Photo by H. Pittier 

 GUAYMI HOUSE IN THE FOREST : NEAR BY IS A CLEARING, WHERE PLANTAINS, YAMS, 

 CASSAVA, AND OTHER EOODSTUEFS ARE GROWN (PAGE 642) 



put himself and his people under the 

 protection of the Colombian government. 

 He never reached the goal, however. 

 His adviser and interpreter having died 

 of smallpox at Honda, the frightened 

 old man turned in his tracks and suc- 

 cumbed to the same disease in Cartagena. 

 It was then that a serious blunder was 

 made by the new regime at Panama. 

 The hereditary successor of Inanaquina 

 was his nephew, Inapaquina, and follow- 

 ing the news of the former's demise, he 

 was effectively proclaimed as such and 

 acknowledged in most villages. The 

 Panamanian government, however, ig- 

 noring the respected tradition, appointed 

 as supreme authority on the whole coast 

 ■Charlie Robinson, a native of Nargana, 

 who as a child and young man had spent 

 many years in the United States and ful- 

 filled perhaps better than any other one 

 the desired conditions for the office, but 

 who, in the eye of the Indians, had no 

 right to it. 



This resulted in a splitting of the 

 community, the more conservative part 

 of which, from Playon Grande east- 

 ward, continued under Inapaquina and 

 the Colombian flag, while the Mandinga 

 Bay natives indifferently accepted the 

 rule of Robinson. Thus inopportune 

 intervention has resulted mainly in the 

 awakening among the majority of the 

 San Bias Indians of a warm feeling in 

 favor of Colombia. 



The often circulated reports of the 

 difficulty of penetrating into the territory 

 of the Cuna-Cuna are true only in part. 

 The backwoods aborigines, in the valleys 

 of the Bayano and Chucunaque rivers, 

 have nourished to this day their hatred 

 for all strangers, especially those of 

 Spanish blood. That feeling is not a 

 reasoned one : it is the instinctive distrust 

 of the savage for the unknown or unex- 

 plicable, intensified in this particular case 

 by the fear of reprisal for injury or 

 crime committed on several instances, 



646 



