Leafing Through My Gavião Diary

Abstract

In 1961, Roberto DaMatta took me along as an assistant in his fieldwork among the Gavião Indians in the state of Pará, then also referred to as the Western Gaviões, in order to distinguish them from the Krinkati and Pukobyê of Maranhão, who were likewise nicknamed Gaviões (Nimuendaju 1946, 16 and 19). The research he was to carry out was part of a project directed by Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira, which studied cases of contact between Indians and whites in light of the notion of “interethnic friction.” My participation in the research met the program requirement for fieldwork experience in the Specialization Course in Cultural Anthropology at the National Museum, in which I was enrolled. On the same occasion, Roque de Barros Laraia took another student in the course, Marcos Magalhães Rubinger, to the Suruí Indians, in a nearby area, but on the other side of the Tocantins River. This work would result in the book Índios e castanheiros: A empresa extrativa e os índios do médio Tocantins (Indians and Brazil-nut Gatherers: The Extractive Enterprise and the Indians of the Middle Tocantins), by Laraia and DaMatta (1967).

A few years later, with Roberto deeply involved in research with the Apinajé and me with the Craô, I assumed that my Diary no longer held any interest for him and I took it from the Museum back home. But it did not occur to me to suggest that we return to the data I had collected, including the notes in my small notebooks and loose sheets, which remained with him. And time passed. In recent years, I tried to return the Diary to him, but there was no opportunity for us to meet in person. Not wanting to entrust the Diary to the mail, I sent him a xerox copy. But my handwriting was barely legible. For that reason, I decided to type it up myself—a very slow process, since I had lost what little skill I ever had at the keyboard.

Yet this step-by-step reading, which typing forced upon me, made me realize that there was something of value in the Diary, because it gives an idea of how the Gaviões were organized and lived at a moment when a portion of them chose friendly contact with non-Indigenous people. For this reason, I decided to write this commentary on the data the Diary presents most clearly. Roberto DaMatta read it and responded with the generous message published alongside this text. Grateful, I begin my comments.