THE INDIANS OF PANAMA
While that portion of the Panama territory that lies along the border of
Colombia known as the Darien is rather ill-defined as to area and to
boundaries, it is known to be rich in timber and is believed to possess
gold mines of great richness. But it is practically impenetrable by the
white man. Through this country Balboa led his force on his expedition
to the unknown Pacific, and was followed by the bloodthirsty Pedrarias
who bred up in the Indians a hatred of the white man that has grown as
the ages passed. No expedition can enter this region even today except
as an armed force ready to fight for the right of passage. In 1786 the
Spaniards sought to subdue the territory, built forts on both the
Atlantic and Pacific coasts and established a line of trading posts
connecting them. But the effort failed. The posts were abandoned. Today
the white man who tries to enter the Darien does so at the risk of his
life.
In 1854 a navy exploring expedition of twenty-seven men, under command
of Lieutenant Isaac C. Strain, entered the jungle of the Darien at
Caledonia Bay, on the Atlantic side, the site of Patterson’s ill-fated
colony. They purposed crossing the Isthmus and making a survey for a
canal route, as an English adventurer not long before had
asserted--falsely as it proved--that he had discovered a route by which
a canal could be built with but three or four miles of cutting. The
party carried ten days’ provisions and forty rounds of ball cartridge
per man. They expected to have to traverse about forty or fifty miles,
for which the supply of provisions seemed wholly adequate. But when
they had cut their way through the jungle, waded through swamps and
climbed hills until their muscles were exhausted and their clothing torn
to tatters, they found themselves lost in the very interior of the
Isthmus with all their food gone. Diaries kept by members of the party
show that they lived in constant terror of the Indians. But no attack
was made upon them. The inhabitants contented themselves with
disappearing before the white men’s advance, sweeping their huts and
fields clear of any sort of food. The jungle not its people fought the
invaders. For food they had mainly nuts with a few birds and the diet
disturbed their stomachs, caused sores and loosened their teeth. The
bite of a certain insect deposited under the skin a kind of larva, or
worm, which grew to the length of an inch and caused the most frightful
torments. Despairing of getting his full party out alive, after they had
been twenty-three days fighting with the jungle, Strain took three men
and pushed ahead to secure and send back relief. It was thirty-nine days
before the men left behind saw him again.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
TRAPPING AN ABORIGINE
In houses and clothing the Darien Indians are decidedly primitive]
[Illustration: NATIVE VILLAGE ON PANAMA BAY]
Death came fast to those in the jungle. The agonies they suffered from
starvation, exposure and insect pests baffle description. “Truxton in
casting his eyes on the ground saw a toad”, wrote the historian.
“Instantly snatching it up, he bit off the head and, spitting it away,
devoured the body. Maury looked at him a moment, and then picked up the
rejected head, saying, ‘Well, Truxton, you are getting quite particular.
Something of an epicure, eh’? With these words he quietly devoured the
head himself.”
Nine of the twenty-seven men who entered the Darien with Strain died.
When the leader returned with the relief party they were found, like
Greely at Camp Starvation, unable to move and slowly dying. Those who
retained life never fully regained strength. Every condition which
brought such frightful disaster upon the Strain party exists in the
Darien today. The Indians are as hostile, the trails as faintly
outlined, the jungle as dense, the insects as savage. Only along the
banks of the rivers has civilization made some little headway, but the
richest gold field twenty miles back in the interior is as safe from
civilized workings as though it were walled in with steel and guarded by
dragons. Every speculative man you meet in Panama will assure you that
the gold is there but all agree that conditions must be radically
changed before it can be gotten out unless a regiment and a subsistence
train shall follow the miners.
[Illustration: A RIVER LANDING PLACE]
The authorities of Panama estimate that there are about 36,000 tribal
Indians, that is to say aborigines, still holding their tribal
organizations and acknowledging fealty to no other government now in the
Isthmus. The estimate is of course largely guesswork, for few of the
wild Indians leave the jungle and fewer still of the census enumerators
enter it. Most of these Indians live in the mountains of the provinces
of Bocas del Toro, Chiriqui and Veragua, or in the Darien. Their tribes
are many and the sources of information concerning them but few. The
most accessible and complete record of the various tribes is in a
pamphlet issued by the Smithsonian Institution, and now obtainable only
through public libraries, as the edition for distribution has been
exhausted. The author, Miss Eleanor Yorke Bell, beside studies made at
first hand has diligently examined the authorities on the subject and
has presented the only considerable treatise on the subject of which I
have knowledge.
