Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
of his own group offended him, he would kill the person. This reached
the point where he killed one of his own wives for not agreeing with
him. The other wives were terrified. His people wanted to leave but were
too frightened. One night while he was sleeping, they fell on him with
dozens of clubs and spears and killed him. This was because Asi'de had
no shame.
In this story of a long vanished past itself now considered shameful,
shame and anger articulated two opposed trajectories of the ideal moral
self. One is that of “respecting,” “fearing” (
-itodo
), or “listening” (-
angari
)
to the moral boundaries formerly established by
puyaque
prohibitions
and now by
Dupadeuruode
or the Word of God. Those people that re-
spected such boundaries were said to be
paaque
, both quiet and kind,
and
caniaque
, generous. This was premised on the voluntary subordina-
tion of individual will to group norms and an ecology of metaphysi-
cal forces that imposes limits on human behavior. (Thus, Ayoreo people
commonly described the immorality of themselves and their ancestors
prior to contact as the result of being duped or ignorant about the true
boundaries of the moral human rather than an intentional violation of
them.) The second trajectory of moral agency was the agonistic rejection
of those limits through unfettered strength, or
etotiguei
.
4
Dominance was considered a virtue necessary for human survival. Al-
though metaphysical forces were more powerful than human will, all
was lost without the capacity to resist. The greatest moral failing was to
be weak and afraid. Both were synonymous with death. It was no coinci-
dence that the word for “pious respect” was also the same word for “fear,”
or that “listening” also meant “obeying.” This, elders said, also applied to
the
adode / puyaque / ujñarone
complex. Survival in the forest, I was often
told, meant not only following taboo prohibitions but also dominating
the willpower of other beings—game animals, food plants, enemies, al-
lies. This was marked with the suffix/morpheme
-sori
. When added to
a noun, it meant the object in question was taken as the subordinate
possession of a more dominant other. Even mundane phrases retained
a martial quality. The words
he yuque yu
referred to being tired but liter-
ally meant “I have become the victim of another.” Likewise, the phrase
ore surei yibai
was how to say that you have lost at a game but it literally
meant “I am the one others burned the skin from.”
The moral weight of dominance found its clearest expression in the
ideal type of the
dacasute
warrior. Only a proven
dacasute
could lead
others, marry more than one wife, and speak with authority. They were
said to fear nothing, and the prototypical
dacasute
never had shame for
any reason. Men who did not achieve this status because they failed to
