Cherne La 2008 Guesting Feasting

8/13/2019 Cherne La 2008 Guesting Feasting

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This is a pre-publication.

Citation: Chernela, Janet (2008) Guesting, Feasting and Raiding: Transformationsof Violence in the Northwest Amazon. In Revenge in the Cultures of Lowland

South America, eds. Stephen Beckerman and Paul Valentine. Gainesville: University

Press of Florida. Pp 42-59.

Guesting, Feasting and Raiding: Transformations of Violence in the Northwest

Amazon

Janet Chernela, University of Maryland [email protected]

In his classical anthropological work on the Nuer, E.E. Evans-Pritchard

defined the boundaries of a group as the imaginary periphery beyond which feudbecomes warfare (Evans-Pritchard 1940). The delineation brings into relief an

essential fault line -- the limit of moral commitment beyond which there is no

recourse to dispute but violence. Within the moral community violence is avoided;

outside the moral community it is common currency. This raises questionsregarding the constituency of "the moral community." If its parameters shift over

time, as our data indicate, what are the forces that push entities toward consolidation

and treaty on the one hand, or autonomy, estrangement, and even enmity, on theother? Under what conditions does the language of violence become the common

idiom? How are violences begun, ended, rationalized, and recalled? Within this

constellation of meanings, as we shall see, lies the possibility of revenge.The notion of revenge cannot be understood apart from the larger body of

local meanings in which it is embedded. For the member groups of the Eastern

Tukanoan family of languages in the northwest corner of the Amazon rainforest inBrazil and Colombia, these meanings comprise a coherent schema based on

generative underlying principles of value and balance. The Wanano have twobroadly applied terms that describe debt and repayment -- wahpaiyo for debt, and

wahpa'a for repayment. Group relations fall within this schema, and can be

summarized as follows: 1) each person belongs to a moral community that isconceptually regarded as bound; 2) group boundaries are reified in daily linguistic

interaction, mythic narration, and ritual; 3) relations between communities are

governed by norms of reciprocity involving exchanges of several types, including

words, goods, spouses, and hostility; 4) a breach of norm between groups initiates anegative form of reciprocity that may be called revenge or retaliation, a

transformation that permits violence; and 5) violence may be avoided by

compensation according to a system of equivalent values.In discussing rules of interaction, breakage and compensation, this chapter

will make suggestions for the historic basis of group configuration and relationship

in the northwest Amazon. The essay pays special attention to the custom ofobligatory out-marriage in which one must marry a member of a different language

group than ones own. Although reported comprehensively in the ethnographic

literature (Jackson 1972, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1983), this practice continues to be

considered exotic and arbitrary. This essay, instead, considers inlawhood as one


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form of alliance-making, whose logic and specifics are accessible through oral

histories gathered in the Uaups basin of Brazil.

The range between a total insider, such as a consanguineal sib-mate, and anoutsider -- "other, enemy, or captor -- is extensive. Mediating these extremes are

several categories of "other" with varying degrees of closeness. In the Northwest

Amazon, affines are located between the two -- they remain "others" (Wan.,payemahsa), yet the relationship assumes ongoing reciprocities of peoples, goods, anddefense. In-law relations, unlike agnatic ones, are subject to the vagrancies of

history. In-laws were once enemies; and they may become so again.

Identity, Space, and the Moral CommunityThe area referred to as the northwest Amazon consists of the drainage basin

of the Uaups River and adjacent areas in Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil. Groups

speaking languages of the Eastern Tukanoan family predominate in the region,although nearby inhabitants who speak languages of the Arawakan and Cariban

families participate in the social system.

The linguist Arthur Sorensen identified 13 languages as members of the

Eastern Tukanoan family: Wanano, Tukano, Tuyuka, Yuruti, Paneroa, Eduria,Karapana, Tatuyo, Barasana, Piratapuyo, Desano, Siriano, and Kubeo. He estimated

that distances between these languages are greater than those of the Romance and

Scandinavian groups of languages (Sorensen 1967, 1973).1 Like Sorensen I use the

term Tukano to refer to one of the languages in the Eastern Tukanoan family that is

known by that name, as well as members of the group. In contrast, I reserve the term

Tukanoanto refer more broadly to a speaker of any one of the languages in theEastern Tukanoan family. In this system of usage then, a Wanano might be

considered a Wanano Tukanoan, a Desano might be referred to as a Desano

Tukanoan, and, a member of the Tukano group could be referred to as a TukanoTukanoan. The names assigned the language groups derive from lingua geral, a

lingua franca adapted by Jesuit missionaries and in common usage in officialdocuments dating to the 16th century. Tukano speakers refer to their language as

Dahsea; speakers of Wanano refer to their language as Kotiria. The large social field

of intermarrying speakers of the many Eastern Tukanoan languages is mahsa, a termwhich glosses as "people."

