A JIVARO WAR TROPHY 



Human Head artificially shrunken by the 

 Jivaro Indians. 



In the Museum of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences. 



The Jivaros, living upon the tributaries of the upper Amazon 

 in Ecuador and Northern Peru are savages of a low type, living 

 by hunting and by war, using for their arms lances and blow- 

 guns with poisoned arrows. They dry and preserve their 

 enemies' heads and also those of their own chiefs. An interest- 

 ing account of this is given in a letter from Frank G. Carpenter, 

 whose information was received at Lima, Peru, in 1913, from 

 Air. M. Bell Taylor of Boston, who had just returned from an 

 expedition down the eastern slopes of the Andes into the Amazon 

 Valley. He said, "After killing a man they cut his head off close 

 to the shoulders and as soon as they reach camp they open it and 

 take out the bones of the skull. The skin of the head is then 

 sewed together from the crown to the base of the neck. It is 

 now a kind of bag. This is filled with hot sand, but is kept as 

 far as possible in its original shape. It is pressed inward during 

 the drying, the sand being changed from time to time, until the 

 head is reduced to one- fourth or one-fifth the original size. 

 Before beginning the curing, the skin is painted with the juice 

 of the huito, a fruit that looks much like an aguacate pear. This 

 juice is a leather preserver. It is smeared over the head inside 

 and out. As the head grows smaller a stone of the shape of a 

 small skull is inserted and the skin is worked down upon it. This 

 stone regulates the size of the head when it is cured. It is taken 

 out before the skin has grown too hard, but after its features are 

 fixed. The head is then hung up over the fireplace and allowed 

 to cure in the smoke." 



Mr. Taylor describes the Jivaros as a well made, good looking, 

 superstitious people, who are polygamists, some of them having 

 seven or eight wives. Their population is kept down by fierce 

 family feuds. 