[Illustration: THE FALLS AT CHORRERA]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood, & Underwood_
ON THE RIO GRANDE]
Of life among the more civilized natives she says:
“The natives of the Isthmus in general, even in the larger towns, live
together without any marriage ceremony, separating at will and dividing
the children. As there is little or no personal property, this is
accomplished amicably as a rule, though should disputes arise the
alcalde of the district is appealed to, who settles the matter. This
informal system is always stoutly defended by the women, even more than
by the men, for, as among all people low in the scale of civilization,
it is generally held that the women receive better treatment when not
bound and therefore free to depart at any time. Recently an effort has
been made to bring more of the inhabitants under the marriage laws, with
rather amusing results in many instances. The majority of the population
is nominally Catholic, but the teachings of the church are only vaguely
understood, and its practices consist in the adoration of a few battered
images of saints whose particular degree of sanctity is not even guessed
at and who, when their owners are displeased with them, receive rather
harsh treatment, as these people have usually no real idea of
Christianity beyond a few distorted and superstitious beliefs. After the
widespread surveys of the French engineers, a sincere effort was made to
re-Christianize the inhabitants of the towns in Darien as well as
elsewhere, for, until this time, nothing had been done toward their
spiritual welfare since the days of the early Jesuits. In the last
thirty years spasmodic efforts have been made to reach the people with
little result, and, excepting at Penonome, David, and Santiago, there
are few churches where services are held outside of Panama and the towns
along the railroad.
[Illustration: OLD SPANISH CHURCH, CHORRERA]
“The chief amusements of the Isthmian are gambling, cock-fighting, and
dancing, the latter assisted by the music of the tom-tom and by dried
beans rattled in a calabash. After feasts or burials, when much bad rum
and whisky is consumed, the hilarity keeps up all night and can be heard
for miles, increased by the incessant howls of the cur dogs lying under
every shack. Seldom does an opportunity come to the stranger to witness
the really characteristic dances, as the natives do not care to perform
before them, though a little money will sometimes work wonders.
Occasionally, their dancing is really remarkably interesting, when a
large amount of pantomime enters into it and they develop the story of
some primitive action, as, for instance, the drawing of the water,
cutting the wood, making the fire, cooking the food, etc., ending in a
burst of song symbolizing the joys of the new prepared feast. In an
extremely crude form it reminds one of the old opera ballets and seems
to be a composite of the original African and the ancient Spanish, which
is very probably the case.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH AT ANCON]
“The Orientals of the Isthmus deserve a word in passing. They are
chiefly Chinese coolies and form a large part of the small merchant
class. Others, in the hill districts, cultivate large truck gardens,
bringing their produce swinging over the shoulders on poles to the city
markets. Their houses and grounds are very attractive, built of reed or
bamboo in the eastern fashion and marked everywhere by extreme neatness,
contrasting so strikingly with the homes and surroundings of their negro
neighbors. Many cultivate fields of cane or rice as well, and amidst the
silvery greens, stretching for some distance, the quaint blue figures of
the workmen in their huge hats make a charming picture. Through the
rubber sections Chinese ‘middlemen’ are of late frequently found buying
that valuable commodity for their fellow countrymen in Panama City, who
are now doing quite a large business in rubber. These people live much
as in their native land, seldom learning more than a few words of
Spanish (except those living in the towns), and they form a very
substantial and good element of the population”.