For Eastern Tukanoans rules prohibit marriage among speakers of the same

language, requiring that spouses derive from a language group other than one's own2

(Jackson 1974, 1976, 1993, C. Hugh-Jones 1979, S. Hugh-Jones 1979, Chernela1993, 2003). The practice of linguistic exogamy results in a coherent and

homogeneous culture complex, with unilineal descent and cross-cousin marriage

integrating some 14,0003Indians

of diverse languages over an area of approximately

150,0004km.

2

The data presented here were derived from fieldwork conducted in Brazil

among the Wanano Tukanoans living along the Uaups River adjacent to theColombian-Brazilian border. I estimate the total Wanano population in Brazil to

number between 500 and 600. When we add the 980 Wanano reported by Waltz and

Waltz (n.d.) for the Colombian portion of the river, the total Wanano population may

be estimated to be between 1500 and 1600 people. Since this measurement is basedon village composition, the calculation includes in-marrying wives who, due to


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practices of exogamy and patrilocality, are not Wanano. The procedure, however,

assumes a corresponding number of Wanano women residing in the villages of their

non-Wanano husbands. As we will see, the approximation of equivalence innumbers of women in and numbers of women out is grounded in Tukanoan values

and principles of balanced, reciprocal marriage exchange.

The Wanano practice fishing and gardening, receiving principal inputs ofprotein from fishing, and sources of carbohydrates from the root crops manioc andyams. These activities are carried out extensively on a daily basis, where the unit of

consumption is rarely larger than the members of a single settlement. However,

production intensifies in conjunction with elaborate exchange ceremonies known aspo'oa in which several sib settlements come together.

Brazil's ten Wanano settlements are situated at intervals of 3 to 24 km apart

along the middle course of the Uaups river and contain from 30 to 170 persons.Villages are situated on high ground at the river edge. Numerous trails lead from the

residential clearing through the surrounding forest to distant gardens and to

neighboring settlements. Overland paths link Wanano villages on the Uaups River

to in-law villages on the Aiar river belonging to Arawakan Baniwa in-laws. (TheBaniwa are also known by the name Curripaco and are discussed in this volume by

Paul Valentine.) Many Wanano and Baniwa sibs have intermarried over generations.

Although the walking time between river basins ranges from four to seven hours,these paths are used with frequency.

Descent: thekorkoa

The Wanano and other Eastern Tukanoans deproblematize group belongingby subscribing rigidly to principles of descent that determine membership through

patrifiliation. The Wanano term koroarefers to a group of patrilineal kin of any of

several levels of magnitude, from the small patriclan or sib to the large linguistico-descent group, known as "the language group." Members of akoroaare said to be

children, or descendants, of a founding patrilineal ancestor from whom the sib nameis derived. Membership in koroais theoretically fixed and ascribed by birth. As

such membership is non-overlapping and boundaries are regarded as impermeable.

The notion of koroa establishes an embedded hierarchy of in-groups based upon thecriterion of common descent and shared language.

That which is referred to as a "language group" in the literature is a maximal

patriclan comprised of a number of local descent groups who consider themselves

kin and may not marry. Shared speech, regarded as an indicator of descent,manifests the extent of the sociopolitical unit and defines the area within which

sentiments of kinship and moral commitments prevail (Chernela 2001). In ordinary

interaction koroa membership is foregrounded as those within the same koroaaddresss one another through kin terms, with the generic y korok/a, my

kinsman/kinswoman, while members of descent groups other than one's own are

referred to and addressed as paye mahsa, meaning Other People. These terms leaveno ambiguity regarding the publicly recognized relatedness of any two interlocutors

and provide an obvious contrast between "own group" and "others." Thus, most

speakers of Eastern Tukanoan languages orient identities in terms of the shared

"substance," language, that underlies the basis of groupness. The idea of communityis thereby manifest in linguistic performance and related linguistic qualities that


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come out in the interactional ground, indexing identities and relationships. Thus are

the complexities of community and belonging in the northwest Amazon resolved and

simplified.The foundation for a sociotopographical order and sacred emplacement of

peoples is found in a pan-Tukanoan narrative recounting the voyage of an ancestral

anaconda-canoe, known as Pamori Busok. The underwater journey begins in aprimordial location known as Water Door, said to be in the southeast. The ancestralanaconda canoe is said to proceed upriver toward the headwaters of the Uaups river.

There, the ancestral canoe turned around, so that its anaconda head faced downriver

and its tail upriver. As the body of the great anaconda rose in the water the foundingancestors of each of the sib-settlements of the Uaups river emerged from its body.

The myth constructs and legitimizes the proper seating (Wan., duhinia),or

settlement, of each local descent group on the basis of the territorializing genitor.The myth is recounted with frequency on ceremonial occasions.

