Agriculture--Plantations--Preparation of ground in
the forest--Paucity of agricultural instruments--Need
for diligence--Women’s incessant toil--No special
harvest-time--Maize the only grain grown--No use for
sugar--Manioc cultivation--Peppers--Tobacco--Coca
cultivation--Tree-climbing methods--Indian wood-craft--Indian
tracking--Exaggerated sporting yarns--Indian sense of locality
and accuracy of observation--Blow-pipes--Method of making
blow-pipes--Darts--Indian improvidence--Migration of game--Traps
and snares--Javelins--Hunting and fishing rights--Fishing--Fish
traps--Spearing and poisoning fish.
Apart from the industries already dealt with, the occupations of the
South American Indians of these parts consist in agricultural pursuits,
hunting, fishing, making war, and holding festival. They are not a
pastoral people and have no cattle; even the domestic pig is unknown,
fowls are never seen, and dogs only exist in their wild state in the
forest. There they are numerous enough, dun in colour, with ears erect.
These Indians do not keep or train them, though some of the tribes away
from this district have hunting dogs.[117]
[Illustration: PLATE XXVI.
1. INDIAN PLANTATION CLEARED BY FIRE PREPARATORY TO CULTIVATION
2. VIEW ON AFFLUENT OF THE KAHUINARI RIVER]
The greater part of the agricultural work falls, as has been seen, to the
lot of the women, though the preliminaries--the heavier work of clearing,
cutting, and breaking up the untouched soil--are undertaken by the men.
Each tribal house stands in the midst of a small clearing. In front
is the big dancing ground, for though the dancing proper takes place
inside the _maloka_, this outer dance clearing is used for the purpose
of assembly, and for effective entries. Near by are the cultivated plots
that belong to the chief. The Indian with his own private lodging in the
bush, or any married Indian,--and all marry when they come to man’s
estate--has his special plantation patch by his country-house, if he has
one, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the tribal house if he is content
with only his quarters therein. But no plantations are made actually
surrounding the _maloka_; they are perhaps half a mile away, for, as a
rule, the house stands alone. Sometimes a man’s plantation will be two
days’ journey from the house of assembly, in which case a “country-house”
is a necessity. The tribal plantations belong to the chief, as he, having
all the unattached women, is better able to cultivate them.
To prepare the plots of ground the smaller trees are felled, the
larger ones are burnt. The stumps of trees, cut about four feet above
the ground, decay with some rapidity, and, directly the branches are
dry enough to burn, fire is brought out and the clearing made into a
gigantic bonfire, or rather series of bonfires, for the always damp wood
will never do more than smoulder, but it is sufficient to destroy the
brushwood and the tangle of creeping plants. There is then a savannah, a
clearing such as is shown in the illustration (Plate XXVI.), a wilderness
of charred posts and vegetable ashes which make most excellent manure.
The ground is then broken up with wooden clubs, and therewith the men’s
labour is at an end.[118] Henceforward their women take charge of the
plantation--_ike_ the Witoto call it before it is planted; it is _akpho_
after planting.
The Indian plantation is no orderly market-garden. To begin with, the
women have nothing but the roughest wooden implement, a wedge-shaped
stake, with which to dig, and rake, and hoe. The ground is always uneven
and broken; the charred remnants of the original vegetation are left to
crumble beside the young growth, and the cultivated seedlings have to
struggle for space and air with quick-growing wild things, forest growths
and creepers that encroach on every side, and would speedily reclaim any
cleared portions of the unconquerable bush were it not for the incessant
diligence of the women. They go there daily straight from the morning
bath, and keep up a constant chattering as they plant the cuttings of
manioc, or tend to the pine-apples and the sugar-cane, while the men take
to their canoes, or go a-hunting in the bush in company. I have never
seen single Indians hunting or walking in the forest. For obvious reasons
they never venture far afield by themselves, or even in very small
parties.
