Mundurucu

ETHNONYM: Munduruku

Orientation

Identification and Location. The Mundurucu live just south of the equator in the Brazilian states of Para and Amazonas. They were known in early Brazilian history as warriors who took enemy heads as trophies. There are two separate groups of Mundurucu, who live in the basins of two major tributaries of the Amazon, the Tapajós and Madeira rivers. There appears to have been little, if any, contact between the two groups since the 1880s. The discussion here refers only to the Río Tapajós group. The climate is characterized by a rainy season (December to April) and a dry season (May to November).

Linguistic Affiliation. Linguists generally classify the Mundurucu language as Tupían in origin. Most of the men and a lesser number of women also speak Brazilian Portuguese.

Demography. In 1980, some 1,100 to 1,250 Mundurucu lived on their reservation, which is a botanical preserve about half the size of New Jersey. Much of this land is savanna that is not arable.

History and Cultural Relations

In the early 1770s the Mundurucu raided Portuguese settlements along the Amazon. In response, the governor of Pará sent a military expedition against them in 1775. The expedition, armed with guns, soundly defeated the Mundurucu, who fought with bows and arrows. Afterward, the Portuguese recruited Mundurucu men to serve as mercenaries against other Indian groups in the region. The alliance gave the Mundurucu access to metal tools and other manufactured goods, which they received in exchange for military service. By the late 1800s the region's Indian groups were under Brazilian control and mercenaries were no longer needed. Instead, world demand for rubber tires brought rubber tappers to the Tapajós River Basin, where wild rubber trees (Havea brasiliensis ) grew in abundance. The tappers traded goods to the Mundurucu in exchange for manioc flour. The Mundurucu learned to tap and cure rubber latex and became part of the patronage system that controlled the rubber trade. During the mid-1950s, prospectors discovered gold north of the reservation. Miners bought manioc flour and hired young Mundurucu men to dig alluvium from creeks. The sediment was run through sluices and panned for gold dust. These young men returned to the reservation and began to mine placer deposits, a more lucrative activity than rubber tapping.

The Mundurucu have some contacts with other Indian groups. A few Apiaca and Kayabi live among them. To the east live the Kayapo, whom the Mundurucu regard as enemies. Four Indian posts are located within the reservation, and its administrative center and a clinic are near the town of Itaituba. These are staffed by the Ministry of Interior's National Indian Foundation (Fundação Nacional do Índio, FUNAI). Contacts with Brazilian peasants, riverboat traders, FUNAI staff, and Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries from Germany, the United States, and Switzerland have influenced Mundurucu culture and society.

Settlements

Mundurucu villages are found along the banks of the upper Río Tapajós and its tributaries and on the savannas between the tributaries. The more traditional villages are on savannas. In the savanna villages there are men's houses, which once played a very important role in defense and ceremonies. On the savannas the insects are less noisome, but there are fewer opportunities for trade than in riverine villages. The desire for better access to trade goods is the motivating force that has induced entire communities to abandon the savanna for sites near the rivers. By 1980 only four villages remained on the savanna. The Franciscan mission on the banks of the Río Curura has more than 400 Mundurucu residents, making it the largest Mundurucu settlement. The second largest is Sai Cinza, which is both a Baptist mission and a FUNAI post. Sai Cinza is the northermost Mundurucu village on the banks of the Río Tapajós and is within walking distance of the Trans-Amazonian Highway. From Sai Cinza, it takes only a few hours by canoe to reach the Brazilian town of Jacareacanga.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. The Mundurucu are subsistence horticulturists who use slash-and-burn techniques to raise manioc, bananas, rice, and other crops. Their primary sources of protein are fish and game. They hunt with shotguns and rifles, or, infrequently, with bows and arrows. Among the animals hunted are peccaries, agoutis, tapir, pacas, and various species of New World monkeys. Fish may be caught using hooks and lines or, more rarely, bows and arrows. Occasionally, the Mundurucu poison a section of a stream and collect stunned fish floating to the surface and unable to breathe.

