know what to expect from the Pirahãs. I was so shocked by what they were saying that I no longer felt that I knew them. Maybe they would kill me as soon as they saw me. But I couldn’t leave my family waiting for the Pirahãs to kill us.
I saw where they were—in the small house built originally by Vicenzo. Peering from the jungle darkness through the palm board slats into the house, I saw that they were sitting by the flickering light of a
lamparina—
a small kerosene lamp, common in Amazonia, which contains a few ounces of kerosene and a cloth wick emerging from a narrow aperture, looking something like illustrations of Aladdin’s lamp in
The Arabian Nights.
These
lamparinas
give off a dull orange light in which people look eerie at night, their dully glowing faces standing out only barely from the surrounding blackness.
I caught my breath silently outside, trying to decide how to enter in the least confrontational way. Finally, I just walked inside with a big smile and said in my best Pirahã, “Hey, guys! How are you doing?”
I made small talk while I walked around the hut picking up arrows, bows, two shotguns, and a couple of machetes. The Pirahã men stared at me with dull alcohol-laden eyes, in silence. Before they could react, I was done. I walked out quickly and wordlessly into the dark, having successfully disarmed them. I was under no illusion that this made me or my family safe. But it did slightly reduce the immediate threat. I took the weapons to our house and locked them in the storeroom. The river trader who had given them the cachaça was asleep in his boat, still moored at the raft in front of my house. I decided to chase him off. First, though, I had to take care of my family.
I locked Keren and the children in our storeroom, the one room that had walls and a door. This was a dark room in which we had killed more than one snake, several rats, and lots of centipedes, cockroaches, and tarantulas. The kids had missed the entire episode so far and as we woke them up in their hammocks to move them to the storeroom they were groggy and half-conscious. They just lay down on the floor, without protest. I had Keren lock the door from the inside.
Then I walked down the riverbank toward the boat, anger building with every step. On the way, though, I was sobered by the realization that I had not seen my teacher Kóhoi or his shotgun. Almost at the exact second that I had this thought, I heard Kóhoi’s voice from the bushes on the bank just behind me. “I am going to shoot you right now and kill you.”
I turned toward the voice, fully expecting to receive the full blast of his 20-gauge shotgun in my face or torso as I did. He came toward me out of the bushes, unsteadily. But I could see with relief that he was not armed.
I asked, “Why do you want to kill me?”
“Because the Brazilian says that you do not pay us enough and he says that you told him he could not pay us if we worked for him.”
We were talking in Pirahã, though he had originally threatened me in rudimentary Portuguese—
“Eu maTA boSAY”
(I kill you).
If I had not been able to speak Pirahã, I might not have survived the night. Kóhoi and I exchanged words in the Pirahãs’ stacatto-sounding language (it sounds this way because of a consonant, the glottal stop, that Pirahã possesses and English doesn’t). I struggled and focused as never before to put each thought across clearly to Kóhoi. I said,
“Xaói xihiabaíhiaba. Piitísi xihixóíhiaagá”
(The foreigner doesn’t pay. Whiskey [he gives you] is cheap).
Kóhoi responded,
“Xumh! Xaói bagiáikoí. Hiatíihí xogihiaba xaói”
(Wow. The foreigner is stealing from us. The Pirahãs don’t want him).
“It is the Brazilian who did not want to pay you,” I continued. “All he wanted to pay you was bitter water” (as the Pirahãs called cachaça).“And that is because it costs him little. It would cost him more if he paid you with farinha, shotgun shells, sugar,
I saw where they were—in the small house built originally by Vicenzo. Peering from the jungle darkness through the palm board slats into the house, I saw that they were sitting by the flickering light of a
lamparina—
a small kerosene lamp, common in Amazonia, which contains a few ounces of kerosene and a cloth wick emerging from a narrow aperture, looking something like illustrations of Aladdin’s lamp in
The Arabian Nights.
These
lamparinas
give off a dull orange light in which people look eerie at night, their dully glowing faces standing out only barely from the surrounding blackness.
I caught my breath silently outside, trying to decide how to enter in the least confrontational way. Finally, I just walked inside with a big smile and said in my best Pirahã, “Hey, guys! How are you doing?”
I made small talk while I walked around the hut picking up arrows, bows, two shotguns, and a couple of machetes. The Pirahã men stared at me with dull alcohol-laden eyes, in silence. Before they could react, I was done. I walked out quickly and wordlessly into the dark, having successfully disarmed them. I was under no illusion that this made me or my family safe. But it did slightly reduce the immediate threat. I took the weapons to our house and locked them in the storeroom. The river trader who had given them the cachaça was asleep in his boat, still moored at the raft in front of my house. I decided to chase him off. First, though, I had to take care of my family.
I locked Keren and the children in our storeroom, the one room that had walls and a door. This was a dark room in which we had killed more than one snake, several rats, and lots of centipedes, cockroaches, and tarantulas. The kids had missed the entire episode so far and as we woke them up in their hammocks to move them to the storeroom they were groggy and half-conscious. They just lay down on the floor, without protest. I had Keren lock the door from the inside.
Then I walked down the riverbank toward the boat, anger building with every step. On the way, though, I was sobered by the realization that I had not seen my teacher Kóhoi or his shotgun. Almost at the exact second that I had this thought, I heard Kóhoi’s voice from the bushes on the bank just behind me. “I am going to shoot you right now and kill you.”
I turned toward the voice, fully expecting to receive the full blast of his 20-gauge shotgun in my face or torso as I did. He came toward me out of the bushes, unsteadily. But I could see with relief that he was not armed.
I asked, “Why do you want to kill me?”
“Because the Brazilian says that you do not pay us enough and he says that you told him he could not pay us if we worked for him.”
We were talking in Pirahã, though he had originally threatened me in rudimentary Portuguese—
“Eu maTA boSAY”
(I kill you).
If I had not been able to speak Pirahã, I might not have survived the night. Kóhoi and I exchanged words in the Pirahãs’ stacatto-sounding language (it sounds this way because of a consonant, the glottal stop, that Pirahã possesses and English doesn’t). I struggled and focused as never before to put each thought across clearly to Kóhoi. I said,
“Xaói xihiabaíhiaba. Piitísi xihixóíhiaagá”
(The foreigner doesn’t pay. Whiskey [he gives you] is cheap).
Kóhoi responded,
“Xumh! Xaói bagiáikoí. Hiatíihí xogihiaba xaói”
(Wow. The foreigner is stealing from us. The Pirahãs don’t want him).
“It is the Brazilian who did not want to pay you,” I continued. “All he wanted to pay you was bitter water” (as the Pirahãs called cachaça).“And that is because it costs him little. It would cost him more if he paid you with farinha, shotgun shells, sugar,
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