Sowing is done during the rainy season, but beyond the fact that things
then grow faster than when it is comparatively drier, there is no
especial harvest time. Crops grow and ripen all the year round. The
Indians are not grain-growing people. Rice is unknown,[119] and the
only grain that is sown at all is maize. This, though much cultivated
by the Kuretu, and by tribes on the Tikie, is not grown in any quantity
by Indians south of the Japura. What there may be is very small. Coca,
manioc, and tobacco are the most universally cultivated. The Witoto grow
a little sugar-cane and it is occasionally found growing wild, but in
very few places. Originally, I imagine, it was imported. The Indians do
not use it for sugar, as sweet things do not seem to appeal to their
palates, and “beer” is unknown. Half-wild pumpkins and plantains are to
be found in most plantations; pines,[120] bananas, yams, papaws, sweet
potatoes, and mangoes are found cultivated more or less. The yellow fruit
of the guaraná is prized by these Indians, especially the Boro, and is
used here by them in the preparation of a stimulating drink[121] similar
to that in use on the Rio Negro.[122] The wild cacao,[123] though not
common, is seen about here, but the tribes do not cultivate it. Manioc,
which is also known as cassava,[124] is a plant that grows throughout the
tropical regions of America, and in the West Indies. It is known also in
Africa, and has been introduced by the white man into some of the Pacific
Islands.
The manioc is planted by the women about July or August, and according to
Indian belief manioc can only be propagated by replanting slips of the
old growth after it has been lifted up and the tuberous root removed. As
it cannot reproduce itself in this fashion in its wild state, presumably
it will grow from young tubers, or seed, but, according to Bates, it is
not found wild in the Amazon basin.[125] The ground is hoed by the women,
and scraped into rough furrows. Cuttings of the manioc plant are set in
these in little holes. Eight months after planting the root is ready
for use. It is large, fleshy, and very heavy for its bulk, each tuber
weighing from half a pound to two or three pounds, and even more. It has
been said of the variety known as the great manioc that a root will weigh
as much as forty-eight pounds.[126] The ground will only carry two crops,
so a fresh patch must be broken up after the second harvest. Indians
will, however, always return to plantations no longer in use, on account
of the different palm fruits which continue to grow wild there after they
have once been cultivated; but the disused plots will never be tilled
again for plantation, they are only visited for this purpose of securing
the fruit.
Throughout the forest peppers are very common and plentiful. Some of the
bushes grow to a height of ten feet. There are many varieties,[127] and
peppers are grown, or allowed to grow, in patches on all the plantations.
I have said that the women are the agriculturalists and the cooks; nor
do I know of any exception to this rule, for though coca and tobacco are
tabu to all women, and their preparation is forbidden to the sex, yet the
women grow the tobacco in the plantations, gather the leaf, and dry it
in the sun. But the actual making of the black liquid is done by the men
alone, and only men prepare the coca for use. Tobacco is not an article
of barter among these tribes, as all grow it, and its preparation is
no secret to any of the tribesmen. Cultivated coca is sown when the
rains begin. The young seedlings need both care and attention.[128] It
is eighteen months before the slender shrub will yield any harvest,
though once grown the supply will continue for three or four decades.
The shrub grows to some five or six feet high, into small trees in fact,
with lichen-encrusted trunks. Both the common kind and a smaller-leaved
variety[129] grow wild in these regions.
Men also must climb the trees to gather such fruits as the papaw and
the seeds of the cokerite or the peach palms. Indians climb in what is
practically a universal method, with a circling rope and a ring.[130]
Their usual way is to secure the legs together about the ankles with a
strip of the inner bark of a tree, and then, with arms and feet free,
to use a bigger loop adjusted round the tree and hips of the climber
for purchase power. For short climbs they will dispense with the bigger
loop. Sometimes palm-frond is made into a ring for the toes, but with
the forest Indians these are oftener left free to allow of prehensile
action. With this simple attachment, made perhaps only of twisted liana,
the native will work his way to a perilous height up the barest of tree
trunks.[131]
[Illustration: PLATE XXVII.
ERYTHROXYLON-COCA]
As a woodsman the Indian is so far in advance of the European traveller
as to make all comparison futile.[132] An Indian in the bush is
wonderful. From his earliest days he has been taught to watch and note.
