The Project Gutenberg eBook of The North-West Amazons, by Thomas Whiffen.

TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE
Dr. ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE, O.M.
THESE NOTES ARE DEDICATED

PREFACE

In presenting to the public the results of my journey through the lands about the upper waters of the Amazon, I make no pretence of challenging conclusions drawn by such experienced scientists as Charles Waterton, Alfred Russel Wallace, Richard Spruce, and Henry Walter Bates, nor to compete with the indefatigable industry of those recent explorers Dr. Koch-Grünberg and Dr. Hamilton Rice.

Some months of the years 1908 and 1909 were passed by me travelling in regions between the River Issa and the River Apaporis where white men had scarcely penetrated previously. In the remoter parts of these districts the tribes of nomad Indians are frankly cannibal on occasion, and provide us with evidence of a condition of savagery that can hardly be found elsewhere in the world of the twentieth century. It will be noted that this area includes the Putumayo District.

With regard to the references in footnotes and appendices, I have inserted them to suggest where similarities of culture or variations of a given custom are to be found. These notes may be of some use to the student of such problems as the question of cultural contact with Pacific peoples, and at the least they represent the evidence on which I have based my own conclusions.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

In the spring of 1908, having been among the Unemployed on the Active List for nearly two years on account of ill-health, and wearying not only of enforced inactivity but also perhaps of civilisation, I decided to go somewhere and see something of a comparatively unknown and unrecorded corner of the world. My mind reverted to pleasant days spent in the lesser known parts of East Africa, and at this moment I happened to come across Dr. Russel Wallace’s delightful Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro. His spirited adventures, and the unique character of the country through which he passed and the peoples he met, fascinated me. I thought of attempting to complete his unfinished journey up the Uaupes River, and imagined I would be able to secure in South America all the instruments and materials such an expedition required. There lay my initial error. My inability to obtain anything of the sort hampered me in scientific research, so that these chapters must simply be regarded as impressions and studies of native ways and doings, noted by a temporary dweller in their midst.

Difference of technique, industry, ability, and scientific knowledge may in the light of future investigations reveal errors or misapprehensions that must bring me into conflict with those who may go there better equipped and with greater understanding. But in any critical appraisement it must be remembered that these tribes are changing day by day, and every year that passes will increase the difference between the Amazonian native as I knew him and as he may be when studied by my successors. So far as in me[2] lies, I have here set forth an account of what he was when I travelled in his forest solitudes and fastnesses.

I left England towards the end of April 1908 and arrived at Manaos on the Negro River on May 27. Incidentally I arrived again at Manaos homeward bound on the same day and almost at the same hour the following year.[1] It may be taken, therefore, that my entire journey covered exactly twelve months.

On arrival at Manaos, I made inquiries as to the facilities for proceeding to S. Gabriel near the junction of the Negro and Uaupes Rivers, and thence up the latter stream.[2] My theory at the time was that it would be possible to ascend this river to its source, and from the vicinity to make a way across country via the Apaporis, Japura, Issa, and Napo Rivers to Iquitos. I soon found that the difficulty of obtaining the necessary men would be immense, and the ascent, in local opinion, impracticable without an expedition on a scale for which I possessed neither the influence nor the pecuniary resources. Persuaded that my line of least resistance, so far as the Uaupes was concerned, would be to reverse the contemplated journey and work from Iquitos to a point on the Uaupes and then descend to Manaos, I proceeded by the Navigation Company’s steamboat to the former town, where I arrived the second week in June.

In company with Mr. David Cazes, the British Consul, to whom I am indebted for many kindnesses, I made a trip up the Napo River. It was soon apparent, however, that it would be practically impossible to cross from that river to the Issa. This was not due to the difficulty of porterage, because there is a “recognised route” from a point some way above the mouth of the Curaray to Puerto Barros, but to the impossibility of obtaining men. Rumours were rife at this time of fighting between the Colombian and Peruvian rubber-gatherers on the Issa River, and the Napo Indians would not go in that direction on account[3] of a not unnatural dread lest they be treated as enemies by whichever party of combatants they might happen to meet.

Eventually, through the good offices of the British Consulate, I sailed from Iquitos by way of the main Amazon River and the Issa or Putumayo River to Encanto at the mouth of the Kara Parana, which I reached in the middle of August. It is from this point that my notes on the manners and customs of the Indians really commence.

I saw at once that it would be impossible to gain any insight into the ways and customs of the various tribes unless I spent some considerable time in what one might call a roving commission among them. I had with me at this time John Brown, a Barbadian negro. He had been for some three years previously in the Issa district in the employ of a Rubber Company, and I enlisted him as my personal servant at Iquitos. He had “married” a Witoto woman some two years before, and through this attachment I was able to derive much valuable information. In fact, he was invaluable throughout the whole expedition, and was more loyal and more devoted than a traveller with some experience of the African boy in his native haunts had reason to anticipate of any black servant.

On the 18th of August we started for the Igara Parana, having collected eight Indian carriers, two half-castes, and eight “rationales,” or semi-civilised Indians, armed with Winchesters, together with three Indian women, wives of three of the rationales.

It may here be mentioned that these armed Indians were to be obtained in the Rubber Belt by arrangement with their employers. It is the practice of the rubber-gatherers to train Indian boys and utilise them as escort, and to obtain rubber from the tribes hostile to those to which the boys belong. This is perhaps necessary to avoid collusion. In my experience there was never any question of fixed charge or price when hiring carriers. They expected to be given, at the conclusion of their service, a present of cloth, beads, a shot gun,[3] or such other item of trade as[4] their heart coveted. The line of argument was simple: “You do what I tell you, and when we part I will make you a rich man.” Wealth was represented by cloth, beads, and a knife. A boy I called Jim promised to go to the end of the earth if I would give him a shot gun. This was his sole ambition. He was one of my escort, and although carrying a Winchester, I do not think it ever entered into his head to make off with it. Such is the simple Indian nature. I do not mean that he would not have run away if such a plan suited him, but he would not have done so for the sake and value of the Winchester.

The two half-breeds were rubber-collectors. They were bound for the Igara Parana, and were only with me until we reached Chorrera.

The semi-civilised Indians are fairly trustworthy, although discipline must be strongly enforced to prevent looting if only because of the danger of reprisals on the part of the indigenous natives. During my wanderings the carriers were often changed, especially while passing through the Rubber Belt. Those men will always run if they get the chance, even if they are in the midst of hostile tribes, when to desert is more often death than not. In number the party remained approximately the same throughout my journey.

The carriers must be incessantly shepherded, kept from lagging behind or going ahead too quickly. They must not be allowed to stop for any length of time or a forced camp will be a necessity. It is the custom of all Indians to bathe whenever possible, however heated they may be, and this will have to be tolerated; but if progress is to be made they must not stop to eat. It was my custom to eat at daybreak and again at the end of the day’s march.

Treachery on the part of the native Indians it is always necessary to guard against—in the Rubber Belt because of the treatment they have received in the past; farther afield partly on account of the rumours of such treatment, and partly on the principle that it’s the nervous dog that bites. They ask but one question: “Why is the white man here?” They accord it but one answer: “We know not. It is best to kill.” And it is not, as is noted elsewhere,[5] the custom of the Indian to attack openly, but when he has the chance of succeeding with little or no danger to himself.

We reached Chorrera, or Big Falls, on the 22nd of August, and thence wended our way by land up the Igara Parana, arriving without much incident in the Andoke country on the 19th of September. Here, by arrangement with an Andoke chief, I managed to get a young Karahone lad, a slave who had been captured some years previously by the Andoke and who said he would take me to his own people across the great river. While we were encamped near the banks of the Japura River, and searching for the bulge-stemmed palm tree with which to make a canoe, we observed three canoes of Karahone on their way down the river, possibly after some warlike expedition. We tried to stop them, but in vain. When, eventually, we crossed the river, we found the occupants of the canoes had given the alarm. Every house we visited was abandoned, four in all, and the path was peppered with poisoned stakes sharpened to the finest point and exposed above ground for perhaps half to three-quarters of an inch. A carrier who trod on one had to be carried back as he was quite disabled for the march.

Returning to the Japura River, we made our way to the upper reaches of the Kahuinari River, visiting different tribes and collecting information. I was anxious at this time to descend this river and find out, if possible, the fate of Eugene Robuchon, the French explorer, who had been missing for some two years.

It may be pertinent here to give in full the story of Robuchon’s disappearance and my search for traces of his last expedition.

Eugene Robuchon, the adventurous French explorer whose notes on the Indians of the Putumayo are known to every investigator, left the Great Falls on the Igara Parana in November 1905. It was his intention to make for the head waters of the Japura and to explore that river on behalf of the Peruvian Government throughout its length for traces of rubber. He started with a party consisting of[6] three negroes, one half-breed, and five Indians with one Indian woman. He carried supplies barely sufficient for two months. I carefully examined all the survivors of the expedition that I encountered, and from them gathered the following account of the journey:—

Having left the Great Falls, Robuchon proceeded by canoe up the Igara Parana to a point some ten miles above the mouth of the Fue stream. He left the river there, struck northward through the Chepei country, and reached the Japura approximately at 74° W., some thirty miles above the Kuemani River. The Indians encountered at this spot belonged to a Witoto-speaking tribe, the Taikene. They were friendly, but either could not or would not provide Robuchon with a canoe. Three valuable weeks were spent in the search for a suitable tree and in the construction of a canoe.

When at length this was finished, the party started down-stream, and for a time progressed without incident. No natives were seen for several days. At last Robuchon’s Indians called his attention to a narrow path that led up from the river-bank on the right. Anxious about his food supply, he landed and followed the path until he came upon a clearing and an Indian house. Eventually Robuchon arranged with the inhabitants that four of them should come down to the canoe with food and receive presents in exchange. But when a larger number than he expected appeared upon the bank, the explorer feared treachery and at once pushed off without waiting for the much-needed provisions. The Indians thereupon manned their canoes and started in pursuit, shouting the while to him to stop. But with his small party Robuchon dared take no chances. He pushed on until the pursuers had been satisfactorily outdistanced.

The boy who told me the tale was convinced that these Indians were perfectly friendly in intention, and the incident appeared to be proof of the nervous state of the party. Some time after this, while shooting the rapids at the Igarape Falls, the canoe was upset and the greater part of the remaining stores was swept away.

The details of this misadventure I was never able to extract in a coherent fashion from the followers I interviewed, but they agreed that very little food of any kind was left, and what was rescued had been almost entirely destroyed by water.

Short of food, and without a canoe, the boys became mutinous. The three negroes and the half-breed deserted, and sought to cut a way through the bush backward in the direction whence they had come. This task was beyond them, and, a few days later, weary, disheartened, and starving, they returned to beg Robuchon’s forgiveness. The reunited party improvised a raft, and, after undergoing the customary hardships of an unequipped expedition in this hostile country, reached the mouth of the Kahuinari. The whole party was weak with hunger and fever, Robuchon himself prostrate and incapable of going farther. He determined to remain where he was with the Indian woman and the Great Dane hound, Othello. He ordered the negroes and the half-breed to push on up the Kahuanari to a rubber-gatherer’s house which he believed was situated somewhere between the Igara Parana and the Avio Parana. They were to send back relief at the earliest possible moment. The boys left Robuchon on February 3, 1906. He was never again seen by any one in touch with civilisation.

The boys had journeyed for but a few hours when they came across a herd of peccary. They killed more than they could possibly use, but made no attempt whatever to carry any meat back to the starving and abandoned Frenchman. Instead they wasted two valuable days in gorging themselves and smoking the flesh for their own journey.

For days they followed the course of the Kahuinari, hugging its right bank, and in this way happened across a Colombian half-breed, from whom they sought assistance. The Colombian took them to his house near the Avio Parana but would not grant them even food until they paid for it with the rifles they carried. The idea of succouring Robuchon was far removed from his philosophy. The boys, then, having surrendered their rifles in return for the stores they so much needed, made the narrow crossing[8] from the Avio Parana to the Papunya River, and followed that stream without deviation to its junction with the river Issa. Turning backward up the left bank of the Issa, they reached the military station at the mouth of the Igara Parana and there told their tale.

When at last a Relief Expedition was made up, it consisted of three negroes—John Brown and his comrades—and seventeen half-breeds. The party left on its search for Robuchon thirty-seven days after he had been abandoned at the mouth of the Kahuinari. It took ten days to reach the junction of the Avio Parana and the Kahuinari, and twenty-one days more to arrive at the camp on the Japura. It had taken ten weeks to bring help. The relief party found some tools, some clothes, a few tins of coffee, a little salt, and a camera. There was no trace of Robuchon, of the Indian woman, or of the dog. On a tree was nailed a paper, but the written message had been washed by the rain and bleached by the sun till it was illegible. Robuchon’s last message can never be known.

The relief party divided into two companies for the journey back—one section of twelve, the other of eight men. The larger party arrived in the rubber district six weeks later. The smaller party, with the three blacks, was lost in the bush. Five months and a half afterwards five survivors attained safety. The story of their misery is a chapter in the history of Amazonian travel that may never be written.

Two and a half years afterwards I was returning from a disappointing trip to the Karahone country. There were persistent rumours that Robuchon was held a prisoner by the Indians north of the Japura. I determined to see if any evidence could be found to settle his fate. I had in my party one of the negroes who had accompanied the French explorer. We journeyed overland southward through the Muenane-Resigero country till we reached the Kahuinari, thence by canoe to the Japura River. The Japura at this point is about a rifle-shot in width—2500 to 3000 yards across. Some three miles below this point on the right bank, a little way back from the river, was a small clearing.[9] In it were three poles marking the site of a deserted shelter. John Brown, my servant and formerly Robuchon’s, said it was the last camp of Eugene Robuchon.

We made camp in the clearing. A little way inland I found an abandoned Indian house, but all indications pointed to its having been deserted many years before. Half buried in the clearing I discovered eight broken photograph plates in a packet, and the eye-piece of a sextant. Other evidence of civilised occupation there was none. At some little distance my Indians detected traces of a path, and though to me it seemed only an old animal track, they maintained it was a man-made road. Cutting along the line of this path, at the end of a hard day’s work we emerged upon a second clearing and the ruins of a shelter. After careful searching we unearthed a rusty and much-hacked machete or trade knife. There our discoveries ended. The path went no farther.

We encountered no Indians in our search. On further investigation it appeared that there are none in the vicinity, and the nearest to the deserted camp on the south of the river are the Boro living on the Pama River, forty or fifty miles away.

Believing that the most probable route of escape was down the Japura, I journeyed slowly eastward almost to the mouth of the Apaporis. We then turned and came back, searching the right bank. Throughout this time we found no Indians and no signs of Indians. On the bank, about a mile and a half below Robuchon’s last camp, we found the remains of a broken and battered raft. It had evidently been carried down in full river, and left stranded on the fall of the waters. Brown recognised the wreck as that of the raft which the Frenchman’s party had built after the loss of the canoe. But it afforded no clue.

Much as I should have liked at this time to pursue my investigations among the Indians of the left, or north, bank of the river, I had perforce to give up further progress for the time being on account of the mutinous hostility of my boys. Nothing would persuade them that they would not be eaten up if they crossed the great river at this point.

Foiled, therefore, in my attempts to learn anything on the scene of Robuchon’s disappearance, I determined to prosecute inquiries among the Boro scattered about the peninsula bounded by the Pama, the Kahuinari, and the Japura. But here also no amount of examination could elicit any information as to the explorer, the woman, or the dog. I was particularly impressed by the fact that the existence of the Great Dane—an object of awe to the Indians—had left no legend among the natives. Robuchon himself wrote of his hound: “My dog, as always, entered the house first. The great size of Othello, his flashing teeth, and close inspection of strangers, his blood-shot eyes and bristling hair invariably inspired fear and respect among the Indians.” Had such an animal fallen into the hands of the Boro, I feel certain its fame would have outlived that of any chance European who might have become their prisoner, however much they desired to conceal their participation in his murder. My own Boro boys could find no record among their compatriots of the presence of Othello or his master.

After this we proceeded in a northerly direction, and, crossing the Japura, visited the Boro tribe located on the north bank of the river, between the Wama and the Ira tributaries. The chief of this tribe had married a Menimehe woman who, curiously enough, remained on terms of friendship with her parent tribe. The chief informed me that in the Long, Long Before—from reference to the size of his son at the time, I calculated about three years previously—the Menimehe had captured a white man with face hairy as a monkey’s. As Robuchon was wearing a beard at the time of his disappearance this seemed to present a clue, but as the Menimehe refused to confirm the statement, and there was no mention of the woman or of the dog, it added but little to the evidence of his fate.

The testimony was further weakened by the knowledge that about that time either the Menimehe or the Yahuna destroyed a Colombian settlement near the mouth of the Apaporis River, and made prisoners of white men. Whatever the truth of the bearded white man, there was certainly[11] no memory remaining of the Indian woman nor of Othello, the Great Dane.

On my return to the Rubber Belt I learned that Robuchon had been lost on a previous expedition for a considerable period, and had lived during that time with Indians. Although this had occurred in the regions south of the Amazon on the Peru-Brazil-Bolivian frontier, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Acre River, the general haziness of natives with respect to place and time may have accounted for the rumours of captivity among the semi-civilised Indians of the Rubber Belt, which set me on a fruitless search among the Indians of the Kahuinari-Japura.

To sum up the evidence with respect to the fate of Robuchon, it seems to me that he did not die of starvation at the mouth of the Kahuinari, because a certain amount of food-stuff was found by the first Relief Expedition at the site of the camp, but no signs of human remains. The illegible message nailed to the tree suggests that he vacated the spot and endeavoured to leave information as to his route for those who might come to his relief.

1. He could retrace his steps up the Japura. With respect to this means of escape, I consider it extremely improbable that he would attempt to return against stream over the route which he had already traversed with such difficulty when aided by the current and the full strength of his party.

2. He could proceed across the Japura to the country of the Menimehe. He was unlikely, however, to cross that river, owing to the bad name enjoyed by the Menimehe. He could not count upon a relief expedition following him there.

3. He could journey up the Kahuinari. He could hardly negotiate the difficulties of the upstream journey though with the inadequate assistance of a single woman. He was aware of the existence of unfriendly tribes on the banks. My inquiries among the Pama Boro yielded no trace of his ever having been seen upon the river. If he had made his way along the right bank of that river, probably some evidence of him would have been found by the relief party.

4. He could have voyaged down the Japura in a canoe or upon a raft. It would have been very hazardous to have attempted this alone—practically hopeless. In any event, if he did make the attempt, he failed to reach the nearest rubber settlement.

5. There remains one means of escape—by an overland march. It would appear that he adopted this method, but only without any idea of permanent relief, in desperate search of temporary assistance. The line of the Kahuinari was the obvious route for a rescue party. Robuchon, however, was starving, and the native track promised a path to a native house and food.

I presume he was located by a band of visiting Indians, captured, and either murdered or carried away in captivity to their haunts on the north bank of the Japura. I suggest the probability of the Indians coming from the north bank up the Japura, because, so far as I could learn, it was not the custom of the Pama Boro to journey to the mouth of the Kahuinari, since they could obtain all they needed from the river at points more easily and more speedily accessible to them. There were no Indians resident in the vicinity, but Indians from across the Japura made excursions at low river in search of game or of turtles and their eggs.[4]

It is upon one of those chance bands that reluctantly I am forced to lay the responsibility for the death of Eugene Robuchon in March or April 1906.

This was little enough to add to the ascertained fact of Robuchon’s end, but such as it was it brushed aside some of the mystery, and proved of interest to the members of the French Geographical Society and to the relatives of the lost explorer.[5]

After concluding my investigations among the Boro in the vicinity of the Pama River, I again crossed the Japura River near the Boro settlement on the north of that river, and proceeded eastward into the country of the Menimehe. This country appears more sparsely populated than the[13] Kahuinari districts, and the manners and customs of these people vary considerably from the tribes inhabiting the country to the south.

From the most easterly point I decided to proceed in a north-westerly direction with a view to striking the upper waters of the Uaupes River eventually. It was in this neighbourhood that I developed beriberi; and, owing to the swelling of my legs, which were covered with wounds and sores, I was only able to walk with difficulty, although I had no pain. My brain was numbed as well as my legs. I slept at every opportunity, did not want to eat, and seemed to be under the effect of some delusive narcotic. Yet I never failed to take all necessary precautions—it was mechanical, a mere habit. Stores were running short, owing to their bad condition, and my boys and carriers were becoming mutinous. Game was scarce, and the few native houses we encountered were for the most part deserted; what Indians we came across were surly and sullen, and appeared latently hostile.

I decided to return, overcome by the argument of Brown that if I did not do so the boys would go, so we turned back to the east and south of the original line, and proceeded overland by way of the Kuhuinari River to the Igara Parana, and thence to the Kara Parana by river. Arriving at the latter river at the end of February, and finding that the steamer for Iquitos would not start for some time, I made a short trip among the tribes of this river.

By reference to the sketch-map it will be seen that from the time I left Encanto on my arrival from Iquitos to my arrival at the same place, bound for Iquitos, was approximately seven months.

The difficulties in the way of obtaining information are such that it is only those who sink for the nonce all inherited and acquired ideas of superiority, manners, and customs who can be successful. As a consequence, the stranger will have to journey with savages, eat with savages, sleep with savages, from the moment he seeks to penetrate their land. Watchfulness night and day must be the price of any desire to understand the native in his home. The field-worker[14] must subordinate every previous and personal conception. Native justice must be his justice. Almost necessarily native ethics must be his ethics. He is no missionary seeking to convert those he meets to ideas of his own; rather is he a learner, an inquirer, eager to understand the thoughts that inspire them, to analyse the beliefs they themselves have gathered. Then there is no common medium of language. Sometimes a native speaking a tongue with which the traveller has a passing acquaintance can make himself understood in another tribal language whereof the white man is blankly ignorant, and then some approximation of the truth sought to be conveyed is arrived at tortuously. For example, I had a Witoto Indian who understood a little Andoke, and by way of Brown the Barbadian carried to me much information of these little-known Indians. John Brown was here invaluable as he knew Witoto well and Boro to some purpose. But much of the appended vocabularies had to be gathered by the crude method of pointing to an object. Having noted the word phonetically, one had to get it confirmed by trial.

Travelling in the bush is a dreary monotony of discomfort and ever-present danger. There are weary stretches of inundated country, sweating swamp. You pass with an unexpected plunge from ankle-deep mire to unbottomed main stream. The eternal sludge, sludge of travel without a stone or honest yard of solid ground makes one long for the lesser strain of more definite dangers or of more obtrusive horrors. The horror of Amazonian travel is the horror of the unseen. It is not the presence of unfriendly natives that wears one down, it is the absence of all sign of human life. One happens upon an Indian house or settlement, but it is deserted, empty, in ruins. The natives have vanished, and it is only the silent message of a poisoned arrow or a leaf-roofed pitfall that tells of their existence somewhere in the tangled undergrowth of the neighbourhood.

On the trail one speedily learns the significance of the phrase “Indian file.” Here are none of the advance guards, flank guards, and rear guards that are needed to penetrate unfriendly country in other lands. The first man[15] hacks a way for those who follow, and the bush is left as a wall on either side that is as inscrutable to the possible enemy on the flank as to the advancing party. On account of such conditions I should say, from my experience of bush travel in these regions, that the whole party should rarely if ever exceed twenty-five in number. On this principle it will be seen that the smaller the quantity of baggage carried the greater will be the number of rifles available for the security of the expedition.

The difficulty of an efficient food supply is very great. Game is always hard to shoot on account of the density of the bush, and in many parts appears to be non-existent. Preserved goods in sealed cases, of convenient size for porterage, should be taken from Europe. My failure to carry out my original intentions was due more than anything else to the fact that my supplies were purchased in the country, and 50 per cent proved unfit for consumption. The country where supplies must be husbanded has little enough of food that is appetising to offer. Fish, if plentiful, are hard to catch for the uninitiated. One hungers for the occasional tapir or peccary, the joys of monkey-meat, and an incautious, though unpalatable, parrot, and in the days of real distress may be glad to fall back on frogs, snakes, and palm-heart. The real fear of starvation, after perhaps the ghastly dread of being lost, is the great cause of anxiety to the traveller in the Amazons.

As for shelter,—a tent is an encumbrance,—an open screen of rough palm thatch can be erected in a very short time, and is all that is necessary, although not all that is to be desired. The shelter is a poor one that does not prevent the dews and the inevitable rain from chilling one to the bone.

Clothes for the Amazons are not designed with a view to fashion or appearance. In the past, continental explorers have introduced some interesting fashions in ducks and khaki, but travelling through a country where one’s life is passed in a bath of perspiration, their distinction of appearance yields to the simple comfort of the native’s nudity. In search of a compromise, I have found that a thin flannel suit of pyjamas with the trouser-legs tucked into the socks,[16] and a pair of carpet slippers laced over the instep, best meet the requirements of the region. Ordinary boots are a positive danger on account of the narrow and sometimes slippery tree-trunks over which one clambers uneasily. A small towel round the neck to wipe away the perspiration is a great comfort. For head-gear a cloth cap or “smasher” hat suffices.

A long knife or cutlass must be carried, and, personally, I invariably carried a revolver, while the gun-bearer should always be at hand with a rifle or scatter-gun. A blanket, sleeping-bag, and waterproof sheet of course must be taken, with the other comforts, medical and hygienic, common to all expeditions.

The drawings that appear in this volume are either taken from photographs or from actual trophies and articles in my possession. The photographs are a record of industry and patience. Films I found useless in this climate, and plates alone materialised. It must be remembered, also, that every time plates have to be changed it is necessary to build a small house, and double thatch and treble thatch to prevent the entrance of any light. Even then the experienced do their work at night.

The difficulty of posing and overcoming the objection of the native subject will be at once realised. Too many groups have been draped by explorers in the unaccustomed decencies of camp equipment, though it has become an essential of the country—climatic and psychological—that the women walk abroad naked and the men unembarrassed by more than a loin-cloth.

The maps cannot pretend to be more than the roughest approximate sketch-maps. When absence of a horizon and the density of the bush are realised, it will be obvious that they can be nothing more. It is hoped that they will suffice to give some idea of the general trend of the country and the location of the various language-groups.

CHAPTER II

Although the Amazons have been known to Europe for fully four hundred years, exploration has been confined almost entirely to the main river and its great tributaries. Little addition has been made to the information possessed by Sir Walter Raleigh in the three hundred years that have elapsed since his death. The rivers certainly are known and charted, yet the land beyond their banks is almost as much a land of mystery in the twentieth century as it was in the days of Queen Elizabeth. It is possible to spend a lifetime in navigating the Amazon,[6] and to know nothing more of its 2,722,000 square miles of basin than can be peered at through the curtain of vegetation which drapes the main streams. Behind that veil lies the fascination of Amazonian travel.

We are not here concerned with the scanty records history offers of these vast regions, nor, for our immediate purposes, is it needful to inquire into the conditions and features of the Amazon watershed as a whole, except in so far as they differ from or resemble those of my field of exploration, the tracts between the middle Issa and Japura Rivers, and in their vicinity. Roughly speaking, this lies in that debatable land where the frontiers of Brazil meet those of Peru, Colombia, and—perhaps—Ecuador, a country[18] claimed in part by the three latter, but administered by none. Here the dead level of the lower Amazonian plains imperceptibly acquires a more decided tilt, the trend of the land from the great Andean water-parting on the west and north-west being south-east to the mighty river on the south, consequently these north-western affluents of the Amazon flow in more or less parallel lines from the north-west to the south-east. It is the rivers that dominate this country, the mountains, those primal determinants, are only distant influences, snow-topped mysteries but dimly imagined on the far horizon from some upstanding outcrop, a savannah where momentarily a perspective may be gained over and beyond the illimitable forest.[7]

On the south of the tracks here dealt with the Amazon slowly sweeps its muddy yellow waters, 500,000 cubic feet per second, towards the ocean. On the north the Uaupes River flows to join the Rio Negro. Between the Uaupes and the Amazon the Rio Caqueta, or Japura River, runs south-east, due east, and south to the main stream, and almost parallel with it the Putumayo, or Issa, gathers the waters of the Kara Parana and the Igara Parana, both on its northern, that is to say its left bank, and joins the Amazon where the main river turns sharply south 471 miles below Iquitos. West again, the Napo drains down to join the great water-way 2300 miles from the sea. Of the Napo much has been written since Orellano sailed down it from Peru, homeward bound to Spain in 1521, and it may be left outside the bounds of our inquiry. With the Issa and Japura we must deal in some detail, but of the Uaupes and Rio Negro a few words will suffice.

Rapids and cataracts bar the navigation of the Uaupes, the chief tributary if not, as some would have it, the main stream of the Negro, until it is, according to Wallace, “perhaps unsurpassed for the difficulties and dangers of its navigation.”[8]

Wallace estimated the country to be not more than 1000 feet above sea-level. I should judge it to be considerably less, by the trend of the country to the south of it. But even here I may be mistaken, as my aneroid was useless, for undiscovered reasons, and my opinion is based simply on the force of the currents of the rivers, the number and depth of the rapids, and the distances to the main river and thence to the sea. The height above sea-level cannot be great, for the tides are felt at Obydos, more than half-way from the ocean to the mouth of the Rio Negro, and there is no abrupt rise from the Obydos levels; indeed the slope of the land is so slight that in the middle reaches of the main river during wet seasons the floods spread for twenty miles, and there is no visible current.

The Uaupes, though lighter than the majority of southern tributaries of the Negro, is what is known as a black water river, while most of the rivers flowing in on the northern bank are white water rivers. This peculiarity, which may be as marked as the difference between ink and milk, is due apparently to the variety of soil in the country drained by the rivers. The chief tributaries of the Uaupes, the Itiya and the Uniya, are both white water streams. Spruce notes that fish are scarcer in black than in white water streams,[9] and attributes it to the absence of vegetation. This may be true in part of the Negro, but it is not true, I think, of other rivers. Certainly these have some sort of fish, for I have seen them rise. One species is known to feed on a variety of laurel berry very plentiful on some of the river-banks.

The Rio Negro itself, the waters of which are dead black, is navigable for more than a third of its course to vessels of a 4 feet draught even in the dry season, and communication is possible from its upper waters with the great northern artery of the Orinoco, through the Casiquiari, the most important of the natural canals that abound throughout the Amazon regions.

The Issa, or Putumayo—the Peruvian name is perhaps better known than the Brazilian, the true geographical[20] one—is the first tributary of importance to join the Amazon after it has entered Brazilian territory. Of its 1028 miles only 93, according to the Brazilian Year-Book, are not navigable by steamers. This exceeds the truth, for there is practically no communication with Colombia or Ecuador by this route, as the statement would imply. In the upper reaches of the Issa rock and shingle are to be found, while 300 miles down stream hardly a stone is to be seen. The water is very muddy, and the current variable as the depth. Now it will be a swirling storm-fed torrent, the turbid water burdened with a wild flotsam of forest trees and matted vegetation, cutting into the soft layers of vegetable mould that form its banks, and rise above it as much as 25 feet in places; anon it is a sluggish stream that spreads oilily nowhither, with scarce a ripple over the deep alluvial deposits of its bed. This river is at its lowest in February and March. At its juncture with the Amazon looking upstream from the main water-way, the Issa is the more imposing of the two, for its course lies wide and fully exposed, while the Amazon bends sharply, and gives the impression that it and not its affluent is the tributary stream. Robuchon calculated that its breadth there was 600 metres, the depth 8, and the current 2½ miles an hour. He states very truly that landslides often occur on the banks of these rivers, and that such destruction of the bank, together with the quick rise and fall of the streams, may so alter the appearance of any stretch as to render it quite unrecognisable, even within a few hours. Special mention is made by him of the Papunya River, that enters on the left bank of the Issa. Forty miles from the Papunya is the Parana Miri,[10] a river with very black water and a large group of islands at its mouth. Many of the islands in these rivers are not stationary, they are floating masses of soil and vegetation, torn away from the banks when the river is in spate. They may be as much as a[21] hundred yards from bank to bank, and birds are to be found living upon them.

The Igara Parana runs into the Issa where that river makes a horse-shoe bend,[11] the junction being on the inner side of the horse-shoe. The breadth of the stream at its mouth is 161 metres. The water is clearer than that of the Issa, and the current slower, never more than 3 miles an hour. Some 220 miles upstream there is an important waterfall, known as La Chorrera, or the Big Falls. The Igara Parana becomes vary narrow and most tortuous as it nears them, and is only 30 metres wide at its exit from Big Falls Bay. This is a huge pool almost as wide as it is long, with a narrow exit at one end, and a succession of cascades at the other. These falls are impassable in boats, and traffic with the upper river can only be carried on by land portage. Much debris of rocks and river-borne tree-trunks obstructs the narrow passage above the falls, which are given by Robuchon as having a total length of 120 metres and a width of 18 metres. The waters descend over a series of wide rocky steps, worn flat and smooth by the ceaseless friction. Masses of stone line the right bank, and rise perpendicularly from the water. This is the only part of the country where I have seen rocks and stones in any quantity.

The upper reaches of the river are distinctly more picturesque than its lower waters. The almost level banks, with their monotonous succession of forest trees, grow gradually steeper, till the sandstone cliffs rise like a fortification above the fringe of vegetation that encroaches on the high-water mark. Presently the river winds in and out between shelving hills, tree-clad to the very margin of the water. Between the Igara Parana and the Kara Parana the country is a perfect switchback of hills and ridges, with a stream in every gully. The steepness of these valleys, with a pitch perhaps of 25° or 30°, does not permit the surface water to lodge and form swamp or morass, in contrast to the waterlogged plains of the lower rivers. Immediately on the left bank of the Igara Parana, and in the vicinity of the Big[22] Falls, the country continues to be hilly, but to the north-east it is more open, and the bush is less obstructive, though its density varies immensely. Similar diversified scenery is to be found on the upper waters of the Japura.

The Kahuanari, a considerable tributary on the south bank of the Japura, drains the divide that intervenes between that river and the Igara Parana. It is subject to sudden floods, which wash down large quantities of forest debris. I have seen it rise twenty feet in a day, and afterwards subside as quickly.

The floods are not to be wondered at when the tremendous rainfall of these regions is considered. The question is never if it will rain, but when and for how long it will be fine. Rain is certain in a land which has but a few days clear of it in every twelve months. Five days, a fortnight, that, all told, is the extent of dry weather to be looked for in this country. The dry season is but a name. It is dry only in comparison with the wetter months from March to August. The upper valley of the Amazon has a three-day winter at our midsummer—June 24, 25, 26—so it is said, and certainly I noted a very decided drop in the temperature of these days in 1908. Snow is unknown, and hail not common. Despite the daily rain the turquoise blue of the sky is seldom long hidden, though from March to June leaden skies portend rain, and seldom fail to make good their portent. During the dry season the rain if it be frequent is never continuous. Almost every day, between three and four in the afternoon and two and five in the morning, heavy clouds will roll up, a preliminary breeze rustle through the leaves, shake the trees, and increase till suddenly there comes a deluge of big drops. Such storms last but half an hour, yet the rain will soak through everything, and the wet bushes drench the passer-by for hours afterwards. Nothing is ever really dry, things are in a constant state of saturation, and it is possible at all times to wring moisture out of any of one’s belongings. So great and incessant is the evaporation that at night the dew is as heavy as rain, while the marshy low-lying lands and the rivers are shrouded by mist both morning and[23] evening. With such humid air lichens and Hepaticæ flourish on all the tree-trunks, though I have never seen them, as described by Spruce, covering the very leaves of the trees.[12]

Electric disturbances are numerous, and a sharp and sudden thunder-shower often occurs about three in the afternoon, or in the night, though rain at night without thunder is common. These storms come up in the dry season especially, and the worst storms may be expected in February, at the breaking of the dry weather. Sometimes the electric storm will consist of an uninterrupted display of lightning with little or no thunder, and the sizzle of light makes the landscape appear as in a cinematograph picture. This continued on one occasion all through the night, and from the amount of interest the Indians evinced I judged it to be an unusual occurrence.

It is always possible to tell when rain will come because of the preliminary breeze, hardly felt below the tree-tops, followed by a dead calm that precedes the downpour. The prevailing wind for nine months of the year will be from the east or south-east, from June to August it will be north and north-west. In January the prevailing wind is from the Atlantic, north-east, veering to south-west; in July from the Pacific, south-west, round to north-east. Fitful and uncertain local whirlwinds will, without warning, swoop down on the clearings round the houses, play havoc in forest and plantation, uproot trees, and destroy habitations.

In spite of the continual rain, of the universal humidity; the climate is not unhealthy. The heat, though a damp heat, is never excessive, the enormously great evaporation brings in a succession of fresh breezes to moderate the temperature;[13] and so, despite apparently trying conditions,[24] the climate is not injurious. The low watersheds between the large rivers appear to be quite healthy, and if there be fever its prevalence varies locally to an extraordinary degree. It has been observed that where the soil is first turned up fever not infrequently follows, a fact noted in other parts of the world, and by no means a condition peculiar to the Amazons.

The soil of the vast Amazonian basin is mainly the alluvial deposit of decomposed vegetable life for centuries past. This sea of Pampean mud stretches from the ocean marshes up to the very heels of the mountains that stand outpost to hold the southern continent from the Pacific. Black and rich it lies in layer after layer twenty, thirty, forty feet beneath the great pall of vegetation that flourishes above during its little day, to die and drop for successive generations of arboreal life to thrive upon in their turn. And in all this vastness is never a stone. Vegetable mould and water-borne mud, but stone does not exist for thousands upon thousands of miles. Only in the upper waters of the Amazonian system are rock formations reached; in the particular district under consideration nothing is to be found harder than a soft, friable sandstone. On parts of the Issa, as on the Napo, the deep banks show strata of shingle, with perhaps red or white clay, that alternate with the dark humus and decaying wood.

It is the ceaseless activity of all vegetable life that renders these regions fit for human habitation at all. There is no period, as with us, of bare branches overhead and decaying matter below. Decomposition is there, but for every dead leaf a virent successor is ready to absorb the gases engendered by decay. The soil may be water-logged, but evaporation, combined with the constant rain, the frequent inundations, and the endless operations of an immeasurable insect world, militate against stagnation.[25] Dank it may be, but there is no iridescent scum upon the water, no fœtid smells to warn of lurking poisons. These natural danger-signals are unneeded, for the poisons are self-destructive. Processes of corruption are coexistent with those of purification. So extraordinary is this that I never hesitated to drink any water, nor is any evil resultant from water-drinking within my knowledge.

In this struggle it is the weak who go under, the feeble who support the strong. This holds good for vegetable and animal kingdom alike, and even with man there is no place for the helpless. Those who fail by the way, who cannot fulfil their functions in the toiling world, and have ceased to be of practical utility, must make way for the more capable. Altruism is not bred of the forest, it is a virtue born in cities. Here it would be suicide. The growing leaf must push off the fading leaf, or the latter will stunt and imperil its growth. In fact it does so, and growth is thus continual. There are no seasons to correspond with our spring nor with our fall of the leaf. From the lower Amazon’s maze of water-ways up to the foothills of the western mountains reigns perpetual summer; the same leafy veil hides the mysteries of the great expanse, eternally dying, eternally renewed.

As one passes onwards, however, nearer where the great cloud-banks gather over the mountain giants of the west, a perceptible change is to be noted, the scenery of the upper Amazon differs in certain essential particulars. It is not only that the great river thoroughfare, first spread on either side beyond the farthest horizon,[14] becomes a thin black line that grows nearer and deeper. Other features besides the river-surface contract. The majestic forest trees give way to timber not so towering. Plant life is not less prolific, but it is on a smaller scale. The bush has the air of being younger. It suggests that it has been dwarfed by perpetual inundations. Nor is the stunted growth limited to the vegetable world; the animals themselves, as if Nature insisted that all be in keeping, are on a lesser scale than their congeners of the eastern plains. No alligators of immense size lurk in the upper waters, even the fish and the turtles[26] are smaller, as though their inches were limited in proportion to the streams.

It is not easy to convey any true notion of the scenery of the Montaña, the vast forest regions spreading eastwards, down from the lower Andean slopes. Here and there the dense forest gives place to an open savannah, an outcrop of rock with but a shallow stratum of soil. These have none of the deep vegetable mould of the lower-lying forests, and the poorer and thinner soil harbours flora of many totally distinct varieties. Often the great fan leaves of the Aeta are matted into a dense roof over the black swamp of the valleys. Sometimes these water-loving palms are seen by the river-side, interlopers in the fringe of fern and thickets of feathery bamboo; or, again, they will grow in a regular belt with little or no other vegetation.

Life is more evident on the rivers than in the forest. Fish are there in plenty—eighteen hundred species are known in the Amazonian waters. Birds, often conspicuous by their apparent absence in the bush, flock on the sand-banks and marshes of the bank. Herons and ducks abound. Egrets haunt the sandy spits that rise from the water, and in the marshy swamps numbers of these beautiful creatures may commonly be seen hunting for the tiny fish, animals, and insects on which they feed. Another enemy of the small denizens of the stream and marsh is the kingfisher. More than one variety abound on all the Amazon water-ways, but none of them can compare with the English bird in brilliancy of colour. Probably this is an instance of protective colouring, one of Nature’s methods of defence, for on these dark waters the gorgeous blue of our Alcedo ispida would be even more conspicuous than it is on our clearer streams.

One pictures this tropical garden, this paradise of the naturalist, as a blaze of gorgeous colour, a profusion of exquisite forms. But, in proportion to one’s imaginative anticipation, I have never seen such a monotonous, flowerless wilderness as this bush appears. Still there are flowers, and flowers of showy colouring, the pinks and yellows of the bignonias, the white and crimson of the chocolate-tree, the[27] crimson of the hibiscus, the scarlet blaze of the passion-flower, the snowy beauty of the inga; all these and a thousand more are there, with the rarest blue and all the myriad shades of mauve and orange, yellow, pink, brown, violet of uncounted orchids. But orchids, though common, grow at the very top of the trees, and unless they are searched for they are not seen, except such varieties as are found on the savannahs.

The whole is on a scale so gigantic, the immense forest, the great rivers, that details are lost in the vast expanse, and the total effect is one of absolute sameness. Yet the individual variety is enormous. Though uniform in the mass, twenty-two thousand species of plants have been differentiated; thousands more remain undescribed. Only a botanist could attempt to deal with these even superficially. The uninitiated, like myself, can but look and wonder.

Many of the units of this mighty aggregate are of a surpassing loveliness; flowers unequalled for beauty, birds and insects that are living jewels, outrivalling inanimate gems. Such palms and ferns as would be rare treasures in a Kew Gardens hothouse riot unheeded in tangled profusion above the dark marshy soil, over a screen of parasites and epiphytes. Forest giants, those immense monarchs of the woods Californian advertisements depict for the edification of the populace, are not there; certainly they are never to be found in the Montaña. Nor, perhaps, in consequence of the lower growth, is there that intense gloom mentioned by writers on more easterly districts. The idea that you look up but can never see the sky is fiction to me. The foliage is certainly too dense for the sunlight to penetrate down to the damp soil and matted underbush, but patches of the sky are always more or less visible through the interlocked branches overhead. Light and air are to be had freely only on the tree-tops, and it is there that birds, insects, and flowers mass their glories out of human ken. Even the animals are climbers, and most of them spend more than half of their existence on the trees.

There are no long dark avenues beneath this leafy canopy[28] that hides all the life and colour of the forest world from the traveller, painfully cutting his path through the intricate confusion of roots and creepers below. These parasitic creepers are of many kinds, rooting down to the dark soil, intertwining with themselves, pushing boldly to the tree-tops, strong as withes, in wild festoons, knotted, tangled, of every thickness from a giant cable to a narrow thread. I have seen parasite on parasite. They loop from tree to tree, bind the underwood into impenetrable thickets, and trail over the track-way, ready to strangle or trip the heedless passer-by. But track-way is a misnomer. The only thoroughfares, where water is as abundant as dry land, are the water-ways. The bed of a stream is the only track. No other line of communication is intelligible to the Indian. Even in the vicinity of civilised centres, hundreds of miles away from these wild fastnesses of Nature, the exuberant vegetation rapidly encroaches upon a roadway. Paths in the forest there are none. A forest track consists in following the line of least resistance. If this should be stopped by any obstacle, a fallen tree, a sudden inundation, it would never be removed or surmounted. There is no choice but to climb over or go round. The ordinary Indian wayfarer would go round; and so the road deviates increasingly; it becomes inconceivably twisted, until the actual ground covered is enormous compared with the distance from point to point.

Where a stream has to be crossed there is rarely any bridge more stable than a small tree cut down and thrown across just when and where it may be wanted. Frequently such impromptu bridges are under water. They are invariably of the slightest; a branch no thicker than a man’s hand suffices to span a deep chasm, and over this an Indian will pass more unconcernedly than an Englishman over London Bridge. The worst penance of all in forest journeyings is to cross a river or a gully full of great fallen trees, on such flimsy foothold. The drop at times may be 40 to 50 feet, and there will be but the one tree across without any attempt at a hand-rail to steady the traveller. Nor can you grasp an Indian’s shoulder for aid in the perilous[29] transit, for to do so is to lose once for all every trace of prestige and authority. The man who cannot get over a river unaided, the man who is not man enough to walk and must be carried in a hammock, is but a poor creature in the eyes of the South American Indian. Still it is more than a test of nerve. In the middle of such a bridge you feel yourself swaying, and it is only with a fearful concentration of will-power and a bitten lip that you arrive safely on the other side, having leapt the last three feet. In the first month of forest journeying I bit my lip through time and again. It is not the torrent below that frightens, it is the rotten trees in the gully. A fall may possibly be a broken neck, more probably it would be a broken leg. Of the two in country of this description a broken neck is preferable.

Where a stream has to be crossed that is too deep to be forded and cannot be bridged over in this elementary fashion, there is little difficulty in the construction of a raft or a temporary canoe. The bulging-stemmed palm furnishes an almost ready-made one. This palm, Iriartea ventricosa, is readily known by the peculiar swelling on the upper part of the trunk. It will attain the height of 100 feet, and the swollen portion is big enough to form the body of an improvised canoe.

Forest bridges are not the only terrors to confront the traveller; lurking dangers are many, and imagination is but too quick to multiply the risks. Peril from wild beasts does not loom largely in the picture, though the jaguar is a savage brute, and the experienced traveller will never sleep without a weapon at hand in case one of these daring creatures should venture to attack. But of animals more anon. There is one danger by no means imaginary, the danger of falling trees. A sudden crack, startlingly noisy in the all-pervading stillness, will give warning of a fall, but there is nothing to guide to safety. It may be the nearest tree that is coming down, or one at some distance; yet the deceptive noise will not determine which may be the doomed one, beyond the fact that a palm gives the sharpest crack. Indians when they hear such a sound are invariably frightened, and often will run backwards and forwards in terrified[30] uncertainty, to try and discover whence came the danger signal.

Then there are plants that injure more directly. One palm, an Astrocaryum, has spines six inches in length up its stem. These spines, black in colour, hard, unbreakable, fall in the bush and spike the foot of the unfortunate who may tread on them. On the palm-stem itself they will wound the unwary hand incautiously or involuntarily thrust in the thicket. Many of the climbing plants have thorns or hook-like prickles, and perhaps the worst are the many kinds of twining river-side palms, whose barbed leaves will tear both flesh and clothing.[15] But trying as these vegetable torments may be, they are outclassed in the eyes of the tyro by the more active evil of perils from snakes and insects. Creeping through dense bush is an agony at first. Poisonous reptiles may lie concealed all about one, virulent insects surround in their myriads. If imagination has painted a floral paradise it has also run riot over a profusion of deadly snakes, an uninterrupted purgatory from creeping things innumerable, and winged pests before which the plague of flies in ancient Egypt sinks to insignificance. And there is some excuse for imagination if it be fed on travellers’ tales. As a matter of fact, if these were true life would in all verity be insupportable. But the fear of snakes passes in two weeks, never to return, and mercifully the most pestilent creatures exist only in limited spheres, and seldom or never in the same. Places that are troubled with the pium will be found free of mosquitoes at night; in a belt of country where the mosquito abounds the pium will be absent, and in any case the two are never active together. The pium, a most vile little fly, comes out at sunrise. It is an intolerable pest, will attack any exposed part of the body, and draws blood every time. The traveller is forced, when journeying through a pium-infested country, to don guarded boots, gauntlets, and a veil. It is impossible to eat, drink, or smoke, till sunset puts a period to the troubling. Fortunately, piums are only found within a few hundred yards of the rivers. This is also the case as a rule with[31] mosquitoes. There is a bad belt of pium country on the Issa, at the Brazilian frontier. It takes two days to get through on a steamer, and during the forty-eight hours life is a long-drawn torture. But once through you are rid of them. Robuchon noted that the Culex mosquito disappears on entering this river: but there are others; one, a kind of Tabano in miniature, is called the Maringunios. I found piums on the Kahuanari at low river, but a light breeze would suffice to sweep them away, and both mosquitoes and piums are practically non-existent in the middle Issa-Japura valley, though mosquitoes are found in certain parts of tracts of flatter country, but are not bad enough to make a net a necessary adjunct for comfort. There is also a tiny sand-fly that occasionally appears at sunset, when the river is low, and though minute in size, causes a very painful wound. It is known in Brazil as the Maruim.

A most annoying little insect that is very common in the bush is a kind of harvest bug. This almost invisible “red tick” must not be confused with another parasite that is only obtained from contact with Indians. The forest tick lives on the leaves of plants and bushes, and when shaken off creeps everywhere, and will burrow under the skin, which gives rise to maddening irritation.

Wasps and wild bees—the bee of these regions is a waspish creature—are frequently a nuisance. Often in a forest path I have come upon a huge black overhanging nest pendant from a tree. It looks like a tarred lobster-pot full of black pitch, and it is necessary to rush past to avoid the stings of the easily-roused inhabitants. Some of the wasps are exceedingly handsome fellows, noticeable even among Amazonian winged beauties, unsurpassed in any other land for gorgeous colouring. Among other fine insects of the Montaña are the huge Morphos, a dazzling blue butterfly many sizes bigger than a humming-bird; dragonflies with iridescent wings and jewelled bodies, fireflies and glow-worms with their living lights, so brilliant that I have often in a moment of forgetfulness mistaken them for distant lights from some human dwelling-place. But the butterflies, the most resplendent of all, frequently illustrate[32] the proverb that beauty is but skin deep. Exquisitely graceful in flight, marvellous in subtle colourings, I have found them to be the dirtiest possible feeders. The sight of one now fills me with repugnance, for it calls to mind pictures of these so apparently dainty and aerial beings fluttering about some mass of offal, actually eating manure.[16] They will congregate in thousands round a spot of blood, so absolutely fearless that it is not possible to drive them away. They will actually smother the kill during the disembowelling process after hunting. The contrast of their ethereal loveliness and their gross habits is revolting—Psyche and putrid filth, an inconceivably horrible combination.

Butterflies and moths exist in great numbers and varieties. The most ordinary kind is a large bright sky-blue; other common ones are tiger-marked and yellow, like our sulphur butterfly but larger. Most of them are strong fliers. If the perfect insects themselves inflict no injury, the same cannot always be said of them in the caterpillar stage, for very many have hair that stings quite painfully.

Ants are the greatest curse. They are everywhere, of all kinds, of varied colours, and almost invariable viciousness. They drop from the overhanging foliage. They may come singly or in battalions—army corps rather. The traveller pushing through the thicket will knock them off the bushes, and they will proceed to crawl down the neck or up the sleeves. They swarm over the bare feet. And then they sting. The worst kind is a small stinging ant not more than the size of a pin’s head. In many places the earth is broken up and transformed into irregular heaps, the late habitations of some gregarious ant, such as the Ecodema cophelotos, or it may be built into cones to the height of 4 or 5 feet by the termites. It needs but short experience of the bush to endorse very heartily Spruce’s comment that they “deserve to be considered the actual owners of the Amazon[33] valley.”[17] On more than one occasion stinging ants drove me from dry land to water. In inundated country these insects forced me to take refuge off the higher points of land, which, turned into temporary islands, form the natural resting-place for the traveller exhausted by the wading, the swimming, and the stumbling through the unseen undergrowth. Unfortunately the ants, too, are driven to take the same refuge. The traveller may find that choice lies between torture on land or again seeking the comparative peace of the water in perhaps an exhausted condition. Happily ants, like the pium, keep in belts, and of these it can only be said that discreet avoidance is better than valour.

With regard to the reptiles, though these abound, they seek rather to avoid than to court notice, and are by no means the danger to life that the ignorant imagine. Naturally the naked Indian is more exposed to any peril there may be than the better protected white man, and if a snake be trodden on it will promptly turn and bite the unshod foot of the aggressor. But no snake, so far as I have observed, will attack a human being unmolested, not even the boa constrictor; nor would the anaconda, the great water snake, though all Indians are very afraid of it. I do not think that even the venomous labarria ever bites a man unless first disturbed.

Alligators in the Issa and the Japura are small, rarely seen, and never formidable. The dangerous jacare, that huge monster of the lower rivers, is unknown here. But of fierce and poisonous fish I shall have somewhat to say later. Curiously enough, despite the swampy nature of the ground, I never met with any leeches, though Bates mentions a red, four-angled species he found to be abundant in the marshy pools at the juncture of the Japura and the Amazon.[18] Frogs and toads are the most abundant reptiles. They exist in thousands and are of all sizes, though I have never seen any of dimensions that Spruce speaks of—“as big as a man’s head.”[19] At night near any stream huge frogs keep up a constant and fearful noise, and even at midday, when a silence that may be[34] felt enfolds the tropical woodland, their chorus is only subdued, not stayed.

This silence of the forest is a very real thing, a quality that does not lessen by acquaintance. On the contrary it grows more real and more oppressive. A strange gloom and a strange stillness hold the bush. They give the impression that there is nothing animate in all the vastness, no life other than that of the overwhelming, all-triumphant vegetation. It is possible to journey for days and never see a human being. A sound, be it but the cracking of a twig, startles in the forest. Then, suddenly, the vibrant quiet will be broken by a shrill scream. Some creature has been done to death. The cry dies to a moan, and the low murmur that is hardly sound, the drone of the unseen but abundant life, once more makes up the silence that pulses tormentingly on ear and brain, till night again wakens the birds and the beasts of the wild, and the murmur grows and deepens to the full volume of confused sound made by the forest’s busy life.

At the break of day, and again at the going down of the sun, the howling monkeys, if they be in the neighbourhood, startle the echoes with their raucous yelps. Sunrise is, indeed, the signal for absolute pandemonium. Toucans start an endless chattering that rises now and again to a far-reaching scream. The trumpeter birds make extraordinary noises. With them may be joined in a chorus of discord the macaws and the parrots of the district, and the chorus is punctuated at night by the mournful cry of a large night-jar.

But, for the most part, the birds and the beasts go about their business silently. They seek neither to disturb their victims nor to advertise their own doings and so attract those with sinister designs against themselves. In the bush silence is a better policy than honesty.

Picture all this, and try to understand the bush life in Amazonia. It will explain much of the unwritten and unwritable story of the inhabitants of these wilds. For the traveller the day is easily summarised: the awakening at sunrise, followed by a bath in the nearest stream, and a[35] meal of what was left over-night; the trail, the worst in the world; the slow progress that jars on the nerves; the never-ending, impenetrable forest; the narrow path that has to be widened; the stumbles, the falls, the whipping of the face and arms by innumerable twigs; the ever-ready liana that catches the foot of the careless walker; the stinging ants that shower down on face and neck when a tree is accidentally shaken; the greenheart and other rods that pierce the feet and legs; the thorns innumerable, and the fine palm-spines on which a hand is transfixed when put out to save a fall; the end of the trek, a bath to get rid of the litter of mud and vegetable filth; dinner, of sorts; and a hammock under a shelter so poor that it will not prevent the driving and inevitable rain from chilling the sleeper to the bone. Imagine the state of fatigue to mind and body when one cries, “Thank God, I have got so far to-day. I could not repeat to-day’s labours. I could not go back on my own open trail, or go through the same to-morrow.” And so crying one knows that to-morrow and the trail must come. Even in fancy you will feel the pressure on your chest, the pressure behind you. It demoralises utterly.

There is a gruesome depression that is almost physical, produced by solitude on a small island, when all other land is out of sight. The bush to me is worse. The oppression is as of some great weight. A light heart is impossible in an atmosphere which the sunshine never enlivens, that is beaten daily back to earth by rain, where the air is heavy with the fumes of fallen vegetation slowly steaming to decay. The effect of the impenetrable thickets around, the stifling of the breath, is all mental, doubtless; but it must react physically on the neurotic subject.

This depression, this despondency, may seem incredible to those who have never experienced anything similar, who are ignorant of the innate malevolence of the High Woods. But in truth there is nothing in Nature more cruel than the unconquered vegetation of a tropical South American forest. The Amazonian bush brings no consolation. It is silent, inhospitable, cynical. It has overcome the mastodon and the megatherium, the prehistoric camel and the rhinoceros.[36] It has reduced its rivals of the animal kingdom to slimy alligators and unsightly armadilloes, to sloths and ant-bears. The most powerful tenant of its shades is the boa constrictor, the most majestic the jaguar. Man is a very puny feature in the Amazonian cosmos.

The sense of one’s insignificance is the first lesson of travel in the bush. In the beginning the discovery amuses the adventurer. Later, he resents the implied superiority of the fixed and nerveless plants which barricade his progress. In the end, he hates the bush as though it were a sentient being. Yet the component parts of the bush are familiar to all at home: we coddle them in our gardens, and nurse them tenderly in our glass-houses. But in the Amazons they unite to form a horrible, a most evil-disposed enemy. They obscure the sun from the earth, condemn one to existence in a gloomy, stifling half-light. They constrict the world to a path laboriously hacked through jealous undergrowth. They stab with hidden snags, and strangle with deftly poised lianas. In their most hurtful mood they poison with a touch.[20]

The Amazonian forest is no glorified botanic garden. Its units are not intelligently isolated and labelled. There is but a monotonous tangle of vegetation through which the traveller cuts his way to daylight and perspective in a river-channel. One rarely sees a blossom or a fruit. Within that tangle, however, is the whole varied life of the tropical jungle. It may be difficult to distinguish specimens through the superimposed mass of extraneous vegetation; it may be impossible to catch a glimpse of a living creature throughout a day’s march; but the flowers are there in their thousands, and a myriad of eyes have noted each blundering movement of the wayfarer. It is no part of the philosophy of the bush to force even the most reckless of animals into needless publicity.

It is simple for the traveller to pull the canoe to the bank of one of the upper tributaries of the great river, to land, to part the screen of bushes, and to pass beyond—into[37] the obscurity of barbarism. It is a simple feat, yet eventful. A thousand yards away from the safe thoroughfare of the main stream the explorer is lost, overwhelmed in the extravagance of vegetation. Denied a pathway, a landmark, a horizon, or a sky, he has less to guide him than the castaway on the ocean or the wanderer in the Sahara. His most definite course can only be from river-bed to river-bed. To direct him on his way the trees offer no aid to help him, the forest provides but little sustenance.

Every traveller in the bush lives in the constant dread of being lost. Desertion, unexpected, unforeseen, is common with the Indians. They leave without ascertainable cause at the cost of their pay, at the risk of their lives. In a watch of the night they depart, and although the country be swarming with their blood-enemies, they vanish into the forest and are no more seen.

In time the civilised man, with no other than such barbaric companions, turns at the thought of them, is nauseated by their bestiality, longs for relief from their presence. Then he wanders away, ever so little a distance into the bush, to be alone and to think. He happens upon a stream—that is so simple a by-path, so obvious a guide. He wanders light-footedly up its bed in search of that ego which had begun to elude him. The surroundings interest him. The water comforts his feet. The silence casts him back upon himself. He thinks, computes, and the solitude assists his introspection. He recovers his perspective, replaces the comrades of his bush-life in their proper places—the glass-fronted cupboards of an anthropological museum. His self-respect regained, he pauses to admire his new-found horizon.

Trees hem him in on every side. A little way up the stream is a narrow slit of sunlight, a little way down a narrow canopy of sky. All else is vegetation. The solitude no longer tempts him, but mocks as he contemplates his surroundings. Yet to doubt is to be ridiculous. It is all so simple; it took so long to come here up the stream; the same number of hours or minutes will take him back again to the spot he marked, and so to the camp.

The difficulties begin with the return journey. He[38] questions the hour of leaving the bearers, the rate of march, the time spent in lazy consideration. One tree is so like another tree, one river vista but the duplicate of the last. Reeds, weeds, and bush now offer nothing distinctive; their former individuality appears to be lost. The trail must have been passed. He shouts, diffidently at first, eventually with hysteria. He fires a rifle, and the bush but re-echoes the sound. The hundreds of miles of forest on every side press together, and the signal is shuttlecocked between. The very echoes seem to him muffled, like the drums at a soldier’s funeral. The traveller is lost.

The realisation is a strange psychological phenomenon. It forces the self-reliant European on his knees to pray; drags him to his feet to blaspheme; throws him on his face to weep. This admission may come strangely to the well-housed British ratepayer. It may sound like a confession of unfathomable cowardice. It is far easier for the arm-chair philosopher to imagine the stoicism of the Indians than to reproduce the neuroticism of his European counterpart. Things are so different when the conception of the Amazonian bush is the memory of the tropical houses in Kew Gardens.

One day I was lost alone. When I realised it I shouted, then fired half-a-dozen rounds from my rifle, and laughed. It was the laugh that brought me to my senses—that way lay madness. The reaction to calm was stupendous. Life was dependent upon self-control and clarity of judgment. I counted my rounds, remembered all I had eaten that day, and settled myself to think. We had crossed a stream, and my boys had been left quenching their thirst. I took the lie of the land, and found a path leading downwards. It must go to water. It did in fact take me to a stream, and I trudged wearily in the bed of it; then, after two fruitless hours of growing despondency, turned and went down, to find, as darkness was closing in, Brown and his party. That night I had fever, and talked in my sleep. And John Brown was lost for five and a half months. Good God!

There is one last experience of the bush—starvation. The man who has not starved can never enter into the[39] feelings of his brother who, with blood-shot eyes and shaking fingers, has groped about the fallen leaves for a lizard or a frog. I can answer for it that those who have starved never again may express the sensation. It has become the memory of a nightmare.

CHAPTER III

Out of the silence and gloom of the forest the traveller will emerge into the full light of a clearing. Though it is the site of a tribal headquarters there is no village, no cluster of huts, except among some of the tribes on the lower Apaporis. There is but one great house, thatched and ridge-roofed like a gigantic hay-rick, standing four-square in the open. This is the home of some three score Indians.[21]

The immediate signs of their occupancy are but few. There is hardly any litter cumbering the homestead; whatever of refuse there be is cleared more speedily by the ants than it would be by the most up-to-date sanitary authority of London. Back here in the untouched districts, away from the Rubber Belt and the commerce-bearing rivers, there are none of the leavings of civilisation: no broken bottles, no battered tins, no torn and dirty scraps of paper—indeed if bottle or tin ever found its way to these wilds it would be esteemed a most rare and valuable treasure. No village dogs bark their challenge at the stranger’s approach, no domestic fowls clutter away to safety. A naked child or a startled old woman may scurry into the saving murk of the maloka,[22] otherwise the silence and solitude appear little less profound than in the forest.

That is the picture as the artist or camera would[41] reproduce it. The details, the essentials, must be sought within.

