1 - Fetching the Outside among the Makushi

Summary

This chapter initially begins with a narrative concerning how the author first came to Surama Village in Guyana in 2012. After discussing the author’s path to the village, as well as the author’s positionality in the field, the chapter describes the landscape of the Makushi people in Guyana. It provides an overview of the relational modes (particularly kinship and shamanism) through which Makushi people in Surama and beyond have engaged with outsiders (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) in the past and present. The chapter then summarises historical Makushi encounters with European colonisation involving the Dutch, English, Portuguese, and Spanish during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as Anglican missionisation during the mid nineteenth century. It provides a brief history of Surama Village, which is the Makushi village that is centred throughout the book. The chapter closes by providing context and background for contemporary transformations among the Makushi people in Surama Village.

I sometimes wonder in a sense whether I found Surama or whether Surama found me. My first encounter with the village occurred in early 2012 when I visited the Surama Eco-Lodge website. With one of the top-rated eco-tourism operations in South America, Surama does not wait for outside visitors to come to them. They actively seek visitors through their highly sophisticated website, promotions on other travel sites, and a broad network of tour providers and travel-related companies. Their online presence actively markets the village and its prearranged tours (often called ‘packages’ in Surama) for tourists. This includes packages for birdwatching, river cruises, exotic fishing, and local culture. Their website provides information on travel logistics, what to bring for a visit (e.g., tropical clothing and malaria medication), and how to reach the eco-lodge from Georgetown on the coast. It is particularly designed to attract foreign tourists (mostly Europeans and North Americans). Although researchers, such as myself, are not the primary targets, we are sometimes drawn in through the same methods.

The Surama Eco-Lodge website includes information for contacting the village. I sent an email and soon received a reply asking about the nature of my visit, the kind of accommodation I would prefer, and any dietary requests I might have. I received a telephone call a few days later from the Surama Eco-Lodge secretary. She asked me what kind of research I wanted to do and explained the process of obtaining the necessary permits from Guyanese governmental agencies in Georgetown. Soon after, I received a permission letter through email from the village and made applications for the research permits. During the summer of 2012, I made my first visit to Surama Village and was warmly welcomed upon arrival at the Surama Eco-Lodge.¹ In 2013, after archival research in the United Kingdom and my second visit to Surama, I started to realise that despite the recency of current methods used to attract tourists the broader process of strategically drawing outsiders into Makushi villages and forming relations of mutual benefit with them has been going on since at least the nineteenth century in Guyana.

I emphasise the process through which I first visited Surama to highlight the sophisticated, strategic, and tourism-related context of contemporary Makushi interactions with outside visitors in the village. I want to make it clear at the beginning that Surama is in no way an isolated community in South America. Many villagers – particularly those working in eco-tourism – are accustomed to modern technology, interactions with outside persons, and the norms of business operations. They regularly use a discourse of customers, clients, and tourism ‘packages’ whilst receiving a steady stream of foreign consultants and NGOs to advise on business practices. Many villagers have cell phones and Facebook profiles – some also have passports, bank accounts, and X (formerly Twitter) feeds. They skilfully form and maintain strategic relations with outsiders and often ‘fetch’ them (like me) to the village. However, outside visitors are more interested in their own encounters with the Makushi than in the Makushi perspective. When I first arrived in Surama Village in 2012, one of my goals was to turn this around to better understand how villagers view their encounters with outsiders in the past and present(see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Welcome sign at Surama Eco-Lodge with image of a howler monkey.

(image by author, 2019)

Although email and eco-tourism are recent developments in the interior of Guyana, Makushi groups in Guyana have a long history of engaging with outsiders, as I will examine and describe throughout this book. They draw outside visitors into their villages and work to develop mutualistic relations through which they obtain outside knowledge, material goods, political and economic connexions, and other desiderata. They aim for mutuality and shared benefits for themselves and their outside allies and partners. As I will introduce in this chapter and examine further in later chapters, the current Makushi strategy of forming relations with outsiders has developed (at least in part) from earlier experiences that involved external predation (particularly slaving) against Makushi groups. During the colonial era in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Makushi villages were heavily raided and enslaved by European settler colonists and Indigenous groups allied to the colonial regimes. As described later, the earliest documented reference to interactions between the Makushi and Europeans emerges within such contexts of enslavement. However, the historical record suggests that Makushi groups soon developed strategies (informed by shamanism) for drawing missionaries and other potentially useful outsiders into their villages for purposes of their own. Eco-tourism in Surama today is consistent with this historically documented strategy of alliance and partnership. This ongoing history and its deeper origins in shamanic practices and related ontological frameworks is the primary theme of this book.

This chapter sets the stage for understanding the continuity of past and present relations between Makushi groups and outsiders in Guyana. In this chapter, I describe the Makushi landscape, social and ontological relations in Surama, and a brief history of Makushi interactions with European outsiders (Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, and British) during the colonial era. I also provide background information on Surama based on oral histories. These dimensions are further examined throughout the rest of the book. The Makushi landscape provides the setting and context for the shamanic frameworks that are seen in Makushi social and ontological relations in Surama and in past and present interactions and strategic alliances with outside visitors. Rooted in shamanic practices of forming alliances with spirits, these strategic relations continue into the present. Building upon this initial description, I show throughout the following chapters how Makushi groups have drawn in outsiders to form strategic relations towards the pursuit of transformative goals.

