The Menimehe, whose houses are more open, make hives of hollow trees for bees to swarm in, and these are placed in their maloka, so that a store of honey and wax is always at hand.
The smoke and darkness keep off the pium and mosquito, but outside the dwelling ants abound, though their value as scavengers does in a measure detract from their general undesirability; for it is thanks mainly to them that there are no bad smells in the vicinity of a Witoto home, as cleanliness is not a virtue of the Witoto. The daily rain, also, prevents any accumulation of filth, for everything of that description is continually washed away.
Jiggers are found in Indian houses, though never in the bush. There need be no trouble with these tiresome creatures if prompt attention be paid to the part affected. It is a common practice among the Indians for the women to examine the men’s feet directly they come in, to see that they are all right, and if a jigger is detected to dig it out with a palm-spine, care being taken that a non-poisonous spine is selected.[33] A very much more serious injury is inflicted by the blood-sucking bat. Not only the forest but the dark and lofty roof of the native house will often harbour bats of several kinds, and occasionally some of the Phyllostoma. Vampires, however, are more frequently met with on the main river than on the Issa or Japura.[34] They undoubtedly attack sleepers, and the subsequent loss of blood may be serious, especially in the case of a child. The point made for is always the big toe, and the wound is so slight that the victim does not waken, or if awake is hardly conscious of the hurt. It is possible that the loss of blood induces a comatose state. I never actually saw a case, though I have talked to persons who had been bitten. But the vampire is rare in these districts, whereas other bats are common enough in the forest.
As a general rule the Indians have no pets; but on one occasion, near a Boro settlement on the north of the Japura, I saw some children of the Menimehe tribes with tame monkeys. These were the only Indians I ever met who kept any pet. Animal food is too scarce in the forest. Bates asserts that “the Indians are very fond of them [monkeys] as pets, and the women often suckle them when young at their breasts.”[35] I never heard of such a case as this, but certainly the monkey must be caught extremely young to be tamable at all; and, I repeat, food is scarce.
CHAPTER IV
Classification of Indian races—Difficulties of tabulating—Language-groups and tribes—Names—Sources of confusion—Witoto and Boro—Localities of language-groups—Population of districts—Intertribal strife—Tribal enemies and friends—Reasons for endless warfare—Intertribal trade and communications—Relationships—Tribal organisation—The chief, his position and powers—Law—Tribal council—Tobacco-drinking—Marriage system and regulations—Position of women—Slaves.
Given equal conditions, similar environment, the human race, wheresoever on this globe its lot be cast, shows a marked sameness in its traits and habits. This need not, in fact does not, argue a unity of origin. There is no reason why a custom may not be indigenous in many parts of the world, among peoples labouring under like conditions; and if the same customs be evolved the same cultural types will also be found to exist. Thus it is easy to find even striking resemblances between these Indians of Amazonia and such distant peoples as the Arunta of Central Australia, the cannibal tribes of pagan Malay, or, to go even wider afield, the Basque people of Southern Europe. This does not for a moment suggest that such common beliefs, customs, or cultures have been introduced from one to the other, or even borrowed from a common stock. The human mind seems to work broadly on certain definite planes of thought, and there is less mental difference between the low-type illiterate of a London slum and the denizens of a tropical forest than there is between him and the learned occupant of a University Chair, though both be nominally of the same nation.
Attempts are continually made to evolve some working classification of the South American Indians. The main difficulty, the sparsity of common factors, despite general similarity, is due in a measure at least to the absence of any standard, any fixity of language, or any confederation between the units of these races. The only rule is that there is no rule. What was a common word yesterday is possibly forgotten to-day; the custom shared a generation ago may vary now past recognition, and to-morrow will see further changes that increase the diversity. These people are in a state of flux. Disintegration is the determinant influence; nothing makes for amalgamation. A section of a tribe isolated from the remainder, surrounded by neighbours whose speech, whose physical features, are entirely different, may develop into a distinct tribe with dialect and customs as variant from the parent tribe as from those in its new vicinage.[36] But extinction rather than such increase is the more probable fate. These tribes are hardly embryos of nations to be, nor can they be entirely classified as the decadent remnants of perishing races. Rather did it seem to me that, despite the awful handicap of their environment, they were gradually evolving a higher culture. Their origin is a problem of no small interest, but one on which recorded history throws exceedingly little light. Whether they be the autochthonous sons of American soil, or the stranded vanguard of successive waves of Mongoloid immigrants pushed southwards to be swallowed up in the Amazonian forests,[37] or—which is most probable—a combination of both, can only be in part determined by the study of their physical traits, their habits, customs, speech, morals, and beliefs. It is for the comparative anthropologist, the comparative folklorist, to find an answer.