These beliefs are an amalgam of Catholic teachings, Tupi and other indigenous folktales and myths, and macumba—an African-Brazilian form of spiritism like voodoo. They believe in the curupira, a jungle elf (some say beautiful woman) who leads people into the center of the jungle because its feet point backward and the lost soul thinks it is leaving the jungle. They believe that the pink Amazonian river dolphin turns into a man at night and seduces young virgins.
I remember Godofredo telling me about this dolphin’s transmogrification. He related an elaborate story of how the dolphin, transformed into a pale-skinned man, but still with his enormous and elongated penis, had impregnated an unfortunate girl near the Auxiliadora. After telling me the story, he asked, “Do you believe this, Daniel?”
“Well, I am sure that many people do,” I answered.
“I do believe it,” he said, trying to pressure me with my respect for our friendship to believe him.
Godofredo had two daughters when I met him, Sônia and Regina. Sônia was about my daughter Shannon’s age and Regina was roughly Kristene’s age. When Sônia was twelve years old, during a period when my family and I lived in the state of São Paulo while I was studying for my doctorate at UNICAMP, she and a girlfriend of hers from the Auxiliadora died suddenly with terrible abdominal cramps. From the description we received later by mail (Godo dictated a letter and had a friend take it by boat to Humaitá to mail it), which included vomiting up fecal material and an inability to defecate, we thought it sounded like intestinal blockage, though it could have been botulism or any number of other things.
Godo’s diagnosis was typical of people of the region: “Ela mixturou as frutas” (She mixed her fruits). Caboclos, unlike the Pirahãs, are very superstitious about what they eat—mixing certain foods, they believe, can lead to a quick and painful death. For example, one must never drink milk while eating acidic fruits like mangoes.
Once we visited Godofredo when his son, Juarez, was recovering from a near-death case of falciparum malaria. Godo had watched Juarez writhe for days on the floor in fever, pain, and nauseated agony, yet had made no effort to get medical help for him.
“Why didn’t you take him to the doctor in town?” I asked, somewhat perturbed. “I can still take him to the doctor if you like. I will pay all the expenses.”
“Look, Mr. Daniel. Everyone dies when it is their time to die. That is why one doctor dies in the arms of another. Isn’t that true? Doctors don’t control death,” came the sagacious caboclo reply.
A couple of years later, when Juarez was nearing his seventeenth birthday, I wanted to provide him with an opportunity to better himself financially. I sat down with Godo during a trip through the Auxiliadora to the Pirahãs.
“Godo, we both know that Juarez is a very smart young man. I have seen that he likes to work on record players and radios. I think that with good training, tools, and some financial help, he could start a shop and make good money. I have a friend in Porto Velho, an American radio technician named Ricardo, and he has agreed to teach Juarez his trade, to let him board with him and his wife, and then to supply him with tools when Juarez is done training. I am willing to pay for all of this. What do you think, Godo? I would like to take Juarez with me when I leave the village.”
Godo put me off temporarily. “Let me think about this, Daniel. When you leave for Porto Velho, I will give you my answer.”
A few weeks later, during a visit by Godo to the Pirahãs to trade for Brazil nuts, I boarded his boat to visit with him and drink some coffee.
“Daniel, I have thought a lot about your offer,” Godo began. “I cannot accept it. You see, I need my son to work with me. I am too poor to hire help. But if he leaves and learns all these new things, I am sure that he will stay in the city and never come back here. He will stay and make money in Porto Velho or Humaitá and not help his father.”
“But Godo,” I pleaded, uncontrollably meddling in his family affairs because I was shocked at this selfishness, “you are ruining Juarez’s future just for your own interests.”
I was really upset. I noticed that Juarez and his stepmother, Cesária, were looking askance at us from the back of the boat, their heads down.
“Maybe I am ruining his future. Or maybe I am not. Only God knows, Daniel. But I know that I need Juarez here with me, now.”
