Hup People - Culture and Nuclear Family

Culture and Nuclear Family

The Hupd'äh, as hunters, know the forest intimately and do not work in agriculture, which their neighbors do extensively. They are scattered amongst more than 20 clans. Each of the clans shares a common ancestry and a set of rituals specific to each clan. Marriages are made between clans, as a marriage inside a clan is considered to be incestuous. The married man can live, most commonly, in his father's local group or in his father-in-law's local group. And as all the clans native to the Alto Rio Negro area practice Dabucuri and celebrate Jurupari, the Hupda maintain their own kapi-vaiyá.

The hearth group, "kakah", is the smallest unit of production and consumption, and can be made up of a nuclear family; it may also include additional persons (mothers-in-law, orphaned nephews, widowed uncles) making it into an extended family. There is no ideal group size, and numbers vary enormously between one local group and another. A hearth group is significantly autonomous, is generally the social unit, which visits other local groups, and is the most mobile part of the local group. The general rule is that the hearth group be self sufficient and, to that end, each hearth group generally contains two adults, a man and a woman, almost always married to each other. Two couples are never part of the same hearth group while the minimum number of people in a hearth group is two.