Don't Sleep There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle

by Daniel L. Everett

Eventually, though, I realized that all the huts were on the side of the path closer to the river. And they all had views of the river from bend to bend. They were built close to the riverbank,

none more than twenty paces from it, and parallel to it lengthwise. Jungle and undergrowth surrounded every home. There was a total of about ten huts. Brothers lived near brothers in this community (in other villages, I later learned, sisters lived near sisters, and in some villages there didn’t seem to be any obvious kinship pattern of settlement). After unloading our supplies, Don and I began to clean a small space in Sheldon’s storeroom for our small pile of supplies (cooking oil, dried soup, canned corned beef, instant coffee, some salted crackers, a loaf of bread, some rice and beans). We walked with

As I learned, the Pirahãs change names from time to time, usually when individual Pirahãs trade names with spirits they encounter in the jungle.

Expressions like hello, goodbye, how are you?, I’m sorry, you’re welcome, and thank you don’t express or elicit new information about the world so much as they maintain goodwill and mutual respect. The Pirahã culture does not require this kind of communication. Pirahã sentences are either requests for information (questions), assertions of new information (declarations), or commands, by and large.

There are no words for thanks, I’m sorry, and so on. I have become used to this over the years and forget most of the time how surprising this can be to outsiders.

Probably better this way

The way to express penitence is not by words but by actions.

Yes

Brazilians used to tell me when I was learning Portuguese, “Americans say ‘thank you’ way too much.”

My wife, Keren; our oldest daughter, Shannon, then seven; our daughter Kris, four; our son Caleb, one; and I left São Paulo by bus for Porto Velho in December, for our first family visit to the Pirahãs.

I was asking so much of them, to leave their friends and city life to spend the next several months in the jungle, with a people they didn’t know, hearing a language none of us spoke. The day my family was to arrive I woke up before dawn. At first light I paced the airstrip, checking for holes. There were always new sinkholes opening up. I also searched carefully for any large pieces of wood, such as firewood, the

We attempted to carry on an American Christian family culture in the middle of an Amazonian village. There were lessons for all of us.

I soon discovered that linguistic field research engages the entire person, not just his intellect. It requires of the researcher no less than that he insert himself into the foreign culture, in sensitive, often unpleasant surroundings, with a great likelihood of becoming alienated from the field situation by general inability to cope. The fieldworker’s body, mind, emotions, and especially his sense of self are all deeply strained by long periods in a new culture, with the strain directly proportionate to the difference between the new culture and his own culture.

Consider the fieldworker’s dilemma: you are in a place where all you ever knew is hidden and muffled, where sights, sounds, and feelings all challenge your accustomed conception of life on earth. It is something like episodes of The Twilight Zone, where you fail to understand what is happening

Culture shock

to you, because it is so unexpected and outside your frame of reference.

Amazonian rain forest covers nearly three million square miles: 2 percent of the total surface of the earth and 40 percent of the South American landmass. This forest is nearly the size of the continental United States. Fly from Porto Velho near the Bolivian

“A Amazônia é nossa”—“The Amazon is ours!” Some Brazilians’ concern about foreign intervention in the Amazon can almost border on paranoia, as when some of my Brazilian colleagues insist to me that U.S. schoolchildren learn in their official textbooks

that the Amazon belongs to the United States.

I tipped us over from my lack of experience, there would be a disaster. I had no life vests but I did have two small children and two very sick passengers who could not

swim to shore. I could not have saved them all in the powerful current of the Maici. But I had no choice.

Stupid

What was wrong with these people? I wondered. Were they totally devoid of any human sentiment?

Nothing Wrong with them its him

The pain and concern on their faces are as deep as any I have ever seen. But I have never seen a Pirahã act as though the

rest of the world had a duty to help him in his need or that it was necessary to suspend normal daily activities just because someone is sick or dying. This is not callousness. This is practicality.

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.

“Don’t leave us. Our children need medicine. Stay here with us.

They were overgrown with grass, which attracted bugs and snakes. Why couldn’t they at least clear the brush and garbage out of their villages?

I have heard them snore contentedly with tarantulas crawling over them.

I determined to proceed with my analysis of their culture as professionally as I was able.