The local descent group is theoretically anchored in space through several

ideological mechanisms. A combination of redundant narratives, among them myth,

historicities, and visual imagery, link topography and time with contemporary grouprights. In addition to the narratives of Pamori Busok and the specific ancestral

narratives of sibs which name the places associated with ancestral events, markings

in the landscape, particularly those on large boulders, are said to be iconic ofancestral precedence. These inscriptions or traces are regarded as having been left

by the ancestors as indicators of rightful occupation. These are the "evidentiary

signs of history, written into the landscape -- representations which justify anddefine practice.

In spite of redundancy, there is little universal consensus among groups

regarding place. While the morphology of events in the narrative of Pamori Busokare shared by all Eastern Tukanoan peoples, the order of group emergence and

emplacement varies substantially from one group to another. The perspectives of thelanguage groups, or even the sibs of the same language group, do not comprise a

consensual and consistent system. Ancestral emergence, defining the relationship of

groups to one another and their rights to place, are contested. The discrepancies innarratives that are context-dependent and spatially-situated represent the ongoing

negotiation and contest among localized groupings. The challenge for any sib-

settlement is to maintain intact the continuity of socio-spatial configuration based

upon patrifiliation as the legitimizing function that links spatial demarcation to pastevent and, thus, present and future rights.

Across the social and spatial boundaries that separate and define them,

descent groups trade and transact. Types of transactions are differently categorized.Conversation, for example, is regarded as one form of exchange -- an "exchange of

talk," known as drka. Object exchange is known aspo'limina,and woman or

wife exchange is known as koto tarikoro.Principles of balance govern all transactions and exchanges among groups

are carefully followed and calculated. Transactions are subject to a set of principles

which require that payments be compensated with an item that may be different in

kind but must be equal in value. This is the case, for example, in the repayment ofceremonial gifts, which are expected to differ in substance but match in value the


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original gift (Chernela 1993, 2001). The same principles of differing-with-

equivalence applies to the trading of daughters as wives across exogamous language

groups.The system of value is based on general principles of reciprocity with broad

application across a variety of contexts. As outlined above: 1) both local descent

groups and language groups are regarded as bounded; 2) these boundaries are reifieddaily in the act of informal speaking and occasionally in ritual; 3) exchanges betweencommunities include words, goods, spouses, and hostilities; 4) all exchanges are

governed by norms of reciprocity. A breach of any of the norms or the principles

underlying them may initiate a negative response -- a form of reciprocity that permitsviolence. This negative reciprocity is here regarded as "revenge." Although no

longer practiced, Wanano informants still describe the act of kha ma tien, a phrase

that glosses as "to fight to kill." Only compensation, according to the same systemof equivalent values, can halt violence.

Principles of "mortal balance" are modeled in the taxonomy and interactions

in the world of non-human creatures. Groups of animals are systematically classified

into cohorts of ranked brothers. For each cohort an oldest brother or focal ancestor,guards its kin and avenges those who might prey on them. It is the wrathful sib

guardian, descended from and transformed from the first ancestor, who, according

to Tukanoan belief, keeps close watch over his kin and will retaliate if one is taken.The rule of tit-for-tat prevails: for every individual taken from among own group, a

retaliatory death will be taken from among the predators (cf. Reichel-Dolmatoff

1971, 1979, Chernela 1987; Arhem 1989, 1991). The same system, in principle, is atplay in the social world of humans.

Violence and Revenge

As we have shown, at the basis of an Eastern Tukanoan theory of grouprights is the belief that spatial designations are the result of historic and supernatural

processes. Predation upon a sitting-place without historical and supernaturallegitimization is dangerous because it breaches rules of spatial demarcation and

generates retaliatory events. Such predation requires a retaliatory act -- revenge --

necessary to correct a transgression. A loss on one side must be compensated by acomparable loss on the other. Vengeance, dependent as it is in righting a wrong, is

one means of making good an outstanding debt. Balance must prevail.

In the following pages we will examine how this ideology has been played

out in practice according to ritual discourse and narrative accounts. Past eventsperceived as improprieties or usurpation are remembered and kept alive through both

formal and informal discourse.

Ritual SpeechThe names of former enemies are not forgotten. Rather, their transgressions

are reified through ritual repetition. In thepooa, an exchange ceremony between

different sib settlements, ritual participants recount past wrongdoings recallingformer enemies by name while expressing vehement emotions.

In the occasions of the po'oa, when two sib settlements visit one another,

boundaries are created, reified, or broken down, as the identities of sibs and their

relations to one another are defined and redefined. The bueyoaka, a speech actwhose title glosses as "spear talk," is a portion of thepo'oa in which past


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transgressions are publicly broadcast. This ritual act mimics warfare as men from

one village face men from another in postures of violence, brandishing spears and

tossing them into one another's ranks. Each enjoins the other into the mock conflict.The theme is displacement and abuse by a group different than one's own.

In one of pooa I recorded among the Wanano, the two participating groups

faced one another in a mock spear battle and shouted these words:Donor: "The Kubeo are over there; those people are over there, and overthere, they hate us. ...We will make puh of them! This Sirio that took my brother

away; that Bu, he took my son, and this Wam Po'nairo (Baniwa sib), made us

suffer, raided us, and left us with nothing!"Donor and Recipient in unison: "They did this to us, to our forefathers!"

