CHAPTER VI
Occupations—Sexual division and tabu—Tribal manufactures—Arts and crafts—Drawing—Carving—Metals—Tools and implements—No textile fabrics—Pottery—Basket making—Hammocks—Cassava-squeezer and grater—Pestle and mortar—Wooden vessels—Stone axes—Methods of felling trees—Canoes—Rafts—Paddles.
Life in Amazonia to the man is occasionally strenuous, frequently a veritable dolce far niente; to the woman it is a ceaseless round of toilsome duties, broken only by the excitement of preparation for, and participation in, a tribal dance. The division of occupations between the sexes is possibly uneven, but very certainly strict. In many cases it amounts to a tabu,[90] and as a rule the reason for this division is either apparent or confessed. It is absolutely a question of sex. To men appertain defensive measures, all that calls for physical strength and skill, war, the chase, the manufacture of weapons, the preparation of certain poisons and drinks, especially those that are used ceremonially. Men paddle the canoes, except in extreme cases, when a sufficiency of men is not forthcoming, and women perforce must lend their aid. They cut the wood and build the houses. They climb the trees to gather fruit, clear the plantations, and turn the soil. Woman is the housewife, the mother, and the cook, but she is also the agriculturalist and the maker of all purely domestic implements. She manufactures the hammocks, the rough pottery, and most of the baskets, although it would not be considered derogatory on the part of the man to lend a hand if necessary.
PLATE XXII.
WITOTO BASKETS OF SPLIT CANE AND FIBRE.
Besides this sexual differentiation various tribes have their special manufactures in which they excel their neighbours. The Menimehe are known as great pottery workers. The Karahone are renowned for their poisons. The Boro specialise on mat-making, plaiting, the manufacture of ligatures, and the preparation of blow-pipes. The Witoto hammocks are better than those of other tribes. Trade in any organised form is non-existent, it is true, but articles pass, as I have already described, irregularly by personal barter and exchange of gifts to other tribes; and in this fashion the poison of the Karahone reaches tribes unknown to the makers, and beads made in Birmingham filter down by many and devious routes even to these isolated wilds. Over fifty years ago Wallace estimated that some thousands of pounds’ worth of trade goods passed up the Uaupes yearly,[91] and this accounts for the fact that tribes north of the Japura are better supplied than those of the south. The best articles for barter I found were axes, knives, combs—especially scurf-combs—and Brummagem beads. Cloth and fowling-pieces are not valued except in the Rubber Belt; the less sophisticated Indian of the backwoods has no manner of use for them: cloth is less ornamental than paint, and the scatter-gun only frightens the game and lessens the kill.
Indian arts and crafts are neither numerous nor particularly complex; indeed arts—with the exception of music and dancing—are almost unknown. There are no rock pictures in the Issa-Japura valleys, such as those executed by the Indians in so many other parts of the Americas, but then there are no rocks. I have occasionally among the Andoke and the Boro seen pictures of a rude type on the supports of the houses, and on the four large central posts of the big maloka; or these may be roughly carved. There is carving also on some of the dancing staves. But these people have no great use for colour and line beyond the ornamentation of their bodies, and in a lesser degree of their pottery. They make no attempt to use drawing for informative purposes. Elsewhere Indians have shown themselves skilful map-makers,[92] but none of these tribes could so much as draw a rough chart of their own district. Yet this district to them represents the whole world. They do not realise that there can be any other people but themselves and the half-dozen tribes or so who happen to be in their immediate vicinity, and always regarded it as a huge joke on my part when I talked of the sea and the vast countries beyond.
