|
|
|
|
|
|
|
of superior age, medicine, or power, but on whether or not they have a good back. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Part of the explanation for this may lie with the significance in the ideology of the practice of the hunt of a final contrast not yet explicitly cited, namely, that between private and public activity and knowledge. The former is suspect within the context of the communal hunt, while the latter is affirmed as good. Children are good for performing maleye ekalo because, it is said, children have no knowledge (ndate), or because they do not know sex, or because they do not yet know the affairs of witchcraft. Strangers, too, are devoid of special knowledge of local affairs. Private medicines for attracting game to one's net at the expense of one's fellows is banned, as is the wearing of private medicine belts. Only open and public means of improving one's fortunes, as by talking, dancing animal-mime dances, encouraging dreaming, performing nya zonga, or performing daleye, are approved. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The private/public contrast is particularly sharp when we compare the aims, conduct, and outcome of communal hunts to those of private hunts. The aim of the private hunt is the killing of the maximum number of animals possible for private household consumption and household sale.5 The aim of the paye leka communal hunt is the wakening of the forest for the benefit of the whole village and the killing and public sharing of game among hunters, villagers, and guests. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Preparations for communal hunts are conducted publicly; for private hunts they are conducted in secret. The repair of nets and weapons, the feeding of hunting dogs, and the amassing of food stores are carried out openly in preparation for the communal hunt; efforts to camouflage these steps are routinely taken in preparation for private hunts, and weapons and stores may be secreted in hiding places beside forest trails a day or two before departure. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Departure protocols for public and private hunts conform to the same contrastive logic. The day of the paye leka communal hunt is announced publicly and all lineage households within the village unit are invited to participate. Hunters assemble and depart together by daylight at a publicly agreed on, prearranged time and place. By contrast, the day of "entering the forest" is a closely guarded secret for the private hunt. Private hunters leave separately, before dawn, by private paths from the backs of houses. They leave in secrecy; if a private hunter is seen leaving wearing a medicine belt, either by a woman or by another man, he turns back, that day's hunt annulled. The hostile eyes of a single villager spotting a hunter before he makes good his escape to the forest can potentially ruin the hunt. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Once in the forest, the publicly recognized voice of the huntmaster rather than the individual voices of the assembled hunters determines where the nets are to be raised and when they are to be lowered and rolled up for the resting period that precedes a new raising. Rules governing the conduct of the hunt explicitly and publicly mandate a state of unusual equality among participants. Rotation of hunters' positions along the circle of nets at each new raising ensures that no one hunter will gain a better position for capturing and killing game than his peers. Further, in the conduct of the public hunt, private medicine belts are |
|
|
|
|
|