In complete exasperation, I gulped down the rest of my cafezinho (a small cup of strong black coffee) and excused myself to go back up the bank of the Maici to my house. I knew that Godo’s attitude was typical of most caboclos. Children were for the economic help of the parents. People didn’t waste their primary assets, their children. They were yours to do with what you wanted, and you wanted them to help you financially.
Years later Godo asked if he could still accept my offer. Juarez was in his midtwenties by this time. “No, Godo. Ricardo no longer lives in Porto Velho, so I don’t know anyone there now who could train him.”
Ultimately, Juarez’s story became a tragedy, common enough among the caboclos. As I was completing the first version of this chapter, I learned that he had been killed in a motorcycle accident on the Transamazon Highway. I have nearly been killed more than once riding my motorcycle down the Transamazon. I thought long sad thoughts about Juarez and the miserable end of the promising young life whose potential was never realized.
Summing up caboclo culture fails to do justice to their rich system of beliefs and way of life. Ultimately, the caboclos had come to play as much a role in my life as the Pirahãs, as I immersed myself more deeply into the world of the Amazon. Like the Pirahãs, they have been among my dearest friends and my most exasperating acquaintances.
But I couldn’t conclude even this cursory survey of them without mentioning their readiness to fight. Caboclos live by a code similar to that of John Bernard Books, John Wayne’s final movie character, in The Shootist: “I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people and I expect the same from them.” Amazonians will help you if you ask. They will give you their last food if you need it. But they are severely sensitive to slights or any sign that you think you are superior to them.
Sometimes just my white skin and foreignness offends this sensitivity. This is because many Brazilians have come to believe that Americans are racist and feel superior to all other peoples. Sometimes those offended by my mere presence feel it incumbent upon them to try to intimidate me for their friends to see.
Many times I have been asked, “O que é você?” (What are you?) or “What are you doing in Brazil?” or “What are you trying to steal from our country?”
The balance between showing toughness and using common sense is a vital one to acquire when traveling in the Amazon. The Pirahãs have learned this lesson. And so have the caboclos. Neither will back down if the odds are even. But both will avoid a fight if the odds are obviously against them. It took me some time to learn the lesson for myself, after committing mistakes that could have been very costly.
Once when my family was living with the tribe, an enormous boat, of a size normally seen on the Madeira, the Amazon, or the Rio Negro, three decks high and one hundred feet long, came up the Maici to our village. It was high water, so the boat seemed to be parked right in front of our house at the river’s edge. The river was only a foot or so from the top of the bank then, though it is more than forty feet below the top in the dry season. The boat was so close and the river so high that the crew could peer into my house. The crew was large, perhaps as many as thirty-five men. I could see that they were staring at Keren and my daughters, now just past puberty. I reacted instinctively and boarded the boat, a thirty-year-old gringo, five feet nine and 155 pounds.
“What are you doing on Indian land?” I demanded of the owner, a huge man named Romano.
“We are looking for hardwoods,” he replied coolly.
I looked around. One man on the crew had a white fleshy orb in the socket where I expected to see his eye. Another h
ad a scar from his forehead to his throat, clearly from a knife. Another had a scar across his belly. I noticed that all of them were built better than I was, with rippling, well-defined muscles exuding power. But as an indignant father and husband, I ordered them off the Pirahãs’ land.
“Who are you to tell us to leave?” Romano asked. “An American ordering Brazilians off Brazilian land?”
“The FUNAI delegado in Porto Velho, Apoena Meirelles, told me to make sure that no one came on this land without his permission,” I responded truthfully but naively, simply not grasping how offensive this could be to a native-born Brazilian. I also did not realize that the FUNAI was largely irrelevant to caboclos, even though I could not function without the foundation’s permission and support. This happened early on in my career, before I knew better.
I was ready to act. I didn’t know what I would do if this turned out badly, though. I had no plan. But to my relief, after a silence during which the crew continued to stare at my house and Romano just looked at me, he suddenly ordered his men to start the boat and prepare to leave. He offered me coffee and we drank it, syrupy sweet espresso. He said goodbye politely and they pulled out. Another lesson I have learned: mean-looking people can in fact be nice.
