The Forest People Summary

The Forest People The forest people is referring to the pygmies of Africa. They live simple yet, complex lives. We might view them as less complex because of how small their population is. However they have rules and ways to achieve higher status than others. This book gives a great account from an anthropologist of what these people were like in the 1950s. It is important to remember that the pygmies in the Inturi forest might be living completely different lives. This book is only a snapshot of what life was like. There were a few things that caught my attention in this book that I would to expand upon. These ideas are music, relationship with the Negros, and the structure of their “village”. In the first chapter the author talks about
the music the pygmies play. He says that to an outsider their music just sounds like random noise. Their music serves a purpose however and is greatly loved by the people. In our culture brings us sweet relief after a long day. I’m sure tribes, clans, villages of people no matter what kind of music they are into find it therapeutic. In our society music is mostly for entertainment purpose only in other cultures music’s purpose is a much larger scale. Music can provide entertainment or can be the background noise for passing down oral stories. Which is exactly what we observed in the Baka movie. In the movie the father sat with his children and sang a story. This provides entertainment as well a lesson. Oral traditions are very important to most cultures who do not have organized archives. These stories to them explain how the earth was made or why something happens. The pygmies of course had similar tales that I sure hope they continue passing down the generations today. Losing a cultures oral history is losing the culture itself. This Is why many anthropologist today are trying to preserve languages that are traditionally spoken not transcribed. If the project is successful the music and the essence of culture will not be lost forever. This task is a daunting one, but one that needs to done nonetheless. The pygmies love to sing and play their music with one another, but pygmies aren’t the only people they encounter. Outside the thick lush forest that the pygmies call home there are the Negros.
The Negros have plantations and much larger villages. The pygmies sometimes work on the plantations to make a meager wage to buy items from the market in the Negro village. The Negros seem far more dependent on agriculture than hunter and gathering like the pygmies do. They seem to have mutual respect and often trade with one another. Meat is the most common item the pygmies would bring. I believe these two groups would have major difficulty without the other and are interdependent. Some speculated that the pygmies were dependent upon the Negros. I find this statement completely false. The Negros got most of their meat from the pygmies, which of course should make them equal to the Negros. The most interesting thing I thought about these two groups is that they send their young boys around 9-12 to become men in an initiation process. If either group found themselves superior the likely hood that they would become men together is very slim. From the authors point of view though the pygmies seem more laid back and enjoying life more. While the Negros seem to be more rigid and more concerned with rules. This is displayed when the pygmies allowed the author to stay at the initiation camp even though no outsiders are not supposed to be permitted. However this time no Negro boys are of age so the absence of the Negros allow the pygmies to get away with it. The Negros seem to be more concerned with
tradition, while at the same time living an untraditional life. They no longer practice subsistence and slowly becoming part of the larger global network. Pygmies are still in their small world at this (the 1950s), but they are also slowly moving away from hunting and gathering. They are beginning to work for others, which is a disaster in the authors’ eyes because they are becoming a different culture. These two groups obviously have a very healthy mutual interdependent relationship, but we can break down the relationships in the pygmies’ life even closer to home. Pygmies live in nomadic tribes that consist of two to four families.
This book follows a tribe of family of four. The family unit in the life of the pygmies is of the utmost importance. Pygmies have no defined leader but those who are a good hunter and/or have a large family get higher prestige. The larger the family the more you become respected. Having a large family means more hands to work. The most popular way to hunt game is with nets, which requires a few people to hold the nets and some chasing the game into the net. From this information we can truly understand why bigger is better if you’re a pygmy. It is far more likely to eat when there are many all pitching in. Polygyny is also very common, but as discussed in class it’s not a man’s sexual fantasies fulfilled. The purpose of plural marriage is more offspring to help provide more food. At this point there were also selling some game in exchange for money. This money was used to buy goods that were not available to them prior markets. It is important to remember that just because you didn’t very many children did not make you an outcast. There was a man the author mentioned that was an excellent hunter, but only had one child. His prowess in hunter outweighed his low birth rate in his family. If you were a lousy hunter and had few children I do not the pygmy people would actually shun anyone, but they may not take his opinion as highly as someone else. Men and women seem pretty close to equal in this society just
as they had in the baka movie. The reason for this equality I believe is they all work as a team to hunt and gather food. From young to old no role in the food acquiring process is too small. Everyone is important and the pygmies recognize this but don’t allow each other feel better than the others. They might be a superior hunter and a little influence, but they are to be humble at the same time. This practice is very similar to the Christmas in the Kalahari earlier from class. In that story the practice of belittling ones and others achievements is a prized trait. I feel the pygmies think somewhat similar. Pygmies may have seemed like barbarians to the western world, but ty are far from that. They are an organized society that interacts with others civilly. Their organization may not look familiar to an outsider, but they all have job to help provide for the family. They are independent and free from most influences of the rest of the world. The exception being camp Putnam. Today some pygmies might be incorporated into modern society, while there may be some that still live how the author describes. This way of life is most likely on the brink of extension if not already. The Negros probably have expanded the amount of plantations. The plantations infringes upon the land of the pygmies eventually if they continue to grow so it inevitable to eventually fully join the rest of society. The pygmies are a talented society that had love for everything and appreciated each day, but the fact they and other cultures a quickly disappearing. When I began this paper I mentioned that oral histories was one of the most important things to preserve in a culture. If we keep their oral traditions alive even when their long gone they will still be remembered and not become the forgotten forest people.