Levi-Strauss: Tristes Tropiques - Notes

Part V: The Caduveo

Chapter 14: Parana

Brazilian primitive peoples named the Gé

● conflict with Tupi-speaking invaders

Indian Protection Service's integration experiment

● later fails, Service leaves them "to their own devices"

sociological predicament: "former savages" on whom "civilization" is forced

● when they are no longer "a danger to Society," civilization abandons them

reversal of equilibrium between modern and primitive cultures

● old ways of life reappeared

Sao Jeronymo reserve: 450 natives

● simple and semi-inadequate housing and living
● inadequacy of tools and items

exchange and gifts, rarity of items

● daughter owns possessions, presides over transaction and exchange

Kaingang natives: hunting and collecting expeditions

● men as leaders, equipped with bodoque
● women carry goods and children

gardening in native economy

presence of koros in diet

● subject of ridicule

Chapter 15: Pantanal

Mato Grosso: "big forest"

● sertao: "bush" or "landscape"
● garimpo: center of diamond-hunters
● pantanal: world's greatest marshland

Cherry Grove - home to "homosexual couples"

Fire Island: railway employee population

French-managed property
● fazenda's sales-counter
 ● empregados (employees) as debtors
○ forced to buy their own product

drinking maté
● china: little girl
● cuia: zebu horn sculpted by peon

Caduveo natives
● regarded by the French as degenerates and thieves
● fear that the anthropologists will tomar conta (usurp their land)

Chapter 16: Nalike

"Indian route" to the campos dos indios

● families of natives in marshes

Engenho village
● living and clothing similar to that of Portuguese peasants
● guaicuru manner of speech
● hamlets "housed as many as six families"
● pottery as main activity

Wooden statuettes
● religious symbols and children's toys -> crumbling religious values?
● "the natives have a particular way… of handling the relations between the sacred and
the profane"
● "opposition of the two is neither so absolute… as some philosophers have liked to
suppose" (Durkheim)

witch-doctor
● bichos: evil spirits, causes of all illness

female coming-of-age ceremony

● cotton dress and cloth
● painted designs

native photographing and payment

● natives demand milreis for being photographed
● re-transposition of money-minded traits into the context of their former institutions:
ostentatiousness of high-born women

pinga symposiums
● recitation of titles and deeds
● cycle of effects on men: excitement -> silence -> weeping -> sickness (repeat)
● cycle of effects on women: singing -> hysteria
○ transvestite demonstrations
 Chapter 17: A Native Society and its Style

systems of customs
● not absolute creations of systems
● customs / myths / games / dreams

Tereno in governmental reserve, near town of Miranda

Mbaya caste system

● nobles (marked by tattoos)
○ hereditary
○ upwardly mobile
● warriors
● plebeians
○ slaves
○ Guana serfs

marriage, sexuality, and children

● monogamous relationships: women sometimes followed warriors in their excursions
● commonality of infanticide and abortion
● continuance of group ensured by adoption, not procreation
● Guaicuru children raised apart from parents
● noble children lavishly attended to
○ ceremonies

Noble pride
● predestined to rule over human race
● myth
○ Gonoenhodi, supreme being, created the agricultural Guana first
○ Mbaya created last and destined to oppress and exploit other tribes

pre-Colombian art
● men as sculptors, women as painters
● depicted leaves, humans, or animals
● incongruity of face-painting style with human face
● each one of the 400 designs were dissimilar
● painters operate on "empirical know-how transmitted from generation to generation" or
keep their secrets intact

significance of painting
● once only nobles' foreheads were painted
● only younger women were painted
● primordial importance, "an end in themselves"
● erotic reasons for painting women

abhorrence of Nature in art

● "contempt for the clay of which we are made"
 ● art comes close to sin: "presence of the demon" in paintings
● Caduveo art "makes it possible for Man to refuse to be made in God's image"

originality of art
● originality lies in combination of simple patterns
● systematic and fastidious compositional procedures
○ refutes any notion of native art being influenced by European Renaissance art

dualism in art
● men sculpt, women paint
● sculpture is representative and naturalistic, paintings are non-representative

styles among women painters

● angular geometric style
● free and curvilinear style
● compositions mingle both styles
● symmetry and asymmetry
● these antitheses glimpsed after the creative process

face-paintings "confer upon the individual his dignity as a human being"

● help him "cross the frontier from Nature to culture"
● from animal to "civilized Man"

nobles and prestige

● exclusivity of castes
● endogamy within castes
● asymmetry of class was balanced by symmetry of "moieties"

congruency of Guana and Bororo social structure and Caduveo artistic style
● presence of double antithesis
● opposition of ternary and asymmetrical organization to binary and symmetrical
organization
● opposition of hierarchical and reciprocal social mechanisms
● social divisions allow for adherence to contradictory principles

Part VI: Bororo

Chapter 18: Gold and Diamonds

Cuiaba
● founded mid-18th century
● Cuxipo natives
● gold mining

Non-natives
● Governor
● Bishop
 ● anti-Indian sentiment
● missionaries and proselytization
● traders and their financial security
● lorry-drivers