Material Culture and the Absence of Ritual

They said, “Pirahãs don’t make canoes” and walked away. No Pirahã has ever made another xagaoa to my knowledge. This taught me that Pirahãs don’t import foreign knowledge or

adopt foreign work habits easily, if at all, no matter how useful one might think that the knowledge is to them.

Often after a visit to the city of three to six weeks, a Pirahã will return as much as thirty pounds

A pattern was emerging: they had no method for food preservation, neglected tools, and made only disposable baskets. This seemed to indicate that lack of concern for the future was a cultural value. It certainly wasn’t laziness, because the Pirahãs work very hard.

Live in the moment. Tropical climate does not require planning for the winter.

How does it happen that Pirahã culture is so materially simple? Some people have suggested to me that their culture may be the result of the trauma of contact with European cultures in the eighteenth century. It is true that European contact with native peoples of the Americas, whether indirect (as with the transmission of disease or the acquisition of trade items) or direct (face-to-face), was traumatic for most indigenous peoples. In many cases this trauma led to cultural disintegration and loss of knowledge and cultural specializations and marginalization of whole populations. It would be a serious

The dead are buried almost immediately. One or two close male relatives will usually dig the grave, preferring spots near the bank of the river, with the effect that in a couple of years the grave has been washed away by erosion. The corpse is placed in the hole. Then, after the possessions are added, green sticks are crisscrossed above the body, securely wedged into the hole. Over these are placed banana leaves or similar broad leaves. Then the grave is filled with dirt. Rarely, in imitation of Brazilian graves they have seen, they will place a cross, with carvings

Perhaps the activity closest to ritual among the Pirahãs is their dancing. Dances bring the village together. They are often marked by promiscuity, fun, laughing, and merriment by the entire village. There are no musical instruments involved, only singing, clapping, and stomping of feet. The first time I saw a dance I was impressed by how much everyone enjoyed themselves singing, talking, and walking around in a circle. Kóhoi invited me to dance with them.

In this dance, the regular dancing is preceded by the appearance of a man wearing only a headband of buriti palm and a waistband, with streamers, made entirely of narrow, yellow paxiuba palm leaves. The Pirahã man so dressed claims to be Xaítoii, a (usually) evil spirit whose name means “long tooth.” The man comes out of the jungle into the clearing where the others are gathered to dance and tells his audience that he is strong, unafraid of snakes, and then tells them about where he lives in the jungle, and what he has been doing that day. This is all sung. As he sings, he tosses snakes at

the feet of the audience, who all scramble away quickly.

Pirahã spirits all have names and personalities, and their behavior is somewhat predictable.

As rituals they are intended to teach the people to be strong, to know their environment, and so on.

Pirahãs avoid formulaic encodings of values and instead transmit values and information via actions and words that are original in composition with the person acting or speaking, that have been witnessed by this person, or that have been told to this person by a witness.

Pirahãs laugh about everything.

Any baby who cuts, burns, or otherwise hurts itself gets scolded (and cared for too). And a mother will often answer a baby’s cry of pain in such circumstances with a growl of disgust, a low guttural “Ummm!” She might pick it up by an arm and angrily (but not violently) set it down abruptly away from the danger. But parents do not hug the child or say things like “Poor baby, I’m so sorry, let Mommy kiss it and make the boo-boo better.”

Maybe we should raise our children like this.

This style of parenting has the result of producing very tough and resilient adults who do not believe that anyone owes them anything. Citizens of the Pirahã nation know that each day’s survival depends on their individual skills and hardiness.

👍

If recursion

is not found in the grammar of all languages, but it is found in the thought processes of all humans, then it is part of general human intelligence and not part of a “language instinct” or “universal grammar,” as Noam Chomsky has claimed.

They have to decide for themselves to do or not do what their society expects of them. Eventually they learn that it is in their best interests to listen to their parents a bit. One young

Second, if an adult can take the “risk” of smoking, a child can too.

That applies very much to western societies.

Pirahã children roam about the village and are considered to be related to and partially the responsibility of everyone in the village. But on a day-to-day basis, most Pirahãs have nuclear families that include the stable presence of a father, a mother, and siblings (full, half, and adopted).

He acted like a child. He did a bad thing. But he is drunk and his head is

He should not have hurt my dog. It is like my child.”

Then I noticed that Xíbaihóíxoi was holding him by the hair of his head. As he tried to raise his head, she jerked his head back by the hair, picked up a stick at her side and started whacking him irregularly on the top of his head,