Word: manioc
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...Yawalapiti, a primitive, vegetable-eating, pot-bellied folk were minding their daily affairs in their village on a source branch of the Rio Zingu. Women were tending babies, or grating manioc, or preparing the red paint with which they protect their naked bodies against insects. The bob-haired men were fishing with spear or bow & arrow, clearing manioc fields or fetching firewood. Some were erecting great communal houses of wicker. Although not new in anthropology, the construction of the houses was original with the Yawalapiti, who never saw any other houses. They invented trusses of tree trunks to bridge over...
...those tokens the Yawalapiti knew that the Great Gods who had flown over their villages were not evil. They would return. Each morning the Yawalapiti women prepared manioc cakes and beverage and the entire tribe turned their faces to the south praying that the return would be soon. It occurred after seven weeks of prayer. From a jungle stream paddled Vincent Petrullo, his guides shouting that they wanted welcome. The Yawalapiti chief headman, wearing a diadem of jaguar hide, greeted him skeptically. When explanations were over, every one laughed loudly about the Great Gods. The women formed in a line...
...southeast of you." Thus through many generations they have developed an uncanny sense of direction. After hours of night marching over ridges, down ravines, through swamps, I have seen my porters arrive at a strange village, in a strange neighborhood, squat down to cook their rice and manioc, and immediately begin their "hand me . . . pass me." Neither the man requesting the service nor the other man ever hesitated-he knew. At such times I have checked their directions with a pocket compass, found them correct, sent them off into gales of jeering laughter by thus doubting their sense of direction...