Pemon

ETHNONYMS: Arecuna, Arekuna, Camaragoto, Kamarakoto, Taulipang, Taurepan

Orientation

Identification. "Pemon" is a self-name meaning "people." "Arekuna" is used by Pemon and others to refer to neighboring groups of Pemon speakers, particularly those in the northern part of their territory. Southern Pemon are referred to as "Taurepan," and those Pemon living in the valley of Kamarata, Uriman, and parts of the Paragua drainage are called "Kamarakoto."

Location. Pemon territory includes the Gran Sabana (4°34′ to 6°45′N, 60°34′ to 62°50′ W) and the valleys of the Caroní, Carun, and lower Paragua rivers (4° to 7° N, 62°30′ to 64°20′ W), all in southeast Estado Bolívar, Venezuela. There are also Pemon in the valleys of the Cuyuni, the upper Kamarang, and Venamo rivers and some in Roraima Territory in Brazil.

Demography. In the late 1970s Pemon within Venezuela numbered about 8,000; the 1982 Venezuelan census registered 11,600. Population growth rates have averaged about 3 percent per year since 1970.

Linguistic Affiliation. The Pemon language, with three regional dialects (Arekuna, Kamarakato, and Taurepan), belongs to the Guayana Group of the Carib Stock.

History and Cultural Relations

Pemon territory is bordered on the east by that of the Akawaio and the Patamona. On the south are the Makushi, and the Arawak-speaking Wapisiana. To the west, in the mid-Paragua and Caura drainages are the Yecuana. All of these groups maintained extensive intertribal trade relations in colonial times, as at present. The Pemon intermarry with the Makushi, the Akawaio, and the Patamona. Pemon entered the Western historical record in the mid-eighteenth century when they were encountered by Spanish missionaries in the Caroní and Icabaru river valleys. In 1817, with the collapse of the Spanish missions, this pressure subsided. Early reports from the 1770s indicated raiding and hostilities among Pemon in the Caroní region, and nineteenth-century reports refer to raiding among settlements in the Roraima area and elsewhere. No extensive warfare has been reported among the Pemon during the last 200 years, however. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, the syncretistic Hallelujah religion first swept through the eastern and southern Pemon areas; Hallelujah is now found throughout Pemon territory.

Their land is bounded by mountains on all sides, and these protected the Pemon from extensive incursions until the early twentieth century. Direct continuous contacts between the Pemon and Europeans, Venezuelans, Guyanese, and Brazilians were minimal until after 1900. Major outside influences have been the Capuchin and Adventist missionaries. Capuchin missions exist at Kavanayen, Kamarata, Uonken, Uriman, and Santa Elena; Adventist settlements are found at Yuruani, Apoipo, Morokmeru, and Maurak. Diamond mining in the streambeds of the region has been a strong economic and social influence, particularly since 1945. In the last quarter-century, the Venezuelan government's presence has increased substantially in the area of Santa Elena along the border with Brazil. Road penetration of the eastern portion of the Gran Sabana dates from the early 1970s. Land entitlement for Pemon communities is the most pressing issue facing them in the early 1990s.

Settlements

Pemon settlements range from a single family to a maximum of six or seven families (i.e., from four to seventy people). They prefer to locate dwellings in open savanna, not far from streams and within a walk of an hour or two to their fields in the nearby gallery forest. In the western valleys and tributaries, Pemon often settle in the forest and put up houses close to their plots. Larger ceremonial centers having a round house (waipa ) for dances and ceremonies draw large groups for periods of several weeks. Mission sites and Adventist villages have produced larger, nontraditional settlements. Pemon dwellings may be round, oblong, or rectangular and usually house a nuclear or extended family. Houses are of mud or slatted walls with thatch roofs and are open and undivided inside; less frequently, they are mission-type houses with interior rooms patterned on criollo styles.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. Pemon are slash-and-burn cultivators, fishers, hunters, and gatherers of wild fruits and insects in season. Bitter manioc, peppers, and a leafy vegetable known as aurosa are the mainstays of the Pemon diet. Yams, ocumo, batata, bananas, plantains, maize, pumpkins, and sugarcane are secondary food crops. Cotton is still grown for hammocks. Tobacco growing has diminished because of the increased availability of commercial cigarettes. Fish, the bulk of daily protein intake, are taken with hook and line, fish poison, and weirs. Hunting, formerly less important, is now done with single-shot shotguns; game includes tapir, deer, peccaries, pacas, agoutis, and birds. Palm fruits, flying ants, and certain larvae are gathered and eaten. Gourds are raised in the fields alongside food crops and are used for water and manioc-beer containers. Money made in the alluvial diamond mines or at mission labor sites has produced a partial cash economy of small purchases alongside traditional subsistence patterns.

Industrial Arts. Pemon make decorated basketry, clay bowls, wooden dugout and bark canoes, paddles, and bows and weave hammocks and baby carriers. They make necklaces from trade beads and weave small fish scoops from twine.

