MUNDURUCU RELIGION BY ROBERT P. M, PnY UNIVERSITY- OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS IN AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY Volume 49, No. 1, pp. 1-154, plates 1i. maps 1-2 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES 1958 MUNDURUCU RELIGION BY ROBERT F. MURPHY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES 1958 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS IN AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY EDITORS (BERKELEY): T. D. MCCOWN, R. F. HEIZER, A. L. KROEBER Volume 49, No. 1, pp. 1-154, plates 1-9, maps 1-2 Submitted by editors November 8, 1957 Issued October 8, 1958 Price, $3.00 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY AND Los ANGELES CALIFORNIA CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON, ENGLAND PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CONTENTS I. Habitat and History Habitat History Recent missionization. Social and economic changes. II. Heroes and Spirits Culture heroes Spirit mothers. Evil spirits. Spirits of the underworld. Mothers of the rain Karoko spirits The soul. III. Shamanism and Sorcery The shaman. Disease and its treatment. Shamanism and spirits. Other functions of the shaman Sorcery IV. Ceremonialism. Contemporary ceremonialism. The Duparip ceremony. Warfare ceremonies . Ceremonies of the game The curing ceremony The karok6. V. Mythology and Folklore The Karusakaib6 cycle of world creation The Bible: Mundurucu version . Cosmological myths. Cultural inventions and innovations Adventures and sagas Tales of animals and people. VI. Religion in a Changing Society. Appendices Glossary of Munduruciu words Glossary of Portuguese words Bibliography Plates PAGE 1 1 5 7 10 12 12 13 17 20 21 22 23 29 29 32 39 41 43 51 51 52 53 58 61 63 68 69 79 82 89 94 113 133 141 141 142 145 149 PREFACE TIas MONOGRAPH is based primarily upon data gathered in the course of research among the Munduruciu Indians of the state of Para, Brazil, in 1952 and 1953. The field work, in which my wife Yolanda and I collaborated, was conducted with the support of the William Bayard Cutting Traveling Fellowship, awarded by the Trustees of Columbia University, and a Research Training Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council. At the time of the investigation, we were gradu- ate students in the Department of Anthropology of Columbia University, and our work was under the guidance of Professors Julian H. Steward and Charles Wagley. The focus of the research was upon those changes in economic and social struc- ture consequent upon the involvement of the Munduruciu in the rubber-extraction industry, but we set as a further goal the collection of as much ethnographic data as was possible during the year available. This aim was partly motivated by a desire to add to the information about South American Indian groups, but it was also felt that completely concentrated and problem-oriented research could be done only in cultures upon which a good background of reliable information was already available. Actually, the Mundurucui are probably better known than most South American Indians, except for those few groups which have been the subject of prolonged and intensive study. This speaks less for the wealth of published data than for the poverty of our knowledge of the area. A certain amount of data is available from the early nineteenth-century explorations of Spix and Martius, and a fine source on Mundurucui culture in the latter part of the century is available in the report of the Brazilian engineer, Antonio M. G. Tocantins. More limited and fragmentary data are available in the work of Manoel Ayres de Cazal, Henry Walter Bates, William C. Farabee, Joao Barbosa Rodrigues, Henri Coudreau, Jose Monteiro Noronha, and Ricardo de Almeida Serra. Some excellent material has been published by the Franciscan missionaries to the Mundurucui, especially Fathers Albert Kruse and C. Str6mer. Unfortunately, I have not had access to the information published by these priests and their colleagues in the Provinzeit- schrift der Franziskaner in Nordbrasilien. The information available in most of the above sources is based upon limited residence among the Indians, and some contain most questionable data. None was written in the light of modern anthro- pological problems and theories or with the aid of contemporary field techniques. Accordingly, my wife and I proceeded to gather as wide a range of data as was possible within the limits imposed by the necessity to accumulate material perti- nent to our main interests. The present work represents one aspect of this re- search. The reader will see that a great deal of the native religion has been lost as a result of contact with Brazilian society, and certain items reported were not actually witnessed by me. It was continually necessary to resort to the memories of older Mundurucu', but we made every attempt to insure the reliability of our facts by cross-checking our data with several informants. I stated in the text which activities and beliefs are extinct and which are still practiced. The final [ iii ] iv Preface chapter of the work systematically explores the processes of disappearance and retention of religious traits and offers an explanation of the phenomena. The analysis relates changes in the sphere of religion to corresponding alterations of the socio-economic structure. In this sense the volume continues my main interests and represents an additional treatise on the problems of culture change. I wish to acknowledge the helpful comments of my colleagues, Professors Robert F. Heizer, Alfred L. Kroeber, and Theodore D. McCown. Mr. Sheldon Klein, a graduate student in anthropology, gave me valuable assistance in research on South American mythology. Funds for aid in the preparation of the manuscript were made available by the University of California. The debt that my wife and I owe to our friends and colleagues in Brazil is inexpressible, and I regret that their numbers are so large that they cannot all be mentioned. Our research was especially aided, however, by Drs. Eduardo Galvao and Darcy Ribeiro, who were at that time ethnologists on the staff of the Brazilian Indian Protection Service. Officials of that agency in Rio de Janeiro, Belem, and in the field were unstinting in their cooperation, and our work owes much to their kindness. Mr. George Colman, then United States consul in Belem, gave aid far beyond the requirements of his official duties, as he has to all anthropologists who have worked in the Amazon during the last decade. The priests and nuns of the Cururui River mission were especially warm and hospitable to us, and the Superior of the mission, Father Placido Toelle, O.F.M., was generous in imparting knowl- edge derived from forty years residence among the Mundurucui. Finally, the Indians who accepted two inquiring strangers into their midst with understanding and kindness can only be repaid by this volume, which is a partial fulfillment of our promise to tell our people of their way of life. I. HABITAT AND HISTORY THE MUNDURUCU' INDIANS are a tribal group of some 1,250 people living on the Tapajos River in the state of Para, Brazil. The remnants of a formerly much more numerous population, they have maintained a considerable part of their native cul- ture despite more than one and a half centuries of contact with Brazilian society. Linguistically, the Mundurucui are Tupian-speaking, but their language is not mutually intelligible with the so-called classical Tupian of the Brazilian littoral. Rather, they appear to form a Tupian substock in company with the near-by Shipaya, Curuaya, and Juruna Indians of the XingI River drainage. Other cul- tural characteristics indicate some discontinuity between the Munduruciu and the bulk of the Tupian-speaking peoples and suggest that Mundurucui history had a relatively independent course from that of the coastal groups. Some of these differences are manifest in mythology and religion. HABITAT The Mundurucui habitat is rather different from what might commonly be ex- pected in the Amazon Valley. Although stretches of flat jungle terrain abound, the area is in a northward-reaching finger of the Planalto de Mato Grosso; the topography is characterized by low hills, and the forests are interspersed with rock outeroppings and large stretches of grassy savannah. Actually, the northern- most extension of these central Brazilian highlands overlooks the Amazon behind the city of Santarem at the mouth of the Tapajos River. The traveler en route to the Mundurucui country usually ascends the Tapajos River from Santarem; recent completion of an emergency landing field some 300 miles upstream can shorten the weeks-long trip to a matter of two hours flight.' During the first 150 miles of the water route the steamer or launch carries one up the deep blue and usually tranquil stream between shores that are at first more than 10 miles apart, but which narrow to a width of about one mile. The hills on either side rise to a few hundred feet and are covered with the vegetation char- acteristic of most areas of terra firma in the Amazon. At the point where the more elevated country and the banks of the river finally merge to form a narrow gap, the Tapajos River plunges furiously over the almost impassible rapids called the Cachoeira de Maranhao. These rapids form an effective block to navigation, and the traveler must debark and by-pass them by truck or on foot. The truck and the road, which are frequently not usable, are the property of a rubber-trading con- cern that maintains warehouse and commercial facilities at the lower end of the rapids. The company town has a population of less than 1,000, but it is the metro- polis and entrepot of the upper Tapajos; one can continue for 1,000 miles farther upstream without finding a settlement one-fifth that size. The next stage of the trip is made in a shallow-draft diesel launch, especially built to negotiate rapids. The shores of the lower Tapajos River are lined with pleasant sand beaches and are broken by occasional villages, but the upper reach 1 The reader will find it convenient to consult the maps on pp. 2 and 3 during the following discussion. [1 ] University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. l Apuhf Map 1. The Tapanj6s River region. 2 3 Murphy: Mundurucu Religion o Mundurucu villages of the Cururiu River * Trading Post o Munduruciu villages of the Savannas u Mundurucu villages of the Savannas abandoned during this century Sae CinzaI # *~~~Porto Alegre) Vila . Nova* CO Cachocira vDo Chacordo , Cho c(Aro Ai Dekodyim a Cabit g.Prauroktr * Patua aal *lpurudyubika Parauaroktika \Ptuazal _ 0 C3reoavn ta Xg S~~Government a3 Caui' Map 2. Munduruefi territory and villages. University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. of the stream is wild and solitary. The jungle overhangs the water and only once in a great while does a tiny wattle-and-daub house, the home of a collector of wild rubber, appear in a small clearing. At even greater intervals, the launch passes or stops at little hamlets of three to six such houses, which form the trading centers of the scattered collector population. Several days and barely 400 miles of this travel bring the voyager to the trading posts which conduct sporadic business with one segment of the Mundurucui popu- lation. There are a few such establishments, all situated on the Tapajos River near the mouths of its eastern tributaries, the Cadiriri, Cabitutiui, and das Tropas. A number of Mundurucui villages are at the headwaters of the latter streams, and an occasional Indian, distinguished by tattooing, unusually ragged or ill-fitting clothing, and impassivity of facial expression can often be seen at the trading posts. Racially, the Mundurucui does not stand out sharply, for Caucasoid genes are as thoroughly distributed among the Indian population as are Indian genes among the local Brazilians. If one wishes to reach the village of Cabrua, a typical Munduruc-u community of the savannah lands east of the Tapajos, it is necessary to ascend the Cabitutui River in a canoe. After five days, or more during the rainy season, of dawn-to- dusk paddling, the port of the village is reached. This consists of a cleared stretch of river bank and a trail that leads to a house about 100 yards away. The house is usually occupied only during the dry season, when some residents of Cabrua go there to pass the summer in fishing and rubber collecting. To reach the village, one must walk a half-day overland from this point. A well-beaten trail leads from the valley of the Cabitutiu and over a ridge, dipping down again to cross a small stream. It continues through the forest and then abruptly emerges onto a sun- scorched savannah. The journey is then near an end, and a few miles of slow but steady ascent through the grasslands and past isolated clumps of forest bring one to the village. The majority of the Mundurucui now live on the banks of the larger streams of the area in order to have convenient access to the rubber trees that grow there. Only 300 Indians live in the contemporary savannah villages, but 700 reside on the Cururu' River in contact with a Brazilian Indian Service post and a Roman Catholic mission staffed by Franciscan priests. Another 200, the most acculturated part of the population, live among the Brazilian population of the Tapajos River. But the region of mixed savannah and gallery forest east of the Tapajos River is their traditional habitat. Most of the events recounted in their mythology are believed to have occurred there, and this has been their homeland throughout the historic period and, according to Mundurucui tradition, since the creation of man. The modern savannah communities have preserved traditional Mundurucui architecture and village plan to a greater extent than the riverine groups. Each has two to five dwelling houses and a men's house, arranged in a circle about a central plaza. But whereas the plazas formerly served as ceremonial and dance precincts and were kept free of weeds, they are now rank with underbush. And the houses are considerably smaller, reflecting the diminished population of the 4 M urphy: Mundurucu' Religion tribe in general and the extended family in particular. Also, although the men's houses are still built according to the traditional pattern, the dwellings are now built on a rectangular floor plan in contrast to the older elliptical shape. Modification of the traditional Mundurucui village is even more striking on the shores of the Curur?u River. Some villages number almost 100 inhabitants, but others are tiny hamlets of two small houses; none has the men's house. All dwell- ings face toward the river, but there is no over-all village plan. The houses are constructed of wattle and daub and, but for a few distinctively Mundurucu characteristics, are much like those of the Neo-Brazilian population. This con- formity to the architecture of the whites2 is even greater on the Tapajos River, where the Mundurucui live in single-family isolation. The decline of Mundurucui culture is also evident in the physical appearance and dress of the people. All now wear the cheap cotton shirts and trousers or Mother Hubbard dresses sold to them by the traders. The more traditional men of the savannah villages generally wear penis sheath and bark belt beneath this raiment and usually hunt in the latter accoutrements only. The elaborate body and facial tattooing that were formerly the hallmark of all Mundurucu, both male and fe- male, is also on the wane. It is common now to see young people who are half-tat- tooed, or who have only the first few lines, never completed because of the lapse of the practice. HISTORY The current decadence of Mundurucui culture is not unexpected. On the contrary, it is remarkable that the Mundurucui have preserved so much, and that they still have a semiautonomous society after more than a century and a half of continuous peaceful relations with the whites. They arrived late on the Amazon historical scene, and were not noted in published reports until 1768.' Whether the Mun- duruciu reported at that time were the members of a war party or had migrated from their home territory is uncertain, for they were seen far to the north of the upper Tapajos country on the Maue-Assui River, a tributary of a channel of the Madeira River named the Parana Mirim. But their center of strength remained roughly in their present habitat, and they fought a colonial military detachment in that region in 1795.' Their defeat at the hands of government troops ended more than two decades of Munduruciu raids upon the Portuguese settlements of the Amazon and ushered in a period of peaceful relations and active alliance with the whites. Subsequent to their pacification, large numbers of Munduruciu drifted into the vicinity of the growing towns and missions on the lower Madeira and Tapajos rivers. The missions are of especial interest to the subject matter of this study. In 1803 the mission of Santa Cruz was established on the lower Tapajos River 2 The term "white" as applied herein to the Neo-Brazilian population of the Amazon is used as a shorthand way of saying, "people bearing a local variant of Luso-Brazilian culture, and wlho identify themselves with Brazilian society." Actually, the local people represent varying degrees of Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid admixture. 8 Monteiro Noronha, 1862. 4'Almeida Serra, 1869, pp. 4-5. 5 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. and was followed by others at Boim and Pinhel.' Spix and Martius visited the Missao Nova de Monte Carmel on the Canoma River, another affluent of the Parana Mirfm, in 1819, and reported 1,000 Mundurueiu under its control.6 Baptism and catechization of the Indians proceeded apace with their increasing involve- ment with the whites, and by 1817 Ayres de Casal stated, "Almost all the Munduruc?u hordes are today our allies and some already Christians."7 The missionaries were by no means the only whites having contact with the Indians, nor was religious instruction the only way in which they were exposed to European culture. The Indians manufactured manioc flour and collected the wild products of the region and sold these articles to the missionaries and traders, who probably were in active competition for the labor and production of the Mundurucu'. The influence of the missions weakened with the deterioration of their economic hold over the Indians, and the Mundurucui tended to drift into a single-family settlement pattern along the banks of the streams. Today the Munduruc?u of the Madeira River region are nearly assimilated, and those of the lower Tapajos are wholly so. The bulk of the population, which remained in the area of the upper Tapajos River, experienced no such intensive contact. No missions were established above the great obstacle of the Cachoeira de Maranhao until 1872, and the area became settled by significant numbers of whites only in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Before that period, the Munduruciu obtained the manufactured articles which they so avidly desired through mercenary warfare8 and through the sale of surplus manioc flour and other products to traders who seasonally ascended the Tapajos River.9 After about 1850, the upper Tapajos country was also pene- trated by rubber collectors, to whom the Mundurucui frequently sold foodstuffs. The collectors traded with merchants in the growing town of Itaituba, below the head of navigation of the Tapajos, and returned each rainy season to the less isolated existence there. The contact of the Mundurucui with the Brazilians thus remained seasonal and sporadic. By the 1870's, the commercial importance of rubber was growing rapidly; greater numbers of whites sought the product each year, and the Mundurucul were drawn increasingly into the extraction industry. The importance of the Indian population in the chronically labor-short Amazon region resulted in renewed efforts to attract or press greater numbers of them into commercial production. This problem and one solution of it were expressed in rather delicate and diplomatic terms by the Brazilian engineer, Antonio Tocantins: "The imperial government has not spared efforts to call into the arms of civilization the hordes that wander in the valley of the Upper Tapajoz. It was with this purpose that in 1872 the establishment of the Mission of Bacabal was ordered."'1 The superior of the new mission of Bacabal, Fr. Pelino de Castrovalva, under- " Martius, 1867, p. 395. 6 Spix and Martius, 1831, p. 1309. 7Casal, 1845, p. 237. 8 See Murphy (1957) for a discussion of this pattern. 9 Cf. Bates, 1863, p. 233. 10 Tocantins, 1877, p. 134. 6 Murphy: Mundurucu Religion took his task with some energy. But his methods were somewhat unexpected by the Itaituba merchants, who had strongly favored the establishment of a mission. The priest established himself at a point on the east bank of the upper Tapajos River and proceeded to gather into his "reduction" some 500 Mundurucuf who had been dwelling on the banks of the stream. According to a later report by the French explorer, Henri Coudreau, the missionary had little or no contact with the main population in the savannah villages.11 The mission Indians con- tinued to collect forest products, principally rubber, and to sell them, but they traded only with the priests, who in turn, traded directly with Belem. Thus by-passed, the businessmen of Itaituba immediately protested to the governor of the province of Para, claiming that the mission monopolized the Indian trade but made little effort toward catechization. The priest inveighed with equal vigor against the corrupting influence of the traders, whom he also accused of gross exploitation of the Indian population. Fr. Pelino lost the fight, and the mission was abandoned in 1876. It would be extremely difficult to assay the effect of the Mission of Bacabal upon Mundurucui beliefs, for other avenues of communication with the white Christian population were opening rapidly during this period. As the rubber- extraction industry went into its boom period, permanent trading posts were established on the upper Tapajos and as far south as the waters of the Juruena and Sao Manoel rivers. And the rubber collectors correspondingly became more sedentary. Whole families settled in the rubber regions and remained there throughout the year. The new Brazilian population settled among and married with the Mundurucui of the Tapajos shores and had occasional contact with the more isolated dwellers of the interior. The latter fell increasingly into the skein of debt relations upon which the rubber economy was and is based, and the structure of their relations with the traders provided the means by which Christi- anity and other aspects of Western culture were communicated to them. RECENT MISSIONIZATION Active catechization of the Mundurucui Indians effectively lapsed with the abandonment of the Mission of Bacabal. Efforts were renewed by the Diocese of Santarem in 1911, however, and in 1912 German priests of the Franciscan order established a mission on the Cururui River, a tributary of the Tapajos flowing through the southern part of Mundurucui territory. The first task under- taken by the priests was to end Mundurucui warfare. Decline in numbers and involvement in the rubber trade made the Indians receptive to exhortations against war. Their prowess had been on the wane for some time, and wars were infrequent and of small scale by 1912. The next problem, that of bringing the Indians under the complete influence of the mission, met with very limited success until the classical pattern of trading with them was adopted. The priests bought rubber at a higher price than did the traders, and they sold merchandise more cheaply. So great was their success in attracting the Munduruciu that a 11 Coudreau, 1897, p. 28. 7 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. rise in rubber prices in the latter part of the 1920's was partly responsible for causing the people of some savannah villages to migrate to the rubber-yielding forests along the Cururui River. Today, some 200 Indians reside at the mission, and another 300 are also clients of the priests. Although this is not a study of changes in Mundurucu1 religion consequent upon proselytization, it is necessary to survey briefly the effects of the mission upon native belief in order to interpret the data to be presented. Catechization is most actively pressed among those Indians on the Cururiu River with whom the mission has trade contacts. The other 200 residents of the Cururu' River have their closest relations with the local post of the Servigo de Protegao aos Indios and only occasionally encounter the priests. The residents of the Tapajos River are far too scattered to be accessible with any frequency to the missionaries; these Mundurucu receive Christian influences through prayer sessions and religious fiestas held at the trading posts and through informal discourse with their Brazilian neighbors. The residents of the savannah villages maintain trade relations with the traders of the Tapaj6s River, but they are visited once a year by a priest who performs baptisms and remains for two or three days in each village to give religious instruction. The personnel of the mission have proceeded with some degree of tact and restraint in their conversion of the Mundurucut population. All Mundurucu' are technically Catholic, having been baptized, but only a minority have received all the subsequent sacraments. Children in residence at the mission school are administered Communion, and at intervals of several years the Bishop of San- tarem visits the mission to hold Confirmation rites for those ready to receive them. All Indians in the villages under mission influence are married in religious ceremonies. These rites generally are the result of considerable pressure by the priests and follow a period of marriage according to native custom. The Indians themselves look upon the public marriage ceremony as most embarassing and shame-provoking and make every effort to avoid it. The sacrament of Extreme Unction is administered only to people who die at the mission itself. Otherwise, the customary funeral rites are followed and the body is interred under the floor of the dwelling. Each Sunday a number of Mundurucu? arrive at the mission for the primary purpose of trading and with the secondary intent of visiting; they are strongly urged to attend Sunday Mass, and most do as a means of keeping in the good graces of the prestigeful and respected missionaries. The superior of the mission has spent more than thirty years among the Mundurucui and speaks the language fluently. All of the Mass except the part universally recited in Latin is given in the Indian tongue. The Mundurucui observe the social division of the sexes while attending church. The front pews are occupied by the nuns and the 40-odd children usually resident at the school, and the remaining seats are occupied by the men. Most remain in a rigid kneeling position throughout the service, with the exception of one or two old men who imitate and even anticipate the ritual postures of the nuns. The women sit cross-legged on the floor of the center aisle; many nurse their children during the rites. 8 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion Attendance at church services is always greatest on such special holy days as Christmas, Easter, and the feast of St. Francis, the patron of the mission. The nuns serve refreshments to the participants, and dances are held in the houses of the Munduruciu who reside at the mission. These occasions unite hundreds of people and thus serve as the social equivalents of the now defunct tribal ceremonies devoted to the game-animal spirits. Most Munduruc?u ceremonies are no longer practiced by any segment of the population. The priests have made special efforts to discourage the practice of native rites in those Cururui River villages under their influence, and only the ceremony to regain stolen souls is still held. This rite requires the participation of only three or four shamans and two men who possess knowledge of certain songs, and is held in the closed house of the sick person. It is thus quite easily concealed from the attention of the priests, and the rites have been held in houses only a stone's throw from the priests' residence. Ceremonies involving a large number of participants have fallen out of practice, even among the more traditional savannah dwellers, who are not readily responsive to the dictates of the priests. As in the case of warfare, it is obvious that culture change was on the side of the missionaries and that their efforts were not the crucial factor in the decline of these aspects of Mundurucui culture. On the other hand, more individualized religious practices are still quite active among the Mundurucui. The priests recognize the psychological value of shamanism and have made little effort to inhibit its practice. They are quite realistic as to its tenacity among not only the Indians but the Neo-Brazilian population of the Amazon. But the position of the missionaries is of necessity ambiguous, for the ideological basis of shamanism is inextricably connected with the concepts surrounding sorcery, to which they are adamantly opposed. Frequent sermons are delivered against belief in witchcraft as the cause of illness, and the priests are extremely severe with those of their parishioners who take part in sorcery killings. Their efforts in this direction have had the net effect of causing the Munduruciu to withhold information on their religious beliefs, but it can be confidently stated that even the most acculturated Mundurucui believe firmly in witheraft. One of the more interesting facets of contemporary Mundurucut culture on the Cururtu River is the general indifference of the people to Christian beliefs, in spite of their acceptance of the mission as an institution. There can be no denial of the fact that the priests are greatly respected by the Munduruciu and have great power among them. Chieftaincy in the Cururiu villages is dependent upon recognition by the missionaries, and the major function of the chiefs is to act as intermediaries between the villages and the mission. The priests con- tinually recruit children for the mission school in spite of the passive resistance of their parents, and they are able to bring considerable coercion to bear upon individuals through their economic power. But the Indians are only nominally Christians in spite of this influence and the intensive catechization to which they are exposed. The following chapters describe the manner in which the Indians have inte- grated and syncretized Christianity into their own belief system. This process 9 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. had doubtless begun long before the establishment of the present mission; it is probable that items of Christian belief have diffused to the Mundurucui and been reinterpreted by them for a period of more than 150 years. These items of belief are now, from the viewpoint of the Indians, Mundurucut ideas. They recognize the affinity between Christian concepts and stories and some of their own, but they shrug off the former by saying that that is the way the priests tell the stories. Some informants thought that the priests had learned them from the Mundurucui-and learned them poorly. The vast majority of Christian teachings have not, of course, been integrated into Mundurucut culture, and the Indians are exposed to these alien beliefs whenever they visit the mission or are visited by priests. Some of these, as the concepts of sin and damnation, are well known to the people, but make no emotional impact upon them. The idea of sin, especially original sin, is predi- cated upon the type of internalized authority more characteristic of the members of a complex society. Mundurucui social control is not dependent upon a sense of guilt, and the structure of personal relations is adequate to govern individuals. The Indians look upon this central theme of Christianity with mixed views. Some feel that hell is the particular destination of white people, but others barely bother to think about it at all. This summarizes the attitude of most Munduruciu toward missionary instruction. They rarely disbelieve the priests, for the latter are regarded as wise and sincere men. But their teachings are thought to be those of white men and thus to be true only for white men. There is no single and absolute body of unchangeable truth to the Mundurucu mind. Within their own mythology, for example, there are two separate origins of man; logically, this appears contradictory, but the Mundurucui do not put these beliefs to the test of logic. This statement does not imply that the Indians are illogical. Rather, it merely suggests that they, like most primitives, are not theologians. For this reason, the native and Christian beliefs coexist quite easily; but most Mundurucui have little interest in the latter, although they may not actively resist and reject them. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES Although it is doubtful that Christian proselytization has resulted in a large- scale displacement of native beliefs, the fact still remains that many aspects of Mundurucui religion are in full decline. This decadence is not understandable as the result of a conflict of patterns of belief. Rather we must view religion, with Durkheim, as being in some way an expression of the mode of organization of the society. Also we are not concerned merely with belief, but with the closely connected subject of ritual; and the form of ritual is directly related to the structure of the social group that implements it. With this thought in mind, we can review some of the major changes that have taken place in Munduruciu society since their contact with the whites. First, the Mundurucui were evidently patrilocal, as contrasted to their later matrilocality, until some time in the early nineteenth century.' This change in residence patterns revolutionized Munduruc?u social structure. More than 40 1-' See Murphy (1956) for a full discussion of the causes and implications of this change. 10 M urphy: Muqndurucuw Religion patrilineal clans, ranked loosely into unnamed phratries and divided almost equally between exogamous moieties, persisted, but the residential basis of patri- lineality disappeared. Males formerly remained in the house and village of their birth, but now they were dispersed by the new marriage rule. Clans lost their lineage nucleii and correspondingly suffered a loss of function. Bride service had in a sense become permanent, and the men's house, formerly the dwelling of village bachelors and young men in bride service, became a permanent dwelling of the men. That is essentially the situation in the contemporary savannah villages. But the social organization of the Cururui River settlements marks a further change from the savannah pattern. Matrilocality is still rather vaguely regarded as the ideal residence rule for all but the sons of chiefs, and the custom is followed in a significant number of cases. Actually, however, many marriages are patrilocal, and there is an increasing tendency for couples to become neolocal eventually. Furthermore, family life and the social division of the sexes has been drastically modified on the Cururui River. The Cururiu villages are the result of migrations by nuclear and extended families from near-by savannah villages and do not represent the simultaneous moves of entire villages. The men's house was never instituted on the Cururiu and dwellings were characteristically small. Thus, the Cururui River houses are the residences of one to three related families, whereas those on the savannahs, even under present conditions of depopulation, have an average number of about four families each. Men reside in the same houses as do their wives and children on the Cururui River, and the nuclear family approaches being an independent social and economic unit. Under these condi- tions the village has little cohesion, and recurrent factionalism results in the proliferation of new and smaller villages. Among these units there are individual ties of marriage and kinship, but the mission provides almost the only context in which the residents of different villages interact in a group."8 Other factors have modified Mundurucui social structure and religion. The population is probably about one fourth of what it was 100 years ago;" this has resulted not only in greatly reduced villages and households, but it has decreased the number of shamans. Other influences have aggravated this decline. The end of warfare did much to devitalize the Mundurucu? and to promote the growing disinterest in the native culture. It also eliminated a whole range of religious ceremonies that formed part of the head-hunting complex. Finally, there has been a profound shift in subsistence base among those Mundurucui who have moved to the shores of the Tapajos and Cururu' rivers. In contrast to the savannah dwellers, who are vigorous hunters, these Indians depend pri- marily upon fish for protein. This has significance for the religious concepts and activities centered on the animal world and hunting. 18 The respective social and economic organizations of savannah and Cururu' River villages are compared and analyzed with reference to the ecology of rubber collection in another work. (Murphy, 1954.) 14 According to some sources, this decline has been even greater. Martius (1867, p. 390) esti- mated the Mundurucd population to be 40,000 in 1819, and Tocantins (1877, p. 101) calculated their number to be 18,910 in 1875. 11 II. HEROES AND SPIRITS MUNDURUCfJ RELIGION is animistic in its broadest outlines, although vague and unpersonalized concepts of power pervade belief. Spirits and powers are active agents in Mundurucui life, and the constant manipulation and propitiation of them are essential to the well-being of the tribe. CULTURE HEROES Culture heroes were people of great supernatural power who lived in mythological times and who were responsible for creating people and much of the animal world. They are also believed to have endowed the Mundurucui with certain items of their culture, although the origin of most of it is not rationalized by mythology. Culture heroes are considered by the Munduruciu to be people of a remote past who accomplished wonderful deeds and then passed out of contact with the world of people and nature. They are in no way worshipped or manipulated nor are they objects of fear and veneration or, outside of their existence in the myth cycle, the subjects of much thought or interest. One culture hero, Karusakaibo, stands above all the rest to such a degree that C. Stromer has referred to him as a "Hochgott."1 Although the "Gott" stem of the appelation, as applied to Karusakaib6, does violence to most definitions of deity, Karusakaib6's dominant position in Mundurucui mythology is undeniable. Like many culture heroes, his origin is unexplained. He exists in a cycle of six myths in the course of which people, the peccary, and the tapir are created, and the hills and sky are formed. Karusakaibo, although an extraordinary person of great power, was believed to be a Mundurucui who lived in a village named Uacupari, situated near, but not identical with, a recent Mundurucui village of the same name. His son Korumtau, his wife Shikiridja, and his sisters also enter into his adventures. Karusakaibo has been syncretized by the Mundurucui with the Christian God preached to them by missionaries from the nineteenth century to the present day. The missionaries followed the example of the Jesuits of the early colonial period and have translated "God" as Tupan, the Tupian thunder deity; the Mundurucui have partly integrated the Christian and native myth cycles by incorporating pleasing tales from the Old and New Testament into their own mythology and substituting their own Karusakaib6 for the missionary's Tupan. However, the subtleties of the concept of the Trinity have resulted in some ambiguity, and Karusakaib6 is equated alternately with the Father and the Son. Identification of the Christian deity and the principal Mundurucui culture hero has altered the position of the latter somewhat. Many Indians, especially those in closest contact with the mission, offer the influence of Karusakaib6 as explanation for many phenomena not specifically accounted for in the cycle of Karusakaibo myths. As an example, various women stated that a couple must copulate several times to have children. After sufficient semen is accumulated within the woman, Karusakaib6 (or Tupan, according to some informants) enters l Stromer, 1932, pp. 5-6. [ 12] Murphy: Mundurucib Religion the woman and blows upon the semen, giving it life. Such atypical intervention in everyday affairs by the culture hero remained puzzling until it was learned that the nuns explain pregnancy to the girls at the mission school by telling them that Tupan places babies inside their bodies. In all his activities, Karusakaib6 is accompanied by his constant companion, Daiiru, a trickster armadillo whose plots and interference are essential to nearly all of the culture hero's acts. In spite of the hero's great power, he finds it difficult to eliminate the wily armadillo and succeeds only at the end of the myth cycle, when he turns him into a tree that now holds up the sky. The other Mundurucui culture heroes are of decidedly less importance and do not appear in the body of Karusakaib6 myths. There is a three-part saga in which two men named Karuetaouib6 and Wakurump6 ascend to the sky and become the visible sun. The latter was an especially powerful shaman whose powers were so great that he once caused the sun to grow dark. He ended the eelipse by magically scraping off the face of the sun. Moraich6k6 is the subject of a brief tale in which he is credited with making the rock paintings that are frequently encountered in the country adjacent to the Tapajos River. Since most of these paintings are on inaccessible cliffs, Moraichoko is acknowledged by the Munduruciu to have been a person of con- siderable supernatural power. A series of four other stories surrounds Nun-g-nung, who is now in the Milky Way. In other stories, a man named Karukehewe was transformed into the tree from whose wood bows are made, and an old woman named Kapiru was responsible for the origin of horticulture. Thus, although Karusakaib6 is viewed as the most important and powerful of the culture heroes, he was not responsible for the creation of all Mundurucu? culture. Another class of culture heroes had no part in the creation of the natural or human environment, but are figures in sagas. A long legend is told about the wanderings of Perisuat, and the wars of Yurichungpo and Karudaiibi are related in a two-part cycle. There are several such personages and, though many have some supernatural gifts, none is as powerful as Karusakaibo and Wakurump6. Nonetheless, the stories of these mythical characters are important in the education of the young and in the expression of themes central to Mundurucui values and world view. SPIRIT MOTHERS The most important single class of supernaturals believed to be active in the world are the spirit mothers of the game animals.! The generic spirit mother of all game animals and the various mothers of certain species must be continually 2Belief in spirit mothers, owners, or protectors of animals and plants is widespread in the Amazon basin. For example, Oberg (1953, pp. 53-54) reports the concept of spirit mothers of plants and animals from the upper Xingu River, and Wagley and Galvio (1949, p. 102) describe two Tenetehara spirits, the Owner of the Forest and the Owner of the Water, which are clearly related to the Mundurucu' spirits. Belief in these bush supernaturals is evidently extremely' tenacious, for Wagley (1953, p. 235) reports the concept of the "mae de bicho" among the Brazilian residents of the town of "Ita." Most groups in eastern Brazil visualize these protector spirits as mothers; in contrast, the Taulipang refer to them as fathers (Koch-Griinberg, 1923, pp. 176-177). 13 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. propitiated to maintain the well-being of the community. Moreover, great care must be taken to avoid giving offense to these spirits lest they strike back at the offender. The major Mundurucui ceremonies functioned mainly to secure the benevolence of the spirit mothers, and one of the chief duties of the shaman was to make periodic offerings to them and thus insure their cooperation. This preoccupation with animal spirits reflects certain basic facts about Mundurucui culture. The society is male-oriented; women are by no means passive actors in the social structure, but the major foci of the culture were male values and activities. And to the Mundurucu' men, at least those of the remaining savannah villages, few activities are more important than the hunt. The male self-image is that of the warrior and hunter, the wayfarer of the forests,8 and the Mundurucui are intensely concerned with all things arboreal. Hunting was as important as horticulture in the traditional subsistence economy and may well have been more basic to the diet in earlier times. There is some speculation about a more southerly origin of the Munduruciu, which suggests the corollary hypothesis that horticulture was less important in their former habitat. If this were true, it would help to explain why hunting is so heavily emphasized in Mundurucui religion, and horticulture is almost completely secularized. The mother of the game, or putcha s.i,5 protects the animal kingdom as a whole from human offense. The relation between the putcha si and animals is conceived by the Mundurucui to be a mother-child relationship. It is believed to be a single, unitary spirit, but it can be found in several places and under several guises at one and the same time. Expressed differently, the putcha si is a single power having several manifestations. The mother of the game is not an anthropomorphic personage; it has no form nor does it exist as a mobile and independent entity. Characteristically, the putcha si is found in two forms; in one it is a very special stone called a wirakud, and in the other it travels in the bodies of the land tortoise and the coata monkey. The Munduruciu wirakua concept, as many of their beliefs, is not highly con- ceptualized or rigidly formalized. It is vaguely conceived as a power and is described as a stonelike object visible only to shamans. Thus, the mother of the game and the wirakua are not identical, but the spirit does manifest itself in the latter object. In its wirakua guise, the putcha si is usually found in the deep perennial springs at the headwaters of the streams that issue from the hills of the Mundurucui country. Hunting is invariably good in these locales because of the desire of the game to congregate about their mother, and Mundurucui shamans have techniques whereby they can place the putcha .si in springs near their villages. So placed, the putcha .si will remain indefinitely unless stolen by a shaman of another village. When the putcha s.i is moved by a shaman, it emits s See the myth of Perisuat on pp. 187-201 for the expression of this theme in legendary form. 4Cf. Martius, 1867, p. 396 and Stromer, 1932, p. 1. 5 Munduruceu words are italicized throughout the text. The system of phonetic transcription and a complete glossary of all Mundurucu terms used may be found in Appendix A. Portuguese words are not italicized, but Appendix B contains the translations of all terms mentioned and the taxonomic classifications of most flora and fauna for which Portuguese designations have been given. 14 a thunderous noise, audible only to the animals, and they follow it to its new home. The manifestation of the mother of the game in coata monkeys and land tortoises is recognized by the Mundurucui to be a temporary, and thus somewhat ephemeral, state. Only certain of these animals harbor the putcha si, and they can be recognized only by a shaman. It is very important that they be identified as the carriers of the putcha ?i, for if an unwary hunter kills one, he is subject to the vengeance of the spirit. Land tortoises bearing the putcha s.i are occasionally caught by shamans and kept in secret places near the villages, where they are fed a drink made from sweet manioc and washed with water into which envira cherosa has been rubbed. The food and the delicate scent of the latter vine are gratifying to the putcha s'i, and good hunting is thereby assured in the area. There are other shamanistic techniques for pleasing the mother of the game and thus insuring an abundant game supply, and the major Mundurucui cere- monies are also dedicated to that end. But the putcha Si is a source of danger when offended, and the Mundurucut hunter must observe a strict etiquette toward game animals lest he attract the wrath of their mother. There are several ways of incurring the vengeance of the putcha si. Killing and eating any game animal except one in which a putcha si or the spirit mother of the particular species is traveling is considered to be perfectly legitimate. However, the animal must be killed primarily for its meat. The putcha si becomes offended when a hunter kills any animal except the jaguar and leaves its carcass to rot, or when an animal is killed only for its hide. One may take the hide from an animal-and the Munduruciu sell hundreds of peccary hides every year to traders-but the meat of the animal must be eaten. Beyond this conservation measure it is con- sidered reprehensible to make a joke about, or make vulgar use of, any part of an animal that has been killed, for one must observe a certain decorum and respect toward game. The apparatus and ritual acts that formed parts of the great ceremonies held for the spirit mothers are considered sacred and their use or performance on profane occasions would be most dangerous. It was for this reason that I was unable to induce the Mundurucui to enact any part of those ceremonies no longer practiced, although they were willing to describe them in detail. Finally, the sweet manioe drink offered to the putcha s.i on ceremonial occasions must be ritually pure. If it was prepared by a woman who had recently had intercourse or who was menstruating at the time, the putcha si would become extremely angry. The putcha si punishes humans by inflicting accidents upon them and by robbing their souls. Snakebites, cuts, falls, and all other accidental injuries are looked upon as the vengeance of the putcha s.i, and the shaman must be called in to ascertain the reason for the attack. Moreover, subsequent to the accident, the putcha s'i directs a malignant object into the body of the injured person, causing him to sicken and in some cases die. The shamans consider these among their most difficult cases, for as soon as they successfully extract one malignant object, the putcha si sends another. 15 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. The putcha si sends two types of malignant object, called the yaktp and the wirakua. The latter has already been explained as a supernaturally powerful, stonelike object in which the putcha Si is sometimes found. The yakip, on the other hand, is thought to be an evil force that is found in the form of a louse. Both the wirakua and the yakip are parts of a general, dangerous power, called chewoi, that exists in all animals. The Mundurucui believe that every animal possesses a wirakua and a yakip as part of its power (chewoi) ; these malignant forces apparently can be controlled by the putcha Si and used by it to avenge the grievances visited upon the animal world by humans. The yakip or the wirakua can also be sent by the animal souls as well as by the putcha si. One shaman stated that the yakip often enters the victim to weaken him, and the wirakua then arrives to kill him. Finally, every species of game animal has a mother spirit that exerts protection over the species. These mothers are decidedly secondary in importance to the putcha s.i, or mother of all game, and the only ones that figure importantly in Munduruciu thought are the bi'u si, the daje s'i, the rapsem s'i, and the taue si, or the mothers of the tapir, the peccary, the deer, and the prego monkey, respectively. The species mothers are given offerings at ceremonies and shaman- istic performances, as is the putcha si, and they are capable of avenging any offense given to their respective children. However, the Mundurucui commonly speak of "feeding the putcha Si" and of the "vengeance of the putcha s.i," though scant reference is given to the species mothers in these connections. Also, the species mothers are never found in the land tortoise or the coata monkey, nor are they believed to be manifest in the form of wirakua. On the contrary, the species mothers are found only in certain of their children, and their presence in the animal can be detected only by a shaman. Another class of mothers is associated with aquatic life and is of less importance than the animal mothers. The asima si is the mother of the fish, a position equiva- lent to that of the putcha si in the animal world. The asima si travels in small alligators and can be found by the shaman in many places where fish are known to abound. In addition to its association with all species of fish, the asima si is also believed to be the mother of all aquatic reptilian, amphibian, and mammalian life. Individual species of fish do not have mothers, but the tartaruga and tracaji, species of river tortoise, have mother spirits that are found within some of their children. The only other aquatic species having a mother is the peixe-boi, or menatee. The mother of the peixe-boi can be found only within certain tapirs. There are no special ceremonies for these spirits, but they, too, are propitiated in the general ceremonies for spirit mothers. This account of supernatural beliefs associated with game animals represents the norm of informant responses on the subject. Mundurucu beliefs are not, however, absolutely uniform and rigid, and there was a certain variation in individual views on the subject. There was, for example, some disagreement on the nature of the wirakua, although all informants agreed that it was like a 16 Murphy: Mundurucu Religion1 stone and alive and strong. The wirakuad is evidently a rather abstract notion of a mystic force that is an attribute of many classes of beings. But beyond this minimal explanation there is a degree of permissible deviation in interpretation. Some informants said that the putcha si was a wiraku4, but others said that it was merely found in a wirakua. Another body of conflicting information per- tained to the belief that there was only one putcha si but that it could simul- taneously be found in many places. Again, a minimal explanation was given that there is but one putcha s'i, but it is divided into many. Deeper questioning drew rather different answers from different informants. In this, and elsewhere, I have given the most common explanation. It is to be understood, of course, that a range of variant belief and practice is to be found in all aspects of culture. Evm SPIRITS In spite of the great power to do harm possessed by the spirits associated with the animal world, the Mundurucui do not look upon these supernaturals as inherently evil or malignant. They attack people only when unjustly provoked and are beneficial when properly propitiated. Since man knows the rules that must be followed to maintain the benevolence of the spirits of the animal world, their vengeance is due to human frailty and not to supernatural caprice or malevolence. The proper attitude toward this class of supernaturals is one of respect and caution, and not of intrinsic fear. However, the Mundurucui believe in other spirits, some of which are dangerous at all times and which attack humans without provocation. The most powerful of these is the class of spirits called Yurupari, belief in which is extremely widespread among the Tupian-speaking peoples of South America. The Mundu- rucu recognize three types of Yurupari. The first is said to be composed of the real Yurupari and includes the souls of people who have been killed by attacks of the Yurupari. Another type of Yurupari is that created by sorcerers to accom- pany their souls on predatory journeys. These Yurupar' are neither as prevalent nor as powerful as the first type, but they are, nonetheless, greatly dreaded. The last category of Yurupari includes the fresh-water porpoises that inhabit the Amazonian rivers. The porpoises are believed to swim in the rivers only by day; at night they are transformed into handsome men or beautiful women who dress in white clothes and travel on land. These are believed to be the least dangerous of all the Yurupari, although they are still considered malevolent and capable of attacking humans. Mundurueui shamans report that the porpoise class of Yurupari frequently complains to them that the other Yurupari are the real demons and that they themselves suffer from their assaults. This third class of Yurupar't is distinguished from the first two types by other characteristics, also. Only the porpoise-spirit travels on land; the others travel through the air. The porpoises are visible to all people in their nocturnal human form, and their beauty frequently leads the un- wary to approach too closely. The sorcerer-created Yurupari and those whose lives and souls were taken by the Yurupari, however, are invisible to all but the shaman. 