Arnold Henry Savage Landor

The Bororo Indians

While I was reassuring my men an Indian appeared, bow and arrows in hand. He stood motionless, looking at us. My men, who had not noticed his coming, were terrified when they turned round and saw him.

The Indian was a strikingly picturesque figure, with straight, sinewy arms and legs of wonderfully perfect anatomical modelling, well-shaped feet—but not small—and hands. He was not burdened with clothing; in fact, he wore nothing at all, barring a small belt round his waist and a fibre amulet on each arm.

The Indian deposited his bow and arrows against a tree when some other Indians arrived. He stood there as straight and as still as a bronze statue, his head slightly inclined forward in order to screen his searching eagle eyes from the light by the shade of his protruding brow. He folded his arms in a peculiar manner. His left hand was inserted flat under the right arm, the right hand fully spread flat upon his abdomen.

The first thing I did was to take a snapshot of him before he moved. Then I proceeded to the interesting study of his features. They were indeed a great revelation to me. One single glance at him and his comrades persuaded me that a theory I had long cherished about the aboriginal population of the South American continent was correct, although in contradiction to theories held by other people on the subject. I had always believed—for reasons which I shall fully explain later—that South America must be peopled by tribes of an Australoid or Papuan type—people who had got there directly from the west or south-west, not by people who had gradually drifted there from the north.

Some scientists—with no experience of travel—have been greatly misled by the fact that the North American Indians are decidedly a Mongolian race. Therefore they assumed—basing their assumption on incorrect data—that the unknown Indians of South America must also be Mongolian. This was a mistake, although undoubtedly migrations on a comparatively small scale of Indians from North to South America must have taken place, chiefly along the western American coast. Those tribes, however, unaccustomed to high mountains, never crossed the Andes. Whatever types of Indians with Mongolian characteristics were found settled in South America were to be found to the west of the Andes and not to the east. This does not of course mean that in recent years, when roads and railways and steamships have been established, and communication made comparatively easy, individuals or families may not have been conveyed from one coast to the other of the South American continent. But I wish my reader to keep in mind for a moment a clear distinction between the Indians of the western coast and the Indians of the interior.

A Fine Bororo Type on a Visit to Author's Camp.

A Fine Bororo Type on a Visit to Author's Camp.

To return to our man: I was greatly impressed by the strongly Australoid or Papuan nose he possessed—in other words, broad, with the lower part forming a flattened, depressed, somewhat enlarged hook with heavy nostrils. In profile his face was markedly convex, not concave as in Mongolian faces. Then the glabella or central boss in the supra-orbital region, the nose, the chin, were prominent, the latter broad and well-rounded. The cheek-bones with him and other types of his tribe were prominent forwards, but not unduly broad laterally, so that the face in front view was, roughly speaking, of a long oval, but inclined to be more angular—almost shield-shaped. The lips were medium-sized and firmly closed, such as in more civilized people would denote great determination. His ears were covered up by long jet-black hair, perfectly straight and somewhat coarse in texture, healthy-looking and uniformly scattered upon the scalp. The hair was cut straight horizontally high upon the forehead, which thus showed a considerable slant backward from the brow to the base of the hair. A small pigtail hung behind the head. The hair at the sides was left to grow down so as fully to cover the lobes of the ears, where again it was cut horizontally at the sides and back of the head. The top of the head was of great height, quite unlike a Mongolian cranium.

The eyes—close to the nose, and of a shiny dark brown—had their long axis nearly in one horizontal plane. They were set rather far back, were well cut, with thick upper eyelids, and placed somewhat high up against the brow ridges so as to leave little room for exposure of the upper lid when open.

None of the other Indians, who had gradually assembled, wore a particle of clothing, barring a tight conical collar of orange-coloured fibre encircling their genital organs—so tight that it almost cut into the skin. Without this solitary article of clothing no Indian man will allow himself to be seen by another, less still by a stranger. But with so modest an attire he feels as well-dressed as anybody. I think that this elegant article of fashion must have originated as a sanitary precaution, in order to prevent insects of all kinds, and particularly carrapatos, penetrating within—or else I was really at a loss to understand of what other use it could be. They themselves would not say, and only replied that all Bororo Indian men wore it. The Indians who had assembled all belonged to the Bororo tribe.

