The Naturalist on the River Amazons

by Henry Walter Bates

I remained at St. Paulo five months; five years would not have been sufficient to exhaust the treasures of its neighbourhood in Zoology and Botany. Although now a forest-rambler of ten years’ experience, the beautiful forest which surrounds this settlement gave me as much enjoyment as if I had only just landed for the first time in a tropical country. The plateau on which the village is built extends on one side nearly a mile into the forest, but on the other side the descent into the lowland begins close to the streets; the hill sloping abruptly towards a boggy meadow surrounded by woods, through which a narrow winding path continues the slope down to a cool shady glen, with a brook of icy-cold water flowing at the bottom. At mid-day the vertical sun penetrates into the gloomy depths of this romantic spot, lighting up the leafy banks of the rivulet and its clean sandy margins, where numbers of scarlet, green, and black tanagers and brightly-coloured butterflies sport about in the stray beams. Sparkling brooks, large and small, traverse the glorious forest in almost every direction, and one is constantly meeting, whilst rambling through the thickets, with trickling rills and bubbling springs, so well-provided is the country with moisture. Some of the rivulets flow over a sandy and pebbly bed, and the banks of all are clothed with the most magnificent vegetation conceivable. I had the almost daily habit, in my solitary walks, of resting on the clean banks of these swift-flowing streams, and bathing for an hour at a time in their bracing waters; hours which now remain amongst my most pleasant memories. The broad forest roads continue, as I was told, a distance of several days’ journey into the interior, which is peopled by Tucúnas and other Indians, living in scattered houses and villages nearly in their primitive state, the nearest village lying about six miles from St. Paulo. The banks of all the streams are dotted with palm-thatched dwellings of Tucúnas, all half-buried in the leafy wilderness, the scattered families having chosen the coolest and shadiest nooks for their abodes.

I frequently heard in the neighbourhood of these huts, the “realejo” or organ bird (Cyphorhinus cantans), the most remarkable songster, by far, of the Amazonian forests. When its singular notes strike the ear for the first time, the impression cannot be resisted that they are produced by a human voice. Some musical boy must be gathering fruit in the thickets, and is singing a few notes to cheer himself. The tones become more fluty and plaintive; they are now those of a flageolet, and notwithstanding the utter impossibility of the thing, one is for the moment convinced that somebody is playing that instrument. No bird is to be seen, however closely the surrounding trees and bushes may be scanned, and yet the voice seems to come from the thicket close to one’s ears. The ending of the song is rather disappointing. It begins with a few very slow and mellow notes, following each other like the commencement of an air; one listens expecting to hear a complete strain, but an abrupt pause occurs, and then the song breaks down, finishing with a number of clicking unmusical sounds like a piping barrel organ out of wind and tune. I never heard the bird on the Lower Amazon, and very rarely heard it even at Ega; it is the only songster which makes an impression on the natives, who sometimes rest their paddles whilst travelling in their small canoes, along the shady by-streams, as if struck by the mysterious sounds.

The Tucúna Indians are a tribe resembling much the Shumánas, Passés, Jurís, and Mauhés in their physical appearance and customs. They lead, like those tribes, a settled agricultural life, each horde obeying a chief of more or less influence, according to his energy and ambition, and possessing its pajé or medicine-man who fosters its superstitions; but, they are much more idle and debauched than other Indians belonging to the superior tribes. They are not so warlike and loyal as the Mundurucús, although resembling them in many respects, nor have they the slender figures, dignified mien, and gentle disposition of the Passés; there are, however, no trenchant points of difference to distinguish them from these highest of all the tribes. Both men and women are tattooed, the pattern being sometimes a scroll on each cheek, but generally rows of short straight lines on the face. Most of the older people wear bracelets, anklets, and garters of tapir-hide or tough bark; in their homes they wear no other dress except on festival days, when they ornament themselves with feathers or masked cloaks made of the inner bark of a tree. They were very shy when I made my first visits to their habitations in the forest, all scampering off to the thicket when I approached, but on subsequent days they became more familiar, and I found them a harmless, good-natured people.

A great part of the horde living at the first Maloca or village dwell in a common habitation, a large oblong hut built and arranged inside with such a disregard of all symmetry that it appeared as though constructed by a number of hands, each working independently, stretching a rafter or fitting in a piece of thatch, without reference to what his fellow-labourers were doing. The walls as well as the roof are covered with thatch of palm leaves; each piece consisting of leaflets plaited and attached in a row to a lath many feet in length. Strong upright posts support the roof, hammocks being slung between them, leaving a free space for passage and for fires in the middle, and on one side is an elevated stage (girao) overhead, formed of split palm-stems. The Tucúnas excel over most of the other tribes in the manufacture of pottery. They make broad-mouthed jars for Tucupi sauce, caysúma or mandioca beer, capable of holding twenty or more gallons, ornamenting them outside with crossed diagonal streaks of various colours. These jars, with cooking-pots, smaller jars for holding water, blow-guns, quivers, matiri bags[^[2]] full of small articles, baskets, skins of animals, and so forth, form the principal part of the furniture of their huts both large and small. The dead bodies of their chiefs are interred, the knees doubled up, in large jars under the floors of their huts.