Trade. The most important products Mundurucu offer for trade are gold dust and rubber. Some households gather Brazil nuts for sale. Where a Brazilian settlement is close enough to make it practical, part of the game taken in a successful hunt may be sold to Brazilians.

For many years, itinerant riverboat traders have visited Mundurucu villages to sell aluminium pots and pans, fishing line and hooks, ammunition, clothes, cloth, sugar, salt, coffee, cooking oil, and, sometimes, illegal alcohol. The Trans-Amazonian Highway makes access to Brazilian shops much easier. These shops offer a wide variety of goods. In some areas, a patronage system still controls trade. Patrons extend credit to clients to pay for goods and expect repayment in cured rubber or in gold dust. This is a system of barter and credit, but by the late 1970s, the system was deteriorating in favor of cash-based transactions.

Industrial Arts. Among the Mundurucu, basket weaving is strictly a male activity. Baskets are woven from the fronds of palm trees and are used to carry firewood, food, and household goods. These baskets function as backpacks and include a tumpline of bark cloth that is placed over the forehead or around the chest of the carrier. The fronds are also used to make small baskets for sale to Brazilians. From the bark of vines, men weave manioc presses. Men also weave sieves for straining manioc pulp and cages used to transport chickens. Some men make necklaces using fishing line and figurines they carve from nutshells. The figurines include recognizable representations of turtles, alligators, fish, and various game animals. These are worn or sold to FUNAI agents or missionaries for resale in Brazilian cities.

Division of Labor. Most tasks are strictly defined as the sphere of males or females. For example, hunting and clearing plots are male responsibilities, and processing manioc flour and washing clothes are female preoccupations.

Land Tenure. Garden plots are considered owned by the household of the men who clear them of trees and brush. The garden is planted, weeded, and harvested by women. It is used for two or three years and then abandoned. After lying fallow for ten or more years, it may be reclaimed by anyone in the village.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. The important kin group is comprised of closely related female coresidents and their husbands and children. Descent is patrilineal, with only clan names and, for some men, shamanistic knowledge inherited from the father. Property is normally not inherited from an individual' s father.

Kinship Terminology. The Mundurucu use bifurcate-merging kin terms on the parental level.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Marriage is regulated by a moiety system, which groups each clan into the "red" moiety or the "white" moiety. A man or woman is expected to select a spouse from the opposite moiety. Typically, a young man leaves his village to visit other Mundurucu villages in search of an eligible mate of the correct moiety. If a man and woman decide to marry, he brings fish or game to her and moves into her family's household. Exceptions are sons of headmen, who bring their wives to their father's villages. Formerly, this alone constituted marriage but, between 1979 and 1981, it was also common practice for Mundurucu couples to be married by the Franciscan priests or by the Baptist missionary. Divorce is simple; either the wife leaves her village and returns with another man, or the husband abandons his wife and her village. In both cases, the community recognizes the divorce.

Domestic Unit. The married couple usually lives in the wife's family's household with her parents, her sisters, her brothers-in-law, her sisters' children, and her unmarried brothers. The household has a strong core of related women.

Inheritance. The personal property of the deceased is burned. Large or expensive items including canoes, tables, stoves, rifles, and sewing machines belong to the household rather than to the deceased and are not destroyed.

Socialization. Girls work with their mothers and other women of the household in tending gardens, processing manioc flour, cooking, washing clothes, and other female tasks. Boys are free, for the most part, to play in the woods, to hunt with toy bows and arrows, and to fish with hooks and lines. They have few responsibilities until they marry.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. The Mundurucu are nominally patrilineal, but live uxorilocally. Patrilineality describes the Mundurucu only to the extent that a Mundurucu clan name, moiety, and some shamanistic knowledge are passed from father to child.

