To the Banawa

As we walked out of the Jamamadi village heading north there seemed to be a lot
of shouting back and forth between our guides and the rest of the village. I asked Bob,
the linguist, what it was all about. Evidently some of it was in the nature of “Remember
to take care of…” and “Bring back bread and milk (or whatever is their equivalent 50
miles from a grocery store)”. Some of this last-minute conversation gave me cause for
thought: Our guides, Bada and Baina, were asking things like “Which direction do we go
after…” and “Is it the second or third turn?”, etc. These men who were going to lead us
through “trackless Amazon jungle” for ten days to try to locate another tribe hadn’t been
that way, themselves, in 10 years or more!
It was June of 1977 and our little group was headed north from the Jamamadi
village of São Francisco. The plan was to cross over the ridge and descend the Curia
River to the Piranha River, then to go up the Banawa River to the Banawa indian village.
Bob wanted to get a word list and some tapes of stories to make a dialect comparison
with Jamamadi, the language in which he was working. We also hoped to find some
information about a possibly related group reportedly living in that general area.
Our first concern was to stop walking. That is, we hoped to be able to find and
borrow a canoe an indian had stashed in the jungle near the source of the Curia. To me
the thought of trying to find a specific bush in several miles of jungle along a stream was
ludicrous. To the indian guides, though, it was no great challenge. They knew the canoe
would be on the side of the stream toward the village, as far up the stream as a canoe
could pass. Even so, we faced a 5-hour hike in the heat and humidity, carrying all our
gear for a 10-day trip.
Several hours into this adventure we came upon an old canoe, further up the
stream than expected. It was really not much more than a moldy log, covered with green
moss, but the guides were interested. They knew the canoe we were after wasn’t big
enough for 4 men, and they thought it would be wonderful if they could float this one,
too. The discussion, as translated for me by Bob, went something like: “Maybe we
could tie it together with vines”; “we could stuff bark and mud in the cracks”; “It is
pretty bad – I guess it won’t work”. We walked on.
Finally we reached the canoe. I was about worn out! Bob and Baina took most of
our gear in the two-man dugout and started downstream, while Bada and I hiked on to a
place where another canoe was said to be stashed. I don’t know why he was in such a
hurry, but I nearly killed myself keeping up with Bada! When we reached the second
canoe we sat around for an hour waiting for Bob and Baina. I since have learned that
indians walk in the jungle to get there, not just to take a walk.
Bob and Baina arrived pretty worn out. Since the stream at that point is relatively
narrow and shallow they had to cut their way through brush and fallen trees. My hike
probably was easier than their canoe trip, even though I felt like I was about to expire.
With two canoes the travelling was easier, especially since the stream was also
getting wider. When it was time to make camp we found a broken-down hunter’s shelter.
There was room for three hammocks “inside”, and there were four of us. Since I had a
jungle hammock, with an integral roof, I volunteered to sleep “outside”. “Inside” and

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“outside” are relative terms since this shelter had no walls and only a skimpy thatched
roof. During the night Bob overheard the indians discussing the fact that they heard a
jaguar outside – where I was sleeping. He decided that I didn’t need to know that, so he
didn’t tell me for a couple of weeks, but he did see the jaguar tracks the next morning as
we broke camp.
As we worked our way downstream we eventually came to a homestead. It was a
compact little place, with chickens and a garden. The lady even had some trees, which
she thought were apple. She asked Bob to identify which was apple, as she had planted
two different kinds of seeds. Apple won’t grow in the tropics so it wasn’t surprising that
neither was apple.
This woman told us that from her place on down the Curia there were houses all
over the place. In fact, she thought it was downright crowded. Half a day later we came
to the next house.
Three days after we left the Jamamadi village we came to the Piranha river. We
stopped briefly at a little Brazilian settlement of a couple of houses, then travelled
downstream to make camp. We beached our canoes, sticking the paddles in the sand, and
hung our hammocks. The next morning we found that one of the canoes had drifted a bit,
dislodging the paddle, and the paddle was gone! Bada and Baina didn’t seem worried.
They searched a bit in the water downstream and there was our paddle, lying on the
bottom. The wood was too heavy to float away, which saved our paddle, but it did make
me wonder what happens if you drop the paddle in deep water. I guess an indian would
ask “Why would you drop your paddle?”
Five days into our trip we came to the mouth of the Banawa River. Its confluence
with the Piranha was fairly indistinct. The water level was high and the rivers had over-
flowed their banks into the jungle. It was really hard to locate the actual river, and we
didn’t want to wander around in our canoes trying to guess the way, so we asked a
Brazilian living there to show us the way. He sent his teen-age daughter and young son
to guide us to the first indian house on the Banawa, which they did easily.
When we and our Brazilian guides arrived at the house, which belonged to Mael
(an elderly Banawa indian) we received a cool welcome. The tension was palpable. Bob
tried to use Jamamadi phrases but Mael didn’t want to speak that language. Eventually
the girl and her brother left, and the atmosphere immediately improved. They relaxed
and brought out food. I can only guess why they were so tense.
Relatively early in the evening Mael announced “It is time to go sleep”, and we
took the hint. From our hammocks we could hear Mael and our Jamamadi guides in
conversation. I could hear it, but only Bob could understand it because they were
speaking Jamamadi. As Bob related it to me the conversation was something like:
Mael: “Who are these people?”
Bada: “They are OK:
Mael: “Who are these people?”
Bada: They give us medicine.”
Mael: “Who are these people?”

