãs’ settlement, and many Pirahãs wanted that land free from competitors for fish and game. And the Colários also wanted revenge.

  On the fateful day, Armando Apurinã, along with his oldest son, Tomé, and their wives, were upriver, just under a day’s journey by canoe, to fish and hunt. Joaquim and his Pirahã brother-in-law, Otávio (Toíbaitii in Pirahã, the only Pirahã to marry an outsider), had remained at the village. While Otávio fished, Joaquim and his wife went to collect manioc and firewood. This is hard work. Manioc tubers are firmly attached to the soil and can be more than eighteen inches in length. Hard tugging and sometimes chopping are necessary to get each root out of the soil. The roots are then tossed into a large woven wicker basket. When the basket holds thirty to forty pounds of manioc, it is raised and secured around the head via a tumpline. Along with his burden of manioc, Joaquim collected some thirty pounds of firewood, which he carried in his arms, at right angles to and even with his

  abdomen. Walking back home he was so overladen that he was unable to look carefully from side to side as most men in the jungle would naturally do. But that was OK, Joaquim reasoned, because he knew the path well and there were unlikely to be any major predators this close to the village.

  He had no way of knowing that lying silently in wait along the path was Túkaaga, with his new 20-gauge shotgun, accompanied by his friends Xowágaii and Bixí, two other teenagers from Coatá. None of these boys had ever harmed a human being. But they were all skilled hunters and expert killers of animals. As Joaquim and his wife neared them, talking about whether to fish or hunt after putting the manioc in the river to soak, Túkaaga waited and tensed. Joaquim’s wife passed by, then Joaquim came into view. When he was about ten feet away, Túkaaga shot him in the midsection.

  Blood spurted from Joaquim’s crotch, thighs, and belly. The force of the blast, combined with the weight of the tumpline and the firewood in his arms, threw him violently to the ground. As Joaquim cried out in agony, his wife and her sister, Otávio’s wife, Raimunda, ran to the sound of the shot. Raimunda took one look at Joaquim and went running to find Otávio to come help, while Joaquim’s wife did what she could to stop the bleeding, stuffing mud and leaves into the wounds. Otávio helped get Joaquim to his hut, out of the hot sun, then paddled for all he was worth upriver to find Tomé and his father-in-law.

  Joaquim was in agony this entire time, the 20-gauge shot having perforated his side and front and torn out chunks of flesh. He didn’t die until evening. Tomé, Armando, and their wives received the news from Otávio that Joaquim had been shot by unknown assailants around the same time that Joaquim died. Tomé and Armando started back at once in separate canoes. They thought that the likely attackers were either the Colários or Parintintin Indians, but they had no suspicions of the Pirahãs at all. Tomé was stronger and more aggressive than anyone on the Maici River, including all the Pirahãs and river traders. Everyone who knew his temper walked softly around him. The muscles in his arms and legs were as well defined and as impressive as many a professional bodybuilder’s. He could work all day with an ax, hunt all night, and fish the next day, never losing any sign of vigor. He rowed downriver furiously, without letting up. About midnight he was approaching Sete. He wanted to first check on Joaquim, not knowing he had already died, and set out right afterward to hunt down the cowards who had shot his brother-in-law without warning.

  Boom! The shot rang out and echoed down the banks of the Mac. As Tomé and his wife rounded the last bend in the river before their village, their way lit only by starlight reflecting dimly off the surface of the Maici, someone fired at them. Tomé took most of the buckshot in his shoulder and back. He was blown out of the canoe into the river, along with his canoe paddle. As he began to sink to the depths of the Maici, his wife, lazaré, struck by only a few pellets from the blast, quickly grabbed him by the hair and held his head above water. She grabbed an aluminum pan from the bottom of the canoe and, leaning forward to maintain a firm grasp on Tomé’s hair, managed to paddle them to the shore using the pot in her left hand. Again, the Piraiã teenagers led by Túkaama did not wait to see the results. They left immediately, running through the darkness back to their village, Coatá.