Trade. An extensive long-distance trade network links the Pemon with neighboring tribes and involves direct exchange of shotguns, blowpipes, manioc graters, bowls, and bead necklaces, among other items. Pemon have managed to mesh cash purchases of outside goods with traditional exchange at fixed rates, thus keeping all Pemon in the network whether or not they have cash.

Division of Labor. Work roles are sex-specific, but overlapping. Men hunt, fish, weave baskets, cut fields, build houses, gather wild foods, work for pay in mines and missions, and go on trading expeditions. Women cook, tend and harvest fields, make manioc beer, fish, gather wild foods, weave cotton articles, assume primary responsibility for children, and also go on trading expeditions. Pemon perform a wide variety of wage labor in Santa Elena and at a number of tourist sites.

Land Tenure. Every Pemon family has usage rights to the fields it cultivates, and when fields go fallow and return to secondary forest, the land reverts to the community at large. Family groups tend to fish and cultivate within a two hours' walk of their settlement, and Pemon would not think of fishing near another's settlement without first informing their neighbors. Hunting, singly or in groups, is done far from settled areas, and no specific rights to hunting territories exist.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. Descent in Pemon society is bilateral, and every person traces an Ego-focused kindred of relatives on both mother's and father's sides. An individual's kindred consists of relatives, including in-laws, up to the grandparental generation and downward to the grandchild generation; Pemon do not trace genealogies beyond their grandparents. There are no corporate groups outside of the household. A neighborhood is made up of groups of siblings linked by marriage bonds, with some inmarrying outsiders from more distant settlements. Age categories (infant, child, adult, aged) are used at times, but most references to other Pemon are kinship references. Personal names in Pemon are taboo, though criollo names have been adopted, are used to some extent, and are not taboo.

Kinship Terminology. Traditional terms approximate the Iroquois type, with variation in the cousin terms. Criollo kin terms, especially that for brother-in-law, are sometimes used by bilingual Pemon.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Marriage ties form the links that bind different settlements together, and the overall pattern of residence can be thought of as the result of ties to parents, brothers, and sisters, on the one hand, and in-laws on the other. Married couples form the basic economic units of Pemon society, and formerly the families of the betrothed spent considerable time discussing the proficiency, or lack thereof, of the prospective spouses at subsistence tasks. Upon marriage, the groom takes up residence with his parents-in-law to perform at least one or two years of bride-service. There is no marriage ceremony; the relationship becomes public when the groom slings his hammock in the house of his father-in-law. Pemon have a rule enjoining marriage with a category of relative that includes the opposite-sex cross cousin, although the rule is only partially followed in practice. Marriage with a category of relative that includes the sister's daughter is also found. Polygyny is practiced, with about 8 percent of all marriages involving a male and two or more co-wives; co-wives are often sisters. Divorce rates are low; about 10 percent of all ever-married individuals have been divorced.

Domestic Unit. Nuclear families predominate, although two- and three-generation extended families build up as sons-in-law marry in or sons bring their wives back home after bride-service. A settlement may have two or three households within five minutes' walk, the members of which span several generations of one or two families.

Inheritance. In the past, an individual's personal belongings were destroyed at death, but nowadays valued items such as shotguns or manioc graters may be passed on to near relatives, usually a child or sibling of the deceased. Houses were formerly burned or abandoned upon the death of the head of household.

Socialization. Pemon children learn by example and are given free rein. Early on, both boys and girls begin helping parents at subsistence tasks such as gathering firewood and hauling water. The Pemon do not approve of anger or displays of hostility; if an adult strikes a child at all, it is so mildly as to be merely a reminder. Some Pemon children spend time in mission boarding or day schools, through the primary school years and sometimes beyond.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. Heads of settlement are usually the oldest economically active males. Reciprocal visits for beer parties and seeing relatives tie neighborhoods and even whole regions together, and the prestige of a settlement is often gauged by the quality and quantity of manioc beer offered by the hosts. Other than the subordinate role of the son-in-law vis-à-vis his wife's parents, hierarchical relationships outside the domestic unit are based solely on age and personal prestige or special skills.

Political Organization. Regional leaders, called capitanes, (Pemon: epuru ) may wield influence throughout a river valley area. Their leadership is diffuse; they are men who exhort, speak well, and inspire followers, not men who give orders. For the most part, their role lies in defusing conflict before it escalates and also includes being a community representative vis-à-vis non-Pemon. Shamans, both male and female, practice their curing powers and sometimes align themselves with capitanes in disputes. Female and male prophets of the Hallelujah religion and of other syncretistic religious movements have wide followings. The egalitarian nature of Pemon society is everywhere evident. There are severe limits on the building up of power by any one person or group.

