Thomas Whiffen

The Indian armoury—Spears—Bows and arrows—Indian strategy—Forest tactics and warfare—Defensive measures—Secrecy and safety—The Indian’s science of war—Prisoners—War and anthropophagy—Cannibal tribes—Reasons for cannibal practices—Ritual of vengeance—Other causes—No intra-tribal cannibalism—The anthropophagous feast—Human relics—Necklaces of teeth—Absence of salt—Geophagy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are three reasons why these Indians are anthropophagous.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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