Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches

by Marvin Harris

  The men whose task it is to clear and burn the new gardens must work harder because of the greater thickness and height of the virgin trees. But it is the women who suffer most, since the new gardens are necessarily located at a greater distance from the center of the village. Not only must the women plant larger gardens to feed their families and pigs, but they must consume more and more of their time just walking to work and more and more of their energy hauling piglets and babies up to and down from the garden and the heavy loads of harvested yams and sweet potatoes back to their houses.

  A further source of tension arises from the increased effort involved in protecting the gardens from being eaten up by the mature pigs that are let loose to scrounge for themselves. Every garden must be surrounded by a stout fence to keep the pigs out. A hungry 150-pound sow, however, is a formidable adversary. Fences are breached and gardens invaded more frequently as the pig herd multiplies. If caught by an irate gardener, the offending pig may be killed. These disagreeable incidents set neighbor against neighbor and heighten the general sense of dissatisfaction. As Rappaport points out, incidents involving pigs necessarily increase more rapidly than the pigs themselves.

  In order to avoid such incidents and to get closer to their gardens, the Maring begin to move their houses farther apart over a wider area. This dispersion lowers the security of the group in case of renewed hostilities. So everyone becomes more jittery. The women begin to complain about being overworked. They bicker with their husbands and snap at their children. Soon the men begin to wonder if perhaps there are “enough pigs.” They go down to inspect the rumbim to see how tall it has grown. The women complain more loudly, and finally the men, with considerable unanimity and without counting the pigs, agree that the moment has come to begin the kaiko.

  During the kaiko year of 1963, the Tsembaga killed off three-fourths of their pigs by number and seven-eighths by weight. Much of this meat was distributed to in-laws and military allies who were invited to participate in the yearlong festivities. At the climactic rituals held on November 7 and 8, 1963, 96 pigs were killed and their meat and fat were distributed directly or indirectly to an estimated two or three thousand people. The Tsembaga kept about 2,500 pounds of pork and fat for themselves, or 12 pounds for each man, woman, and child, a quantity which they consumed in five consecutive days of unrestrained gluttony.

  The Maring consciously use the kaiko as an occasion to reward their allies for previous assistance and to seek their loyalty in future hostilities. The allies in turn accept the invitation to the kaiko because it gives them an opportunity to decide if their hosts are prosperous and powerful enough to warrant continued support; of course, the allies are also hungry for pig meat

  Guests dress up in their finest manner. They wear bead-and-shell necklaces, cowrie-shell garters around their calves, orchid-fiber waistbands, purple-striped loincloths bordered with marsupial fur, and masses of accordion-shaped leaves topped by a bustle on their buttocks. Crowns of eagle and parrot feathers encircle their heads, festooned with orchid stems, green beetles and cowries, and topped with an entire stuffed bird of paradise. Every man has spent hours painting his face in some original design, and wears his best bird-of-paradise plume through his nose along with a favorite disk or a gold-lip crescent shell. Visitors and hosts spend much time showing off to each other by dancing at the specially constructed dance ground, preparing the way for amorous alliances with the female onlookers as well as military alliances with male warriors.

  Over a thousand people crowded into the Tsembaga dance ground to participate in the rituals that followed the great pig slaughter witnessed by Rappaport in 1963. Special reward packages of salted pig fat were heaped high behind the window of a three-sided ceremonial building that adjoined the dance grounds. In Rappaport’s words:

  Several men climbed to the top of the structure and from there proclaimed one by one to the multitude the names and clans of the men being honored. As his name was called, each honored man charged toward the … window swinging his ax and shouting. His supporters, yelling battle cries, beating drums, brandishing weapons, followed close behind him. At the window the mouth of the honored man was stuffed with cold salted belly-fat by the Tsembaga whom he had come to help in the last fight and who now also passed out to him through the window a package containing additional salted belly for his followers. With the belly fat hanging from his mouth the hero now retired, his supporters close behind him, shouting, singing, beating their drums, dancing. Honored name quickly followed honored name, and groups charging toward the window sometimes became entangled with those retiring.