[2] These bags are formed of remarkably neat twine made of Bromelia fibres elaborately knitted, all in one piece, with sticks; a belt of the same material, but more closely woven, being attached to the top to suspend them by. They afford good examples of the mechanical ability of these Indians. The Tucúnas also possess the art of skinning and stuffing birds, the handsome kinds of which they sell in great numbers to passing travellers.

The semi-religious dances and drinking bouts usual amongst the settled tribes of Amazonian Indians are indulged in to greater excess by the Tucúnas than they are by most other tribes. The Juruparí or Demon is the only superior being they have any conception of, and his name is mixed up with all their ceremonies, but it is difficult to ascertain what they consider to be his attributes. He seems to be believed in simply as a mischievous imp, who is at the bottom of all those mishaps of their daily life, the causes of which are not very immediate or obvious to their dull understandings. It is vain to try to get information out of a Tucúna on this subject; they affect great mystery when the name is mentioned, and give very confused answers to questions: it was clear, however, that the idea of a spirit as a beneficent God or Creator had not entered the minds of these Indians. There is great similarity in all their ceremonies and mummeries, whether the object is a wedding, the celebration of the feast of fruits, the plucking of the hair from the heads of their children, or a holiday got up simply out of a love of dissipation. Some of the tribe on these occasions deck themselves with the bright-coloured feathers of parrots and macaws. The chief wears a headdress or cap made by fixing the breast-feathers of the Toucan on a web of Bromelia twine, with erect tail plumes of macaws rising from the crown. The cinctures of the arms and legs are also then ornamented with bunches of feathers. Others wear masked dresses; these are long cloaks reaching below the knee, and made of the thick whitish-coloured inner bark of a tree, the fibres of which are interlaced in so regular a manner that the material looks like artificial cloth. The cloak covers the head; two holes are cut out for the eyes, a large round piece of the cloth stretched on a rim of flexible wood is stitched on each side to represent ears, and the features are painted in exaggerated style with yellow, red, and black streaks. The dresses are sewn into the proper shapes with thread made of the inner bark of the Uaissíma tree. Sometimes grotesque head-dresses, representing monkeys’ busts or heads of other animals, made by stretching cloth or skin over a basketwork frame, are worn at these holidays. The biggest and ugliest mask represents the Juruparí. In these festival habiliments the Tucúnas go through their monotonous see-saw and stamping dances accompanied by singing and drumming, and keep up the sport often for three or four days and nights in succession, drinking enormous quantities of caysuma, smoking tobacco, and snuffing paricá powder.

I could not learn that there was any deep symbolical meaning in these masked dances, or that they commemorated any past event in the history of the tribe. Some of them seem vaguely intended as a propitiation of the Juruparí, but the masker who represents the demon sometimes gets drunk along with the rest, and is not treated with any reverence. From all I could make out, these Indians preserve no memory of events going beyond the times of their fathers or grandfathers. Almost every joyful event is made the occasion of a festiva: weddings amongst the best. A young man who wishes to wed a Tucúna girl has to demand her hand of her parents, who arrange the rest of the affair, and fix a day for the marriage ceremony. A wedding which took place in the Christmas week whilst I was at St. Paulo was kept up with great spirit for three or four days, flagging during the heats of mid-day, but renewing itself with increased vigour every evening. During the whole time the bride, decked out with feather ornaments, was under the charge of the older squaws whose business seemed to be, sedulously, to keep the bridegroom at a safe distance until the end of the dreary period of dancing and boosing. The Tucúnas have the singular custom, in common with the Collínas and Mauhés, of treating their young girls, on their showing the first signs of womanhood, as if they had committed some crime. They are sent up to the girao under the smoky and filthy roof, and kept there on very meagre diet, sometimes for a whole month. I heard of one poor girl dying under this treatment.

The only other tribe of this neighbourhood concerning which I obtained any information were the Majerónas, whose territory embraces several hundred miles of the western bank of the river Jauarí, an affluent of the Solimoens, 120 miles beyond St. Paulo. These are a fierce, indomitable, and hostile people, like the Aráras of the river Madeira; they are also cannibals. The navigation of the Jauaarí is rendered impossible on account of the Majerónas lying in wait on its banks to intercept and murder all travellers, especially whites.