Donor: "Long ago, before we became pitiable and frightened as we are today,

in this same place, everyone hated and envied the Wanano. This began long ago,during the time of our forefathers. Now we do exactly as our forefathers did."

Raising spears, participants cried out: "Eeeeee! Those Tukano did this!

That Tukano sib captured our grandfathers and forced them out! That blasted

Tukano! And we who were here before...now we are suffering, we, miserable,people. And the one that took our grandfathers captives and forced them out -- that

cruel one too. That ugly Balero that captured our grandfathers and threw them out.

And those other vicious ones! They took our grandfathers captive and pushed themout. Curse them! Here we are, bereft and pitiful in this place. While we are here,

pitiably, I do this: 'Puh!' to these despicable creatures!'

The antagonistic bueyoakaenactment precedes gift exchange and other ritualsteps toward sealing an alliance between two groups. Thepo'oa in general, and the

bueyoaka in particular, articulate Wanano interpretations of Uaups historical

relations of guesting, feasting, and raiding. The discourse is a trope of history inwhich the adversaries are often neighbors. It is a reflexive model through which the

Wanano locate themselves vis--vis their neighbors and other outsiders. Thelanguage and ritual itself brings groups, formerly distanced, into proximity, as the

ritual is a vehicle for re-inventing relations (Chernela 2001).

Speakers use the ritual process, not merely to understand the past, but tocreate it (Turner 1968). Each group goes through a ritual transition of being the

enemy only to come out as ally. In the case of two sibs of different language groups,

the ceremony establishes a new, diplomatic proximity or alliance. Through the

vocalizations and enactments of antagonistic hostilities the ceremonial movesparticipants toward a finality in which the two sibs are rendered allies. By means of

the litany of naming and enacting a common enemy -- such as the Kubeo, the

Tukano, the Sirio -- the participant sibs, at first on opposing sides, are eventuallybrought into alliance. By the end of the bueoyakathe relations of belligerence and

bellicosity shift to those of peace, conviviality, and alliance.

Group identities and relations are forged in the present through a ritualconstruction of the past. The pooa is the site where groups establish what they once

were, what they will be no longer, and what they wish to become. In the course of

the bueyoaka the dangers of the outsider are rendered behind and past.

Through gift and language exchanges an alliance is established, albeit aconditional one. Insofar as the proximities between groups is constructed and reified


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through ritual enactment, and based upon the fluctuations of diplomacy, they

constitute a social contract with contingency. In the diplomatic rhetoric of the po'oa,

closeness is created as a difference is underscored. Whatever solidarity is created ina po'oa may be as easily be broken as it was constructed.

Relations between groups may change both by gradual slippage and by

abrupt rupture. Through ritual, however, relations between groups can changethrough "authorized revision." In the language of the po'oa, the past is not restored, itis rectified and reified. In this sense boundaries, although regarded as essential

givens, are instead a result of the communicative processes that shape them.

Although represented as static, boundaries are conceptualized, subject to context andto vantage point.]

In recounting histories of displacement the identity of the speaker determines

both the axes of adversarial relations as well as the roles of victor and victim. Thebueyoaka simulation is a pretense in the modality of the vanquished. A speaker never

represents his group as victor. Instead, each group recalls, and perhaps, re-

experiences, the pain of former insult and injury.

The mutual-determination of socially constitutive relations of the present andthe distant past is inherently invisible and insubstantial. Yet these are the forces that

shape that which we call historical events -- births, deaths, wars, alliances, enmities,

nations, clans, and identities. The essential ineffability of social relations is one ofthe reasons they require redundant substantiation. It is also the reason why socially

constitutive relations are so frequently represented, described and disputed, in ritual

as well as in ordinary discourse. This is nowhere more the case than in relationsarising from violence.

Oral Histories

Informal conversation and questions I posed among members of the Wanano,Piratapuyo, and Arapao Tukanoans

5regarding past events revealed large areas of

agreement regarding population movement, alliances, and displacements. These oralhistories pointed to two types of activities involving violence and conceived as

revenge were prevalent in the river basin: 1) displacement and 2) bride capture.

1. DisplacementAmong the important patterns that emerged was the association between

locations of dispute and the attributes of location. Sites regularly reported in dispute

appeared overwhelmingly to be those with greatest strategic and symbolic import.

