The Putumayo, the Devil's Paradise: Travels in the Peruvian Amazon Region and an Account of the Atrocities Committed upon the Indians ThereinHardenburg, W. E. (Walter Ernest)
History
The Putumayo, the Devil's Paradise: Travels in the Peruvian Amazon Region and an Account of the Atrocities Committed upon the Indians Therein
Hardenburg, W. E. (Walter Ernest)
Peru -- Description and travel; Peruvian Amazon Company; Putumayo River; Rubber industry and trade -- Peru
"These Putumayo Indians were not only divided tribe from tribe, but
within each tribe more or less constant bickerings and disunion
prevailed between the various 'families' or _naciones_ into which each
great branch was split up. Thus, while Huitotos had a hereditary feud
with Boras, or Ocainas, or Andokes, the numerous subdivisions of the
Huitotos themselves were continually at war with one another. Robuchon
enumerates thirty-three sub-tribes or families among the Huitotos, and
he by no means exhausts the list. Each of these, while intermarriage was
common and a common sense of origin, kinship, and language prevailed as
against all outsiders, would have their internal causes of quarrel that
often sharply divided neighbour from neighbour clan.
"Such conflicts led to frequent 'wars,' kidnappings and thefts of women
being, doubtless, at the bottom of many disputes, while family
grievances and accusations of misuse of occult powers, involving
charges of witchcraft and sorcery, made up the tale of wrong. As a rule,
each family or clan has its great central dwelling-house, capable often
of housing two hundred individuals; and around this, in the region
recognised by tribal law as belonging to that particular clan,
individual members of it, with their families, would have smaller
dwellings scattered at different cultivated spots through the
neighbouring forest. The wars of those clans one with another were never
bloodthirsty, for I believe it is a fact that the Amazon Indian is
averse to bloodshed, and is thoughtless rather than cruel. Prisoners
taken in these wars may have been, and no doubt were, eaten, or in part
eaten, for the Amazon cannibals do not seem to have killed to eat, as is
the case with many primitive races, but to have sometimes, possibly
frequently, in part eaten those they killed. More than one traveller in
tropical South America records his impression that the victims were not
terrified at the prospect of being eaten, and in some cases regarded it
as an honourable end. Lieutenant Maw mentions the case of a girl on the
Brazilian Amazon in 1827 who refused to escape, to become the slave of a
Portuguese 'trader,' preferring to be eaten by her own kind.
"The weapons of the Putumayo Indians were almost entirely confined to
the blow-pipe, with its poisoned darts, and small throwing-spears with
poor wooden tips, three or more of which, grasped between the fingers,
were thrown at one time. The forest must have been fairly full of game
up to quite recently, for the Indians seem to have had a sufficiency of
meat diet; and, with their plantations of cassava, maize, and the
numerous fruits and edible leaves their forest furnished, they were not
so short of food that cannibalism could be accounted for as a necessity.
They were also skilled fishermen, and as the forests are everywhere
channelled with streams of clear water, there must have been a frequent
addition of fish diet to their daily fare.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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