The Makushi Landscape

When flying into the interior of Guyana, one is struck by its sparsely populated vastness. Interior-bound flights from Guyana’s capital city, Georgetown, traverse large tracts of forest before coming upon remote expanses of thinly vegetated savanna in the Rupununi region. There is an initial sense of isolation as one flies over this portion of the Guyanese landscape. As part of the Guiana Shield, which is one of the oldest geological formations on Earth, this is an ancient landscape and encompasses the territory of the Makushi in Guyana. Although it contains islands of trees and occasional villages with thatched dwellings in its higher elevations, the flooding caused by the annual rainy season dissuades most settlement and vegetation in its lower elevations.

During the primary rainy season, which generally runs from April or May until July or August, these expanses of savanna are indeed quite flooded.² The abundance of standing water gives the appearance of vast lakes and was likely a factor in Walter Raleigh’s belief that El Dorado lay in this vicinity near the mythic Lake Amucu (see Rivière 2006a: 62). However, during the dry season, which is aggravated in some years by the El Niño system, the over-abundance of water changes to a parching dryness.³ This savanna dryness is contrasted with the wetness of nearby tropical forests. Anthropogenic savanna burning maintains the delicate balance between these contrasting ecological zones in the Rupununi. The Makushi dwell between these zones with villages in the savannas and cassava farms mostly located in the nearby forests (Whitaker 2020c, 2023a).

Rising out of these expanses of savanna are two sets of mountain ranges. The northernmost is the Pakaraima range near which Surama Village is located. Moving further south along even larger tracts of savanna lies the Kanuku range in the southern Rupununi closer to the town of Lethem on the border with Brazil. The Makushi territory lies between these two mountain ranges in Guyana and extends into the Brazilian state of Roraima. Despite mobility and the changing locations of villages, this territory has been remarkably consistent for more than two centuries (Santilli 1994: 68, 1997: 49–50, 2001a: 84–85).⁴ The landscape of the Makushi territory – contained within the Guiana Shield – consists of a various mixture of forest and savanna (see Figure 1.2). Other than the mountains, the most notable features of this landscape are the large granitic rock formations that jaggedly thrust from the earth – sometimes in curiously shaped geometries that have provided fodder for mythological tales among the Makushi and other groups in the region. In the north of this territory, and forming part of the boundary between Guyana, Brazil, and Venezuela, is a large tepui (i.e., a table-top mountain) called Mount Roraima, which is a landmark in the cosmology of the Makushi and their neighbours.⁵ This landscape is linked in local historical ecologies with the quasi-shamanic mode through which the Makushi have interacted with non-humans and human outsiders in the past and present.

Figure 1.2 View of the Surama landscape from the Surama Eco-Lodge.

(image by author, 2013)

Makushi Relational Modes and Outsiders in Guyana

Against the backdrop of this rugged and shamanic landscape, practices of drawing in persons from the outside have been central to the history of the Makushi, as well as other Indigenous groups throughout the Guianas and broader lowland South America (see Rivière 1969, 1984, 1995b). Throughout the region, modes of interacting with outsiders range from warfare to trading and exchange to marital formations and broader partnerships and alliances. Across Amazonia, warfare and related forms of conflict and hostility have been thought often to transition over time into relations of trade and exchange, which create the conditions for marriage and partnership (Lévi-Strauss 1943a). Although the Makushi reproduce their village groups by incorporating outsiders as affines, predatory raiding by other regional Indigenous groups historically spurred a strategy of forming alliances and partnerships with some Europeans as allies. Although warfare and alliance are thus related in Makushi history, their case is somewhat unique and raises questions about the past and present bases of other regional alliances.

Similar to other Indigenous societies throughout Amazonia, marriage and shamanism are two of the primary means through which Makushi groups have conceptualised and managed relations with outsiders. Through marriage, Makushi households incorporate outsiders (whether Makushi or non-Makushi) as affines. Due to the incest taboo, marriage necessarily implies the incorporation of outside persons from beyond the immediate group of close kin. A system of incorporating specific categories of persons as affines, who might or might not also be related as consanguines (i.e., relatives by blood), is built into the kinship terminology of the Makushi language. Although the Makushi in Surama today generally use English-based kinship terms, due to influences from missionaries and schooling over the years, the Dravidian-style kinship terminology in Makushi is marked by its use of spousal terms to refer to cross-cousins.⁶ In Makushi kinship terminology, as described to me in Surama, father’s brother and mother’s sister are respectively classified as marked forms of father (pabai’) and mother (mamai’), whilst father’s sister (wa’nï) and mother’s brother (tori’) are respectively classified as aunt (or mother-in-law) and uncle (or father-in-law) (see also Abbott 2009). Mother’s brother can also reportedly be called moishane (by males) and ako or sometimes possibly awo (by females).⁷ A male cross-cousin is called yako (also meaning brother-in-law and friend) by males. A female cross-cousin (mother’s brother’s daughter or father’s sister’s daughter) is classified as ‘little wife’ (o’nobï’ye) whether or not the male speaker (ego) marries her. If he marries her, then she becomes ‘wife’ (o’nobï). In the present, this kinship terminology is infrequently used in Surama, and some uses in the past were likely often classificatory (see Rival and Whitehead 2001: 4–5; see also Rivière 1969). However, it reflects a process, which is both terminological and practical, of reproducing Makushi social groups by incorporating categories of outsiders within the context of kinship. As discussed in Chapters 6 and 7, the yako relationship – in its sense of friendship and reciprocal obligation – provides a relational idiom for forming ongoing partnerships with outsiders.

