Marc Brightman

(Oxford University)
Draft paper to present at Relaes (im)prprias: propriedade e bem-viver na Amaznia,
Museu Nacional/UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, 8-9 April 2010.
Mastery, slavery and affinity among the Trio and Akuriyo of southern Surinam.

I would like to begin by summarizing a Trio myth. Two Trio brothers are captured as
children by the Akuriyo whom you have just heard about in Vanessas paper. The
Akuriyo at first appear to adopt them but then prepare to cook and eat them. Aturai, one
of the brothers, escapes and returns to his Trio relatives. He organises a wrestling match
and beats all of the other Trio, then leads a revenge expedition against the Akuriyo. The
Trio warriors exterminate all the Akuriyo they can find, until they arrive in a settlement in
which the inhabitants seem to have special powers; they all vanish into the air except a
small child, called Maritik, who proves to be able to run faster, and to hunt ten times as
well as any of the Trio. Aturai says, he is doubtlessly stronger and faster than we are...He
may plan to destroy us and therefore I will make him my junior. As my junior he will
protect me in due course. When, for example his former relatives come, he will
exterminate them. The boy helps the Trio to exterminate the Akuriyo by giving advice
about such things as setting traps. The Trio speculate that this boy is one of those
people who lived long ago, and they cleanse him with special moss from rocks, which is
used to cleanse someone who is caught by belligerent people.1
Today, the Trio refer to the Akuriyo who are attached to their households in terms of
ownership, or entume: they say that they own (entume wae) an Akuriyo. This is much as we
would expect - the domestication of the Akuriyo appears to be a form of familiarizing
predation, and they seem to be treated as a form of pet following a pattern found
elsewhere in Amazonia. The Akuriyo themselves say that they regard themselves as
children in relation to the Trio, and the Trio teach them about living in a civilized way
much as fathers teach sons. Yet the Trio also refer to the Akuriyo as their pito, a word
which is associated with affinity, and, more specifically, to refer to the son-in-law.
1

The story is taken from Koelewijn (1984, 1987).

Similarly, in the myth I summarized, the word used by Aturai to refer to his junior is
pito.
I would like to discuss this discrepancy in terms of the distinction made by Carlos Fausto
in his recent article on mastery and ownership in Amazonia, between two forms of
asymmetry in native Amazonian cosmopolitics. He refers to them as asymmetric
consanguinity and asymmetric affinity. The former, which represents relations of
mastery and ownership, of familiarizing predation, adoption and the taming of pets. He
asserts that it can be regarded as a fundamental cosmological operator. He suggests that
there are two corresponding forms of symmetry in Amazonian societies: symmetric
affinity, which shares the status of fundamental cosmological operator, and symmetric
consanguinity.2
[show slide 1]
Fausto asserts that asymmetric affinity does not qualify as a generalized cosmopolitical
system, and the reasons he gives are as follows: it does not provide a general idiom for
schematizing relations as diverse as those between shamans and auxiliary spirits, warriors
and victims, captors and captives, masters and pets despite the fact that the son-inlaws position in an uxorilocal system is frequently compared to that of a captive enemy
or a pet animal. The difference between a master and a father-in-law is that the former is
always double-sided (a voracious jaguar for others and a protective father for their own)
whereas the latter tends to be all too jaguar.
Against this typology, let us look at mastery among the Trio. In the Trio language, the
root entu is the particle that appears most closely associated with consanguinial
asymmetry in the Trio language. It has been translated by Peter Rivire and by the
linguist Eithne Carlin as source, origin, foot of mountain, base of tree, owner,
boss. It is the Trio equivalent of terms in other Amazonian languages that have been
translated as master. It is the term used for village leaders as owners of the village, and
all kinds of masters, from the masters of animals to the specialist in plant medicine (epi
entu) to the person in charge of the village generator (montoru entu). The entu particle also
serves to create one of the possessive forms in the Trio language, described by the
2

See Fausto (forthcoming).

