The Quarup is the principal ceremony of the Indians of the Xingu. It is not necessarily an annual event but may be held in any year during which a chief or person of chiefly birth has died. Not that it is a funeral ceremony in any conventional Western sense of the term: for, apart from its social importance as a gathering together of all the neighbouring tribes, one of its central events is the bringing out of seclusion of the young girls who have menstruated for the first time since the previous Quarup, who have been strictly confined since their menstruation, and who are now ready for marriage with their betrothed. This makes of the Quarup a celebration of rebirth as well as a lament for the dead, a ceremonial of a richness and subtlety to which no brief account can do justice, a ritual drama of regeneration.
The host tribe spends weeks preparing for this – sending out messages to invite all the neighbouring tribes, clearing campsites for them and gathering enough food to feed them when they arrive. The day before the Quarup is spent setting up and decorating the Quarup posts, which represent those who have died, and which are decorated until they resemble the human body, at which point, in the eyes of the participants, they actually become those who are being mourned. In addition to this, there is dancing and flute-playing, and the members of the tribe decorate their own and each other’s bodies.
During the night, as the mourners sit watching and lamenting the dead, representatives from the tribes camped round the village one by one rush into the village to steal firebrands in order to light their own fires.
The next day, the main ceremony unfolds. The messengers go out and lead the chiefs of each tribe into the centre of the village – and when they have taken their places, their tribesmen rush into the village, and the wrestling tournament begins with the strongest members of the host tribe each challenging the champion of one of the visiting tribes. This leads into a more general, less formal series of wrestling bouts, and then, after an exchange of gifts, the girls are brought out of seclusion, walking behind a kinsman of the dead chief, carrying a gourd cup containing ‘pequi’ nuts (a symbol of fertility), which they empty on the ground in front of the visiting chiefs. This is followed by general feasting and then by a dance in which pairs of fluteplayers (playing the special ten-foot Quarup flutes) followed by pairs of the now released girls visit each hut in the village in turn. After further celebration, speeches and a final distribution of gifts by the host tribe, the visiting tribes depart, leaving the host tribe to take the Quarup posts down to the lagoon at dusk and float them out until they sink and join the spirit village at the bottom of the lagoon.
The next morning, the chief gives every member of his tribe a new name.
C.H.