In the past, according to several villagers in Surama, marriages and marital arrangements were often formed during an end-of-the-year multi-village festival, which was known as Parishara and centred around relations with non-human others. Emphasising beer drinking and dancing, somewhat similar festivals are common throughout the region and sometimes associated with forming matrimonial alliances (see Rivière 2000, 2009; see also Erikson 2004). According to accounts in Surama, Parishara provided a context in which outsiders – both Makushi and sometimes non-Makushi – were invited, brought into the village, and incorporated through marriage as affines.⁸ As among the Trio in Suriname (Grotti 2012: 197–198, 2013: 177; Whitaker 2021b: 85), feasting, dancing, and cassava beer were used to suspend temporarily the boundaries between Makushi villagers and outsiders so that the latter could be incorporated into a new village and household group.

Makushi groups historically practised semi-uxorilocal post-marital residency – that is, the groom lives with the bride’s family (see Santilli 1997: 57, 2001a: 88). Prospective brides and grooms often came from different villages that were already linked through prior marriages. The son-in-law – variously poito, poitoma, or poitorï (see Abbott 2009) – was expected to temporarily live uxorilocally, so that his in-laws (particularly the father-in-law) could benefit from his labour in the form of brideservice.⁹ Sons-in-law were central to political–economic relations in the region (Rivière 1984: 87–94; see Santilli 1994: 72). Although often described in the nineteenth century (Im Thurn 1889: 298–300, 1901: 155–161), as well as in oral histories in Surama, Parishara is no longer practised in Surama. I was told by villagers that it is no longer found anywhere in Guyana in its historical form. Alongside waning parental control over spousal selection, the festival has lost whatever role it had in marital formation and has fallen into desuetude. Versions of the dances still occur during ‘culture shows’ and similar performances (see Riley 2003), as well as during Amerindian Heritage Month in September, but they no longer seem to involve marriages nor other formal incorporations of outsiders. Nevertheless, according to villagers in Surama, the Parishara festival was historically one of the primary occasions during which local Makushi groups formed and managed partnerships with others.

Makushi groups also incorporate (or appropriate) the outside through shamanism. In Makushi, a shaman is known as a pia’san – this term is often pronounced in Surama as ‘piazong’ – or more commonly as a piaiman in Guyana and piatzán in Brazil (see Santilli 2001a). Sadly, I learnt in 2018 that the piaiman (Mogo) in Surama had died since my last visit in 2015.¹⁰ However, from 2012 to 2015, I was able to learn from him a basic understanding of Makushi shamanic ideas and practices. The central dimension of Makushi shamanism is the ability to manage relations with allied spirits associated with the landscape. As is common throughout Amazonia, Makushi people speak of ‘master’ or ‘owner’ beings, which are called putorï (singular) – this term is often pronounced in Surama as padlru – or pa-tamona in Makushi, that control various parts of the landscape and guard their wards (e.g., specific animals, plants [wild and domesticated], fish, rivers, and mountains) (Whitaker 2021a: 75–77).¹¹ These spirits must generally be sought out, provided with gifts, and made into allies by the piaiman. In return, they can provide game meat, fish, and other benefits to hunters, fishermen, and others who extract resources from the landscape, but they can also mete out retribution (e.g., sickness, death, and fits) to them or their family members. By managing relations with these outside allies, piaimen seek to ensure fertile crops, game animals, and rain for the village, as well as to gain powers, abilities, and esoteric knowledge. A successful Makushi piaiman gains master spirits as familiar allies. Through the formation and management of relations with such entities, Makushi piaimen are expected to heal sickness, release game animals, produce charms and amulets called bina, use spells called taren, control the weather, serve as mediums for communication with the dead, and divine future events and secret knowledge, as well as counter the violent predations of kanaima sorcerers. Kanaima use poisons, bina, taren, and ritualised physical attacks to weaken and kill victims. In contrast to kanaima killers, piaimen are primarily healers and managers of relations involving otherness, although they are also occasionally accused of sorcery. Piaimen are sometimes thought to have a spousal or otherwise affinal tie with allied spirits or similar beings – thus linking shamanism and marriage as related means of forming multi-valent relations of alliance and partnership with outside entities. Although piaimen healers, kanaima sorcerers, and alleluia prophets can all be said to be shamanic practitioners among the Makushi (see Whitehead 2002), since they use somewhat similar methods (see Santilli 1987: 7; see also Oliveira 2018), the emphasis on shamanic relations in this book primarily concerns those formed by piaimen.