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 Bada: “They speak our language.”
Our host must have been reassured because the next day he was willing to speak
to Bob in the Banawa language, which was related to Jamamadi. His wife, though,
showed considerable embarassment because she couldn’t speak anything but Banawa.
You see, she was blond. She said the indians had killed her parents and taken her captive
many years ago, when she was a child. She was raised as a Banawa and married a
Banawa man and raised Banawa children, but she was painfully aware that she was a
Brazilian and couldn’t speak Portuguese
Having passed this initial evaluation, Mael was willing to take us up the Banawa
River to meet more of the group. This river was pretty small so we walked for several
hours. We were taken to a house in a cleared field, where we met several young men.
Again, the reception was cool. The obvious leader of the group spoke to us in broken
Portuguese but he clearly was suspicious of us. Soon he went outside, where our
Jamamadi guides were, and we could here him in conversation with Bada and Baina.
apparently the conversation went something like:
“Who is this guy, anyway. Doesn’t he speak Portuguese?”
“Yes, but he’s different. He speaks only our language to us.”
“Should I offer him a cigarette?”
“No, he’s different. He doesn’t smoke.”
“Does he buy skins, and sorva?”
“No, he’s different. He buys our language. We talk, he writes our words, and
then he pays us. Why don’t you talk into his tape recorder?”
When the young man came back into the house he brought food to give us. We
had passed one more security check. They then excorted us to a house in the village,
some distance away.
We had arrived! There we were, in a Banawa village, surrounded by Banawa
men speaking their language. I, of course, could understand none of it and can only
record the sense of what was said as related to me by Bob. There was more talk like what
went on in the other house, and some conversation with Bob. Then Bada said, to the
young leader, “You talk well. Why don’t you talk into his tape recorder?” The man
replied “OK”, then he then filled up an entire cassette tape speaking in his native tongue
telling stories. We had what we had come for, and Bob figured Banawa and Jamamadi
were about 25% mutually intelligible.
We were fed well. We could see cook fires among the other houses in the village,
but we were somewhat isolated. We assume there were women, since we were given
cooked food, but they carefully kept the women out of sight. Again, I can only guess
what they feared.
Next day we headed back down the Banawa, past a significant place. Bada asked
Mael “Isn’t this where the knives were stolen?” Some years earlier a group of Jamamadi
had visited the Banawa. The Banawa had gotten them drunk and stole their machettes!
Bada commented that his uncle had been in the group. Those men had been forced to

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travel back to the Jamamadi village through the jungle without knives, a trip that could
have taken as much as 10 days.
We had accomplished what we had come to do so I set up our radio and called our
support base to arrange for an amphibious plane to come pick us up. Baina and Bada
took the two small canoes and returned to their village, which took about 12 days since
they were going upstream and they didn’t have the little bit of help we could have
provided.
Bob and I went fishing in a local lake while we waited for the plane. We
borrowed a very small canoe, and I noticed that it had a harpoon in it. I asked if there
really was anything large enough in this lake to need a harpoon. About then we heard a
loud splash out in the lake and a wave rocked the canoe. I had some trepedition at getting
into a canoe with only about 4 inches of freeboard with creatures that large in the water.
In the end we didn’t need the harpoon, but we did catch some nice Tucunaré (Peacock
Bass) from 12 to 18 inches long. Those we gave to the man whose canoe we had used.
The plane came, and the pilot found us by accident. When I had called to arrange
the pick up I had told them where I thought we were and he had flown there. He didn’t
see us, so he flew down the river until he found us. We were a couple of turns down
from where I thought we were! It was a good thing he didn’t just set down there and wait
for us.

Copyright © 2009 Richard A. Need

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