65 Transcript of an August, 1971 commentary by Napoleon Chagnon of film rushes for The Ax Fight .

30160 [The first number in each paragraph below is a rough equivalent of the current moment in digitized version to original film footage.]

30160 Film rolls 15 and 16; sound rolls 14 and 15. Edge numbers DR-OOOO. This is a second look at the fight. This material should be put back in sequence right after they previous recording. This is another set of commentary on the fight that broke out in the village. Uuwä ran out and clubbed Mohesiwä on the wrist.

85400 21:35 You see a woman running out with a club to give it to somebody, and she's the woman on the left. Her name is Nakahedami. She is Mohesiwä's sister.

98640 You see a woman come up and remove the bow stave that was stuck in the ground by Mohesiwä. Just prior to that his sister, Nakahedami, had given him a long club to replace the bow stave. Then his mother comes up at 74 feet and takes the bow stave away, because he was trying to run the other guy through with the bow stave, and the women are trying to de-escalate the fight. And the woman who takes the bow stave away is his mother, Borowama, and she's in photograph 129. The other guy in that comment was Uuwä, whom Mohesiwä was trying to run through with his bow stave. It was quite clear that he was trying to spear him with the bow stave.

101440 37:20 His [Mohesiwä's] mother [Borowama] has a hemo club, and he is asking her to give him the hemo club, which is another kind of weapon. It's made out of palm wood. And his mother is not giving it to him, but she's rubbing his arm where he got clobbered on the ax -- where he got clobbered with the club -- from Uuwä.

123160 58:00 The fellow at 58 feet is Hiimashiwa with his back to us. He's got a red loincloth on, and he's taking the side of Uuwä.

127615 59:20 There is a little short stocky woman over to the left who is very close to Mohesiwä's mother. That woman is Moramanama, who is a widow, but she was once married to two men who were brothers, and these two men were brothers to the father of Uuwä, who struck the first blow. She's walking over to Uuwä, so that Uuwä would in fact be her classificatory son. Moramanama is in photograph 64. Her other name is Nasimi.

148640 87:20 You clearly see that Nanokawä was up in the thick of things, but because people were in front of him you couldn't see him in the picture until people start dispersing and going away, and Nanokawä walks back to his house with Mohesiwä at his side. So he's clearly taking Mohesiwä's side in the fight. Mohesiwä, by the way, is his sister's [Borowama's] son, so it's a very warm personal relationship.

158000 93:25 You see Nakahedami with her head right in line with the post, and immediately in front of her is a woman Kaosarama, who's in photograph 98, and she's married to Daramasiwä. She's also involved in the fracas. Kaosarama, the woman I've just identified, would be the classificatory mother of Mohesiwä and Törawä, the two guys who were involved from Wadoshewa's lineage.

171200 105:20 You see coming out from the right of the screen, Kebowa, carrying an ax, and he's about ready to start the fight over again.

173640 109:20 Yoinakuwä bursts out of his house carrying a machete, following his brother Kebowa over to escalate the fight to a different level. The two women who are walking back assuming that the battle was all over suddenly realize that it's going to start again and they turn around and start going back. One of them is Moramanama. And the little boy is Moramanama's son, Harikana. As Kebowa approaches the house where Mohesiwä is sitting, Mohesiwä's mother, Borowama, grabs a hemo palmwood club to defend her son. Correction: It's a bow stave. And Nakahedami sitting there in her hammock starts shouting back ...

180120 116:20 ... and the mother gives the bow stave back to her son and he's being surrounded on two sides by Yoinakuwä and Kebowa . That's at 116 feet, 20 frames.

180400 116:35 And the woman at 116 feet, 35 frames, running to the house in the middle of the picture is Moramanama.

182600 117:25 Nakahedami, in the house at 117 feet, 25 frames, has begun wrestling the ax away from Kebowa. Nakahedami is defending her brother.

185200 120:05 You see a figure run from left to right across the screen with his arm held out, yelling for somebody to give him a weapon, and it's probably Törawä, Mohesiwä's brother, and the fight's going on in the background behind him.

190360 125:20 Yoinakuwä is fighting with Nakahedami; she's managed to get a grip on the machete.

191920 127:20 You see a figure running from right to left into the fight again, and it's Törawä. This time he's got a machete, he's going to put his club down, and right behind him is a woman with an ax. So they're each escalating to new levels.

201520 136:33 You see Törawä put his machete down and grab an ax from a woman who hands him an ax, because he sees that Kebowa is starting to hit his brother with ax.

203240 140:30 Nakahedami runs out with her baby around her neck, and she's running out yelling something to somebody.

204760 141:20 And Moramanama is running into the fracas too at this point, 141 feet, 20 frames.

216360 151:20 You see Kebowa, after Törawä gets dragged out of the fight by one of his female kinsmen, and once his back is turned, Kebowa lashes out, runs after him and plants the ax right in the middle of his back when his back is turned.

227000 166:20 Nakahedami [sic: Chagnon corrects this at 11626] just grabbed an ax and she's taking a swing at some woman with it. The woman she's swinging it at looks like Moramanama.

231200 Also at 166 feet, 20 frames, Törawä actually has the ax with the sharp edge up, and he's going to -- he's attempting to take a blow at somebody, but he never succeeded; I was standing there and I watched it. Prior to that I had said that it was Nakahedami who swung at somebody with an ax. It wasn't -- she didn't swing with an ax, she was beating with her hands. But she was doing it right at the same time that Törawä was swinging with the ax and they were right next to each other, so it looked like her.

235500 169:20 You see a guy with a black V painted on his chest and two bright yellow feathers in his ears [sic.: attached to his shoulders] and his face partly blackened. His name is Yakahaiwä and he comes running out there to grab some woman who's doing something. Yakahaiwä wasn't grabbing her; he took one hell of a swing at her.

287040 245:20 The woman who's massaging the back of Törawä, who got clobbered with the ax, is Wadoshewa's younger wife, Husiheami, who's in photograph 54 and in 129. The woman who is helping him up is his mother, Borowama.

352600 377:20 You see the woman still crying in the hammock, and it's Dimöma, who's in photograph 123. She's feeling very sad because Yoinakuwä's wife got bashed with a piece of wood and she's still crying in the hammock.

366800 437 feet to 458 feet. There's a woman giving Wadoshewa a terrible tongue-lashing, and it might be the woman Waböama; it's not clear from the identification photographs that that is her, but her breasts look about the same, and the child looks about the same age, and she's living in the right section of the village. In fact, she's married to Moshiwariwa, and that would be a very reasonable location in the village and kinship relationship for her to take that side. She's scolding the women and calling their origin into question by calling them Waikayoma, and things of that sort -- women who are Waikas.