Trumai

By Teferi Abate Adem

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The Trumai are one of several indigenous peoples of Central Brazil living in small, ethnically based, village communities widely dispersed in a region that formed the headwaters of the Xingu River, one of the largest tributaries of the Amazon.  When studied by anthropologist Buell Quain in 1938, the Trumai village was situated on the Kuluene River. This culture summary focuses on salient aspects of culture and society among these Trumai villagers based on available ethnographic information (Murphy and Quain 1955; Levi-Strauss 1950).

During Quain's sojourn in 1938, the Trumai village consisted of forty-three residents, including three non-Trumai women but excluding a few Trumai living elsewhere with other groups. When visited by Oberg ten years later in 1948, the population had shrunken to a meager 25 (Murphy and Quain 1955: 22). There are no reliable historical data documenting demographic changes, but it is widely suggested that the Trumai were a relatively numerous and vigorous people prior to their contact with people of European ancestor (den Steinen 1886).

The Trumai language is considered as an isolate language. Over years, however, Trumai had incorporated within it a good many words from the neighboring Kamayura and Auetö languages.

Not much is known about the history the Trumai. According to Trumai oral tradition, they arrived in the upper Xingu region only in the first half of the 19th century. Later in 1884, when visited by Karl Von den Steinen, perhaps the first European to ever encounter them, the Trumai lived in two separate villages, one on the left bank of the Kuliseu River and the other on the right bank of the lower Kuluene River (den Steinen 1886). When Quain arrived to study them in 1938, the Trumai were confined to the village near the Kuluene River. The other village was abandoned in the years between these two visits. Murphy attributes this change to declining population caused by the advent of new diseases and the integration of some Trumai families into neighboring ethnic groups.  

The Trumai village visited by Quain consisted of four elliptically shaped houses with arched grass-thatched roofs extending to the ground. These houses were arranged roughly in a circle around a central plaza. Each dwelling was occupied by different families, each having its own section of the house and its own fireplace. In the center of the plaza was the men's gathering place, consisting of a log bench and a fireplace.  This plaza served not only as the center of Trumai social life, but also as the village burying ground.

Traditional subsistence was based primarily on slash-and-burn horticulture, supplemented by fishing, hunting, and the gathering of wild fruits and turtle eggs.  The principal native crops grown included bitter manioc, maize, and sweet potatoes, with subsidiary crops of beans, peanuts, peppers, squash, sugarcane, pineapples and bananas.  Many of these cultivated plants were borrowed from neighboring peoples.

The Trumai produced and used bark canoes, variously shaped baskets, hammocks, stone axes and wooden tools.  They obtained other required tools and weapons, including pottery, bows and arrows in trade from the neighboring Kamayura.  

Trumai men bartered raw materials, art objects, and implements among themselves in ways that looked like games.  In these "trade games," which were extremely popular pastime activities, each man successively offered items for exchange.  The Trumai also conducted extensive trade with the neighboring groups. With the Kamayura, for example, they exchanged stone axes and local salt for pottery and bows.  Other items of foreign and domestic origin that entered into active exchange were feathers, fishhooks, cotton yarn, paper, beads, and trinkets.

In addition to hunting and clearing the land, men planted crops, but women did the rest of the agricultural work such as digging up manioc, picking vegetables and carrying the harvest back to the village.  Women did not take part in heavy building tasks, but helped by finishing sections of new houses.

All land and productive resources were communal property and the right to exploit them resided with any individual willing to expend the labor.  To the Trumai, the only important property was in the personal possession of transportable, material artifacts.

Consanguineally close male relatives formed co-resident units, but this didn't result in the establishment of a patrilineal lineage as the community was very small.  

Since the Trumai were living in a small village, Quain noted every resident addressing everyone else using some descriptive and classificatory terms that expressed demonstrable bond of consanguinity or affinity.   The terms differentiated among lineal, collateral and affinal relatives.

Marriage was forbidden between first cousins, classificatory cousins and with sister's daughters.  Polygyny, commonly sororal, was practiced. According to Levi-Strauss, levirate and some form of fraternal polyandry were also practiced (1950: 337).

Unlike the neighboring Waura, Kamayura, and other culturally similar groups of the upper Xingu area, the Trumai lacked extended family groupings. Instead, the Trumai domestic unit consisted of nuclear families sharing the same house, but each having its own section of the house and its own fireplace.  

Trumai inheritance rules were concerned with two issues. One was succession to the village chieftaincy, and the other concerned possession of certain songs performed in ole or manioc ceremony.  Chieftaincy was transmitted from father to son, or, if there were no son, to the sister's son or the daughter's husband.  Ole songs were inherited either through one's mother's brother or mother's father.  

During his sojourn, Quain noticed deliberate attempts by parents to instill aggressive ownership attitudes in the young.  He witnessed, for example, a three year old girl being taught to claim objects by shouting possessive pronounces in a loud voice.  Children were generally pampered, but got no sympathy when they were hurt.

