I've always been quite interested in indigenous people from around the world. Yesterday, while cruising the web, I found this book: Light at the Edge of the World by Wade Davis. It's kind of a summation of his very interesting life living among different groups of people around the world. Thought I would include a passage for all you water starved canoeists from some of his time spent in South America.
The most sacred object of all...was also the most utilitarian, the very canoes that had carried us for days now into the forests. Warao means "Owners of canoes," and in a world of water, the people not only travel by canoe, they virtually live in them: sleeping, playing, cooking, trading. To be a builder of canoes is to become a man. Not to possess a canoe is to be relegated among the undistinguished souls of the dead, impoverished, unfed, the lowest of the low. An infant's first canoe is the flat root of a sangrito tree, a plank laid down on the floor of the hut, a surface to practice upon. Before a child can walk, he can paddle, and after a week in Winikina, I grew used to the sight of three-year-old boys and girls, alone, fearlessly maneuvering small dugouts across the wide expanse of the river.
Canoes, in addition to providing an essential means of transportation, moving goods and people throughout the delta, are, more profoundly, the vessels of Warao culture. The toy-like dugout of the child, the discarded hull slowly rotting beneath the landing, the massive seagoing craft that once journeyed to Trinidad and beyond -- all represent the mystical knowledge transmitted by the master builder and acquired by the apprentice during their construction, every step of which is dominated by shamanic insight and regulation.
No tree can be felled without the permission of the ancients, the ancestral carpenters who receive offerings of sago starch and tobacco. The spirit of the trees lives on in the canoes, which are carved from the embodiment of Dauarani, the Mother of the Forest, whose womb is both birth canal and coffin. The master builder, who must abstain from sex with his wife until the canoe is consecrated, is visited daily by the spirit of the tree; and as the canoe takes shape as the vulva of the goddess, the very act of carving becomes a mystical act of love, intercourse with the divine.
What do you fellow canoe makers think about that? Especially the part about abstaining from sex till you get the thing on the water? Might speed up my build times a little.
The most sacred object of all...was also the most utilitarian, the very canoes that had carried us for days now into the forests. Warao means "Owners of canoes," and in a world of water, the people not only travel by canoe, they virtually live in them: sleeping, playing, cooking, trading. To be a builder of canoes is to become a man. Not to possess a canoe is to be relegated among the undistinguished souls of the dead, impoverished, unfed, the lowest of the low. An infant's first canoe is the flat root of a sangrito tree, a plank laid down on the floor of the hut, a surface to practice upon. Before a child can walk, he can paddle, and after a week in Winikina, I grew used to the sight of three-year-old boys and girls, alone, fearlessly maneuvering small dugouts across the wide expanse of the river.
Canoes, in addition to providing an essential means of transportation, moving goods and people throughout the delta, are, more profoundly, the vessels of Warao culture. The toy-like dugout of the child, the discarded hull slowly rotting beneath the landing, the massive seagoing craft that once journeyed to Trinidad and beyond -- all represent the mystical knowledge transmitted by the master builder and acquired by the apprentice during their construction, every step of which is dominated by shamanic insight and regulation.
No tree can be felled without the permission of the ancients, the ancestral carpenters who receive offerings of sago starch and tobacco. The spirit of the trees lives on in the canoes, which are carved from the embodiment of Dauarani, the Mother of the Forest, whose womb is both birth canal and coffin. The master builder, who must abstain from sex with his wife until the canoe is consecrated, is visited daily by the spirit of the tree; and as the canoe takes shape as the vulva of the goddess, the very act of carving becomes a mystical act of love, intercourse with the divine.
What do you fellow canoe makers think about that? Especially the part about abstaining from sex till you get the thing on the water? Might speed up my build times a little.