Political Organization. Mundurucu villages are autonomous units. Each village has a headman, most often the most influential of the men who married into the village. Because the headman's sons and their wives usually live virilocally, the headman has a group of sons and sons-in-law to draw upon for support. If a shaman lives in the village, all accord him respect, but his powers are in the spirit world. Some villages have "captains" appointed by a riverboat trader or another outsider to facilitate trade. None of these three men has any authority over others.

Social Control. Mundurucu villagers are expected to cooperate with one another. Strong sanctions encourage this cooperation and discourage shirking work at hand. A woman who does not work or who flouts male authority may face the threat of gang rape by male villagers who disapprove. No case of this occurred during fieldwork conducted in 1979-1980, and it may be a completely forgotten sanction. If one or several people become seriously ill in the village, an uncooperative male may be suspected of sorcery. Two Mundurucu men living in the reservation were murdered for this reason during the period 1979-1981.

Conflict. Except for these sanctions, the Mundurucu rarely resort to violence, and fighting meets with community disapproval.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. Years of effort by Franciscan, Baptist, and Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) missionaries have resulted in some Roman Catholic and Protestant converts. In the early 1950s Mundurucu adults would tell traditional tales and myths as they sat with children beside the evening fires (Murphy 1958). This practice had waned considerably by 1980, when children were more likely to hear radio programs or records played on battery-powered phonographs than traditional lore. Important in their view of the world is the mischief, illness, or death caused by sorcerers. These sorcerers are said to hate everybody and are blamed whenever someone falls ill, has an accident, or dies.

Religious Practitioners. Shamans are healers. When someone falls ill or dies, a shaman identifies the sorcerer, whom other men of the village attempt to kill. The most likely suspect is another shaman, who is known to have spiritual powers that could be used to practice sorcery. Both shamans and sorcerers are almost always male (Murphy 1958, 29-49).

Ceremonies. Ceremonies reported by Murphy as occurring in 1952-1953 were not held during 1979 and 1980. In Cabrua, the three karoko (sacred flutes) were kept in a section of the men's house away from the sight of women, but men did not sleep in the men's house, and the sacred flutes were not played. At one village, a missionary encouraged the community to hold their traditional dances, but most of the teenagers lost interest, went to a nearby house, turned on their record player, and danced as couples to Brazilian country music.

Arts. Mundurucu men weave baskets, make necklaces of figures carved from Brazil-nut shells, and, infrequently, make bows and arrows. Women sew clothes from purchased cloth, make small fishing nets, and, very rarely, weave hammocks and make clay pots.

Medicine. The Mundurucu believe that sorcerers cause illness by spreading caushi (infectious objects that cause illness or death). Shamans cure by blowing smoke on the body, patting it, and then flinging or sucking out the caushi, which are then burned. If an individual experiences depression or malaise, this is attributed to soul loss. The shaman calls the lost soul to encourage it to enter a tapir skull and then to return to its proper place in the person from whom it wandered. When ill, Mundurucu also seek industrially manufactured medicines to effect cures.

Death and Afterlife. Just after a person dies, men from the moiety opposite to that of the deceased burn personal items belonging to the dead person, make a coffin, and bury the body. Their concept of afterlife is now greatly influenced by the Christian notion of heaven. Mundurucu formerly buried their dead under the clay floors of their houses, and this may still occur in some villages. Missionaries and Indian agents have encouraged villages to use cemeteries instead.

Bibliography

Burkhalter, Steve Brian (1983). Amazon Gold Rush: Markets and the Mundurucu Indians. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International.

Burkhalter, Steve Brian, and Robert F. Murphy (1989). "Tappers and Sappers: Rubber, Gold, and Money among the Mundurucu." American Ethnologist 16:100-116.

Murphy, Robert F. (1958). Mundurucu Religion. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Murphy, Robert F. (1960). Headhunter's Heritage: Social and Economic Change among the Mundurucu Indians. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Reprint. 1978. New York: Octagon Books.

Murphy, Yolanda, and Robert F. Murphy (1974). Women of the Forest. 2nd ed. 1985. New York: Columbia University Press.

STEVE BRIAN BURKHALTER