The Yanomamo are a tribe of twenty thousand who live in about two hundred and fifty widely dispersed villages in Brazil and Venezuela. It was first thought that the Yanomamo were a group of hunter-gatherers, but contrary to that thought they actually cultivate their own crops for food. They also hunt and forage, but only as needed. While the Yanomamo travel for several weeks when the jungle fruits and vegetables are ripe, they are a tribal society settled in villages, which break into small groups to go off on collecting expeditions. During such expeditions, game such as wild pigs, large and small birds, monkeys, deer, rodents, and anteaters, are hunted. The bulk of the Yanomamo food, more than eighty percent, is grown in their village gardens. The size of the garden is dictated by the size of the family it must feed. Because village headmen will have the responsibility of entertaining visitors and sponsoring feasts, they plant and care for larger plots. Plantain is their most important domesticated crop. Manioc, taro, and sweet potatoes are also cultivated along with cane, used for arrow manufacture, and tobacco, a crop of central importance. All women, men, and children chew tobacco daily and guard it jealously. The Yanomamo word for being poor is literally translated as without tobacco. Cotton is also grown in the village gardens to provide the materials for hammocks and clothes. The Yanomamo envision the universe as having four layers hovering atop one another with a thin layer of space between them. The top most layer is empty, the second is sort of like Christianity’s heaven where the souls of the deceased go after death except there isn’t any pearly gates and the dead continue on in their after lives as they would down on Earth. The third layer is the one where the Yanomamo live in, which they say was created when a piece of the second layer fell off. The bottom most layer, the Yanomamo say, was crea...
