MEET A TRIBE OF JIVARO INDIANS

The Aucas and Aguarunas are blood kin. They are both Jivaros. They were both headhunters The Aguarunas would kill as quick as those Aucas killed those five missionaries in Ecuador.

Most men have more than one wife – sometimes as many as six or eight. The father lives in a large thatched roof house that looks to be about 30 feet wide and 60 feet long. The roof, made of palm leaves, reaches nearly to the ground to keep the rain from blowing in. The entrance is at either end. The doorway is only about four feet high. The opening has a board across the bottom to keep the pigs out. It is difficult for a six-foot gringo to get into one of their houses. You had better be certain you are welcome before you even attempt to enter. The Aguarunas don’t take to strangers.

At the foot of every bed is a fire for cooking. They place three logs end to end and where the logs meet they build their fire. To cool the fire down they pull the logs apart. To get more heat they push them together. Those fires never go out. There is no chimney. The house is filled with the smoke of 20 fires. You are aware of the darkness when you enter the low narrow doorway. It is not just the darkness of the black, smoke charred roof. It is an evil darkness. An Indian man never turns his back to anyone. They stand with their backs to the wall. They will not allow even their own brother to walk behind them. That is the evil darkness of heathenism. You sense the foreboding spirit in the way they treat their children. I have never seen a man pick up a little child and put her on his knee and tell me this is my daughter or granddaughter. I have seen a father kick a little child across the room as if she were a soccer ball.

Headhunting and head shrinking is a common practice. It not unusual to find a shrunken head in the home of a Jivaro Indian.

Their marriage customs were a cause of many killings. Before an Aguaruna girl is three years old she is already married and living with her husband. Yes, three years old. An Aguaruna man is supposed to marry a specific girl. He must marry the daughter of his father’s sister. A man who has seven or eight wives will soon have 40 or 50 babies. They don’t want those kids. They are not going to raise them. If the woman cannot abort that pregnancy they will kill many of those babies the day they are born.