Two Jari Youths with their Water Buffalo

(Photo Courtesy of Ed Sprague. All rights reserved.)

The Jarai young were mostly responsible for the care and feeding of the family livestock All livestock was considered sacrificial including the water buffalo, cow, pig and chicken. Receiving a buffalo sacrifice was a very high honor and so on down the line to a chicken. None of the mentioned were ever eaten without some sort of sacrific and there were many. At times excuses were made to conduct a sacrifice so that they might be able to eat meat. Because of the restrictions on the eating of the family livestock, the Montagnards located on the Northern Phu Yen border picked up the Vietnamese tradition of eating dogs. This spread rapidly during my years with the Jarai. It got to a point that a couple of Jarai raised dogs to sell for this purpose.