Thomas Whiffen

Occupations—Sexual division and tabu—Tribal manufactures—Arts and crafts—Drawing—Carving—Metals—Tools and implements—No textile fabrics—Pottery—Basket making—Hammocks—Cassava-squeezer and grater—Pestle and mortar—Wooden vessels—Stone axes—Methods of felling trees—Canoes—Rafts—Paddles.

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

PLATE XXII.

WITOTO BASKETS OF SPLIT CANE AND FIBRE.

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

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

PLATE XXIII.

BORO NECKLACE OF JAGUARS TEETH WITH INCISED PATTERNS

NECKLACE OF JAGUAR-TEETH, INCISED, AND FLUTE MADE OF HUMAN BONE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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