38 



INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 15 



surprise that the old Winchester rifles possessed 

 by the Camayura were clean and polished and in 

 much better condition than the dirty, rusty rifles 

 of the Caduveo. The culture of the Camayura 

 is still intact, their technology is of the traditional 

 pattern. What they have that is foreign has been 

 selected for a special purpose and does not inter- 

 fere with the technology as a whole. The Ca- 

 mayura are not hunters; the rifles are used for one 

 purpose only, namely, warfare. They were war 

 trophies in the first place and are highly valued 

 as such. It appears that as warfare is an im- 

 portant activity the weapons of war are given 

 great value and special care. 



THE PREPARATION OF FOOD 



In addition to the food products, utensils, and 

 other implements required for preparing food for 

 consumption, which have already been described, 

 there is fire (tatd). To make fire the Camayura 

 place the point of a length of cane used for arrows 

 in a notch made in a piece of soft dry wood and 

 rotate it rapidly between the palms. When the 

 wood begins to smolder the firemaker blows on 

 the ember, adding dry buriti fiber until a flame 

 appears. This act seldom has to be performed, 

 as fires are kept going night and day. New fires 

 are made by taking burning brands to wherever a 

 fire is wanted. In the mornings when the people 

 go to bathe in the river the boys take burning 

 brands, usually holding two burning sticks to- 

 gether, and run to keep the brands burning. 

 When they get to the river they light a fire to dry 

 themselves after the bath. 



The Camayura say that they did not always 

 have fire. In the beginning the people had no 

 fire and dried their fish in the sun. Then Mavut- 

 sin6, the creator, told them to go and find fire. 

 The people said, "We do not know where the fire 

 is." Mavutsine told them that fire was kept by 

 award, the wolf. When the Camayura came to 

 the place where award lived they found him taking 

 fish out of his trap. The Camayura took a piece 

 of buriti palm, lighted it, and ran away. The 

 wood, however, was damp and the fire went out. 

 They returned and stood around watching the 

 wolf throw fish onto the bank. As the fish were 

 flopping aroimd one of them jumped into the fire 

 and scattered burning brands in all directions and 



before the wolf was aware of it the Camayura 

 stole one of the brands and ran back to their 

 village. 



The Camayura then go on to relate that they 

 had difficulty taking fire from one place to another. 

 The moon (yai) eventually had pity on them and 

 taught them how to make fire with the arrow. 

 Fire has a mama'e called tataturidp which can be 

 seen in the swamps at night By the description 

 which the Camayura give, this mama'e appears 

 to be phosphorus. When tataturidp is angry he 

 burns houses and makes burns on people at night. 



In discussing the processing of- manioc we had 

 occasion to describe the four basic manioc prod- 

 ucts from which foods can be prepared. These, 

 as we have seen, were (1) tiburati, the dried balls 

 of grated meal, (2) temiy,, the dried tubers, (3) 

 tibudk, starch flour, and (4) mohet, the juice which 

 contained the starch. It is from these four 

 products, with the addition of sweetpotatoes, 

 corn, and fish, that the Camayura woman prepares 

 a number of foods. 



The bread of the Camayura, as we have said, 

 is menyu, or the flat manioc cake. In preparing 

 to make menyu, a woman takes a number of 

 dried balls of tiburati and grinds them with a heavy 

 wooden pestle. She then sits beside the mortar 

 with a tuavi, sifter, across her legs, with another 

 sifter below it on the ground. She takes several 

 handfuls of ground meal from the mortar and 

 places them on the sifter and begins to work the 

 meal back and forth in order that the finer particles 

 will fall onto the sifter below, leaving only the 

 heavier woody fibers which she throws away. 



When she has prepared enough coarse flour 

 she sprinkles a little cold water over it and works 

 the moisture in. The resulting mixture is not 

 dough but a moist, crumbly mass. While she 

 has been thus occupied, the baking plate (yapehe) 

 has been heating over a fire nearby. When the 

 plate is hot enough she places two or three hand- 

 fuls of flour on the plate and spreads it with a 

 circular motion of the hand, working out from the 

 center of the plate until the flour is evenly spread 

 over the plate. She watches the baking cake 

 carefully, periodically lifting one side and then 

 another with the menyu turner (iwep). When 

 the underside turns yellow, she turns the cake 

 over with the turner and leaves it for several 

 minutes but not long enough to turn yellow. The 