I will provide a more in-depth description of Makushi shamanism in Chapter 5. However, I want to clearly highlight here the significance of shamanism for managing relations with outside forces and beings. Piaimen often engage with potentially dangerous and mostly non-human ‘others’ to form alliances to benefit their people. Within this framework, shamanism contributes to a relational mode that is also significant for historical and contemporary interactions between villagers and certain kinds of outsiders (particularly Europeans and North Americans).¹² Makushi relations with Europeans have occurred within such ontological contexts in the past and present. This first emerges historically during the nineteenth century when some Makushi groups developed strategies for allying with European outsiders whom they seem to have viewed as potentially akin to shamanic spirits. Their aim was to counter slaving raids from which they were suffering and to obtain outside goods, connexions, and knowledge. This quasi-shamanic relational mode of engaging outsiders continues today in Surama with tourists. To provide initial background for these relations, I present here a brief history of Makushi relations with European outsiders during the colonial era in contexts of raiding, slaving, and alliance.

Makushi Encounters with Europeans during the Eighteenth Century

Although the earliest speculative date for a first encounter between the Makushi and Europeans is 1530, when a Spanish explorer named Pedro de Acosta and 300 men temporarily settled below the Orinoco, such speculations more often centre around Walter Raleigh and his expeditions in the 1590s (see Myers 1993: 12–15).¹³ There are legends in some Makushi villages that the wreckage from one of Raleigh’s ships remained until fairly recently in a forested area in the Rupununi. Although Raleigh was more active on the coast (see Bancroft 1766: 258–259), part of his expedition ventured into the interior of the Guianas in search of El Dorado and may have (according to some speculations) encountered Makushi groups near the Orinoco. Despite a paucity of evidence, some have suggested that the Orinoqueponi – meaning ‘those living on Orinoco’ – in Raleigh’s writings were the Makushi (Im Thurn 1883: 173–174; Schomburgk 1848b: 75, 78).¹⁴ Whether this suggestion is accurate or not, the Makushi territory has long attracted explorers, missionaries, and others whose writings provide a significant record of Makushi relations with Europeans.

The first known reference to the Makushi by name dates to 1740 when they are mentioned in the context of slaving expeditions (composed of Brazilian colonists and Indigenous people) near the Uraricoera River. Such expeditions were relatively common in this region of Brazil at the time, and this was likely not the first to target Makushi villages (see Myers 1993: 11). Lourenço Belforte and Francisco Ferreira were leaders in these ‘rescue’ or ‘ransom’ expeditions (known as resgates in Portuguese) to ‘save’ war captives.¹⁵ These expeditions often provided pretexts for slaving. Makushi groups are also repeatedly mentioned in Portuguese documents after the construction of Fort São Joaquim in what is now Roraima State, Brazil. This fort was constructed in 1775–1776 to strengthen Portuguese control over the Rio Branco region due to fears of Spanish and Dutch encroachment (Hemming 1987: 31–32; see Farage 1991: 123; Santilli 1994: 17). Portuguese surveyors visited Makushi villages and claimed that they were ‘the most numerous and perhaps the least warlike tribe of the Rio Branco’ (Hemming 1987: 34). In the following years, the Portuguese used material goods to draw Indigenous people (including Makushi) to the fort as labourers, but there were tensions, and some soon began to relocate elsewhere due to exploitation and harsh conditions (Hemming 1987: 32–33; see Farage 1991: 153). When a group of Makushi rebelled in 1790, Portuguese officials overreacted and removed many Indigenous people from the region (Hemming 1987: 36–37; see Farage 1991: 164–168; Santilli 1994: 17).¹⁶

The earliest known documented Dutch reference to the Makushi appears in 1753 and is written by Laurens Storm van’s Gravesande, the Director General of the Dutch colonies of Essequibo and Demerara.¹⁷ It mentions that some Makushi and Caribs had been killed in a Wapisiana attack and indicates that Makushi persons had accompanied Dutch colonists in the interior region (Harris and de Villiers 1911: 302–303). If Makushi groups encountered Dutch colonists prior to this, it appears to have been undocumented, although it could have occurred within the context of Dutch expeditions in search of El Dorado in 1714 and 1739 or during Nicholas Horstman’s expedition during the 1730s.¹⁸ Storm van’s Gravesande mentions the Makushi again in 1765, and he received a report in 1769 from a Dutch colonist named Gerrit Jansse with further information about them and the Wapisiana.¹⁹ Dutch colonial concern with the Makushi focused mostly on trade interests. However, as in Brazil, eighteenth-century Makushi encounters with the Dutch centred around enslavement, which was mostly facilitated by Indigenous proxies (especially the Caribs and Akawaio) of the colonial regime controlled by the Dutch (Whitaker 2016b; Whitehead 1988).

