The Gathering of the Clans: The Making of the Palikurnaoné

Abstract

The article focuses on the process of naoné-nationhood-of the Palikur, a Native American people of northern Brazil and southern French Guiana, from 1500 onward. It is described how, in counteraction to colonial expansion, a corpus of preexisting clans combined with diverse other ethnic entities to create, at its height (c. 1800), a dominant regional polity, itself linked to wider cross-ethnic macropolities under a single leader. New data are offered to support the thesis that such formations, which coevally existed elsewhere in Amazonia, were not just a response to new circumstances but also the renewal of a pre-Conquest sociopolitical strategy. The article also addresses the role of leadership in historical Amerindian macropolitical systems and suggests that a chief's skills as a peacemaker were no less necessary than his skills as a warmonger.At its simplest, the word naoné, in the language of the Palikur, an Arawakan-speaking people of Brazil and French Guiana, means nation. It also signifies among other things each of the separate subgroups, or clans, that jointly comprise that nation. It is with these two senses and the relationship between the phenomena they represent that this article is concerned. Building on an earlier article (Passes 2002) and on Françoise Grenand and Pierre Grenand's important ethnohistorical work (1987) on Amapá state, North Brazil, the article discusses the creation of the Palikur nation as a bipartite formation, structured along geographical lines, before and immediately after the Conquest, and its subsequent transformation, through constant agglomeration, into a powerful political confederacy of mutually independent ''clans'' based in northern Amapá. It will be shown how, throughout the period of colonial expansionism, and in spite of the prolonged Franco-Portuguese rivalry regarding its possession, this region of marshes Ethnohistory 51:2 (spring 2004)

Extensive Networks of Megalithic Monuments at the North Bank of the Mouth of the Amazon River

“…This is a region historically assigned as the traditional territory of Arawakan speaking groups, as the contemporary Palikur. In fact, this zone was, according to ethnohistorical sources and Palikur emic history, the territory of several arawak or arawaknized groups that formed a great clan confederation, which existed until 18 th century (14)(15)(16)(17).…”

The place of politics: powerful speech and women speakers in everyday Pa’ikwené (Palikur) life

“…Local leaders are sometimes female and women are active in political decision‐making generally (Passes 1998: chap. 5; 2004; cf. Capiberibe 2001: 74).…”

“…3 3 See Viveiros de Castro (1992: 260), Fisher (2001: 116‐17, 132‐3), McCallum (1989: 223 ff., 247‐8; 1990; 2001: 69‐70, 102, 108, 111‐17, 126), Overing Kaplan (1975: 51), and Passes (1998: 78; 2004), apropos the Araweté, Kayapo, Cashinahua, Piaroa, and Pa’ikwené respectively. …”