To illustrate, every confluence of a tributary stream with a main river is a site ofcontest. Paku, a settlement located at an important waterfall at the confluence of the

Makuku tributary stream and the Papuri River, is a clear example. Piratapuyo

speakers claim that the site, now occupied by the Tukano, was formerly (andcontinues to rightfully) theirs. As one Piratapuyo explained, Paku is our site. We

were removed by the Tukano sib that lives there today. The matter is recalled

bitterly by the Piratapuyo, who still occupy villages adjacent to Paku.Ipanor is yet another example of a disputed sites with strategic and symbolic

import. Located at the confluence of the Tiqui and Uaups Rivers, Ipanor is

important in several senses. The large cataract at Ipanor is an impediment to heavy-

bodied water craft proceeding upriver into the Uaups basin. For centuries Ipanorwas the upriver limit to outsiders of all kinds, including Portuguese merchants,


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slaving expeditioners, and others in pursuit of Indian labor or forest resources. Most

significantly, Ipanor is the recognized site of emergence of the anaconda canoe,

regarded as ancestral to all Eastern Tukanoan language groups. The Arapao, whonow inhabit neighboring Loiro, claim that Ipanor, with its weighty symbolic import

for all Eastern Tukanoan groups, is truly theirs. The Arapao claim that they were

forcibly moved downriver by the Arawakan Tariano who now inhabit the site. ThatIpanor is today occupied by an Arawakan, rather than an Eastern Tukanoan group,is a bitter fact for Tukanoans in general and the Arapao in particular (Chernela

1989; Chernela and Leed 2001). The Wanano are unusual in maintaining an

uninterrupted sequence of settlements of one language group along the UaupsRiver. Even so, they claim displacement to the southeast by the Arawakan Tariana

and to the northeast by the Arawakan Baniwa and the Tukanoan Kubeo. They

attribute their integrated string of uninterrupted settlements to a strategy that limitedviolation: marriage. For consideration of this we turn to a discussion of wife-taking

and wife-offering.

2. Wife Stealing

A second important form of violence calling for revenge was wife-stealing.The far-reaching incest regulation that prohibits marriage within the language group

obliges persons to take spouses from alien groups. Marriage was achieved through

two conventional means: violent seizure and negotiation (Jackson 1983:133). Adaughter given in marriage requires that another, a cousin, be returned. Wife-

stealing -- a negative exchange -- and its counterpart, vengeful retaliation, was a

commonplace alternative to negotiation. Indeed, marriage raids were ritualized warin which the settlement from which a woman was taken would attempt to avenge its

loss. According to Wanano informants, such small-scale raiding for women typified

Wanano history. The Wanano have numerous terms and phrases that refer to wife-stealing. For example, the act of seizing a wife is described asnumisare coro. Those

who seize wives are referred to as numia nni mahsa.The tallying of wife-taking was, and still is (see Chernela 1989, 1993),

followed with careful vigilance. Marriages are considered to be exchanges between

sibs and are arranged by the sib seniors. When a simultaneous exchange of womenoccurs, the marriage is called koto tarikoro, "woman exchange." When the

negotiation is not immediately reciprocal, it is calledpubuhseri manenikoro, "no

woman given in exchange," indicating that the debt is outstanding until a return is

made. A claim is made when a wife is needed; otherwise, a debt may remainoutstanding for many years. During my fieldwork sojourn in a Wanano village a

woman complained because she had given her daughter in marriage four years

earlier and yet no return had been made. Now, her 18-year-old son was wifeless. Inthis case the debt was repaid three years after the claim was issued; the return was

made when a female at last became eligible. Once the exchange was reciprocated,

the term implying indebtedness was no longer used. If the giving of a woman inmarriage is not reciprocated it gives rise to counter claim may be the occasion of

enmity and revenge if not fulfilled. This was the caseduring my 1978 stay in the

Wanano village Yapima when sorcery was reportedly used as revenge against a

debtor sib.


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The in-law relationship is fraught with ambivalence. The dangerous enemy

in-law is a recurring theme in narratives of all kinds. An origin myth, specific to the

Wanano, tells of an occasion when ancestral Wanano brothers discovered Kubeowomen harvesting manioc in a forest clearing. This was the first time these earliest

Wanano men, the legend tells, had seen either women or gardens. Delighted, the men

arranged a po'oaceremony in which the Kubeo women were to provide manioc beer,a cultivated and cooked product, in exchange for uruku, an uncooked fruit thatproduces a blood-red pulp now used in ornamenting the bodies of pubescent girls.

The fruit would be given by the Wanano men to the Kubeo women. Following the

po'oa the Kubeo men, now referred to as brothers-in-law in the narration, becameaware of their sisters' absence -- and their loss. They took immediate revenge against

the Wanano, attacking them with fire. From this violent interaction the first "real"

Wanano sib emerged. The newly-formed, "real" Wanano descended the flames asdrops of water, quenching the fires. This, according to the tale, accounts for the

name, Kotiria, meaning drops of water.

Numerous narratives recount the dangers encountered by a Wanano culture

hero when he attempts to visit his wife's family. These tales recount the hazardspresented to the Wanano hero by his in-laws and his narrow escapes from their

attempts on his life.

Violent retaliation is not the only form of response to breach, however. Otherresponses may be used strategically, including alliance -- the complementary

opposite of revenge. We have discussed how marriage can initiate violence.