The village visited by Quain in 1938 consisted of forty-three residents, including three non-Trumai women but excluding a few Trumai living elsewhere with other groups.

During Quain's visit in 1938, the village was governed by a chief whose authority was rather limited to a set of facilitative duties.  These included specifying work assignments for villagers and organizing groups for collective hunts, fishing expeditions, or for tilling soil.  In doing so, the chief was assisted by two vice chiefs.

Personal quarrels were solved mostly through loud verbal interchange with the opponent or angry speeches to an audience of men silently seated in a circle. The purpose of the men's circle was to provide disputants with an outlet for their emotions, but not a forum to prove their cases.  The village chief mediated disputes involving families and public life.  Protests against the chief or the village as a whole didn't often result in open conflict.  Instead, protests were expressed by grumbling, non-compliance and threats to leave.  No action except ridicule was taken against dissidents.  Serious offenses such as unwarranted use of force required compensation payment to the injured party.  

Available evidence shows that inter-ethnic relations in the upper Xingu area were not exactly pacific, despite trade and intermarriages.  During Von den Steinen’s visit in 1884, for example, the Trumai were attacked by the Suya (Levi-Strauss 1950).  This conflict seemed to last for decades as the Trumai also lived under the fear of another Suya attack in 1938 (Murphy and Quain 1955).  

During Quain's visit, the Trumai seemed to have forgotten many religious ceremonials once practiced by their forefathers. To Quain's surprise, most Trumai also showed little regret for this loss.  Quain attributed this lack of interest to the fact that much of Trumai religion was borrowed from the neighboring groups in Upper Xingu not too long ago.  

The most important religious practitioner in Trumai village was the shaman, a man believed to possess extra-visionary powers through which he could locate enemy war parties and "see" the afterworld (Murphy and Quain 1955:  79).  To become a shaman, one needed to submit to long and complicated trials, including fasting, remaining awake, and self-punishment, such as knocking one's head against the hut post and scarifying the body (Levi-Strauss 1950).  The most important function of the shaman was curing illness. This required a good knowledge of not just herbal medicine but also of sorcery and witchcraft.  

During Quain's stay, the most important ritual for the Trumai was the ole (manioc) ceremony which was held for  more than three weeks from the middle of August to the end of September. Its purpose was to insure an abundant manioc crop. In addition to intensive dances, songs and related arts, the ole involved erecting peeled poles, each rubbed with white clay, painted in black and red designs, and decorated with cotton tufts glued to the top.   Each post represented certain spirits, identified with individuals, and received offerings in the form of fish cakes (beiju) and other kinds of food.   The Trumai also celebrated the annual piqui harvest with a house-to-house dance by women accompanied by songs.  Other important ceremonies included spear-throwing contest among neighboring ethnic groups.

In addition to a wide variety of folktales, songs and dances, Quain collected many Trumai paintings, drawings and figurines with stylized naturalistic patterns.  Other Trumai arts wooden ornaments and decorated objects such as dance bark strips, utensils, dance pendants, masks and musical instruments.  

During Quain's stay, illness such as headaches, bloated stomach and stomach aches were believed to be caused by primarily witchcraft and, secondarily, by the breaking of a taboo or by contagion.  Women complained of afflictions believed to be caused by sorcery.  Illnesses were treated by both individual shamanistic curing, locally called jau'kath, and group ceremonies or kevere.  The former involved the use of tobacco smoke and sucking, while the later required communal chanting and magical manipulation (Murphy and Quain 1955:  81-82).

The Trumai, like all the other ethnic groups of the upper Xingu area, buried their dead "in a recumbent position with the head toward the east" (Levi-Strauss 1950: 338).  The corpse was wrapped in a hammock.  They also believed that after death one travels the Milky Way, through a road lined with many panthers, and at last enters waniwani, the village of the afterworld, where one would never encounter death again (Murphy and Quain 1955: 91).  

This culture summary was written by Teferi Abate Adem in October 2008 based on available ethnographic information, mostly from Murphy and Quain (1955) and Levi-Strauss (1950).  

Levi-Strauss, 1950. "Tribes of the Upper Xingu River." In Handbook of South American Indians, Vol. 3, The Tropical Forest Tribes,  Pp. 321-348.  Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 143. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute.

Murphy, Robert, F. andBuell Quain,   1955.  The Trumai Indians of Cental Brazil (forward by Charles Wagley). Monographs of the Ameican Ethnological Society, No. 24. Locust Valley, New York:  J. J. Augustin Publisher.  

Steinen, Karl Von den, 1886. Durch Central-Brasilien. Expedition zur erforschung des Schingú im jahre 1884 (Translated for the HRAF files by Frieda Schütze in 1966-1967).