The first known Spanish reference to the Makushi emerges in 1775 when a Spanish colonial officer, Don Antonio Santos, located Makushi groups between the Mahu and Rupununi rivers and the Pakaraima mountains (Humboldt and Bonpland 1881: 35). Spanish interests in the Makushi territory largely centred around gold exploration. For example, Portuguese soldiers disrupted a Spanish expedition in search of El Dorado in the Rio Branco region during the same year (Hemming 1987: 31). Spanish references to the Makushi appear again in the 1790s when Spanish colonists devised an unsuccessful plan to use Makushi and Akawaio groups to destabilise the Dutch colonies (Whitehead 1988: 156). However, nothing came of this plot due to the intervention of a Dutch-aligned Carib leader. Spanish interest in the Makushi seems to have waned thereafter.

By the end of the eighteenth century, Makushi groups in the region had encountered the Portuguese (1740), Dutch (1753), and Spanish (1775) colonial fronts.²⁰ These fronts correspond with the three countries of contemporary residence for Makushi groups: Brazil (Portuguese), Guyana (Dutch and later British), and Venezuela (Spanish). The contexts of Makushi encounters with Europeans during this time period were mostly predatory, centred around enslavement and coerced labour, but they also occurred in relation to trade and exploration. However, in the early nineteenth century, some Makushi groups began to strategically engage with Europeans (primarily British colonists and missionaries). This involved strategies of seeking, forming, and managing beneficial relations of alterity with these strange and dangerous but potentially useful outsiders.

Makushi Encounters with Europeans During the Nineteenth Century

In 1803, Great Britain seized the Dutch territory of present-day Guyana and later formalised their control with the Convention of London in 1814 (Rivière 2006a: 17). There is some limited evidence that there were Makushi groups who were early allies of the British. For example, Charles Edmonstone, a British colonist serving as Protector of Indians, writes in 1816 that the Makushi were ‘by far the most numerous tribe, and have never failed to send a part of their number with every expedition [mostly against slave revolts and escapes] that has been under my direction’.²¹ However, early British contact with some Makushi groups stemmed from frayed relations with the Caribs.

In a frequently narrated incident in 1810 (see Burnett 2000: 54–56), a Carib leader named Mahanarva, who has also been referred to as Manariwan (see Farage 1991: 170–171), visited Georgetown and requested that the British colonial government continue the Dutch policy of providing annual payments in the form of trade goods (see Harris and de Villiers 1911: 109–110; Menezes 1973, 2011 [1977]: 42).²² Mahanarva was a multi-village war leader or ‘Great Owl’ who led an Indigenous alliance that engaged in raiding and slaving against other Indigenous people in the interior region of what is now Guyana (Bolingbroke 1813: 99; see Whitehead 1988: 59–60, 169–170). Although it was deliberated, British officials eventually agreed to this continuation of the annual payments, as requested by Mahanarva. However, they tried to obtain leverage in return against Carib raiding and slaving in the interior and recognition of British colonial authority (see Farage 1991: 170–173; Menezes 1973, 2011 [1977]).²³

Later in 1810, in response to this visit, a medical doctor and British colonist named John Hancock was sent as part of an expedition to the interior. From November of 1810 until July of 1811, Hancock journeyed throughout the region, met with Indigenous groups, and visited the Makushi villages of Annai and Pirara, as well as Fort São Joaquim in Brazil (Hancock 1835: 26, 39–40, 59; see Harris and de Villiers 1911: 110).²⁴ He notes that one of the expedition’s goals was to suppress the Indigenous slave trade (Hancock 1835: 46). When he called a meeting of local Indigenous leaders, which included fourteen Makushi leaders, he ascertained that slaving and abductions of women were the main causes of regional conflicts and claims that he was told that some Makushi leaders recognised Mahanarva’s authority and leadership over their villages (Hancock 1835: 26). However, he suggests elsewhere that some Makushi leaders were independent of the Caribs.²⁵

Hancock’s writings indicate that there was a substantial trade in European manufactured goods, such as axes, beads, and knives, among Makushi and other Indigenous groups in the region at the time. Trade relations reportedly extended into forms of human trafficking. He mentions complaints that the Caribs coerced some Makushi to ‘sell’ their relatives and claims that Makushi men would sometimes ‘sell’ the wives and children of their deceased younger brothers (Hancock 1835: 46). Slaving from Brazil also continued to occur.²⁶ Hancock (1835: 14) writes that some Makushi wanted the British to ‘form a colony or settlement in their country’ and that they desired knowledge of how to make European manufactured goods, such as axes and agricultural implements.²⁷ His account indicates that some Makushi at Annai believed that white people had special powers (e.g., an ability to control the wind), because they were able to make their boats go in either direction in rivers.²⁸ Although only briefly mentioned by Hancock, this is the earliest known evidence regarding Makushi notions of Europeans having extraordinary powers and esoteric knowledge.