[Illustration: THE PEARL ISLAND VILLAGE OF SABOGA]
To enumerate even by names the aboriginal tribes would be tedious and
unavailing. Among the more notable are the Doracho-Changuina, of
Chiriqui, light of color, believing that the Great Spirit lived in the
volcano of Chiriqui, and occasionally showing their displeasure with him
by shooting arrows at the mountain. The Guaymies, of whom perhaps 6000
are left, are the tribe that buried with their dead the curious golden
images that were once plentiful in the bazaars of Panama, but are now
hard to find. They have a pleasant practice of putting a calabash of
water and some plantains by a man they think dying and leaving him to
his fate, usually in some lonesome part of the jungle. The Cunas or
Caribs are the tribes inhabiting the Darien. All were, and some are,
believed still to be cannibals. Eleven lesser tribes are grouped under
this general name. As a rule they are small and muscular. Most of them
have abandoned their ancient gaudy dress, and so far as they are clothed
at all wear ordinary cotton clothing. Painting the face and body is
still practiced. The dead often are swung in hammocks from trees and
supplied with fresh provisions until the cords rot and the body falls to
the ground. Then the spirit’s journey to the promised land is held to be
ended and provisions are no longer needed. Sorcery and soothsaying are
much in vogue, and the sorcerers who correspond to the medicine men of
our North American Indians will sometimes shut themselves up in a small
hut shrieking, beating tom-toms and imitating the cries of wild animals.
When they emerge in a sort of self-hypnotized state they are held to be
peculiarly fit for prophesying.
[Illustration: NATIVE VILLAGE AT CAPERA]
All the Indians drink heavily, and the white man’s rum is to some extent
displacing the native drink of chica. This is manufactured by the women,
usually the old ones, who sit in a circle chewing yam roots or cassava
and expectorating the saliva into a large bowl in the center. This
ferments and is made the basis of a highly intoxicating drink. Curiously
enough the same drink is similarly made in far-away Samoa. The dutiful
wives after thus manufacturing the material upon which their spouses get
drunk complete their service by swinging their hammocks, sprinkling them
with cold water and fanning them as they lie in a stupor. Smoking is
another social custom, but the cigars are mere hollow rolls of tobacco
and the lighted end is held in the mouth. Among some of the tribes in
Comagre the bodies of the caciques, or chief men, were preserved after
death by surrounding them with a ring of fire built at a sufficient
distance to gradually dry the body until skin and bone alone remained.
The Indians with whom the visitor to Panama most frequently comes into
contact are those of the San Blas or Manzanillo country. These Indians
hover curiously about the bounds of civilization, and approach without
actually crossing them. They are fishermen and sailors, and many of
their young men ship on the vessels touching at Colon, and, after
visiting the chief seaports of the United States, and even of France and
England, are swallowed up again in their tribe without affecting its
customs to any appreciable degree. If in their wanderings they gain new
ideas or new desires they are not apparent. The man who silently offers
you fish, fruits or vegetables from his cayuca on the beach at Colon may
have trod the docks at Havre or Liverpool, the levee at New Orleans or
wandered along South Street in New York. Not a word of that can you coax
from him. Even in proffering his wares he does so with the fewest
possible words, and an air of lofty indifference. Uncas of the
Leather-Stocking Tales was no more silent and self-possessed a red-skin
than he.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
A CHOCO INDIAN IN FULL COSTUME
His cuffs are silver; his head adorned with flowers]
In physiognomy the San Blas Indians are heavy of feature and stocky of
frame. Their color is dark olive, with no trace of the negro apparent,
for it has been their unceasing study for centuries to retain their
racial purity. Their features are regular and pleasing and, among the
children particularly, a high order of beauty is often found. To get a
glimpse of their women is almost impossible, and a photograph of one is
practically unknown. If overtaken on the water, to which they often
resort in their cayucas, the women will wrap their clothing about their
faces, rather heedless of what other portions of their bodies may be
exposed, and make all speed for the shore. These women paint their faces
in glaring colors, wear nose rings, and always blacken their teeth on
being married. Among them more pains is taken with clothing than among
most of the savage Indians, many of their garments being made of a sort
of appliqué work in gaudy colors, with figures, often in representation
of the human form, cut out and inset in the garment.
So determined are the men of this tribe to maintain its blood
untarnished by any admixture whatsoever, that they long made it an
invariable rule to expel every white man from their territory at
nightfall. Of late years there has been a very slight relaxation of this
severity. Dr. Henri Pittier of the United States Department of
Agriculture, one of the best-equipped scientific explorers in the
tropics, several of whose photographs elucidate this volume, has lived
much among the San Blas and the Cuna-Cuna Indians and won their
friendship.
