Comparative ArawakanHistories Rethinking Language Family and Culture Area in Amazonia EDITEDBY JONATHAND.HILLAND FERNANDOSANTOS-GRANERO Umverstty of Illittots Press URBANAANDCHICAGO @2002 by the Board of Trustees of theUmversllY of I!!inms Allnghts reserved l'vlanufacturcdin the Umtcd States of Amcnca c5432. j9This book !S prmtcd on acid-free paper. Librarr of Congress Catalogmg-m-PublicatlonData Comparative Arawakanhistoncs: rethinking language famil}' and cuiturc area mAmazoma I edited br jonathanD.Hi!!and Fernando Santos-Granero. p.em. lndudes bibliographical references. ISBNo-252-02758-2 {cloth: acid-free paper) 1.ArawakanIndians-Congresses. 2. Arawakanianguages-Congresses. I. Hi!!,Jonathan David, 195.J-II. Santos-Granero, Fernando, I955-1'22J0.2.A7C632002 9729'00.J979-dC2J2001007537 Contents Acknowledgmentsv11 IntroductiOn JONATHAND.HILLANDFERNANDOSANTOS-GRANERO PART1:LANGUAGES,CULTURES,AND LOCALHISTORIES 1.The ArawakanMatnx: Ethos, Language, and History inNative South Amenca FERNANDOSANTOS-GRANERO25 2..Arawak LingUistic and Cultural Identity through Time: Contact, Colonmlism, and Creolization NEILL.WHITEHEAD51 3.Histoncal LingmstJCs and Its ContributiOn to Improving the Knowledge of Arawak SIDNEYDASILVAFACUNDES74 PART2:HIERARCHY,DIASPORA,AND NEWIDENTITIES 4.Rethinking the Arawakan Diaspora: Hierarchy, Regionality, and the Amazonian Formative MICHAELJ.HECKENBERGER99 5.SoCJalForms and RegressiveHistory:From the Campa Cluster tothe MO.JOSandfromtheMojostothe Landscapmg Terrace-Builders of the Bolivian Savanna FRANCE-MARIERENARD-CASEVITZ123 6.Piro, Apunna, and Campa: S o c ~ a lDissimilatiOnand Assimilation asHistorical Processes111 Southwestern Amazonia PETERGOW147 7.BothOmphalos and Margm: On How the Pa'ikwene (Palikur) SeeThemselvestoBeat the Center and on theEdge at the Same Time ALANPASSES171 PART}:POWER,CULTISM,ANDSACREDLANDSCAPES 8.A New Model of the Northern ArawakanExpansion ALBERTAZUCCHI199 9.Shamamsm, ColonJalism, and the Wild Woman: Fertility Culttsm and Histoncal Dynamtcs m the Upper RioNegroRegwn JONATHAND.HILL223 10.Secret Religious Cults and PolittcalLeadershtp: lvlulttethmc Confederacies fromNorthwestern Amazoma SILVIAM.VIDAL248 11.Prophetic Traditions among theBaniwaandOther Arawakan Peoples of the Northwest Amazon ROBINM.WRIGHT269 ReferencesCited295 Contributors327 Index331 Aclcnowledgments THECHAPTERSm thisbook werewrittenin 1999and2000inpreparation for the mternational conference "Comparative Arawakan His tones: Rethink-mg Language Family and Culture Area 111 Amazonia," orgamzed by Fernan-do Santos-Granero and Jonathan D. Hill. The conference took place May 24-26, 2000, at the Smtthsonian TroptcalResearch lnstttute (STRI)mPanama City, Panama, and was sponsored by the Smithsonian TropicalResearchIn-stttute and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Fif-teenspecialistsonArawak-speakingpeoples-twelve ethnologists,twoar-chaeologists, and one lingutst-attended the conference.Astde from the two orgamzers,partlctpants mcluded PeterGow,MichaeiHeckenberger, Soren Hvalkof, Olga Linares, AlanPasses,Donald Pollock, France-Mane Renard-Casevitz, Dan Rosengren, Sidney da Silva Facundes, Hanne Veber, Silvia Vidal, Neil\"'httehead, Robm Wnght, and AlbertaZuccht. Twoother spectalists, Alexandra Aikhenvald and Nicolas Journet, were nlVltedtoattendthe con-ferencebut unfortunately hadtowithdraw during the planning stages. STRIprovtded funds allowing Jonathan Hill toreturn to Panama City in late September 2000,wherehe andFernandoSantos-Granero completed mtttal stages of editmg the revised conference papers and completed a draft of the mtroductory essay. We are very grateful to the