  Armando, close behind, pulled his son out of the water. Of the four men who had lived at Set, one had been murdered (Armando learned on arrival that Joaquim was dead) and one was severely wounded. Not knowing what to do, the survivors went downriver immediately after burying Joaquim, to Coatá, to seek protection from Otáviol’s people, the Piraiãs. For three days, Armata, Otáviol, Tomé, and their wives stayed at Coatá with the Piraiãs, not knowing that they were guests of the families of their murderers. Neither did they comprehend that the Piraiãs at Coatá in fact despised Armando, Tomé, and the Aurinã women. Months later, opísib, the main man at Coatá, told me, laughing, that they did’t finish off the Aurinã men from Set because they were in the middle of the village and Piraiãs could have been hurt. And they did not want to harm Otáviol, unless he accidentally got in the way.

  Tomé was in very serious condition, but a trader arriving to buy Brazil nuts was persuaded to take him to the hospital in Manic oré, about a two-
day trip downriver. In spite of his wounds and the fact that they were infected, Tomé survived and made a full recovery. As he was in the hospital, though, his family, all the survivors from Set, learned that it was the Piraiãs who had attacked them and that no Piraiã wanted them to remain on the Mac. Even Armando’s Aurinã brother, Aprígio, who lived downriver at Terra Preta (Black Earth), was forced to leave, with his Diarroi wife and their two sons.

  After more than fifty years, the Pirahãs were expelling the Apurinãs from the Maici. It was a terrible shock. The Apurinãs left to face a life of indentured servitude as they went to Brazilian settlements on the Marmelos River, downriver a day’s canoe trip from the mouth of the Maici. They were allowed to stay only if they would work all day, every day, without pay for the Brazilians whose land they had been relocated to. Tomé swore revenge on the Pirahãs and sent threats via river traders. His family persuaded him not to try. The Pirahãs were waiting for him and would surely have killed him had he returned to the Maici. He knew this too. No one can come onto the Pirahãs’ land without their knowing. At the same time, the Pirahãs feared Tomé. They knew that he was as familiar with the Maici and its forest as they were. And they had no doubt that he would be a formidable foe.

  The broken band of residents of Sete and Aprígio knew that they could no longer call the beautiful, nurturing Maici their home. Within two years, most of the Apurinãs were dead, except for Tomé, his wife, Aprígio’s son (and Tomé’s cousin) Roque, and Otávio’s wife, Raimunda. Otávio stayed only a short time off the Maici with his Apurinã wife and family. He eventually returned alone to live with his people again, as all the Pirahãs desired. Armando died, perhaps of poison. No one knew exactly how he had died, only that it had been sudden. His wife and daughter poisoned themselves. Several years later, Aprígio also died.

  The Apurinã experience illustrates the dark side of Pirahã culture. While the Pirahãs are very tolerant and peaceful to one another, they can be violent in keeping others out of their land. It also shows us once again that tolerance toward a group of outsiders and coexistence with them does not mean long-term acceptance. The Apurinãs had believed that a lifetime among another people could overcome the differences in culture and society that separated them from this other people. They learned the deadly lesson that these barriers are nearly impossible to overcome, in spite of appearances over time—just as residents of the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and many other places have learned in the course of history.

  But there is another lesson to take away from this story. It concerns the fate of Túkaaga himself. Just a few months after murdering Joaquim and attempting to murder Tomé, Túkaaga was living alone, away from all other Pirahã villages. A month or so after his isolation, he was dead in mysterious circumstances (meaning that the Pirahãs by and large did not want to talk about it—some said he died of a “cold,”which is possible). I think he may have been killed by fellow Pirahãs. All the Pirahãs felt eventually endangered by what Túkaaga had done, after police came to investigate Joaquim’s death. And the Pirahãs had heard rumblings that nearby settlers were considering a punitive attack against them. Initially, the Pirahãs told me that they were not afraid, though it was obvious to me that they were, in spite of their bravado.

  They realized as they talked more about the reaction against them for Joaquim’s murder that in fact many Pirahãs could die. This may be why Túkaaga was ostracized. Ostracization is an extreme form of punishment in the Amazon, where social cooperation is necessary for protection, for help in hunting and gathering food, and so on.

  We already know that the Pirahãs do not need to have a chief or laws or regulations to exercise control over their members. Survival and ostracism are all they need. Túkaaga learned a hard lesson. His two helpers were never punished, so far as I can tell. Both are friends of mine, though I never ask about Túkaaga or the death of Joaquim anymore.