In 1812, soon after Hancock’s expedition, a British explorer named Charles Waterton also travelled to the interior of British Guiana and visited Makushi villages in the Rupununi. He mentions coming to the ‘Apoura-Poura’ (probably the Burro-Burro) River.²⁹ This river is currently about a thirty-minute walk from the Surama Eco-Lodge. Similar to Hancock, he journeyed on to Pirara and then to Fort São Joaquim in Brazil (Waterton 1973: 27–29). His writings seem to suggest indirect trade with the Spanish, since he claims that Makushi groups used Spanish terminology to refer to several trade items (e.g., ammunition, gunpowder, hats, letters, and shirts) (Waterton 1973: 43). Villagers in Surama today are aware of Waterton’s journey (mostly from books), and I have heard of plans to eventually clear a tourist trail along the path where he once travelled.

Another British colonist, William Hilhouse (1825: 37), describes the Makushi during the 1820s as disproportionately targeted by slaving raids and as frequently enslaved by other regional Indigenous groups, such as the Caribs and Akawaio, who sold them as slaves in Brazil. He claims that the Makushi population had dramatically decreased as a result of being heavily targeted and that they had fled to remote areas of the colony seeking respite from such attacks. There are other similar references to the Makushi population having decreased considerably by 1833 due to Carib and Akawaio raids.³⁰ Although it is unclear if Hilhouse ever visited the Makushi, he was well informed on Indigenous affairs in British Guiana, since he was involved (in his brief role as Quarter-Master General of Indians) in coordinating Indigenous groups for colonial defence (see Burnett 2002: 26; Menezes 1973: 75–76).

Hilhouse’s claims suggest severe population loss among the Makushi between 1816 and 1825.³¹ One potential factor relates to Hancock’s reference (from his expedition in 1810–1811) to Mahanarva’s authority over some Makushi villages, as well as his mention of Makushi persons ‘selling’ kin to the Caribs. This may point to a temporary shift from Carib slave raiding to Carib slave trading with some Makushi groups.³² Such trading may have soon reverted to raiding, but it raises the possibility that some Makushi groups strategically managed early on to at least temporarily convert predatory raids into trade relations.³³ A rise in epidemics, to which colonial expeditions likely contributed, is another factor in regional Indigenous population loss (both Makushi and non-Makushi) at the time. By the 1820s and 1830s, the Carib population had also decreased (Hilhouse 1825: 29; Schomburgk 1922 [1847]: 54). Although the extent of Makushi population loss is uncertain, reports of demographic decline were likely due to combined effects from raiding, migration, and epidemics. It is within this context that Makushi groups first encountered Anglican missionaries.³⁴

Early Missionisation among the Makushi

In 1831, the colonies of Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice, which encompassed the territory of present-day Guyana, were unified into the single colony of British Guiana. During the same decade, slavery was abolished throughout the British Caribbean, which included British Guiana, in a two-part process starting with ‘indenturement’ and ending with freedom. With abolition, the role of Indigenous groups as enforcers of the plantation system was greatly reduced (Menezes 1973: 82–84; Whitaker 2016b: 37). Around the same time, Anglican missionaries formed stations among Makushi and neighbouring Indigenous groups in the Rupununi. Although this history is discussed in detail in Chapters 3 and 4, a brief summary of these missions is provided here within the broader context of early Makushi encounters with European outsiders.

The first Anglican missionaries whom the Makushi encountered were John Armstrong and Thomas Youd. Armstrong first mentions the Makushi in 1833 after making a visit to their territory. During this visit, he learnt of ongoing slaving raids against Makushi groups. He began envisioning a permanent mission to the Makushi village of Pirara.³⁵ As mentioned earlier, this large and prominent village had previously been visited by British colonists.³⁶ Armstrong and Youd repeatedly refer to Makushi groups visiting their station at Bartica and expressing desires for a resident missionary in the interior region. During one visit, Youd was told that villagers in Pirara were constructing buildings and planting crops in expectation that someone would come and reside with them.³⁷ In 1838, Youd relocated to Pirara and began the first of three successive mission stations.³⁸

Youd’s mission had to be relocated twice due to opposition from Brazil concerning his presence in what was then a disputed territory (see Rivière 1995a; see also Farage 1991). The boundaries between Brazil and British Guiana were unfixed, and Brazilian officials saw him as encroaching upon them (at best) or seeking to claim a part of their territory for Great Britain (at worst). After leaving Pirara, Youd relocated his mission to Urwa in 1839 and to Waraputa in 1840 after Brazilian officials opposed his presence at Urwa. He was told by Makushi villagers at Pirara that they would follow him if he relocated because they had gone to the trouble to ‘fetch’ him.³⁹ This is the first known reference to this term ‘fetch’ being used to refer to Makushi groups drawing in and strategically allying with European outsiders. Subsequent European travellers repeatedly mention attempts by Indigenous groups throughout the interior of British Guiana to similarly draw in outsiders. These efforts largely centred around desires for a European presence as a curb against external predation and as a source of various desiderata. During Youd’s missions, anxieties about slaving raids seem to have been the main motivation.⁴⁰