Wenner-Gren Founda-tion, STRI, and all the mdiv1duals named above for then support and effort, without whiChneither the conference nor this book would have been possi-ble. However, the mformatmn and interpretations contained inthis book are those of theeditorsandindividualauthorsandnotthose of theorganiza-tions acknowiedgedabove. Comparative Arawalcan Histories Introduction JONATHAND.HILLAND FERNANDOSANTOS-GRANERO COJHPARJ-\TIVEARAWAK.t\N HJSTOIHESisthe firstattempt tobring together the writmgs of ethnologists and lustonans who have speCialized in the study of the Arawak-speakmgpeoples of South Amenca and the adjacent Caribbe-an basm. Speakers of Arawakan languages are best known to the general public asthefirstindigenous Amencans contacted by Columbus in1492.Evidence of the mfluence of Arawak-speaking peoples on European understandings of the "new" world tl1ey had "discovered" can be found in the persistence of such common words ascanoe,cncrqllc,hammock,lwrncnne,barbecue,mmze,cns-snl'n,andtobacco {Arrom1999, xii, A-viii, n"Vii; Rouse 1992, 12). The phenom-enon of cannibalism-a termongmatedinthe Arawakwordcmzibn-con-tinues to intngue and stimulate Western imaginatmn andimaginary. Arawak-speakmg peoples spreadfarandwideacrossthelandscapesof South Americaand the Caribbean, more sothan any other language family beforethegreat population declines thataccompaniedEuropean coloniza-tion (see map 1). Archaeology, lingmstiCs, and history pomt tothe existence of a dynamic, expanding diaspora of Arawalc-speakmg societies occupying vast stretches ofland along the Amazon and Onnoco rivers and their tribu-taries. The diversity and numbers of Arawakan peoples livmg in South Amer-Icatoday havebeengreatlydinumshed, butthey contmuetoliveinlarge concentrations in eastern Peru, southern Venezuela, central Brazil, northeast-ernBrazil,andsouthwestern Brazil. The factthat contemporary Arawakanpeopies are widely dispersed geo-graphically bears witness to the grand scale of their movements and the far-flung settlements they established across pre-Columbian South America and the Caribbean. It also reveals the terrible loss of population and land that they 2 JONATHAND.HILLANDFERNANDOSANTOS-GRANEHO ;;o' '--,,._ ,, Pacific Ocean',,1 I .. __ ' ! D u Areas or Arnwak-spcnking peop!CllAreas of non-Aralvnk-sjleaking peoples Atlantic Ocean Map I.Location of MaJor Arawakan Groupmgs at the Time of European Contact. The llOIH\rawabn groups occupymg main areas arc (I) Carib,{:>..)Tukano, (3)Pomo,(.t) Tupt-Guaram, and(5)GC. have suffered over the past fivecenturies. Their current spatial distribution spans wide distances acrossthe continent, attesting tothe continuous flow of trade and migratiOnthat had unfolded before European colomzation of South America. The first European to comprehend the immense geographic expanse un-derlymgthe ArawakandiasporamSouth Amenca wasprobably the )esmt and lingmstFather Filippo Salvatore Gilij !1780-84). Working m the Middle Onnoco regmn during the late colonial period, Gilij was the first IntroductiOn 3 scholar topropose an underlymg umty forthe Arawak language family.He did so by assoCiatmg a large number of languages spoken among peoples of the Onnoco basin with those spoken by peoples livmg as far away asthe Lla-nos deIvlojos111 easternBolivta.Modernlinguists contmuetorecognize Gilij's work asthe first systematic linguistic study of a South Amencan lan-guage family and as the pomt of departure for Amencan lingmstiCs(Noble 1965, 1-2; Durbm 1977). Histoncal Jingmstics continues to play a major part mcurrent understandings of the Arawakan diaspora. It provides clear em-piricalevidencethatthe