Reflections on the Melancholy Tropical [France] Levi-Strauss

Summary of Works

In the autumn of 1934, I accidentally got a teaching position in sociology at the University of S? o Paulo in Brazil, which provided me with an opportunity to conduct anthropological research on South American Indians. After passing through the equatorial windless zone, I arrived in Brazil by boat and landed in Rio de Janeiro. My main activity is exploring the Amazon river basin in South America. I started from the dense rain forest in the Amazon, went deep into the Brazilian plateau, and made several years of anthropological field trips to the Kaduweo, Pololo, South Bikwala and Tubikwasi ethnic groups. I described in detail the social structure, production and life, religious beliefs and customs of these Indian tribes, and also recorded the unique thinking of an anthropologist.

Selected Works

The Indians in South Bikwala woke up in the morning and stirred up a campfire. After a cold night, they kept warm by all possible means, and then had a simple breakfast. The food was left over from the previous night. Shortly after eating, men went out hunting, some in groups, some alone. The women stayed in the camp to cook. Women and children like to play in the water, and then sometimes they light a fire. Everyone warms up by the fire, trembling with deliberate exaggeration. At other times, they also take a bath from time to time. The daily work doesn't change much every day. Preparing food is the most time-consuming and energetic activity: cassava has to be ground, squeezed and dried before cooking; There is also cumaru fruit, which is used for seasoning and adds a bitter almond flavor to everything. This fruit must be shelled and cooked. When necessary, women and children will go out to collect wild fruit lettuce. If there is no shortage of food, women knit, sometimes squatting and sometimes kneeling, with their hips sitting on their heels. Otherwise, they carve, polish or string beads, which are made of shells or shellfish, and sometimes make earrings and other ornaments. If they are tired of their work, they catch fleas from each other, or loaf around lazily, or sleep.

during the hottest period of the day, the whole camp was silent; The camp residents, some sleeping, others silent, are enjoying the incomplete shade space provided by their residence. The rest of the time, they chat while working. It's almost always fun. They tell jokes, sometimes pornographic or obscene jokes, which often cause a burst of laughter. Work is often interrupted by visitors or questions; If a dog or horse begins to mate, everyone stops working and observes the process with interest. After commenting on such important events, they began to work again.

Most children do nothing all day; Little girls sometimes help older women to do things, while little boys do nothing, or go fishing by the river. The men who stayed in the camp worked as basket weavers and sometimes helped with housework. Most families are in harmony. At three or four o'clock in the afternoon, the men who went hunting returned to the camp, and the whole atmosphere became more lively. The conversation was louder and more vivid, and various groups outside the family began to appear. Cassava cakes or other foods found during the day are eaten. In the evening, it was one or two women's turn to cut wood and went to the nearby bushes to find wood to build a campfire. In the light of the last dusk, you can see them walking back to the camp, stumbling because of the burden they are carrying, with wood in a basket and a belt hanging over their heads. They have to squat down and lean back slightly to make the basket lean against the ground, so that they can take off the belt tied to their foreheads and take out the wood in the basket.

Branches and wood are piled up in a corner of the camp, and everyone can take them for their own use as needed. Families are all around their own fires, which have already started to shine. Most of the evening time is spent chatting, singing or dancing. Sometimes this kind of entertainment lasts until the early morning, but usually after touching each other and scolding each other in a friendly way for a while, the married couple get close together, and the mother hugs the sleeping child and everything becomes quiet. A cold and silent night is interrupted only occasionally by the sound of wood burning, or the light footsteps of people adding firewood, or the barking of dogs and the crying of children.

The number of children born in South Bikwala is small: I later found that it is not uncommon for couples who have no children; It seems quite natural and common to have only one or two children, and it is rare to see more than three children in a family. Parents are not allowed to * * until a child is weaned, and children usually don't wean until they are three years old. The mother took the child next to her thigh and tied it with a wide belt made of bark or cotton cloth; If she wants to bring another baby, she can't carry the basket. Their erratic way of life, coupled with the lack of material environment, makes them have to be extremely careful; When necessary, women do not hesitate to use mechanical methods or plant drugs to cause abortion.