First of all characteristics is the fact that nothing makes for permanence. The house and its contents at the best are but for temporary use. The possession of a central tribal house does not presuppose that these Indians remain for any length of time in one locality. After about two or three years the house falls into a state of disrepair, but the tribesmen will not patch and mend it. They will simply discard it like all useless things. The women will be loaded up with the few tribal possessions—not forgetting the inevitable burden of their infants—the house will be burnt,[42] and the whole of this grosse famille departs to seek a new site on which to build another habitation.

Building material is easily come by, and though to clear the land for agricultural purposes from the virgin forest entails considerable hard work, it is periodically a necessary task. However rich it may have been in the first instance successive crops rob the soil of its fertility, as the Indian is only too well aware, and fresh ground must perforce be broken up every few years. Then again, paths converging on the homestead in time are worn through the forest undergrowth, dense though it may be, circuitous though the trail of the Indian is invariably. Secrecy is security. A track-way is as good as an invitation, a sign-post, to the enemy. To move becomes a precautionary measure, even if the food supply be not exhausted—another reason that makes for unsettled conditions in forest life.

The site chosen is never near a river, for these are the highways for a possible enemy, and streams for ordinary purposes abound. Also—but this is an insignificant reason in comparison with the first—insect pests are not so abundant at a distance from the river-bank. With an eye to defence from hostile visitors, the Indian habitation is sedulously hidden, and the paths that lead to it are concealed also in every possible way. The track from the river especially may run more or less directly for, say, a third of a mile; then it is absolutely stopped by a fallen tree. No cleared pathway apparently runs beyond this, but the Indian, creeping through the thicket by devious ways, eventually reaches another comparatively cleared track. This will in turn be stopped in the same fashion, and thence lead more directly housewards. The river-path may be broken twice or even three times in little more than a mile.

At the same time that the ground is cleared on which the house is to be built, a plot immediately in front is also cleared for use as a dancing ground. This is customary, but not invariable, for some tribes are content with the dancing space inside the house. The outside dancing floor once cleared is quickly trodden down, and though no special[43] preparation is attempted will soon be baked comparatively hard in the sun.

The construction of the great house is not complicated, but the workmanship is dexterous, and will bear the closest inspection. Four great poles, 20 to 30 feet high, form the main supports of the roof, which slopes down on either side tentwise almost to the ground from the central ridge-pole. More posts and cross-beams support it, and the whole is most adroitly lashed together. The forest supplies all the needed material. It is there ready to hand, growing where the house is to be erected. The straightest tree-trunks provide the posts and cross-beams; the creeping lianas serve to splice and bind the framework together; Bussu palm-leaves [23] make the thatch, which, as the actual wall is but some three feet in height, is practically roof and wall in one. The bejucos, or lianas, used to tie the beams and poles are first soaked in water to render them supple enough.[24]

To make the thatch the Indians slit bamboos and insert[44] the palm-leaves doubled backwards.[25] The strips are then laid on the framework of the house, one above another, so that the uppermost strips shall hang half over those below. They are piled on to a thickness of from a foot to eighteen inches, and when completed this shingling is absolutely waterproof. When it ceases to be so the house will be abandoned. The leaves are not plaited, or intertwined in any manner, so the roof consists only of loose fronds, row upon row, and these have more the appearance of tobacco plants hung in an open drying-barn than a reed or straw thatch.

All the native houses are made after much the same manner. They vary only in unimportant details. The shape, as a rule, is a rough parallelogram or square with rounded angles, but on the lower Apaporis the houses are circular. On the Napo River also they are hemispherical, but the section of a Witoto or Boro house usually would be a triangle some 30 feet high, with a 60-feet base. Witoto houses sometimes are more circular as to ground-plan, but always have the pointed roof, not a cone (see Fig. 4).

The house is not always roofed and thatched to the ground, the last two or three feet occasionally being made of a closely set palisade, lined with matting or thatch. This is even more noticeable in a Nonuya house, and a Makuna house is invariably so fortified and is lighter than a Boro dwelling. As a general rule it may be noted that the Issa-Japura houses are not strengthened in this way. Wallace gives the dimensions of a house at Jaurité as 115 feet long, by 75 broad, and 30 high.[26] A Witoto or a Boro house is usually about 60 to 70 feet in diameter. In both cases the size depends on the numbers of the tribe.

These houses have no windows, and the entrance is merely an opening in the palm-thatch eaves of some three feet by two. This most frequently is closed with a removable section of the thatch, which must be lifted out when any one enters, and replaced behind them; or it may be, as among the Orahone and Nonuya, covered by a curtain of thatch, which is hung on a cross-piece of the eaves by a strip of liana, and simply is pushed aside and swung back into place. In a Nonuya house the door is marked outside by bundles of rods neatly tied and set against the side posts.[27] Whatever the “door” may be, the opening is invariably kept closed, and it is the duty of any persons coming in to fasten up the entrance as soon as they have entered.[28] The consequence of this absence of any opening is that the interiors of the malokas are nearly as dark by day as by night. But this deep gloom keeps out insects—no small consideration in a land so infested with them.

The interior with its pointed roof resembles, as Robuchon remarked, a circus at a country fair. The central space is usually kept clear, and is used by the children as a playing-ground what time it is not required for more serious tribal business, such as dancing or a tobacco palaver. The far end of the house—where there is usually another small entrance—is the portion reserved for the chief and his family. As a rule it is open, but I have seen it matted off in some Witoto houses. Neither the Boro nor the Witoto indulge in the cubicles of palm-leaf thatch mentioned by Wallace in Uaupes houses,[29] nor are their habitations divided into two, with a small chamber at the end, as described by Koch-Grünberg[47] in Tuyuka houses.[30] Each family has its own fire, but that is the only distinction, though on the lower Apaporis mats of beaten palm-leaf are used to form a sort of booth for each family. Such mats, duriei as the Witoto call them, are also employed in some houses for the protective purpose of securing the entrance.

The Apaporis Indians also make shelves or platforms on which they sleep, but all the other Issa-Japura tribes use the hammock slung about 2½ feet from the ground. One is hung for every man adjacent to his family fire—almost over it in fact. A second, placed rather less advantageously, in local opinion, belongs to his wife; while a third may be set between the two, close under the sloping thatch, for the children, when they are not asleep on the rough floor of uncovered earth. The family possessions are stored in places on the rafters overhead along with the hammocks, cooking-pots, and baskets with dried fish or smoked meat, the cassava-squeezer and personal treasures.

The chief has no other house, but any tribesman with a wish for one can build a small house for himself and his family in the bush, though he still retains his right to a corner in the common dwelling of the tribe. A temporary shelter is easily contrived by lashing poles to four trees, some seven or eight feet above the ground. On this frame-work branches for rafters and palm-leaves for thatch are quickly adjustable. This is the ordinary way of preparing a sleeping-place in the forest, and[48] is known among the rubber-gatherers as a rancho, but the Indians’ private houses are constructed more securely, and more like miniature editions of the central tribal house, although in this case no wall whatever supports the sloping roof as a rule. These may be called their country homes, and they may be perhaps as much as two days’ journey from the great house of assembly.

At ordinary times there will be possibly from fifty to sixty people in the tribal house, but on the occasion of any festivity as many as two hundred will crowd in, all as by right entitled. What the atmosphere is like on those occasions may better be imagined than described. I invariably slept in native houses, and never found them other than very dark, very hot at night, and full of smoke, for which there is no outlet, chimneys being unknown luxuries with most of the tribes. Some of the Indians on the Apaporis contrive an arrangement that permits the smoke to disappear, and the Kuretu make what is almost a chimney-cowl by means of an overhanging portion of the topmost thatch above a small opening;[31] but in the ordinary Boro or Witoto house there is nothing to disperse the smoke from the wood fires that, it must be remembered, are never extinguished. These tribes have no means of making fire. It is therefore a matter of vital importance that it should never be permitted to die out. Did such an untoward accident occur the household would be fireless till live embers were obtained from some friendly neighbour.

Fire-making is unknown to the tribes on the south of the Japura, but on the north of that river fire is obtained by friction in a groove.[32] I never saw it done, but was told that ants’ nests were often used for tinder. On one occasion I made a fire by firing cartridges into a mass of leaves and wood chips, having first extracted the bullets and replaced them with cotton wool. The leaves flamed up after fourteen rounds. Matches are sheer magic in the Indian’s eyes, and[49] a box is a most valuable gift. He may blaze one, just to be certain that the white man has passed on some of his own magical powers along with the wonderful little box of sticks, but never more than one is sacrificed at a time.

What with the heavy dews and the incessant rain the bush is always in a condition of reeking damp, so bush fires are impossible. Therefore, when they cannot make fire, the Indians must keep the family fire burning night and day, and its preservation is the very serious business of every member of the tribe. Not only do they depend on it for warmth and cooking, but the fitful glow of the smouldering fires is on ordinary occasions the only light in the Indian house. Torches of resinous wood are used at dances and such-like festivals only. When the tribesmen go into the bush they always carry fire over their shoulders. This is done by means of a strip of some resinous bark, about two feet long, which they hold in their hands. The bark smoulders slowly, and can at any time be blown into a flame.

The fire is always arranged after a definite pattern. Three young trees are placed together on the ground endways, in the form of a triskeles. The fire is kindled in the centre, and once alight it will last for as long as a week at a time. All day when people pass, even the little children, they will give a kick to a log to keep the fire together, and during the night it is fed continually in the same fashion.

The natives sleep with no more covering than they have worn in the daytime. The hammocks of the father, the mother, and the children are slung, as has been said, in a triangle, with the fire between them. As the fire dies down one or other will rise and push the wood more closely together, blow a little at the hot embers, and then return to rest, till about the hour before sunrise, when it is coldest. Then every one gets up, and when the fire has been blown into a blaze they wait for dawn.

Dawn is the signal for all to repair to the river for the first bath of the day. The girls come back with big jars full of water on their heads, held in position by their uplifted hands. The women go to work in the plantations, the men may hunt and fish. As day advances into evening the women return again from the plantation, the mothers, naked and shining from the evening bath, with their children seated astride their left hips; while those not encumbered carry up the pine-apples, the plantains, and the manioc, packed in baskets that are slung from their foreheads. Those who have sought provision in the forest bring back lizards and snakes—it may be a frog, for nothing seems amiss for the hot-pot of the Indian. The hunters come in from the bush with a capybara, a curassow, or a monkey; the men who preferred the river bring fish. Soon there is a savoury smell from the cooking of cassava cakes, the boiling of meat, and the pungent odour of yarakue. There is not much talk, and none of the homely clatter of dishes, for leaves serve as plates and napkins, fingers for eating utensils. The naked women crouch on their heels about the fires; the men stretch languidly in their hammocks; and so the Indian day passes by imperceptible degrees again to night.

So much for the human inhabitants of the tribal household. There are others of less pleasing character. Spiders are there, some of an extraordinary size, not forgetting the deadly tarantula. One day I placed my hand carelessly on one of the posts in an Indian house, and only just withdrew it in time, for it had been within an inch or two of a large mygale. Scorpions also lurk in crannies of the thatch, but they never bothered me in the least, and although the swelling was considerable in the one or two cases of bite I noted, there were no after-consequences.

The Menimehe, whose houses are more open, make hives of hollow trees for bees to swarm in, and these are placed in their maloka, so that a store of honey and wax is always at hand.

The smoke and darkness keep off the pium and mosquito, but outside the dwelling ants abound, though their value as scavengers does in a measure detract from their general undesirability; for it is thanks mainly to them that there are no bad smells in the vicinity of a Witoto home, as cleanliness is not a virtue of the Witoto. The daily rain, also, prevents any accumulation of filth, for everything of that description is continually washed away.

Jiggers are found in Indian houses, though never in the bush. There need be no trouble with these tiresome creatures if prompt attention be paid to the part affected. It is a common practice among the Indians for the women to examine the men’s feet directly they come in, to see that they are all right, and if a jigger is detected to dig it out with a palm-spine, care being taken that a non-poisonous spine is selected.[33] A very much more serious injury is inflicted by the blood-sucking bat. Not only the forest but the dark and lofty roof of the native house will often harbour bats of several kinds, and occasionally some of the Phyllostoma. Vampires, however, are more frequently met with on the main river than on the Issa or Japura.[34] They[52] undoubtedly attack sleepers, and the subsequent loss of blood may be serious, especially in the case of a child. The point made for is always the big toe, and the wound is so slight that the victim does not waken, or if awake is hardly conscious of the hurt. It is possible that the loss of blood induces a comatose state. I never actually saw a case, though I have talked to persons who had been bitten. But the vampire is rare in these districts, whereas other bats are common enough in the forest.

As a general rule the Indians have no pets; but on one occasion, near a Boro settlement on the north of the Japura, I saw some children of the Menimehe tribes with tame monkeys. These were the only Indians I ever met who kept any pet. Animal food is too scarce in the forest. Bates asserts that “the Indians are very fond of them [monkeys] as pets, and the women often suckle them when young at their breasts.”[35] I never heard of such a case as this, but certainly the monkey must be caught extremely young to be tamable at all; and, I repeat, food is scarce.

CHAPTER IV

Given equal conditions, similar environment, the human race, wheresoever on this globe its lot be cast, shows a marked sameness in its traits and habits. This need not, in fact does not, argue a unity of origin. There is no reason why a custom may not be indigenous in many parts of the world, among peoples labouring under like conditions; and if the same customs be evolved the same cultural types will also be found to exist. Thus it is easy to find even striking resemblances between these Indians of Amazonia and such distant peoples as the Arunta of Central Australia, the cannibal tribes of pagan Malay, or, to go even wider afield, the Basque people of Southern Europe. This does not for a moment suggest that such common beliefs, customs, or cultures have been introduced from one to the other, or even borrowed from a common stock. The human mind seems to work broadly on certain definite planes of thought, and there is less mental difference between the low-type illiterate of a London slum and the denizens of a tropical forest than there is between him and the learned occupant of a University Chair, though both be nominally of the same nation.

Attempts are continually made to evolve some working classification of the South American Indians. The main[54] difficulty, the sparsity of common factors, despite general similarity, is due in a measure at least to the absence of any standard, any fixity of language, or any confederation between the units of these races. The only rule is that there is no rule. What was a common word yesterday is possibly forgotten to-day; the custom shared a generation ago may vary now past recognition, and to-morrow will see further changes that increase the diversity. These people are in a state of flux. Disintegration is the determinant influence; nothing makes for amalgamation. A section of a tribe isolated from the remainder, surrounded by neighbours whose speech, whose physical features, are entirely different, may develop into a distinct tribe with dialect and customs as variant from the parent tribe as from those in its new vicinage.[36] But extinction rather than such increase is the more probable fate. These tribes are hardly embryos of nations to be, nor can they be entirely classified as the decadent remnants of perishing races. Rather did it seem to me that, despite the awful handicap of their environment, they were gradually evolving a higher culture. Their origin is a problem of no small interest, but one on which recorded history throws exceedingly little light. Whether they be the autochthonous sons of American soil, or the stranded vanguard of successive waves of Mongoloid immigrants pushed southwards to be swallowed up in the Amazonian forests,[37] or—which is most probable—a combination of both, can only be in part determined by the study of their physical traits, their habits, customs, speech, morals, and beliefs. It is for the comparative anthropologist, the comparative folklorist, to find an answer.

As an instance of the difficulty of classification, and the confusion that has resulted in much of the literature on this subject, the statements given in the Contemporary Science Series volume, The Races of Man, may be examined. Deniker orders the Indians in four divisions—Carib, Arawak, Miranha, and Pano; and classifies the Witoto in the first, taking the determinative ethnic distinction to be “their acquaintance with the hammock, a plaited (not woven)[55] texture, and a particular kind of cassava-squeezer.”[38] If this is correct and sufficient, all the Indians of the middle Issa-Japura regions are Caribs. But I do not think the arguments are conclusive. For example, “the practice of the ‘couvade’” is given as racially distinctive of the Carib.[39] But couvade is by no means peculiar to the Carib. In this region it is a common custom of the Witoto and the Boro, who are linguistically and physically diverse.[40] Then, as regards the hammock, it has been pointed out by Sir Everard im Thurn, who holds that the Carib did not migrate to British Guiana from the interior but from the islands,[41] that the Caribs of Guiana, the “stranger tribes,” as he calls them, that is, tribes who have migrated thither, “make their hammocks of cotton,” while the native tribes use palm-fibre.[42] None of the Issa-Japura tribes make use of cotton yam for their hammocks; it is, in fact, almost unknown to them, and what little they may possess is presumably obtained by barter, for to the best of my knowledge they do not prepare it, or know how to prepare it; palm-fibre only is used by them. The explanation probably is that Deniker apparently confuses the Karahone and the Witoto, as he speaks of “the Uitotos or Carijonas,” as though they were the same, instead of a totally distinct group of tribes. He also gives Crevaux as his authority, when he states that the Witoto—according to him a Carib group—“live side by side with the Miranhas,” Miranha being differentiated as a distinct branch. But Dr. Crevaux speaks of “Ouitotos ou Miranhas,”[43] and remarks that “Les Miranhas du Yapurá sont appelés par leurs voisins ‘Ouitotos.’”[44] It would seem, then, that the[56] French traveller considered that the Witoto language-group belongs to the same racial division as the Miranha language-group, though, as Dr. Koch-Grünberg remarks, the languages of these groups “ne présentent aucun signe de parenté entre elles.”[45] In fact, he is of the opinion that “on serait sans doubte plus près de la vérité si on rattachait les différents dialectes parlés dans la région des Ouitotos à un groupe linguistique nouveau.” This he designates the groupe Ouitoto.[46] Miranha or Miranya is the name given to the Boro by the tribes on the north, and is the lingoa-geral name for the Boro and other groups. The word means a wanderer, a gratuitous distinction where all tribes have nomadic tendencies, and this may be the reason why it has apparently been applied to several groups.

It is not surprising that there should be confusion over any attempted classification of these peoples, for not only are there many language-groups, each with numerous tribes, but in addition to this a group or a tribe will have not one distinct name by which it may be known and classed, but a number of names, so that inevitably the writer without personal knowledge of a group will be easily misled in dealing with it and its divisions.

So far as the Indians are concerned no language-group and no tribe use the esoteric name. They talk simply of “our speech” or “our own people,” and they are named, and frequently named differently, by the surrounding tribes. The Boro, for example, are known as Boro to the tribes from the west and south, as Miranya to some of those of the east and the north; the same tribe would therefore be Boro to the Witoto and Miranya to the Yuri or the Menimehe. The Dukaiya are called Okaina—which means “capybara”—by the Witoto, though they are also called Dukaiya, which is the extra-tribal name of their most powerful tribe or section. Muenane and Nonuya are also Witoto names.[47] Witoto is the esoteric name for mosquito, but the Witoto[57] tribes were thus named by the tribes on the south either because the name has the same meaning in their language or because they had learned the Witoto word for this insect. In this case the esoteric name is the same as the exoteric. Crevaux gives ouitoto as the word for “enemy” among the Karahone and the Roucouyennes,[48] and Martius has a similar word for that meaning among other tribes.[49] All this adds to the difficulties of nomenclature. It must be understood, also, that if you ask a Witoto, “O Memeka bu?” (What tribe do you belong to?) he would not tell you, but he would answer in the affirmative if the question be put as to whether he belongs to a certain tribe or to a certain group, though he will not himself use the tribal or group name. This applies to all Indians. Moreover, there is the very thorny question of spelling. I have throughout adopted the rule laid down by the Royal Geographical Society, and spelt words with English consonants—that is to say, with their equivalent values—and Italian vowels. This is the most generally accepted method, but even with this peculiarities of ear must result in sundry variants.

Another source of confusion in writing about these peoples has been the indiscriminate use of the words nation, tribe, clan, family. To avoid possibility of mistake it may be explained at the outset that tribe is here used in the sense ruled by the new editions of both the Anthropological and the Folklore Handbooks, that is to say, “a group with a common language, code of law, some rude form of government, and capable of uniting for common action.” These tribes I would further classify into language-groups, such as the Witoto language-group, the Boro language-group, and so forth. The group name—Witoto, Boro, Andoke, or whatever the case may be—applies to all the tribes of these groups, in addition to their individual names. The variations between these tribes of a group are mainly dialectic and local, but the variance between tribes of alien groups is more than a difference of speech and custom. The Boro, for instance, are distinctly Chinese in appearance; their[58] neighbours the Witoto resemble rather the Dyaks of Borneo.

The two groups with which we are mainly concerned, and the only two with which it is possible in this book to deal seriously in detail, are the Witoto and the Boro. They occupy roughly the lands between the Japura and the Igara Parana, and the Igara Parana and the Issa, though there are no actual boundaries. The Boro country lies north-west of the Futahi Hills, in the watersheds of the Pupuna and the Kahuanari rivers. The Boro also occupy a stretch of country north of the Japura, where that river bends south and east below its junction with the Wama, and including part of the Ira watershed. On this, the north-east border, they meet the country of the Menimehe, while on the north they touch the Karahone country. The Resigero and Nonuya districts lie between them and the Muenane. The country by the Futahi Hills west of the Igara Parana, that is to say, the basins of the Esperanza and Sabalo Yacu rivers, is very sparsely populated, and the Dukaiya country on the west of the Nonuya practically separates the Witoto and the Boro on the north-west. From the mouth of an unnamed tributary of the Japura—below the Tauauru and on the opposite bank—the Andoke country runs south of the Japura to the junction of the Kuemani, where the Japura becomes the boundary between the Andoke and the Witoto. On the west the Orahone country lies on the farther side of the Issa from the Witoto, the Issa being the dividing line from the west and south-west of the Witoto group. The name Orahone is given to all tribes indiscriminately if they elongate the lobes of their ears,[50] so the Orahone, or Long-ears, may possibly be many distinct tribes. Thus, one writer notes of the Napo tribes, the “Cotos” and the “Tutapishcos,” that they “are sometimes called ‘Orejones,’” but are not so known locally.[51] The Orahone are of a low type. To the east of the Menimehe and the Boro districts the Kuretu language-group of tribes[59] occupy the country north and south of the Japura. To the north the Opaina, Makuna, and Tukana groups interpose between them and the Bara and Maku groups. The Maku are found from the Rio Negro to the Apaporis, and again above the Bara group north of the Arara Hills about the Kaouri river, a tributary of the Uaupes. Though the Bara group live to the north of the Apaporis they have nothing in common with the Uaupes Indians. Both their language and customs resemble more those of the Japura, and they have no intercourse with the surrounding tribes. They are a dark-skinned people, of a low type, and consequently looked down on by their lighter-skinned neighbours. The Maku, also of a low type and dark, are a very nomadic group; in fact all these peoples are wanderers, and the districts here given for their localities must be taken as merely approximate. That they were there when I was in the country is no guarantee that they will be found there now, or a few years hence. The locality of a tribe, or a language-group, is mainly dependent on the locality of its neighbours, especially of any powerful or warlike body. The tribes of the upper Issa districts are semi-civilised Colombian, those of the lower waters semi-civilised Brazilian Indians. Only in the middle district have the tribes been free, until recently, from the influence of the white man.

It is almost impossible to give the populations of these districts even in round figures. My own estimate for the nine language-groups of the Issa-Japura region, based roughly on the number of houses and the extent of country, is as follows: but, I repeat, these figures must be taken as very approximate, and are probably overestimated in some cases:—

making a total of eighty-six thousand, or well under a hundred thousand. Koch-Grünberg estimates the Witoto-language group as comprising at least twenty thousand souls,[52] and a Peruvian official estimate gives thirty thousand as the supposed total, reduced within the last decade to some ten thousand.[53] It is practically impossible to obtain any reliable figure. Koch-Grünberg gives six thousand as his estimate of the number of the Miranha. I am inclined to think in this case the number is insufficient, and should place it at from fifteen to twenty thousand.

All the tribes north of the Japura have a mortal antipathy to all those south of that river, and think they are savages. The light-coloured tribes, as I have mentioned, invariably despise the darker races, and consider them of a lower grade than themselves, as, it will be seen, is actually the case. The Maku, a tribe of small dark people, are universally regarded and treated as slaves; the Witoto, smaller and darker than the adjacent Boro, are physically inferior, and far less particular in their ways and in the observance of tribal customs. The Andoke, sometimes called the white Indians on account of their fairer skins,[54] are the tyrants and bullies of all their neighbours; and it has been suggested that the warlike Awashiri, who are the terror of the Napo Piohe and Orahone tribes, are nomad Andoke or Miranha. Certainly both these people wander far from their usual districts. So feared are the Andoke that Boro carriers will refuse to go into the bush in the Andoke country.

Wallace credits the Kuretu with peaceable habits,[55] but for the most part all these peoples live in a constant state of internecine strife. Some friendship, or perhaps—as tribes never make friendships outside their own language area—it would be more correct to call it intertribal commerce, takes place between certain of these groups; and a mutual hatred of one group will occasionally form a vague tie between others. For instance, the Boro, Resigero, and Okaina may not love each other, but they agree in their[61] detestation of the Witoto. The Okaina and the Andoke are practically at ceaseless war with all their neighbours, but the Andoke have some traffic with the Muenane and with the wandering Karahone, who serve to link up the tribes of the north with those of the south of the Japura, though they are separate from all other tribes. The Boro on the left bank of the Japura, where they migrated into territory trenching on that of the Menimehe, are on fairly amicable terms with the latter, and I have even seen a Boro man with the Menimehe tribal mark, though menimehe means “pig” in Boro. Possibly he had married a Menimehe woman. The Boro and Resigero also intermarry—at least cases of such marriages are known. The Tukana and Bara tribes on the Tikie will not marry into any other tribe, except the Maku, who will intermarry with any.

This state of endless warfare is based not on avarice but on fear. They fight because they are afraid of each other, and see no protection but in the extermination of their neighbours. Every ill that befalls a man they set down to the evil intent of an enemy. Death, from whatsoever cause, is invariably considered to be murder, and as murder it has to be revenged on some suspected person or persons. Hence it follows that blood-feuds innumerable are carried on relentlessly. Any and every excuse serves for a fight. If a thunderstorm should wreck a house it is more than sufficient reason for that household to attack another in reprisal of the damage done; for it is to them quite evident that the catastrophe was caused by the magic of some malicious dweller in the vicinity.

This state of abject apprehension influences the tribesmen in other ways. It will be found as root cause of many a tribal custom, and must not be forgotten in judging of native character and morals.

One result is that there are no recognised native trade routes or trade centres, to the best of my knowledge, nor are there any markets where the tribes of any language-group may meet and exchange their wares. Even local markets are non-existent. Trade is individual. Articles[62] of commerce are handed from the maker to the purchaser, from the owner to the buyer, from tribe to tribe. If a tribe be renowned for pottery, as are the Menimehe, such pottery could only be obtained from a Menimehe, or bought “second-hand” from tribes living in the neighbourhood of the pottery workers, and from them traded to others, third, fourth, and even fifth hand. That articles are bought and passed on indefinitely in this fashion is proved by the fact that I found a Price’s candle-box among the Boro tribes on the Pama river, who had had no relations with the white man before my advent. After all, the wants of the Indian are few and simple, and he can supply most of them for himself, or at least a community can furnish its own; extra-tribal goods are distinctly luxuries.

It would be futile to attempt to give any localities for the many tribes into which the language-groups are divided; for if the group as a whole is to be regarded as a roving quantity, the tribes and their component units are far more uncertain, in view of their migratory habits. I have therefore not done more than make lists of the tribes met with in the middle Issa-Japura districts, without reference to the exact spot they might have temporarily inhabited when I met them.[56] These lists, which do not pretend to be exhaustive, contain the names of 136 Witoto tribes, 41 Boro, and 15 Okaina.

The “Maynanes,” “Recegaros,” and “Yabuyanos” mentioned by Hardenburg [57] as Witoto “sub-tribes, or naciones,” are not Witoto at all, and nacione is not a recognised name for these divisions, but merely adopted from the loose jargon of the rubber-gatherer. Nor is the same writer correct in considering the Witoto to be “the largest and most important tribe,” as the Karahone outnumber them considerably, and many other language-groups are decidedly more important in both the social and the scientific scale.

There is nothing to show any affinity among the tribes, and there is none of the intricate relationship of the[63] Australian systems. The social unit of the tribes is the undivided household community of some sixty to two hundred individuals, with a common house, under the rule of a chief. Some tribes have but one central tribal house, others may have two or three; but each house would have its absolutely independent chief and would be exogamous. There is no head chief or central organisation to bind these households in the tribe, any more than there is to unite the tribes of any language-group. Intertribal fighting is continual, and only some great common danger, some threatened calamity of the gravest, might serve to combine the tribes in a supreme effort for self-defence. A man with an unusual magnetic influence might so dominate his neighbours as to weld tribe and tribe for extra-tribal struggle. At the most some half-dozen tribes under spur of most hazardous peril, urged to superhuman effort by imminent torture and death, ever unite even for war. On the rare occasions when this may be done the exceptional individual would be but the greatest among equals, not a recognised commander-in-chief.[58] I only know of one instance in point. Nonugamue, a Nonuya, was paramount chief of the entire Nonuya-speaking area, a large tract of country that lies between the Boro and the Okaina, and south of the Muenane and Resigero tribes. It was quite a recent usurpation on the part of this chief, and I never discovered any other case of one man influencing so large a district. It is true that a Boro chief named Katenere did get together a band of men numbering from thirty to forty to make war to the death against the white rubber-gatherers; but in this instance, though he was of notable personality, he could not combine the tribes. His band were all Boro, simply men of his own type, the boldest spirits of various tribes. A Resigero chief also made himself notorious by collecting a body of warriors to make war not on the white[64] men but on those Indians who gave way to the pressure put upon them by these whites and agreed to work rubber. He warred, therefore, against his own tribe, against members of his own language-group, and he did so lest worse should befall his people. He knew of no other remedy than to make the punishment for yielding equal to that for refusing to yield. Nothing less in his opinion could save the tribes. Once I came upon a habitation with the dead bodies of thirty-eight men, women and children—for he spared none who had any dealing with the whites. They had been slain, and the house partly burnt, by this chief. In consequence of these drastic measures he was feared by whites and Indians alike, and both when walking through the bush within possible distance of his district would start at a sound every few minutes and imagine it was this redoubtable warrior on the warpath again.

But these cases were abnormal, due to the presence of new and evil factors that threatened the tribes with a fate to which death itself were preferable. It was the instance of the approach of an unparalleled danger, the signal for supreme exertion, and for unexampled negligence of customs that are stronger than all law.

In normal conditions the chief has no influence beyond his own household, and the extent of that influence would depend largely on the man’s personal character, and also the character of the rival authority, the tribal medicine-man. Whichever happens to possess the strongest personality would be the dominant spirit of their little community. Other things being equal, the odds are decidedly in favour of the medicine-man—death comes speedily to those who rebel against the magic-worker—and a weak chief would be entirely subservient to him.

The chief has a special portion of the house assigned to him and his family, a larger share than would be allotted to any other man; but this privilege is necessary, as all prisoners belong to the chief, and he takes all the unattached women. As he thus has more women to work for him the big tribal plantations become his. He leads the tribe in war, presides over the tobacco palaver, and has the last[65] word in the tribal councils. The chief has no special name, for there are no titles of courtesy, except among the Andoke, who call a chief Posoa. The ordinary warrior will talk to the chief with no outward sign of respect; still, the chief’s word carries a great amount of weight.

On the death of a chief his successor must be elected by the tribe, and though the son as a rule is appointed, he does not become chief as a matter of course, but only after tribal selection. If due cause should be shown against him, and the tribe be of accord on the point when the matter has been discussed in tobacco palaver, another man would be chosen, and the honour conferred on him in accordance with tribal decision independent of relationship.

There is but one law among the tribes, and that law is paramount and infrangible—Pia, it is our custom. Custom, more binding than any legal code, shepherds the Indian from the cradle to the grave. And Pia is not only the law, it is the reason for all things. So it has always been. Neither the chief, the medicine-man, nor the tribal council makes the law, though it is the business of all three to enforce it, and it can only be set aside, on the rare instances when such liberty would be tolerated, with the consent of the tribesmen given in formal conclave.

The tribal council consists of all the males of the household who have attained to man’s estate, under the presidency of the chief; and the Indian parliament, the Indian court of law, is the tobacco palaver.

This tobacco drinking—the chupe del tabac, as Robuchon calls it—of which so much has been written, must not be confounded with the kawana drinking at a dance. When word has gone round that it is desired to hold a council the warriors and elders of the tribe foregather, and squat on their haunches round the tobacco-pot, which is placed by one of the assembly on the ground in their midst. One of the group will start the subject to be brought under discussion, usually the Indian whose advice or suggestion has influenced the chief to call the council, or the one who has a cause to lay before the tribe. It may be a matter of war, some question of hunting, or the wrong-doing of a[66] fellow-tribesman that has to be discussed and judged. The speaker is doubtless under the influence of coca, and will talk on and on. He may take hours to deliver his oration, given with endless repetitions, while those who agree with him will grunt “Heu!” to show approval from time to time throughout the performance. When his final word is uttered the spokesman will reach forward and take the pot, dip in a short stick, and wipe some of the black liquid on his tongue. He will then pass the pot round to his companions, and every man who has agreed with him will take tobacco, whilst any one who passes the pot by—to signify he disagrees—will be bound to give his reason for being of an opposite opinion. This is continued until all in disagreement with the original speaker have put forth their views. The question at issue is then settled by whichever side may have the majority, the chief having the casting vote. There is no appeal against such settlement. It is absolutely final.

The passing of tobacco is also used as a binding promise on every verbal agreement between individuals. In this case they will dip a small stick like a match into the liquid and pass it over the tongue, or put their forefingers into each other’s tobacco pots, made from the hollowed husks of nuts, and which are usually carried suspended round the neck by a string. The tobacco pot comes into requisition again at a friendly meeting, and serves to emphasise the binding nature of the friendship.

Though these Indians now all hold to patrilineal and patrilocal law, there are traces that point to possibly original matrilocal customs among them, such as still obtain among some of the tribes of British Guiana.[59] We find survivals of marriage by capture; but in no tribe are the girls sold, nor have they any dowry. The husband, once he has obtained his wife, is entirely responsible for her maintenance.

Both endogamy and exogamy, with a preference for the former, exist so far as the tribe is concerned; but with regard to the social unit of the tribe, the community that shares a common house of assembly, the rule of exogamy[67] is very strictly enforced. The reason for this is that all within a household are held to be kin. The one exception for this law among the tribes is also the one exception to their patrilocal customs. In the possible instance of a chief having a daughter but no sons to succeed him, the daughter may marry a man of the same household, who would probably be an adopted son. Any other exception would be most unusual, and could only be attempted with the permission of the tribe after thorough consideration of the case in tribal council. Otherwise any son and any daughter of a household, no matter though they be of different parentage, are barred from marriage by the blood-tie; yet what we should look upon as an equally close relationship on the spindle side is regarded by the Indians as no such thing, only the most intimate relations of the mother ever being so much as counted kin.[60] A man may marry into the household from which his mother came without transgressing any recognised law, because the mother, having left her original household to join that of her husband, has become one of his household on marriage, and has ceased to belong to her own. In all probability she will have had little or no intercourse with it. Marriage between two individuals does not establish any admitted affinity between their respective households. It follows that the children of two sisters might possibly intermarry, but the children of two brothers never could.

Woman’s lot among all the tribes of the Amazon is commonly regarded as a hard one. It is true that the steady grind of the day’s work falls to her share. Men work intermittently, but the work that falls to the women to do is incessant. In addition to the natural functions of the mother and the housekeeper, the duties of an Indian wife include the bulk of all agricultural labour. The husband’s energies cease when he has cleared and broken up a patch of land, reclaimed a field from the surrounding forest, an arduous task that needs more physical strength than women possess. The ground once freed of trees and[68] undergrowth, and roughly dug, the husband considers that his share in the toil is at an end, and he will lie in his hammock, eat, and sleep, while his wife, the baby slung behind her, tills the field and harvests the crops. It is for her to plant the slips and in due season dig the manioc. She must attend to the growing plant, and eventually prepare the roots for use. But it would be wrong to infer that the Indian husband is a lazy slave-driver. If his work is occasional it must be confessed that he does undertake all the heaviest labour. Each sex has its own pursuits. The man is the hunter and the warrior, the woman is helpmate, agriculturalist, and staple food-provider. The differentiation of work is very clear, bounded by the law of Pia—it is our custom, which is like unto that of the Medes and Persians. A man will on no account plant manioc, but he has a reason for this rule: he says that women, being able to produce children, can produce manioc; production is her province, not his.

The subjection of wives, if subjection it can be called, is due to economic conditions. The woman holds a recognised, if subordinate, position. She rarely quarrels with her husband, though she is certainly not afraid of contradicting him when necessary; in fact I have met such anomalies as hen-pecked husbands.

There are, as will be seen in detail subsequently, certain definite restrictions imposed upon the women of the tribes, food they may not eat, ceremonials they may not share, sacred objects they may not even see. Coca and tobacco they may neither prepare not partake of, a law as rigid as that which debars men from planting or preparing manioc. In some tribes women are not permitted to see or be seen by strangers, but, as a rule, the married women are remarkably free in this matter, though young girls are more restricted.

Taken as a whole, women are well treated among all the tribes. A woman is so far respected that her husband will consult her, but there is nothing approaching to chivalry on the part of the man. The Indian does not idealise. He weaves no romantic dreams about the Sex, but looks upon[69] a woman from the most material standpoint, pays her no small attentions, never thinks of saving her trouble or any exertion, and in no way attempts to lighten her lot in life. Yet everywhere, owing to conditions of existence, women’s influence is very great. The tribal reputation of a man rests largely in the hands of his wife; she can so easily leave him if badly treated, and once the forest is gained she is lost to him, and may without difficulty secure the protection of another tribe, or, should public opinion be strong enough to drive the guilty husband away, of another man in his household. The onus of her disappearance will lie heavy upon the husband who has forced her to such—in Indian opinion—extraordinary action. But cruelty on the part of a husband is rare, as rare as infidelity on the part of a wife. A man who ventured to ill-treat his wife would soon be the scorn of the tribe, for the other women would promptly make a song about him, and the ridicule to which he was exposed would be an effectual deterrent from further ill-doing in a country where adverse public opinion is more efficient than any police force in the prevention of recognised wrong.

The right of women to personal possession appears to be allowed. At death her domestic implements are buried with her, and I have often wanted to buy some article of adornment from a woman, but when I asked the husband what he would like in exchange, have invariably been referred back again to his wife, and had to conduct the barter with her. Also, though the children belong absolutely to the father, it would be the mother and not the father who would negotiate the exchange of any ornament worn by a child.

Finally we come to the last and lowest section of a tribe, the slaves. Slavery among the Indians themselves is little more than a name, for a slave belongs to the chief, and soon becomes identified with his family. Though slaves have frequently a chance to run away they seldom do so, for they are usually treated with kindness, and probably are nearly as well off in the house of their victors as in their own. Captives of both sexes under the age of seven years,[70] or thereabouts, are kept as slaves by the conquering tribe; above that age they are destroyed, as they possess intelligence enough presumably to betray their new tribe to their old one. When a slave reaches man’s estate he is permitted to identify himself with the warriors as any other boy would be; and thereafter is looked upon as free; but the chief would consider that he had a lien of sorts on such a man, and this would be commuted by payment of perhaps half his shooting bag, probably until the time that he married. If the chief dies, the slaves become the property of the new chief, but a man, if already a warrior, would no longer feel himself bound to a new chief, except in so far as tribal discipline might enforce on all the warriors. A woman slave may be purchased from the chief by the gift of some small present to his wife. After this the girl is free.

Maku slaves have little huts of their own in the forest, where they live apart, and are never in any way familiar with their masters. They are permitted to keep their own women. These slaves are generally despised. They act the part of the “proverbial cat,” and are held to blame when anything goes wrong. A medicine-man may accuse a Maku if a death takes place, or any crime is committed, and the wretched slave is then destroyed unhesitatingly. There are no Maku south of the Japura.

CHAPTER V

Judged by some of the pictures in books purporting to give accounts of the South American Indians, the photograph adjoining (Plate VIII.) would represent an Indian chieftain decked in his best to welcome the newly-arrived traveller, instead of what it is—merely a group of my escort and carriers tricked out in the rag, tag, and bobtail array they deemed due to my dignity and their own. Far different is the actual scene when the Indian homestead is approached and one meets these sons of the forest—be they Boro, Witoto, or others—in their native haunts and natural garb, unaffected by “civilised” influences. From the shadow of the interior will stalk the chief, accompanied by his escort of warriors, all naked, but for a strip of bark-cloth about the loins. Round the neck of the chief is a necklace of jaguar teeth, in his hand a broadsword of iron-wood; the men with him are destitute of feathers or ornaments, but each holds poised in his left hand a bunch of throwing javelins.

It is regrettable that returning explorers [61] have deemed it a necessary concession to unscientific prejudice to illustrate the natives of the Amazons in clothing or drapery that is wholly foreign to their custom and to their thought. The hypocrisy was more common before the uncompromising days of photography, but the effect of the old woodcuts and engravings is to give an entirely wrong impression of the[72] appearance of the Indian in his own haunts. Even so accurate an observer as Crevaux discounts much of the value of his illustration by clothing his figures in a manner that could only be possible within the Rubber Belt, or in the case of his personal servants. Since the introduction of photography, non-existent clothing has ceased to appear in pictures of the Amazonian tribes, but still much misconstruction has been occasioned by grouping sets of natives in such a fashion as to make it appear that they are ashamed of their nakedness. As a fact, they are totally unaware of it. Therefore it cannot be too strongly emphasised that the Indians of these tropical regions are no more alive to any idea of indecency in their lack of apparel than are the people of England conscious of immodesty in their conventional attire at a Lord Mayor’s banquet or a function of the Court. It is as impossible to comprehend the true psychology of the Amazonian from the pedestal of the prude as from the pulpit of the priest. Difficult as it may be for either to understand, it is none the less true that to some peoples dress appears to be more indelicate than nudity.[62] He who would see truly must divest the mind of inherited and instilled prejudices in favour of much that to the natives has no meaning or reason for existence. Moreover, he might do well to remember that clothes are not always worn from motives of decency. Then he will understand that the naked Indian in his forest is no more unchaste than is the statue of a Greek god in the galleries of the British Museum.

It may be laid down as a generalisation for the regions under investigation that the women are wholly destitute of clothing, and the men wear little or nothing but what the Witoto call a moh-hen, that is, a strip of beaten bark-cloth carried from front to rear between the legs and tucked in at either end over a string or strap of bark-cloth bound about the waist. As the temperature varies hardly at all with the season of the year, there is no periodical deviation from[73] this rule. Farther south the tribes make blankets, but here, though they were interested in mine, they have nothing of that description, and the native sleeps at night without covering, exactly as he, or she, walks abroad throughout the day.

There is practically no scope for originality, no choice of costume. Even the chief is undistinguished from his tribesmen by the character of his attire, although as a rule he wears a necklace of tiger teeth, which is the outward evidence of his rank. His wife does not wear any special ornaments, but of necessity she possesses the greater number. The only member of the tribe who varies from his fellows is the medicine-man, and he will adopt any idea that appeals to him as an addition to the eccentricity of his appearance. One Andoke medicine-man, whom I photographed, was wearing a turban of bark-cloth dyed a brilliant scarlet; but his taste in this particular was purely individual, and denoted neither professional nor tribal distinction. The large bag shown in the adjoining illustration should be noted, for it was greatly admired by the tribe. It appeared to be made in the same way as the ligatures, with threads of red and undyed palm-fibre. It was not manufactured by the Andoke, but had been obtained by barter; however, it was of indigenous make, and probably came from the north of the Japura. Among the Orahone the medicine-men fashion for themselves vestments of tapir hide, the only instance in these parts of skins being utilised for clothing that came to my knowledge.

The Amazonian boy is first provided with a breech-cloth when he is five years old. His earliest lesson is in its manufacture, for every Indian fashions his own clothing, is his own tailor and cloth manufacturer. He goes to the bush and selects a tree,[63] on which he marks a space 6 feet long by 9 inches in width, and strips from it both the outer[74] and inner barks. He separates the two layers, cuts the strip of inner bark in two, and carries the pieces to the river, where the material is thoroughly soaked. Afterwards this is beaten with a small wooden mallet until it forms a yard length of bark-cloth 9 inches in width. Nothing further is needed, for this makes the breech-cloth, and it is sufficient to pass between the legs and tuck securely over the waist-band in front and behind. There is no variation from the type or method of manufacture,[64] and this simplest form of clothing is common to all tribes inhabiting the wide stretch of country between the rivers Issa and Japura.

The breech-cloth is never discarded by the male Indian, nor, in the sight of man or woman, would he ever remove it. When bathing he wades into a sufficient depth before he interferes with its adjustment. Even when a man dies his breech-cloth is buried with him.

South and west of the Issa, in the country of the Orahone, the men wear, like other Napo tribes, long shirts of bark-fibre, on which are traced circular designs painted in red, while north of the Japura the Karahone wear stiff stays of bark, like strait-waistcoats, above their breech-cloths. These garments are tightly plaited on to the body, and end in a plaited fringe. They must be cut off to permit of removal. The same uncomfortable costume extends northward from the Karahone country into that of the Umaua and the tribes of the Apaporis district.

The Menimehe who, it will be remembered, occupy the left bank of the Japura to the south and east of the Karahone, wear a loin-cloth with an apron, which extends to the knees, of loose palm-fibre suspended over it. This apron is 18 inches long and 6 inches in width, and is taken off in the house. It is worn ceremonially, and always donned for war and for dances. The men of the Opaina, who succeed the Menimehe on the east between the Miriti and Apaporis[75] Rivers, wear aprons after the same fashion as their neighbours. The women wear nothing.

The Makuna, who dwell to the north of the Kuretu on the other side of the Apaporis, affect a small belt of beaten bark, from which depends in front a long apron of bast. The Kuretu group, who inhabit both sides of the Japura to the east of the Menimehe, improve upon the habit of their neighbours. Over the loin-cloth the men wear a bast kilt, or petticoat, which dangles as low as the ankles. When walking, this garment is tucked up between the legs, something after the manner of a Malay sarang. The loin-cloth is retained below.

All the tribes on the right or south bank of the Japura follow the fashion of the Boro; the men wear only breech-cloths, the women go absolutely naked.

Thus it will be observed that the fashion of dress falls into a definite geographical progression,[65] and there is no sudden change in passing from one neighbouring tribe to another, although the tribal distinctions are very marked.

The natives wear no head-covering as a protection. In a heavy rain an Indian on the trail will tear down a palm-leaf and carry it over his head as we should an umbrella, and he will adopt the same rough-and-ready though effective means to shield himself from the sun.

No gloves are worn nor coverings for the feet. Boots of any sort, in fact, would be impossible wear; even Europeans dispense with them. Still, it is not possible for the white man to go through the forest bare-footed. Personally, I used carpet slippers, which were washed every evening after the day’s trek, and dried during the night.[66]

If for ordinary everyday life the attire of the Indian is of the slightest, on the occasion of a festival or a dance the most elaborate sartorial preparations have to be made. Wallace has enumerated no less than “twenty distinct articles forming the feather head-dress,” which is worn by[76] the Menimehe and the Nonuya, as well as by the Uaupes Indians of whom he wrote.[67] Then there are the feather armlets—ruffles of bright-tinted plumage worn on the arm,[68]—wooden combs decorated with tufts of feathers, and curassow down for the women, anklets and strings of rattles hung round the legs, aprons of painted bark or belts of beads, earrings, and necklaces, and, supreme vanity, there are the elaborately-painted designs on the skin that are to the Indian belle what the latest Paris “creation” is to her civilised sister.

According to Sir Everard im Thurn every tribe makes its own feather head-dress after a special colour scheme.[69] I did not find this to be the case with the Issa-Japura tribes. Instead of making them according to rule, rather do they make them according to luck. Whatever they can get in the way of gay plumage, feathers of the parrot, the macaw, or the toucan, especially the macaw, because its feathers are the longest, be the colour what it may, is employed indiscriminately. The effects are very brilliant, but there is nothing made in these districts of such elaborate description as the gorgeous feather-cloaks manufactured by the Napo Indians, which are veritable works of art. The Issa-Japura tribes content themselves with a coronet of the gayest breast-feathers, plumed with tufts of the long feathers from the tail, all tied together with fibre thread.[70] The Boro men on festive occasions also stick these long macaw feathers into their arm-ligatures. The chief’s head-dress is more lavish than those of his warriors. The only boy I ever saw wearing one was the young son of a chief. Women do not wear the feather head-dress, but they attach the white down of the curassow duck by means of some resinous substance—such as rubber latex, or the milky secretion of the cow-tree—for decorative purposes round their legs, between the[77] ligatures. The result of this is to make the calves look enormous. The men do not decorate with down. The Indians are invariably most careful of their feather ornaments. At the end of a dance an old man, so Koch-Grünberg noted, will come round and knock the dust off the feathers with a long cane. I have myself observed Indians, when overheated by their violent exertions at a dance, take off their feather ornaments to preserve them from sweat. They will never part with them, as they are communal, not personal, possessions, and I found they objected extremely to any attempt I made to photograph them when wearing their dancing feathers.

Combs for festive occasions are made of palm wood, with spines of the Bacába palm [71] for teeth, fixed in with pitch, and are ornamented with feathers. These tribes do not bind up their hair with coroá string as do some of the Uaupes Indians.[72] As may be judged from the illustrations, hair-dressing fashions are not very varied. They range for the men from quite short, as among the Muenane, to the long hair fancied by some of the Boro. The majority wear their hair slightly shorter than the women’s, as a rule divided down the middle, but occasionally cut straight across the forehead in a shock fringe, reminiscent of the coster’s. The only variation among the women is a band, a strip of beaten bark-cloth, occasionally seen among the Resigero (see Plate XII.).[73] The Makuna wear their hair in pigtails. The Karahone women keep their hair cropped short. In the Boro comb of the illustration the black spines are set between two pieces of cane, bound over with fibre, and finished with basket-work of narrow cane strips, light and dark, plaited into a regular pattern. The spines are 3¼ inches long, and project to within a quarter of an inch of the ends for about 1⅜ inch on either side of the basket-work back. This is 3¾ inches long and about half an inch thick. The spines are neatly pointed at either end, and the whole[78] resembles very nearly—but for the uncommon effect of the basket-work—a European comb of rather large and coarse make.

The Andoke comb is also made with two pieces of cane, slightly decorated with chevron incisions. It is a quarter of an inch shorter than the Boro comb, and has spines on one side only. These are set in pitchy matter between the cane, and project seven-eighths of an inch. From the hardened centre at one end depends a short tuft of fibre string, to which feathers may be attached, and a longer string from the other end is fastened to half a nutshell cut as a cup, very similar to the tobacco pot, and made from the same kind of nut. This is 2⅛ inches long by 1⅛ deep in the centre, and 1½ across. It is black and highly polished. This small cup is used to hold the latex employed for depilatory purposes.

The Witoto comb is of much rougher construction, with a thicker back. As with the Boro, the spines are set right through, but instead of a section of cane, two sticks, round bits of bamboo or reed are employed, and the whole coated with pitch and tied with fibre string. The length of the spines is a quarter of an inch longer than in the Boro comb, but owing to the more clumsy back they project a quarter of an inch less.

Having laid down the rough generalisation that all the[79] women of these tribes wear nothing, one has to begin the list of various exceptions that go to prove this rule. It is true that they are nude to the extent of wearing no garment of any description, but though naked they do not appear to be so; and it is a qualified nakedness after all, qualified with a variety of ornament, and, above all, of paint.

The Indian woman’s ideas on the subject of clothing are well illustrated by the behaviour of those women who were of my own party. I gave them djibbehs, but, unless I happened to be present and they feared my anger, they never would wear them. For this attitude they advanced five excellent reasons. If the sun shone the bright light would damage the garment by causing the colour to fade.[74] If it rained the djibbeh would get wet. If they were out in the bush the thorns caught and tore the material. If they were dancing the useless encumbrance of a dress would hide all their carefully-executed adornments of paint. If they were in the house a covering of any sort would be merely ridiculous. There were obviously, then, few or no opportunities left to wear their new, but cumbersome and useless, finery. Not that the Indian man or woman has no desire for finery, quite the contrary, their ornaments are more important than their dress, in fact their ornaments are their dress.

The women of the Issa-Japura tribes wear a broad girdle for a dance.[75] It is worn on no other occasions, and removed immediately the dance is at an end. These dancing girdles are made by the women of seeds or Brummagem beads if such can be had. These are strung in about two-foot lengths, and so arranged that when two or three dozen strings are fastened into a broad flat band the varying colours make a bold and definite design. Like all these Indian ornaments, they evince a fine artistic sense of colouring and pattern. Beads are passed inwards from the Rubber Belt from tribe to tribe. On account of the isolation of[80] these peoples, they cannot aspire to have fashions direct from Birmingham, and novel patterns hardly seem to occur to them. Designs must be symmetrical, and they are quite content to copy the old-established ones. The colours vary, but dark beads are the most sought after, dark blue being more favoured than red. Black and white ones are the most prized, but red and white is the combination usually seen. Any woman may possess a girdle, and it is an individual, not a tribal, possession, the reverse of the custom as regards the men’s feather head-dresses. These girdles are exceedingly handsome and wonderfully well constructed.

Beads are especially treasured by the Karahone women, and they will wear chain upon chain, amounting in the aggregate to a considerable weight. The number worn by a Boro woman may be judged from the illustration (p. 154), where the white appendage round the woman’s neck is made simply by stringing a few pounds of white beads together. Both men and women wear necklaces. Besides those made only of beads, they are made of tiger—that is to say jaguar—teeth, and pig, tapir, marmoset, and cat provide ivories that may be strung on curána thread, besides the necklace of accomplished vengeance, the string of human teeth. With the exception of the latter, the teeth are bored through the fang, and threaded at regular intervals, interspersed with beads, bone, or Brummagem, tiny discs of bone or shell, or brightly-coloured seeds. The pendants on the necklaces seen in the illustrations are mostly coins, depreciated Chilian dollars as a rule.[76] Those shown in the various photographs were either given to the wearers by me or had filtered through from the Rubber Belt; a few may have reached these primitive folk through the medium of intertribal barter. In any case, they are always most rare and cherished possessions. The pendants generally worn are thin, flat, triangular pieces of beaten metal, obtained either from coins or old brass cartridge cases. The rarity of metal in these parts is marked by the small quantity allowed for any one ornament, which is invariably of extreme thinness, and hardly more than a featherweight. They are not[81] grooved, incised, or beaten into any design, but have merely a smoothed surface. The edge is rounded, not sharp. They are hung by a small beaded fibre string to the necklet or more generally to the ear-plug.

The necklaces are matters of importance, for they disclose the status of the wearers. The skill of a warrior as a hunter, his bravery in war, is proved by the character of the teeth that circle his neck: the more successful the hunter the finer the teeth he wears, the more numerous the adornments of his family. Most to be envied in Indian opinion is a string of human teeth, in that it is the witness of revenge; the teeth are from the head of an enemy, for a man wears only the teeth of foes or game that he himself has killed, and at his death they will be buried with him, unless he fall at the hands of a foe, and his string of teeth go to swell the spoils of the victor. Human teeth are never bored, they are carefully bound into the necklace with fine fibre string. The very insignificance of the small, worn, discoloured teeth is in itself a sinister characteristic, presupposes an object other than ornamental, adds a horrible touch to the bizarre effect of all this barbaric bravery.

Necklaces of human teeth are frequently finished, if the teeth are not sufficient in number for the required length, with rounded bits of bone. Other teeth are spaced out with discs, some made of bone, others of shell obtained from river mussels, or even with knots in the fibre thread. The Boro necklace of human teeth in the accompanying illustration is made on cotton twist, an imported article very seldom found among these tribes,[77] though one of the Okaina beaded garlands figured on Plate XIV. is also made on cotton string, not palm-fibre as is customary. The handsome jaguar tooth necklace loses some of its artistic values in a black-and-white reproduction, which inevitably cannot do justice[82] to the creamy ivory, shading to rich browns, of the teeth, making effective show against the red and blue of the beads, the dull colourlessness of the pieces of bone. Some of the teeth have a very primitive criss-cross grooving scratched on the fang end, others have a more elaborate attempt at a carved design. Each design differs, but the same idea of involuted curves is traceable in all.

In cases where Indians are too poor or too isolated to secure a sufficient supply of the Brummagem article, chains are still made of the bright red and black seeds of a bush plant, as they were before beads were obtainable; or bits of bone are employed, short lengths of cane or reed, or even red berries, gay enough when fresh, but dull and crinkled when they wither and fade. Beetles also are utilised for ornament, and the fondness of the Indian for black is shown in his rejection of such beetles as the gaudy-coloured Longicornes and his preference for the shiny breastplate of a fat squat beetle in black armour.[78] These strung on fibre string look like irregularly carved jet beads, but are far lighter, and make a soft and hollow rattle when shaken.

Besides these chains and necklaces the natives are very partial to a tight-fitting necklet of white beads bordering either side of a row of small, flat, diamond-shaped pieces of black wood, or the black shell of a nut, or gourd. These necklets vary a trifle in width: some have the diamond almost squared, they may have one, two, or three white beads between the black points, but there is no greater divergence than this from the stereotyped pattern. The polished bits of wood, like the beetle cases, resemble jet; and the sharp distinction of black and white sets off the native beauty, as a band of black velvet is supposed to put the finishing touch to her fairer sisters.

A favourite ornament among the Boro and Witoto, and also with some of the Napo tribes, is a bracelet of iguana skin. To make these, a circular piece is cut off the creature’s tail, the ring of skin, varying in width from half to three inches wide, is removed and drawn over the hand when fresh and damp. This band dries tightly to the skin of[83] the arm, and will remain there in spite of frequent washings for years. These lizard-skin bracelets can hardly be seen in any of the photographs reproduced in these pages. They are supposed to have certain magical properties, and to endow the wearer with special strength and vigour. For the same purpose children wear a black ring cut from a nut. The diameter of the ring—1½ inch outside and quite a quarter of an inch less within—does not permit it to be worn when the child grows up; the arm always swells round it, and obviously it must eventually be cut off, but I cannot speak with any certainty as to how or when this is done. The women’s bracelets are made of beads when they can be obtained, or of gay-coloured seeds. Those worn by the Resigero woman in the illustration by page 80 are made of threaded seeds, or of beads, wound round and round the forearm with a turn or two of white beads at either end. The central beads are usually dark red.

Rattles and feather ornaments are festooned on the legs for a dance, but only the women wear the tight ligatures that swell out the calf. Both men and women among all these tribes wear ligatures, the men on the upper arm, just below the shoulder, the women on the leg, below the knee and again above the ankle. These ligatures are worn extremely tight, and result not in atrophy of the limb, as might be expected,[79] but in an enormous swelling of the muscles above or below them. The ankle ligatures sometimes reach half-way up the leg. They all vary greatly in breadth, but this I consider to be a matter of personal taste—or possibly personal skill—and not a tribal fashion or distinction, except in so far as that the Witoto knee ligatures are narrower than those of other tribes, and are never so well made. But this confirms the idea of personal skill deciding the pattern, for all Witoto work is cruder than Boro or Okaina. Even the roughest of these ligatures, however, is a marvellously neat piece of workmanship, the more surprising when one discovers that only the fingers are used in its manufacture. A ligature band is made of a very fine fibre thread, and on the reverse side has the appearance[84] of a knitted or crochetted fabric; on the right side it looks rather like a woven tapestry ribbon, with a slightly raised pattern. But so far as I could ever see no implement of any kind is employed in the making of these bands.[80] The fibre string is interworked and knotted with extraordinarily skilled finger-work only. Sometimes the band is decorated by a pattern of coloured lines, diagonals, and diamonds slightly raised. In nearly every one that I saw closely enough to examine the edge was corded, and the end finished with a kind of buttonhole looping. The ligatures shown in the illustration are Witoto and Boro-made ones.[81] The ends are finished with a line of open-work stitches and a buttonholed or twisted edge. Through the open spaces twisted fibre cords are run, and these pull the band together exactly on the principle of a lady’s silk purse. They are tied in two knots. A tuft of cords, or occasionally a bone or wooden disc, finishes off the man’s ligature, which is knotted in front. The women lace their ligatures on, and fasten them very securely. I had to cut those shown in Plate XIV. to get them off the wearer’s legs. The Yahabana and other Kuretu-speaking tribes wear their armlets very tight, and the skin underneath is lighter in shade than it is on the exposed portion of the limb, according to Koch-Grünberg. This lighter skin will blister in the sun if unprotected.

The leg rattles are made of polished nutshells, and garters with beaded tassels and nutshells are fastened below the knee. The nutshells vary in size and shape, though all are approximately bell-like when cut and strung, with or without beads, on fibre thread. They give a tinkling sound if shaken, and for this reason, as they play a distinct part in the native dances, they are dealt with in a later chapter among the musical instruments. In addition to these[85] rattles strings of feather-tufted reeds or bits of bone are also worn. The reeds, cane, or bones, are about three inches long, with a small bunch of feathers secured to one end by means of pitch. The other end is pierced, fibre thread strung through, and the intervals between the reeds are kept by means of knots.

Similar little bits of cane are worn in the ears, which are bored by all these tribes at the age of puberty. These ear ornaments are frequently decorated at one end with a tuft of gay feathers. These are very neatly arranged in some cases; a ring of fine blue feathers may surround a red tip. They are fixed to the cane with latex or pitch. Orahone, which simply means Big Ears,[82] is a name given nowadays to many distinctly different tribes who follow the fashion of the Indians on the Uaupes and the Napo and insert large wooden plugs into the lobes of their ears. The Orahone and some Issa-Japura tribes—especially among the Boro-speaking group—use a disc of cabbage wood. The Orahone smear this with a red vegetable colouring matter, the Boro fix an ornamented shell into the wood.

These wooden plugs are extremely light, about two and five-eighth inches long, and three inches across at the widest point, that is the front rim. This end is hollowed like a shallow egg-cup, and the shell set in it is decorated with a fine pattern done in black-and-white. In one earring in my possession the shell, so far as I can judge, is a portion of some hard, dark nutshell. The pattern is grooved, or scratched on the shell, and filled in with a fine white clay. This gives the effect of an elaborate black-and-white inlay. The shell is secured in the hollow with pitch. The back part of the plug that fits behind the ear is not decorated in any manner.

Very effective earrings are made with round discs of a pearl-coated river-shell fastened to a short piece of bamboo with pitch. The mother-of-pearl is of a deep blue colour, and of a good quality. In shape these earrings are not unlike certain kinds of toadstool with a thin stem and an inverted cone head.

With the Boro and other Indians near the Japura the lip also is perforated for the insertion of an ornament, except among the Witoto, who do not use the labret. This, as a rule, is made of metal, if it is in any way possible to secure some. Silver is occasionally seen, and brass is obtained from old cartridge cases, that are beaten flat and rubbed to shape.

Nose-pins are another fashionable adornment of the forest Indians. The Makuna wear a long black pin, a palm-spine, through the cartilage of the nose. The Yakuna also wear a long pin, and the Muenane and Witoto women wear nasal ornaments. The nose-pins of the Kuretu-speaking tribes, Yahabana and others, must be somewhat of an obstruction to the wearer, owing to their exaggerated length, 30 centimetres. In the central Igara Parana district the Boro, especially the women, insert feathers into small holes made in the wing of the nose. Boring the algæ is peculiar to the Boro-speaking group of tribes, and to the Resigero. The women bore holes in the top of the nostril, into which they insert bits of quill to keep them open till such times as a dance is held, when the quills are removed and small ornaments with feathers are put in their place. No other tribes have this fashion. The Saka, who are of the same language-group as the Karahone, wear the bones of birds instead of a palm nose-pin through the septum. Robuchon confirms my observation that the septum of the nose only is perforated by the Witoto in the upper Igara Parana districts, and that a goose feather is then worn. He also mentions the use of the labret, and the elongation of the lobe of the ear. There are many varieties of ear ornaments, but most of them are big and enlarge the lobes.

