Traditionally the Suruí Paiter lived in communal
houses divided internally according to family groups.
Today, the situation has changed a great deal; however,
in order to better understand social organization, we
will illustrate how traditionally houses were organized.
The houses are long, shaped in the form of an ellipse,
measuring about 25 by 8 meters, with a single door on
the more narrow part. They are tall constructions, in
the shape of a Gothic arch, and may be as high as 8
meters. The frame is of wood and is covered with thatch.
Treebark, half a meter high, forms the base of the wall
that protects the house from rain, the rest being of
thatch.
At the entrance there is a space for common use, where,
among other objects of household use, there are large
ceramic pots, belonging to each woman of the house and
which are used to make various kinds of soup and ceremonial
drink called "i", made from corn. On the days
when the women cook together, squatting, with long bamboo
spoons, one can hear in the early morning the sound
of the mortar, where the corn is being pounded for soup
or flour. Also, every day the women make the regular
movement, on foot, of bending the trunk up and down
and holding the heavy pestle.
In the other spaces of the longhouse, pairs of wooden
posts (joined by beams about a meter and a half from
the ground) divide up the nuclear families (a married
couple and children). On these beams, five or six people
hang their hammocks, one next to another. There are
few objects, only the food brought from the garden for
two or three days, some game meat or fish, and a few
pieces of corn bread. On the ground, there are clay
pots, small mats set by the posts, when not in use,
and one or another basket. In high places, bananas are
strung up to ripen and corn for seeds and other uses;
there also they keep arrows, ornaments, and, today,
suitcases or baskets with clothes. The wooden frame
is useful for keeping small belongings, and for sticking
in mirrors and combs.
The marriage system reveals in part the occupation
of the spaces of the large longhouse. As they are polygamous,
several men with two or more wives, many of the wives
sleep in compartments separate from their husband.
Each small family group has a fire for cooking, besides
the larger fire and buckets at the door. Below each
hammock, a fire is made and at night the women wake
up all the time to get more firewood and kindle the
flames. In this family scenario, the place of the head
of the house is the first to one of the sides of the
door, where he lives with one of his wives, and from
there the house is divided up into several compartments,
each family compartment being a unit of social life.
There people converse, lying down or sitting, passing
around husked corn. The hammocks swing back and forth
and the bodies warmed by the fire touch each other;
while babies are passed from one hand to another. Each
nucleus is connected to another and from one hammock,
a person converses with everyone else in the longhouse,
children go back and forth bringing chunks of food kept
in baskets, women sweep the floor, others are seated
on mats in small groups doing small chores and at times
talking in low voices.
The house is far from being a quiet place. Everything
happens there, the stage of many stories, each of which
has its refuge in hammocks that shelter from the violent
heat and from the sweat of the gardens. The longhouse
is a fresh and cool place, the darkness reduces the
burning sun to a point on the door. From one house to
another food circulates following the obligations of
kinship. Little earthen pots or baskets coming and going,
and there are also constant quick visits to the house
of a brother or affine who has brought meat.
Present-day Dwellings
Today, the elders of the villages continue to live
in longhouses. But the number of wooden houses (with
asbestos or mud covering, wooden walls and polished
cement floors) has been increasing) and there is even
one or another of bricks, following the architecture
of the houses of the colonists. In these houses, instead
of domestic groups, there are nuclear families.
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