As an instance of the difficulty of classification, and the confusion that has resulted in much of the literature on this subject, the statements given in the Contemporary Science Series volume, The Races of Man, may be examined. Deniker orders the Indians in four divisions—Carib, Arawak, Miranha, and Pano; and classifies the Witoto in the first, taking the determinative ethnic distinction to be “their acquaintance with the hammock, a plaited (not woven) texture, and a particular kind of cassava-squeezer.”[38] If this is correct and sufficient, all the Indians of the middle Issa-Japura regions are Caribs. But I do not think the arguments are conclusive. For example, “the practice of the ‘couvade’” is given as racially distinctive of the Carib.[39] But couvade is by no means peculiar to the Carib. In this region it is a common custom of the Witoto and the Boro, who are linguistically and physically diverse.[40] Then, as regards the hammock, it has been pointed out by Sir Everard im Thurn, who holds that the Carib did not migrate to British Guiana from the interior but from the islands,[41] that the Caribs of Guiana, the “stranger tribes,” as he calls them, that is, tribes who have migrated thither, “make their hammocks of cotton,” while the native tribes use palm-fibre.[42] None of the Issa-Japura tribes make use of cotton yam for their hammocks; it is, in fact, almost unknown to them, and what little they may possess is presumably obtained by barter, for to the best of my knowledge they do not prepare it, or know how to prepare it; palm-fibre only is used by them. The explanation probably is that Deniker apparently confuses the Karahone and the Witoto, as he speaks of “the Uitotos or Carijonas,” as though they were the same, instead of a totally distinct group of tribes. He also gives Crevaux as his authority, when he states that the Witoto—according to him a Carib group—“live side by side with the Miranhas,” Miranha being differentiated as a distinct branch. But Dr. Crevaux speaks of “Ouitotos ou Miranhas,”[43] and remarks that “Les Miranhas du Yapurá sont appelés par leurs voisins ‘Ouitotos.’”[44] It would seem, then, that the French traveller considered that the Witoto language-group belongs to the same racial division as the Miranha language-group, though, as Dr. Koch-Grünberg remarks, the languages of these groups “ne présentent aucun signe de parenté entre elles.”[45] In fact, he is of the opinion that “on serait sans doubte plus près de la vérité si on rattachait les différents dialectes parlés dans la région des Ouitotos à un groupe linguistique nouveau.” This he designates the groupe Ouitoto.[46] Miranha or Miranya is the name given to the Boro by the tribes on the north, and is the lingoa-geral name for the Boro and other groups. The word means a wanderer, a gratuitous distinction where all tribes have nomadic tendencies, and this may be the reason why it has apparently been applied to several groups.
It is not surprising that there should be confusion over any attempted classification of these peoples, for not only are there many language-groups, each with numerous tribes, but in addition to this a group or a tribe will have not one distinct name by which it may be known and classed, but a number of names, so that inevitably the writer without personal knowledge of a group will be easily misled in dealing with it and its divisions.
So far as the Indians are concerned no language-group and no tribe use the esoteric name. They talk simply of “our speech” or “our own people,” and they are named, and frequently named differently, by the surrounding tribes. The Boro, for example, are known as Boro to the tribes from the west and south, as Miranya to some of those of the east and the north; the same tribe would therefore be Boro to the Witoto and Miranya to the Yuri or the Menimehe. The Dukaiya are called Okaina—which means “capybara”—by the Witoto, though they are also called Dukaiya, which is the extra-tribal name of their most powerful tribe or section. Muenane and Nonuya are also Witoto names.[47] Witoto is the esoteric name for mosquito, but the Witoto tribes were thus named by the tribes on the south either because the name has the same meaning in their language or because they had learned the Witoto word for this insect. In this case the esoteric name is the same as the exoteric. Crevaux gives ouitoto as the word for “enemy” among the Karahone and the Roucouyennes,[48] and Martius has a similar word for that meaning among other tribes.[49] All this adds to the difficulties of nomenclature. It must be understood, also, that if you ask a Witoto, “O Memeka bu?” (What tribe do you belong to?) he would not tell you, but he would answer in the affirmative if the question be put as to whether he belongs to a certain tribe or to a certain group, though he will not himself use the tribal or group name. This applies to all Indians. Moreover, there is the very thorny question of spelling. I have throughout adopted the rule laid down by the Royal Geographical Society, and spelt words with English consonants—that is to say, with their equivalent values—and Italian vowels. This is the most generally accepted method, but even with this peculiarities of ear must result in sundry variants.
