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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 15 



only work for the white man when they want an 

 ax, a knife, a gun, or some article of clothing, and 

 once they obtain what they want they wander off. 

 Miners particularly are bitter about the fact that 

 the Nambicuara are unreliable workers. 



Missionary activity, which has been carried on 

 intensively by both Protestants and Catholics for 

 about 20 years, has been singularly unsuccessful in 

 Christianizing the Nambicuara. The Jesuit priests 

 informed me that only those individuals who have 

 been taken to Diamantino as children and kept 

 there can be said to understand the rudiments of 

 Christianity. The hope is that eventually these 

 individuals can be brought back to the tribe and 

 through their influence their children will be 

 raised as Christians. The Protestants tell the 

 same story. The Indians remain around the 

 mission stations, participate in prayer meetings, 

 and perform little tasks for which they are com- 

 pensated but they soon become bored and wander 

 off. The Rev. L. W. Buckman told me that he raised 

 a Nambicuara boy at the station and believed that 

 he would remain, but one day the boy got married, 

 left with his wife, and took up the old wandering 

 pagan form of life. None of the Waklitisu band 

 are considered Christians. When Marciano died 

 a few days before I left he was buried according to 

 Indian custom, both Protestant and Catholic mis- 

 sionaries participating in the burial as onlookers. 

 Among this band which has had as much mis- 

 sionary contact as any, there was not a single 

 individual who could speak or read Portuguese. 

 Some of the men, as has been mentioned, used a 

 form of pidgin Portuguese as a means of com- 

 municating with their white neighbors. 



The attitude of the Nambicuara toward the 

 white man is not only one of suspicion and sullen 

 resentment, but one of disdain. They call white 

 people "civilisados" or sometimes "bean eaters." 

 A Nambicuara feels insulted if these terms are 

 applied to himself. He openly boasts of being a 

 "bugre," a slang term widely applied to Indians in 

 Brazil which signifies a sodomite or heathen. 

 While all other Indians that I have met in Mato 

 Grosso objected to this term when it was applied 

 to them, the Nambicuara alwa3^s use it when talk- 

 ing about themselves. Julio informed me that the 

 Nambicuara always get sick when they visit white 

 people. The missionaries confirmed this fact but 

 added that the Nambicuara have now become 



dependent upon the whites for metal tools, guns 

 and ammunition, and feel it necessary to visit 

 white settlements. The Nambicuara are not above 

 visiting white men for treatment of injuries and 

 cases of severe illness. 



The interband relationships of the Eastern 

 Nambicuara, although characterized by tensions 

 and periodic open conflicts, are based on a recog- 

 nition of common origin, common speech, and a 

 degree of intercourse through trade, marriage, and 

 the performance of dances in common. The rela- 

 tions with the so-called wild tribes to the north, on 

 the other hand, are based on war, not just on 

 raiding for loot and women, but on a war of exter- 

 mination. Although the bands south of the tele- 

 graph line no longer participate in war, the bands 

 north of the line still fight on occasion with their 

 enemies which they call the Salaunsu and which 

 the whites call the Beico de Pau. 



When preparing for a war the chief of the band 

 takes the men into the woods and tells them that 

 there are bad people to the north whicb they must 

 kill. Then after singing a war song they set about 

 making many arrows and war clubs. The night 

 before the attack they camp near the village of the 

 enenry. The men paint their bodies with the sap 

 of some latex tree and their faces with urucu and 

 charcoal. They then take leaves and stuff them 

 into any holes in the ground or in trees around their 

 camp. After all the holes are stopped up, they 

 take the skin of an anteater, the skin of a toad, and 

 the leaves of a tree, which are used in preventing 

 rain, and burn them. The stopping of the holes is 

 believed to prevent the enemy from hearing them, 

 the smoke is to blind the enemy's anunsu and, also, 

 to make the enemy sleep soundly. The chief 

 remains at this spot and sings all night with the 

 shamans. At dawn the young men approach the 

 huts of the enemy, stand in the doorways and 

 shout, and when the occupants awaken they are 

 shot down or clubbed. No one is spared. They 

 then take whatever they can, burn the houses, and 

 return to the chief and his singing shamans where 

 the loot is distributed among the warriors. 



The internal organization of^the band is based 

 upon kinship and is perpetuated through cross- 

 cousin marriage. One belongs to the band of his 

 or her mother. Julio explained that when the 

 daughter of the wife whom he abducted from the 

 Elotasu reaches puberty she will return to the 



