Uncivilized(2)

On the western side of the clearing, I saw about an acre of crops planted. I had studied the Caraica tribe via a colleague who had a friend, who had a friend, who spent some time with them a few years ago. I learned that they grew a variety of staples to compliment the meat gathered by the men when they hunted that included bananas, manioc, mangos, sugar cane, corn, and sweet potatoes. I noticed one woman walking from the fields toward the housing with a large basket filled with corn on her back, supported by a palm-frond strap that went around her forehead.

Father Gaul took the lead as we walked into the village. I saw several women throughout the various longhouses, cooking manioc bread on hot clay plates over fires, some nursing babies, and others lounging in hammocks. They watched us with curiosity, but they made no move to greet our group. All the women were naked, but I expected that. While this tribe had some minor trade relations with missionaries and other tribes, they had yet to progress to clothing, and they even shunned things as basic as loincloths over the men.

I followed Father Gaul to a longhouse, which oddly had a smaller hut about a quarter of the size next to it. He stepped inside, calling out a greeting to an old Caraican man that was lying in his hammock. An old woman, presumably his wife, tended a fire, where she was spreading the manioc flour over a clay plate.

Father Gaul spoke in quiet Portuguese to the man, while patting him on his shoulder. The man gave a semi-toothless smile amidst a heavily wrinkled face, and it was clear that they were exchanging greetings. Father Gaul then pointed at me and fired off a flurry of words I didn’t understand, but clearly, I was being introduced.

The old man beckoned me forward with his hand, and I stepped nearer to him.

“Moira… this is Paraila… Zach’s adoptive father.”

Father Gaul then turned to Paraila and spoke more Portuguese. It was the language many tribes adopted in the last century, born of a necessity to communicate with the world creeping in on the Amazon wild. Paraila looked at me and gave me a tender, welcoming smile as his hand reached out. I took it, and he spoke to me. When he was finished, he squeezed my hand and Father Gaul said, “He bids you welcome and is happy to have you in his village. He hopes you will rest for a while. When the hunting party comes back, there will be a big feast to welcome us. He also says that he hopes you will take good care of his adopted son, but by looking at you, he can sense you are a good and strong woman, and will have no problem handling Zach.”

I smiled wide at Paraila and said, “Father Gaul… tell him thank you, I’m honored to be here, and that I will take very good care of Zach when we leave.”

Paraila smiled at me one more time, and then he and Father Gaul talked again while I turned to check out the village some more. There were a few skinny dogs running around and oddly, in the next longhouse over, I saw a tiny, black monkey with a leash around its neck made of palm rope, which was tied to a log on the ground. One of the children was feeding it plantains and apparently, it was some type of pet, which was very interesting, because I knew one of their meat staples was, in fact, monkey.

Resting a hand on my shoulder, Father Gaul said, “Come. Let’s set up your hammock, and I’ll show you where the water is so you can freshen up. Then you can get a nap. The feast won’t be for a few hours, and it will go late into the night.”

I nodded and followed Father Gaul out of Paraila’s home, eager to get my first glance at Zach when he came back to the village.





The feast was underway, and Zach had not returned. Father Gaul had told me when I woke from my nap that Paraila was concerned about him. He was not taking the news of our arrival well and had been adamantly opposed to leaving with us. Apparently, he and Paraila fought for days over the issue, and it still wasn’t clear whether Zach had agreed to return to the States with me.

A large fire had been started in an open area just a few yards from the huts, and varieties of meats were roasted. The hunting party had come back about an hour ago—by my count twenty-two men strong. But Zach was not among them. When I asked Paraila, through Father Gaul translating, he said, “Zacharias is tracking a tapir and stayed behind. He’ll be back soon with more meat.”

I picked at the food I’d been handed, which was cradled in an oversized banana leaf. The hunting party was successful in killing a caiman and several spider monkeys, and they were greeted with cheers from the women as they came back into the village with their spoils.

The men were just as naked as the women were except for a tulip-shaped sheath over their penises made of woven palm. It nestled their uncircumcised penises in a thick nest of black hair, with their testicles hanging heavy beneath. Again, I had expected this, and it wasn’t shocking at all. As an anthropologist, I found those societal differences between our culture and theirs to be beyond fascinating.