O visível e o invisível nas relações de contato dos grupos Jê Meridionais: uma análise da caça, guerra e dos rituais funerários como relações de predação, produção e controle dos poderes latentes da alteridade

Abstract

The present work aims at analyzing some expressions of religious magical thinking, especially the relations between hunting and war, in the historical universe of the contact of southern Jê groups during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, regarding their relations with the external world of otherness. Mediated by the endless wars, the relations of these Indians with the non-Indian outside world proposes a predation from the outside for the production of the interior, in which process the shamanism acts as an instance of control of the invisible powers for the success of the capture of symbolic and material goods from abroad. Predation through war allowed the group to appropriate subjective parts of the other, but also of objectified parts, which enable not only the incorporation of virtues, but also body parts of the enemy. In this context, we intend to establish some relationships between the funerary urns and the dead (beast), the war and the enemy and the hunting and slaughtered beast, thinking through a dialogue between Anthropology, Archeology and History, we can propose certain analogies between these different ways of relating to the outside world that was probably present in the history and culture of these southern Jê groups. The basic material of research was both a historical documentation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries pertaining to the region of today's southern Goiás, Triângulo Mineiro and north of São Paulo and the bibliography from archeology which was used as an ethnographic bibliography on the Jê groups that allowed the exercise of an ethnographic projection. Based on this, it is proposed that the visible powers of warriors and hunters were added to the invisible shaman's powers and its actions in situations of conflict, in which, animals, dead (beast) and other people are enemies, but also holders of certain powers and goods and also responsible for an ontological production, controlled by dreamy and warrior shamans, which are subjectively and objectively appropriated in hunting, war and funeral rituals for their own production and reproduction of their cultural social machine.