On that, as well as on later occasions, I noticed two distinct types among the Bororos: one purely Papuan or Polynesian; the other strongly Malay. The characteristics of those two different types showed themselves markedly in every instance. The majority were perhaps of the Malay type. I was intensely interested at the astounding resemblance of these people to the piratical tribes of the Sulu Archipelago in the Celebes Sea, where, too, one met a considerable amount of mixture of those two types as well as specimens of pure types of the two races.

Among the Bororos many were the individuals—of the Malay type—who had the typical Malay eye À fleur de tÊte, prominent, almond-shaped, and slightly slanting at the outer angle. The nose—unlike that of Papuan types—was flattened in its upper region between the eyes, and somewhat button-like and turned up at the lower part—just the reverse of the Papuan types, who had prominent aquiline noses with a high bridge and globular point turned down instead of up. The lips were in no case unduly prominent, nor thick. They were almost invariably kept tightly closed.

The form of the palate was highly curious from an anthropological point of view. It was almost rectangular, the angles of the front part being slightly wider than a right angle.

The front teeth were of great beauty, and were not set, as in most jaws, on a more or less marked curve, but were almost on a straight line—the incisors being almost absolutely vertical and meeting the side teeth at an angle of about 60°. The upper teeth overlapped the lower ones.

The chin was well developed—square and flattened in the Papuan types, but receding, flat and small in the Malay types.

Both types were absolutely hairless on the face and body, which was partly natural and partly due to the tribal custom of pulling out carefully, one by one, each hair they possessed on the upper lip and upon the body—a most painful process. The women—as we shall see—in sign of deep mourning, also plucked out each hair of the scalp.

A striking characteristic of the head—in Papuan types—was the great breadth of the maximum transverse of the head, and the undue prominence of the supra-orbital ridges. Also, the great height of the forehead and its great width in its upper part were typical of the race. The maximum antero-posterior diameter of the skull was equal, in many cases, to the vertical length of the head, taken from the angle of the jaw to the apex of the skull. The ears nearly invariably showed mean, under-developed lobes, but, strangely enough, were otherwise well shaped, with gracefully defined and chiselled curves. They were not unduly large, with a wonderfully well-formed concha, which fact explained why the acoustic properties of their oral organs were perfect. They made full use of this in long-distance signalling by means of acute whistles, of which the Bororos had a regular code.

The favourite form of earring adopted by the Bororos was a brass ring with a metal or shell crescent, not unlike the Turkish moon, but I do not think that this ornament was of Bororo origin. Very likely it was suggested by the cheap jewellery imported into Brazil by Turkish and Syrian traders.

They displayed powerful chests, with ribs well covered with flesh and muscle. With their dark yellow skins they were not unlike beautiful bronze torsi. The abdominal region was never unduly enlarged, perhaps owing to the fact that their digestion was good, and also because they took a considerable amount of daily exercise. In standing they kept their shoulders well back, the abdominal region being slightly in front of the chest. The head was usually slightly inclined downwards.

The feet of the Bororos of the Malay type were generally stumpy, but this was not so with the higher Papuan types, who, on the contrary, had abnormally long toes and elongated feet, rather flattened. The Bororos used their toes almost as much as their fingers, and showed great dexterity in picking up things, or in spinning twine, when their toes did quite as much work as their fingers. The colour of the iris of the Bororo eye was brown, with considerable discoloration around its outer periphery, and especially in the upper part, where it was covered by the lid. The eyes were generally kept half closed.

The anatomical detail of the body was perfectly balanced. The arms were powerful, but with fine, well-formed wrists—exquisitely chiselled, as were all the attachments of their limbs. They had quite graceful hands, long-fingered—in more ways than one—and wonderfully well-shaped, elongated, convex-faced nails, which would arouse the envy of many a lady of Western countries. The webbing between the fingers was infinitesimal, as with most Malay races. Great refinement of race was also to be noticed in the shape of their legs—marvellously modelled, without an ounce of extra flesh, and with small ankles.