Among the Tuyuka the boys at the age of puberty burn scars on their arms, but I have never seen scarification among the Issa-Japura tribes;[83] nor is there much tattooing. The Menimehe, both men and women, tattoo the face and breast. The designs show little artistic skill, and are all done in straight lines. The patterns on the cheeks are[87] simply tribal marks.[84] The breast patterns vary. On the arms of these people I have seen rough representations of a lizard tattooed as here illustrated. The incision is done with the spine of a palm, and the black residue from burnt rubber is rubbed into the puncture. This results in a blue mark. None of these tribes have such a practice as that described by Crevaux of making chevron marks on a woman’s thighs to record the number of her male children.[85] I know nothing of this or any similar custom, but some of the Boro living on the north of the Japura have borrowed the idea of tattooing from the Menimehe, and wear—both men and women—a tribal mark below the cheek-bone, and sometimes a pattern on the breast. These are the only two groups of tribes among whom I ever saw any people tattooed.

But, if very few tattoo, all paint. The Karahone women are as fond of paint as they are of beads, and use more colours than other tribes. Their particular colour is purple. As a rule the colours are red, yellow, black—a bluish black—and white. The latter is secured from certain fruits. A bright red, the commonest paint of all, is made from a prickly burr, or nut, that is full of seeds and red matter.[86] Black paint is obtained by using charcoal, or the juice of a fruit,[87] and a species of Cissus has a fruit from which the Indians get their blue paints. Ochre gives them yellow, but the source of the purple paint I was unable to discover.

Red is a favourite colour with all the tribes, and many women daub their whole faces over with scarlet. This will quite content them, and no further attempt at a design will be made. A blue-black is also very often seen smeared on in the same fashion, the juicy stain apparently being merely[88] squeezed over the skin. Robuchon mentions a custom among some Witoto tribes of covering the body with latex and then sprinkling it with black ashes. Hardenburg also mentions the use of a resinous matter which is daubed on by the Witoto.[88] The reason for the former Robuchon declared he could not divine. It was one of the secrets of the dressing-table of the Kinene girls that he was not prepared to fathom. Sometimes black ashes are so used, and at other times yellow clay. The secret is not so profound as the French traveller seems to have imagined. It is evidently done for protective purposes, as babies in arms are invariably treated in this fashion, women but seldom. Occasionally a black juice is smeared over the face and neck, under the jawbones. This I never thought was meant to be decorative paint, but always concluded it was some manner of skin tonic.

Among the Orahone, and also some of the Issa and Japura Indians, the women cover their teeth and their finger-nails with a black pigment.

The paint is never allowed to work off entirely; fresh designs are superimposed before the original has quite disappeared. The women always paint themselves for a dance, and dances are so frequent that before the coat of paint is worn away another festivity will be in prospect, and fresh decorations have to be considered. They also paint on other occasions than a dance.

With regard to the designs the photographs give a truer notion than any possible description of the variations and tribal fashions. The independent Andoke have no fixed pattern, but their lines appear to be more flowing. A good example is the fourth figure in Plate XXI. The body in this case was coated with a purple paint, leaving only a broad seam down the middle unpainted. This design is not seen elsewhere; it is peculiar to the Andoke. In one dance I saw they painted themselves with what were intended to be representations of their Witoto neighbours. I saw also the Andoke got up for a dance covered with weapons painted in my honour, boots, trousers, and dresses[89] all suggested. Purple paint predominated, and the effect was a rough copy of my own apparel in paint.

The patterns are regular; the most highly finished ones are executed with an eye to the lines of the figure, and some, as for example those shown in the accompanying group of Okaina women, are of complicated if crude design. The Okaina designs are certainly the most elaborate that I met with, but it is to be noted that in no case do the women attempt to hide, disguise, or paint that portion of the body which most peoples are the first to cover, and which even among these tribes is never exposed by the males.[89]

The effect of paint on the legs of women wearing tight ligatures is, as Robuchon very aptly remarked, to give them the semblance of small balcony pillars. Among the less particular—the Witoto especially being the more lax in this as in all other matters—the regular designs are not attempted, and paint is daubed crudely on the body in smears and splotches, with a result that is bizarre in the extreme.

The men are painted by their women before a dance, but never in the intricate patterns and variety of colour used by the ladies of the community themselves.

On one occasion among the Okaina three of the old women of the tribe were sent to me with purple paint, to paint me for the festivity. The Andoke men seem more given to painting themselves than the men of other tribes, and always use purple paint. A common device is a lizard, some nine inches long, painted on the back and in front on the middle of the chest. But painting is not a universal custom among the men as with the women. I do not remember, for instance, to have seen a Witoto man painted.

CHAPTER VI

Life in Amazonia to the man is occasionally strenuous, frequently a veritable dolce far niente; to the woman it is a ceaseless round of toilsome duties, broken only by the excitement of preparation for, and participation in, a tribal dance. The division of occupations between the sexes is possibly uneven, but very certainly strict. In many cases it amounts to a tabu,[90] and as a rule the reason for this division is either apparent or confessed. It is absolutely a question of sex. To men appertain defensive measures, all that calls for physical strength and skill, war, the chase, the manufacture of weapons, the preparation of certain poisons and drinks, especially those that are used ceremonially. Men paddle the canoes, except in extreme cases, when a sufficiency of men is not forthcoming, and women perforce must lend their aid. They cut the wood and build the houses. They climb the trees to gather fruit, clear the plantations, and turn the soil. Woman is the housewife, the mother, and the cook, but she is also the agriculturalist and the maker of all purely domestic implements. She manufactures the hammocks, the rough pottery, and most of the baskets, although[91] it would not be considered derogatory on the part of the man to lend a hand if necessary.

Besides this sexual differentiation various tribes have their special manufactures in which they excel their neighbours. The Menimehe are known as great pottery workers. The Karahone are renowned for their poisons. The Boro specialise on mat-making, plaiting, the manufacture of ligatures, and the preparation of blow-pipes. The Witoto hammocks are better than those of other tribes. Trade in any organised form is non-existent, it is true, but articles pass, as I have already described, irregularly by personal barter and exchange of gifts to other tribes; and in this fashion the poison of the Karahone reaches tribes unknown to the makers, and beads made in Birmingham filter down by many and devious routes even to these isolated wilds. Over fifty years ago Wallace estimated that some thousands of pounds’ worth of trade goods passed up the Uaupes yearly,[91] and this accounts for the fact that tribes north of the Japura are better supplied than those of the south. The best articles for barter I found were axes, knives, combs—especially scurf-combs—and Brummagem beads. Cloth and fowling-pieces are not valued except in the Rubber Belt; the less sophisticated Indian of the backwoods has no manner of use for them: cloth is less ornamental than paint, and the scatter-gun only frightens the game and lessens the kill.

Indian arts and crafts are neither numerous nor particularly complex; indeed arts—with the exception of music and dancing—are almost unknown. There are no rock pictures in the Issa-Japura valleys, such as those executed by the Indians in so many other parts of the Americas, but then there are no rocks. I have occasionally among the Andoke and the Boro seen pictures of a rude type on the supports of the houses, and on the four large central posts of the big maloka; or these may be roughly carved. There is carving also on some of the dancing staves. But these people have no great use for colour and line beyond the ornamentation of their bodies, and in a lesser degree of their[92] pottery. They make no attempt to use drawing for informative purposes. Elsewhere Indians have shown themselves skilful map-makers,[92] but none of these tribes could so much as draw a rough chart of their own district. Yet this district to them represents the whole world. They do not realise that there can be any other people but themselves and the half-dozen tribes or so who happen to be in their immediate vicinity, and always regarded it as a huge joke on my part when I talked of the sea and the vast countries beyond.

One tribe of Witoto do possess a drawing on bark-cloth that is their equivalent of a map of the world. This tribe when I visited them were located near the source of the Karaparana, and the “map” was so very exceptional an acquisition that it was known and talked about by far distant tribes who had never seen either it or its possessors. In fact, it was one of the wonders of the universe, to be bragged about to any stranger who was ignorantly unaware of its existence. Nothing I could offer would persuade these Witoto to part with their treasure, and unfortunately I was unable to obtain a photograph of it. My too evident interest aroused suspicion, and on this account I was unable to study it clearly, as I saw it but for a moment, and that in a dark house before my eyes were accustomed to the gloom. It was almost immediately hidden for fear I should seize it. This map was made on beaten bark about two feet square. The centre was divided into about a dozen squares. In each square very crude human figures were represented fighting, planting, or hunting in their own tribal territory. These were the “nations” of the world. The dividing lines were of red vegetable pigment. The “nations,” so far as I could see, were fighting amongst themselves. In the margin were the sun, a moon, and many stars. I saw nothing to designate spirits or Taife. So ancient was this map, handed down from generation to generation, that divine origin or use was[93] assumed. It was said to be the world in the days when the Good Spirit appeared to man.[93]

Slight carvings, such as can be seen in the accompanying illustration, are done at times on the teeth that they string for a necklace; and among the Witoto I twice met with examples of figures carved in wood. The two figures in the first instance, a nude man and woman, were life-size. They were painted white with designs in black and red to represent the paintings done for a dance. These figures were placed on either side of the door jambs outside, and were the only two of the kind I ever saw or heard of in the country. They were greatly prized by their owners, and spoken of by neighbours as notable achievements. No one had any idea who made them, or when they were made, and if questioned simply said they always had been.

In the second instance the figure was a small female doll. It was in the possession of the daughter of a chief of the Itoma Gurra tribe of Witoto, a young girl, but who had arrived at maturity. The Indians said the doll was for the children to play with, but such toys are extremely scarce. This one was about eight inches high, and was made of some very light wood, painted white, with the organs that denoted the sex marked in red.[94] The toy was not regarded in any way as an idol, nor was there any suggestion of magical powers attaching to it. To secure such a toy is almost impossible, but this doll I did obtain. Unfortunately I showed it to an Indian afterwards, who told me that his tribe made such things, and that he could get me a pair to it. I gave him the toy, but never saw him or the doll again. This was unusual. As a rule when an Indian says he will do anything he keeps his word.

Smelting, or any description of metallurgy, cannot be looked for among the inhabitants of a country so singularly devoid of all metalliferous deposit or formation. Metal[94] there is practically none in the aboriginal homes of the natives, and whatever of it is received, be it but a trousers-button, becomes at once an heirloom and a treasure. Their only method of working metal when obtained is to heat and hammer it into various forms and shapes for ornaments. Weapons and implements alike must be contrived of other materials. In normal conditions man, without the knowledge to work ore, turns to stone for substitute, but conditions in Amazonia are, as has already been shown, abnormal. If there is no metal neither is there any stone. It is so rare that it is looked upon as almost sacred,[95] and implements fashioned of it are not made nowadays by the tribes, but those in use are handed down from one generation to another. North of the Japura, where quartz can be obtained, at least by barter, it is used for knives, arrow-heads, spear-points, and cassava-graters; but these Issa-Japura Indians have to content themselves with wood and palm-spines, and have only their ancestral stone axes.[96] These are constructed in true “prehistoric” manner; the stones have been and are fastened to their wooden hafts with fibre lashings fixed by vegetable pitch.[97] The Indian cannot say from whence they came, there is no memory of their makers; they are, in fact, looked upon as veritable gifts from the gods.

Wooden knives are constructed from such hardwood trees as the black ironwood. These knives and stone axes will be used by Indians even more in touch with civilisation than these tribes, possibly because the Brummagem trade-goods knife and hatchet has been proved useless for practical wear.

For boring purposes the Indians make an instrument like a bradawl T with a capybara’s tooth, and a paca tooth is used for scraping. With these simple implements the labour involved in producing such a weapon as the blow-pipe is enormous. But these are all the tools the Indian craftsmen possess.

Manufactures among the Issa-Japura tribes are not numerous. These Indians have no textile fabrics; they neither spin nor weave; everything is done by finger-work, and the local substitutes for woven goods are beaten bark-cloth and netted or plaited palm-fibre. This, as a rule, is in its natural colour, as very little dye is ever employed. There is no leather working. The only use made of the skins of animals, I ever discovered, was that some Menimehe tribes had large round shields of tapir hides, two to five hides superimposed one on another;[98] the medicine-men make garments of the same leather; while the medicine-pouch is often made of the unshorn skin of the jaguar. Leather thongs are sometimes employed for tying purposes, such as securing an axe-haft, and on the north of the Japura to string a bow, but the ubiquitous fibre and liana are in more general use.

Glass is unknown to the Indian, but every tribe makes its own pottery. Earthenware pots are used by all Indians for cooking. The best are manufactured by the Menimehe women, and are distinguished by the red and black colouring. This is obtained by the use of certain juices extracted from the bark of a tree. These handsome, well-finished pots are a great article of barter, and are exchanged for other products of friendly tribes. Thus they are to be found at far distances from where they are made on the northern bank of the Japura. It amounts to a trade, distinct if unorganised.

Pottery-making is the sole province of the women in any tribe, earthenware appertaining to the culinary department which is their special sphere. The pots, entirely made and shaped by hand, when finished are beautifully symmetrical, though the Indian potters possess nothing approximating[96] to a wheel.[99] Squatting on the ground the women work and mould the clay, and rub it between their hands into long cylinders very much like plug tobacco. These are coiled round and round and kneaded into a previously constructed shape; or the women will prepare a circular hole in the ground and mould the clay into that. The plastic coils are then worked round with any hard thing that is handy—a bone or a piece of wood. When the vessel is built up to the size intended it is carefully rubbed before it is set out to dry in the sun. Finally, hot ashes are heaped over the pots, which are baked slowly and polished afterwards.

The clay used is commonly to be found on the river-banks, and with it the Indians mix wood ashes, either to stiffen it or, as Crevaux suggests,[100] to render the finished article more porous, so that its contents are kept cool by evaporation. This pottery is known as caraipé ware, from the fact that the ashes of the caraipé bark are preferred for its manufacture.[101] In some districts vessels of even a very large size are made of it,[102] but I never saw any big pots either imported or made locally in the Issa-Japura valleys. The large vessels used for making kawana by these tribes consist merely of huge strips of the inner bark of the tree, riveted together with thorns or spines, and set upright on a hard earthen surface; or else a section of a great tree trunk is hollowed out to make a trough. Large flat plates to bake the cassava cakes on are made of earthenware, but very often only wooden platters are used.

Women are not the tribal potters alone; they are also the chief basket-makers, though on occasions the men will make baskets. Both Karahone and Boro Indians excel in basket-making, though all tribes are skilful enough at it. If you give an Indian anything to carry he never dreams of holding it in his hands if it will allow of other carriage. He either winds a strip of bark-fibre round his head to make a sling in which to place it, or, if it were anything[97] that did not admit of easy adjustment—as, for instance, fruit—he gathers some green palm leaves, and in about five minutes has plaited them, on a foundation of two rods, into a long and deep square basket, which is thrown away at the end of the march. Such quickly made baskets are continually in use, but the tribes also construct more elaborate ones that can be utilised for more than immediate purposes. In every maloka may be seen baskets of plaited bark-fibre and of plaited cane,[103] usually white, but sometimes with an interwoven and regular pattern in black cane. The Resigero make bottle-shaped baskets as receptacles for edible ants. A large basket is carried on the back, slung from the forehead with the customary band of bark-fibre.

Quite as important as the pottery is the manufacture of hammocks.[104] This again is done by the women of the tribes. It is woman’s, that is to say light, work. All these tribes make them on the same principle and in the same way, the only difference in the hammocks of different tribes is the spacing of the cross-threads. This, according to Hamilton Rice, is a tribal distinction, each group of tribes having an individual spacing.[105] The material used is curana string or palm-fibre. To prepare this the women take the pinnate leaflets of the Chambiri palm [106] and fold over each strip at[98] its broadest part. They grip it tightly and shred it down with the thumb and forefinger. The fibre thus procured is then twisted into a cord by rolling it tightly and hard against the naked thigh.

To make a hammock a woman takes a length of this fibre string and turns it round, backwards and forwards between two posts set in the earthen floor of the maloka. Cross strings of the same material are then tied at the regulation intervals and knotted across, from string to string, to the opposite side. No implement of any kind is used; the two posts are the only framework, and the whole construction is carried out entirely by the women’s fingers without any artificial aid.

The cassava-squeezer, that essential complement to an Indian household, is another plaited or basket-work article. The squeezer, which is common to the Boro and all the tribes north or south, except the Witoto, the Muenane, and the Nonuya, consists of a long cylinder with a loop at both ends. One is attached to a rafter, and the other to a stout stick, on which a woman sits, and thereby pulls upon the cylinder. The manioc is inserted through the open end before the weight is applied, and the elastic structure widens out to permit the soaked and grated roots to be packed in, till it resembles nothing so much as a well-filled Christmas stocking; but when pressure is brought to bear on the lower end the cylinder gradually elongates, and thereby contracts, crushing the roots to a pulp, from which the poisonous juice drains away.

The material used to make these squeezers appears to be a species of cane, but is said to be the bark of a palm tree.[107] It is cut into narrow strips and closely plaited into an elastic bottle some seven to ten feet long, and not more than about six inches wide when open. Instead of this cylinder the Witoto use a long web, a rectangular strip about ten inches wide of plaited bark-fibre, about an inch wide. This they wind round the grated manioc after the manner that putties[99] are adjusted on the leg. The tighter they twist the pliable web the greater the pressure upon the crushed roots, and the juice is thus wrung out of them.

The grater that is used to scrape the manioc roots, before they are placed in the squeezer, is a wooden implement made by the Indian women themselves.[108] It is a flat oval. The one in the illustration measures 16½ inches by 5¾ inches. The wood is of a bamboo type set with short black palm-spines about an eighth of an inch apart, thicker at one end than the other, but arranged in no regular pattern. These spines are fixed into the wood and project about an eighth of an inch above it. Those in which quartz stones are inserted instead of spines are a valuable commercial commodity north of the Japura.

I never saw manioc crushed, as Robuchon described, with a pestle and mortar; but these articles are in frequent use, especially for the preparation of coca and tobacco, so they are items of importance in an Indian inventory. A mortar is easily improvised from the hollowed trunk of a tree, and such a small mortar, with a long heavy pounder, is shown on the right of the photograph of a group of Okaina Indians. It is being used to pound coca (Plate XXV.). The pestles are made of some heavy wood, such as red wood or mahogany, and the lower trunk of the peach palm,[109] or a block of ironwood makes a very solid mortar. The peach-palm trunk is hollow, that is to say, it has a very hard shell filled with soft pith that can be scraped out with little difficulty.[110] Some of these mortars are of great size. Spruce gives the measurements as five to six feet high, but none I saw were more than four feet.

Not only are mortars and troughs made from the tree trunks, but bark is cut into long strips to make smaller vessels, shallow concave trays not unlike the Arunta hardwood pitchi.[111] The method is ingenious by which the bark[100] is stripped from the trunk, or the tree is felled, for the principle in each case is the same. Round the trunk of the selected tree a number of small holes are made, or, if only a portion is to be removed, the trunk is notched at the required distances. The edge of the stone axe is inserted in the notch, and the slip of wood is levered up with it until it splits away at the lower notch; or, if the tree is to be felled, the holes are widened into grooves that are deepened round the trunk till it gives way—a somewhat slow process, but a sure one.

In this fashion the Indians cut down the trees from which their boats are to be made. A tree is felled, preferably a cedar,[112] and the trunk is hollowed out for the length required, which varies, but may be as much as 20 feet, though the breadth will not exceed 18 inches. To hollow the trunk the Indians bore holes in the wood in order to secure the proper thickness, and then slit off pieces with their stone axes. These are kindled into a fire to which logs of wood are added. This burns out the required cavity, and when the trunk is very hot the burning embers are scraped away and the burnt trunk is forced apart, which is done by gradually inserting longer logs that are hammered into place. This is a job that needs to be done deftly and quickly, or the cooling wood will soon either contract too much or break at the strain. The heat also causes the ends to curve upwards, so that the bow and the stern of the boat will rise higher than the centre. Such a “dug-out” is a heavy concern, often with a specific gravity greater than that of water.

These boats belong to the community, and are not many in number. They are never left on the bank, nor are they kept in the maloka, but are hidden in the bush near the river-banks. The paddles, however, are kept in the house, stored overhead on the rafters.

All the tribes of the Issa and Japura valleys make these rather clumsy craft, but it is possible that the original idea is not indigenous, and that the autochthonic boat is the temporary canoe made from the hollowed trunk of the bulge-stemmed palm.[113] These canoes can be fashioned in an hour or two. The soft pulp is removed easily with a knife, or even may be crushed up with the fingers, but the bark is very hard, and the bulging portion of the trunk is shaped already for the craft. The ends are stiffened with clay, and the improvised canoe is ready for use, and is quite sufficient for casual purposes—to cross a river when too deep to ford or too wide to bridge,—and being of no permanent value it may be left to drift away down-stream when used.[114]

Spruce mentions tribes who cannot make canoes, and have to construct rafts to cross any main river;[115] but rafts are not used on the Issa or Japura streams except by the rubber-workers. They make them of trunks of light wood lashed with liana or withes, with a rail at the side, but such a construction is unknown to those Indians who have not met with the “civilized” invaders from the Rubber Belts. The Catanixi, so Wallace states, make canoes of the bark of trees stripped off in one sheet,[116] but I never saw anything approaching the “birch-bark” canoe, though some of the “civilized” Indians use a montaria, a built boat that is certainly not indigenous.

The canoes are propelled with paddles from four to five feet long, cut from the solid block of wood, elongated in the blade, not rounded, as is universal on the main Amazon river. They may be decorated with roughly painted designs. Indians always paddle in unison, sometimes on alternate sides, sometimes three together on one side and three on the other. They face the way they are going, as one would in a “Canadian” or “Rob Roy,” and the man in the bow steers. When two men paddle a large canoe both will sit forward and paddle from the bow.

CHAPTER VII

Apart from the industries already dealt with, the occupations of the South American Indians of these parts consist in agricultural pursuits, hunting, fishing, making war, and holding festival. They are not a pastoral people and have no cattle; even the domestic pig is unknown, fowls are never seen, and dogs only exist in their wild state in the forest. There they are numerous enough, dun in colour, with ears erect. These Indians do not keep or train them, though some of the tribes away from this district have hunting dogs.[117]

The greater part of the agricultural work falls, as has been seen, to the lot of the women, though the preliminaries—the heavier work of clearing, cutting, and breaking up the untouched soil—are undertaken by the men. Each tribal house stands in the midst of a small clearing. In front is the big dancing ground, for though the dancing proper takes place inside the maloka, this outer dance clearing is used for the purpose of assembly, and for effective entries. Near by are the cultivated plots that belong to the chief. The Indian with his own private lodging in the bush, or[103] any married Indian,—and all marry when they come to man’s estate—has his special plantation patch by his country-house, if he has one, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the tribal house if he is content with only his quarters therein. But no plantations are made actually surrounding the maloka; they are perhaps half a mile away, for, as a rule, the house stands alone. Sometimes a man’s plantation will be two days’ journey from the house of assembly, in which case a “country-house” is a necessity. The tribal plantations belong to the chief, as he, having all the unattached women, is better able to cultivate them.

To prepare the plots of ground the smaller trees are felled, the larger ones are burnt. The stumps of trees, cut about four feet above the ground, decay with some rapidity, and, directly the branches are dry enough to burn, fire is brought out and the clearing made into a gigantic bonfire, or rather series of bonfires, for the always damp wood will never do more than smoulder, but it is sufficient to destroy the brushwood and the tangle of creeping plants. There is then a savannah, a clearing such as is shown in the illustration (Plate XXVI.), a wilderness of charred posts and vegetable ashes which make most excellent manure. The ground is then broken up with wooden clubs, and therewith the men’s labour is at an end.[118] Henceforward their women take charge of the plantation—ike the Witoto call it before it is planted; it is akpho after planting.

The Indian plantation is no orderly market-garden. To begin with, the women have nothing but the roughest wooden implement, a wedge-shaped stake, with which to dig, and rake, and hoe. The ground is always uneven and broken; the charred remnants of the original vegetation are left to crumble beside the young growth, and the cultivated seedlings have to struggle for space and air with quick-growing wild things, forest growths and creepers that encroach on every side, and would speedily reclaim any cleared portions of the unconquerable bush were it not for the incessant diligence of the women. They go there daily straight from[104] the morning bath, and keep up a constant chattering as they plant the cuttings of manioc, or tend to the pine-apples and the sugar-cane, while the men take to their canoes, or go a-hunting in the bush in company. I have never seen single Indians hunting or walking in the forest. For obvious reasons they never venture far afield by themselves, or even in very small parties.

Sowing is done during the rainy season, but beyond the fact that things then grow faster than when it is comparatively drier, there is no especial harvest time. Crops grow and ripen all the year round. The Indians are not grain-growing people. Rice is unknown,[119] and the only grain that is sown at all is maize. This, though much cultivated by the Kuretu, and by tribes on the Tikie, is not grown in any quantity by Indians south of the Japura. What there may be is very small. Coca, manioc, and tobacco are the most universally cultivated. The Witoto grow a little sugar-cane and it is occasionally found growing wild, but in very few places. Originally, I imagine, it was imported. The Indians do not use it for sugar, as sweet things do not seem to appeal to their palates, and “beer” is unknown. Half-wild pumpkins and plantains are to be found in most plantations; pines,[120] bananas, yams, papaws, sweet potatoes, and mangoes are found cultivated more or less. The yellow fruit of the guaraná is prized by these Indians, especially the Boro, and is used here by them in the preparation of a stimulating drink [121] similar to that in use on the Rio Negro.[122] The wild cacao,[123] though not common, is seen about here, but the tribes do not cultivate it. Manioc, which is also known as cassava,[124] is a plant that grows throughout the tropical regions of America, and in the West Indies. It is known also in[105] Africa, and has been introduced by the white man into some of the Pacific Islands.

The manioc is planted by the women about July or August, and according to Indian belief manioc can only be propagated by replanting slips of the old growth after it has been lifted up and the tuberous root removed. As it cannot reproduce itself in this fashion in its wild state, presumably it will grow from young tubers, or seed, but, according to Bates, it is not found wild in the Amazon basin.[125] The ground is hoed by the women, and scraped into rough furrows. Cuttings of the manioc plant are set in these in little holes. Eight months after planting the root is ready for use. It is large, fleshy, and very heavy for its bulk, each tuber weighing from half a pound to two or three pounds, and even more. It has been said of the variety known as the great manioc that a root will weigh as much as forty-eight pounds.[126] The ground will only carry two crops, so a fresh patch must be broken up after the second harvest. Indians will, however, always return to plantations no longer in use, on account of the different palm fruits which continue to grow wild there after they have once been cultivated; but the disused plots will never be tilled again for plantation, they are only visited for this purpose of securing the fruit.

Throughout the forest peppers are very common and plentiful. Some of the bushes grow to a height of ten feet. There are many varieties,[127] and peppers are grown, or allowed to grow, in patches on all the plantations.

I have said that the women are the agriculturalists and the cooks; nor do I know of any exception to this rule, for though coca and tobacco are tabu to all women, and their preparation is forbidden to the sex, yet the women grow the tobacco in the plantations, gather the leaf, and dry it in the sun. But the actual making of the black liquid is done by the men alone, and only men prepare the coca for use. Tobacco is not an article of barter among[106] these tribes, as all grow it, and its preparation is no secret to any of the tribesmen. Cultivated coca is sown when the rains begin. The young seedlings need both care and attention.[128] It is eighteen months before the slender shrub will yield any harvest, though once grown the supply will continue for three or four decades. The shrub grows to some five or six feet high, into small trees in fact, with lichen-encrusted trunks. Both the common kind and a smaller-leaved variety [129] grow wild in these regions.

Men also must climb the trees to gather such fruits as the papaw and the seeds of the cokerite or the peach palms. Indians climb in what is practically a universal method, with a circling rope and a ring.[130] Their usual way is to secure the legs together about the ankles with a strip of the inner bark of a tree, and then, with arms and feet free, to use a bigger loop adjusted round the tree and hips of the climber for purchase power. For short climbs they will dispense with the bigger loop. Sometimes palm-frond is made into a ring for the toes, but with the forest Indians these are oftener left free to allow of prehensile action. With this simple attachment, made perhaps only of twisted liana, the native will work his way to a perilous height up the barest of tree trunks.[131]

As a woodsman the Indian is so far in advance of the European traveller as to make all comparison futile.[132] An Indian in the bush is wonderful. From his earliest days he has been taught to watch and note. I have known an Indian stop and tell me that when the sun was in a certain[107] position, that is to say half an hour previously, seven Indians passed that way carrying a tapir, which had been killed when the sun was there—indicating another position. It was killed a long distance away, and the bag must have been a tapir on account of the evident weight. He took up a leaf on which was a spot of blood, coagulated. He pointed to tracks on the ground, to prove the question of numbers and distance. The men who passed were weary, he knew it by the way their toes had dropped on the ground. The breaking of a twig, the exudation of sap, is enough of a guide for the Indian to judge when the last passer-by came that way. I have been told it was within ten minutes, and shown a leaf. It had begun to rain ten minutes before, and the leaf, overturned by a passing foot, was wet upon both sides. A glance will suffice for an estimate of what animals passed, and when. By some intuitive perception, moreover, he will deduce in a moment whither the game has gone, and will make, not along its trail, but more directly for it. Yet close and accurate as his observation invariably is, when the Indian sportsman begins a tale of the chase it is exaggerated beyond the wildest dreams and liveliest imaginings of the most gifted sporting Munchausen among ourselves.

When an Indian is path-finding he judges both time and distance by the sun. If not attacked by an enemy, he will win his way home from anywhere, always at a jog-trot, and will probably do his fifty miles on nothing more sustaining than coca. A sense of locality is born in him, and from childhood upwards this is trained and developed by continued and varied experiences. To be able to judge by the sky, by the weathered side of trees, by the flight of birds, or the run of animals—above all to have a sense that is greater than all judgment—is a matter of life or death not once but continually. The inept are the unfit, and the forest will show them no mercy.

This minuteness and accuracy of observation comes into play again when the Indian is hunting. Death to his quarry from the tiny poisoned dart of the blow-pipe is certain, but not absolutely instantaneous. He also will[108] shoot birds with a blunt-headed arrow that stuns but does no damage to the plumage. The shock appears to kill the bird. Hit with dart or arrow they may flutter a little distance before they fall. I have watched an Indian scores of times when hunting game shoot bird after bird in a tree, mark down where each fell, and eventually never fail to account for every one despite the density of the surrounding bush. Hardly a traveller but has noted and wondered at the same thing.

Blow-pipes are only carried by the Indians when hunting. They are weapons of the chase, not of war. Most of the tribes manufacture their own, but the Bara, who neither hunt nor fish, get theirs solely by barter from other tribes. The blow-pipe—obidiake of the Witoto, dodike of the Boro—made by these tribes is a heavier weapon than those made by tribes farther north.[133] It is constructed, like those of all tribes south of the Japura, in two sections, bound together with great nicety, and has invariably a mouthpiece made of vegetable ivory or a similar wood that fits round inside the mouth. These blow-pipes are from eight to fourteen feet long, with a quarter-inch tube, the outer mouthpiece being an inch and a half. They are sometimes made from reeds [134] by the Boro and Andoke, and I have seen small Boro boys with a hollow reed pipe, about half the ordinary length. This was merely a plaything. These are the simplest form of blow-pipe, and would appear to be the original type. Though I imagine reeds are always obtainable, for the flora did not seem to vary, as a rule the wood of the chonta palm is employed.[135] On the north of the Japura, the tribes, I believe, mostly make their blow-pipes of palm stems.[136] Two[109] long strips of this wood are slit off by notching and levering with a stone axe, as already described. The chonta poles are trimmed, rubbed, and grooved with sand and a paca-tooth tool till they form the corresponding halves of a tube, which must fit most exactly. All this entails very careful and tedious work, so it is fortunate that time to an Indian is of no account. These half tubes are then fastened together and the bore polished with what is practically sand-paper. A string is dipped in some gummy substance, and then covered with sand. When dry, a fine polish is secured with this by friction. The blow-pipe is next bound from end to end with fibre-string, or narrow strips of pliant bark.[137] The whole pipe is then coated with some resinous gum, or wax.[138] A small bone is fixed about twelve inches from the mouthpiece, and this acts as a sight. Such a tube will send an arrow a distance of from forty to one hundred and fifty feet, and an expert hunter shoots the smallest birds at twenty yards. The chonta-wood pipe is the heaviest and most lasting, but I do not know if it carries farthest. The Indians’ accuracy of aim is extraordinary. The arrows, or darts, are about nine inches long, no thicker than a small match, and are tufted with fluffy down from the seed vessels of the silk-cotton tree,[139] the tuft being of a size to fit exactly into the bore of the pipe. The arrows are made of the leaf-stem spines of the Patawa palm.[140] They are carried in a quiver of bamboo lined with dried grass or fine rushes that protect the delicate darts. The poisoned points are partly cut through so that they break off in the wound. Once a bird or animal is hit the poison kills them very speedily. The silk-cotton for tipping the arrow is carried in a gourd that is attached to the arrow quiver with strips of cane, and to it is also tied the jawbone of the pirai fish, which is used as a file for the points of the darts. When the arrow is ejected from the blow-pipe there is a slight noise,[110] like a child’s pop-gun, but it is not enough to scare the game.[141]

Indians are no more provident as hunters than as housekeepers. When game is plentiful they will kill and eat, kill recklessly, and eat to repletion. But game is not always plentiful. It may abound to-day and all be gone to-morrow. Even parrots and peccary will fail at times. Birds and beasts wander, and though the hunter can often judge of direction through knowledge of their habits, and—what in this instance probably governs them—which fruits are ripest and where most abundantly to be found, this will not altogether account for the fluctuations in the supply of game. It must also be remembered that in this respect the bush varies greatly, and even where animal life is not scarce it is apt to become so on the advent of man. Even apart from the disturbance caused by the hunter, game in the vicinity of any human settlement tends to disappear. The hunter must go farther and farther afield.

The Indian is an expert trapper. His traps though simple are ingeniously contrived, and seldom fail to act. An empty bag is due more frequently to absence of game than to the inadequate plan of the trap. Monkeys are caught with a running-noose loop snare made of liana, which is adjusted carefully along a fruit-bearing branch of a tree. Any monkey attempting to reach the fruit strangles itself in the noose, exactly as a rabbit does in the wire of an English poacher.

A shallow pan of water is the Indian bait for ground vermin. Round it they dig a ring of holes, about a foot across, on which are lightly spread grass and leaves. Rats, mice, frogs, and small snakes venturing to drink fall through[111] into the holes that are deep enough to hold them captive till the trapper comes round and secures his catch. For larger animals the hunters dig a line of pits, with a sharpened stake fixed upright at the bottom of each. The game, corralled and driven over these, falls in through the sticks and leaves that hide the opening, and is impaled on the stake. The Karahone arm their pits with poisoned arrows, and dig a succession of these death-traps down a forest avenue.[142] A more complex contrivance is made with carefully poised logs. This description of trap is set in a forest run, the brushwood on either side is twisted and plaited into a rough fence, and the trap erected in the opening. The slightest pressure on the footboard releases the weight, and brings the heavy trunk down with a crash on the intruder. A trap of this kind will catch anything from a squirrel to a jaguar.

A tapir is sometimes killed with a throwing javelin, which the Indians use with much dexterity, though when they throw anything they do it with an over-arm action, with a jerk as a girl would. Their skill with these javelins is not surprising when one remembers that they hunt two or three days a week from boyhood, and so are continually throwing them at animals. The javelin is a light spear with a poisoned palm spine at the point. A man carries seven of these in his hand, and seven more in reserve in a bamboo case—fourteen in all. These javelins are about six feet long, and an Indian can throw one a distance of thirty yards. Sometimes only five are carried in the hand, but seven is the more usual number. Though long they are very thin and light. The haft is usually made of chonta, or similar hard straight-grained woods. A spine is always fixed in the point, which is filed almost through so that it will break off in the body of the wounded animal. These spines are poisoned with animal putrefying poison. Of the heavier spears more anon.

Koch-Grünberg noted that tribes on the Tikie have well-defined[112] and recognised hunting and fishing rights, but that when travelling any such rights are avoided. This is common to all Indians. They will even erect barriers in the bush and on the rivers, and they keep strictly to their own localities, otherwise quarrels would arise and war be the upshot.

The sporting proclivities of the tribes vary considerably. The Tukana are fishers, but not hunters. The Boro, on the other hand, though great hunters do not fish, at least I do not remember ever having been given fish in a Boro house. Certainly they are not such fishermen as the Witoto or the Okaina, who are the most skilful of all the fishing tribes.

Fish are taken with hook and line, in nets and traps, by poisoning the water, by spearing, and by shooting with bows and arrows. For fish-hooks these tribes have hardly anything but those that they contrive for themselves from wood, bone, or spines, and civilised metal hooks are greatly sought after by all of them. Napo Indians make hooks of bone.[143] The Witoto fakwasi is a fish-hook made of wood or palm spine. A spine is fastened to a fine stick, and this is baited with grubs, and used with a fibre line, or with a pihekoa, a rod and a line. Fish are caught to some extent with bait and laid lines.

Hand nets are made of chambiri palm-fibre in the same way that hammocks are made, but with a finer mesh; larger ones are constructed by fixing fences of wattle across the stream before the rivers rise. In the dry season the Witoto use nets to drag the pools in the river-bed. They also catch fish with baited nets, the bait being larvæ, or some fruit attractive to fish, such as that of the setico, or the drupes of certain laurels. In the dry season they bale out the water from the shallower pools with gourds till the fish can be captured by hand.

Some of the fish traps are most cleverly designed. There is one known on the Uaupes as the matapi, which is simply a basket open at one end, but without sufficient space for fish of any size to turn round in. As fish are not able to[113] swim backwards without the room to turn they cannot escape once in the trap. On the Napo the Indians spear fish most expertly, but other Indians depend largely on these and similar traps for their supply.

Fish are speared with a wooden trident or, rather, caught between its prongs, or stabbed with a bamboo spear that has a double-edged blade. Some of the civilised Indians of the lower Amazons have harpoons with detachable heads that they use for hunting the manatee, or river dolphin, but, in these upper waters, dolphins, if seen,—and that is rarely—are speared with tridents; the Indians have no harpoons, and the only thing that resembles a detachable head is the partly filed-through javelin. The Menimehe shoot fish with the bow and arrow.

By far the most wholesale and general way in which fish are obtained is through the use of poison.[144] The Indians procure this from the root of an evergreen bush, the babasco,[145] which they pound very fine. They dam the stream with a wattle fencing and then throw the mashed babasco in above this fish weir. The fish frequently jump out of the water, gasping as though they were being strangled, and the Indians secure those distressed fish in outspread palm leaves. Sometimes the dead fish drop down into a net, spread beside the dam to catch them; or the Indian fisherman will simply spear them when they are sufficiently narcotised. Dead fish will be found floating in the vicinity many hours afterwards. The Napo Indians put the crushed babasco in a basket and stir the water with this below the dam—so that the fish cannot escape upstream.[146] Witoto and other Issa-Japura tribes merely throw the roots into the stream, and the dam is made more to prevent the dead fish being washed away than to stop the live ones escaping. The poison works almost instantaneously on the smaller fish. The Indians on the Tapajos make use of a poisonous liana[114] called timbo.[147] Its action is similar though not so immediate as that of the babasco root, and consequently it is of little use in quick-flowing waters. Neither babasco nor timbo affect the fish injuriously for human food.

CHAPTER VIII

The armoury of the Indian contains, for the most part, weapons designed for primitive hand-to-hand encounter with either man or beast. The sixty or more feet a blow-pipe dart will carry; the two hundred feet, which is the outside range of an arrow from the most powerful of his bows, would be futile in any country less enclosed than these dense woodlands. Even here success in intertribal conflict is a matter of personal dexterity rather than mechanical accomplishment. It is true that the Witoto near the rubber districts have ordinary muzzle-loading scatter-guns. Other tribes have a few, a very few rifles, and some Brummagem fowling-pieces, usually with single barrels. But the rifle cannot be said to have won its way into unchallenged favour. When an Indian does possess a gun he is exceedingly chary of using it; his chief idea is to save his powder and shot. The Menimehe have neither rifles nor scatter-guns; they consider that firearms frighten the game, and prefer their own throwing-javelins, their bows, and their arrows.

The Indian weapons of offence may be said then to consist of the sword, the bow, and the spear. There is no difference between war spears and arrows and those used against the larger wild animals. For defence the Menimehe carry a small club, or life-preserver, and the Jivaro and[116] some of the tribes near the Napo river, use a circular shield covered with tapir hide like the Uaupes river Indians.[148] The Menimehe also have large round shields made with tapir skins. From two to five hides are superimposed one on the other to make a shield, and when finished these will turn any arrow or spear, and are impenetrable to other than a nickel-cased bullet of high velocity. The Yahuna on the other side of the Apaporis do not use a shield, nor do any of the tribes south of the Japura.

The Indian’s club is like a quarter-staff made of hard red-wood—which is the heaviest kind known to them—and is used simply as a personal weapon of offence or defence. It is not a war weapon. The Indian sword is made of red-wood or black iron-wood, and is from thirty to thirty-six inches long, polished quite plainly. It is used by the attacker to aim blows at the thighs of his antagonist, the object being so to hit him as to bring him to the ground. Once this is done his head can be easily smashed. As a weapon of defence the Indian uses it to protect himself from the throwing of javelins. Holding the handle in one hand and the point in the other, he can ward off such missiles with the greatest dexterity, thus in a way obviating the necessity of carrying a shield.

A diversity of spears, or javelins, is constructed by all these tribes. Chonta wood is universally employed for spears and arrow-heads, the weapon differing in accordance with its purport, the chonta spear for tapir, the blunt arrow for birds, and so forth. These wooden weapons are scraped smooth with the file-like jaw of the pirai fish, and a final polish is put on with the leaves of the Cecropia peltata, which are rough enough to be effective substitutes for sand-paper. The spears are thickest at the head, and taper nearly to a point at the butt. The head is made of a separate piece of chonta some three inches long, bound into the grooved end. A poisoned palm spine is always fixed in the point of a spear, as in the lighter throwing-javelin. About two or three inches down, the head is filed nearly through, in order that it shall break off in the wound, and[117] so be the more difficult to extract. The poisoned point is protected with a reed sheath.

Arrow-heads also are half filed through. This is done with the fish-jaw attached to the quiver immediately before use. The tips are made of chonta and are poisoned.[149] The bows are of various kinds of wood, and of many sizes, strung with fibre made thicker and stronger as desired. The arrow shaft is without feathers, and has no nock for the bowstring. The arrows are carried in quivers of wicker or of wood. The Menimehe, the most skilful bowmen of these regions, are famous for their quivers as well as for their pottery. They make the quivers out of bamboo, the elementary ones being merely scraped-out sections cut so that there shall be a joint or a knot for the end; the more elaborate specimens are made of strips of bamboo bound together. The arrow poison is carried in a small pot or calabash. The vegetable poisons that are used for birds and small game give place to a mixture of strychnos and poison obtained from decomposed animal or human matter when the weapon is employed against men or the bigger beasts. Its effect on a human being is said to be almost instantaneous.

Indian strategy makes for concealment both in attack and defence. A tribe will never rush precipitately into open and aggressive war with a neighbour. Plans for the campaign are no affairs of a hurried minute; no impulse of uncontrolled anger. They are, on the contrary, well matured and much deliberated. After many a tobacco palaver, when war is determined on for any good and sufficient reason—usually revenge for some real or fancied wrong—the tribal warriors muster, and it may be that a friendly tribe will assemble with them. Attack will be stealthy, silent, and never by any chance frontal. These are the true tactics of the forest denizen. A noiseless flank approach, a sudden rush, and then, if the foe be taken[118] unawares, a furious onslaught. But surprise is essential to success. With the utmost caution they approach the enemy’s head-quarters, the big tribal house, probably when a dance is taking place and the hostile warriors are occupied with matters other than possible war. The invaders wait for night; creep in under cover of darkness; and if possible cut up the unprepared revellers when asleep after the feast. Should the victorious attackers be in a blood-thirsty mood, every soul will be killed and the house burnt. But the Indian is no Berserker when fighting. He is as careful of his own skin as he is anxious to destroy his foe—possibly even more so; a living enemy may be slain in the future, but if he be killed himself ultimate vengeance is no longer for him.

As regards defence, the Indian never attempts any effective fortification of his home. The only defensive action taken by the tribes is to prepare a series of pitfalls in the forest avenues, after the fashion described for game, with poisoned stakes to impale any foe who may unwittingly stray into them. Death in such a trap comes very speedily. These pits, as I have already noted, are always dug by the Karahone.

It appeared to me that the Indians depended mainly on the secrecy of the tribal dwelling, ensured by the absence of direct footways; for though their houses are not built on defensive—or even defendable—lines, the hostility between various language-groups is rampant, as has been already shown, and internecine strife is unending. The Indian has been called docile and gentle. He may be, if to fear an enemy as much as he is hated be docility. “Do not wait for the first blow but deal it: if you cannot deal it with impunity now wait till you can—but wait securely hidden”: there is the whole text-book of the Indian’s science of war.

If it can be done with due regard to personal safety the Indian warriors like to take prisoners. A prisoner is tangible evidence of successful achievement and personal valour. There is, as a rule, no mutilation of the dead, or of a prisoner; whatever does occur is due to personal brutality on the part of some individual. Prisoners are bound with[119] palm-fibre, and so long as they walk quickly enough, when the victorious band returns from the fray, they are not ill-treated. But there must be no delay. Every moment adds to the dangers that threaten the marauders. Vengeance accomplished, they must hurry back to the comparative safety of their own locality. If a prisoner lag he endangers his captors, and in self-defence they would slay him. Prisoners are sometimes sold, but as a rule they are killed and eaten at the big feast arranged to commemorate the event, unless they are young enough to be kept as slaves without risk of their running away to tell tribal enemies of the secret roads through the bush. The consumption of a dead foe at least guarantees his harmlessness—as a warrior, if not as a comestible.

Prisoners are never kept for any length of time, on account of the danger that would follow should they manage to escape. They get no food nor drink, and if never actually tortured, are treated very casually until killed with a heavy wooden sword, not with poisoned javelins, as Robuchon imagined was the ceremonial method of killing for culinary purposes. The captor knocks his prisoner down with blows on the shins and the thigh, and then hacks off the head with his broadsword. Robuchon is also responsible for the statement that the prisoners consider that to be thus killed and eaten is a great distinction and honour. It is true that they make no complaints, but that is simply on account of the fatalistic nature of the Indian.

If killed in war a chief’s body is carried off by his tribe if possible, though the ordinary warriors, dead or wounded, of the beaten faction are left to their fate, for fear of delay and possible surprise during retreat; although that fate be known to be consumption by the enemy.

Among the Boro and other cannibal tribes anthropophagous orgies follow hard on the heels of tribal strife. If it happens to be possible, that is to say if the fight has taken place as an attack on their own house, the corpses of the enemy are eaten; but no Indian ever risks the chance of reprisals being taken by remaining in the vicinity of a hostile house to eat the dead, nor will he ever burden[120] himself with food when returning to his own habitation. The cannibal feast thus becomes the prerogative of the conqueror.

Unlike the better-known tribes of Guiana, most, if not all, of the Indians of the upper rivers are indisputably cannibals, especially the Boro, Andoke, and Resigero groups. It has even been asserted by some writers that sundry tribes belong to the lowest grade of cannibals in that they will “eat their own dead children, friends and relatives.”[150] This, however, is incorrect, and why it must be so is very obvious when the main causation of extra-tribal cannibalism is understood.

In the first place, and it is not only the first but the most general and important, anthropophagy is looked upon as a system of vengeance, a method of inflicting the supreme insult upon an enemy.[151] It will be seen that the Indian has very definite opinions as to the inferiority of the brute creation. To resemble animals in any way is a matter to be avoided at all costs. Body hair is an animal characteristic, so man must depilate. The birth of twins is a disgrace because it is a descent to bestial levels. What a crowning disgrace then must it be for the dead to share no better fate than that of slaughtered animals. No more absolute vengeance on the dead could be devised. The primary cause therefore is insult.

Secondly, there is a desire to make use of what would otherwise be waste material. Animal food is scarce in the forest. But these tribes do not, as has been asserted of the Cobeu and Arekaine,[152] make war simply with a view to obtaining provision of human flesh. Anthropophagy is the effect, not the cause, of war. But then there remains the fact that meat is hard to come by, and is continually required. The slain and the prisoners provide meat, and at[121] the same time the degradation, the ignominy of supplying the place of beasts makes vengeance most definite.

Finally, and in a still more subsidiary degree, there is the reason most commonly advanced, the supposition that there exists a measure of belief in the assumption of the characteristics of the eaten by the eater; a belief that must give sardonic impulse to the primary reason of all, the desire to degrade the dead. Though this third reason has least weight of any with the Indian, it cannot be entirely absent when the food tabu connected with childbirth is remembered. But I know of no such actually admitted reasons as give rise to anthropophagous feasts elsewhere, as among the Aro, who are said to eat human sacrifices because “those who ate their flesh ate gods, and thus assimilated something of the divine attributes and power.”[153]

The subsidiary reason, that of necessary anthropophagy, has been advanced by some apologists,[154] and with a certain amount of truth. But this reason may be looked upon as very secondary, in my opinion, though, were the food-quest of little importance, there might be less cannibalism. The Indian would, in fact, only eat human flesh ceremonially, as a ritual insult.

From all this it follows that intra-tribal cannibalism would be a criminal outrage by the tribe on itself, and therefore it could never occur that a member of the tribe was eaten, nor would his teeth be extracted even to show an accomplished revenge. This disposes of any such thing as the eating of dead relatives as a sign of respect. These and similar statements are due to misapprehension of facts by the writer, or a too hasty judgment on the part of the explorer.

One other cannibal custom noted by Wallace and recently confirmed by Koch-Grünberg, is unknown to me, that of exhuming the bones of the dead, which are then burnt and the calcined remains made into broth.[155] No such custom ever came under my notice, nor did any of the tribes refer[122] to such practices in any way in my hearing. The dried human heads prepared by the Jivaro [156] are also unknown in the regions here dealt with. No heads are mummified in this district. But among some of the tribes south of the main Amazon river this repulsive art is carried on, and specimens of these heads, not more than one-fifth their natural size, have been obtained and brought to Europe.[157] Their exportation is now forbidden by the South American governments, as the supply not unnaturally was apt to coincide with the demand.

Though these reduced heads are unknown to the Issa-Japura tribes, the head is not ignored as a trophy. The fleshy parts, the hair and the teeth are removed, and the skull is hung in the plantation patch to be cleaned by ants and other insect scavengers. These will pick one bare in half an hour. Cleaned, and dried in the sun, this memorial of victory is eventually suspended outside, or on the rafters in the house, over the string that carries the top part of the drums. Bates records how the Mandurucu soaked the heads “in bitter vegetable oil,” and then smoked or sun-dried them,[158] but the Issa-Japura tribes subject their dreadful trophies to no other process than the action of the insects, air, and sun in the plantations. These ghastly evidences of Indian vengeance I have often seen in the houses, and in the plantations, the bare skulls gleaming white like so many gourds on a string. Robuchon also mentions that he found skulls hanging from the ceiling of malokas, which the natives were quite ready to barter for a large handful of beads, but this does not tally with my experience.

When a feast is to take place the prisoners are knocked down and despatched, their heads removed to be danced with and eventually dried as trophies. The body is then divided and shared among the feasters. Only the legs and arms, and the fleshy parts of the head, are eaten ceremonially, anything like the intestines, brains, and so forth, is regarded as filthy and never touched, nor is the trunk eaten.[123] The male genital organs, however, are given to the wife of the chief, the only woman who has any share in the feast. The hands and feet are regarded as delicacies, for the same reason that civilised man has a preference for calves’ feet, on account of their gelatinous character.

Each portion of flesh is tied to a stick, and every man, according to Robuchon’s account, drops his share in the pot, and places the stick to which it is tied on the ground beside it whilst he watches till the meat is cooked. I was told that the culinary processes were attended to by the old women of the tribe. The flesh, with the required seasoning of peppers, is boiled over a slow fire, while drums are beaten, and the assembled tribe—adorned with full panoply of paint, necklaces, and feathers, and with the gory heads fixed upon their dancing staves—dance round singing a wild song of victory.

The savage orgy will continue for hours, with outbursts of drum-beating, gratulatory orations, and much drinking. I was told that the festival of drink and dance will go on without intermission for eight days.[159]

Only men eat ceremonially, the women, with the exception of the chief’s wife, having no share in the revolting feast, except on occasions, when perhaps the necessity for animal food—the secondary reason—is the cause of the indulgence. What portions of the bodies are not eaten are thrown into the river. I do not know if this is ceremonial, but it is curious to note that the Indian paradise is up river, not down, where, of course, the refuse is carried by the stream. With some tribes the trunk is buried, or it may be merely thrown into the bush to be devoured by the wild dogs. This latter is not infrequent. These methods of disposal are ceremonial in so much as that they are carried out amid organised tribal jeers and insults.

Flutes are made out of the arm-bones of eaten prisoners, the humerus. The radius and the ulna, fleshless and dry,[124] with the fingers of the hand contracted, are fastened to wooden handles and used to stir the kawana. I have seen these, but they are jealously guarded by their owners, and probably no white man has succeeded in obtaining a specimen.

Among the tribes of the Japura and the Issa the teeth are always carefully retained by the slayer, to be made into a necklace, a visible and abiding token of his completed revenge. This removal of the teeth may be held synonymous with the curse of many savage tribes in reference to their enemies—“Let their teeth be broken.” David himself called upon God to “break the teeth” of his foes. Possibly the reason is a reversion in thought to the time when the teeth were man’s only weapon.

It is certainly worth noting in connection with the anthropophagous practices of these tribes that they have almost no salt. In its natural state it is non-existent throughout the Issa-Japura regions, and can only be obtained with difficulty. It is possible that the salt in human blood may be one of the unrealised attractions that lead these peoples to anthropophagous practices. A craving that can be so dominant as to influence race migration, as the salt-craving may do,[160] can hardly be ignored when dealing with the inhabitants of a country where local conditions offer little or nothing to satisfy it.

Another vice which may very possibly have origin in the same lack of a necessary condiment, and to which these Indians are very prone, is the eating of clay.[161] It is not impossible that the clay may have saline properties; in any case among all these tribes geophagy is very common, especially with the non-cocainists, the women and children. As a rule it occurs among the very poorest—the slave clan,—those who are least able to obtain such a luxury as salt, and it is found among the female children most of all. The latter fact is perhaps because the male child, the potential warrior, is the more carefully[125] guarded, and would be the more severely beaten if discovered eating dirt. I never came across any man who eat clay, though I know of a boy who suffered from this neurotic appetite. The clay, if it cannot be otherwise obtained, will be scraped from under the fireplace, and it is always eaten secretly.

The Indians look upon geophagy as injurious, but it appears to be ineradicable. I cannot help thinking it must be due to some great “want” in Indian diet, a physical craving that the ordinary food of the tribes does not satisfy. It is instinctive. In the manufacture of coca they add clay. This suggests that if taken in small quantities it may have a neutralising and therefore a beneficial effect on some more or less injurious article of daily food. But it rapidly, and invariably, degenerates into a vice; and the habit appears to have a weakening and wasting effect on the whole body.

In some parts of the Amazons, though not with these tribes, the clay is regularly prepared for use,[162] and the vice is shared by other races than the Indian.[163] Children who suffer from this extraordinary craving will swallow anything of a similar character, earth, wax, and Bates even mentions pitch,[164] but they prefer the clay that is scraped from under the spot where the fire has been burning, probably because the chemical processes induced by the heat render it more soluble, easily pulverised, and hence more actually digestive in its action.

It has been suggested that this disease was introduced into America by negro slaves, and is not indigenous. This is a question for the bacteriological expert rather than the traveller to decide, but as it indubitably exists among tribes that have not come in any contact with negroes or negro-influenced natives it would seem to argue on the face of things that the similarity of vicious tastes was due to similarity of causation, rather than to contamination by evil example, unless the ubiquitous microbe is to be held responsible for this ill also.

CHAPTER IX

Food is the dominant problem of an Indian’s existence. The food quest is to him no indefinite sociological issue of future “food control,” but an affair of every day. Living, it would seem, in the midst of plenty, starvation is a frequent visitant in an Amazonian household. They are an improvident folk, as I have already stated, and if food be plentiful give no thought to make provision for the morrow, when there may be none to be had.[165] “None” to the man of the forest has a different significance, a more inclusive meaning, than it has to the white man, for it comprehends everything that by the widest stretch of the imagination can be considered possible for human consumption. And it is well for the Indians that they are omnivorous, for the uncertainty of food supply is the most certain factor of life in the Amazonian bush.[166]

To run through the details of the possible provision of meat: there is, to start with, the tapir,[167] though the Witoto consider much tapir is bad, especially for women. The print of its three toes, with a fourth on the forefeet, is very seldom not to be found in the damp soil by stream and[127] river. The tapir is in fact plentiful throughout these regions, though, thanks to its protective colouring, it may often not be obtrusively present. The young tapir is flecked and dotted with pale yellow spots on its brown coat, an exact imitation of sunlight on the earth through foliage. Gradually these stripes and spots fade to dull greys, only the fully grown animal is entirely without them, and of a uniform dead slaty colour. Young tapir flesh makes an excellent dish, and is like pork in taste, but it must be eaten very fresh, for the meat will not keep sweet many hours on account of its richness. Therefore if a tapir is killed in the water and sinks,[168] it must be eaten immediately it comes to the surface, that is after some hours, during which the gases have generated in the animal’s stomach, and so caused it to rise. But tapir is always considered unhealthy if eaten too frequently, and at certain seasons of the year is said to be quite uneatable, and if taken gives rise to sickness. An old tapir is tough and heavy eating at the best of times. Tapir flesh dried over a smoky fire is excellent eating, though I have never seen the Indians smoke meat for keeping, even when they found I did so myself. Another meat that has been compared with pork is that of the paca.[169] It is rich and fat, but it is eatable, and not so strong in flavour as the flesh of the capybara,[170] a larger animal, found usually in the vicinity of water. In appearance the capybara is not unlike a long-nosed, crop-eared rabbit, while its cousin the agouti,[171] chestnut-coloured and rough-haired, has a rat-like face on a rabbit’s body, though the flesh has nothing in common with the rabbit’s. Both the paca and the agouti are plentiful in the forest. Of the two the latter is more of a forest-dweller, and seeks the streams only to drink.

A small species of ant-bear is fairly common, but the large ant-eater is not often found. The latter does exist in the Issa-Japura watersheds, according to Indian accounts; and ant-bear is eaten by the Boro, but has too strong and[128] pungent a taste for the white palate. Armadilloes, when obtainable, are baked in the ashes of the fire, as hedgehogs are roasted in England.

Monkey flesh, though usually tough and invariably insipid, is by no means despised, nor must a traveller in these regions be squeamish over it, horribly suggestive as the body of a cooked monkey very certainly is in appearance, for monkey meat most frequently will be the only plat on the dinner menu. It is the most ordinary food of the Indian, though monkey is not the easiest game to collect. The wounded or dying animal is very apt to clutch at the boughs in its agony, and the hand will contract in death and the body remain pendant. Even if it drop it will frequently stick in a forked branch out of reach; so that for one monkey eaten probably several are slain. Monkeys of all sorts, however, abound throughout the forest, and also marmosets, pretty little creatures with something of the squirrel about them.[172] Though I never saw the big-bellied monkey mentioned by Spruce,[173] I noticed a large number of spider-monkeys, with tails so prehensile that they serve as additional hands to convey fruit to their mouths. The supply of monkey flesh depends in the first instance on what provender there may be in the neighbourhood for those animals. Monkeys are wanderers, and when they have cleared one part of the forest of fruit and nuts, they migrate to another. The migration of game is a serious matter for the Indian, for all animals here are subject to periodical movements as noted in the previous chapter. It may result in the abandonment of a homestead when scarcity of animal life in a district drives the human inhabitants away.

When it can be obtained a deer, or a sloth, furnishes a variety for the cooking-pot; and then there is the peccary, so dreaded by the Indian. The peccary,[174] the wild pig of[129] the forest, lives in small herds, and the reason proffered by the Indians for their fear of the animal is that when one is wounded it sets up a loud cry, and the rest of the herd promptly come to its aid and join in attacking the aggressor. This story is universal among the tribes. The peccary has a deceptively harmless appearance. They have not all tusks, and in no case are the tusks very prominent; yet, so sharp are they, that the fearless and pugnacious creature can inflict a severe wound. The shoulder and leg are the parts prized for eating. I know of no temporary tabu connected with this animal, though it has been said that at times the flesh is unfit for food on account of a gland in the back.[175] This may, however, be the reason why the body is rarely eaten.

Of birds, parrots are the most plentiful, and the toughest. For a hard, tasteless, and unappetising meal commend me to the carcase of that noisy bird. They require to be stewed for quite twenty-four hours, and that over a slow fire, or else the flesh is impossible to eat. Their chief use is in soup. Macaw, curassow, piuri and panje, mocking-bird, toucan, and egrets all go to the family pepper-pot of the successful hunter, with the turkey of these parts, pigeons, partridges, herons, ducks, and geese; in fact quite a good assortment of feathered fowl.

The frogs that make night hideous with their croaking provide the Indian epicure with one of his most esteemed dishes, for both frogs and snakes are considered delicacies, so that the traveller who pitied tribes like the Botocudo, because insects and reptiles formed a large part of their diet,[176] would simply be wasting his sympathy. Even the white man does not disdain the delicate flesh of the iguana, ugly though that green-bellied, black-ridge-backed reptile is. Turtles are caught and eaten during the dry season when the rivers are low. The native method of capturing them is to turn the unwieldly creature over on its back when asleep on the sand-banks. This renders the turtles perfectly helpless, though a snap from their powerful[130] jaws will do serious damage.[177] The eggs also are eaten by these tribes, although none of the Issa-Japura tribes will touch birds’ eggs, for they look upon them as fœtal, and therefore unclean.[178] Further it is beast-like, in their opinion, to eat the liver, kidneys, and other intestines of animals, though these may be made into soup or hot-pot. For the same reason the Indian does not touch carrion.[179] But such niceness is outbalanced by tastes that in our eyes would be equally or even more filthy, for the Indian will eat vermin, and head lice are looked upon as quite a bon bouche. Hence a scurf-comb is a most important present, and to comb your neighbour’s hair and eat the “bag” an honour and a luxury.[180] They will also eat the grubs of wasps and bees, in fact any larvæ—nothing comes amiss to them.

All the Indians—except the Menimehe, who, as mentioned, keep hives in their houses,—collect wild honey from the hollow trees and other places where the bees nest in the bush. Sometimes these insects make nests of a considerable size, that look like lobster pots full of black pitch hanging on the tree-trunks. The large cells are full of a thin honey that is used by the natives to mix with various drinks. The Indians are very fond of honey, and smoke the bees out to secure it. Bees are more common than wasps in these parts, and fortunately are less dangerous.

