Hammock History

   Amazonian history
" Old Mother" That is what dwellers of the Amazon call their hammocks: "As in our first unremembered memories, mae velha (old mother) enfolds us in comforting arms, besides protecting us from scorpions, mists, and serpents that meander along the ground. The hammock accompanies us like a bed never could through our whole existence. Born in the jungle by the shore of a river, the newborn sleeps his first sleep in the hammock as his grandfather will sleep his last. Then as is our ancient custom, we bury the dead lying down in their own hammock. We are born, we live, we love, we die in the hammock, and then our friends carry us to the boneyard in mae velha to rest up till Judgement Day."

   European history
It is not often scholars can cite the first day a word entered a language but in 1500 on the 27th of April, a Monday, the Portuguese explorer Pero Vaz de Caminha walked along a sandy beach in Brazil. On that day he noted in his journal: "In their thatched houses the natives sleep in NETS that are attached with cords to the wooden beams above. Below always burns a small fire to keep them warm and to repel bugs and demons." He saw an Indian dozing happily in what looked like a fishing net, and so from that day the Portuguese expression for hammock is rede de dormir: "a net for sleeping."

In English, the word "hammock" came by way of Spanish conquistadors, who derived the word hommoca from the Caribs, who wove fibers of the hammok tree. The ferocious Caribs learned the craft from a people they had conquered, the inventive, but more peaceable, Arawak tribe whose own word hammock – ini – translates as: "bed-threads."

   A hammock saying:
If you don't know the knot, you're going to know the floor.

Why a Hammock is Better than a Bed!
We have to fit ourselves to the grid of a bed,
  but the hammock molds itself to our forms.
The bed, hardly a fellow traveler of our desires, squares off sleep;
  but the hammock collaborates in the movement of our dreams.
Now the bed requires us to take its manner, fixing us to itself,
  and we look for repose in a succession of positions.
But the hammock takes on our individual shape
  and becomes one with our habits, answering individual form.
The bed is rigid, predetermined, and angular.
  but the hammock is hospitable, comprehensive, and accomodating,
ready to meet all the whims of our fatigue
  and the unforeseen containment of our tranquility.
The old mother, the young wife.

Credit: much of the information on this page is credited to James Bogan.