AMAZON TRIBES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 5016, 20 August 1926, Page 2

AMAZON TRIBES.

e* — SLEEP 300 IN A ROOM. MONKEY MEAT AND ROAST ANTS. Overcrowding is worse on the Amazon, it would seem, than' in the .most densely populated areas of London, .for some of the natives recently visited by Dr. William McGovern, the explorer and anthropologist, think nothing of living 200 or 300' in a room. It is true the room is the of a house, but even so. -•- • • I The centre of the room is used as a sort of cotamon drawing room, and the various families live on “allotments.” all round, the family allotment being big enough to contain a central fire and th'e necessary number of hammocks toi sleep inDr. McGovern is just back in London, after a year on the Amazon, looking f o r_and finding—hitherto undiscovered tribes. ; He came across natives who had efliny heard of white men. Some wer& civilised tribes with culture, an elaborate political a,nd religious organisation of their own. Others were so wild and primitive that they had ho hous.es, dug up rootsi for their nourishment, and only showed themselveshigher than the animals by the use of fire. „ Dr. McGovern told a “Daily News representative something of his mote recent adventures. “The party consisted of three, besides four Brazillian and a, number of Indian servants,” he said.. “We travelled mainly by canoe, but sometimes., of course, had to use bur legs to penetrate the jungle where the more primitive tribes live. “All the tribes were antagonistic to any white man, but, although several times attacked, we came, through safely. We were well armed, and that did not seem quite fair, because the only weapons, they had were their bows *hd poisoned arrows. Their . blow-pipes are only used on wild animals. Still, their arrows are dangerous, for I know of no antidote against the poison. So the best way is to try to kill the antagonism of the natives by kindness.

“A little knowledge of simple medicine is very useful here, and once thebe might have been trouble if I had not been able to sew up the head of a girl on whom a tree had fallen. She was stunned, 'a,nd her friends thought her dead. S<h when she came lound they naturally .thought .1 had resurrected her. That ‘miracle’ stood me in good stead. < “Our chief food was peccari, or wild beer, monkey flesh, and roa’S|t ants ; while the staple food df the natives is- the mandioca; —a sort off poisonous potato from •which the poison is extracted by a; complicated process of evaporation. “Their drink is mandioca beer, which is prepared by a somewhat unpleasant method. It is the woman’s work, as is all the work except hunting and fishing. They chew the mandioca, in which fermentation is set up, and place it in a trough. Th® contents of the trough are theft watered down, and this is their beer!” Dr. McGovern was permitted to see the devil worship of the Amazonian tribes. There are ceremonies which, if a woman.sees, mean death for her.