Fish abound in all the rivers, though like the plants and animals they are smaller in the upper reaches than in the lower Amazon valleys. Robuchon gave the following as found in the Issa: Silurios of all kinds, that is to say platysomas, planiceps, platyrhynchos, leopardus, and the little caudirus (Serasalmys), Pygo, Cebras, Piraga (D. costatus et carinatus); also many kinds of needle fish and shark-toothed[131] fish. There is any quantity of skate in the Issa, though its power to inflict a nasty wound does not recommend it to the naked Indian fisherman. Some of the fish are very good eating; none better than the uaracu, which is said to feed on laurel berries.[181]

It is when one turns to the vegetable world that one finds the staple food of the Amazonian native. The manioc is to the Indian the chief necessary of life. The sweet manioc,[182] although known to these Issa-Japura tribes, is never planted, because it is not appreciated by them. They prefer the poisonous species which, as its botanical name Manihot utilissima implies, can be put to a multiplicity of uses. To eliminate the poison and render it fit for food, the manioc is subjected to several processes. So far as I could observe, or learn by leading questions, these are roughly as follows:

The women bring the brown tubers of the manioc in baskets from the plantation. On their way up they stop by the river and cleanse the soil from the roots, which are like a small beet in appearance, but white when peeled. The manioc after it has been washed and soaked for a short time is next scraped by means of a sharp wooden knife in order to peel off the thin adhesive skin, similar in substance to that of a potato, but if anything thinner. Sometimes the women instead of using a wooden knife simply scrape the skin off with their teeth. The peeled roots are washed in the river again, and taken up to the house. Each root is then cut longitudinally into three or four sections, which are put in a bowl near the fire and left to soak for twenty-four hours. When, at the end of this time, the manioc is sufficiently softened, they place a piece or two of rotten manioc in the bowl with the fresh stuff. The object of this is to promote fermentation and thus to extract the poison from the fresh root.

The next process is to mash the manioc, and for this purpose it is all—both fresh and rotten—removed from the pan and grated into a large wooden trough, with the special implement that has black palm-spines inserted in the soft[132] wood for teeth. The grated pulp is removed from the trough and put into a cylindrical palm-cane wringer, the cassava-squeezer which is used by the Boro, the Andoke, the Resigero, the Okaina, and all tribes to the north. The Witoto and other tribes on the south use a long rectangular palm-fibre wringer, which is twisted to form a cylinder in the same way as a puttee is wound round the leg. In this elastic cylinder it is compressed till all the poisonous juice has been drained away, when the remainder, a coarse kind of flour, is placed in an open pan and left to get thoroughly dry. Afterwards it is rubbed between the hands to make it finer.[183]

The next operation is to sift this flour through a basket sieve. Any coarse stuff that does not rub through the sieve is thrown away. The fine residue is baked in a clay platter, and should be turned over with the hands once during the process. No water is added to the flour before it is baked.

This flour is kneaded with water, put in a pan and cooked over the fire. The result, the cassava bread, is leathery and tough, and when one speaks of “bread” unleavened bread must be understood. It is never allowed to brown, the outer crust is merely hardened, and as a result the cassava cake has always a raw uncooked taste. But I found that if one of these native cakes were cut in small pieces and fried in animal fat till crisply toasted, it was quite good eating, better if anything than ordinary bread.

The Boro leave the starch in the cassava flour, so their bread is more sustaining than Witoto bread, as Witoto women remove the starch and use it for other purposes.[184] Boro bread is also thicker, and when pulled apart is of a stringy consistency.

Spruce mentions a manioc oven,[185] but this is quite unknown to me. All the tribes I visited cooked their cassava on large earthenware plates on an open fire. Nor could they prop their cooking utensils on stones, for—as has been noted—stones there are none in these districts. The pot is put simply on the three logs that compose the fire where their ends meet. The hot embers in the centre give plenty of steady heat, and if more be required the pot must be placed on a tripod of branches and the embers fanned with a palm-leaf to a flame.

Among the Andoke manioc is peeled by the women with their teeth, and then washed. The roots are pulped with a grater, and the starch is washed out by adding water to them in a basket suspended on a tripod over a calabash. The partially prepared manioc is left till required for use and will keep in this state for a week at a time. When they wish to use it the grated pulp is strained in a cassava-squeezer, then mixed with starch and sifted through a sieve. The fine stuff is baked immediately, and the water that was drained off in the wringer is boiled up at once to make a sweet-tasting drink. The starch will keep for a month.

Among the Boro and Witoto the manioc water is boiled till it thickens, and is then used as a sauce into which the cassava is dipped before it is eaten. Another way of eating cassava is to dip it in soup. The Boro on the Japura concoct a sauce of the consistency of paste by seasoning the manioc water with peppers and fish.[186]

Though the tuber is the most valuable portion of the plant it is not the only part used for food. The leaves may be eaten as a vegetable. They are boiled till quite soft; pounded very fine with a pestle; fish, worms, frogs, ants and peppers are added as seasoning, and this brew is eaten with cassava bread and with meat. Another method of preparation is to take the leaves and cook them in the water squeezed out of the roots in the wringer. This sauce[134] is boiled in an earthenware pot suspended from a cross-beam, or placed like the earthenware pan on a triangle of sticks, over a slow fire, until the leaves become a paste. This is carried in a palm-leaf as an emergency ration by an Indian when going into the bush.

Cassava, then, is the Indian’s “staff of life.” Its complement is the hot-pot, or pepper-pot, which is a “generous” soup supercharged with meat that forms the staple, while the liver and so forth are added to enrich the brew. It is a standing dish with the aborigines. Each family has a big pot that simmers constantly over the special fires. Into this go all things, and it is replenished daily from the proceeds of the kill. Portions of animals that may not be eaten—blood, brains, intestines—can be utilised in the stew; and everything is very highly qualified with peppers, the chief stimulant in native diet.

Wallace has suggested that the excessive use of peppers is due to the lack of salt.[187] This very serious need is not without considerable influence on the Indian, and it is possible—as has been suggested—that it is at the root of more than over-indulgence in pepper. Mineral salt is not to be had,[188] except by barter, throughout the middle Issa-Japura regions; and what little the tribes can obtain is chiefly secured by burning certain plants with saline qualities.[189]

On account of its rarity salt is much sought after, and a present of salt is always highly appreciated.

The Indian feeds at sunrise after he has had his drink of “tea” and his first bath. This morning meal is an informal one of cold cassava cake, and any meat that may have been left uneaten overnight, or a dip in the hot-pot. He eats sparingly, and never takes much of a meal if a day’s march or a hunt is in prospect. Nor does he carry food[135] with him, unless he be going on a journey. Coca, which of course is but a stimulant, is sufficient sustenance in his opinion. Still, he will eat a little at any time it may be possible, and there is usually no lack of fruit for the taking in the bush.

The great meal of the day is towards sundown when the hunt is over, the quarry killed and cooked.[190] Then all the men, squatting round their private family fires in the big house, help themselves from their hot-pot and eat to the limit of its contents. An Indian will not take a bite at his food; he tears whatever he is eating into small pieces with his fingers. Among the Issa-Japura tribes, as with the Tukana, men and women do not eat together, and the children feed with the women. None of the tribes have any special observances or purifications before or after eating, so far as I am aware, nor are there any general restrictions, except so far as carrion and the intestines are concerned. But even these may at a pinch be made use of without prejudice, by resorting to the simple expedient of blowing, or rubbing with a magic stone, the two antidotes for all evils with the Indian. There are temporary food tabu for women, and certain prohibitions for children. These will be dealt with later.

The usual method of cooking is to rest the pot as described on the fire-logs themselves. Sometimes the pot is placed, like the pan for baking cassava, on lumps of clay, or on a triangle of sticks roughly made for the occasion. The sticks must be long in comparison to the height from the ground that is required, and are not tied, but merely so adjusted that each supports and locks the others. Such a tripod makes a firm seat, though never employed by the Indians for that purpose. I have never seen pots hung. The pot is covered with a single leaf, and the soup is stirred with any stick that comes to hand at the moment; there are no special ones, nor are any fashioned for use as ladles. Meat is almost invariably put in the hot-pot, but occasionally it is toasted over the fire.

When the women have cooked the food the men help themselves from the pot; they are not waited upon by their women. An Indian will help himself from the hot-pot at any time the fancy may seize him, or, for that matter, from any hot-pot, so long as the owner thereof is present. The tribal or chief’s fire carries the tribal hot-pot, which is open to all, as all contribute to it, at least all the unmarried warriors must do so. This is the hot-pot which always remains, and the fire that never dies out. The family hot-pot and fire is the concern of each individual family only.

Fruit is to be had in plenty, and throughout the year in this country of endless summer. Not being a botanist, and aware that some of the most tempting fruits held latent poison under an alluring exterior, I was most chary of eating fruit unknown to me, and never touched any until quite satisfied of its wholesomeness from its effects on the Indians; nor, mindful of the fact that the Indian will, and apparently can, eat anything, would I venture to eat many fruits the Indians partook of as a matter of course. Sweet and ripened fruit is rarely eaten by them; they prefer a bitter taste, and, as mentioned in connection with sugar-cane, have no particular use for anything sweet. The Indian will gather fruit and bring it to the house, though the usual custom is to pluck and eat it in the bush. So far as I was concerned especially, it was brought in as a present to denote good-will.

One fruit the Indians grow in the plantations resembles and tastes like grapes.[191] It is very plentiful, particularly in the old plantations, and the Indian will often return to one of these in order to obtain this fruit. Another fruit, also found growing in old plantations, is the colour of a lemon, and the size and shape of an orange. It is very good eating, extremely sweet when ripe, with huge black pips, and the part immediately under the skin is gummy, like rubber latex, and sticks to the mouth.

A fruit we knew as the mauve berry is found at the top of trees. In size it approximates to a red currant, and it[137] grows in large bunches. The colour is a light pinky mauve. It is intensely sweet, and according to popular report has an intoxicating effect upon the eater. It certainly appears to have very heady properties.

Various palms furnish palatable fruits. There is a small edible palm from which the Indians strip the bark after they have cut it down, and remove the cylinder of hardened sap which is of the same consistency as a hard woody apple. It is heavy but rich-flavoured and good eating. Then there is the cabbage palm, not to mention the pupunha.

Nuts and seeds abound. There is a large oval seed in a fleshy envelope that birds feed on freely, and another fruit with a large stone is the wild alligator pear. The stone of this is more than one-half the size of the whole fruit. It is delicious in taste, and is looked upon by both whites and natives as a great delicacy. In shape it resembles a pear, and in colour it varies from green to yellow or russet.

CHAPTER X

If the Indian eats but little during the day, he drinks to excess whenever opportunity offers. In the early morning a beverage somewhat akin to tea, but colourless, made from an infusion of bitter herbs, is taken. It has some tonic properties, and when I drank it seemed always to have a slight taste of peppermint. This herb infusion is the first meal of the day. It is drunk out of half-gourds, after the morning bath, before the members of the household disperse to their varied avocations. I am under the impression that this decoction is made from a species of grass, and not the Ilex paraguayensis from which mate, or Paraguay tea, is made. It is probably the lemon grass mentioned by Simson.[192] The Indians also scrape the seeds of the capana, mix in some cassava flour, and wrap up the mass in plantain leaves. This is left to ferment in water, till it is the colour of saffron; then it is dried in the sun. This is drunk as a bitter tea in the morning when diluted in water.

The Indian drinks enormous quantities of water, or unfermented liquor, at times, and afterwards can abstain like a camel for a considerable period. He never drinks when eating, but afterwards. At a feast or a dance when he is unable to drink more he simply pokes his fingers down his throat, with the result that room is made for renewed doses of his non-alcoholic beverage.

The principal unfermented drinks made by these tribes[139] are prepared from manioc, and from various fruits. The first is made from the grated manioc by merely squeezing out and boiling the water, and is thus a by-product of cassava in the making. This leaves a sweet drink, which is certainly insipid and is not considered to be healthy. The moisture squeezed out of the “squeezer” is boiled and boiled again into a rather thick drink. This is used more as a sauce into which cassava is dipped than as a “clean” drink. It still contains, I believe, a minute percentage of hydrocyanic acid.

Another beverage is prepared from roasted pines. The juice is squeezed out, and this liquid extract is ready to drink without further process. Plantains, bananas, and other fruits, grated and mixed with starch obtained from the manioc tubers, are boiled and flavoured with local spices to make another concoction. A thick yellow liquid prepared from the Patana palm is the national drink of all these Indians, except the Menimehe and Kuretu, who make fermented drinks from pine fruit. The Patana fruit is boiled and broken with the hand in water, so as to mix up the pulp and allow the heavy skins to fall to the bottom of the pot. These and any fleshy remainder are strained away in a sieve, and cassava flour is added to the liquid, which is drunk while warm. This drink is known as patana-yukise in lingoa-geral. There is a vegetable milk that is consumed by the Indians, which I take to be the cow-tree milk mentioned by other travellers.[193] I do not think it is very plentiful in these regions, and for my own part never saw nor tasted it. It is a creamy, sticky fluid, obtained by lacerating the bark, that can be drunk when fresh. I am certain these tribes do not use it for any cooking purposes, and do not think it is ever stored in their houses, but is only drunk in the forest from the tree.

There are intoxicating drinks among the Menimehe and the tribes north of the Japura, but among some of these northern tribes the men drink caapi,[194] which is strongly erotic.[140] I would suggest that caapi is unknown to the tribes south of the Japura, except probably to their medicine-men. It would account for the frenzy of the latter when diagnosing disease, and so forth, which quite corresponds with the descriptions given by Spruce of the effect of caapi.[195]

The plant from which caapi is prepared is grown in plantations by Indians on the Uaupes and Issanna rivers,[196] and by other Rio Negro tribes. The drink is made from the stem, mixed in a mortar by the Uaupes Indians with the roots of the painted caapi.[197] The pounded mass is rubbed through a sieve, and water is then added. Women are not even allowed to touch the vessel that contains the caapi. This intoxicating liquor is unknown to me, but I heard that the Karahone and other tribes had this strong drink. Though known on the Uaupes to all the tribes it is said to have only a confined use on the Rio Negro.

Other drinks that are to be found north of the Japura are prepared from fermented maize, and manioc.[198] Caxiri, or manioc beer, is used by the Menimehe, the Ticano and Kuretu. Tribes on the Napo drink masato, which is also made from manioc that has been partly masticated by the women and then left to ferment.[199] They make another fermented drink from bananas, but pines are principally employed as they contain more sugar for fermenting purposes.

Before a dance the women of the Issa-Japura region prepare great store of kawana, a drink made from the yellow pulp of a pear-shaped fruit,[200] not unlike a mango, with a large black seed in the centre.[201] The liquid is stored in the large vessels made by the primitive process of stripping off a sheet of[141] bark and setting it end up on the hard ground. These are usually to be found at the chief’s end of the tribal house. One of these impromptu vats will hold as much as thirty gallons.

By far the most important of the stimulants taken by these peoples are the preparations made from the leaves of the common coca shrub.[202] Coca is the mescal of the Indian,[203] and possibly a heritance from the Inca invaders of bygone centuries.[204] The use of coca is habitual, not intermittent. An Indian will take as much as two ounces a day.[205] All Indians use it, the Bara in especial being heroic coca-takers.

To prepare coca for use the sage-green leaves are carefully picked and fire-dried. They are then pounded with other ingredients in mortars made from small tree-trunks. The pestle shown in the illustration is made of mahogany. Beside the coca leaf the Indian pounds up lime that is procured by reducing to ashes certain palm leaves,[206] baked clay that is scraped from underneath the fire, and some powdered cassava flour. Whether these leaf-ashes are a form of calcium I do not know. In the Sierra powdered coca is mixed with pulverised unslaked lime, or with the ashes of the Chenopodium Quinoa. As this latter is one of the distinctive Sierra flora, I presume the Indians of the forest have found some substitute in the bush. The drug is carried in a bag, or beaten-bark pouch, that is worn suspended round the neck. The clay and palm-leaf ashes certainly neutralise the bitterness of the pure leaf, and it is possible that in these foreign ingredients the Indians have discovered an antidote, if such there be, to the worst effects of the drug.

The Indian by means of a folded leaf shoots the powder into the cheeks on one or both sides. This when moistened forms a hard ball, and with such a wad stuffed between[142] the cheek and the teeth he can go without sleep, food, or drink, for several days. Coca is not swallowed, but gradually absorbed and passed down with the saliva.[207]

As to cocainism, we know that the Indians are veritable cocaino-maniacs, or rather coca-maniacs. It is a matter of great regret to me that I was unable to make observations—may I say psycho-medical observations—on Indians under the influence of this drug. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that it was not possible to observe one not to some extent under its influence, for it must be remembered that the use of the drug is so continuous that it is difficult—one has hardly the opportunity—to differentiate. Whether coca permanently injures the higher brain centres, as has been suggested,[208] is unknown to me, as unknown as the Indians themselves before they developed the heroic use of the drug. The evidences of its effect are contradictory in the extreme, and vary in individual cases. In my own case hunger and thirst were eliminated, but I was unable to establish a tolerance for the drug, and after many vain attempts gave it up, except when food was scarce and anything was preferable to the pangs of hunger. I was certainly able to make greater efforts without food, but its effects were evanescent in the extreme, and were soon followed by acute vomiting and cramp in the stomach. The nausea may have been due to the foreign substances with which the powdered leaves are mixed and not to the coca, but on that point only a trained opinion could be of value.

Even on the question of its influence on the appetite it is difficult to give any clear ruling. My own experience was that it utterly destroyed the appetite. Possibly the Indians’[143] “tolerance” accounted for the fact that despite the use of the drug they invariably eat heartily when opportunity permits.

The dilation of the pupil caused by the use of the drug is marked in the Indian, and gives a curious expression to the eye. On account of the darkness of the iris this is not so markedly noticeable as would be the case with grey-eyed peoples.

The Tuyuka and other tribes north of the Japura use as a stimulant parica or niopo, a wonderful snuff which is a strong narcotic, and very similar in its effects to coca.[209] It is made from the dried seeds of a mimosa,[210] and, like coca, is mixed with quicklime,[211] and baked clay.[212] The seeds are roasted, and then pounded in a shallow wooden mortar, and the snuff when made is packed in snail-shells [213] and is inhaled through hollow bird-bones inserted in both nostrils. It is used for curative purposes by the Uaupes Indians.[214]

The Menimehe and Yahuna tribes take snuff, but they neither smoke nor lick tobacco. The Uaupes Indians smoke enormous cigars,[215] but none of the tribes south of the Japura smoke their tobacco; it is only licked. After the tobacco leaves are gathered they are soaked, and then pounded in a mortar by the men. Tobacco, it must not be forgotten, is tabu to the women in any form, and it may be noted here that tabu on drink and drugs is far stricter than any tabu on food. The latter are intermittent, enforced only in special cases, or at certain times or ages; but the tabu on coca, aya-huasca, caapi and tobacco is always binding [144]on all women. A little thickened cassava starch is added, which makes the mixture into a stiff dark liquid, to be used either privately or ceremonially, as already described. The tobacco-pot shown in the accompanying illustration is made of a thick and hard nut-shell, with apparently natural holes that are stopped with pitch.[216] Two artificial holes have been bored through for the string. It is about two and a half inches long, by one and five-eighths wide. The oval hole at the top is five-eighths of an inch across, and through it the point of a stick is inserted when the tobacco is to be taken.

The ingenuity with which the Indians prepare cassava flour, their staple provender, from a poisonous root, though notable, is ordinary in comparison with the intricate processes which the poor Indian’s “untutored mind”[217] has elaborated for the preparation of various poisons. Natural poisons abound in the forest. There is one tree known as the poison-tree and credited with most deadly properties.[218] On the Issa and Japura an arrow-poison is made from putrefying animal matter mixed with strychnos. Good poison is very rare, and very much in demand. The most potent preparation is made by the Karahone, who have great knowledge of poisons and are by far the cleverest toxicologists. The Menimehe understand poisons to some extent, but are not the equals of the Karahone, from whom most of the tribes obtain their poisons by barter. But poison of some sort is always manufactured by every medicine-man.

The most important poison is the curare.[219] It is made from two plants, called by the Witoto ramu and pani respectively.[220] The complicated recipe is a treasured hereditary possession.[221] The wood of the Strychnos toxifera is the[145] most necessary ingredient in the manufacture of curare. It is pounded in a mortar, and the sap, mixed with water, is strained and boiled with peppers, ants, and a variety of more or less noxious material.[222] When it is sufficiently inspissated it is put into the small pots, about an inch and a half in diameter, in which these Indians carry it round their necks, in readiness to smear on the palm-spine points of their darts, arrows, and javelins.[223]

CHAPTER XI

Though so recognised an authority as Bates is responsible for the statement that the fecundity of the Amazonian Indians is of a low degree,[224] because as many as four children in one family are rarely found, it is open to doubt whether he and his successors have not in this instance confounded effect and cause. It is certainly true that the normal number for a family is but two or three, yet that this is not a question of fertility the high percentage of pregnant women would seem to disprove.[225] The numbers are remarkable in view of the fact that husbands abstain from any intercourse with their wives, not only during pregnancy but also throughout the period of lactation—far more prolonged with them than with Europeans. The result is that two and a half years between each child is the minimum difference of age, and in the majority of cases it is even greater.

The main reason why there are these limited families, is, in my opinion, not a diminishing birth-rate, but an enormously high percentage of infant mortality. The test of the survival of the fittest is applied to the young Indian at the very moment of his birth, for the infant is immediately submerged in the nearest stream, a custom that easily leads to infanticide in the case of an unwanted child, or one with any apparent deformity.

Another accepted opinion with which I am not in agreement is that these girls become mothers at a very early age, and that when only fourteen years old themselves may have already had two children, as is said of tribes on the Tikie. My experience has been that these peoples do not arrive at the age of physical maturity even so early as white races, probably owing to lack of nourishing food and perhaps in some degree to the retarding and depressing effect of the forest environment.[226]

These Indians share the belief of many peoples of the lower cultures that the food eaten by the parents—to some degree of both parents—will have a definite influence upon the birth, appearance, or character of the child.[227] Before the birth of an infant the mother has to submit to certain definite food restrictions, which vary with different tribes in some slight degree, but are all rooted in the same idea. Among some tribes all animal food is forbidden to any woman throughout the entire period of pregnancy, and this precludes her from share in the tribal or family hot-pot. Among the tribes of the Tikie and elsewhere tapir flesh is prohibited, not so much because it is considered unhealthy, which on account of its richness it certainly would be,[228] but because if a mother partook of any it would be looked upon as tantamount to allotting the visible characteristics of the animal to the unborn child. From a like cause these Indians imagine that the child would have the teeth of a rodent did the mother eat capybara during the months of her pregnancy; it would be spotted like a paca if she ate that beast; or, if she ate bush-deer flesh, which is tabu to all women after marriage among the Kuretu-language group,[148] the venison would make the infant deformed. Peccary is tabu among many tribes, and with the Witoto during the last month of pregnancy the mother’s food is limited to one kind of small fish, with cassava and fruits.

The belief that ill will befall the unborn infant if the mother do not regularly adhere to dietary laws is strictly held by both men and women. To give birth to a deformed or disfigured child is the most disgraceful calamity that can happen to any woman, and therefore all possible precautions must be taken, and any animals reputed to possess undesirable characteristics are naturally forbidden, lest the unborn child should in any way resemble the appearance or take the characteristics of the animal concerned. The prohibitions are, therefore, definitely tabus, inasmuch as they are believed to entail the penalty of deformed or malignant progeny upon the transgressor, a belief very binding on people who hold that to some extent the consumer absorbs the characteristics of aught that is eaten.

Nor do all these tabus concern the mother only, for the father also among some of the tribes must abstain from meat a short time before, as well as after, the child’s birth.[229] This recognition of a definite connection between the father and the child, a more intimate connection than civilised peoples recognise, is to be noted, and should be borne in mind when considering the curious custom of the couvade, which must be recorded anon.

Whatever the weather may be no accouchement ever takes place within the house.[230] When birth is imminent the expectant mother will go out into the forest with some trusted older woman, or alone, for the Indian wife is quite willing to take full responsibility without any further aid. Among some of the tribes north of the Japura the mother is accompanied to the forest, and assisted while there by[149] other matrons, who have their faces painted red. But the Boro and the Witoto women go unattended or with but one female attendant. Neither the husband nor any other man is permitted to be present whatever the circumstances.

The shelter of the forest gained, the woman makes a small clearing, and spreads a bed of leaves on which she sits down.[231] Her trouble is not of long duration. When the child is born she ties the umbilical cord with fibre-string, and then bites it through,[232] or cuts it with a wooden knife. This done she at once proceeds to the nearest water and bathes, after which she returns to the house. She wears no covering or bandage.

The infant is taken with her to the river and is washed and ducked. If it survive this drastic treatment its body is covered with what the Witoto call hittagei, that is, rubber latex, over which a brown or red clay is smeared. Hardenburg relates that he was told this was done by the Witoto “in order to keep it warm.”[233] I have often seen the process carried out, but the warmth theory never occurred to me, and none of the Indians suggested it as a possible reason or gave any explanation of the custom.

As I have said, with all these tribes infant mortality is very great. The custom of submerging the new-born child undoubtedly causes an immense increase in the number of deaths. This led me to inquire why they persisted in such a fatal course, but one and all said that if the child was not strong enough to survive it had better die. This is the Indian attitude, and explains much of the seemingly ignorant or harsh treatment to which young children are subjected.

Indians do not care to have large families. To support a number of children would often be a matter of grave difficulty.[234] But fœticide is not practised, and abortion is[150] probably unknown except to the medicine-men, who would only procure it for their own purposes or protection. Should destruction for any reason be desired, the birth would be allowed to take place, and the child afterwards killed “accidentally” during the subsequent lustration. Bastard children are undoubtedly destroyed, and the second of twins is left in the bush by the mother before immersion; or, among some of the tribes of the Kuretu, if the babies are of both sexes it is the girl that is killed, whichever may have been born first. Otherwise they kill the second, because it is obvious that the second is the transgressor, it had no right to come, and it is a disgrace to bear twins, as these people hold the opinion that to be delivered of more than one child at a birth is to lower themselves to the level of the beasts. The act of killing is performed by the mother secretly, at the parturition if possible, and the body would be concealed by her in the bush.[235]

The act is not due merely to cruel or callous disregard of infant life. If to be sickly and deformed is an undesirable state, the Indian sees no reason why any unfortunate being should be condemned to live in such a condition; and, moreover, the sufferer must handicap others as well as itself in the strenuous race of life. Therefore deformed children are never seen. A child that is discovered to be in any degree abnormal or sickly at birth is allowed to die on immersion, by the very simple method of holding it under water till life is extinct. If, however, the deformity is not discovered till after the child has been brought to the tribal house, the medicine-man is called in to deal with the case. If the mischief be beyond his power to remedy, he declares that it was caused by some evil spirit[151] and may work ill to the tribe,[236] so as a precautionary measure the wretched little creature is taken out and left exposed in the forest, or some tribes go as far as to bury it alive.[237] This is done with no intention to cause unnecessary suffering, but simply that as it had to die it might as well die by suffocation as by any other means.

If there were an epidemic of deformed or sickly cases among the newly born it would most probably lead to a tribal blood-feud, as it would be most assuredly put down to the evil intention and craft of some enemy. Who the latter might be it is the province of the medicine-man to determine.

Except in the above instances intentional infanticide is not common. Unintentionally it would seem to be very frequent. It might further be resorted to in time of famine, if lactation should be difficult or if the mother were to die.[238] I know of one case where a child on the death of the mother was thrown to the dogs—wild dogs are the voracious beasts of the forest. On another occasion the infant was buried with its dead mother, though this would not have been done had any one been willing to adopt it. Both these cases occurred among the Witoto.

Koch-Grünberg found that among the Tuyuka the houses have a small chamber at the end where a man and his wife stay after the birth of a child. There is no such thing among these tribes.

The day after her delivery the mother presents the infant to its father, and then, as though nothing had happened, goes back to her work in the plantation, and spends the day toiling in the fields as usual. She will only return to feed the child at night. But the father remains in the house with the baby, for he in his turn must submit to definite tabus, the restrictions and prohibitions of that curious custom known as the couvade, “a live growth of savage[152] psychology,” as E. B. Tylor calls it.[239] The baby lies in a hammock and the father lounges in his, and there, with some tribes, he will remain for from three to six weeks.[240] The Witoto are more casual in this observance than the Boro. Colour seems to be given to the theory that couvade marks a stage of emergence from matrilineal to patrilineal organisation, by the fact that among those tribes where relationship is counted on the father’s side couvade is apparently practised far less strictly, and only in a limited form, as compared with the descriptions of couvade given by other writers among tribes such as those Sir Everard im Thurn studied in British Guiana, where definitely matrilocal customs are still extant.[241] But, however limited the restrictions, in all cases the father abstains from hunting until the child’s navel is healed. He must not touch his hunting weapons even,[242] nor may he eat the flesh of any animal that has been hunted, which, as regards animal food, is practically the same tabu as exists for the mother before the child’s birth. Fish and cassava form his diet, but coca is not tabu.

Yet, despite his enforced deprivations, the Indian father enjoys himself. He has, in fact, a very easy time of it, which may go to confirm him in his quite genuine belief that his actions are of substantial benefit to the child.[243] Friends will assemble in numbers to express their joy at the[153] happy event; they will even come from great distances for this purpose. There is much talk, and all exchange coca and lick tobacco. In the midst of the congratulations the medicine-man will arrive to deliver his opinion, given after due consideration, of the points of the new-born. Congratulations will be interspersed with numerous ventral grunts, as signs of assent and approval, with the decisions enunciated, on the part of the proud parent or his visitors. The orations will be interrupted by the ceremonial licking of tobacco between the medicine-man, the father, and his visitors.

After eight days the child will be named by the medicine-man and the assembled family. The name given among all these tribes is generally that of the father’s father, if the child be a boy. With the exception of further ceremonial tobacco-taking there is no ritual.

Boys are called as a rule by the names of animals or birds;[244] girls are given the names of plants and flowers. For instance, among the Boro a common masculine name is Pimwe, which is the name of a white water-bird; or Eifoike among the Witoto, eifoike being their name for the turkey-buzzard. My own name among the Witoto was Itoma, which means the sun, that sound being the nearest to Thomas that they knew. The Boro called me Pimwe, the white ibis, on account of my white bath-gown.

No Indian ever uses his name, nor is he called by it when spoken to by his companions.[245] One will speak to another as tanyabe,[246] that is to say, “brother,” or Iero,[246] Moma,[247] that is, “father”; in the case of a woman it would be Gwaro,[246] Rinyo,[247] which is “mother,” or Tanyali,[246] “sister.” They will never address each other in more direct fashion, and if one of the speakers is not a member of the household, and therefore no relationship exists between them, they will make use of some expression equivalent to our “comrade,”[154] “man,” “girl,” or other generality. The Boro, when they wish to call the attention of a man, cry Mupe! of a woman, Muije! As I obviously stood in no relationship to any of my companions, the usual congenital term of address could not be used in my case, and if I chose to run the risk of giving my enemies power over me through knowledge of my name that was my own affair.

This objection to divulging the name is too widespread to need comment.[248] The Indian of the Upper Amazons is on this point not so far removed from our own old-fashioned country-folk.[249] But at the same time, though they would not divulge their own names they were invariably most curious to get hold of mine, and made great efforts to pronounce it. Whiffena was the usual outcome of such attempts. I also found that the Indians had no objection to making use of any name I might give to them, presumably because, not being their true name, no magical dangers were possibly incurred through its use, such as would be probable did I call one of them by his or her own proper name.[250]

Among some tribes the name of a deceased person will be given to some surviving relative.[251] This is looked upon as an honour to be bestowed on the greatest friend of the deceased,[252] and thereafter this new name is considered his private name, and the one originally his thenceforth ceases to concern him in any way.

With the naming of a child the formalities connected with its birth are at an end, and once the navel is healed the father’s share in the ceremonials is completed. With his return to ordinary life the infant reverts to the charge of the mother. Day and night the child remains with her. It is carried out into the fields when she sets forth on her day’s[155] toil among the manioc and pines, and is brought back to the fireside at night when she returns to cook the evening meal. The Witoto women, in common with other tribes in the vicinity, carry their infants in a sling of beaten bark-cloth that is passed round the forehead and hung as a bag behind. At a less tender age they will seat them on the hip, and small girls may often be seen with a smaller brother or sister astraddle round their waists.

The Indian mother will suckle her young for three years, or even longer, and at least during the earlier nursing will have no connection with her husband. This long period of lactation is certainly due in a measure to the scarcity of food. There is no artificial supply or substitute obtainable in place of the natural provision. If the mother cannot feed it the child must starve. The child is fed wherever the mother’s duties may take her. On many occasions I have seen a child that is running about and playing, suddenly toddle up to the squatting mother intent on her cassava making, and still standing suck for a few moments and then toddle away. Not less remarkable is it to see the women milk themselves into a palm-leaf, a very usual custom after the children’s teeth develop. The leaf is rested on the palm of the hand, which gives it the necessary cuplike form, and from this the child is fed.

The prohibitions with regard to certain foods that affected the parents before and immediately subsequent to childbirth, continue in force afterwards so far as the children are concerned. Such tabus are more strictly enforced on the girls than on the boys; and their diet is neither plentiful nor seemingly of the most nourishing description. Cassava cakes and fruits are permitted them, and some of the smaller bony kinds of fish among fish-eating tribes, but none of the better kinds of fish, and no game, until they attain maturity.

There is no childhood as others know it for the little Indian. By this I mean no innocent childhood. These forest children from birth see all the life of their elders, hear all things openly discussed, and the very games and jests of the babies are tainted with what we should consider obscenity.

Children are primarily under the authority and protection of the father, but any authority on the parent’s part is very slight, and ceases to exist altogether where the boys are concerned once the age of puberty is reached. Of course even a married son shows respect to a father if they are living in the same house. Girls, as they are in the care of their mothers or some responsible elderly matron of the tribe until their marriage, must be more under authority; and virginity, as with us, is strictly protected so far as is possible.[253] But in the main it may be said that parental control is only a semblance, and filial piety, so characteristic of the Inca and the Chinese, is practically unknown: indeed, though the smaller children seem very fond of their parents, after a few years it appears to be almost fashionable to disregard parental authority entirely.

A child is not considered responsible for any damage it may contrive to do. If it commit any mischief that entails loss to others compensation is claimed from the parents, but no chastisement would in consequence be meted out to the little offender. Children are never beaten, whatever their offences, and rarely punished. They are looked upon as the potential warriors and mothers of warriors, and treated very differently to the old and worn, who may be left to forage for themselves. The parents, in fact, show great affection for their children, despite the stoical way in which infant lives are sacrificed. Often have I seen the father, who would on no account carry food or any part of his woman’s burden, however heavy, give his small son a lift over the bad ground. Although he will never play games with his children as western folk do, the Indian father will do his best to please the youngsters and make them happy. He will make little javelins, a small blow-pipe, a toy sword for the boys. They have their miniature weapons from the tenderest years, and imitate their fathers in all that they do, just like the girls, who go with their mothers to the plantations, and take a share in women’s work as their form of play, and shoulder a share of women’s burdens when hardly more than babies themselves.[157] Their games, in short, are all mimetic. They have no games with string or balls.

It follows naturally enough that there is little or no elaborate ritual of initiation among most of these tribes, so far as I was able to ascertain, for no part of a man’s life is kept secret from a child. The elders simply take the young of each sex apart and teach them. Nor is there much ceremony on the attainment of the young warrior to tribal rank. He has been instructed by the elder men as to the ways of hunting; he is allowed to join a tobacco palaver; he is presented by the chief with a pouch of coca; he is permitted to lick tobacco, and he affirms as he does so that he will bear himself bravely on all occasions. There is no further formality, and thus he enters the ranks of the fighting men. Among the Bara after a Jurupari dance all the youths of pubertal age are whipped, which is considered to be initiation. The whipping instrument, made from the hide of the tapir, is sacred. Women are excluded from this ceremony, and they believe when the boys shout that it is the expulsion of demons. The performance is regarded as strictly private, and if a man or boy tells of his experience he is outcast.

For the girls there are some secret lodges in the bush. But how far this is an Indian custom, how far a recent development for purposes of defence, I was not able to ascertain. The matter is not one on which the Indian is ever communicative. Certainly among all the tribes in the vicinity of the much-feared and ever-raiding Andoke, the girls who are bordering on puberty are segregated in the depths of the forest under the protection of old and wise women of the tribe. This may not be general, and I do not think it is a universal custom. It is done by these tribes principally, I take it, for the protection of the flower of their womanhood, to prevent the mothers of warriors-to-be from falling into the hands of the restless thieving Andoke. At the same time the girls are under instruction of their keepers, they are taught in these lodges presumably the duties that will shortly fall to their lot. They learn to dance, to sing, and to paint themselves for festivals. It is[158] no unusual sight to see a party of small girls painting each other, if by chance one haps across a secret lodge. This is, I take it, in the way of practice, the Indian girl’s version of her civilised sisters’ “dressing-up” games.

The girls’ isolation is not absolute. There is always communication between the hidden lodge and the tribal house, but such communication is made with due care, no path is ever cut or worn to the hiding-place, and if one develops by usage it is speedily blocked the moment it is noticeable. When no inimical raiders are about, and all is considered safe, the girls repair to the tribal house, but no girl is allowed to return to the tribe for good until such time as a marriage has been arranged for her.

One writer on the Jivaro tribes mentions festivities held when a four-year old child is first initiated into the art of smoking.[254] This could never occur among any of the tribes on the Japura or the Issa, where it has been seen tobacco is only licked. Boring the ears, nose, and lips of the adolescent is done when they go to the lodges at the age of puberty. It is very carefully carried out, and is probably done with their ordinary boring instrument, the tooth of a capybara. Among the Menimehe the tribal marks are tattooed on face and breast at this time.

I have not met with the custom mentioned by Sir Clement Markham as existing among the Mariama, of a man cutting lines near the mouth of his twelve-year-old son, nor has the scourging of the Omagua, and their trial of the girls by hanging them in a net to smoke them, come under my observation, any more than the cruel scourging of girl children mentioned by Clough,[255] though boys on the Apaporis are thrashed, and I have heard of the custom north of the Japura. The Jurupari dance as described by so many authorities, and the girls’ whippings, as noted by Wallace,[256] have been told me second-hand by these tribes. I have never seen either, and south of the Japura I believe such customs to be unknown.

CHAPTER XII

At the beginning of my stay among the tribes, I thought, as many have asserted, that polygamy was common among the Indians. The reason for this belief is simply the fact that it is extremely hard to distinguish at first between wives, concubines, and attached women—women under the protection of a man, but not necessarily in intimate relation. Inquiries do not immediately assist any conclusion. If, for example, you question one of the attached women she would merely reply, “I am the chief’s woman,” which answer would have been equally correct in either case. But on better knowledge of their languages and customs the conviction was forced on me that monogamy and not polygamy is the rule, with the exception of the chiefs north of the Japura, who have, so far as I could make out, more than one wife. Koch-Grünberg affirms, and other tribes told me, that among the tribes on the Tikie a chief may have four wives. This is not the case south of that river, where chiefs, like ordinary members of the tribe, have only one.

But in addition to his wife or wives, all female prisoners and any unattached women belong by right to the chief. He is their father, mother, and husband, in so far that they receive his protection, though the wife would not permit any intimacy, unless it were when she was bearing or nursing a child. These women are not to be regarded, however, as what the Witoto call rinyo kachirete, that is tribal prostitutes, although other members of the tribe beside the chief are[160] allowed to have access to them when his consent has been gained. The prisoners certainly would be used with his permission as women of convenience. So far as I could gather the chief respects the chastity of his wards, and it is therefore unlikely that he would claim any droit de seigneur where the other women of the tribe are concerned.[257] Letourneau is responsible for the statement that “in America from the land of the Esquimaux to Patagonia, the loan of a wife is not only lawful but praiseworthy.”[258] I have never heard any suggestion of jus utendi et abutendi, and consider it unlikely in view of the Indian’s character. He is not only a jealous husband but the rights of the wife are tacitly recognised, and I should conclude that such a custom would be entirely alien to Indian nature. The same argument holds good in the case of a daughter.

To distinguish between wards and wives is so great a difficulty that I even hesitated to accept without further confirmation the account given by Wallace of polygamous practices among the Isanna and Uaenambeu tribes,[259] careful as he was over all details of things about which he had personal knowledge. But I also was told by all tribes north of the Japura that it is permissible to have more than one wife, though the first must retain the position of “mistress of the house.”[260] It possibly resolves itself into the question of whether the women greatly out-number the men at a particular period or not.

Marriage with these Indians is not a matter of any great or prolonged ceremony or even of festival. A youth marries as a matter of course when he reaches man’s estate. Till he has taken to himself a wife he must remain in some degree dependent either on his parents or the chief; for he cannot plant his own manioc or tobacco, nor can he cook his own food. He has no one whose duty it is to see that[161] there are no thorns or jiggers in his feet, to paint him for a dance, to prepare him store of drinks. Complete independence comes only when with his own woman he can, if he so pleases, go his own way, and live in solitude out in the forest or have his own fire in the shelter of the big maloka, just as it suits his whim. To secure this independence, to get his woman, he is required in the first place to show that he is a capable hunter and warrior, that is to say he must demonstrate the fact that he can feed and protect a wife and children.[261] But there is no scheme in any way approximating to the customs of those African peoples who rule that a man must have killed his man before he can be considered a proved warrior, and qualified for matrimony. It is sufficient if he be a hunter by repute in the generality of cases, though among the Uacarra and some other tribes, as noted by Wallace, an exhibition of skill is demanded.[262] A girl of these tribes will not marry a man who did not prove a good shot in an archery trial held for the purpose of testing his prowess, the reason alleged being that he cannot be sufficiently adept to maintain a family. This is the underlying idea in all the ceremony attached to the transaction of marriage among these Indians, of a piece with all their doings and sentiments. There is no use for the unfit. It is the philosophy of the forest in practical form.

Further, in view of his prospective position as husband and father, there are certain preparations, elementary enough, to be made by the bridegroom. From the surrounding forest a plot of land must be reclaimed, the trees felled and uprooted, the soil broken and roughly tilled, for the plantation. This is an absolute necessity, the agricultural is far more vital than any housing problem, for that is a point easy enough to settle, as the intending bridegroom need not build himself a house at all, if he can obtain a corner in the great house of assembly. There is nothing to prevent him from building one on his own account if he is not content with the quarters there allotted to him, though[162] the usual arrangement is for a man to bring his wife to live with his family rather than to start a separate establishment.

Betrothals are often made in childhood by arrangement between the parents, and occasionally a small boy is married to a small girl. This is not common, but I have seen it done in the case of a chief more than once. On one occasion that I remember it was among the Andoke, another time it was in a Boro house. The ceremony is the same as for adults, but naturally only in form. Among some tribes of the Andoke such child marriage is allowed if the boy has made a plantation and successfully hunted an animal, and either his or, more rarely, the girl’s family will admit them to joint life, and one Witoto man told me that he had been married as quite a youngster. But the general disparity of age is from five to fifteen years, for a man will choose an undeveloped girl, perhaps only nine or ten years old, and hand her over to the women of his own family.[263] The Andoke usually marry girls much younger than themselves, and I have seen a man of twenty with a tiny girl-wife hurrying after him. Undoubtedly the idea is the same as that underlying infant marriage in India, the man seeks to gain affection by association. The girl lives with him and his people, they become to all intents and purposes her people; she is trained by custom to their habits of life, must naturally imbibe their ideas, and will bring no foreign notions of manners or morals to disturb the equanimity of the common household when, in due time, she attains pubescence, and is made a wife de facto as well as de jure.[264]

In the ordinary run of events the woman invariably comes to live with the man’s family, he never goes to hers. Only in rare cases have I heard anything approaching the matrilocal customs noted among the Indians of British Guiana.[265] These cases would be exclusively when a chief,[163] who has no son, marries his daughter to some man with a view to obtaining an heir through her. The man might be selected from friendly neighbours, or, with the approval of the tribe, an adopted son of the chief might be chosen. If the former, the bridegroom would have to leave his own people and live with his father-in-law. How exceptional this is may be judged from the fact that it is the sole circumstance of which I am aware where disregard is permitted to the prevailing rules of patrilocal and exogamous customs. This is, however, hearsay only. I never met with a case in point, though the Indians told me of it.

Individual preliminaries settled, it remains for sanction to be obtained from the chief of the girl’s household—to whom, it must be remembered, all unattached women belong—with which end in view the would-be bridegroom presents him with a pot of tobacco and one of coca.[266] He need ask no one’s consent of his own account, as in marriage the man has an absolutely free hand, unless he goes against tribal law by marrying a girl of any hostile tribe who might prove to be a danger to the community. As proof that he is a man of substance and owns a house, or has a recognised right to quarters in one, he will bring a piece of palm shingle that has been left over after the thatching, to the father of the selected damsel. He also brings a small tree cut through, to show that he has cleared and made a plantation. In both cases the form would appear to be accepted without the actuality. The father then produces some coca and tobacco. North of the Japura they will chew pataca,[267] and they will lick tobacco ceremonially together. There is no further ceremony, and a fortnight later the marriage is consummated, the girl remaining with her own people during the interval.[268]

Robuchon and Hardenburg, in dealing with this formality of presenting wood, have taken the action to be that the[164] suitor wishes to provide his future parents-in-law with a supply of firewood. Though in other details of marriage ceremonial they are exactly correct, both these authorities seem to have mixed the idea of firewood—a matter it is never the son-in-law’s business to prepare—with this symbolic offering, which is intended to signify that his patch of ground for cultivation is prepared and only waiting for the woman to plant and cultivate it.

If the information given me about tribes north of the Japura is correct, a more primitive marriage custom still maintains among their neighbours. The suitor, accompanied by his father and other relatives, visits the father of the chosen lady. Notice of the arrival having duly been sent, the object of such a formal visit is understood, though not definitely stated beforehand. If the suggestion meets with favour the visitors are welcomed with a feast. Two or three days later, in the middle of the festivities, the bridegroom’s party suddenly kidnap the bride, without any show of opposition on the part of her friends and family. She is carried off to the visitors’ canoes, and the pair thenceforward may consider themselves to be man and wife without further ceremony.[269] Though I never met with this custom in the districts near the middle Issa and Japura rivers, all the tribes told me of it, and among the Kuretu, so I was informed, the ceremony is even more suggestive of marriage by capture, as it is a point of honour for the bride to scream and protest while the groom carries her off with mock assistance from his friends.[270]

In every marriage the contracting parties are allowed complete freedom of choice. This is absolute on the part of the man, and, with the rare exception of young girls adopted into a family with a view to marriage, equally so on the part of the woman. The unmarried women are never objects of barter. The man neither pays for his wife, nor does he receive dowry with her. With marriage he assumes[165] entire responsibility for wife and family. Girls rarely refuse an offer made to them. They occupy an inferior position in the family compared with that of the sons. By education and custom they are subservient to the wishes of the elders. As they grow older and have to take their share of the communal work they lose what independence they had as irresponsible children. By marriage alone can the native girl obtain a corner of her own in the maloka, a desirable sleeping-place beside the fire. A man is not forced upon her against her will. One bachelor is to all intents and purposes as eligible as any other. Personal appearance, where all who attain puberty are of necessity healthy and well formed, counts for little. The battle of Eugenics is fought at birth not at marriage. Whereas a boy becomes independent almost from the date of his first breech clout, the girl has her freedom curtailed with each succeeding year. Food tabus have schooled her appetite. She has suffered the restraints of the secret lodge. Marriage is her destiny, she neither knows nor desires an alternative. Such an upbringing does not make for capriciousness where choice of a husband is concerned. She can always run away if her husband prove displeasing, but in the majority of cases, unless subjected to very decided ill-usage, it never enters into the head of any wife so to behave. Peoples who will submit to the tyranny of a few blackguardly oppressors, and make hardly an effort in self-defence, do not rebel against the obvious in everyday life. Pia, “it is so,” makes as much for demoralising inertia as Kismet. In short, there is no coercion in an Indian girl’s wedding, and equally no opportunity for original selection.

This question of personal acquiescence rules throughout their matrimonial relations, for with these Indians the marriage contract is only binding so long as husband and wife desire to be bound. Divorce is simple. For good cause shown the husband can rid himself of his wife, and be free to try for better fortune with another. He has only to bring the matter up in tobacco palaver, and if he can make good his cause he need not trouble further: he is free.[271][166] Infidelity, bad temper, disease, laziness, disobedience, or childlessness, is deemed a sufficiently weighty objection in a wife to warrant such action. Tribal opinion is in every case the chief criterion in the business.

On the part of the wife the matter is simpler yet. She will run away. A woman is never blamed for deserting her husband, on the presumption that such unnatural procedure could alone be due to the fact that she had been not only ill-treated but grossly ill-treated by him. For an independent woman is unknown among the Indians: if she is not under the protection of some man she is left in the lurch, and if she does not speedily find a protector must very surely die. Moreover it is obvious that when a woman runs away she must leave her children, and only gross cruelty will drive her to that.

If, on the other hand, a man divorce his wife, that is to say if he drives her away from him and so forces her out of the household, he lays himself open to severe tribal censure should the consensus of opinion be that no good cause has been shown. If upon inquiry he fails to establish a satisfactory excuse, he promptly is held up to ridicule by his fellows; he is the butt of all the women; and he will certainly find it a most difficult thing to remarry, for no woman will ever consent to be his wife. In fact, tribal censure results in the practical banishment of the offender, for his life in the tribal family will be made unendurable till such time as his offence be forgotten. The end of this persecution, and his return to tribal rights and privileges, depends entirely on his ability to prove and persuade his fellows that after all he was not the one to be blamed.

When a woman quarrels with her man, or wishes to revenge any wrong she may have suffered at his hands, real or imaginary, she will dart at the loin-cloth of the offender in the presence of the tribe and attempt to tear it away so as to expose him to his fellows. No insult could be greater, for this is the worst disgrace that can happen to a man. Should this occur, the victim must run into the forest and hide himself; nor can he return until he has beaten out a new bark loin-cloth to replace the one that was[167] torn, and so, once more decently attired, he may come back and apologise to the tribe. The pair will then go off together into the bush, and, according to circumstances, the wrong-doer undergoes, or perhaps they mutually undergo, a very painful penance. The wronged one takes one or more of the big black stinging ants, and places them on the most sensitive and private parts of the other’s body. The sting of the virulent insects not only gives intense pain, but results in fever within twenty-four hours, and there is much swelling of the parts affected.[272] This is the recognised mode of punishment after any conjugal infidelity, or any ordinary separation; and, repentance thus very practically expressed by submission to torture, forgiveness follows and good relations are again restored.

When a man dies the top ligatures of his widow are cut as a sign of mourning, and are only replaced if she marries again. There is no prohibition against remarriage, though this is not permitted till some months after the husband’s death. As a rule, on a man’s death his widow continues to live with his people, either under the protection of the chief, or under that of her dead husband’s brother. If her own people are not hostile to the tribe into which she married she may return to them, but the probability is that the tribes will have drifted apart, even if they have not become enemies. Very frequently widows become the tribal prostitutes, a custom that is not recognised, but is tolerated, and is never practised openly or immodestly.[273]

CHAPTER XIII

Indians, like most coloured races, are abject cowards in pain or disease. They will bear torture stoically enough when deliberately inflicted, but should they suffer from any, to them, mysterious reason, in their ignorance of natural causes they at once ascribe their affliction to witchcraft. To this possibly may be due the hapless manner in which they will lay them down to die, and actually succeed in doing so by auto-suggestion.

To the Indian in common with other peoples of the lower cultures, moreover, there is no such thing as death from natural causes. It is the result either of poison administered in secret by an enemy, or magical evil wrought by him or at his instigation, and the crashing of the thunder is the magic noise that accompanies the fatal result. If a possible enemy is known or suspected, or if, after divination, the medicine-man can identify the culprit, it becomes the duty of the relatives to avenge the deceased, who has, according to Indian logic, been murdered.[274]

Without doubt a very large number of deaths are due to poison. Removal by poison is practised to a great extent by the Karahone, who have, as has been said, much scientific knowledge of poisons and their effects. Further, it is the custom of the tribal medicine-man when his patients are in what he considers to be a hopeless condition, to administer a dose of poison quietly to the moribund sufferers after he[169] has declared that all his skill is in vain, and announced that recovery is impossible. For the medicine-man it then becomes more important to secure the fulfilment of his verdict than to risk the chance of recovery falsifying his prognostications. The probability is that the patient would die, if for no other reason than that the medicine-man foretold his death, but that gentleman will take no risks.[275]

There are other and more recognised cases in which it is the medicine-man’s province to administer a fatal draught. A mad person, for example, is first exorcised by the medicine-man to expel his madness. If this fails to secure the eviction of the evil spirits that cause the madness, the man is put to death to ensure the destruction of the bad influence which, since it passes the doctor’s power to remedy, has presumably been sent by some hostile colleague with greater magical gifts. Occasionally also, when any serious accident has befallen an Indian, a medicine-man goes through the ceremony of placing him in a secluded part of the bush, and administering the usual narcotic. The patient is then left for the night. The next day his relatives return, and if he is not dead he recounts to them his dreams, and from these they deduct who is the enemy that has caused his sickness. Reprisals naturally follow.

Should any known infectious disease break out in a tribe, those attacked by it are immediately left, even by their closest relatives, the house is abandoned, and possibly even burnt. Such derelict houses are no uncommon sight in the forest, grimly desolate mementos of possible tragedies.

Perhaps the cruel treatment of the sick arises from the fact that all disease is regarded as due to an enemy who essays by such means to procure the destruction of the tribe. Fear is undoubtedly the root-cause. But it must also be remembered that where life is not easy for the hale and hearty, for the helpless it is impossible except in so far as they can prey upon their active neighbours. The question[170] of self-preservation comes in to complicate the problem of the unfit. At every point it is clearly to be seen that the survival of the most fit is the very real and the very stern rule of life in the Amazonian forests. From birth to death it rules the Indians’ life and philosophy. To help to preserve the unfit would often be to prejudice the chances of the fit.[276] There are no arm-chair sentimentalists to oppose this very practical consideration. The Indian judges it by his standard of common sense: why live a life that has ceased to be worth living when there is no bugbear of a hell to make one cling to the most miserable of existences rather than risk greater misery? Moreover, in Indian opinion, such clinging to life is a very arrant selfishness.

Certainly cases of chronic illness meet with no sympathy from the Indians. A man who cannot hunt or fight is regarded as useless, he is merely a burden on the community. Should he show no signs of eventual recovery, his friends unhesitatingly leave him to die, or, if a medicine-man has not been commissioned to put him out of the way, he is driven into the bush, where the same end is speedily attained. This is done not only to the invalids, but also to the aged members of a tribe, unless they possess great wisdom and experience, and so are of great tribal worth. Otherwise they, too, have ceased to be units of any practical value in tribal life, and merely hamper the more active. Actual parricide there is none; old people are not killed, but they are left to die. There is no sentimental desire for their company, no affection to lighten the unhappiness of their lot. If they are unable to tend themselves, not an Indian will go out of his way to render any help or service. Cassava may be thrown to them occasionally, or it may be forgotten, and without doubt in times of scarcity no provision whatever is made for the feeble and the failing who can make none for themselves. Slaves, of course, are looked upon as of no account, and if sick or crippled they are abandoned without a thought. If a woman with a young child should die, and no one be found willing to adopt the infant, the father argues that it must die[171] anyhow, and it is either quietly killed and buried with the dead mother, or exposed in the bush.[277]

The reason that underlies such neglect of the sick and infirm has, on the other hand, resulted in the prevention of intra-tribal homicide. If the survival of the unfit is not to be desired, the existence of the fit is to be encouraged by all possible means. On the whole, although sick people are neglected, I do not think that they are often destroyed. Frequently a sick Indian has appealed to me, “Oh! let me die,” but none has ever said, “Kill me!” Intra-tribal homicide is certainly prohibited by custom, otherwise homicide is only limited by fear of reprisal, a more effective combination than any police force or criminal code. Even as punishment for an admitted offence, homicide within the tribe is not tolerated, for if a man die it means the loss of a warrior, an injury to tribal strength, a matter not to be lightly risked where the battle is only to the strong. There is, however, one exception to this, and that is in the case of theft. Living as these peoples do an absolutely public life, theft becomes of necessity a capital crime. The loser, if he can catch the thief, will kill him by knocking him down by a blow on the legs with the iron-wood sword, and then hacking off his head. This retribution is considered perfectly justifiable by the tribe, and is indeed sanctioned by custom.

After a murder has been committed it is the sacred duty of some brother or near relative of the dead to kill the murderer, or, if not, at least a relative of his, in accordance with the world-old idea of an eye for an eye. A man who refused to revenge a murdered relative would be taunted by all the women, and this would soon render his own life in the tribe an intolerable one. But I have never come across the custom which is prevalent in Africa among some primitive peoples, that is, to search for the same relative to the murdered as the murdered man was to the avenger: for example, “You have killed my nephew, I will kill your nephew.”

When an intentional murder has been committed the[172] murderer flies to the bush, where he is promptly followed, and the pursuit is not foregone until the criminal is secured or the pursuers find themselves in imminent danger from a hostile tribe. In the latter case the blood-feud remains open for an early settlement, and the friends of the murderer are dealt with first.

Homicide is, in fact, always looked upon as a wrong done to a man’s tribe or family, rather than to the individual himself. In the case of accidental homicide it may still lead to a blood-feud. The deed is done, that is sufficient for these simple-minded folk. It may possibly be put down to the witchcraft of some neighbouring medicine-man who has bewitched the unintentional slayer with hostile motives; but that will not save the unfortunate offender, rather is it an additional argument that he should be destroyed lest worse trouble follow. There is also to be reckoned with the idea that the dead man’s spirit will haunt the tribe, and especially his nearest relative, until his blood has been avenged.[278] Besides, it is undoubtedly difficult to draw the line between accident and design, and, for the matter of that, the meaning of the word “accident” is unknown to the Indian.

The chief and the tribe will sometimes take up the quarrel as their own, but, on the other hand, a man considers it a disgraceful thing not to be able to avenge his own wrongs, and, therefore, never applies to the chief for tribal help. This is true of all small communities, an affront of any one of the community being a personal attack upon every other member, but it is not necessary that it should be avenged by all, unless the affronted one be unable for any cause to complete his revenge by himself.

No tribal notice is taken of a murder committed intra-family, such as the murder of a son or a wife, as no revenge is necessary; the loss only affects the murderers, and it is simply arranged by the family itself. The loss of one member does not suggest itself as a reasonable cause[173] for compelling the loss of another. The one exception to this would be if the murdered man were a noted warrior whose death would constitute a serious tribal loss. Action might then be taken by the whole tribe after the usual tobacco palaver.

So much for death by violence; there remains something to be said of death by disease, and of sickness not necessarily ending in death.

All travellers and writers have noticed how prone the Indian is to sun-sickness. Living as he does in the perpetual gloom of his tribal house, or the restricted light of the forest depths, he appears to be exceptionally susceptible to the effects of strong sunshine. His sensitiveness is tried further by any sort of change, even a transference from the upper reaches to the main rivers completely upsets him. Indians appear to go sick especially on moving only a short way from their own locality. They are also bad subjects for malarial fevers, and the Issa River is notoriously unhealthy in this respect. By this I mean the river itself, and in its immediate vicinage. Even a few hundred yards away from its banks the country is comparatively healthy and free from pestilent fly-belts, which, it will be remembered, are at their worst some three days steam up that river.[279] On the Brazilian frontier especially the pium from sunrise to sunset is unbearable. The beginning of the rains invariably brings fever.

On the other hand, chest complaints are rare, respiratory disease is unknown, and throat diseases uncommon, though you meet victims to rheumatism and cramp. There is no venereal disease among these tribes, and no umbilical hernia. Phimosis is common, and so are gastric complaints. Diseases of the eye are rare, though squinting is extremely prevalent.

There are many parasitic diseases. Ringworm and intestinal worm are very general troubles, and lice in the head universal. Jiggers in the Indian houses are a pest to all, and one of the daily duties of the Indian wife consists in the examination of her man’s feet to remove any thorns[174] or jiggers that may have effected a lodgment. This jigger is similar to the African species; it burrows into the foot, and lays its eggs beneath the skin. I have had as many as thirty-seven picked out of my foot at one time. The nuisance can be largely diminished if the traveller take the precaution always to wear boots in or about an Indian house, for jiggers are not found in the bush itself, though a somewhat similar pest abounds on the leaves and grasses,[280] and causes abominable irritation. In the Rubber Belt the usual remedy for this is a bath of white rum.

Near the Rubber Belt smallpox has found its devastating way among the Indians. I have said that they fear any contagious disease, and will often leave a sick person to die, so it may well be understood that a case of smallpox causes the utmost panic and consternation.[281] Tribes further removed from contact with “civilisation” are spared this scourge, but I noticed a form of measles among the children. Yellow fever is not known in the upper reaches, but I can answer for it that beriberi is, as I fell a victim to it myself. It is very prevalent in all this country, but it does not attack the Indians.[282]

The Napo Indians suffer from skin diseases that are not known to the tribes in the Issa and Japura valleys. There is a bluish discoloration and white blotch that is said to come from eating tapir.[283] Among the Karahone one meets[175] with cases afflicted in the same manner as natives on the Apaporis. They are spotted with a leprosy which is said to be due to the amount of fish that is eaten by these tribes. This disease is otherwise unknown.

All strangers suffer from ulcers on the legs.[284] Among the Indians themselves sores are common,[285] but I think are due entirely to neglected wounds caused by palm-spines and so forth, not to climate and feeding as would be the case with ourselves. Stings also have to be reckoned with.

Indian remedies are rather symptomatic than specific;[286] the methods of cure will be more fully dealt with in connection with the medicine-men. The remedies are rather of the order of kill than cure. For instance, fever is treated by the drastic method of bathing in the cold water of the river to lower the temperature.[287] On the Napo the natives take a concoction of tobacco-water and quinine. They make a remedy for wounds from the bark of a tree, which they boil, and use the liquid to wash the wound. A root found in the forest yields a narcotic much employed by the medicine-man when it is scraped, crushed, and boiled in water. Another remedy, acting as a counter-irritant, is a sage-green feathery moss, some species of lichen, very dry, that grows round the roots of trees.

During my stay with the tribes I never met with any such frantic sorrow at a death as is described by Koch-Grünberg,[288] though a mother will cry over the body of a dead child,[289] and sobbing, wailing, and a certain amount of excited grief is shown at a funeral, especially if it be that of an important person.

Burial takes place without delay on the day of death. The dead man, unwashed, is wrapped in his hammock in a sitting position, and a grave is dug immediately below the place where the hammock was slung in his lifetime. Though[176] they only dig deep enough to hide the body, this custom of intramural interment does not appear to have unhealthy effects upon the other inhabitants of the house, and no epidemic ever seems to arise in consequence. The dead man’s ornaments, his arms, and other personal possessions, such as his tobacco-bag, his coca-pot, are placed in the leaf-lined grave beside him. The whole interment is carried out with all speed, to get the body out of the way as quickly as they possibly can. South of the Issa a canoe or earthen jar takes the place of the hammock for shroud, but I never met with any urn burial, primary or secondary, among the tribes of the north.[290]

When the deceased is a woman the same procedure is followed, only pots are buried with her in place of weapons. Among the Kuretu-language group, when a woman dies, her pots are broken before they are placed in the grave,[291] and her baskets are also buried with her in addition to her ornaments. This is done to prevent the return of the soul to ask for its properties should they be needed in the spirit world.