  Within limits set by the basic technological and environmental conditions of the Maring, all of this has a practical explanation. First of all, the craving for pig meat is a perfectly rational feature of Maring life in view of the general scarcity of meat in their diet While they can supplement their staple vegetables with occasional frogs, rats, and a few hunted marsupials, domesticated pork is their best potential source of high-quality animal fat and protein. This does not mean that the Maring suffer from an acute form of protein deficiency. On the contrary, their diet of yams, sweet potatoes, taro, and other plant foods provides them with a broad variety of vegetable proteins that satisfies but does not far exceed minimum nutritional standards. Getting proteins from pigs is something else, however. Animal protein in general is more concentrated and metabolically more effective than vegetable protein, so for human populations that are mainly restricted to vegetable foods (no cheese, milk, eggs, or fish), meat is always an irresistible temptation.

  Moreover, up to a point, it makes good ecological sense for the Maring to raise pigs. The temperature and humidity are ideal. Pigs thrive in the damp, shady environment of the mountain slopes and obtain a substantial portion of their food by roaming freely over the forest floor. The complete interdiction of pork—the Middle Eastern solution—would be a most irrational and uneconomic practice under these conditions.

  On the other hand, unlimited growth of the pig population can only lead to competition between man and pig. If permitted to go too far, pig farming overburdens the women and endangers the gardens upon which the Maring depend for survival. As the pig population increases, the Maring women must work harder and harder. Eventually they find themselves working to feed pigs rather than to feed people. As virgin lands are brought into use, the efficiency of the entire agricultural system plummets. It is at this point that the kaiko takes place, the role of the ancestors being to encourage a maximum effort at pig raising but at the same time to see to it that the pigs do not destroy the women and the gardens. Their task is admittedly more difficult than Jahweh’s or Allah’s, since a total taboo is always easier to administer than a partial one. Nonetheless, the belief that a kaiko must be held as soon as possible, in order to keep the ancestors happy, effectively rids the Maring of animals that have grown parasitic and helps keep the pig population from becoming “too much of a good thing.”

  If the ancestors are so clever, why don’t they simply set a limit on the number of pigs that each Maring woman can raise? Would it not be better to keep a constant number of pigs than to permit the pig population to cycle through extremes of scarcity and abundance?

  This alternative would be preferable only if each Maring clan had zero population growth, no enemies, a wholly different form of agriculture, powerful rulers, and written laws—in short, if they weren’t the Maring. No one, not even the ancestors, can predict how many pigs are “too much of a good thing.” The point at which the pigs become burdensome does not depend upon any set of constants, but rather on a set of variables which changes from year to year. It depends on how many people there are in the whole region and in each clan, on their state of physical and psychological vigor, on the size of their territory, on the amount of secondary forest they have, and on the condition and intentions of the enemy groups in neighboring territories. The Tsembaga’s ancestors cannot simply say “thou shalt keep four pigs, and no more,” because there
is no way of guaranteeing that the ancestors of the Kundugai, Dimbagai, Yimgagai, Tuguma, Aundagai, Kauwasi, Monambant, and all the rest will agree to this number. All of these groups are engaged in a struggle to validate their respective claims to a share in the earth’s resources. Warfare and the threat of warfare probe and test these claims. The ancestors’ insatiable craving for pigs is a consequence of this armed probing and testing by the Maring clans.

  To satisfy the ancestors, a maximum effort must be made not only to produce as much food as possible, but to accumulate it in the form of the pig herd. This effort, even though it results in cyclical surpluses of pork, enhances the ability of the group to survive and to defend its territory.

