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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 15 



beans, ipie; peanuts, oremj,; sweetpotatoes, mahodo; 

 "cara," ndvi; maize, dnji; potatoes, mula; cotton, 

 kodokira; urucu, dunto; tobacco, tauwy, piqui 

 fruit, ipa. Manioc, maize, and sweetpotatoes 

 were tbe principal food crops. Cotton was grown 

 for making hammocks and the various belts and 

 strings used. Tobacco leaves, after being dried, 

 were smoked by being rolled into cigars (tapdki). 

 Tobacco seems to have had a ritual use, as the 

 shamans smoked heavily before performing a rite. 

 Bitter manioc was shredded on a shredding board 

 into which fish teeth or fine pieces of shell had 

 been embedded. The pulp was squeezed in a 

 piece of cotton cloth in order to remove the poison- 

 ous acids. The meal was then used for baking 

 cakes. The fine powder or flour which settled at 

 the bottom of the settling tub was also used for 

 baking cakes after it was thoroughly dried. Maize 

 was eaten boiled or roasted. Sweetpotatoes were 

 roasted over coals. Maize meal was prepared and 

 mixed with wild honey and water to make a non- 

 alcoholic beverage. The Bacairi cMm not to have 

 used any form of alcoholic beverage. 



Cultivated plots were located outside the vil- 

 lage, each large household usually having a con- 

 tinuous area. Maize and many other crops were 

 planted in September and October when the 

 rains began. Sweet manioc and sweetpotatoes 

 could be planted the year around, especially on 

 river banks after the rivers went down following 

 the rainy season. April was the harvest month 

 and also the beginning of the ceremonial season. 



ORGANIZATION OF LABOR 



The occupants of the large communal houses 

 usually worked together in the fields, went hunting 

 or fishing together, and generally cooperated in 

 economic activities. Families could work indi- 

 vidually if they wished or did not need the help 

 of others. It was the task of the men to burn and 

 prepare the fields for planting. As the men 

 loosened the soil with the digging stick women 

 planted the seeds, slips, or pieces of stalk, as the 

 case might be. Women and children thereafter 

 took care of the weeding. 



Division of labor by sex existed to a certain 

 extent. Women wove mats (anegeu) out of various 

 fibers, and hammocks out of cotton yarn which 

 was also spun by women. Men wove baskets. 

 Both men and women made clay pots. Bacairi 



pots are quite distinct from the pottery of the 

 Indians living on the Upper Paraguay River. 

 Bacairi pots are flat-bottomed and have straight 

 vertical walls with everted rims. The pots in 

 common use were, and still are, black in color, 

 unglazed, and undecorated. Some of the pots 

 seen were made in the forms of frogs, turtles, 

 fish, and buds. The Bacairi claim that they 

 formerly had decorated pottery called amuga, 

 painted with black, gray, red, and brown designs. 



The Bacairi also had economic activities in 

 which the whole village, or a number of com- 

 munal houses, participated. The komete, or col- 

 lective land clearing, was one of these. A man 

 would invite a large number of relatives and 

 friends to assist him in clearing a new piece of for- 

 est land. The women would participate by pre- 

 paring large amounts of food and honey beverage 

 for the workers. The new field would remain the 

 property of the man who initiated the komete, 

 obligating him to work in return if called upon, 

 but sometimes the group of men who cleared the 

 field would divide it among them. 



House building was always an enterprise in 

 which the whole village took part. The group 

 that was interested in raising the house cut the 

 beams and poles necessary for the framework and 

 prepared large quantities of food. While a cer- 

 tain number of men began to put up the frame- 

 work, others went to gather grass for thatching. 

 When they returned with the thatching they put 

 on their ceremonial decorations and danced the 

 mahulawdri dance. House building was thus not 

 only an economic act but also a ceremonial 

 occasion. 



Hammock weaving was, at times, a collective 

 enterprise. A woman with a larger than usual 

 cotton crop distributed cotton among her friends 

 and when the work was completed she organized 

 a feast and dance. 



Ceremonial trading expeditions (tullki) were 

 organized by the chief of the village. During 

 the rainy seasons, when the rivers were high and 

 canoe travel easy, the men of a village would 

 collect whatever excess goods they had, such as 

 bows, baskets, ornaments, hammocks, and even 

 food, and would go to a neighboring village where 

 the chief would receive them before the ceremonial 

 house. The two chiefs would then supervise tbe 

 exchange of commodities. After tbe trading was 



