Appendix 1 - Named groups

Summary

Named groups

The following account covers nearly all the people living on the Pirá-paraná and its tributaries. However, it also covers some regions outside the Pirá-paraná and leaves out isolated individuals living inside the Pirá-paraná area but belonging to groups mainly located outside it. There is no such thing as a correct account of the grouping of sibs into larger units. The names of the sibs, their seniority ordering and their membership in larger descent units are all open to dispute among Indians. There are only relatively high and relatively low degrees of consensus over certain aspects of the descent-group structure. I cannot possibly represent the many conflicting accounts I heard, and so I have combined them into a single one as best as I can. The order of my lists represents the seniority order of sibs as far as possible; among the Barasana group, the first is the most senior and the last, the most junior. Even the least well-known sibs I include were mentioned on several separate occasions. Whenever I have consistent information on the specialist role of a sib, I include it; from the distribution of specialist roles it will be clear that some of my major exogamous units include more than one ‘Simple Exogamous Group’ structure. Starred groups are those often referred to, but said to be extinct.