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As stated in the previous section, the present
Ikpeng village is located on the Middle Xingu, below the
village of Terra Preta, of the Trumai. The model of the
Ikpeng village contains the "moon" or ritual plaza, consisting
of an ellipse with two fires, as a cerimonial center.
In the ellipse there is a covered hut with a double sloping
roof and no walls, called the mungnie, which is not a
men's house, as in other Xingu societies, for the women
generally have access to the place. It is rather at once,
an atelier for artwork - with better illumination than
the very dark dwelling-places -, a rehearsal room for
cerimonial preparations, a place where friends can drink
and eat outside the domestic context, and, finally, the
"arsenal" where a few men, under strict tabu, make the
headdress called otxilat, which represents the principal
apparel of the warrior.
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In general, the great Ikpeng rituals are held on
the central plaza and mark life passages, most of the
time involving the whole village. In the final phase of
the initiation cycle (which culminates with the tattooing
of the faces of boys from eight to ten years old), for
example, the hunters return from having spent several
weeks in the forest carrying pieces of smoked meat, which
are brought in an immense basket, with the help of a front
band and supplementary nets, that is placed on the plaza
for the distribution of the meat.
The cerimonial paths are always elliptical, given
that the dances are made around two points, one of which
is the center of the house and the other the center
of the mungnie. Even when the village consists of several
houses and the mungnie is in the center (which is the
case of the present village), each house forms with
the mungnie a circuit for the elliptical dance.
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01:: House in construction in the Ikpeng village. Photo: Eduardo Biral, 1990.
02:: Ikpeng dwelling represented by a Kalapalo. Drawing: Tahugaki Kalapalo, 2001.
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