“Cordero, you are serveeng. Y hombre, ya le dije que la muchacha no . . .”
“Fife cards; all ze workeengs, Carlos.”
“Lindísima, hombre, pero su mamá. . . . Enriquito, you speak.”
“No, señor, equivocado, I am speakeeng.”
“Caramba! Es verdad. Eet ees true. And for how much are you speakeeng?”
“No, et ees meestake. Ze doctor is speakeeng, because he is sitteeng by ze side of Juancito, which ees serveeng ze cards,”—and with deep solemnity the doctor proceeded to “speak” by throwing two Cuenca-made chips on the table, the game rattling on until Muñoz broke in upon an oratorical description of the latest event of the vida social of Cuenca with a:
“And I am nameeng you now, Carlitos; with ze house full of ze whole kettle,” and throwing down a “full house,” he scraped the entire pile of chips to his corner of the table.
There were two dentists in Cuenca at the time of my visit. One of those present was not there in person, because he had gone away on a week’s journey two months before; the other had not yet arrived, though he appeared nightly at the “English Language Club,” because his instruments of torture and gold-plated diploma were still somewhere on the road from Guayaquil. Had they both been unqualifiedly present in the flesh, the wise man would have continued to endure any degree of toothache rather than submit to their amateurish mercies. The chief raison d’être of the city is its commerce in “panama” hats, though virtually none are made there. The agent sent to Azogues or other neighboring towns pencils in some cabalistic code on the inside of the hat the price paid the weaver—or as near that price as his conscience makes necessary—and delivers it to his employer. In the city are many “factories of sombreros,” from behind the downcast mud fronts of which sounds all day long the pounding of wooden mallets, and from which exudes the constant smell of sulphur. At the establishment of a club-member we posed for a local photographer in acres of hats, in various stages of the finishing process, which ranged from the huge Gualaquiza products from the Jívaros country on the east, to those of so fine a weave as to be inferior only to the famous jipijapa of Manabí.
It is just over the range from Cuenca that are to be found the Jívaros, the widely renowned head-hunters of the upper Amazon. Montesinos had lived long months among them at the time of his mishap, and knew their ways well. A proud, untamed race engaged in almost constant warfare with the neighboring tribes, they consider the white man an equal, and treat him as a friend so long as he does not transgress their strict tribal laws. The Andean Indian, with his slinking air and his heavy clothing, they look down upon as a weakling and a very inferior being. Having despatched an enemy, the Jívaros cut off the head well down on the shoulders, extract the skull by a vertical cut at the back, sew up this and the lips, and, by the insertion of hot stones and a process only imperfectly understood by any other than the tribe itself, reduce the head to the size of an orange, with the original features easily recognizable. In this state it is said to be of little use to its rightful owner, even if recovered. The desiccated head must, according to tribal laws, be kept until after the yearly ceremony to appease the spirit of the dead man, after which it is hung up as a trophy over the entrance to the successful hunter’s house, or, what is far more usual of late years, traded to some passing white man for a rifle or a supply of cartridges. One traveler I met had been so eager to obtain one of the dried heads that he offered a Jívaro chief two rifles. The chief replied sadly that, though he would do anything possible to get a rifle, unfortunately it happened that the tribe did not have a single dried head on hand. “But,” he cried a moment later, his countenance brightening visibly, “could you wait a month or so?”
A few years ago a tall, lanky German arrived in Cuenca and went down among the Jívaros to study their customs, and especially to find out exactly how they shrink heads. Month after month passed without a word from him, but cuencanos knew the Teuton way of pursuing an investigation step by step in all its details and ramifications, and thought nothing of the prolonged absence. Then one day, more than a year later, there was offered for sale in the market of Cuenca a splendid specimen of shrunken head, with long, blond hair and beard and a scholarly cast of countenance. The investigation had been thorough; but the outside world still remains in darkness on the art of shrinking heads among the Jívaros.