However, the indigenous people feel and show their strong love for their children, and children also love their parents. However, this affection is sometimes masked by their irritability and depression, which are also quite easy to fall into. There was a little boy who suffered from indigestion. He has a headache and is ill. He is either sleeping or * * * most of the time. No one showed any concern for him, and he was ignored for a whole day. At night, his mother went to his side, carefully caught lice for him while he was sleeping, gestured to others to stay away, and used her own arm as a cradle for the boy.

On another occasion, a young mother patted her child on the back and played with him. After the baby was beaten, he began to laugh. The younger mother played harder and harder until the baby began to cry. After the baby cried, the young mother stopped beating him and began to comfort him.

now let's discuss the life of adults. South Bikwala people's attitude towards * * * can be expressed in their sentence tamidige mondage, which literally can be translated as "* * * good". I mentioned earlier that their daily life is full of atmosphere. Anything related to love makes the indigenous people feel great interest and curiosity; They like talking about this topic very much, and their conversation in the camp is full of metaphors and hints. * * * usually takes place at night, sometimes near the campfire, but usually people who want to * * * will retreat to the grass about a hundred yards away from the camp to act. If someone leaves, it will immediately attract attention, and everyone will be full of interest and start talking about jokes, even children will participate. They understand the reasons for this burst of jokes. Sometimes a small group of men, young women and children will follow the couple in the bushes and watch the whole process, whispering and suppressing laughter. The pair of * * * don't like others watching, but they can only endure, and they can only endure the jokes they will face when they return to the camp. Sometimes, another couple will follow in his footsteps and seek peace in the Woods and grass.

However, this kind of behavior does not happen frequently, and the taboos about this kind of behavior only provide a partial explanation for this phenomenon. The real reason seems to be the indigenous temperament. Married couples often caress each other freely in public, and the degree is almost unlimited. However, I have never seen a man erect during this kind of caressing, not once. Caressing * * * doesn't seem to come from the satisfaction of physical functions, but a game of love and intimacy. Perhaps this is why men in South Bikwala don't wear the sun shield worn by men of almost all ethnic groups in central Brazil. In fact, the purpose of wearing a visor, if not to avoid erection, is at least to show that the wearer is not sexually aggressive. People who live entirely in clothes still have what we call modesty, but the standards of shyness and shyness are different. Indians in Brazil, like some melanesians, don't take the degree of physical * * * as the criterion to distinguish between shyness and ignorance, but the criterion to distinguish between calmness and excitement.

However, these subtle differences sometimes inevitably lead to misunderstandings between us and the Indians, and the mistakes are neither ours nor the Indians. For example, it is quite difficult to be completely indifferent when you see one or several beautiful young women lying on the sand and tickling my feet. Every time I go to take a bath in the river, I am often embarrassed by a group attack by about half a dozen women, old and young. Their goal is my soap, and they like soap very much. In daily life, they will make similar actions without hesitation; After the young woman is covered with red resin, she will go to sleep on my hammock, which makes me have to put up with a hammock covered with red; Sometimes when I am walking on the ground and working with a group of reporters, I feel that someone is pulling my shirt. It turns out that some women think it is very convenient to blow their noses with my shirt, which is much more convenient and convenient than what they usually have to do. First, they go to the bushes to pick a branch and fold it into a clip to blow their noses.