linguist Eithne Carlin as temporary controlled possession (2004, pp. 459-476). It is

interesting however, that another possessive mode is used to refer to relations of kinship:
permanent possession according to Carlins scheme.
[slide of forms of entu]
The souls of the dead go to the entutao: Rivire writes, the eye-soul departs on a
hazardous journey through the sky to the amore entuhtao on the eastern horizon, where sky
and water meet. The term entu means owner, source, root or origin, and htao is a
postposition meaning in (1997: 143), but he does not attempt to disentangle the
significance of the range of meanings of entu and its relationship to the migrations of the
soul. One of my own informants, likewise, when describing where the soul used to go
(before the arrival of missionaries and conversion to Christianity), said omorenp ipata tan
entutao the village of the soul, far away, entutao again, entu with the postposition
meaning in; he located entutao in a large mountain, Tpriken, or Kasi-Kasimn
(Kasikasima).
Could it be that, rather than meaning foot of mountain, the term entu derives this
association with mountains and the foot of trees from the location of the soul-owner in
certain particular locations? Could this soul owner also be the source of souls, just as
the masters of game animals are the masters of game? In other words, could ownership
be prior to cosmological location? It seems to me that this may be a false question, just
as the translation of omore as soul is a false translation, if perhaps the least worst possible
(omorenp, denoting the soul of a dead person, really means former soul, the suffix np
meaning former or previous). The mysterious soul owner is a place as much as a
person. Meanwhile, the village leader, the village-owner, the boss, are sources and
origins as much as owners and bosses the village is created by and depends upon its
leader-owner. It may be that, as these tricks of translation suggest, our starting point in
locating meanings for indigenous terms can prejudice our interpretations of other
meanings as we locate them along the way. Indeed the concrete meanings (base of
mountain, foot of tree) may have given rise through metaphor to the more abstract
senses of owner, master. Perhaps, then, the physical relationship with the environment
with mountains, trees and so on has more importance in structuring native concepts
such as ownership than a prior emphasis on abstract concepts or particular aspects of

relationship terminology would suggest.

Now I would like to turn to the matter of asymmetric affinity. If we go back to the myth
I summarized at the beginning, with Maritik captured and made into the junior of
Aturai: the usual pattern for familiarizing predation would lead us to expect Maritik to
be domesticated like a pet, to be referred to like an adopted child as the Trio boys
captured by the Akuriyo were. But the term used for junior is pito, which, as we shall
see, is the primary term used to express asymmetric affinal relations. Why do the Trio
use an affinal term in what seems to be a clear example of familiarizing predation?
Before answering this question, we need to know more about Trio relationship
terminology. The Trio have two terms of relevance: pito, which denotes an affinal
relationship, and pito, which, seems to refer more specifically to asymmetric affinal
relationships. Thanks to the writings of Peter Rivire, the Trio are a classic case with
regard to the question of asymmetric affinity. In his article on the comparative study of
Carib societies (1977), Rivire focused on the Carib term pito, whose meaning in
different Carib societies has variously been translated as slave, servant, client, brother-inlaw, son-in-law, and sisters son (40); he pointed out that this range of meanings covers
a continuum from the potentially equal (brother-in-law) to the totally inferior (slave),
and went on to note that however, slave and servant are concepts that are out of
keeping with the nature of Carib societies as we know them today.
The case of the Trios subjugation of the Akuriyo shows that things have changed since
Rivires own fieldwork in ways that he did not anticipate. It is interesting also that he
believed that these more extremely asymmetric forms of meaning for pito were more
likely to be postcontact adaptations of indigenous ideas modified by European
influence than reflections of an earlier, more complex, and more hierarchical form of
society that has now disappeared, although he recognised that these two explanations
were not necessarily mutually exclusive.
This belief may seem to be supported by the fact that the capture and subordination of
the Akuriyo would almost certainly not have happened without the intervention of the
missionaries. At the same time, Santos Graneros study of indigenous Amazonian forms
of slavery shows that the pre-contact thesis should not be dismissed too easily. In any

