The tribe then had a tobacco palaver, and because of the unsightliness, and the pollution,[398] and the blood-feud with their enemies which had cost the tribe so many warriors, it was decided to destroy her.
And when she heard this she fled into the forest, and all the komuine came and robbed the emiye, the plantation, and there was no pika, manioc, and no kome, fruit.
And when the men of the Utiguene went out to hunt, the lianas were like a net in the path, and so thick no one could pass. And the tribe got thinner and thinner, and now to-day there is no tribe of the Utiguene.[399]
The Amazonians have stories equivalent to many worldwide tales, such as that of the lion and the mouse, only in the forest version it is the jaguar who enacts the lion’s part, while the mouse is replaced by the ant, a liana serves instead of a net to keep the great beast captive, and there are other correspondingly local and numerous variations. The hare and the tortoise fable has its counterpart in the story of a race between the deer and the tortoise. The ramifications of this tale are most intricate. These stories are very dissimilar in detail, so far as I could gather, from their equivalents in the Old World, but in each case the same principle is evolved: by a widely different route Old and New reach eventually an identical goal.
There is a marked prevalence of animal stories, tales—and this is a point not to be overlooked—of the familiar forest beasts, the birds and the reptiles of everyday life. In these the birds and beasts have certain accepted characteristics, they stand in the Indian folk-tales as representing definite abstract ideas. Thus, as with us, the tortoise is crafty and slow; the ant and the bee are typical of industry. The snake, that is to say the poisonous snake, in Amazonian myth, as in Biblical story, represents evil, the evil eye. The tapir stands for blindness and stupidity, while cunning and deceit are represented by the dog. These bush dogs approximate to our fox, and like Reynard have sharp up-standing ears. They prowl round the maloka, and will clear off anything they can find, even in close vicinity to the house. The agouti, or capybara, takes with the Indian the place held in African folk-tales by the hare. He is the wittiest of beasts, can outmanœuvre all the others, and is the practical joker of the forest. The boa-constrictor, unlike the poisonous snake, is not evil; it exemplifies the silent and the strong. The chattering parrot represents irresponsibility; it is a woman in disguise, and is certain in Indian animal tales to be noisy and unreliable, and probably will betray some secret. The peccary is for constancy, the hawk for cunning, the sloth for laziness, and the tiger for bravery. The monkey stands for tenacity of life, which is probably due to the fact that owing to constriction of the muscles its hold on a branch does not relax for some time after death.
These characteristics, however, do not appear to govern in any way the question of food tabu concerning the respective animals. On the contrary, the reasons alleged for such tabu often appear to be, if anything, opposed to what one would expect to find from the foregoing classification. It is the material, not the abstract characteristic with which the tabu deals. Moreover the tabu varies. Irrespective of those connected with birth, at certain times of the year there is a restriction, if it does not amount to an actual prohibition or a tabu, with regard to eating heavy meats. Simson assigns such avoidance to a belief current among Indians “that they partake of the nature of the animal they devour.” This is the case professedly for any tabu on foods for women with child, but the reason given to me for general restriction as regards, say, tapir flesh, was not that the eater would be affected by any characteristic of the animal, material or spiritual, but that the tapir meat if eaten at forbidden seasons was very bad, that is to say unhealthy, and would be the cause of certain skin diseases. It probably would be. Tiger meat, as already explained, is treated much as human flesh is treated. Apart from the tiger, the meat of larger game will, it is sometimes averred by other tribes, make the eater gross and unwieldy.[400] In connection with this question of big game and food, Spruce refers to a “superstition” among the Uaupes Indians that may be a possible survival of a totemic system, though he does not advance the theory. “How should we kill the stag?” they say, “he is our grandfather.”[401] However this may be with other language-groups, among those of the Issa-Japura regions there is no trace of any totemic system, except in so far as that boys and girls are named, as already stated, after birds and flowers respectively. Animal names are made use of occasionally, but only as names of contempt and ridicule. These Indians look upon all animals as enemies. To suggest that any animal is an ancestor would be the direst of insults to people who so strenuously try to avoid all likeness to the brute creation. One need only refer to such customs as the killing of one of twins, or depilation, to give the lie to any theory that would seek to trace in Boro story—for example—for sign of suggested descent from any eponymous animal. Relationship is traced indeed only so far as memory serves; that is to say the oldest man may relate how he remembers his grandfather telling who his grandfather’s father was. Also there are invariably tales of bygone chiefs, great warriors whose deeds and characters are outstanding enough to be remembered.
A story is told of a small fish that is to be found in these rivers which may be fact or may be fable. All Indians say that this fish is a parasite that will find its way into the intestines of human beings when they are bathing. This belief is noted elsewhere, and I merely refer to it here because it is so universally credited without—so far as I could ascertain—an atom of corroborative evidence.