The Bororos divided themselves into two separate families—the Bororo Cerados and the Bororo Tugaregghi. The first descended from Baccoron; the second claimed descent from Ittibori. Baccoron lived where the sun set, in the west; Ittibari dwelt in the east.

I heard a strange legend in connection with their origin, in which they seemed proud of their descent from the jaguar—which to them represented the type of virility. A male jaguar, they said, had married a Bororo woman.

A sensible custom existed among the Bororos, as among the Tuaregs of the Sahara desert in Africa. The children took the name of the mother and not of the father. The Bororos, like the Tuaregs, rightly claimed that there could be no mistake as to who the mother of a child was, but that certainty did not always apply to the father. This was decidedly a sensible law among the Bororos, who were most inconstant in their affections. They were seldom faithful to their wives—at least, for any length of time.

The Bororos were not prolific. They frequently indulged in criminal practices in order to dispose of their young—either by strangulation at birth or soon after, or by drugging their women before the birth of the child. The young, when allowed to live, took milk from their mothers until the ages of five or six years. The parents were extremely kind to their children; indeed, they were extraordinarily good-natured and considerate. Eight days after birth they perforated the lower lip of male children and inserted a pendant, taking that opportunity to give a name to the child. The lobes of the ears were only perforated at the age of ten or twelve.

It was only at the age of about twenty that men were allowed to marry.

I found among the Bororos an interesting custom which I had seen but once before—in Central Asia, on the slopes of the Himalaya Mountains, among the Shoka tribesmen. I am referring to the "clubs"—called by the Bororos Wai manna ghetgiao. There the young men and girls went not only with the object of selecting a wife or husband, but also to get thoroughly acquainted and see if the mate selected were suitable or not. The men sat on one side of the club-house—a mere hut—the women on the other. In a way, these clubs prevented hasty marriages, for the men were given plenty of time to study their prospective brides and the girls their future husbands. Curiously enough, in the Bororo country it was generally the woman who proposed to the man. When the official engagement was made the man proceeded to the hut of his sweetheart and brought a gift of food for her and her mother. If the gifts were accepted there was no other formality to be gone through, and the matrimonial ceremony was indeed of the simplest kind. The man took away the girl to his hut and they were man and wife.

The cuisine of the Bororos was not attractive to European palate, ears or eyes. One of the favourite dishes of the Bororos, served on grand occasions, was the mingao, or Indian corn chewed up into a paste inside their mouths by women and then displayed before the guests in earthen pots filled with fresh water, in which it was then cooked.

The Bororos maintained that the sun, Cervado, and the moon, Ittary, were two brothers, both being males.

They believed in a superior Being—the essence of goodness and kindness—a Being who will never give pain or hurt anybody; therefore the Bororo, who was really at heart a great philosopher, never offered prayers to that superior Being. Why pray and worry one who will never injure us? they argued.

Then they believed in a wicked and revengeful devil, the BoppÉ, to whom constant attention was paid because by him was caused all the trouble that humans can have. Malady, accidents, disaster in love, in hunting or fishing expeditions—for all these the devil BoppÉ was responsible.

Then they had also another evil spirit—the Aroe Taurari—who, they said, often assumed the appearance of their ancestors in order to come and watch the games of the Bororos, such as wrestling and archery. Wrestling—in the catch-as-catch-can style—was one of their favourite games. They were very agile at it. Their favourite trick was to seize each other across the shoulders, each endeavouring to trip his opponent by a twisted leg round his knee. Children in the aldejas were playing at this game all the time. In the Bororo wrestling-matches it was sufficient to be thrown down to be the loser, and it was not essential to touch the ground with both shoulder-blades.

The only other game I saw among the Bororos was the test of strength. It was carried out with a most striking article—a great wheel made of sections, each one foot long, of the trunk of the burity palm tied together by double strings of fibre. The ribbon thus formed by them was rolled so as to make a solid wheel of heavy wood 6 ft. in diameter. The whole was retained in a circular form by a strong belt of vegetable fibre. This great wheel was used by the Bororos in their sports, at festivals, for testing the strength of the most powerful men. It was so heavy that few men could lift it at all, the great test being actually to place it on one's head and keep it there for a length of time.

