Tatuyo

ETHNONYMS: Emñreke Pinz Makñ, Pamwa Mahâ, Sons of the Celestial Anaconda (used only in ritual)

Orientation

Identification. The Tatuyo are part of the Tukano linguistic and cultural group. "Tatuyo" is the Nheêngatu translation of the indigenous word "pamô" (pl., pamwa ), which means "armadillo." "Pamwa Mahâ" literally means "the armadillo people." This is a pejorative designation (since humans emerged from the earth, and not from the water of the river), used by the junior clan to refer to the senior clan. By extension, this term is used in the Tukano area to refer to the entire tribe.

Location. The territory occupied by the Tatuyo is that surrounding the upper course of the Río Pirá-Paraná, at its headwaters, which is where the people have always lived. In addition, there exists a Tatuyo clan (Owa Mahâ) that lives at the confluence of the Papurí and Yapú rivers and in a few malocas (indigenous houses) on the upper course of the Caño Ti. The Pirá-Paraná is a small river that flows along the western margin of the Guyana flank, in Colombian territory. Tatuyoland is located between 69° 50′ and 71° W and between 0° 20′ and 0° 60′ N.

Linguistic Affiliation. Tatuyo is part of the Eastern Tukanoan Group of the Tukanoan Language Family (formerly called Betoya).

Demography. In 1970 the population of the Tatuyo was estimated at between 250 and 300 persons.

History and Cultural Relations

There are no historical documents on the ancient Tatuyo. Tatuyo mythology, for its part, tells of a vast migration and metamorphosis of a primordial people originally located in the east. They entered the world by traveling up a white river, called the Milk River. This myth, which is common to all of the tribes of the northwestern Amazon region, is probably based on historical reality. According to the myth, it was at the great Ipanore rapids that the Tukano tribes, which had been traveling together in a Great Anaconda dugout canoe, parted ways, each acquiring its own language and territory. Each tribe enjoys a distinctiveness, built upon the common foundation of Tukano culture. Although the Tatuyo are mythically related to all the tribes of the Vaupés, their strongest ties are to their closest neighbors, the Karapana to the northwest, and the Taiwano and Barasana to the south. The Tatuyo have had periodic contact with the world of Whites since the mid-twentieth century, through rubber tappers, traders, Catholic and Protestant missions, public schools, sanitation and public health services, ethnologists, and most recently, organized cocaine traffickers and guerrilla groups.

Settlements

The maloca has largely been preserved in the Pirá-Paraná Basin. It consists of a long rectangular frame with a double pitch roof, each maloca housing a patrilineage. The houses are situated on the very banks of the Pirá-Paraná and its tributaries. They are ordered spatially (upstream/downstream, Pirá-Paraná/tributaries), according to the genealogical hierarchy of the clans and lineages. The travel times between malocas are from several minutes to several hours, both by dugout on the rivers and by foot along forest paths.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities . The Tatuyo practice swidden agriculture, bitter manioc (Manihot utilisima ) being the principal cultigen. The acquisition of the first manioc plant and the establishment of the first swidden are considered by the Tatuyo as the fundamental transformation from savage life to civilization. The manioc is principally used to produce a large, flat bread (cassava), which is the main staple of the Tatuyo diet. Manioc is also used to produce a flour (fariña ), which can be preserved and sold, and a fermented drink (chicha ), which is of great importance in religious ceremonies. The Tatuyo cultivate a number of other plants common to the societies of the northwestern Amazon region. The men are expert fishermen and, to a lesser degree, hunters (today guns have almost completely replaced the bow and arrow and the blowgun with curare-tipped darts). Both sexes gather wild products, which contribute significantly to the diet. Forest products in particular play an important role in ritual, in addition to their dietary value. During the rubber boom and sporadically into the 1970s, many Tatuyo worked as rubber tappers. More recently (in the 1980s), they have begun to increase the size of their coca (Erythroxylum coca ) gardens, to sell the leaves, dried or made into a paste, to cocaine traffickers. Occasionally the Tatuyo sell Whites manioc flour, smoked or salted meat, and items of material culture such as baskets, pots, and blowguns.