Marriage can also end enmity. It is this we consider now.Pre-emption: Marriage as Treaty

While marriage in which a wife was taken could initiate revenge, and thereby

"war" (Wan., kha ma chien, see above), marriage in which a wife was given couldbring about peace. In this system of meanings and equivalences, a violent situation

could be reversed by bequeathing a woman. Oral histories in which informantsrecount wife-giving as one means of ending disputes strongly support this position

(Chernela 1989, 1993). Several reported instances represent the in-law relationship

as tantamount to treaty between the sibs exchanging spouses. Warring betweenDesano and Wanano, for example, is said to have ceased when the Desano "gave a

woman" to the Wanano. Speaking of a Baniwa in-law sib, the Wam Makama Koro,

one informant said this: "The people of the Wam Makama Koro sib were the

brothers-in-law of our ancestors; for this reason they did not eat Wanano flesh."From the Wanano point of view, in-law status exempted them from Wam Makama

aggression. The Wanano still use an intimate nickname to refer to the ancestor who

first married a woman of that sib and thus brought about peace. Marriages betweengroups over generations create alliances, reified through ceremonial discourse, ritual

gift-giving, and the co-production of future generations.

Co-raiding with In-laws: Alliance FormationOral histories also made frequent mention of raiding under the leadership of

Arawakan paramount chiefs who would consolidate Baniwa sibs and enlist Wanano

in-law sibs as allies. Informants attributed the Wanano participation to in-law

obligation. One informant expressed it this way: "Since our grandfathers werebrothers-in-law of the Baniwa, they dragged them off to wars at the headwaters of


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the Papur, Cuiub, and Querar rivers. In these rivers, the Baniwa went together

with our ancestors killing people." As in-laws of the Baniwa sibs, according to these

reports, the Wanano participated in campaigns against the Kubeo, the Tukano, andother Baniwa groups. Each of these former enemies is today an in-law group to the

Wanano -- a point which reflects the changeable status of in-law relations through

time. While Wanano informants vividly recall Arawakan war chiefs and campaigns,they have no such recollection of their own campaigns. On the other hand, it isevident that the Wanano provided warriors to the Baniwa in what the Wanano

consider to be "Baniwa Wars." Keeping in mind that it is the narrator that

determines adversaries and allies, as well as the morality of all involved, these datasuggest several important conclusions.

For one thing, we must now consider the Wanano as possible constituents of

a regionally-based chiefdom in which Arawakan leadership predominated. Byproviding warriors and wives to the Baniwa, the Wanano succeeded in maintaining

the integrity of their own settlement sites on the heavily contested Uaups River.

This is supported by the fact that the Tariana and Baniwa who displaced numerous

Arawakan and Eastern Tukanoan settlements left intact a substantial block ofWanano settlements along the principal river. This is especially noteworthy since

the Wanano are located between the Baniwa, moving south, and the Tariana, moving

north.These data support conjectures that Arawakan sibs may have mobilized under

paramount chiefs for military campaigns, as well as related hypotheses that

Arawakan populations were migrating throughout the Uaups region. A scholar ofBaniwa ethnohistory, Silvia Vidal, reproduces the sacred/secular routes of a Baniwa

culture hero that "conform to the sociopolitical and religious basis for the regional

leadership of powerful Arawakan chiefs and groups within multiethnicconfederacies" (2003:44; and See Robin Wright 1981). Vidal represents the territory

of the Arawakan Baniwa to include the Iana, Uaups and its affluents the Papurand Tiqui, showing movements both up and down the Uaups, up the Papur, and

down the Tiqui (2003:45).

Numerous sibs of the Arawakan Tariana and the Baniwa are now linked bymarriage to the Wanano. Of the eight in-marrying wives in the Wanano village of

Yapima, three were either Tariana or Baniwa.6

Relational Shift: Affinity and the Moral Community

The strategy of marriage as treaty is not uncommon. The North Americanlegend of Pocahontas represents her as marrying the man whose life she saved and

thereby created peace. The facts have been transformed into a tale of connubial

peacemaking. The use of marriage as a treaty formation is a well-known strategyamong heads of European states, the Hapsburg monarchs most notably.

For the Wanano, in-laws are the very groups named as enemies in oral

histories and in ceremonial litanies. If we take this to be evidentiary, it stronglysuggests that linguistic exogamy is one means of making peace when the alternative

is violence, displacement, and revenge.

For the northwest Amazon, we may construct a spectrum recognizing three

primary categories of relationship: 1)fraternal, in which no wives are exchanged; 2)


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adversarial (war), in which a woman or other life (ancestral site) is taken; and 3)

treaty, in which a woman is given:

Fraternal= No exchange of women.War=Woman (or other lives) taken

Treaty= Woman given

For Eastern-Tukanoan speakers of the northwest Amazon, such as theWanano, the concept of common descent is the only truly solidary relationship.Unlike the artifice of marriage, bonds of siblinghood are deemed "natural," not

intended to be the subject of pragmatic consideration. The boundary of moral

obligation within which participants accept certain values and conventions extends togroups deemed brother.

