normal daily activities just because someone is sick or dying. This is not callousness. This is practicality. I had not learned this yet, though.
In the rainy season, river traders used to come up the Maici from the Marmelos daily in search of Brazil nuts,
sorva
(the sweet fruit of the couma tree), rosewood, and other jungle products. The routine was always the same. In the distance I heard the
putt-putt-putt
of their diesel engine. Sometimes they would go by without stopping, but not often. I dreaded their approach because they interrupted my research. And they often took my best language teachers away to work for them for days or even weeks at a time, slowing my progress considerably. I knew they were going to stop because just as they passed our house, I would hear the
ding
of the signal bell, the pilot letting the engine operator know when to slow the boat down. Then came another couple of
ding
s to stop the boat, as they allowed their slowing momentum against the Maici’s current to bring them backward at the perfect angle and speed to dock in front of our house at the small log raft I had built as a combination quay and bathing platform.
For the arrival of most of these boats, I waited while it moored and the Pirahãs went running down to see what kind of
mercadorias
the trader might be carrying. I knew that eventually a Pirahã man would come to my house and say that the Brazilian wanted to talk to me.
I learned early on that it was considered rude to decline these invitations—never mind that three to six boats could stop on a busy day and each one took at least half an hour to tell me their business and visit. It wasn’t that I minded the conversations with these men. On the contrary, I quite enjoyed talking with them and their families, who often accompanied them on their trading trips. They were tough pioneers, hard men by any standards, with names like Silvério, Godofredo, Bernar, Machico, Chico Alecrim, Romano, Martinho, Darciel, and Armando Colário.
They liked to talk to me for several reasons. First, I was the whitest man most of them had ever seen, and I had a longish red beard. Second, I talked funny. My Portuguese was closer to the São Paulo dialect than their own Amazonense dialect, rendered even less intelligible by American vowels scattered liberally through Portuguese words. Third, I had lots of medicine, and they knew I didn’t charge for it if they were sick. Finally, they thought I was the Pirahã’s
patrão.
After all, I was white and spoke the Pirahã language. That was enough proof that I was in charge for these traders, who, in spite of being fun to talk to, were uniformly racist—they thought of the Pirahãs as subhuman.
I used to try to convince them that the Pirahãs were just as human as they were.
“These people came here before you, from Peru, maybe five hundred years ago.”
“What do you mean they came here? I thought they were just creatures of this forest, like the monkeys,” the river men might reply.
It was common for them to compare the Pirahãs with monkeys. I suppose that lowering one variety of
Homo sapiens
down the scale of primates to the status of monkeys is standard among racists worldwide. For the river men, the Pirahãs talked like chickens and acted like monkeys. I tried hard to convince them otherwise, but to no avail.
Since they thought I was the Pirahãs’ boss, it was common for the traders to ask me to have the Pirahãs work for them. But of course I was no
patrão,
and so I would tell them that they’d have to get the Pirahãs to agree on their own.
The Pirahãs communicated with them using gestures, a few stock Portuguese phrases that they had learned, and a number of words that both they and the traders knew from the
Lingua Geral—
“General Language,” also known as “Good Tongue” (
Nheengatu
), a language based on Portuguese and Tupinamba (a now extinct but formerly very widespread indigenous language spoken along almost the entire
In the rainy season, river traders used to come up the Maici from the Marmelos daily in search of Brazil nuts,
sorva
(the sweet fruit of the couma tree), rosewood, and other jungle products. The routine was always the same. In the distance I heard the
putt-putt-putt
of their diesel engine. Sometimes they would go by without stopping, but not often. I dreaded their approach because they interrupted my research. And they often took my best language teachers away to work for them for days or even weeks at a time, slowing my progress considerably. I knew they were going to stop because just as they passed our house, I would hear the
ding
of the signal bell, the pilot letting the engine operator know when to slow the boat down. Then came another couple of
ding
s to stop the boat, as they allowed their slowing momentum against the Maici’s current to bring them backward at the perfect angle and speed to dock in front of our house at the small log raft I had built as a combination quay and bathing platform.
For the arrival of most of these boats, I waited while it moored and the Pirahãs went running down to see what kind of
mercadorias
the trader might be carrying. I knew that eventually a Pirahã man would come to my house and say that the Brazilian wanted to talk to me.
I learned early on that it was considered rude to decline these invitations—never mind that three to six boats could stop on a busy day and each one took at least half an hour to tell me their business and visit. It wasn’t that I minded the conversations with these men. On the contrary, I quite enjoyed talking with them and their families, who often accompanied them on their trading trips. They were tough pioneers, hard men by any standards, with names like Silvério, Godofredo, Bernar, Machico, Chico Alecrim, Romano, Martinho, Darciel, and Armando Colário.
They liked to talk to me for several reasons. First, I was the whitest man most of them had ever seen, and I had a longish red beard. Second, I talked funny. My Portuguese was closer to the São Paulo dialect than their own Amazonense dialect, rendered even less intelligible by American vowels scattered liberally through Portuguese words. Third, I had lots of medicine, and they knew I didn’t charge for it if they were sick. Finally, they thought I was the Pirahã’s
patrão.
After all, I was white and spoke the Pirahã language. That was enough proof that I was in charge for these traders, who, in spite of being fun to talk to, were uniformly racist—they thought of the Pirahãs as subhuman.
I used to try to convince them that the Pirahãs were just as human as they were.
“These people came here before you, from Peru, maybe five hundred years ago.”
“What do you mean they came here? I thought they were just creatures of this forest, like the monkeys,” the river men might reply.
It was common for them to compare the Pirahãs with monkeys. I suppose that lowering one variety of
Homo sapiens
down the scale of primates to the status of monkeys is standard among racists worldwide. For the river men, the Pirahãs talked like chickens and acted like monkeys. I tried hard to convince them otherwise, but to no avail.
Since they thought I was the Pirahãs’ boss, it was common for the traders to ask me to have the Pirahãs work for them. But of course I was no
patrão,
and so I would tell them that they’d have to get the Pirahãs to agree on their own.
The Pirahãs communicated with them using gestures, a few stock Portuguese phrases that they had learned, and a number of words that both they and the traders knew from the
Lingua Geral—
“General Language,” also known as “Good Tongue” (
Nheengatu
), a language based on Portuguese and Tupinamba (a now extinct but formerly very widespread indigenous language spoken along almost the entire
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