Language Contact and Documentation: Contacto Linguistico y Documentacion

124 Mutua Mehinaku & Bruna Franchetto
The Upper Xingu is a multilingual system composed of different ethnic
groups connected by marriages, many interethnic festivals and ceremonial exchanges.
These groups have lived in the Upper Xingu without wars for a long
time, at least three centuries. We are beginning only now to understand the
history of the formation of this complex system more clearly, as the historical
narratives told by elders are combined with the findings of archaeological, ethnological
and linguistic research. Hearing various languages spoken is thus the
norm in an Upper Xingu village and I grew up listening to and speaking two languages
simultaneously. Before the Portuguese language arrived, there was no lingua
franca in our culture. Each ethnic group had (and still has) its own language.
2.1 Kin and marriage
In the Upper Xingu various kinship paths exist that together form an extremely
dense network. There has been interethnic marriage in the Upper Xingu for a
long time, through engagements, arranged marriages, common marriages and
bride abduction. The desired marriage is with an important person: (i) ojotse,
the professional ‘wrestler’ of the ikindene fight, (ii) uãgi ‘worker,’ (iii) kangahagi
‘fisherman,’ (iv) ologi, ‘artist,’ (iv) anetü limo ‘sons (or daughters) of chiefs.’
Parents want to marry their son to a woman who works well, knows how to
make hammocks and mats, spin cotton, the daughter of a chief.
My father’s marriage succeeded on the side of my grandmother Sesuaka,
because my father’s father was her brother. My mother is my father’s parallel
cousin on both my paternal and maternal grandfathers’ sides. The marriage
was consolidated on my grandmother’s side because the family is close, sinagüko,
‘their roots are together’, nhengagüko ‘their lines are together.’
Marriage to other people from the Upper Xingu was only possible because
they involved groups integrated with the Xinguano cultural system. This is still
important today, though it does not exclude marriages outside the Upper Xingu.
In Kuikuro we call the other Upper Xingu peoples tikinhü and in Mehinaku
pütaka. You could not marry non-Xinguano peoples in the past because they
were all wild (ngikogo). People were wary, though this is not actually the best
word to translate what we call kinhakatsu: it would be better translated as a
‘loathing’ of another people. Why did they loathe these other peoples? Because
they are warriors who live from hunting and eat the meat of ‘creatures’ (ngene).
The peoples of the Upper Xingu do not eat game meat, apart from capuchin
monkey and some large birds (like curassow, doves, guans, etc.). Our staple
diet is fish, manioc bread and porridge made from finely ground manioc flour. 4
4 However, we do not eat, of course, just any species of fish, just as the hunting peoples do
not eat every kind of game.