contemporary pattern of dispersal into distant re-gions was preceded by a pattern of continuous mteractions across the span of South Amen ca. The Arawakan diaspora has stimulated twentieth-century anthropologists toformulateavariety of theonesaboutthepeopling of LowlandSouth America.'InterpretatiOns of the role of Arawakan peoples mthe settling of South Amenca can be foundmvolume 5 of Steward'sHnndbookof South Amencanlmfinns (1949), Meggers and Evans-s Archeologtml InvestrgnttollS ntthelvfouth ofthe Amnzou (1957), and Lathrap,s TheUppcrAmnzou(1970a, 70-79). Both Lothrop ( I940) and Radin (1946) advocated the idea thatArawa-kanpeoples servedasbearersof "lugh-culture"traitsintroducedtoother mdigenous Americanpeoples.Inanarticletitled"South AmericaasSeen fromMiddle Amenca," Lothrop advanced the hypothesis that the Arawaks influenced the higher cultures of Central America and the Andes rather than the other way around: The presentwnter Jsof the opimonthatthekeytounderstanding of the higher cultures m the New \Vorld may lie m the expans1on of the Arawak tribes, whoseongmalhome seemstohavebeenmthe Onnoco basn1.... Didthe Arawak expanston penetrate Central Amenca m t1mes early enough to mt1ucnce the building of the higher cultures? Wethink it qmte possible. We suggest that the Arawak afford a logJCaiexplanation mpart forthe ex1stence of the "com-monMiddle Amencan matenal"recognized by Kroeber (q.v. Kroeber,1930), that they offer a possible mechamsmforthe spread northward inearly ttmes of such typically South Americantraits as mamoc, coca, the blow gun and the rubber ballgame.Furthermore, Arawakart isessentmllycurvilinear and, as known mtsolated areas, for instance the Antilles, it affords a common base from which specialized styles, suchasMaya, Code, MaraJOand Chavin mtght alike have sprung. (Lothrop 1940, 425) In Paul Radin's f11din1IsofSollth Amenen(1946, 24),Arawak-speakmg peo-ples were portrayed ashaving a highly developedculture based on theuse of "the dugout, the bow and arrow, and the war club;an agricultural mode of life,withmaizeandmanioc asstaples;and, finally,acloselykmt socml 4JONATHAND.HILLANDFERNANDOSANTOS-GRANERO structurewithmatrilinealdans, stratifiedclasses, andahighly centralized chieftainship." They moved across South Amenca, overwhelmmg or enslav-mg other mdigenous peoples who were "more simple" (Radin 1946, 25, 45). The latter included their old enemies, the Carib, who "culturally .. , were to become almost entirely dependent upon"the Arawakandinsome cases "weretobe completely absorbed" !Radin 1946, 32). Radin(1946, 32)argued that the Arawak were "the pioneers of a new type of civilizatiOn."They not only imposedtheirculture on previOus,simpler populations but also adopted many trarts fromthe peoples they conquered, whether forcibly or peaceably. When they came into contact With peoples who had a more complex culture, such asthe Clunguano,they lost most of their cultural traits. Radin (1946,45) concluded that "in spite of allthese weaknesses, their role of culture-bringers to an area of tremendous extent in South Amer-ica ISm no way dimimshed, nor can their cultural virility be questioned." From a currentanthropologicalperspective,muchof Radin'stheoryisflawedby anessentmlizednotionof Arawakanpeopjesas"peacefuland by speculative chronologies that have little archaeologiCalor lustorical backing. Nevertheless, Radin's early formulation did identify, or at least hint at, suchculturalfeaturesashierarchicaisoctalorganization andtransethmc identities. These featureshave been more fullydocumented and studied by subsequent generatiOns of anthropologiCal researchers. The concept of1anguage family