Word: kurelu
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...remark-piece of writing. Texts on primitive man are generally of two varieties: the standard, jargon-crammed ethnographies, and the informal, mildly sensational accounts of "my three years trapped among the savage head-hunters." This book is neither; diary-like, it instead relates incidents occurring among the Kurelu tribe over a seven month period. Its purpose is to give a non-technical account of the way these people live, to give with quiet dignity a feeling of what it is like to be a stone...
...task is not easy, for the Kurelu lead a life so different from that of Western man that his culture must seem totally irrational and paradoxical. They are an agricultural people, and warfare is an important element in their lives. But it is a different kind of warfare, fought on strange terms with odd rules...
...such ritualized warfare, with its lack of emphasis on large numbers of casualties seems inexplicable to modern observers, the Kurelu pattern of revenge must be comfortingly familiar. Revenge for these people is a serious and bloodthirsty business, and it takes a form completely different from that of open warfare. Revenge is taken by a small raiding party, which slips into enemy territory and slaughters one of the offending opposition. It is better, more prestigious, to avenge a death by killing a warrior, but it is not necessary. A child, or a woman working in the fields will do well...
...idyllic life. While they are not indiscriminantly savage and violent, the Kurelu cannot be said to be living the peaceful, stressless existence the romanticists had postulated...
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