[Illustration: SOME SAN BLAS GIRLS
The dresses are covered with elaborate designs in appliqué work]
It was the ancestors of these Indians who made welcome Patterson and his
luckless Scotchmen, and in the 200 years that have elapsed they have
clung to the tradition of friendship for the Briton and hatred for the
Spaniard. Dr. Pittier reports having found that Queen Victoria occupied
in their villages the position of a patron saint, and that they refused
to believe his assertion that she was dead. His account of the attitude
of these Indians toward outsiders, recently printed in the National
Geographic Magazine, is an authoritative statement on the subject:
“The often circulated reports of the difficulty of penetrating into the
territory of the Cuna-Cuna are true only in part”, he says. “The
backwoods aborigines, in the valleys of the Bayano and Chucunaque
rivers, have nourished to this day their hatred for all strangers,
especially those of Spanish blood. That feeling is not a reasoned one:
it is the instinctive distrust of the savage for the unknown or
inexplicable, intensified in this particular case by the tradition of a
long series of wrongs at the hands of the hated Spaniards.
“So they feel that isolation is their best policy, and it would not be
safe for anybody to penetrate into their forests without a strong escort
and continual watchfulness. Many instances of murders, some confirmed
and others only suspected, are on record, and even the natives of the
San Blas coast are not a little afraid of their brothers of the
mountains.
“Of late, however, conditions seem to have bettered, owing to a more
frequent intercourse with the surrounding settlements. A negro of La
Palma, at the mouth of the Tuyra River, told me of his crossing, some
time ago, from the latter place to Chepo, through the Chucunaque and
Bayano territories, gathering rubber as he went along with his party. At
the headwaters of the Canaza River he and his companions were held up by
the ‘bravos’, who contented themselves with taking away the rubber and
part of the equipment and then let their prisoners go with the warning
not to come again.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy of National Geographic Magazine_
CHIEF DON CARLOS OF THE CHOCOES AND HIS SON]
“The narrative of that expedition was supplemented by the reflection of
an old man among the hearers that twenty years ago none of the party
would have come out alive.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of National Geographic Magazine_
THE VILLAGE OF PLAYON GRAND, EIGHTY-FIVE MILES EAST OF THE CANAL
The houses are about 150 x 50 feet and each shelters 16 to 20 families.
The members of each family herd together in a single room]
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy Nat’l Geographic Magazine_
SAN BLAS WOMAN IN DAILY GARB]
“Among the San Blas Indians, who are at a far higher level of
civilization, the exclusion of aliens is the result of well-founded
political reasons. Their respected traditions are a long record of proud
independence; they have maintained the purity of their race and enjoyed
freely for hundreds of years every inch of their territory. They feel
that the day the negro or the white man acquires a foothold in their
midst these privileges will become a thing of the past. This is why,
without undue hostility to strangers, they discourage their incursions.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy Nat’l Geographic Magazine_
A GIRL OF THE CHOCO TRIBE]
“Their means of persuasion are adjusted to the importance of the
intruder. They do not hesitate to shoot at any negro of the nearby
settlements poaching on their cocoanuts or other products; the trader or
any occasional visitor is very seldom allowed to stay ashore at night;
the adventurers who try to go prospecting into Indian territory are
invariably caught and shipped back to the next Panamanian port”.
Among the men of the San Blas tribe the land held by their people is
regarded as a sacred trust, bequeathed to them by their ancestors and to
be handed down by them to the remotest posterity. During the early days
of the Canal project it was desired to dig sand from a beach in the San
Blas country. A small United States man-of-war was sent thither to
broach the subject to the Indians, and the Captain held parley with the
chief. After hearing the plea and all the arguments and promises with
which it was strengthened the old Indian courteously refused the
privilege:
“He who made this land”, said he, “made it for Cuna-Cuna who live no
longer, for those who are here today and also for the ones to come. So
it is not ours only and we could not sell it”.
To this decision the tribe adhered, and the wishes of the aborigines
have been respected. It has been the policy of the United States to
avoid any possibility of giving offense to the native population of the
Isthmus, and even a request from the chief that the war vessel that
brought the negotiator on his fruitless errand should leave was acceded
to. It is quite unlikely, however, that the Indians will be able to
maintain their isolation much longer. Already there are signs of its
breaking down. While I was in Panama they sent a request that a
missionary, a woman it is true, who had been much among them, should
come and live with them permanently. They also expressed a desire that
she should bring her melodeon, thus giving new illustration to the
poetic adage, “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast”. Perhaps
the phonograph may in time prove the open sesame to many savage bosoms.
