THE NORTH-WEST AMAZONS

BORO MEDICINE MAN, WITH MY RIFLE

THE NORTH-WEST
AMAZONS

NOTES OF SOME MONTHS SPENT
AMONG CANNIBAL TRIBES

BY
THOMAS WHIFFEN
F.R.G.S., F.R.A.I.
Captain H.P. (14th Hussars)

NEW YORK
DUFFIELD AND COMPANY
1915

Printed in Great Britain

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.

THOMAS WHIFFEN.

London, 1914.

CONTENTS

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 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.

APPROXIMATE PLAN OF ROUTE

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 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 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.

PLATE I.

HOUSES IN THE RUBBER BELT OF THE ISSA VALLEY

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, 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 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 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. 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.

Spot where Eugene Robuchon was last seen

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 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.

Robuchon had five courses open to him once he decided on abandoning the camp:

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 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 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 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, 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.

PLATE II.

A HOUSE IN THE ‘RUBBER BELT,’ ISSA VALLEY

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.

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 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]

PLATE III.

TYPICAL RIVER VIEW BELOW THE MOUTH OF THE NEGRO RIVER

BANK OF MAIN AMAZON STREAM IN THE VICINITY OF THE MOUTH OF THE JAPURA RIVER

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 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 hundred yards from bank to bank, and birds are to be found living upon them.

PLATE IV.

1. RIVER VIEW ON MAIN STREAM NEAR ISSA RIVER

2. LANDSCAPE ON UPPER AMAZON MAIN STREAM

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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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.

PLATE V.

THE BULGE-STEMMED PALM, IRIARTEA VENTICOSA, SHOWING PORTION OF LEAF AND FRUIT

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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

The Indian homestead—Building—Site and plan of maloka—Furniture—Inhabitants of the house—Fire—Daily life—Insect inhabitants—Pets.

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 reproduce it. The details, the essentials, must be sought within.

Fig. 1.

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, 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 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]

Fig. 2.

To make the thatch the Indians slit bamboos and insert 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.

PLATE VI.

FLOWERS AND SECTION OF LEAF OF THE BUSSU PALM

THE LEAF IS USED FOR THATCHING

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.

Fig. 3.

Elevation of small Boro House

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.

Fig. 4.—Section of houses.

PLATE VII.

SELF, WITH NONUYA TRIBE (Note Doorway behind me)

MUENANE TRIBE

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 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.

Fig. 5.

A A A, posts. B, fire. C C C, hammocks. D D, Wall.

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 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 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.

Fig. 6.

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 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

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.

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 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) 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 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 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 neighbours the Witoto resemble rather the Dyaks of Borneo.

DIAGRAMMATIC MAP OF THE ISSA-JAPURA CENTRAL WATERSHED SHOWING LANGUAGE GROUPS

BY CAPTAIN THOMAS W. WIFFEN

Click map for larger version

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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.

PLATE VIII.

1. GROUP OF WITOTO

2. GROUP OF SOME OF MY CARRIERS

CHAPTER V

Dress and ornament—Geographical and tribal differentiations—Festal 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.

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 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.

PLATE IX.

MEDICINE MAN AND HIS WIFE (ANDOKE)

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 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 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.

PLATE X.

BORO TRIBESMEN

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 Rivers, wear aprons after the same fashion as their neighbours. The women wear nothing.