7

At the other end of the spectrum are those furthest from own group with

whom one has negative reciprocities: taking, not giving. Revenge is the necessaryaction taken by the victimized Other. The in-law relationship originates in conflict as

de factoin-lawhood emerges from bride seizure. Yet marriage itself is

transformative, capable of creating alliance or retaliation. When inlawhood is

regarded as balanced it confers upon an alien group a non-alien status, conferredritually and maintained over generations of wife-giving and wife-receiving.

Attached to this status is the assumption of treaty, assistance of several kinds,

including military, and ongoing ceremonial gift exchange of food and craft items. Inthe spectrum of relationships, the approved and recognized in-law stands between

kin and enemy.

Tukanoan myth and history both affirm in-lawhood as a dubious, ambivalentcategory (Chernela 1997). Compared to relations among the members of a common

descent group, in-law relations are fragile. Structurally limited by the closure of

restricted exchange, and historically limited by the exigencies of circumstance, thenon-alien identity is fraught with contradiction. In-laws are thought to be

treacherous, their treachery although expected, all the more offensive for its breachof contract.

Even so, marriage shifts the moral boundaries that signify where and when

and with whom violenceis or is not an appropriate means of conflict-resolution.If conflict, albeit rule-governed, is the relationship between those who are unrelated,

transforming Others i.e., non-kin, aliens -- into in-laws renders them closer to self

and thus less menacing.

If an alien woman in marriage is adequate compensation for the death of abrother, it suggests the transformation of past lives for future ones. Following the

prescription of cross-cousin marriage, an in-marrying wife from one language group

will produce offspring belonging to her husbands language group. If thisprescription is followed in the subsequent generation, her own daughters will marry

into her own language group, thereby peopling future generations for both groups.

Thus marriage consolidates investment in future generations for both marryingentities. It brings intermarrying descent groups within the imaginary boundaries of

the moral community by sharing stakes in future generations.

Alliances formed through marriage may be used to avoid imminent violence

as well as to prevent future, potential violence. In the latter sense, linguistic out-marriage constitutes a preemptive strategy a form of group insurance. Eastern


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Tukanoans, such as the Wanano, lack supralocal military organizations with which to

defend their borders. Instead, they pay for peace with women. Marriage -- loose,

egalitarian affinities -- rather than internal consolidation -- is their overridingstrategy.

From this proposition, we may generalize a relationship between social

distance, marriage, violence, and revenge, constructing the following heuristic:ceremony and marriage may be used to close a significant expanse of social distanceand pacify an avenger. This creates an intermediate zone of conditional morality

in which a conditional balance is achieved. If that balance is breached, relations

return to violence, and retaliation is the appropriate, morally prescribed response.Insofar as persons stand for political entities in this exogamous context, and

marriages carry the potential for political linkage, marriage constitutes a strategy for

intergroup alliance. This, in turn, is related to both land and persons, since the twoare inextricable.

Both ritual speech and informal accounts reference the displacement of one

local descent group by another. The accounts I gathered point to violent

displacement and continuing contest at sites of greatest strategic or symbolicrelevance. These include locations at impassable waterfalls, confluences of rivers,

and sites packed with supernatural power and signification. These reports also

suggest raiding by confederacies of Baniwa sibs and allies throughout the UaupsRiver and its affluents the Querar, Papur, and Tiqui. If Arawakan expansion has

been acompanied by full integration into the Tukanoan social universe, as would

appear to be the case today, this came about, we argue in this paper, throughintermarriage, one alternative to vengeance.

Discussion and Conclusion

The argument presented here is that two types of predation -- one involvingterritory, the other involving women are transformations of one another. This

works in two ways: the first negative, in which a woman is taken and the victimizedgroup takes revenge; here, only future lives can compensate past deaths. In the

second, given a positive value, a war in progress is halted by the giving of a woman.

The second illustrates the transformative and complementary nature of theterritory/marriage dyad in which compensation for one of the two can be made with

the other. Predation on territory can presumably be avoided by alliance formation

through the giving of a wife. This appears to be the Wanano strategy.

Through several mechanisms discussed in this essay wife exchange andgift-giving among them enemies are transformed into allies. These mediations

illustrate several important phenomena: 1) that violence is but one form of social

exchange; 2) that the principles of balance and reciprocity govern all exchanges; and3) that ceremonial reification and exchange of women may bring new groups within

the moral boundaries, shifting them from full outsiders to partial insiders. In

considering the set of equivalences that determine whether balances are met, thepaper addresses the necessary criteria of retaliation and the determinants of revenge.

