Authors: Tahir Shah
With the destruction of the rain-forests and the even speedier obliteration of tribal plant knowledge (a result of rampant westernisation, missionary activity and so forth), the race to learn ancient medications is being lost. A few companies, such as Shaman Pharmaceuticals, are actively attempting to learn from indigenous peoples about the plants in their societies, and their medicinal uses. One of the problems they face is that, since the early 1980s, there has been a decrease in fieldwork and an increase in plant medicines synthesised in the lab’, as scientists learn to control genes etc. Shaman Pharmaceuticals sends teams of trained ethnobotanists into the jungle to work with and learn from indigenous shamans. They compensate indigenous groups who teach them about medicinal plants. The problem is time: plant cures take years, even decades, to get to the market.
One ethnobotanist, Mark Plotkin (1993), has developed a small-scale solution, called the ‘Shaman’s Apprentice Program’. His notes, which are based on tribal knowledge, are translated back into the tribal language and are studied by a young member of the tribe. Once written down, they are less likely to be lost, despite the fact that the plants themselves are liable to be made extinct if things continue as they are.
Dozens of tribal societies worldwide have historically taken trophy heads. But the curious practice of shrinking heads has set the Shuar apart from other tribes. No other known peoples have treated their trophy heads in this way, with the possible exception of the ancient Nazcan, and other coastal civilisations of the Atacama. As discussed in the text, the reasoning for making
tsantsas
was clear. It was a means of controlling the
musiak
, the avenging soul. The
tsantsa
itself had no intrinsic value and was discarded once made and honoured, that is, until western souvenir hunters came looking for them.
The ability to shrink human heads has brought the Shuar widespread attention. While being captivated by the
tsantsa-making
technique, the outside world has often classified the Shuar as a barbaric people. From the earliest interaction with the tribe, Western observers dubbed them
Jivaro
, their own word for ‘savage’.
There is no doubt that, until the post-war era, the tribe lived by an ancient tradition of warfare and
tsantsa
raids. But despite their eagerness to take heads, the Shuar were historically a people with a strong sense of ethics and a well-developed social framework. The ancient ways of the tribal society have almost entirely come to an end in the last handful of years. Small-scale petroleum projects in the deep jungle are one reason for this. But the overbearing responsibility must be assumed by a variety of missionary groups who have sought to cast the Shuar into the modern world, and to save their souls.
Landing in remote jungle enclaves, in flying-boats, the missionaries have wrought change on an unknown scale. Their intentions may be worthy, but they have led to the stripping away of a distinct tribal identity. Like a house of playing cards, a traditional Shuar community was extraordinarily fragile. Small changes affected the entire unit, causing it to collapse.
As mentioned earlier, the missionaries seem to have steered clear of prohibiting or condemning the use of
ayahuasca
. This point gives hope in the face of absolute uncertainty. With the continued use of
ayahuasca
, the shamanic tradition - although diminished in strength - can remain in place. The continuing existence of shamans ensures that, for the time being at least, the ancient knowledge of medicinal plants is able to survive.
Further weakening of the community occurred in the early years of the 20th century. The Shuar peoples have been devastated by the white man’s introduction of Old World diseases, like whooping cough, measles, tuberculosis, venereal diseases such as gonhorrea, and so forth. Malaria, generally classified as an Old World affliction, has decimated Shuar numbers since the 16th century. In addition, the common cold has culled the Shuar’s numbers. The only positive factor in terms of population, is that the cessation of
tsantsa
raids has led to a reduction of death through warfare.
It is fortunate that a range of scholarly ethnographic studies were made of the tribe before the curse of change ravaged the Shuar lands. By far the best and most accurate published study is Michael Harner’s (1972). Many of the other works fell victim to the pitfalls of poor ethnographic research. However fascinating one finds the
tsantsa
tradition to be, it is a shame this one facet of Shuar life has been grasped by western observers virtually to the exclusion of all else.
Thankfully, the Shuar’s use of
ayahuasca
allows them to continue with their central belief: that the world is an illusion, and that only by taking the hallucinogen can they enter the
real
world. One wonders how this fundamental philosophy would change if
Banisteriopsis caapi
was prohibited by missionary groups in the region.
Until the 19th century, when explorers came searching for the head shrinking people, the tribe had been largely left alone since the initial Spanish incursions into the region. The Spanish, of course, had no interest in
tsantsas
or the Shuar. They were concerned only with finding gold. The tribe’s partial enslavement and subsequent rebellion, mentioned in the text, occurred in 1599. The size of the Spanish casualties may have been (in my opinion) grossly exaggerated. But, without doubt, the Shuar insurrection dissuaded the Spanish from exploring the area further. Harner (1972) notes that perhaps no other tribal people on the Latin continent has had so much written about them, with so little still known of them.
In traditional Shuar society every man, woman and child, was on constant guard, watching for raiding parties. The
tsantsa
raids were their
raison d’être
. They proved a warrior’s bravery and the community’s superiority. Feuding kept the tribe strong and alert. Like animals in the wild, those who were incapable of keeping up, were picked off.
A visitor was always in fear of being butchered. For this reason, guests would never enter another’s
maloca
, without being expressly invited to do so. And, even then, they would never travel to an acquaintance’s abode unarmed. A bowl of
masato
might be pushed aside, until the hostess - the woman who had prepared it - had taken a sip.
During the night the house would be barricaded against attack. Anyone wishing to defecate or urinate would do so within the house, and remove their waste in the morning. After reading the standard works on traditional Shuar society, I was surprised to see for myself the openness of the houses. There are no barricades now, nor are there watch-towers. People leave their
malocas
at night and wander freely through the village.