Among this people it is the women who cling most tenaciously to the
primitive customs, as might be expected, since they have been so
assiduously guarded against the wiles of the world. But Catholic
missionaries have made some headway in the country, and at Narganá
schools for girls have been opened under auspices of the church. It is
probably due to the feminine influence that the San Blas men return so
unfailingly to primitive customs after the voyages that have made them
familiar with civilization. If the women yield to the desire for novelty
the splendid isolation of the San Blas will not long endure. Perhaps
that would be unfortunate, for all other primitive peoples who have
surrendered to the wiles of the white men have suffered and disappeared.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
DAUGHTER OF CHIEF DON CARLOS
This young girl is merry, plump and fond of finger rings]
[Illustration: NATIVE BRIDGE OVER THE CALDERA RIVER]
In their present state the San Blas are relatively rich. All the land
belongs to all the people--that is why the old chief declined to sell
the sandy beach. There is a sort of private property in improvements. A
banana plantation, a cocoanut grove or an orange tree planted and cared
for, becomes a positive possession handed down to descendants of the
owner through the female line. Perhaps one reason for keeping the women
so shut off from the world is that they are the real owners of all
individual property. Ownership does not, however, attach to trees or
plants growing wild; they are as much communal as the land. So the
vegetable ivory, balata and cocoanuts which form the marketable products
are gathered by whomsoever may take the trouble. Land that has been
tilled belongs to the one who improved it. If he let it lapse into
wilderness it reverts to the community. The San Blas Indians have the
essence of the single tax theory without the tax.
They have a hazily defined religious system, and have curiously reversed
the position held by their priests or sorcerers. These influential
persons are not representatives of the spirit of good, but of the bad
spirit. Very logically the San Blas savages hold that any one may
represent the good spirit by being himself good, and that the
unsupported prayers of such a one are sure to be heard. But to reach the
devil, to induce that malicious practitioner of evil to rest from his
persecutions and to abandon the pursuit of the unfortunate, it is
desirable to have as intermediary some one who possesses his confidence
and high regard. Hence the strong position of the sorcerers in the
villages. The people defer to them on the principle that it is well to
make friends with “the Mammon of Unrighteousness”.
Polygamy is permitted among these Indians, but little practiced. Even
the chiefs whose high estate gives them the right to more than one wife
seldom avail themselves of the privilege. The women, as in most
primitive tribes, are the hewers of wood and drawers of water. Dress is
rather a more serious matter with them than among some of the other
Indians, the Chocoes for example. They wear as a rule blouses and two
skirts, where other denizens of the Darien dispense with clothing above
the waist altogether. Their hair is usually kept short. The nose ring is
looked upon as indispensable, and other ornaments of both gold and
silver are worn by both sexes. Americans who have had much to do with
the Indians of the Darien always comment on the extreme reticence shown
by them in speaking of their golden ornaments, or the spot whence they
were obtained. It is as though vague traditions had kept alive the story
of the pestilence of fire and sword which ravaged their land when the
Spaniards swept over it in search of the yellow metal. Gold is in the
Darien in plenty. Everybody knows that, and the one or two mines near
the rivers now being worked afford sufficient proof that the region is
auriferous. But no Indian will tell of the existence of these mines, nor
will any guide a white man to the spot where it is rumored gold is to be
found. Seemingly ineradicably fixed in the inner consciousness of the
Indian is the conviction that the white man’s lust for the yellow metal
is the greatest menace that confronts the well-being of himself and his
people.
The San Blas are decidedly a town-dwelling tribe. They seem to hate
solitude and even today, in their comparatively reduced state, build
villages of a size that make understandable Balboa’s records of the size
and state of the chief with whom he first fought, and then made friends.
At Narganá are two large islands, fairly covered with spacious houses
about 150 feet long by 50 broad. The ridge pole of the palm-thatched
roof is 30 to 40 feet from the ground. A long corridor runs through the
house longitudinally, and on either side the space is divided by upright
posts into square compartments, each of which is supposed to house an
entire family. The side walls are made of wattled reeds caked with clay.
