cunaque and Bayano territo- 

 ries, gathering rubber as he 

 went along with his party. At 

 the headwaters of the Caiiaza 

 River he and his companions 

 were held up by the "bravos," 

 who contented themselves 

 with taking away the rubber 

 and part of the equipment, 

 and then let their prisoners go 

 with the warning not to come 

 again. 



The narrative of that expe- 

 dition was supplemented by 

 the reflection of an old man 

 among the hearers that 20 

 years ago none of the party 

 would have come out alive. 



Among the San Bias In- 

 dians, who are at a far higher 

 level of civilization, the exclu- 

 sion of aliens is the result of 

 well-founded political reasons. 

 Their respected traditions are 

 a long record of proud inde- 

 pendence ; they have main- 

 tained the purity of their race 

 and enjoyed freely for hun- 

 dreds of years every inch of 

 their territory. They feel that 

 the day the negro or the white 

 man acquires a foothold in 

 their midst these privileges 

 will become a thing of the 

 past. This is why, without 

 undue hostility to strangers, they dis- 

 courage their incursions. 



Their means of persuasion are ad- 

 justed to the importance of the intruder. 

 They do not hesitate to shoot at any ne- 

 gro of the near-by settlements poaching 

 on their cocoanuts or other products ; 

 the trader or any occasional visitor is 

 very seldom allowed to stay ashore at 

 night; the adventurers who try to go 

 prospecting into Indian territory are in- 

 variably caught and shipped back to the 

 next Panamanian port. 



To the war vessel anchoring close to 

 their coast they send a polite request to 

 leave, and when a high official of the 

 Isthmian Canal Commission asked to 

 buy the sand of Caledonia Bay, to be 

 nsed in the building of the Gatun locks, 

 he was courteously refused, with the 

 following reply from the old chief: 



Photo by H. Pittier 

 SAN BLAS WOMAN IN DAILY ATTIR^ 



"He who made this sand made it for 

 the Cuna-Cuna who live no longer, for 

 those who are here today, and also for 

 the ones to come. So it is not ours only 

 and we could not sell it." 



To judge by the density of the popu- 

 lation in the few villages visited by the 

 writer, the San Bias Cunas, who also 

 call themselves Tule, aggregate eight to 

 ten thousand on the stretch of coast 

 between Punta Escribanos and Cape 

 Tiburon. Excepting Bocas del Toro, no 

 other part of the Panamanian littoral is 

 so densely populated, and there is no 

 more orderly community in the whole 

 Republic. 



It is a great mistake to consider these 

 Indians as mere savages. At least one 

 man in every ten has traveled exten- 

 sively as a sailor and has seen more of 

 the world than the average Panamanian. 



649 



