The ethnography of Nambicuara agriculture

Abstract

P. Aspelin The ethnography of Nambicuara agriculture In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 135 (1979), no: 1, Leiden, 18-58 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl PAUL L. ASPELIN In his recent contribation to !&e controversy over Lvi-Strauss' e h o -graphy of Nambicuara subsistence and residence (Aspelin 1976, 1978; Lvi-Strauss 1976, 1978), Price ( 1978) cites additional useful information from some of the few smces which deal with the Nambicuara during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In his basic works on the subject, Lvi-Strauss (as cited in Aspelin 1976) originally stated that Nambicuara agriculture was simply supplementary to their gathering and hunting and that their agricdtural efforts and production were concentrated in the rainy season and essentially non-existent during the dry season. Between 'the first, where he found some evidence &at it was its inhabitants ahat had attacked his party in 1907, and the second, he found an old, overgrown roa, showing the use of steel tools apparently obtained by force from some rubber-gatherers who had attempted to enter the Juruena basin a few years previously (Rondon n.d.:121). Later that day, July 6th, two Nambicuara baskets were found in that Same area, containing, in addition to &e usual items of dmestic use such as botle gourds, resins, and stone axes, several [oodstdfs including a gourd full of manioc soup, a clay pot full of refined manioc starch (called \tapioca in English and either rnaniqura or rnainicura or, more recerntly, polvilha in Portuguese), half baskedul of fresiily grated manioc dough, tobacco, unicum (Bixa Orellana), several kinds of beans and potatoes and a few other objects (Rondoli 1922:52f.)