17 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. These Yurupari make a thin, whistling noise as they travel through the air. Though the porpoise Yurupari are handsome, shamans report the others to be ugly beyond description. A further distinction between the porpoise and the other Yurupari is that the latter have no fixed abodes, whereas the porpoises have cities at the bottom of deep quiet stretches of the Tapajos River. All types of Yurupari travel only at night. They frequently lurk on the peri- pheries of villages, and, consequently, few Mundurucui venture beyond the circle of houses after dark. The weapon of the Yurupari is a magical stone that it throws at anyone who comes within range. The stone is believed to enter the victim and invariably to cause fever, pains in the stomach and sides, and vomiting. The stones vary in size; the larger ones are thought to be the more powerful. Also, the amount of damage done by the stone depends on the distance from which it is thrown. If the Yurupari is within fifteen feet, death is almost instantaneous. At longer ranges, only temporary illness may result. There are no means by which attacks of the Yurupari can be prevented, but Mundurucui shamans have techniques for extracting the harmful stones. Extreme care must be taken in this treatment, for the stone maintains its malignancy even after being extracted. Only smaller stones can be touched with the bare hands, and even these must be treated gingerly. The stone, however, is afraid of the bow, and the bow is frequently used to drive the stone into a fire, where it is destroyed. It was extremely difficult to obtain full information about the Yurupari while in the field because the Mundururcu informants hestitated even to speak of this spirit. To mention it was believed dangerous, and it was also considered to be such a frightful subject that any prolonged discussion of it was in poor taste. This attitude caused a curious situation among the missionized Mundurucui. The priests translated the Devil as Yurupari, and their sermons to the Indians were replete with references to the greatly feared demon and threats that sinfulness would be punished by condemnation to the "fire of the Yurupari." They were evidently ignorant of the full range of Yurupart beliefs shared by the Mundurucui and were accordingly unaware of the acute discomfort and revulsion aroused in their listeners. One of the commonest beliefs of Yurupari in the Amazon Basin is that of the fresh-water porpoise transformed at night into a forest demon. Among the Brazilian caboclos, or backwoodsmen, the porpoise is believed to ensnare victims through its great sexual attraction and potency. Wagley reports that in the town of Ita the porpoise is thought to emit the high whistling sound characteristic of the Mundurucu? Yurupart, although there is no indication that the porpoise is identified with the spirit.6 Brazilian neighbors of the Mundurucui also believe in the magical power of the porpoise, and it is quite possible that the Indian concept of the porpoise type Yurupari' was borrowed from the civilized population. If this is true, we are presented with the seeming paradox whereby aboriginal culture elements have been spread by people having a basically European culture. This 6 Wagley, 1953, p. 240. 18 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion phenomenon is not at all unusual in South America; Wagley and Galvao report the Tenetehara belief in the demon, Zurupari, to have been borrowed by the Indians from the local Brazilian population.7 Similarly, the Tupinamba culture hero, Tupan, became a mythological figure in many Brazilian tribes through the active agency of the Jesuits. Another instance of this type of diffusion and syncretism may exist in the Mundurucui belief that the Yurupari take the souls of their victims in order to re- cruit their own ranks. This may well be an aboriginal idea, but it corresponds suspiciously to the classical missionary teaching that the souls of sinners are taken by the Yurupart, or Devil.8 The absence of any concept of sin in the Mundu- ruciu belief is not surprising, for missionaries have labored for generations with- out noticeable results, to inculcate the idea of sin and punishment among them. The Yurupari attack all people regardless of age or sex, but a class of spirits known as asik is dangerous only to infants. There are hordes of as'ik wandering over the earth, for the shadows of all people turn into this spirit upon death. Only the transformed shadows of little girls are dangerous to infants, however. The Munduruc?u believe that these asik, like all little girls, want to take the children for themselves, and they rob the child of its life to do so. Like the Yurupari, the as'ik kills its victims by throwing a magical stone into them. The asik is clearly visible to the shaman as a little person no more than a foot high; its skin is either black or white, and it is always very beautiful. To ordinary people unendowed with shamanistic powers, the as4k is visible only as a fleeting shadow. It is not at all remarkable, therefore, that anxious Mundurucui mothers often see acsik on the paths between the villages and the bathing places. These paths are considered to be especially dangerous, but the asik also attacks in the village on days when most of the people are abroad, and only one or two women or girls remain in the village to tend the infants. As a rule, the Munduruciu believe that safety from all supernaturals can be gained by numbers; the various malevolent beings are always especially dangerous outside the village and to the lone person. This idea functions to provide super- natural support for sociability and cooperation, and few Mundurucui hunt, fish, or garden alone, nor does any woman willingly go to bathe or draw water by her- self. To be sure, there are other, more concrete and persuasive reasons for Mundu- rucu gregariousness, but supernatural concepts rationalize and support this aspect of the social structure. The shaman must be called to cure an attack by the asik, but there are also means by which such attacks can be prevented. Children are made immune by frequent baths in a solution of water and the crushed leaves of an unidentified shrub, and a piece of ginger root is almost always hung on the child's tipoia, or carrying sling, as protection against the asik. Also, mothers bite off and spit out pieces of the ginger root as they walk along the paths between the villages and the bathing places in the belief that this will avert molestation by the spirit. 7 Wagley and Galvao, 1949, p. 102. 8It is equally possible that this represents a modification of an aboriginal concept of the Yurupari. Metraux (1928, p. 58) notes the antiquity of this belief among Tupian groups, and the Mundurucui might well have shared this element. 19 0University of California Publicationrs in Am. Arch. and Ethn. SPIRITS OF THE UNDERWORLD The kokeriwat are a class of spirits that are believed to inhabit the underworld. Although they are extremely mischievous, the kokeriwat are not specifically ma- levolent toward humans nor are they especially feared by the Mundurucu'. During the old Munduruc?u wars, kokeriwat warriors used to issue from the underworld and, unseen by all but the shamans, fought side by side with the Mundurucui as allies. One informant stated that the kokeriwat were really the souls of Mundu- rueu warriors of ancient times, but this is not a universally held belief and must be classed with our previously discussed minor variations on major themes. Despite the help given them by their invisible allies, the Mundurucui warriors had to take certain precautions against the kokeriwat, for the latter always attempted to steal the teeth from the trophy heads taken by the war party. The Munduruecu guarded against this by extracting the teeth, which were later strung on a cotton belt, and hiding them in the mouth of the head. When all the teeth were extracted, they were placed in a small box which the warriors suspended from their necks. The kokeriwat were also able to make women pregnant without their knowledge by assuming the form of a small bird and flying between their legs. They later returned to claim the issue. Several cases were reported in which the kokeriwat robbed the mothers of these surreptitiously begotten children. One child of the village of Parawaroktika was sent by her mother to fetch water. After a con- siderable period of time passed by, the mother asked some women who were bound for the stream to tell the daughter to return immediately. The women went to the stream and found two sets of tracks leading away from the beach. They called the men of the village, who followed the tracks to a hill within which was situated one of the underworld homes of the kokeriwat. A shaman called out to the girl and asked her to return, but the kokeriwat replied in a voice heard only by the shaman, "She cannot return. I am keeping her for she is my daughter." The shaman was afraid to make any further attempt to regain the child, and she was left with the kokeriwat. Informants were able to name three separate underworlds of the kokeriwat. The one to which that child was taken was known as Paradua. Another was called Wikotchongp6 and was on the banks of the Iririri River, a tributary of the Cururui River. The third home of the kokeriwat was Kokeriwatka (literally, the place of the kokeriwat), which was near the Morro de Careca on the Cururu' River. All these places were abandoned by the kokeriwat after they became increasingly sub- jected to attacks by the Yurupari. They now live in an underworld to the east and no longer have relations with the Mundurucu'. The Mundurucui know of the lands of the kokeriwat because many shamans are said to have traveled there. Some shamans, as P6subaboi, a former chief of Capikpi, even had wives there. The kokeriwat have human forms when in their own land, but everything else is the reverse of the terrestrial world. Posubaboi, for example, related that the first time he had intercourse with his kokeriwat wife he told her to lie on her back on the ground in the usual Mundurucui position. But the kokeri- 20 Murphy: Munduruci' Religion wat do not have sexual relations in the same position as do the Mundurucu, and his wife replied, "If I lie on the ground I will get worms. We will do it standing up, instead." Furthermore, although the sun also rises in the east and sets in the west in the underworld, it is night there when it is day in the terrestrial world. The kokeriwat engage in fish-drugging expeditions, as do the Mundurucui, but they poison the water with the sipo snake and not with timbo. Also, they fish for anaconda rather than real fish. Fish-drugging expeditions are always noisy affairs, but those of the kokeriwat are so tempestuous that they create a huge wind which is felt in the terrestrial world as the two- or three-day cold spell which strikes the Mundurucui country in June of every year. Conversely, Mundurucui timbo-fishing causes a cold spell in the underworld. MOTHERS OF THE RAIN The mambat si, or mothers of the rain, are a number of spirits, each of which is believed responsible for a certain type of rain or storm.9 The Mundurucui believe that the rains are their children and that atmospheric disturbances are the results of their activities. Informants were not certain exactly how many mothers of the rain exist, but they were able to give the names of seven and to describe some of their attributes. The mambat si are colored in varying degrees of black or white, and all their possessions, such as carrying baskets and penis sheaths, are cor- respondingly black or white. All the mambat si described by informants are male, but these male spirits have wives who are also considered mothers of the rain. Three of the mambat s'i are mentioned by name in the legend Qf Perisuat.10 They are Tiptaibitum (storm of wind and rain), Ianporungrung (strong thunder and lightning), and Kurobirarinyun (steady, slow rain). Kurobirarin- yun was also mentioned by informants as the briniger of a fine, all-day rain and as being of whitish color. Of somewhat darker hue is Churarimunpo, who appears on those days when clouds gather and thunder rumbles. The storm never breaks, however, and the sun always reappears. Daibitureb6 causes rain and high winds, but, although black, he is not as black as Daibituwatpo, who brings storms with black clouds. Finally, Karuparab6, also a black mambat s'i, carries strong electrical storms with violent thunder and lightning. The thunder is believed to be the sound of his flattus, and the rays of lightning are thought by the Mundu- ruciu to shoot from his anus. Karuparabo's violent behavior is attributed to his anger because of the intimacies of his wife and Churarimunp6. The mambat si live in houses below the ground; these houses are scattered throughout the world and their occupants determine the weather in their environs. One house of the mambat si is inside a hill near the Cabitutui River, and its resi- dents make the weather in the surrounding Mundurucui country. During the summer dry season, the mambat Si wander afar, as do the Mundurueu, and do not return until the beginning of the rains. The people are able to detect the re- turn of the spirits to their homes by the first rumbles of thunder in September. 9 Tocantins' (1877, p. 116) statement that the souls of Mundurucu" dead are believed to produce storms was unsubstantiated by informants. 10 See page 95. 21 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. The mambat Si are delayed in their journey in certain years, and the rains then arrive late. There is no way by which humans can hasten their return. Although the Munduruc'u have no supernatural techniques to induce or stop rain, they believe that they can frighten the mothers of the rain by planting a bow in the ground when a violent electrical storm threatens. Significantly, they generally resort to such preventative measures at the beginning of the rainy season, a period when storms frequently threaten but seldom strike. I have never seen them attempt to frighten electrical storms away after the full force of the rainy season has arrived. In the old days, say Mundurucui informants, extremely powerful shamans were able to see the mambat s'i, who always took the form of black deer when they traveled. When a shaman sighted one of these invisible animals he knew that it would rain and that it would be useless to go hunting. KAR6Kt SPIRITS The karoko is a set of three trumpets, or more precisely, resonant chambers, which are kept in a small enclosed room attached to the men's house of each Mundurucui village. These trumpets are functionally equivalent to the more widely distributed bull-roarer. They are taboo to the sight of women, to whom they are believed to have once belonged, and they are endowed with supernatural qualities. This supernatural aspect of the karoko stems from the belief that they harbor certain spirits. These are of three categories. First, each set of trumpets is believed to possess a soul (ibiunbok) that resides within the instruments. Again, each set of trumpets is considered to be the property of a certain clan and the residence of the tubo, or eponymous ancestor, of the clan. Finally, each set of trumpets has a group of spirit "companions" (karoko ejewot). All three categories of spirit, when propertly propitiated, act to protect the village in which the trumpets are housed. The interrelationship of the various spirits of the trumpets with the structure of clan and phratry organization has been analyzed elsewhere,'1 but a brief recapit- ulation is necessary in order to understand fully the place of these supernaturals in contemporary Mundurucui culture. As mentioned in chapter I, the Mundurucui at one time practiced patrilocal residence, and their patrilineal clans had a resi- dential basis in patrilineages. Furthermore, evidence suggests that the clan was once localized, and clan and village were equivalent units. During this period, what are now only the karak6 of certain villages were also the karoko of clan groups. The clan ancestors were contained within the trumpets and exerted a benevolent influence over the &an-village unit. Clan, ancestor, and trumpet were all named after the same eponymous object, whether animal, fish, or plant. Each trumpet also had a spirit companion which was given a plant or animal name other than that of the clan. Ensuing population growth produced segmentation and the formation of new local lineages, some of which in time became localized clans in their own right. The offspring clans adopted new spirit companions for their trumpets but kept those of the parent clan, also. The sharing of a spirit com- 11 Murphy, 1956. 22 Murphy: Munduruci' Religion panion of the trumpets by parent and offspring clans constituted a phratriac af- filiation and served to perpetuate their former unity. When the Mundurucui shifted from a patrilocal to a matrilocal mode of resi- dence during the nineteenth century, the clans lost their residential basis en- tirely and their male members were scattered by marriage throughout many vil- lages. The sacred trumpets continued in their role as residences of the ancestral and companion spirits, but they no longer functioned to protect and aid a unified clan-village unit. Today, the trumpets are still regarded as the property of cer- tain clans, but their spirits serve to protect a multiclan village. The close rela- tionship that formerly existed between trumpets, clan ancestors, and clan mem- bers has become considerably attenuated, if not altogether lost. The trumpets are now considered the property of the clan of the man who manufactured them. In one village, no member of the clan that owned the village trumpets was in resi- dence in the community. However, members of other clans played the trumpets and the village was nonetheless under the protection of the trumpet spirits. It is not surprising, then, that many informants considered the souls of the trumpets to be of greater importance to the village than were the spirits appropriate to the clan that owned them. The significance of the latter supernaturals will proba- bly become increasingly dim in Mundurucui thought in future years owing to their incompatibility with the new social structure. THE SOUL The Mundurucui believe that all humans, animals, fish, and domesticated plants possess a soul, or ibiunbok; the most detailed and most important body of belief, however, concerns the souls of humans. People have two ibiunbok; one is the real soul, and the other is merely the shadow or reflection of the individual. The latter is believed to become transformed into the asik spirit upon the physical death of its bearer, and the former leaves the body and goes to the afterworld. The real ibiunbok is thought to resemble a small, black, ovoid-shaped pebble and is said to be situated in the region of the spinal column, between the lower extremities of the shoulder blades. Although it has physical reality, no one knows of what ma- terial it is made. In spite of their belief in the immortality of the soul, the Munduruciu are not as worried about the fate of the soul after death as they are with the misadven- tures that may befall the soul during life. The soul is said to leave the body some- time after death, but no informant was certain whether the soul departed im- mediately or lingered in the corpse for a period of time. The soul of the deceased has three possible destinations. Those of men who devoted considerable time to the playing of the sacred trumpets, or karoko, go to Kar6kokai, the place where the trumpets were first discovered by the women. There they play the instruments and live well, for the forests team with 'game and the rivers with fish. Men and women who knew the ceremonial dances for the spirit mothers of the game reside in another afterworld, known as Up6tchar6, or the land of the game. The animals there have human forms, although the forests are paradoxically thought to be 23 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. rich in game animals, and they and the Munduruciu souls pass their time in danc- ing. Both Kar6kokai and Upotchar6 lie in a subterranean land called Karubisese. The Mundurucui believe Karubisese has three locations: below the headwaters of the Juruena River, under the Great Falls of the Cururui River, and west of the Tapajos River beyond where the sun sets. Life in the underworld is far better than in the terrestrial realm. The souls re- assume their old bodies, but they are groomed and decorated in the manner fol- lowed by the Mundurucui before the coming of the white men. Similarly, the souls do not have to gather rubber, for there are no traders or trade goods; in short, the aboriginal culture is completely reestablished in the underworld. Food is good and abundant, and the Mundurucui souls make war and take trophy heads. But Mundurucui warriors are never killed in the hereafter-only the enemy dies. It has already been mentioned that the souls of those people killed by attacks of the Yurupar' go to the land of the Yurupari and are there transformed into these demons. The Mundurucui look upon this as an undesirable fate, although it is not regarded with particular dread and foreboding. The same lack of deep con- cern for the fate of the soul is found in Mundurucui attitudes toward the after- worlds of the trumpets and the game. Although all acknowledge that life in these realms must indeed be idyllic, no one actively anticipates this existence. The Mundurucui do not learn ceremonial dances or play the trumpets in order to gain a favored residence after death. There were no indications that concepts of the afterlife acted as motivating factors or goals of behavior. Correspondingly, since one's fate after death is not considered as a reward for socially valued be- havior, there is no post-mortem punishment or retribution for undesirable be- havior. One goes to the land of the Yurupari only because one has been attacked and killed by them, and those attacks are the result of misfortune and not of sin. To the Mundurucul life after death is not a subject for worry. When I asked one informant where she expected to go after death, she laughingly replied, "To a termite hill." Another decided to go to Para (Belem), which all Mundurucui know to be the great city of the white men. Missionary teachings have affected the beliefs of the more intensively prosely- tized Munduruc?u to some extent. Those Indians who had spent some time at the mission school knew that people who did things contrary to the teachings of the priests went to "the fire of the Yurupari," but those who acted according to those precepts "joined Tupan in the sky." However, it is doubtful if Christian belief in the hereafter influenced the behavior of more than a few of the most rigorously indoctrinated Indians. Although missionary teachings were generally accepted as true (at least as applicable to the white men) owing to the high prestige of the priests among the Mundurucui, the Indians commonly accepted the form of the ideas only and not their meaning. In those cases where the form of a Catholic belief became integrated into the culture, it invariably was made meaningful in Mundurucui terms, and the actual form underwent some transmutation in the process. Usually the same cultural trait will not have the same function in two 24 Murphy: Mundurucu Religion totally different structures, and the Mundurucfu have changed the form and meanin,g of religious elements in such a way that they function within the struc- ture of Mundurucui culture. Although the Christian concept of the soul has main reference to the hereafter, the Munduruciu beliefs in the soul are more closely concerned with the here and now. The souls of people afflicted with a certain illness can wander abroad and constitute a threat to society. Also, the soul is highly vulnerable to theft by the game animals. And finally, the soul can be used as a means of obtaining omens and knowledge. The souls of the dead remain permanently in the afterworld and are not thought to intervene thereafter in the affairs of the living except in one highly limited way. They are not believed to return to the world as ghosts nor are they regarded as a source of danger. But the soul of a living person may turn into an uantau- huakat, or wandering soul, during the course of a malady characterized by weak- ness, fever, and yellow skin. The person so afflicted is generally unaware of the journeys of his soul, but some are said to become uantauhuakat willingly and to remember the deeds of their wandering souls. The soul always travels at night and at these times attacks sleeping people. On occasion, it travels with other wandering souls and, thus strengthened and emboldened, may strike at persons who are awake and walking about. The wandering soul is believed to be especially dangerous, for defense against it consists of purely temporary measures and there is no cure for sick people whose souls wander. The uantauhuakat can be driven away by the shaman, who spears it with a five-inch-long lance, but it always returns to the attack. It attacks chil- dren and robs their souls, and visits adults as a vampire that sucks the blood from its victims. Only the shaman can see wandering souls, although anybody can hear their footsteps at night. However, the soul travels about on a cord that stretches like a piece of rubber, and its footprints are never visible the next day. After the sick person dies, the soul goes to an afterworld, and its nocturnal travels cease. People so afflicted are not killed, in spite of the danger to the com- munity. The soul of a young woman of the village of Cabrua was known to wan- der at night, but no action was taken against her. The residents of the village were extremely nervous during the nights of her illness, and most hesitated even to speak of it. The vampire aspect of the wandering soul is reminiscent of European folklore, and there exists here also the possibility that the Munduruciu borrowed the belief from their Brazilian neighbors. One Brazilian informant specifically stated that the people of the Tapajos River believed that the souls of some sick people journey at night as vampires, although they do not travel on magical elastic cords. Borrowing in this instance appears obvious, although it is not certain just who borrowed from whom. It is possible in all these examples that the transmission of the themes is extremely complex. The Mundurucu' may well have received this concept from the whites but through the intermediary of another Indian tribe 25 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. rather than directly from their immediate Brazilian neighbors. In our present state of knowledge of the ethnology of the Amazon region, reliable reconstructions of such diffusion are most difficult. In the preceding discussion of spirit mothers of game animals, it was mentioned that the putcha si avenges itself upon humans by stealing their souls. This is one of the gravest afflictions that may befall a Mundurucui, and only the performance of a ceremony is sufficient to regain the soul of a stricken person; ordinary shaman- istic curing techniques are inadequate. Men can lose their souls to the game through a variety of offenses. The insults to the game already described are the most common means of occasioning the anger of the spirit mothers. One can also lose his soul if he sits too close to a fire over which the head of a game animal is roasting, and he is struck by the optic fluid from an exploding eye. Another means of losing one's soul is to have adulterous relations with the wife of a member of the Biu si (Mothers of the Tapir) society, which is responsible for impersonating the tapir during certain ceremonies. In these cases, the tapir robs the soul of the offending male. The members of the Bil si society, themselves, are in danger of losing their souls during those ceremonies in which they perform. They must be especially careful not to bathe in the streams during rituals, as the tiue si, or mother of the prego monkey, will surely steal their souls. To prevent this they bathe in the house from gourds. Women may also lose their souls through offenses against the game, but since women do not hunt, this rarely occurs. However, a woman who bathes during her first menses or shortly after the birth of a child may have her soul taken by the jararaca snake. Either the large or small species of this reptile family robs the soul, depending on whether the woman is on land or in the water at that time. The jararaca turns the soul over to the tapir, and it begins the long journey described below. The journey of the stolen soul is believed by the Mundurucui to be a terrifying and danger-fraught experience. Although the putcha si is often spoken of as stealing the soul, the actual theft appears to be the work of the tapir and, less commonly, of other animals and spirit mothers of species. After the tapir steals the soul, it runs with it through thick underbrush and swims across rivers. The beast then gives the soul to the peccary, which travels for some time with it and then passes it on to a lesser game animal. The soul is finally transferred to the smallest species of monkey which, in turn, gives it to the largest variety of fish. It passes on to smaller fish until it finally reaches the smallest species. At this point the journey ends, and the afflicted person dies. The person whose soul has been robbed lies in a semicoma and dreams of the trials to which his soul is exposed. The rigors of the trip are such that the person grows steadily weaker, and death may occur at almost any time during the travels of the stolen soul. If the animal with which it is traveling dies, the sick person dies also. Two parts of the journey are especially dangerous. At one point the soul passes within a stone's throw of the house of a prego monkey, which throws semen at it. If the soul is struck by only a drop of the semen, its owner dies. In another 26 Murphy: Mundurucu Religion part of its trip, the soul travels with the coata monkey. This animal traverses one section of its passage by bending an assal palm over, igrabbing its branches, and then letting it fling him into the foliage of another tree as it springs back. If the soul is not careful, it falls to the ground, killing its sick owner. The only dangerous part of the journeys with various species of fish, except for the invari- ably fatal end of the trip, is with the black piranha, which tries to eat the soul. The concept of soul loss, like the belief in spirit mothers of game animals with which it is associated, is widespread among both Indian and rural Brazilian in- habitants of the Amazon region. Especially interesting because of its similarity to the Munduruc'u belief is Wagley's report that the Brazilian population of the community of Ita believes that the mae de bicho punishes humans by stealing their "shadows."" Although the departure of the soul from a living body is generally an occasion of great danger, there are some circumstances under which it is considered desir- able and beneficial. The souls of shamans frequently travel abroad and are able to visit the underworlds of the kokeriwat and the afterworlds of the Munduruciu. Shamans visit the afterworld of the game, (where they serve as shamans to the animals), and that of the trumpets, but they do not visit the Land of the Yurupari. The wounded warrior was believed to acquire temporary shamanistic powers dur- ing the period of his incapacity, and his soul wandered abroad while he lay in his hammock and dreamed of its experiences. These travels were considered desirable, and care was taken to remove the penis sheath of the warrior to allow him to dream. The Mundurucui were unable to explain why the penis sheath inhibited dreams and the wandering of the soul. The souls of sleeping people sometimes travel harmlessly abroad, and dreams are believed to be the experiences of the soul while away from the body. Dreams are not considered visions or prognostications of future events, but they are thought to be good or bad omens. Thus, if a man dreams of some frightening experience, he will not leave the village for a few days for fear of some unknown danger. Certain people are able to derive knowledge from their dreams. These people, known as cheseretaibitchanyen (those who know how to explain dreams), derive their power through medication administered to them as children. The souls of Munduruc'u of times long past appear to them in dreams and teach them certain songs that are sung during ceremonies. Significantly, the songs taught to dreamers are not new or forgotten ones, but songs that are quite actively present in Mun- duruciu culture and known by other dreamers. All animals have souls, which return to the afterworld of the game and become transformed into people upon the death of the animal. Fish are also thought to have souls, but they are accorded little importance in Mundurucu? thought. Al- though individual fish and animals have souls, only species of domesticated plants have souls. Dogs, too, are thought to have souls, but the canine soul returns to the Land of the Dogs upon the death of its body. Also, dogs are not considered to be 1Wagley, 1953, p. 235. 27 28 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. under the protection of a spirit mother nor do they possess the chewoi, or malig- nant power of the game. Finally, all other human beings are considered endowed with souls much like those of the Mundurucui. However, informants had no idea where the souls of the white people and Indians of other tribes went after death, beyond referring to the missionary's heaven. Upon being asked the destination of the souls of white people, one Mundurucui chuckled and replied, "You, and not I, should know the answer to that question." III. SHAMANISM AND SORCERY THE PROBLEMS of illness, accident, and death are commonly conceived in super- natural terms by primitive peoples, and the techniques for their resolution are accordingly the province of religious practitioners. The supernatural dangers threatening the Mundurucu? currently preoccupy the society more than any other aspect of the supernatural realm, for they constitute the cause of all sickness and death; and epidemic disease has beset the Mundurucui since their first contact with Europeans. But the Mundurucui do not feel broken and powerless before the onslaughts of ailments to which they have little natural immunity. Mystical in nature through the evil may be, it is not mysterious, for it can be explained and controlled. The threat is no less concrete for existing on a level of reality beyond the sensory powers of ordinary mortals, but the protection of the society must, therefore, rest in the hands of persons who are able to see and act in this sphere. These individuals are viewed by the Mundurucu as the possessors of great and manifestly beneficial power, although they recognize the corollary principle that this power is potentially dangerous and corrupting. THE SHAMAN The Mundurucu' shaman, or mamu', has the ability to deal with supernatural threats through possession of a mystical power latent within him from the time of his birth. His functions within the society are manifold. The shaman performs cures; he is essential to nearly all ceremonies; he propitiates the spirit mothers of the animal world; he rids the community of evil forces; and he can detect lost people and objects. But through essential to the well-being of society, the power of the shaman can be used for evil ends. His status is ambivalent; he maintains a balanced and favorable relation between the human and supernatural worlds, and he is capable of profoundly disturbing this balance. Most Mundurucui villages have at least one shaman in residence, although some have none. The shaman has high prestige, although the respect accorded an individ- ual practitioner is at times mixed with fear when it is suspected that he indulges in black magic. In spite of the high regard in which he is held, he receives no material benefits for his services. Among the more acculturated Mundurucu, a small present is sometimes given to the shaman for a cure, but this pattern appears to be of recent origin and obtains in only a minority of cases. The shaman does not devote full time to his specialty. All practitioners hunt, fish, and clear gar- dens with the other men and manufacture baskets, bows, and other objects. The shaman frequently makes great personal sacrifices in the performance of his duties. Some travel great distances to treat those who are too ill to come to them, and they often make these trips to the detriment of other activities and tasks. The practice is considered dangerous, for the shaman must face the dual menace of contact with hostile spirits and the suspicion of his fellowmen. But most Mun- duruciu shamans are motivated by a true sense of public service. They feel that they possess a great power that can be used both for good and bad ends and be- [29] University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. lieve that it is incumbent upon them to help the sick and to perform their obliga- tions to the supernatural world. One does not seek to become a shaman among the Mundurucui, nor is shamanism the result of a serious illness or an extraordinary experience, as is true in many societies. The power is acquired only through inheritance from the father, and it is believed that all children of shamans are also shamans, although they may not practice the art in later life. For all practical purposes, however, only male chil- dren inherit shamanistic power. The female offspring of shamans are nominally classified as shamans also, and women evidently participated more fully in the practice until a relatively recent period, for Tocantins reports a number of women to have been accused of sorcery, knowledge of which is confined to shamans, in and about the year 1875.1 Today, active status is limited to men, and the daugh- ters of shamans are considered to be shamans in an academic sense only. Mundurucui informants were unable to explain the shaman's power beyond saying that it is within him and that he is born with it. It is not thought of in concrete terms, as a supernatural object lodged within his body, nor is the power thought to reside in supernaturals whom the shaman controls. The absence of any concept of control or of cooperation with certain spirits is rather unusual in this section of South America. Metraux, for example, reports the trait for the Tupi- namba,2 and Wagley has written of the use of familiar spirits among both the Tapirape" and the Tenetehara.' In the regions to the south of the Mundurucui, Oberg states that shamans are aided by spirits among the Kamayura, Bacairi, and Nambicuara.' Investigation failed to indicate, however, that the Munduruc?u shaman was aided in any way by supernatural beings. He is in contact with the supernatural world and is capable of co6perating with it or defeating its intents, but he accomplishes this through direct use of the unlocalized power contained within him and not through the intermediary of spirits. Also, all shamans have some form of contact with all supernatural beings; none has special relations with any particular supernatural. Some shamans are thought to be more powerful than others. The most effective practitioners are usually the older men, for they are considered to have acquired experience and skill. However, the crucial determinant of a shaman's strength is the strength of his father, for the sons are believed to inherit the degree of power of the parent. Some older Munduruc?u men barely practiced, since their power was considered slight, whereas younger men were often highly regarded as shamans. Among the contemporary Mundurucu, two or three shamans are looked upon as being in possession of great strength, and their services are in heavy de- mand. On one occasion, a man became violently ill shortly after midnight and needed immediate care. The village shaman was away, so it was necessary for one of the sick man's relatives to set out through the forest, which is feared at night, on the path to the next village. He directed its shaman to the aid of his sick rela- 1 Tocantins, 1877, pp. 109-111. 2Metraux, 1948, p. 129. Wagley, 1943. 4 Wagley and Galvao, 1949, pp. 108 ff. 6 Oberg, 1953, pp. 60, 75, 100. 30 Murphy: Mundurucu Religion tive and immediately continued on a long journey to another village, where lived a greatly renowned practitioner. Both returned the next day, and the visiting shaman, after administering to the sick man, was visited by everybody in the village who had the slightest ache or pain. He proceeded to rid the village of the various evil spirits believed to be infesting it and returned home. The most re- nowned shaman among all the Mundurucui lives on the Cururui River. People are known to make overland trips of four days in order to seek his aid. It will be seen that these ,great shamans are of particular importance in that they are called upon to detect sorcerers. The training of the shaman is not very complex or extensive. So far as his effectiveness depends on innate power, he need learn no involved techniques for the control of personal spirits. Curing methods are relatively simple, and the mechanics of the procedure are known to any Mundurucui child through mere observation. But the techniques used to propitiate the spirit mothers of the game necessitate some training, which is usually provided by the father or paternal uncle of the novitiate. The older kinsman also instructs the trainee in the use of various medicinal cures and teaches him the more esoteric aspects of his profes- sion. The novitiate usually makes his debut as a shaman during one of the cere- monies for the spirit mothers of the animals, when his first official act is to call the mother of the game. This event takes place at about the age of puberty, but he generally does not practice curing until he reaches maturity. The shaman employs a minimum of apparatus and techniques. Among the Mun- duruciu, he does not practice ventriloquism nor does he use any musical instru- ments or songs. In common with shamans in most eastern South American groups, a great deal of his effectiveness depends upon the magical use of tobacco smoke. But there is only one shamanistic activity, that of feeding the spirit mother of the game, in which he seeks a narcotic state through the use of tobacco smoke. Unlike the Tenetehara or Tapirape shaman,6 he does not fall into a trance during a curing performance. The Mundurucui cannot give a clear explanation of the efficacy of tobacco smoke; they say only that it is strong. But smoke is strong only when blown by a shaman, and the strength of the smoke is believed to stem from his power. Only five instruments are essential to shamanistic practice. The most important of these is the naneh, a small piece of the root of the genipa tree carved to re- semble a two-headed pestle. The naneh is used whenever the shaman feeds the mother of the game. It is believed to emit a thunderous noise audible only to the game, which calls together the animals of a wide area. Another instrument used by the shaman is the ibobot (literally, 'toy'), a small piece of arrow shaft that is sent out by him in search of lost people and objects. The borombo is an instru- ment, made of tucuma-palm-fruit pits, which leads the shaman to the putcha si or mother of the game. The potponchap is a piece of wood some five inches long, carved in the shape of a knife with a round handle. This instrument is used to kill the intrusive objects sent by sorcerers. Finally, a tail feather of the mutuim 6 Cf. Wagley, 1942. 31 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. is used by the shaman to extract from afflicted people the yakip, or malignant object sent by the mother of the game. All these instruments are inert until the shaman blows power-giving tobacco smoke upon them. They are then thought to be "alive" and to have "strength." DISEASE AND ITS TREATMENT In order to understand fully the important role that the shaman plays among the Mundurucui, their theories of disease and affliction must be outlined. There is practically no human misfortune that cannot be attributed to supernatural influ- ences. If a Munduruciu suffers a slight cut on his foot, he may admit that it was due to sheer mischance. But if he incurs a serious wound, the shaman is usually consulted and invariably attributes the affliction to the vengeance of the mother of the game. Any infection, pain, or other aftereffect of the wound is generally thought to be the work of the yak'p, which is sent by the mother of the game or by the soul of the animal offended by the wounded man. Similarly, a snake bite, a fall from a tree, or any other serious misadventure that cannot be classified as a disease is usually diagnosed by the shaman as the vengeance of the animal world. Diseases also are the result of evil supernatural influences. But whereas serious accidents are attributed to the spirit mother and therefore to the negligence or stupidity of the stricken person, disease strikes people regardless of their activities. And though afflictions that have clear and obvious causes, as cuts or snake bites, are also thought to be the vengeance of the supernaturals associated with the ani- mals, disease is caused by sorcerers. All sorcerers are shamans who consciously wish to hurt their fellow men. The sorcerer causes disease by modeling a variety of objects and blowing smoke upon them to give them life. The evil objects, called causi, are then wafted off on the wind to wander through the air until they en- counter some human. Invisible to ordinary people, they enter the body and cause illness. The particular illness depends upon the material out of which the caus'i was modeled and the shape given it by the sorcerer. Two distinct processes are required for the proper cure of illness. First the causi is extracted from the sick person's body by the shaman, and he then prescribes certain herbal remedies to repair the damage caused by it. The first part of the cure is uniform for all causi; the herbal remedy prescribed is, however, specific for the malady. The process of extracting a causi is extremely simple. The sick person strips his or her clothes from the part of the body where the pain is localized and sits or lies on the ground. The treatment most often takes place in the patient's dwelling, but the shaman sometimes receives the ill in the men's house. After the patient is prepared, the shaman takes one of his large cigarettes, which are wrapped in a thin layer of the inner bark of the tauari tree, and commences to smoke. As he smokes he crouches over the sick person and intently stares at his body. The shaman does not inhale or swallow excessive amounts of smoke, and narcotic effects are specifically denied. Rather, the smoke heightens his extra-visual ability 32 Murphy: Mundurucui Religion to see the causi within the patient's body, and he is considered to be in a state of intense concentration. During this period the many observers of the cure fall silent, and even the children are hushed. After completing his examination and identifi- cation of the causi lodged within the patient's body, the shaman blows clouds of smoke over him. This is an essential part of the cure, for the tobacco smoke is be- lieved to dislodge the causi' from its place deep within the sick person and to bring it nearer to the surface, from where it can be easily extracted. Once the shaman has accomplished this end, he commences to massage the patient's body, stroking inward toward the point where the pain is localized. At the completion of the mas- saging the causi is believed to be directly below the skin and just above the source of pain. The shaman quickly applies his mouth to this point and sucks noisily at the patient's skin. He then draws away and deftly removes the cau'i from his mouth, into which he has supposedly sucked it, and holds it out in his open palm for all to observe. He examines it with great care for some time and throws it into a fire, where it is thought to be completely destroyed. The object exhibited by the shaman is usually a small piece of wood or the pit of a palm fruit. The sleight of hand in- volved apparently requires no great ingenuity, but everybody is firmly convinced that the shaman has really extracted an evil object from the patient. I was un- able to induce any shaman to reveal the innermost secrets of his art, but I am con- vinced that the shaman, too, believes that he extracts causi, elusive thouigh his reasoning may be. The sole deviation from the above procedure occurs during the extraction of a very large and dangerous causi. The shaman localizes the object and brings it to the surface of the body in the usual manner, but he extracts it with a quick, grabbing motion of the hand. The causi is visible to the shaman both when flying freely through the air and when lodged in the patient's body. Ordinary persons can see it only after the shaman has extracted it. There are ten reported varieties of causi, each of which represents a type of disease recognized by the Mundurucui. The causi is believed to wreak considerable damage while in the sick person, and its extraction and destruction is not sufficient for a full recovery. This can only be through the application of herbal remedies, each of which is a specific for a certain type of causi. These medicines are thought by the Munduructu to be either "hot" or "cold"; the causi is believed to cause considerable internal bleeding, and hot medicines remove this old blood from the body, and on the other hand, cold medicines re- duce fever and alleviate pain. The following is a list of the ten varieties of disease recognized by the Mun- durucui and a description of the causi believed to cause each and the medicinals used to repair their damage. 1. Dau (leg) pip' (pain), or pain in the leg, is caused by a causi carved in the shape of a sting ray and made from its tail. This causi lies on the floor in the door- ways of houses and waits for an unwary person to step on it. Although it causes intense pains in the leg, its effects are not fatal. To cure the aftereffects of dau 33 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. pipt, the shaman heats the leaves of a tracua vine over a fire and applies them to the center of the pain. This poultice, despite being heated, is considered a cold remedy. 2. Ipsa pipi, or pain in the stomach, is instigated by a caucsi that is made from a bitter manioc tuber or a piece of soap. When the object is made from soap it causes a mild stomach-ache, but when made from bitter manioc the poison is believed capable of killing the victim. Three varieties of cold medicine are used to cure the aftereffects of this illness. An unidentified species of potato is grated in water, and part of the mixture is drunk while the rest is poured over the patient's stom- ach. Another remedy uses a few scrapings from the castanha de arara mixed in water and taken both externally and internally. Also, the root of the jambiu plant is beaten into a half-gourd of water and drunk. 3. Eksabi pipi, pain in the back, differs from the other ailments in that it is caused by a causi that is actually a living bird. This bird, a species of curuja da noite, can be heard at night, but is never seen. When it flies directly above the house, the inhabitants are in danger of being afflicted with backache. A cold rem- edy for backache consists of a paste of grated ginger root which is applied to the affected parts. Another medicine is made in a similar fashion from the root of an unidentified shrub. 4. The material and form of the causi that causes aiinsabi pipi, or pain in the side, was not known by my informants, although five remedies were listed as effective in its cure. The following three are cold medicines. Pau de candeia is grated into boiling water and the compound drunk while still very hot. A broth is also made from envira de cacao, and grated deer antler is mixed with cold water and used both internally and externally. Hot medicines include a xoultice of heated jamar'u leaf and a broth made of the ashes of kamaiu cane mixed in hot water. 5. The common cold is called ocho ochd, an onomatopoetic word, and is believed to be caused by a causi which consists of a bit of talcum powder rolled in paper. Four cold remedies include hot drinks made with lemon, ginger root, the root of an unidentified shrub, and the sap from a tree. The only hot remedy known is made by boiling mel de chupe and taking it internally. 6. The causi that causes nunchai pipi, or pain in the uterus, is made from the root of an unidentified tree. Menstrual pains are not believed to be caused by this object, nor is it thought to cause labor pains. A hot medicine, used to free the woman of the old blood from the intra-uterine bleeding caused by this cauti, is made by cutting up the root of a paxiuba palm and boiling it in water. Some of this preparation is administered internally, and the remainder is placed in a pot below the woman's hammock. The rising vapors are believed to aid in the cure. Ashes of the paxiuba palm are also mixed in water and drunk. 7. Paiat, or fever, generally accompanies stomach-ache, according to inform- ants. Actually, such a concurrence of the two afflictions occurs during an attack of chronic malaria, and the stomach-ache is, more accurately, a pain in the liver. Two cold remedies are used to reduce the fever. The first is made by grating a 34 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion vine in hot water and applying the mixture to the stomach. The other consists of the trunks of very young buriti palms crushed in water. Part of this mixture is drunk, and the rest is applied externally to the torso of the sick person. 8. Ok pip?", or intestinal pain, is caused by the same caus.i as ipsa pipti, or stom- ach-ache. However, the term ok pips is in reality reserved for dysentery, for it is always accompanied by severe diarrhea. The medicines used for stomach pains are considered effective in the relief of intestinal pains also, but two additional cold remedies are used as specifics for the diarrhea. The roots of a certain shrub are boiled in water, part of which is taken internally and the rest allowed to steam below the hammock. The leaves of this shrub are also applied to the abdomen as a poultice. The same use is made of the leaves of the muririu page, a water plant. The local Brazilians also boil the leaves of this plant and place the steaming pot below the hammock of a bewitched person. The vapors are believed to cause an evil object to fall out of the victim's body. 9. A pip?, or headache, is treated by mixing envira de castanheira in water and applying the solution to the head. Unripe Brazil nuts are also grated into water and similarly applied. Both remedies are considered cold. The nature of the catusi that causes headache was not known by the informants interviewed. 10. The tenth and last ailment is a three-stage sickness generally known by the name applied to its first stage, called ujewais. In this primary phase, the afflicted man or woman becomes unhappy and listless and eats mud, soap, and other inedible substances. The symtoms increase in severity in the next stage, or yauhu'(, and the victim becomes thin, yellow, and "bloodless." Finally, the patient passes into the state known as taubokat, at the end of which he usually dies. During the final illness, the person's soul sometimes becomes one of the dreaded wandering souls. The symptoms are descriptive of the chronic forms of a number of illnesses, such as malaria, dysentery, and jaundice. The Mundurucui attribute it to a cauqsi made of roasted earthworms rolled into a ball and spread in the air. No remedies were known. A person can be afflicted by more than one cals'i at a time, and the shaman often recommends a number of herbal preparations. The shaman does not him- self administer these remedies, but instructs the kinsmen of the sick person in their use. They then collect the proper herbs and apply them. The techniques used by the Mundurucui shaman are so widely distributed throughout eastern South America that any attempt to trace their provenience would be overly lengthy. The shaman's use of tobacco smoke and the techniques of sucking and massage are almost universal in the Amazon area. Of equally wide distribution are the use of herbs and the various methods of applying them. In- fusions, external applications, and steam baths are, as Lowie indicates,7 known among a number of tribes of the region. One aspect of Munduruciu herbal medicine worthy of further discussion is the division of remedies into hot and cold categories. This distinction is made through- out most of Latin America with regard to both medicines and food. The Miun- 7Lowie, 1948, pp. 51-52. 