THE FOREST INDIANS 37 



seen in desert peoples. Though the forest that surrounds them 

 suggests plenty and the rivers the possibility of free movement 

 with easy intercourse, the struggle of life, as in the desert, is 

 against useless things. Travel in the desert is a conflict with heat 

 and aridity; but travel in the tropic forest is a struggle against 

 space, heat, and a superabundant and all but useless vegetation. 



The Machigangas are one of the subtribes of the Campas In- 

 dians, one of the most numerous groups in the Amazon Valley. It 

 is estimated that there are in all about 14,000 to 16,000 of them. 

 Each subtribe numbers from one to four thousand, and the terri- 

 tory they occupy extends from the limits of the last plantations — 

 for example, Eosalina in the Urubamba Valley — downstream be- 

 yond the edge of the plains. Among them three subtribes are still 

 hostile to the whites : the Cashibos, the Chonta Campas, and the 

 Campas Bravos. 



In certain cases the Cashibos are said to be anthropophagous, 

 in the belief that they will assume the strength and intellect of 

 those they eat. This group is also continuously at war with its 

 neighbors, goes naked, uses stone hatchets, as in ages past, be- 

 cause of its isolation and unfriendliness, and defends the entrances 

 to the tribal huts with dart and traps. The Cashibos are diminish- 

 ing in numbers and are now scattered through the valley of the 

 Gran Pajonal, the left bank of the Pachitea, and the Pampa del 

 Sacramento. 1 



The friendliest tribes live in the higher valley heads, where 

 they have constant communication with the whites. The use of the 

 bow and arrow has not, however, been discontinued among them, 

 in spite of the wide introduction of the old-fashioned muzzle-load- 

 ing shotgun, which they prize much more highly than the latest 

 rifle or breech-loading shotgun because of its simplicity and cheap- 



1 The Cashibos of the Pachitea are the tribe for whom the Piros besought Herndon 

 to produce " some great and infectious disease " which could be carried up the river 

 and let loose amongst them (Herndon, Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon, 

 Washington, 1854, Vol. 1, p. 196). This would-be artfulness suggests itself as some- 

 thing of a match against the cunning of the Cashibos whom rumor reports to imitate 

 the sounds of the forest animals with such skill as to betray into their hands the 

 hunters of other tribes (see von Tschudi, Travels in Peru During the Years 1838-1842, 

 translated from the German by Thomasina Ross, New York, 1849, p. 404). 