Diamond-hunters
● garimpo colony
● garimpeiros: diamond-hunters
● two categories
○ adventurers
○ fugitives
● led by ‘captain’ or ‘engineer’
● hostility among rival bands

Diamond trade
● regulations
● ‘burnt’ diamonds
● pintado trade: impure diamonds painted and sold

Traditions
● finding gold demands ridding oneself of it or “ill fortune” follows
● women in the garimpo are peasant prostitutes
● syphilis transferred from women to wounded hunters

Night Rituals
● singing and make-believe
● ‘caricatures’ or imitations
● ‘funny face’ sessions
● traditional lament
○ private soldier’s complaint

Chapter 19: The Good Savage

Kejara
● houses with a “majesty of sheer scale”
○ flexible
○ reactive
● colorful decorations
● neo-Brazilian influenced architecture
● absence of influence of Salesian Fathers
○ preserved peace between settlers and natives
○ exterminated native culture

Kejara and native independence

● chief of Rio Vermelho villages
● Council and decision-making
● interpreter
 ○ excursion in Rome
○ spiritual crisis and reawakened Bororo identity

Traditional dress
● male nudity and sheaths
● body-painting
● female costume

Indigenous music
● unison singing
● repetitive tunes
● solo-ensemble pattern
● irara ritual
○ placation of hunted animal spirits
○ consecration of chase
● wind instruments
● calabash percussion
○ dynamism
● missionary detections of satanism in tribal music
● codified sound-language of the drum

Village arrangement
● 26 huts in circular arrangement
● baitemannageo: house of bachelors
● cart-wheel arrangement
○ bachelor’s house as the hub
○ established paths as the spokes
○ family huts as the rim
● Salesian missionaries converted the Bororo by forcing them to abandon their circular
arrangement and adopt one based on parallel lines

Significance of village structure

● correspondence of elaborate network with
○ privilege
○ tradition
○ hierarchical status
○ rights
○ duties

Division of village
● two groups
○ Cera: 'weak'
○ Tugare: ‘strong’

Marriage practice
● lineage inherited from the mother
● marriage takes place between the two tribes
 ● women inherit house in which they were born

Function of moieties
● opposite tribes perform funeral rites
● all social and religious activities require participation of ‘opposite number’

Second diameter
● separation into two additional groups
○ 'upstreamers'
○ ‘downstreamers'
● role unknown

Clan division
● groups of families with common ancestor
● female line
● mythological ancestor
● at one point, eight clans total
● collective living

Sub-groups
● red and black families
● class division of clans
○ higher
○ middle
○ lower
● endogamous classes
● underpopulation

Economic wealth
● profession -> comfortable living
● tribute to chief
○ food
○ manufactures
● ‘balance of payments’ kept intact
○ chief redistributes wealth among the clans

Wealth of status
● myths, traditions, and dances
○ social or religious functions
● ceremonial items
○ feathers
○ bows
○ diadems

Bororo craft
● pottery used to be decorated
● decorations forbidden on religious grounds
 ● austere household objects
● colorful accessories of dress

Chapter 20: The Living and the Dead

Religion
● deeply religious population
● elaborate system of metaphysics
● all aspects of daily life imbued with religious significance
● casual carrying out of certain religious rituals
● intermittent sacred mood

Layout of the village

● summarizes and provides a basis for relationship between
○ man and universe
○ society and the supernatural
○ living and dead

General cultural traditions related to death

● periodic visits to the dead
● ‘grateful dead’
○ formal burial
○ gifts from the dead
○ exchange
● ‘the enterprising knight’
○ hero barters corpse for princess
○ the dead as instrument for profit
○ cannibalism and necrophagy

Bororo philosophy
● human shape is transitory
● animal - human - arara
● death is natural and anti-cultural
● mori: ceremonial hunt in honor of native death
○ Nature must pay her debt
● Nature is human
○ operates through intermediary of a special category of souls

Bari or sorcerer
● special category of human beings
● mediation of physical and social
● characteristics
○ asocial lifestyle
○ receives supernatural assistance in hunt
○ can transform into animal
○ can make prophecy
○ knows secrets of disease
 ● guardian spirits
○ jealous bond

Sociological universe
● spirits of men are social, not natural
● aroe: society of souls
● duality present in
○ villages of the dead
○ upstream and a downstream moiety

Master of the spirits

● aroettowaraare: road master
○ receives spirit dreams
○ may demand supernatural assistance for others
● healer and nurse
● ability to transform into animal
○ provider-creature
● sacrifices himself for salvation of mankind
● aije: mythical monster

Ceremonies
● go on for several weeks
● negotiations between physical universe and society
● roiakuriluo: funeral dirge admitting dead man into society of spirits

Evening roll-call
● mats
● assignment of duties
● ritual singing

Beliefs
● opposition: living against the dead
● twofold supernatural world
○ priest
○ magician
● plurality of heavens
● myths and heroes
○ Tugare - existence of things
○ Cera - creation in order
● antithesis of moieties symbolizes passage from Nature to Society

Conclusion
● society based on justice
● social divisions: symmetry and asymmetry in equilibrium
● imagery of dead can be broken down in terms of an attempt to
○ hide, embellish or justify religious
■ the relations prevailing in that society among the living