One morning in 1981, while I was living among the Pirahãs, near the mouth of the Maici River, in the center of the Amazonian rain forest, I was awakened by the sounds of people yelling and crying. I had been researching the Pirahã language and culture now for some four years, so I spoke the language reasonably well. The yells tore me from my pleasant liminal state between sleep and alertness. I rose, slipped on my gym shorts and flip-flops and ventured outside to see what was going on.
Some twenty Pirahã men, women, and children, their numbers growing by the second, were gesticulating and yelling, some crying in fear, at a spot on the bank across the river. I asked what they were pointing at. A man looked at me incredulously, demanding "Don't you see it? It is a kaoáíbogi ('fastmouth' – a jungle entity separate from humans but like them in many ways). I looked again. And again. I asked again. The response was "The fast-mouth is there right now!"
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