35 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. durucut, however, do not classify their foods in this manner, suggesting that the concept was perhaps borrowed from their Brazilian neighbors together with certain medicinal recipes. Furthermore, although the list of diseases and remedies is undoubtedly incomplete, it is significant that only twenty-four herbal medi- cines were reported. A much longer list could be collected among rural Brazilians of the area, who also use most of the same herbs employed by the Mundurucu'.8 This leads immediately to the question of whether the civilized inhabitants of the Amazon borrowed the medicinal preparations from the Indians or whether dif- fusion operated in the reverse direction. Although the use of herbs by the Indian population of the Amazon is undoubtedly a pre-Columbian practice, and although diffusion probably operated in both directions, it is very possible that the'greatest borrowing was by the Indians. This is probably true for the Mundurucui, al- though we cannot be so certain for the first Indian groups encountered by the Portuguese. The herbal knowledge of these coastal tribes is, of course, crucial to the question. The Mundurucui theory of disease exists side-by-side with certain sound empiri- cal observations on the subject. They are well aware that epidemics are contracted through contact with white people. For example, when either my wife or I caught a cold, the Mundurucui avoided close proximity to us. Even on those occasions when we fell ill after an epidemic had already developed in the village, they were in- clined to blame us. Also, they recognized that residence along waterways or near swamps was often accompanied by fevers (malaria), and they knew that the savannah villages were therefore more salubrious. Both contagion and the un- healthfulness of certain locales were loosely connected with the prevalence of the sorcerer's evil objects, or caus'i, despite the contradiction implied. However, in this as in many other lines of thought, the Mundurucui do not push logic to its con- clusion, for the roots of the supernatural concepts are social and not intellectual. The empirical observations and supernatural concepts coexisted with little effort on the part of the Mundurucut to integrate them, if, indeed, they were aware of the mutual antipathy of the two. Moreover, despite their supernatural explanation of disease, the Mundurucui freely sought the rational medication, that we provided. Every day, a number of people came to our house for treatment, some from other villages; in only a very few cases did we have to seek out the sick and persuade them to accept our aid. Our experience in this matter was not unique, for both the mission and the Indian Post dispensed large quantities of medicine to Mundurucui patients. Not even the shamans resisted treatment; many were, in fact, our most faithful patients. There are a number of reasons for this lack of resistance to Western medicine by the Mundurucu'. Through long contact with the whites, they had come to rec- ognize the efficacy of the white man's medicines, especially in the treatment of diseases they know to be associated with the civilized population. Some even knew the names of specific remedies; I had the unusual experience of having a tattooed, seminude Indian ask me for "sulfa." 8 Note also the many herbal remedies reported by Wagley (1953, pp. 241-252) from the Ama- zon River town of Ita. 36 This receptivity has, in part, been communicated to them by the whites. The Brazilian population of the near-by Tapajos River places high value upon modern medicines, despite their accompanying belief in witchcraft, their use of herbs, and occasional resort to shamanism. Wherever we traveled, we were continually visited by sick or wounded people. The fact that we were not medical practitioners did not affect our position as curers. It was sufficient that we were American scien- tists and must, therefore, possess adequate knowledge and equipment to cure almost any disease. Penicillin was endowed with quasi-magical qualities by the backwoods Brazilians, and they used it to cure backaches, sprains, and intestinal ailments, as well as various types of infection. These attitudes have diffused to the Mundurucui, and our medicines were accorded high prestige by them. But, more importantly, Western medicines accorded with their own techniques for the treatment of disease. They placed the use of aspirin, sulfa, and other drugs in the same category as their own herbal remedies, and believed that they repaired the damage done by the evil objects, or causi, of the sorcerer. Thus, they would go first to the shaman to have the intrusive object removed and then to us for medication; neither by itself was considered sufficient for a complete cure. The accommodation of rational medication to aboriginal curing techniques furthered Mundurucui acceptance of Western medicine more than did the example and prestige of the white man. For example, the Mundurucui were convinced that a feverish person should be made cool. The result of this erroneous, albeit clear and simple, logic was that the sick took frequent baths in cold streams and lay upon the cool floors of their houses rather than in their hammocks. We, and the priests for many years before, repeatedly cautioned them against this practice, but our words went completely unheeded. The result was that a person afflicted with slight cold and fever soon developed a violent grippe. The Mundurucu' were not impressed by the clear association between bathing and a worsened condition, for the seriousness of an illness was believed to be a direct function of the type and strength of the causi that caused it. Similarly, we had very little success in convincing the Mundurucui of the savannah villages that they could prevent malaria by purchasing mosquito nets and sleeping in them during their summer stay on the banks of the large streams. Whether our explanation that the causi that caused fever were afraid of mosquito netting was ultimately of some influence could not be ascertained. Needless to say, we were not looked upon as authorities on caust. The techniques used to cure attacks by the animal spirits or by the Yurupari are somewhat different from the remedies for causi. Although both involve the extraction of an intrusive object from the patient's body, different methods are used. Also, no herbal treatments are used to right the damage done by these supernaturals. The malignant stone cast by the Yurupart into its victim is considered far too dangerous to be sucked out by the shaman. Special precautions must be taken during a cure, and shamans are truly apprehensive while treating an afflicted person. The following case of a Yurupari attack will perhaps illustrate Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 37 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. this more vividly than could a generalized description. On this occasion, Maria, the wife of the shaman Vicente, had chosen the unpropitious hour of nightfall to walk on the path behind her house. She returned in a few moments shouting and screaming, her body doubled over with tremendous stomach pains. Her husband, Vicente, diagnosed her affliction as caused by Yurupari attack, an analysis that followed quite naturally from the location and sudden violence of her pains and from the time and place of their onset. Vicente, although the strongest shaman in the village, did not feel able to cope with the Yurupari him- self, and he called in three other shamans who were residing in the village at that time. A lone shaman can deal adequately with caus'i, but the Mundurucui usually try to gather as many practitioners as possible when the Yurupari attacks. When all had assembled, Antonio, one of the assisting shamans, blew smoke on the sick woman and attempted unsuccessfully to extract the object by the common means of massaging the affected part and pushing it from the body with a squeezing motion of the hands. But he was forced to stop, for the malignant power of the Yurupari was already causing pains in his arms. Vicente then took Antonio's place, with somewhat greater success. He, also, avoided direct physical contact with the stone, and massaged his wife's body and squeezed the objects out. He extracted a total of three stones. The first flew from her body into the air and directed itself toward the floor of the house, where the stones usually lodge themselves after extraction. But the stone swerved in mid-flight to avoid a bow, of which it was afraid, and escaped through a hole in the wall. The second, and largest, emerged from the woman's body and flew into the dirt floor near the wall of the house. The third stone was small, and Vicente was able to catch it with a wad of charred cotton as it came out of his wife's stomach. He dropped the stone and cotton in a fire that had been built in front of the doorway. The shamans then turned to the problem of destroying the stone that had entered the floor of the house. While Antonio stood guard at one door, Vicente watched the other to make sure that the evil object did not escape. Another shaman, Jose, then pounded the end of a bow along the ground, driving the malignant object before it. When it was directly below the fire, he lifted the end of the bow quickly, and the stone was lifted into the blaze. The stones destroyed, Vicente sucked at various parts of his wife's body to rearrange the internal organs and cleanse the damaged areas. At the conclusion of the treatment, his wife rested comfortably and no longer felt pain. But both Vicente and Antonio then began to feel ill owing to proximity to the hyper- malignant objects. The other shamans then proceeded to cure them by sucking the parts of the body where the pain was localized. The emotional tone of both shamans and witnesses during a Yuruparn cure is quite different from that prevailing in a treatment for caus'i. The latter per- formances are characterized by a quiet interest on the part of the audience; the shaman is believed to be in full command of the situation and fear is minimal. But when one of the Yurupart's stones is being withdrawn from an afflicted person, both shamans and audience are nervous and tense. A number of shamans must be called upon to battle the evil, but despite their numbers the practitioners 38 are still believed to be in great danger. The stone cannot be touched; small ones can be plucked from the patient's body or from the ground with a piece of charred cotton, but large stones are allowed to enter the ground and are then safely driven into a fire with the tip of a bow. The yakip and wirakua sent by the souls of the game animals or by their spirit mothers cannot be touched either, but they are not considered as dangerous as the stones of the Yurupari. To extract these malignant objects, the shaman, working alone, blows smoke upon the patient and massages his body. He then flicks the object out of the body with a mutuim feather upon which he has blown tobacco smoke. No attempt is made to catch and destroy the object, for this would further anger the spirits of the game. These cures are usually only temporarily efficacious, and other yaktp or wirakua frequently strike the victim anew after his cure. In addition to their supernatural curing techniques, most shamans are quite skilled in the secular treatment of broken bones, dislocated muscles, and similar ills. On one occasion, my wife was in acute discomfort from a strained muscle in her back. The shaman instructed her to lie face downward across a hammock, and our interpreter was told to hold her legs while I maintained a firm grip on her shoulders. He then probed the musculature in the small of her back with his fingertips. Although she complained only of a generalized backache, he apparently believed that the source of the trouble was to be found in this area. When the shaman found the difficulty, he ordered the interpreter to pull on her left leg at his command. He then pressed gently but firmly into the musculature with his two thumbs and issued the order. The treatment was quite effective, for his patient's pain was relieved immediately. The preceding account represents a fairly comprehensive description of Mundurucu maladies and their treatment. But a final affliction recognized by the Munduruciu can be classified neither as illness nor wound. The concept of ibikoium is best translated as bad luck and is found widely distributed throughout the Amazon under the designation of panema. Ibikoium affects only men and becomes evident when a man hunts for several days without killing any game or prowls continually about the underbrush near the village without encounter- ing a woman. So far as could be ascertained, bad luck is not caused by super- naturals. It strikes only men who do not rub their bodies daily after bathing with the ground root of a species of forest vine. The fragrance of this root lingers about the person and is thought to attract game animals and women. To insure good luck fully in one's pursuits, it is also believed necessary occasion- ally to drink sufficient quantities of this root mixed in water to induce vomiting. Most men undergo this purification process once or twice a year. SHAMANISM AND SPIRITS Although Mundurucui shamans are not thought to control and use particular spirits, they are believed to be in intimate contact with the supernatural world. The shamans' souls are said to have the ability to travel to the afterworlds and to the underworld of the Kikeriuwat, and they alone among the Mundurucui can Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 39 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. see and speak to certain supernatural beings. This power is of great importance to Mundurucui society, for the economic well-being of the community is believed to depend upon the proper propitiation of the spirit mothers of the game. Annual ceremonies were formerly held for this purpose, and the shaman had an important role in these rites. But the shaman was also responsible for pleasing the mothers of the game by 'feeding' them throughout the year. The latter required only the co6peration of other shamans and was of short duration and limited participation. Today, say informants, the spirit mothers are no longer fed because of the lack of sufficiently strong shamans. The Mundurucui believe that hunting is cor- respondingly poorer than in the old days and life less abundant. The occasions when he fed the putcha si, or mother of the game, constitute the only instances when the shaman went into a trance. A number of shamans were necessary for this performance. The strongest of them was usually selected to feed the putcha 'i, and he prepared himself by magically inserting the three instruments known as naneh into his body. One was placed in the back of the neck and two others in the back of either knee. The shaman then lay in his hammock in the men's house and was covered with a blanket of buriti palm leaves. The other shamans lit large cigarettes rolled in tauarl bark and, inserting the lighted ends in their mouths, blew dense clouds of tobacco smoke into the hammock. Fortified by the naneh in his body and intoxicated by the smoke, the shaman fell into an extraordinary state in which he was able to see the super- naturals clearly. He then leaped out of the hammock, seized a bowl of miiri (sweet manioc gruel), and, led by his boromb6, another instrument, dashed off to feed the putcha si. He ran a short distance outside the village and there plunged into a hole in the ground which only he could see. He then traveled underground, shouting loudly in his passage, and emerged from another hole some distance beyond, from which point he continued his journey on the surface. The shaman visited the various manifestations of the putcha i'i and fed miri to all of them. He then selected the one that pleased him most and brought it back to one of the deep springs near his village, where its influence would attract game animals. The shaman returned to his village by the same route used on his outward journey. When he arrived back in the men's house, his waiting fellow shamans seized him and immediately extracted the three nanehs, lest their power turn him into an animal. They then blew tobacco smoke on his body and washed and dried him, thus bringing him out of his dangerous state. Only the strongest of shamans could feed the putcha si personally. Weaker ones sent their naneh out alone to call the putcha si together in the Land of the Game, and the shaman's soul went there to feed them. A shaman whose wife was pregnant could not travel under the ground, for the earth would close over him and trap him. One shaman related that this had once happened to a man, and the other shamans dug him out just in time. The shaman also has the power to 'manufacture' the mother of the peccary (daje s'i) and the mother of the tapir (biu si). The mother of the tapir is made by killing a pregnant tapir and extracting the fetus, which is brought back 40 to the men's house rolled in leaves and then slowly toasted and dried out over a fire. Tobacco smoke is blown upon it, and sweet manioc broth is occasionally poured upon it to please and feed it. The dried fetus is believed to become trans- formed in time into a baby tapir containing the mother of the tapir, and the shaman places it near one of the pools at the headwaters of the streams. Even weaker shamans can make the biu s'i, and any pregnant tapir serves this purpose. Although the manufacture of a biu si was never witnessed during our residence among the Mundurucui, I was able to observe the preparation of a mother of the peccary in the savannah village of Cabrua. On this day, the hunters had chased a band of peccary that had passed close to the village. The band, however, had a fair head start on the hunters and escaped, leaving a half-grown member behind. The dogs cornered the animal in a bush, and the hunters were about to capture it as a pet when the shaman arrived on the scene. He ordered the men and their dogs to stand back while he smoked intently and concentrated his gaze upon the animal. He then announced that the young peccary was carrying the mother of the peccary, or daje s'i, within its body. As the news spread, all the villagers came out to gaze upon the animal and to admire its "beauty," evidently seeking thereby to gratify the spirit. The shaman then grabbed the squealing peccary and sat upon it, while another shaman secured it by its snout. A third shaman pulled out the animal's eyebrows and some hair from its back and released it unharmed. The first shaman then brought the hairs back to the trumpet chamber adjoining the men's house and placed them inside the hollow limb of a buiriti palm. Every day thereafter he blew smoke upon his creation and poured a sweet manioc drink over it. After a period of this treatment it was believed that the hairs would turn into a young peccary with the mother of the peccary inside it. The animal would similarly be carried to one of the deep pools in the neighborhood and would attract herds of peccary. Strong shamans, it was believed, could make the daje si from the hairs of any peccary, but weaker practitioners, as in this instance, had to select an animal that already had a daje s.i within it. OTHER FUNCTIONS OF THE SHAMAN In addition to his curing activities and his role in the propitiation of the spirit mothers, the shaman performs a variety of lesser duties. When the village is moved to a new locale every ten years or so, the shaman must inspect the site selected. He ascertains if there are many fever-producing caus"i in the neighbor- hood, and he looks also for signs of the Yurupari and other malignant beings. These malevolent forces can also exist below the surface of the ground, and the shaman must send his naneh to inspect the earth below the proposed village site. After the instrument has completed its investigation, it returns to the shaman and tells him of its discoveries. The shaman, through another of his instruments, the ibobot, can also discover lost persons and lost or stolen objects. He blows smoke upon the ib6bot-a small piece of cane-and sends it upon its mission. In the case of a stolen object,9 the 9 Theft is extremely rare among the Mundurucu and probably owes its occasional occurrence to the contemporary acquisition of trade goods. Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 41 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. instrument follows the thief's tracks and then comes back and reveals his identity and location to the shaman. If the object is merely lost, the ibobot searches for it and then informs the shaman where it is to be found. Hunters occasionally lose their way in the forest, and their relatives immedi- ately resort to the shaman to find them. The shaman's instrument locates the lost person and then returns to tell the shaman whether he is alive and homeward bound on the proper trail. If the person is still wandering aimlessly, the ib6bat frequently nudges him in the right direction or enters his body and leads him home. Only the shaman can hear the voice of the ibobbt; his dialogues with the instrument are inaudible to others. One informant reported that in the old days the most powerful shamans of the tribe were able to turn people temporarily into animals. The Mundurucui in those times performed a ceremony called the Duparip, which took place over a three-year period. As a part of this ceremony, the three most powerful shamans participating allowed their hair to grow to their shoulders and were believed able to turn the bizorro, an insect, into the tapir and men into the tapir or deer. Nobody was able to see them perform these acts; the transformed men simply disappeared. It was considered extremely dangerous to be thus selected by these powerful shamans, because the men, in the guise of tapirs and deer, were frequently chased by the dogs and could be killed. However, the shamans recognized the slain animals as their own creations and proceeded to change them back to men. They took out the heart and blood, placing them on the ground and covering the pile with leaves, and then blew tobacco smoke upon it and stamped upon the ground; the man emerged from under the leaves alive and intact. It is said that men who had undergone this experience were considered especially sacrosanct because of their former membership in the animal world, and their presence was especially valued at the ceremonies connected with the animal spirits. Shamans possessing the power to assume this special ceremonial role were always married to equally strong female shamans. These women were able to transform other women into animals during the Duparip ceremony and are said to have been capable of transforming a Brazil-nut husk with a length of vine inside it into a cutia. Finally, some shamans engage in the practice of making a woman into a yapo, or wanton. No respectable shaman would perform such an act, however, and those who use their powers for such disreputable ends are called mamui keren, or bad or foolish shamans. Reprehensible though this may be to the Mundurucu', the mamu keren is not to be classed with the ibakaipat, or sorcerer, who is believed to be a dire threat to society. He causes disease and death, whereas the mamu' keren merely converts women into nymphomaniacs, a practice that is rather ambivalently considered both disgraceful and highly amusing by the Mundurucui men. The yapa indiscriminately copulates with all men who desire her. Characteristi- cally, she does not smile modestly in the presence of the men, but grins and laughs 42 in a manner thought to be quite lewd and suggestive. The other women look upon the yapo as a threat to their own marital happiness, but blame the men for her condition. Any sufficiently disreputable and irreverent shaman can make a yapo of a woman whom he desires. But, unlike love magic in most societies, once he creates her he must be prepared to share her with others, for his magic makes her want any and all men. To make a yapo the shaman prepares a paste of sorva sap and urucui and mixes it thoroughly with the roasted and powdered body of the uirapurui bird. Smoke is blown upon the preparation and it is magically sent into the body of the unsuspecting woman. Another preparation is made with a piece of uirapuru meat, and a third is made by mixing brilliantine with either the brains of the boa boa bird or of the matrinchao fish. The use of the uirapurui as a love charm or symbol is widespread in the Amazon region, especially among Tupian groups. The Mundurucui believe it to be an enchanted bird and explain that, as the other birds of the forest follow the uirapurui, so also will the men follow a woman who has been bewitched with a charm made from its body. The yapo is not physically damaged by the spell cast over her by the shaman. She appears happy and laughs constantly; her appetite for men is insatiable, but she enjoys herself thoroughly when in their company. However, her condition is viewed with disfavor by the other women, and she becomes marginal to female society. Also, she soon becomes the subject of widespread gossip and ridicule, both of which are unendurable to a Mundurucu'. For these reasons, the yapo generally goes to the shaman to be cured. He extracts the charm by the same techniques used to take out causi and then recommends a preparation made of sorva sap and the root of a tree near which a jaguar has slept or rolled about. The woman applies this preparation to her face and body until she feels that she has been completely cured. The remedy is considered to be effective in keeping men away as it partakes of the qualities of the jaguar, which is considered an ugly and repulsive animal by the Mundurucui. The treatment is not always effective. A young woman of the village of Cabrua went to the shaman to be cured of her condition. During the following days a marked change was noted in her deportment. She smiled demurely behind her hand and no longer fixed the men with direct and inviting glances. But as the days passed, she returned slowly to her old ways and was soon meeting the men in the underbrush surrounding the village. When the shaman who had performed the cure was asked why she behaved in this manner, he shrugged and replied, "Sometimes the treatment works, and sometimes it does not." SORCERY When his power is used for socially approved purposes, the shaman is accorded the respect due a major benefactor of the community. But his power can be used for evil ends, and witchcraft is invariably believed to emanate from shamans gone bad. The sorcerer or ibikaipat is thought by the Mundurucui to engage in his nefarious practices with conscious and deliberate intent. All shamans have Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 43 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. knowledge of the techniques of witchcraft, and the transformation of the shaman into a sorcerer requires only his personal motivation. He is not thought to practice witchcraft with limited goals in mind; once he begins to practice black magic, he continues until apprehended and executed. The sorcerer usually becomes one because, as the Mundurucui say, "he is angry at everybody" or, less commonly, because he has a grievance against some par- ticular person. He never practices his art on behalf of another person. His chief means of wreaking harm upon his fellowman is through the creation of the previously described, disease-causing cawsi. He is believed to select an isolated place in the forest to which he frequently repairs to manufacture the intrusive objects. These are spread broadcast on the wind and attack those people with whom they come into contact. Consistent with the belief that the sorcerer has a hostile attitude toward all his fellowmen, the Mundurucui claim that the causi is not usually directed at particular people or at the sorcerer's own village. In actual practice, however, when disease strikes the people of a village a fellow villager possessing shamanistic power is almost invariably suspected. But evidence suggested that the causi is seldom used against particular persons toward whom the sorcerer has some grievance. One informant stated that "the sorcerer's aim is not that good." And it was also specifically disavowed that the causi attack the sorcerer's kinsmen. When the sorcerer wishes to destroy selected individuals, he usually does so through his power of sending supernatural jaguars against them. These creatures can be made by the shaman by blowing smoke upon the teeth and claws of a dead jaguar. Under ordinary circumstances, the jaguars cannot be seen, but they are thought to become visible to the victim when about to attack. The jaguars act under the instruction of the sorcerer, who frequently changes himself into one and "leads his pack like a hunter leads his dogs." He often attacks persons in distant villages by the expedient of placing a band of rubber about his ankles and magically transporting himself almost instantaneously over long distances. He then summons his so-called pets by wiggling his fingers, and they attack their chosen victim. When their work is done, the sorcerer dissolves his jaguars and returns through the air to his own village. So great is his speed that his neighbors seldom note his momentary absence. In other instances, the sorcerer's jaguars lurk in the vicinity of his village and attack anybody who has the misfortune to encounter them in an isolated place, for like the Yurupari and the asik the jaguars generally strike only at the solitary. They are thought to pounce upon their victims and magically to eat out their intestines. These attacks are invariably fatal. The victim is usually able to return, pale and vomiting, to his village, but dies a short time later Three cases of jaguar attacks will be discussed below to illustrate the vividness of belief in their existence and to document the techniques and purposes of their manipulation. A middle-aged Munduruciu shaman, whose Portuguese name is Bertino, related a frightening experience that he had undergone when a young man. A fellow shaman joined Bertino one day and suggested that they go into 44 Murphy: Mundurucui Religion the forest to hunt. The older man then invited him to sit down and rest and talk. "Are you angry at somebody, younger brother?" he inquired. When Bertino denied any ill feelings toward another, the shaman bluntly said, "You must be. Come join me in sorcery." Bertino resisted his entreaties and told him, "I am not angry at anybody, and I do not want to harm others. Before my father died, he said to me, 'Use your knowledge to cure and to feed the putcha s'i and for other good things. Do not use it to hurt another.' And also," continued Bertino, "I do not want to be killed by my own people." But the older shaman, not dis- suaded, brushed his hand down his own arm and produced a caus'i to impress Bertino. He then waved his fingers in the air and twenty hideous jaguars sur- rounded Bertino, snarling and waving their tails. "Take ten for yourself, and I will take the other ten," invited the sorcerer. Bertino was paralyzed with fright, but he still refused to practice witchcraft. "Perhaps you would prefer to be killed in a war," suggested the other. Bertino replied, "I would rather be killed by the enemy than by my own people." Having failed in his purpose, the sorcerer threatened to kill Bertino. He apparently attempted to do so on one occasion, said my informant, for he was shortly thereafter attacked by a causi while fishing. This sorcerer was finally killed by his fellow Mundurucu, and his brother was later slain as a suspected witch, also. The sorcerer's jaguars emit a whistling sound much like that of the Yurupari. A long time ago a shaman who was hunting in the woods climbed a fruit tree and, while gathering the fruit high in the branches, heard a whistling noise that resembled the cry of the blue nambu bird. The shaman knew this to be the signal of the jaguar, but when he looked down from his lofty perch, he saw another hunter looking upward in search of what he believed to be a bird. The whistling grew closer, and the jaguars emerged from the brush. They carried leaves in their jaws, which they jammed into the mouth of the victim to prevent outcry before "eating his intestines." The jaguars departed, and the shaman descended from the tree and returned to his village. A short time later the victim of the jaguars arrived in the village, feverish and vomiting. The shaman was asked to treat him, but, having witnessed the attack, he turned to another shaman and said, "You treat the sick man. It was you who ate him." The stricken man died, and the men of the village executed the accused sorcerer. The following case of jaguar sorcery is of special interest since it describes an attack of one brother upon another. These occurrences are rare in Munduruciui society, but they serve to further highlight the strong, latent sibling rivalry that appears clearly in the mythology and folklore. The incident, which was said to have occurred within the last generation, also documents techniques by which one can defend himself against the jaguars and destroy the sorcerer who is traveling in the guise of these creatures. Two brothers, who had inherited shamanistic power from their father, were at odds because one wanted the wife of the other. The jealous brother decided to kill the husband by turning himself into a jaguar and eating him. The brothers 45 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. lived in different villages, but the sorcerer leaped the distance to his brother's village and stalked him in the forest. The married brother heard the approaching whistle of the jaguar and backtracked and lay in wait for it. When it appeared, he shot the creature in the head, the only vulnerable point in its body, and thus killed it. He then cut the jaguar's throat, thrust his hand into its body, and dragged out its liver. He mixed the liver with gunpowder and left it on the trail. After he returned home, a group of men from his brother's village arrived with the intent of killing him. The sorcerer, whose jaguar form had been slain, had returned to his village sick and had accused his brother of bewitching him. The brother explained that he had merely defended himself against his own brother, who was the real sorcerer. The assembled men believed him, and the guilty brother wasted away and died. Cases of jaguar sorcery were extremely common among the Mundurucu'. During our residence with them, one of the residents of the mission was suspected of making and spreading causi and turning into a jaguar at night. It was further believed that he had created other jaguars that were constantly lurking behind his house. But the presence of the priests prevented the Mundurucui residing at the mission from killing the suspected man, and they merely avoided his person and his dwelling. Even the powerful shaman who lived in the mission village had resolved to move away rather than live near such a dangerous per- .sonality. Although all disease is believed to be caused by witchcraft, a single occurrence of illness within a community does not generally provoke direct action against an accused sorcerer. When, however, sickness becomes rife within a village, and especially when deaths result, the responsible sorcerer is sought out and killed. The practice of destroying a witch is resorted to only when the community is faced by a major threat, and the inevitability of occasional illness is usually rationalized as owing to stray causi. In spite of this inconsistency, the simple formula which attributes disease to witchcraft, and therefore calls for the death of the sorcerer, cannot be more rigorously applied if shamanism is to continue. Even under this modified application of the rule, the shaman's position is most precarious. One or two shamans are executed as sorcerers during an average year, and their numbers are steadily dwindling. Those shamans who are fortunate enough to escape accusation are visibly insecure, especially when the rainy season reunites people in their villages and the annual cycle of colds and epidemic diseases begin. This constant fear induces many shamans to leave their villages and to migrate to the vicinity of the Brazilian population. As an example, there were three shamans in the village of Cabrua, one of whom rarely practiced for fear of accusation. He had been suspected of sorcery once before and had escaped retribution only because of membership in the strong family of the chief. The numerical strength and influence of his family was, however, his only protection from execution, for one need not actively practice shamanism to be accused of sorcery. The possession of the latent hereditary power of the shaman suffices 46 to establish eligibility for suspicion. Both of the two active shamans had resolved to move away from Cabrua and to dwell in the isolation of their rubber avenues. But neither would admit to fear of being accused of sorcery. One claimed that he wished to reside with his own kin although he was already living, as is con- sidered proper, with his wife's relatives in Cabrua. The other said that he would find food more abundant at his rubber avenue locale. Such minor subterfuges are common among the Mundurucui when queried on an unpleasant personal subject. In reality, both shamans knew that several years had passed since the last sorcery execution in Cabrua, and neither wished to be present for the next. Also, as soon as one had made the decision to leave, the other had no choice but to follow. To be the only available suspect in the village was not a very promising prospect. The men of a village afflicted with a great deal of illness usually seek out the most powerful shaman available and request that he not only attempt to cure the sick, but destroy the causi that infect the village. He is also expected to use his great powers to detect and name the responsible sorcerer. Shamans are said to be capable of discovering and naming sorcerers at any time, but they do so only when requested by the villagers after a particularly severe epidemic or after a death from disease. Informed of the culprit, who is almost always a fellow villager, the men collectively decide to dispose of him and delegate the task to two or three of their number. But, as will be shown subsequently, such unanimity of communal decision is the ideal situation; sorcery killings are fre- quently stormy affairs among the contemporary Mundurucui. Only a few Mundurucui shamans are considered to be powerful enough to destroy the caus.i in a village and unerringly point out their creator, and it is, therefore, usually necessary to invite one from outside the community. After he has treated the sick, the visiting shaman proceeds to destroy the causi and other malignant spirits within the village. He first builds a small thatch hut, no larger than necessary to contain him and his instruments, and retreats to it for the day. His first act is to lean his five potponchap (spears), the previously described dagger-shaped instruments, against a piece of wood laid upon the floor of the hut. Next he places an ordinary steel lock in line with the potponchap. The lock is considered to be the most effective of all these instruments owing to the causi's fear of metal, and it is referred to as the leader of the others. The shaman then blows smoke twice on the potponchap, and they suddenly come to life and move from their leaning position to balance perfectly across the piece of wood. He blows smoke on them a third time, and the instruments then stand in a vertical position, their sharp points directed upward. Thus animated, the lock addresses the other instruments to suggest that they attack the shaman in order to test his strength. At this juncture the shaman says, "No. I only assembled you to kill causi, Yurupart, and any other evil thing that you can find. But be careful not to harm anything that belongs to the game animals." He then flips the piece of wood upon which the lock has been lying and sends it through the thatch into the open air. The five potponchap immediately fly after Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 47 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. it and spend the day spearing malignant spirits and objects. At nightfall, they reenter the shaman's hut, their points covered with the blood of these beings, and the practitioner asks them what variety of supernaturals they had destroyed and how many of each there were. After he has rid the village of the evils inhabiting it, the shaman divulges the name of the sorcerer, if he believes the situation to be sufficiently serious. The accused shaman is usually killed from ambush outside his village, although some are dispatched by direct assault within its confines. Since the sorcerer's soul is believed to be dangerous even after death, another shaman must extract and destroy it immediately after the execution. This is done by brushing it from its position in the back to the top of the head with a mutuim feather. When the soul emerges from the head, it is caught in a hollow bamboo tube and cast into a fire. Most studies of the subject conclude that sorcery executions are conducive to social cohesion, since they constitute a mechanism for the externalization of aggression and release of tension in a socially approved way, and also because they constitute a mechanism of social control. The Mundurucui data tend partly to substantiate this thesis, for sorcery executions are the only occasions on which intrasocietal violence is sanctioned. Interpersonal tensions are rife among the Mundurucui, but during our research no Mundurucui was even heard to raise his voice against another, and the occurrence of overt violence between men was specifically denied by informants. The social structure demanded complete harmony and co6peration; the latent and suppressed aggressions inevitable in such a situation were projected into the person of the sorcerer, and his execution was cathartic for the community. It will be shown, however, that the changing nature of this community has caused sorcery to be involved in its progressive and ongoing fission. In spite of the fact that sorcery was a perilous practice, resort to black magic served as a covert expression of generalized hostility for the shaman, as well. Although it is impossible to induce any Munduruciu to admit witchcraft, I am inclined to believe that it is actively practiced. The techniques by which causi are manufactured and propagated are well known to all shamans, and some informants claimed that sorcerers have revealed their activities to them, as in the case described above.10 There is no doubt that many, if not most, accused shamans are entirely innocent of the charges, but this, of course, does not alter the function of sorcerer execution as an escape valve for repressed aggression and hostility within the society. Aside from the suspicions, fear, and personal insecurity engendered by belief in witchery among prospective victims and shamans alike, the execution of sorcerers is frequently a source of factionalism within the society. During our residence in the village of Missao Velha, the community was split by an impending sorcery execution. Two years earlier, a powerful shaman had been called to the village to destroy the malignant objects believed to have caused an outbreak of 10 See pp. 44-45. 48 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion illness. This accomplished, the shaman informed the people of the identity of the sorcerer and implied that there was one more in the village whose name he would not reveal at that time. The accused man was duly slain, in spite of the objections of his house mate and brother-in-law. Sickness continued to trouble the village, and the shaman then revealed the name of the other guilty person. The latter, a young man named Antonio, was still present in Missao Velha during our sojourn. He remained somewhat aloof from the other men, but on occasion joined and even joked with some of those most intent upon killing him. However, the latter by no means included all the villagers. The brother-in-law of the shaman who had been killed two years before, Antonio's house mate, and the men of another of the eleven dwellings of the village opposed his execution or were at least in favor of allowing him to depart in peace. The faction that favored killing him was led by the son-in-law and the sons of the chief. The chief, himself, had rather ambivalent feelings about the case. He owed his position as chief to the mission priests, and he did not wish to bring down their inevitable wrath through another killing. But he believed in Antonio's guilt and refused to live in the same village with him. For a time he planned to shift his residence, but those plans were changed when he heard that Antonio intended to leave for the Tapajos River. We had lived in this village for several weeks before the conflict came to our attention, for there was no external indication of disturbance in the smooth flow of everyday life. Only gradually it became evident that feelings were quite bitter. The faction that favored killing Antonio regarded him with fear and loathing. Those who favored his cause did so not out of disbelief in sorcery, but because they distrusted the honesty of his persecutor's motives, and because they were weary of the interminable conflicts in the village. They knew, however, that their cause was hopeless, and all had decided to move at their earliest con- venience. If all carried out their intention, the village stood to lose 36 of its 90 people. Antonio's case was not unique; sorcery was almost invariably and deeply involved in the rapid fission process that was occurring in all Mundurucui villages. Sorcery killings probably produced such tensions even before Mundurucu? society had lost its cohesiveness. But there can be little doubt that the stronger patterns of leadership and interdependency of the past were more conducive to unanimity of action within the community on these occasions. Also, where complete concurrence could not be obtained, the dissident elements undoubtedly remained passive rather than create disharmony. The individual and the family depended completely upon larger groups for their continued existence, and, in any event, there existed no alternate residence pattern. Sorcery and executions will undoubtedly continue even after the larger social units of extended family and village have become completely fragmented. The priests of the Cururiu River mission have inveighed against belief in sorcery for more than forty years with little noticeable effect. Nor were they the first to attempt to suppress the practice. In 1876, Father Pelino de Castrovalva, the 49 50 - University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. founder of the mission of Bacabal on the Tapajos River, wrote to the governor of the province of Para the following words: Now one of the greatest superstitions with which I have had to battle has been that of witch- craft. What have I not said, what have I not done to wrest this pernicious superstition from their hearts? And how many deaths have they caused with these erroneous principles before the establishment of the mission? Despite all, when I begin to think that I have persuaded them to detest such an abominable vice, the first day that the missionary is missing they do the same things.t" 11 Cited in Tocantins, 1877, pp. 108-109. IV. CEREMONIALISM CONTEMPORARY CEREMONIALISM THERE EXISTS a deep and nostalgic awareness among the older Mundurucui that they are witnessing the disappearance of their way of life. It is felt acutely that most of the wise and learned men of the tribe are dead and that the remaining few will die within the near future. Only six traditional savannah villages remain and their populations are diminishing steadily. Those Mundurucui who have migrated to the banks of rivers to escape the problems of village life or to have easier access to their rubber avenues are rapidly losing the native culture. The young men who remain in the interior villages tend to be more conservative than the latter but still fail to transmit effectively even the attenuated body of tradition that they have learned. Although this dilemma is known and deplored by the Mundurucui, they view the process with considerable fatalism. Little attempt is made to reinstate that which has lapsed for they view this deterioration as progressive and irreversible; they fully expect to lose the balance of their culture. This realistic appraisal of the precarious position of Mundurucui culture and society is in part the result of the disappearance of some of those ritual aspects of culture that were the expression of its vitality and were important to its integration. These aspects were, in turn, undermined by those modifications in the structure of the culture that have been taking place since the nineteenth century. One of the integrative bases of Mundurucui society-warfare-ended in the early part of this century as a result of the deep involvement of the Mundurucu? in rubber production. The end of warfare and head-hunting concluded a series of ceremonies that centered about the trophy head and the persons of the suc- cessful warriors. The status of the warrior, the power of Munduruciu arms, and the supernatural significance of the trophy head were, accordingly, no longer celebrated. These were very real values in the nineteenth century and are still considered by the Mundurucui themselves to be the hallmark of traditional Mundurucui culture. Another series of rites that were held for the spirit mothers of the game has also fallen into disuse. No clear and obvious reason, such as the end of warfare, can be offered for the cessation of these ceremonies. Informants claim that today they lack a sufficient number of powerful shamans to perform the rites effectively. In a sense, this is true. Two different ceremonies, named Araiarai and Dajearuparip, were held for the mothers of the game. The former was a lengthy festival that lasted through- out the rainy season; the latter was much like the Araiarai in form and function but was compressed into a ten-day period. According to our closest possible calculations, the Araiarai could not have been celebrated since 1930 and must have lapsed during the period when a large part of the Munduruc?u population moved to the Cururiu River. Communication between the traditional villages [ 51] University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. of the savannahs and the new ones of the river bank became attenuated, and a lack of powerful shamans in the former communities may well have developed. The shorter Dajearuparip ceremony was practiced as recently as 1945 or there- abouts but has since lapsed in spite of a few unsuccessful efforts to resurrect it. By that time the lack of shamans must have become acute, as it is today in many sections of the Munduruciu country. Also, the early 1940's were a period of intense rubber collection, owing to the stimulus provided by World War II. During these years the Mundurucut of the savannah villages grew more accustomed to clothing and other attractions of the outside world, and involvement with Brazilian so- ciety increased. The exact effect of these influences is uncertain, but interest in ritual undoubtedly was replaced increasingly by apathy and fatalism in the face of the decay of other aspects of Munduruciu culture. Ceremonialism not only heightens social cohesion, but it reflects it. So far as the structure of Mundurucui society was undermined by other factors, so also was the basis of the ceremonial reunions. The form of the extinct ceremonies for head-hunting and the spirit mothers of the game was described by informants. Other rites were reported by them in very fragmentary form and were attributed to a more remote past. Only a curing cere- mony and the complex of ceremonial activities surrounding the sacred trumpets are still extant and were observed by me. THE DuPARiP CEREMONY One elderly Mundurucuf reported a ceremony ealled the Duparip, which he said had ceased to be practiced long before his birth and which had been related to him as a boy by the old men. The Duparip was said to have been held infrequently; it was initiated during the summer, and the associated ritual activities occurred intermittently over a two-year span. It was not possible to obtain a full account of the purpose or form of the cere- mony, for the informant remembered only disconnected items. It obviously had some significance as a rite of passage, for young boys' were taken into the men's house and allowed to return to their proper dwellings only at the end of the two- year ceremonial period. During this time they were referred to as pet jacamis by the men, and three stripes were cut through their hair, from front to back, in imitation of the feathering of that bird. When they were finally released from the men's house, they were given sharp wooden "beaks" with which they "pecked" at the women. During their confinement they could leave the men's house only to relieve themselves. The men periodically hastened the growth of the boys by standing upon their feet and lifting them up by the armpits. The "young jacamis" could eat only a certain type of deer, the meat of which was carefully examined for traces of skin, which was believed to make the boys ill. Other passages of the Duparip included the previously mentioned rite in which three powerful shamans transformed people into animals.2 Flutes were played by 'My informant reported that boys are recruited for this ceremony at the age of three; I think this most doubtful and believe that five years is a more reasonable age. 2 See p. 42. 52 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion dancers clothed in cloaks of buriti leaf, who danced from ho-use to house, playing in each. Another connected trait reflected intermoiety ritual antagonism. When hunters of the White moiety killed a red deer, they mocked the Red moiety by piercing the animal's lip and inserting a woman's lip plug. The ears were also pierced and plugs inserted, and the deer was carried triumphantly to the men's house where the hunters danced before cooking the meat. Tattooing was the only life cycle observance practiced in recent years by the Mundurucui. Although now rapidly disappearing, tattooing was started at the age of about six or seven and terminated some ten years later. Complete tattooing signalized full manhood for the boys and womanhood for the females and con- stituted initiation as an adult member of the society. If the chronology reported by my informant is correct, the Duparip may well have functioned partly to in- corporate the young boys into the male world before they were subjected to the long and painful process of tattooing. Their new status as novitiate males would thus be signified by the custom of pecking the women at the end of the ceremony, the first time in which they played a symbolically male role in interaction with the women as a group. WARFARE CEREMONIES Summer, the dry season, was traditionally the time for warfare among the Mundu- rucu. War parties usually stayed in the field throughout the dry season and re- turned before the winter rains made rivers impassable and life uncomfortable. Occasionally an expedition pursued its activities throughout the rainy season and the following dry season, but it always returned before the rains forced it to spend a second winter abroad. Those Mundurucui who stayed at home generally passed at least part of the dry season away from their villages, moving to the river banks where they fished and hunted. The first rains of September and October brought them back to their villages where they reunited with the returning warriors to take up the threads of mundane village life and, also, to stage the most important rituals of the Mun- duruc?u ceremonial cycle. The villages of successful head-hunters were the locales of a series of ceremonies that involved ritual observances during three successive rainy seasons after the return of the war party.! No ceremonies were held before going on the warpath, and the war ceremonies of the Mundurucui were part of the religious beliefs and activities surrounding the supernatural potency of the trophy head and of its owner rather than rituals to assure a successful raid. The return of a war party was an occasion of joy and festivity in the Mundu- rucu villages, but the holiday atmosphere was often dampened by the saddening news of the death of a kinsman during a foray or while on the march. The bodies of the fallen warriors could not conveniently be brought back to their communi- ties, but it was nevertheless considered necessary that certain clans of the comple- 8 Some informants claimed that the ceremonial cycle was carried out during one rainy season, but the majority opinion and most reliable view were as above. 