PRIMITIVE PEOPLES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 942, 30 August 1957, Page 18

PRIMITIVE PEOPLES

TUPARI, by Franz Caspar; Bell and Sons, English price 18/6. CHISUNGU, by Audrey I. Richards; Faber and Faber, English price 4 +RANZ CASPAR and Audrey Richards are both anthropologists. Their books are concerned with the time they spent among primitive peoples; the former with the Tupari in the heart of the Matto Grosso in Brazil in 1948, the latter with the Bemba in Northern Rhodesia in 1931. But there the similarity between their works ends. Mr Caspar has written a popular travel book, Dr Richards a technical work of anthropology.

I suppose that the Matto Grosso has a fascination for many readers, which comes partly from Conan Doyle’s Lost World, partly from the adventures and ‘isappearance of Colonel Fawcett, partly from the awful legends of savage Indians, armed with blow pipes and darts envenomed with the lethal curare poison. Mr Caspar’s book will disappoint readers with over-inflamed imaginations. He offers an account of the day to day life of the Tupari; a story which has its own fascination and excitement, but which lacks the highlights of murder, mystery and sudden death. The Tupari were believed to be untamed warriors and cannibals, but like so many legends which Europeans believe of savage peoples, these customs were more honoured in the breach than the observance. Mr Caspar’s book is interesting, but spoiled by writing down to the level of what the author conceives to be his readers’ interests and intelligence, even where such simplification makes for disjointedness or lack of clarity. One suspects, too, that Mr Caspar believes that sex in every other chapter helps sales. Dr Richards makes no such concession to her audience. She describes a girl’s initiation ceremony (chisungu) in detail as+she witnessed it, and she discusses its significance both for the Bemba society and for the study of society in a wider sense. She is concerned with the function of an initiation ceremony in the general operation of matrilineal society; how it reflects and establishes the position of women. in a society which is organised through the mother’s group, but yet depends largely upon the men for fts physical survival. Dr Richards’s book is technical, but not difficult. Her descriptions and her explanations seem to me more satisfying because they add to the fascination of her story a theory which makes sense

of it.

Francis

West