When a chief has died the ceremonies are more elaborate. His body, like any other man’s, is wrapped in his palm-fibre hammock, and he is buried with his weapons, ornaments, and private treasures. But after the grave is filled in, the assembled tribe partake of a funeral feast. In the intervals of drinking and dancing the mourners sing of the great achievements, the worthiness and virtues of the dead man. The new chief comes forward, attired in the prescribed fashion, wearing a weird and wonderful head-dress to attract attention. He does not face the assembled people, but turns to the wall of the house, and speaks with his back to the tribe.

After a burial a fire is made over the new grave by the relatives, and is always kept burning for some days, except[177] in the case of a chief, when the whole house is burnt. This may possibly counteract the obvious dangers of these intramural burials, and account for the absence of evil results.

Whatever mourning may be indulged in before the body is buried, no grief is ever shown after the interment, for the spirit has then departed. This belief explains why a man’s grave is not marked in any way by these tribes, and has, as a matter of course, no claim to respect from his survivors.

It is possible that the question of cannibal customs as insults to the dead also influence the Indians in the matter of burial, and the absence of sign upon a grave. It would in some measure account for the burial in the house—as a protective measure—in spite of the fact that they recognise the danger of the spirit’s return, a belief which would more naturally incline them to extramural burials.

Ceremonial bathing always takes place after a funeral, in which every one takes part for the purpose of purification.

CHAPTER XIV

The medicine-man of the South American Indian tribes has been described as “the counterpart of the shaman type.”[292] There would seem to be hardly need for any qualification—he is a shaman. The word has attained a certain vogue, with too frequent lax usage, so that merely finding the name “shimano” in connection with any of these Indians—especially when it is found in the pages of an American writer—does not warrant this assertion.[293] But a short study of the exhaustive paper on Shamanism and the Shaman in the Royal Anthropological Institute Journal[294] will show that point for point the methods and procedure of the Witoto, the Boro, and kindred tribes tally with that of the shamans of Siberian peoples. That is to say he is a doctor and a wizard, not a priest. He claims to deal with spirits by magical processes, to exorcise, outwit, and circumvent, not to officiate in any sacred office as the minister, the vicar, of a deity. He is a hypnotist and a conjuror. But he is more than a mere charlatan. He is the poison-maker for the tribe, and possesses, as a rule, especially among the Andoke and Karahone, a considerable knowledge of drugs,[179] both curative and lethal. The curare poison is a treasured secret of the medicine-men. Its recipe is religiously guarded by them, and the deadly preparation is made with both ceremony and privacy. The Andoke medicine-men have an ointment concocted from a plant—the identity of which they would not divulge—that is used for massaging purposes. They all use tobacco juice, coca, and a white snuff that I thought must be the famous niopo, but could not find out anything about it.[295] One cure for a headache is worked with a special kind of dried bark. The medicine-man carries a piece of this in his magic-bag, and with it he rubs over the head of the sufferer; or, if he is dealing with a wound, he will pass the bark over the skin to make it heal. There is also a species of lichen or moss used by them to rub lightly over the affected part, which acts as a very mild blistering agent. It stings and, acting as a counter irritant, draws the inflammation away from the seat of the injury to the surface, and thus to some extent neutralises the pain. It is a sage green in colour, dry and feathery in appearance, and is found growing round the roots of trees.

Pain, sickness, death, each and all are caused in Indian opinion by some evil spirit, sent of course by an enemy. It is to combat this magic-worked mischief that the medicine-man’s services are required in the first place. Magic must be countered by magic.[296] Incidentally the medicine-man relies also to some extent on his own medicine, his purges, and narcotics. However potent these may, or may not be, the fact that the patient has implicit faith in their efficacy goes far to assist their intrinsic merits and further the cure, the expulsion of the evil spirit that has wrought the trouble. A medicine-man probably has a number of these more or less genuine remedies, infusions of herbs that possess curative properties, such as those already dealt with in the previous chapter.

But drugs and ointments alone do not, to the Indian mind, go far to bring about recovery. Much more effective,[180] as a spirit-evicting agent, is the medicine-man’s virtue, represented by his breath. It is sufficient for him to breathe over food or drink to render it healthy, to breathe on a sore place to secure removal of pain, to breathe on the sick to promote recovery.[297] Nor is this power vested only in the medicine-man. Other people’s breath may have similar value, if of less degree.[298] Should an Indian wish to eat of forbidden food, he may get an old woman to breathe over it. Is a child sickly, a like procedure may restore it to health. In all the medicine-man’s performances breathing and blowing over the patient is a prominent part of the processes. The medicine-man will breathe on his own hand and then massage the part of the patient that is affected; and if stronger measures are required he will suck the place, or as near the place as his mouth can be put, suck vigorously and possibly spit out a black liquid—the tobacco juice freely taken by him during the performance explains the colour. The avowed object of the suction is that it draws out the poison—the evil spirit.[299] It is here that some degree of charlatanism comes into play, for the operating medicine-man will presently produce a tangible object from his mouth, a bit of stick, a thorn, a fishbone, or anything of a similar description, and inform the patient and his friends that this is the material form which had been assumed by the evil spirit which he has drawn bodily from the flesh of the sick person.[300] This is the usual accompaniment of the shaman’s rites, and too universally indulged in by the wizard fraternity to need any particular comment.

The Indian medicine-man receives presents for the cures he effects. Should he fail he must make the best case he can[181] for himself, and depart to the bush to work magic against the rival who has successfully—according to his account—outmanœuvred him. The blame for failure is not to be his but another’s. This, it is hardly necessary to note, is an alluring chance for the repayment of any personal injury or slight, not often missed by so entirely human a person as the Indian medicine-man.

To a certain extent the office of tribal medicine-man is hereditary, that is to say the eldest son, if efficient, succeeds the father. It would be more correct to say the most hairy of his sons, as hirsute qualifications are far more weighty and essential determinatives than questions of primogeniture. The hairier the wiser it would seem. But of this anon. Often the medicine-man will have a small boy with him, who may be his son, actual or adopted, and who is also credited with magic gifts.[301] Thus the secrets of the profession are preserved from generation to generation, the chosen youths being the recipients of the secrets and trained to develop and carry on the magic of their predecessors. Part of the ritual of initiation, as of the ceremonial healing, consists of what to the unbelieving white man is not too well done conjuring. The medicine-man is a clumsy conjuror, and only the implicit trust of his patients and audience saves him from frequent detection. But the belief that they must see what he declares they see goes far to make them in very truth behold it. The “conjuring” in the initiation of a novice consists of simple “passes” of sticks up through the nostril and out of the back of the head. According to Waterton the probationers have to endure exhausting ordeals and torture.[302] This is very probable, but on this point I received no information.

So far as I am aware not one of these tribes attaches any importance to the hair that is clipped or depilated, nor to nail parings; if they do the point escaped me. But though they depilate because they dislike resembling monkeys with a hairy pelt, at the same time it is noticeable that not only[182] does the medicine-man ignore this general custom, especially among the Andoke where it is strictly tabu to him—yet hairiness is, as I have stated above, a necessary qualification for any man or youth who is desirous of attaining the position of medicine-man. He is certainly the only man in the tribe with any face hair. When the medicine-man has a hairy son the boy is trained to inherit the “practice,” but should he have no offspring with this distinctive requirement, a hairy child will be chosen and educated for the post.

There may possibly be some connection between this tabu and the belief that when a medicine-man dies he returns as a tiger, and even during his lifetime he can make excursions in tiger-form, and be so absolutely tiger that he can slay and eat the beasts of the wild. Every medicine-man possesses a jaguar skin that he is said to use when he turns tiger. By possession of a skin he has the power of resuscitating the tiger, he himself being the spirit of the tiger. He can thus work his will, afterwards returning to human form. An ordinary tiger might be killed, but a medicine-man in tiger form could not be.[303] On one occasion a medicine-man I met had a bag made of tiger-skin hung round his neck, in which he carried all his paraphernalia. But the medicine-men never wear these skins as wraps or coverings. Each hides his tiger skin away, when not in actual use for magic purposes.

The power to return after death in the shape of the dreaded jaguar is a further defensive measure, a precaution against hostile peoples, as in this shape both before and after death the medicine-man can attack the tribal enemies, and carry obnoxious individuals away into the bush whenever opportunity offers.

The medicine-man lives with, and yet aloof from his fellow-tribesmen. He has to observe many tabu, certain kinds of food are prohibited, and he must have no connection with women when making his medicines,[304] for should the woman bear a child it will be a tiger cub. To make his drugs and unguents a medicine-man goes alone into the forest, and this in itself marks him as different from other[183] men, who will never of their own free will go far without a companion. Spruce mentions an armed guard attendant on medicine-men, “their lives being in continual jeopardy,” but no such thing is known south of the Japura.[305] The medicine-men certainly wander in the bush alone, for they will disappear at times, and on their return inform the tribesfolk that they have been about some magical journeyings; they may have worked in the guise of tigers against tribal enemies; or paid visits in the spirit to other lands. No armed escort could protect a medicine-man better than his own reputation suffices to do, for all medicine-men are feared—certes one that was not feared would not be worth the killing—and no Indian would be likely to risk the danger resultant on doing one an injury. I doubt if even a hostile tribe would wittingly put a medicine-man to death, for they fear retaliation on the part of the spirit, which would certainly haunt them, even if it worked no graver ill.

The medicine-man’s dress, as already mentioned, is largely a matter of personal taste; something original and striking is usually attempted. The Orahone medicine-man clothes himself in tapir-skin, and the Andoke medicine-man in the illustration opposite p. 73 was wearing a dyed turban when I took his portrait. Any fancy article that comes to hand is utilised to make him different from his fellows. His “properties,” which are carried in an ornamented bag of tiger skin, or of beaten bark sewn with fibre string, consist of a rattle—of rather more elaborate design than the ordinary dance rattle—some small magic stones, and a cup made from the shell of a river fish.[306] The latter resembles a large oyster, and the mother-of-pearl inner coating is much used for earrings and ornaments. The medicine-man takes this cup, speaks into it, and rubs the sick person all over with it. Then, if this does not bring about a cure, the patient must suck it till he vomits, and continue to vomit till the evil spirit be expelled.

Condor claws play a great part in magic-working among[184] the northern tribes. These gigantic birds are rare in the bush, and I never saw one, though I heard of them from all the medicine-men, and obtained some specimens of the dried feet from them. These are ugly objects, the leg stump stopped with pitch and bound roughly round with bands of beaten bark, about half or a quarter of an inch wide, and not twisted. But though I got the claws I could not get any details as to what they were supposed to do.[307]

I once saw a medicine-man with the skin of an anaconda, and was told that by using the skin he could control the spirit of the anaconda.[308] For this purpose the medicine-men are habitually provided with the dried skins of lizards and snakes.[309]

The Andoke place great faith in strings of magical stones, five or seven in number. These are taken off the string and laid by the medicine-man in certain patterns on the sufferer. The medicine-man gazes at them abstractedly till a degree of self-induced trance is established. He will then break out into a frenzy, stamp, shout, and brandish his rattle. The stones are also used for magical rubbing, and are most assiduously guarded by their possessors, who will not part with them for any consideration. The only string of such stones I managed even to see are shown in the illustration. They are of quartz, somewhat roughly made flat discs, worn smooth by continual use, about three-quarters of an inch in diameter and a quarter of an inch thick, bored in the centre, the hole being half the size in the middle to what it is at its external radius. These stones are always carried on a string.

Whatever goes wrong in tribal life, from a pain in the[185] finger to a hurricane, the malice of an enemy working through the evil spirits is held to be responsible, as will be shown more fully hereafter. It is the medicine-man’s business not only to frustrate their malicious purposes, but also to discover who is the foe inciting their wickedness by magical influences. Mischief can be wrought without any bodily presence.[310] Revenge is also possible by the exercise of similar extra-natural powers. For instance, if a child is lost, or killed by a tiger, the bereaved parents call the tribal medicine-man to their assistance. If the hunters sent out to retaliate upon the tiger-foe fail to capture or overcome it, the medicine-man proceeds to work magic. This may be quite simple, for it is possible that in his solitary wanderings in the bush he may have the luck to come across the lost youngster. In this case he “re-creates” the child by the potency of his magic-working, and secures an unshakable reputation by producing it alive in due course. Should such luck not befall him he can but return with a tale of vengeance wreaked on the tiger, and a tiger-tooth—not necessarily of fresh extraction—in proof of that same. Then it is his duty to discover which might be the wicked tribe that sent the tiger, or had it sent at their instigation, as he would have to ascertain who had sent sickness were it the death of an adult that was under investigation. The procedure is the same whether the trouble be a house blown down by the wind or any other catastrophe. The tribe assembles for a solemn palaver, and the medicine-man, frenzied with drugs, eventually “divines” who is the enemy. The final decision usually is that the tribe had better go to war at once lest worse befall them.

The medicine-man invariably has a considerable say in intertribal policy. War is never made without his advice, and in addition to his duties as tribal avenger and healer, he must warn the tribe of impending hostilities.[311] Should hostilities break out, or a death occur, during a white man’s visit to a tribe, he would possibly find himself[186] in considerable personal danger. Success to the tribe might in part be attributed to his virtue, but disaster would certainly be considered due to his malign presence, a point the medicine-man would not be slow in urging against the visitor.

The white stranger, with his foreign magic—for magic every other thing he possesses must seem to the unsophisticated child of the bush—in any circumstances is regarded with some jealousy by the professional magic-workers of the tribes. Naturally, therefore, it is with extreme difficulty that any details of their methods and doings can be learnt. It goes without saying that the medicine-man regards any inquisitive stranger as a potential rival, is on his guard against bluff or bribery, and never willingly gives so much as an opening for exchange of professional confidences. It is the hardest thing in the world to obtain information from the Indian, for every Indian will say “I don’t know,” or “Pia”—because it is so—in order to avoid having to explain his beliefs to the white man. I tried to bluff, and by feigning to possess magical gifts hoped to draw the local exponent into a rival display, but with no encouraging results. What I could gather had to be done with circumspection, a bit here, a trifle there, a note from a chance remark, a comment from another.

The expulsion of the evil spirit causing sickness is a matter requiring invariably much noise and fury. The maloka is always dark, be it day or night, and the gloom is not broken by torches for the medicine-man’s visit, nor are the smouldering fires kicked into a blaze. The doctor, well under the influence of drugs, works himself to a state of wild exaltation. He beats the floor with a palm branch, shakes his rattle vigorously, and makes the most appalling noises. He will imitate the beasts and birds of the forest, and—as he must be a skilled ventriloquist if he has any claims whatsoever to magic gifts—the sounds apparently come from every side. This is to demonstrate the embodying of the spirits of the nether world, the active causation of all ill. Also it is to summon to his assistance[187] all friendly spirits, or all over whom he has attained magical influence. He carries on conversations with the assumed speakers, and intermittently howls, and shrieks, and beats the air with his palm branches. The greater the noise, the wilder the excitement, the more potent is the magic of the medicine-man. South of the Japura he does not blow smoke over the patient, but he makes use of both tobacco juice and coca. He further drugs himself most probably with some such powerful agent as aya-huasca, though that is not supposed to be known to these tribes. The medicine-man also doses himself with a drink made from a certain liana. When thoroughly intoxicated with it he will run away, and shortly go into profound slumber. In this comatose state he is supposed to hold intercourse with the unseen world, to wander in spirit to other places, and, as a result of what he has hereby learnt, to be able to foretell the future when he awakes.

Magic-making in cases of sickness includes the blowing, sucking, and so forth, already described. The relatives of the patient will discourse at length on the story of the sickness, and the medicine-man will either announce who sent it himself or expound the sick person’s dreams and therefrom deduct the source of evil. The official explanation and verdict is always given in the most ambiguous phraseology, so that whatever happens the medicine-man may be able to twist his dictum to the desired equivalent of “I told you so.”

As already described the invalid may be given a strong narcotic drink, the decoction of a root, and carried out to a small clearing made in the bush. There he is left under a rough shelter. No one may speak to him, or pass him while he lies there, otherwise he will die. The relations go out of sight, and guard the bush tracks, to prevent any such passage. If the patient die the medicine-man asserts very positively that some one has transgressed, knowingly or unknowingly, and so caused the fatal ending. I saw such a case on one occasion and was prayed by the Indians not to go anywhere in the direction of the sick man.

Should a man’s wife fall ill her relatives may, if they[188] are within reasonable distance, come and take her away. Koch-Grünberg mentions a case among the Bara Indians where two men came from another tribe and removed their sick sister. They were treated with a show of hostility and followed—as the ailing woman took her healthy children away—for some distance into the bush. But no tribal quarrel ensued, the hostility appears to have been merely ceremonial. This is typical of what might occur among any friendly tribes.

Spruce, after seven months among the Uaupes Indians, “failed to catch a payé”[312] or see one at work. I attempted to get on terms with sundry of these gentlemen by an exhibition of my own “magic” powers, in the hope that I might elicit some comments, or hints of their own secrets. I made play with my eyeglass, and informed them that it was great medicine, and enabled me to see through a man. But though the tribesmen had on their own account attributed this faculty to my camera, the medicine-men were very sceptical of the eyeglass. Still I had better fortune than Spruce, for one day when I was with an Okaina tribe, a woman of my party went down with fever. She had a temperature of 103° to 104°, and the quinine with which I dosed her had no effect. There happened to be a great and noted medicine-man in the district, so they sent for him. The maloka, some fifty yards from wall to wall each way, was dark as pitch. Into the gloom rushed a frenzied figure. It was the medicine-man in a state of tremendous excitement. He passed his hands frantically all over the woman’s body. She lay rigid, and he was shaking with the intensity of his emotion. Never in my life have I seen a man so excited. If he were play-acting he believed most emphatically in his own play-acting. Then he filled his mouth with coca, and stooping over the moribund woman put his lips upon hers. Eager and trembling, he sucked up the contents of the woman’s mouth, then rushed out of the house and expectorated, emptying his mouth with his fingers. After this he announced that he had sucked away the evil spirit.

I considered it the most extraordinary faith cure: but there was no burking the fact that a dying woman had been restored most miraculously to health. Certainly imagination goes very far in the curative process with a patient in Amazonia—as elsewhere,—but even allowing for this it was extraordinary.

Faith in the healing powers of the medicine-men is not confined to the tribesmen, for I knew one case of an Indian woman who had been married for years to a white man and lived in the rubber district. She fell ill, and her husband, instead of trusting to the white man’s remedies, insisted on sending for a medicine-man.

CHAPTER XV

Whatever of art there may be in the soul of the tribesman finds expression in the dance. It is the concert and the play, the opera, the ball, the carnival, and the feast of the Amazons, in that it gives opportunity for the æsthetic, artistic, dramatic, musical, and spectacular aspirations of the Indian’s nature. It is his one social entertainment, and he invites to it every one living in amity with him. Any excuse is enough for a dance, but nevertheless the affair is a serious business. The dance, like the tobacco palaver, is a dominant factor in tribal life. For it the Amazonian treasures the songs of his fathers, and will master strange rhymes and words that for him no longer have meaning; he only knows they are the correct lines, the phrases he ought to sing at such functions, because they always have been sung, they are the words of the time-honoured tribal melodies.[313] It is for these occasions that he fashions quaint[191] dancing-staves and wonderful musical instruments, and dons all his treasured ornaments, while his wife paints her most dazzling skin costumes. He practises steps and capers, tutors his voice to the songs; meantime his children rehearse assiduously in the privacy of their forest playground, against the time when they too may take part in the tribal festivities.

The entertainment demands elaborate preliminaries. When any such carnival is on hand the old women of the tribe for days previously are busied making cassava, and with the preparation of kawana or other appropriate drinks. The amount of liquid refreshment necessary for a large dance is enormous, in view of the custom by which the liquor-logged native simply steps aside, and by the insertion of a finger down the throat is speedily ready for a further supply. During the four or five days that a dance continues only the old men among the Turuka will eat anything, and that nothing more substantial than manioc starch; the dancers merely drink hashiri.

Nor is the inner man only to be considered. All sartorial treasures, the feathers and necklaces of the men, the beaded girdles of the women, are taken from their receptacles, the wardrobes in the rafters of the maloka. The men—for the[192] Amazonian male reserves to himself the greatest brilliance of attire on occasions of ceremony—array themselves in their feather tiaras, with necklaces, armlets, and sounding garters of polished nuts. The maidens and matrons also apply themselves to the elaboration of their toilets. No court dressmaker ever gave more anxious thought to the fashioning of chef-d’œuvre in silk and brocade than do these dusky daughters of Eve to the tracing of circles, angles, bands, and frets upon their naked skins. Coquetry is as essential an accompaniment of the savage dance, in the unmapped bush of the Amazons, as in a garlanded ballroom of Mayfair. The most vain of English beauties probably spends less time over her adornment for any function than do these young women as they squat in chattering crowds over the calabashes of vegetable dye, white, scarlet, black, or purple, with which they trace upon each other the cunning patterns that make their only dresses.

When these preparations are satisfactorily advanced the chief, or some one in authority, despatches his invitations, no formal cards entrusted to a postman, but a summons mysterious as a Marconigram, and imperious as a writ of the High Court. The chief takes his stand between the manguare, the signal drums slung from the rafters of the great house, and with the rubber-headed drumstick he beats out as message sonorous notes that travel to every Indian within eight or nine miles. This summons is no mere manipulation of the four notes which constitute the range of the instrument, but an articulate message to convey the time, the place, and the purpose of the meeting to the initiated.

The numbers who congregate for a dance were a constant source of astonishment to me. Out of the silent and trackless bush scores of expectant guests, all painted and feathered, will pour into the clearing about the maloka, at the time appointed by the signal drum, and by nightfall some hundreds are gathered. Great bonfires are set ablaze, and the interior of the tribal lodge, where the chief has a place in the centre, flares ruddy with the light of torches. The men make loud clangour with their instruments, flutes, pan-pipes,[193] or drums, and out in the clearing they form into line, clutching their jingling dance-poles, while the women form up facing them. Led by a strenuous tribesman clattering with nuts and dried seeds, the line begins its perambulation of the maloka. Forward two steps—thud! Backward two steps—thud! Clattering and pattering, with the fifes shrieking high above all other sounds, as the drums growl deep below, the procession slowly encircles the maloka, and then enters. In a frenzied flutter of feathers and leaves the performers move round the chief, to a jangle of seed-pods and rattles, till the company is completed, and the tribal lodge is packed with the dancers, when he signals for silence. The dance stops. The instruments cease their outcry, and in the sudden contrast of silence the chief sings a line which is the keynote of the occasion, the explanation, the reason for the assembly. Then dance and song begin, while those who are not taking active part squat round upon their haunches and ejaculate hoarse cries of approval and encouragement at intervals.

As aforesaid, any excuse is good enough reason for such festival. Dances take place continuously: at the harvest of the pine-apple and the manioc; at the conclusion of a successful hunt or war-expedition; and at such other times in the Amazonian season as the chief feels moved to give entertainment. As the weather does not vary sufficiently to influence the harvesting of the crops at any particular date, there is no equivalent to our harvest; and, though manioc is planted as a rule just before the heaviest annual rainfall becomes due, there is no part of the year when some of the roots are not ready to gather. Pines are most plentiful in October, and it is then that the special pine-apple dances take place.[314]

The dance takes its character from the occasion. The dancing staff, unless the dance is in honour of some specific thing, is undecorated, merely furnished with a calabash that contains nuts, or with a carved head hollowed for the same purpose, and is sometimes hung with bunches of dried[194] seeds that rattle when shaken or when knocked on the ground. These form important additions to the orchestra, and to the garters and anklets strapped to the legs. Very often the Indian decorates his staff with palm leaves merely for ornament, but in the harvest dances the staves are adorned with bunches of whatever crop is to be honoured—a tuft of pine-apple leaves or a bundle of manioc shoots. The Yakuna carve patterns on their dance staves.[315] Among the Tureka, north of the Japura, dance staves are a most important possession, and are looked on with great affection by their owners. The Tureka men wear aprons when dancing, and use clappers in one hand, instead of the horns and rattle used alternately by the Tukana.[316] The Menimehe carries a club in his right hand. On the Tikie, dancers are said to hold a flute in the left hand, and always to have a green twig under their girdle. Koch-Grünberg further states that they have clay whistles with which they blow at dances as well as for signals. These are not customs of the Issa-Japura tribes.

The soloist who leads the dancers from the start outside the maloka very probably commences by executing some fancy high stepping. He may, for instance, prance like a stallion, and this is calculated to amuse the company immensely. When the performers get too heated by their exertions in the house they will file outside, still dancing, and after a few turns on the open space in front of the maloka, will return within.

Among the Okaina and the Boro the hand is often placed on the far shoulder of the next in line. I especially remember one endless dance in an Okaina house in which all free performers were double locked, while those in possession of staves or rattles were content with a single lock to allow freedom for one hand. The dancers invariably stand in single file, usually with one hand resting on the shoulder of the next in line. The Menimehe and most other tribes place the left hand on their neighbour’s right shoulder, but, according to Koch-Grünberg, tribes on the Tikie place[195] the right hand, though the Tukana rest the left. The figure is composed of a broken circle of men thus linked together, whilst in their free hands they hold the dancing staves, rattles, or flutes. Within, and concentric, is the ring of women dancers, who face the men and maintain a time which is complementary and not identical with theirs.[317] North of the Japura in some cases the women dance between the men in the same circle,[318] or the men and the younger girls dance round the elder women. When dancing, personal touch is not tabu or disliked, possibly because it is ceremonial or conventional. In most of these dances the woman who is not engaged in the inner circle of the select—the complementary figure of the dance—places herself outside the outer circle with her left hand on the left shoulder of the man of her choice. Her frontal portion is thus at right angles, and away from that of her man.

The rhythm of the dance is always very marked. The figures and steps are simple, neither suggestive nor lascivious, and wholly destitute of the lustful invitation of the dances of the East. The step is almost invariably a high, prancing flexion of the thigh upon the body, followed by a deliberate extension to the ground, repeated two or three times, the advance being completed with a resounding stamp of the right foot upon the earth, according to the accentuation of the measure. The same steps are repeated backwards in retiring, although less ground is covered, so that the dancers sway rhythmically forward and backward; but the end of each movement finds the whole line advanced some little distance from where it was at the conclusion of the previous one. The forward movement may be described simply as, right foot forward, left foot forward, stamp with right, right foot backward, left foot backward, right foot back in position, toe on ground, to start[196] da capo right foot forward, in uninterrupted repetition. Spruce has described this movement as “a succession of dactyls.”[319] In stamping, which is done by all the dancers in unison, the knee is brought up to a right angle with the trunk, and the foot then thrust down with the whole weight of the body. Toe with right is the same motion as stamp right, but with only a slight flexion of the knee, and comparatively noiseless. The circles move to the right, continuing, but almost imperceptibly on account of slight change of ground. The Tureka make a jump before the stamp, shout at the end of the figure, and whistle through their teeth.

While the principal dance is in progress a frequent form of side-show to the main entertainment is the entrance of a tribesman with a grievance. He will have made for himself the most remarkable costume he can devise, and to ensure that he shall gain attention, wears upon his head a veritable “matinée hat” of absurd proportions.[320] He pays no heed to the dance when he comes into the maloka, but stalks solemnly to a position in the sight of all, though he will keep out of the actual track of the dancers. Then, standing stock-still with upraised hand, facing neither the performers nor the “sitters out,” but in any chance position, he raises his staff and begins to recite his complaint to a monotonous refrain. The following is a typical instance of what may be chanted:

The following is a complaint made by a Boro chief’s daughter of her treatment by her own tribe:

The petitioner will repeat his or her song for hours without ceasing. To all appearance no one takes the slightest notice of his presence, unless the dance should come to an end during the recitation, when the performers jeer and laugh at his tale of woe. This has no effect upon the plaintiff, who continues gravely to voice his grievance. The chief must, however, take note of the matter, and if it be thought of sufficient importance it is brought up for discussion and judgment at the next tribal conference in tobacco palaver. At any rate, this method of airing a grievance has the effect of placing the culprit on the black-list, in view of the resultant publicity; and the natural wariness that is shown by others of the tribe in all dealings with such suspect for the future, is in itself a punishment for the crime.

It is difficult in the extreme to obtain any reliable evidence of the existence of initiation dances. Sixty years ago Dr. Russell Wallace described as the initiation dance of the girls[198] of the Uaupes a dance which, six years ago, Dr. Koch-Grünberg, the latest and most painstaking of Amazonian investigators, found as a Jurupari ceremony confined to men on the river Aiary. The dance is the same in each case, and depends for its distinction upon the infliction of serious bodily injury. The mysteries of initiation, as has been said, have not yet been fathomed in the Amazons, nor have those of Jurupari. There is undoubtedly a dance in which the performers beat their fellows with lianas until the blood is drawn and the victims faint with pain, but no white man has yet spoken with certainty upon its origin.[322] The dance is not known in the district between the Issa and the Japura, nor do the mysteries of initiation fall to be discussed in this chapter. Those are not matters which are readily laid bare to even the most enterprising investigator in the haunts of the aborigines.

According to Koch-Grünberg’s account, all the women, accompanied by the smaller boys, leave the maloka directly the notes of the flutes are heard, and either hide in the woods or in another house with closed exits. The performers circle round in quick marching time, blowing their flutes, which each holds in his right hand, his left resting on the right shoulder of the next man. At the completion of the circle they stand in line. One dancer then draws the long whip they all carry under their right arms, and while his companion holds his flute high up, blowing lustily, he gives him three blows on the side and stomach heavy enough to draw blood freely. This continues till all have taken part. There is no singing, but the gaping wounds and much drinking of kashiri rouse the performers to a state of wild excitement. This dance is followed by an ordinary one, in which the women take part.[323] Obviously none of the Issa-Japura[199] tribes practise this dance, for I never saw any signs of the scars that must inevitably remain on the bodies of dancers cut in this wholesale fashion.

The account given by Bates of a dance at the Feast of Fruits among the Juri and the Passé Indians is an equally good description of some of the Issa-Japura harvest dances. The men carry long reeds instead of javelins, and with their left hands on their neighbours’ right shoulders move slowly to right and to left. The accompaniment is a song as drawling and monotonous as the movement, which will be continued for upwards of an hour at a time.[324]

In the pine-apple dance the Indians tie pine leaves to boughs and wave them as they move. The women of the chief, and possibly all the women of the tribe, form a semicircle with the chief in the centre, sometimes alone, sometimes with others. They carry the mid-rib of the Trooly palm or some similar wand, with a small pine, or often the pine-top, tied to the end.

The proceedings at all harvest dances are very similar. I give as example a Boro dance at the gathering of the manioc, which is but an excuse for this dance, as manioc is pulled up at all times and seasons. As is almost universal in Indian dancing, the outer circle, or rather semicircle, is composed of men. The women, fewer in number, stand together in the centre, or each behind the man of her choice. Their dancing staves are all decorated with bunches of manioc shoots. The woman, with the nearer hand resting on the man’s shoulder, keeps step with him, moving to her own front and not sideways like the man, though in the same direction. The inner group face the circle of men, and their steps are complementary to those of the men, and not identical with them. The chief starts the dance with the first line of the song, his wife replies, and her answer is echoed by the chorus of the chief’s women.

The whole process of growing, harvesting, and preparing the manioc for cassava is thus related, then the chief will ask:

The suggestion is obviously that the women have stolen and eaten the cassava of the chief, but it is made solely to bring in the sexual suggestion. The women deny the imputation, and declare that their bellies are empty, or that they are great with child, not swollen with mao. The chief will then ask why, or when, the belly fills with child, and so the song continues on the lines of the sexual ideas introduced until the finale is reached, when the chief would sing:

The Muenane, who occupy a part of the central Issa-Japura watershed, between the Andoke and the Resigero, possess a dance of their own, which has travelled into many of the other tribes south of the Japura, and has become very popular.[331] This is a combination of a riddle and an animal dance. The figure is formed as in the pine-apple dance, but the centre is taken by a warrior who has gained a reputation as a wit. His business is to ask a riddle, which will in all probability be an original one, and he asks it after the manner of a chant. Naturally a man with at least the indigenous sense of wit is loudly applauded and received with shrieks of laughter from the outset. The dancers take up the chanted question as they rotate round the questioner. At the end of the measure the dance stops, and the riddler rushes frantically round the circle with a lighted torch, looking, like Alcibiades, for a man—to answer his riddle. He stops suddenly, thrusts his torch into the face of a performer, and, peering into his eyes to seek for some sign of answering intelligence, repeats his question. The answer, if in the negative, is given—whatever the tribe dancing may be—in the tongue of the originators of the dance, Muenane—“Jana” (I do not know). The dancer thereupon, having failed to reply correctly, is then impressed to be a follower of the questioner, and must rush after him[202] and imitate all his antics, which are apparently to give the clue to the riddle. In a short time a long single file of these failures is engaged in presenting a burlesque of the habits of the animal whose name is the answer required. The first performer who guesses correctly becomes the questioner in turn, and the dance starts afresh.

It may be pertinent here to relate an incident which tends to convey at least an insight into the Indian character, the lack of altruism, the love of discomfiture of others. On one occasion the questioner—evidently to take a rise out of a stranger, and being intoxicated, if not with coca at least with the dancing mania—thrust his torch into my face, nearer than would be tolerated in the usual way. I quickly placed my foot on his chest, with the resultant back-somersault of torch and man. The shrieks of laughter lasted a considerable time. I was the hero of the hour, and custom decreed that the victim should laugh at his own discomfiture.

All Indians are clever mimics, and the fidelity with which they reproduce the actions of jaguars, tapirs, monkeys, parrots, and other familiar animals of the bush is remarkable. The riddles are nearly always concerned with animals, and the test of wit is the amount of sexual suggestion contained in the reply.[332] A typical query is, “When is a howler-monkey not a howler?” The answer would be, “When he is covering his mate.” The dumb show of the actors delights the audience, and leaves no small characteristic to the imagination. The riddles may defy translation, but the actions are certainly not beyond interpretation.

In this connection it is well to refer again to the subject of dance intoxication. The excitement due to rhythmic motion struck me very forcibly. It should be remembered too that the men are heroic cocainists, and this stimulant, in forcing the imagination, undoubtedly for the moment—qua alcohol—has an aphrodisiacal tendency. The sexual innuendoes of the songs, though not of the dance, increase the effect. It must also be borne in mind that five days and nights is not an uncommon limit to one dance. It may cease at sunrise for a short space, and individuals,[203] of course, rest and sleep as nature may dictate, but never, to my knowledge, for any length of time.

On one occasion I was witness to the most remarkable salacity on the part of an individual. In my innocence I considered it part of the dance, and was satisfied with the idea that I had at last happed upon the indigenous counterpart of the coition and parturition dances of the East. It was not until the man was restrained by order of the chief that the true facts were realised.[333] But this was exceptional. The dance is carried on with frenzy and excitement, but with nothing beyond that. It never touches eroticism.[334] The dance never ends, as we know ending. It dwindles to cessation.

Another dance, much appreciated by the tribes between the Issa and the Japura, is not very dissimilar in essentials from the musical chairs of our childhood. The dancers form into a line, or two parallel lines, and, headed by the song-leader, carry out the customary step in single file. At the leader’s mention of a certain word, or perhaps a certain subject, previously agreed upon, the whole line must right-about turn, and pick up the step again without losing a beat. Those who fail are withdrawn from the line. The dance continues until the fittest alone remain, and is productive of general amusement.

But there are more tragic inspirations for a dance than the guessing of riddles or the garnering of the crops. I refer to the triumphant home-coming of tribal warriors, laden with booty from the war-path, with a band of doomed prisoners. The treatment of the latter and their disposal at the feast[204] have been already dealt with. But the cannibal ritual of insult is not the end. When the orgy of blood and gluttony is over, the warriors must dance. Only the men may take part in the feast, so only the men may participate in this dance. The music is chiefly that of the drums, and to their gloomy rolling—according to Robuchon’s account—the warriors lurch portentously, drunk already with victory, and excited by dancing. They break apart frequently to stir the great troughs of liquor with the forearms of their dead enemies, and to quaff deep calabashes full of drink. Then they stagger back to the wild intoxication of the dance. Their songs become shrieks, demoniacal, hellish. For eight days this horrible dance of triumph continues, while the captive boys and girls, young enough to be saved from the fate of the earthen pot, cower in the darkness of the maloka and suffer, perforce in silence, the gibes of the women. But this scene defies description.

Set against the darkly impressive background of the forest any tribal dance gives an amazing effect of kaleidoscopic light and colour when, with nightfall, by the flare of great fires and the glow of torches, the performance begins. The chosen soloist of the tribe jangling his circlets of nuts, sounding his gourd rattle, in a falsetto voice sings the ancient air of the dance. The warriors follow the melody in canon. Then slowly the great line of naked men, arms interlocked about each other’s necks, surges forward two steps in perfect time, pauses a moment, then recedes two steps. In a little while the whole earth shakes with the swing of the movement. It is like the flowing and ebbing of mighty waves upon a shore. It intoxicates with the recurrence of the accentuation. Slowly round the big maloka the procession passes, swaying in unison. The streaked and banded women dance uniformly in an opposite direction. The fires splutter and blaze. The torches cast strange shadows. The flutes, the pan-pipes, and the drums blare, bleat, and boom their barbaric accompaniment.

It is a mad festival of savagery. The naked men are wildly excited; their eyes glare, their nostrils quiver, but they are not drunk. The naked women abandon themselves[205] to the movement of the dance; they scream their chorus to the tribal dance-song; but they are not lewd. There is about it an all-pervading, illimitable delirium. The wild outburst affects even the stranger in their midst. Forgotten cells in his brain react to the stimulus of the scene. He is no longer apart, alien in speech and feeling. He locks arms in the line of cannibals, sways in rhythm with them, stamps as solemnly, and sings the meaningless words as fervently as the best of them. He has bridged an age of civilisation, and returned to barbarism in the debased jetsam of the river banks. It is the strange fascination of the Amazons.

CHAPTER XVI

In considering the native dances it must be remembered that the accompanying songs are essential elements of the entertainment: they mark the character of the dance; and equally, in considering the songs, it must be remembered that the imagination of the native never goes beyond the relation of the sexes. The Indian’s poetry is an inverted form of romanticism. Instead of seeking to give rhythmical expression to an idealisation, to find in the beauties of Nature an analogy to the realities of Life, he reverses the process. For instance, he views a ripe fruit, and it only suggests to him a pregnant woman. In all such natural phenomena as he recognises he notes but the crude, if possibly the scientific, origin. In the most ordinary conversation he refers to conditions that appear indecent in common print; they are, however, undetachable from him.

So it is that in his songs he debases idealism, does not elevate realism. His poetry is on a par with that of the music-hall comedian who conceals a mass of filth under avowedly innocent words—but the intention is very different. The Indian possesses no other verbal vehicle, knows no other source of inspiration. His imagination is bound by his vocabulary, as his vocabulary is limited by his imagination. Curiously enough the effect upon his audience is gained by the same means as those employed by the red-nosed singer[207] in the places of entertainment south of the Bridges, and is almost identical in degree. Some of the Londoners of the County Council schools have advanced ethically but little beyond their naked brothers of the Amazonian bush.

These Indians cannot be said to love music for its own sake. The use of music in any form is almost entirely ceremonial. They neither sing nor play instruments as a rule merely for pleasure. On the occasions of their festivals and dances, though, they give evidence of the possession of voices of considerable flexibility. They also display much ingenuity in the manufacture of their instruments, and, next to their weapons, the pan-pipes, flutes, and drums are most carefully fashioned and preserved. In fact, these take precedence over all domestic implements, and even most ornaments.

The native singing voice is loud, high, and shrill. The male leader—as a rule it is a man who is appointed, and he may be any one who knows the old songs—sings the solo, to give the chorus their cue, in a high falsetto which is very penetrating, and marks both time and tune for the others to follow in canon. The song is started softly, and gradually increases both in volume and speed. According to the circumstances, the subject, and the occasion, the men sing alone, the women sing alone, or the men and women combine as in the tribal dances. Most of the singing is done in unison, with a regular drone accompaniment from those not actually articulating the words. The songs are sung in regular time, to the accompaniment of stamping, but not with hand-clapping. The melodies are simple, and in the definite tribal songs consist of little more than a single phrase that seems to admit of no variation, and is repeated ad libitum, as, for example, Mariana Keibeio, a Boro tribal song. The tune of this, notated from memory, and in part from a phonograph record, runs approximately, so far as it can be rendered in our notation:

What this implies no Indian now knows, for with all[208] tribal songs the natives offer no explanation of their meaning or their origin. They are the songs that their fathers sang, and one can find no evidence of the amendation or emendation of the score on the part of their descendants. These tribal lays are so old that the words are obsolete and no longer understood by the singers; what is of importance is the rhythm, and to that, as is common with uncivilised peoples, the music is largely subordinated. It is but an accompaniment to the dancing. “The sense of time” in the Indian, as Stevenson noted among the South Sea Islanders, “is extremely perfect,” and one might complete the quotation and add, “I conceive in such a festival that almost every sound and movement fell in one.”[335] It is not an easy matter to discuss, because the English and the Indian standpoint are so diametrically opposite. So far as I could judge the tunes are usually in a minor key, both melody and harmony being of the simplest.

There are no love-songs among the Indians, for the poetic conception of love does not exist. Sacred songs and nursery songs are equally lacking. A mother never croons to her baby; she does not understand a lullaby. War-songs are merely the expression of the war-dance; they depend for their significance upon the words and for their ferocity upon the grim accentuation of the chorus.

At the time of the harvest of pine-apples, when the great dance is held, the men sing the challenge, and the women reply in their own defence. The songs are similar to that sung at the manioc-gathering dance, and I have previously tried to give some idea of such a song.

Apart from the traditional songs of the tribes, which are sacred and unchangeable, the Indians are very fond of a form of song which is really a game rather than a musical effusion. More correctly, perhaps, it should be called a ballad.[336] A leader of acknowledged fertility of imagination and fluency of expression is appointed, as for the Muenane[209] riddle dance, and will collect the members of the tribe for what is actually an impromptu dance. He, or she, will chant to an improvised air with a simple rhythm, while the chorus repeat each line or its burden as a refrain. Such songs give opportunity for all the wit of the tribe. They are designed either to honour or to ridicule the subject of the ballad. In reality a composition of this description takes hours to sing. The first wit propounds the question, the chorus repeat it, and the second wit then suggests the answer, which is again repeated by all amid much laughter, and the repetition is continued not once but twenty times, until the first wit breaks in with a new query. This is a very favourite game among the women.

The following is an attempt to suggest the song-words of a dance performed by some Witoto for my benefit, though I do the Indians too much justice, give too great an idea of continuity, in this version. There is no cohesion in their productions, and reiteration is the salient feature of all. The sound and the rhythm suggested to me at the time the metre of Hiawatha, so I give this song in an attempt at Hiawathian measure. But the adaptation is really too varied for the Indian original. I was outside the maloka when the women started—no men took part—and they danced in front of me. After a time I went inside, and the performers promptly followed me, and continued to dance in the central space of the house. Naturally not one word would have been sung if these dancers had known it would be interpreted to me.

This went on ad nauseam. The true object in all such songs is to bring in and discuss sexual matters, and no song has advanced far before it has become essentially carnal in idea and thoroughly licentious in expression.

Although instruments are always employed at the dances they do not seem to be introduced with any idea of organised accompaniment, but only to help swell the body of sound. The natives, being ignorant of the use of metal, have been forced to make their instruments entirely of vegetable substances; the only other material used is bone, human bone, bien entendu, and judging from a specimen presented by Robuchon to the British Museum, the shell of a small land tortoise. Their instruments of percussion are drums, castanets, and rattles: their wind-instruments are flutes and pan-pipes. Very rarely a solitary Indian may be found playing the flute, apparently for his personal amusement and solace. As a rule, it is merely used in combination with its fellows to increase the volume of sound without heed to its proper place in harmony.

The pan-pipes are the simplest of all instruments of Amazonian music to make, and are the most universally popular. They consist of a bundle of reeds—three, five, six, seven, ten, or even seventeen in number—bound together[211] with palm-fibre, or, on the Napo, with finely split cane. Although the pipes are cut to lengths yielding the necessary musical intervals, the number seems to be purely arbitrary. They are used in concert with all other instruments, and mark so much of tune as the Indian orchestra strives to attain. The pan-pipes shown in the accompanying illustration are Witoto instruments contrasted with the neater finish of one made on the Napo. The latter has the greater number of pipes, and all relatively smaller. There is nothing complicated about the make of either set. The cane pipes are cut immediately below the natural joint, and the node is thus made to serve as a stop.[337]

The ubiquitous bamboo also furnishes the material for a larger flute, and flutes or fifes are made out of the arm-bones of prisoners taken in battle. After the victim is killed and eaten the humerus is cleaned, its extremities opened, and the soft matrix scooped out. Finger-holes are bored in the shaft of the bone, usually three in number, but occasionally five. When human bones are not forthcoming the tribesman uses the leg-bone of a jaguar. This is opened at the end and furnished with a wax stop that leaves a small canal open to a three-cornered air-hole. Occasionally one of these flutes is made with both ends open, in which case a square or semicircular hole is cut out from the upper rim. The flute is held against the lower lip, and commonly has three, or more rarely four, sound-holes. Flutes are also made of heron-bones, open at the lower end, with a square air-hole, and generally four sound-holes. These have mouthpieces made of leaves, and their tones are exceedingly shrill. But the most curious instruments of which I have note are flutes made from skulls of animals, by covering them with pitch, and only leaving open the holes of the nose and the occipital bone. One hole is blown through, the other is the sounding-hole. Many of the Indian instruments, especially the bone flutes, are gaily ornamented with elaborate incised patterns that are dyed black and red with[212] vegetable extracts. The flutes are also adorned with tassels of cotton or palm-fibre.

The flute or fife is played from the extremity that is rudely fashioned into a mouthpiece. No native trumpets are provided with sliding tubes like the familiar trombone, and there is no plug in the mouth-hole. Nor are any of the Amazonian wind-instruments fitted with a vibrating reed. There are no bagpipes, and, in the regions I traversed, no stringed instruments. Certain tribes north of the Japura, notably the Desana, use whistles made of clay, which they employ both as alarm signals and as adjuncts to the dance.

Trumpets of bark and bamboo have an irregular distribution. Many tribes dispense with them on all ordinary occasions, and confine their use to Jurupari music. These sacred instruments constitute one of the most profound mysteries of the Amazon. They are lengthy affairs, made from the hollow stem of a palm, and fitted with a trumpet mouthpiece. The note is akin to that of the bassoon. These trumpets are tribal possessions, and are kept concealed at a distance from the maloka, in a hut which the women are never permitted to enter, and where the various secret paraphernalia connected with boy initiation—such as the whips of tapir hide—are stored. It is a capital crime for any woman even to set eyes upon them. The Jurupari trumpet is as tabu to Indian women as the bull-roarer of the Australian native is to his women-folk.[338] The Indian girls are brought up in the belief that the music of the trumpets is an essential element in the exorcism of the evil spirit from the body of the youthful initiate, and that any interference on their part must lead to the eternal residence of such spirit in the novice, to the consequent disaster of the tribe, and this belief holds good all their lives.[339] No sooner is Jurupari music heard approaching the maloka[213] than all the women and uninitiated hurry to the bush, and remain in hiding until the ceremony is concluded and the trumpets have been returned to their tabernacle. What the ceremony may be is held a profound secret, and the punishment for infringement is death.[340] As a rule two of these sacred trumpets are used, and they are tuned to the same pitch, though differing in their tone according to their length. They are only used north of the Japura; south of that river the tribes have no Jurupari music and only know them as employed ceremonially by their neighbours in connection with initiation secrets to frighten their women.

The Tukana when dancing use a trumpet alternately with their rattles; and the Indians north of the Japura have regular castanets, made of blocks of hard wood, which are manipulated with one hand, much in the manner that the nigger-minstrel plays the “bones.” All the tribes make rattles of small gourds by the simple method of partly filling the calabash with dried seeds, or fruit stones, and inserting a wooden handle so that they can be shaken in time to the dance. Some of these are of the roughest, the stick of the handle quite untrimmed; others are more finely finished, and the polished black surface of the gourd may be ornamented with designs in colour, or incised patterns. But these are by no means the only rattles used at a dance. The Indians have them of many kinds and descriptions. The smaller are worn as armlets, wristlets, leglets, and anklets. These are made of nuts, strung with coloured beads on palm fibre, and very carefully fashioned. The leg rattles are frequently handsome ornaments, the rich brown of the glossy nutshell making a splendid contrast with the blue or red of the Brummagem beads. The finest are made from a nut not unlike the Brazil nut of commerce in shape, but less angular. That shown in Plate XLIII. has natural groovings and marks which give the polished sections the appearance of being engraved. A section of the shell is cut off, thoroughly cleaned and polished, then attached by a short string of beads to the main leg- or arm-band[214] from which these nut sections hang bell-like. The arm rattles are made of smaller nuts, some are not unlike an oval hazelnut, flat on one side, cut in half and highly polished. The nut is, roughly speaking, some three-quarters of an inch across and long. These also are hung on threads of beads pendant a quarter of an inch apart from the connecting beaded string. Leg rattles are made of larger nuts, and one variety is made in the form of a bunch, not a band or chain. The beads used for these are blue and red in colour, and the bunch of nuts on their beaded strings is fastened with plaited palm-fibre beneath the knee. The whole effect is most distinctly ornamental. The jangle of two or three of these nutshell bells is not unpleasant: there is almost a tinkle in their clatter, but the volume of sound obtainable from a number of them is remarkable, and so is the precision with which they accentuate the rhythm of movement.

The Indians have no cymbals, gongs, or bells; but the drum is an important factor not only in native music, but in native life. The drum is the telegraph of the Amazons. In fact, the most remarkable of all the native instruments is the manguare or signal drum. Although the primary use of this drum is to signal, it is utilised on great occasions as an addition to the aboriginal orchestra. To make this important adjunct of the maloka two blocks of hard wood are chosen, some six feet in length, and about twenty-four inches in diameter. These blocks are very carefully hollowed out by means of heated stones that are introduced through a narrow longitudinal slit, and char the interior. Instead of endeavouring, however, as would be the case with an ordinary drum, to contrive as nearly perfect a cylinder as possible, the object of the signal-drum maker is to obtain a husk of varying thicknesses, so as to secure differences in note. Accordingly, with his rude implements, hot stones, capybara-tooth borer, and stone axe, he fashions the interior of the drum in such a manner that the outer shell, the sounding-board, varies in thickness from half an inch to four inches. Two blocks are used; the smaller is called the male, and the larger the female. The ends are[215] simply the wood of the tree which is not removed, all the hollowing being accomplished by means of the grooved slit. When finished these are suspended by withes at an oblique angle, one end much higher than the other—say six feet and three feet respectively from the ground. They hang from the rafters of the maloka, or from an upright frame, and present the appearance of two barrels surmounted by a narrow slit.[341]

The musician takes his stand between these drums and, with a wooden mallet headed with a knob of rubber, beats out his message or his tune. Altogether he has a range of four notes—two low ones on the female manguare, and two high ones on the male. On these he rings the changes with great rapidity, and produces a sound which, though not startlingly loud, has such penetrating qualities that it can be heard twenty miles away. He beats very quickly in short and long strokes, not unlike the Morse Code. By means of the manguare a skilled signaller can carry on a conversation as accurately as a telegraph operator at St. Martin’s-le-Grand, or a soldier with a heliograph—but how he does it is another secret of the Amazonian bush. When used for its proper[216] purpose as signal drum, the Boro and the Okaina can carry on conversations upon almost any subject within their ken. Other tribes are only able to distinguish between a warning of danger and an invitation to a dance. Brown could use the drum for small matters—he could hurry the bearers out of the bush for example. He said there was no code, but that the signaller tried to represent the sound of words with the drum, and Indians invariably told me that they made the words with the drum. However, with a language dependent on inflection, as theirs unquestionably is, there must be a code of some description.

India-rubber, which has added a new and awful terror to the life of the forest Indian, is only employed by these tribes to make the drum mallet, used with the manguare, and the latex for depilatory purposes. The Witoto call the mallet ouaki, the drum is hugwe.

These great signal drums have designs worked upon them in which the organs associated with the presumed sex of the instrument are prominent; and, after the manner of the natives, both instruments are invariably distinguished internally with the proper sexual characters, the female drum having two breasts pendant inside.

Even in the construction of a small playing drum much time and ingenuity are expended. First an aeta palm [342] is selected, cut down, and a section of the trunk laboriously hacked off. This section in turn is carefully hollowed, until only a thin shell remains. Some tribes use a section of bamboo in place of the hollowed palm, but these never secure so fine an instrument or so fine a note as the palm trunk makes. Over the two ends of the cylinder dried monkey skin is tightly stretched—preferably that of the howler monkey, as it is popularly supposed to produce a louder and more rolling sound. Some tribes then fasten across one end of this drum a very tight cord, into the centre of which has been tied a fine sliver of wood. By this means two notes are obtained—the open note where nothing interferes with the vibrations of the drumhead, and the closed note where the vibrations of the splinter[217] intersect those of the skin. A very inferior instrument is made with agouti skin over a bamboo cylinder. The drums made on the Napo River look very much like an English child’s toy drum, rather high and narrow, and, of course, made entirely without metal. The sides bulge slightly, and have crossed threads of fibre string. The vellum of the drumhead is kept in its place tautly by a close-fitting ring. These drums are usually decorated, and are objects of barter among many of the tribes. They are played with the fingers only, not with drumsticks or mallet.

CHAPTER XVII

Some travellers and writers have asserted that the Indian has no religion. In the vulgarly-accepted meaning of the word he may have none. There is great variation among the groups, the tribes even—I venture to say—among the individuals. So far as they believe in anything they believe in the existence of supreme good and bad spirits; but their beliefs are always indefinite, only half understood even by themselves. To a certain extent it is open to the medicine-man, the chief priest of their magico-religious system, to vary, or even to disregard any current belief. Among individuals are to be found sceptics of every grade. On the whole their religion is a theism, inasmuch as their God has a vague, personal, anthropomorphic existence. His habitat is above the skies, the blue dome of heaven, which they look upon as the roof of the world that descends on all sides in contact with the earth. Yet again it is a pantheism, this God being represented in all beneficent nature; for every good thing is imbued with his spirit, or with individual spirits subject to him.

In essence the idea of God is not that of a Supreme Being, and not entirely that of a Creator, but rather that of a Superior Being, possessed by an indulgent tolerance for all mankind. But he suggests only the negative idea. He[219] is a spirit of benevolent passivity. He is good for no other reason than that he is not evil. There is no particularised sanctity in his name, no adoration of his nebulous personality, only an unquestioning acquiescence in his benignity. True, he is held in high esteem, but that is because he permeates all in nature that is not inimical, and thus demonstrates his kindly disposition. If the harvest fails it is due to the malevolence of their Diabolus, or some of his agents, yet if it be a good one the credit is due not to the Good Spirit, but rather to the medicine-man for having with his magic frustrated the machinations of the Bad Spirit.

This Devil, or Bad Spirit, is affirmative in character, and is always active. He must not be invoked, but he is to be prevented by charms and magic from wreaking his vengeance on mankind, and must be placated at all costs as the supreme author of sickness and misfortunes, and the controlling power of malevolent nature.

Both the Good and the Bad Spirit are attended by lesser spirits with similar characteristics. So far as I could ascertain, there is no suggestion that any of these supernatural beings ever lived in this world, though they influence it so entirely, and can visit it at will.

The Good Spirit may be more potent, but he is certainly more remote than the Bad Spirit—too remote for ordinary people to be brought into any degree of contact with him whatsoever. His influence, his benefits, are, as he is, passive. The Bad Spirit, on the contrary, is of a ceaseless energy. His active influence is invariably present. He is always exerting his power in some definite, some concrete form. Poison, for example, is an active agent. The devil in it works vigorously to the undoing of his victim, definitely exercises a deleterious effect upon his enemy, man. So, too, the rocks that bar the way upstream are more active than passive. They repel, they may defeat the traveller, and, therefore, are to be regarded also as the active agents of a hostile power.

It is noteworthy in this connection that the Bad Spirit may be materialised sufficiently to be able to carry a child bodily away, or to steal a woman, should she stray out into[220] the forest by herself.[343] For this reason usually no woman will go alone into the bush, she will take a companion with her, especially at night, for the demon is popularly supposed to be unable to tackle more than one at a time, even if the second be only a young child.[344] Women who run away from their husbands are consequently said by them to have been taken by the devil. This is a favourite theory, as the man may thereby avoid the censure or hostility of the tribe. The men also do not care to be far in the bush alone, and after dark nothing will induce an Indian voluntarily to embark on the risk of adventuring into the forest by himself.

One of the first difficulties met with when dealing in detail with the religion of these peoples is their refusal to use the true name of any spirit or deity. This has root in the same reason that ordains they shall never disclose their own names, nor voluntarily except on rare occasions, that is without questioning, the name of their tribe.

In the Boro language we have the word Neva as an equivalent for God, the good or sympathetic deity, and the word Navena for the Devil, the great evil or antipathetic spirit, in fact the negative of all represented by Neva. But inasmuch as neva stands also for the sun, the dawn, and the morning, while navena is used for any spirit however humble—whether the soul-part of a thing, animate or inanimate, or the ghost or disembodied soul of the dead—we have a right to postulate that such are not the true, or supposed self-appellated names of these deities, but those that may be used without offence, and therefore free of the consequent evils that the mention of the true name would entail on the users.

To give another example: In Witoto Usiyamoi has the same meaning as God in ordinary parlance; Taife is the Devil, whereas Taifeno is any bad spirit whatever. But, again, the Taife, the dread of these people, the all-pervading evil genius, is named Apuehana, a word never pronounced above a whisper. Here then we may have reached a true secret name.

The Boro Neva and the Witoto Usiyamoi are the Tupano of the Tupi-Guarani tribes of the east and the Negro River. This we find is the Apunchi-Yaya of the Guichua of the west, the Cachimana of the Orinoco. Navena and Taife or Apuehana are the same as the Jurupari of the north, the Iolokiamo of the Orinoco, and the Locazy of the Ticuna.[345]

To return to the personal characteristics of the two regnant powers, the Good and the Bad Spirit, the former, though vague, is yet an omnipotent tempestipresent deity, and, although passive, something more than sympathetic and benevolent. He made the world, or it might be more correct to put it that he permitted it to be created, for his amusement and pleasure. When not otherwise engaged in his mysterious happy hunting-grounds he keeps a watch over earth and over mankind. But so great is he that no prayer or invocation is offered to him, nor, were it offered, could he be thereby influenced.[346] It is because he is so big a Chief that his attitude is entirely passive. Once Neva had forgotten the puny human factor, so he took the guise of a man and came to earth. The open spaces—the natural savannahs or geological outcrops—are where he spoke to the Indians, and it is a sign of his speaking and of his erstwhile presence that these are now open to the sun and the sky. But one Indian vexed Neva, the Good Spirit, and he was wrath with all men, so he went again to sit on the roof of the world. But before he departed he whispered into the ears of all the tigers that they were to kill the Indians and their children, and that is why the tigers to-day are wicked and sometimes are the habitations of the most evil spirits. Before this time the tigers were good to men, and they hunted together like brothers; they lived together in the houses; they ate and drank and licked tobacco in amity round the fire.[347]

Such, so far as I could gather, is the Indian’s belief. The tale was told me by a Boro, but the belief is approximately the same with all these tribes. On the occasion of hearing this story of the visit of the Good Spirit to earth I related, to the best of my ability, the Christian story. The result may be of value in determining the possession of logic by the Indian. After they had listened to my story the tribesmen held a tobacco palavar, which lasted some six hours. Then the chief—the medicine-man was surly and remote—appeared, and this was the burden of his wisdom. His own people were greater than the people from the clouds—the white people—for the Good Spirit, Neva himself, came to the Indians, whereas only the Young Chief visited the clouds. And the Indians were better than the white people, for the white people killed the Young Chief, but the Indians listened to Neva, and only one among them vexed him.

I had heard the story of the Good Spirit’s manifestation before, but doubted its genuineness, until one day when I inquired of a Boro what a savannah was he answered me that it was where Neva spoke to the Indians. When I questioned him further he told me the above. It is impossible to say how far this story may be a genuine folk-tale, how far it is a perverted version of the Biblical account. Tales travel far. They are adopted from one people to another, with resultant variations. We know that the Jesuits penetrated to the Rio Negro as early as 1668-69. There have been missionaries of that Society on the Napo. But I met with no traces of them on the upper waters, nor have any of these peoples anything in the least resembling the Christian symbol in their designs. One might expect to find so simple a figure as a cross reproduced in native art if once known, but it certainly is not. On the face of it we may here be dealing with a variant that has[223] passed from tribe to tribe, that has trickled through centuries, to reappear now as a tribal tradition among peoples who have never been in any direct contact with Christian influences.[348]

As regards the rule of these supreme spirits over the lesser spirits of good and evil they stand in the relation of great chief. The good spirits are the spirits of trees that bear edible fruits, of the trees from which arrows are made, of the Coca erythroxylon, of the astringent properties of various herbs, of the medicine-man’s magic stones that may be used as a prophylactic. These are not only the subjects of the Good Spirit, they were made by him. He made all the good things of the forest; and he also made the rivers and the skies. The Bad Spirit placed the rocks in the rivers, the poison in the mandiocca and in all noxious growths of the bush. He made the liana to trip the unwary walker, in short all things hurtful. These malevolent elements are the bad spirits which, as the name in Witoto appears to imply—the Taifeno,—are all subject to the Taife. As the Good Spirit lives above the world so the Bad Spirit inhabits the nether regions. The lesser spirits of evil go to him by way of the earth holes,[349] for these are the passages to his kingdom. The visit of the Good Spirit to earth as a corporate being was a unique event never repeated, but the Bad Spirit wanders with his myrmidons in the forest every night. Sometimes he takes the form of a tiger, or other fierce animal; sometimes, as alternative to the tiger-lifting theory, he resembles a man who can disappear at will. He imitates the call of the hunter who has found game, or the call of an animal to be hunted. He entices his victim by these and similar contrivances to venture deeper and deeper into the bush, until the wretched wanderer is utterly lost. According[224] to tribal belief he is then destroyed, or spirited bodily away. As has been said, the Bad Spirit never appears to more than one at a time, and that one is usually spirited away, so can give no account of the appearance, but as confirmation of his real presence an Indian will sometimes whisper the evil name as he points out the track of an abnormal-sized tapir, which is curiously reminiscent to the European of the cloven hoof of his own Devil.

The child-lifting story is a favourite one, and some amount of corroborative evidence is forthcoming, for in the awful loneliness of the bush a child naturally would become half demented with fear and apprehension, and if ever found again would be only too honestly willing to believe he had been in the very real clutches of a very real devil. The juvenile adventurer, answering in this way to leading questions, gives to these simple people all the proof they look for, and adds an immediate and local authenticity to the accepted myth.

As there is no prayer to the Good Spirit, so there is no supplication to the Bad. The medicine-man, as I have said, invokes neither; he appeals to neither; but he attempts by magic to force the Bad Spirit into quiescence, to discover some more potent influence that shall make him powerless to hurt, for unless coerced he is all-powerful.