These early Anglican missions historically overlap with expeditions by the Schomburgk brothers. Robert Schomburgk was a geographer and naturalist who undertook surveying expeditions in British Guiana for the Royal Geographical Society (1835–1839) and as a boundary commissioner for the British Government (1841–1844) (see Rivière 2006a, 2006b; see also Rodway 1889). He demarcated the disputed frontier zone between Brazil and British Guiana.⁴¹ Schomburgk opposed enslavement of the Makushi and supported Youd’s mission at Pirara.⁴² Both Robert and his brother, Richard Schomburgk, had substantial interactions with Makushi groups. Noting regional fears of enslavement, the Schomburgk brothers describe slaving against Makushi groups by Brazilian raiders, as well as other Indigenous groups and sometimes British colonists, and mention villages destroyed by such attacks.⁴³

Unfortunately, Schomburgk’s opposition to enslavement uncomfortably mixes with his promotions of British imperialism in the region (see Rivière 1998; see also Farage 1991: 15–16). This sometimes provided fodder for colonial agendas, which was basically the very thing feared by the Brazilian authorities. For example, in a letter to Thomas Buxton of the Aborigines’ Protection Society in London, Schomburgk explicitly argues that slaving raids from Brazil were part of the reason why the boundary needed demarcation.⁴⁴ One of his goals was to expand British control over the Makushi territory. To support this goal, Schomburgk amplified Youd’s claims that the Makushi desired a British missionary and British rule.⁴⁵ Later, in his report to the governor in 1839, Schomburgk places the proposed line of demarcation between British Guiana and Brazil to the west of Pirara, which effectively sought to claim much of the Makushi region as British territory (Rivière 2006b: 1).

In 1839, Schomburgk travelled to London and worked to further advocate against the slaving raids targeting the Makushi and their neighbours. These raids were subsequently discussed in the British Parliament, and the Makushi became implicated in diplomatic disputes between British Guiana and Brazil (Harris and de Villiers 1911: 114–115; see Rivière 1995a). In conjunction with his visit to London, Schomburgk (1922 [1847]: 224–225) brought three Indigenous men to Europe for training as interpreters and guides (Rivière 2006a: 406; Sandbach 1839: 8).⁴⁶ One was a Makushi man named Saramang (Burnett 2002: 22; Timbs 1968 [1867]: 596). Although Saramang died of unknown causes after his return to British Guiana (Schomburgk 1922 [1847]: 245), his visit further indicates the reach of Makushi efforts to ally and partner with outsiders at the time.

In Surama, as discussed further in Chapter 2, this history of high-profile Makushi engagements with the outside world continues. Although the context for most visits today is eco-tourism, contemporary relations with outsiders resonate with historically documented interactions. For example, Schomburgk (1848a: 267) writes concerning his journeys to the Makushi territory that:

In every village there is a house exclusively dedicated to the reception of strangers. It is usually situated in the midst of the community, and is furnished and provisioned by the chieftain and his family. This house is called Tapoi by the Macusis and Wapisianas.⁴⁷

A similar structure in Makushi villages was noted by Charles Barrington Brown (1876: 113–114) as an ‘open shed, called the strangers’ house’ (see Whitehead 1988: 65–66). These comments could, for the most part, be generally made about Surama and several other Makushi villages today in relation to eco-lodges that have emerged since the 1990s (see Whitaker 2023b: 6).⁴⁸

A Brief History of Surama Village

Although a relatively small village, which consisted of 314 persons as of January 2020, Surama receives frequent visits from tourists and other outsiders and forms strategic relations with them for various purposes. Based on colonial-era writings, it seems that a village called Surama has existed and received visitors in this region of Guyana since at least the mid 1800s. For example, Charles Barrington Brown and James Sawkins (1875: 112) write in relation to their geological expedition that:

…we passed the mouth of the Surama, a small branch of this river, coming in from the south, near which the banks of the Burro-burro become high, and there are a few sand beaches at its bends. A quarter of a mile beyond the Surama we came to the landing of a Macusi village bearing the same name and went to it. It is prettily situated in the midst of a beautiful undulating savanna, about three miles from the landing.

Elsewhere, Brown (1876: 179–187) mentions Surama as located two and a half miles from the Burro-Burro River and a walking distance of nine and a half hours from Annai. These distances roughly match the village’s current location, although the exact site may have shifted over time.

During the early twentieth century, Surama is also mentioned by the British novelist Evelyn Waugh (1986 [1934]) and by an Anglican missionary in Yupukari named James Williams (1932: 7–8) who refers to it as Suramata. Villagers in Surama say that the village’s original name was Shuramata, which can be translated as ‘the place where the barbecue spoiled’ from Makushi. Although the story comes with variations, the general gist of it is that a Carib group conducted a raid on Surama at some point in the past, kidnapped female villagers, and barbecued the bodies of male villagers killed during the raid. In some accounts, the barbecue going ‘bad’ refers to this cooking of persons, whilst in other accounts it refers to a holiday barbecue that spoiled due to the raid. There is a set of partially buried stones arranged in a circle in Surama that is said to be where the barbecue occurred. The spoiled barbecue was discovered when a separate group of villagers returned from hunting. They cried out shuramata, indicating ‘the barbecue is spoiled’ upon finding the bodies. In some accounts, a white man is said to have Anglicised the expression shuramata as Surama. In most accounts, the Makushi reportedly fled to an area called Kaiwan-paru and subsequently to a long-standing refuge area called Iwokrama where they later defeated the Caribs.⁴⁹ They eventually returned to Surama. Some say that the Caribs were motivated by desires for the Makushi secret of making curare poison. Although this story is undocumented in written records, it resonates with historical patterns of Carib raiding.