case, it is interesting that Rivires reason for believing that extreme affinal asymmetry
was not entirely indigenous to Carib societies has precisely to do with the fact that it is an
affinal relation more specifically, with the fact that pito refers to sons-in-law or, more
unusually, to brothers-in-law for such is the case among the Trio themselves, and for
them it is a reciprocal term. Moreover, the Trio have a relationship terminology which
expresses a past ideal of marriage with sisters daughter, and so the relationships of
father-in-law and brother-in-law shade into each other: the son-in-law is also referred to
in Trio as pito.3 To be exact, pito is used to refer to the brothers of women who are
potential wives (like the Nambiquara term tarte in Lvi-Strausss classic account, to
which I shall return later [Lvi-Strauss 1943]).
The fact that Rivires own fieldwork was carried out among the Trio may have led him
to be more alert to the more equal end of the continuum of meanings of pito. Yet
despite this, he argues that in all Carib societies the relationship between affines and
specifically between parents-in-law and their children-in-law is always asymmetrical in
nature, and this being the case, affinal relationships offer the best idiom for expression of
political relationships that involve domination and subordination (41). As if to confirm
this argument, during my own fieldwork I found that, in addition to the term pito,
perhaps as a result of the influence of the Wayana, the Trio had adopted the term pito,
which, though obviously a cognate of pito (it is one of the terms discussed by Rivire in
his article), has more strongly hierarchical connotations. It is used to refer both to sonsin-law, and to a chiefs followers. It is also used occasionally to refer to the Akuriyo, the
Trios subordinates or slaves. However, after describing the ideal Carib village composed
of a leader and his sons-in-law, Rivire notes as an aside I think the whole question of
the patrilocal residence of the sons of strong chiefs needs further investigation. The
patrilocal residence of the sons of leaders is clearly a case of consanguineal asymmetry
but it is worth keeping this question in mind: which is the foundation of leadership
this, or the relationship with the son-in-law?
Here we have several important points: firstly, Rivire asserts, despite the fact that the
Trio version of pito is a mutual term, that affinal relations are always asymmetrical: the
Trio case thus demonstrates an important slippage between symmetric and asymmetric
affinity; although the reciprocal pito relationship lies at the extreme symmetrical end of
Cf. Lvi-Strausss Social use of kinship terms, in which he says that the Nambiquara (as well as the
ancient coastal Tupi) have avuncular marriage as well as cross-cousin marriage
3

the continuum between the two, it is still an asymmetric relationship, and so arguably
places in doubt the very existence of symmetric affinity as anything more than a
hypothetical category. I suggest that this depends on how one looks at things. From the
perspective of the impassive scientific observer (assuming that there is such a thing), it is
clear that two brothers-in-law who have exchanged sisters represent equivalent and
symmetrical positions. But from the point of view of each brother-in-law, each is a wifegiver, and this takes precedence over their role as wife-takers; what we have therefore is a
situation of mutual hierarchy and reversible asymmetry. For this reason, men to whom
one refers as pito (and who refer to one reciprocally using the same term) consider
themselves entitled to make all sorts of demands for presents and favours.
The second point is that the nature of asymmetric affinity among the Trio does not
support Faustos description of the father-in-law as all too jaguar and of the soceral
relationship as one that is too unequal and insufficiently ambivalent to act as a
cosmological signifier. Here, although soceral authority is important and can even be
regarded as the basic political structure on which Trio society is based, it can be an
affectionate relationship, and is not necessarily radically unequal. In a society in which
conviviality or daily sociability is enough to create kinship it can even be difficult to
distinguish technically affinal relations from relationships of consanguinity.
A third point is that the father-in-law is a character of enormous importance in Trio
myth, to such an extent that I doubt whether asymmetric affinity can be dismissed as a
cosmological operator. In many such myths a Trio man meets a jaguar or another forest
person, who entices him to marry his daughter it is only by avoiding eating the food of
his host that he escapes turning into a jaguar himself. Of course such myths express
affinity, but they also express the dangers of marrying distant others one risks losing
ones human perspective and in some cases even attacking and killing ones own former
kin. In addition, they express the ideal of marrying close, where consanguinity and
affinity shade into each other. And the risk of losing ones own perspective, as attested in
numerous cases from all over Amazonia, derives from the fact that commensality and
conviviality can lead to becoming kin: as Fausto has pointed out, by eating with each
other (rather than eating each other), we come to share the same perspective. Indeed, as
Lvi-Strauss argued in his paper on the Nambiquara brother-in-law relationship (1943),
the term (equivalent to pito) for the brother of a potential wife serves to create kinship

relations between previously unrelated groups.