Caboclos, like the Pirahãs, are isolated even from other Brazilians, something that the Pirahãs notice when other Brazilians or foreigners come onto their land. This was made clear to me years ago by caboclo reactions to members of the Projeto Rondon. This project was a government-sponsored initiative to aid the health of the poor of Northern Brazil and increase the social awareness of privileged Southern Brazilians by bringing teams of college students from the South to the more remote and primitive areas of Brazil for short visits to provide dental and medical care. Once when I arrived at the Auxiliadora, where Godofredo and Césaria still lived, some men called to me as I was passing the shade tree that they sat under. They were sipping iced-cold Antarctica beer, dressed in shorts with flip-flops, and shirtless.
“Seu Daniel, como é que vai? Sabe rapaz, na semana passada tinha um grupo de estrangeiros do seu pais aqui. Falavam português enrolado que nem você!” (Mr. Daniel, how is it going? Last week there was a group of foreigners here from your country. They spoke Portuguese poorly just like you!)
“A group from my country?” I asked, surprised that any group of Americans would ever travel to the Auxiliadora. “Where were they from?”
“They were here with the Projeto Rondon. They were all from São Paulo.”
I walked away amused that to the caboclos there was little difference between a gringo from the United States and a Brazilian from São Paulo.
Part Two LANGUAGE
11 Changing Channels with Pirahã Sounds
Caboclos, travel, and other experiences of the Amazon were ultimately just means to an end. My experiences in the region were ordered around my struggle to figure out the grammar of Pirahã. As I made progress, excruciatingly slowly, I realized that this language was unusual—profoundly so. Initially I recognized this as I analyzed the way it organized its sounds into words. I based my conclusions about its uniqueness on field research with Tzeltales in southern Mexico, training with Comanche and Cherokee speakers in Oklahoma, helping missionaries analyze other Amazonian languages, and wide reading.
I usually did my serious work on the language in the loft of our tribal house. It was built parallel to the river’s edge to catch breezes. Our house had a storeroom and a ceiling made of ax-hewn boards over our sleeping areas (to prevent crawling, hopping, and slithering life from falling on us while we slept and also to make those rooms a bit cooler).
The triangular space created between my thatched roof and board ceiling was open on both sides, and there was enough room for me to put a table and a couple of chairs up there for my linguistics work. I referred to this space as my study. It was extremely hot in this relatively closed space, and there were snakes, frogs, tarantulas, and other critters in the thatch, but it gave a small bit of privacy from the village, so that my language teachers and I would have fewer distractions. Access to this space was by a homemade ladder nailed onto the living room wall just below my desk.
When I worked in my study, I was so hot that my T-shirt clung to me and my hair stuck to the sides of my head. But I learned to ignore that. It was the animal life that continued to keep me alert and wary.
From time to time I would have to stop working while small frogs jumped out of the thatch in panic with snakes slithering behind them. None of the snakes were very large, but some were venomous. They lived in the thatch, which was apparently a great hunting ground. I learned to keep a hardwood club at my feet or on the chair next to me. When I heard the thatch above my head rustle, I would scoot back my chair, pick up my club, and wait. First a frightened frog would jump out. I tried to kill them too. (I wanted all life out of the thatch.) But they were too fast and small. Then I knew that whatever had frightened the frog would not be long behind, so I would wait. Several times a snake would poke its head out. Since I was waiting, the slithery pest was almost always a goner. Wham! The club would bang the snake’s head against the thatch and support poles. I would toss the snake out into the jungle and go back to work.
I lived and breathed the Pirahã language while I was in the village. But my initial optimism about analyzing their language faded as I began to grasp just how difficult it was.
