Travels on the Amazon

by Alfred Russel Wallace

Projecting inwards from the walls on each side were short partitions of palm-thatch, exactly similar in arrangement to the boxes in a London eating-house, or those of a theatre. Each of these is the private apartment of a separate family, who thus live in a sort of patriarchal community. In the side aisles are the farinha ovens, tipitís for squeezing the mandiocca, huge pans and earthen vessels for making caxirí, and other large articles, which appear to be in common; while in every separate apartment are the small pans, stools, baskets, redes, water-pots, weapons, and ornaments of the occupants. The centre aisle remains unoccupied, and forms a fine walk through the house. At the circular end is a cross partition or railing about five feet high, cutting off rather more than the semicircle, but with a wide opening in the centre: this forms the residence of the chief or head of the malocca, with his wives and children; the more distant relations residing in the other part of the house. The door at the gable end is very wide and lofty, that at the circular end is smaller, and these are the only apertures to admit light and air. The upper part of the gable is loosely covered with palm-leaves hung vertically, through which the smoke of the numerous wood fires slowly percolates, giving, however, in its passage a jetty lustre to the whole of the upper part of the roof.

On entering this house, I was delighted to find myself at length in the presence of the true denizens of the forest. An old and a young man and two women were the only occupiers, the rest being out on their various pursuits. The women were absolutely naked; but on the entrance of the "brancos" they slipped on a petticoat, with which in these lower parts of the river they are generally provided but never use except on such occasions. Their hair was but moderately long, and they were without any ornament but strongly knitted garters, tightly laced immediately below the knee.

It was the men, however, who presented the most novel appearance, as different from all the half-civilised races among whom I had been so long living, as they could be if I had been suddenly transported to another quarter of the globe. Their hair was carefully parted in the middle, combed behind the ears, and tied behind in a long tail reaching a yard down the back. The hair of this tail was firmly bound with a long cord formed of monkeys' hair, very soft and pliable. On the top of the head was stuck a comb, ingeniously constructed of palm-wood and grass, and ornamented with little tufts of toucans' rump feathers at each end; and the ears were pierced, and a small piece of straw stuck in the hole; altogether giving a most feminine appearance to the face, increased by the total absence of beard or whiskers, and by the hair of the eyebrows being almost entirely plucked out. A small strip of "tururí" (the inner bark of a tree) passed between the legs, and secured to a string round the waist, with a pair of knitted garters, constituted their simple dress.

The young man was lazily swinging in a maqueira, but disappeared soon after we entered; the elder one was engaged making one of the flat hollow baskets, a manufacture peculiar to this district. He continued quietly at his occupation, answering the questions Senhor L. put to him about the rest of the inhabitants in a very imperfect "Lingoa Geral," which language is comparatively little known in this river, and that only in the lower and more frequented parts. As we wanted to procure one or two men to go with us, we determined to stay here for the night. We succeeded in purchasing for a few fish-hooks some fresh fish, which another Indian brought in: and then prepared our dinner and coffee, and brought our maqueiras up to the house, hanging them in the middle aisle, to pass the night there. About dusk many more Indians, male and female, arrived; fires were lighted in the several compartments, pots put on with fish or game for supper, and fresh mandiocca cakes made. I now saw several of the men with their most peculiar and valued ornament—a cylindrical, opaque, white stone, looking like marble, but which is really quartz imperfectly crystallized. These stones are from four to eight inches long, and about an inch in diameter. They are ground round, and flat at the ends, a work of great labour, and are each pierced with a hole at one end, through which a string is inserted, to suspend it round the neck. It appears almost incredible that they should make this hole in so hard a substance without any iron instrument for the purpose. What they are said to use is the pointed flexible leaf-shoot of the large wild plantain, triturating with fine sand and a little water; and I have no doubt it is, as it is said to be, a labour of years. Yet it must take a much longer time to pierce that which the Tushaúa wears as the symbol of his authority, for it is generally of the largest size, and is worn transversely across the breast, for which purpose the hole is bored lengthways from one end to the other, an operation which I was informed sometimes occupies two lives. The stones themselves are procured from a great distance up the river, probably from near its sources at the base of the Andes; they are therefore highly valued, and it is seldom the owners can be induced to part with them, the chiefs scarcely ever. I here purchased a club of hard red wood for a small mirror, a comb for half-a-dozen small fish-hooks, and some other trifling articles.

