Thomas Whiffen

“ The man who cannot get over a river unaided, the man who is not man enough to walk and must be carried in a hammock, is but a poor creature in the eyes of the South American Indian. Still it is more than a test of nerve. In the middle of such a bridge you feel yourself swaying, and it is only with a fearful concentration of will-power and a bitten lip that you arrive safely on the other side, having leapt the last three feet. In the first month of forest journeying I bit my lip through time and again. It is not the torrent below that frightens, it is the rotten trees in the gully. ”

“ This silence of the forest is a very real thing, a quality that does not lessen by acquaintance. On the contrary it grows more real and more oppressive. A strange gloom and a strange stillness hold the bush. They give the impression that there is nothing animate in all the vastness, no life other than that of the overwhelming, all-triumphant vegetation. It is possible to journey for days and never see a human being. A sound, be it but the cracking of a twig, startles in the forest. ”

“ Whatever of art there may be in the soul of the tribesman finds expression in the dance. It is the concert and the play, the opera, the ball, the carnival, and the feast of the Amazons, in that it gives opportunity for the æsthetic, artistic, dramatic, musical, and spectacular aspirations of the Indian’s nature. It is his one social entertainment, and he invites to it every one living in amity with him. Any excuse is enough for a dance, but nevertheless the affair is a serious business. The dance, like the tobacco palaver, is a dominant factor in tribal life. ”

“ 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 obscure the sun from the earth, condemn one to existence in a gloomy, stifling half-light. They constrict the world to a path laboriously hacked through jealous undergrowth. They stab with hidden snags, and strangle with deftly poised lianas. In their most hurtful mood they poison with a touch. [20]
The Amazonian forest is no glorified botanic garden. Its units are not intelligently isolated and labelled. There is but a monotonous tangle of vegetation through which the traveller cuts his way to daylight and perspective in a river-channel. One rarely sees a blossom or a fruit. ”

“ Soon there is a savoury smell from the cooking of cassava cakes, the boiling of meat, and the pungent odour of yarakue. There is not much talk, and none of the homely clatter of dishes, for leaves serve as plates and napkins, fingers for eating utensils. The naked women crouch on their heels about the fires; the men stretch languidly in their hammocks; and so the Indian day passes by imperceptible degrees again to night. ”

“ The visit of the Good Spirit to earth as a corporate being was a unique event never repeated, but the Bad Spirit wanders with his myrmidons in the forest every night. Sometimes he takes the form of a tiger, or other fierce animal; sometimes, as alternative to the tiger-lifting theory, he resembles a man who can disappear at will. He imitates the call of the hunter who has found game, or the call of an animal to be hunted. He entices his victim by these and similar contrivances to venture deeper and deeper into the bush, until the wretched wanderer is utterly lost. ”

“ The sense of one’s insignificance is the first lesson of travel in the bush. In the beginning the discovery amuses the adventurer. Later, he resents the implied superiority of the fixed and nerveless plants which barricade his progress. In the end, he hates the bush as though it were a sentient being. Yet the component parts of the bush are familiar to all at home: we coddle them in our gardens, and nurse them tenderly in our glass-houses. But in the Amazons they unite to form a horrible, a most evil-disposed enemy. ”

“ The maloka is always dark, be it day or night, and the gloom is not broken by torches for the medicine-man’s visit, nor are the smouldering fires kicked into a blaze. The doctor, well under the influence of drugs, works himself to a state of wild exaltation. He beats the floor with a palm branch, shakes his rattle vigorously, and makes the most appalling noises. He will imitate the beasts and birds of the forest, and—as he must be a skilled ventriloquist if he has any claims whatsoever to magic gifts—the sounds apparently come from every side. ”

“ The naked women abandon themselves [205] to the movement of the dance; they scream their chorus to the tribal dance-song; but they are not lewd. There is about it an all-pervading, illimitable delirium. The wild outburst affects even the stranger in their midst. Forgotten cells in his brain react to the stimulus of the scene. He is no longer apart, alien in speech and feeling. He locks arms in the line of cannibals, sways in rhythm with them, stamps as solemnly, and sings the meaningless words as fervently as the best of them. ”

“ Although he will never play games with his children as western folk do, the Indian father will do his best to please the youngsters and make them happy. He will make little javelins, a small blow-pipe, a toy sword for the boys. They have their miniature weapons from the tenderest years, and imitate their fathers in all that they do, just like the girls, who go with their mothers to the plantations, and take a share in women’s work as their form of play, and shoulder a share of women’s burdens when hardly more than babies themselves. ”