At the basis of a Tukanoan social economy is the notion of an eternal

scoreboard marking life and death, birth and mortality. Victim and avenger are

parties in a single mode of exchange, a retaliatory dialogue between families whotrade in lives. Principles of reciprocity link predator and prey, as killing is justified


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as a means of rectifying an imbalance, inherited and requiring correction. Imbalance

may result in death, with ample evidence of misfortune interpreted as retribution.

Only equity is capable of producing and maintaining peace. Equity, as we have said,is created through two means: retaliation and treaty.

Thus relations of enmity, of hatred and hostility, presume and tell of their

opposite the positive in-law relation made through the agency of womenexchanged by men and the future generations produced by the alliance. The case ofthe Northwest Amazon suggests that at least one political formation may be

associated with linguistic exogamy: diffuse organization, weak leadership, and

incorporation through expanded affinity. Reciprocities of violence are ritualized.Forms of war contain -- in two senses -- peace.

This mirroring of relationships generates and regulates violence between

human groups, creating rules of negative reciprocity that become the forms ofpositive interactions, peaceful associations. The key to this transformation of

negative into positive reciprocities is the idea of an equivalence between different

species of actions the giving of a wife, the taking of a life. The idea of an

equivalence between disparate actions crosses the law of mimesis according to whichone treats as friends those who treat one as friends, as enemies those who treat one as

enemies, and life can be paid for only in life. The notion of equivalence between

different actions and of mimesis together provide the rules for connecting events,enacting, remembering, and recording history.

The notion of violence as asymmetry, involving the disruption of a symmetry

or balance, is explicit in our examples. In them we find that anti-social relations ofviolence, of kill and/or be killed, are governed and justified by rules of reciprocity

that presume peace in an image of balance or equality. The fundamental opposition

between a wife freely given and a wife forcibly taken is the balance between socialcontract and war. Marriage is both the product of war and the management of

conflict. A woman taken is war; a woman given is treaty. War and marriage aretransformations of one another, part of a continuum of cultural practices that are

touched off situationally as in-laws are feasted, guested, and raided; raided, guested,

and feasted.

Endnotes1Despite ongoing contact and a deliberate maintenance of distinct linguistic

varieties characterized by separations that exceed those of the Romance group,models of ethnic pluralism do not accurately describe the Eastern Tukanoan case. A

number of factors, including a correspondence between linguistic performance and

group membership, loyalty to the language of one's descent group, and marriageacross language groups, serve to establish a single speech community in which

numerous codes interact according to shared norms and beliefs.2The Kubeo (Cubeo) (Goldman 1963), Makuna (?rhem 1981, 1998), and

Arapao (Chernela 1988, 1989) are exceptions to the pattern of linguistic exogamy.3The figure of 14,000 is based upon the 1987 reported census figure of

14,164, compiled by the Centro Ecumenico de Documentao e Informao (CEDI),

Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro. It exceeds by 5,000, the estimates of Sorensen(1967) and Jackson (1976).


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Jackson, Jean E. 1974. "Language Identity of the Colombia Vaups, Indians," in R.

Bauman and J. Sherzer, eds., Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking.

Cambridge University Press.Jackson, Jean E. 1976 "Vaups, Marriage: A Network System in an Undifferentiated

Lowland Area of South America," in Regional Analysis, Vol. II: Social

Systems, ed. C. Smith, pp. 65-93, New York.Jackson, Jean E. 1977. "Bara Zero-generation Terminology and MarriageEthnology 16(1):83-104

Jackson, Jean E. 1983. The Fish People: Linguistic Exogamy and Tukanoan Identity

in Northwest Amazonia. New York: Cambridge University Press.Reichel-Dolmatoff, G. 1971. Amazonian Cosmos: The Sexual and Religious

Symbolism of the Tukano Indians. University of Chicago. Originally

published 1968 as Desana, Simbolismo de los Indios Tucano del Vaups,Bogot, Universidad de los Andes.

Reichel-Dolmatoff, G. 1979. "Cosmology as Ecological Analysis: A View From

the Rainforest," Man 2(3):207-318.

Sorensen, Arthur P., Jr. 1967. "Multilingualism in the Northwest Amazon,"American Anthropologist, Vol. 69, pp. 670-684.

Sorensen, Arthur P., Jr. 1969. The Morphology of Tukano, Ph.D. dissertation,

Columbia University.Turner, Victor. 1968. The Drums of Affliction: A Study of Religious Processes

among the Ndembu of Zambia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Vidal, Silvia. 2003. The Arawak-Speaking Groups of Northwestern Amazonia:Amerindian Cartography as a Way of Preserving and Interpreting the Past.

In Histories and Historicities in Amazonia, Neil L. Whitehead, ed. Lincoln:

University of Nebraska Press. Pp 33-58.Waltz, Nathan and Carolyn. n.d. "The Uanano, ms., Summer Institute of

Linguistics, Bogota.Wright, Robin. 1981. History and Religion of the Baniwa Peoples of the Upper Rio

Negro Valley, Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University.

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