The Tibagy Kaingang
David Hicks
The Kaingang, who together with the Aweikoma constitute the southern
branch of the Gé-speaking peoples, are widely scattered about the four southern
Brazilian states of Sao Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul-
Several subtribes once inhabited the Misiones region of eastern Argentina, but
these are now extinct. It is only to be expected that subtribes often separated
from one another by many hundreds of miles should have developed idio
syncrasies, and substantial variation in culture and institutions have been
reported as between the Northern group of subtribes (located in Sao Paulo)
and the rest. Ihe latter consists of the Southern subtribes (located in Ri°
Grande do Sul) and the Central subtribes (located in Paraná and Santa Cata
rina) ; between these subtribes lesser differences have been remarked. 1 b uS
while one can sensibly refer to something called “Kaingang culture” no blanket
of uniformity covers the three or four thousand hunters, fishers, food collec
tors, and agriculturalists making up this tribe.
Now, in the Santa Catarina reservation of the Duque de Caxias, there
formerly existed a subtribe that was studied between December 1932 and
January 1934 by Jules Henry who identified it as pertaining to the Rain-
gang tribe (1964: xxi et passim). This classification I have subsequently chal
lenged 1 , and I denote the Duque de Caxias community by the appellation
“Aweikoma”. Although this subtribe and the subtribes of the Kaingang
possess (I employ the ethnographic present tense when referring to the non
extinct Aweikoma) a number of similar cultural and institutional traits, their
1 See Hicks (1966, 1971a, 19716). The first draft of certain sections of the presea
essay formed part of the B. Litt. thesis which I submitted to the University of O x 0
in 1965 for examination by Professor E. E. Evans-Pritchard and Mr. Francis HuxlbT
both of whom I wish to thank for their useful comments on that earlier analysis- ( -
supervisor at the time was Dr. Rodney Needham who typically devoted intense
attention to my research problems. To him go my special thanks. The award of a -
University of New York Faculty Fellowship for the summer of 1969 enabled me to
write the previous draft with no financial preoccupations, and to the Research Foun
tion of that institution I express my grateful thanks.