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 …show more content…
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 …show more content…
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