“ He may free his spirit for magical purposes, to fight unseen enemies on better terms, or for the pursuit of some nefarious end. He may either remain disembodied and invisible, or lurk for a time in the form of some animal or object, a tree, a stone—where stones exist—or even in the wind, the rain, or the river. The layman Indian, though perfectly aware that he cannot of his own accord and free-will loose his own soul from its fleshy trappings to adventure in some foreign sort, is quite willing to believe that other more fortunate mortals can accomplish a feat to him so impossible. ”

“ Thus the secrets of the profession are preserved from generation to generation, the chosen youths being the recipients of the secrets and trained to develop and carry on the magic of their predecessors. Part of the ritual of initiation, as of the ceremonial healing, consists of what to the unbelieving white man is not too well done conjuring. The medicine-man is a clumsy conjuror, and only the implicit trust of his patients and audience saves him from frequent detection. But the belief that they must see what he declares they see goes far to make them in very truth behold it. ”

“ The cry dies to a moan, and the low murmur that is hardly sound, the drone of the unseen but abundant life, once more makes up the silence that pulses tormentingly on ear and brain, till night again wakens the birds and the beasts of the wild, and the murmur grows and deepens to the full volume of confused sound made by the forest’s busy life. ”

“ Man’s soul in Indian belief is immortal, that is to say it exists as long as it is felt to exist, whilst it continues to appear in the dreams, in the thoughts of the survivors—for so long, in fact, as it is remembered. Surely this is immortality. A thing forgotten has never existed; and, per contra, the soul of a remembered being lives for ever. The disembodied spirit or ghost lingers near the body after death, in the woods near the house, or may even lodge in the house itself. ”

“ Magic is to be met by magic, not by material properties. The hostile evils that threaten a man are only to be turned aside by the exercise of more powerful anti-hostility on the part of his medicine-man. But the Indian must go warily, observe signs and portents, pay due heed to good and evil omens. He must, for example, never shoot a poisonous snake with a blow-pipe. Should he do so one poison will neutralise the other, and destroy not only the poison on the arrow that wounded the snake, but also all poison whatever that was in his possession at the time. It is magic against magic. ”

“ Till he has taken to himself a wife he must remain in some degree dependent either on his parents or the chief; for he cannot plant his own manioc or tobacco, nor can he cook his own food. He has no one whose duty it is to see that [161] there are no thorns or jiggers in his feet, to paint him for a dance, to prepare him store of drinks. Complete independence comes only when with his own woman he can, if he so pleases, go his own way, and live in solitude out in the forest or have his own fire in the shelter of the big maloka, just as it suits his whim. ”

“ As day advances into evening the women return again from the plantation, the mothers, naked and shining from the evening bath, with their children seated astride their left hips; while those not encumbered carry up the pine-apples, the plantains, and the manioc, packed in baskets that are slung from their foreheads. Those who have sought provision in the forest bring back lizards and snakes—it may be a frog, for nothing seems amiss for the hot-pot of the Indian. The hunters come in from the bush with a capybara, a curassow, or a monkey; the men who preferred the river bring fish. ”

“ Travelling in the bush is a dreary monotony of discomfort and ever-present danger. There are weary stretches of inundated country, sweating swamp. You pass with an unexpected plunge from ankle-deep mire to unbottomed main stream. The eternal sludge, sludge of travel without a stone or honest yard of solid ground makes one long for the lesser strain of more definite dangers or of more obtrusive horrors. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is because he is so big a Chief that his attitude is entirely passive. Once Neva had forgotten the puny human factor, so he took the guise of a man and came to earth. The open spaces—the natural savannahs or geological outcrops—are where he spoke to the Indians, and it is a sign of his speaking and of his erstwhile presence that these are now open to the sun and the sky. But one Indian vexed Neva, the Good Spirit, and he was wrath with all men, so he went again to sit on the roof of the world. ”

“ DUKAIYA (OKAINA) RATTLE MADE BY NUTSHELLS
The numbers who congregate for a dance were a constant source of astonishment to me. Out of the silent and trackless bush scores of expectant guests, all painted and feathered, will pour into the clearing about the maloka, at the time appointed by the signal drum, and by nightfall some hundreds are gathered. Great bonfires are set ablaze, and the interior of the tribal lodge, where the chief has a place in the centre, flares ruddy with the light of torches. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Death, from whatsoever cause, is invariably considered to be murder, and as murder it has to be revenged on some suspected person or persons. Hence it follows that blood-feuds innumerable are carried on relentlessly. Any and every excuse serves for a fight. If a thunderstorm should wreck a house it is more than sufficient reason for that household to attack another in reprisal of the damage done; for it is to them quite evident that the catastrophe was caused by the magic of some malicious dweller in the vicinity. ”