NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW — HOLMBERG 



39 



then. Children are always present, eagerly await- 

 ing the emptying of a calabash, since it is then 

 passed to them to drain the dregs. The women 

 are almost always in the background watching 

 over their husbands, because they are quite certain 

 from previous experience that the party will end 

 in a brawl. This is always the case when there 

 is sufficient liquor. A man deep in his cups will 

 turn to another (it may be his brother, uncle, his 

 son-in-law, or even his father-in-law) and insult 

 him with some such phrase as "Etomi tuti nde" 

 ("You are very lazy") or "Ai i tends gdtu" ("You 

 never bring me meat with any fat on it") . He will 

 be answered in the same vein, and a fight will soon 

 break out. The Siriono do not fight with their 

 fists at this time; physical aggression is expressed 

 in the form of a wrestling match, in which one 

 participant tries to throw the other to the ground 

 again and again until he is too exhausted to rise. 

 Since the contestants are usually so drunk that 

 they cannot sta'nd up, these wrestling matches 

 frequently terminate with both of them passed 

 out on the floor much to the merriment of the 

 spectators. Not infrequently, however, one or 

 the other (or both) falls into one of the innumerable 

 fires in every Siriono hut and gets badly burned. 



When the party reaches the fighting stage the 

 crying women intervene and try to stop the fights. 

 At this time they too come in for their share of 

 aggression and not infrequently are struck forcibly 

 by their husbands. However, I heard of only 

 one case in which a man murdered his wife in one 

 of these drinking bouts. This happened approxi- 

 mately 15 years ago, the wife being shot through 

 the heart with an arrow. Although overt aggres- 

 sion runs high during drinking feasts, after they 

 are over the participants usually suppress their 

 angry feelings within a few days' time, and all is 

 normal again until another drinking bout takes 

 place. Insofar as I observed little sexual activity 

 takes place during or immediately after drinking 

 feasts. Participants are usually too drunk to 

 indulge in sex. 



When a considerable supply of honey is avail- 

 able, drinking bouts are timed so as to take place 

 every few days until all the liquor is gone. For 

 lack of honey, however, not more than a dozen 

 are likely to occur during the year. A man who 

 has given a feast expects to be invited to and is 

 expected (wants) to attend those given by the 

 people who participated in his. As most of the 



people who take part in these feasts are near 

 relatives, this almost always happens. 



In only one instance did I notice that the 

 aggressions of the drinking feasts were the direct 

 cause of strained relations for a long period of 

 time. During a bout in August 1941, Eantandu 

 (Father-of-Strong-one), a chief, insulted and 

 wrestled when drunk with Eresa-eanta (Strong- 

 eyes), his cousin, or father's sister's son, over 

 questions of food. Eantandu when drunk told 

 Eresa-eanta that he never brought him any 

 food, that he never hunted spider monkeys, that 

 he was lazy, that he was evil, etc. Although 

 neither participant knew much about what he was 

 doing, a wrestling match ensued in which Eresa- 

 eanta got badly burned in the fire, and he was 

 unable to get out of his hammock for several days. 

 As a result of this fight, about which Eresa-eanta 

 was later told by his wives and brothers, strained 

 relations persisted until January 1942, when I 

 first saw the two together again at a drinking feast 

 given by Eantandu — one which, incidentally, did 

 not end in a brawl, as the liquor ran out. After 

 recovering from the first drinking feast, Eresa- 

 eanta with a couple of his brothers and their 

 families remained away from the band for long 

 periods of time, hunting, fishing, collecting, and 

 attending their gardens at a nearby lake. 

 Although the party returned to Tibaera from tune 

 to time for a few days or a week, Eresa-eanta 

 would have no relations whatever with Eantandu, 

 even though their respective wives were friendly 

 enough. After relations had been reestablished at 

 the second drinking feast, however, the two con- 

 tinued on friendly terms. 



Like the men, the women too have their drink- 

 ing feasts, but these do not usually terminate as 

 rouglily as those of the men. In five of these 

 feasts which I observed, singing was the prominent 

 feature apart from the drinking and smoking. 

 Although the women accused each other of having 

 had sexual relations with one another's husbands, 

 most of them had reached such an intoxicated 

 condition by the time these accusations were 

 made that they were placed in their hammocks to 

 sleep it off. 



In only one instance did I observe mixed drinking. 

 This involved three old women and their husbands 

 and brothers. On this occasion, however, only a 

 few calabashes of mead were available, and the 

 party was not organized in any way. 