  It does this in several ways. First, the extra effort called forth by the pig lust of the ancestors raises the levels of protein intake for the entire group during the rumbim truce, resulting in a taller, healthier, and more vigorous population. Furthermore, by linking the kaiko to the end of the truce, the ancestors guarantee that massive doses of high-quality fats and proteins are consumed at the period of greatest social stress—in the months immediately prior to the outbreak of intergroup fighting. Finally, by banking large amounts of extra food in the form of nutritionally valuable pig meat, the Maring clans are able to attract and reward allies when they are most needed, again just before the outbreak of war.

  The Tsembaga and their neighbors are conscious of the relationship between success in raising pigs and military power. The number of pigs slaughtered at the kaiko provides the guests with an accurate basis for judging the health, energy, and determination of the feast givers. A group that cannot manage to accumulate pigs is not likely to put up a good defense of its territory, and will not attract strong allies. No mere irrational premonition of defeat hangs over the battlefield when one’s ancestors aren’t given enough pork at the kaiko. Rappaport insists—correctly, I believe—that in a fundamental ecological sense, the size of a group’s pig surplus does indicate its productive and military strength and does validate or invalidate its territorial claims. In other words, the entire system results in an efficient distribution of plants, animals, and people in the region, from a human ecological point of view.

  I am sure that many readers will now want to insist that the pig love is maladaptive and terribly inefficient because it is geared to periodic outbreaks of warfare. If warfare is irrational, then so is the kaiko. Again, permit me to resist the temptation to explain everything at once. In the next chapter I will discuss the mundane causes of Maring warfare. But for the moment, let me point out that warfare is not caused by pig love. Millions of people who have never even seen a pig wage war; nor does pig hatred (ancient and modern) discernibly enhance the peacefulness of the intergroup relations in the Middle East. Given the prevalence of warfare in human history and prehistory, we can only marvel at the ingenious system devised by New Guinea “savages” for maintaining extensive periods of truce. After all, as long as their neighbor’s rumbim remains in the ground, the Tsembaga don’t have to worry about being attacked. One can perhaps say as much, but not more, about nations that plant missiles instead of rumbim.

  Primitive War

  WARS WAGED by scattered primitive tribes like the Maring raise doubts about the basic sanity of human lifestyles. When modern nation-states go to war we often puzzle over the precise cause, but seldom lack plausible alternative explanations from which to choose.

  History books brim with details of wars in which the combatants struggled for mastery over trade routes, natural resources, cheap labor, or mass markets. The wars of modern empires may be lamentable, but they are not inscrutable. This distinction is basic to the present-day nuclear détente, which rests on the assumption that wars involve some sort of rational balance of gains and losses. If the United States and the Soviet Union clearly stand to lose more than they can possibly gain by nuclear attack, neither is likely to initiate a war as the solution to its problems. But this system can be expected to prevent nuclear war only if wars in general are related to practical and mundane conditions. The probability of self-annihilation won’t discourage warfare if wars are fought for irrational and inscrutable reasons. If wars are fought, as some believe, primarily because man is “warlike,” instinctually “aggressive,” an animal who kills for sport, for glory, for vengeance, or for the sheer love of blood and violent excitement, then kiss those missiles goodbye.

  Irrational and inscrutable motives predominate in current explanations of primitive warfare. Since war has deadly consequences for its participants, it seems presumptuous to doubt that the combatants know why they are fighting. But cows, pigs, wars, or witches, the answers to our riddles do not lie within the participants’ consciousness. The belligerents themselves seldom grasp the systemic causes and consequences of their battles. They tend to explain war by describing the personal feelings and motivations experienced immediately prior to the outbreak of hostilities. A Jívaro about to set off on a headhunting expedition welcomes the opportunity to capture the soul of the enemy; the Crow warrior yearns to touch the dead foeman’s body to prove his fearlessness; other warriors are inspired by the thought of vengeance, still others by the prospect of eating human flesh.

  These exotic yearnings are real enough, but they are the results rather than the causes of war. They mobilize the human potential for violence and help to organize warlike behavior. Primitive war, like cow love or pig hate, has a practical basis. Primitive peoples go to war because they lack alternative solutions to certain problems—alternative solutions that would involve less suffering and fewer premature deaths.