Industrial Arts. Tatuyo women make pottery; men make baskets, dugout canoes, blowguns, bows and arrows, and magnificent feather headdresses.

Trade. Certain products and artifacts are the object of a series of exchanges with the other Tukano tribes: curare, manioc graters, river-snail shells, and ibis feathers (these feathers are considered the principal form of wealth and function as money among the tribes). Since the 1950s various items have been bought from Whites: salt, axes, machetes, knives, guns, fishhooks, flashlights, aluminum and plastic containers, hammocks, clothing, radios, and most recently, outboard motors.

Division of Labor. The division of labor is quite pronounced, both between men and women, and among men, the latter mainly concerning ritual and political tasks. Men build the malocas; make most wooden objects; weave baskets; prepare the chagra (swiddens); cultivate coca, tobacco, and chili; hunt; and fish. In addition, they have a monopoly on religious, ritual, and political work, all of which is highly specialized according to lineage and clan. Women tend the gardens, cook, and take care of the young children.

Land Tenure. Each Tatuyo clan occupies a territory, the "possession" of which is legitimated by the origin myth.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. Tatuyo society is an exogamous unit organized hierarchically into five differentiated patrilineal clans.

Kinship Terminology. Kinship terminology is of the Dravidian type.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Because all Tatuyo consider themselves related through common descent from the Celestial Anaconda, the men take their wives from the neighboring societies: Karapana, Taiwano, Barasana, Panena, Tuyuka, and Cubeo. The greater the distance between tribes, the rarer the marriages between them (although they are not forbidden). The ideal marriage is the exchange of sisters between two men belonging to two traditionally allied lineages. Marriages involving the exchange of women who are not sisters also occur, such as those of women exchanged between a man and his sister's son. Temporary residence can be matrilocal with bride-service, but it is ultimately virilocal. After a divorce a woman returns to her kin and takes up with another man. There are several cases of sororate. Polygyny, although permitted, is rather rare.

Domestic Unit. The domestic unit is the nuclear family, which, in case of serious conflict, can survive alone in a house in the forest. In general, however, the nuclear family is part of a larger unit, the maloca or longhouse, which constitutes the local group. The maloca is ideally comprised of the families of full brothers, each of which occupies a particular space, determined by birth, in the longhouse.

Inheritance. The Tatuyo have little property to transmit, but sons inherit from their fathers and daughters from their mothers. Social, political, religious, and ritual offices and the songs, incantations, and objects attached to them are inherited in the paternal line according to principles strictly determined by Tatuyo social organization.

Socialization. The Tatuyo lavish their children with affection and use physical coercion only exceptionally. Early on, children are told stories about ghosts (wâti ) that haunt the forest foot paths at night, devouring those who foolishly leave the protection of the maloca. Later, the children are told the myths that trace the major outlines of Tatuyo culture. Rites mark the major phases in the separation of the sexes. At every stage of socialization the emphasis is on the cohesion of the group of brothers that forms the core of the community and on the individuality of young girls, who enter at marriage into the network of alliances. For a generation or two the Tatuyo hid their children so that they would not have to attend the mission school. Since the 1970s, however, the Tatuyo have wanted their children to be educated so that they would be better prepared for interactions with Whites.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. Tatuyo social organization is based upon a hierarchical principle, the senior/junior opposition, which manifests itself at the level of full brothers, lineages, and clans. Each clan is specialized in many respects. The aggregate of clans constitutes the Tatuyo society, an organic unit that is represented symbolically as the body of the Celestial Anaconda, the ancestor of the Tatuyo.

Political Organization. The aggregate of Tatuyo clans does not constitute a political entity, however. Political power is always centered around certain men who add to the prestige of their birth (as oldest lineage or clan member) a personal, intellectual, and moral prestige.

Social Control. The head of the maloca possesses little means other than his personal authority to maintain social solidarity. Situations involving serious conflict mean the destruction of the community: either dispersal of its members to other malocas or a solitary life in the forest. A desire to avoid the innumerable inconveniences caused by the dissolution of the core group of brothers is the basis of social control and local-group solidarity.