Social Control. Overt conflict, anger, and fighting are strongly reproved by the Pemon. Gossip, ridicule, and sometimes ostracism are principal forms of social control. The dispersion of settlements acts in concert with the tendency to avoid interaction between disputants to ensure that the main means of social control is not allowing the conflict to break out in the open in the first place. In extreme cases where sorcery is believed to have been confirmed, an assassination attempt may be mounted against the wrongdoer, or the wrongdoer is put on notice not to return to a given river valley area. Homicide is very rare. It is difficult to gather people for vengeance against the perpetrator, who generally flees the territory and does not return. Pemon say trouble occurs over women and false gossip. Sorcery accusations can be leveled when serious or widespread illness strikes a settlement or neighborhood. The basic response of the Pemon to conflict is to withdraw from the conflict situation, often by taking an extended visit to relatives living elsewhere and waiting for things to calm down. Individuals who get in fights at beer parties are quickly labeled as angry men and are avoided by all. Venezuelan police and courts are not much in evidence outside of border towns and diamond mines. The Pemon, for the most part, have little recourse to them except in cases involving disputes with criollo miners. Missionaries may be called upon occasionally to discuss conflicts, but most mediation is done directly by heads of settlement or capitanes.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. Pemon traditional beliefs centered on soul concepts, plant and animal spirits, Kanaima (the spirit of evil in all its forms and manifestations), and spirits of the dead (mawari ). Various celestial and subterranean spirit worlds can only be reached by shamans in ceremonial trance. Spirits of the dead live inside the mountains and can cause harm to the living. Plant spirits, such as the "grandfather of tobacco," are helpers and can be used by a shaman to combat the evil effects of the spirits of the dead. Kanaima, the spirit of evil, is mostly believed to come from outside one's settlement or neighborhood, never from close by, and there is a tendency to implicate non-Pemon outsiders as Kanaima. Kanaima may take possession of a person and cause the person to do evil. Ancestral beings are portrayed in a magnificent oral literature that documents the origin of the Pemon world and its spiritual, geographical, and social aspects. Religious movements led by prophets combining Pemon and Christian beliefs have sprung up over the past 100 years, including Hallelujah, Chimiding, Chochiman, and San Miguel. Shamans cure disease by communicating with the spirit world. Knowledge of plant medicines is commonly held, and masters of magical formulas (taren ) provide others with specific invocations serving to ward off disease or to ensure a successful outcome from a dangerous situation, such as childbirth. Various food taboos surround pregnancy and the period immediately after the birth of the child; these taboos are to ensure the health of the child and the strength of its soul.

Ceremonies. Dancing and beer accompany Pemon ceremonies, except in Adventist Pemon settlements, where manioc beer is prohibited. Lines of male and female dancers, arms linked, circle inside the round house for Hallelujah ceremonies or traditional dances, while people slip in and out for conversation or a gourdful of manioc beer. Informality is the key to the ceremonial gatherings, which are often held in the dry season. Smaller neighborhood gatherings may occur throughout the year with no fixed schedule. Mission services are attended by some Pemon living at mission sites.

Arts. Storytelling, basketry, and pottery are the principal Pemon art forms, and outstanding persons are recognized in all of these areas for their individual skills. Pemon distinguish quickly between everyday basketry and the more elaborate forms, which can become valued trade items. Some women are renowned for the quality of their clay bowls—the making of pottery is not a skill possessed by many females. Good clay sites are limited. Clay bowls are mainly made in the Kamarata area by women who have acquired the skill from their mothers; the bowls are then dispersed in the trade network.

Medicine. Pemon use bark and leaves to make poultices for wounds and cuts. Specific food prohibitions apply to various illnesses. Pemon quickly attribute injury and illness to natural causes—only if healing does not occur in the expected time or if the patient dies are supernatural causes invoked. Death is attributed to Kanaima, even though a natural cause is also cited. Introduced diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and measles have at times caused wide-spread illness. Mission-provided antibiotics and vaccines have reduced Pemon infant mortality rates. A hospital is located in Santa Elena.

Death and Afterlife. Upon death, the soul joins the mawari and migrates beyond the sky. The death of an adult is accompanied by much wailing and mourning by the female relatives of the deceased; sorrow over the death of a child is deeply felt but mostly private. Pemon may have a memorial service held at a mission if the deceased is to be buried there rather than near the settlement.

Bibliography

Butt Colson, Audrey J., and H. Dieter Heinen, eds. (1983-1984). "Themes in Political Organization: The Caribs and Their Neighbours." Antropológica (Caracas) 59-62.

Gillin, John P. (1948). "Tribes of the Guianas." In Handbook of South American Indians, edited by Julian H. Steward. Vol. 3, The Tropical Forest Tribes, 799-860. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 143. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.

Koch-Grünberg, Theodor (1916-1928). Vom Roroima zum Orinoco. 5 vols. Berlin and Stuttgart: Dietrich Reimer; Strecker und Schröder.

Thomas, David John (1982). Order without Government: The Society of the Pemon Indians of Venezuela. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

DAVID JOHN THOMAS