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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY PUBLICATION NO. 10 



woman, when the men are off on the hunt it is 

 they who must barbecue the meat. Similarly, 

 although basketry is the art of women, men must 

 sometimes make baskets in which to carry home 

 game. 



On the whole, however, the sex division of labor 

 follows the pattern presented in table 2. 



TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION 



Although rivers and lakes abound in the terri- 

 tory traversed by the Siriono, all movement and 

 transportation take place on foot, overland. 

 Considering that the water courses are extremely 

 abundant, that the Siriono are constantly crossing 

 rivers and streams in their wanderings, and that 

 there is no lack of excellent materials in the en- 

 vironment from which to build canoes, it is 

 surprising that they have remained unique, as 

 compared with their immediate neighbors, in not 

 constructing watercraft of some kind. Even 

 though they are not a river people— their camps 

 are usually located inland — the number of lakes 

 and streams in their territory would seem to 

 justify the use of watercraft, not only as an ad- 

 junct to foot travel, but as a means of augmenting 

 the food supply as well. Since much of the ac- 

 tivity related to the food quest, during the dry 

 season particularly, centers around the lagoons 

 and streams, canoes would be of great advantage 

 in fishing and in stalking waterfowl. It would 

 seem, in fact, that the lack of canoes can only be 

 explained by such hypotheses as that they have 

 never tried to build them or that attempts to 

 build them have proved unrewarding. 



The trails (nenda) over which transportation 

 and hunting take place are not built ; they simply 

 grow up from use. A hunter may strike out in a 

 general direction through the forest in quest of 

 game, and as he follows his meandering course, 

 avoiding dense growths of underbrush where 

 travel is difficult and going around fallen trees 

 that may impede his progress, he bends over a 

 few leaves and twigs. In his travels be may en- 

 counter a water hole, a stream, or a lake where 

 hunting is good, and if this be the case, he may 

 return again and again to the same spot, some- 

 times with his tribesmen, until by frequent use a 

 new trail is formed. When a new camp site has 

 been settled, trails grow up rapidly as a result 

 of hunters and collectors making food recon- 



naissances in all directions from the house. 

 Those routes yielding game are traversed again 

 and again, while those proving sterile are immedi- 

 ately abandoned. 



Trails are never cleared and are very poorly 

 marked. About every 15 feet or so a small plant 

 or a piece of brush is bent over to the right of the 

 direction in which one is proceeding. Thus one 

 can always tell in which direction the trail runs 

 or was made. Except in the cases of trails which 

 connect one camp site with another, the network 

 of trails roughly follows the pattern of a wheel. 

 With the camp site as the hub, a trail goes out 

 along one spoke and returns by another. A 

 great deal of crisscrossing and overlapping, of 

 course, do occur. 



It is impossible for the uninitiated to follow 

 these rude paths. Since most Indian hunting 

 trails lead out from a hut and back to it, one must 

 make many sterile attempts in trying to trace the 

 course of a band from one abandoned hut to an- 

 other, before striking the path that connects two 

 houses. Even when I was traveling with Indians 

 of the same tribal group, I found that they, too, 

 were never sure whether a newly discovered trail 

 was an abandoned hunting trail of another band 

 or whether it might actually lead us on to the spot 

 where the band was settled. 



When on the march the Indians do not move 

 great distances in a single day. The lack of good 

 roads, the necessity of crossing swamps and 

 streams, the impediment of young children who 

 must be carried or who cannot walk rapidly, the 

 burden of the gear — the hammocks, the pots, the 

 baskets, the calabashes, the food, etc. — all hinder 

 progress considerably. When lack of food or water 

 forces a band to move, the members usually 

 average not more than 8 or 10 miles a day, and 

 since they stop to rest, hunt, and gather at each 

 camping place, movement of the entire band does 

 not usually take place more often than every 4 or 

 5 days. Unless there is some definite objective 

 toward which they are traveling, they exhaust the 

 wild life of an area as they travel. 



While I was living with a band on the march for 

 about 6 weeks during September and October 

 1941, while they were traveling from a camp site 

 northeast of Yaguaru, Guarayos, to Tibaera on 

 the Rio Blanco, it took them about a month to 

 travel about a hundred miles. Movement of the 

 entire band took place on the average of every 3 