53 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. mentary moiety have the privilege (or pleasure, as some informants phrased it) of burying the dead of the other moiety, if only symbolically. For this purpose, the humerus of the dead Mundurucui was cut off and the flesh stripped from the bone after the arm was boiled and allowed to dry in the sun. Indicative of the symbolic importance attached to the moieties' prerogative of burying each other's dead was the practice of amputating the humerus of a wounded but still living warrior who was unable to continue the return journey. Furthermore, when the body was lost or a vengeance party was in hot pursuit and such Draconian meas- ures were impossible, a symbolic arm bone was made out of a short piece of arrow cane and duly mourned, treasured, and buried. The grisly operation of taking the humerus of the fallen warrior was per- formed by a member of the latter's iboiwatitit, or those clans of the opposite moiety that held the special burial right over the deceased's clan. This man brought the bone back to his village and guarded it carefully, sleeping with it in his arms "as if it were a baby." After an unspecified period, the man's mourners and many members of his iboiwatitit gathered to bury the bone in the floor of its custodian's house. Both male and female kinsmen of the slain warrior were expected to weep loudly upon hearing news of his death. The patterned wailing of the men was of short duration, but that of the women was expected to last for several months. Also, women, as in the event of the death of any relative, had their hair cropped close to the scalp and were prohibited from wearing any body ornamentation. The latter restriction applied also to men, but their hair was not cut. The cutting of the woman's hair was always done by a male member of her iboiwatitit. The actual cycle of trophy-head ceremonies began shortly after the return of the war party with an observance known as Inyen-borotaptam, or Decorating the Ears. This ceremony and those celebrated in the two succeeding rainy seasons were held under the leadership of the taker (or takers) of the trophy head, who was thereafter honored by the title of Dajeboisi, or Mother of the Peccary. Food was amassed by the host village under his direction, and invitations were issued to other villages. The purpose of this phase of the trophy-head ceremony was to decorate the head. Implicitly, its function was to inaugurate the head and its owner into the status that both would occupy until the conclusion of the cycle. The preparation of the trophy head began during the return march from the enemy village. First the brains were extracted with the wide bamboo point of a war arrow, which was inserted into the head through the foramen magnum. The teeth were then knocked out and carefully stored away, and the head was lightly boiled and dried near the fire. This process made the skin dry and parchment-like and effectively preserved it. Finally a woven cord was inserted in the mouth and led out through the nostril by a hole pierced in the hard palate, leaving the tasseled ends of the cord dangling from the mouth and nostril. At a later time, the eye sockets were sealed with beeswax and two paca teeth affixed across either eye. The Mundurucu considered the crowning glory of a trophy head to be the 54 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 55 feather pendants that were suspended from either ear, the attachment of which was the central purpose of the Inyenborotaptam. Feathers from five species of birds were used in the ornamentation, and each type of feather could be attached only by the Kiris.l, Akai, Chunyu'n, and Paraw4' clans, and those of the mutuim by the Witu'm clan. The Karu' clan and subelan, the Sau subelan, and the Waru clan and subelan used the feathers of the red macaw; the Kaba clan attached parrot feathers; and the Boron clan contributed those of the gaviao tawato. Those clans sharing the same feathers were always linked within the same phratry, and the appropriate bird species was usually an eponymous clan spirit of at least one of the groups. The feather pendants could be no longer than the hair on the trophy head. For this reason, long-haired victims were especially prized and a woman's head was highly valued, although it was thought more valorous to kill an enemy warrior. The sponsorship of these ceremonies was not the only duty of the taker of the trophy head. The social and religious role of the Dajebois.i had certain noncere- monial aspects that were, nonetheless, part of the larger ritual complex of warfare and head-hunting. Upon his return to the home village, the successful warrior assumed an enhanced status that endowed his person with an almost sacred aura and isolated him from normal relations with his fellow Mundurucui. Sexu- ality was considered especially dangerous both to the Dajebois.i and to his wife. They were enjoined against indulging in sexual intercourse with each other or with anyone else throughout the ceremonial period. The Dajebois.i could lose his power and fall into the previously discussed state of bad luck merely by looking at a yapo, or wanton woman, and for this reason he always bathed very early to avoid meeting one on the path to the stream. Moreover, he was expected to have minimal contact with or sight of women other than his wife. Even she posed a threat to his special status, and they ate sitting back to back. The Dajeboisi was expected to maintain a decorous and restrained attitude at all times. He spent much of his time lying in his hammock and gazing upward to avoid the contaminating sight of men who had recently had coitus. He could talk to the other men, but only on serious topics; trivial conversation and joking were considered inappropriate to his sacrosanct position. Although he slept in the men's house, thd Dajeboisi did not partake of the communal meals there and ate only with his wife. But he was expected to be generous toward the other men and to keep tobacco under his hammock at all times for their use. In addition to his ceremonial role, the Dajeboi.si had an important function in the religious aspect of the hunting economy. His person and the trophy were thought pleasing to the Mother of the Game, and he brought the head into the forest whenever a hunting party embarked. The Dajeboismi did not, however, hunt nor did he accompany the other men. His mere proximity was sufficient to insure a good kill, and after two animals were slain he returned to the village. It was believed that if he were to remain longer in the forest he might step in the blood of a game animal and thereby lose the charm of the head. The wife of the Dajebos't occupied a delicate status also. Like her husband, she University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. had to exercise great care in her relations with others lest she look at a person who had recently had sexual relations. On days when hunting parties left for the forest she was supposed to remain in her hammock until late in the morning, for if she arose and moved about the game would run away. She was not allowed to bathe in the stream with the other women but washed her body from vessels of water brought to her house. Nor was the wife of the Dajeboi'si supposed to work; a young woman from her iboiwatitit was chosen to draw water and wood for her and to perform household chores. Considerable authority over the other women was exercised by the Dajeboisi's wife, and she felt free to send the women of the village to work in the garden or perform whatever services she desired. The Dajeboisti and his wife were, according to some informants, obliged to main- tain this regimen during the more than two years between the return of the war party and the final phase of the ceremonial cycle. Others thought that the pro- hibitions were not continually in force during this long period, but agreed that some restrictions were observed until the conclusion of the final ritual. With the advent of the second rainy season after the taking of the trophy head, the Dajeboisi again issued invitations to the people of other villages, and all re- united for feasting. This phase of the ceremony is known as Yasegon, or Stripping the Skin from the Head. As the name indicates, the trophy head was skinned, its ornaments were removed, and the bare skull was then hung in a corner of the men's house. Before the head was boiled and skinned, it was thrown on the ground and a group of men called "Vultures" batted it back and forth with sticks in imitation of the vulture's practice of tossing strips of carrion with its beak. The Vultures included all the bald men of the village and certain others who were thought to be really bald, although ordinary vision showed them to have hair on their heads. Previous to these proceedings, a number of old men, all of whom had at one time taken an enemy head, took the trophy head and tapped its top. If powder or any other matter fell from it, they announced that the Dajeboisi had broken an obliga- tion. This was generally interpreted by all to mean that he had had sexual rela- tions. In such a case his status terminated and no further observances were held, since the head had lost its power. If the test proved the owner of the head had kept his faith, the ceremony could continue. The rites held during the first two rainy seasons were simple, and activities in- cluded only the decoration of the head during the first rainy season, its skinning during the second, and feasting on both occasions. The third winter, however, was the climax of the cycle, and festivities were lengthier and much more elaborate. The final phase of the ceremony was called Taimetorom, or Hanging the Teeth, for on this occasion the teeth extracted from the trophy head were strung on a woven cotton belt. These belts were not worn, but were carefully guarded in a basket kept in the warrior's house. But the most important ritual of the third rainy season was the all-night song- fest of the Darek Si, or Mothers of the Bow. The Dareks1i was a men's society; it was by no means exclusive in membership for all adult Mundurucui males belonged to 56 it, and it served as a general organization for persons of warrior status. The Dajeboisi was the leader and organizer of these festivities also and he customarily sent two messengers to the chiefs of the other Mundurucui villages to issue the following invitation: "Come, eat the hide of the game of the Dajeboisi. Come, drink werii and mori. It is only a mouthful, but come." The chiefs then called their people together and announced, "They want us to come and eat and drink. Every- one who wishes may go." The invited villagers, who had long known of the im- pending ceremony and were expecting the invitation, cut their hair and orna- mented themselves in the traditional Mundurucui style and set out the next day. Food had been amassed by the people of the host village and all settled down to feasting and completing their body painting. On the day after their arrival, a member of the Muchacha' society, an exclusive group composed of old and valiant Dajeboisi who had mastered great knowledge of lore and songs, sounded the pem, a musical instrument used only by them. At this signal all the young boys, who had previously been tonsured and painted, fled into the forest and underbrush to hide from the men. The men then spread throughout the environs of the village and each captured a previously selected boy of the other moiety. The captor decorated the boy with necklaces and belts of glass beads (i.e., during the nineteenth century) and monkeys' teeth. By the time all had been assembled, dusk had already fallen, and the DareksIi society returned to the village in a single file with the boys in the lead. All the men marched with bows and arrows set in release position. The women remained in the dwelling houses, for it was believed that any who saw the Dareksi enter the village would be killed during the next war. After entering the village, the men went to the house of the Dajeboisi, where they were served food and drink. A number of small ceramic vessels were laid out in a line and filled with various types of meat in a sauce made from the Brazil nut. Behind each bowl of meat was another filled with a drink prepared from sweet manioc. The line of men passed single file down the row of bowls, each man squatting on his haunches and taking one piece of meat with beijiu (a flat manioc flour cake) and a sip of the sweet manioc drink. Then, still squatting, he moved to the right and took another piece of meat and beijui and another sip of the drink. When he reached the end of the line he returned to the beginning; the process was continued until all the, food was eaten. Certain precautions were taken with the drinks because of the sacred nature of the occasion. The Vultures had to eat apart from the other Dareksi, for if one of the latter were to drink from the same vessel he would turn into a vulture when he died. Also, the sweet manioc drink could be made only by young girls and old women to avoid the threat of contamination of the drink by a drop of menstrual blood or semen from the vagina of a mature woman. The men were prohibited from sexual intercourse immediately before the ceremony for they too could con- taminate the beverage and cause others who drank from the vessel to fall victims of the yellowing sickness, or ujewaii. To prevent this a shaman examined the 4 The identity of this term with the Spanish word for 'girl' is an interesting but entirely independent parallel. Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 57 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. contents of each bowl to ascertain whether a ritually impure person had defiled the food. After partaking of the ceremonial feast, the men went to the men's house, across the front of which they lined up in a single row with the boys behind. They sang songs celebrating warfare and their arms until dawn, at which time the cere- mony ended and the guests returned to their villages. At the conclusion of the rite, the Dajeboisi resumed his normal life. His person and the trophy head no longer exercised their power, but he retained the title and distinction for life. This account suggests some of the functions of the ritual complex in relation to the practice of warfare and to the social structure, in general. First, the high status accorded the Dajeboi'i acted to give personal incentive to individual war- riors and thus contributed to more effective military action. The taker of the trophy head was further motivated, for the power possessed by him and the head increased the yield of the hunt. The concept of this magical influence also pro- vided an additional group motivation and rationale for warfare and served to root it more firmly in Mundurucui beliefs. The emphasis on warfare was further heightened through the celebration of Mundurucut prowess by the Dareksi; and this phase of the ritual provided a means of indoctrinating the young into the militarism in which they would one day take part. The ritual complex was also related to aspects of Mundurucui culture other than warfare. The burial of the humerus of the warrior slain in battle was the most important occasion for the expression of intermoiety ritual hostility. And the attachment of feather pendants to the ears of the trophy head was one of the few remaining corporate functions of the fragmented clans. Finally, and this is true of all the important intervillage ceremonies, the warfare rites served to integrate the populations of the several Mundurucui villages and to maintain bonds of as- sociation among scattered fellow clansmen. CEREMONIES OF THE GAME Two ceremonies, the Araiarai and the Dajearuparip, were held in honor of the spirit mothers of the game. The several Mundurucui villages took turns as hosts in these intervillage rites, and one of the two ceremonies was held during most years. The purpose of the two rites was identical, and they differed only in length and in minor formal details. The following description of the Dajearuparip is also valid for the Araiarai, except where noted. A ceremony was usually held at the instigation of one of the older and more respected men of the village-not necessarily the chief-who then became its piwat, or leader and organizer. But it was essential for the leader to have the consent of his fellow villagers, for they had to join him in amassing food and drink for the visitors. As in all Mundurucui ceremonies, the arrival of the guests signaled the begin- ning of feasting and preparation of ceremonial regalia. The actual ceremony began with the playing of flutes by a group of cloaked dancers who danced from house to house, performing in each. The cloaks were made of the long fronds of the 58 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion buriti palm and were fashioned in an extremely simple manner. The ends of a large bunch of fronds were tied together and a ring of vine was attached some five inches below the top knot. The vine ring was then placed on the dancer's head, and the leaves were arranged to fall uniformly down all sides of his body to a point below his knees. The garment was fastened to his waist by a buriti leaf belt. The dancer's arms protruded from the sides of the cloak, and the fronds were pushed aside to make openings for the eyes and mouth. Underneath these cloaks the dancers wore the same raiment used by all the other men during the cere- mony. This consisted of a buriti-leaf crown, to the front, back, and sides of which were attached vertical strips of buriti leaf. Bands of this leaf were also tied around the biceps, wrists, ankles, and just below the knees, and were crisscrossed across the chest and shoulders. The ends of each band were shredded and allowed to'dangle. A belt of buriti leaf was also worn, and long thin strips of this leaf hung from it to form a knee-length skirt. Thin fibers hung from the back of a buriti-leaf neck choker to below the buttocks. The garment used in the Araiarai ceremony was identical, except that the buriti leaves were first boiled in water and then hung in the sun to bleach white. The instruments used by the dancers, called kiu', consisted of bamboo tubes some 18 inches long with a reed made of the root of the paxiuba palm inserted in the mouth. Identical instruments were used in a secular dance, the Parasoi, but those for the Dajearuparip and Araiarai could not be used for such profane pur- poses, for fear of insulting the Mother of the Game. After the ceremony began, five cloaked dancers made the house-to-house rounds day and night and were replaced after each round by fresh dancers from the men's house. There was an occasional intermission to allow the men and the in- habitants of the dwelling houses to sleep. Each round began when three cloaked men, dancing side by side, approached the first house in a clockwise direction from the men's house. Playing their instruments, they danced to the doorway of the house three times and backed off, entering the house on their fourth approach. After entering the house they circled twice around the interior and then left for the next house in the same direction, repeating the same movements. As they left the house, the other two cloaked dancers approached it, entered in the same man- ner, and followed the first three through the village. During the rounds of the five kiu( players, the other men stayed in the men's house and sang songs ap- propriate to the ceremony. Most of these songs dealt with hunting and game animals, and some with fish and food-bearing plants. The climax of the ceremony was the summoning of the spirit mothers of the game and their subsequent visitation. Some days after the beginning of the house-to-house dancing, temporary thatch walls were built about the open sides and front of the men's house. A great number of skulls of game animals were gathered and those of each species were placed in rows running east-west and parallel to each other. At the head of the line of tapir skulls was one that had been kept in the men's house and was considered to be the chief of all the skulls in the room. In front of the rows of animal skulls were those of two coata monkeys. Their 59 0University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. function was to guide the spirit mothers to the men's house, in the same manner that the coata monkey, it is believed, leads game through the forest. Before the skulls were placed in order, they were washed with a fragrant solution made from the envira cherosa and then with miirt, a sweet manioc gruel. Miri is thought to be especially pleasing to the spirit mothers, and a bowl was kept near the skulls so that the spirits could eat after answering the summons. When all arrangements were in order, two men who knew the various songs dedicated to each type of animal sat in front of the array of skulls and sang for the spirit mothers. A number of shamans stood by, ready to shoot with magic arrows those Yurupari that inevitably came to steal the mori. A shaman also had to be present at all times to detect the arrival of the spirits. When the spirits ar- rived, the shamans blew smoke over all the heads and then inserted a bamboo tube into each head to suck the arrow points and buckshot from the spirits. These objects are believed to be lodged in the animal spirits because of the hunting ac- tivities of the Mundurucui, and it was necessary to extract them in order to completely placate the spirits. The spirits then ate the mirt and departed. Although the main purpose of the ceremony was the gratification of the animal spirits, the participants remained for three or four more days to take part in dances and ritual activities in imitation and honor of the game animals. On the day following the feeding of the spirits, all the men repaired to the banks of a stream and there sought out white clay. Two men were selected and "captured" by the others and white clay was smeared upon their foreheads, converting them for ceremonial purposes into coata monkeys. The others adorned themselves as peccaries by applying white clay to their cheeks and jaws. They then paraded single file into the village, the two monkeys in front and the peccaries following in close order ranks, all making the noises characteristic of their species. Once in the village, the men invaded the houses; those who were simulating the peccaries grunted and poked at the ground with sticks to make peccary tracks, while those playing the parts of the monkeys upset articles in the house, robbed food, and created the general havoc characteristic of monkey behavior. The men then re- paired to the men's house where they pretended to shoot the monkeys with bows and arrows. During this time the women sang songs about the peccary, and then, upon a signal from the leader of the ceremony, they rushed upon the men, who attempted to escape, and dragged those they captured to the fire "to singe the hair from their hides" as they would do with a slain peccary. The next of the animal imitations was that of the tapir, which was the special function of a men's association known as the Biusi, or Mothers of the Tapir. The male participants painted each other elaborately with urucui and genipa paint, and the next day at dawn all the men retired to the forest where they built a temporary shelter. During the day the members of the Bius's pursued men of the opposite moiety, and those caught were then made members of the group. This practice served as a recruiting device, but it also reflected the Munduruciu pattern of intermoiety ritual antagonism, for membership was looked upon with some fear. The Biusi were especially subject to soul loss during the Araiarai and the 60 Dajearuparip ceremonies. Since bathing in the stream was considered particu- larly dangerous to them, the members had to bathe in the village from gourds. Also, their obligation to sing the songs of the tapir allowed the Bius, little sleep during ceremonies. When night fell, all fires of the village were extinguished and the Bius,., their captives, and the men fortunate enough to have escaped them reentered the village in total darkness. The women shut themselves in their houses and did not dare look at the procession lest their next children be born with the fleshy hump found between the shoulders of the tapir, that is, hunchbacked. The procession ended in one of the houses, where the Biust partook of a sweet manioc drink; after they were thus refreshed the women could look upon them with impunity. A number of creatures were imitated on the final night of the ceremony, and songs appropriate to each species were sung. Among the performances was that for the land tortoise, in which the men imitated the animal and acted in this role as the pets of the women. All lined up in close order and pretended to accept chewed food from the mouths of their owners. The Mundurucui recall with glee that on one such ceremonial occasion a local Brazilian trader, who had been visiting the vil- lage, participated in the land tortoise imitation and actually ate the proffered food. In other sequences the grasshopper was emulated by squatting with stomach close to the ground and chirping, and the cry and hopping movements of the toucan were also enacted. The animal performances lasted throughout the night, and dawn saw the con- clusion of the ceremony and the departure of the guests. THE CURING CEREMONY The above performances of the Mundurucui ceremonial cycle are now defunct, and there is little likelihood that they will be revived. But some ritual activity is still extant. It will be noted that the following ceremonies, though quite important to Mundurucui society, involve little social participation beyond the confines of one or two villages. None calls for the large reunions characteristic of the ceremonies devoted to the animal spirits or to the trophy head. The curing ceremony, referred to as Piunbikmakupanyen, does not call for broad participation, although all the people of the village in which it is held usually attend as bystanders. Four shamans and two men with special knowledge of songs are needed, however, and must frequently be summoned from a distance. The curing ceremony is held only in cases of robbery of the soul by the animal spirits, a belief which has already been described. Soul loss is commonly held re- sponsible for illnesses in which general, progressive debility is noted without the specific symptoms usually indicative of bewitchment. Given this diagnosis, the shaman attempts to identify the violation for which the animal spirits have taken vengeance and then prescribes a curing ceremony. At least four shamans are necessary to effect a cure and two men are called in to sing the required songs. The latter are persons who, as was described in a previous chapter,' received 5 See page 27. Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 61 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. knowledge of these supernaturally powerful songs through dreams. The cere- mony takes place in the household of the sick person; a man, when ill, is usually brought from the men's house to his wife's dwelling, whatever the cause of the malady. The tapir skull used during the ceremonies of the game is installed in the house, and long tauari bark-wrapped cigarettes are inserted into either eye and three are thrust into the ground on the left side of the skull. The "dreamers" then seat themselves before this ensemble and proceed to sing to the various game animals, requesting that they return the soul of the sick person. While singing they wave a mutuim feather tied to the end of a stick before the skull. It will be recalled that there is a definite sequence in the passage of the soul from one species to another, proceeding from large game animals to smaller ones and then from the largest fish to the smaller ones until the soul arrives at the smallest fish and the patient dies. The songs of the dreamers are believed to be completely efficacious in securing the return of the stolen soul, but the soul is returned only when the dreamers sing the song of the animal that possesses the soul at the moment the song is being sung. Since the shamans and dreamers have no idea which animal has the soul at the time, and since there are a large number of animals into whose hands the soul passes (and, correspondingly, a large number of songs), the dreamers must trust to chance and luck that they will sing the right song at the appropriate instant. The choice of song is up to the dream- ers, and they frequently sing for a long time before hitting upon the animal that has custody of the soul. Obviously, a great deal of risk is involved in this process, for the passage of time brings the patient and his soul nearer to their fatal destination. And as the journey lengthens, the condition of the sick person steadily worsens. However, the dreamers generally succeed eventually in retrieving the soul, which is believed to return to the tapir skull used in the ceremony. This account of the procedure following the return of the soul is based upon a curing cere- mony that I witnessed in the savannah village of Cabrua. Both doors of the house in which the rite was held had been covered with palm leaves in the belief that the soul of the patient was ashamed to be seen and would return only in the dark. At the conclusion of the song to the peceary, the shaman looked inside the tapir skull and announced that the soul had been in the custody of the pecearies and had just been returned. Their intent accomplished, the singers ceased their activity and aided the shamans in the subsequent process of repairing the harm done to the patient and restoring the soul to her body. One of the four shamans present extracted the soul from the tapir skull with his hand and held it for some time, examining it closely. In the meantime, the patient was lying in a hammock covered with mosquito netting, and two men, neither of whom was a shaman, blew smoke under the netting through long tauari bark-wrapped cigarettes. At the conclusion of the fumigation the shaman returned the sick woman's soul to the tapir skull, and she was taken from her hammock and seated upon a mat. One of the women of the house poured several gourds of water over her in the belief that this would reduce her fever. The 62 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion sick woman was then dried with a piece of cloth, and the shaman placed the lighted end of a cigarette in his mouth and blew smoke over her entire body. He then rubbed her legs from toes to thighs, blew more smoke upon her stomach and rubbed both front and back of her torso. Another shaman took his place and twice passed a palm leaf down her body and both arms. Each time, he cleaned the leaf of the malignant objects that it supposedly picked up from the patient's skin. These ministrations were intended to rid the body of the sick woman of some of the accumulation of evil or extraneous objects that had entered her during her illness. An especially dangerous article was discovered in her chest, and the least powerful of the shamans applied his mouth to her body and sucked it out. He was immediately racked by a fit of violent coughing, and a shaman having some- what more power sucked at his throat, whereupon the object lodged in his own throat. It was finally removed by the most powerful of the four shamans present. He, too, appeared to be choked by the malignant object but succeeded in spitting it out into his hand. All present were invited to look at it, and, evi- dently no longer dangerous, it was given to a small boy to throw into a fire. The last part of the curing ceremony was the special duty of the only member of the Biusi society present in the village. He approached the sick woman, chant- ing a song and stamping each foot upon the iground. In this manner he circled about her and then grasped her under the armpits and lifted her while stamping his feet. This process was believed to shake the last of the supernatural objects from her body, and she was then ready to have her soul restored. The shaman again plucked the soul from the tapir's skull and placed his clenched hand over the patient's head, making motions suggesting that he was placing the soul within. The sick woman, who was thought to be fully cured, returned to normal activity and enjoyed the appearance of restored health. Unfortunately, her condition, which was possibly tubercular, soon worsened, and again she began to cough steadily. THE KAR6K6 Certain supernatural beliefs and practices are connected with the karoko, or sacred musical instruments of the Mundurucui. The instruments themselves have been somewhat inaccurately termed trumpets for lack of a better word, although in design and operation they more nearly approximate the oboe. Each Mundurucui village of the savannahs has a set of three such instruments. Each set belongs to a different clan, but their essential design and construction are the same, though with some variation in size. This has no ritual significance but is regarded by the Mundurucui as a sign of degeneration, for the karoko of different villages were said to be formerly of the same size and much larger than those of today. However, the three instruments composing any single set are purposely and traditionally graded in size. The karokd are actually extremely simple instruments. Each is merely a long, hollow cylinder made of a very light wood, into the end of which is inserted a reed. Those of the village of Cabrua were 43, 46, and 52 inches long and the 63 4University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. internal diameters of their resonant chambers were 23/4, 23/4, and 31/4 inches, respectively. The reed is made by splitting a 27 to 28-inch length of wet and pliant paxiuba palm root, hollowing out both halves and rejoining them by binding at either end. A stick slightly larger than the diameter of the cylinder is bound at right angles to the reed and prevents it from falling within the chamber when inserted. When one blows into the end of the reed it gives a flatulent sound similar to the American Bronx cheer, but when the reed is inserted into the resonant chamber of the karoko and blown, it emits a deep reverberating tone. The sound emitted by these instruments is not said to be of supernatural origin, nor is it considered an imitation of the voice of spirits. The actual playing usually takes place within the chamber where the instru- ments are stored. This chamber is a small extension at the southwest end of the men's house. The roof adjoins that of the main sleeping quarters and slopes to the ground at the west end at the same pitch. But unlike the open-sided dormitory, the karoko chamber is completely walled with thatch in order to insure the secrecy of its contents. The trumpet chamber of the village of Cabrua- measured 20 feet in length and 111/2 feet in width. Owing to the pitch of the roof, however, one could walk erect for less than half the length of the room. The back of the chamber was generally used as a rubbish heap for the disposal of the old paxiuba root reeds. Suspended horizontally from the ceiling were two parallel poles, upon which the three trumpets were laid when not in use. Also hanging from the roof was a horn made of a hollow bamboo tube, to the end of which was attached an empty gourd; a design resembling an hourglass was cut in the side of the gourd. The over-all length of the instrument was 22 inches, and the length of the bamboo tube was 161/2 inches. This particular horn was used to emulate the roar of the jaguar, or isi rap nyun ipichat, which is the eponymous name of one of the spirit companions of the trumpets of Cabru'a. The spirits residing within the karoko become displeased, say the Mundurucu, if not properly fed and played. Accordingly, every night when the men gather in front of the men's house for their meal, one of them brings a half-gourd of food into the chamber, lays the trumpets on the ground, and offers food to the mouth of each. The playing of the trumpets is somewhat more irregular and infrequent, although the older men claim that they were played daily in times past. The trumpets are usually played during the late afternoon and shortly after nightfall. Although they are nominally considered to be the property of a particular clan, any man is allowed to play them. These are not especially sacred occasions. Although other men are free to watch the three players performing, they generally amuse themselves in other ways, as guitar playing, talking, or making artifacts. The women, who go about their work nonchalantly at these times, always seem to know who the performers are, despite the fact that sight of the instruments is absolutely forbidden to them and the trumpet chamber is carefully shielded from their view. The actual music produced by the three karoko players was not recorded and can be described only as a deep and rather monotonous dirge. The music is always 64 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion the same, but there are a number of songs or words to the same basic melody. These songs are not sung by the players but are thought by them during the performance. In keeping with exclusive male access to the instruments, the songs are known and taught only to the men. Of any group of three players the man who knows the songs best acts as the leader and plays the medium-sized instru- ment, and the others act as his accompaniment. The leader plays the basic karoko melody, and the man with the largest trumpet emits long and steady blasts interspersed with occasional short ones. The player of the smallest of the three instruments, usually the youngest man, blows a few short sounds whenever the leader signals him by lifting his elbow. The players pause at indefinite intervals, and the leader then sounds a blast on the gourd horn. As they play, the three walk side by side across the width of the trumpet chamber. The room is large enough to allow three long steps with a pivot motion at the end. The instrument is clutched across the chest by the left forearm as the player walks, and the reed is held with the right hand. The frequent playing of the karoko is accepted as a necessary part of the ordinary round of village life and does not merit designation as a ceremony. There are other, however, special occasions when the instruments become the focus of much wider social participation. It is believed necessary to offer a special feast to the various spirits of the trumpets at least once a year. On the designated day, the women amass large quantities of sweet manioc and grate it into water to make a rich beverage; sufficient game is usually killed on the previous day to last through the feast. The finished drink is brought to the men's house in large clay pots, and the men gather about with halfkgourds and drink. Large quantities are consumed, the the women are kept busy throughout the day. The feasting generally begins at noon and lasts until nightfall. As every round of beverage arrives, a bowl must be offered to the trumpets. The spirits are further gratified by the trumpets being played from the beginning of the feast until dawn of the following day. Most of the village population sleeps throughout the night, and the players are occasionally relieved by other groups of three men. Invitations to this feast are not extended to other villages. Other ceremonies are held when the trumpets are being moved from an old village to a newly constructed one and when new trumpets are made and installed. Both of these occasions involve the participation of people from other villages. The ceremony of the reinstallation of the karoko in a new men's house took place in Cabitutui during our field work. The village invited the two nearest villages, Cabru'a and Decodyem. Decodyem declined as the inhabitants were busy preparing manioc flour, but those of Cabrua accepted. The guests arrived during the after- noon and on the following day the men went to the forest to gather thatch for the wall of the trumpet chamber. The new village was built a few hundred yards from the old one, and although the dwellings had been finished and were already occupied by the women and children, only the frame of the men's house had been completed. The men continued to sleep in the old men's house. On the second day after the arrival of the guests, the men went hunting while the women harvested the sweet manioc. 65 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. The women made the manioc drink on the next, or third, day of the ceremony, and the men then commenced thatching the walls of the trumpet chamber. The men's house, say the Mundurucui, is the home of the karoko, and the trumpets must be moved into a completely roofed and walled dwelling at the same time that the men move. For this reason it is necessary to complete the walls and roof in one day and to move into the new men's house, with the trumpets, that very night. Since it takes several days to thatch a roof properly, the roof of the old house is customarily dismantled and placed upon the frame of the new one. A new roof would be built during the next rainy season. During the busy preparations for the installation of the instruments in their new home, considerable feasting and gaiety took place also. From the arrival of the guests until the completion of the thatching, everybody took part in inter- moiety and intersexual joking. Mixtures of urucu or palm fruit and water were prepared and were thrown by the women upon men of the opposite moiety. The latter seized the women's supply occasionally and took revenge. After thatching the roof of the new men's house and walling the trumpet enclosure, the men assembled in the old men's house. They unstrung their ham- mocks and assembled all their belongings and then took the trumpets from their old chamber. Three men of the same moiety as the clan to which the trumpets belonged then began playing the instruments and slowly marched toward the new village. The other men crowded about the players, wearing and waving palm leaves, to shield the sacred instruments from the eyes of the women. Within the protecting ring were four other men. One carried a hunting horn with which he occasionally sounded a signal consisting of two long, four short, and two more long blasts; another man followed this signal with the characteristic yell of the hunter who raises game. A third man sounded the gourd horn associated with the trumpets of Cabitutui, and a fourth walked along shaking a rattle. The last man belonged to the opposite moiety of the trumpets and was referred to as their ib oiwatitit. His head was covered with a paste made of uruciu and ground maize. The slow procession started from the old men's house at dusk, and night had fallen by the time the group of marchers reached the new village. The women shut themselves in the dwelling houses in anticipation of the men's arrival, and, as the men entered the village, the women began to wail in sorrow for the loss of the instruments that are believed to have once been theirs.6 The procession of men circled each house of the village three times and then stopped in front of the new men's house. There the trumpets were played while the rest of the men drank the sweet manioc beverage and rested. The instruments were played outside the men's house until dawn and were then brought inside their new chamber and played until the sun rose. At that time they were retired to the rack suspended from the ceiling, and the guests departed for their own village. The old men's house was later burned to hide all evidence of the activities that once went on in it. In view of the rapid disintegration of Mundurucuc village life, it is doubtful 6 See pp. 89-91. 66 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion that many new karoko will be made. In the past, however, the installation of newly manufactured instruments called for a ceremony quite similar to that held when they were shifted to a new men's house. The trumpets are made in a temporary shelter situated deep in the forest, secure from the chance gaze of passing women. One man is responsible for their manufacture, and the karoko are considered to belong to his clan and to harbor its spirits.7 Until they are properly installed in the men's house, the trumpets are referred to as wira anan, or "jaguar with a beak." The Mundurucu? explain this difference in nomenclature as being due to their reluctance to mention the proper names of new instruments in front of the women. The ceremony of installation is called wira anan bon, or "going to get the jaguar with a beak." Invitations are sent to the residents of several other villages, and all are expected to bring their own karoko. The male invitees leave their own communities with the trumpets well before dawn and proceed directly to the shelter where the new instruments are being made. Their women leave after daybreak and go to the host village. The assembled men feast throughout the day and at dusk form a procession to the village. This is almost identical to the one formed when old trumpets are being installed in a new village, except that the trumpets of several villages are played. After the new instruments are installed, the old ones are brought to the place where the former were made and are burned. This description of Mundurucut ceremonialism shows that ritual emphasis was placed upon the propitiation of the spirit owners of game animals, warfare and the quest for trophy heads, and the placation of the clan and trumpet spirits. A unifying thread can be discerned in the fact that the proper care of the trophy head was regarded as a means of pleasing the animal spirits, and also that the trumpet spirits were vaguely conceived as being associated with those of the game. Furthermore, the curing ceremony was specifically devoted to retrieving souls stolen by the animal supernaturals. Mythology and folklore reveal a continuation of the basic masculine theme of hunting and warfare in Munduruciu culture. The Mundurucui recognize spirit mothers of fish and aquatic animals, but these were propitiated only incidentally during the major ceremonies for the animal spirits; informants mentioned fish spirits in this connection as an afterthought. There is a striking absence of attention to horticulture both in the belief system and in the ceremonial cycle. Each species of domestic plant is believed to have a soul, but not a mother spirit. Songs were formerly sung to the species souls, when the particular plant was being sown, to insure a good harvest, and another song was sung to the garden at the time of burning the clearing. All these songs were better known by the men than by the women, although the latter did most of the horticultural work. No substantiation could be found for Tocantins' statement that the Mundurucui perform annual ceremonies for maize and manioc.8 7During the patrilocal phase of Mundurucui social structure, the maker of the trumpets prob- ably belonged to the dominant, and perhaps only, clan of the village, and there was undoubtedly a closer functional relationship between clan and trumpet than under present matrilocal circum- stances. 8 Tocantins, 1877, pp. 133-134. 67 V. MYTHOLOGY AND FOLKLORE A COLLECTION of fifty-eight myths and folktales was recorded in the villages of Missao Velha and Cabrua. The latter community, one of the more conservative savannah settlements, was far more productive of traditional lore of all kinds and most of the material below was gathered there. Although this chapter repre- sents the complete body of oral literature collected in the field, there is un- doubtedly more available if a wider range of Mundurucui informants were to be sampled. Some myths, such as that of the origin of clans collected by Father Kruse,1 were specifically sought, but were unknown to those questioned. Mundu- rucu mythology has undoubtedly undergone considerable attenuation, and these may be among the large number of stories no longer extant. The older Mundurucui say that oral literature was formerly much more actively recounted and transmitted. During the evenings, the elders told tales to all the assembled men, and children were brought to listen. These sessions are no longer frequent, but considerable interest is still manifest among the listeners. A number of men and children and usually some women gathered around whenever I found an informant with a story. Indeed, without an audience the narrator would not put forth his best efforts. The delivery was always quite animated and was accompanied by vivid gestures, imitations of animals, and dialogues between the personages in the story. The audience gave full attention, and it was con- sidered most disrespectful to create any diversion during the narration. All laughed readily and spontaneously at the appropriate passages, although many had heard the tale several times before. The stories themselves range over a variety of subjects and are told for a number of purposes. They have been broken down into six major categories to provide continuity. This does not represent an attempt toward a systematie classification of the myths; actually the categories overlap considerably. For example, the animal tales are generally told for amusement, but they frequently explain the origins of certain species. On the other hand, the Karusakaibo cycle is a true creation myth and is centered upon the activities of the principal culture hero. There are numerous passages in this myth cycle, however, that are considered highly humorous by both narrators and audiences, and in other incidents animals are also created. Similarly, a category of cosmological myths has been included, but there are several events in other tales that are also important to an under- standing of Munduruciu cosmology. Through all, there is a running theme of the importance of the animal world to Munduruc?u society and of the close interrelation between the two. In many tales, animals either have the form of people or are able to take on this form. The mythology does more than explain the origin of animal species, for in almost all cases the various animals are transformed people. That the species had their origin in the human world tends to reinforce the special significance given them in ceremonies and the supernatural belief system. This affinity between animals and humans will be evident in the saga of Kruse, 1934, pp. 56-57. [68] Perisuat, the young man who makes an incredible journey through the forest and returns home more animal than human. The Munduruciu visualize themselves as hunters and voyagers of the forest, and the odyssey of Perisuat has deep meaning for them. They are also warriors, and several of the tales abound with head-hunting episodes and warfare. And some are tales of internecine strife, which, to a Mundurucui, is one of the most horrible eventualities imaginable. The reader familiar with European mythology will recognize many thematic similarities, either independently invented or diffused, in Mundurucui tales. And the student of lowland South American mythology and folklore will see in the Mundurucu another example of the widespread dissemination of tales, in whole or in part, throughout the area. No attempt has been made toward any exhaustive distributional analysis of this material, and only a few of the more interesting parallels have been noted. THE KARUSAKAIB6 CYCLE OF WORLD CREATION The major creation legends of the Mundurucui revolve around the figure of the culture hero, Karusakaibo. Metraux has made the apt suggestion that this personage merits the title of "transformer" rather than "creator" and compares him to Maira, a figure widespread in Tupian mythology.2 But apart from this rough similarity of roles of the two culture heroes, the Munduruciu creation legends seem to be quite divergent from those of most other Tupian groups. The Tupian grandfather personage, subsumed under the names of Monan, Maira- Monan or Sum', is absent, as are the twins commonly found in Tupian creation myths.3 Despite these points of difference in the structure of the tales and in the main actors, there are numerous parallels of episode and theme between the Munduruciu creation cycle and the oral literature of Tupian and other South American groups. The first story of the Karusakaibo legend shows a marked resemblance to a Christian-influenced tale collected by Wagley and Galvao among the Tenetehara and entitled by them, "Creation of Wild Pigs."' In both Tenetehara and Mundu- rucu versions, a culture hero imprisons a group of people in a wall of feathers and converts them into peccaries. Other Tenetehara resemblances include the widespread emphasis on the tapir as a symbol of virility, as derived no doubt from the size of the genitalia of the male of the species. In one Tenetehara story, a woman marries a tapir,' and in the corresponding Mundurucui tale the culture hero transforms his sexually precocious son into that animal. Another widely distributed theme is found in the discovery of humans in the underworld. Nimuendajut relates an Eastern Timbira story in which the discovery is made by a man digging for an armadillo,' whereas in the Mundurucui episode the armadillo 2 Metraux, 1928, p. 27. 8 The Munduruciu denied all knowledge of episodes concerning twins and even claimed that twins were an unknown phenomenon in their own society. It is interesting to note that though other forms of infanticide were freely admitted, they specifically disavowed the killing of twins. They are not and were not a genetically isolated population, and I assume that the practice exists but that there was very strong resistance to giving this information. 4Wagley and Galvao, 1949, p. 134. 5Wagley and Galvao, 1949, pp. 148-149. ' Nimuendaju, 1946, pp. 247-248. Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 69 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. himself makes the find. In the further development of the Munduruciu story the culture hero pulls a number of peoples out of the underworld, but his cord breaks and many are left behind. This theme is distributed beyond South America, as is the Magic Flight passage found in the first tale of the Karusakaib6 cycle. 1. KARUSAKAIBO AND THE WILD PIGS In times long past, Karusakaib6 lived in the village of Uacupari. This settlement was not at the site of the modern Uacupari, but was near by. During one dry season Karusakaib6 and all the people of the village were out hunting in the forest, where they lived in temporary lean-tos. That of Karusa- kaib6 was separated from those of the other people, and he stayed there alone with his son Korumtau. The people killed a great deal of game, but in that time there were no tapir, wild pig, or veado capoeira; the only equivalent of the wild pig was the catitui. Karusakaib6, however, hunted the nambui bird to the exclusion of all other game, and every day he sent Korumtau to the lean-tos of his sisters to trade his kill for game that their husbands had taken. On the first three days that Korumtau went to the lean-tos of his aunts, they said to him, "We do not have any meat, but we will get you some." On the fourth day the aunts became angry with the boy and said to him, "Your father hunts only nambu' which is no good to eat, and we always have to give you food. We do not have any." Korumtau began to cry and went away. The sisters called him back, offering him food, but he would not return. The boy returned home crying, and Karusakaib6 asked him what had hap- pened. He replied that the aunts had scolded him because the nambu's did not please them. Karusakaibo said, "They will pay for this," and sent his son outside to gather the feathers of the parrot, the mutium, the jacui, and the nambui and to bring them back to him. There were many feathers outside, for Karusakaib6 had killed many birds, and the boy 'gathered them and brought them back. The father then transformed his son into a small bird, the taukorenjujut, and sent him out to surround the lean-tos of all the other people with the feathers. In this disguise, Korumtau flew around the lean-tos and planted the feathers in the ground, quills first. As he went about his task, he sang the song of the bird. He was nearly out of feathers when someone in one of the lean-tos called out, "Who is that singing out there," and threw a piece of burning firewood at him. The boy flew away and returned to his father. Karusakaib6 asked the returned son, "Did you put all the feathers in the ground?" The boy said that he had not finished, and his father sent him out for more feathers. He replenished his supply and finished his task in two more days. Upon completion of his chore, Korumtau reported to Karusakaibo, and the latter told him, "Now go back and tie the feathers together at the top." For this purpose he transformed the boy into a frog and made the feathers grow to a great size. The boy, in the guise of a frog, returned to the encircled lean-tos and climbed a tree, singing the song of the frog, "p6k, p6k, pok... " as he tied the tips of the feathers together. When he finished, the lean-tos and their environs 70 were covered over by a huge dome of feathers. He had almost completed his work when a man from one of the lean-tos hit the tree in which he was seated with a piece of firewood, causing the boy to fall to the ground. He was not hurt, however, and hopped home to his father. Korumtau reported the successful completion of his mission to Karusakaib6, who said "We will take care of your aunts now." He then began to blow smoke in the direction of the encircled lean-tos, and it entered under the feathers in great clouds, making the people dizzy. At this point, Karusakaibo shouted at his prisoners, "Eat your food, people of Uacupari." They misunderstood him and thought that he meant for them to have sexual intercourse. They proceeded to have coitus and made the usual grunting sounds while doing so. Gradually, these noises turned into the grunts of wild pigs and the cries of the children into the squeals of sucklings. The dense tobacco smoke choked the people, and Karusakaib6 then threw husks of the fruit of the tauari tree into the pen. The people put these husks up to their noses to avoid breathing the smoke-filled air, but the husks grew onto their noses, transforming them into pig snouts. The prisoners then turned completely into wild pigs, but without hair. Karusakaib6 did not like the pigs in their hairless state and asked a frog to gather hair for them. The frog said that he had none, but sent him to an ant- eater named Radjerapseb6. The latter gave him a quantity of anteater hair which Karusakaibo threw among the wild pigs, saying that it was for them. He then returned to the near-by village of Uacupari. The people who had remained in Uacuparf suspected that Karusakaibo had done something with their fellows. He denied this, saying, "No. They will come. They are still out hunting." Karusakaib6 then went back to the pigpen and planted a tucuma palm immedi- ately outside the gate. He went there every day, opened the gate, and threw a tucuma fruit in front of it. When a wild pig came out to eat the fruit, Karusa- kaib6 shot it. He then closed the door and went back to the village with the pig. He told no one where he was getting the animals. After many days of shooting wild pig, Karusakaibo ran out of arrows and had to go away to replenish his supply. He was afraid, however, that a cunning and scheming armadillo named Daiiru? would induce Korumtau to tell the secret of the wild pigs. To avoid this Karusakaibo6 instructed the boy to refuse to talk to anyone. He covered him with white tapioca and told him, "Stay in your hammock. If Daiiruf comes, tell him that you are sick and cannot get up." He then went in quest of the arrows. As soon as he had left the village of Uacupari, Karusakaib6 turned himself into a tapir and directed himself toward Wasapappi (Savannah of the Home of the Little Birds), a village between the sites of the modern villages, Aro and Cabitutu. He walked near the men's house of the village at night, while everyone was sleeping, and left many tracks. In the morning the men of Wasapappi saw the tracks and set off to hunt the tapir. The tracks were very clear, and they followed them to the place where Karusakaib6, in his tapir form, was sleeping. Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 71 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. The dogs ran up to him barking, and the hunters sent many arrows into his body. The tapir got up and ran off, but he chose a trail where he knew other hunters were waiting in ambush. He passed them slowly and received many more arrows and did the same thing at another ambush place. He then ran away from his pursuers and retransformed himself into a man, pulled all the arrows out of his body and set off for home with a good stock. In the meantime, all was not well in Uacupari. Shortly after Karusakaib6 had left the village, DaiYiru arrived. He went to Korumtau and asked, "Tell me, where is your father killing the wild pigs." The boy refused to tell him. but Daiir(u was persistent. Finally, Korumtau said to the armadillo, "I would show you only I am sick and have to stay in my hammock." Daiiriu replied, "Oh, you are not sick. Come out of the hammock." Korumtau gave in to the repeated requests and descended. DaiYru then blew smoke all over him, in the manner of the shaman, and stamped his feet heavily on the ground, causing all the tapioca to flake off his body. He then said, "Good. Now you are well." But Korumtau still refused to tell his father's secret to the wily armadillo. After long and persistent questioning, the boy finally wearied and decided to fall back on a ruse that his father had devised before leaving. He had prepared for this eventuality by building three small hunting lairs, like those made by the Mundurucui; one was under a piqui palm and the other two were under uchi palms, and on the wall of each little straw hut, Karusakaibo had placed a piece of wild pig hide to convince the curious that it was here that he shot the animals. Korumtau took Daiirui to the first of these and said, "We get them here. You have to wait." A band of catitu? came along, and Korumtau said, "Here come the wild pigs. Shoot !" Daiirui was not so easily fooled and said, "No. These are not the animals that your father kills. These have short black hair mixed with white. Here on the wall are the long black hairs of your father's game." He let the catitiu pass. Korumtau then took DaiYrui to the second false hunting lair and then to the third. At both places the same conversation took place. DaiYrui became even more inisistent that he discover the secret. The boy realized that he could not hope to fool the armadillo and consented to bring him to the pen and show him what to do. He ended his instructions with the admonition to be careful that the pigs did not all escape. The irresponsible DaiYriu ignored this warning and, instead of throwing one tucuma fruit in the opened doorway, he pulled a whole cluster off the tree. This attracted many pigs, and when the first came out, DaiYirui shot it. Unfortunately he did not know how to shoot wild pigs and the arrow fell out. Another pig and then another came out and the same thing happened. Korumtau, seeing what was happening, called out, "Shut the door and keep the rest in." On hearing this, all the pigs made a rush for the door and ate DaiYrfu. Korumtau fled, but the wild pigs set off in pursuit of him. As he ran through the forest, he called to his father for help. Karusakaibo was returning through the forest at the time his son called. He was still some distance away when he first heard the shouts for help, and he was unable to intervene directly. Instead, he magically changed the boy into 72 Murphy: Munduruct' Religion an ant which crawled into an anthole, then into a grasshopper which hid under the blades of grass, and finally into a cricket. None of these transformations tricked the vengeful wild pigs and they continued the chase. In desperation Karusakaib6 threw up a chain of hills between his son and the pursuing pigs. (These are the same high hills which one can see today at the headwaters of the rivers which drain the Mundurucui country.) The pigs were very clever, however, and passed around the sides of the hills, catching Korumtau and making off with him. The pigs, with Karusakaib6 following, reached the banks of the Tapajos River, and the culture hero threw a hill over part of the herd, imprisoning his captive son, also. They are still there today. Those pigs who were not caught within the hill that Karusakaibo created went to the banks of the Tapajos but were unable to cross the river because of its great width. They then magically made an anaconda and stretched it from one bank to another. The giant constrictor tightened his coils and drew the banks together, making the river very narrow at that point. The pigs crossed over safely and spread out into the forests on the west bank of the Tapajos. Their descendants are the wild pigs which are hunted in the forests today. Karusakaib6 had lost his only son and returned to Uacupari, crying as he went. On the path he stopped at the now empty pigpen, looked around at all the tracks and noted some blood on the ground. This, of course, was the blood of Daiirui, but Karusakaibo thought that it might be that of his son. He gathered the blood together, blew on it, and stamped on the ground; but, instead of producing his son, he returned only Daiirui to life. Disappointed and enraged, Karusakaibo began to beat the armadillo and to berate him for causing his son's death. Daiirui begged forgiveness, and the culture hero relented. He then con- tinued his return journey to Uacupari, still weeping for Korumtau. 2. KARUSAKAIB6 PUNISHIES THE SEDUCERS OF HIS SON After Korumtau had been stolen by the wild pigs, Karusakaib6 returned to his house in Uacupari. He went out to his garden one day and, when returning, heard the voice of his son calling, "Father, father." He looked around, but saw no one. Some days later, Karusakaibo went to his garden again, and the same thing happened. He looked again and saw only two trees standing near the path. The next time he went to the garden, he heard the voice calling, "Father, father," and thought, "Could that tree be my son?" He turned back and cut down one of the trees and brought it home. Out of the wood of this tree he fashioned a doll upon which he blew tobacco smoke. He left the doll in a corner of his house and after a few days went to inspect the results. The only human development that had taken place in the doll, however, was that it had grown ears-and these were orelhas de pau, the fungus growth that grows on logs. He threw the doll out saying that it was no good and was obviously not his son. The next time he went to the garden he heard the same voice and forthwith cut down the remaining tree. He again fashioned a doll out of the wood, repeated the same operations, and left it in a corner of the house. The next time he 73 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. looked at the doll, it had turned into a beautiful boy, all painted and decorated. He took this boy as his son and was consoled. Karusakaibo kept his new son concealed from all the women of the village. The boy's only food, however, was the juriti bird, and the father had to go out every day to hunt some. In order to guard the son, he kept him in a small enclosure within the house and told an old woman of the household to guard the child and to keep everybody away from him. He then set off for the forest. In Karusakaibi's house were several sieves which the women of the village always borrowed when they made beijui. Shortly after he had left his new son for the first time to hunt the juriti, a woman came to the house to borrow a sieve. The boy was inside his enclosure, but the woman heard the buzzing of a disk- and-string toy with which the lad was playing. She asked the old woman, "What is that ?" "Go away," replied the boy's guardian. "Leave him alone." The woman listened more and then said, "I will go." That night, Karusakaibo came home, roasted the juriti, and called the boy out to eat. The son came right out, for he did not have coitus and thus was not ashamed. On the next day and the one after that, different women came to the house and the same things transpired. On the fourth day, another curious woman came, and was also sent off by the old woman. She left, but slipped in by another entrance and entered the boy's chamber. The boy was very beautiful and the woman desired him immediately. She asked him for his penis and he gave it (i.e., they had sexual intercourse). His penis remained enlarged and erect, however, after the conclusion of the act. When the father came home that night and called his son, there was no response. He called again, and the ashamed boy still did not come out. Karusakaibo wondered what was wrong and went into the chamber. He saw the lad's enlarged penis and knew immediately what had occurred. Going out to the old woman, he asked, "What happened? I told you to watch him and to keep the women away, but you did not." "But I told them," replied the woman. "It is just that they would not listen." Karusakaibo returned to his son's room and pushed his thumb against the head of the boy's penis, saying "gikiriu" three times (the sikiriu' is a small bird with a short beak-the magical association here is obvious). The penis grew very small, and the boy then came out to eat his juritl. After finishing it he returned to his chamber. On the following day Karusakaibo went to the forest to hunt, leaving the same instructions with the old woman. A short time later a woman entered the house, ostensibly to borrow a manioc sieve, and inquired as to what was inside the closed chamber. The old woman repeated the same warning to leave the boy alone, but the woman, who had heard of the boy from his lover of the previous day, entered surreptitiously and offered herself to the boy. After completing the act the boy's penis grew even longer than it had the day before, and he was afraid to leave the chamber when his father returned to the house. Karusakaibo discovered the son's wayward behavior immediately and again chided the old woman for her negligence. Karusakaibo became disgusted with the son and determined to get rid of him. 74 Murphy: Munduruci Religion He seized him by the nose and yanked, giving him a long snout, then stretched the boy's ears and banged the sides of his head to make the head narrow. He next grabbed him by the back of the neck so as to produce a hump, and stretched his penis to enormous size. He then took a large wooden pestle and rammed it into the boy's anus, shouting, "Go away." As he ran away, Karusakaibo threw a piece of tauari bark over him, and it turned into a thick hide. In essence, the boy had been converted into a tapir. From this moment on this particular tapir became known as Anyocaitche. The tapir ran off in the direction of the near-by stream where the women gathered every day to bathe and draw water. The women learned that he lurked in this neighborhood, and, subsequently, when they came for their bath they would jump into the water and call, "Anyocaitche," whereupon the tapir would emerge from the forest and have intercourse with them. One day a man of the village was near the stream, engaged in making a basket. Hlis attention was caught by a young woman who came to bathe, but who, upon entering the water called, "Anyocaitche, come bathe." The man was amazed to see the tapir jump into the water and perform coitus with the woman and all the others who followed her into the water. The man thought, "Is it possible that my own wife will do the same thing?" His fears were quickly confirmed. He went back to the village and announced to the other men, "It is not we who have been making our women pregnant," and described what had transpired. They thereupon resolved to kill the tapir. The next day Karusakaibo ordered all the women of the village to work in the gardens. The men prepared a supply of arrows but first sent one of their number ahead to lure the tapir so that they could kill him from ambush. The decoy suspended a gourd on either side of his chest to simulate breasts and set off. As he left he called back, "Do not delay, for if you do, that tapir will get me in the anus." Upon reaching the stream he dove in and called Anyocaitche. The tapir ap- peared and was immediately shot by the concealed archers. They then cut the tapir up and made from its blood an armadillo, whose proper name was Nem- bukarare, which they left in the place of the tapir. The meat was brought back to the village and cooked and eaten. All traces of it were eradicated before the women came home, and they suspected nothing. When the women left the village for the gardens on the following morning, one left her child, who was still nursing but was able to talk, with her husband. The child was hungry when the mother returned and cried for the breast. The mother, however, was in a hurry to receive the attentions of the tapir at the stream, and she took a gourd water container and hurried out of the village. The child followed her, crying angrily for the breast. Finally, the little boy cried out in vexation, "It was a good thing that we ate your husband." The mother wheeled upon the boy and said sharply, "What was that ?" The child became frightened and answered, "Nothing. I only asked for the breast." She slapped him lightly on the head and the boy immediately turned into the tekerz', a small bird, and flew off. The mother tried to grab it but got only a tail feather. 75 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. The woman went on to the port and called for the tapir. In its place came the armadillo, who attempted to have intercourse with her. Since the women cus- tomarily had coitus with the tapir in the position of animals, it was only as the armadillo was mounting her that she realized that it was not Anyocaitche. She returned to the village weeping for the loss of the tapir, but pretending that the tears were for her lost child. All the village women went to the port and had the same saddening experience. Upon learning of the remark made by the child, the women realized what had happened and resolved to avenge the tapir's death by jumping into the water and turning into fish. Karusakaib6's wife, who was also enamored with the tapir, went to the men and told them all to hunt the next day. They did so, leaving only one man, whose wife had given birth the night before. The women then congregated and painted each other ornately. The mother of the new-born child was reluctant to leave it, but the women were determined not to leave a single female behind and finally persuaded her to join them. They then started out in single file for the stream, the youngest women in front, the oldest bringing up the rear. As they marched, they sang, "We are going to fall into the water for we are angry because of our man." One by one they jumped into the water and turned into fish. In the meantime, the one man who had remained in the village began to wonder at his wife's absence. He went to the port and upon seeing what was taking place ran back to give the alarm. Placing the baby under an overturned pot for protec- tion, he ran into the forest blowing on a signal horn and calling to the other men, "Your women are all jumping into the water." The men heard him only in- distinctly, but ran to see what the trouble was. Just as they reached him, the man turned into a jacui bird. The men hurried back to the village; those who did not hear the alarm were transformed into japin birds. The men, however, were too late. When they reached the stream, there were oiily three old crones left, and Karusakaibo made them into alligators and crabs. The little boys who were abandoned on the beach by their mothers turned into birds and flew away. The Mundurucui tribe was then composed only of men. 3. HOW KARUSAKAIrB AND DAIIR(J CAUGHT THE WOMEN On the day after the women had jumped into the water and turned into fish, Karusakaib6 sent all the men of Uacuparl out to hunt. He then went to the garden anld dug up some sweet manioc which he brought back to the house. After this he went to the forest and killed a jacu', whose thin leg bone he used as a hook. The meat was left on the bone as bait, and he tied the hook to a length of sipo (jungle vine). He then collected some leaves of the tucuma palm and set out for the stream into which the women had jumped. The women, all transformed into fish, were lying at the bottom of a deep hole where the stream had undercut the bank, and there Karusakaibo could hear them talking and laughing. He dropped his line in the water and immediately hooked one of the fish, which he yanked out of the water and left flopping behind him. He refrained from looking over his shoulder at the fish and proceeded to make a basket out of the tueuma palm leaves. Finally the fish stopped flopping, and he felt someone come 76 up behind him and laughingly tickle his ribs. He then turned around and beheld his wife, transformed again into a woman. He blew smoke on her and passed his hands over her body to remove all the scales and fish slime. Bidding her fill a con- tainer with water and follow him, Karusakaibo returned to the house. Back at the house, he ordered her to make the traditional sweet manioc drink, weru', and then concealed her in her hammock, which he hung above the storage platform. But the presence of the sweet manioc drink indicated the work of a woman, and Karusakaibo thrust the arms of his pet coata monkey into the beverage, intending to tell the men that it was the monkey who had prepared it. Among the returning hunters was Dai-;ru, the trickster companion of Karu- sakaib6. The other men were easily misled by Karusakaib6's allegation that the monkey had made the drink, of which they had all imbibed upon returning. The wily armadillo, however, sniffed upon entering the house and remarked, "There is something here." "No there is nothing at all," replied Karusakaib6, "take some manioc drink." Daiirui lifted the half-gourd to his mouth three times, but he did not drink. He only sniffed and repeated his suspicion. He then began to sing a song at the conclusion of which he wiggled his hips in an amusing manner. Each time that he sang the song he looked around but saw nothing. On the third time, the wife peaked from her place of concealment to see who was singing. She saw DaiYrui and began to laugh and was thereby discovered. The armadillo immediately cried, "I told you that there was something there," and asked for 'first preference,' that is for the hand of the first daughter born to Karusakaib6 and his wife. Karusakaib6 granted the request, and DaiYrui then asked him to tell how he had gotten his wife back. The culture hero did not wish to tell him for he knew that Dai;rui lacked the necessary patience, but he finally gave in to the insistent questioning. DaiYrui secured the requisite equipment and went to the stream in which the women were swimming. He caught one of the fish, pulled it out of the water, and left it flopping on the ground behind him while he commenced work on the basket. The fish finally stopped thrashing about and was on the point of turning into a woman when Daiirui grew impatient and turned around to look. He saw only a jacunda pintada. Exasperated, he had intercourse with the fish and threw it back in the water. Until this day, the jacunda pintada (called 'wife of the armadillo' in Mundurucui) is inedible and does not even serve for bait. The armadillo returned to the village and made the sweet manioc drink in an effort to convince Karusakaibo that he had been successful in his fishing venture. The culture hero tasted the drink and knew immediately that Dai-riu had made it. He then went down to the stream and created an otter, which he placed in the water to frighten the transformed women from the hole in which they were hiding. The fish then scattered up and down the river. 4. HOW KARUSAKAIBO AND DAIIRU.t PULLD THE PEOPLE OUT OF THE GROUND Now it came to pass that a child was born to Karusakaibo and his wife. When the child had learned how to walk Daiirui came to claim her as his wife in accordance with his agreement with Karusakaib6. He brought the little girl home and slept Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 77 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. with her every night, but for some time he refrained from violating her. Finally he had intercourse with the infant and, in so doing, killed her. Karusakaibo determined to avenge the death of his daughter. He brought Daiirui to the forest and shot arrows high into palm trees, ordering the armadillo to retrieve them in the hope that he would fall down. When this did not happen, Karusakaibd shot an arrow high into a thorny-trunked tucuma palm. The wily armadillo climbed up the palm tree by pushing his paws up the trunk instead of climbing hand over hand. By this device he bent the palm thorns down, and they did not wound him. Finally Karusakaibo made a huge garden clearing in the forest and, when the time for burning off the felled vegetation came, he ordered DaiYrui to build a fire in the middle of the clearing. He then ignited the perimeter of the clearing and left Daiirui trapped by the advancing flames. But the resourceful trickster dug deep into the ground and escaped.7 When the fire had cooled, Karusakaibo returned to the garden to look for the ashes of the armadillo. He found only the hole and thought, "Could it be that he is still alive?" He blew tobacco smoke into the hole and stamped his foot, whereupon Daiir?u issued from the ground. The still angry culture hero began to beat DaiYir', but the armadillo cried, "Do not do that! Do not do that! There are people down in the earth where I was." Karusakaibo sent DaiYru' for some cord and then sent the armadillo down the hole with it with instructions to tell the people to grab the cord securely. Daihrui did as he was told, and Karusakaib6 began to pull the people out of the ground. First came the "savage Indians," who tried unsuccessfully to kill Karusakaibo. These dispersed throughout the forests. The next people to be pulled out of the ground were the "peaceful Indians," or people like the Mundurucui. They too scattered over the land and, with the 'savage Indians,' are now the tribes of the region. The last to emerge to the terrestial level were the Mundurucu', for im- mediately after their appearance, a maracana flew past and cut the cord with his beak. The remaining people, who were the most beautiful of all, fell back down the hole. The underworld in which these people live, said Daiiruf, is a replica of the world in which terrestial people live. The hole through which the people were drawn was at Uacupari, the village of Karusakaib6. 5. KARUSAKAIB6 MAKES MORE WOMEN After drawing the people from the ground, Karusakaib6 decided to make more women, since he was the only man to have a wife. He made many women out of clay, but they lacked vaginas, and these were made by various animals, who formed the vaginas by having intercourse with the clay figures. Some were made by the agouti, and because of the shape of his penis, the women had a long thin vagina. More were made by the paca, and these were nice and round. Finally, the squirrel made the best-round and pretty. After the vaginas were made, Daiirui 7In another version of this story, KarusakaibM ordered Daiiru to grab another armadillo by the tail. The trickster did this, and Karusakaibo, through his magical powers, made it impossible for Daiiru to open his closed hand. The other armadillo then dug into the earth and dragged Dai;rui with him. 78 Murphy: Mundurucu Religion dabbed a bit of rotten Brazil nut on the mouth of each one. It is because of the animals who made the vaginas that they are of different shapes and sizes today, and it is because of the armadillo that the female organ smells as it does. 6. HOW KARUSAKAIBO MADE THE SKY AND FINALLY AVGED HIMSELF AGAINST DAIYRt Now Karusakaibo resumed his plans to rid himself of the armadillo-trickster, DaiYrui. One day he invited DaiYrui to accompany him to bathe. On the way, Karusakaibo told him, "Carry a flat stone." The armadillo picked up a flat stone and carried it in his hands. "No," said Karusakaib6, "carry it on your head." As soon as Daiiriu had placed the flat stone on his head, Karusakaib6 caused the stone to grow in diameter. It grew and grew, and, in order to support it, Daiirui braced his hands beneath it. As it grew larger Daiirui cried out, "It is heavy." When the armadillo could no longer support it, Karusakaib6 caused both him and the stone to rise high into the air. This great, flat stone is now the sky. Karusakaibo then made roots grow from Daiiru's nose and implant themselves in the earth; the armadillo thus became transformed into the apoi, a tall tree of the jungle. It is this tree which to this day supports the sky, although nobody knows where it is. THE BIBLE: MUNDURUGtT VERSION The following six tales are among the most delightful collected; they are also of great value for an understanding of the processes of integration and creativity in myth-making. The first three syncretize the story of Adam and Eve with Mun- duruciu themes, and the last three represent a similar integration of New Testa- ment themes. Karusakaib6 and Tupan are interchangeable in these stories, and the same nar- rator frequently used both names to designate the same person. The first tale of the cycle, "The Creation of Adjun and Eva," has become a continuation of the account entitled "Karusakaib6 Makes More Women." An interesting reversal of Biblical events occurs in that Adjun, or Adam, is made from Eve's rib. The second story, "The Origin of Work," appears to be an aboriginal myth integrated with that part of the Biblical punishment for original sin that com- mands that man shall live by the sweat of his brow. Koch-Griinberg recorded a similar story of tools that worked by themselves among the Taulipang,8 and Nimuendaju' found the same theme in an Eastern Timbira tale.9 Neither story betrays European influence, nor does that collected by Wagley and Galvao among the Tenetehara.10 The aboriginality of the theme in eastern South America is further corroborated by Metraux's reference to the belief in a land where there is no work as an essential part of the ancient Tupian myth of the "terre-sans- mal."" Granted that the legend is aboriginal to the Mundurucui also, they have then adopted and embellished that part of the Book of Genesis which had meaning Koch-Grunberg, 1927, pp. 133-137. 9NimuendajU, 1946, p. 244. 10 Wagley and Ga1vao, 1949, p. 132. 11 Mtraux, 1928, pp. 208-209. 79 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. for them. By the same principle, Eve's consumption of the forbidden fruit be- comes a minor theme in the third story, and the main activity of the devil- serpent is to teach Adam and Eve the art of sexual intercourse. The three New Testament stories are all interpretations of Christ's death and ascent to Heaven. In the last two versions, Karusakaibo, who in this case is equated with God the Son and not God the Father as in the Genesis tales, is ac- cused of sorcery and is slain by his fellows. Like Christ, he arises from the dead and has further adventures. In two of these stories Karusakaib6-Tupan-Christ endows the white people with their technological superiority. The Mundurucui still look upon their own backwardness as the result of Karusakaib6's anger. The last story of the cycle has integrated more European content than have the others. Karusakaib6 is specifically mentioned as visiting America and Ger- many, the respective native lands of the author and the missionaries. En route he made salt water and ice, both of which are but dimly understood by the Mun- duruciu. One episode substitutes domestic fowl for the fishes and loaves of the Sermon on the Mount, but the resulting creation was not used to feed the multi- tude. 7. THE CREATION OF ADJUN AND EVA When Karusakaibo, or Tupan as he is known by the priests, made the women out of clay, he also made a little house in which he locked the unfinished clay dolls. When he opened the house again, the dolls had all turned into adolescent girls. There were already men at that time, and one of these men discovered the girls and seduced one. Karusakaibo asked who had had coitus with the girl, and when he found out, he made the man marry her. As the girls grew to maturity, the culture hero gave one to each man. Eventually, all the men had wives, and only a girl named Eva was left without a mate. Karusakaibo decided to make a man for her. He took one of her ribs while she was asleep, turned it into a man, and placed him beside her. In the morning she awoke to find Adjun. Karusakaibo told Adjun that Eva was his woman and was given to him to help him. He left a quantity of fruit with them, but instructed them not to eat any. 8. ORIGIN OF WORK Karusakaibo sent Adjun to the forest to make a garden. Adjun did not, however, have to do any physical labor, for Karusakaibo gave him machetes that worked by themselves and did not require a human arm to swing them. But he instructed Adjun to refrain from spying upon the work of the machetes. Adjun, however, was overcome by curiosity and peeked at the activity of the machetes, whereupon they all broke. When Karusakaib6 saw that nothing had been done in the new garden, he made Adjun do the work himself. And he warned Adjun that his children after him would also suffer for his disobedience. From then on it would be hot, and people would sweat and develop callo-uses on their hands. Karusakaib6 then gave axes to Adjun and again told him that the axes would do the work themselves as long as they were not spied upon. Adjun again looked, the axes broke, and Karusakaib6 ordered him to fell the trees himself. Adjun 80 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion began to cut a tree, which in those times was as soft as a melon, but the tree began to cry. He took another swing with his axe, and the tree cried harder. Thought Adjun, "This is hurting the tree too much. I cannot cut it." When Karusakaibo asked if the work was done, Adjun replied, "No. This tree cannot stand the chopping." "Spit on your axe," said Karusakaibo, "and then chop it." The spit turned the wood hard and knotty, as it is today. Karusakaibo then gave hoes to Adjun with the same instructions, but Adjun again disobeyed and was ordered to do the hoeing himself. Thus he ended by making the entire garden through his own labor. When the manioc matured, Karusakaib6 sent Adjun to the garden to harvest it and make farinha. He went to the garden and saw that the stalks were only a foot high. He returned, claiming that the crop was not yet ripe, but Karusakaib6 re- plied, "There is manioc there. Go and pull it out and make farinha." Again Adjun went to the garden and decided that the manioc was too young. This time, Karusakaibo told him to go back to the garden, stamp his foot upon the ground twice, and then touch a tuber with his toe. Adjun did this and the stalks sprouted up and the garden became all tangled and overgrown as it is today. Karusakaibo was very angry at Adjun for his disobedience and burned him in order to purify him. 9. ORIGIN OF SEX Adjun and Eva lived together, but Adjun did not know what to do with a woman or how to beget children. He thought that Eva's vagina was a wound and he tried to heal it by washing and medicinal treatment. The devil, who was really a serpent, came disguised in the form of a man and asked Adjun what he was doing. He told the serpent that he was trying to heal Eva's wound, whereupon the serpent told him what the vagina was actually for and what Adjun should do with it. Adjun replied, "No, she is wounded. That would hurt her." The serpent reassured Adjun that it would not hurt Eva and that they would both enjoy it. Adjun did as directed, and he and Eva liked the experience so much that they and all mankind have been doing it ever since. Later, the devil tempted Eva to eat the fruit. When Karusakaib6 learned of this he sent her and Adjun away. 10. KARUSAKAIBO LEAVES THE WORLD: FIRST VERSION After his disappointment with Adjun and Eva, Karusakaib6 decided to ascend to the sky. On the way he passed through all the lands down the Tapajos River. There, the people were more receptive to him than had been the Mundurucu, and they followed him and listened to him. He taught them many wonderful things. It is for this reason that the Mundurucui have little knowledge and are poor in material things, and the people downstream have so much that is wonderful. 11. KARUSAKAIBO LEAVES THE WORLD: SECONID VERSION After turning Daiiriu into the apoi tree, Karusakaib6 returned to Uacupari. Be- cause of his great power his people had become afraid of him. He had made people, animals, and hills, and the villagers therefore decided to kill him as a 81 2University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. sorcerer. The men of the village went to his house to kill him, but Karusakaib6 was aware of their intent and transformed himself into a weak old man who could not even walk. They came again, and Karusakaib6 turned himself into a very old woman, and again the men left out of compassion. On the third occasion, Karu- sakaib6 again made himself into an old man, but this time the men slew him with their bows and arrows and left him. Some days later the village men visited Karusakaib6's grave and found him sitting on the ground, alive and young again. He then left them and ascended into the sky. To this day it is dangerous to live on the site of Karusakaibo's old village of Uacupari, for down below is the underworld from which the people were drawn. This underworld is like the present world of the Mundurucu, but it has cities, steamboats, and other wonderful things. If one were to live above this world, the land would sink and in its place a river would flow. 12. KARUSAKAIBd LEAVES THE WORLD: THIRD VERSION The people were angry and suspicious toward Karusakaib6 (Tupan) because he did many strange things and had great power over people. They shot him with arrows and buried him, placing over his grave thorns and great stones. However, he came to life again and burst out of the tomb with such force that the hills of the Mundurucui country were formed. Tupan is now in the sky. On the way he visited America and Germany. During his travels he made salt water and turned water into ice so that he could cross it. He also created many kinds of animals. On one occasion he killed a hen, split it, and put it on the fire. He cut one of the halves into many little pieces and blew upon them. Each piece turned into a hen or a rooster and flew away. One of the roosters saw Tupan as he flew away and cried, "There goes Santo Antonio rising." Tupan arrived at a house and asked for water and manioc flour. The people did not know who he was and gave him only water. Tupan said, "Their garden is going to grow." He turned his back and walked away, and the garden turned into stone. He went on and arrived at another house. These people gave him manioc flour and water. Tupan said, "This garden is going to become all overgrown." But the opposite happened, and the garden yielded abundantly. The first people were angry at Tupan and thought him a sorcerer. Those who were kind to him said, "Ah, but our grandfather is good !" COSMOLOGICAL MYTHS The following nine tales deal in part with cosmological themes. The cycle of tales concerning the activities of Karuetaouibo and Wakurump6 explains the visage of the sun, but differentiates its physical appearance from the sun spirit, or its ultimate reality. The visible sun, we learn, is really a dual phenomenon that con- sists alternately of the heads of Karuetaouibo and Wakurump6. The tale (15) ex- plaining this shares certain motifs with the widely distributed "Rolling Head" 82 Murphy: Mundurucut Religion myth. But in other stories in which detached heads become astral bodies, the heads are usually transformed into the moon.' The most interesting episode in these stories, however, is the clearly delineated Oedipus theme in tale 13. The myth bears some resemblance to one collected by Nimuendajiu among the Eastern Tim- bira in which a star takes pity upon a young but ugly man.'3 The latter story, however, has two brothers playing the roles of the brothers-in-law in the Mundu- rucu account. The stories of Nung-nung are likewise concerned with origins in that they ex- plain the prevalence of fleas at certain seasons and the origin of the Milky Way. But the latent theme of sibling rivalry that runs through this myth cycle is quite strong. Tales 16 and 17 tell how Nung-nung's wife (and patrilateral cross cousin in the second version) left him for his younger brother, and in tale 18 Nung-nung copulates with the brother's wife and is killed by him in revenge. The two remaining stories of this group are unrelated to these two myth cycles. One gives an account of how the spirit, the Mother of the Rain, appeared in the guise of an old woman and created the abundant fruit of the forest. The other partakes of the widely distributed theme that the night was once very short and became long through human intervention. The responsible person is transformed into a bird of the night in the Mundurucui account, as he is in native myths col- lected by Nimuendajui4 and by Couto de Magalhles.'3 13. TRANSFORMATION OF KARUETAOUIBO AND WAKURUMP6 Once upon a time there lived two men, named Karuetaouib6 and Wakurumpo, who were married to each other's sisters. The latter was a man of normal appearance, but Karuetaouib6 was very ugly. He was so ugly that his wife no longer wanted him and not only refused to accept his kill of fish and game, but had relations with another man. One day the men of the village went to a stream far in the forest to fish with timbo. When the others returned, Karuetaouib6 remained in the shelter that they had built and contemplated his unhappy situation. He was disgusted with life and reluctant to return to a wife who did not want him. As he was sitting there, the Sun came with his wife and asked him what he was doing. "Nothing," replied Karuetaouibo, "I am only sitting here because my wife has relations with another man and no longer wants me because of my ugliness."' The Sun wished to verify the truth of this and told his own wife to have coitus with Karuetaouib6 in order to see if he was capable of pleasing a woman. The wife tried him out, but his penis was soft and would not enter. She went back and reported this to the Sun. To see if his wife was telling the truth, he passed his hand down the front of her body and then down her back to see if he could bring out semen. Nothing could be discovered, and he knew his wife told the truth. "See Baldus, 1946, pp. 108-109. "Nimuendajui, 1946, p. 245. 4 Nimuendajiu, 1915, p. 287. "Couto de Magalhaes, 1935, pp. 231-233. 83 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. The Sun then said, "Let us see what we can do for him," and he passed his hands over the body of Karuetaouib6, making him very small. He placed him in- side his wife's womb, and after three days he was reborn. The Sun worked upon him and fashioned him into a beautiful man of normal size. He then went to the stream and caught a basket full of fish which he gave to Karuetaouibo saying, "Return to your village, but do not go back to your wife. Go instead to a woman named Painun who weeps constantly for her husband, who was killed by the enemy." The Sun then brought him to the edge of the village and left him to enter by himself. As Karuetaouib6 approached the village, he signaled that he was coming. He first went to the men's house and there hung a hammock so small that there was no room for another man to climb in and bother him. Everybody gathered around him and admired his new beauty. The men said, "Ah, I wish that I were a woman so that I could have him for myself." Karuetaouibo's wife heard this, but she did not bother to look up, thinking that he had merely painted himself. Finally, she went outside the house and saw that her husband had indeed become very beauti- ful. The wife was under the impression that her husband still wanted her, and she made haste to make herself appear industrious. She went to her mother-in-law, who was grating manioc and said, "Let me grate the manioc, mother-in-law. The old lady replied, "No, he does not want you to do it." In the meantime, Karue- taouib6 ignored his wife and said, "Mother, go to the edge of the forest and pick up my basket full of fish." The wife offered to go, but Karuetaouibo refused. When the mother returned with the fish, Karuetaouib6 instructed her, "Go to the house there and give the woman who is weeping some fish and tell her to be consoled and cry no more." The old woman did this, and the woman in mourning said to her, "How can it be that your son wants me. I am ugly and dirty now." The mother replied, "It was he himself who sent me. He wants you." At this moment, Karuetaouibo entered the house and said to the woman, "Go to the stream and wash yourself and return to be my wife." She made herself clean and beautiful, and when she returned they started their life together. When Karuetaouibo returned to the men's house, he got into his tiny ham- mock. Wakurump6 approached him and said, "Let me get into your hammock so that you can tell me how you became so beautiful." Karuetaouib6 replied, "No, the hammock is too small." But Wakurumpo was extremely persistent, and after a number of days Karuetaouib6 surrendered and told him the story. "But," he added, "this can mean nothing to you for you are not ugly, and your wife wants you." The envious Wakurump6 wanted, however, to get rid of his wife and be as handsome as Karuetaouibo. He accordingly pretended that he was ugly and that his wife had rejected him for another man. Like Karuetaouib6, he went on a timbo-fishing expedition and stayed behind when the others returned to the vil- lage. Soon Sun arrived and, pretending at first that he did not recognize Waku- rump6, eventually asked him what he was doing. Wakurump6 repeated the same story that Karuetaouibo had told, and the Sun proceeded to take the same meas- ures. He instructed his wife to see whether Wakurump6 was capable of satisfying 84 a woman, and the Sun's wife proceeded to have coitus with him. However, Karuetaouib6 had neglected to tell this part of the story to Wakurump6, and the latter completed satisfactory relations with Sun's wife. The wife told Sun what had happened, and he verified it as he did in the case of Karuetaouibo. Sun then made Wakurump6 very small and inserted him into his wife's womb, whence he was reborn three days later. He proceeded to make him big again and to remodel him. But this time, he made him ugly and hunchbacked and told him, "Now go home. But go home to your wife." Sun and his wife did not fish for him or carry his basket back to the village, and Wakurump6 had to do all this him- self. When he neared the village he signaled his arrival, and all the people who came to greet him stood about and stared at his ugliness. He had to go back to his wife, who accepted him. When Wakurump6 went to the men's house to hang up his hammock, Karue- taouibo was lying there in his hammock, playing the following song on a flute: It was your fault, Wakurump6 It was your fault, Wakurumpo You were curious for your mother's vagina You were, you were. 14. WAKURUMPO MAKES AN ECLIPSE One day Wakurump6, who was a powerful shaman, decided to hide the sun. He did this by putting genipa paint on the face of the sun through sorcery. He also brought on tremendous rains by merely twiddling his fingers in the direction of the sun. Thus, it was always either completely dark or rainy and obscure. The other shamans got together and made it light through the magical use of macaw feathers. But they were able to bring the light only to the spot where they were sitting. Everywhere else it remained dark. Finally, Wakurump6 took a piece of bamboo and sharpened it into a crescent- shaped knife. He sent this up to the sky to scrape the genipa off the sun's face. It was then light again. 15. KARUETAOUIBO ANI) WAKURUMPO ASCEND TO THE SKY AND BECOME THE SUN Wakurump6 and Karuetaouib6 were killed by enemies, who cut off their heads and placed them on top of posts. A small fat boy was posted to guard the heads. This boy had inherited shamanistic powers, but neither he nor the other people knew this. One day the heads began moving and talking, but only the boy could hear them, because of his special power. He shouted to the older men, "The two heads are moving and saying to each other, 'When will we rise to the sky?"' The elders scoffed and said, "How can heads without bodies or eyes move, and how can a dry mouth talk ?" This happened many times, and the men still thought that the fat boy was lying to them. A few days later the men adorned the heads with urucu' paint and feathers, and after some days the heads said to each other, "Today we ascend." The boy spread the alarm, but none of the men heeded his warning. At noon the heads were seen to start rising to the sky, accompanied by their wives. Karuetaouib6 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 85 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. and his wife rose rapidly, but Wakurump6 ascended slowly because his wife was pregnant. The men of the village shot arrows at the heads, and all missed except one shaft sent by the fat boy, which put out the eyes of Wakurump6. Wakurump6 and Karuetaouib6, both children of the sun owing to their magical rebirth from the womb of Sun's wife, are now in the sky and appear as the visible sun.'6 The wife of Wakurumpo is Parawabi'a, the moon. When it is sunny and bright, this is because Karuetaouib6 is in the sky; he is beautiful and his eyes shine a bright red. However, when it is dark and cloudy, it is because Wakurump6 is in the sky. Wakurump6 is ashamed to show his ugliness, and his eyes are dull and lifeless. For this reason he hides, and we do not see the sun. 16. HOW NUNG-NUNG TURNED INTO THE APOI TREE Nung-nung (in Mundurucui 'nung nung' means flea-ridden) was really a dog in human form. He married a woman, and, on the first night of the marriage his new mother-in-law noticed that there were fleas throughout the house. She found even more fleas in the daughter's hammock and, upon further search, she dis- covered that her daughter's pubic hair was filled with the insects. She informed the daughter, "Your husband is not a person at all." They abandoned Nung-nung, and the woman married his younger brother. Nung-nung went off to the forest and passed the day taking out his foot lice (tiny insects which burrow under the skin and create egg sacs). A number of small wasps gathered around to eat the lice, and Nung-nung caught them and snipped their heads off, keeping the bodies. These he took home to his mother, saying that they were edible, larger wasps. He was thus able to deceive her by shouting, "Put out the fire, put out the fire," as he approached the house; he then gave her the smaller and inedible wasps under the cover of darkness. One day a hunter saw what he was doing in the forest and told Nung-nung's mother. She no longer accepted the wasps. The following day, Nung-nung saw a band of catitui entering a hole. He covered the entrance of the hole and allowed only one of the animals to come out, which he killed and brought home to his overjoyed mother. Every day Nung- nung released and killed another catitui, but after a while they became very thin. When he killed the last of the imprisoned animals, he went away to the north. There he turned himself into an apoi tree, for he had no more food to bring to his mother, and his brother was living with his wife. Nung-nung is still in the apoi tree and that is why any animal that walks underneath one acquires foot lice. The lice eat away the roots of the apoi tree, but instead of falling over, it simply sinks deeper into the ground. 17. HOW A WOMAN KILLED NUNG-NUNG Nung-nung went into the forest every day to take out his foot lice. The wasps gathered around him to eat the lice, and he caught them and brought them home to his mother. While in the forest one day, he saw a band of catitiu enter a hole. 16 The Mundurucu differentiate between the visible sun and the 'real Sun,' who is the mythical personage of tale 13. 86 He blocked the entrance of the hole and released and killed one every day for his mother. He arrived with his catitui one day and his mother said to him, "Your father's sister is here with her daughter. Go and greet them." Nung-nung went to the aunt and asked her why she was visiting. The aunt replied, "I am here to take your younger brother as the husband of my daughter." Nung-nung spoke up and said, "I would like to have her." The aunt consented and that night the couple had intercourse and slept together in the same hammock. During the night, the aunt went to look at the sleeping pair and found fleas in the hammock. She awakened the daughter and found that her pubic hair was also infested with fleas. "This is not a human that you married. Leave him," she advised her daughter. The girl left Nung-nung's side and went to sleep with her mother. Early in the morning, Nung-nung went to his mother-in-law and aked why his wife had left him. The aunt answered, "She always gets annoyed with her husbands and comes to sleep with me." He went back to sleep and later went out to hunt. When Nung-nung returned, he found that his wife and aunt had left, and asked his mother where they were. "Your aunt left taking your younger brother as the husband of her daughter," said the mother. Nung-nung became angry and exclaimed, "He will only be able to give her his horn to eat, for all he ever does is play it. It is I who hunt." But the younger brother stayed with his bride. Another woman arrived in the village and stayed in the house of Nung-nung's mother. One night he went to the house and had coitus with her. The next mornin,g he lay in his hammock playing a song on his flute which told of his exploits with the woman. She heard him and raged, "To whom are you playing that song. I will kill you." She waited until he fell asleep and then made a powerful mixture of water and wild timbo. She threw it over him as he slept in his hammock, and the poison killed him. She then put his flute into the hammock with him and covered over the spots on the ground where the poisonous concoction had spilled. The woman then went to the garden. When Nung-nung's mother returned from the garden, she called him to dine. Discovering that he was dead, she asked the woman what had happened. "I do not know," replied the latter. When I left he was all right. He was lying in his hammock playing the flute." Nung-nung died in this manner. 18. NUNG-NUNG AND HIS BROTHER'S WIFE One- day Nung-nung said to his younger brother, "I know of a fruit tree that is favored by birds, brother. Let us go there and build a shelter and a hunting blind and eat birds." Nung-nung, his brother, and the brother's wife and child went to the forest and prepared their camp. Then Nung-nung said to the brother, "You go out to the bird blind today. I am going to stay here." After the brother left, Nung-nung made a long cord which he attached to bushes in the near-by forest. He kept the other end of the cord near his hammock. He then got into the hammock and pulled on the cord, causing the bushes to sway and rattle. "There is a jaguar out there," he said to his sister-in-law. "You had better come Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 87 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. into my hammock for protection." The frightened woman climbed into Nung- nung's hammock, and he had intercourse with her. This went on every day, until the brother finally became suspicious. He pre- tended to go out to the bird blind, but lurked in the near-by bushes and observed his brother's strategem. He then went on his way and later returned to say, "There are no more birds. Let us go home." On the way back to the village the brother said to Nung-nung, "Let us stop in the garden to suck sugar cane and to see if the pineapple is ripe yet." While in the garden, the younger brother sneaked up behind Nung-nung and tied him to an urucui bush, where he left him to die. When the younger brother and his wife reached home, the mother asked for Nung-nung. In spite of the brother's assurances that Nung-nung would arrive soon, the mother grew increasingly anxious. The next morning she went to the garden, hoping to meet him on the path. Said the younger brother, "While you are in the garden, bring back the urucui that I left hanging from the bush." The mother went to the bush and there found her son's body. 19. NUNG-NUNG BECOMES THE MILKY WAY The Milky Way, which appears clearly in the dry season, is really the hammock of Nung-nung. One day his friends said to him, "You could transform yourself into a star, Nung-nung." This idea did not appeal to him and he declined. Then they said, "You could become a streak in the sky." This pleased Nung-nung, so he lay in his hammock and ascended toward the sky (the Mundurucui believe the sky to be a dome of rock). The men shouted to him, "Stay up in the sky." He could not hear them clearly and thought they said, "Stay on this side of the sky, Nung- nung." His hammock stopped rising, and the Milky Way is now on this side of the sky, although the stars are in the rock itself. Until the present day, fleas and foot lice are at their worst when Nung-nung's hammock is visible in the sky. 20. HOW THE NIGHT BECAME LONG Once upon a time, the nights were very short, unlike our present long nights. A man named Awareub6 was unhappy with the short nights, for he wished to lie in the hammock longer with his wife. One day he said to her, "I would like to lie with you longer. I wish that the nights were not so short." She replied, "Go to my father and ask him for a thread of night, and you can lengthen the darkness." Awareubo went to his father-in-law and his request was granted. He stayed in the village of the father-in-law that night and set out for home the next morning. When he left, the father-in-law handed him two packages and instructed him, "In this package is the thread of night; in the other is the thread of day. Do not open them until you arrive home." He returned to his village, but his curiosity overcame him within shouting distance of home, and he opened the package containing the thread of night. It immediately became pitch-black, and he was unable to 'grope the short distance 88 into the village. He shouted to the villagers to bring fire, but nobody heard him, and he then turned into the curujao da noite (a bird). When he flew away he took the thread of day with him, and nobody knows to this day where it is. That is why the nights are so long. 21. MOTHER OF THE RAIN In times past wounded warriors used to turn into shamans during the period of their disability and wandered over the world in this form. One of these warriors was once walking along a path when he met an old woman who was really the Mother of the Rain. He said to her, "Where are you going, old woman?" The woman, who was carrying an empty basket on her back replied, "I am going to gather fruit," and she named many species of fruit that she intended to collect. As she turned away the warrior pulled on her basket, dragging it to the ground. Out of the empty basket tumbled so much fruit that the warrior could not eat it all; she had created this fruit to demonstrate her power to the wounded man. The angry old woman then exclaimed, "You are not a real shaman. You have only become one for a short time, and only because you went to war and were wounded." She then continued on her way, but since that time there has been an abundance of fruit in the forest, whereas there previously had been but little. CULTURAL INVENTIONS AND INNOVATIONS The following myths are specifically concerned with explaining cultural innova- tions. The first two are the longest and, to the Mundurucui, the most important and account for the origin of the sacred trumpets and of horticulture. The first is a true social charter, for it validates the ascendancy of the male in Mundurucui society. It reveals also the basic insecurity of the male position; the women once owned the instruments and the men can retain them only by force. In short, the male role is felt to be subject to constant threat. The reader will immediately recognize the almost globally distributed theme associated with sacred musical instruments forbidden to the eyes of women. The myth of the origin of horticulture and domesticated plants makes a clear association between these aspects of culture and womanhood and nurture of the young. The story demonstrates an obvious conigruence not only with the female principle in fertility, but with the primary role of the woman in horti- culture. 