These days, when a man dies, he is buried in a cemetery area at the edge of the village. Traditionally the Shuar would bury dead members of the family (especially the head male) under the dirt floor of the house. In some cases, the
maloca
was then abandoned out of respect. The dead man was buried in a shallow grave, not more than about two and a half feet from the surface. If married, his widow would cut her hair short as a sign of mourning.
In cases where the house was to be abandoned because of its owner’s death, the body may have actually been interred in the house at ground level (the Kafirs of Nuristan had a similar tradition of above ground burials). The body would be inhumed in a
kann
(from which we derive our word ‘canoe’), a balsa wood coffin made from a hol-lowed-out log, erected on a scaffolding. Some of the
tsantsas
he had made during his lifetime may have been buried with the warrior. These would be placed in the small of his back. Also buried with him would be clothing, weapons and other artefacts and his monkey skin travelling bag. The tradition is almost identical to the Nazcan and Paracas funeral techniques, discussed in the text.
Many of the Shuar’s thatched
malocas
that I encountered were much like any other Upper Amazonian houses. The traditional oval design has been largely forsaken for a simpler open-sided square house. But
malocas
are still built on high ground, near a river, surrounded by a garden area. They tend now to face inward to a football field. Houses are of course communal, with one area belonging to the women, and one to the husband. With less polygamy (which is frowned on by missionaries) there is more commonly only one wife, and so the house is less often subdivided along gender lines.
In the past, in addition to barricades, there was frequently a secret passage leading to the jungle, for escape in times of attack. Houses were routinely abandoned after about ten years,- partly because the house would be rotting by then, and partly because the gardens would be overworked, and the hunting grounds depleted. With more permanent missionary-built schools, water tanks, churches and other communal buildings, villages are now less likely to be abandoned.
Until head-taking feuds were eliminated, houses had to be large enough to hold the
tsantsa
feast. Garden areas, growing
yuka
and other vegetables would also have to be big enough to grow sufficient food for the feasts.
The Shuar did not wage war to gain territory. Feuding was regarded as a means of taking as many heads as possible, or to capture women. Revenge would help to select the village targeted which, in all likelihood, would have made an attack of their own previously. A
kakaram
, a great warrior, would usually lead a warring party. To be considered a
kakaram
the man must have taken at least three or four heads. Before the raid, spies would be sent to stake out the enemy village. Men were recruited for the attack: usually about thirty took part. One problem of a warring party was that some of its warriors would invariably be the enemies of others. So parties were loosely arranged into pairs, mutual friends covering each other’s backs.
Warring groups would first combine forces to attack one or two houses in the enemy village, often setting the thatch alight to drive the occupants out. The enemy were butchered regardless of age or sex. If a man snatched a girl as a wife, she may well have been butchered en route home by the rest of the group, in order to make another
tsantsa
.
The world of the Shuar was based, as we have seen, on the premise that apparent reality is illusion. The importance of the soul to this premise cannot be over-emphasised. Only by understanding this complex idea, can one gain a rudimentary grasp of the working of traditional Shuar society. The belief was founded on the notion that one could enter the supernatural world by using
ayahuasca
, and acquire a soul there.
Three distinct types of soul could be acquired, known accordingly as
arutam, musiak
and
nekas wakani
. The soul depended on the person and his circumstance. Once someone had attained a single soul, he was immune to all murderous forces, such as sorcery, assassination and poisoning. However, he wasn’t immune to the scourge of contagious disease brought by the white man. But when he had acquired two souls he would be immune to even these Old World afflictions.
Nothing, traditionally, was so important to a Shuar man as acquiring an
arutam
soul. It ensured his survival. It was not so important for a woman, largely because females were not exposed to such danger during their lives. They did not take part in
tsantsa
raids. Harner (1972) asserts that an
arutam
soul was sought when a son was as young as six years. The child was taken by his father to a waterfall (considered as a sacred place), where he paced up and down, in the hope of attracting an
arutam
soul. The soul was thought to exist in the spray at the base of the waterfall. If, after several days the boy had not seen an
arutam
soul, he was given
datura, Brugmansia arborea
, juice. The father would take
datura
as well as giving it to his son to drink.
In the dream which followed, the seeker would behold a pair of creatures, two giant anacondas, jaguars or even a pair of fire-balls. Taking all his courage, he had to go up and touch one of the creatures. Once he had done this they would explode and disappear. He spent the first night on the river-bank. While sleeping there, the
arutam
soul would come to him as an old ancestor warrior. The soul entered the child and resided in his chest. Imbued with great self-confidence, the
arutam
soul would give him inner strength.
The
musiak
(the avenging soul) could only be acquired by someone already possessing an
arutam
soul. The
musiak
was only manifested when the possessor of an
arutam
soul was slain. The avenging soul seeped out of the dead warrior’s mouth, and set about avenging his death; ie killing the person who killed him. The Shuar believed that as the head-hunting expedition retreated, the slaughtered enemies’ souls hovered alongside the party. The only way to dispose of them, to deactivate them, was to turn them into
tsantsas
. This forced the avenging
musiaks
or souls into the shrunken heads.
One of the processes in making a
tsantsa
was to rub charcoal into the skin so as to blind the avenging soul. When the shrinking itself was concluded, three consecutive
tsantsa
feasts were held: at the end of which the
musiak
spirit would be expelled from the
tsantsa
and sent on its way.
In the confusion of a
tsantsa
raid, the warriors would have to hurry to remove heads as carefully as they could. With a knife, the victim’s skin was peeled back from the upper part of the chest, the shoulders and the back. Then the head was chopped as far down the neck as possible, close to the collar-bone, traditionally using a stone-edged axe. The warrior would remove his own headband and thread it through the neck and out of the mouth, making it easier to carry, slung over the shoulder. Heads had to be decapitated with great speed, as the
tsantsa
party was usually under attack at the time.