coastline of Brazil).
One night at about nine o’clock, when the kids were tucked in and Keren and I had gone to bed, a boat I had not seen before came to the village. The Pirahãs yelled into my bedroom that the owner’s name was Ronaldinho. Of course he wanted to see me, so I got up and went on board to talk to him. From the outset, his operation looked suspicious. There was not a single trade item in sight. Yet the boat was relatively large—over fifty feet long and twelve feet wide, with a board deck covering the hold.
I sat at one end of the empty vessel. Ronaldinho sat at the other end, with Pirahãs sitting around the sides of the deck.
“I want to know if I can take about eight men upriver with me to collect Brazil nuts,” he said.
“You don’t need to ask me. That is really none of my business. Ask the Pirahãs.”
He winked at me as though we both knew that I was just saying this for effect. Then I added something that the director of the Porto Velho office of the Brazilian National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), Apoena Meirelles, had asked that I tell these traders.
“The only thing that the law requires is that the Indians agree to work for you and that you pay them the going market price for their produce, or at least minimum wage for their labor.”
“But I have no money,” Ronaldinho replied.
“Money would not even be appropriate for the Pirahãs. You can pay them in trade items,” I suggested.
“OK,” he murmured, unconvinced.
I looked around again. Perhaps some trade goods were under the deck, in the storage area called the
porão
in Portuguese.
“But you cannot pay them in
cachaça
” (sugarcane rum, pronounced ka-SHA-sa), I warned him. “The FUNAI director says that if you sell them alcohol, you can be punished with as much as two years in prison.”
“Oh, I would never give them alcohol, Mr. Daniel,” Ronaldinho promised. “Other traders do this, but thank God I am not one of those dishonest guys.”
Bullshit, I thought, but I said only that I was going to bed.
“Boa noite,”
I said as I left.
“Boa noite,”
he replied.
I went up to my house and was quickly asleep, though my sleep was disturbed periodically by laughing from his boat. I was pretty sure that he was giving the Pirahãs cachaça, but I didn’t want to play policeman. I was tired, and I was feeling a bit out of my depth.
Then, about midnight, I was awakened from a deep sleep by yelling. The words that first impressed themselves on my senses were “I am not afraid to kill the Americans. The Brazilian says to kill them and he will give us a new shotgun.”
“You’re going to kill them, then?”
“Yes, I will shoot them while they are sleeping.”
This discussion was coming from the jungle darkness less than a hundred feet from my house. Most of the men of the village were drunk on Ronaldinho’s sugarcane cachaça. But Ronaldinho had done more than give them cachaça. He had urged them to kill me and my family, offering a brand-new shotgun to the man who would do the deed. I sat up in bed, Keren wide awake beside me.
This was just our second visit to the Pirahãs. We had been in the village continuously for seven months. I spoke their language well enough now to understand that they were talking about killing us. I understood that they were urging each other on. And I knew that something was likely to happen very soon if I didn’t act. My children were asleep in their hammocks. Shannon, Kristene, and Caleb had no idea what kind of danger their parents had put them in.
I pulled back my mosquito net from our bed and, very unusually, left the house in the dark, with no flashlight to attract attention, wearing only the shorts and flip-flops that were lying by my bed. I stepped carefully through the jungle to the hut where the men were working up their emotions to kill us. Adding to my tension, I was afraid of stepping on a snake in the dark, even though I was only walking a few dozen yards.
I didn’t
One night at about nine o’clock, when the kids were tucked in and Keren and I had gone to bed, a boat I had not seen before came to the village. The Pirahãs yelled into my bedroom that the owner’s name was Ronaldinho. Of course he wanted to see me, so I got up and went on board to talk to him. From the outset, his operation looked suspicious. There was not a single trade item in sight. Yet the boat was relatively large—over fifty feet long and twelve feet wide, with a board deck covering the hold.
I sat at one end of the empty vessel. Ronaldinho sat at the other end, with Pirahãs sitting around the sides of the deck.
“I want to know if I can take about eight men upriver with me to collect Brazil nuts,” he said.
“You don’t need to ask me. That is really none of my business. Ask the Pirahãs.”
He winked at me as though we both knew that I was just saying this for effect. Then I added something that the director of the Porto Velho office of the Brazilian National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), Apoena Meirelles, had asked that I tell these traders.
“The only thing that the law requires is that the Indians agree to work for you and that you pay them the going market price for their produce, or at least minimum wage for their labor.”
“But I have no money,” Ronaldinho replied.
“Money would not even be appropriate for the Pirahãs. You can pay them in trade items,” I suggested.
“OK,” he murmured, unconvinced.
I looked around again. Perhaps some trade goods were under the deck, in the storage area called the
porão
in Portuguese.
“But you cannot pay them in
cachaça
” (sugarcane rum, pronounced ka-SHA-sa), I warned him. “The FUNAI director says that if you sell them alcohol, you can be punished with as much as two years in prison.”
“Oh, I would never give them alcohol, Mr. Daniel,” Ronaldinho promised. “Other traders do this, but thank God I am not one of those dishonest guys.”
Bullshit, I thought, but I said only that I was going to bed.
“Boa noite,”
I said as I left.
“Boa noite,”
he replied.
I went up to my house and was quickly asleep, though my sleep was disturbed periodically by laughing from his boat. I was pretty sure that he was giving the Pirahãs cachaça, but I didn’t want to play policeman. I was tired, and I was feeling a bit out of my depth.
Then, about midnight, I was awakened from a deep sleep by yelling. The words that first impressed themselves on my senses were “I am not afraid to kill the Americans. The Brazilian says to kill them and he will give us a new shotgun.”
“You’re going to kill them, then?”
“Yes, I will shoot them while they are sleeping.”
This discussion was coming from the jungle darkness less than a hundred feet from my house. Most of the men of the village were drunk on Ronaldinho’s sugarcane cachaça. But Ronaldinho had done more than give them cachaça. He had urged them to kill me and my family, offering a brand-new shotgun to the man who would do the deed. I sat up in bed, Keren wide awake beside me.
This was just our second visit to the Pirahãs. We had been in the village continuously for seven months. I spoke their language well enough now to understand that they were talking about killing us. I understood that they were urging each other on. And I knew that something was likely to happen very soon if I didn’t act. My children were asleep in their hammocks. Shannon, Kristene, and Caleb had no idea what kind of danger their parents had put them in.
I pulled back my mosquito net from our bed and, very unusually, left the house in the dark, with no flashlight to attract attention, wearing only the shorts and flip-flops that were lying by my bed. I stepped carefully through the jungle to the hut where the men were working up their emotions to kill us. Adding to my tension, I was afraid of stepping on a snake in the dark, even though I was only walking a few dozen yards.
I didn’t
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