22. INVENTION OF THE SACRED TRUMPETS The sacred trumpets of the Munduruciu, called the karoko, are taboo to the sight of women, but the women once owned them. In fact it was the women who first discovered the trumpets. There were once three women named Yanyonbori, Tuembiru, and Parawaro. When these women went to collect firewood, they frequently heard music from some unknown source. One day they became thirsty and went off in search of water. Deep in the forest they found a beautiful, shallow, and clear lake, of which they had no previous knowledge. This lake came to be named Kar6k6boapti, 89 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. or 'the place from which they took the karoko.' The next time the women heard the music in the forest, they noted that it came from the direction of the lake and went off to investigate. But they found only jiju fish in the water, which they were unable to catch. Back in the village, one of the women hit upon the idea of catching the fish with hand nets. They rubbed the mouths of the nets with a nut which had the effect of making fish sleepy, and returned to the lake properly equipped. Each woman caught one fish, and these fish turned into hollow cylindrical trumpets. The other fish fled. That is why each men's house now has a set of only three instruments. The women hid the trumpets in the forest where no one could discover them and went secretly every day to play them. The women devoted their lives to the flutes and abandoned their husbands and housework to play them. The men grew suspicious, and Marimarebo, the brother of Yanyonb6ri, followed them and discovered their secret. He did not, however, actually see the instruments. Marimarebo went back to the village and told the other men. When the women returned, he asked if it was true that they had musical instruments in the forest. The woman admitted this and were told, "You can play the instruments, but you have to play them in the house and not in the forest." The women agreed to this. The women, as possessors of the trumpets, had thereby gained ascendancy over the men. The men had to carry firewood and fetch water, and they also had to make the beijui. To this day their hands are still flat from patting the beijui into shape. But the men still hunted, and this angered Marimareb6, for it was necessary to offer meat to the trumpets, and the women were able to offer them only a drink made from sweet manioc. For this reason, Marimarebo favored taking the trumpets from the women, but the other men hesitated from fear of them. On the day on which the women were to bring the trumpets to the village, they ordered the men out to the forest to hunt while they made the sweet manioc drink. When the men returned from the hunt, the three discoverers of the trumpets led the other women out to get the instruments. The leader of the women, Yanyonb6ri, sent one of the women back to tell the men that they should all shut themselves securely inside the dwelling houses. The men refused to do this and insisted upon remaining in the men's house. Finally, Yanyonb6ri herself went back to order the men inside the dwelling houses. Her brother, Marimareb6, replied, "We will go into the house for one night only, but no more. We want the trumpets and will take them tomorrow. If you do not'give them to us, then we will not go hunting, and there will be no meat to offer them." Yanyonb6ri agreed, for she knew that she could not hunt the food for the trumpets or for the guests at the ceremonies. The men entered the dwelling houses, and the women marched around and around the village playing the trumpets. They then entered the men's house for the night and installed the instruments there. Then one by one the women went to the dwelling houses and forced the men to have coitus with them. The men could not refuse, just as the women today cannot refuse the desires 90 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion of the men. This went on all night, and the women returned to the men's house all slippery inside. The next day the men took the trumpets from the women and forced them to go back to the dwelling house. The women wept at their loss. When the men took the trumpets from the women they sang this song (which expresses the shame that domination of the women inflicted upon them): It was I who went and hid I entered the house and hid I entered the house and almost hid Because I did not know I was ashamed Because I did not know I was ashamed Because I did not know I entered the house and hid I entered the house and almost hid 23. INVENTION OF HORTICULTURE Long ago there were no gardens or domesticated plants. An old woman named Kapirut had a sister's son named Karuebo. The child cried all day long from hunger and asked for the vegetables that are planted today in the gardens. Although these plants were not known at the time, the little boy was very wise and thus was able to ask for them. Kapirui sent the men out to the forest to make a huge clearing. After the felled vegetation had- dried, she ordered the men to burn it. The garden burned well, and the old woman went out to it. On the way she told the people of the many things that would spring from this garden and how they were to use these products. She told them that there would be maize, which they could pick and roast when the silk turned black; she told them that they were to eat the sweet potato roasted, and that they could suck the sugar cane when it flowered; she said that they could eat banana raw or cooked when it turned yellow, and that they should boil the sweet manioc and throw away the pulp, using only the broth; she told them that they could mix cara and banana with this broth; she told them that they could eat cara and macaxeira boiled or roasted; that melon could be eaten when it turns yellow, as could pineapple; she said that cajiu was edible when it was red or yellow and inga when it became fat; she told them that fava and feijao could be eaten boiled; and she told them, too, how to prepare farinha. But, she warned them, timbo is poisonous and cannot be eaten. They were to pull it out and beat it in the water, inviting all the others to share in the catch of fish which could be eaten. The old woman, Kapiru', further told them that when the maize was ripe they would be advised of this by a small macaw which would fly above the house singing, Takorekorek, takorekorek. She also said that the bird would return carrying an ear of maize in its beak. He would drop the maize near her sister's son, and they were to give it to him to eat. She then instructed the men to dig a large hole in the middle of the garden and to put her in it with her arms, legs, 91 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. and digits outspread. This they did and covered the old woman lightly with earth, and with every breath she spread and spread until the whole garden was in fact Kapirui. Out of her grew all the plants of the garden. It is for this reason that manioc grows in clusters at the ends of the stalk; the tubers are the fingers of the old woman. After fifteen days, the bird flew over and dropped the ear of maize, which they gave to the boy. He ate it and stopped crying. "It is the signal of the old woman," said the people, and they went out to gather the maize. They came back and roasted and ate it. The only one who was absent was a shaman who had been hunting in the forest. He explained to his wife that he had killed nothing, and she told him that the people of the house had maize but ate it all and saved none for him. The one who had eaten most, she told him, was the boy, who really owned the garden. The shaman became angry and killed the boy by sorcery. When he died, he joined his aunt in the garden. 24. ORIGIN OF THE BARK CANOE Ouitonsese had two sons, Metoenpin and Metoaruib6. The father very much wanted the two sons to have the pleasure of killing an enemy and, accordingly, set out with a war party for a village of the Apiaca Indians. They arrived on the banks of the Tapaj6s and had no way of crossing. Ouitonsese sent all of the people out to the forest to look for a tree whose bark would not break and from which they could make canoes. They did not find such a bark, because in that time there was none. One night Ouitonsese had a dream in which appeared the bark of a tree trans- formed into a person. The vision told him if he wanted to build a bark canoe he would have to pull the bark from the bottom of the river. The needed material was at the river bottom in the form of people, but they could be transformed into trees by feeding them nambui chorona and piaba. Ouitonsese got this food and the next day sent the people to the forest again to search for bark. While they were gone, he pulled the people out of the river magically. He fed these people the prescribed foods, and they turned into trees and took root in the forest. These trees were the white tauarf, the red tauari, the cajui assiu, the uai uru (?), and the jutahi. He tested the bark of each tree and found that all were good for making canoes. When the people returned, Ouitonsese asked them if they had found the proper trees. Upon hearing of their failure he told them that they had not sought them diligently enough, for they were in the forest. The next day the people of the war party went again to look for bark, and this time they were successful. They made bark canoes and crossed the river. The Apiaca village was attacked, and the sons took enemy heads. These were the first bark canoes. 25. STORY OF THE BOW There were once two brothers named Teseringrebo and Karukehewe who had a very malicious older sister named Kabawan. This sister was extremely cruel to 92 Murphy: Munduruci' Religion them and hid food from them; each day they came home and searched through the house for food, not knowing that the sister had hidden it. They found the food one day, and the sister scolded them for taking it. The brothers left home and the elder turned into the pau d'arco tree. The younger was unable to turn into this tree so he became transformed into the paxuberama tree. The pau d'arco, into which the older brother was transformed, was at first hollow and contained ready-made bows inside it. Only one man knew how to open the tree and take the bows out. Another spied upon him and wanted to take bows from the tree also. The first warned him not to take any if his wife was menstruating or pregnant. The second man lied, saying that his wife was not pregnant and attempted to extract the bows. When he went to open the tree, it turned into solid wood, and now people have to carve their bows from the wood. 26. ORIGIN OF THE CHILDREN'S BOW There was once a boy who used to make many arrows. His maternal uncle saw him and asked what he was doing. "Making arrows," said the boy. "You will never kill any enemies," scoffed the uncle to the little boy. But the boy insisted that he would. The same exchange took place three more times, and finally the boy became very angry with the uncle. On the fourth such occasion, the lad shouted, "I will so kill an enemy," and took up his bow and arrow and shot the uncle. The boy then turned into a little bow-the first children's bow. 27. ORIGIN OF FIREWOOD At one time all the wood in the forest was living, and there was no dry wood for the fires. A woman sent her sons into the forest to look for dry wood, but they looked in vain. During their search they encountered old Iepoab6 who asked, "What are you doing, children?" They said, "We are looking for firewood." The old man replied, "If you push me you will have plenty of firewood." He then went away. The boys told their mother of Iepoab6's words, and he said, "If he said to push him, then do so and see what happens." The next day the boys met the old man again and he gave them the same advice. He then turned and walked away, but the children ran after- him and pushed him over. As he fell, dry pieces of wood appeared all over the forest, and we now have firewood. 28. ORIGIN OF THE CLIFF PAINTNGS Moraichok6 lived in the time of the old people on the banks of the Parawarokti, an affluent of the Tapajos River. He and his friend Morekorewib6 lived with their families in a house there. These two men danced all their lives. One day they left the village, dancing as usual, and came to a stream. Moraich6ko made paintings there, high on a rock cliff. No one knows how he got up to the cliff face. Some say that he must have hung his hammock there, but the cliff is smooth and there is no place from which a hammock could have been hung. He could have reached that high only with magical power. After making the painting, 93 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. Moraich6k-o made the paintings on the Morro de Cantagalo, on the Tapaj's River.'7 He and Morek6rewib6 then went to the lands downstream. ADVENTURES AND SAGAS The following tales are not greatly concerned with supernaturally implemented transformations and innovations, although such events do occur within their contexts. And they are not creation epics in the sense of the cycle of Karusakaib6. The first (tale 29) is the story of a boy who is tricked by his mother's brother and, as a result, accomplishes a journey fraught with a number of hardships and successive dangers. He finally reaches home, but his experiences have left him more animal than human. This is clearly indicated at the end of the story when he kills his own pet birds, for no Mundurucui would kill a pet any more than he would his own children. The story is reminiscent of a Tukuna tale related by Nimuendajui, in which a woman is lost in the forest and has various adventures with animals, returning home bereft of reason.18 A Temb6 tale collected by Nimuendajiu has even more close affinity to the Munduruc'u story.1 A boy under- goes a similar odyssey and returns home with the personality of the catitui. The story of Perisuat probably indicates more clearly than do the ceremonies for the game-animal spirits that the Munduruciu feel that their own arboreal way of life connects them very closely with the animal world. The human and animal spheres are conceived as symbiotic to each other, and their memberships are interchangeable under certain circumstances. That the Mundurucut and Tembe sagas are historically connected is manifest in an episode common to both, in which the lost boy crosses a river on the back of a giant alligator. The tale of Perisuat has other widely distributed elements. The motif of feces that speak can be found in much of native South American folklore, and the theme of the man with the sharpened leg bone is encountered far beyond the limits of the continent. Tales 30 to 33 are united by the common theme of internecine conflict. The first relates the estrangement of two brothers and the growth of hostility and suspicion between them owing to the failure of one to join in common ventures with the other. This attitude toward the deviant and the nonparticipant is still active in contemporary Mundurucui society and is a potent agent in the enforce- ment of co6peration and communality. If such a person is also a shaman, his behavior is frequently sufficient to bring accusations of sorcery. The tale (30) continues to develop the growing hostility between the two brothers until its culmination in head-hunting attacks on each other's villages. During one episode, one of the brothers has sexual intercourse with the wife of the other as in the cycle of Nung-nung stories (tale 18). But unlike that legend, one brother cuckolds the other for the specific purpose of revenge, thus providing one illustration of the strong component of covert aggression in Mundurueu adultery. 17 Some informants attributed the cliff paintings to Karusakaib8. I have seen those on the Morro de Cantagalo. They are clearly animal representations and are indeed in a seemingly inaccessible place. The paintings undoubtedly predate the Mundurucu occupation of this terri- tory. Nimuendaju, 1952, p. 148. 19 Nimuendaju', 1915, p. 299. 94 The story (32) of the origin of the Paribitetet tribe repeats the theme of the isolated and antisocial person who finally breaks out into open aggression against his fellows. These are terrible acts to the Mundurucui, and it is interesting to note how the dilemma is resolved. In tales 30 to 32, the persons 'guilty of intra- tribal conflict leave the Munduruciu country, and their descendants form enemy tribes. The offenders in tale 33 are killed in warfare, and they die without issue. Thus, although fratricidal conflict is thought by the Mundurucui to have occurred in the past, the guilty parties and their heirs were subsequently completely expunged from the society. 29. THE SAGA OF PEPISUAT: A MUNDURUCU ODYSSEY At one time there lived a boy named Akainoatp6, who had an uncle (mother's brother) named Karujuribo. The boy liked to hunt with his uncle and called to his grandmother every day as they left for the forest, "Grandmother, I am going to bring back the tripe of a tapir." Before setting out on the hunt one morning, the uncle, Karujuribo, told Akainoatpo to give him his arrows for sharpening. The uncle sharpened the arrows and they left. On the path the uncle said to Akainoatp6, "Go ahead. I am 'going to stop to defecate." But this was only a ruse, and the uncle circled ahead of the nephew and transformed himself into a deer to test the boy's hunting skill. Upon spying the deer Akainoatpo called back, "Uncle, there is a deer here." When he received no response to his cries, he decided to shoot the animal himself. The uncle had foreseen this eventuality and had sharpened the point in such a way that the arrow would not enter. The unharmed deer ran away and became retransformed into the uncle. When the uncle returned, Akainoatp6 said to him, "Uncle, there was a deer here, and I shot him but the arrow did not enter." The uncle replied, "I did not hear you call, but it seems that the deer has gone. Let us look for another." When they returned to the house at the end of the day, the boy told his grandmother what had happened. Every time thereafter that the boy accompanied his uncle on the hunt, the latter turned himself into various species of wild life. One day the uncle turned himself into the deer and appeared before the boy. However, Akainoatp6 had sharpened his own arrows on this occasion and the arrow entered the body of the deer. The deer fell over as if dead, and the lad tied its legs with sip6 (jungle vine) and placed it over his shoulders and set out for home. On the way he grew tired, put the deer on the ground and lay down to rest. The deer came back to life and freed its legs easily from the weak vine used to tie him. Transformed again to a human, the uncle returned home shortly after the boy. Before the next hunt the boy said again to his grandmother that he would bring back the tripe of the tapir. The grandmother replied that if he really wanted to kill the tapir, he should put his arm up the animal's anus and pull out the tripe. The boy misunderstood and did not know whether the tapir should be dead or alive when this was done. He went again to the forest with his uncle, and this time the latter disguised himself as a tapir. The boy shot the tapir and, although the arrow did not enter, the tapir feigned sleep. Thinking the tapir Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 95 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. dead, Akainoatpo tucked his bow and arrow under his arm, approached the tapir from the rear and inserted his arm in its anus. First he pulled out all the excre- ment, and then he shoved his arm in to just below the elbow in search of the tripe. The tapir awoke, constricted his rectum on the boy's arm and ran off dragging the nephew behind him. He ran hard for some time and then slowed to a walk, eating as he progressed. From that time the uncle never reverted to human form, but remained always a tapir. Also, Akainoatp6 received the new name of Perisuat during this episode. Perisuat, the former Akainoatp6, began to suspect that the tapir was really his uncle in disguise, and he called out, "Wahnyun, wahnyun (uncle)." The tapir did not reply. Finally the tapir stopped to eat under a tree, and Perisuat said, "Could you leave me here to rest a little, uncle?" The tapir replied, "No, grandson. (The tapir uses this term of address toward Perisuat hereafter. It is proper between old and young.) Let us go a little farther." The same request and the same answer took place under every fruit tree at which the tapir stopped. They finally arrived at a place where the Tapajos River is quite wide, and here they crossed the stream. Safe on the other side, thee tapir released the boy's arm by defecating. The tapir then said, "Stay here, grandson. I am going to get some arrows." Before he left, he told Perisuat that there were three giant alligators in the river at this point, the largest of whom was named Uaiti pung pung. "When you wish to get back to the other side," he instructed the boy, "call Uati pung pung to carry you across." He told Perisuat that upon the first call, the smallest of the three alligators would appear, but that he should reject him. The second call similarly would fetch the second in size, but on the third call Uiiti pung pung, who was so huge that he had trees on his back and was like an island, would appear. The uncle then went off into the forest where he was killed by a savage tribe. When the uncle did not appear, the boy began calling for him in a musical voice and then turned into a little white bird. This bird is still known as the perisuatbiumbikkukat, or 'the place where dwells the soul of Perisuat.' In the meantime, the hunters who had killed the tapir-uncle arrived looking for some envira (inner bark of a tree) to tie up the slain tapir. Upon spying them, Perisuat turned himself into a beehive high in a tree. The hunters saw the bee- hive and exclaimed, "There is honey there. Let us knock it down." They then got sticks, but each time they reached for the beehive the tree grew out of their reach. Two parrots, who knew that the beehive was the transformed Perisuat, came on the scene and warned him of the intentions of the hunters. They spoke to the beehive in low voices so that the hunters would not hear and then flew away. The hunters then tried to use hooks to get the beehive, but the latter covertly pushed the hooks away. Finally, the hunters decided to return the next day and cut the tree down. Perisuat then transformed himself from the beehive back into a human, descended from the tree, and fell asleep on the river bank. In the morning he awoke and called the alligators with the following song: 96 Murphy: Mundurucu Religion Come and get me Where the animals are singing Where they are Their voices are sad The toucan with a barely heard voice Juriti, juriti, white juriti The first alligator arrived and said, "What do you want?" Perisuat replied, "Nothing. I am calling Uaiti pung pung." The alligator became angry and dived back under the water. Perisuat repeated his song. The second alligator arrived and was similarly rejected, but on the third repetition of the song the giant Uati pung pung came to the surface. He asked the boy, "What do you want ?" Perisuat replied, "Nothing. I only wish to cross to the other side of the river." The alligator assented, and Perisuat urged him to come closer so that he could mount him. "Is that near enough?", asked the alligator. The boy answered, "No. Come a bit closer to the bank." This continued until the alligator was quite close to the shore, and Perisuat was able to grab an overhanging branch of one of the imbauba trees which grew on the alligator's back and swing aboard. He thus avoided being eaten by the beast. The alligator started across the river and in midstream said, "Nephew, I am going to sound my horn." He opened his mouth and uttered a deep grunt which was accompanied by a bad smell. Perisuat's uncle had previously warned the boy not to spit when the alligator did this (spitting is an expression of disgust among the Mundurucui) or the animal would surely eat him in midstream. Remembering this admonition, the boy spat covertly into his hand and rubbed it on his stomach, saying to the alligator, "Ah, but you smell nice." When they got near the farther shore, the alligator asked, "Is this close enough ?" hoping that the boy would debark in the water so that he could eat him. Perisuat asked the alligator to approach closer, and finally the boy was able to swing off the alligator's back by a branch. Safe on dry land, Perisuat called out that the stench of the alligator's mouth was maddeningly bad. The beast replied, "Why did you not say this in the middle of the river, my nephew?" He then thrashed about in a rage and broke all the trees on his back. Perisuat then set out on the return to his grandmother's house in the village of Uacuparl. While he was on the path night fell, and Perisuat bedded down between the buttress-like roots of the pau de sacupema. A blue nambu', which was nesting between the root spurs on the other side of the tree, called out to Perisuat all night long and made a continual commentary on how unbearable life was because of boys. At dawn Perisuat went to the bird and asked why she would not let him sleep. He then broke all but three of the nambu's eggs. At that time the nambiu used to lay several eggs at once, but after Perisuat broke them, she rarely laid more than three. Perisuat then continued his journey. He traveled all day, and after nightfall he stopped to sleep. As it was already dark, Perisuat did not know that he had stopped under a tree that was full of lagartas. These insects spent the night ealling down to him, "Perisuat, your 97 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. anus is open." They also defecated all over him. At the end of this sleepless night, Perisuat investigated the source of the disturbance and picked up a long stick with which he killed as many of the lagartas as he could reach. He then set out on the path again. While on the trail, Perisuat killed a monkey and carried it with him all day, planning to eat it that evening. At night he discovered a hole in a large fallen tree where he decided to spend the night. He did not know that this hole was the den of a jaguar. When the jaguar returned he called out to the hole in the tree. When the hole did not answer, the jaguar knew that there must be an intruder in his den. He then called out the name of Perisuat. The boy answered, and the jaguar asked him from where he had come. Perisuat said only that he had come a long distance. The jaguar continued to converse with Perisuat at great length until he finally grew hungry. "Give me one of your hands, Perisuat," requested the jaguar. Perisuat replied, "But how will I catch anything?" The jaguar reassured him that he would still be able to catch things without one of his hands, and Perisuat cut off one of the monkey's hands and threw it out to him. While cutting off the monkey's hand, Perisuat simulated cries of pain, and the jaguar was thereby deceived. The jaguar began to talk to Perisuat again, but after some time he grew hungry once more. This time he called for the other hand, and the same dialogue ensued. In time Perisuat had to give away the monkey's two feet also, although he protested to the jaguar that he would not be able to walk. Finally the jaguar said, "Perisuat, pass me your liver." "But I will die without my liver," replied the boy. The jaguar assured him that he could live without his liver, and, with feigned cries of pain, Perisuat cut out the monkey's liver and threw it to the hungry jaguar. The jaguar appeared to be satisfied, but after some time called out, "Where are you, Perisu'at?" "I am right here in the log," said the lad. "Scratch the log so that I will know exactly where you are," said the jaguar. He settled down for a while, but later repeated the same question. Finally the jaguar said, "Stay ri,ght where you are, Perisuat. I will return shortly." The jaguar intended to get a large stone which he could hurl at the log and thus crush Perisuat. But the boy was aware of this scheme and defecated in the jaguar's lair, fleeing thereafter to the branches of a tree. Before he left, he instructed the pile of exerement to reply to all of the jaguar's questions. The jaguar returned and, placing the stone on the ground, rested. After some time he said, "Where are you, Perisu'at?" "Right here in the log," replied the excrement. The jaguar then requested Perisuat to scratch the log as he did before. The excrement did this, and the jaguar picked up the stone and smashed it down on the point in the log from which the scratching had come. When the jaguar searched the den he could not find Perisuat. However, he thought that Perisuat was surely helpless without hands, feet, or liver and assumed that the pile of excrement was the crushed remains of the boy. He ate the excrement and left. The next morning Perisuat descended from his perch in the tree and continued his homeward journey. 98 At the end of this fourth day of travel, Perisuat again bedded down between the huge spreading roots of a pau de sacupema. He did not know it, but sleeping between the roots adjacent to him was a man who intended to kill him. One of this man's legs was bare of flesh and the end of the bone was sharpened to a fine point. During the night the man called, "Perisuat?" The boy answered, "Ah." The man with the sharpened leg bone said, "If you are there, scratch the tree so that I will know where you are." Perisuat did this, and the man thrust his pointed leg through the wood in an attempt to stab him. Perisuat rolled away in time, and the leg bone passed harmlessly over his body. This happened several times until finally a black ant came and told Perisuat that he should tie up the man's leg bone when he next pierced the wood. Perisuat did this with his bow- string and the man was unable to withdraw the leg. He implored Perisu'at to release it, but the boy, who had not slept for three nights, was adamant. The next morning he awoke, released the man, and went on his way. On his fifth day of travel Perisuat encountered a jaguar couple fishing in a stream with timbo. The husband was upstream drugging the water, and the female was farther downstream catching the fish. Perisuat met the wife first. She asked, "Have you seen my husband?" Perisuat replied in the negative. The woman became enamored of Perisuat and asked him to have coitus with her. He assented, and she prepared a powder of grated Brazil nut to rub on their genitalia after completion of the act, to hide the traces of their lovemaking. As they began to have intercourse, the jaguar wife asked Perisuat to tell her when he was finished, as she secretly planned to kill him and cut off his penis. He, being very cunning, simply ran away when he had satisfied himself. He ran upstream and encountered the husband, who asked him from which direction he had come. Perisuat lied and told the jaguar that he had come from upstream. In response to the suspicious husband's further inquiries, Perisuat claimed that he had not seen the wife. The jaguar then said, "Wait here. I shall go and ask her." Despite the wife's ruse, the jaguar discovered that she had recently had intercourse and ran back in search of Perisuat. The latter immedi- ately changed himself into a deer and, when the jaguar attacked him, into the tamandua grande, or giant anteater. He grabbed the jaguar with his powerful forelimbs and tore the animal's eyes out with his hooklike claw. The jaguar called to his wife to bring him some breu de jutahi to place in the empty sockets (this tree sap hardens into a glassy finish). To this day, therefore, the jaguar has glassy, shining eyes. Perisuat, in the meantime, had gone on his way. Perisu'at arrived under an imbauba tree in which three animals, which looked like monkeys, were eating fruit. Some of the fruit fell to the ground and he stopped to eat it. The boy inadvertantly gave notice of his presence by stepping on a stick, which broke with a snap. The animals looked down and said, "Ah, Peri- suat. From where are you journeying?" He told them and then asked for a husk of the fruit (the fruit of this tree is contained in husks, in each of which there are several fruit). The animals picked a husk, slyly sucked out all the fruit and threw the empty husk down to the hungry boy. Perisuat was patient and asked again, with the same result. The third time this occurred, he warned them that if they Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 99 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. did not throw down some fruit he would shoot them with his bow and arrow. In- stead of giving him something to eat, they asked him what type of leaves he pre- ferred to use for a temporary shelter against the rain. He replied that he could use the leaves of the banana, naja, or patua trees. They commented that these leaves were a joke to them. Perisuat then added that he could also use mambaca leaves. They appeared afraid of these because of the spines. Perisuat again asked for fruit and again received only a husk. Angered, he shot at one of the animals, but failed to kill it. Perisuat did not know that he had thus incurred the anger of the mothers of the rain, who were traveling in the guise of these three animals. Their names were 'Storm of Wind and Rain,' 'Steady, Slow Rain,' and 'Strong Thunder and Lightning.' As soon as he shot at them they ran off and started the rains in revenge. The rains continued all that day and night and halfway into the next day. Perisuat made a shelter of the leaves of mambaca and remained there throughout the storm. He continued his journey when the rain slackened to a slow drizzle. On the way, Perisuat met a blue nambu' who was warming himself in a ham- mock hung near a fire. The cold wanderer went quietly to the fire to warm him- self. He got so close that his hair brushed the bird's tail and caused it to look down from its hammock. Spying Perisuat he exclaimed, "Ah, it is you, Perisuat. From where are you coming?" Perisuat answered, and the nambui said, "Why do you not join me in the hammock and warm yourself." Perisuat refused for he knew that the bird wanted to seduce him. The nambui asked again, and angered by Perisuat's second refusal, threatened to take the fire away. The boy then grabbed a piece of the burning firewood and countered, "But I am going to take this." As he grabbed the wood a black ant bit him, distracting his attention, and the nambui took flight with a great beat of wings which made the fire disappear. Perisuat cried after him, "Your head is full of muquim." To this day the head of the nambiu is full of these insects. Perisuat continued his journey. He went on until he encountered the tracks of a tapir under a buriti palm. He decided to build a little shelter in which he could lie in wait for the tapir to pass. Two young girls, who were really tapirs in disguise, came along and peeked into Perisuat's blind. "Ah," they exclaimed, "It is you, Perisuat. From where are you coming?" He indicated the direction, and the girls, who had taken a liking to him, decided to stay in the shelter also. Later they asked him to get some fruit from the buriti palm for them. When he went in search of a vine with which to make a climbing ring, they asked him what he was doing. He explained that he needed a climbing ring to ascend the tree, and they said, "That is not how our father gets buriti fruit. He simply knocks on the tree." Perisuat hit the tree- with a stick, but no fruits fell. The girls showed him how to knock down the fruit by hitting the tree with their feet (in the manner of the tapir). They then made a buriti beverage which Perisuat began to drink by sipping, as do all humans. The girls, however, put their faces in the drink and sucked it up, shells and all, like animals. The girls then told Perisuat to wait for them while they went in search of their 100 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion father, whose name was Keremuatp6, in order to get his permission to marry the boy. As soon as they left, Perisuat escaped up a tree, for he was afraid of their father. The father, a mean and old tapir, arrived but could not find Perisuat. He went back to inform his daughters of this, and the daughters arrived at Perisuat's shelter just in time to meet him coming down from the tree. Again the girls went to tell the father that Perisuat was there, but the lad fled, leaving the tapir-girls weeping. Along the trail Perisuat found a hunter's snare into which he curiously put his hand. The noose pulled tight on the hand, and when Perisuat attempted to free himself with the other hand that, too, became caught. He then tried to use his feet to get loose but they, too, became entangled, and Perisuat was hopelessly ensnared. The hunter arrived and tied the boy up, leaving him in the custody of an old woman who was guarding his snares. But while it was still daytime, the old woman fell sound asleep. After the old woman had fallen asleep an ant arrived on the scene and, behold- ing the plight of Perisuat, said, "This person kills good game. I shall help him." The ant tried to cut the cords which bound the boy but failed. A bee then appeared and said, "This person shoots game whose blood is good. I shall help him." The bee also failed, as did a wasp which also tried to free Perisuat. The three insects then sought the aid of the squirrel monkey, who managed to free the boy. Perisuat was unconscious and half-dead and had to be dragged away by his saviors. When the hunter returned and noted that Perisuat was gone, he called to the old woman, "Where is my game ?" She awoke with a start and said, "Ah, I was sleeping." The angry hunter struck her, and she became transformed into the curuja bird and flew away. To this day the curuja sleeps in the day and stays awake all night. Perisuat recovered and proceeded on his homeward journey. He met a jaguar who could not close his mouth because he had a bone stuck in it. The jaguar asked Perisuat whence he had come, and the boy replied that he had come a long distance. Perisuat knew only the direction to his home and not the exact path. The jaguar volunteered to show him the proper trail if the boy would remove the bone from his mouth. This he did, and the jaguar pointed out the way, instructing him to keep going until he met a namb?u chorona who would be singing. At this point he would find the path. Perisuat proceeded, but, before reaching the nambiu chorona, he met an arma- dillo. After the usual query about the direction of his travel, the armadillo said to Perisuat, "Use this path which I made to carry firewood to my house. It leads to the path to your house." Perisuat followed this advice and arrived at the edge of his village. As he approached the village Perisuat spied some mutuim singing in the trees. These mutufm had been his pets but had flown away to the forest when he departed. They flew to him crying, "Father! Our father has returned !" Perisuat was barely human after his long suffering in the forest, and he killed the birds. He emerged from the forest into the village clearing, where he was seen by some children who ran to tell his grieving grandmother. Perisuat, almost an 101 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. animal after his sojourn, entered the house and told his story to the grandmother. The old woman cleaned his body and took the insects out from under his skin. But when she rubbed urucui on his body to heal him, he died. 30. KARUDAIIBI AND YURICHUNGP6 Of the six sons of Isimokubo, the oldest was Karudaiibi, followed by the next oldest, Yurichungp6. The former was the chief of the village of Uacuparl, and the latter was the chief of Kapiepic. The family of Karudaiibi included his wife, Ikonjurai, their daughter, Karujep6ng, and the wife's brother, T6boremsom. The other sons of Isim6kubo were named IsHib6sngsong, Isiwaibo, Bongbirebo, and Soiraishipo. Two of these younger brothers lived each with an older brother. The two chieftains went separate ways on war parties and hunts, both of which they pursued with great zeal. One day, however, the eldest brother, Karudaiibi, decided that he did not care to hunt or fight any more, but had other and better things to do. Yurichungp6, who continued to hunt and make war, came to wonder at the idleness of his brother and his neglect of the duties of a good Munduruciu chief. In time he became suspicious of the intentions of Karudaiibi and sent one of the younger brothers to Uacupari to invite him to take part in a raid. Karudaiibi declined the invitation, claiming that he had work to do. In reality the work con- sisted of nothing more than stringing macaw feathers into ornaments which he then hung on the walls of his house. Yurichungp6 went to fight the savage Indians without the help of his brother, but later renewed his invitation. Karudaiibi de- clined again and again and would not allow the two younger brothers who lived with him to join Yurichungpo. Finally, Yurichungp6 sent word to his older brother that, if he and the other brothers could not visit his village, he should at least send his wife. Karudaiibi suggested that the envoy ask the wife; she replied that she would go later, for first she must make a supply of weri (a drink made of sweet manioc). The wife, Ikonjurai, went to the village of Kapiepic and stayed there for two days to par- ticipate in a feast sponsored by Yurichungpo. Upon her return home, she prepared a meal of dauil, made of the leaf of taja and a milk extracted from Brazil nuts. When it was ready, she sent her daughter to inform the father. "Will it make people thirsty? Does it contain sufficient pepper ?" asked the latter. The dauiu was then served first to the oldest men, then to the middle-aged, and finally to the young. Karudaiibi ate his portion in his hammock; he never got out of his ham- mock, but stayed there all day long making featherwork. Again Yurichungp6 went on the warpath and returned. This time he requested that his brother come to Kapiepic to teach him how to ornament the trophy heads taken during the war. The oldest brother refused, giving no explanation other than, "That is the way it is." On another occasion, Yurichungpo asked Karudaiibi to join him in a feast of cutia legs. "No," replied the latter, "that is your food. I am already tired of it." On another occasion, Yurichungpo asked the oldest brother to join him in a feast. "No," he answered, "ask my wife. She is the one who has hot hands [knows how to cook]." The wife accepted the invitation, but said as before, that she would come after she had made a supply of weri. She set 102 Murphy: Mundurucu Religion out for Kapiepic with her daughter, and when she arrived there she laughingly gave a jar of the weru to Yurichungp6. She then went to a house and hung her hammock near the place where Yurichungpo kept the tauari bark in which he rolled his cigarettes. On this occasion she stayed for several days, for she had come to desire her brother-in-law. During his sister-in-law's stay in Kapiepic, Yurichungp6 sent one of his younger brothers to fetch some tauari bark. He approached Ikonjurai's hammock and asked her, "Where is my brother's tauari bark?" She grabbed his hand and thrust one of his fingers into her vagina saying, "Here is Yurichungpo's cigarette cover." The younger brother left the house quite aroused. He joined the other younger brother, and while they made cigarettes, he recounted his experience with the wife of Karudaiibi. Yurichungpo, who was lying in his hammock guarding the trophy head he had taken, heard them whispering and caught the words, "You go first." Later, after everybody had settled into their hammocks for the night, one of the younger brothers arose and went to the house and had intercourse with Ikonjurai. He returned and the other brother proceeded to do the same. By this time Yurichungpo realized that his younger brothers had been up to something and asked them what they had been doing. They replied that they had done nothing at all. But Yurichungp6, who had observed the loose behavior of his sister-in-law, forced them to confess that they had been having intercourse with Ikonjurai. To obtain revenge for Karudaiibi's repeated refusals of his hospitality, Yurichungp6 also went to the hammock of his sister-in-law. The next day Ikonjurai asked to be brought back to her husband's village. Yurichungp6 accompanied her, but in mid-journey the other men of the village, who had heard of her intimacies with the three brothers, waylaid the party and gang-raped her. Yurichungpo was able to do no more than protect the daughter from similar treatment. By the time the men had finished, Ikonjurai was dead. They gave her some medicine, however, which brought her back to life. During the course of the rape some of the woman's pubic hairs were pulled out. One of the men noted this and suggested, "She no longer has an owner. Let us pull out the rest of her hairs." They proceeded to do so and then allowed the mother and daughter to go on their way When Ikonjurai arrived in Uacuparl, she was in such a terrible state that she went to her hammock and stayed there. Her husband, Karudaiibi, and his sister noted that her appearance and behavior were unusual and became suspicious. When the men sat down to eat, the sister waited on them. However, when they wanted more beijui, Karudaiibi's sister called out to her sister-in-law to bring it, hoping thereby to expose her. Ikonjurai approached the assembled men holding the beijui in front of her vagina to conceal the fact that she had been plucked. But as she walked, the labia of the vagina, distended by the rape, made a flapping noise. All the men except Karudaiibi looked up at her. One said, "Who has been tamper- ing with the mouth of the sack of the Dajeboili?" [the title borne by a man who has taken an enemy head]." Still Karudaiibi said nothing, and everybody walked away from the meal in anger and disgust. 103 0University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. Later Karudaiibi told his brother-in-law, Tdb6rems6m, to go to his sister and ask who had tampered with the mouth of the sack of the Dajeboisi. The young man went to his sister and drew her to one side by requesting that she pick the lice from his head. When they were out of earshot of the others, T6b6rems6n posed the question to his sister. She laughed and said, "Nobody except the brother of the Dajeboisi did anything to me. But I do not know who plucked my pubic hair for I had fainted by then." The youth reported this conversation to Karudaiibi. He said nothing, but thereafter had nothing more to do with his wife or their daughter. After some days had passed he got another wife in the following manner. He approached the woman Ib6pumpong while she was alone and bade her good afternoon. She was startled and said, "Ah, but you frightened me." He asked, "Did you think that I was a jaguar ?" She said, "No, I did not think that, but what do you want ?" He replied, "I want you to come and bathe with me." "Do you want to do with me as you do with your wife," she asked. Karudaiibi said simply, "I want you for my wife." He then had a large house built just for him and his new wife. One day, Karudaiibi suggested that the men accompany him to shoot fish in the stream. While everybody spread out to shoot fish and hunt paca, he went on toward the village of Kapiepic, the home of his estranged brother. He hid near one of the paths leading from the village to the gardens, planning to kill and decapitate one of the woman of Kapiepic in revenge for the seduction of his wife. Two woman passed his lair, but he did not know how to behead a woman nor did he have the courage to attack them. He returned to the men whom he had left fishing and asked, "Did you kill anything?" They replied that they had killed nothing and Karudaiibi said, "Neither did I." Some days later he called for another fishing expedition. Again he esconced himself near the village and awaited a woman. While lying in hiding, an anaconda approached and asked him what he was doing there. Karudaiibi explained and further lamented that he did not know how to carry out his intentions. The snake said, "Wait here and I will show you how." He then entered some thick brush at the edge of the path, and when some females appeared he made a noise in imita- tion of an edible grasshopper highly favored by the Mundurucu' women. One entered the bushes to get the grasshopper and the snake 'grabbed her, covering her mouth against outcry, and cut off her head. Karudaiibi placed the head in his carrying basket and rejoined his men. He asked his two younger brothers if they had killed anything and they replied that the men had all killed many paca. (This fortune in the hunt was due to the charm exercised over the spirit mothers of the game by the trophy head.) When the brothers asked what he had killed, Karudaiibi replied, "Saubitom," and thus re- vealed to them the dreadful fact that he had taken a head from a fellow Mundu- rucu. The basket containing the woman's head was left at the edge of the forest, and Karudaiibi did not bring it to his house until everybody had retired for the night. When his wife saw the head she became fearful of her own fate and cried out, 104 Murphy: Mundurucui Religion "So this is why you wanted me." Her husband commanded her to be quiet lest she inform the whole village and then proceeded to boil the head and extract the teeth. He buried the skull in the floor of the house. After finishing his work, Karudaiibi went to the men's house for the night. The other men asked what took him so long, and he lied, "I had to wait for a zogi-zogi monkey to cook." The men were puzzled by this answer and he ex- plained, "My new wife is different. Whenever I go to the house she weeps and wants me to stay. For that reason I call her vagina the mouth of the zogi-zogi." When the people of Kapiepic missed the murdered woman they looked far and wide to no avail, for Karudaiibi had buried his victim's body in a deep hole. Yurichungpo finally sent one of the younger brothers to Uacupari to inquire for the woman. When the youth arrived, Karudaiibi said, "Sit down and talk, brother, for if you do not speak now you will be ashamed to later." "No," said the younger brother, "I have just come to look for one of our women who became lost on her way back from the garden." Karudaiibi replied, "I do not think that we have any newcomers here, but go and look. You know how it is. Women arrive and mingle with the other women, and nobody knows that they are here." The younger brother looked, but of course did not find the missing woman. Karudaiibi went again to the outskirts of the village of Kapiepic and this time killed a woman named Saubore. He successfully repeated the dissimulation that he had practiced on the previous occasion, but the people of his village had begun to wonder at his nocturnal activities. On the third occasion that he killed a woman from Yurichungp6's village, he was discovered. After that day's hunt the wife of T6b6rems6m spied upon Karudaiibi's house and saw him and his two younger brothers as they were engaged in knocking the teeth out of the trophy head. When she saw that the head was that of a "person" (a Munduruciu), she ran away in terror. She went to her husband and, after recovering her courage and voice, she told him of the activities of the brothers. T6b6rems6m seized his bow and arrows and went to kill Karudaiibi. He burst into the house and found the brothers arrayed against him with bows drawn. "Why are you spying upon me?" said Karudaiibi. Tob6rems6m's courage failed him and he replied, "I only came here to offer you my aid in your work." However, T6b6remsom's wife had spread the alarm, and the news reached the village of Kapiepic. When Yurichungpo heard of Karudaiibi's actions, he sent one of his younger brothers to speak to him. The youth approached the elder brother and said, "An- other of our women is missing, and they say that it is you who are killing them." Karudaiibi denied any implication in the murders and convinced the younger brother that the Warupawat, an enemy tribe, had done the deeds. He elaborated, "They have been near our village too. They frightened the women the other day and we later found their tracks." The younger brother reported this to Yuri- chungpo, but he did not believe it. Yurichungp6 then invited Karudaiibi to visit his village. The latter accepted to allay the suspicions directed against him. Before going, however, he told the two younger brothers who lived with him to wait for him in the bushes that he had used for ambush. 105 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. Yurichungp6, in the meantime, had told his men to club Karudaiibi to death,' but he wished to be certain first that the older brother was guilty. The men asked again if he had killed the women, and he again denied it. The women of the village then invited him to join them in a bowl of dauii and asked him the same question. Despite his protests of innocence, the women were convinced of his guilt for they recognized him by his neckeord. They seized the cord and would have strangled him, but they lacked courage. He merely laughed at their sus- picions. On the following day, all the men of Kapiepic went out to hunt. Karudaiibi accompanied them, but chose a path that would take him near the bushes where his brothers were hiding. As he walked through the forest he played on a horn so that everybody would know his whereabouts and would therefore not suspect him of criminal activities. From time to time he met other hunters and claimed parts of their game. He came upon a man who was trying to extract a cutia from a hollow log and offered to thrust a stick in one end so that the man could catch the animal as it emerged at the other. The man placed his hand in the log and caught the animal as it fled. "Has it got a big head?" asked Karudaiibi. The man affirmed that the cutia had a big head and Karudaiibi then asked, "Is it as big as a coconut?" When the other replied that it was, he went behind the man as if to look over his shoulder, but instead, grabbed him around the neck. The other man was strong, however, and Karudaiibi had to struggle to subdue him. He then cut off the victim's head and brought it to his brothers, who took it home. Later that evening it was noticed that one of the men had not returned. Karudaiibi said, "He will come. When the catitiu runs you have to follow it a long distance." As time wore on the men of the village grew increasingly suspicious that Karudaiibi had killed the missing man. Some thought that he could not be at fault since they had heard his horn being played all the time they were in the forest, but the others were not at all convinced. However, they could not be sure that Karudaiibi was responsible for the hunter's disappearance, and they allowed him to return to his village. Yurichungp6 then returned his brother's visit. Before arriving at the village he instructed his brothers to hide near some buriti palms and to kill all the women who came to collect buriti fruit. When he entered the village, Karudaiibi greeted him and invited him to join the assembled men in a meal of cutia legs. Yurichungp6 consented and added, "I would also like a drink made of buriti fruit. There are trees near by whose fruit is ready to spoil." Karudaiibi then sent nearly all the village women to collect buriti for his guest. One man accompanied them. Karudaiibi and Yurichungpo went out to hunt while awaiting the arrival of the buriti. Yurichungp6 was walking behind his older brother on the path and presently called ahead to him, "I have to go into the forest to defecate, brother. I will catch up with you later." When he was safely in the forest he set out on a run for his own village and proceeded to make an alliance with the Warupawat against his brother. When Karudaiibi returned from the hunt, he was informed that all the women who had gone for buriti had been killed and beheaded, and only the man who 106 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion escorted them had escaped. Karudaiibi then wanted to go on the warpath against his brother, but he was not supported by his own men, who blamed him for starting the trouble. Yurichungpo and his people abandoned the village of Kapiepic for fear of the brother and went to the village of the Warupawat, from where they continued to watch the movements of the people of Uacupari. When the dry season arrived, the people of Uacupari, as is customary, left their village to take up temporary residence on the banks of a stream. Yurichungpo spied their fires on the shores of the Cururtu River above the rapids of Crepotia, and decided upon a joint attack with their Warupawat allies. The war party came upon one camp, but decided that there were too many people there for an easy victory. They scouted another and smaller camp, but its inhabitants were scattered along the banks of the stream. In order to get them back to camp, Yurichungpo turned to a shaman and said, "Let us see how good your sorcery is. I want a heavy rain to drive all these people back to shelter." The shaman wet the end of a macaw feather with blue dye and pointed it at the sun. Instantly the sky clouded over and a heavy rain fell, bringing everybody back from their far-flunig pursuits. The warriors under Yurichungp6 fell upon the camp and killed everybody in it. Yurichungp6 started the return journey to the village of the Warupawat, but some of the men, led by P6subip6, were tired of 'havin,g human blood on their arrow points' and resolved to set off by themselves. They paused near the Cururui River to shave their heads and paint themselves. Somewhat farther along their route, P6subipo, who was sick of bloodshed, announced that he was going to descend into the ground. Many laughed at him and thought this impossible, but he entered the earth and many of the men followed him. As the last man entered, the others grabbed him and pulled him back. Those who did not choose to follow P.s'ubip8 rejoined Yurichungp6. Yurichungpo and his remaining followers stayed in the village of the Warupa- wat until one day when they ran out of macaw feathers. They went to Uacupari to ask some of Karudaiibi. The latter received them with outward friendship, although he secretly plotted to kill his brother. Yurichungp6 was seated in a hammock and all the people of the village came to him to pay their respects. But the women picked up lances and were about to thrust them through the hammock into Yurichungpo's back, when Karudaiibi said, "Do not do that. He is my guest." His eyes, however, told the women to act as if there was no plot afoot. Yurichungpo explained the purpose of his visit, and his brother assured him that he was welcome to all the feathers he wanted. Karudaiibi then took the women aside and ordered them to make the weru' drink in order to delay Yurichungpo and thus allow a greater opportunity to murder him. But the brother was aware of their plans, and when they sat down to the weret on the following day, he said, "Brother, I need some dye to tattoo my son. Give me some in an unpainted bowl." The dye was given to him, and he went behind the men's house on the pretext of urinating. He urinated into the bowl, mixing it with the dye, and blew the mixture in the direction of the sun. The sun became 107 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. blackened and it grew very dark; under cover of the darkness Yurichungp6 and his men went from house to house and gathered all the macaw feathers that they could find. He then said to a younger brother, "Give me a piece of bamboo." He blew the bamboo toward the sun and made it light again. He and his men then departed. When they were hidden by the forest they began to run, for they knew that Karudaiibi and his men would try to intercept them. The men of Uacupari did mount a pursuit, but every time that they came out from the forest onto the path taken by the fleeing Yurichungp6 the fugitives had already passed. They returned to the village, and Yurichungpo and his men went far to the south, where they became savages. Their descendants are the Ditditwat, or Nambicuara. 