CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF BEHAVIOR 



1448 



struatcd between menarche and marriage. 

 Before a child was born, the married pair 

 were uneasy and uncomfortable. They sel- 

 dom talked together, they never ate to- 

 gether. The young man felt abased by his 

 position of servitude to his financial backer ; 

 the young wife lived miserably under the 

 eyes of her mother-in-law. Both turned to- 

 ward their own relatives, from whom they 

 expected affection and support. Often the 

 3'oung wife ran away. When she became 

 pregnant she might not tell her husband but 

 instead told her own kindred, who prepared 

 the first of the birth exchange feasts and 

 brought it to the door. When her child was 

 born, she was under the care of her brother 

 in either his house or hers, and the husband 

 was banished from the scene for a month or 

 more. When later children were born, the 

 "knee baby" became permanently attached 

 to the father, with whom it stayed. The 

 mother was granted a month's respite, alone 

 with her child, whom she might care for all 

 day. Then, amid bickering and economic 

 calculating, she was returned to her hus- 

 band. The infant was not taken out of the 

 house until it could hold on to its carrier; 

 from this time on the father began to take 

 the child aw^ay from the mother. He pre- 

 sided officiously over the way his child, the 

 child of his spirits (although biologic pa- 

 ternity was recognized, it w^as not regarded 

 as important), was fed, insisting on the 

 milk itself rather than the suckling. In an 

 ideal marriage, husband and wife were 

 ecjually matched in intelligence, having en- 

 gaged in common economic enterprises, and 

 had two children, one to sleep with the 

 father, the other with the mother. Early 

 ciiildhood training focused on control and 

 assertiveness; the child was taught to hold 

 on to the back of the adult's neck, even 

 when the adult fell, to climb, swim, and rig- 

 orously control its sphincters. Sexual taboos 

 centered about the heterosexual activities of 

 the women; other forms of sex activity, 

 masturbation and one-sex play, were 

 shrouded in shame but were not sinful. In 

 women's gossip, intercourse was described 

 as acutely painful until after the first child 

 was born, and then the most that a woman 

 hoped for was sufficient lubrication so that 

 intercourse would not be too painful. 



The Manus had succeeded in building and 

 maintaining a culture with a high standard 



of living. They were well fed, enjoying the 

 fruits of the toil of all their neighbors ; they 

 disciplined each generation by breaking the 

 mother-child tie early, and they insisted on 

 physical adequacy, but gave little place to 

 the pleasures or the graces of life. Finery 

 was worn at puberty and marriage cere- 

 monies and at ceremonies after birth, but 

 as a daily costume only for mourning. The 

 highest expression of affection was between 

 brother and sister: "She works hard for him, 

 he brings food to her, she weeps for him 

 when he dies." Congruently enough, we 

 found in Manus an early death age for 

 males, frequent enuresis in children, prosti- 

 tution, and hoboes — men who refused to 

 conform to the exactions of this grim, ef- 

 ficient society. 



C. THE SIRIONO OF EASTERN BOLIVIA^ 



The Siriono are a very primitive, semi- 

 nomadic people of Eastern Bolivia, who live 

 a rigorous and deprived life under extreme 

 environmental conditions. They live in 

 bands within wdiich extended families act as 

 the effective economic unit, whereas the 

 band (a group of something less than a hun- 

 dred people) provides an almost closed so- 

 cial milieu within which young people find 

 mates. Their marriage system is one in 

 which all mother's brothers' daughters and 

 other women in the same classificatory re- 

 lationship are potential wives. The band, 

 from which small nuclear families or large 

 extended families occasionally wander away 

 for days or weeks, camps together in one 

 large, badly built lean-to constructed 

 around tree trunks. Hammocks are sus- 

 pended from the trees, and each family 

 has its own space between the hammocks 

 for building a fire. The Siriono are pri- 

 marily hunters, although they also do con- 

 siderable food collecting and practice a little 

 supplementary agriculture in temporary 

 camping sites which provide some food, for 

 which they do not have adequate storage 

 arrangements. As the group is almost con- 

 tinuously on the move wandering in search 

 of game, with 4- or 5-day halts, there is 

 little possibility of accumulating food, even 

 though both sexes carry loads of 60 or 70 

 pounds. Fire is carried from camp to camp, 

 but they luiv(> lost the art of fire-making 



"Based on f\rU\ work done in 1940-41 bv Holm- 

 berg (1950). 