Bororo Men, showing Lip Ornament.

Bororo Men, showing Lip Ornament.

Bororo Men.

Bororo Men.

The Indians of South America, like the Indians of North America, revelled in decorating themselves with the feathers of brightly-coloured birds. The red, yellow and blue giant macaws, fairly common in that region, paid dearly for this fashion of the Indians. Many of those poor birds were kept in captivity and plucked yearly of all their feathers in order to make hair ornaments of beautiful blue and green plumage for the leading musician, who rattled the bacco (a gourd full of pebbles which can make a terrible noise), or else armlets, earrings or necklaces. Some of the designs woven with the tiniest feathers of those birds were quite clever, and required delicate handling in their manufacture. Ducks, too, supplied many of the feathers for the ornaments of the Bororos.

Their cooking utensils were simple enough—merely a few large earthen bowls, badly baked and unglazed, the largest of which was seldom more than 2 ft. in diameter. They broke easily, being made extremely thin.

The Bororos made basket-work by plaiting dried palm-leaves, but their most interesting work of all consisted in the really beautifully made fishing nets. Nearly all the Indians of South America showed remarkable talent and patience at this work. The strings were twisted of a vegetable fibre, extremely resisting, and eminently suitable by its softness and regularity of diameter.

Whether owing to excitement, indigestion or other causes, the Bororos had visions, which they attributed to the Aroe Taurari. In a certain way they were believers in the transmigration of the soul—not generally, but in specific cases.

There were certain Bororos who, by magic songs, professed to fascinate animals in the forest and were able to catch them. The barih or medicine-man generally, assisted in those incantations.

The Bororos were remarkable walkers. They were extremely light on their feet and had a springy gait, most graceful to watch. A striking characteristic of these people was that, when standing—unlike nearly every other tribe of savages I have seen—they spread their toes outward instead of keeping both feet parallel. To a lesser extent the feet were held in that position also when walking. The suppleness of their bodies gave them a great advantage in penetrating with ease anywhere in the forest without having to cut their way through.

Both men and women were passionately fond of dancing, although their dancing had not reached any degree of perfection. With a strip of burity palm upon their shoulders they hopped around, monotonously chanting, with a rhythmic occasional jump, the women following the men.

The women possessed considerable endurance. They could carry heavy weights for long distances by means of a fibre headband resting on the forehead. Under those circumstances the body was kept slightly inclined forward. Children were also carried in a similar fashion in a sling, only—less practically than among many Asiatic and African tribes—the Bororo children were left to dangle their legs, thereby increasing the difficulty of carrying them, instead of sitting with legs astride across the mother's haunches. I was amazed to see until what age Bororo mothers and sisters would carry the young upon their shoulders—certainly children of five or six years of age were being carried about in this fashion, while such hard duties as pounding Indian corn, thrashing beans, and hut-building, were attended to.

Neither in women nor in men was the power of resistance in any way to be compared with that of the tribes of Central Africa or Asia. The Indian tribes of Brazil impressed one as being strong, because one compared them with their neighbours and masters, the Brazilians, who were physically one of the weakest, least-resisting races I have ever seen. When you compared them with some of the healthy savage races elsewhere, the Indians did not approach them in endurance and quickness of intellect. Do not forget that endurance is greatly due to brain power and self-control. The Indian races I saw in Brazil seemed to me almost exhausted physically, owing perhaps to constant intermarriage among themselves. The eyesight of the Bororos, for instance, was extremely bad. There were many in every aldeja who were almost or absolutely blind. The others were nearly all short-sighted.

The Bororos removed—pulled out, in fact—their eyelashes one by one, as they believed it improved their sight, especially for seeing at long distances. They all suffered more or less from complaints of the eyes. Indeed, I have seldom found races whose members had eyes in such poor condition. Conjunctivitis was the most prevalent form of eye disease. Ophthalmia was frequently met with. They seemed to have no efficacious method of curing those complaints, and the result was that one found an appalling number of blind or half-blind persons among them—quite out of proportion to the small population. The Bororos did not, of course, know of spectacles or any other way of protecting the eyes. Even when their eyes were in a normal condition, they nearly all had some defect of vision. Squinting was frequently to be noticed among them, and nearly invariably unevenness of the eyes. Cataract was common at a comparatively early age, and they knew no remedy for it. An abnormally marked discoloration of the upper part of the iris was constantly to be noticed even in young people. Among the healthiest I never saw one man or woman with extraordinary powers of vision such as are most common among savage tribes of Asia and Africa. The diseased condition of their blood was also perhaps to a certain extent responsible for this.