I have known an Indian stop and tell me that when the sun was in a
certain position, that is to say half an hour previously, seven Indians
passed that way carrying a tapir, which had been killed when the sun was
there--indicating another position. It was killed a long distance away,
and the bag must have been a tapir on account of the evident weight. He
took up a leaf on which was a spot of blood, coagulated. He pointed to
tracks on the ground, to prove the question of numbers and distance. The
men who passed were weary, he knew it by the way their toes had dropped
on the ground. The breaking of a twig, the exudation of sap, is enough of
a guide for the Indian to judge when the last passer-by came that way.
I have been told it was within ten minutes, and shown a leaf. It had
begun to rain ten minutes before, and the leaf, overturned by a passing
foot, was wet upon both sides. A glance will suffice for an estimate of
what animals passed, and when. By some intuitive perception, moreover,
he will deduce in a moment whither the game has gone, and will make, not
along its trail, but more directly for it. Yet close and accurate as
his observation invariably is, when the Indian sportsman begins a tale
of the chase it is exaggerated beyond the wildest dreams and liveliest
imaginings of the most gifted sporting Munchausen among ourselves.
When an Indian is path-finding he judges both time and distance by the
sun. If not attacked by an enemy, he will win his way home from anywhere,
always at a jog-trot, and will probably do his fifty miles on nothing
more sustaining than coca. A sense of locality is born in him, and from
childhood upwards this is trained and developed by continued and varied
experiences. To be able to judge by the sky, by the weathered side of
trees, by the flight of birds, or the run of animals--above all to have a
sense that is greater than all judgment--is a matter of life or death not
once but continually. The inept are the unfit, and the forest will show
them no mercy.
This minuteness and accuracy of observation comes into play again when
the Indian is hunting. Death to his quarry from the tiny poisoned dart of
the blow-pipe is certain, but not absolutely instantaneous. He also will
shoot birds with a blunt-headed arrow that stuns but does no damage to
the plumage. The shock appears to kill the bird. Hit with dart or arrow
they may flutter a little distance before they fall. I have watched an
Indian scores of times when hunting game shoot bird after bird in a tree,
mark down where each fell, and eventually never fail to account for every
one despite the density of the surrounding bush. Hardly a traveller but
has noted and wondered at the same thing.
[Illustration: PLATE XXVIII.
1 & 2.--Andoke bamboo cases with darts and cotton
3. Dart with cotton attached
4. Blowpipe with dart
5. Javelins
6. Fishing trident
7. Spears in bamboo case
8. Dance Staff]
Blow-pipes are only carried by the Indians when hunting. They are weapons
of the chase, not of war. Most of the tribes manufacture their own, but
the Bara, who neither hunt nor fish, get theirs solely by barter from
other tribes. The blow-pipe--_obidiake_ of the Witoto, _dodike_ of the
Boro--made by these tribes is a heavier weapon than those made by tribes
farther north.[133] It is constructed, like those of all tribes south of
the Japura, in two sections, bound together with great nicety, and has
invariably a mouthpiece made of vegetable ivory or a similar wood that
fits round inside the mouth. These blow-pipes are from eight to fourteen
feet long, with a quarter-inch tube, the outer mouthpiece being an inch
and a half. They are sometimes made from reeds[134] by the Boro and
Andoke, and I have seen small Boro boys with a hollow reed pipe, about
half the ordinary length. This was merely a plaything. These are the
simplest form of blow-pipe, and would appear to be the original type.
Though I imagine reeds are always obtainable, for the flora did not
seem to vary, as a rule the wood of the chonta palm is employed.[135]
On the north of the Japura, the tribes, I believe, mostly make their
blow-pipes of palm stems.[136] Two long strips of this wood are slit
off by notching and levering with a stone axe, as already described. The
chonta poles are trimmed, rubbed, and grooved with sand and a paca-tooth
tool till they form the corresponding halves of a tube, which must fit
most exactly. All this entails very careful and tedious work, so it is
fortunate that time to an Indian is of no account. These half tubes are
then fastened together and the bore polished with what is practically
sand-paper. A string is dipped in some gummy substance, and then covered
with sand. When dry, a fine polish is secured with this by friction. The
blow-pipe is next bound from end to end with fibre-string, or narrow
strips of pliant bark.[137] The whole pipe is then coated with some
resinous gum, or wax.[138] A small bone is fixed about twelve inches from
the mouthpiece, and this acts as a sight. Such a tube will send an arrow
a distance of from forty to one hundred and fifty feet, and an expert
hunter shoots the smallest birds at twenty yards. The chonta-wood pipe is
the heaviest and most lasting, but I do not know if it carries farthest.
