The Naturalist on the River Amazons

by Henry Walter Bates

The fate of the little girl, who came with a second batch of children all ill of intermittent fever, a month or two after Sebastian, was very different. She was brought to our house, after landing, one night in the wet season, when the rain was pouring in torrents, thin and haggard, drenched with wet and shivering with ague. An old Indian who brought her to the door said briefly, “ecui encommenda” (here’s your little parcel, or order), and went away. There was very little of the savage in her appearance, and she was of a much lighter colour than the boy. We found she was of the Miránha tribe, all of whom are distinguished by a slit, cut in the middle of each wing of the nose, in which they wear on holiday occasions a large button made of pearly river-shell. We took the greatest care of our little patient; had the best nurses in the town, fomented her daily, gave her quinine and the most nourishing food; but it was all of no avail, she sank rapidly; her liver was enormously swollen, and almost as hard to the touch as stone. There was something uncommonly pleasing in her ways, and quite unlike anything I had yet seen in Indians. Instead of being dull and taciturn, she was always smiling and full of talk. We had an old woman of the same tribe to attend her, who explained what she said to us. She often begged to be taken to the river to bathe; asked for fruit, or coveted articles she saw in the room for playthings. Her native name was Oria. The last week or two she could not rise from the bed we had made for her in a dry corner of the room; when she wanted lifting, which, was very often, she would allow no one to help her but me, calling me by the name of “Caríwa” (white man), the only word of Tupí she seemed to know. It was inexpressibly touching to hear her, as she lay, repeating by the hour the verses which she had been taught to recite with her companions in her native village: a few sentences repeated over and over again with a rhythmic accent, and relating to objects and incidents connected with the wild life of her tribe. We had her baptised before she died, and when this latter event happened, in opposition to the wishes of the big people of Ega, I insisted on burying her with the same honours as a child of the whites; that is, as an “anjinho” (little angel), according to the pretty Roman Catholic custom of the country. We had the corpse clothed in a robe of fine calico, crossed her hands on her breast over a “palma” of flowers, and made also a crown of flowers for her head. Scores of helpless children like our poor Oria die at Ega, or on the road; but generally not the slightest care is taken of them during their illness. They are the captives made during the merciless raids of one section of the Miránha tribe on the territories of another, and sold to the Ega traders. The villages of the attacked hordes are surprised, and the men and women killed or driven into the thickets without having time to save their children. There appears to be no doubt that the Miránhas are cannibals, and, therefore, the purchase of these captives probably saves them from a worse fate. The demand for them at Ega operates, however, as a direct cause of the supply, stimulating the unscrupulous chiefs, who receive all the profits, to undertake these murderous expeditions.

It is remarkable how quickly the savages of the various nations, which each have their own, to all appearance, widely different language, learn Tupí on their arrival at Ega, where it is the common idiom. This perhaps may be attributed chiefly to the grammatical forms of all the Indian tongues being the same, although the words are different. As far as I could learn, the feature is common to all, of placing the preposition after the noun, making it, in fact, a post-position, thus: “He is come the village from;” “Go him with, the plantation to,” and so forth. The ideas to be expressed in their limited sphere of life and thought are few; consequently the stock of words is extremely small; besides, all Indians have the same way of thinking, and the same objects to talk about; these circumstances also contribute to the case with which they learn each other’s language. Hordes of the same tribe living on the same branch rivers, speak mutually unintelligible languages; this happens with the Miránhas on the Japurá, and with the Collínas on the Jurúa; whilst Tupí is spoken with little corruption along the banks of the main Amazons for a distance Of 2500 miles. The purity of Tupí is kept up by frequent communication amongst the natives, from one end to the other of the main river; how complete and long-continued must be the isolation in which the small groups of savages have lived in other parts, to have caused so complete a segregation of dialects! It is probable that the strange inflexibility of the Indian organisation, both bodily and mental, is owing to the isolation in which each small tribe has lived, and to the narrow round of life and thought, and close intermarriages for countless generations which are the necessary results. Their fecundity is of a low degree, for it is very rare to find an Indian family having so many as four children, and we have seen how great is their liability to sickness and death on removal from place to place.