Indefinite as these beliefs in a deity, good or evil, may be, faith as to the after-life of the soul is possibly still vaguer. Yet faith there certainly is, for the existence of the spirits of the dead is an accepted fact, acknowledged in the Indian ritual of burial.

Temporarily disembodied spirits, that is to say the souls of living men, with power to send them forth out of their material bodies.

Any of these four classes of spirits are good or bad,[225] according as they are benevolently or malevolently inclined.

These Indians all believe in the temporary transmission of the disembodied soul into the form of an animal, bird, or reptile, not a regular and enforced series of such transmissions. This temporary transmission is for the pursuance of a certain aim, perhaps for some indefinite length of time. It appears that the spirit has the power of transmigration into other animal bodies, or back again to its extra-mundane form at will. Whether the animal is human, whether, when so invaded, it incorporates two spirits and becomes dual-souled, the Indian does not relate.

Man’s soul in Indian belief is immortal, that is to say it exists as long as it is felt to exist, whilst it continues to appear in the dreams, in the thoughts of the survivors—for so long, in fact, as it is remembered. Surely this is immortality. A thing forgotten has never existed; and, per contra, the soul of a remembered being lives for ever. The disembodied spirit or ghost lingers near the body after death, in the woods near the house, or may even lodge in the house itself. And then indefinitely, indeterminately, after the body is buried the soul wanders farther afield, and goes at length to the happy grounds of the Good Spirit. Among some tribes this paradise is located above the skies, among others it is away up some river, in the far and mythical distance. The latter heaven is situated, as has already been mentioned, upstream, and that, in this country where the trend of the land is north-west and south-east, is also approximately towards the setting sun.[350]

This land of the After-Life is a diminutive replica of the ordinary world, but with evil things eliminated and joyful things emphasised. All is on a lower scale, stunted forests and pigmy game. This idea of a world in miniature approximates to the Malay conception of a spirit, the “diminutive but exact counterpart of its own embodiment,” appertaining to all animal, vegetable, and mineral bodies.[351] The Indian[226] miniature world would thus be, it seems, constructed of the spirits of the material world. Colour is given to this theory by the fact that individual possessions are buried with the dead, and the Kuretu confess that this is done to prevent the return of the soul in search of them. Were such properties to pass into the possession of survivors the soul part of each object, needed to represent it in the spiritual world, would be detained in the material world. Burial sets it at liberty, presumably, to accompany the soul part of its owner, to take in the miniature world of the After-Life a position corresponding in every detail to that which has been held here on earth. The soul is pictured as the body, in miniature also, visible or invisible at will, for these people, like the majority of many of a higher culture, are unable to imagine the soul except in some material guise.[352] Life in this enigmatic sphere has everything most prized in this world. Hunting is fruitful always; women are beautiful and amenable, and the men are all the old familiar friends of earth. The means of attainment to this desirable state are so vague as to be unassignable. Good and evil have no part in this scheme of heavenly philosophy. Broken tabus, crimes against tribal jurisprudence, apparently bring only temporary evil influences into play. Their punishment is immediate and material. The happy land is open to all the tribe with whom the Good Spirit is not vexed. It is closed to all their enemies.

These lost souls, the spirits of those divinely damned, must still frequent the earthly forests, or perhaps ally themselves with the spirits of evil and wander down the holes in the earth to join the legions of the nether world.

I have heard, but not very definitely, of the Zaparo belief that the good and brave souls will pass into birds of beautiful plumage and feed on the most delicate fruits, while the bad and cowardly are condemned to a future existence in the guise of objectionable reptiles.[353]

This belief in, at least, a partial presence of the spirits of the dead has possibly a bearing on the Indian dislike, to use[227] no stronger term, of mentioning his proper name. In the case of some tribes, as has been noted, the name of a dead man is given as a special honour to his greatest friend among the survivors. With other tribes names of the living may, and probably have once been those of persons now dead. To mention such a name aloud might conceivably be to attract the attention of the defunct erstwhile owner.[354] Therefore the name is only whispered, lest the spirit hearing it might come and bother the speaker or the individual named.[355] There is, of course, the further reason that the knowledge of a man’s name gives an enemy power to work him magical evil. But that is a point already dealt with, except in so far as it argues some identity of the name with the essential ego.

Not only do the Indians hold that a man’s soul leaves his body at death, but, further, they believe that it may do so during life for a limited period. We have examples in sleep, they argue, when the spirit is out of the body and wanders about; for in dreams, they say, the soul passes through the mouth and has adventures in the outer world.[356] Dreams are, in fact, a portion of the man’s real life. His spirit has ventured forth and actually gone through the experience his fancy paints. They realise, therefore, that individuality is not in the body itself, but in the spirit that inhabits the body. So if a man dreams he will not hesitate to declare that he has done what he dreamed he was doing.

This is an example of involuntary disembodiment, differing only from actual death in that it is of temporary[228] duration. The soul has gone quietly, and will return. But if the soul make a violent effort to escape that apparently entails fatal consequences, for the Indians declare when anybody sneezes it is the soul attempting to leave the body and so cause death.

Voluntary disembodiment is believed to be possible in certain favoured cases.[357] This power is said to be possessed by the medicine-man. He may free his spirit for magical purposes, to fight unseen enemies on better terms, or for the pursuit of some nefarious end. He may either remain disembodied and invisible, or lurk for a time in the form of some animal or object, a tree, a stone—where stones exist—or even in the wind, the rain, or the river. The layman Indian, though perfectly aware that he cannot of his own accord and free-will loose his own soul from its fleshy trappings to adventure in some foreign sort, is quite willing to believe that other more fortunate mortals can accomplish a feat to him so impossible.[358] No alternative explanation offers to his mind to elucidate sundry mysterious happenings.

Quite distinct from these disembodied spirits are the extra-mundane spirits, good and bad, that visit this world and benefit or plague its inhabitants. These may invade all natural objects, and, especially those evilly disposed, will work unceasingly as agents for the supreme powers to whom they owe allegiance. The bad spirits haunt the darkness, they lurk in the recesses of the woods, find a habitation in deep waters, and ride to destruction on the floods. Danger from them threatens the Indian at every turn. He can only be protected by the counter-magic of his medicine-man. For fear of possible mischief at their malicious hands no Indian will bathe at night unless supported by the presence of companions. If he lose his way in the forest it is due to their machinations;[359][229] and all that goes amiss in this by no means best-of-all-possible worlds is at least in part engineered by them, either at the suggestion of an enemy, or from their own innate badness of heart.

Sickness again is a concrete entity. The Indian knows not the microbe of science, but he recognises the existence of a definitely hostile and active enemy in the presence of disease. It is a spirit that wanders about, and at the instigation of an enemy attacks individuals or tribes. The attack is an actual invasion. Illness is due to the presence in the flesh of the sick person of a foreign and inimical body.[360]

Before a thunderstorm the Indian believes that the air is full of spirits, and the medicine-man is requisitioned literally “to clear the atmosphere.” Thunder is the noise of evil spirits making a turmoil and fuss; whilst, according to Bates, any inexplicable noises are made by another of this destructive band, Curupira, the wild spirit of the woods.[361] Thunder probably means that an enemy is sending sickness to destroy the tribe. Therefore if a man is ill a flash of lightning is quite sufficient to kill him through sheer fright and shock.

These extra-mundane spirits may be said to be the spirits of particularised evils, just as the Taife, the Navena, the Jurupari, is the supreme spirit of all evil.[362]

With the final division of the spirit world is enwrapped the total philosophy, the innermost meanings, in fact both the whole and the origin of the Indian magico-religious system. As men have souls—so truly felt in all—what is more natural than that animals who move and breathe, who live and die, who in many respects are more powerful,[230] more clever than men, should be assigned souls also by the Indian’s primitive reasoning. I say soul deliberately, for Indian metaphysicians do not differentiate between soul and spirit—they are one and indivisible, the miniature self that may be seen in the pupil of a living eye but has vanished from the eye of the dead. The question of souls other than human is to the Indian too obvious to need elucidation; it admits, indeed, of no argument. There is a degree of belief in a spirit, “a transcendental x,”[363] in all objects, even those that are inanimate. What lives and grows must have a spirit. What can interfere with, or affect man in any way must possess some occult influence, some mysterious personality, that works for or against him, especially if that object be in any degree unfamiliar or abnormal in appearance. All these things, vegetable growths, rocks, are to the Indian as we have repeatedly seen, active agents in the scheme of things, and as such must also possess the intangible ego, the spiritual essence, that is the soul of all earthly forms. Evidence as to animistic beliefs among the Indians is universal and overwhelming. A point of interest to the psychologist comes in with the problem whether the belief that undoubtedly exists is a belief in a duality of spirits in one envelop, or whether, when the supernatural spirit, or the disembodied spirit of a man, is transmitted into extra-human forms, it being the stronger can oust the natural spirit of the animal or object which is entered, and if so what becomes of the finally evicted spirit. On this point I have unfortunately no information to adduce.

While these beliefs are in the main general among all the language-groups of the Issa-Japura regions, those of the Boro-speaking tribes are the most intricate. They have more definite notions of the spirit-world, a greater range of theories as to the powers and extent of supernatural phenomena. They fear the local devils more, take greater care to appease them and to avoid rousing their hostility. This is the natural result of the increased isolation secured by the Boro tribes. They have been influenced less by the[231] outer world than the Witoto, for example. Both Boro and Andoke tribes invariably keep aloof so far as may be from any stranger.

Two of the forest denizens, the jaguar and the anaconda, occupy outstanding positions in this connection with spirits and magic to all the other beasts of the wild. Any animal may be utilised by a spirit as a temporary abiding-place, but the “tiger” and the great water-snake independently of such spiritual possession are magical beasts. Tales gather round them; differential treatment is their portion. As regards the jaguar this may be due to the fact that it is seldom seen, and therefore the more mysterious in its evil doings. It is also a dangerous beast, bold and fearless, and to be dreaded for this if for no other reason. But the anaconda is no such aggressive enemy of man. Yet, though the Indian is an omnivorous eater, he will never kill either the tiger or the anaconda for food.[364]

The anaconda is looked upon as an evil spirit. It is the embodiment of the water spirit, the Yacu-mama,[365] whose coils may bar the passage of the streams, and the Indian goes in terror of it, nor would he bathe in its vicinity, though, so far as my experience went, the gigantic reptile will not attack human beings unprovoked.[366] The Yacu-mama, as the name signifies, is the mother, the spirit of the streams. Among some tribes, though not in my field of exploration, a relationship is held to exist between this water-spirit and Jurupari, so it is said.[367] It occupies the place in Amazonian folk-tales filled by the sea-serpent of Europe; while the manatee and the dolphin are the Amazonian mermaids. The cow-fish, or manatee,[368] is an object of wonder on the main stream, but is unknown on the upper rivers. I have never seen one nearer than the mouth of the Issa river. The dolphin also is not found in the higher waters. On the lower rivers it[232] abounds, but, according to Bates, no Indian willingly kills one; and though dolphin fat makes good oil the belief is current that when burnt in lamps it causes blindness.[369]

Tigers are not killed unless they be the aggressors, that is to say they are never killed wantonly. The reason for this is not cowardice, but fear of further aggression on the part of the tiger family, or from the family of the medicine-man who has assumed tiger form. Indians look upon animals as having the same instincts as themselves, and therefore capable of a prolonged blood-feud with humans who may have wronged them. The tribesman is accordingly anxious not to provoke war with the tiger tribe, but if Indians are challenged by the death of one of their number the case is altered, and they will immediately accept combat. To hunt a jaguar without provocation merely for food or for sport would be foolishly to kindle the animosity of the whole tiger family, to rouse the violent enmity of the wandering spirit domiciled for a time in the body of the hunted beast. But when an Indian is killed, or a child lost—and tigers are usually credited with the destruction of any child missing from its home—the medicine-man is called upon, and he proceeds to discover that it was a tribal enemy working in disguise, probably the spirit of a hostile medicine-man, intent to destroy the tribe by thus slaying potential warriors or mothers of warriors. The tiger is in these circumstances to be treated as a human enemy. A big tribal hunt is organised, and if the quarry be secured a feast of tiger-flesh follows, a feast of revenge, very similar in detail to the anthropophagous orgies already described.[370] At no other time does the Indian eat jaguar meat. The tiger-skin becomes the property of the medicine-man, whose magic has thus triumphed over the magic of a rival.

I have already noted that anything abnormal or unknown is regarded with suspicious dread. My camera was naturally endowed by Indian imagination with magical properties, the most general idea among the Boro being that it was an infernal machine, designed to steal the souls of[233] those who were exposed to its baleful eye. In like manner my eyeglass was supposed to give me power to see what was in their hearts. When I first attempted to take photographs the natives were considerably agitated by my use of a black cloth to envelop the evil thing; and when my own head went under it they had but one opinion, it also was some strange magic-working that would enable me to read their minds, their unprofessed intentions, and steal their souls away; or rather become master of their souls, and thus make them amenable to my will at any time or in any place. This was undoubtedly due in part to the fact that I was able to reproduce the photograph. The Indian was brought face to face with his naked soul, represented by the miniature of himself in the photographic plate. One glance, and one only, could he be induced to give. Never again would he be privy to such magic. The Witoto women believed that I was working more material magic, and feared should they suffer exposure to the camera that they would bear resultant offspring to whom the camera—or the photographer—would stand in paternal relation.

To cite another instance of the attitude of the Indian towards the abnormal. A certain Witoto tribe have a tree that they regard as an object almost of veneration. This palm, as may be seen in the photographs, has a forked stem, the trunk dividing into two some few feet above the ground. I met with no more formulated sign of tree-worship than this. Unquestionably, though they did not worship—for as I have said, these Indians worship nothing—the Witoto looked upon this tree as a thing to be respected, prized, and if it were not meted proper treatment perchance to be definitely feared.[371]

Finally, in addition to all these spirits good or evil, the tribes south of the Japura are concerned with the sun and the moon. These are venerated, the sun as a great and sympathetic spirit, but not an incarnation of the great Good Spirit, the moon as his wife, who is sent betimes by the sun into the heavens at night to prevent the evil spirits from depopulating the world. Of the stars these people[234] seem to have the vaguest ideas, and only one Boro explained to me that they were the souls of the chiefs and of the great men of his tribe.[372]

The Indian lives in a world of imagined dangers, over and above the real ones that confront him at every turn. There is possible menace in any place, dormant hostility in all surrounding nature, active menace in the unfamiliar and unknown. One might expect to find that he decked his person and his belongings with an unlimited number of charms, to protect against these battalions of evil. But it is not so. The Tukano do, it is said, place certain green, sweet-smelling herbs under the girdle as a love charm, to attract the opposite sex, but nothing of this sort is known south of the Japura, and charms, as the western world knows them, hardly exist. I know of none beyond the medicine-man’s magical stones, the iguana-skin wristlets of the men and the wooden ring placed on a child’s arm, which appear to partake of the nature of charms. Magic is to be met by magic, not by material properties. The hostile evils that threaten a man are only to be turned aside by the exercise of more powerful anti-hostility on the part of his medicine-man. But the Indian must go warily, observe signs and portents, pay due heed to good and evil omens. He must, for example, never shoot a poisonous snake with a blow-pipe. Should he do so one poison will neutralise the other, and destroy not only the poison on the arrow that wounded the snake, but also all poison whatever that was in his possession at the time. It is magic against magic.

As an instance of the Indian belief in omens, I remember that once a small species of wild turkey alighted in a clearing, and kept running round and round in circles. This was taken by the Indians to mean that people were coming to the maloka who might be either friends or enemies. This gave rise to an excited discussion as to which would be the more likely event of the two. It so happened that a party of friendly Indians did arrive that same evening. Casement[235] relates how a large wood ibis descended among a crowd of Witoto and Muenane in the compound at Occidente.[373] A Muenane wished to shoot the bird, and when persuaded to leave it unmolested, expostulated that the ibis must have been sent by their enemy the Karahone to bring disaster upon them. As a rule, it strikes me, an enemy would appear in a less kindly guise than that of an ibis. In my case no attempt was made by the Okaina to interfere with the bird in any way, in fact it was looked upon as a friend who came to give due notice of approaching visitors, and therefore was to be regarded with gratitude.

CHAPTER XVIII

Darkness is full of mysterious horrors to the Indian, nor can one wonder that he fills with imaginary demons the weird and terrifying solitudes of the bush by night. The children are openly afraid of the dark, because of the tigers that may then be prowling about, let alone less substantial perils. Adults are not so frank with regard to their fears, but as a matter of course all occupations cease at sun-down, and every one makes for the sheltered warmth of the maloka. There, by the flickering firelight, after the contents of the family hot-pot have been discussed, long tales are told. First one and then another takes up the burden of recital. The chatter dies slowly, maybe it will linger on by the fire of some verbose story-teller, till the chill of coming dawn brings the sleepers from their hammocks to stir the smouldering embers into a blaze, and to gather round them waiting for daybreak to dispel the evil agents of the night.

The tales are endlessly long, and so involved that they are utterly unintelligible to the stranger until they have been repeated many times. Then the drift of myth and tradition, the meaning of fable and story, may be broadly grasped. To win it comprehensively in detail is a matter of time, patience, and intimate knowledge of the speaker’s tongue. Moreover, the tales have such numerous variations, and are so grafted the one on to the other, according to the momentary fancy of the narrators, that it is exceedingly[237] difficult to differentiate between a variant of a known story and one that may in its essentials have been hitherto unheard.

“It is,” postulates Dr. Rivers, “not the especially familiar and uniform which becomes the object of myth.”[374] The mythopœic influence of that which is seldom seen would lead us to expect that among these Indians, sunk in “the gloom of an eternal under-world of trees,”[375] the heavenly bodies would play a prominent part in tribal folk-tale and myth. But so far as the stars are concerned this is not the case at all;[376] they seem to be ignored; and, as regards the sun and moon, it is the sun—contrary to usual tropical custom—that is the most important, the moon—as with more northern peoples—occupies the subordinate position of wife. Her inconstant appearances are accounted for by the suggestion mentioned in the previous chapter that she is sent periodically by the sun her husband to drive away the evil spirits of the night that await the stray or heedless loiterers in the forest thickets. But this protective character is denied to the moon by other tribes, and some South American Indians will hide young infants lest the moon should injure them.[377]

What I cannot but consider the most important of their stories are the many myths that deal with the essential and now familiar details of everyday life in connection with the manihot utilissima and other fruits. The tale that follows does not purport to be a literal translation of the myth as related to me, or in my hearing. I have merely attempted to put together, infinitely more concisely than any Indian raconteur would ever dream of doing, the various details of the local story and belief:

This story is utterly different from one Spruce heard from more northern tribes at Saō Gabriel. The Barré story has it that a bird discovered to the Indians the use of the mandiocca, then a great and solitary tree. All the tribes came to procure the roots, and when none were left carried off branches; hence the varieties of mandiocca now grown.[380]

Deluge traditions are to be found among practically all the tribes. I repeatedly asked questions on this point, and invariably found, as other travellers had discovered previously elsewhere,[381] that the Indians would tell of a flood that drove their fathers in the long, long ago to seek refuge in canoes, for all the earth was under water. But though Mr. Joyce considers it “strange how this deluge myth not only pervades practically the whole of the Andean region of South America, but extends also to many regions in the northern portion of[239] the Continent,” it must be remembered that inundations are frequent in these regions, and a great one probably occurs every few decades. It would only be strange were there no deluge myths. As Sir Everard im Thurn has so aptly put it, when “the Indian tells in his simple language the tradition of the highest flood which covered all the small world known to him, and tells how the Indians escaped it, it is not difficult to realise that the European hearer, theologically prejudiced in favour of Noah, … is apt to identify the two stories.”[382]

With the possible exception of the Eldorado fable, there is no South American legend that has excited so much interest and speculation as the story of the warrior women who in some mysterious forest fastness dwelt apart from men, cultivated masculine attributes, and destroying the male brought up the female progeny resultant from the yearly exception to their celibate rule,[383] to be women of the same stern pattern as their extraordinary selves. Some writers would make them a seventeenth century edition of the modern suffragette, rebel against the “tyranny” of man—and with certainly better reason for rebellion.[384] The story has been treated as mere Spanish romance,[385] or a mistake on the part of the invaders due to the custom of wearing the hair long among many of the tribes.[386] It has been taken to be a deliberate fabrication on the part of Pizarro to explain his failure, a temptation to which Sir Walter Raleigh himself also fell victim.[387] Be it what it may, the tale was told, the land known as the land of these women warriors, and their name of Amazons bestowed upon the great river. The tale of warrior women is, however, not confined to the forests of the Amazon. One comes therewith to the question of nomenclatory origin. The Baron de Santa-Anna Nery devotes the first ten pages of his Land of the[240] Amazons to this discussion. It seems to be a case of where doctors disagree.[388] But at least the tale, Asiatic, African, or autochthonic, was localised here, and stories of feminine prowess in the field continued to be quoted even in the nineteenth century. Wallace himself mentions “traditions” said to be extant among the Indians themselves, of “women without husbands.”[389] This is no proof of the local existence at any time of celibate women warriors. The tradition may well exist, the only curiosity again would be if it did not. For three centuries at least the invading white man has talked of, and inquired for, a tribe of such warrior women. It takes less than this to start the most robust of folk-tales. A world agape like the Athenians of old for some new thing, some tale to vary the oft-told stories, does not require three centuries to adopt a novel romance. The question “do such things exist?” is not asked long before it ceases to be a question and becomes an assertion. The more positive the assertion the greater will be the wonder of the tale. When the wonder is sufficient it will be established as a current myth. I do not therefore deny that such a tale is told, or at least may be told, but for my own part I never heard mention of it. Spruce speaks of women assisting their men to repulse an attack on tribal head-quarters,[390] but no story of any woman fighting, or having done so at any time, was ever told me. Moreover it should not be forgotten in this connection that all weapons are strictly tabu to women.

A story that is prevalent throughout South America tells of a race of white Indians who sleep in the daytime, and only go abroad at night. This tale was laughed at when repeated at a recent meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, but it is certainly in existence among the tribes,[391] and Crevaux[241] states that the Ouayana will not go near one river, “à cause des singuliers habitants qui habiteraient près des sources … des Indiens aux chevaux blonds qui dorment le jour et marchent toute la nuit.”[392]

Of tales as to the reputed origin of any tribe I have no note, though when I cross-questioned a Boro tribe as to why a certain district was almost uninhabited, they told me that the reason was as follows:

The Amazonians have stories equivalent to many worldwide tales, such as that of the lion and the mouse, only in the forest version it is the jaguar who enacts the lion’s part, while the mouse is replaced by the ant, a liana serves instead of a net to keep the great beast captive, and there are other correspondingly local and numerous variations. The hare and the tortoise fable has its counterpart in the story of a race between the deer and the tortoise. The ramifications of this tale are most intricate. These stories are very dissimilar in detail, so far as I could gather, from their equivalents in the Old World, but in each case the same principle is evolved: by a widely different route Old and New reach eventually an identical goal.

There is a marked prevalence of animal stories, tales—and this is a point not to be overlooked—of the familiar forest beasts, the birds and the reptiles of everyday life. In these the birds and beasts have certain accepted characteristics, they stand in the Indian folk-tales as representing definite abstract ideas. Thus, as with us, the tortoise is crafty and slow; the ant and the bee are typical of industry. The snake, that is to say the poisonous snake, in Amazonian myth, as in Biblical story, represents evil, the evil eye. The tapir stands for blindness and stupidity, while cunning and deceit are represented by the dog. These bush dogs approximate to our fox, and like Reynard have sharp up-standing ears. They prowl round the maloka, and will clear off anything they can find, even in close vicinity to the house. The agouti, or capybara, takes with the Indian the place held in African folk-tales by the hare. He is the wittiest of beasts, can outmanœuvre all the others, and is the practical joker of the forest. The boa-constrictor, unlike the poisonous snake, is not evil; it exemplifies the silent and the strong. The chattering parrot represents irresponsibility; it is a woman in disguise, and is certain in Indian animal tales to be noisy and unreliable, and probably will betray some secret. The peccary is for constancy, the hawk for cunning, the sloth for laziness, and the tiger for bravery. The monkey stands for tenacity of life, which is probably due to the fact that owing to constriction of the muscles its hold on a branch does not relax for some time after death.

These characteristics, however, do not appear to govern in any way the question of food tabu concerning the respective animals. On the contrary, the reasons alleged for such tabu often appear to be, if anything, opposed to what one would expect to find from the foregoing classification. It is the material, not the abstract characteristic with which the tabu deals. Moreover the tabu varies. Irrespective of those connected with birth, at certain times of the year there is a restriction, if it does not amount to an actual prohibition or a tabu, with regard to eating heavy meats. Simson assigns such avoidance to a belief current among[244] Indians “that they partake of the nature of the animal they devour.” This is the case professedly for any tabu on foods for women with child, but the reason given to me for general restriction as regards, say, tapir flesh, was not that the eater would be affected by any characteristic of the animal, material or spiritual, but that the tapir meat if eaten at forbidden seasons was very bad, that is to say unhealthy, and would be the cause of certain skin diseases. It probably would be. Tiger meat, as already explained, is treated much as human flesh is treated. Apart from the tiger, the meat of larger game will, it is sometimes averred by other tribes, make the eater gross and unwieldy.[400] In connection with this question of big game and food, Spruce refers to a “superstition” among the Uaupes Indians that may be a possible survival of a totemic system, though he does not advance the theory. “How should we kill the stag?” they say, “he is our grandfather.”[401] However this may be with other language-groups, among those of the Issa-Japura regions there is no trace of any totemic system, except in so far as that boys and girls are named, as already stated, after birds and flowers respectively. Animal names are made use of occasionally, but only as names of contempt and ridicule. These Indians look upon all animals as enemies. To suggest that any animal is an ancestor would be the direst of insults to people who so strenuously try to avoid all likeness to the brute creation. One need only refer to such customs as the killing of one of twins, or depilation, to give the lie to any theory that would seek to trace in Boro story—for example—for sign of suggested descent from any eponymous animal. Relationship is traced indeed only so far as memory serves; that is to say the oldest man may relate how he remembers his grandfather telling who his grandfather’s father was. Also there are invariably tales of bygone chiefs, great warriors whose deeds and characters are outstanding enough to be remembered.

A story is told of a small fish that is to be found in these rivers which may be fact or may be fable. All Indians say that this fish is a parasite that will find its way into the intestines of human beings when they are bathing. This belief is noted elsewhere, and I merely refer to it here because it is so universally credited without—so far as I could ascertain—an atom of corroborative evidence.

CHAPTER XIX

In speech, as in everything else, the forest Indian is confined within the narrow limits of his immediate surroundings. Unlike the nomadic Indian of the plains, he passes his entire existence in an area little larger than an English parish. He has almost no commercial dealings with his neighbours. The only fresh blood that penetrates his tribe is brought in by the immature children taken prisoners in war. Like the landscape his imagination owns no perspective, no horizon. In the Amazonian bush an Indian may live and die without ever having gazed upon a terrestrial object at the distance of a mile. His mode of life, a community within a single house, under a single roof, makes of household words a dialect, and with the passing of a generation makes that dialect a language.

In a society where each tribe is complete in itself and at deadly enmity with all its neighbours, and where writing is unknown, language must naturally undergo very rapid, very definite change. Moreover Indians will not voluntarily speak the language of other Indians. Thus the Amazonian natives use no common tongue, and there is little in the vocabularies so far collected to explain either the origin or the relationship of the existing dialects. Tribes divided by the breadth of a narrow river speak languages that are[247] mutually unintelligible. On the other hand, tribes distant some hundreds of miles from each other possess a language with a common root, which is fundamentally different from those in use among all the intervening peoples.

So far as I could classify them, the language-groups of this district fall under thirteen headings. By group I comprehend all tribes speaking a language with common roots, though the dialects may vary considerably. These groups, and the approximate number of Indians in each, are as follows:

According to Koch-Grünberg all the tribes on the Tikie speak the Tukano language, and as a result of segmentation the Airi and Tihio speak the Dessana language.

Occasionally tribes, though speaking an entirely diverse tongue, and members of a distinctly different language-group, have some comprehension of the tongue spoken by a neighbouring language-group. For instance, the Muenane can understand Witoto, but they have no knowledge of Boro, probably because they come more in contact with the former people. The Menimehe know some words of Tupi,[248] or lingoa-geral, which is extraordinary, even though their acquaintance with it is very slight.

The tribal names in ordinary use are, as has been said, bestowed by neighbouring tribes, and are merely nicknames. It follows that the name by which a tribe becomes known to a traveller is the name in use among the tribes in the districts through which he passes, so that a visitor from the north probably knows of a tribe by a different extra-tribal name from that known to a new-comer from the south. The difficulties of identification caused by this have already been commented on in an earlier chapter, it is only necessary to refer to them here in so far as the same difficulties beset any attempt to learn the local dialects.

Of the thirteen languages tabulated above, one of the most difficult, and the most guttural, is the tongue spoken by the Resigero group of tribes. Nonuya, also guttural, is perhaps equally difficult, whilst Andoke is possibly the worst, as it is almost ventral. Okaina, though presenting many difficulties, is easier to acquire than the first-named three, and may be characterised as nasal, while Boro and Witoto are neither nasal nor ventral nor impossibly guttural. Muenane is somewhat akin to Boro, but is richer in words. Menimehe approximates more to the speech of the Uaupes River Indians, and it again is nasal.

The endeavour to reproduce the guttural expressions of the Indian in Roman letters is rendered the more complex by the uncertainty of his utterance and the aural variations of his European interpreters. The same word phonetically transcribed by an Englishman, a German, a Frenchman, and a Spaniard bears little or no resemblance to a common inspiration. Each European observer conveys to his written word the error of his national idiosyncrasy of impression and pronunciation.

The difficulty of a phonetic rendition of a foreign language into English has long been apparent, and is one shared—though in a lesser degree—by all Continental linguists. To meet this difficulty the Germans have devised a system almost Chinese in its intricacy, while the French seek to reproduce such simple sounds as that of our English “W”[249] by combinations of diphthongs. Many of these elaborate phoneticisms have been adopted by English writers without consideration of the lingual limitations of their inventors, or of the confusion induced in the mind of the student.

To simplify transliteration, though at the sacrifice of the finer distinctions of the language, the orthographic system of the Royal Geographical Society has been used in this work,[402] and the explanation of the system given in the appendix with the Witoto and Boro vocabularies is taken from the rules laid down by that Society and adopted by the Royal Anthropological Institute.[403] This system ordains that an approximation to the sound should be aimed at only, as any system which attempted to represent the more delicate inflexions of sound and of accent would be so complicated that it would merely defeat itself.

I attempted to make a vocabulary of Andoke words, but the language is, as I have noted, so guttural, not to say ventral, that it renders all attempts impossible without some medium to work upon at the start, such as I had with Boro and Witoto. In these two cases Brown’s knowledge of the latter, and even his very slight acquaintance with the first, were of great use to me as a basis upon which to work.

As an example of the difficulty to be faced without some common medium, I have asked a native, “What is this?” and touched my head or a stick, but could find no clue to whether his answer referred to the thing touched or my action in touching it. Only a long and tedious study can overcome conundrums of this description, and when to these is added the impossibility of conveying accurately by written signs the sound as uttered, the attempt proved beyond my powers and resources.

Mention has been made by one writer of the “‘cluck’ of satisfaction—common to all the tribes of the Provincia Oriental.”[404] I consider the sound emitted by the Issa-Japura[250] peoples as a sign of assent or pleasure is more ventral than that described by Simson. It is approximately Hurrr! like a grunted sigh of satisfaction. The exclamation of surprise amongst all these peoples is very similar and may be written Huh! This sound, lengthened considerably, is the Witoto affirmative Huhhh. Huh! huh! huhh! as affirmatives are very freely used in conversation. The more an Indian agrees with the speaker the more ventral do his ejaculations become. The negative will not be used except in direct answer to a question, for it is contrary to Indian custom and etiquette to interrupt or contradict. The absence of the affirmative Huh! is practically a contradiction, on the ground of doing nothing being itself negative. A similar idea is seen in the tobacco palaver, where the dissentient signifies his disapproval by abstaining from licking tobacco. Should an Indian, however, wish to give an affirmative answer to a negative question, he will then make use of the negative No, for to answer Yes in Indian parlance would be to confirm the negative.

This brings us to the question of construction, and it is at once apparent that in Witoto, for example, the construction of a sentence tallies more with the construction of the deaf and dumb mute’s gesture language than with anything else, that is to say it is the very antithesis of the Chinese, or of our own. It may be said of the Indian, as Tylor wrote of the deaf and dumb mute, that he “strings together … the various ideas he wishes to connect, in what appears to be the natural order in which they follow one another in his mind.”[405] For instance the Witoto say, Benomo honne, literally “here put it”; benomo ekkono, “here open it you”; eijo rie dotoenyino, “much fruit put in it not do you”—“do not put much fruit into it.”

It will be noted that the personal pronoun here has become the suffix of the verb. This is the general rule, as in dinitikwe, “I shall carry it”; a chimitekwe, “I am going to see”; ona dueruetckwe, “I want you.” But this rule is not invariable, as we find kwe mona, “I am unable”; ke hanyete, “I do not understand,” with the pronoun kwe or ke placed, as we[251] should put the “I” before the verb; nor is the variation caused by the negative, as “I do not want you” is ona dueruenetckwe. In this instance the position of the personal pronoun kwe is probably determined by the objective ona, which structurally must precede, otherwise the meaning of the phrase would be inverted and become “You do not want me.” A pronoun is also used as a prefix to a noun to denote possession, as tano, “cassava,” ometano, “your cassava.” According to Koch-Grünberg the suffix make indicates some other place, or thing; it occurs in baimake, “other”; naimake “them”; but I am not aware that it acts as a definitely differentiating suffix in these or any other case.

In Witoto nyete as a suffix negatives what proceeds it, the literal meaning of the word inyete—a compound of ite = are—being the equivalent of the French il n’y en a pas.[406] As examples of its use we get figora, “good,” figonyete, “bad”; huchite, “twisted,” huchinyete, “straight,” that is to say “not twisted.” The Boro negative is ne, as for instance in imine, “good,” nemine, “bad,” i.e. “not good.”

Repetition of a word literally doubles its meaning, as in the Witoto nana, “all,” and the Boro paa-paa, “low-low,” that is to say, “lower”; kame-kame, “high-high,” i.e. “higher.”

I have said that the principle of construction in both Boro and Witoto is that of the mute’s gesture language, but gesture language actually is almost unknown, non-existent, among all these tribes. The hand is pointed to show direction, or to identify a person or object. The Indian beckons with one hand, but its movement is downward, not upward as with us. There is also a recognised sign to express desire for sexual intercourse. This is a mere jest, a ribald suggestion, as with boys of a certain age among our lower classes. The right elbow is grasped with the left hand, the elbow being so flexed as to allow the hand to point upwards. It is, in fact, the letter Z of the dumb alphabet.

Fingers and toes are used for reckoning, and are the more needed in that the Indians’ knowledge of numbers is of the[252] slightest. But few can reckon beyond five, though I once found a senior wrangler who counted seventeen, by the aid of all his fingers, all the toes of one foot, and two of the other. The remaining three toes he covered over, to show that they were not required for the total sum. If an Indian wished to enumerate anything over ten he would place both hands to his head and say, “Like the hairs of my head.”[407] In Boro I could only learn of four numerals, tiamie, “one-half”; tsanere, or tsape, “one”; mieke, “two”; sause, “five.” These in combination give tsape-mieke, “three”; mieke-mieke, “four.” The Witoto numerals are dahe, “one”; mena, “two”; dahe-amene—equivalent to the Boro tsape-mieke,—“three”; menahere, “four”; dapekwiro, “five”—that is one hand; nagapekwiro, “six.”

It makes absolutely no difference to the value whether you say tsape-mieke or mieke-tsape; dahe-amene or mena-dahe.

For measures these tribes have nothing more definite than a handful, a foot- or finger-length, and of weights they possess no knowledge whatever, nor, so far as I am aware from their customs or their language, is there any consciousness of more possible or desirably-accurate definition.

To express a length of time other than the merely immediate past, present, and future, the Indian makes use of what conveys to him an indefinable idea, “As long as the hairs of my head.” This is similar to his notion of expressing any large number. He reckons time by the moon to the extent of saying, “When the moon is small,” or, pointing to it, “As it is now,” but I never heard anything like “so many moons,” or an equivalent value in a word. In fact, time to the Boro, so far as I am aware, is distinguished by only pekare, “to-morrow,” aiupe, “yesterday.” The Witoto will speak of beiruito, “to-day”; wiremoni, “to-morrow”; dawire, “the day after to-morrow,” or nawire, “yesterday”; beinawire, “the day before yesterday,” or beinawife, “the night before last.”

There is, as I have already mentioned, no writing, not even the most primitive picture-writing. The Indian makes use of no signs as aids to memory; and the only recognised symbol that I met with—other than such symbolic practices as the presentation of wood and thatch by the bridegroom to his parents-in-law—was the tobacco folded in a strip of palm leaf that is the regular invitation card of North-Western Amazonia when festivities are toward. Neither individuals nor families have any recognised name-marks—such as a peculiar notch or number of notches—to distinguish personal property. It must be remembered that in the small private habitations in the bush a man and his wife and children are more or less isolated, and that in the great tribal house the family community have most of their possessions in common. It is difficult with so communal a people to know what may be looked upon as general property, and what as individual, with the exception of personal ornaments. Indians recognise their property only by differential qualities, certain ornamentation, ways of binding or lashing, patterns in basketry, colouring—and division of colours—on pottery; and these differences are known and recognised by others, as well as by the actual owners.

Each tribe has its peculiar call or signal, which I believe is altered occasionally as a precautionary measure. This may be a whistle, or the imitation of the cry of bird or beast. Then there is the so-called drum-language used in signalling, and already noted in a previous chapter, which I certainly believe to be some sort of code. Brown’s assertion that the sound of the word is made with the drum, and the Indians’ description of making the words is, I take it, merely the untaught intelligence striving to explain how an onomatopœic language—such as Boro and Witoto to some extent certainly are—can be further conventionalised to a scope even more circumscribed than the ordinary monotone of the Indian’s speaking voice.

Not only is the Indian voice monotonous, but the conversation is rendered yet duller by the invariable repetition of the last words of a sentence. This is particularly the case[254] with the Tuyuka, where conversation has a definitely ceremonial form. For instance, if a man leaves a party to bathe, he says, “I go to take a bath,” and the company present reply in chorus, “You go to take a bath.” On his return the formula runs, “I have taken a bath,” and the confirmative echo follows, “Yes, you have taken a bath.” This endless repetition, as was noticed with regard to songs, is characteristic of all Indians.

In quality their voices are strident and rasping, and are always raised in conversation and grow higher with increased excitement. No Indian speaks confidentially, he shouts; and unless something very sacred and secret is under discussion the conversation in an Indian house can be heard a mile away. In the forest the mass of vegetation above appears to act as a sounding-board, and so to lengthen the distance that sound is carried, not, as one might think, to stifle it. But independent of this the Indians possess extraordinary power of throwing the voice, a sort of ventral whisper; and all, to some extent, are ventriloquists. Even semi-civilised Indians of Brazil, who have lost much of the cunning of their brethren, the “Wild Indians” of the forest, have this power.

The Indian is as fond of speaking and singing in a high-pitched voice interspersed with ventral grunts as a Chinese coolie, and this predilection, as regards the falsetto voice, is greatest on the part of the women, whose voices are always higher than the men’s.

When an Indian talks he sits down, no conversation is ever carried on when the speakers are standing unless it be a serious difference of opinion is under discussion; nor, when he speaks, does the Indian look at the person addressed, any more than the latter watches the speaker. Both look at some outside objects. This is the attitude also of the Indian when addressing more than one listener, so that he appears to be talking to some one not visibly present.

CHAPTER XX

We find in all savage races, peoples of the lower cultures, that there is no differentiation of individualism, that is to say all members of the race or group are at approximately the same level. This is what we know as a “low state of civilisation.” It has been suggested that such dead level, the lack of all initiative, of progress in short, is due to the absence of religion, of ideals or gods, through which true enthusiasm only is engendered. A religious ideal undoubtedly tends to progress, and with the exception of patriotism—which, after all, is a religious ideal—is the main influence. It is a case of cause and effect, however, for the effect of environment must not be overlooked. Local conditions initiate progress and may cause enthusiasm for an ideal, the effect and, at the same time, the potent accelerator of such progression.

It is an extraordinary but undeniable fact that the Indian is individually wise yet racially foolish, individually intelligent, racially inept. This may be due entirely to geographical control, to the peculiar characteristics of the social environment. The greatest incitement to human progress, intercommunication, is denied in the Amazon wilds. True, there are the rivers, but the value of rivers and waterways in this respect is negatived by custom. Existing conditions make this necessary, for in isolation alone is protection to be found for any tribe.

We find, then, the group system, where the community is everything, the individual nothing, blocking the path of progressive evolution to a very great extent among the forest Indians of South America, as it has done among the native tribes of Australia. The individual can gain nothing for himself, he can only work for the greater glory of the group, and has therefore no intimate incentive for strenuous advancement. A tribe has little or no opportunity for progress when it consists of but a few hundred members, and is practically isolated from all other tribes, except for the hardly intellectual shock of war, or perhaps the occasional intrusion of some wandering barterer, a member of possibly a hostile tribe, who is tolerated on account of the necessary articles which he brings, things that cannot be manufactured by the tribes he visits.

The Indian is hedged about with a constricting environment against which he can scarcely be said to battle. He accepts with the resignation of the East, and knows nothing of the restless rebellion that makes for Western amelioration and progress. What the Indian lacks is not intelligence but character, that is to say will-power. The Indian is brave, he endures pain and privation with the greatest stoicism, he can be doggedly obstinate, but only in exceptional cases can he rise above his fellows to anything approaching individuality and strength of mind.

The dominant characteristic of the Indian is a profound and nervous reserve. The extreme nervousness of his manner is due undoubtedly to wholesale indulgence in coca. It affects all the conditions of social intercourse. It makes the Indian character extraordinarily negative. Enthusiasm is to seek in Amazonia. The Indian never expresses violent joy or fear. A shock is more likely to raise a laugh from him than a cry. He will submit to much, he will bear greatly, but it is easy to provoke a laugh against even a fellow-tribesman. An Indian will invariably laugh at another’s discomfiture. But with a stranger all Indians are taciturn, and they will have little or nothing to say to him if he be a white man.

Outside the narrow limit of the tribe the Indians possess no altruistic feelings, no sympathy with strangers. They look upon every man as a definite, or at least a possible enemy. The gentle Indian, peaceful and loving, is a fiction of perfervid imaginations only. The Indians are innately cruel. They certainly have no true kindliness for animals; every animal is a foe, as I have elsewhere noted. The Maku children are especially cruel to them, but cruelty to the dumb brute is universal among the tribes. On the other hand, intra-tribal hospitality is without end. I have given a single biscuit to a boy and seen him religiously divide it into twenty microscopic pieces for all and sundry. But they are quite improvident so far as the morrow is concerned. If a family is threatened with famine the whole party will walk over to another house, make themselves at home, eat and drink without the slightest hesitation, without even craving invitation so to do. The reason is obvious. The host of to-day may be the guest of to-morrow. I have seen, however, a hunting party doing their best to eat a whole tapir, with the evident desire to finish the feast before the arrival of another, and possibly a less successful, hunting party. Otherwise division of spoil is absolutely equal, except that the chief by right has the greatest share.

The Indian is not always a hospitable host where other than his own tribe or language-group is concerned. Vague tales have penetrated even to his well-guarded ignorance of the customs of the Rubber Belt, of the servitude of his fellows. He hates the white man and mistrusts him. The Andoke are invariably surly in their attitude towards him. There are tribes—the Karahone, for instance, on the northern bank of the Japura—who refuse all attempts whatsoever at intercourse. They will neither receive presents nor ambassadors. If the explorer persist despite the rejection of his overtures he will find poisoned stakes sunk in his path. He will be harassed in all his doings. When at length he attains to the tribal head-quarters he will find a house indeed, and perhaps food, but no warriors, no women, no children The fire will still be burning within the maloka, but the tribe has vanished, leaving no track, no sign of its whereabouts.[258] The Indian’s “Not at home” is no mere social euphemism. It is a demonstrated fact.

When the stranger finds such silent evidence of the tribal attitude toward his presence, it behoves him to take steps very promptly for his protection. He may be certain that the natives, though hidden, are covering his every action. If he, or one of his party, show himself, a flight of poisoned arrows whistles forth from the bush. Then follows a siege that tries the nerves of the stoutest campaigner. The hidden enemy, the noiseless weapons, menace from every tree. It is almost certain death to stop in the open. Within the house is a shelter little more dependable. The natives pierce the thatch with fire-javelins, with tiny spears bearing blazing tufts of hemp or cotton, and sooner or later the great structure will catch fire. There follows the imposed rush into the clearing, and the quick butchery by that unseen but ever-watchful enemy.

Against such an enemy, in such a situation, the resources of civilisation are of little avail. A wretched little dart steeped in the tribal war-poison may be fragile as a reed, but fired from the near shelter of the bush it is as effective as a Mauser bullet.

When travelling among these Indians it is necessary in order to gain their respect to do as they do. I have emphasised this throughout. The traveller must cross the most nerve-racking bridge without help, he may have no hammock in which to be carried. This is a striking contrast to what I have met with in parts of Africa, where to walk is taken as a sign of unimportance; the man who does so cannot in native eyes be what they would call in India a “burra sahib.” I have also noted that the student of life must conform in all things that may be with the customs and habits of the tribesmen with whom he wishes to associate. In a land where pia is the supreme law, deviation from custom can be only regarded as criminal.

When an Indian house is reached the chief comes out with a party of his warriors. The burden of proof rests[259] with the invading European. He advances to the chief with his interpreter, and must make declaration of friendship. If the explanation of his appearance be accepted, the Indian laughs and may slap his visitor vigorously on the back, after the usual custom of the native in South America welcoming the stranger. Together they then proceed to the house, and the chief calls his woman and orders food to be provided for the strangers. The white man on his part tenders whatever he has brought by way of presents—beads, gun-cartridges, a small-tooth comb, or a knife.

When the evening meal is finished the chief stalks into the centre of the maloka, which has hitherto been untenanted, like the arena of a circus before the performance begins. A great fire is made up, and about it the men of the tribe squat on their haunches. The chief explains to them the presence of the stranger, and takes counsel on the question of his entertainment. As he describes his intentions he falls into a rhythmic chant, and his followers assent with deep-chested Huhh! All this is a lengthy business, but the tribe eventually arrive at a common decision. The chief then bends forward to the tribal tobacco pot that has been placed midway among the group. Into this he solemnly dips a tobacco stick, and conveys a little of the liquid to his tongue. Man after man bends forward round the circle, and each in turn dips his splinter of wood into the pot to notify his assent. It is a sign of tribal agreement as binding as the Lord Chancellor’s seal on a document of state. With it the tobacco palaver is concluded and the Indians seek their hammocks for sleep.

The Indian’s treachery is proverbial. I may mention on this point two sayings—there are hundreds similar—which illumine this phase of the character and customs of the tribesmen. The Andoke says, relevant to the Karahone, “If your spirit wander (sleep) in the hammock of a monkey or beast Indian, it wanders always.”[408] The meaning is this, the Karahone appear to have a real and exact knowledge of virulent poisons. It is related that they can[260] saturate a hammock with some narcotic which the victim does not discover, thus ensuring his death or destruction. They also burn fires under the hammock of those they wish to remove from the world, and stifle them with a narcotic smoke.

Another proverbial remark runs: “If a Karahone give you a pineapple, beware.” This refers to the Karahone’s playful habit of presenting poisoned pines. The Boro have a similar saying: “Take a pine from an enemy and die,” but this is due to the recognition of the fact that an Indian is never so dangerous as when simulating hospitality that is treacherous in the extreme.

Perhaps the Indian trait that soonest strikes, and most indelibly impresses the observer, is his charming altruism in the community of the family or tribal group, his wild misanthropy towards other tribes. His ambition is to live undisturbed with his family in the deep recesses of the forest. He asks only to be let alone.

In a region where land is free for all to take who will, and personal belongings are few—and invariably buried with the owner—laws of inheritance there can be none. But the law of possession is strict, and the penalty is death. There can be no toleration of theft, as on account of the publicity in which the Indians live it may be effected with such ease. The punishment for theft has therefore to be drastic, final. The victim may kill the thief. I was told that this is done by hacking at the culprit’s head with a wooden sword or a stone axe. This savours of ceremonial sacrifice. But though to steal from a member of the tribe is to steal from the whole community and therefore a crime, there is no bar against stealing from the stranger. They will do so unblushingly. I remember once missing a pair of scissors. On searching I discovered a Witoto woman stealing them. But she swore she had never put them in her basket, though they were found there!

There is very distinctly a dualism of ethics, one law for the tribe, and another law for all who are not members of it. To kill a fellow-tribesman is to injure the tribe by destroying one of its units. Sin against the individual is of no importance[261] except in so far as injury to any one person is injury to a unit of the tribe, to be punished by the law of retaliation in kind if the offender be of another tribe. Sin against another tribe is no sin except in the eyes of the tribe sinned against; then for its members it becomes not the sin of the individual doer but of his whole community. It is the tribe and not the individual that would be held guilty for any offence committed by one of its members. For instance if a Boro killed a Menimehe, vengeance may be taken by the dead man’s tribe on all or any of the members of the Boro tribe concerned.

Vengeance is primarily a matter for the individual principally affected. A man considers it a disgraceful thing not to be able to avenge himself, and will therefore never apply to the chief for tribal help. On the other hand the chief and the tribe will sometimes take up a quarrel and make it their own. This is a common custom amongst small communities, an affront to any one of the community being a personal attack upon every other member, though it is not necessarily avenged by all unless the affronted one is himself unable to compass revenge.

Members of a tribe sometimes quarrel, though rarely, but at times a fight commences in which others join, till eventually it becomes a “set to” between two families. On the whole I am inclined to say that the natives of the Amazons are the least quarrelsome people I have ever met.

It would be wrong to state that these people have no moral sense, because a slavish adherence to custom in itself is moral. That is to say they possess a moral code. However that does not entail any right or wrong as we know it, but only pia, that is “what our forefathers thought and did,” in other words tribal usage, which may be translated by what we call “good form.” There are no words in the Indian tongues for virtue, justice, humanity, vice, injustice or cruelty. These are unknown to the tribes who differentiate only with the equivalents for good and bad. Points like this earmark the ethics of a people. The curious negative character I have already noted is carried out here also. Again there is recognition of the moral law of conjugal[262] fidelity in that there is definite punishment for infidelity—the ordeal of the stinging ants. Punishment infers transgression of a law or code. It is not sufficient to say that in this case it is due to the extraordinary jealousy of Indian husbands, for the penalty is imposed on both husband and wife, the retribution is due to public opinion not personal revenge. Before marriage the men take the tribal prostitutes—the Maku girls and to some extent the unattached women—openly, but after marriage this is not the case. Incest is unknown among them, and in that term I include promiscuous intercourse among any of the members of a household. The antipathy to this lies only between those living under the same roof, it does not extend to consanguineous individuals who are members of different households.

The women are extraordinarily modest in their behaviour. Their eyes rarely leave the ground in the presence of a stranger. I had one woman in my party who never spoke to me, or even looked in my direction, the whole time we were together. After much dancing, I have seen the women, succumbing to dance stimulation, show their preference for certain men in the dancing party by placing their hands on their shoulders, an act in obedience to the impulse of the moment. In fact after dancing for a length of time they become comparatively boisterous and irresponsible. But even at the height of excitement there is nothing markedly rude in the dance, when one allows for the fact that sexual suggestion is not to be included in that category in Indian ethics. Even on this point they have their limitations, for Koch-Grünberg relates that when talking to some Desana Indians on sexual subjects, the conversation was stopped by them till the women were sent away. After their departure the men talked freely and broadly. This I did not remark among the Indians I visited, in fact sexual matters appeared to be discussed freely and lewdly by both sexes, and even by young children.

The Indians under the range of discussion most certainly possess the greatest racial antipathy towards the white man. This is noticeable among the women especially, for they will[263] never admit to their own people if they have ever had any dealing or connection whatsoever with the white man.

Gratitude among Indians is unknown—at least to me. Take this example: I had Indians who had been slaves, who had elected to come with me, or at least had evinced no repugnance at the idea, with whom I had shared all the food at my disposal, stinting myself often to ensure their gratitude—as I thought—caring for them, doctoring and curing them when sick, till eventually I became fond of them. But on the main river at the first opportunity they ran, apparently at the suggestion of one of their own tribe, the Peon of a rubber-gatherer. What arguments were used I know not—perhaps that I was a devil, that my real motive was to fatten them for culinary purposes. The fact remains they left me, to all appearances, willingly.

This stealing of Indians is a well-recognised source of amusement on the Amazon river, and the victims of such loss—who of course perpetrate the same sort of outrage on others directly opportunity permits—are so indolent, so lethargic, that they will not cross a river to recover the stolen. The custom is the more prevalent on account of the character of the Indian. He will always leave one white man to go to another. He is always on the alert to run, to go elsewhere. This is true of Indians enslaved by other Indians, to a limited extent. Unless they are well treated and identified with the tribe they will run, only to be again enslaved by others, or put to death. The matter is hard to explain. It simply is in the blood. It is Pia, as Brown remarked. It is their custom. They do it “just for so.”

Another point about the Indian is that he must always be kept up to the work in hand. The women toil unceasingly, but the men are only too ready to seize any excuse to cry off a job. They spend their time mainly in mooning around. Obtaining food is their chief occupation. But when an Indian is kept up to his work he works hard and well.

Though the Indian attitude at first is invariably stoical they are not lacking in inquisitiveness. Their curiosity was[264] enormously aroused by many of my possessions. It is hard to say what will evoke their wonder. I have seen an Indian evince no interest in a steam-boat, but show the most extraordinary interest in my jackboots, and be greatly occupied with the problem of how I got into them. A walking-stick was an unanswerable conundrum to them, it never occurred to their minds that I could use it as an assistance in walking. My eyeglass, my camera, were mysterious devils that could read into their hearts and filch their souls, as I have already noted. My watch, with an alarm to it, struck consternation to their simple minds. My phonograph, that reproduced records of dancing which were repeated on reversal, raised shouts of wonder. An Indian in a down-river town saw nothing to excite him in a tram, and took a ride thereon quite unconcernedly, but the women’s hats were exciting, and at the sight of a man on a bicycle his astonishment was unbounded: it was “man on spider-web!” Horses are unknown in these regions, and there is no possibility of the majority of the Indians seeing any one on horseback. I could only get a mule as far as the first big river, but beyond the bush became too dense. Otherwise I fancy their amazement would equal that of the Australian natives when they saw the beast come in two on the man dismounting.[409]

Decadent the Indian may be, and thanks mainly to his inveterate cocainism he undoubtedly is, but that he is the degraded descendant of a higher race is a theory that I beg leave to doubt entirely. According to von Martius the standard of ethics rises or falls with the increase or decrease of a tribe. He based his theory on the fact that the most corrupt Coeruna and Nainuma were nearly extinct. It is possible to argue that they were dying out because they were corrupt,[410] rather than they were corrupt because they were dying out. Sir Roger Casement appears to have accepted the theory expounded in Vergangenheit und Zukunft der amerikanischen Menschheit. But Tylor remarks, “I cannot but think that Dr. Martius’ deduction is the absolute reverse of the truth.” Certainly the theory[265] of the Indians’ regression is, I consider, entirely erroneous. I see nothing to suggest it. On the contrary it appeared to me that in spite of the awful handicap of their environment, these tribes were slowly evolving a higher standard of culture. There is no evidence of their having reverted from a higher culture. A people who once knew how to produce fire by friction do not easily forget that method to rely on the clumsy processes of fire-carrying. Men who have smoked tobacco are not very likely to content themselves, nor would their offspring be contented, with merely sucking it. People who knew the simple method of preparing yarn with a spindle would only revert in exceptional cases to the slow and even painful process of rolling fibre on the naked thigh, and that in a land where cotton is abundantly to hand on every side. The tedious method of plaiting and tying by hand would hardly, one imagines, be substituted for weaving. A race that has once worked metal and relapsed to the use of stone without even more exceptional and definite reasons for that relapse, is no more likely in fact than it is recorded—so far as I am aware—in history.

Examples are known of peoples who have forgotten one useful art, for material and utilitarian, or social, or magico-religious reasons; but a people who have allowed some half dozen to disappear is unknown to me. Yet these Indians carry fire, lick tobacco, roll fibre on the thigh, and though they make use of an embryo loom—the two posts between which their hammocks are plaited—have not appreciated its potentialities. Some of the Amazon tribes,[411] though surrounded by canoe-building peoples, can only make rafts; the secret of the dug-out, if ever known to them,[412] has been forgotten. But it is possible that an isolated section of the original canoe-builders—as we have seen these tribes today are all isolated sections—may for some reason have had no need to construct a canoe for such lengths of time that the method of fire-heating and burning, especially of forcing the hot trunk open, had through disuse been at least partially[266] forgotten.[413] Presume that they failed in their attempt to build one for some reason,[414] and it was found that a raft would do momentarily in its place, the original skill and knowledge might easily die out in a generation. Therefore the absence of canoes alone would be no convincing argument. Nor must it be forgotten, as Dr. Rivers has pointed out,[415] that other causes besides defective memory and lack of practice may result in the entire disappearance of even useful arts. But I repeat hardly of so many among all these tribes in common.

Everything points to the conclusion that these tribes found their way to the forest in a very primitive condition. The forest has arrested, it has stunted their growth, but it has not plunged them back from later cultures to the Stone Age. The stones themselves deny it, for stone is not the natural substitute for iron in these regions.[416] Whence the tribes came hither, and when, in whatsoever far back age of our earth’s story, they were a Neolithic people—hardly that, a people emerging from the unsettled conditions of the Paleolithic hunter, agricultural but not yet pastoral, and such they have remained throughout the centuries.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Physically, as may be judged from the accompanying tables, there is a wide margin for dissimilarity among these tribes. Their appearance is nearly as varied as their speech, more so in fact, in that there is much diversity of type even among individuals of the same speaking-group. I have seen a Boro as dark as a Witoto, while his fellow-tribesmen may be yellow as a Chinaman. It is, of course, possible that the darker Boro are sons of Witoto women. The custom prevalent in all the tribes of adopting the young children captured from their enemies, makes of necessity for great changes in type even in one household, so that despite the preference for group endogamy that undoubtedly exists there are few households where cross-breeding is not in evidence.

In stature the Indian is small, which I take to be a result of depression due to his forest environment; but the body is well-balanced and upright. Among the tribes I visited the Andoke as a speaking-group were, so far as I could observe, the largest in build and the tallest. The Okaina may possibly come into the same scale. The Karahone represent the mean, while the Maku are invariably small, a low class and badly-fed people. The average measurements of the tribes are best gathered from the types tabulated. I made the average height to be for men 5 feet 6 inches; and for women 4 feet 10 inches.[417] I certainly remember one case of a man among the Andoke nearly 6 feet high, but can recall no other. The women were never much over the average of the female type. I give my measurements for what they are worth, but unfortunately I did not know the correct way in which they should have been taken; they were[270] made with a centimetre rule, but not on the correct anthropometrical principles. The Indians stood against the side of the house to be measured, and I registered their height by the simple process of placing the ruler on the head and measuring its distance from the ground.[418]

The bone of the Indian’s skull is thick, and both dolichocephalic and brachycephalic types are in evidence.[419]

The Indian does not run to fat, rather is he inclined to be thin, but strong, muscular and healthy, with rounded outline and finely-developed chest. The Witoto, however, though broad and strong, fail in the limbs, their legs especially lack development. On this point my observations tally with Robuchon’s notes. The Tukana have a magnificent physique. The Andoke, though some are tall, with large frames, as a group incline more to breadth of both face and figure. The tribes of the Tikie are of a low grade.

The Indians as a rule, have hands of an average size, with stumpy fingers, and short, spatulate nails. Constant manual labour of some sort would seem to keep the nails naturally of a normal length. I never remember seeing an Indian pare his nails, but fear this is a point that may have escaped my observation. The men’s arms are frequently distorted, and the shoulders gain an artificial breadth by the use of ligatures to swell the muscles of the upper arm by means of constriction.

The natural symmetry of the Indian’s person is further enhanced by slight hips, flat buttocks. The abdomen seldom protrudes though the navel is prominent, but not to the same extent as is found among negroes.

The men generally have large feet,[420] with long toes. Both men and women have very prehensile toes, and will pick up objects off the ground with their feet rather than trouble to stoop. They are flat-footed.

The Indian does not extend his legs when he walks, as Europeans do. He moves rather with the action of an unathletic woman. His step is on an average about two-thirds of an ordinary man’s thirty-inch pace. The foot is of necessity raised well above the ground, on account of the lianas which would trip the slovenly walker. This does not make for rapid progression. But though he walks more slowly than the white man, the Indian[271] can keep up a jog-trot of about five miles an hour for tremendous distances. Moreover his wind is far better than any white man’s. At a push, to get away from hostile neighbours for example, he is capable of going sixty miles a day. In ordinary circumstances he walks nowhere, except about the house and compounds. Consequently he has developed a different set of muscles from the ordinary pedestrian.

As the Boro are more harassed than the Witoto they march as a rule in silence, while the Witoto are noisy generally; but a march in country that might prove hostile is done in silence by every tribe for obvious reasons. In friendly country the Indians go along chattering and joking, or in silence, just as the spirit moves them: there is no rule. The necessity for walking in single file, and the invariable difficulties of the route, do not, however, altogether encourage conversation. These restricted paths have a further influence upon the Indian. Often enough it is necessary to place one foot directly in front of the other in order to find any footway at all. This is the probable reason, or one of the reasons, why the men walk with a straight foot, a specially needed precaution on the narrow bridges, that are merely formed of single trees. The women walk in rather a stilted fashion, with the toes turned inwards at an angle of some thirty degrees, on account of the tight ligatures they wear below the knee and above the ankle, which cause the calf to swell to enormous proportions, as has been noted. This may not inconceivably have a contracting effect in the angle of the foot. It is regarded as a sign of power if the muscles of the thighs are made to come in contact with each other when walking.

That the men run and jump well is due to their good wind, but they have no pace, and could easily be outstripped over a limited course by an average white man in good condition. But the women neither run nor jump with any facility, as they all suffer from varicose veins, caused by the ligatures to some extent, but also by the burdens they carry, and from labouring in the fields when in a condition unsuited to such physical exertion. As weights are carried on the back suspended by a strap across the forehead, the tendency to stoop or grow round-shouldered is counteracted, for the pull of the strap brings the head back, and the strain is taken by the muscles of the neck.[421] Water is always carried in vessels balanced on the head, and though the[272] Amazonian Indian may not have the superb carriage of her sisters in the East, yet the young girls at least are very well set up, though with advancing age a lifetime of field work and burden-bearing may bow the elder women till they walk, as described by Robuchon, “in an inclined position.”