The Indians’ accuracy of aim is extraordinary. The arrows, or darts, are
about nine inches long, no thicker than a small match, and are tufted
with fluffy down from the seed vessels of the silk-cotton tree,[139]
the tuft being of a size to fit exactly into the bore of the pipe. The
arrows are made of the leaf-stem spines of the Patawa palm.[140] They are
carried in a quiver of bamboo lined with dried grass or fine rushes that
protect the delicate darts. The poisoned points are partly cut through
so that they break off in the wound. Once a bird or animal is hit the
poison kills them very speedily. The silk-cotton for tipping the arrow is
carried in a gourd that is attached to the arrow quiver with strips of
cane, and to it is also tied the jawbone of the pirai fish, which is used
as a file for the points of the darts. When the arrow is ejected from the
blow-pipe there is a slight noise, like a child’s pop-gun, but it is not
enough to scare the game.[141]
Indians are no more provident as hunters than as housekeepers. When
game is plentiful they will kill and eat, kill recklessly, and eat to
repletion. But game is not always plentiful. It may abound to-day and all
be gone to-morrow. Even parrots and peccary will fail at times. Birds and
beasts wander, and though the hunter can often judge of direction through
knowledge of their habits, and--what in this instance probably governs
them--which fruits are ripest and where most abundantly to be found, this
will not altogether account for the fluctuations in the supply of game.
It must also be remembered that in this respect the bush varies greatly,
and even where animal life is not scarce it is apt to become so on the
advent of man. Even apart from the disturbance caused by the hunter, game
in the vicinity of any human settlement tends to disappear. The hunter
must go farther and farther afield.
The Indian is an expert trapper. His traps though simple are ingeniously
contrived, and seldom fail to act. An empty bag is due more frequently
to absence of game than to the inadequate plan of the trap. Monkeys are
caught with a running-noose loop snare made of liana, which is adjusted
carefully along a fruit-bearing branch of a tree. Any monkey attempting
to reach the fruit strangles itself in the noose, exactly as a rabbit
does in the wire of an English poacher.
[Illustration: PLATE XXIX.
ANDOKE BAMBOO CASE WITH DARTS FOR BLOWPIPE AND GOURD FULL OF COTTON]
A shallow pan of water is the Indian bait for ground vermin. Round it
they dig a ring of holes, about a foot across, on which are lightly
spread grass and leaves. Rats, mice, frogs, and small snakes venturing
to drink fall through into the holes that are deep enough to hold them
captive till the trapper comes round and secures his catch. For larger
animals the hunters dig a line of pits, with a sharpened stake fixed
upright at the bottom of each. The game, corralled and driven over these,
falls in through the sticks and leaves that hide the opening, and is
impaled on the stake. The Karahone arm their pits with poisoned arrows,
and dig a succession of these death-traps down a forest avenue.[142]
A more complex contrivance is made with carefully poised logs. This
description of trap is set in a forest run, the brushwood on either side
is twisted and plaited into a rough fence, and the trap erected in the
opening. The slightest pressure on the footboard releases the weight, and
brings the heavy trunk down with a crash on the intruder. A trap of this
kind will catch anything from a squirrel to a jaguar.
A tapir is sometimes killed with a throwing javelin, which the Indians
use with much dexterity, though when they throw anything they do it
with an over-arm action, with a jerk as a girl would. Their skill with
these javelins is not surprising when one remembers that they hunt two
or three days a week from boyhood, and so are continually throwing them
at animals. The javelin is a light spear with a poisoned palm spine at
the point. A man carries seven of these in his hand, and seven more in
reserve in a bamboo case--fourteen in all. These javelins are about
six feet long, and an Indian can throw one a distance of thirty yards.