I have already remarked on the different way in which the climate of this equatorial region affects Indians and negroes. No one could live long amongst the Indians of the Upper Amazons without being struck with their constitutional dislike to the heat. Europeans certainly withstand the high temperature better than the original inhabitants of the country; I always found I could myself bear exposure to the sun or unusually hot weather quite as well as the Indians, although not well-fitted by nature for a hot climate. Their skin is always hot to the touch, and they perspire little. No Indian resident of Ega can be induced to stay in the village (where the heat is felt more than in the forest or on the river), for many days together. They bathe many times a day, but do not plunge in the water, taking merely a sitz-bath, as dogs may be seen doing in hot climates, to cool the lower parts of the body. The women and children, who often remain at home, whilst the men are out for many days together fishing, generally find some excuse for trooping off to the shades of the forest in the hot hours of the afternoons. They are restless and discontented in fine dry weather, but cheerful in cool days, when the rain is pouring down on their naked backs. When suffering under fever, nothing but strict watching can prevent them from going down to bathe in the river, or eating immoderate quantities of juicy fruits, although these indulgences are frequently the cause of death. They are very subject to disorders of the liver, dysentery, and other diseases of hot climates, and when any epidemic is about, they fall ill quicker, and suffer more than negroes or even whites. How different all this is with the negro, the true child of tropical climes! The impression gradually forced itself on my mind that the red Indian lives as a stranger, or immigrant in these hot regions, and that his constitution was not originally adapted, and has not since become perfectly adapted, to the climate.

The Indian element is very prominent in the amusements of the Ega people. All the Roman Catholic holidays are kept up with great spirit; rude Indian sports being mingled with the ceremonies introduced by the Portuguese. Besides these, the aborigines celebrate their own ruder festivals; the people of different tribes combining; for, in most of their features, the merry-makings were originally alike in all the tribes. The Indian idea of a holiday is bonfires, processions, masquerading, especially the mimicry of different kinds of animals, plenty of confused drumming and fifing, monotonous dancing, kept up hour after hour without intermission, and, the most important point of all, getting gradually and completely drunk. But he attaches a kind of superstitious significance to these acts, and thinks that the amusements appended to the Roman Catholic holidays as celebrated by the descendants of the Portuguese, are also an essential part of the religious ceremonies. But in this respect, the uneducated whites and half-breeds are not a bit more enlightened than the poor, dull-souled Indian. All look upon a religious holiday as an amusement, in which the priest takes the part of director or chief actor.

Almost every unusual event, independent of saints’ days, is made the occasion of a holiday by the sociable, easy-going people of the white and Mameluco classes; funerals, christenings, weddings, the arrival of strangers, and so forth. The custom of “waking” the dead is also kept up. A few days after I arrived, I was awoke in the middle of a dark moist night by Cardozo, to sit up with a neighbour whose wife had just died. I found the body laid out on a table, with crucifix and lighted wax-candles at the head, and the room full of women and girls squatted on stools or on their haunches. The men were seated round the open door, smoking, drinking coffee, and telling stories, the bereaved husband exerting himself much to keep the people merry during the remainder of the night. The Ega people seem to like an excuse for turning night into day; it is so cool and pleasant, and they can sit about during these hours in the open air, clad as usual in simple shirt and trousers, without streaming with perspiration.

The patron saint is Santa Theresa, the festival at whose anniversary lasts, like most of the others, ten days. It begins very quietly with evening litanies sung in the church, which are attended by the greater part of the population, all clean and gaily dressed in calicos and muslins; the girls wearing jasmines and other natural flowers in their hair, no other headdress being worn by females of any class. The evenings pass pleasantly; the church is lighted up with wax candles, and illuminated on the outside by a great number of little oil lamps—rude clay cups, or halves of the thick rind of the bitter orange, which are fixed all over the front. The congregation seem very attentive, and the responses to the litany of Our Lady, sung by a couple of hundred fresh female voices, ring agreeably through the still village. Towards the end of the festival the fun commences. The managers of the feast keep open houses, and dancing, drumming, tinkling of wire guitars, and unbridled drinking by both sexes, old and young, are kept up for a couple of days and a night with little intermission. The ways of the people at these merry-makings, of which there are many in the course of the year, always struck me as being not greatly different from those seen at an old-fashioned village wake in retired parts of England. The old folks look on and get very talkative over their cups; the children are allowed a little extra indulgence in sitting up; the dull, reserved fellows become loquacious, shake one another by the hand or slap each other on the back, discovering, all at once, what capital friends they are. The cantankerous individual gets quarrelsome, and the amorous unusually loving. The Indian, ordinarily so taciturn, finds the use of his tongue, and gives the minutest details of some little dispute which he had with his master years ago, and which everyone else had forgotten; just as I have known lumpish labouring men in England do, when half-fuddled. One cannot help reflecting, when witnessing these traits of manners, on the similarity of human nature everywhere, when classes are compared whose state of culture and conditions of life are pretty nearly the same.

