I do not remember a single circumstance in my travels so striking and so new, or that so well fulfilled all previous expectations, as my first view of the real uncivilised inhabitants of the Uaupés. I felt that I was in the midst of something new and startling, as if I had been instantaneously transported to a distant and unknown country.
The Indians of the Amazon and its tributaries are of a countless variety of tribes and nations; all of whom have peculiar languages and customs, and many of them some distinct characteristics. In many individuals of both sexes the most perfect regularity of features exists, and there are numbers who in colour alone differ from a good-looking European.
Their figures are generally superb; and I have never felt so much pleasure in gazing at the finest statue, as at these living illustrations of the beauty of the human form. The development of the chest is such as I believe never exists in the best-formed European, exhibiting a splendid series of convex undulations, without a hollow in any part of it.
Among the tribes of the Uaupés the men have the hair carefully parted and combed on each side, and tied in a queue behind. In the young men, it hangs in long locks down their necks, and, with the comb, which is invariably carried stuck in the top of the head, gives to them a most feminine appearance. This is increased by the large necklaces and bracelets of beads, and the careful extirpation of every symptom of beard.
Taking these circumstances into consideration, I am strongly of opinion that the story of the Amazons has arisen from these feminine-looking warriors encountered by the early voyagers. I am inclined to this opinion, from the effect they first produced on myself, when it was only by close examination I saw that they were men.
I cannot make out that these Indians of the Amazon have any belief that can be called a religion. They appear to have no definite idea of a God. If asked who made the rivers and the forests and the sky, they will reply that they do not know, or sometimes that they suppose it was "Tupanau," a word that appears to answer to God, but of which they understand nothing. They have much more definite ideas of a bad spirit, "Jurupari," or Devil, whom they fear, and endeavour through their "pagés," or sorcerers, to propitiate.
When it thunders, they say that the "Jurupari" is angry, and their idea of natural death is that the "Jurupari" kills them. At an eclipse they believe that this bad spirit is killing the moon, and they make all the noise they can to drive him away. One of the singular facts connected with these Indians of the Amazon valley is the resemblance between some of their customs and those of the nations most remote from them. The gravatana, or blowpipe, reappears in the sumpitan of Borneo; the great houses of the Uaupés closely resemble those of the Dyaks of the same country; while many small baskets and bamboo-boxes from Borneo and New Guinea are so similar in their form and construction to those of the Amazon, that they would be supposed to belong to adjoining tribes.
The main feature in the personal character of the Indians of this part of South America is a degree of diffidence, bashfulness, or coldness, which affects all their actions. It is this that produces their quiet deliberation, their circuitous way of introducing a subject they have come to speak about, talking half an hour on different topics before mentioning it. Owing to this feeling, they will run away if displeased rather than complain, and will never refuse to undertake what is asked them, even when they are unable or do not intend to perform it. They scarcely ever quarrel among themselves, work hard, and submit willingly to authority. They are ingenious and skilful workmen and readily adopt any customs of civilised life introduced among them.