  9 Land to Live Free

  The most common challenges the Pirahãs face are disease and incursions into their land by people from other parts of the world—especially divers, fishermen, and hunters from a variety of countries, including Brazil. Japanese sport fishermen and Brazilian commercial fishing boats on the Marmelos have been a frequent sight, the visitors paying the Pirahãs in sugarcane rum, cloth, manioc meal, and even relatively expensive trade items, like canoes, to help them locate fish, through a caboclo intermediary. They also suffer ill effects from trade with caboclos, who usually only give them sugarcane rum in exchange for food and jungle products. Rather than cause offense and risk a dangerous encounter with any of these outsiders, the Pirahãs will often give them all the food that they have to placate them.

  The solutions that the Pirahãs needed outside help with most were demarcation of their land, to prevent the incursions, and medicines against the diseases. Keren and I helped them with the latter regularly. But I was sensing a stronger responsibility to help them with the former too. The need for a reservation became more obvious as we traveled in by river to their village, learning more about the caboclo culture that enveloped the Pirahãs. Although we flew to the Pirahãs on our first family visit, which was cut short by malaria, on our next trip we went by boat to the Maici.

  We intended to stay longer this time, most of the year, and boat travel was cheaper than plane travel for getting in the bulk of our supplies. I had a more personal reason to prefer boat travel—to avoid airsickness. We arrived at the docks in Porto Velho for our first long family visit with our goods packed in fifty-five-gallon metal barrels, fuel containers, wooden crates, suitcases, duffel bags, and cardboard boxes. Dockworkers came running to “help.” But I had learned from others that if they touched just one bag they extorted large sums. So I shooed them all away and carried all the cargo alone, down a very steep mud bank, across a foot-wide, bouncy gangplank, onto the leaking recreio. All of these supplies would need to be transported multiple times, across lengthy stretches of muddy, flooded paths and the fresh tracks of big jungle animals (once with the animal, a puma, still visible).

  Looking back now, I wonder if we were aware of the possible impact of all those goods on the Pirahãs. I think we must have assumed that this huge quantity of supplies, to meet the needs of a California family for a year, would not bother the Pirahãs. We never considered living any other way at this point in our careers. Luckily for us and for the Pirahãs, I think we turned out to be right, but not because of any insight or carefully reasoned conclusions on our part. The Pirahãs never showed much interest in our things, never tried to steal them (except food), and never asked for them. They always seemed to think of our things as not related to them in any significant way.

  In any case, river travel became our preferred way of getting to the village over the next couple of years. We could take more supplies, thus extending our stays, and we also were able to stop at small settlements along the way and get to know the Brazilians who lived near the Pirahãs. Many of these people went regularly to the Pirahãs to trade with them.

  As I got to know these people, I learned one thing that disturbed me:many of them were interested in the Pirahãs’ land. Often they asked why the Pirahãs should be given this prime hunting and fishing ground. “Mas, Seu Daniel, porque aqueles bichinhos têm direito à toda aquela terra bonita e os civilizados não?” (But, Mr. Daniel, why do those little creatures have rights to all the beautiful land but civilized people do not?) This kind of talk worried me because I could easily imagine some of these folks moving onto the Pirahãs’ land and trying to take bits or even large sections away from them. I knew I should help the Pirahãs get a legally recognized reservation, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it.

  By now, my family and I had been in Brazil for many years. After I finished my Ph.D. we decided to spend a year in the United States so that I could do postdoctoral work at the center of my linguistic world, the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts—the department of Noam Chomsky, wh
ose theory of grammar had become so influential in my professional life.

  After we had been at MIT for five months, however, I received word via Dr. Waud Kracke, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle, that the Brazilian National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) wanted me to join them on an expedition to identify the boundaries of an officially recognized reservation for the Pirahãs. I agreed to this enthusiastically.

  I would need to travel all night from Boston to Rio de Janeiro and then do another seven hours of puddle-hopping flying to Porto Velho. The FUNAI had invited me to help them determine the extent of land to be reserved for the Pirahãs. The FUNAI representative who invited me was known to me simply as Xará (shaRA). He held a senior position in the FUNAI. Xará had spent a couple of years traveling around the lands of the Pirahãs, the Mundurucus, and the Parintintins, and he wanted to see to it that they all had fully legal reservations to maintain their traditional way of life. He was of medium height and build, handsome, with a full black beard and long hair, traveling with his pretty blond Brazilian companion, Ana. Simultaneously serious and laid-back, always dressed casually, they reminded me of a couple of concerned hippies. But they spent their time trying to help guarantee that the Indians of Brazil could carry on their way of life by at least keeping the land of their ancestors.