According to villagers, Surama had become a paddock site for cattle by the early twentieth century as part of the cattle trail from Lethem to the Guyanese coast.⁵⁰ The cattle trail was an operation largely associated with a British colonist named H. P. C. Melville who raised cattle at Dadanawa Ranch near Lethem in present-day Guyana. Ranchers would send the cattle to Surama to rest at the paddock before continuing onwards to the coast. From the 1910s until the late 1950s, when the cattle trail was reportedly closed, employment opportunities for Indigenous people in the region mostly centred around cattle and rubber-tapping. During the 1940s and 1950s, an epidemic is said to have hit Surama and killed many villagers. In the 1960s and 1970s, Surama had a small and struggling population facing economic hardship and increasingly limited access to the outside world.⁵¹

The village of Surama is said to have been refounded when two brothers moved there during the 1970s. Additional families soon relocated to Surama and the new residents joined the existing inhabitants in starting a new village. In the 1970s, children were sent to Annai or Lethem for schooling. Villagers emphasise how they worked together to build a village school, as well as an Anglican village church, and how they eventually developed nursery and primary schools. With the decline of cattle and rubber in the region, gold mining provided most of the few and sparse employment opportunities. Jobs were also available in the neighbouring Brazilian state of Roraima, where (despite conflicts over land rights) gold mining and cattle-related employment remain significant for Makushi people (Santilli 2001a: 92–93; see Santilli 1997). Many sought such opportunities across the border. However, economic, social, and cultural life has been transformed in Surama since the 1990s when it opened its first eco-lodge and began seeking outside visitors as tourists. Although eco-tourism has brought many changes to the village, it is consistent with historical Makushi patterns of strategically seeking and allying with outsiders.

Spectres of Development: Outsiders and Transformation

As introduced in this chapter, Makushi groups have sought European outsiders since at least the early nineteenth century when they drew in missionaries as a defensive hedge against slaving raids from Brazil. Similar relations with outsiders continue in Surama today within the context of eco-tourism. However, although consistent with past Makushi practices of drawing in visitors, the current scale of interactions with outside visitors in Surama – several hundred tourists annually visit the Surama Eco-Lodge – is unprecedented for the Makushi in Guyana. Relations with such outsiders in Surama are linked with the spectre of development and integral to local projects aimed at transformation.

Development and eco-tourism are generally embraced by Surama’s villagers and leaders. I rarely heard locals express opposition concerning either. Villagers point to the various benefits of eco-tourism – for example, education, paid employment, healthcare, and purchased food – and support locally controlled eco-tourism as a means of becoming ‘developed’ in Guyana. Villagers talk about eco-tourism as one part of the development that they generally desire. This development is partially economic, but it also involves a transformative process involving alterity. Despite the differences between missions and eco-lodges, Surama’s hospitality and welcome of outsiders, which involve interactional patterns that were commented upon concerning various Makushi groups during the nineteenth century, are part of a broader Makushi history of strategically engaging with outsiders in projects aimed at transformation, as discussed in later chapters.⁵² However, villagers are aware of the challenges involving contemporary changes in Surama.

There is both a sense of excitement and concern among villagers regarding the changes and transformations that are occurring in Surama. Although villagers generally embrace eco-tourism, I frequently heard some express sadness concerning what they perceive as a lost sense of community and growing concerns about the rise of local health epidemics. Paid employment has led to a rising economic individualism that has contributed to declines in values and practices associated with sharing and cooperation. Older villagers, in particular, spoke of the need for togetherness and noted changes regarding food sharing and working together for the common good. Pre-packaged food for purchase is associated with altered eating practices and a diet that has led to increases in diabetes and heart disease, despite the increased availability of healthcare. There is also concern about declining fluency in the Makushi language among young people and a lower prevalence of the forest-related skills that drive eco-tourism. The unprecedented ingression of the outside has also resulted in a heightened orientation towards foreign consumer goods and a greater perceived need for commodities. This reinforces a growing dependence upon money and waged employment in the market economy.

As I talked with villagers in Surama, I soon began to recognise common themes that connect Makushi experiences of ‘development’ with those of other societies (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) around the world. Many of the challenges facing Surama, in relation to health, community, and social relations, are not entirely unique and are often experienced by people living in developing countries. However, although contemporary changes in Surama may be unprecedented in the context of Makushi history, there is continuity with earlier strategies concerning relations with the outside. What is most notable about Surama’s current encounter with development through eco-tourism is its consistency with long-standing Makushi strategies of drawing in outsiders and using sustained relationships with them towards agentive goals of transformation. This involves a shamanic practice of managing relations involving alterity with outsiders whilst producing inner alterity. This theme will be further examined in the following chapters and links historical Makushi contact with missionaries and explorers to contemporary experiences with tourists and development in Surama.