The Indian woman has generally a beautiful figure, well proportioned and supple, with high, straight shoulders. Untrammelled by dress she is graceful and free in her actions. Before marriage the women have very small breasts, but after they have borne a child the breasts develop considerably. Old women, probably on account of poorer nourishment, are very flat-chested, and one never sees a woman with very pendent breasts. In the older women they atrophy.[422]

There is great individuality in the faces of the Amazonian Indians. A tribe is no herd of sheep, differentiated only to the experienced eye of the shepherd; the dissimilarities of countenance are immediately apparent, and even to the most casual observer Indians show marked variety of face and colour and feature. Like all savages the Indians admire most the lightest coloured skins. The divergence of colour is both tribal and racial; and as a rule it will be found that the higher the type the better the physical development, and the greater the mental capacity, the lighter will be the skin. On account of the saturation of the atmosphere the Indians mostly have skins of a good texture. I never found rough skins on Indians in these districts.[423][273] Of all the tribes the Menimehe have the lightest complexions, and they are invariably fatter and in better condition than the surrounding tribal groups.

I have mentioned the custom of covering a new-born infant with rubber milk either for warmth or to protect the skin; the women daub themselves with gum and a yellow clay because it is supposed to preserve the skin; but none of these peoples use any oil for lubricating purposes, and they are free from any noxious-smelling secretion. The smell of a negro they consider most offensive, but do not extend this dislike to the white man. The Indian owes his immunity from this unpleasant trait in part because he does not perspire at all freely, perhaps to difference of glandular secretion, and in part to frequent ablutions. Yet, though even a dirty people like the Witoto will bathe at least three times a day and most tribes far more often, these Indians, as has already been noted, are by no means free of body parasites. Head lice may be said to be universal, and in addition jiggers and the red tick that drops off leaves in the forest and burrows under the human skin, there is another burrowing parasite that invades the human body to lay its eggs, which is extremely common among these people. One is apt to be infested with these pests merely from touching an Indian, certainly by lying in an Indian hammock. The parasite causes considerable irritation, and the local remedy is to apply babasco juice.

Except in the case of a medicine-man, who never depilates, hair is looked upon as dirt; therefore it is always removed, only the hair of the head being permitted to grow. Depilation is usually done just before a dance. The method of removal adopted is to cover the hirsute parts with rubber latex. This is allowed to dry, so that a grip can be obtained and the hair removed simply with the forefinger and thumb or by means of two small pieces of cane. Two persons will, as far as facial hairs are concerned, depilate one another. It is universally considered a sign of cleanliness to remove all the body hairs, and even to pull out the eyebrows and eyelashes.[424] That the eyebrows are not removed for æsthetic purposes is proved by the fact that the effect is promptly reproduced with paint. It is not easy to get information with regard to the removal of body hair,[425] but I was able to obtain a little from a Karahone slave boy who was with an Andoke tribe I met. He told me that the Karahone did not depilate the hair of the face. This is the one exception among these tribes.

On the authority of Schomburgh, im Thurn states that occasionally when there is great demonstration of grief at a burial “the survivors crop their hair.” So far as my experience went none of the Indians of the Upper Amazons ever “crop” the hair close, except that of young girls when danger threatens. Should there be any reason to suppose that some man is inclined to steal a girl, her hair might be closely cut as a preventive measure to save the child from being kidnapped, for a hairless woman is looked upon as a social outcast among the tribes. The young Indians have long hair that often reaches to below the small of the back, but this length does not continue, and it is a varying quantity among the adults.

The hair is uniformly scattered over the scalp, and is coarse in texture, lank, and very abundant. Baldness is unknown, and greyness, as with the negroes, is very rare. I have only seen grey hair on a few people of apparently unusual age. In colour it is almost uniformly black, a red- not a blue-black, which gives it an occasional brown glint. Some of the children are lighter-haired, but such a variation as red hair is unknown, though in the sunlight the women’s hair may take a reddish gleam. Both women and children have finer hair than the men, and with young children it is often quite downy. As a rule it is straight, but among the Tukana wavy hair is more evident.

Among the greater part of these peoples the hair is not cut, either by the men or women. The Karahone men cut their hair to the shoulders; the Boro women, and in some cases the men, trim theirs round very much as is often seen among our small girls. Sometimes the Witoto women trim their lank locks. This is done with a knife if they have one, otherwise it is singed. With the Menimehe and Karahone it grows very low on the forehead. The Tikie tribes have most untidy and ill-kept hair.

Owing to race—possibly of Mongoloid origin—and to the prevalence of depilatory customs, the men have scanty beards, if any.

On the whole these Indians hold their own in the matter of good looks, even the lowest types are not repulsive in appearance. I mean, of course, to the eye of the stranger, not according to their individual standard of beauty. In feature both the various language-groups and the tribes of each group show many grades. It may be taken as usual that with a lighter skin the nose and lips are thinner than among those with darker colouring. The Boro and the Resigero, both comparatively light-skinned groups, have thin lips. This naturally follows from what I have already said as to colour and type, the higher type possessing, as would be expected, the more refined features. The Boro,[275] taken as a group, are the best looking, many of them are very handsome, and some of the Andoke also are notably well favoured in appearance. “Noble” is Koch-Grünberg’s decision on the question of the Tukana tribesmen’s appearance. The Okaina, also, must be classed as good looking.

It seems somewhat of a contradiction after this to remark that a squint is so common a trait among these tribes that one cannot but notice immediately any one with normal eyes. This is, however, with the exception of the Tukana, very prevalent among all these tribes. The eyes are not large, and are deeply set. They are black in colour with occasional yellowness of the eyeball, but never to the degree seen in the bilious eye of the negro. Both eyesight and hearing are very acute. In the bush, or in the dark, the tribesmen have most penetrating sight, and can distinguish details at a glance where the ordinary white man can see nothing of any description. In the sun, or any strong light, their sight is inferior.

It is difficult to judge what an Indian’s ears would be like if left to Nature’s fashioning, as they are invariably distorted to more or less degree by artificial means. They are frequently prominent, and do not appear to be set close to the head in any case. The large ear-plugs will pull the lobe of the ear half-way down the neck and more. Nose-boring is not carried to so disfiguring an extent. The Boro, especially the women of those tribes, bore the wing of the nose—a custom peculiar to this people—as well as the septum, which is also bored by Muenane and Witoto women, but the nose pins are small, and do not distort the feature as the ear-plugs do the ear. The Tukana’s nose has naturally large alæ. The tribes on the Tikie also have broad noses, with prominent cheek-bones, a characteristic noted by Wallace among the Kuretu.[426]

The Indian’s chin is narrow, small, rounded, and, especially in the case of the women, retreating. There is no dimple or cleft. The teeth are big and even, and very rarely found projecting.

The Indian’s expression is stolid enough ordinarily, but when talking he has much play of feature, and he will gesticulate freely under the influence of coca. Among the tribes to the south of the Japura a man will look a stranger straight in the face, but north of that river the native has a more furtive glance. The Indian’s gaze is intense.

They are never demonstrative of affection, and, though they will touch a white man as a salutation, never touch each other. By this I mean that when friendlily disposed an Indian would[276] return a white man’s salute, the offer of the hand, but no Indian would grasp a fellow-tribesman’s hand, or put an arm around his neck. Kissing is unknown among these people. Crevaux records that he saw children among the Calina kiss to show affection, but the nearest approach to an embrace I ever witnessed was a slap on the shoulder, probably under the shoulder-blade, which is the salutation between great friends. Mothers of course fondle their children, and I have even seen a woman with her arm round her husband, but such an exhibition is considered barely decent. Neither do they exhibit grief by weeping. The girl children cry occasionally, but no child ever screams; and adults may whine but never shed tears.

As regards brain-power, the Boro group are the most intelligent, with the possible exception of the Menimehe. I invariably found the Boro exceedingly anxious to learn from me anything they judged might be of utility to themselves. They evinced a definitely intelligent interest, not to be confounded with the ordinary curiosity of the untaught. Among all these peoples the power of mental development ceases after they have attained puberty.

One limitation that is to be noticed with all of them is their inability to grasp any chronological data. They have nothing in the way of a tally of any description, and in speaking use the vaguest expressions only for reckoning. It is my opinion, based on observation of the number of generations still living at any one time, that these people live to an advanced age. They grow elderly at from twenty-five to thirty years, and may, under favourable conditions, live another half-century or more. This is borne out by the fact that I found occasionally a man with grey hair—a sign in all coloured peoples, and I believe in Mongoloid peoples, of great age. But no Indian can give any information as to his own age, or the age of his children. For him age is non est, time of little value. He cannot tell you when he came to the neighbourhood in which you find him, though obviously only a year or two may have been passed there. His day is regulated to some extent by the rising and the setting of the sun, portioned only by its height in the heavens. If but occasion serve, one or other of the warriors, drunk with coca, will talk the whole night through, excitedly recounting some folk-tale, or endlessly boasting his feats in the hunt or on the war-path. The interruption is not resented by his comrades, nor does it seem to interfere with their slumber. Indians, in fact, never appear to sleep much, or rather they sleep little and often, as chance offers. Night is no more the time of repose than day, except in so far as darkness puts a stop to certain of their[277] avocations. When sleeping on the ground an Indian curls up on one side with his knees to his chin, or he sleeps on his stomach, seldom lying on the back.[427]

Though, as has been noted, they sleep with no wrap or covering, these Indians are most sensitive to climatic changes. They are decidedly susceptible to a difference of locality, and, more than this, in a land where the extreme contrast of temperature is no more than twenty degrees throughout the year, with an average of half that total, they are affected by even slight variations of temperature. They fear the cold of the early morning, and, accustomed as they are to the half-lights of the forest, they dislike sunshine, and prefer to keep in the shade, fearful of sun-sickness if exposed to the sun.

It has been suggested by some travellers that the curious habit of the Indians of inducing sickness every morning by means of a feather was based on the idea that any food which was retained in the stomach all night must be unwholesome and ought to be removed immediately.[428] I have often seen the Indians do this, but always put it down to a desire to rid the stomach of the non-absorbent constituents of the coca powder, as only the men, who alone may take coca, resort to this practice. The Indian in the early morning drinks an infusion of herbs, as I have already mentioned, which induces the removal of such substances by vomiting, although not taken primarily for this purpose.

Sickness is also secured with the fingers after a prohibitive quantity of cahuana has been drunk, as afore noted, during a big dance. Having imbibed to his utmost capacity, the Indian adopts this simple expedient to enable him to drink again.

The tribes of the upper Amazons are, comparatively with others, very cleanly. But it is only comparatively. The Boro are the cleanest, and the Witoto unquestionably the most dirty. Immediately on rising all Indians resort to the river, but except among the Boro and the Resigeros, who rub themselves with sand, the performance can hardly be called washing, it is simply bathing. The Nonuya and Muenane are cleanly, like the Resigero. Even the Andoke, though they use no sand, are cleaner than the Witoto, for this tribe never wash, and only take a dip two or three times a day, while at least five times is the ordinary rule with the majority.[429]

The first duty of the morning is a visit, as has been said, to the bathing-place. Thither troop the old and the young, both male and female, to wash and revive in the water. They do not attempt to rub their bodies dry, but are content to let the moisture evaporate when they emerge from the stream. When on a march or out hunting Indians will always bathe in any water available on the route. They go in streaming with perspiration, but seem to suffer no ill-effects. Bates has described them as “taking merely a sitz-bath” like a dog,[430] but they seemed to me to bathe as any ordinary person would who went into the water to get cool.

After returning from war the Indians bathe scrupulously before they re-enter the house. It is in the nature of a ceremonial washing, and possibly is a subconscious act of purification, though the Indians, when asked the reason, told me only that it was pia, our custom. In fact lustration with the Indian is too frequent an action to keep any ceremonial significance it may ever have had.

It follows as a matter of course with people so familiar with water that one and all are expert swimmers. The Indian of the Amazons invariably swims as naturally as he walks, and with as little tuition. From the hour of his birth he has been conversant with the river, and in a climate where the temperature of the water varies but little from 75° to 80° or more, he regards a dip as his chief solace. He never passes a stream without taking advantage of its proximity to bathe, and the fact that he may have recently fed, or that he is perspiring freely, does not hinder him from a plunge, and makes no difference to his enjoyment.

In swimming the Indian paddles like a dog, and does not attempt to attain to anything approaching the breast-stroke of the European, nor does he extend the legs widely. He flexes the legs sharply upon the trunk, and, suddenly stretching them in a straight line, drives the body forward. The stroke is not a tiring one, and the native is capable of undergoing long immersion without suffering exhaustion, but the speed he can acquire is not remarkable. For that matter there are no reasons why the Indian should desire to make rapid progression. Swimming to him is an adjunct to bathing, or a means to cross a stream; its finer developments trouble him not at all. In the muddy rivers of the Amazons there is nothing to tempt the native to dive, nor are there suitable places to jump off the banks. The Indian slips in as best suits the occasion, and does not aspire to exhibition feats, or to water games.

When bathing the Indian is exposed to a certain element of danger from fish that inflict varying degrees of injury. There is the stinging eel, and skate of some sort and another stinging fish,[431] the caneiro, and the piranha. Electric fish are less common in the upper rivers than in the main streams, and I never noticed one Indian of the Issa-Japura tribes take any special precaution against them, though elsewhere the natives will beat and prod the water with rods before they bathe, to discover, if possible, whether any eels are lurking in the vicinity. The caneiro’s method of attack is by suction, not shock. They are very plentiful in all these rivers, and their power of suction is most extraordinary. I am not likely to forget the first time I made acquaintance with one of these voracious little fish. It suddenly attacked, or rather attached itself with its sucker-like mouth, to the inner side of my leg. The sensation was most alarming. I made with all possible speed to land. The caneiro certainly sucks up the flesh rapidly and painfully, but I am doubtful if it really “tears off pieces of the skin and flesh,” as it is said to do.[432] The piranha, though quite a small fish,[433] is even more ferocious. It will attack anything, and is said to be capable of reducing a large animal to a skeleton in the space of a few minutes. There is a story, repeated elsewhere, that one very small fish is actually a human parasite. The Indians aver that it will enter the body of a man when bathing. Orton mentions this fish, which according to him is “a slender silurid fish (Vandellia)” but remarks that he never met “with one confirmatory case.”[434] Neither did I. But I found that all Indians take precautions against it when bathing.

APPENDIX II
MONGOLOID ORIGIN

On the vexed question of original Asiatic extraction what little evidence I have to offer is in general support of the theory that some at least of the ancestral stock probably found their way hither from Asia, or—what is more in accordance with the laws of migration as so far ascertained—spread from the American to the Asiatic continent. There is undeniably a marked prevalence of what are recognised as Mongoloid traits among these peoples. I fully accept Ratzel’s dictum, “We may hold firmly to the relationship of the Americans with the East Oceanic branch of the Mongoloid race.”[435] To quote another writer, “As Burton remarks, this strain demonstrates itself in big round Calmuck skulls, flat faces, with broad, prominent cheek-bones, oblique oriental eyes, rather brown than black. They have also dark thick eyebrows, and thin moustaches fringing large mouths, with pointed teeth and sparse beards hardly covering the long pointed chin.”[436] The truth of this description can be judged from the illustrations in this volume. The most casual observer must notice the prevalence of Mongoloid facial characteristics prevalent among the South American Indians, such as obliquity of eye, prominent cheek-bones, broad flat nose. My own observations led me to conclude that the Mongoloid type was very pronounced in individual cases, so much so that I estimated at least one per cent to be of a pure Chinese type, and my common name for them (vide my note on secrecy of individual names, p. 154) was Chin-Chin. I would refer to such illustrations as that facing p. 254 in the second volume of Spruce’s Notes of a Naturalist. (See again Spruce, i. 328; Orton, p. 170, for references to prevalent obliquity of eye.) On the other hand, Bates remarks of the Tupuyo that “their eyes are black and seldom oblique like those of the Tartar races” (Bates, i. 78); and Wallace remarks, “I[281] never could discern an unusual obliquity of the eyes” (Wallace, p. 332). I cannot agree with this statement. The latter, however, noted the prominent cheek-bone among the Curetu (p. 354); and Orton refers to it and to the flat nose (Orton, p. 170).

Further characteristics in common among Mongoloid peoples and these tribes are the customs of shaving or depilating facial hair, and a prolonged period of suckling the young (vide Westermarck, p. 484).

APPENDIX III
DEPILATION

Karahone are said not to depilate. This (see text) is debatable. I believe that they pluck out the hair of the chin and whiskers, but leave eyebrows and moustache.

These tribes have no body hair, except pubic hair, which is very scanty. The Indian women are most particular about the removal of all pubic hair. The men are less careful, though it is supposed to be done, but as that part of their bodies is never voluntarily exposed they are more heedless than the women.

APPENDIX IV
COLOUR ANALYSIS AND MEASUREMENTS

Colour

Robuchon gives the colours of the Witotos as brown-copper colour, varying between twenty-nine and thirty of the chromatic scale of the Anthropologicas of Paris.

Colour Analysis
Unexposed Part—Armpit

Mean average attempted by means of colour markings and identified according to Lovibond’s tintometer scale.

Substance examined.	Matching Standards.	Colour developed.
Red.	Yellow.	Blue.	Black.	Orange.	Red.
Witoto	3.6	2.8	1.6	1.6	.2	.8
Muenane
Karahone
Andoke
Nonuya
Boro	3.3	2.7	1.5	1.5	.2	.6
Okaina
Resigero
Menimehe

There was practically no tribal differentiation of pigmentation in the units of these groups, as far as the unexposed part of the[284] body is concerned. This is understandable. The palm of the nigger’s hand differs little from his white brother’s.

Colour Analysis
Exposed Part—Back

There is here more differentiation. The tribes numbered 1-9 are in order of shade, from the lightest according to personal observation. This is borne out by data except the grouping which was not so apparent to the eye.

Substance examined.	Matching Standards.	Colour developed.
Red.	Yellow.	Blue.	Black.	Orange.	Red.
9. Witoto	10.6	9.2	6.2	6.2	3.0	1.4
8. Muenane
7. Karahone	8.7	7.5	4.5	4.5	3.0	1.2
6. Andoke
5. Nonuya	8.0	7.0	4.0	4.0	3.0	1.0
4. Boro	4.9	4.4	1.5	1.5	2.9
3. Okaina	.5
2. Resigero	Yellow.
1. Menimehe	3.4	4.1	.7	.7	2.7	.7 [437]

Apparently in one tribe only is red non-existent, free yellow taking the place—No. 1 (vide curve).

Note.—It will be seen at a glance that differentiation is caused by increased “sadness” or excess of black, and by the amount of free red. These are the two governing factors. Orange is constant throughout.

N.B.—There is extraordinary variation amongst individuals of the same tribe, as well as amongst tribes of the same language-group and language-groups themselves.

Huis’ Measurements of Samples of Women’s Hair

Note.—The lighter tips of latter which become eliminated after puberty, i.e. elimination of orange.

	Red.	Yellow.	Blue. Black.	Green.	Yellow.
No. 1	19.5	31.5	28.0 = 19.5	8.5	3.0
No. 2	18.5	26.0	17.0 = 17.0	Orange. 1.5	7.5
Light tips	19	26.0	25.0 = 19.0	Green. 6.0	1.0
Dark ends

Descriptive Characters

Eye.—1. Dark, i.e. black-brown iris. Note.—Outer angles of eyes visibly elevated; deep-set; eyeball thick; covers the caruncle; outer angle slightly compressed and pointed.

Hair.—Colours—1. Black, not coal black. 2. Children’s hair is some shade lighter than adults’, but still “black.”

Form of Face.—1. Face inclined to be square and wedge-shaped. 2. Inclined to concavity. 3. Compare photographs. 4. Chinese, Fig. 6, but not so pronounced. (N.B.—There is great variation.) 5. Chin small, round, retreating. 6. Cheek-bones broad. Face flat (inclination to, vide photographs). 7. Medium lips—great variation. 8. Ears medium-sized—flat. 9. Lobes sometimes attached.

Measurements of Types [438] in Centimetres

Tribe.	Head—Round.	Head—Across.
Male.	Female.	Male.	Female.
1. Resigero	56	53	14	14
2. Nonuya	56	51	16	14
3. Boro	56	52	18	15
4. Andoke	57	53	17	16
5. Witoto	54	—	15	—

Tribe.	Head-Length.	Neck.
Male.	Female.	Male.	Female.
1. Resigero	20	18	Short	Short
2. Nonuya	21.5	19	Long	Short
3. Boro	24	20	Short	Long
4. Andoke	22	19	Medium	Short
5. Witoto	21	—	Short	—

Tribe.	Cheek-Bones.	Mouth.
Male.	Female.	Male.	Female.
1. Resigero	High, not pronounced	High, not pronounced	Moderate	Large
2. Nonuya	Very high	High, not pronounced	Large	Large
3. Boro	Wide, high	Wide, high	Small	Small
4. Andoke	—	—	Small	Small
5. Witoto	Wide, high	—	Large	—

Tribe.	Teeth.	Eyes.
Male.	Female.	Male.	Female.
1. Resigero	Large	Large	Oblique	Oblique
2. Nonuya	—	—	Deep-set	Oblique
3. Boro	—	—	Deep-set	Oblique
4. Andoke	—	—	Slightly oblique	Oblique
5. Witoto	Large, even	—	Oblique	—

Tribe.	Nose.	Height.
Male.	Female.	Male.	Female.
1. Resigero	Straight	Broad, bridged	160	138
2. Nonuya	Aquiline	Flat	168	149
3. Boro	Depressed	Depressed	162	146
4. Andoke	Aquiline	Depressed	171	146
5. Witoto	Flat	—	164	—

Tribe.	Chest—Round.	Waist.
Male.	Female.	Male.	Female.
1. Resigero	85	75	73	71
2. Nonuya	87	79	73	75
3. Boro	88	75	77	65
4. Andoke	89	82	76	76
5. Witoto	90	—	77	—

Tribe.	Hips—Round.	Tip Shoulder-Tip Elbow.
Male.	Female.	Male.	Female.
1. Resigero	82	79	35	28
2. Nonuya	83	88	35	32
3. Boro	87	81	34	30
4. Andoke	90	87	38	33
5. Witoto	84	—	36	—

Tribe.	Elbow to Top Middle Finger.	Eminence Buttock to Tip Flexed Knee.[439]
Male.	Female.	Male.	Female.
1. Resigero	45	39	52	44
2. Nonuya	47	41	53	48
3. Boro	46	42	47	45
4. Andoke	48	40	53	48
5. Witoto	44	—	52	—

Tribe.	Crutch to Tip of Flexed Knee.	Eminence Knee to Ground.
Male.	Female.	Male.	Female.
1. Resigero	37	28	51	44
2. Nonuya	40	31	53	45
3. Boro	36	32	51	45
4. Andoke	41	33	55	44
5. Witoto	38	—	52	—

Tribe.	Feet.	Distance between Nipples.
Male.	Female.	Male.	Female.
1. Resigero	Broad, large	Broad, small	20	23
2. Nonuya	Long	Broad	21.5	23
3. Boro	Large	Small	23	22
4. Andoke	Large, broad	Medium	22	20
5. Witoto	Large, broad	—	22	—

Tribe.	Length from Centre Nipples to Navel.	Navel to Crutch.
Male.	Female.	Male.	Female.
1. Resigero	23	24	19	19
2. Nonuya	25	22	24	20
3. Boro	21	22	20	20
4. Andoke	25	25	24	23
5. Witoto	26	22	—	—

Tribe.	Remarks.
Male.	Female.
1. Resigero	Moderate	Plump
2. Nonuya	Lean	Fat
3. Boro	Well-nourished	Well-nourished
4. Andoke	Well-nourished	Very plump
5. Witoto	Well-nourished	—

Essential Measurements
Two Cases, Women, Witoto

Extra Notes on Two Women, Witoto (chosen types)

No. 1. Very short neck; short sternum; straight shoulders. When standing at ease the middle finger of hand is half-way between flexion of knee and hip-joint. Thighs short.

General Description of Two Indian Women for evolving a Type. Both Witoto-speaking

No. 1. Woman full grown. No. 2. Still growing, of pubertal age. According to Schedule, pp. 11, Anatomical Observation.

External Characters.—General condition well nourished—healthy. No. 1. Stout. No. 2. Medium.

Descriptive Characters.

APPENDIX V
ARTICLES NOTED BY WALLACE AS IN USE AMONG THE UAUPES INDIANS THAT ARE FOUND WITH THE ISSA-JAPURA TRIBES

Household Furniture and Utensils

Weapons

Musical Instruments

Dress and Ornaments

APPENDIX VI
NAMES OF DEITIES

Many writers have stated that the Indians of the Upper Amazon forests have no words in their languages to express a Supreme Being. (See, for example, Bates, i. 162; Wallace, p. 354; Nery, p. 273; Orton, p. 316; Bates, ii. 137, 162-3; Markham.) It therefore seemed to me worth while to make the following list of words expressive of some idea of a superior, non-human being, good or bad.

Tribe.	Good Spirit.	Bad Spirit.
Amazon (proper)		Curupira
		Diabo do mato (Spruce, ii. 437)
Atabayoo, Inivida (Orinoco tribes)	Cachimana (Humboldt, ii. 362)	Iolokiamo (Humboldt, ii. 362)
Baniwa	Diotso	Yenauepena (Koch-Grünberg)
		Ienahabapen (Tavera-Acosta)
Baré	Diose (Sp. Dios.) (Koch-Grünberg, p. 92)	Iyehe (Koch-Grünberg)
	Oayaba (Spix)
Boro	Neva[441]	Navena[442]
Bororo		Bope[443] (Cook, p. 55)
Casiquiari		Yamadu (Spruce, ii. 437)
Equatorial Andes		Munyia (Spruce, ii. 437)
[294]Guayana		Yawahoo (Bancroft and Stedman, Spruce, ii. 437)
Hypurina		Kamiri (Steere, p. 379)
Imihita Miranya	Nawene (Koch-Grünberg, Z. 9081)
Karutana		Inei (Koch-Grünberg, p. 93)
Katapolitani		Iyemi, Koai (Koch-Grünberg, p. 93)
Puru	Ara, Carimade (Clough, p. 117)	Arabuny, Camery, Mendy (Clough, p. 117)
Quichua	Apunchi-yaya[444] (Orton, p. 628)
Siusi	Yaperikuli[445] Koch-Grünberg, p. 92)	Iyeimi (Koch-Grünberg, p. 93)
Tamanac	Amulivaca[446] (Humboldt, ii. 473-474).
Tariana	Yaperikuli (Koch-Grünberg, p. 93)	Iyei (Koch-Grünberg, p. 93)
	Iapiricure (Crevaux)	Inhat (Crevaux)
Ticuna	Nanuloa (Markham)	Locazy (Markham)
Tupi-Guarani	Tupan[447] (Nery, p. 281)	Ananga[448] (Nery, p. 281)
Uaupes	Tupanau (Wallace, p. 348)
Uarekena		Kue (Koch-Grünberg, p. 92)
[295]Witoto	Usiyamoi,[449] Husinaimui (Koch-Grünberg)	Taifeno, Taifa, Taegfeno (spirit), Foremo (phantom) (Koch-Grünberg)
Yagua	Tupana (Orton, p. 628)
Yukuna		Hiya (Koch-Grünberg, p. 93)
Zaparo	Piatzo[450] (Orton, p. 628)	Mungia (black spectre) (Orton, p. 170)
		Zamaro (Simson, p. 175)
		Samaro (Simson, p. 263)

APPENDIX VII
VOCABULARIES AND LISTS OF NAMES

Note re Pronunciation.—Vowels as in Italian and consonants as in English. The system adopted by the Anthropological and Geographical Societies has been followed.

SOME WITOTO TRIBES OF THE ISSA-JAPURA WATERSHED

SOME TRIBES OF THE OKAINA GROUP

SOME BORO TRIBES OF THE ISSA-JAPURA WATERSHED

WITOTO CHIEFS AND MEDICINE-MEN

NAMES OF BORO CHIEFS AND MEDICINE-MEN

WITOTO

BORO

APPENDIX VIII

FOOTNOTES

[1] My arrival in England was postponed to some months later through an attack of beriberi.

[2] It was unknown to me till afterwards that Dr. Koch-Grünberg of Berlin had, in 1904, ascended the Uaupes to, I believe, 71° west longitude.

[3] A rifle, where possessed, is never used against an animal but kept for use against the white man.

[4] Turtle eggs are, curiously enough, not considered fœtal.

[5] For my share I had the honour to receive, through the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the thanks of the French Government.

[6] Steamers have been on the Amazon since 1853, and navigation is continuous throughout the year (cf. Brazilian Year-Book).

[7] I never saw the Andes actually from these districts, but the suggestion is always there, they are seen in the mind’s eye; an ultimate, if invisible, limit to what would otherwise seem more than illimitable.

[8] Wallace, p. 246.

[9] Spruce, ii. 379-380.

[10] Robuchon’s estimate of distances is 471 geographical miles from Iquitos to the mouth of the Issa; thence to the Cotuhe, which he places at 2° 53′ 12″ S. and 69° 41′ 10″ W., 150 geographical miles. From the Cotuhe to the Igara Parana, 252 miles, a total distance of 873 geographical miles from Iquitos to the Igara Parana.

[11] Robuchon gives latitude 1° 43′ 9″ S., longitude 71° 53′ 36″ W.

[12] Spruce, i. 7, ii. 100.

[13] September to January is the hottest portion of the year, the heat being at its worst in December. 90° would be extreme heat, and 70° the lowest the mercury would probably reach; the average being from 75° to 85°. Robuchon is responsible for the statement that the temperature at the mouth of the Cotuhe in September was 43° Cent. in the shade, but that after a brisk shower it fell to 31°. The water of the Amazon has a temperature of 81°; the Japura is a warmer river and reaches 85°. Wallace gives the mean temperature of the Rio Negro water in September—that is, during the hot season—as 86°, and the corresponding temperature of the air as from 76° to 92.5°. The water, he considers, is probably never less than 80° at any time. The temperature of the Uaupes has been noted as invariably 76° at three to six feet below the surface (Geo. Journ., 1910, p. 683).

[14] The Amazon at its mouth is 158 miles across from bank to bank.

[15] This I take to be the Yacitara mentioned by Spruce, i. 30.

[16] Wallace noted a butterfly frequenting “the dung of some carnivorous animal” in Malacca, and remarks that many tropical butterflies suck liquid from muddy places, “and are generally so intent upon their meal that they can be easily approached and captured” (Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, pp. 29, 114).

[17] Spruce, ii. 366.

[18] Bates, ii. 262.

[19] Spruce, i. 49.

[20] One tree is reputed to be so poisonous that no Indian will touch it. See Maw, p. 294.

[21] These tribal houses differ from the communal long-houses of the Fly Delta, British New Guinea, not only in shape, but in that there are no platforms and no divisions for each family; the whole interior is open. For description of Kiwai and Daudai long-houses see Expedition to Torres Straits, iv. 112-117.

[22] Maloka = Indian lodge or tribal house (lingoa-geral).

[23] Manicaria saccifera (cf. Spruce, i. 56).

[24] Eugene André noted that two kinds were commonly used on the Causa, the mulato, a kind of Aroideae, and the murcielago, which belongs to the Bignoniaceae family.

[25] Several kinds of palm-leaves are used for this purpose, and whichever was most easily procurable in the district where the house was built would be used by the tribe. Hardenburg mentions the leaves of the Phytelephas macrocarpa, the vegetable ivory-tree, as in use among the Witoto, and the Bactris ciliata or Chonta palm for the posts and rafters (p. 135). The leaves of the Bussu palm, Manicaria saccifera, will make a thatch that lasts for ten or twelve years, by some accounts (cf. Waterton, p. 479).

[26] Wallace, p. 341.

[27] This is architecturally interesting in view of Foucart’s theory of the evolution of the Egyptian grooved stone pillar from wooden originals, bundles of reeds.

[28] Simson mentions such a “door,” p. 237.

[29] Wallace, p. 341.

[30] Among the Jivaro one partitioned half of the house is kept for the women (Orton, p. 171). There is no such distinction among the Issa-Japura tribes.

[31] Cf. Wallace, p. 354.

[32] Crevaux has described the process. He watched an Indian “qui fait du feu en roulant vivement un roseau dans une cavité creusée dans une tige de roncon” (Voyage dans l’Amérique du sud, p. 214). Wallace mentions this method among the Kuretu, op. cit. 355.

[33] If a jigger is removed at once with a needle it will not hurt, and scarcely makes a puncture.

[34] Vampires in this country are few and far between, but Simson mentions them as a plague at Agnano (Simson, p. 131).

[35] Bates, i. 246. For the taming of a full-grown Coita see p. 247. Another pet mentioned by Bates, a “strange kind of wood-cricket,” is also unknown to me as a pet, and though I have often heard loud-voiced insects of the cricket class they have never been in captivity (cf. Bates, i. 250).

[36] Cf. Martius, P.R.G.S. ii. 192.

[37] See Appendix.

[38] Deniker, p. 552.

[39] Marriage by capture was a Carib custom (Westermarck, p. 383). It is unknown nowadays to the tribes south of the Japura.

[40] Partial couvade is found also among tribes in the north of America, that is to say, certain things are tabu to the father after the child’s birth. Cf. Dorsey, Siouan Cults, p. 511; Venegas, i. 94; Tylor, pp. 294-7.

[41] im Thurn, p. 173. Joyce locates the original Caribs on the upper Xingu, from whence, he considers, they spread over Guiana and the lesser Antilles (South American Archæology, p. 256). Rodway, on the authority of Spanish chronicled Arawak information, suggests they were the original inhabitants of the north-west coast, migrant from Mexico (Guiana, pp. 41, 45).

[42] Ibid. pp. 171-2.

[43] Crevaux, Fleuves de l’Amérique du Sud, Yapura, F. 5 et 7.

[44] Crevaux, Vocabulaire français-roucouyenne.

[45] Koch-Grünberg, Journal de la Société des Américainistes de Paris, tome iii. No. 2 (1906).

[46] Koch-Grünberg, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xxxviii, 189.

[47] It must be remembered that I came to all these people from the Witoto country.

[48] Crevaux, Voyages dans l’Amérique du Sud, p. 368.

[49] Martius, Beiträge, ii. 340.

[50] The Inca were called Orejones by the Spaniards on account of the large studs they wore in the lobes of their ears. See Joyce, p. 110; Ratzel, ii. 172.

[51] Simson, p. 210.

[52] Koch-Grünberg, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xxxviii. 188 (1906).

[53] Cd. 6266, pp. 9, 10, 12, 25, 26.

[54] Rice, p. 690.

[55] Wallace, p. 354.

[56] See Appendix.

[57] Hardenburg, Man, p. 134.

[58] This combination is of so exceptional a character that it is hardly to be recognised as a definite trait of organisation, and it follows that though such exceptional cases may point to a possible past unity of clans as a tribe, these clans are now practically small tribes, being incapable of combining for common action. The expressions language-group, tribe, and tribesman are therefore more correct than tribe, clan, and clansman would be.

[59] Cf. im Thurn, p. 185.

[60] This is exactly the reverse of the matrilocal customs related by Sir Everard im Thurn.

[61] Or their artists and publishers.

[62] “The natives are ashamed, as they say, to be clothed” (Humboldt, Travels, iii. 230; cf. also Wallace, p. 357). Clothes, in fact, are often donned by savages at periods of license only. See Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, chap. ix.

[63] There are several trees in these forests that supply the needed fibrous bark. im Thurn suggests that the bark used is that of the Lecythis ollaria, but Spruce states that tauari is made from the bark of certain species of Tecoma of the Bignoniaceae order, and tururi, a thinner bark-cloth, from various figs and Artocarps. Naturally natives use the tree that is handiest when required (cf. im Thurn, pp. 194, 291; Spruce, i. 27).

[64] Dr. de Lacerda in his journal for July 22, 1798, describes just such a manufacture of bark-cloth carried on by the Muizas, who traded this with their neighbours the Maraves. See Land of Carembe, R.G.S., 1873, p. 71. Loin-cloths made from the bark of the Artocarps are also found among the Semang of Kedah and other wild tribes of the Malay Peninsula. See Skeat and Blagden, i. 143-4, 157, 376, etc.

[65] A similar geographical progression has been noted among the women of British New Guinea. See Williamson, The Mafulu, p. 28.

[66] Sandals known as alparagatas, with soles of plaited aloe-fibre, are usually worn by travellers in the Amazons. These can be cleaned and washed in the same way. See also Simson, p. 83.

[67] Wallace, p. 351.

[68] Feather ruffs are worn by Napo Indians, but not by these tribes.

[69] im Thurn, p. 305.

[70] One feather head-dress in my possession is made with rough cotton yarn, obtained presumably by barter, for none of these tribes make cotton yarn themselves, and it is very rarely to be found among them. The feathers are bound into the hank with very fine fibre.

[71] Oenocarpus distichus.

[72] Wallace, p. 351.

[73] According to Koch-Grünberg the Yahabana and other Kuretu-speaking tribes part the hair in the middle and plait it with bast. After bathing, the hair is dried, combed, and arranged with a bandage.

[74] Red was the favourite colour for a djibbeh. White ones were not much liked.

[75] This corresponds with the bead tanga described by Wallace, but the Uaupes’ apron is “only about six inches square,” and these girdles or garlands are two feet long or more (Wallace, p. 343).

[76] Value, I believe, about ninepence exchange or less.

[77] So uncommon is it that I was under the impression that it was entirely unknown until I examined the necklace in question very carefully after my return to England. Certainly I never saw any of these tribes preparing cotton or making use of it in any way except in its natural state to tip their blow-pipe arrows. String or yarn of any sort, except the fibre thread, I always found to be absolutely unobtainable anywhere throughout these districts.

[78] Possibly one of the Histeridae mentioned by Bates, i. 211.

[79] Pace Maw, p. 226.

[80] Belts of apparently similar minute plaiting are worn by the Mafula of British New Guinea. These natives also wear armlets and leglets of the same material, but not tightened to swell the muscles. The thread these are made of is manufactured from vegetable fibre in the identical manner employed by the Issa-Japura Indians (Williams, The Mafula of British New Guinea, pp. 32, 53, 54).

[81] Compare illustration with pictures of ligatures in D. Rannie’s My Adventures among South Sea Cannibals, pp. 80, 170, 179.

[82] The Spaniards called the Inca Orejones on account of the large studs worn by them in the lobes of their ears. See Joyce, p. 110.

[83] Wallace states that all the Indians “have a row of circular punctures along the arm” (Wallace, p. 345). These tribes have nothing of the sort.

[84] Wallace describes the mark as “three vertical blue lines on the chin” (Wallace, p. 345). This is not correct; vide drawing.

[85] Crevaux, p. 264.

[86] The Bixa Orellana (Spix and von Martius, p. 228).

[87] Genifa americana (Spix and von Martius, p. 228).

[88] Hardenburg, p. 138.

[89] “Covering, if not used as a protection from the climate, owes its origin, at least in a great many cases, to the desire of men and women to make themselves mutually attractive” (Westermarck, p. 211). “Clothing was first adopted as a means of decoration rather than from motives of decency. The private parts were first adorned with the appendages that were afterwards used by a dawning sense of modesty to conceal them” (Johnston, The River Congo, p. 418).

[90] The result of this is that a traveller is forced to have women as well as men in his escort, or he would find that half the services required would not be rendered him. For instance, no male Indian will prepare food, neither will he wash clothes, nor clean the cooking vessels. This refers to the untouched districts, and must not be confused with the forced “willingness” of the Rubber Belts.

[91] A. R. Wallace, p. 349.

[92] E. B. Tylor notes that the savage is often skilled in map-making as a form of picture-writing (op. cit. p. 90), and quotes Prescott for the existence of maps in Peru before Europeans reached South America (Prescott, Peru, i. 116). Ancient maps or books like “rolled up palm leaves” (Ratzel, ii. 169).

[93] See Chap. XVIII.

[94] Pudenda maioris statuae muliebris nigra, labia maiora rubra picta sunt; sed et in maiore et in minore statua vagina tam profunde perforata est ut transitum ab vulva ad uterum suggerere videatur. Scrotum statuae virilis nigrum, praeputium rubrum, pictum est; membrum autem ipsum, quamvis quiescens, erectum tamen est et sic ad abdomen parallelum.

[95] See Chap. XVII.

[96] Keane tells of the Mojos valley natives that so uncommon is stone in that district that if a man set out on a journey to the uplands where stone is procurable he would be asked to bring some back as a curiosity (Keane, p. 12). For some use of stone implements of the past still employed among present-day peoples, see Mitchell, Past in the Present, p. 12, etc.; Routledge, With a Neolithic People; Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 592-4, etc.; Skeat and Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, i. 242, 296.

[97] Spruce mentions a white pitch obtained from Icica trees, I never saw any white pitch. These Indians use only black.

[98] Some tribes near the Napo also use circular shields of tapir hide, p. 116.

[99] The use of the potter’s wheel was even unknown to the Incas (Joyce, p. 193).

[100] Crevaux, p. 193.

[101] The caraipé tree is, according to Spruce and Bentham, one of the Licania genus of the Chrysobalaneae order (Spruce, i. 13).

[102] Spruce, i. 14.

[103] The Cerropia peltata, according to Spix and Martius, p. 259.

[104] Tylor mentions the hammock as one of “the inventions which it seems possible to trace to their original districts,” and states that it has spread from South America and the West Indies “far and wide over the world, carrying with it its Haitian name, hamac” (op. cit. p. 175). It is interesting to note in this connection that a hammock is known as a hamaka among the Yakuna; the Tariana call it hamaka or amaka; and the Yavitero Indians call it aimaiha (Koch-Grünberg, Aruak-Sprachen Nordwestbrasiliens und der angrenzenden Gebiete, p. 65). The Baré Indians call it mi; the Baniwa bidzaha or bisali; the Siusi pieta or piete; the Katapolitani change the t to d and have pieda; the Kurutana call it makaitepa; the Uarekena say soalita (Koch-Grünberg, op. cit.); while the Pioje call hammocks jangre (Simson, p. 268). The Witoto word is kinai and the Boro gwapa.

[105] Hamilton Rice gives the distances between the meshes as the space of thumb to little finger stretch for the Witoto, palm-length for the Karahone, four fingers for the Cubbeo (p. 700). I knew the spacing differed, but never heard that it was a tribal distinction.

[106] The palm employed is, according to Bates, an Astrocaryum (Bates, ii. 209). Wallace and im Thurn mention the Mauritia flexuosa (A. R. Wallace, p. 342; im Thurn, pp. 283, 290), which, according to Spruce, “seems confined to the submaritime region” (Spruce, i. 15). He gives Bromelia karatas, ii. 520. Spix and Martius give the Tucuma palm (Astrocaryum vulgare) and others of the same genus (Spix and Martius, p. 248).

[107] “A species of Desmoncus” (A. R. Wallace, p. 336).

[108] Women make both cassava-squeezers and graters. This may be a coincidence, as I have seen men making the mats for the doorways, usually women’s work.

[109] Guilielmia speciosa.

[110] Spruce, ii. 447.

[111] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 668-9, and Across Australia.

[112] Any hard wood may be used, but cedar makes the best canoe. Hamilton Rice says cachicama (Rice, p. 691). Spruce mentions “a heavy laurel, probably Paraturi,” used by the Tussari for making their cascos (Spruce, i. 413). Bates mentions the Itauba amarello, “the yellow variety of the stone-wood” (Bates, ii. 117). But all trees will not do, for some will not open properly when they are fired (André, pp. 241-2).

[113] Iriartea ventricosa.

[114] This is said to be the only kind of canoe used by the Auhishiri (cf. Simson, p. 199).

[115] Viz. the Maca, the Guaharibo, and the Guahibo (Spruce, i. 477).

[116] Wallace, p. 358.

[117] For example, the Zaparo (Simson, pp. 169, 295); the Uaupes Indians (Wallace, p. 349).

[118] Among other tribes this is not always the case. Manioc and banana cultivation with the Rucuyens is carried on by the men (Ratzel, ii. 128).

[119] There is a wild species on some of the rivers, but the Indians make no use of it (cf. Bates, i. 194).

[120] Anauana sativa (Wallace, p. 336).

[121] Spruce, i. 180-81.

[122] Among the Issa-Japura tribes it is rather sustaining than stimulating, i.e. it is not fermented.

[123] Theobroma, the food of the gods (Spruce, i. 79).

[124] I would suggest that manioc is the true name for the plant, cassava for the “bread” made therefrom. Mandiocca is only American-Spanish for manioc.

[125] Bates i. 194, n.

[126] Spruce, i. 215.

[127] Capsicum frutescens (Spix and Martius, p. 259). Artanthe eximia and other Artanthe and Peperomia (Spruce, ii. 283-4).

[128] For processes of growing and preparation, see Markham, pp. 148-9.

[129] Erythroxylon coca and E. cataractarum (Spruce, ii. 446-8).

[130] Cf. E. B. Tylor, p. 170.

[131] An illustration in Sir H. Johnston’s Liberia, ii. 406, shows a West African native climbing with only one ring and both arms and ankles free. Bates mentions an Indian climbing with only one ring used for the feet (Bates, ii. 196). The same method is to be found in Ceylon, among the Malays, etc. (cf. Skeat and Blagden, i. 51, 62, 85; Tennant, Ceylon, ii. 523; Partridge, Cross River Natives, p. 150, etc.).

[132] This is no uncommon thing among peoples of lower culture, but that it does not of necessity follow as a corollary to life in the bush is proved by some of the West African tribes who are most indifferent sportsmen. This is the case among sundry of the peoples of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, where a British official has before now had to train his shikari, if he hoped for successful sport.

[133] The blow-pipe, the gravitana in lingoa-geral, is known as the zarabatana among the Teffe tribes (Bates, ii. 236); the bodoquera on the Napo. Koch-Grünberg gives the following names for it: todike, Imitritä Miranya; uataha, Yavitero; uilipona, Uarekena; uapana, Yukuna; Mauipi, Katapolitani; mauipi or moipi, Siusi; mauipi or mauipi, Tariana (Aruak-Sprachen, p. 73).

[134] A species of Arundinaria.

[135] Bactus ciliata.

[136] The wood used is paxiaba-i, the Iriartea setigera (Spruce, ii. 522). This small palm grows from ten to fifteen feet high, with a stem of an inch to two inches in diameter. When dry the soft inner pith is removed, and the bore polished with a bunch of tree-fern roots pulled up and down (Wallace, p. 147).

[137] Jacitara (Bates, ii. 236).

[138] From the arbol-del-lacre (Hardenburg, Man, p. 136); Pao-de-lacre, Vismia guianensis (Spruce, ii. 522).

[139] Bombax (Wallace, p. 147); Eriodendron sp. (Sterculiaceae), (Spruce, ii. 523; Bates, ii. 237).

[140] Oenocarpus Batawa (Spruce, ii. 522).

[141] These blow-pipes appear to be similar to those still in use among the Orang Kuantan Malays, of which a specimen is to be seen in the British Museum. It is made of two grooved halves of a hard wood, bound with cane, and coated with “a gutta-like substance” (Skeat, Man, 1902, No. 108). This is, however, a shorter instrument than the Witoto or Boro use, the measurements given being only 5 feet 2 inches for total length, with an interior diameter of seven-sixteenths of an inch at the mouthpiece and three-eighths of an inch at the muzzle-end. The blow-pipe is found among all Malayan tribes. For distribution in the South Seas, cf. map in Skeat and Blagden’s Pagan Tribes, i. 254.

[142] Deniker states that the Miranha hunt “like the ancient Quechuas by means of nets stretched out between the trees, into which they drive, with cries and gestures, the terrified animals” (Deniker, p. 561). I have never seen or heard of such nets among them.

[143] Orton, pp. 169-70.

[144] Cf. method of poisoning adopted by natives of Torres Straits (Torres Straits, iv. 159).

[145] Jacquinia armillaris. According to Spix and Martius babasco poison is made from the leaves and blossom of the Budleya connata (Spix and von Martius, Reise, 1820, p. 98).

[146] Simson, p. 131.

[147] Paullinia pinnata (Sapindaceae) (Spruce, ii. 523; Bates, ii. 82-3). Spruce also mentions cunambi, poison obtained from the roots of Ichthyothera cunambi (Spruce, ii. 520); and Yuca-raton, the root of Gliricidiae sp. (Spruce, ii. 455).

[148] The frame is made of timbo-titica, Heteropsis sp. (Spruce, ii. 523).

[149] Such very hard wood is procurable, and so abundant is it that even tribes like the Botucudo, who could use shell, stone, or metal, use wood in preference, and many tribes prefer their lithic axes to metal ones. The inference is obvious—these peoples are not, and never have been, metal-using races, and poisoned wood suits sufficiently their purposes for arrow-heads.

[150] Oakenfull, p. 30.

[151] Compare with customs of the Mafulu in British New Guinea (Williamson, p. 179; Fiji, Thompson, p. 35).

[152] Clough, pp. 104-5; Wallace, p. 353.

[153] Partridge, Cross River Natives, p. 59; “Upper Congo Cannibals,” J.R.A.I., xxiv. pp. 298-9.

[154] For example, Maw, p. 160.

[155] Wallace, pp. 346-7.

[156] Ratzel, ii. 138-9; Orton, pp. 171-2.

[157] See British Museum, Cambridge Museum, Munich Museum.

[158] Bates, ii. 132.

[159] I was never present at a cannibal feast. This information is based on Robuchon’s account, checked by cross-questioning the Indians with whom I came in contact.

[160] Johnson, Liberia, ii. 898.

[161] On the other hand earth-eating is prevalent among the Torres Straits people, where salt is not rare. The pregnant woman eats it to make her infant light in colour and strong and brave (Torres Straits Exped., iv. 139).

[162] Crevaux, p. 287.

[163] Bates, ii. 195.

[164] Ibid.

[165] Some tribes, for example the Jivaro (Simson, pp. 93-4), are said to be more provident in this respect, but the Boro and Witoto groups are not among them. Occasionally a store of pines may be made in October, when pines are most plentiful, but this is all.

[166] It may be noted here that all the denizens of the forest, including even the larger carnivora, are by popular report fruit-eaters, and are specially fond of the wild alligator pear (cf. Spruce, ii. 362-3).

[167] Tapirus americanus.

[168] All animals when wounded appear to take to water.

[169] Coelogenys paca.

[170] Hydrochaerus capybara.

[171] Dasyprocta agouti.

[172] I captured some and brought them away as pets.

[173] Spruce, i. p. 182.

[174] Dicotypes tajacu is the only one I observed in these parts, but D. labiatus is common in the bush. The peccary is called kairooni by the Arawak; mero and emo by the Witoto according to the species; mene by the Boro; and whinga by the Macusi.

[175] See Wood’s Natural History, “Mammals.”

[176] Oakenfull, p. 30.

[177] Turning turtles is prohibited by law in Brazil, but no law reaches these wilds.

[178] The Indians of British Guiana who eat the turtles’ and iguana eggs, also “will not touch the egg of a fowl” (im Thurn, p. 18).

[179] They do not, however, object to their food being decidedly “high” (cf. Simson, p 115).

[180] In this they share the tastes of the Liberian women (cf. Johnston, Liberia, ii. 954).

[181] Spruce, ii. 381.

[182] Manihot aypi.

[183] The description given by Fr. Pinto in Dr. de Lacerda’s eighteenth-century journal of the preparation of manioc flour by the Murunda Kaffirs differs only from the Indian method in that the root is not squeezed, merely soaked till “almost rotten,” then dried and pounded (R.G.S., The Lands of Cazembe, 1873, p. 129).

[184] It would seem that the Boro use what is known in Brazil as Farinha de aqua, and the Witoto make Farinha secca (cf. Spruce, i. 11-12). Brazilian arrowroot and tapioca are products of the manioc prepared in different ways. Only the Boro and Menimehe make Farinha de aqua.

[185] “A mandiocca oven (called budari in Barré)” (Spruce, ii. 477-8).

[186] Bates noted that he saw Indians on the Tapajos season this sauce with ants in place of fish (Bates, i. 318-19).

[187] Wallace, p. 340.

[188] Simson mentions salt-licks in the neighbourhood of the Rio Salado Grande (Simson, p. 238).

[189] The ashes of the drum tree (Cecropia peltata) “are saline and antiseptic” (Spruce, ii. 447). “A kind of flour which has a saline taste” is extracted from the fruits of the Inaja palm (Maximiliana regia), and the Jara palm (Leopoldinia major), and the Caruru, a species of Lacis (Wallace, p. 340). Cuaruru is given by Spruce as a native name for Pogostemon sp.; when this is burnt the ashes give salt (Spruce, ii. 520).

[190] Cf. Torres Straits, “The chief meal of the day is taken at night, soon after sundown; the remains are eaten in the morning,” iv. 131.

[191] This is probably the puruma (Puruma Cecropiaefolia Martius) mentioned by Bates (Bates, ii. 217).

[192] Yerba Luisa (Simson, p. 61).

[193] This may be Mimusops sp. (Sapotacae) or Callophora sp. (Aponcynaccae) (Spruce, i. 50, 224; ii. 520). Bates, i. 69; Spruce, i. 51; Orton, pp. 288, 500, 581.

[194] Caapi is known as aya-huasca, the drink of Huasca, the greatest king of the Inca, to the Zaparo and other tribes farther west (Spruce, ii. 424).

[195] Spruce, ii. 419-21.

[196] Banisteria Caapi (Spruce, ii. 414).

[197] Haemadictyon amazonicum (ibid. p. 415). This is only added by the Uaupes tribes.

[198] Both Manihot utilissima and Manihot Aypi (Spruce, ii. 414).

[199] Cf. Tylor, pp. 179-80.

[200] Paullinia cupana (Spruce, i. 180).

[201] Guarana, “pro panacea peregrinantum habetur” (von Martius), is made from the roasted seeds. It is “almost identical in its elements with theine and caffeine” (Spruce, i. 181). It is cultivated on the Negro as an article of trade. According to Bates it is made from the seeds of a climbing plant (Paullinia sorbilis) (Bates, ii. 134).

[202] Coca Erythroxylon.

[203] Spix and von Martius, p. 153.

[204] Joyce, p. 97.

[205] Markham, Peruvian Bark, p. 151.

[206] According to Bates the leaves of the candelabrum tree (Cecropia palmata) are used (Bates, ii. 211-12). Spruce has the imbauba or drum tree (Cecropia peltata) (Spruce, ii. 447). Markham gives the quinoa plant (Markham, op. cit. p. 151).

[207] Re effects. Spruce notes that it had little effect on him (Spruce, ii. 448). One of my companions though “at first affected … with slight nausea … soon became accustomed to it, and found it very useful on many occasions” (Hardenburg, p. 137-8). This is interesting in relation to my own continued intolerance. “In Peru its excessive use is said to seriously injure the coats of the stomach” (Spruce, ii. 448). At Ega it was regarded as a vice only to be indulged in secretly (Bates, ii. 211). Markham, on the other hand, considers it “the least injurious, and the most soothing and invigorating” narcotic (Markham, op. cit. p. 152). He even recommends it as a preventative of loss of breath to Alpine climbers (ibid. p. 153). With this I cannot concur.

[208] See Appendix for this and other notes.

[209] Spruce relates that a Guahibo told him, “With a chew of caapi and a pinch of niopo … one feels so good! No hunger—no thirst—no tired!” (Spruce, ii. 428).

[210] Mimosa acaciodes (Bentham). “A species of Inga” (Bates, i. 331). The seeds of Acacia Niopo (Humbolt). Piptadenia peregrina (L.) (Bentham and Spruce, ii. 427).

[211] The Guahibo use no quicklime (Spruce, ii. 426).

[212] This is curious, but I can advance no reason.

[213] Or “a bit of the leg-bone of the jaguar, closed at one end with pitch” (Spruce, ii. 427).

[214] And by the natives on the upper Orinoco (Spruce, ii. 423).

[215] “Two feet long and as thick as the wrist” (Spruce, ii. 420). It “is smoked in the ordinary way”. A long cigar is also smoked on the Equatorial Pacific coast, but “held in the mouth at the lighted end” (ibid. p. 436). This is common amongst negroes.

[216] Like the eyes of a cocoanut—to allow passage to the budding rootlets.

[217] Spruce, ii. 413-55.

[218] Bates, ii. 288.

[219] Also called curari, ourali, worara, woorari, urari, ervadura. “A powerful South American arrow-poison occurring in commerce as a blackish extract, somewhat resinoid in appearance,” used for tetanus, hydrophobia, epilepsy (Dict. Mat. Med.).

[220] Strychnos castelmoeana and Cocculus toxicoferus (Hardenburg, p. 136).

[221] “Many ingredients are used, such as several kinds of barks, roots, peppers (Capsicum), ants, and the poison-fangs of snakes” (im Thurn, p. 311).

[222] Crevaux gives a long description of the preparation of this poison (Crevaux, pp. 268-337).

[223] According to Bates, salt is considered to be an antidote for this poison (Bates, i. 247).

[224] Bates, ii. 200. This agrees with Darwin, Descent of Man, i. 128.

[225] Dr. Galt considered “that there is no more fertile race than the pure-blooded Indian of the Marañon” (Orton, p. 465).

[226] Menstruation has been known to commence in England at the age of eleven, generally in cases of well-nourished blondes, and in exceptional cases even earlier. It has been known to occur at nine years, but this was induced by a severe accident. This is unknown among the forest people. I made out the age of puberty to be not less than fifteen for girls, and eighteen for boys, among the tribes I was with.

[227] Cf. Thomson, The Fijians, pp. 179-80; Codrington, The Melanesians, p. 228, etc.

[228] Tapir flesh is undoubtedly rich, and over-indulgence would have evil effects upon any woman independent of other conditions, for equally it would upset a man.

[229] A tribe in British Guiana, the Macusi, carry this idea even further, and impose such restriction on a man before his actual marriage (im Thurn, p. 222). I have never met with this.

[230] Wallace in his account of the Uaupes Indians states that “the women are generally delivered in the house, and do no work for four or five days” (Wallace, p. 345). This does not tally with the customs among the Issa and Japura tribes, at least I never found it to be the case.

[231] These Indians adopt a sitting, i.e. continental (not English left lateral) position for parturition.

[232] For similar treatment elsewhere see Schomberg, Reisen in Britisch Guiana, ii. 66.

[233] Hardenburg, p. 135.

[234] I cannot help thinking that some infanticides may be due to the fear by the wife that the husband would refrain from the fulfilment of his debitum conjugale did he find that it resulted in his having to support an unduly increasing family.

[235] Infanticide is a subject open to unlimited misapprehension and misrepresentation. Compare with the above, for instance, the statements of a missionary among some of the Indian tribes farther south. Mr. Grubb speaks of “a shrill cry of pain when a child perhaps has been cruelly murdered” (An Unknown People in an Unknown Land, p. 17). A reviewer with much knowledge and experience of Paraguay, remarks, “I never remember hearing the women’s shrill cry of lamentation. The children are killed almost immediately after birth, as secretly as possible, and no one pays much attention to the fact” (Seymour H. C. Hawtrey, for R.A.I.). This is certainly the case with the Issa and Japura groups.

[236] Among the Ucayali deformed children are killed because they “belong to the devil” (Orton, p. 321).

[237] A similar practice is reported among the Kuni of British New Guinea (Williamson, The Mafulu, p. 178).

[238] Among Zaparo tribes also this is the case (Simson, pp. 175, 183).

[239] Early History of Mankind, p. 247.

[240] This is one of the many supposed indications of a possible Asiatic origin of these peoples, “remnants of a race driven into the mountains by the present dwellers in the plains,” as Tylor says of the Miau-tsze, who also practice the couvade (op. cit. p. 295). The practice is as widespread as the performance of the medicine-man or shaman, though not invariably an accompaniment of so-called shamanism or kindred performances: for example the Arunta have medicine-men but do not practise the couvade, the Basque people have couvade but no medicine-man.

[241] In support of this theory note that in Melanesia proper couvade has only been observed “where the child follows the father’s kindred” (Codrington, p. 228).

[242] According to one writer some Indians go so far as to remove all weapons and furniture from the house (Clough, p. 104).

[243] With the Issa-Japura tribes the father is subjected to no such torturing processes at the hands of his friends as are recorded of other tribes and peoples, “in such sort that from being sick by pure imagination they often make a real patient of him” (Tylor, loc. cit. p. 288 et seq.; J.A.I. xviii. 248; cf. also Crevaux, Spix, and Martius, p. 381; Schomburg, Reisen in Britisch Guiana, ii.).

[244] Bird names, as is commonly the case in South America, are attempts to repeat the cry of the birds themselves. Kweko, for instance, is a most suggestive name for a parrot. Birds, it may here be noted, very seldom sing in Amazonia.

[245] See Brinton on this subject, Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 196. Cf. Howitt, p. 739.

[246] Witoto.

[247] Boro.

[248] Cf. Tylor, Early History of Mankind; im Thurn, p. 220; Hodson, Naga Tribes, p. 176; Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p. 139; Brinton, p. 195, etc.; Seligmann, p. 140; André, p. 16; Lang, Origin of Religion, etc.

[249] See Folklore Journal; Mitchell, Past in the Present.

[250] Every Indian man has two names, his own name and his secret name (name of genitalia). The latter is generally a significant name, and is used in ribald jesting round the fire, e.g. “the Okaina (a rodent) went to the stream to bathe,” etc. etc., ad nauseam.

[251] The converse of this holds good elsewhere, for the names of the dead are often tabu. See Rivers, Todas, pp. 625-6; Tylor, p. 142; Brinton, pp. 94-5.

[252] Brinton, p. 197.

[253] Pace Ratzel, ii. 128.

[254] Simson, p. 92; Ratzel, ii. 128.

[255] Markham, Clough, p. 104.

[256] Wallace, p. 360.

[257] According to Waitz the Carib medicine-man was accorded the jus primae noctis (Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iii. 382); Westermarck, p. 76. Von Martius also attributes this custom to certain Brazilian tribes, the chief, not the medicine-man, claiming the right (i. 113, 428, 485).

[258] Letourneau, The Evolution of Marriage, p. 52.

[259] Wallace, p. 355.

[260] This is quite usual of course. See Westermarck, pp. 445-7.

[261] Cf. custom among the Muskoks (Ratzel, ii. 125. See also im Thurn, p. 221; Westermarck, p. 18).

[262] Wallace, p. 346.

[263] Westermarck puts the disparity of years at from five to six among natives of Brazil (op. cit. p. 137; Spix and Martius, ii. 248).

[264] This invariably takes place in the forest, for no intimacy, even between husband and wife, is ever permitted in the publicity of the house. According to Westermarck a similar custom prevailed in Fiji (op. cit. pp. 151-2), but this is denied by Thomson, The Fijians, p. 202.

[265] im Thurn, pp. 186, 221.

[266] As De Morgan remarked of a somewhat similar practice among the Sakai of Perak, this is a form of marriage by purchase “modified by the smallness of the price paid … a purely formal substitute” (Bulletin de la Société Normande de Géographie, vii. 422; Skeat and Blagden, ii. 60-61).

[267] Or potacea, a nut of bitter taste the size of an acorn.

[268] See von Martius, i. 113. For similar instances cf. Westermarck, p. 151.

[269] This confirms the account given by Wallace, p. 346; von Martius, i. 600.

[270] See for similar etiquette, Alcedo-Thompson, Dictionary of America and the West Indies, i. 416; E.R. Smith, The Aurocanians, p. 215; Westermarck, pp. 383-4.

[271] This seems to be the same as the Hottentot custom (Kolben, Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, i. 157).

[272] These are, I believe, the same ants that are used in the manufacture of the curare poison. They are fairly common. In lingoa-geral they are called tucaudera.

[273] “The Carayas maintain quasi-husbands for widows at the public cost, lest they should be a source of disturbance to the general peace” (Ratzel, ii. 126). Widows are repi, prostitutes among some Melanesians (Codrington, p. 235).

[274] See, for similar belief among the Zaparo, Simson, p. 174.

