CHAPTER IV

The Indian homestead—Building—Site and plan ofmaloka—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 themaloka,[22]otherwise the silence and solitude appear little less profound than in the forest.

That is the picture as the artist or camera wouldreproduce 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 thisgrosse familledeparts 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 specialpreparation 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. Thebejucos, 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 insertthe 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 PALMTHE LEAF IS USED FOR THATCHING

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

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 themalokasare 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

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-Grünbergin 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,durieias 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.

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, andis known among the rubber-gatherers as arancho, 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, anda 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 ofyarakue. 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 largemygale. 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 theirmaloka, 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 thePhyllostoma. Vampires, however, are more frequently met with on the main river than on the Issa or Japura.[34]Theyundoubtedly 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.

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 maindifficulty, 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 “theUitotosorCarijonas,” 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 “OuitotosouMiranhas,”[43]and remarks that “Les Miranhas du Yapurá sont appelés par leurs voisins ‘Ouitotos.’”[44]It would seem, then, that theFrench 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 thegroupe 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 Witototribes 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 givesouitotoas 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 wordsnation,tribe,clan,family. To avoid possibility of mistake it may be explained at the outset thattribeis 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; theirneighbours the Witoto resemble rather the Dyaks of Borneo.

DIAGRAMMATIC MAP OF THE ISSA-JAPURA CENTRAL WATERSHED SHOWING LANGUAGE GROUPSBY CAPTAIN THOMAS W. WIFFENClick map for larger version

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 tribesoccupy 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 theirdetestation 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, thoughmenimehemeans “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. Articlesof 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, ornaciones,” are not Witoto at all, andnacioneis 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 theAustralian 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 whitemen 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 lastword in the tribal councils. The chief has no special name, for there are no titles of courtesy, except among the Andoke, who call a chiefPosoa. 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. AndPiais 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—thechupe del tabac, as Robuchon calls it—of which so much has been written, must not be confounded with thekawanadrinking 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 afellow-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 exogamyis 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 andundergrowth, 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 ofPia—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 upona 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.

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