Data collected by UNICEF

Data on the Parintintin language

Alternative names: Kagwahiv, Kawahib, Cabahyba, Tupi-Kawahib

“Kagwahiv” means “us, our people”; it is the self-designation shared by several groups living on the middle and upper-Rio Madeira, and in the center of the state of Rondônia. The group furthest north is usually designated under the name “Parintintin” – probably a Mundukuru name.

While for a long time the name Parintintin was used referring to the Kagwahiv groups in general, nowadays it only refers to the Kagwahiv groups living on the Indigenous Territories of Ipixuna and Nove de Janeiro.

Area: Brazil, state of Amazonas, municipality of Humaitá, IT of Ipixuna and Nove de Janeiro.

Classification: Tupi family, Tupi-Guarani branch, group VI.

We hereby follow the classification established by Jensen (1999).

The Kagwahiv self-designation is shared over a set of groups whose idioms are very close and share a number of cultural features as well as the same social organization. Several sources consider it as one and the same language including different dialects.

In that case two main dialectal groups are to be distinguished (as in Fabre, 2005):

The North dialectal group, including the variants spoken by the Parintintin, the Tenharim, as well as the last surviving Juma.

The South dialectal group, including the variants spoken by the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, the Amondawa (or Amunduva) and the Karipuna do Rondônia (not to be confused with the Pano “Karipuna do Guaporé”).

These different dialects essentially differ on a lexical level.

All of these groups are believed to be descendants of the Cabahyba, who lived on the upper- Tapajós until the 18th century.

Number of speakers: The Parintintin population counts 418 people, according to the FUNASA (2010). But the number of speakers of the ancestral language within this population it likely to be extremely low and probably doesn’t exceed a dozen elderly people, according to UNESCO. Chances are that the younger generations have given up the language in favor of Portuguese.

Language status: No official status.

According to Linguamón: “Portuguese is the only official language of Brazil. Current linguistic legislation for other languages pertains only to the education sector, and in particular bilingual and intercultural primary school teaching (exclusively in indigenous communities). In reality, there are, however, very few qualified bilingual teachers”.

Vitality & Transmission: In the Parintintin communities, as it appears, the language has been given up in favor of Portuguese for generations and the last speakers are very old. The Kawahib language in the Parintintin group is on the brink of extinction.

UNESCO considers the language “critically endangered”.

Historical observations

The Kagwahiv are among the peoples of Brazil who were studied by Claude Lévi-Strauss during his visit to Brazil in 1935 (he calls them “Tupi-Cawahib”), and to whom he devoted a whole chapter in Tristes Tropiques (1955).

They were “pacified” by an expedition led by Curt Nimuendajù in 1923, retracing their origins to the Cabahyba, who lived on the upper-Tapajos until the 18th century.

They were chased away by the Munduruku (another Tupi group, non-Guarani), armed by the Portuguese. They moved west, probably scattered into smaller groups, one wave after the other, which could explain the multiplicity of “Kagwahiv” groups. There might have been over twenty of them in the beginning of the 20th century. Most of them have disappeared nowadays. Despite occasional inner conflicts, the Kagwahiv remain recognized as one and the same people.

They now live on small patches of land, scattered over the vast territory they use to occupy, chased away by mining operators, landlords, and divided by the ongoing construction of the trans-Amazonian highway.

Ethnographical observations

The Kagwahiv societies are characterized (with rare exceptions) by social dualism, i.e. a society made of two moieties, two distinct and exclusive groups, where an individual belongs to either one or the other. In the Parintintin society, these two moieties have bird names: Mutum (curassow, in English, a galliform, a bird that does not fly) and Kwandù (the harpy eagle, one of the largest birds of prey in Amazonia).

The moieties are patrilineal (the individual belongs to the same moiety as their father) and exogamous (marriage occurs between members of opposite moieties). The two moieties are common to almost all the Kagwahiv; the mutum (or mytum) is always the animal symbolizing the first moiety, but the animal symbolizing the second moiety varies: Taravé (a yellow and blue ara) for the Tenharim population, Kanindé (also an ara) for the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, etc.

This social system appears unique among Tupi-Guarani language populations. It may have been inherited from the Rikbatska, a Macro-Jê language population who used to neighbor ancestors of the Kagwahiv.

For the Parintintin, however, this dualist society is complexified by the existence of a “third category”, Gwyrai’gwára – whose members are considered Kwandù without being submitted to exogamous practices –, symbolized by the japù (or oropendola), a small swamp bird.

Parintintin villages are relatively small and traditionally organized around one common house home to several families. These common houses, these days, tend to disappear in favor of individual family houses.

For more on the Parintintin and Kagwahiv populations, please refer to the excellent Povos Indígenas no Brasil website.

As well, of course, as the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss.

Sources

De Castro Alves, Flávia (2010). Brazil Amzónico. In « Atlas sociolingüístico de pueblos indígenas en América Latina », UNICEF. Tome 1, Pp 245- 264

Fabre, Alain. 2005. Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos. Available for online consultation [26/10/2011]

Online sources

Data collected by UNICEF on Parintintin [26/10/2011]

Pages on Parintintin on the Povos Indígenas no Brasil website [26/10/2011]

Page on Kagwahiv (here Kawahib) on the Linguamón website [26/10/2011]

Additional bibliography

Betts, LaVera. 1981. Dicionário Parintintín-Português, Português-Parintintín. Brasília: SIL.

Jensen, Cheryl (1999).”Tupi-Guarani”. InThe Amazonian languages, R.M.W. Dixon and Alexandra Y.Aikhenvald (eds) Cambridge University Press, 1999

Kracke, Waud H.1984. “Kagwahiv moieties: form without function?”. In: K. Kensinger (ed.), Marriage practices in lowland South America: 99-124. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1948. “The Tupi-Cawahib”. HSAI 3: 299-305.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1955. “Tupi-Kawahib”. In: C. Lévi-Strauss, Tristes tropiques: 379-445. París.

Nimuendajú, Curt 1924. “Os Parintintín do rio Madeira”. JSAP 16: 201-278.

Peggion, Edmundo Antônio 1996. Forma e função. Uma etnografia do sistema de parentesco Tenharim (Kagwahiv, AM), Dissertação de Mestrado. Campinas: UNICAMP.

Rodrigues, Aryon D. (1999), “Tupi” . In The Amazonian languages, R.M.W. Dixon and Alexandra Y.Aikhenvald (eds) Cambridge University Press, 1999

See Atlas sociolingüístico de pueblos indígenas en América Latina and Fabre (2005) for further bibliographical resources.