The Indians play a conspicuous part in the amusements at St. John’s eve, and at one or two other holidays which happen about that time of the year—the end of June. In some of the sports the Portuguese element is visible, in others the Indian, but it must be recollected that masquerading, recitative singing, and so forth, are common originally to both peoples. A large number of men and boys disguise themselves to represent different grotesque figures, animals, or persons. Two or three dress themselves up as giants, with the help of a tall framework. One enacts the part of the Caypór, a kind of sylvan deity similar to the Curupíra which I have before mentioned. The belief in this being seems to be common to all the tribes of the Tupí stock. According to the figure they dressed up at Ega, he is a bulky, misshapen monster, with red skin and long shaggy red hair hanging half way down his back. They believe that he has subterranean campos and hunting grounds in the forest, well stocked with pacas and deer. He is not at all an object of worship nor of fear, except to children, being considered merely as a kind of hobgoblin. Most of the masquers make themselves up as animals—bulls, deer, magoary storks, jaguars, and so forth, with the aid of light frameworks, covered with old cloth dyed or painted and shaped according to the object represented. Some of the imitations which I saw were capital. One ingenious fellow arranged an old piece of canvas in the form of a tapir, placed himself under it, and crawled about on all fours. He constructed an elastic nose to resemble that of the tapir, and made, before the doors of the principal residents, such a good imitation of the beast grazing, that peals of laughter greeted him wherever he went. Another man walked about solitarily, masked as a jabiru crane (a large animal standing about four feet high), and mimicked the gait and habits of the bird uncommonly well. One year an Indian lad imitated me, to the infinite amusement of the townsfolk. He came the previous day to borrow of me an old blouse and straw hat. I felt rather taken in when I saw him, on the night of the performance, rigged out as an entomologist, with an insect net, hunting bag, and pincushion. To make the imitation complete, he had borrowed the frame of an old pair of spectacles, and went about with it straddled over his nose. The jaguar now and then made a raid amongst the crowd of boys who were dressed as deer, goats, and so forth. The masquers kept generally together, moving from house to house, and the performances were directed by an old musician, who sang the orders and explained to the spectators what was going forward in a kind of recitative, accompanying himself on a wire guitar. The mixture of Portuguese and Indian customs is partly owing to the European immigrants in these parts having been uneducated men, who, instead of introducing European civilisation, have descended almost to the level of the Indians, and adopted some of their practices. The performances take place in the evening, and occupy five or six hours; bonfires are lighted along the grassy streets, and the families of the better class are seated at their doors, enjoying the wild but good-humoured fun.

We lived at Ega, during most part of the year, on turtle. The great fresh-water turtle of the Amazons grows on the upper river to an immense size, a full-grown one measuring nearly three feet in length by two in breadth, and is a load for the strongest Indian. Every house has a little pond, called a curral (pen), in the backyard to hold a stock of the animals through the season of dearth—the wet months; those who have a number of Indians in their employ send them out for a month when the waters are low, to collect a stock, and those who have not, purchasing their supply; with some difficulty, however, as they are rarely offered for sale. The price of turtles, like that of all other articles of food, has risen greatly with the introduction of steam-vessels. When I arrived in 1850, a middle-sized one could be bought pretty readily for ninepence, but when I left in 1859, they were with difficulty obtained at eight and nine shillings each. The abundance of turtles, or rather the facility with which they can be found and caught, varies with the amount of annual subsidence of the waters. When the river sinks less than the average, they are scarce; but when more, they can be caught in plenty, the bays and shallow lagoons in the forest having then only a small depth of water. The flesh is very tender, palatable, and wholesome; but it is very cloying: every one ends, sooner or later, by becoming thoroughly surfeited. I became so sick of turtle in the course of two years that I could not bear the smell of it, although at the same time nothing else was to be had, and I was suffering actual hunger. The native women cook it in various ways. The entrails are chopped up and made into a delicious soup called sarapatel, which is generally boiled in the concave upper shell of the animal used as a kettle. The tender flesh of the breast is partially minced with farinha, and the breast shell then roasted over the fire, making a very pleasant dish. Steaks cut from the breast and cooked with the fat form another palatable dish. Large sausages are made of the thick-coated stomach, which is filled with minced meat and boiled. The quarters cooked in a kettle of Tucupí sauce form another variety of food. When surfeited with turtle in all other shapes, pieces of the lean part roasted on a spit and moistened only with vinegar make an agreeable change. The smaller kind of turtle, the tracaja, which makes its appearance in the main river, and lays its eggs a month earlier than the large species, is of less utility to the inhabitants although its flesh is superior, on account of the difficulty of keeping it alive; it survives captivity but a very few days, although placed in the same ponds in which the large turtle keeps well for two or three years.