has servedasa maJor organizmg pnnCI-plemlowland South American ethnology formany years(Loukotka 1968; Mason 1950;Nimuendaju and Guenos 1948; Greenberg 1957, 1987). Studies focusmg on societies with common lingmstic affiliation have emergedfrom time to tune (Basso 1977; Maybury-Lewis 1979; Butt-Colson and Heinen 1984; Brown 1984). On the other hand, the idea that lingmsl!c affiliatiOn has broad sociocultural significance has been undermmed by approaches emphasizing cultureareasconsistingof complexmosaiCSof languageuseandcultural mteractions (Murdock 1951;Steward and Faron 1959). Our goal in this volume ISnot tore;ect this older, descnptive and relativ-isticapproachtocompansonbuttorevtsitthetwmconceptsof language family and culture area mlight of recent ethnographic, lustoncal, and theo-reticaldevelopments. Theincreasing attentiOnethnologistshavegivento long-term lmtorical processes of change (Wolf 1982; Price 1983; Comaroff and Comaroff 1992; Schneider and Rapp 1995; Sahlins 1995) clearly demonstrates that there is no Simple one-to-one reiationship between lingt.tistic affiliation andculturalpattern.Recentattentionpmdtotheprobiemof essentialism 1I1anthropology has added a further reasonto main tam a healthy skepticism toward deterministiC theories of language-culture interrelatiOns. Introdzlcttoll5 The term Amwnk Isitself a complex category havmg problematic htston-caloriginsandmeamngsthathaveoftenbeenabsorbedintomamstream anthropology Withoutsufficientquestionmg(see chapter 2).Challenging, questionmg, and ciillqumg the ethnological, historical, lingmsl!c, and archae-ologicalrealitiesbehindthetermAmwak iscruCialtoany exerciseincom-parative history,mcluding thisone. AsImportant as criticalreflexivity may be, wemtendittofosterratherthandampenthesearchfornew compara-tive insights, retheorizings of earlier theory and method, and novel general-Izationsor hypotheses. Inthe process of crittqumg the term Armvnk andin questiOning the concepts oflanguage family andculture area, canweartic-ulate new understandings of such terms and concepts, allowmg for the emer-genceof newgeneralizatiOnsthatavoidahtstoricalessentialism?Arethere cultural practices that can be smdtobe charactenstic of geographically dis-persed Arawak-speaking peoples? Regardless of how such questions may be answered eventually, itisimportant to raise them. The development of new comparative theoreticalunderstandings m South Amencan ethnology and 111 general anthropology greatly depends on asking the right questiOns. In a broader sense, reopemng these older comparative questions inlight of new theory and knowledge moves us beyond the sterility and defeatism of hyper-relativism and postmodernist doubt, ills that have afflicted anthropology 111recent decades(!Cnauft 1996). Thinkmg along these lines led us to organize anmternattonal conference focusedon explicitly comparative goals that brought together specialists 111Arawak ethnology, history, linguistics, and archaeology. Inthe imtial proposal we encouraged all participants to emphastze interethmc processes such asthe emergenceof newreligiousmovements,theconsolidationof interethnic confederations,andtheestablishmentof allianceswithcolonialpowers againstotherindigenous groups. Althoughthese specifictopicshavere-mained centrally Important, we have seen the list ofhistorical themes expand toincludesuchtopicsasidentity politics,ritualandpoliticalhierarchies, gender relatiOns, culturallandscapes, and linguistic vanations. The immediate goal of the conference was to bring together specialists who had done fieldwork or archivalresearch on Arawakanpeoples liv111g111 the Upper Rio Negro region of Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombra, as well asthose living 111 the sub-Andeanlowlandsatthe headwaters of the Madeiraand UcayaliriversinsouthwesternBrazilandeasternPeru. Wechosethose two areasastheanchorpomtsforour comparativepro;ect because thelargest concentrationsof Arawak-speakingpeoples livetheretoday.Lingmsticre-constructions (Key 1979)show that these two geographically sepanite areas were formerly connected by a vast network of Arawak-speakmg peoples who 6JONATHAND.HILLANDFERNANDOSANTOS-GRANERO occupied largeterntories mthe central Amazonfloodplainaswellascon-tiguous riverine terntories extending up the Rio Negro mto the Ormoco basin and Llanos to the north, up the mamstream of the Amnon/Marafion River, and along the Madeira River up to its source (see map 1). Durmg the coloma1 period, epidemJCs, warfare, misswmzation, and forced relocatiOns d e e ~mated the Arawakan peoples of Lowland South Amenca. En-tire societies]ivmg in accessible coastal, nvenne, or savanna territones either disappeared or were reduced toa handful of survivors. Huge losses of popu-lation and other ma.Jor changes also unfolded in more remote mterior regions such as the Upper Rio Negro and the lowlands of eastern Peru. Inpart because of their locatmn atthe margms of expanding, competing colo malempires, Arawakan and other indigenous peoples survived in greater numbers in these headwater regions than anywhere else in the Amazon basin. Nevertheless, even inthe more remote areas of the Upper Rio Negro and eastern Peruvian low-lands, Arawak-speaking peoples suffered maJor population declines and loss of autonomy m campmgns to recrmt forcedlabor during the Rubber Boom (ca.1860-1920).Contemporary ethnopolitJCalarrangements mthesetwo headwater regions reflect a series of profound adjustments, losses, recoveries, and transformatiOnsthat unfoldedalong centunes of colomalism, rubber gathenng, and other long-term mterethmc processes. Because our priority hasalwaysbeentounderstand long-term histonca1 processes of change that have produced contemporary ethnolinguistiC geog-raphies, weextended our original focuson eastern Peruand northwestern Amazoniatomdude specialistswhohaveworkedw1thArawak-speaking peoples 111 areas of the Orinoco basin, the Circum-Caribbean region, eastern Bolivia, and southern Brazil. Coverage of the !alter areas was necessary to fill m some of the Immense spat1aJand temporal discontinuities that have de-veloped over centuries of western state expansiOn mLowland South Amer-ica (see maps 2-6). Companson across widely dispersed geographic areas was informedby arigorously historicalapproachto ethnogenesis and cultural differentiation. These processeshaveunfoldedthrough the replacement or transformatiOn of ancient trading networks by or into specific regional pat-terns of alliance. Extreme geographic dispersalposesparticular opportunities andchal-lenges for a comparative study. In terms of opportunities, the contemporary distributwn of Arawak-speakmg peoples into widely separate geographic re-gions provides an ideal context to assessproblems havmg to do with there-latiOnships between linguistic affiliation and cultural practices. The Arawak language family isunique inthe extent to which its member groups have ex-panded into a variety of physJCaJandsocialenvironments. Arawak-speaking Pacific Ocean ItOr contemporary Arawak-Speaking Peoples Map2 .,ocaton \ :f.tlanlic Ocean \ l \ 7 Taino 1 Cnquctio Taino ) Nepoyn& SUJliJOYOCmnamigotoYnoWarao Kurilla, Nepoyo Lolwuo) Atlantic Ocean Pacific Ocean GUiana Highlands1) Knriiia/ 8 Pcrnon Akawruo l,\ (

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