A portion only of the inhabitants arrived that night, as when traders come they are afraid of being compelled to go with them, and so hide themselves. Many of the worst characters in the Rio Negro come to trade in this river, force the Indians, by threats of shooting them, into their canoes, and sometimes even do not scruple to carry their threats into execution, they being here quite out of reach of even that minute portion of the law which still struggles for existence in the Rio Negro.

We passed the night in the malocca, surrounded by the naked Indians hanging round their fires, which sent a fitful light up into the dark smoke-filled roof. A torrent of rain poured without, and I could not help admiring the degree of sociality and comfort in numerous families thus living together in patriarchal harmony. The next morning Senhor L. succeeded in persuading one Indian to earn a "saía" (petticoat) for his wife, and embark with us, and so we bade adieu to Assaí Paraná (Assaí river). On lifting up the mat covering of our canoe, I found lying comfortably coiled up on the top of my box a fine young boa, of a species of which I possessed two live specimens at Guía: he had probably fallen in unperceived during our passage among the bushes on the river-side. In the afternoon we reached another village, also situated up a narrow igaripé, and consisting of a house and two maloccas at some distance from it. The inhabitants had gone to a neighbouring village, where there was caxirí and dancing, and two women only were left behind with some children. About these houses were several parrots, macaws, and curassow-birds, which all these Indians breed in great numbers. The next day we reached Ananárapicóma, or "Pine-apple Point," the village where the dance was taking place. It consisted of several small houses besides the large malocca, many of the Indians who have been with traders to the Rio Negro imitating them in using separate dwellings.

On entering the great malocca a most extraordinary and novel scene presented itself. Some two hundred men, women, and children were scattered about the house, lying in the maqueiras, squatting on the ground, or sitting on the small painted stools, which are made only by the inhabitants of this river. Almost all were naked and painted, and wearing their various feathers and other ornaments. Some were walking or conversing, and others were dancing, or playing small fifes and whistles. The regular festa had been broken up that morning; the chiefs and principal men had put off their feather head-dresses, but as caxirí still remained, the young men and women continued dancing. They were painted over their whole bodies in regular patterns of a diamond or diagonal character, with black, red, and yellow colours; the former, a purple or blue black, predominating. The face was ornamented in various styles, generally with bright red in bold stripes or spots, a large quantity of the colour being applied to each ear, and running down on the sides of the cheeks and neck, producing a very fearful and sanguinary appearance. The grass in the ears was now decorated with a little tuft of white downy feathers, and some in addition had three little strings of beads from a hole pierced in the lower lip. All wore the garters, which were now generally painted yellow. Most of the young women who danced had besides a small apron of beads of about eight inches by six inches, arranged in diagonal patterns with much taste; besides this, the paint on their naked bodies was their only ornament; they had not even the comb in their hair, which the men are never without.

The men and boys appropriated all the ornaments, thus reversing the custom of civilised countries and imitating nature, who invariably decorates the male sex with the most brilliant colours and most remarkable ornaments. On the head all wore a coronet of bright red and yellow toucans' feathers, set in a circlet of plaited straw. The comb in the hair was ornamented with feathers, and frequently a bunch of white heron's plumes attached to it fell gracefully down the back. Round the neck or over one shoulder were large necklaces of many folds of white or red beads, as well as the white cylindrical stone hung on the middle of a string of some black shining seeds.

The ends of the monkey-hair cords which tied the hair were ornamented with little plumes, and from the arm hung a bunch of curiously-shaped seeds, ornamented with bright coloured feathers attached by strings of monkeys' hair. Round the waist was one of their most valued ornaments, possessed by comparatively few,—the girdle of onças' teeth. And lastly, tied round the ankles were large bunches of a curious hard fruit, which produce a rattling sound in the dance. In their hands some carried a bow and a bundle of curabís, or war-arrows; others a murucú, or spear of hard polished wood, or an oval painted gourd, filled with small stones and attached to a handle, which, being shaken at regular intervals in the dance, produced a rattling accompaniment to the leg ornaments and the song.

The wild and strange appearance of these handsome, naked, painted Indians, with their curious ornaments and weapons, the stamp and song and rattle which accompanies the dance, the hum of conversation in a strange language, the music of fifes and flutes and other instruments of reed, bone, and turtles' shells, the large calabashes of caxirí constantly carried about, and the great smoke-blackened gloomy house, produced an effect to which no description can do justice, and of which the sight of half-a-dozen Indians going through their dances for show, gives but a very faint idea.