One of these houses holds from sixteen to twenty families, and the
edifices are packed so closely together as to leave scarce room between
for a razor-back hog to browse. The people within must be packed about
as closely and the precise parental relationship sustained to each other
by the various members of the family would be an interesting study.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
GUAYMI INDIAN MAN
Note the tattoed marking of face and the negroid lips]
The Choco Indians are one of the smaller and least known tribes of the
Darien. Prof. Pittier--who may without disrespect be described as the
most seasoned “tropical tramp” of all Central America--described them so
vividly that extracts from his article in the National Geographic
Magazine will be of interest:
“Never, in our twenty-five years of tropical experience, have we met
with such a sun-loving, bright and trusting people, living nearest to
nature and ignoring the most elementary wiles of so-called civilization.
They are several hundred in number and their dwellings are scattered
along the meandrous Sambu and its main reaches, always at short
distance, but never near enough to each other to form real villages.
Like their houses, their small plantations are close to the river, but
mostly far enough to escape the eye of the casual passer-by.
“Dugouts drawn up on the beach and a narrow trail breaking the reed wall
at the edge of the bank are the only visible signs of human presence,
except at the morning hours and near sunset, when a crowd of women and
children will be seen playing in the water, and the men, armed with
their bows and long harpooned arrows, scrutinizing the deeper places for
fish or looking for iguanas and crabs hidden in the holes of the banks.
“Physically the Chocoes are a fine and healthy race. They are tall, as
compared with the Cuna-Cuna, well proportioned, and with a graceful
bearing. The men have wiry limbs and faces that are at once kind and
energetic, while as a rule the girls are plump, fat, and full of
mischief. The grown women preserve their good looks and attractiveness
much longer than is generally the case in primitive peoples, in which
their sex bears the heaviest share of every day’s work.
“Both males and females have unusually fine white teeth, which they
sometimes dye black by chewing the shoots of one of the numerous wild
peppers growing in the forests. The skin is of a rich olive-brown color
and, as usual, a little lighter in women and children. Though all go
almost naked, they look fairer than the San Blas Cunas, and some of the
women would compare advantageously in this respect with certain
Mediterranean types of the white race.
“The hair is left by all to grow to its natural length, except in a few
cases, in which the men have it cropped at the neck. It is coarse and
not jet black, as reported of most Indians, but with a reddish hue,
which is better noticed when the sun is playing through the thick mass.
“In young children it decidedly turns at times to a blond color, the
only difference from the Caucasian hair being the pronounced coarseness
of the former. As there are no white people living within a radius of
fifty miles, but only negroes, mulattoes and zambos, this peculiarity
cannot be explained by miscegenation, and may therefore be considered as
a racial feature of the Choco tribe.
“In men the every-day dress consists of a scanty clout, made of a strip
of red calico about one foot broad and five feet long. This clout is
passed in front and back of the body over a string tied around the hips,
the forward extremity being left longer and flowing like an apron. On
feast days the string is replaced by a broad band of white beads. Around
the neck and chest they wear thick cords of the same beads and on their
wrists broad silver cuffs. Hats are not used; the hair is usually tied
with a red ribbon and often adorned with the bright flowers of the
forest.
“The female outfit is not less simple, consisting of a piece of calico
less than three feet wide and about nine feet long, wrapped around the
lower part of the body and reaching a little below the knees. This is
all, except that the neck is more or less loaded with beads or silver
coins. But for this the women display less coquetry than the men, which
may be because they feel sufficiently adorned with their mere natural
charms. Fondness for cheap rings is, however, common to both sexes, and
little children often wear earrings or pendants.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
INDIAN GIRL OF THE DARIEN]
“The scantiness of the clothing is remedied very effectually by face and
body painting, in which black and red colors are used, the first
exclusively for daily wear. At times men and women are painted black
from the waist down; at other times it is the whole body or only the
hands and feet, etc., all according to the day’s fashion, as was
explained by one of our guides. For feast days the paintings are an
elaborate and artistic affair, consisting of elegantly drawn lines and
patterns--red and black or simply black--which clothe the body as
effectually as any costly dress.
“From the above one might conclude that cleanliness and modesty are not
the rule among the Chocos. As a matter of fact, the first thing they do
in the morning is to jump into the near-by river, and these ablutions
are repeated several times in the course of the day.
