Nomads of the Long Bow 



The Siriono of Eastern Bolivia 



By Allan R. Holmberg 



INTRODUCTION 



This study 1 was carried out under the auspices 

 of the Social Science Research Council, of which 

 I was a predoctoral fellow in 1940-41. It had its 

 origin in 1939, when I was associated with the 

 Cross-Cultural Survey at the Institute of Human 

 Relations, Yale University. While studying there, 

 I was privileged to get considerable exposure to 

 the cross-disciplinary approach to the problems of 

 culture and behavior which was, and still is, being 

 emphasized at the Institute, expecially by Drs. 

 Murdock, Hull, Dollard, Miller, Ford, and 

 Whiting. 



As I continued my anthropological studies, it 

 became more and more apparent to me, as to 

 others, that a science of culture and behavior was 

 most apt to arise from the application of tech- 

 niques, methods, and approaches of several 

 scientific disciplines concerned with human be- 

 havior — particularly social anthropology, soci- 

 ology-, psychology, and psychoanalysis — to spe- 

 cific problems. Consequently, in casting around 

 for a subject on which to carry out field work, 

 I began to search for one that would be especially 

 adaptable to cross-discipliuary treatment. 



While studying at the Institute of Human 

 Relations, I became keenly aware of the significant 

 role played by such basic drives as hunger, thirst, 

 pain, and sex, in forming, instilling, and changing 

 habits. Because of the difficulty of studying 

 human behavior under laboratory conditions, our 

 knowledge about the processes of learning has 

 been derived largely from experimental studies of 

 animals. However, the procedure, successfully 

 employed in psychological experimentation, of 

 depriving animals of food suggested that it might 



1 The data in slightly different form were presented to the Graduate School 

 of Yale University in partial fulfillment for the degree of doctor of philosophy. 



be possible to gain further insight into the relation- 

 ship between the principles of learning and cultural 

 forms and processes by studying a group of per- 

 ennially hungry human beings. It was logical to 

 assume that where the conditions of a sparse and 

 insecure food supply exist in human society the 

 frustrations and anxieties centering around the 

 drive of hunger should have significant repercus- 

 sions on behavior and on cultural forms them- 

 selves. Hence, I took as my general problem the 

 investigation of the relation between the economic 

 aspect and other aspects of culture in a society 

 functioning under conditions of a sparse and in- 

 secure food supply. More specifically, the prob- 

 lem resolved itself into determining, if possible, 

 the effect of a more or less constant frustration of 

 the hunger drive on such cultural forms as diet, 

 food taboos, eating habits, dreams, antagonisms, 

 magic, religion, and sex relations, and upon such 

 cultural processes as integration, mobility, sociali- 

 zation, education, and change. 



In our own society there are many individuals 

 who suffer from lack of food, but one rarely finds 

 hunger as a group phenomenon. For this reason 

 a primitive society, the Siriono of eastern Bolivia, 

 was chosen for study. The Siriono were selected 

 for several reasons. In the first place, they were 

 reported to be seminomadic and to suffer from 

 lack of food. In the second place, they were 

 known to be a functioning society. In the third 

 place, the conditions for study among them 

 seemed favorable, since it was possible to make 

 contact with the primitive bands roaming in the 

 forest through an Indian school which had been 

 established by the Bolivian Government in 1937 

 for those Siriono who had come out of the forest 

 and abandoned aboriginal life. 