[275] For example, among the Bororo when the medicine-man has announced that the patient will die in a given time, “if at the end of this time he still lives, the executioner, sent of course by the priest, will suddenly appear in the hut, sit astride his stomach, and strangle him to death” (Cook, p. 55).

[276] See Joyce, p. 249.

[277] See supra, p. 151.

[278] The idea of blood crying for vengeance is familiar enough, and the most universally-known example is that of the fratricide Cain informed that his brother’s blood cried for vengeance from the ground (Gen. iv. 10).

[279] See supra, p. 31.

[280] “A microscopic scarlet Acarus” (Orton, p. 485).

[281] “To an Indian smallpox is certain death—the most dreaded enemy, who has over and over again swept off entire tribes, and the name or passing suspicion of which from youth up has always been trembled at and fled from as from death itself” (Simson, p. 142).

[282] There are many varieties of this complaint. In one kind the patient wastes away. With another it assumes the characteristics of elephantiasis, the legs swell, the flesh becomes soft and podgy, the skin unhealthy and white. It is said by the rubber-gatherers that a cure can only be effected when the patient sees the sea, in other words through complete change of air.

[283] Simson speaks of a “skin-disease common amongst all Indians of the higher Marañon, called ‘carata.’ The skin is ‘scaly and blotched all over with black’” (Simson, p. 178). This seems to be similar to the “cutaneous disease” mentioned by Bates, except that he explicitly mentions “the black spots were hard and rough but not scaly” (Bates, ii. 382). The Purupura Indians have also a skin complaint that causes them to be “spotted and blotched with white, brown, or nearly black patches” (Wallace, p. 357).

[284] I did myself, and so did my boy Brown and others of the party.

[285] André, pp. 16-110.

[286] Spix and Martius, p. 31.

[287] Simson, pp. 148, 194. A very common practice among Indians.

[288] Koch-Grünberg, pp. 134, 165.

[289] I do not mean the body of an infant killed at birth, which, as I have said, is done as quietly and secretly as possible.

[290] “Primary urn-burial is characteristic in the main of the Tupi-Guarani family” (Joyce, p. 270).

[291] For the same reason that prompted similar proceeding among the Norsemen, an influence still alive in many parts of our own country. Cf. Mitchell, Past in the Present. An instance is reported from Hampshire within the last few years of a child’s toys being broken on its grave. (Read, Folklore Journal, vol. xxii. p. 322.)

[292] Ratzel, ii. 155.

[293] Shaman is in more general use among Americans. It should be remembered that the Zaparo, with whom Simson mentions the shimano (Simson, pp. 174-5, 177), have had considerably more intercourse with western civilisation than the tribes away from the Napo line of communication.

[294] Vol. xxiv.

[295] “The chief ‘medicine’ of the Payes on the affluents of the Amazon, both northern and southern, and on the Orinoco” (Spruce, ii. 436).

[296] Crevaux, p. 300.

[297] im Thurn, p. 312; Wallace, p. 347; Crevaux, p. 299.

[298] im Thurn, p. 368.

[299] Spruce mentions Barré Indians “sucking out the rheumatism” from each other’s shoulders (Spruce, ii. 435).

[300] I am unable to say whether the medicine-man believes that an actual stick has been literally in the patient’s flesh, or whether he believes that the stick concealed in his mouth becomes a habitation for the supernatural power causing the sickness, or if he merely does the whole thing to impress his audience, and confirm their belief in his magical powers. Quite possibly all these reasons combined in varying degrees are present in any case. See Marett, Anthropology, p. 247.

[301] A boy “with epileptic tendency being preferred,” as im Thurn noted was the case in British Guiana (im Thurn, p. 334).

[302] Waterton, p. 449.

[303] Cf. im Thurn, p. 349.

[304] Cf. Westermarck, p. 152.

[305] Spruce, ii. 430-31.

[306] I have never seen the medicine-man’s palm-leaf boxes mentioned by Spruce, ii. 431.

[307] Among the Mungaberra the medicine-men “can and often do assume the form of eagle-hawks,” and thus attack other tribes (Spencer and Gillen, p. 533). It may be that the medicine-men of Indian tribes nearer the mountains, where these birds have their habitat, assume the form of a condor, as the medicine-man of the forest districts does that of the jaguar, for the condor is “sacred throughout practically the whole of the Andean region.” See Joyce, p. 175.

[308] The jaguar and the anaconda are both magical beasts. See Chap. XIX.

[309] Note: Among the Arunta the medicine-man has “a particular kind of lizard distributed through his body, which endows him with great suctional powers” (Spencer and Gillen, p. 531).

[310] See im Thurn, pp. 329-31.

[311] Spruce, ii. 432. Cf. Rochfort, Histoire naturelle et morale des Isles Antilles, p. 472.

[312] Spruce, ii 431.

[313] That the words are now incomprehensible may have arisen from the fact that the songs were originally intended only to recall things to those already instructed, in the same way that Mexican picture records “do not tell their stories in full, but only recall them to the minds of those who are already acquainted with them” (E. B. Tylor, p. 96). As instruction and memory lapsed the words would become mere gibberish. Certainly all these tribes appear to have songs they can no longer interpret. La danse est accompagnée des chantes; je regrette de n’avoir pu saisir le sens de leurs paroles (Crevaux, p. 104). There are old dances with words no longer understood among the Tukano (Koch-Grünberg, p. 254). This is, of course, by no means peculiar to the Amazonian Indians. Some of the singing games played by children in British New Guinea have words whose meanings are either obscure or lost (Barton, J.R.A.I., p. 269). Among the Naga tribes the language of the songs “is known in many cases to be now unintelligible to those who sing them” (Hodson, Naga Tribes, p. 68). Corrobborees are passed from one tribe to the other among the Australian natives, “the result is that the words are, as a general rule, quite unintelligible to the performers” (Spencer and Gillen, Central Australia, p. 281). Zulu charm songs are said to be incomprehensible to the singers (Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 413). These instances might be multiplied, but they suffice to show that this survival of words with lost meanings is world-wide.

As a curious contrast to this we find that the Spanish missionaries in South America complained that they had great difficulty in getting their converts to remember the Ave Maria and the Paternoster “seeing that the words were mere nonsense to them” (Tylor, p. 96). It should not be forgotten though, in this connection, that the potency of a word is in inverse ratio to its incomprehensibility. Cf. Brinton, Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 92.

[314] Possibly there may be a second pine harvest and dance, but the great feast takes place in October.

[315] Koch-Grünberg mentions the same among the Opaina.

[316] Koch-Grünberg.

[317] Maw describes quite a different arrangement in a dance at Tabitinga. “The dancers were usually linked three together, one principal character supported by two others, one on each side; and there were generally two sets dancing at the same time, each set being followed by women and children dancing or jumping in the similar manner” (Maw, p. 220).

[318] Koch-Grünberg mentions a dance among tribes north of the Japura where the men and women dance together in pairs. The women do not wear aprons, and at the end of the figure they disappear.

[319] Spruce, i. 313.

[320] One is irresistibly reminded of the clown, especially of the comic man who usually puts in an appearance at military sports. It is possible that this custom of dressing-up to secure attention when airing a grievance is what has been mistaken by some writers for a part of the dance. Sir Roger Casement, quoting Maw in the Contemporary Review, September 1912, talks of “the masked men” as “a necessary part of each performance.” It is certainly quite unknown to me, for I never saw or heard of anything of the kind, though in the first edition of Bates’s Naturalist on the River Amazon the frontispiece of the second volume gives a masked dance of the Tukuna, so I do not suggest that masked dancers do not exist, only that they are not known among the tribes of the Issa-Japura valleys.

[321] It must be remembered that Indians are extraordinarily generous, or improvident, in the matter of food. I should never hesitate to join a family party when feeding, without waiting for an invitation. The complaint in question probably refers to a whole basket of manioc bartered in the plantation, which transaction would belong to quite another category.

[322] Crevaux gives an account of an initiation dance where the torture applied is by means of the application of stinging ants to the naked bodies of the neophytes (Crevaux, pp. 245-50).

[323] Koch-Grünberg, p. 188. The German doctor also gives an account of a dance where boys and girls perform in couples. When the figures are ended the couples withdraw into the forest, and night covers subsequent proceedings. This takes place among the Yahuna of the Kuretu group. The men of these tribes when summoned by drum to a dance leave their women behind them.

[324] Bates, ii. 207.

[325] Manioc.

[326] Plantation.

[327] Manioc root.

[328] Cassava.

[329] What is it? what is it?

[330] It is good.

[331] As proof that this dance is borrowed, and not common to all the tribes that dance it, is the fact that all tribes, whatever their language-group, use the Muenane words for the answer.

[332] See Appendix.

[333] The individual in question was labouring under the most extraordinary sexual excitement. This may have been due to coca influence, to the lubricity of the song words, or to the intoxication due to rhythmic movement. The first two possible causes are eliminated by the fact that Indians are almost continually under the influence of the drug, and that no song could be more lewd than the ordinary conversation of these people.

[334] These Muenane riddle dances somewhat resemble the Pirapurasseya, or fish dance, seen by Bates at Ega. The performers joined hands in a ring and questioned the leader in the centre, who finally might try to rush the ring, and when successful was succeeded by whoever might be responsible for his escape (Bates, ii. 276). im Thurn’s description of a Guiana animal dance also tallies more or less with these dances. See im Thurn, p. 324.

[335] R. L. Stevenson, In the South Seas (Pocket Edition, 1908), p. 100.

[336] “Dancing to the accompaniment of the human voice only. The word ballad is derived from this.” Ital. ballare = to dance. See Games, Sports, and Pastimes, by D. H. Moutray Read, in the new Folklore Handbook.

[337] North of the Japura the tribes use what are known as Yapurutu pan-pipes, which are usually played in pairs. The Tukana call them bupupo or yapurato (Koch-Grünberg, p. 300).

[338] Cf. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 345, chap. xi., etc. Bull-roarer too sacred for women to see in Muralug Island, Torres Straits (Expedition Torres Straits, iv. 276; v. 217).

[339] Cf. Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia. Sound supposed by women and children to be the voice of the great spirit assisting at the boy’s initiation.

Also Howitt, pp. 594-5; Andrew Lang on “the Bull-roarer” in Custom and Myth; Haddon, Study of Man, p. 309.

[340] See Koch-Grünberg; Humbolt, ii. 363; Nery, p. 261; Spruce, ii. 416; Wallace, pp. 348-9.

[341] There are two in the British Museum on the top shelf in the South American room.

[342] Mauritia flexuosa.

[343] Cf. Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p. 517.

[344] The one exception being where parturition is imminent, and no helpmate is available.

[345] See Appendix.

[346] Compare with identity of the white culture-hero of the higher South American cultures, Quetzalcoatl of the Nahua, Uiracocha of Peru, Tsuma of Venezuela. Note this being came from the East. See Joyce, p. 12. He is in fact the Atahocan of the Algonquin “remote from the world, to whom no worship was paid”(Ratzel, ii. 144).

[347] According to the Malays’ anthropomorphic ideas concerning the tiger, “the tiger-folk … have a town of their own, where they live in houses, and act in every respect like human beings” (Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 157). In Perak tigers with human souls live in similar villages (Sir W. E. Maxwell, J.R.A.S., No. vii. p. 22). The natives of Korinchi in Sumatra are credited with the power to assume tiger form at will (Sir H. Clifford, In Court of Kampong, pp. 65-6).

[348] When Markham says of the Ticuna that “they fear the evil spirit, and believe of the good one that, after death, he appears to eat fruit with the departed and takes them to his home, this would seem to be a distinct survival of missionary teaching, for these Indians were preached to between 1683 and 1728.” Christian influence is also shown in their naming ceremonies (Markham, p. 200).

[349] These holes in the heavy mould of the forest are caused by subsidences. The Indians do not understand how they came to be, and explain the fact by asserting they are the work of devils.

[350] Among the Kuretu the soul is believed to hover near the body for one day after death, and then to flit away, and finally to retire to a beautiful house at the source of a mysterious river.

[351] Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 52.

[352] im Thurn, p. 343. Cf. also Skeat, Pagan Malay, p. 47.

[353] See Simson, p. 175; Orton, p. 170.

[354] Cf. Spencer and Gillen, p. 498.

[355] This is so frequently the case among primitive peoples as hardly to need amplifying. It is very general among the Indian races. See André, p. 16; im Thurn, pp. 158, 220.

The Algonquin hold that the mention of a man’s name offends his personal deity (H. R. Schoolcraft, Oneota, pp. 331, 456; Indian Tribes of the U.S. ii. 65). Australian natives only mention secret names in a whisper (Spencer and Gillen, p. 139). See also note on names in Chap. XI.

[356] This belief is also held by the Dyaks. “Their theory is that during sleep the soul can hear, see, and understand, so what is dreamt is really what the soul sees. When any one dreams of a distant land, they believe that his soul has paid a flying visit to that land” (E. H. Gomes, Seventeen Years among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo, p. 161). Howitt writes of the South Australian native: “While his body lies motionless, his spirit goes out of him on its wanderings” (Howitt, pp. 410-11). See also Seligmann, p. 191.

[357] im Thurn, pp. 329, 343.

[358] See im Thurn, p. 349. In Australia “one black fellow will often tell you that he can and does do something magical, whilst all the time he is perfectly well aware that he cannot, and yet firmly believes that some other man can really do it” (Spencer and Gillen, p. 130).

[359] Spruce relates a custom unknown to me practised by some tribes when astray in the bush. The Indian when lost “names the Curupira, and … twists a liana into a ring … throws it behind him … follows the direction in which it has fallen” (Spruce, ii. 437-8). The Bororo use a bull-roarer to drive the bad spirits off (W. A. Cook, The Bororo Indians of Matto Grosso, p. 55).

[360] The Caribs of the Pomeroon river actually attempt to counter the attack of epidemic sickness by blocking the forest tracks “to stop the passage of the spirits” (im Thurn, p. 356). In Guiana disease is regarded as an evil spirit that prowls around (Brett, Indian Tribes of Guiana, p. 225).

[361] Bates, ii. 115.

[362] Jurupari is unknown south of the Japura. I can therefore give no particulars or description from personal investigation and knowledge of aught concerning this all powerful demoniac deity of the northern tribes.

[363] J. D. Pfleiderer, Die Genesis des Mythus der indogermanischen Völker, p. 48.

[364] Elsewhere this appears not to be the case. See Bates, ii. 114.

[365] Yacu = water, mama = mother, Mai d’agoa (Tupi). Pachamama, the earth, was worshipped in Peru, and the Inca also reverenced Mamaccocha, the sea mother (Joyce, pp. 154, 225).

[366] Bates mentions a boy at Ega being devoured by one of these huge creatures (Bates, ii. 113-15).

[367] Clough, p. 60.

[368] For description see Wallace, pp. 127-8.

[369] Bates, ii. 264.

[370] For dance at tiger’s “wake” see Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 169.

[371] Cf. Darwin, p. 64.

[372] “They consider the sun as the fountain-head of majesty and power and even of beneficence, and as the abode of the Great Priests who have passed to the spirit world and fear him” (W. A. Cook, op. cit. p. 55).

[373] Occidente is on the left bank of the Igara Parana, a tributary of the Issa.

[374] Folklore Journal, 1912, p. 314.

[375] Casement, Contemporary Review, September 1912, p. 325.

[376] Indians on the main river, however, according to Dr. Silva Coutinho, “not only give names to a great number of celestial bodies [stars], but they have legends about them” (Nery, p. 252).

[377] Markham, pp. 93-4.

[378] Poison.

[379] Narcotic.

[380] Spruce, i. 314. In South America manihot is propagated by means of slips or cuttings; but in the Torres Straits the manihot sp. introduced by the white man is grown from pieces of the old roots (Exped. Torres Straits, iv. 149).

[381] Clough, p. 212; Humboldt, ii. 182; Oakenfull, pp. 34-5; im Thurn, p. 375; Joyce, p. 167.

[382] im Thurn, p. 375.

[383] Humboldt, ii. 400-1; Chanoine Bernadino de Souza, Para e Amazon; see Nery, pp. 8-9.

[384] Humboldt, pp. 88, 400.

[385] Spruce, ii. 561.

[386] Spruce wisely remarks on this point, “that the Spaniards had been for two whole years among Indians who wore their hair long,” and therefore were not likely to mistake men for women (Spruce, ii. 459).

[387] Nery, p. 6.

[388] The French traveller rejects the ἀ-, μαζός theory in favour of the ἄμα ζώνη—bound with a belt (Nery, p. 2).

[389] Wallace, p. 343.

[390] “I have myself seen that Indian women can fight.… The women pile up heaps of stones, to serve as missiles for the men” (Spruce, ii. 457-8). This, vide “stones,” is not possible in the Issa-Japura district.

[391] Where tribal differentiation of colour is so marked as among these people it is only natural that tales should be told of some mythical “white” folk.

[392] Crevaux, Voyages dans l’Amérique du Sud, p. 284.

[393] Komuine = monkey (Boro).

[394] “So high”—demonstrated with the hand.

[395] These would be her natural protectors.

[396] Rubber latex. See Depilation.

[397] To hide the unsightliness.

[398] Of the chief’s daughter.

[399] This may be a folk-tale of the monkey-people stealing Indian women for their mates. Cf. Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 185; Clifford, Studies in Brown Humanity, p. 243.

But it should not be overlooked that the Boro depile most carefully, while the Andoke medicine-man does not depile at all, and the Andoke are mortal foes of the Boro. The Karahone also are said not to depile, and on this score would be regarded by the Boro as no better than brute beasts. So this story may be a traditional account of the actual rape of a chief’s daughter by a hostile tribe, the Amazonian version of Helen and Troy.

[400] Simson, p. 168.

[401] Spruce, i. 332. im Thurn relates of the Arawak Indians that “each family is descended—their fathers knew how, but they themselves have forgotten—from its eponymous animal, bird, or plant” (im Thurn, pp. 184, 376).

[402] The general principle is well known, and is now used both by the authorities of the United States and of Great Britain. It consists in giving to the vowels in native words their Italian significance, and to the consonants that which they have in the English language.

[403] Notes and Queries on Anthropology (1912), pp. 187-96.

[404] Simson, p. 94.

[405] Tylor, p. 25.

[406] Koch-Grünberg transliterates it as ingetā, or ingétā; and gives marā for good, maringetā, marinyetā, bad; faréti, fat; faré ingetā, thin (Die Uitóto Indianer, pp. 10-11).

[407] Orton stated that the Zaparo “have no words for numbers above three, but show their fingers” (Orton, p. 170). Simson gives words for four and five as in use among those tribes, and after that manunu, meaning “many-many” (Simson, p. 179).

[408] The reference to monkey or beast is due to the fact that the Karahone do not depilate all body and face hair.

[409] Spencer and Gillen, Across Australia, ii.

[410] Cf. Ratzel, ii. 125.

[411] For example the Maca, the Guaharibo, and the Guahibo (Spruce, i. 477).

[412] Vide Chap. VI. p. 101, where it is stated that the dug-out is not the autochthonic boat of this country.

[413] These canoes, it must be remembered, are not affairs of everyday manufacture. They are tribal possessions, not many in number, and needing time, skill, and, above all, experience, to make successfully.

[414] For instance the wrong wood might have been chosen; some trees will not open when heated (cf. André, pp. 241-2).

[415] The Decadence of Useful Arts.

[416] There are no stones in this region it should be remembered.

[417] Wallace gives 5 feet 9 inches or 5 feet 10 inches as not uncommon for the height of a Uaupes man (Wallace, pp. 335, 353), and the Isanna as very similar. The Bugre are shorter, 5 feet 4 inches, and misshapen in the leg (Oakenfull, p. 33). The Tukana, 160 to 170 centimetres (Koch-Grünberg).

[418] I had no calipers, and the breadth in all cases is approximate only, taken from point to point where it was individually greatest, not where, as I subsequently discovered, scientific measurement decrees.

[419] Tukuya, two types dolichocephalic. Koch-Grünberg. Napo, brachycephalic (Orton, p. 166). According to Orton the “long-headed hordes” came from the south (Orton, p. 316).

[420] Bates noted that the Tapuyo have “small hands and feet” (i. 78), and Orton mentions it as a characteristic of races of Tupi origin (Orton, p. 316).

[421] The women are muscular in the neck, and will carry considerable weights in baskets slung on a band passed round the forehead. They will carry through the thickest bush as much as sixty pounds and more in the same manner, their strength in lilting and carrying weights being confined to the neck.

[422] Robuchon states that the women’s mammae are pyriform, and the photographs show distinctly pyriform breasts with digitiform nipples. I found them resembling rather the segment of a sphere, the areola not prominent, and the nipples hemispherical.

[423] Orton and Galt, however, note that “one will sometimes find the skin of the Indian rough, hard, and insensible, like the skin of the larger lower animals” (Orton, p. 591). Skin—Colour and Texture.—“Je remarque que ces Indiens, comme les Roucouyennes et les Oyampis, out les plis de la peau beaucoup plus saillants que chez les races blanches et noires. Les plis du genou resemblent à une peau d’orange. Je voudrais représenter exactement ces détails, qui m’intéressent au point de vue anthropologique, mais je trouve la difficulté insurmontable. Il me vient toutefois une idée; je fais barbouiller un Indien avec du roucou des pieds à la tête, et, à moyen d’un papier mince que j’applique avec la main, j’obtiens tous les détails de structure. Le roucou agit comme de l’encre d’imprimerie. Avec un pen d’exercice je recueille les détails anatomiques de toutes les parties du corps, et particulièrement des pieds, des mains, du genou et des coudes. Il est à noter que la peau d’enfant à la mamelle présente des plis aussi accentués que ceux d’un blanc à l’âge adulte. La peau d’un jeune homme vue à l’œil me semble grossie trois fois à la loupe” (Crevaux, p. 303). We have already noted that there Issa-Japura tribes are free from the skin diseases that Napo and other Indians frequently develop. This probably accounts for the contradiction of my observances with the notes of other writers.

[424] See note on Depilation, p. 282.

[425] According to Wallace, though the Uaupes Indians remove facial or body hair the Isanna tribes do not (Wallace, pp. 353, 356).

[426] Wallace, p. 354.

[427] I have found this amongst all people who sleep on the ground, I take it, for obvious buffer reasons.

[428] Simson, p. 93.

[429] During menstruation women wash more frequently, with intent to arrest as well as to hide their condition. A girl at such times will bathe as often as twenty times in a day. The cold water acts as a styptic.

[430] Bates, i. 200.

[431] Simson, p. 234.

[432] Simson, p. 235.

[433] Four inches to fourteen inches in length (Keane, p. 551).

[434] Orton, pp. 482-3.

[435] Ratzel, ii 170.

[436] Oakenfall, p. 26.

[437] The only yellow free colour.

[438] Approximate measurements.

[439] Outer measurements not, as they should have been, from head of fibula to top of great trochanter.

[440] N.B.—As Case 2 was growing, further measurements will be useless if not misleading. These were taken with the help of a medical man and are therefore more correct than other measurements.

[441] Neva = also sun, morning.

[442] Navena = ghost, devil.

[443] Bope = also disembodied soul.

[444] Yaya = father.

[445] Yaperikuli = heroes.

[446] Originally father or creator, not Great Spirit.

[447] Soul of father or parents.

[448] Soul of Evil.

[449] Heroes of the tribe.

[450] Also great-great-grandfather.

[451] House.

[452] Ri-e-i, white man.

[453] Itoma, sun.

[454] Ei-fo-ke, Turkey-buzzard.

[455] Privy name. Reference to the fact that all Indians have two names. See p. 154 for note on nomen penis sui.

PLATE NO.		FACING PAGE
	Boro Medicine Man, with my Rifle	Frontispiece
I.	Houses in the “Rubber Belt” of the Issa Valley	4
II.	A House in the “Rubber Belt,” Issa Valley	16
III.	1. Typical River View below the Mouth of the Negro River 2. Bank of Main Amazon Stream in the Vicinity of the Mouth of the Japura River	18
IV.	1. River View on Main Stream near Issa River 2. Landscape on Upper Amazon Main Stream	20
V.	The Bulge-stemmed Palm, Iriartea Venticosa, showing portion of Leaf and Fruit	28
VI.	Flowers and Section of Leaf of the Bussu Palm. The Leaf is used for Thatching	44
VII.	1. Self, with Nonuya Tribe 2. Muenane Tribe	46
VIII.	1. Group of Witoto 2. Group of Some of my Carriers	70
IX.	Medicine Man and his Wife (Andoke)	72
X.	Boro Tribesmen	74
XI.	Witoto Feather Head-dresses	76
XII.	Groups of Resigero Women	78
XIII.	Centre of Dancing Group—Muenane	80
XIV.	Boro Comb of Palm Spines set in Pitch and finished with Basketwork of Split Cane, Fibre Strings, and Tufts of Parrots’ Feathers	78
XV.	1. Dukaiya (Okaina) Bead Dancing-girdle 2. Condor Claws, used by Andoke Medicine Man of the Upper Japura River	80
XVI.	Necklaces of Human and Tiger Teeth	82
XVII.	1. Necklace of Polished Nutshells. 2. Leg Rattles of Beads and Nutshells. 3, 4, 5, and 6. Bead Necklaces. The Black “Beads” are Bits of Polished Nutshell, threaded between White Beads	82
[xvi]XVIII.	Boro Ligatures	84
XIX.	Boro Leg and Arm Ligatures. Witoto Leg Ligature	84
XX.	1 and 3, Boro. 2, Witoto, Ligatures	86
XXI.	Andoke Girls	88
XXII.	Witoto Baskets of Split Cane and Fibre	90
XXIII.	Boro Necklace of Jaguars’ Teeth with Incised Patterns Necklace of Jaguar Teeth, Incised, and Flute made of Human Bone	92
XXIV.	Boro Cassava-squeezer. (A) Loop at End	96
XXV.	1. Okaina Group 2. Group of Okaina Women	98
XXVI.	1. Indian Plantation cleared by Fire preparatory to Cultivation 2. View on Affluent of the Kahuinari River	102
XXVII.	Erythroxylon-Coca	106
XXVIII.	1 and 2. Andoke Bamboo Cases with Darts and Cotton. 3. Dart with Cotton attached. 4. Blow-pipe with Dart. 5. Javelin. 6. Fishing Trident. 7. Spears in Bamboo Case. 8. Dance Staff	108
XXIX.	Andoke Bamboo Case with Darts for Blow-pipe and Gourd full of Cotton	110
XXX.	1. Water Jar, Menimehe; (a) Witoto. 2. Drums (Witoto). 3. Pan-pipes, Witoto; (a) Boro. 4. Stone Axe (Andoke). 5. Paddle used on Main Amazon Stream. 6. Paddle used on Issa and Japura Rivers. 7. Menimehe Hand Club. 8. Wooden Sword (Boro). 9. Pestle—Coca, etc. (Boro)	116
XXXI.	Bamboo Cases, filled with Darts for Blow-pipe, showing Fish-jaw Scraper, and Gourd filled with Raw Cotton. One Dart has Tuft of Cotton placed ready for Use. These are Andoke Work	118
XXXII.	Witoto War Gathering	120
XXXIII.	1. Boro Necklace made of Marmoset Teeth 2. Andoke Necklace of Human Teeth	124
XXXIV.	Boro Women making Cassava	132
XXXV.	Witoto Cassava-squeezer. Boro Manioc-grater with Palm-spine Points	134
XXXVI.	One of the Ingredients of the Famous Curare Poison	138
[xvii]XXXVII.	Incised Gourds	144
XXXVIII.	Karahone Child. Boro Women carrying Children	150
XXXIX.	Boro Women carrying Children	154
XL.	Okaina Girls	158
XLI.	Stone Axe Head (Boro). String of Magic Stones (Andoke)	184
XLII.	Anatto, Bixa Orellana. A Red Dye, or Paint, is made from the Seed	190
XLIII.	Half Gourds decorated with Incised Patterns, made by Witoto near the Mouth of the Kara Parana River. Dukaiya (Okaina) Rattle made of Nutshells	192
XLIV.	Okaina Girls painted for Dance	194
XLV.	Boro Dancing. Group of Nonuya, Men and Women	196
XLVI.	Muenane Dance	200
XLVII.	Okaina Dance	202
XLVIII.	Okaina Dance	204
XLIX.	Pan-pipes	210
L.	Group of Witoto Women by Double-stemmed Palm Tree Group of Witoto Men by Double-stemmed Palm Tree	232
LI.	1 and 2. Witoto Types. 3. Witoto from Kotue River	270
LII.	Combs. 1. Andoke Comb with Nutshell Cup for Rubber Latex. 2. Witoto Comb. 3. Boro Comb	272
LIII.	Boro Tribesman from the Pama River A Menimehe Captive	274
LIV.	Witoto Types. Witoto Woman with Leg Ligatures	278
MAPS
Map. 1.	Approximate Plan of Route	2
Map. 2.	Sketch Map	10
Map. 3.	Diagrammatic Map of the Issa-Japura Central Watershed, showing Language Groups	58
Sketch Map of the North-Western Affluents of the Amazon River		At end
Sketch Map of the Amazon River with its Northern Affluents		At end

Witoto group of tribes	15,000
Boro group	15,000
Dukaiya or Okaina group	2,000
Muenane group	2,000
Nonuya group	1,000
Resigero group	1,000
Andoke group	10,000
Menimehe group	15,000
Karahone group	25,000

			Centimetres.
1.	Head	Maximum length	17.3	18.15
2.	Head	Maximum breadth	13.85	13.9
3.	Nose	Length from base to root	4.3	4.0
4.	Nose	Breadth across nostrils	3.0	3.0
5.	Projection of head	From vertex to root of nose	9.2	10.0
6.		” ” mouth	16.0	14.2
7.		” ” chin	19.0	17.4
8.		” ” tragus of ear	10.7	12.0
[289]9.	Bizygomalic breadth of face		12.75	12.0
9.	Face length from nasim to chin		10.2	9.3
10.	Length of upper limb		60.0	[440]
11.	” cubit		38.0
12.	” hand along its back		15.0
13.	” foot		23.0
14.	Sitting height		72.0
15.	Kneeling height		103.75
16.	Standing height		139.5
17.	(Obvious) height to chin		120.5
18.	Height to sternal notch		117.0
19.	Height from internal malleolus to ground		6.4
20.	Span of arms		140.5

A. Colour of skin.
	No. 1.	Exposed part light reddish-brown.
	No. 2.	Unexposed part—very much lighter, and tintometer curve, etc.
B. Colour of eyes. Black.
	No. 1.	Dark-brown iris.
	No. 2.	Black iris.
C. Fold of skin at inner angle of eyes.
	No. 1.	Covering the caruncle.
	No. 2	Covering the caruncle.
[290]D. Colour of hair.
	No. 1.	Black, brown in sunlight, i.e. brown-black.
	No. 2.	Black, brown in sunlight, i.e. brown-black.
E. Character of hair (vide Section of Hair).
	No. 1.	Straight and coarse (horse hair but finer).
	No. 2.	Straight and coarse (horse hair but finer).
F. Amount of hair.
	No. 1.	Body very very scanty, depilation not recent.
	No. 2.	Face nil. Body nil.
G. Shape of face.
	No. 1.	Short. Broad.
	No. 2.	Pyramidal. Wedge-shaped.
H. Profile of nose.
	No. 1.	Chinese type.
	No. 2.	Chinese type, but not so pronounced, between this and European.
I. Prognathism.
	No. 1.	Slight.
	No. 2.	Very slight.
J. Lips.
	No. 1.	Medium—slightly everted.
	No. 2.	Medium European type.
K.
	No. 1.	Platyoprosopic not excessive.
	No. 2.	Platyoprosopic not excessive.

		PAGE
CHAPTER I
Introductory		1
CHAPTER II
Topography—Rivers—Floods and rainfall—Climate—Soil—Animal and vegetable life—Birds—Flowers—Forest scenery—Tracks—Bridges—Insect pests—Reptiles—Silence in the forest—Travelling in the bush—Depressing effects of the forest—Lost in the forest—Starvation the crowning horror		17
CHAPTER III
The Indian homestead—Building—Site and plan of maloka—Furniture—Inhabitants of the house—Fire—Daily life—Insect inhabitants—Pets		40
CHAPTER IV
Classification of Indian races—Difficulties of tabulating—Language-groups and tribes—Names—Sources of confusion—Witoto and Boro—Localities of language-groups—Population of districts—Intertribal strife—Tribal enemies and friends—Reasons for endless warfare—Intertribal trade and communications—Relationships—Tribal organisation—The chief, his position and powers—Law—Tribal council—Tobacco-drinking—Marriage system and regulations—Position of women—Slaves		53
CHAPTER V
Dress and ornament—Geographical and tribal differentiations—Festal [x]attire—Feather ornaments—Hair-dressing—Combs—Dance girdles—Beads—Necklaces—Bracelets—Leg rattles—Ligatures—Ear-rings—Use of labret—Nose pins—Scarification—Tattoo—Tribal marks—Painting		71
CHAPTER VI
Occupations—Sexual division and tabu—Tribal manufactures—Arts and crafts—Drawing—Carving—Metals—Tools and implements—No textile fabrics—Pottery—Basket-making—Hammocks—Cassava-squeezer and grater—Pestle and mortar—Wooden vessels—Stone axes—Methods of felling trees—Canoes—Rafts—Paddles		90
CHAPTER VII
Agriculture—Plantations—Preparation of ground in the forest—Paucity of agricultural instruments—Need for diligence—Women’s incessant toil—No special harvest-time—Maize the only grain grown—No use for sugar—Manioc cultivation—Peppers—Tobacco—Coca cultivation—Tree-climbing methods—Indian wood-craft—Indian tracking—Exaggerated sporting yarns—Indian sense of locality and accuracy of observation—Blow-pipes—Method of making blow-pipes—Darts—Indian improvidence—Migration of game—Traps and snares—Javelins—Hunting and fishing rights—Fishing—Fish traps—Spearing and poisoning fish		102
CHAPTER VIII
The Indian armoury—Spears—Bows and arrows—Indian strategy—Forest tactics and warfare—Defensive measures—Secrecy and safety—The Indian’s science of war—Prisoners—War and anthropophagy—Cannibal tribes—Reasons for cannibal practices—Ritual of vengeance—Other causes—No intra-tribal cannibalism—The anthropophagous feast—Human relics—Necklaces of teeth—Absence of salt—Geophagy		115
CHAPTER IX
The food quest—Indians omnivorous eaters—Tapir and other animals used for food—Monkeys—The peccary—Feathered game—Vermin—Eggs, carrion, and intestines not eaten—Honey—Fish—Manioc—Preparation of cassava—Peppers—The Indian hot-pot—Lack of salt—Indian meals—Cooking—Fruits—Cow-tree [xi]milk		126
CHAPTER X
Drinks, drugs, and poisons: their use and preparation—Unfermented drinks—Caapi—Fermented drinks—Cahuana—Coca: its preparation, use, and abuse—Parica—Tobacco—Poison and poison-makers		138
CHAPTER XI
Small families—Birth tabu—Birth customs—Infant mortality—Infanticide—Couvade—Name-giving—Names—Tabu on names—Childhood—Lactation—Food restrictions—Child-life and training—Initiation		146
CHAPTER XII
Marriage regulations—Monogamy—Wards and wives—Courtship—Qualifications for matrimony—Preparations for marriage—Child marriages—Exception to patrilocal custom—Marriage ceremonies—Choice of a mate—Divorce—Domestic quarrels—Widowhood		159
CHAPTER XIII
Sickness—Death by poison—Infectious diseases—Cruel treatment of sick and aged—Homicide—Retaliation for murder—Tribal and personal quarrels—Diseases—Remedies—Death—Mourning—Burial		168
CHAPTER XIV
The medicine-man, a shaman—Remedies and cures—Powers and duties of the medicine-man—Virtue of breath—Ceremonial healing—Hereditary office—Training—Medicine-man and tigers—Magic-working—Properties—Evil always due to bad magic—Influence of medicine-man—Method of magic-working—Magical cures		178
CHAPTER XV
Indian dances—Songs without meaning—Elaborate preparations—The Chief’s invitation—Numbers assembled—Dance step—Reasons [xii]for dances—Special dances—Dance staves—Arrangement of dancers—Method of airing a grievance—Plaintiff’s song of complaint—The tribal “black list”—Manioc-gathering dance and song—Muenane Riddle Dance—A discomfited dancer—Indian riddles and mimicry—Dance intoxication—An unusual incident—A favourite dance—The cannibal dance—A mad festival of savagery—The strange fascination of the Amazon		190
CHAPTER XVI
Songs the essential element of native dances—Indian imagination and poetry—Music entirely ceremonial—Indian singing—Simple melodies—Words without meaning—Sense of time—Limitations of songs—Instrumental music—Pan-pipes—Flutes and fifes—Trumpets—Jurupari music and ceremonial—Castanets—Rattles—Drums—The manguare—Method of fashioning drums—Drum language—Signal and conversation—Small hand-drums		206
CHAPTER XVII
The Indians’ magico-religious system—The Good Spirit and the Bad Spirit—Names of deities—Character of Good Spirit—His visit to earth—Question of missionary influence—Lesser subordinate spirits—Child-lifting—No prayer or supplication—Classification of spirits—Immortality of the soul—Land of the After-Life—Ghosts and name tabu—Temporary disembodied spirits—Extra-mundane spirits—Spirits of particularised evils—Spirits of inanimate objects—The jaguar and anaconda magic beasts—Tiger folk—Fear of unknown—Suspicions about camera—Venerated objects—Charms—Magic against magic—Omens		218
CHAPTER XVIII
Darkness feared by Indians—Story-telling—Interminable length of tales—Variants—Myths—Sun and moon—Deluge traditions—Tribal stories—Amazons—White Indians tradition—Boro tribal tale—Amazonian equivalents of many world-tales—Beast stories—Animal characteristics—Difference of animal characteristics in tale and tabu—No totems—Indian hatred of animal world		236
CHAPTER XIX
Limitations of speech—Differences of dialect—Language-groups—Tribal names—Difficulties of languages—Method of transliteration—Need of a common medium—Ventral ejaculations—Construction—Pronouns [xiii]as suffix or prefix—Negatives—Gesture language—Numbers and reckoning—Indefinite measure—Time—No writing, signs, nor personal marks—Tribal calls—Drum-language code—Conversational repetitions—Noisy talkers—Ventriloquists—Falsetto voice—Conversational etiquette		246
CHAPTER XX
No individualism—Effect of isolation—Extreme reserve of Indians—Cruelty—Dislike and fear of strangers—Indian hospitality—Treachery—Theft punished by death—Dualism of ethics—Vengeance—Moral sense and custom—Modesty of the women—Jealousy of the men—Hatred of white man—Ingratitude—Curiosity—Indians retarded but not degenerate—No evidence of reversion from higher culture—A neolithic people—Conclusion		255
APPENDICES
I.	Physical Characteristics	269
II.	Mongoloid Origin	280
III.	Depilation	282
IV.	Colour Analysis and Measurements	283
V.	Articles noted by Wallace as in use among the Uaupes Indians that are found with the Issa-Japura Tribes	291
VI.	Names of Deities	293
VII.	Vocabularies and Lists of Names	296
VIII.	Poetry	311
LIST OF BOOKS REFERRED TO		313
INDEX		315

Witoto		15,000
Yuri		unknown
Yahua	Yahua	unknown
	Pegua
Andoke		10,000
Boro or Miranha		15,000
Muenane		2,000
Nonuya		1,000
Resigero		1,000
Okaina or Dukaiya		2,000
Karahone	Karahone	25,000
	Umaua
	Saha
Tukana		unknown
Yahuna
Makuna
Opaina
Bara
Kuretu
Menimehe		15,000
Akaroa

Darkness (devil)	Apuehana
Fire	Ireiki
God	Usiyamoi
Moon	Fuibui
Sky	Mona
Sun	Itoma
Water	Heinowei
Hunger	Ameniti, naimede
Laugh	Sateide, seteide
Metal	Okkupe
Paper (book)	Kwerape (literally my leaves)
Paper (leaves)	Rape
Paper, a speaking leaf	Kwede, hweyarape
Powder (dust)	Himuisa
Sleep	Inude, unyude, kwinyakate
Sleep, dream	Inie
Bush, the	Aisikumo
Cliff	Ifere
Compound	Gicheipwere
Palm jungle	Amena
Plantation	Akafo
River	Imane
River, a large	Ichue
Road	Io
Stream	Hurete
Streamlet	Ichemo
Alligator pear	Nomedo
Coca	Hibia
Cocoa	Museje
Fruit (general)	Rie
Grape fruit	Hurekoi
Gum (rubber milk)	Hittie
Leaves	Rape
Maize	Bechado
Mango palm	Himeki
Mango palm drink	Hayabei, hagapui
Manioc (poisonous)	Maika
Palm	Amena
Palm	Himepile, hitiji
Palm drink (pjnayo)	Himepwi
Palm-spines	Edo
Pepper	Ifigo
Pineapple	Rosiji
Plantain	Ogoda
Plum	Nemawsi
Rubber	Isire
Rubber latex	Hittagei
Sugar-cane	Kananoganei, kononga
Sugar-cane juice	Kananogan’heinowei, kononochiki
Tobacco	Deui
Tree	Inya
Trees, felled	Amena
Tree poles	Neda
Withe	Vineihi
Bird (small generally)	Siji
Bird (small unknown species)	Iguyitoi
Bird, cock	Eitaba
Birds (small game)	Ataba
Birds, chickens	Ataba hissa
Capybara	Okeina
Curassoa	Eifoke
Deer (one species)	Kito
Deer (generally)	Chaota
Eggs (generally)	Herga
[300]Eggs (one kind)	Ataba hige
Fish (general)	Jukua
Jaguar	Hekko
Monkey (general)	Homa
Monkey (one species)	Hemwi
Monkey, small	Hidobe
Parrot	Kwiyoto
Parrot (another kind)	Kweko, Uiyike
Pig	Mero
Pig, small	Emo
Spider	Humakinyo
Tapir	Zuruma
Tiger, dog, etc.	Hekko
Turkey	Muitoka, muito
Turkey (another kind)	Egwe
Turkey Buzzard	Eifoke
Boy	Toii
Girl	Rinyosa
Lad	Hivisa
Man	Rema
Man, old	Weikiroma-superoma
Man, strong	Reima
Men, white (Europeans)	Riei, riama
People	Komweine
Stranger	Oikommo
Stranger, an enemy	Ikagmake
Stranger, a friend	Cheinama
Woman	Rinyo
Woman, old	Weirinyo-irokwe
Brother—
Man speaking	Ama
Woman speaking	Tio
Brother-in-law	Oima
Child	Hito
Father	Moma
Grandfather	Marama
Grandmother	Einyoko
Husband	Une
Mother	Einyo
Nephew—
Brother’s child	Enasai
Sister’s child	Komona
Niece—
Brother’s child	Enasanyo
Sister’s child	Momonio
Sister—
Man speaking	Mirinyo
Woman speaking	Epunyo
Sister-in-law	Ofanyo
Uncle—
Father’s brother	Iso
Mother’s brother	Vichama
Wife	Ei
Anus	Sirafo
Arm	Onawji
Fore-arm	Onefai
Belly	Ero
Blood	Dueidi
Body	Namaseapwi
Bowels	Hepe
Clitoris	Hito
Ears	Efo
Eyes	Uise
Face	Uyeko
Feet	Elba, epa
Finger	Onoko
Flesh	Jukua
Hair	Ifoterai
Hair (body)	Heinektere (!), heineitere
Hair (face)	Eimago
Hair (pubic)	Hueke
Hand	Ono
Head	Ifo
Heart	Komeke
Limbs	Rueisi, reesi
[301]Mouth	Fue
Nails	Onokobi, onopeko
Nails (toe)	Ekobe
Navel	Modda
Neck	Kimo
Nose	Dofo
Penis	Hechina
Pudenda	Jana
Semen	Uke
Skull	Ifoku
Teeth	Isido, isife
Testicles	Hinyergo
Tongue	Hufe
Urine	Poji
Vagina	Berirafo
Ague	Fuibuiko
Diarrhœa	Nuimuisa, Jui, chui
Illness	Duide, tuike
Small-pox	Guiyoko, tutuko
Bark cloth	Vinei
Beads	Sirie
Breech cloth	Mokoto, makuto iroi, hinoi-giroi
Clothes (general)	Uiniroi
Cord (belt)	Kirige
Feather head ornaments	Eniago
Necklace, dance	Chikai
Necklace of seeds	Imaidu
Necklace, of teeth	Efoke
Slippers, boots	Epa iko
Socks	Epa iko (see Feet and Cap)
White man’s cap	Ifoigiko, ifoiko, iko
White man’s shirt	Kaifofero
Baking-pan	Sipe
Cassava	Tano
Firewood	Rege
Hammock	Kunei
House	Hofo
House, large	Ejo hofo
Hut	Hiochupe
Light (artificial)	Maha
Lighted torch	Maha
Mat	Duriei
Pot	Inogo, ichuki
Thatch	Ereije
Tobacco-pot	Kuruke
Torch	Rekekawdo, rekeketo, recheki
Axe	Chovema
Blow-pipe	Obidiake
Fish-hook	Fakawasi
Knife	Chovefa, chovetera
Drum	Hugwe
Drum mallet	Quaki
Pan pipes	Piabami
Sword	Chovega
Trap, animal	Iregi
Weapons, stones, shot	Chowefi, jowefi, chowefei
Signal-drum	Ware
Afternoon	Nawipe
Morning	Wiremoni
Morning, early	Monanyeno
Night	Nagona
Night, last	Nago, hahe nago
Night before last	Beinawife
To-day	Beiruido
To-morrow	Wiremonei (see Morning)
To-morrow, day after	Dawire
Twilight	Naruide, nagona-yakate
Yesterday	Nawire
[302]Yesterday, day before	Beinawire
All	Nana
Before	Fuere
Before (position)	Uikota
Before (long time)	Heiyei
Behind	Moina
Behind (position)	Moina
Enough	Asirete
Farther	Beife
For	Mero
Full, carefully, good measure	Einue
Full	Moniteidi, monite
Here	Benomo
How many?	Nigama?
How much?	Niga?
Much	Eijo
Much, enough	Monome
Nobody	Buna
Now	Monokoi
Only	Dama
Then, afterwards	Achue
There	Batinomo
This	Pie
Together	Fofona (?)
Well?	Mei?
What?	Nifote?
Where?	Ninomo?
Who?	Bu?
Why?	Nibaji, nibeiji?
No	Damaita
Not	Inyete
Yes	Huhh, U (ventral)
I	Kwe
Thou	O
He, she, him	Afima
We	Koko
You	Omei
They, them	Afimaki
Bad	Figonigete
Big	Eijue
Bitter	Neimenete
Black	Ituide
Cold	Rosirete
Cool	Maneide
Dark	Hitirite
Dead	Teide
Deeper	Nane efarite
Dry	Daherede
Good	Figora
Hard	Agarrite
Heavy	Merete
Hot	Usirete
Light (sun)	Hite
Light (weight)	Fekote
Long	Are
Red	Larede
Short	Hiannare
Small, little	Yewrete
Soft	Itieide
Straight	Huchinyete
Strong	Agarrite
Thick	Herie
Thin	Henite
Twisted	Huchite
Well (in health)	Gagritte
White	Userede
Early, soon	Ono
Slowly	Puiya
Soon	Reiri
To bathe	Noise
To bring	Ate
To carry	Ui
To come down	Anabi
To come up	Kifobi
To cool	Rosirete
To cry	Ede
To dry	Nokitenyete, nohipuinyete
To eat	Oko, gunyo
To go down	Anahei
[303]To go quickly	Reiri maka
To go up	Kifohei
To hear, listen, understand	Kekate
To heat	Usirete
To hurt	Isirete
To like, love, desire (persons)	Dwere-uite
To like, love, desire (things)	Oyakate
To know	Onote
To make	Nenyo, fuiho
To rain	Nokitede, nokipuite
To sit down	Anarana
To sleep	Mei-ine
To speak	Naitode
To stay	Fuipire
To take	Gweipi
To urinate	Chowei, pochite
To wait	Anafue
To wash	Hokoa
To work	Biefono
I am	Iti kwe
Thou art	Iti-o
He is	Afima ite
We are	Iti koko
You are	Iti omoi
They are	Afimaki ite
I was	Kwe ia
Thou wert	Ia o
He was	Afima ia
We were	Koko ia
You were	Ia omoi
They were	Afimaki ia
One	Dahe
Two	Mena
Three	Dahe-amene
Four	Menahere
Five	Dapekwiro
Ten	Nagapekwiro
Ask me	Kwemohikka
Give me	Kweme
Give me food	Eka
A few days ago	Tika irue
It is dark	Nawite
It is going to rain	Teyakate
It is going to rain	Puiyakate
What tribe do you belong to?	O Komweine?
What tribe do you belong to?	O Memeka bu?
Move along!	Hei!
Move along!	Ifo!
Come!	Bi!
It is very far	Hikka Ite
It is very far	Hikka Are
It is near	Hiannare
It is very near	Hikka-iannare
It is very much farther	Hikka-fe
Be quick	Reiri
Be slow	Pwia hei
Be slow	Pwia ifo
You do not want me	Kwena dueruenyeteo
I am about to punish you	O feitakkwe
What do you want?	Nifote oyakateo
[304]How much do you want?	Niga oyakateo
I want to see	Eroi yakatekwe
I want to eat	Okoyakatekwe
I want to sleep	Iniyakatekwe
I do not want to sleep	Iniyakanyetekwe
Let us sleep	Meikoko ini
Let us walk	Manyakoko maketchi
Let us bathe	Manya koko noi
Go and wash	Hokorise
What are you doing?	Nefoteo nia?
What are they doing?	Nefoteo nietimeke?
What have you done?	Nefoteo nieteo?
What have you others done?	Nefoteo omoi nieteo?
Are you sick?	O seicha?
Are you sick?	Tuiko teiteo?
What is the matter with you?	Neisoi o icha?
What pains you?	O nino isiritte?
He is dead	Ei e teide
He is well again	Ei e hichoet
Put water to boil	Heinoi kokoita
We are nearly there	Duki-eikateki
We have not arrived	Duki nieteke
It is a long way yet	Nia areiti
It is a very long way	Nia are are are
It is very short	Wei iannare
Put on more wood	Nane rege honne
Fill it full	Nue oruita
Be careful not to break it	Chitesai
Remove the leaves	Rape honne
Open it carefully	Nue ekonotta
Cook only manioc and plantains	Dama seteo meika ogoto
Eat the skins	Igore ine
Take some crushed maize	Pechato tuta hisano ui
How many women are there?	Niga rinyona hisa ite?
From what cause has your brother died?	Nipeiche tio teide?
Why did you leave the child outside? It will be eaten by the dogs	Nipeiche hito hino o fuaka ia daria
Go soon and guard the women	Mei rieri rinyona hofona ipeise
Do not do it again	Mene amanyete omoi
An unmoral Indian woman	Rinyo Rei-irage
An immoral Indian woman	Rinyo Kachirete
With whom have you been having intercourse?	Bu tika beriteo?
How many husbands have you had?	Nigama bettora-o?
[305]Are you (a virgin) married?	Nia rutanyega-o?
Who ravished you?	Bu-o rutaka?
You are blind (a fool)	O ui nirite
Do not delay	Fwepi neri
Give me something	Feka
Do not give anything	Fekanyete
Walk	Mekkate
Do not walk	Mekanyete
I do not understand	Kehanyete
That’s my business (common expression without intention of rudeness)	Pia
My body aches	Kwe apui isirete
Let me go	Kwe-mosueta
Hold me	Kwe-mojeno
Turn round	Jireno
Do not move	Weihoi
Why do you shout?	Nipeiche kicheteyo?
It is big	Ei ichwe
It is small	Hurete
It is small	Eichonyete
It is not good	Fogonyete
Do you like it?	Kimmarueteo?
Do you not like it?	Kimmaruenyeteo?
You are pretty	Nuen otego
You are ugly	Nuenonyeteo
You are dirty	Oapwi gagrette
I want you	Ona dueruetckwe
I do not want you	Ona dueruenetckwe
Tie well (the cross poles)	Nue kwina
Tie higher	Keifofe kwina
Take care not to break	Titeise
Well done, you thatch well	Mei omoi ita
Is everything clean?	Nana ganino fuinore?
That is dirty, I shall punish you	Vie gagrette a kioiteo o feitikwe
It is very sweet	Eicho nimerettega
I do not like it hot	Usirete ittinyetekwe
I like it warm	Chiei maneide ittitekwe
Look well in front of you	Nue oroi
The plantation is a good one	Nue akafo icha
The plantation is a bad one	Akafo fogonyete
Let us go and build a house	Manya ofo koko fuinoche
There are not sufficient palisades	Nia amena nana inyete
All of you bring timber	Omoi amena atiche
You make the thatches	Are niite omoi
These boys will bring canes	Bie hettanitino are gweichi
These others will bring palm leaves	Bimeke ererite
Those will make holes	Bimeichino iffweirakte
[306]I do not want it there	Batinomo ittinyetekwe
Open it here	Benomo ekkono
Send me the small boy	Urettema kwemo hito
Go and throw away that water	Mei ba i heinoi dota
Wash it well	Nue hokorii
Do not delay	Are enyeno bi
You are dirty	Nia gagrette
Put it there	Batinomo honne
Put it here	Benomo honne
Put it yonder	One honne
Do not put it over there	Batinomo honne nieno
Why are you sad?	Nipeiche sure iteo?
Who hurt you?	Bu o faga?
When did you come?	Nirueteo viteo?
When did you go?	Nirueteo heito?
It is so firm I cannot move it	Are agagrette ekkononyette
Bring the wood	Itofie nue omoi ire
Do not throw them away	Oni tinyeno nue ofitare
I am going to see	A chimitekwe
If you do not bring them, I shall punish you	Omoi pweya fachiomoi
Plant them carefully	Nue omoi haire
Go and clean up	Mei omoi reitiseiri
Place all the sticks together	Reitekinyo nue omoi ofitare
You have left the plantation untidy	Akkafo gagritte omoi fueka
Why don’t you bring it?	Nipeiche atinyeta omoi?
Make enough cassava	Eichwe tano fuinore
Let it be good	Nuere finoiche
Bring a little	Yewre atitomoi
Not enough	Dutenyete
It is soft	Itieide
What are you doing?	Nifote niecomoi?
What are you eating?	Nifote okoteomoi?
Where are they—the rest of you?	Ninomo iteomoi?
Why have they (the others) gone without telling me?	Nipeiche kwe jonyeno heite omoi?
Bring it to the light	Useritenomo ate
To-morrow go and see the tribe and then return here together	Weirimoni dama komweine hoke teiteo nana fofona orerire
Split it with the knife	Chovefa do ekkono
Take out the cane early	Monanyano kononwe ono
It is rich	Kei maritte
Wash the pot well before boiling water in it	I chiko nue hoko heinowei hoku-itechi
Do not put much fruit in it	Eicho rie dotenyino
It is very inconvenient	Y otirette
I am unable	Kwe mona
I am unable	Hitinyete
[307]I shall carry it	Diuitikwe
Do not carry it	Uinyetekwe
I am tired	Aeeiontekwe
You are going to carry manioc	Meika omoi ui

Brother	Tanyabe
Chief	Abihibya
Chief’s wife	Abihilya
Child	Chemene
Father	Iero
Fellow-tribesman	Miamuina
Husband	Tahe
Liar	Aliraje
Man	Gwapime
Medicine-man	Chekobe
Mother	Gwaro
People	Akime
Sister	Tanyali
Sluggard	Ubeye
Son	Chukije
Wife	Tapa
Woman	Gwame
Abdomen	Mebigwa
Arm	Menejeko
Back	Meatche
Belly	Epae
Blood	Tibune
Body	Kepe
Bone	Pukene
Bosom	Neghpane
Buttocks	Medehe
Cheek	Mekwa
Ear	Menimeo
Eye	Ajike
Finger	Utsigwako, mechiko
Flesh	Iyame
Foot	Tia
Hair	Nikwako
Hand	Meuche
Head	Nikwa
Heart	Meebe
Knee	Mimoko
Leg	Take
Mouth	Mehe
Navel	Icheba
Neck	Metchke
Nose	Metiko
Penis	Nomeo
Testicles	Domiba
Thigh	Kibaje
Tongue	Menigwa
Tooth	Igwahe
Vagina	Elyapo, diugwa
Ague	Chinabe
Prickly heat	Nikemoi
Smallpox	Maraipa
Tick	Chichihe
Wound	Pepene
Dance	Machiba
Falsehood	Achipe
Fear	Apichune
Grief	Abiyene
Ill	Chemei
Remedy (in general)	Tabota
Smell	Tukine
Truth	Imiane
Agouti	Bute
Anaconda	Bua
Ant-eater	Ehe
Armadillo	Tie
Bird	Karaha
Capybara	Uba
Deer	Nibigwa
[308]Fish	Amome
Flea	Ikookwa
Frog	Nihagwa
Hawk	Ane
Head-louse	Knawni
Jigger-flea	Mipahe
Land crab	Nekwalige
Monkey	Kemuime
Mosquito	Nee
Paca	Tahe
Parrot	Yabe
Pig	Mene
Tapir	Ukahe
Tiger, wild dog	Wipe
Tucan	Neiche
Turkey-buzzard	Pikahe
Wild turkey	Imiko
Cane	Imuepa
Cassava	Mao
Cassava (cake)	Topohe
Coca	Ipe
Fruit	Kome
Grain	Tsokome
Guarana fruit	Inye
Guava	Tuche
Gum	Makhine
Leaf (letter)	Gwahake-ane
Lemon	Teheba
Maize	Ihio
Manioc (flour)	Chobéma
Manioc (Poisonous)	Pika
Manioc (Sweet)	Baheri
Millet	Matsaka
Palm needle	Aneto
Peppers	Dio
Pine-apple	Kitsea
Plantain	Uhiko
Plantation	Emiye
Stinging-herb	Ate
Twig	Katine
Withe	Ahéba, mo
Yam	Kate
Basket	Minyeba
Baulks of timber	Imei
Comb	Pidogwa
Cooking pot	Iguanye
Door	Cheugwa
Drinking gourd	Jirijo
Firewood	Kuba
Grater	Chilye
Hammock	Gwapa
House	Ha-a
Manioc squeezer	Buahe
Mirror	Mekeme
Oil	Diripa
Platter	Patahe
Salt	Kanama
Small timber	Igwa
Soap	Nishtie, tagwa
Spoon	Daihigwa
Tobacco	Banye
Tobacco stick-match	Kugwao
Torch	Diripa
Water jar	Ijo
Arrow	Beremehe
Arrow-poison	Bakua
Boat, canoe	Kihikwame
Blowpipe	Dodike
Dance rattle	Tekie
Fish-net	Tsene
Gun	Anihe
Head feathers	Aboka
Knife, sword	Nitsikwa
Mallet	Imepachura
Paddle	Bodugwa
Rope (vegetable cable)	Igwanye
Signalling drum	Kimwe
Sword	Pitoho
Whip	Gwachike
Beads	Ichkabe
Clothes	Kwaiame (loin-cloth)
Garment	Kameha
Head ornament	Gwatako
Loin-cloth	Ike, pakehe, kwaiame
Man’s bracelet	Manyame
[309]Metal	Tsitsi
Bush, the	Bahe
Dawn	Tsitsibeko
Death	Tsihibeko
Devil	Navena
Dust	Anijio
Fire	Kihigwa
God	Neva
Good Spirit	Neva
Gunpowder	Anijio
Morning	Neva
Night	Beko
Plantation	Emie
Rain	Nihava
Shadow	Nave
Star	Mikirigwa
Stream	Te-e
Sun	Neva
Thunder	Tsitsi
Water	Nepakio
Now	Ikuka
To-morrow	Pekore
Yesterday	Aiupe
Yes	Eh
No	Cha
To call attention of a man	Mupe!
To call attention of a woman	Muije!
All	Bemere
Enough, much	Lirane
Other	Chipe
Same	Tedere
Slowly	Tsikene
Quickly	Chukure
Far	Chiejene
Far away	Kamine
Here	Iji
Near	Perine
There	Eji
What	Itsebane, ina
When	Mukoka
Where	Kia
Why	Ivekie
Angry	Kaiyupa
Bad	Nemine, imitine
Black	Kiribebe
Cold	Tsigore
Good	Imine
High	Kame
Higher	Kame-kame
Lazy	Urenere
Little	Neku
Long, big	Kameme
Low	Paa
Lower	Paa-paa
Old	Kieme
Purple	Chepanye
Small	Chuchine
Strong	Kupene
Thin	Arenegwe
Warm	Kogore
White	Alijimuinya
Young	Balyika
I	O
Me
We
Us, Mine
Ours
You	Di
Yours	Di
My	Ta
One	Tsanere, tsape
Two	Mieke
Three	Tsape-mieke
Four	Mieke-mieke
Five	Sause
One-half	Tiamie
To advance	Ikeyi
To bathe	Maboigete
To beat flat	Kihigwa
To bind, sew	Tsiko
To break wind	Nepo
To bring	Tsate
To call	Pibwa
To catch hold	Dekeba
To come	Dichabe
To crush	Megwasako
To cut, shorten	Gwatairo
To drink	Mado
To eat	Macho
To go	Opeko
To go away	Gwadipe
To hang	Nehigwa
To make, do	Mene
To move	Chinye
To open	Paiyeke
To rain	Nihaba
To rest	Paribe
To run away	Imiba
To scratch	Medonakons
To search	Neku
To see	Aktime
To speak	Dibaje
To strike	Kaboko
To throw	Wago
To tie	Chichi
To wait	Ubi
To wash	Nitie
To work	Wakimei
Where are you going?	Kia bwipe ite?
Where do you come from?	Kia-te itse?
Where do you come from?	Minekwe?
Do not go away	Tsa petine
Stand still	Tachure
Sit down	Takebe
Bring here	Chibahe
Let us go	Mahu Mepei
Leave me alone	Ubiédere
Give me	Okedake
Where (is it?)	Kia
Whose (is this?)	Mu
There is none	Tsa ikatine
I do not know	Ureta
I do not know	Tsa quaha Kétine
How many?	Muitemeko?
What is the matter?	Ina ichabie?
What is hurting you?	Ina ichabie?
What are you called?	Muipa dimene?
Are you willing?	Imeje?
Cover it up	Gwatako
Hold your tongue	Kéktere
It is well	Imine
Good-bye	Opeko

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The North-West Amazons: Notes of some months spent among cannibal tribes

THE NORTH-WEST AMAZONS

PREFACE

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

APPENDIX II MONGOLOID ORIGIN

APPENDIX III DEPILATION

APPENDIX IV COLOUR ANALYSIS AND MEASUREMENTS

Colour

Colour Analysis Unexposed Part—Armpit

Colour Analysis Exposed Part—Back

Huis’ Measurements of Samples of Women’s Hair

Descriptive Characters

Measurements of Types[438] in Centimetres

Essential Measurements Two Cases, Women, Witoto

Extra Notes on Two Women, Witoto (chosen types)

General Description of Two Indian Women for evolving a Type. Both Witoto-speaking

Descriptive Characters.

APPENDIX V ARTICLES NOTED BY WALLACE AS IN USE AMONG THE UAUPES INDIANS THAT ARE FOUND WITH THE ISSA-JAPURA TRIBES

Household Furniture and Utensils

Weapons

Musical Instruments

Dress and Ornaments

APPENDIX VI NAMES OF DEITIES

APPENDIX VII VOCABULARIES AND LISTS OF NAMES