“The kitchen utensils are always thoroughly washed before using, and,
contrary to our former experience, their simple dishes, prepared mostly
in our presence, looked almost always inviting. During our stay among
these good people nothing was noticed that would hurt the most delicate
sense of decency.
“The Chocoes seem to be exclusively monogamist, and both parents
surround their babies with tender care, being mindful, however, to
prepare them early for the hard and struggling life ahead of them.
Small bows and arrows, dexterously handled by tiny hands, are the
favorite toys of the boys, while the girls spend more time in the water
playing with miniature dugouts, washing, and swimming. The only dolls
seen among them were imported ones, and they seemed to be as much in
favor among grown women as among children. These latter go naked until
they are about five years old, when the girls receive a large
handkerchief to be used as a ‘paruma’, or skirt, and the boys a strip of
some old maternal dress for an ‘antia’ or clout.
“The Chocoes are very industrious. During the dry spells their life, of
course, is an out-of-door one, planting and watching their crops,
hunting, fishing and canoeing. But when the heavy rains come they stay
at home, weaving baskets of all kinds--a work in which the women are
proficient--making ropes and hammocks, carving dishes, mortars, stools,
and other objects out of tree trunks”.
In the country which will be traversed by the Panama-David Railroad are
found the Guaymies, the only primitive people living in large numbers
outside the Darien. There are about 5000 of them, living for the most
part in the valley of Mirando which lies high up in the Cordilleras, and
in a region cut off from the plains. Here they have successfully
defended their independence against the assaults of both whites and
blacks. To remain in their country without consent of the Great Chief is
practically impossible, for they are savage fighters and in earlier days
it was rare to see a man whose body was not covered with scars. It is
apparent that in some ways progress has destroyed their industries and
made the people less rather than more civilized, for they now buy cloth,
arms, tools, and utensils which they were once able to make. At one time
they were much under the influence of the Catholic missionaries, but of
late mission work has languished in wild Panama and perhaps the chief
relic of that earlier religious influence is the fact that the women go
clothed in a single garment. This simple raiment, not needed for warmth,
seems to be prized, for if caught in a rainstorm the women will quickly
strip off their clothing, wrap it in a large banana or palm leaf that it
may not get wet, and continue their work, or their play, in nature’s
garb.
It is said, too, that when strangers are not near clothes are never
thought of. The men follow a like custom, and invariably when pursuing a
quarry strip off their trousers, tying their shirts about their loins.
Trousers seem to impede their movements, and if a lone traveler in
Chiriqui comes on a row of blue cotton trousers tied to the bushes he
may be sure that a band of Guaymies is somewhere in the neighborhood
pursuing an ant bear or a deer.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
CHOCO INDIAN OF SAMBU VALLEY
Silver beads about his neck and leg. Face painted in glaring colors]
As a rule these Indians--men or women--are not pleasing to the eye. The
lips are thick, the nose flat and broad, the hair coarse and always jet
black. Yet the children are not infrequently really beautiful. Any
traveler in Panama who forsakes the beaten track up and down the Canal
Zone will be impressed by the wide extent to which beauty is found among
the children, whatever their race or combination of races. But the charm
soon fades. It is seldom that one sees a mature woman who is attractive
to Caucasian eyes. Among the women of the Guaymies face painting is
practiced only on great occasions, black, red and white being the usual
colors. The men go painted at all times, the invariable pattern being a
sort of inverted V, with the apex between the eyes, and the two arms
extending to points, half an inch or so from the corners of the mouth.
The lips are colored to make them seem thicker than normal, and heavy
shadows are painted in under the eyes.
Among some tribes the wealth of a man is reckoned by the number of his
cattle; among the Guaymies by the number of his wives. For this reason,
perhaps, the attainment of marriageable age is an occasion of much
festivity for children of both sexes. The boy is exposed to tests of his
manly and war-like qualities, and, in company with his fellows of equal
age, is taken by the wisemen of the tribe into the solitude of the
forest that by performing tasks assigned to him he may prove himself a
man. There, too, they learn from the elders, who go masked and crowned
with wreaths, the traditions of their tribes told in rude chants like
the Norse sagas. Until this ceremony has been fulfilled the youth has no
name whatsoever. After it he is named and celebrates his first birthday.
