Yanomamo Essay

Chagnon gained access to the Yanomamo by offering trade goods to the Yanomamo natives. Trade goods included machetes and other modern day goods in which the Yanomamo wanted but would never encountered in the worldly goods. Chagnon traded for goods that he didn’t need like native’s bows. He did this kind of trading so the natives would accept him and not get pissed off if he gave out gifts not to everyone. Chagnon used many techniques to establish a rapport with the Yanomamo. Chagnon from time to time dressed like the natives to establish a comfort level with them. Chagnon also shared some food items as was in the cultural norm.

Chagnon faced many challenges in the field. For example the first day the natives wanted to get into his food because the culture used it to share within the cultures. Chagnon had to give out some of his food but he couldn’t live without peanut butter so he made it as if it was feces so the natives did not want it. Other times he had to do what the natives did when the natives “borrowed” his axe for a couple days, so he did the same thing with some of the natives stuff. The natives gained much respect for him by his actions. He faced a lot more challenges along the way with the native’s culture and customs.
He mapped out from the information from the natives to collect family tree information in the different tribal towns. This was done by mapping out the statistical information and used the tribe’s natives. Chagnon’s work that was qualitative was the collecting stories and traditions of the tribes. What he did was try to collect family tree information from the natives natural telling of stories and what not. This was quite hard in some respects due to the fact that he collected bad information for the first year of his research. This was due to the natives telling him fake information and fake names that were vulgar and quite funny to the