The Fierce Anthropologist
The Fierce Anthropologist
The Fierce Anthropologist
president and C.E.O.; Charles executive vice-president and C.O.O.; John W. executive and CEO.
SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE: To about a or to change an address, please The New Yorker, BOX 56447,
C O one E-mail to or our Web sire at
To purchase a hack issue telephone (800) 753.7276. Outside North America, call (303) For a change
of should give four weeks’ If possible, please send the address label from a recent issue. we make
our carefully screened companies that offer products and services we believe would interest readers. If you
do not receive offers please us at Box 56447, Boulder, CO 80322-6447.
NOTICE : may be
by copyright law (Title 17 U. Code
A REPORTER AT
BY PATRICK
arrived, the Yanomami bad begun leaving the mountains to settle near missions along the Orinoco.
wrote that the Yanomami were “one ‘provoked not by competition for women, sionaries in the field, have expressed con-
of the best nourished populations thus as Chagnon had written, but by the spread cern about the impact of his research on
far described in the anthropological/ of new diseases, which prompted angry Yanomami culture. Kenneth Good, who
biomedical Chagnon’s accusations of witchcraft. worked with Chagnon while researching
“burly” men, the villagers I encountered Others, too, were bewildered by some his Ph.D., has lived among the
were-as Rice had observed in of Chagnon’s writings. The linguist mami for twelve years-longer than any
tiny and scrawny, smaller than most Jacques who had been encouraged other American anthropologist. Good
rican Pygmies. According to data com- by Claude Levi-Strauss at the College de calls Chagnon “a hit-and-run anthropol-
piled by L. a biological France, has lived for twenty-five years ogist who comes into villages with
anthropologist at the University of Col- with the Yanomami. In 1994, crit- loads of machetes to purchase coopera-
orado, the adult males average four feet icized Chagnon in the American tion for his research. Unfortunately, he
nine inches in height, and the women for obscuring the identity of twelve creates con&t and division wherever he
four feet seven inches. The children have villages in his homicide study, making it goes.” During his years among the
some of the lowest weight-for-height ra- difficult for other anthropologists to ver- Good witnessed a single war, and
tios among Amazonian Indians. More- ify his data. The German ethnologist the only time he felt endangered was
over, Chagnon’s account of Yanomami Eibl-Eibesfeldt, a former head of on his first, nervous night in the field,
warfare seemed greatly exaggerated. I vis- the human-ethnology department at the in 1975, when Chagnon and another
ited a village on the Mucajai River, in Max Institute, outside Munich, anthropologist, both drunk, burst into
54 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER
his hut, tore his mosquito netting, and his village: “He had his bird feathers tween them and the antagonistic people
pushed him out of his hammock in a adorning his arms. He had red-dye paint of He said that, in return, the
mock raid. all over his body He wore a loincloth like Mishimishimabowei-teri had bestowed
the Yanomami. He sang with the chant on him the name of their village-an
Both eyes. He has the typical Ocamo, and I don’t know where else it A Multidisciplinary Study,” which pre-
form rash on both cheeks. . . . I’m afraid don’t know when it arrived.” sents a general overview of Neel’s re-
you’re going to [see] some severe cases of Later, he tells Neel that the Ocamo search objectives. The other was “The
Feast,” which documents the celebra-
tion of a military alliance between two
formerly hostile villages. “The Feast”
is widely considered one of the finest
ethnographic films ever made, because
of how it depicts the Machiavellian
underpinnings of tribal festivities. In
Asch’s notes, he explained the back-
ground to the film: “To conduct raids
and to protect itself from attack, a
village must ally itself with
neighboring villages. The feast is a
means by which these intervillage al-
liances are formed. To prepare for a
feast, the village is first cleaned. Gal-
lons of banana soup for the guests are
cooked and stored in large troughs. The
guests, waiting outside the village, send
in an emissary who chants a greeting
and brings back food to his people. The
guests burst in, dancing and brandishing
their weapons, whiie the hosts recline in
their hammocks. Feasting, trading, and
games of ritual violence then take place.
Sometimes these ‘games’ escalate into
real massacres.”
Both “A Multidisciplinary Study’
and “The Feast” were filmed in the vil-
lage of Patanowa-teri. Twenty-eight
years later, when I visited there, a tribal
elder named Kayopewe told me, through
a translator, that before Chagnon and
arrived with their equipment the
village had fallen into ruins and was
largely abandoned. It was reconstructed
and reoccupied, he said, only after
non promised that if the villagers moved custom for two villages to celebrate such visits into tribal territories. The first
back in and held a peacemaking feast a union by choosing a new enemy, and group to defend Yanomami rights was
with their neighbors from a hostile after feasting together the new allies formed in Brazil, and a split developed in
lage called Mahekoto-teri he would give launched a raid on a thiid village, killing anthropology between the researchers
every man among them a machete. a woman in the process. One day, when who wanted simply to observe tribal
opewe said that the whole had, in tried to film a doctor who was ture and those who wanted Indians to
effect, been by the filmmakers. treating a sick man from the village of have land rights and health care. From
partly confirmed this account in Mavaca, Neel interrupted him. “I don’t 1976 until 1985, Chagnon was prohib-
an article published in the journal want any of this,” he said. “You’re here to ited from reentering Yanomami terri-
in 1972. In a description of document the kind of study we’re trying tory. During those years, he and his wife,
the making of “The Feast,” he said that to make. Anyone can walk into a village Carlene, raised two children, and he be-
Chagnon had sent him, three and treat people. This is not what we’re came a popular lecturer at Northwestern
mami, and a young Protestant mission- here to do.” and then at the University of California
ary, Daniel Shaylor, on an eleven-day After Neel’s researchers departed, many at Santa Barbara.
