52 



INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHKOPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 15 



tbey accused, of having caused illness through 

 witchcraft turned out to be members of other 

 tribes or men who had married into the tribe. 

 If it were believed that someone caused the death 

 of a person through witchcraft, such a person 

 could be killed by the brothers of the victim either 

 by direct force or by counterwitchcraft. How 

 ever, no cases of this kind were discovered. 



We have seen that the Camayura divide their 

 neighbors into enemy tribes and friendly tribes. 

 Relationships with enemy tribes are on a permanent 

 war footing characterized by raids and counter- 

 raids. The members of enemy tribes are well 

 known. Their names are remembered and a 

 record of the past deeds of every enemy warrior 

 is kept alive to be settled at some future date. 

 When recounting a raid the Camayura mention by 

 name the enemies who were killed. Juruna who 

 was taken from the Juruna tribe when a boy 

 explained that in a certain raid in which he partic- 

 ipated as a member of the Camayura, his father 

 was killed. Witchcraft, however, is not practiced 

 against enemy tribesmen. 



Relationships with friendly tribes, on the other 

 hand, are characterized by trade, intermarriages, 

 and joint participation in ceremonies. While the 

 relationships are friendly they are tense. When 

 other tribes visit the Camayura, they enter the 

 village very formally. Ceremonies and trade are 

 carried on according to strict rules of etiquette. At 

 night the visitors withdraw from the village and 

 sleep in the woods. The element of competition 

 in ceremonies and trade give rise to suspicions 

 and in some cases to ill feeling. These enmities 

 are believed to be the causes of witchcraft. Yet 

 these individual suspicions and tensions do not 

 appear to lead to open ruptures between the 

 Basin tribes and are to some extent counter- 

 balanced by kinship bonds established through 

 intermarriages. 



The sanctions which govern the behavior of the 

 Camayura are inherent in the kinship relationships. 

 Every individual knows from childhood what his 

 duties and attitudes toward prescribed classes of 

 relatives are to be and what he can expect from 

 them. The chief is an economic and ceremonial 

 leader, guiding communal activities prescribed by 

 custom, and carrying out decisions reached by 

 common consent. Ultimate authority rests in the 

 tribal council which meets nightly around the 



fire in the center of the village. The council is 

 composed not only of the chief and the house 

 chiefs but of all mature men. The decisions made 

 by these men, who are kinsmen, is binding upon 

 the women and children and those young men who 

 have not, as yet, had shamanistic experiences 

 and who thus have no right to smoke. This 

 society, based on kinship, carries out political 

 functions insofar as force is exercised, but we would 

 look in vain for any relationship other than kinship 

 that binds individuals to the chief and which 

 gives the chief rights to exercise authority sanc- 

 tioned by force. 



RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND CEREMONIES 



In his brief but accurate description of Cam- 

 ayura masks and dances, Von den Steinen (1894) 

 stresses the artistic aspect of the dances, masks, 

 headdresses, and other ceremonial gear, and as the 

 Camayura stated that the designs represented 

 fish and birds, he was led to the belief that the 

 ceremonies were merely fish and bird dances. Our 

 investigations of Camayura ceremonial life, on 

 the other hand, had not proceeded far before it 

 became clear that the rituals, in particular, were 

 complex affairs in which a belief in spirits, spirit 

 impersonation, and the use of sacred objects were 

 definitely related to a concern over the perpetua- 

 tion of the tribe, the security of the food supply, 

 and other economic resources. Underlying not 

 only the religious beliefs and practices but the 

 entire economic and social order are the myths 

 which account for the world as it appears to the 

 Camayura. 



ORIGIN MYTHS 



A very general type of culture hero in South 

 American Indian mythology is a supernatural 

 being who finds and releases Indians from the 

 earth or from mountains, later establishing them in 

 certain areas and giving them, if not all, many of 

 the principal elements of their culture. Mavutsine" 

 differs from this kind of culture hero in that he 

 created the sun and the moon as well as the 

 Camayura, their friendly Indian neighbors, and 

 the two women who later gave birth to the 

 Caraiba, white men. These acts made Mavutsine 

 more of a creator than a culture hero. Although 

 the Camayura say loosely that Mavutsine" created 