We have all seen Hollywood movies in which some explorer or scientist learns a tribal language fluently in just a short period of time. These seemed silly to me now as I struggled to learn more about this language and express myself in it. There were no textbooks. There was no one who could translate Pirahã sentences into Portuguese, except in the simplest paraphrases. Even after six months, I wasn’t sure that I understood anything my teachers were saying to me. It got very discouraging at times. But I saw that three-and four-year-old Pirahã children learned the language and I dared to believe that I might eventually speak as well as a three-year-old.
Although linguistics was my intellectual pursuit among the Pirahãs, I never lost sight of the fact that I was being paid by churches and individual Christians to translate the Bible into the Pirahã language. However, in order to do this I needed a thorough understanding of the structure of the language. The two goals were at least compatible at this stage.
Pirahã has one of the smallest sets of speech sounds or phonemes in the world, with only three vowels (i, a, o) and just eight consonants (p, t, k, s, h, b, g, and the glottal stop x) for men and three vowels (i, a, o) and seven consonants (p, t, k, h, b, g, and x) for women (they use h both where men use h and also where men use s). Women have fewer consonants than men. This is not unheard of, but it is unusual.
The term glottal stop will not mean much to many readers since it is a sound that is lacking from the phonemes of most European languages, including English. But it is important in Pirahã. In English we occasionally make the glottal stop in interjections, such as uh-uh (no). Whereas a consonant like t stops the flow of air coming out of the mouth just behind the teeth and a k cuts off the air with the back of the tongue raised against the palate, a glottal stop is produced by closing the vocal folds tightly and cutting off the flow of air before it gets into the upper portion of the throat (the pharynx).
To appreciate how small Pirahã’s list of sounds is, consider that En glish has approximately forty phonemes, depending on the dialect. And English’s inventory is by no means unusually large. Hmong of Vietnam has over eighty. At the other extreme, only Rotokas (New Guinea) and Hawaiian vie with Pirahã for smallness of phonemic inventory—both have eleven phonemes, the same number as Pirahã men.
Some have asked whether a language can communicate complicated information with only eleven phonemes. A computer scientist knows, however, that computers can communicate anything we program them to do, and that they do this with only two “letters”—1 and 0, which can be thought of as phonemes. Morse code also has only two “letters,” long and short.
And that is all any language needs. In fact, a language could get by with a single phoneme. In such a language words might look like a, aa, aaa, aaaa, and so on. It’s not surprising that there is no language known with only one or two sounds, since the smaller the phonemic inventory, the longer words have to be to provide enough information for speakers to distinguish one word from another (otherwise they would sound too much alike) and the harder it becomes for our brains to tell words apart (words that are too long would require too much memory to distinguish, among other problems). So if there were a human language like the binary language of computers, humans would need computerlike brains to use and recognize the very long words that would be necessary. Imagine trying to tell a word of fifty consecutive a’s apart from a word of fifty-one a’s.
There is therefore a tension between learning a large number of phonemes to keep words a more manageable size, versus learning fewer phonemes while letting words “grow” a bit. Some languages can be complicated in both ways. German has both long words and a large set of phonemes, for example.
A couple of English examples can help us see how we use phonemes to distinguish words. In the words pin versus bin, for most speakers the only way to distinguish which word means a small pointed fastener and which is a container is that one has the phoneme p and the other has b; otherwise the words are identical. This means that p and b are meaningfully separate sounds in English, unlike the two types of p in pin and spin.
In the latter words, the p of pin is aspirated, meaning that a puff of air is emitted with its pronunciation, whereas the p of spin is not aspirated. (You can see this by holding a piece of notebook paper about three inches from your mouth when pronouncing these words in a normal voice. The paper will bend forward with the “wind” of aspiration from the first word, but not the second.) For this reason, in our alphabet we distinguish between p and b, a meaningful distinction, but not between the two p sounds of pin and spin, since we can recognize such words with or without aspiration. (Audrey Hepburn, influenced by her native Dutch, tended not to aspirate consonants and most people hardly noticed.)
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