31. KARUDAIIBI MAKES WAR UPON SA There lived in the village of Uacupari, the chief of which was Karudaiibi, a man named Wak6rebo. Now Wak6rebo had a wife in the village of Uaradibika, and he went there often to visit her. On one occasion he arrived when the men were all absent and only the women were in the village. He repaired to the men's house and found there a young boy whom he ordered to bring fire to light his cigarette. The boy refused, saying impudently that cigarettes were not food. Wakorebo explained to him that for men cigarettes were indeed food, but the boy still refused to perform the errand. This angered Wak6rebo so much that he picked up a stone and hurled it at the boy, striking him in the head and killing him instantly. Only the boy's mother saw this act and she made no outcry. When the other men returned to the village, they saw the body of the boy lying on the floor of the men's house and asked how he died. Wak6reb6 replied, "I do not know. He was just standing there and suddenly fell over dead." The boy's mother remained silent. After this incident, Wakoreb6 no longer came to the village of Uaradibika of his own accord, and the men had to send for him to sing the songs that he knew. One day he went to the village at the request of the men and sang the words, "It was I, it was I, it was I who killed the boy." They decided to kill him for his crime and invited him again. He sang for the men and announced his departure immediately afterward. But the four chiefs of the village-Sa (the head chief), Ibftb6nb6n, Watipenemvpenem, and Soiresoire-had ordered the women to make a weru' drink and to detain him by inviting him to partake. In the meantime the chiefs sent men to the forest to wait in ambush along the trail that Wakorebo would take. Wak6reb6 drank the weru and then made the round of the houses to bid farewell. At the first house the chief of the household told his wife to heat a bowl of dauii for Wakorebo. After he had finished the dauii, the chief said to him, "Wak6reb6, I wish to give you some macaw feathers. Wait a bit." The visitor accepted the proffered gift gladly, and the chief very slowly pulled out the feathers. The same events transpired in every house that Wak6rebo entered, and he did not set out on his homeward journey until the sun was very high in the sky. 108 Murphy: Mundurucu Religion After entering the forest Wakoreb6 fell into the ambush that had been prepared for him, but the arrows missed their mark, and he ran off with the others in hot pursuit. His path took him past the house of the chief Ibobonbon, who shot Wakorebo in the back of the head. The others caught up and dispatched the fallen fugitive, taking his head as a trophy. His body was also brought to the village where it was cooked and eaten. Everybody in the village except one old woman was given some of the meat to eat. To avenge this slight, the old woman went to the forest on the pretense of gathering firewood, but really hoping to intercept Wakorebo's brother to tell him what happened. She sat by the edge of the trail for several days until she finally met the brother. "What are you doing here?" he asked. She replied, "Gathering firewood. And you?" "I am going to see my brother," said the man. The old woman announced, "He is not there. Sa has eaten him, and Ibobonbon has his head." The brother concealed his rage and grief and said that he would go to the village and see for himself. But once out of sight of the old woman, he backtracked through the forest and went to his own village to inform the people. He went immediately to his sister and told her of their brother's fate. Both began to lament loudly, and their wails were heard by Karudaiibi. He sent for the youth, saying, "If he has something to say, let him say it in the men's house and not among the women." The brother and sister came to him and asked that he get the head back and avenge the death of Wakorebo. Karudaiibi ordered arrows to be made and then called all the warriors before him. He asked each to identify their warrior qualities. Some compared themselves to the cao-cao dos campos, a bird that is very hard to shoot, and others compared themselves to types of wood that arrows cannot enter. Having thus singled out the best warriors, Karudaiibi ordered the sister of the slain man to go ahead of the war party to the village of Sa and there sing to the people until they fell asleep. When they were all sleeping soundly she was to steal the head of her brother, whereupon the party would attack the village. The girl approached the village of the chief Sa, singing as she walked. Two youths of the village heard the song and crept close to the path. They saw the girl, and they also saw behind her the war party. They knew then that there would be a fight and went back to the village to warn the others. But the men did not believe them, and when the girl arrived they asked her what she wanted. "The bones of my brother," she answered, meaning that she wanted his head. They gave her instead a half-gourd full of his gnawed limb bones. Later that night the men fell asleep, and the girl wakened them by singing. This happened several times during the night until finally they all fell into a deep and exhausted sleep. The girl then took the head and ran off, turning into a curajao da noite, a night bird. At dawn the war party arrived in the village, and its members hung their hammocks in the men's house. They lay in their hammocks with their heads pointing in one direction so that they would be prepared to leap out and present a united front to the enemy. Sa approached them to present his greeting, but he was armed with a lance which he planned 109 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. to shove through the hammocks and into the backs of the visitors. The warriors were prepared for this and they leaped from their hammocks to do battle. The fight raged on until the floor of the men's house was muddy with blood. Many men were killed, but the arrows did not penetrate the bodies of those of Karudaiibi's warriors who had claimed impenetrability. Finally Sa's men cried out that they were weak and had had enough fighting, and the attackers withdrew. But the vanquished warriors plotted to ambush the retreating war party and lay in wait for them near the hill of Makapopa. Karudaiibi was aware of their intention and as his men neared the ambush he sang a magical song that left the enemy stupified and powerless. They thus escaped safely, but never returned home. Instead they went off to the north where their descendants live today. 32. ORIGIN OF THE PARIBITETET TRIBE Kamarisos6n lived in the village of Kereboika, which used to be east of Cabrua. The 'soson' part of his name means, literally, 'ashamed,' and he was indeed an ashamed man. He used to hunt and associate with the other men, but now he avoided their company entirely and was planning to leave the village. He no longer slept in the men's house, but stayed in the dwelling with his wife. Nor did he hunt in the company of the other men, but waited until all had left the village and then followed well behind them. When the column of hunters paused to allow the stragglers to catch up, he would run past them while they hurled taunts at him. His hair was neglected and had grown as long as a woman's, and all the men would wave their penises at him and shout, "Here is your lip plug, Kamaris6s6n." ' Kamarisoson was stung by these jibes and planned revenge. He said to his wife, "Tomorrow I am going hunting, and I shall not return. But I will leave a trail of leaves so that you can follow me later." He then made several bundles of arrows, which he hid along the path at intervals of 20 to 30 yards. The next day the men went out hunting on the path where the arrows had been deposited. Kamarisoson brought up the rear as usual, and when the men stopped he ran by them in the midst of jeering taunts. However, as soon as he had passed them he wheeled about and sent all his arrows into his persecutors. When he had no more arrows he ran on with the others in hot pursuit. But he ran only as far as the next cache of arrows where he stopped and shot more shafts at the others. The same thing continued until he had killed nearly all his pursuers; he then ran off into the forest and never returned. His wife followed the trail of leaves that he had left, and from these two sprang the tribe of Paribitetet. 33. THE KEKENYO There were once four men who spent all their time fishing in the streams. They were given the collective nickname of 'Kekeny6' because they always sang a song that went, "Keke, keke, keke." Every day they went to the small streams deep in the forest and caught little fish. m' Only women wear lip plugs among the Munduruciu. 110 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion The four began to follow all the women in the village when they went to the gardens or collected firewood or went to bathe. If a woman refused their demands for coitus, they attempted again to seduce her. If she spurned them a third time, they cut off her head. To mislead the people of the village into thinking that the deed was done by an enemy war party, they made a great many tracks in the vicinity of the body. And they threw off any possible pursuers by walking in the stream for some distance. They then went to the middle of the forest where they hid the head and spent the rest of the day fishing. The first time that they did this they returned to the village in the late afternoon and were told that one of the women was missing. Everybody went out to search for her, and her headless body was found where the Kekenyo had left it. Convinced that it was the work of an enemy tribe, all returned to the village. The next time that a woman was found decapitated, the men of the village still believed that an enemy war party was responsible. But the wily Kekeny6 asked, "How can it be that you find enemy tracks near the village, while we who go deep into the forest find no sign of them ?" But in spite of such ruses, they were caught on their third attempt. When the men found that a woman was missing they followed the tracks of the enemy to the banks of a stream. But this time they went up the stream to a point where they discovered a set of tracks leading from the stream to the forest. Farther on they encountered another set of tracks leading into the forest, and finally they saw the tracks of the two remaining men leading in the same direction. The men followed these tracks to the point where they merged and went on until they heard the shouting of the Kekenyo, who were fishing in a stream. "There are the enemy," they said, "encircle them." When they drew close to the enemy they saw that they were really the Kekeny6. "Ah, it was you who killed our women," they cried, but they did nothing and allowed the Kekeny6 to return to the village. For some time the Kekenyo were so ashamed that they did not molest any more women. In time the need for women grew upon them, but they now set out for another village in search of their prey. They left their own village in the afternoon and arrived at the other during the night. Creeping into the houses they had intercourse with some of the women. The women looked at them and thought, "They look like people (Mundurucu'); they have armbands and leg- bands... " But then they looked at their waists and saw that they were wearing live snakes for belts. The Kekeny6 returned to their village that night, but the women told their husbands, for they thought that they had been visited by some type of demon. The men agreed that the culprits must have been the Kokeriwat, the people of the underworld, and they sent to the village of the Kekeny6 for shamans. But instead of real shamans, the Kekeny6 arrived. They blew smoke over the women and pretended to extract some object. However, instead of extracting an evil spirit, they had only a piece of charcoal in their mouths. The four men took ill University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. advantage of the occasion to have intercourse with the women again. The same thing happened several times, and on their last visit they shaved the pubic hair of one of the women. The men of the village then decided to go out and search for the K6keriwat, whom they believed to have violated their women. They met instead the Kekeny6, who were walking along the path singing, "Keke, keke, keke." Upon spying the latter they said, "Ah, it was not the K6keriwat who shaved the woman's vagina, but these four." They turned back to the village, but took no action against the Kekeny6. However, when the four men arrived in the village they were accorded a cold reception and were given no food. Knowing that they had been discovered, the Kekeny6 left for the forest to make war. They were later killed by enemies. 34. HOW WOMEN ALMOST POISONED FISH Once there was a man who hunted nambui every day, and at night brought only these birds home to his wife. She became very sick of nambui and did not want any more. As he approached the house one day their daughter began to cry. "Do not cry," said the mother, "your father is coming home as usual with the nambui that makes a bitter broth." The man was near enough to the house to hear this and did not want to enter, but instead retraced his steps to the forest. He reached a place where he could spend the night, and discovered a band of prego monkeys in the tree above him. He climbed the tree, attempting to catch one to bring home for dinner, and grabbed the tail of a female. "Who has got my tail?" cried the monkey. "Let it go. It is very delicate." The man released his hold on the female monkey's tail and began to look for a male. He grabbed one and the male monkey called, "Who has my tail?" and turned upon the man, biting him in the nose. The man fell to the ground, and the whole band of monkeys descended from the tree to eat him. They ate all but one of his legs, which they put into a basket. After eating the man, the monkeys turned into people and headed for his house. One of the monkeys now in human form, went to the door of the dead hunter's house. The man's wife thought at first that her husband had returned, but she looked up and saw instead a strange man with a basket. She looked inside the basket and immediately recognized her husband's leg, but gave no sign that she had done so. She merely said to her daughter, "Come, let us go fetch water." As soon as they were away from the house, they began to flee through the forest, for they knew that the strangers wished to eat them. They met a poisonous snake, and the woman asked him for aid. The snake said that he could not help her, and she fled on until she met a spider, who gave the same reply. The woman went to all the beasts of the forest and asked for help against the monkeys- for the band had changed back into monkeys-but all said that they were unable to protect her. Finally she encountered an ant and he too was unable to help her, but he told her that farther ahead was a frog who was also a shaman and who could surely help her. She found the frog, and he told her, "I can help you, but you and your daughter must stay behind my back." He then turned toward the advancing monkeys and shot them with a bow and arrow. He also shot a 112 Murphy: Mundurucu Religion multitude of other beasts of every species who were also pursuing the woman and her daughter, intent upon eating them. After the frog had shot and killed all the animals, he ordered the woman to skin them and to put their meat on the babricot and their hides in the fire. She did this, and there were so many that she was completely blackened with soot when she finished. Then the frog told her, "Go take a bath, but look only upstream and do not look behind you." He did not explain this order to her. The woman went to the stream and bathed, and the dirt from her body turned the stream black. This dirt was acting upon the fish like timbo, and they began to come to the surface, batting their tails three times before dying. The woman heard this sound and turned around to see what it was. All the fish immediately came back to life again and swam away. At this point the frog came down to the stream to collect the dead fish. When he saw that there were none, he asked the woman if she had looked around. She admitted that she had, and the frog told her that if she had not done this people would not have to go into the forest in search of wild timbo. Instead, fish would have been killed by the dirt from the bodies of bathing women. 35. THE MAN WHO LIVED ON SMOKE There was once a man whose only food was tobacco smoke. Without tobacco smoke he would die. He was so dependent upon tobacco that, when he ran out of it, he filled a gourd with smoke and drank from it. One day he went to the forest to get Brazil nuts and brought along some tobacco and a gourd full of smoke. He smoked all the tobacco during the journey and began to drink the smoke from the gourd. He drank sparingly, but still he consumed all the smoke when only halfway up the tree. Since he could not live without it, he fell down to the ground dead. However, his body disappeared. To this day people must plant tobacco only among the burned pieces of wood that lie about in the garden. TALES Op ANIMALS AND PEOPLE This last group of legends includes a somewhat varied assortment of stories that concern animals or people or, commonly, the two in interaction. The first story explains that dogs originated from a union between a girl and a dog in human form. Two other stories also deal with the domesticated dog. In tale 57 two dogs burst out of the eyes of a burning demon, and tale 50 tells how the inhabitants of the Land of Dogs took revenge upon a Mundurucu by feeding him bones. Tales 37 to 40 are united by the common theme of hostility between father- in-law and son-in-law, an antagonism that seldom erupts into open quarrels in Mundurucui society. The story entitled "The Origin of the Alligator" tells of a man who eats his sons-in-law, but who is finally outwitted by a son-in-law who escapes a series of traps. The structure of the tale bears a strong resemblance to a Tenetehara legend about a vulture father-in-law2' and to two Tukuna myths 2 Wagley and Galvao, 1949, pp. 150-151. 113 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. collected by Nimuendaju'.' "The Man Who Married the Guariba Monkey" is in many respects almost identical with a folktale of the same name reported by Roth from the Arawak of British Guiana.'2 An interesting note in the Mundurucu' ver- sion is an incestuous union between the monkey-woman and her son. Tale 39 deals with the mucura father-in-law's attempts to imitate the feats of his nonhuman sons-in-law and his consequent death. The story is clearly linked to the Tenetehara "Opossum Takes a Son-in-law."' Another variation of the theme of union between two species is found in tale 40, in which the deer unknowingly marries a jaguar- girl. A similar story is reported from the Tukuna;25 both Mundurucui versions include an episode in which the son-in-law must maintain a normal demeanor in the face of the wife's family. Included in the following collection are four stories about the land tortoise, a notorious prankster in the folklore of the Amazon. Tales about the land tortoise are well represented in collections of Brazilian oral literature, and Charles F. Hartt devoted an entire volume to these stories.' Three stories concern humans who made love to animals. Although this is a common theme in the region, it is worth while to note that the Munduruciu story of a man's love for a sloth has parallels in Cavina'2 and Guiana Arawak'2 folklore. Also, stories of a liason between a woman and a snake are found among both the Mundurucu (tale 49) and the Tenetehara.'9 The last two stories in this section are of great interest. Tale 57 is an obvious rendition of the story of Hansel and Gretel, although the actors are spiders, and the wicked witch appears as a Yurupari. It should be noted that the cruel stepmother is missing in the Mundurucui version, as she is in the legend "Babes in the Wood," collected by Wagley and Galvao among the Tenetehara." Finally, it is fitting that the last Mundurucu myth (58) to be related should be the one that explains their acceptance of the whites. Although the idea that the Mundu- rucu once owned the present site of the city of Belem has no basis in truth, it is quite accurate to attribute their involvement with the whites to their desire for manufactured articles. This realism is consistent with the common recognition of the modern Munduruciu that needs are cumulative. 36. ORIGIN OF THE DOG Dachekor6 had arrived at her first menses. She therefore stayed in the house alone when her mother went to the garden and her two brothers set out for the hunt. After they had all left, a young man entered the house. His name was Karupitub6, and he was not a human at all but a dog in human form. However, at that time there were no dogs in the villages of people as there are today. 22 Nimuendajui, 1952, pp. 145-146. 23 Roth, 1915, p. 71. 24 Wagley and Gavlao, 1949, pp. 131-134. 25 Nimuendajli, 1952, p. 150. 0 Hartt, 1875. 27 Nordenskiold, 1924, p. 290. 28 Roth, 1915, p. 204. This story is slightly variant in that a woman loves a male sloth. 29 Wagley and Galvao, 1949, p. 149. 30 Wagley and Galvio, 1949, pp. 163-165. 114 Dachekoro had made a dish of taja leaf in Brazil-nut milk and invited the young man to eat. After he finished she told him to lie in the hammock and brought him manioc flour and water. She then said to him, "Let us lie together in the hammock." He queried her as to whether she was serious and then asked her how many children she had. She replied that she had none, and Karupitubo told her, "I am no good for a woman who has had no children." But she accepted him despite his warning, and they had sexual intercourse in the manner of dogs and became locked together upon completion of the act. While lying thus joined he told her that she would have dogs for children and instructed her in the preparation of the medicine that makes dogs become good hunters. He also told her how to use the dog in hunting various types of game. Later in the day, the mother of Dachekoro returned home and called out, "I have brought you a roast yam, my daughter." The daughter was still joined to Karupitubo in the hammock and was unable to arise. The mother came over to the hammock and asked, "What are you doing?" The young man replied, "I warned her that it would be no good, but she wanted me anyway." The mother grabbed a stick and struck them at the point of union, breaking the lock. Karupitub6 hobbled off in the direction of the men's house, but kept on going into the forest and was seen no more. Later the younger brother returned and said, "I brought nothing for you, sister." The mother spoke up and said, "Your sister is already pregnant." "Good," said the brother, "her child can bathe mine when I have one." The older brother came home, and the same conversation took place. At last Dachekoro's time of confinement arrived, and her mother stayed home with her while the two brothers went to the forest to hunt. Four dogs, two males and two females, were born to her, and her mother liked them very well because they were pretty. The younger brother came home and said, "I have brought nothing for you, sister." The mother said to him, "Your sister has already given birth, but her children are different. If they are people, then they have very long nails." The brother was curious and looked; he immediately wanted one. "Wait until they have grown a bit," said his sister. The second brother arrived and also announced that he had nothing to give to his sister. The mother told him that she had given birth, but that her children could not be people since they had long nails, different type feet, and tails. The older brother was also curious, but as soon as he had seen the dogs, he seized a piece of wood and killed one of the couples. The sister sheltered the remaining male and female with her body and ran off to the safety of the forest with her children and her mother. The dogs grew to a tremendous size, for they were the children of Karupitub6, whose people were the wolves of the prairies to the south. Every day they hunted and brought home great quantities of game, so that there was always an abundance of food in the house. One day the younger brother came to their house, and as he approached he called out. The dogs leaped forward to attack him, but Dachekoro recognized the brother and called off her children. The brother entered the house and was Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 115 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. given a large serving of meat; upon leaving they gave him roasted meat to take home. When the younger brother returned to the village, he told his older brother what had happened, and the latter went to visit his sister and mother also. As he neared their house he shouted, and the dogs ran out to attack him. Dachekoro recognized the brother who had killed two of her children and did nothing to restrain the dogs. After the brother had been bitten several times, Dachekoro called out, "That is enough," and the dogs let the brother pass. She gave him food, but he went home covered with bites. Before he left, the younger brother had requested a male and female dog from the first litter. When the litter arrived, she sent him the two dogs with instructions on how to make them good hunters. From these two dogs grew up the present breed of small Mundurucui dogs. Dachekor6 then went off in the direction of Cuyaba with her two great offspring to join Karupitubo in the Land of the Dogs. 37. ORIGIN OF THE ALLIGATOR Karuekab6 had a daughter who was much desired by all men. Many came to him to ask her hand in marriage, and he consented gladly to every match, for each marriage lasted only one night. During that first night, the father-in-law always ate the bridegroom. Knowledge of this practice became widespread, but still the young men came to marry the girl, hoping to carry her off the next day. But in all instances the next day was too late. Among those who wanted to marry the daughter of Karuekabo was a very tiny but very wise man named Amab6t. Amab6t went to his mother and asked, "Mother, is it true that Karuekabo eats all of his sons-in-law?" When the mother confirmed this, he asked if the same fate awaited him if he married the daughter. The mother replied, "Yes, he would surely eat you for you are only the size of a little boy, and he has already eaten big strong men." He was determined, how- ever, to have the girl, and his suit was readily accepted by her father. Now the way that Karuekab6 killed his sons-in-law was to wait until they left the house at night to urinate, and when they returned he fell upon them as they entered the door. But when the clever Amabot returned to the house after urinating, his small size allowed him to reenter through a hole in the wall, and he thus eluded the malignant father-in-law. Karuekabo persisted in his efforts to kill his new son-in-law and sent him off on the following day to make a bird blind in the branches of a tree. Amab6t knew that his father-in-law intended to pounce upon him as he descended from the tree, and to warn of his approach he stationed four birds in the tree, each bird facing in one of the four directions. As Karuekab6 approached furtively along the path, one of the birds began to sing, and the father-in-law knew that he had been discovered. He tried to sneak up to his son-in-law from each of the three remaining directions, but the birds detected his presence immediately. Having no other course to follow, he then went up to the tree openly and called, "Did you kill any birds?" "Yes," came the reply. "Then bring them down," 116 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion commanded the father-in-law. "Wait a moment. Here is another bird to kill," said Amabot and shot his arrow off into the forest. He then said to Karuekabo, "I missed. Will you get my arrow for me." The father-in-law sped to get the arrow before his son-in-law could descend from the tree, but he was not fast enough. Amabot was already safe on the ground, and they went home together. They then went into the forest to cut down branches of the sorveira tree to get the fruit. Amabot knew that his father-in-law would attempt to seize him as he climbed the tree, and he used a piece of rotten inner bark to make his climbing ring. It broke when he put it around his feet and he sent Karuekab6 for another piece. By the time the latter had returned, the son-in-law had already repaired the ring and was high in the tree. He ate some of the ripe fruit and chewed the seeds into a sticky mass, which he kept. When enough branches had been cut, the father-in-law told him to come down and start for home. But Amabot knew that the older man was planning to grab him as he climbed down, so he told him, "Wait. There are some baby parrots up here that I would like to capture." He got the parrots, which he had previously placed there through his magical power, and began to descend. Part way down he complained of fatigue and threw the parrots to his father-in-law. After picking them up, the latter looked up at Amab6t, who at that very moment threw the sticky mass of chewed seeds into the other's face. He then fled, afraid to return to the house of Karuekab6. Amabot ran until he reached a stream where some people, among whom was his sister, were fishing. He told them that he was being pursued and asked to be hidden. The people knew of Karuekabo's reputation, and they consented to protect the fugitive son-in-law. Amabot, through his magical powers, made him- self even smaller than he already was, and the people tried to hide him first in the crook of their elbows and then behind the knees. But he was still visible, and it was finally decided to put him on the back of someone's neck, instructing that person to face constantly toward Karuekabo. Amabot then gave them the following instructions: "When Karuekab6 comes, he is going to look for me in your midst and will not believe you when you tell him that I am not here. He will threaten to eat you. You should then ask him to open his mouth to show which tooth he is going to eat you with. When he opens his mouth, throw a red hot stone inside it and this will kill him." All that Amab6t predicted actually happened, and when Karuekabo opened his mouth wide, all the people gathered around and exclaimed, "Ah, there is the tooth with which our grandfather is going to eat us." The father-in-law opened his mouth still wider, and they threw the hot stone inside, killing him. They then flung his body into the stream, where it floated on top of the water. Amab6t went on his way. The people went back to their village and announced that Karuekab6 was dead and was floating upon the water; this was also confirmed by the women who went to bathe in the stream. Amab6t's sister was disturbed that the body floated and went to the stream and pushed it below the surface and under a log with her foot. There it became transformed into the first alligator. 117 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. 38. THE MAN WHO MARRIED THE GUARIBA MONKEY There was once a man who unknowingly married a guariba monkey in human form. The couple lived together until she grew pregnant; she then suggested a visit to her father. On the way she cautioned her husband, "Watch out for my father for he is very nasty. Whatever you do, do not laugh at him." The pair arrived at a house high in the branches of a tree among the vines. "This is my father's house," said the wife, but the house was empty. They came to a second house high in a tree but found nobody. At the third house, they encountered the monkey family, all of whom were in human form. The husband was well received by the father-in-law. The latter said to his son-in-law, "Let us eat some cupiuba leaves, and we will sing." At that time the cupiuba leaf had an intoxicating effect, although it does not today. The father-in-law ate a great deal of cupiuba leaf and became very drunk and began to sing. The son-in-law looked at the older man's mouth as he sang and thought, "How much like a guariba monkey he looks." The idea amused him so much that he began to laugh. The monkey turned very silent and later said to his daughter, "This husband of yours is no good. Let us all leave him." He then fed the man enough cupiuba leaf to put him to sleep. When he was asleep he put him in a hammock and hung the hammock on the end of a limb, from where he could not descend. The monkey family, including the man's wife, fled. When the man awoke he looked around and saw that there was no escape from his lofty perch. But some bees and the wasp came and brought him back to earth. The wasp said to him, "Now is the time to seek revenge." The son-in-law agreed and went home and prepared many arrows before setting out in pursuit of his in-laws. He arrived at the first tree house and then at the second, but nobody was at either. In the third house, however, he found and killed all the guariba monkeys except his pregnant wife. The wife escaped by herself and later gave birth to a son. She mated with the son and from this union came the present species of guariba monkey. 39. STORY OF THE MUCURA At one time the mucura were people. The arabamba (a fishing bird), the percevejo (an insect), the pigeon, the honey-eating fox, the hummingbird, the otter, and the tick were also in the form of people, but, unlike the mucura, they were really animals. The daughter of the mucura married the arabamba. One day he invited his bride to take her basket and fish with him. They went to the river, and the arabamba climbed out on the end of a long limb above the water and defecated. A fish came to eat the excrement, and the arabamba dove down and caught it. He repeated this until the wife's basket was full of fish. When the couple went home, the old mucura greeted his daughter and inquired about their luck in fishing. The daughter reported the fine catch and told the curious father how it was accomplished. The mucura said, "Tomorrow I will 'go and do the same." He invited his wife to bring her basket and accompany him, 118 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion went to the river, and repeated all that the arabamba had done. But the fish would not eat his excrement, and he caught nothing. He returned to his daughter and said to her, "Your husband is not a person. Leave him." She did. The daughter of the mucura then married the pigeon, and he too invited her to fish. They went to a small lake and the husband drank from it, and then went inland and vomited all the water. He repeated this several times and at last succeeded in drying up the lake. Many fish were left stranded on the dry lake bed, and they picked them up and brought them home. As before, the mucura asked his daughter whether they caught many fish and how they were caught. He resolved to go and do the same as his son-in-law. He went to a lake and drank heavily from it and then went inland and tried to vomit. But he was unable to, and went home to tell his daughter that her husband was not human and that she must leave him. The mucura's daughter then married the percevejo, who invited her to help him weed the garden. They went to the garden and he said to her, "Just wait here." He then crawled around among all the weeds and urinated on them. The weeds all died. The father attempted the same without result. He ordered the daughter to leave her husband. The daughter next married the honey-eating fox, and one day the new husband invited her to take a gourd and go hunting with him. He climbed a tree in which he spied a beehive and called out, "Honey, honey." The honey flowed out of the beehive and filled the gourds. When the father tried to emulate his son-in-law, he had no success, and he ordered his daughter to leave the fox. The daughter married the hummingbird, who also invited her to collect honey with him. He went to each flower and opened it, and the honey flowed into the gourds. Again the mucura wished to do the same, and again he met with failure. After being ordered to leave the hummingbird, the daughter of the mucura married the tick. One day the tick asked her to help him collect Brazil nuts. They went to the forest, and he climbed a big Brazil-nut tree, from which he knocked down several husks of nuts. When they had enough, he placed a leaf under himself and jumped out into space. "Here I come," he shouted, as he floated gently to earth on the falling leaf. The father mucura did the same, and when he had knocked down enough nuts he placed a leaf against his stomach and leaped off the branch. But instead of floating to the earth, he fell down heavily on his stomach. Like the other husbands, the mucura decided the tick was not a person and therefore not suitable for the daughter. The daughter then married the otter. He invited his bride to fish with him, and when they reached the banks of the stream, he told her to collect a large pile of firewood. He built a roaring fire and then sliced a vine into four strips, which he wove together to make a cord for stringing fish. By this time the fire had burned down to red coals, and the otter told her, "I am going to jump into that fire and roll around. But you must not shout when you see this." The otter did as he said and then leaped out of the fire, grabbed his fish string, and jumped into the water shouting. As he swam downstream he caught many fish, which he strung on his vine. 119 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. The mucura attempted to catch fish in the same way. He built a roaring fire and jumped into it and rolled around. However, his wife saw that he was burning and reached to pull him out. She could grab only his tail, and she pulled it until the skin came off. He was now a true mucura (these animals have hairless tails), and he jumped out of the fire and scampered away into the trees. 40. THE JAGUAR AND THE DEER At one time a deer married the daughter of a jaguar. The deer did not know that he had married a jaguar, since both were in human form. The couple went to live in the house of the deer, but one day the wife suggested a visit to her family. The deer agreed, not knowing that his in-laws were really jaiguars with human bodies. On the way, the wife cautioned him, "Beware of my father because he is very ugly and ferocious. So also are my sisters and brothers and their husbands and wives. When I present you to them they will embrace you and tickle you. Do not laugh, but keep a serious countenance. If you laugh they will eat you." When they arrived at the house of the jaguars, nobody was at home. The men had all gone hunting, and the women were away from the house. The first to return was the father. The daughter said to him, "This is my husband and your son-in-law." The father-in-law embraced him and attempted to tickle him into laughter, but the deer was forewarned and remained serious. As each of the other members of the jaguar family returned home, the same happened. All the hunters brought back ,game, but none had killed a deer. They all sat down and ate. The next day all the jaguar males went out to hunt, and the father-in-law brought home a deer. At the sight of the dead deer, the deer son-in-law became frightened, for he realized that these people were jaguars and that they knew that he was a deer. The deer was cooked and served to everybody. All ate heartily except the son-in-law, who only pretended to eat. On the following day the deer said, "Today, father-in-law, I am going to hunt also." He went out to the forest and killed a jaguar, which he brought back to the house. The jaguar family, including the deer's wife, became terrified when they saw the deer's game, for they thought that the son-in-law would surely kill and eat them too. But they did not dare to let the deer know that anything was wrong, and they cooked the dead jaguar and pretended to eat it. That night the father-in-law said to the deer, "Son-in-law, in what manner do you sleep ?" The deer said, "I sleep with my eyes open, and when I am awake my eyes are shut. And you, father-in-law?" The jaguar answered, "I am different. When I am awake my eyes are open, and when I sleep they are closed." The jaguars were afraid of the deer, and planned to flee that night while he was asleep. The deer went to sleep, and his eyes were closed, for he had lied to his father-in-law about his sleeping habits. The old jaguar came and looked at him and reported to the others, "His eyes are closed. He must still be awake." From time to time he checked on the son-in-law, who eventually awakened. The old jaguar looked again and said, "His eyes are open. At last he is asleep." They all then fled to the forest. The deer then got up and fled also, but in the opposite direction. 120 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 41. ORIGIN OF THE SLOTH There was once a man who had a very peculiar hunting practice. He would ac- company the other men a certain distance into the forest and then stop and let them go on. When they were safely out of sight he would proceed to cut a piece of meat out of his own thigh, crying "ai, ai," in pain as he did this (in Mun- duruciu 'ai' is not only an expression of pain but the word for 'sloth'). He would then collect and scatter about hair from deer that the other men had butchered, and when the others returned he always told them that he had killed a deer. After each day's hunt he returned to his house and told his mother, "I have killed only this," presenting to her the meat from his own thigh. The old woman would cook the slice of meat and bring it out to the men's house. The man's leg always healed, and new flesh replaced the part that he had cut.1' In time the men became suspicious of the "deer" that yielded but one piece of meat, and they also wondered at the man's custom of lagging behind. One of the men went back to spy upon him and reported his behavior to all the people of the village. That afternoon his mother received and cooked his usual offering of meat without comment. She brought it to the men's house and said to him, "Here is your meat. We used to think that you brought good meat, but you bring only bad meat from your own body." When the man heard this, he rolled over in his hammock and clung to it with his hands and feet, his back facing to the ground. "Who told you that? Who told you that ?" he repeated. As he said this he began climbing up the hammock in the manner of a sloth in a tree and turned into the first sloth. 42. THE MAN WHO TURNED INTO THE MAE DA LUA GRANDE There was once a man who had to be fed directly by his mother, like a young bird. He had a wife, but he always refused the food that she offered and went to his mother's house to be fed. Whenever he was being fed, his mouth turned into a beak and his arms into wings. He flapped his wings while his mother was putting the food in his mouth and cried, "Wah, wah, wah." His wife wondered why her husband would not eat and went to spy upon him in the house of his mother. When she learned the truth, she would have nothing more to do with him. He then turned completely into a bird, the mae da lua grande. 43. THE MAN WHO TURNED INTO THE MAE DA LUA PEQUENA Once there was a man who went with his wife to look for some patua palm fruit. When they reached a grove of patua, the man left the path to look for a tree with ripe fruit. After a time his wife heard him shout, "Here is a ripe one." She went in the direction of his voice, but did not find him. She heard him shout from an- other direction and again went in search of him, but still she did not find him. Once more she heard him shout, but he was nowhere visible. Finally she cried in exasperation, "Where are you now ?" He called back, "Here is a ripe one ... one ... one ... ," and his voice trailed off into the cry of the mae da lua pequena, into which he had become transformed. I" Wagley and Galvao (1949, p. 155) report the motif of the man who cuts meat from his own leg in the context of a rather different Tenetehara story. 121 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. 44. THE TORTOISE AND THE DEE PLAY A GAME Two tortoises were playing together on a hill at a game which they called karurapenpenpenpen. There was a clean, straight path on the side of the hill that terminated at the bottom in a tree. The tortoises climbed to the top of the path and rolled back down it, shouting, karurapenpenpenpen as they descended. When they neared the tree at the bottom, they pulled their heads into their shells and struck the tree with a loud noise. The deer arrived on this scene and watched their game with great curiosity. "What are you doing, Yauti ?" he asked. "We are playing karurapenpenpenpen," they answered. "Try it yourself. It is lots of fun." The deer responded that they would have to teach him, and the tortoises said, "Just watch what we do and follow us." Down the hill they rolled, shouting "karurapenpenpenpen," and pulled their heads into their shells just before striking the tree. The deer followed after them, gaily crying, "karurapenpenpenpen," but having no shell his head smashed into the tree and he was killed. The tortoises thought this funny. "Weh, weh, weh," they chortled, clapping their hands. They then sat down and ate the deer. 45. THE TORTOISE RACES WITH THE DEER One day the deer said jokingly to the tortoise, "Yauti, do you think that you can keep up with me if we run together?" The tortoise immediately replied, "Yes. I can keep up with you." The deer did not believe him, and they agreed to run to- gether the following day. The tortoise then went to all the other tortoises and posted them along the line of the race. He instructed them, "Whenever the deer calls out 'Yauti,' answer him." The tortoise himself waited at the finish line. When the race started, the deer ran for a while and then, curious to see whether the tortoise had kept the pace, called out "Yauti." "Ah?" came the answer from a tortoise posted along the route. The deer ran faster and later called again. Again he was answered and he ran even faster. This happened several more times and each time the deer ran faster. Finally he fell over dead from exhaustion. All the tortoises laughed, "Weh, weh, weh," and clapped their hands. They then sat down and ate the deer. 46. THIE TORTOISE, THE JAGUAR, AND THE ALLIGATOR One day the tortoise was traveling through the forest and passed under a naja palm in the top of which some prego monkeys were eating the palm fruit. He stopped to eat some of the fruit which had fallen to the ground when the monkeys spied him. "Ah, there is Yauti," they exclaimed. "Come up and eat with us, Yautf." The tortoise replied that he could not climb, and two of the monkeys went down and carried him to the top of the tree. He ate naja fruit with them until they de- parted, leaving him alone in the tree. A passing jaguar saw the tortoise in the top of the tree and called to him, "How did you get up there, Yauti ?" "I climbed," answered the tortoise. The jaguar, who 122 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion wanted to eat him, then said, "You climbed? Come down and show me how you did it." "No," said the wily tortoise. "I do not know how to get down. Besides, I like it here." The jaguar remained under the tree, with his neck craned upward, imploring the tortoise to come down. Finally he grew tired and his head drooped down. At this point, the tortoise jumped from the tree and struck the jaguar's head with his hard shell, killing him. "Weh, weh, weh," lauighed the tortoise, as he clapped his hands and sat down to eat the jaguar. After he had consumed the jaguar, the tortoise made a flute out of one of the jaguar's bones. He sat at the entrance of a hole that he was using for a home and played a song in which he sang, "Here is the bone of Yauarite (a proper name given to the jaguar). How ugly it is." Another jaguar came along and said, "Yautf, are you calling my name ?" "No," answered the tortoise, "I am calling my own name." He then sang the song, substituting 'Yauti' for 'Yauarite.' The jaguar went away satisfied, but he had gone only a short distance when the tortoise sang the song again with the original words. The jaguar returned and the same dialogue transpired. The third time that the tortoise did this, the jaguar ran back en- raged and tried to grab him. The tortoise quickly retreated into his hole, and the jaguar managed to seize only a forepaw. But the tortoise, whose skin is like bark, laughed and said, "You have only the root of a tree." The jaguar released his grip and the tortoise withdrew deep into the hole. Some time later an alligator arrived at the entrance to the tortoise's lair and called inside, "Yauti, do you know that fava beans grow on vines?" The tortoise responded, "No, they grow on trees," and an argument ensued. At last the patience of the alligator had reached its limit, and he covered the entrance to the tortoise's hole with sticks and dirt. The next day he returned to see if the tortoise was dead so that he could eat him. He called out, "Yauti," and received the answer, "Ah ?" "Do you know that there is a lot of wood fungus [eaten by tortoises] in the forest?" The tortoise was not to be lured out by so transparent a ruse and re- plied, "I am not interested, since I have already eaten well." The alligator re- turned for several days in a row, but the durable tortoise was still alive. Finally, the tortoise decided to trick the alligator. He shed his old shell and grew another and then awaited the alligator. When the latter called to him, he answered in a weak and fainting voice, and the alligator thought that he was near death. He then escaped from his den by another entrance. On the following day, the alligator received no answer and proceeded to dig out the hole to get the body of the tortoise. He saw the shell and reached for it, whereupon the very much alive tortoise sneaked up behind him and pushed him into the hole and covered it. He clapped his hands and laughed, "Weh, weh, weh." The next day he returned and called, "Alligator." The alligator replied and the tortoise taunted, "Do you know that there are a lot of fish just spoiling in the river?" The alligator lamented, "Ah, but I cannot get out of this hole." The alli- gator dried out and weakened very rapidly, and a few days later the tortoise re- ceived only a weak answer from his prisoner. The next day, the tortoise received no reply whatsoever; the alligator was dead. The tortoise laughed, "Weh, weh, weh," and clapped his hands. 123 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. 47. THE TORTOISE AND THE TAPIR The tortoise was under a buriti palm one day, eating the fallen fruit. The tapir discovered him there and exclaimed, "Ah, it is you who have been eating my food." He stamped upon the hard-shelled tortoise a number of times and drove him deep into the muddy ground. The tapir went away, but the tortoise was so thoroughly stuck that he remained there for a long while. At last a band of peccaries came to eat under the buriti palm and stirred up the mud so thoroughly that the tortoise, who had by this time grown greatly, was uncovered. They said, "Ah, it is you Yautl. What were you doing down there ?" The tortoise told them what had happened, and the peccaries counseled him to go seek his revenge. He followed the old tapir tracks for a long time and finally came to an old pile of tapir dung. "Is the tapir very far away?" the tortoise asked of the dung heap. "Very far. You will never catch up to him," was the reply to the slow-moving tortoise. Farther on the tortoise sighted a place where the tapir had bedded down some time ago. He asked the same question and received the same answer. He con- tinued on his journey, and the dung heaps and the sleeping places became fresher, but still they answered that the tapir was very far away. He persisted and finally came upon the sleeping tapir. "Now that I have caught him, what shall I do with him," thought the tortoise. He contemplated biting the tapir's left foreleg and bit his own to experiment. It did not hurt, so he tried all his other legs with no success. He then bit his own testicles and this hurt terribly. "Ah, that is it," explained the tortoise, and he clamped onto the tapir's testicles with his jaws. The tapir jumped up and ran, wild with anguish, but the tortoise maintained his grip. The tapir ran and ran and finally dropped dead. The tortoise said, "How did you like that? That is in return for all of my sufferings under the ground." He clapped his hands and laughed, "Weh, weh, weh." He called the other tortoises to help him eat the tapir, but there was still too much meat, and some jaguars came to help them. They all ate, and when they were finished the jaguars were thirsty. But there was no water in the neighbor- hood. The tortoise, who can go for long periods without water, said to the jaguars, "There is water near by." He then went off a short distance, urinated, and rolled about in the water. He returned, wet and muddy, and announced to the jaguars that he had just bathed. They went out one by one to look for the water but re- turned thirstier than before. The tortoise did this again and again, and all the jaguars died of thirst. All the tortoises laughed, "Weh, weh, weh," and clapped their hands in glee. They then sat down and ate the jaguars. 48. THE MAN WHO LOVED THE SLOTH There was once a man who loved a sloth named Araben. Every few days he and his brother would go out to work in the garden and, after a short time, he would announce to the younger brother that he was going off to the forest to kill birds. 124 Murphy: Mundurucqi Religion But instead of hunting for birds he passed under a tree from which the sloth was hanging. He then called, "Araben, Araben. Come down." The sloth replied very lazily, "I do not want to. I do not want to. Your wife will talk about me. She will say that my teeth are like biriba pits [which are black, like sloth's teeth]." "No," reassured the man, "she will not know about us." The sloth would then climb down very, very slowly, as do all sloths. When she reached the ground they had inter- course and spent the rest of the day in playing. After his tryst with the sloth, the man would return home and tell his brother that he did not see even a toucan that day. The younger brother, who had no trouble in killing birds, grew suspicious of the activities of his older brother. The next time that the latter took his leave from the garden, the former followed him. The younger brother watched the other's activities with the sloth with some wonderment and then went home to tell his sister-in-law of the behavior of her husband. But he cautioned her, "Do not say anything to him. I am going to kill the sloth." On the following day, the younger brother went by himself to the tree in which the sloth lived. He called to her, "Araben, Araben. Come down." The sloth, think- ing that it was the older brother, descended from the tree. The younger brother then said to her, "Do you know what? I am angry with you," and killed her with a blow from a cudgel. He then laid a large branch across her head to make it ap- pear that there had been an accident. The next time that the two brothers went to the garden, the older one went off on the usual pretext of killing birds. He called to her but received no answer. He then cried to her, "What is the matter? Did somebody say something to you about me ?" There was still no answer and upon further investigation he discovered his lover's body lying under the tree, seemingly crushed by a falling limb. He accepted her death as an accident, but was so grieved that he cried until he could hardly speak. He returned to his house and refused the food that his wife offered to him on the excuse that "the jaguar has stolen my voice." The man then resolved to kill himself by eating all varieties of inedible plants, in the hope that one would prove to be poisonous. He ate many plants without result. Finally he tried the fruit of the moriapa, not knowing that this fruit would enable him to detect the truth and see things as they really were. He ate the fruit and fell into a trance, during which he saw that his brother had killed the sloth. When he revived he killed the brother in revenge. 