This article is of a man name Napoleon A. Chagnon and the Yanomamo Indians, and what he went through living with them for nineteen months. These indians live in southern Venezuela and part of northern Brazil. They have about 125 villages some not even known by outsiders. Their people love to fight wars, because they are fierce for reasons being the blood of "Moon". They are also known as the "fierce people". Chagnon stated that what impressed him the most was the importance of aggression in their culture. The Yanomamo would beat their wifes, pound their chest to dueling and organized raidings to ambush and kill men from enemey villages. Another tribe of indians called the Carib-speaking Makiritare Indians were pleasant and charming compared to the Yano's. They were excited to show Chagnon the courtesies of their system of etiquette.
Chagnon traveled by rowboat two and half days and reached a missionary mission settlement on the third day. James P. Barker, who was the first non-Yanomamo to make a sustained permanent contact with the tribe in 1950, joined Chagnon at the settlement. Barker had lived with this group for about five years. When they got to the village, Bisaasi-teri, Chagnon explains how it felt hot and muggy. They were greeted with a dozen naked men with their arrows drawn.
After just arriving Chagnon questioned himself on why he chose anthroology, and he was ready to quite and leave. He talks about how everything smelled bad and how everyone was filthy and nasty, but within two weeks he was smelly and filthy just he same.
When Chagnon had to prepare a meal, he describes how just plain oatmeal took forever. He goes through the details of preparing it and says when he completed the meal it was almost lunchtime. He would only eat once a day and lasted all day on mainly cafe con leche, a heavily sugared expresso coffee. Also, Chagnon created a water system as so he wouldn't have to walk to the river everyday. He would catch rain water on sheets of zinc roofing and funneled it into a gasoline can then ran a hose from the can to his hut.
The Yano's would always beg for his food so he started eating peanut butter which looked like animal feces. He would tell them it was cow dung so he wouldn't have to share. Furthermore, the indians would give Chagnon plantain seeds that were easy to eat, but in exchange they wanted steel tools. This is the cultural aspect I got out of this article.
My Opinion:
I can relate to the Yanomamo Indians because people (women/girls) in our country get kidnapped or stolen, and we have to fight to find them and get them back. Also, when they give someone something they expect something in return and thats how American are to. If I gave a friend $5 I would expect them to give me something or give the money back later on. Basically you can look at our states as being tribes of ours and in each tribe we have different ways. Not every one state is alike. In class we learned about how we percieve other societies and their way of living being different and strange to us. While I was reading this article they did seem strange. Especially when Chagnon said he would be eating and the Indians wanted some they would sit in his face and beg or they would refer to the food asking him what kind of animal semen was he eating. Also, at the beginning of the article in the subtext it as how would you have felt in Chagnon's place? My answer would be dirty, uncomfortable, irritated, and fed-up because I'm use to my way of life which is being able to take showers and brush my teeth and having meals prepared fast. I would have been uncomfortable living in mud huts and living among people different from myself. Then I would have been irritated and fed-up because of the way they would of acted towards me. Stealing my belonging, destroying things I worked hard on, and being in my face begging.