Another source of confusion in writing about these peoples has been the indiscriminate use of the words nation, tribe, clan, family. To avoid possibility of mistake it may be explained at the outset that tribe is here used in the sense ruled by the new editions of both the Anthropological and the Folklore Handbooks, that is to say, “a group with a common language, code of law, some rude form of government, and capable of uniting for common action.” These tribes I would further classify into language-groups, such as the Witoto language-group, the Boro language-group, and so forth. The group name—Witoto, Boro, Andoke, or whatever the case may be—applies to all the tribes of these groups, in addition to their individual names. The variations between these tribes of a group are mainly dialectic and local, but the variance between tribes of alien groups is more than a difference of speech and custom. The Boro, for instance, are distinctly Chinese in appearance; their neighbours the Witoto resemble rather the Dyaks of Borneo.
DIAGRAMMATIC MAP OF THE ISSA-JAPURA CENTRAL WATERSHED SHOWING LANGUAGE GROUPS
BY CAPTAIN THOMAS W. WIFFEN
Click map for larger version
The two groups with which we are mainly concerned, and the only two with which it is possible in this book to deal seriously in detail, are the Witoto and the Boro. They occupy roughly the lands between the Japura and the Igara Parana, and the Igara Parana and the Issa, though there are no actual boundaries. The Boro country lies north-west of the Futahi Hills, in the watersheds of the Pupuna and the Kahuanari rivers. The Boro also occupy a stretch of country north of the Japura, where that river bends south and east below its junction with the Wama, and including part of the Ira watershed. On this, the north-east border, they meet the country of the Menimehe, while on the north they touch the Karahone country. The Resigero and Nonuya districts lie between them and the Muenane. The country by the Futahi Hills west of the Igara Parana, that is to say, the basins of the Esperanza and Sabalo Yacu rivers, is very sparsely populated, and the Dukaiya country on the west of the Nonuya practically separates the Witoto and the Boro on the north-west. From the mouth of an unnamed tributary of the Japura—below the Tauauru and on the opposite bank—the Andoke country runs south of the Japura to the junction of the Kuemani, where the Japura becomes the boundary between the Andoke and the Witoto. On the west the Orahone country lies on the farther side of the Issa from the Witoto, the Issa being the dividing line from the west and south-west of the Witoto group. The name Orahone is given to all tribes indiscriminately if they elongate the lobes of their ears,[50] so the Orahone, or Long-ears, may possibly be many distinct tribes. Thus, one writer notes of the Napo tribes, the “Cotos” and the “Tutapishcos,” that they “are sometimes called ‘Orejones,’” but are not so known locally.[51] The Orahone are of a low type. To the east of the Menimehe and the Boro districts the Kuretu language-group of tribes occupy the country north and south of the Japura. To the north the Opaina, Makuna, and Tukana groups interpose between them and the Bara and Maku groups. The Maku are found from the Rio Negro to the Apaporis, and again above the Bara group north of the Arara Hills about the Kaouri river, a tributary of the Uaupes. Though the Bara group live to the north of the Apaporis they have nothing in common with the Uaupes Indians. Both their language and customs resemble more those of the Japura, and they have no intercourse with the surrounding tribes. They are a dark-skinned people, of a low type, and consequently looked down on by their lighter-skinned neighbours. The Maku, also of a low type and dark, are a very nomadic group; in fact all these peoples are wanderers, and the districts here given for their localities must be taken as merely approximate. That they were there when I was in the country is no guarantee that they will be found there now, or a few years hence. The locality of a tribe, or a language-group, is mainly dependent on the locality of its neighbours, especially of any powerful or warlike body. The tribes of the upper Issa districts are semi-civilised Colombian, those of the lower waters semi-civilised Brazilian Indians. Only in the middle district have the tribes been free, until recently, from the influence of the white man.
It is almost impossible to give the populations of these districts even in round figures. My own estimate for the nine language-groups of the Issa-Japura region, based roughly on the number of houses and the extent of country, is as follows: but, I repeat, these figures must be taken as very approximate, and are probably overestimated in some cases:—