What is occurring in the case of the Akuriyo is precisely the opposite they have been
domesticated and made into servants, but neither marriage nor kinship relations have
been created. To understand this it seems to be crucial that they are referred to as pito,
but never as pito.
[show slide 2]
It is tempting to speculate that the Akuriyo are involved in a constant attempt to assert
themselves as affines while the Trio maintain them as consanguines, or rather, as subjects
of their mastery as a form of asymmetric consanguinity. This would make sense in terms
of the tendency, noted by Santos Granero, for slaves eventually to intermarry with their
masters: captive slaves, servant groups and tributary populations were integrated, and
eventually assimilated, into their masters societies.yet Enemies are equated to
affines and game meat, whereas captive children are associated with consanguines and
pets (Descola 1994: 339) (2009: 174). There therefore has to be some shift back to
affinity again for intermarriage to occur and integration and assimilation to take place.
In the Akuriyo case, intermarriage has not occurred in the 40 years since their capture
except for certain rare cases. The Trio appear to refuse to treat them as affines. I know
of two cases of intermarriage between Trio and Akuriyo. In the only case I know first
hand, a Trio man was accused of murdering an Akuriyo boy who drowned in a creek
(like most Akuriyo, he was unable to swim, so the possibility of an accident could not be
excluded). The Trio man left the village for a period, as is usual when an accusation of a
crime like this is made. When he returned, he married an Akuriyo woman (who to my
knowledge was not kin to the murdered boy). It is said that he did not perform any
brideservice for the womans father. The other case I heard about from Peter Rivire. A
Trio man whose wifes father died found that he was obliged to carry out a lot of work
for his wifes mother she had no husband, so he had extra duties in addition to those
of brideservice. So he arranged for the old woman to marry a young Akuriyo man. After
this, the Akuriyo did all of the hunting for the entire family. Suddenly, it was as though
the father-in-law-son-in-law relationship had been reversed: the Trio man had a kind of
soceral authority over his own mother-in-laws husband. These exceptional cases of

intermarriage show that when it does occur the relationship always falls in the Trios
favour: Trio ownership of Akuriyo always trumps the usual behaviour expected of wifegivers and wife-takers. What this also suggests is that even when intermarriage occurs
and affinity in this sense is thus realized, the relationship of mastery persists.
The terms entu, denoting a master/owner and pito, denoting an inferior affine, can, with
reference to the Akuriyo, be regarded as complementary terms: owner and slave. Yet
they belong to different forms of asymmetry. Perhaps, as with the case of pito, these
terms should be understood from the point of view of each party concerned. If the
Akuriyo regards the Trio as entu, his master, this could underline the fact that he cannot
expect to marry a Trio girl; meanwhile, the Trio can see the Akuriyo as pito his
subordinate affine, who is too wild to consider as a son-in-law. On the other hand, and
this I think is more likely (although it does not necessarily exclude what I have just
suggested), the use of these terms may be just a form of bricolage, a way of expressing in
Trio a kind of asymmetry that did not previously exist. The case of the Akuriyo shows
that mastery and affinity are not mutually exclusive. Owners or masters can be the
owners or masters of affines as well as consanguines.
Fausto writes that, to be powerful, shamans and warriors must ensure that the
subjectivity of their wild pets is preserved, which means that they can never become
entirely tamed (Fausto 1999a:949). (Fausto, our volume). This ambivalence is at the
heart of mastery. But it seems that a similar ambivalence is at the heart of asymmetric
affinity indeed, this ambivalence can itself take the form of a chronic slippage between
the two forms of asymmetry, consanguineal and affinal, in Amazonian social relations.
This slippage is acknowledged in Lvi-Strausss article on the social use of kinship terms
among Brazilian Indians (1943), and he contrasts it with the European institution of
comprage, which (at least in the past, notably at the time of the writing of some of his
sources such as Jean de Lry) was in essence a form of asymmetric consanguinity
although it later transformed into compadrazgo, which is an affinal relationship. As LviStrauss concludes, A sufficient number of convergent indications have been recorded so
that we may consider the outstanding character of the "brother-in-law" relationship a
specific feature of South American sociology, constituting the core of an original
institution of comprage which appears clearly among the Nambikuara and whichmay
formerly have had a much wider distribution on the continent. Perhaps the distinction

between asymmetric consanguinity and asymmetric affinity is a mirage. While I suspect

that symmetry is of little importance in Amazonian societies, it seems that asymmetry is
fundamental and consanguinity and affinity are manipulated to serve it.

References
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