I'd like to know the approximate population of South Bikwala, at least indirectly. In 1915, Longdong thought its total number was 2 thousand, but this estimate may be high; However, at that time, every group of South Bikwala people had hundreds of members, and according to the news I got along the telegraph line, its population has dropped sharply since then. Thirty years ago, the total number of known parts in Sabané was more than 1,. In 1928, Shabannei group visited Campos Novos telegraph station, among which there were 127 adult men besides women and children. But in 1929, when the group was camping in a place called "Espirro", they were attacked by influenza. The disease turned into a kind of pulmonary edema, and as a result, 3 people died within 48 hours. The group broke up and abandoned the sick and dying. One thousand known shaban insiders, by 1938, only 19 men, plus their women and children, were left. Besides the epidemic, the reason why the number of words is so small has to be added to the war between them and their neighboring tribes in the east. However, there is another large ethnic group living not far from Tres Buritis. Under the attack of an influenza outbreak in 1927, six or seven people died, and only three people were left in 1938. Tarundé, once one of the most populous ethnic groups, had only twelve men (plus women and children) in 1936. There were only four of these men left by 1939.

Now, there may be no more than two thousand people scattered all over the area. It is impossible to make systematic statistics, because some ethnic groups have always been strongly hostile, and all ethnic groups move around during the migration season. But I managed to persuade my friends in Udi Hariti to take me to their village, where people from other ethnic groups who are related to them managed to gather together before going; Using this method, I can measure the size of the current meeting scene of relatives and compare the number of participants with those observed by previous people. I promised to bring gifts and barter with them. The chieftain of that ethnic group was rather hesitant when he agreed to my request: he was not sure about the attitude of the guests he was going to invite. If my companion and I actually disappeared in this area where no white people had entered since the murder of seven telegraph workers in 1925, the peace that had been maintained since 1925 and would be endangered at any time might be destroyed for a long time.

He finally agreed to my request, but on one condition, that is, we must reduce the expedition and bring only four cows to carry gifts. Even so, we still can't walk along the common path under the valley, because the plants on the path are too dense for camel animals to pass through. We must cross the plateau along a temporary and special road.

In retrospect, the extremely dangerous trip looks like the funniest episode. As soon as we left, we went to Jurnena, Runje, and our fellow Brazilians immediately found that Indian women and children did not go with us, but only Indian men with bows and arrows were our companions. In travel books, this situation means that we are about to be attacked. Therefore, we walked with trepidation, and from time to time, we inspected the Smith and-Wesson pistol (our expedition members pronounced the name of the pistol "Cemite Vechetone") and rifle that we carried with us. Our worries proved to be unnecessary: at noon, we caught up with other people in the same ethnic group, and its chief knew that our mule was moving much faster than the woman with the basket, and the woman with the basket was walking slower, so the women and children had to leave first the night before we left.

However, shortly after everyone met, the Indians got lost: the new road was not as simple as they thought. In the evening, we had to stay in the forest for the night. Before we set out, we were told that we couldn't hunt on the road, but the Indians didn't bring any supplies and depended on our rifles for hunting to provide food. We only carry the necessary supplies for emergencies, and there is no way to share food with everyone. A group of deer grazing by a pool ran away as soon as we got closer. The next morning, there was discontent everywhere, and the Indians publicly expressed their anger at the chief, blaming him and asking him to be responsible for the travel plan he designed with me. Instead of organizing a hunting activity or going out in groups to collect food, all the aborigines lay under temporary shelters and waited for the chief to find a way to solve the problem himself. The chief went out with one of his wives, and they didn't come back until the evening. The baskets on their backs were full of locusts that they had spent all day catching. The indigenous people thought that the crushed locusts were not good food, but they still ate heartily and refreshed themselves. We'll start again the next morning.

We finally arrived at the appointed meeting place. It is a sandy terrace, from which a stream can be seen, with trees on both sides, and some semi-hidden indigenous pastoral areas inside the trees. All ethnic groups arrived at the meeting place in dribs and drabs. By evening, there were 75 people representing 17 families, all huddled under 13 shelter buildings, and the structures of these shelters were almost as simple as those of indigenous camps. They explained to me that during the rainy season, these people lived in five ground huts, which could last for several months. There are several aborigines who seem to have never seen a white man. Their attitude is rather stubborn, while the chief is rather impatient. It seems that the chief reluctantly persuaded them to come to this unexpected place. We don't feel safe, and neither do the Indians. It was quite cold that night, because there was no platform