Those who cannot hunt and fish for themselves, and whose stomachs refuse turtle, are in a poor way at Ega. Fish, including many kinds of large and delicious salmonidæ, is abundant in the fine season; but each family fishes only for itself, and has no surplus for sale. An Indian fisherman remains out just long enough to draw what he thinks sufficient for a couple of days’ consumption. Vacca marina is a great resource in the wet season. It is caught by harpooning, which requires much skill, or by strong nets made of very thick hammock twine, and placed across narrow inlets. Very few Europeans are able to eat the meat of this animal. Although there is a large quantity of cattle in the neighbourhood of the town, and pasture is abundant all the year round, beef can be had only when a beast is killed by accident. The most frequent cause of death is poisoning by drinking raw Tucupí, the juice of the mandioca root. Bowls of this are placed on the ground in the sheds where the women prepare farinha; it is generally done carelessly, but sometimes intentionally through spite when stray oxen devastate the plantations of the poorer people. The juice is almost certain to be drunk if cattle stray near the place, and death is the certain result. The owners kill a beast which shows symptoms of having been poisoned, and retail the beef in the town. Although every one knows it cannot be wholesome, such is the scarcity of meat and the uncontrollable desire to eat beef, that it is eagerly bought, at least by those residents who come from other provinces where beef is the staple article of food. Game of all kinds is scarce in the forest near the town, except in the months of June and July, when immense numbers of a large and handsome bird, Cuvier’s toucan (Ramphastos Cuvieri) make their appearance. They come in well-fed condition, and are shot in such quantities that every family has the strange treat of stewed and roasted toucans daily for many weeks. Curassow birds are plentiful on the banks of the Solimoens, but to get a brace or two requires the sacrifice of several days for the trip. A tapir, of which the meat is most delicious and nourishing, is sometimes killed by a fortunate hunter. I have still a lively recollection of the pleasant effects which I once experienced from a diet of fresh tapir meat for a few days, after having been brought to a painful state of bodily and mental depression by a month’s scanty rations of fish and farinha.

We sometimes had fresh bread at Ega made from American flour brought from Pará, but it was sold at ninepence a pound. I was once two years without tasting wheaten bread, and attribute partly to this the gradual deterioration of health which I suffered on the Upper Amazons. Mandioca meal is a poor, weak substitute for bread; it is deficient in gluten, and consequently cannot be formed into a leavened mass or loaf, but is obliged to be roasted in hard grains in order to keep any length of time. Cakes are made of the half-roasted meal, but they become sour in a very few hours. A superior kind of meal is manufactured at Ega of the sweet mandioca (Manihot Aypi); it is generally made with a mixture of the starch of the root and is therefore a much more wholesome article of food than the ordinary sort which, on the Amazons, is made of the pulp after the starch has been extracted by soaking in water. When we could get neither bread nor biscuit, I found tapioca soaked in coffee the best native substitute. We were seldom without butter, as every canoe brought one or two casks on each return voyage from Pará, where it is imported in considerable quantity from Liverpool. We obtained tea in the same way; it being served as a fashionable luxury at wedding and christening parties; the people were at first strangers to this article, for they used to stew it in a saucepan, mixing it up with coarse raw sugar, and stirring it with a spoon. Sometimes we had milk, but this was only when a cow calved; the yield from each cow was very small, and lasted only for a few weeks in each case, although the pasture is good, and the animals are sleek and fat.