Ethnoecology, Resource Use, Conservation And Development In A ...

of the European pig (Schomburgk 1923: 310). Im Thurn reported that the meat of
exotic animals introduced by Europeans was avoided by all Amerindians unless 'blown'
on by a piaiman (see chapter 5.2) (Im Thurn 1883: 47, 368). However, this situation
clearly changed over time, and by the 1940's the practice of animal husbandry
appears to have become commonplace among the Wapishana (Peberdy 1948: 18,
31-32). Nowadays it is a very widespread practice: 95 percent of households
interviewed reported that they kept at least some domestic animals. The size of
household stock holdings varied from a single chicken to fairly large numbers of cows,
pigs and other animals. There is clearly a great deal of interhousehold variation in the
relative importance of domestic and wild sources of animal protein.
The Wapishana language has an extensive nomenclature of domestic animals. All
the familiar species - cow (tapi'izi), pig (kooshi), sheep (kazinizo), goat
(boochi), horse (kawaro), donkey (chaakashi), mule (boozo), chicken (kuruku),
turkey (piiru), guinea fowl (pikodu), as well as cat (pishan) and dog (arimaraka) -
have Wapishana names. Many more specific names exist which refer to particular age-
sex classes, and to castrated males. The etymology of these terms has not been
investigated, and it is possible that many, if not all, have been borrowed or adapted
from various of the non-Amerindian languages to which Wapishana people have been
exposed over the course of their recorded history.
The common appearance of domestic animals in myth and folklore attests the
extent to which animal husbandry has been incorporated into Wapishana culture.
Various of the associated skills – those of cattle management being a particularly
impressive example [e.g. See Brock 1972] - have nowadays been seamlessly
integrated into the repertoire of subsistence strategies.
Of the domestic animals, cows, pigs and chickens — the latter generally being
raised for the production of meat rather than eggs, although eggs are also eaten —
are the most important as sources of meat. Horse, donkeys, cats and dogs are not
eaten, and the other species listed above are fairly uncommon. Horses and donkeys
are used as draft animals and for transportation; horses particularly in the location
and rounding-up of cows. Cows are also put to work — to carry heavy loads, or as a
means of transport when ridden or used to pull bullock carts.
A system of herd management based upon open access to grazing lands
operates throughout the Rupununi, allowing cattle and horses especially to roam over
large areas of the savannahs for much of the time. Fences are very rare, and the
notorious Wapishana fence, marking the boundary between reservation lands and the
Dadanawa grazing lease, is derelict over large stretches. Some parts of the Dadanawa