The moon dwelled in the body of a grand shaman. When he died, she was free to wander in space but instead returned to the earth to eat his incinerated bones. When the shaman’s relatives discovered this outrage, they attacked the moon with arrows but the arrows fell harmlessly to the earth. The moon tried to evade the arrows by hiding in the clouds, but at last one arrow penetrated, and her blood spilled to the earth. From the drops of her blood the Yanomami were born.

Of all of the indigenous groups of the Amazon, the Yanomami are without a doubt one of the most studied and well known. The name Yanomami means man, people or species. Those who are not Yanomami are “nape,” which roughly translates to “people who are foreign, urban, and dangerous.” This is how the Yanomami refer to criollos as well as members of other ethnic groups. The Yanomami inhabited the Parima mountain range and the Upper Orinoco as early as 1758. It is thought that at the moment of the earliest contacts with Europeans, the Yanomami had been in the middle of a significant demographic and geographic expansion, exploring new territories along the shores of the Orinoco, Padamo, and Mayaca rivers. In the northern and western zones of their territory, the Yanomami may have clashed with the Ye'kuana, who successfully resisted their advances. Today, the geographic center of the Yanomami in Venezuela is the territory between the Parima mountains and the Orinoco, particularly the basins of the Ocamo, Manaviche, and Mavaca rivers. Groups of Yanamomi also live in the outskirts of Brazil. Conuco farming seems to have been an important activity throughout their history, although it is unclear exactly when agriculture was first introduced. Early visitors consistently described them as "hunter-gatherers" although this may have reflected a romantic vision of the Yanomami as a remote and unknown people. Agriculture is primarily a male activity, particularly the tasks of clearing and burning the land. Both men and women plant and harvest corn and cotton, and all participate in gathering. The men climb trees to reach the fruit, insects, or other foods, while women carry the goods. In their conucos the Yanomami plant a variety of plantains and bananas, as well as sweet yucca and other tubers. In addition, they farm a variety of plants for ritual purposes, dyes, and hallucinogens. They trade for sebucanes and graters, which they use in the preparation of manioc and cassava. Though sometimes also practiced by women, hunting and fishing generally are male activities. The Yanomami distinguish between two kinds of hunting: one is known as “rami,” which provides them with meat for everyday use, and the other is “heniyomou,” which is performed collectively by all the men of a community for celebrations and special guests. When the heniyomou is practiced for funerals, the hunting ritual begins in the early evening with a series of poetic chants called “heri” and dances performed by adolescents of both sexes. This ritual, in which the young people improvise songs in the midst of raucous laughter and obscene jokes, lasts several nights. Funeral celebrations also include the “reahu,” a ritual in which the ashes of the dead are ingested by the community. The ashes are ground in a mortar and then mixed into a plaintain soup. As the women cry, relatives and friends of the deceased gather in a circle to drink the soup. If the deceased has died at the hands of an enemy, the men evoke curses, promising revenge. Yanamomi frequently consume tobacco and yopo during ritual ceremonies. These stimulants allow the Yanomami to get in touch with the world of the supernatural, cure illnesses, and pass on their collective memory. The Yanomami live without clothing. A man will bind his foreskin with a cotton string tied around the waist in order to keep his penis upright and against his stomach. Considered more as decoration than as clothing, young women commonly wear cotton guayucos, or loincloths. Men and women both have the same round haircut. Body painting with a variety of dyes is common. For red, they generally use anatto, and for purple, they combine the anatto with a resin called caraña. When men go off to war, they wear black body paint, which symbolizes the night and death. When in mourning, a woman wears black paint on her cheeks for an entire year before she can use red again. For some festivals, the Yanomami apply white clay over the body. Men typically wear multicolored bracelets made with the feathers of birds like the toucan, the curassow, the sparrowhawk, and the parrot. Yanomami men often perforate their earlobes with pieces of cane decorated with feathers or flowers. They also pierce their nose and lips with thin bamboo sticks. Female ear decorations are more subtle, made with palm shoots, flowers, or a handful of scented leaves. These are placed in cylindrical plant shoots, then positioned into the holes in their ears. Yanomami textiles include the chinchorro or hammock, woven on rustic frames of wood nailed into the ground. During trips into the jungle, the Yanomami use mamure fiber to weave provisional hammocks, marakami-toku, which are often discarded after the trip. Mamure fiber is used in the female art of basketry as well. Women make guaturas, guapas, and manares. The guatura, a basket most often used for carrying loads, is woven in a dense braid. While in the past pottery was an important artisan craft in Yanomami culture, today it has almost completely disappeared. Few communities still make the typical hapoka, a plain bell-shaped pot made with white clay. References Luis Cocco, Iyeweiteri: Quince años entre los Yanomamos, Don Bosco, Caracas, 1972. Napoleon A. Chagnon, Yanomamö. The Fierce People, (3rd ed.), Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1983. Jacques Lizot, Tales of the Yanomami: Daily Life in the Venezuelan Forest, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 55, Cambridge University Press, 1991. Johannes Wilbert, Folk Literature of the Yanomami Indians, Los Angeles, 1990.