49. THE WOMAN WHO LOVED THE GREEN SNAKE There was once a woman named Utukereb6, who loved a green snake named Tupasereb6. The woman would frequently say to her mother that she was going off to collect sorva fruit from branches that had fallen to the ground (limbs of the sorva tree often break under the weight of the fruit). She then went out to a sorva tree, high in the limbs of which was the green snake. "Come down, Tupa- serebK," the woman would call, and the snake slithered down and they would have intercourse and play all day. At the end of the day, the snake used to climb back up the tree and knock down enough sorva fruit to fill his lover's basket. She would 125 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. then go home and give the fruit to her mother, who distributed it throughout the village. Utukerebo went to gather sorva fruit every few days, and finally she became pregnant. Her brother became suspicious of her frequent trips to the forest and wondered at her invariable fortune in finding sorva fruit. He followed her to her rendezvous one day, but he did not notice her partner. She cried out in the midst of romping with the snake, "Do not make me laugh so much, Tupasereb6. You are making me laugh so hard that I am urinating." The brother could see her but not the person to whom she spoke. However, he finally saw the snake after it had climbed the tree and was crossing the branches in search of fruit to knock down to the woman. The brother went home and told the mother, who warned all the people in the village to avoid the fruit for it was ,gathered by a snake and not by a person. The woman's brother decided to kill the snake, and he went to the sorva tree and called out, pretending that he was Utukereb6. The snake came down from the tree, and the brother exclaimed, "Do you know what? I am angry with you." He then killed the snake and coiled him at the foot of the tree so that the serpent ap- peared to be asleep. The sister went again to see the snake and found him dead at the foot of the tree. She returned to the village empty-handed and went immediately to the house of the man who had loved the sloth to ask him how he found the killer of his lover. He told her of the fruit that he had eaten which gives people the ability to see everything as it truly is. The woman ate it and found out that her brother was the guilty one. She took no action against him but bore and reared her son, the product of her affair with the snake. When the son igrew up she told him that it was his uncle who had killed his father. The boy asked the uncle to make arrows for him and took one of these arrows and shot and killed him. After the two incidents of the sloth and the green snake, the shamans saw that everyone could have access to their magical powers. To prevent this, they made the moriapa plant poisonous, and today nobody can eat its fruit. 50. THE MAN WHO WENT TO THE LAND OF THE DOGS There was once a Mundurucui who traveled downstream with his white patron (rubber trader) to the lands bordering on the sea. There they entered the Land of the Dogs, in which dogs existed in the form of people. The patron introduced the Munduruciu to the dogs as a man from the savannah land of the interior. They said, "Yes, we know about your people. They mistreat our grandchildren (the dogs owned by the Mundurucui) and give them nothing to eat but bones." The dogs then invited the trader and the man to eat with them. They went to the edge of the village and brought a pile of bones which they gave to the Mundurucui, saying, "Here is some of the food that you give to our igrandchildren." Later, the patron and the man took their leave. The dogs came out to attack them as they left the village, but they ran away and escaped aboard a ship. The 126 Murphy: Mundurucu Religion ship sailed out to sea and almost to the end of the world, where it went under the water and came out in the land of the sky. (The Munduruciu believe that the sky and water meet at the end of the world.) There they were met by Karusakaib6 who invited them to look down upon the world. The man looked down and saw that his wife was already married and pregnant. Karusakaibi advised him to go back and take another woman. He went back to the world and finally found his way back to his village. He lived there to an old age. 51. THE MAN WHO HAD COITUS WITH THE FROG A man was hunting in the forest one day when he heard a female frog named Wawa singing, "Wa, wa, wa, wa," in a croaking voice. The man went over to Wawa, who was sitting in a hole in a tree and said, "Why are you making that grunting noise? Be mine, and I will make you grunt from the pain of my penis inside you." The frog continued siniging, and the man went away. However, as soon as he left Wawa transformed herself into a beautiful woman wearing a lovely, bluish dress. She appeared on the path in front of the man and said, "What did you say when I was singing back there ?" He replied, "I said nothing. Nothing at all." The transformed Wawa said, "You did say something. You said that you wanted to marry me and make me grunt from the pain of your penis. All right, I want to be your wife." The man was pleased with this, for she was very beautiful. They walked along the path a bit, and the man then wanted to have coitus. Wawa agreed and said, "Let me know when you are ready to ejaculate." They had intercourse and when he reached his climax he told her. At that instant she changed herself back to a frog and went hopping off with the man's penis caught in her vagina. He stood helplessly as she hopped away and stretched his penis out to an incredible length. After it had stretched to about fifty feet she released her grip and went on her way. The man wanted to go home, but he could not; his penis was so long that he could not carry it. He tried to coil it over his shoulders, but it was too heavy. He attempted to wrap it around his waist, but that failed. He stood in despair with his penis lying coiled about on the ground when some otters arrived. The otters asked the man what was wrong and he hold them what had hap- pened. "That is nothing," they said. "We will fix you up." They went to the stream and caught a caratinga and roasted it just enouigh to heat it. They applied the heated caratinga to the man's penis, and it began to shrink. When it had di- minished to a palm's length, they asked, "Is that enough?" He said, "No, a little more." They reapplied the caratinga, and the man's penis shrank to the size of a little finger. "How is that?" they asked. The man cried out in dismay and jumped away. He went home with a tiny penis. It was due to this episode that the caratinga is now half-black from being half roasted. To this day the caratinga is known as "awareraipo iuiuata" (heated the penis of the otter-the discrepancy is obvious; it was really the man's penis that had been heated). 127 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. 52. THE CITY OF THE GIANT ANACONDA A party of Munduruceu and Apiaea were returning from a war foray and camped upon the banks of the Tapajos River for the night. They chose a place near a stretch of very deep and calm water, and they heard from it the sounds of roosters and cows. Also, one of the boys had cried all night, and this was taken as a bad omen. Before dawn, the old men woke up saying, "Let us go in the direc- tion of our s.ibe [water and manioc flour, but frequently used as a generic term for food and, as in this case, home] ." The party set out across the river in two large bark canoes. The first crossed the river safely, but the second was sucked down by a giant whirlpool. The men in the second canoe were dragged down to the bottom of the river, and there they arrived in a wonderful city inhabited by enchanted people and owned by the giant anaconda. In it they had coffee, chickens, and cows and all the other marvels of a great city. All the men were allowed to enter except two, who rose to the sur- face and swam to an island in the middle of the river. There they shouted to the men of the first canoe, who picked them up and brought them to shore. All the others stayed in the city. 53. HOW DOGS AND JAGUARS BECAME ENEMIES At one time, dogs and jaguars were not enemies. A hunter and his dogs went into the forest to kill some game. On their return trip the hunter left his dogs and his arrows by a tree and went to get some tauari bark to make cigarettes. While he was stripping and pounding the bark into thin sheets, a jaguar arrived and greeted the dogs. "Hello, children, what are you doing here?" "We are waiting for our father who went off to get tauari bark," they replied. The jaguar noticed the arrows leaning against the tree and said, "Here are your father's arrows. Can they really kill people?" The dogs assured the jaguar that indeed they could kill people, and the jaguar picked up a smooth shaft and passed it back and forth in his fist. He laughed and commented that this one could not hurt anybody. He then took a fishing arrow having a small bone barb and passed it inside his fist. The barb caught him and he said, " This might do a bit of damage." He did the same with a blunt-nosed bird arrow, and when it did not pass through his fist, he said, "This one looks dangerous." He then took a large hunting arrow such as is used for big game and laughed, "This one certainly could not hurt people." "It can so kill people," cried the dogs who were angered by all this foolishness, and they barked at the jaguar and chased him up the tree. The hunter heard the commotion and returned to investigate. When he saw the treed jaguar, he picked up the same arrow that the jaguar had sneered at and killed him. Since that time, dogs and jaguars have been mortal enemies. 54. HOW THE BIRDS GOT THEIR COLORS A royal eagle mother lived with her child in a nest atop a samauma tree. One day the mother eagle flew down to the water to seize a terrapin that was surfacing. She 128 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion caught the terrapin in her claws, but it was so large and strong that it dragged her down to the bottom of the river. The motherless eagle child cried and cried until a black eagle came and fed it. The latter soon grew tired of caring for the fledgling and left. Then came a rapina eagle, who fed the young one and stayed with it until it was fully grown. He then said, "You are now big. You must take revenge upon the terrapin." The black eagle and the rapina eagle then put a log which weighed the same as the terrapin in the water and said to the young royal eagle, "If you can lift this up to your nest you can do the same with the terrapin." The eagle flew down to the water and after a great struggle carried the log up to its nest. The eagle was ready for the terrapin and waited at a good vantage point for him to surface. The terrapin surfaced and, thinking that the young eagle was in its nest, shouted, "It was good that we ate your mother." The terrapin was all decorated with the feathers of the dead eagle. But the son swooped down from behind and grabbed the terrapin. The latter submerged, pulling the eagle with him, but the other terrapins pushed them to the surface, and the eagle flew off to his nest with his prey. The eagle called upon the other birds to help him devour the terrapin; but first they had to open the shell. The toucan pounded at the hard shell with the side of his beak (which accounts for its present shape), but to no avail. Then the carpinteiro, a kind of penicapau, pecked at the shell until it broke. The birds all ate and decorated themselves with the red blood, the blue fluid from the gall bladder, and the yellow fat. The toucan put the blue fluid around his eyes and placed yellow fat on the trunk of his tail and in a band across his breast. He also placed blood on his tail. The penicapau put blood on his head, and the pipira covered himself completely with blue gall. The mutu'm put blood on his legs and beak and then called out to the galsa, who had just arrived, "Let us smear some white clay upon ourselves. You go first." He did this to keep the galsa from using any of the terrapin dyes. The galsa covered himself with the white clay and then said, "Now you." The mutufm, who did not intend to paint himself white, flew away, but the galsa reached out to grab him. He caught only the tail of the mutuim, which to this day is white. The royal eagle gave the head of the terrapin to the rapina eagle to reward him for his trouble in rearing him. The head, when used as a horn, made a noise that sounded, "Toc, toc, poat, poat." The tawat6 eagle, a very large bird, grew envious for he had a very shrill voice. He asked the smaller rapina eagle for the horn with such insistence that the latter yielded it. Today the tawato eagle has a deep voice and the rapina eagle can only cry, "Eee, eee, eee." 55. HOW THE BRAZIL-NUT TREE GREW LARGE The Brazil-nut tree was once so small that even the women could climb it to gather nuts. One day a woman was in the branches of a Brazil-nut tree when a man arrived below and asked her to come down and have intercourse with him. She refused him, but he persisted and called to her to hurry. She still refused, and he said, 129 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. "Let me go up and gather the nuts for you, but come down first." Still the woman refused. The man then threatened, "If you do not come down, I will make this tree grow so big that you will never get down." She replied, "I will have gotten down before you can make it grow so big." He called again to her to come down and kicked the tree, making it grow suddenly to its present enormous size. The woman remained trapped in the branches of the tree for such a long time that the bees began to gather around her. A bird, the penicapau, came t-o her and said, "Sit on my back and I will take you to the ground." She climbed on his back, but no sooner had she done so than a bolt of lightning came down and singed the bird's tail feathers, causing him to leave her in the tree. Next came a coatipuru monkey, who invited her to ride to the ground on his back. They started down, and a bolt of lightning struck at them. But the coatipuruf dodged to the other side of the great trunk and they were unharmed. More bolts struck, but the monkey eluded them all, and they reached the ground safely. The woman was so grateful to the monkey that she offered herself to him, but the monkey did not want her. Instead she gave him one of her pubic hairs, and this hair is to be found in the armpit of the coatipuriu monkey to this day. 56. HOW THE BRAZIL-NUT CASE BECAME HARD The outer husk of the Brazil-nut case used to be so soft that any animal could get to the nuts inside. One day a frog and a deer were about to make a repast of Brazil nuts when the cutia arrived. He said to them, "Be careful. That fruit may be poisonous. Let me eat some first to see if it is edible." The frog and the deer were frightened by these words and let the eutia test the Brazil nuts. He ate and ate and ate, and then pretended to fall over on his side as if dead. The deer said, "Look what happened to him. That fruit must be poisonous." The cutia then pre- tended to revive and said to the others, "You see how poisonous it is. Do not eat it." The deer went away, and the frog, to make sure that nobody would be poisoned, made the case so hard that only the cutia could gnaw his way through it. It was thus that the cutia fooled all the other animals and today is the only one that can eat Brazil nuts. 57. STORY OF THE SPIDER: HANSEL AND GRETEL IN THE AMAZON The mother spider had many, many children. So many, in fact, that the parents were hard pressed to get enough food for all. One day the father spider said to the mother, "I am going to take a boy and girl to the forest and leave them there." He selected two of the children and said, "Let us go to the forest and tap a beehive of which I know." He took along a hollow gourd for the ostensible purpose of col- lecting the honey and led the children into the forest. Upon reaching a certain point, the father spider said, "The beehive is near by, but let me go ahead to check on its location. When I find it, I shall call for you by blowing across the mouth of this hollow gourd." He then went on into the for- est and ascended a hill. On top of the hill he climbed a tree, from the branches of which he hung the gourd. Descending the tree, he went home by another path. 130 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion Later the wind rose and blew across the mouth of the gourd, making the sound: "Zoom, zoom." "Ah," the children said, "there is father signaling to us." They headed in the direction of the noise, but not seeing the father, went too far and became lost. The two spider children wandered in the forest for days, but finally came upon a well-beaten path. Following it they arrived at the house of an old woman who was nearly blind. This old woman prevented people from entering her house un- announced by sitting in the doorway and swinging a length of cane back and forth across the aperture. But in the house the hungry children spied much farinha and many bananas, and the boy said to his sister, "Wait here. I am going to get some bananas." On the way in he made a slight noise, and the old woman swished her stick back and forth to see if anybody was there. But the boy eluded the old woman and returned with food. He did this again with similar success. After finish- ing all the food the children were still hungry, and the girl volunteered to make a foray into the house. The brother protested, but the girl insisted upon going. She entered without being detected, but on the way out the old woman swung the stick and touched the girl. The latter grabbed the stick, and the old lady said, "Who are you ?" The girl explained that they had wandered in the forest for many days and were hungry. "Who is with you ?" asked the old woman. The girl replied that it was her brother, whereupon the old woman invited them both into the house. Now the children did not know that the old lady and the other people who be- longed to the household were really Yurupari, but the old woman wanted the children for herself, and when the other people of the house returned that evening she hid them in the rafters. The other Yurupari were usually in voyage and only stayed at the house for very short periods of time. When they left, the old woman brought the children down from the rafters and imprisoned them in a closed room. She fed them well, and every month entered the room to feel their arms and fingers. "Ah," she would lament, "you eat so much, but still you do not get fat." This continued for months until they finally grew big and plump. She then said to them, "Go out into the forest and gather lots of firewood and bring it back to the house." The children went out and began to gather firewood when a parrot flew over- head and called out, "What are you doing ?" After a few moments he flew overhead again and asked the same question. He did this several times and finally, when the children had almost finished their chore, the parrot lit on a branch and asked again, "What are you doing?" "We are gathering firewood," replied the children. "The old lady sent us to gather lots of it." The parrot responded, "Do you know why she sent you to gather firewood? She is going to build a big fire and cook and eat you. Now when you get back, she will tell you to build a fire. Do this. Do not disobey her. When the flames get high, the old woman will then ask you to dance around the fire. She will then shove you into it." "However," continued the parrot, "you must do the following: when she tells you to dance, reply that you do not know how. In order to teach you, she will dance 131 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. around the fire singing, 'It goes like this, it goes like this.' When she gets quite close to the fire, push her in. As she burns, her eyes will explode and out of them will come two dogs. These dogs will be yours." The children followed the parrot's instructions, and when the dogs came out of the old woman's eye sockets they washed them and continued on their voyage. They traveled with their dogs, and whenever they arrived at a house, they checked first to see that it was unoccupied and then proceeded to rob it of whatever food they could find. To avoid any further repetition of their recent troubles, they slept in the forest. At one deserted house they found watermelon seeds. They took these seeds and spread them all over the land of the Mundurucu', and this is why the Mundurucui have watermelons today. After a long time the sister died, and the brother wandered through this region alone except for the two dogs. 58. HOW THE WHITE MEN TOOK PAR! FROM THE MUNDURUCt Three Munduruciu men, Tusapara, Cheyub6rubo, and Peseo, built a village where now stands the white man's city of Para (Belem, capital of the state of Para, Brazil). After they made this village the first white men arrived, and soon they came in such great numbers that they pushed the Munduruc?u out completely. The three chiefs fought the whites at first, but then the white men captured two Munduruciu boys and raised them. These boys were sent back to tame the Mun- durucui and with them they brought baskets full of steel axes, hoes, machetes, and other articles. The boys met a war party in the forest and showed them the good things that they had brought and explained to the warriors that the whites merely wanted to tame them and not to harm them. Each member of the war party received a present, and they went back to show these things to the old men of the village. The old men were impressed and accepted the white men. Although Para was taken over by the whites, it kept the last part of the name of Tusapara for its own name. 132 VI. RELIGION IN A CHANGING SOCIETY IN THE FIRST CHAPTER of this study it was suggested that changes in Mundurucui religion could better be understood through an analysis of changes in other aspects of the culture than through knowledge of the activities of the missionaries. This is not to deny that the priests are and have been powerful and influential figures among the Indians. But their proselytizing efforts have consistently been realized only after certain social and economic changes have taken place. Also, changes in religion have consisted principally in the disappearance of activities and beliefs. The acquisition of Christianity has been an extremely slow process, although it might be hypothesized that it will become accelerated with further disintegration of Mundurucui society. Until very recent years, the core of Mundurucui religious beliefs was the rela- tionship between the world of humans and that of the game animals; the sharp decline of this aspect of Mundurucui religion is one of the most striking changes. The bond between animals and humans was clearly expressed in the complex of beliefs and rites connected with the spirit mothers of the game, and the Araiarai and Dajearuparsp ceremonies were the most important of all Mundurucui rituals. Their enactment protected humans from the vengeance of the spirits and promoted the fertility and availability of game. Even the sacred trumpets, originally the abodes of ancestral spirits of localized clans, acquired a vague and undefined re- lationship with the animal spirits. Warfare, also, was rationalized by the beneficent influence of the trophy head upon these supernaturals. Furthermore, the shaman was not only responsible for feeding the spirits, but he was believed to be able to cure the animals that dwell in human form in the Land of the Game, much as he cures the tame game animals found in every Mundurucui village. The closeness of the human-animal bond can be seen in other aspects of belief. Mythology abounds with accounts of animals that at one time had human forms, and the origin of certain species from the metamorphosis of humans is common. That the reverse can also take place is seen in the conversion of people into animals during the Duparip ceremony. The best example of the merging and interpenetra- tion of the two realms is the saga of Perisuat, who became almost animal through an extended and solitary stay in the forest. The relationship between Munduruciu society and the animal kingdom was one of symbiosis. The Mundurucui depended upon the animals for subsistence, and the animals, through their spirit mothers, depended upon the Munduruciu for the performance of rituals essential to their well-being and increase. The dis- appearance of these rituals is explained quite simply by the Mundurucui as owing to the lack of shamans sufficiently powerful to protect the animal spirits and human participants from attacks by the Yurupart. This view is true to the extent that there are fewer shamans among the contemporary Mundurucui, but it also reflects a characteristic fatalism and apathy toward the aboriginal culture. Not only are modern shamans said to be weaker, but men, in general, are not believed to be as strong, brave, and wise as were their forebears. And game is not as plenti- ful as it was in times past, nor are women considered as beautiful and desirable. [ 133 ] 1University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. In short, the Mundurucui view their present condition with apathy and face the future with pessimism. They make no great effort to preserve past practices be- cause they feel the struggle is futile and their way of life altered beyond redemp- tion. As one Mundurucui informant phrased it: "We are now all pariwat [non- Mundurucu] ." Reasons for this attitude can be found in the effects of more than a century and a half of contact with white society. During this period the population has been assailed by European-introduced epidemic diseases, and large numbers of people have migrated to the vicinity of white settlements where trade goods can be procured. The present Mundurucui population is probably one quarter that of the mid-nineteenth century. This depopulation and the increased involvement in the extraction of wild latex brought an end to warfare during the early part of this century. This had the obvious effect of terminating the ceremonial cycle devoted to the trophy heads, but it also had other repercussions. Warfare was, even more importantly than hunting, the principle expression of masculine values among the Mundurucu'. It served to provide the men of several villages with a common goal, thereby promoting social cohesion, and it constituted a means of safely releas- ing repressed hostilities that had accumulated between members of the society. The end of warfare thus deprived the males of their sustaining and fortifying self-image as valiant warriors and removed one of the chief bases of social unity. The pursuit of the hunt, however, continued after the termination of military forays. But the Mundurucu( had become deeply committed to rubber tapping, and the demands of this activity upon their time forced them to depend even more heavily upon fishing during the dry season, when rubber is collected. Today, the men of the savannah villages still hunt almost daily during the rainy season, but three quarters of the surviving Munduruciu population, who live along the banks of the larger streams, rely chiefly upon fish as a source of protein throughout the year. The shift from hunting as a primary substance activity further undercut the cultural emphasis upon masculine values, which were central to the religious com- plex surrounding'game animals. Of even greater importance, it stripped the cere- monies of their economic rationale and made them less meaningful in terms of mundane activity. Finally, the progressive, ongoing fragmentation of Mun- durucfu society has not only induced apathy toward the traditional culture, but it has weakened the group unity upon which the performance of ceremonies de- pended, and which they expressed. Collective religious activity, in general, has almost completely disappeared among the Mundurucui. Small gatherings take place when the sacred musical in- struments are moved to a new men's house, and the trumpets are still played a few nights a week. But social change has had a profound effect upon this sector of Mundurucu' religion also. The connection between the instruments and the clans was based essentially on a patrilocal rule of residence. Under it, the dominant or only clan of the village could quite reasonably be considered as the owner of the village instruments which were the repository of the ancestral spirits of the clan. Since the change to matrilocality, the instruments are considered to belong to 134 Murphy: Munduruct Religion the clan of the man who manufactured them. If he dies or moves to another village, it is quite possible that no other man of that community will belong to the clan owning the trumpets. It is, therefore, understandable that informants were often vague when asked to explain the' connection between clans and instruments. Many people believed that the trumpets had souls of their own and that these were the most important spirits resident within them. And, as has been mentioned, it was commonly thought that the playing of the instruments was pleasing to the spirit mothers of the game. The actual function of the trumpets in present-day Mundurucui society has little to do with clanship, but much to do with the maintenance of the sharp dichotomy between the sexes. The instruments are primarily the property of the village men and are expressive of their unity and identity in the face of the women. In this connection it is significant that the villages that arose along the Cururui River have never had either the men's house or the sacred trumpets. As a corollary, the gulf be'tween the sexes in social participation and labor that characterizes the savannah villages is lacking. On the Cururui the nuclear family is the basic social and economic unit. Men eat and sleep with their families and join their wives in tasks that would be considered degrading by a savannah dweller. But the demands of the rubber trade, combined with the covert hostility and factionalism that exist in all Munduruciu villages, are currently promoting migration from the savannah communities either to the Cururuf River or to isolated residence alonig other streams. The end result will be the complete lapse of the sacred instruments and the men's organization. The only other extant ceremonial is the one devoted to curing victims of soul loss. Since human souls are stolen by the spirit mothers of the game, this rite is also one of the few remaining religious acts that deals with this category of super- naturals. It is most significant that all the important means of obtaining the good will of these spirits and the increase of game have lapsed, although the Mun- durucii have clung tenaciously to the technique of defending themselves against the spirits and rectifying the damage done by them. It may be said of the religion of the contemporary Munduruc?u that it has retained those items that specifically protect the individual and, to a less degree the society, from harm though drop- ping those features that were not so immediately defensive in nature and which were more expressive of the integration and central values of the society. To continue this line of thought, we turn to a consideration of those elements of Mundurucui religion that have maintained greatest vitality-shamanism and sor- cery. The two institutions are inseparable in the Mundurucui mind; the shaman cures diseases, which are invariably caused by sorcery, and the sorcerers are re- cruited from the ranks of the shamans. But disease, its explanation and its cure, has much greater significance than as a system of belief. Kluckhohn has shown for the Navaho that sorcery plays a vital role in the release of aggression,' and Bea- trice Blythe Whiting's monograph Paiute Sorcery2 shifts emphasis somewhat and stresses the function of sorcery as a mechanism of social control. Both of these fac- 'Kluckhohn, 1944. 2 Whiting, 1950. 135 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. tors, but primarily that of aggression release, play a part in Munduruciu sorcery also. In a previously published work' I set forth the thesis that aggression cannot be tolerated in Mundurucui society because of the combination of a matrilocal resi- dence rule and a patrilineal descent system. Under these social conditions each man has two sets of allegiances, one to his clan and the other to the household and village of his wife. Since the two do not coincide, he occupies social roles that potentially can conflict. That is, a quarrel between households or villages may well pit fellow clansmen against each other, and, correspondingly, conflict between clans can cause internal dissension within villages and even households. Open aggression is therefore avoided among the Mundurucu, and, although interpersonal and in- terfactional tensions abound within the group, they are generally suppressed. The feeling of horror at the outward display of hostility between men is so strong that informants were unwilling to give data upon its occurrence, although it oc- casionally happens. Violence during warfare or the execution of a sorcerer, however, is thoroughly condoned. Attacks upon enemy tribes served to channel hostility upon surrogate objects outside the society and thus promoted social cohesion, but this avenue of release is no longer open. The only remaining catharsis for aggression is the prac- tice of sorcery and the execution of suspected sorcerers. Another alternative, with- drawal from the frustrating situation, has been made possible by the general pacification of the upper Tapajos area and the consequent possibility of flight from village life. In former times it would have been most risky for an individual or family to forsake the mutual security offered by the local group, but today it is common for Mundurucui to live in the midst of the Brazilian rubber-gathering population. Even within the confines of Mundurucui territory, the tendency to- ward neolocal residence makes isolated or semi-isolated existence socially accept- able. MundurucuA sorcery has a number of interesting facets. It is impossible to induce any shaman to admit the practice, but the body of detailed knowledge of witch- craft techniques suggests that it indeed exists. Granting that witchcraft is not completely a figment of the Mundurucu imagination, the practitioner undoubtedly derives considerable gratification of his antisocial inclinations. Also, the Mun- durucu' generally fix suspicion of sorcery upon the more deviant shamans. Thus of the two people known by me to have been suspected of witchcraft, one was a rather humorless, silent, and aloof man, and the other, although more outgoing, far outstripped the other members of the village in rubber production. The threat of sorcery accusation, it may be inferred, tends to enforce social participation and conformity. These factors of covert release of aggression and social control are, however, applicable only to the ranks of shamans. Persons born without shamanistic powers are unable to practice witchcraft, and sorcerers do not practice on behalf of others. But the dogged persistence of belief in black magic among the members of the society at large suggests that it does perform a very vital social function. It has al- 8 Murphy, 1957. 136 Murphy: Mundurucu Religion ready been mentioned that depopulation, the disintegration of the social struc- ture, and the decline of such highly valued activities as warfare and the hunt have robbed the Mundurucui of much that was vital and positive in their way of life and left them disheartened and apathetic. Frustration, in the classic paradigm, nor- mally leads to aggression, the expression of which is forbidden in this culture. Fear of sorcery among the Mundurucui is a means of embodying and phrasing in under- standable terms not only the manifold anxieties of their existence but the latent aggression that nearly all members of the society carry within them. In this connection, it will be remembered that the intrusive objects made by the sorcerer are spread abroad and are not usually directed against any one person. The sorcerer is then, as the Mundurucui say, malevolent toward society in general. This is not only logically consistent with the indiscriminate ravages of epidemic disease, but it also suggests that the accusers of the sorcerer displace generalized aggression to his person and eradicate it through his execution. That considerable aggression is unleashed upon the executed sorcerer can be inferred from the quality of the executions and the way in which informants report them. Many, if not most, executions take place from ambush, but some are bloody affairs in which the accused is beaten to death with clubs. And the Mundurucui enthusiastically relate these episodes with obvious hatred for the victim. The men of the village of Cabrua derived evident satisfaction by pointing to a brow-n smear on the posts of their men's house and saying: "That is where we wiped the blood of our last sorcerer from our hands." This emotional intensity parallels that reported by Kluckhohn among the Navaho,' and among both peoples this is atypical behavior. Since aggression is related not only to real interpersonal differences but to frustration and general insecurity, it should be expected that witchcraft accusa- tions would be most common in periods of stress. This is borne out by the Mundurucui practice of refraining from direct action against the sorcerer until illness becomes severe in the community and deaths occur. Unfortunately, we do not have sufficient historical material to demonstrate conclusively, as did Kluckholn, that sorcery troubles are correlated with historical periods of crisis. The best primary source on the Munduruciu, the report of the Brazilian engineer Antonio Tocantins, in 1875, describes sorcery executions as extremely frequent and one of the major problems of the Bacabal mission.! But it is difficult to evaluate the significance of this data and to control all the variables in the situa- tion without similarly complete reports from other periods. In 1875 the Mundurucu1 still waged war and therefore had available a means of expression of hostility which had the obvious advantage of being directed outside the society. But on the other hand, Mundurucui society was then being subjected to its greatest threat since the contact with the whites, for these were the first years of the rubber-extraction period, and the Indians themselves were becoming increasingly involved in the industry. White rubber tappers were penetrating the area in growing numbers, and the mission had just been established. In 4Kluckhohn, 1944, p. 56. 5 Tocantins, 1877, pp. 107-111. 137 3University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. view of the complexity of the problem and the paucity of data, however, it can only be concluded that sorcery was also common in times past. Whether or not accusations and executions have increased in number or in proportion to the number of shamans cannot be positively ascertained, but it is highly significant that the institution has been perpetuated into the present, a period that has seen the disappearance of much of Mundurucui religious activity. It has been said that the shaman occupies a most precarious role today. The source of much of the evil threatening the group, he also is the only person who can cope with the harmful forces, and his services are in great demand. The Mundurucui are deeply concerned with illness and frequently sought relief in the medicine afforded by my wife and me and by the mission and Indian Service Post. But given their theory of disease, modern medicines were inadequate for a complete cure and were believed efficacious only in healing the damage done by supernatural agencies. The removal and destruction of the latter can only be accomplished by the shaman. The role thus has a dual function; society purges itself of repressed hostility through the imputation of malevolence to the shaman, and it is also the means by which society protects itself from the believed evil. This dual function makes shamanism a most ambivalent practice. All but the most powerful practitioners, who usually are called upon to detect sorcerers, are in great and continued danger. The general reduction of the Mundurucui population has proportionately thinned the ranks of the shaman, and executions have further reduced their numbers. Many leave the Mundurucui country in flight from execution parties or in fear of future accusation. Others refuse to practice shamanism in the hope, often vain, that they will thus shield themselves from suspicion. The result is that many villages are without shamans, and their residents accordingly lose another motive for remaining members of nucleated communities. The involvement of sorcery in repressed conflict may be seen through an examination of a few case histories. The instance already cited in which the village of Missao Velha split on whether to kill the accused Antonio is a case in point. Antonio was the most industrious rubber tapper of the village and was much disliked by the family of the chief. The latter 'group was, as in most Mundurucui villages, the strongest aggregration of kinsmen in the community, since it included not only the sons-in-law of the chief, but also his sons, who are customarily exempt from the matrilocal residence rule. Relations were strained between the chief's group and the men of many other households of the village, for the latter looked upon the chief as the appointee of the missionaries and resented the strength of his family. These dissidents sided with the condemned shaman. They were not, however, willing to court the possibility of open factional struggle by offering physical defense of Antonio, but resolved instead to leave the village. Another case of sorcery, this time in the savannah village of Cabrua, saw the men of the village determined to kill the stepson of the chief. The latter, supported by his sons and sons-in-law, intervened, and the man's life was spared. In a 138 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion third village, however, the power of the chief's family must have been weak, for both he and his son were slain as sorcerers by the other men of the village. The tendency for villages to fractionate because of sorcery fears and accusations is probably greater now than in the past. Not only is village cohesion in general much weaker, but the disappearance of such leadership activities as heading war parties and trading on behalf of the village as a whole has made it most difficult for the chief to obtain the consensus necessary to carrying out an execution. It must not be thought, however, that lack of unanimity in sorcerer killings indicates a decline in belief in black magic; it rather reflects distrust of the sincerity of the accusers and the existence of latent factionalism that may not be directly caused by witchcraft. But these occasions bring conflicts to a head and open breaches that are in many cases irreparable and can be resolved only by the removal of one party. This analysis of the Mundurucui data indicates that although the institution of sorcery may be viewed in one light as socially integrative, so far as it acts as a cathartic for aggression, it may also be most disruptive of social cohesion, for it often aggravates tensions.! It would seem that shamanism and sorcery have become complementary to the central direction of social and economic change. The ecological accommodation to increased participation in rubber production calls for the dispersal of the population into ever smaller units in the vicinity of the stands of wild rubber trees. Correspondingly, sorcery conflicts tend to disintegrate larger village units while being integrative for factions within the village, which then commonly establish themselves as small local groups. This is not the only means by which social fission occurs. Latent conflicts that do not involve sorcery sometimes cause families and factions to leave villages; others leave because of the economic expediency of residence near their rubber avenues. But sorcery remains as a contributing motivation for the participants in the process. The Mundurucui example thus suggests that the institution of sorcery may promote the cohesion of a society as a whole, but only where other bases for such cohesion exist. The close relationship of religion to the social structure can be seen quite as clearly in the context of change as in a synchronic dimension. As the society has become progressively divested of those mechanisms that integrated tribe and village, so also have group religious activities fallen into abeyance. What remains are the essentially individual practices of shamanism and sorcery. This is the same process noted for other parts of South America by Steward, and which he has phrased as part of a change in "level of sociocultural integration."7 But beyond the scope of participation in religious activity we have seen another selective factor determining which segments of religion will persist. This, in brief, is the simple question of whether the element serves some social function in the changed setting. By this criterion, the warfare ceremonies have totally disappeared, and the ceremonies for the animal spirits have declined with the shift of a large part of the population from hunting to fishing. Similarly, the 6 Kluckho'hn (1944, p. 71) has noted the presence of disriaptive elements in Navaho witch- craft also, although the analysis of these tendencies were beyond the scope of his treatise. 7 Steward, 1951. 139 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. religious complex of the sacred musical instruments is extant only in five villages. The beliefs connected with all these rituals remain, but, lacking expression in action, are no longer effectively transmitted to the young. On the other hand, those aspects of religion that are keyed to the persistent problems of Mundurucui society show great tenacity. Sorcery beliefs may be currently disruptive of tribal and village integration, but they maintain a vital social function in terms of the needs of a society undergoing fractionation and individualization. These are beliefs that explain human malice and suffering and offer techniques for defense against them. They are not closely linked to and dependent upon the peculiarities of native Mundurucui culture, or of any particular lowland South American culture, and it is undoubtedly for this reason that shamanism and sorcery remain active among the peasants of the impoverished Amazon and can be found among the lower classes of its cities. The maintenance of specifically defensive functions of native religion is not pecul- iar to South America. We need only look to the United States, where the Sun Dance and the peyote cult have become primarily curing rites. These are flourish- ing parts of radically changed cultures and expressions of altered social systems and cannot be looked upon as lag phenomena. If there is a functional relation between religion and society, it must also exist in historical depth. 140 APPENDIX A GLOSSARY OF MUNDURUCU WORDS In this list, the letters i and u have the phonetic value of the Spanish i and u, o is pronounced as the German o with umlaut, and s is equivalent to the English sh. Araiarai the ceremony for the spirit mothers of game animals, which lasts an entire rainy season. asik a spirit that steals the souls of children. asima gi spirit mother of fish and other aquatic creatures. aunsabi pipi pain in the side. biu si spirit mother of the tapir. Biu si anyen Mothers of the Tapir, a men's society. borombo an instrument used by the shaman. causi the intrusive object, created and spread by sorcerers, that causes disease. cheseretaibitch anyen those who know how to explain dreams; persons who learn super- naturally powerful songs from dreams. chewoi the supernatural power possessed by game animals. Dajearuparip the shorter, ten-day ceremony for the spirit mothers of the game animals. Dajeboisi the title bestowed on a warrior who took an enemy head. daje si spirit mother of the peccary. Dareksi anyen The Mothers of the Arrow, a society to which all Mundurucui warriors be- longed. dau pipi pain in the leg. dauii a drink made of taja leaf and a broth extracted from grated Brazil nuts. Duparip an extinct ceremony. eksabi pipi pain in the back. ibilcoium chronic bad luck. ibiunbik soul; also shadow, reflection, picture. ibob6t an instrument used by the shaman. iboiwatitit the clan that possesses burial rights over certain clans of the opposite moiety. iboikcaipat the sorcerer. Inyenborotaptam the first part of the trophy-head ceremonies. ipsa pipi pain in the stomach. iss rap nyun ipichat a species of jaguar, one of the eponymous spirit "companions" of the sacred musical instruments of the village of Cabrua. Icarokd the sacred musical instruments kept in the men's house. karoko ejewot spirit "companion" of the sacred musical instruments. Iciu a flute played during the Araiarai and Dajearuparip ceremonies. olceriwat the spirits of the underworld. mambat gi the mother of the rain. mnamii shaman. mamui Iceren a shaman who uses his power for foolish or scandalous ends. m6ri a gruel made from sweet manioc. m'5riapa a shrub, the fruit of which is believed to have been capable of endowing people with clairvoyant powers in mythological times, but which is now poisonous. Muchacha anyen a society of learned and honored warriors. naneh an instrument used by the shaman. nunchai pipi pain in the uterus. ocho ocho the common cold. Ok pipi pain in the intestine. paiat fever. pern a horn used only by members of the Muchacha anyen society. [ 141 ] University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. Piunb&klmkup anyen the curing ceremony to retrieve a stolen soul. piwat leader and sponsor of a ceremony. potponchap an instrument used by the shaman. putcha si the spirit mother of all game animals. rapsem si spirit mother of the deer. sikiriu a species of small bird having a short beak. Taimetorom the final phase of the trophy-head ceremonies. taubokat the third and final stage of the illness, ujewaii. taue' si spirit mother of the prego monkey. tauk6renjujut a species of small bird. teker?i a species of small bird. tubo ancestral clan spirit. uai uru a tree. uantauhuakat wandering soul. uirapurut a bird, the body of which is used in love magic (Tupi). sujewaii a lingering illness which causes the victim to sicken and die. wira anan literally, 'jaguar with a beak'; the term applied to newly made sacred musical instruments. wiraku4 a supernaturally potent and stonelike substance. yakip a malignant supernatural object, said to resemble a louse, possessed by game animals. yapo a wanton woman. Yalegon the second part of the trophy-head ceremonies. yauhfi the second stage of the illness, ujewaii. Yurupari a highly malignant forest and water spirit. APPENDIX B GLOSSARY OF PORTUGUESE WORDS apoizeira a tree. arabamba a fishing bird. assas a palm (Euterpe oleracea). beijib flat cake made from manioc flour. biribd the fruit of the biribazeiro tree (Duguetia maregraviana Mart.). bizorro an insect. boa boa a bird. breu de jutaht sap of the jutahi tree. buriti a palm (Mauritia vinifera Mart.). caju& fruit of the cajueiro tree (Anacardium occidentalus). caju assul (cajuacu) giant cajueiro tree (Anacardium giganteum). ca,o-cao dos campos a savannah bird. card the South American yam (Dioscorea sp.). caratinga a species of fish (Diapterus), fami]y Gerridae, genus Diapterus and Eugerres. castanha de arara a tree of the Euphorbia family (Joannesia hevioides Ducke). castanheiro the Brazil-nut tree (Castanhea vesca) catitii (cazititt, taititu) a small wild pig of the family of Tayassuidae (Pecarn tajacu). coatd the spider monkey (Ateles sp.). cupiuba a tree (Goupia glabra). curuj&o da noite a night bird. cutia agouti (Dasyprocta aguti Lin.). envira (embira) a generic term applied to several vegetable fibers used as cord. farinha a coarse flour made from bitter manioc. fava a domesticated food plant of the family of Leguminosae. 142 Murphy: Mundurucu' Religion 143 feijao bean. galsa a wading bird. gavido rapina a species of eagle (Cerchneis sparverius eidos). gavido real a species of eagle (Thrasaetus harpyia). gavido tawat6 a species of eagle (Hypomorphnus urubitinga urubitinga). guariba the howler monkey (Alouatta seniculus). imbauba (umbauba) a tree (Cecropia palnata). inga tVhe fruit of the ingazeira tree (Inga sp.). jabota a tree (Cassia blancheti), the bark of which is used to make canoes. jacami (jacamim) a species of trumpeter bird favored as a pet (Psophia crepitans). jacfi various species of birds of the family of Cracidae, especially those of the genus Pe- nelope. jamarii a plant (Cucurbita idolatrica Lacerda). jambbi a plant of the family of Compostas (Wulffia stenoglossa). japin (japim, japj, xexeu) a bird (Cacicus cela). jararaca a species of poisonous snake (Lachesis lanceolatus Lacep.). jiju a species of fish (Etythrinus unitoeniatus). juriti (juruti) various species of pigeons of the family of Columbidae. jutahi (jutahg, jutal) various trees of the family of Leguminosae, genus Hymenaea. kamaitl a cane from which arrow shafts are made. lagarta caterpillar. macaxeira sweet manioe (Manihot aipi). mne da lua (urutau) a night bird (Nyctibius grandis). mde de bicho mother of the beasts-a bush supernatural, belief in which is widespread among the caboclo population of the Amazon. maracand a species of parrot (Propyrrhura maracana). matrinchiao a species of fish (Brycon brevicaudatus). mel de chup6 a type of honey. mucura (gambd) various marsupials of the genus Didelphis. muquim small red tick. munurirfh page a medicinal plant. mnuttim the "turkey of the jungle," name applied to various species of the genus Crax. naja (anajal) a palm (Maximiliana regia). nambii (inambfz) various species of birds of the family of Tinamidae, especially those of the genus Crypturi. orelha de pau literally, ear of wood; a fungus that grows on trees. paca a river rodent (Cuniculuts paca). panema a term for chronic bad luck used by the Amazonian peasants. patu4 (pataud) a palm (Cenocarpus pataua). pau d'arco a tree (Tecoma heptaphylla), highly favored for the manufacture of bows. pau de candeia tree, used for medicinal purposes (Vanillosmopsis sp.). pau de sacupema (sapopema) tree with roots that, spread from the trunk to form buttresses. paxiuba a palm (Socratea exhorriza). paxiuberana a tree (Tovomita triflora). peixe-boi manatee (Trichechus inunguis Desmaret). penicapau (pica-pau) woodpecker. percevejo an insect, parasite (Cimex rotundatus). piaba a small fish (Leporinus copelandi). pipira (tie-sangue) a species of bird (Rhampheelus brasilius). piqui a tree bearing a round, oleaginous fruit (Caryocar villosuim). piranha a carnivorous fish noted for its ferocity (Pygocentrus piraya). prego a species of monkey (Cebus macrocephalus). samauna (sumauma) a large tree (Ceiba pentandra). 144 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. sip6 (cip6) a generic term for liana. sorva the fruit of the sorveira tree (Couma utilis), also used as a source of sap. taja (tinhordo) a plant (Caladium bicolor). tamandud grande the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla). tartaruga a species of river turtle (Emys amazonica). tauari a tree (Cariniana sp.), the inner bark of which is commonly used as a cover for cigarettes; sheets of the bark are used as walls in the traditional Mundurucul house. timb6 a generic term applied to many lianas and roots used for drugging fish. tipoia bark-cloth sling in which women carry infants. tracajd a species of river turtle (Emys tracaja). tracud a liana used for medicinal purposes (Philodendron myrmecophilum Engl.). tucumd a palm tree (Astrocaryum tucuma Mart.). uchi fruit-bearing tree (Saccaglottis uchi Hub.). urucef the fruit of the urucuzeiro bush (Bixa orellana), used as a source of red dye. veado capoeira a species of deer. zogi zogi (macaco boca d'agua) squirrel monkey. 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The Tenetehara Indians of Brazil. New York. WHITING, BEATRICE BLYTHE 1950. Paiute Sorcery. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, No. 15, New York. PLATE S UNIV. CALIF. PUBL. AM. ARCH. AND ETHN. VOL. 49 a. View of the savaninahs southwest of the village of Cabrua. b. Forests and valleys east of Cabrua, looking toward the Das Tropas River. [MURPHY] PLATE I UNIV. CALIF. PUBL. AM. ARCH. AND ETHN. VOL. 4M a1. A oiillg .Ifuduuf11 im1.1m. N\oteb t.nttooedl vertiten(l filis oml ilcck- I111 ( olitil1 lill- uis ot (If ;u I)1lpigs :111(1 1X1 Imilds. The Iuues(x of ( ;,,llau" 1(- ill the IuueIck oruilulu. F). _\11111(111'1(11 ii Av01l1 (11 gYTlrl(lher 111 th 0 (-01111111111 1 s1ll((1 111 AvIl (I farinha iS 111(10n . I MURPHY I PLATE 2 UNIV. CALIF. PUBL. AM. ARCH. AND ETHN. VOL. 49 a. Bark-walled dwelling house occupied by the author and his wife. b. Interior of Munduruce dwelling. [MURPHY] PLATE 3 UNIV. CALIF. PUBL. AM. ARCH. AND ETHN. VOL. 49 Sleeping section of the men's house. The hammocks of members of the White moiety are huing in the foregrounid, those of the Red moietv in the background. The far wall containis the entranice to the ehamber in which the saered trumpets are kept. [MURPHY] PLATE 4 UNIV. CALIF. PUBL. AM. ARCH. AND ETHN. VOL. 49 a. Instruments used in the ceremonies of the Game. The cylinders are horns played in these rites, and the earthenware pots are used as coiitaiiiers of the beverage offered to the "spirit mothers" of the game animals. Note the tapir skull between the vessels. b. Mundurucu man playing one of the sacred trumpets, or karoko. Another of the set of three instruments is leaned against the wall at the right. [MURPHY] PLATE S