  The Maring, like many other primitive groups, explain their going to war in terms of the need to avenge violent acts. In every instance collected by Rappaport, previously friendly clans began to make war on each other following allegations of specific acts of violence. The most frequently cited provocations were abduction of women, rape, the shooting of a pig in a garden, theft of crops, poaching, and death or disease induced through withcraft.

  Once two Maring clans had engaged in warfare in which fatalities had occurred, they never lacked motivation to renew hostilities. Each battlefield death was brooded over by the victim’s relatives, who never felt satisfied until they had evened the score by killing one of the enemy. Each round of fighting provided sufficient motivation for the next, and Maring warriors often went into battle with a burning desire to kill specific members of the enemy group—the ones who ten years before had been responsible for killing a father or brother.

  I have already told part of the story of how the Maring prepare for war. After uprooting the sacred rumbim, belligerent clans hold the great pig festivals at which they attempt to recruit new allies and consolidate relationships with previously friendly groups. The kaiko is a noisy affair, various phases of which go on for months, so there is no possibility of launching a sneak attack. In fact, the Maring hope that the opulence of their kaiko will demoralize their enemies. Both sides make preparation for battle well in advance of the first encounters. Through intermediaries, an unforested area located in the borderland between the combatants is agreed upon as an appropriate fight ground. Both sides participate, alternately, in clearing this site of underbrush, and fighting begins on an agreed-upon day.

  Before leaving for the fight ground, the warriors gather in a circle around their war magicians, who kneel by the fire, sobbing and conversing with the ancestors. The magicians place lengths of green bamboo in the flames. When the heat makes the bamboo explode, the warriors stamp their feet, cry Oooooooy and move to the battlefield in single file, prancing and singing along the way. The opposing forces array themselves at opposite ends of the clearing within bowshot of each other. They plant their man-sized wooden shields in the ground, take cover, and yell threats and insults at the enemy. Occasionally a warrior pops out from behind his shield to taunt his adversaries, darting back as a shower of arrows is loosed in his direction. Casualties are low during this phase of the fighting, and allies in both camps attempt
to end the war as soon as someone is seriously injured. If either side insists on further vengeance, the fighting escalates. The warriors bring axes and jabbing spears into play, and the opposing ranks draw closer to each other. Either side may now rush the other in a determined attempt to produce fatalities.

  As soon as someone gets killed, there is a truce. For a day or two, all the warriors stay home in order to carry out funerary rituals or praise their ancestors. But if both sides remain evenly matched, they soon return to the fight ground. As the struggle drags on, the allies become weary and are tempted to go home to their own villages. If defections accumulate more in one group than the other, the stronger force may attempt to rush the weaker and chase them from the field. The weaker clan gathers up its movable possessions and flees to its allies’ villages. The stronger clans, anticipating victory, may seek to press the advantage by sweeping down on the enemy village at night, setting fire to it and killing as many people as they can find.

  When a rout takes place, the victors do not pursue the enemy but concentrate instead upon killing stragglers, burning buildings, destroying crops, and abducting pigs. Nineteen of twenty-nine known wars among the Maring ended in one group routing another. Immediately after a rout, the victorious group returns to its village, sacrifices its remaining pigs, and plants the new rumbim, initiating the period of the truce. It does not directly occupy the enemy’s lands.

  A decisive rout in which many people are killed may lead a group never to return to its former territory. The losers’ descent lines merge with those of their allies and hosts, while their territory is taken over by the victors and the victors’ allies. Occasionally, the defeated group cedes its boundary lands to the allies among whom it has sought refuge. Professor Andrew Vayda, who has studied the aftermath of wars in the Bismarck Range region, says that whether a defeated group had been decisively routed or not, it is likely to establish its new settlement farther away from the enemy borders.