Brazil's Canela Indians

Canela festivals, which are really pageants, sometimes lasting several months, portray the Canela way of life as well as most of their beliefs, values, and roles. Click on photos to enlarge.

Opening Wè?tè Season Festival The Canela festival season is the dry, summer "Wè?tè" season. The opening begins with hostilities between men and women. The men leave to hunt, and when they return with the meat hung on a tall pole, the women struggle to push it down and cut off the meat with knives.	Meat hung on tall poles, 1971.
After the Opening Wè?tè festival lasting two days, one of the five great Wè?tè season festivals commences in late March through May. Five Great Wè?tè Season Festivals The captions are very brief. Please follow the link to the monograph for a fuller explanation of these festivals.
Khêêtúwayê [The novices] wear headbands on the backs of their heads with two, or three, or sometimes even five, macaw tail feathers pointed upwards.	Sunset, silhouetting the macaw tail feathers, 1958.
Pepyê [The novices] make Formal Friends and Informal Friends by either entering the water looking away from each other in shame, or by going into the water together, coming up facing each other in Informal Friendship.	Young men, facing each other, jump into the water, 1975.
Pepkahàk The dramatic daily act of the Pepkahàk troop is to file counter clockwise around the village just outside of the circle of houses to collect food in the late afternoon. They march by with great pride, looking neither to the right or left, nor up or down, and keeping very serious faces, demonstrating their superior status.	Serious-faced troop.
Fish There are seven groups in the plaza. The Stingrays, the Otters, and the Fish are on the east, while the Piranha, the Teprã-?ti and Tep are on the west. The Clowns are on the northern edge. They all build fine houses, with the exception of the Clowns, who build a crooked house to demonstrate what is wrong.	Really crooked house, 1964.
At the end of the festival the Clowns build a weir and try to catch the Fish as they escape from it. The Fish dodge, but eventually are caught by a Clown snatching away the fish-shaped baskets they carry.	Fish dodging on their way from the weir, 1960.
Mask At the end of this festival, which requires participants to make masks of palm fiber with two horns on top, a grand parade of the society of Masks is staged.	Parade of Masks, 1960.
Closing Wè?tè festival The Wè?tè season closes with several parts, one of which is when the Little Falcon swings on a vine attached to a pole above a cage shaped like an early Canela forager’s hut. Return to top	Little Falcon, "flying" off the cage.