The ceremonies in which the girls play the chief part are less
elaborate, but one would think rather painful, since they include the
breaking of a front tooth in sign that they are ready for marriage. They
marry young and mothers at twelve years are not uncommon.
Once a year the Guaymies have a great tribal feast--“balceria” the
Spaniards call it. Word is sent to all outlying huts and villages by a
mystic symbol of knotted rags, which is also tied to the branches of the
trees along the more frequented trails. On the appointed day several
hundred will gather on the banks of some river in which a general bath
is taken, with much frolicking and horseplay. Then the women employ
several hours in painting the men with red and blue colors, following
the figures still to be seen on the old pottery, after which the men
garb themselves uncouthly in bark or in pelts like children “dressing
up” for a frolic. At night is a curious ceremonial dance and game called
balsa, in which the Indians strike each other with heavy sticks, and are
knocked down amid the pile of broken boughs. The music--if it could be
so called--the incantations of the wisemen, the frenzy of the dancers,
all combine to produce a sort of self-hypnotism, during which the
Indians feel no pain from injuries which a day later often prove to be
very serious.
[Illustration: PANAMANIAN FATHER AND CHILD]
There are a multitude of distinct Indian tribes on the Isthmus, each
with its own tribal government, its distinctive customs and its allotted
territory, though boundaries are, of course, exceedingly vague and the
territories overlap. The Smithsonian pamphlet enumerates 21 such tribes
in the Darien region alone. But there seems to be among them no such
condition of continual tribal warfare as existed between our North
American Indians as long as they survived in any considerable numbers
the aggressions of the white settlers. It is true that the historian of
Balboa’s expedition records that the great leader was besought by
chieftains to assist them in their affrays with rival tribes, and made
more than one alliance by giving such assistance. But the later
atrocities perpetrated by the Spaniards seem to have had the effect of
uniting the Indians in a tacit peaceful bond against the whites.
Picturesque and graphic as are the writings of men like Esquemeling, the
Fray d’Acosta and Wafer, who saw the Indians in the days of their
earliest experience with the sort of civilization that Pedrarias and
Pizarro brought to their villages, they do not bear more convincing
evidence of the savagery of the invaders, than is afforded by the sullen
aloofness with which the Darien Indians of today regard white men of any
race. More than the third and fourth generation have passed away but the
sins of the Spaniards are still recalled among a people who have no
written records whatsoever, and the memory or tradition causes them to
withhold their friendship from the remotest descendants of the historic
oppressors.
There seems to have been no written language, nor even any system of
hieroglyphics among the tribes of Panama, a fact that places them far
below our North American Indians in the scale of mental development. On
the other hand in weaving and in fashioning articles for domestic use
they were in advance of the North American aborigines. Their domestic
architecture was more substantial, and they were less nomadic, the
latter fact being probably due to the slight encouragement given to
wandering by the jungle. The great houses of the San Blas Indians in
their villages recall the “Long houses” of the Iroquois as described by
Parkman.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
CHOCO INDIAN IN EVERY-DAY DRESS]
Thus far what we call civilization has dealt less harshly with the
Indians of the Isthmus than with our own. They have at least survived it
and kept a great part of their territory for their own. The “squaw-man”
who figures so largely in our own southwestern Indian country is unknown
there. Unquestionably during the feverish days of the Spaniards’ hunt
for gold the tribes were frightfully thinned out, and even today
sections of the country which writers of Balboa’s time describe as
thickly populated are desert and untenanted. Yet much land is still held
by its aboriginal owners, and unless the operation of the Canal shall
turn American settlement that way will continue so to be held. The
Panamanian has not the energy to dislodge the Indians nor to till their
lands if he should possess them.
Many studies of the Panama Indians as a body, or of isolated tribes,
have been made by explorers or scientists, and mainly by French or
Spanish students. The Smithsonian Institution catalogues forty-seven
publications dealing with the subject. But there is an immense mine of
anthropological information yet to be worked in the Isthmus. It is not
to be acquired readily or without heavy expenditure of energy, patience
and money. A thoroughly scientific exploring expedition to unravel the
riddle of the Darien, to count and describe the Indian tribes of the
Isthmus, and to record and authenticate traditions dating back to the
Spanish days, would be well worth the while of a geographical society, a
university or some patron of exploring enterprises.