STEINEN1894-001 - primary ethnography
Nahuquä matavu fish-form bullroarer
Brazil - Kulisehu (Curisevo) river, Upper Xingu, Mato Grosso - South America
Play / practical
matavu
Source term: Schwirrholz — matavu
matavu = bullroarer (Upper Xingu Carib; ~ Arawak matapu)
On the Kulisehu river in 1887–88, Karl von den Steinen collected bullroarers from the Carib-speaking Nahuquä carved in the form of fish, and set their name down in his comparative word-list: matavu — printed directly opposite the Arawak Mehinaku word matapu. One word, two language families: the clearest trace of a cult term that crossed the Upper Xingu's deepest linguistic line. The zigzag running down the boards, he wrote, "counts here too as the image of the snake," the same reading the Nahuquä gave the ornament on their dance gear. Their Carib descendants — the Kalapalo and Kuikuro of today — no longer keep the instrument; these fish-form boards are the word's only document on that side of the family line.
Am Schwirrhölzern der Nahuquä … kommen Zickzacks derselben Art wie auf dem Rückenholz vor und gelten auch hier als Bild der Schlange.
On the bull-roarers of the Nahuquä … zigzags of the same kind as on the back-board occur, and here too they count as the image of the snake.
von den Steinen 1894, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens (Maskenornamentik chapter; figures p. 327)
- Object
- Fish-form wooden bullroarer boards, figured on p. 327 (plate 22, Schwirrhölzer Fischform); the zigzag ornament on the boards is read as the image of the snake.
- Function
- Collected and figured among the Nahuquä mask- and dance-ornament sphere; von den Steinen records the object, its name, and its snake-image ornament, but no specific rite for the Nahuquä boards themselves.
- Source
- Karl von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1894). Word-list appendix (from p. 525): Nahuquä "Schwirrholz — matavu", opposite Mehinakü "Schwirrholz — matapu" — the Carib-side attestation of the Arawak cult word (regular p ~ v). Figures p. 327. Collated by Zerries 1953:281–283. Main text p. 327 gives a different Carib…
- Source location
Page references
word-list appendix from p. 525; figures p. 327 (plate 22); Levi-Strauss, HSAI 3 (1948), p. 347 (fish form, no sexual prohibitions) and pp. 330-331 Fig. 34 caption g, h
- Source confidence
- medium Kulisehu (Curisevo) river villages visited on von den Steinen's 1887–88 route; not an object-level findspot
- Snake-linked