trek to Patanowa-teri, a “mountain hide- of the Mahekoto-teri and Patanowa- In 1985, Chagnon, accompanied by a
out” far from the vaccination centers teri became sick and died. It is not clear University of California graduate student,
along the Orinoco. “After finding [the] what they died of, because they may have Jesus Cardozo, who was Venezuelan,
Patanowa-teri we set up an aircraft radio been exposed to many different patho- in reentering Yanomami territory.
and reached Napoleon at Mavaca. He gens, including colds, the Edmonston B He returned to Mishimishimabowei-teri,
convinced the headman to move back virus, and malaria. (Shaylor, the expedi- where he hoped to finish his long-term
into an old garden near the Orinoco tion’s translator, had arrived in Patanowa- study of the relationship between
River where the genetics expedition teri with malaria, where he became so mami homicide and reproductive suc-
could work with them and we could take sick that he had to be evacuated.) In cess. Cardozo, who no longer has cordial
film.” A large shipment of metal pots 1996, when I showed the elders of both relations with Chagnon, went on to help
duly arrived as payment for the villagers’ villages a video of “The Feast,” many of create the Venezuelan Foundation for
cooperation. In 1995, according to an the old men wept. Kayopewe said, “We Anthropological Research, which pro-
article in the Visual Anthropology Re- broke out in sores and rash on our faces, motes Yanomami education and land
view, Chagnon said, “I did not ‘stage’ and it burned really badly. One of us rights. As Cardozo later recalled of the
this-it happened naturally. They could died at the village [where the filming expedition, “We hadn’t even got our boat
not have cared less about our interests in took place]. We left him there and fled moored to the shore at Mavakita”-a
filming and are the kind of people who into the jungles. An old man would die. Mishimishimabowei-teri village that
would not do something this costly and We would tie him up in the trees. And had broken off from the main group
time consuming for two whole commu- then a young woman would die, and we following various epidemics in the early
nities simply to accommodate the film- would leave her in a basket. We kept seventies-“when Yanomami started
ing interests of outsiders.” dying off and dying off.” When the men coming out and shouting, ‘Go away!
Other payments were required--so heard a translation of the soundtrack of Shaki brings [illness].’ Within
many that Chagnon radioed for another ‘A Multidisciplinary Study,” in which our first twenty-four hours there, three
plane to bring in more trade goods. Neel claimed that the Patanowa-teri children died-two in the night and an-
When Chagnon distributed the goods, had been saved from measles, thanks to other in the morning.” Although there
he created what seems, on the sound- the vaccinations, there was a chorus of was no connection between Chagnon’s
track, to be pandemonium. Later, when protest. Horemu!” (“Lies, lies.“) arrival and the deaths, the events were
and asked a group of One man told me, “Shaki stole our spir- seen as further evidence of the anthro-
Yanomami to cut some bananas in front its, and we have never been the same.” pologist’s malefic power. “On our sec-
of the camera, they suddenly burst into a ond night, half of the village fled into
y the mid-seventies, the Yanomami the forest to get away from us.”
frenzied dance-“screaming at the top
of their lungs, waving branches of leaves
in the air,” as later wrote in
B had become the most intensively
studied and filmed tribal group in the
After another day of searching for
a community where he could continue
lines. filmed the scene, assuming world. In Paris in 1978, a festival was de- his genealogical research, Chagnon
that it was a “garden ritual.” When the voted to films about them. As scientists, found a village, Iwahikoroba-teri, that
Yanomami finally stopped, Chagnon news teams, filmmakers, and others com- was willing to receive the expedition.
asked them, “What was that all about?” peted for footage and new data about “When we arrived at Iwahikoroba-teri,
“Isn’t that what you just asked us to the tribe, some of the Yanomami along everybody was sick, throwing up and
do?” the headman replied. the Orinoco became part-time film ex- moaning and lying down in their ham-
The filming of “The Feast” also had tras and anthropological informants. mocks,” Cardozo said. “I remember a
unforeseen consequences. When At the same time, native-rights advo- little girl, Makiritama. She was vomit-
non invited the Patanowa-teri’s former cates began to criticize outsiders---gold ing blood. She was defecating blood,
enemies, the Mahekoto-teri, to partici- miners, journalists, missionaries, scien- too. I remember her husband-she was
pate as guests, he created a new alliance. tists-claiming that cultural disruption very young, she was to be his future
According to Chagnon, it is Yanomami and epidemics invariably followed their wife-showed me where she was