Conflict. The pan-Amazonian myth of the "Bird-Nester" is one of the best indicators of the pivotal role of conflict in an indigenous community. In the Tatuyo version, the protagonists are an elder and younger brother who are in competition for the same woman. Within the hierarchical structure of the clans there also exists a structural conflict (portrayed in myth and continually acted out in everyday life) between the senior (Pamwa-Mahô) and junior (Peta-Huna) clans, which effectively rules out, before the fact, the establishment of senior-clan hegemony over the rest of the society.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. Tatuyo religious life is inseparable from social, economic, and political life. Myth organizes these various aspects of existence not so much by imposing belief as by equating its mythological images with the reality of the natural and cultural world in which the Tatuyo live. Religious (spiritual) experience itself is essentially mystical and ecstatic in nature, based in particular on the powerful psychotropic plant yahé (Banisteriopsis caapi; i.e., ayahuasca). All the mythical beings are supernatural beings. At the head of the mythical pantheon is the Sun, the Father, who is at once the creator and supreme shaman. Then come the other major figures, such as the Celestial Anaconda (the biological ancestor of the Tatuyo); Yurupari Anaconda (the initiatory ancestor); Earth Jaguar (the wild ancestor of humankind); Romi-Kumu; the Woman-Shaman (the hard-hearted woman); the Adyawaroas; the Celestial Workers (originally the first night, fire, and thunder); and Warimi, the culture hero, who is the intermediary between the sky and the earth, between myth and the tangible world, between the people (Mahâ, those who call themselves Tatuyo) and the Whites. In addition to the great mythological characters, there are the wâti, the cannibalistic ghosts that live in the forest.

Religious Practitioners. Men hold a monopoly on religious practices, and each man can be a practitioner. Nevertheless, certain men are recognized as great practitioners and are called ka mahm ("those who know") or kumu (shaman; generally called payé in Brazil).

Ceremonies. There are two types of ceremony among the Tatuyo: those in which the sacred flutes and trumpets (called poke in Tatuyo and yurupari in Nheêngatu) are played and those in which the instruments are not played. The former type, referred to generically as the "festival of yurupari," are associated with the initiation of boys and with the appearance of the season's first fruits. It entails, by means of word, dance, and music, a reenactment of the "way of primordial water"—the creation of the world and people. The second type of ceremony is based on the exchange of forest foods by allies.

Arts. The feather ornaments and choreography of the religious ceremonies are the most notable forms of Tatuyo artistic expression.

Medicine. Virtually every type of activity, object, plant, animal, or food can be a source or vector of illness, the dangers of which must be counteracted by a shaman. The Tatuyo use relatively few plants to cure illness. Shamanic cures consist mainly of verbal pronouncements intended to dispel the evil causing the sickness. The Tatuyo no longer hesitate to avail themselves of Western medicine whenever possible.

Death and Afterlife. When a man dies he takes his hammock, machete, and all the possessions that were important to him, waves goodbye, and leaves. He passes to the other side and arrives in another maloca, the Baleful Maloca, where he is received by his deceased parents. He stays there, seated in a hole, for one year, during which time he has many dreams. After a year's time he goes down to the river to wash and to take off the feather ornaments in which he was buried. When he returns to the maloca it is changed; it has become the Maloca of the Primordial Opening, where people live before being born.

Bibliography

Bidou, Patrice (1976). "Les fils de l'Anaconda Céleste (les tatuyo): Étude de la structure socio-politique." Thêse de Doctorat en ethnologie, Laboratoire d'Anthropolgie Sociale, Paris.

Bidou, Patrice (1985). "Le chemin du soleil: Mythologie de la création des indiens tatuyo." L 'Homme 93:83-103.

Gros, Christian (1976). "Introduction de nouveaux outils et changements sociaux: Le cas des indiens tatuyo du Vaupés (Colombie)." Cahiers des Amériques Latines 13-14:189-234.

PATRICE BIDOU (Translated by Christopher Latham)