Sometimes only five are carried in the hand, but seven is the more usual
number. Though long they are very thin and light. The haft is usually
made of chonta, or similar hard straight-grained woods. A spine is always
fixed in the point, which is filed almost through so that it will break
off in the body of the wounded animal. These spines are poisoned with
animal putrefying poison. Of the heavier spears more anon.
Koch-Grünberg noted that tribes on the Tikie have well-defined and
recognised hunting and fishing rights, but that when travelling any such
rights are avoided. This is common to all Indians. They will even erect
barriers in the bush and on the rivers, and they keep strictly to their
own localities, otherwise quarrels would arise and war be the upshot.
The sporting proclivities of the tribes vary considerably. The Tukana
are fishers, but not hunters. The Boro, on the other hand, though great
hunters do not fish, at least I do not remember ever having been given
fish in a Boro house. Certainly they are not such fishermen as the Witoto
or the Okaina, who are the most skilful of all the fishing tribes.
Fish are taken with hook and line, in nets and traps, by poisoning
the water, by spearing, and by shooting with bows and arrows. For
fish-hooks these tribes have hardly anything but those that they contrive
for themselves from wood, bone, or spines, and civilised metal hooks
are greatly sought after by all of them. Napo Indians make hooks of
bone.[143] The Witoto _fakwasi_ is a fish-hook made of wood or palm
spine. A spine is fastened to a fine stick, and this is baited with
grubs, and used with a fibre line, or with a _pihekoa_, a rod and a line.
Fish are caught to some extent with bait and laid lines.
Hand nets are made of _chambiri_ palm-fibre in the same way that
hammocks are made, but with a finer mesh; larger ones are constructed
by fixing fences of wattle across the stream before the rivers rise. In
the dry season the Witoto use nets to drag the pools in the river-bed.
They also catch fish with baited nets, the bait being larvæ, or some
fruit attractive to fish, such as that of the _setico_, or the drupes
of certain laurels. In the dry season they bale out the water from the
shallower pools with gourds till the fish can be captured by hand.
Some of the fish traps are most cleverly designed. There is one known on
the Uaupes as the _matapi_, which is simply a basket open at one end,
but without sufficient space for fish of any size to turn round in.
As fish are not able to swim backwards without the room to turn they
cannot escape once in the trap. On the Napo the Indians spear fish most
expertly, but other Indians depend largely on these and similar traps for
their supply.
Fish are speared with a wooden trident or, rather, caught between its
prongs, or stabbed with a bamboo spear that has a double-edged blade.
Some of the civilised Indians of the lower Amazons have harpoons with
detachable heads that they use for hunting the manatee, or river dolphin,
but, in these upper waters, dolphins, if seen,--and that is rarely--are
speared with tridents; the Indians have no harpoons, and the only thing
that resembles a detachable head is the partly filed-through javelin. The
Menimehe shoot fish with the bow and arrow.
By far the most wholesale and general way in which fish are obtained is
through the use of poison.[144] The Indians procure this from the root
of an evergreen bush, the _babasco_,[145] which they pound very fine.
They dam the stream with a wattle fencing and then throw the mashed
_babasco_ in above this fish weir. The fish frequently jump out of the
water, gasping as though they were being strangled, and the Indians
secure those distressed fish in outspread palm leaves. Sometimes the
dead fish drop down into a net, spread beside the dam to catch them; or
the Indian fisherman will simply spear them when they are sufficiently
narcotised. Dead fish will be found floating in the vicinity many hours
afterwards. The Napo Indians put the crushed _babasco_ in a basket and
stir the water with this below the dam--so that the fish cannot escape
upstream.[146] Witoto and other Issa-Japura tribes merely throw the roots
into the stream, and the dam is made more to prevent the dead fish being
washed away than to stop the live ones escaping. The poison works almost
instantaneously on the smaller fish. The Indians on the Tapajos make use
of a poisonous liana called _timbo_.[147] Its action is similar though
not so immediate as that of the _babasco_ root, and consequently it is of
little use in quick-flowing waters. Neither _babasco_ nor _timbo_ affect
the fish injuriously for human food.