Their hearing was good, but not much more acute than with the average European—and infinitely inferior to that of the natives of Asia and Africa. They suffered considerably from the most terrible of blood complaints, general among them, also from leprosy and various skin troubles.

The Bororos made considerable use of the urucu plant (Bixa orellana L.) which they called nonoku, from the fruit of which they obtained a brilliant red colouring matter for tinting their bows and arrows. The shell of the fruit contained a number of shiny seeds, which, when squashed, exuded a vivid red juice. It adhered easily to the skin of the forehead and cheeks, for which purpose the Indians also extensively used it.

The black paint which the Indians used for smearing themselves across the forehead, cheeks, and upon the shoulders, from side to side, was made to stick to the skin and shine by mixing it with a resin.

The Bororos of the Rio Barreiros district carried five arrows each with them, but each family of Bororos used a special colour and also a different number of arrows, so that no particular rule could be laid down for the entire tribe. The red-tinted arm-band which most men wore was called the aguasso.

Before starting on a hunting expedition of importance the Bororos usually indulged in a feast.

I took a great number of thumb-marks among them, some of which were remarkable for the precision of the spiral lines from the central point, all over the thumb point. Others in the longer thumbs showed a peculiar deviation in the curve at the end, near the point of the thumb. Where the lines began to deviate, the triangle formed was filled in by other lines joining those of the spiral at sharp angles.

The experiments with the dynamometer in order to measure their strength, the anthropometric measurements with a calliper, and the printing of the thumb-marks, caused the Bororos first of all great anxiety, then boisterous amusement. They looked upon it all as utter nonsense—in a way I did not blame them—and repeatedly asked why I did it. I told them that I did it to find out where they came from.

"We are not monkeys," said they; "we do not walk on our hands. If that is your object you should look at our foot-marks on the ground, not at the marks of our hands!"

With these words, from a tracker's point of view, the local wit set the entire company in shrieks of laughter at his quick repartee.

"Oh, yes!" said I; "but with the thumb-marks I may perhaps trace, not only where you come from, but also where your great-grandfather, who is now dead, came from." That was too much for them. All had been anxious to make a smudge with smoke-black upon my note-book. Now they all refused to do any more thumb-marking, and walked away; but I had fortunately already finished the work I needed from them.

The Bororos—in fact, most Indian tribes of Central Brazil—knew nothing whatever of navigation. This was chiefly due to the fact that all the woods of Central Brazil had so high a specific gravity that not one of them would float. Hence the impossibility of making rafts, and the greatly increased difficulty in making boats. As for making dug-outs, the Indians had neither the patience nor the skill nor the tools to cut them out of solid trees. Moreover, there was really no reason why the Indians should take up navigation at all when they could do very well without it. They could easily get across the smaller streams without boats, and they were too timid to go and attack inimical tribes on the opposite banks of unfordable rivers. Besides, the Indians were so few and the territory at their entire disposal so great, that there was no temptation for them to take up exploring, particularly by water.

They were all good swimmers. When the river was too deep to ford they merely swam across; or else, if the river were too broad and swift, they improvised a kind of temporary raft with fascines or bundles of dried burity leaves, to which they clung, and which they propelled with their feet. These fascines were quite sufficient to keep them afloat for a short time, enabling them also to convey a certain amount of goods across the water. In other countries, such as in Central Africa among the Shilucks and the Nuers of the Sobat River (Sudan), and the natives on Lake Tchad, I have seen a similar method adopted in a far more perfected fashion. The Shilucks, for instance, cleverly built big boats of fascines—large enough to carry a great number of warriors. Such was not the case with the bundles of burity of the Indians—which merely served for one or at the most two people at a time, and then only until the bundle became soaked, when it went to the bottom.