be pretty horrible—although nothing compared to what I'd been through. But it wasn't. Not half as bad as the dissections in a medical school. The Indians don't just chop off the heads. First they make a V-shaped incision in their victim's body, with the point of the V just above the navel, and extending up and over the shoulders and around the neck. Then they peel off the triangular flap of skin until the neck is exposed and sever it neatly between the cervical vertebrae. Then they turn the skin inside out, like stripping off a glove, as far as it will go. Did you ever try your hand at taxidermy—at skinning birds for specimens? I thought so. Then you know how it is when you skin a duck or a woodpecker—how you have to make a cut through the skin at the back of the head in order to get the skin over the skull. It's the same with a human head. When the skin is off the Indians soak it in a sort of tanning solution made of bark and leaves. That stops the hair from falling out and cures the skin. While it's soaking in this, the head-shrinker collects a lot of round stones of various sizes, and some coarse sand, and places them in a fire. After two or three hours he takes the head from the liquid, lets it drain, through the slit in the back of the scalp and turns the skin right side out.
Then he sews the lips together or skewers them in place with little slivers of palm wood, and taking the largest of the hot stones he drops it into the skin through the neck-opening. Then he keeps moving the head about, turning it this way and that, rolling it back and forth, so that the hot stone comes into contact with all parts of the skin. It steams and smokes and stinks of burned leather, and the head begins to shrink and toughen as it dries. When the first stone cools off the Indian dumps it out and puts in a smaller stone. He keeps this up, using smaller and smaller stones as the head shrinks, and all the time moulding the nose, lips and features to keep their shape.
I had always supposed it was a long process—that it took weeks, months to shrink a head. But it doesn't. The whole process requires only about thirty-six hours, and the head shrinks to its permanent size in a few hours. When it is reduced to the limit of the stones, the hot sand is used, the flap of skin is tied over the neck opening, and the head is hung up in the smoke of a fire to blacken and cure.
There's a lot of ceremony about all this. It has to be done in a special sort of hut at a distance from the village—so the spirits of the heads won't hide in the houses—and the head-shrinkers have to live alone in the medicine-hut and watch the heads until they are finished. There isn't anything very strange or remarkable or mysterious about shrinking heads—I could do it myself and make a better job of it than the Jivarros. Of course you know that they shrink animals' heads also—mostly sloths and monkeys. They believe they are descended from sloths, so when they kill one they shrink its head as a sort of honor—like keeping the head of one's ancestor on the parlor mantel. Sometimes they even shrink the entire bodies of their enemies. I never could find out just why they do that. It’s a big job—and messy—and takes a lot of time and trouble. I think they do it just as a stunt—to show their skill and prove what they can do in the shrinking line.
Appearance of the Shrunken Heads
They're repulsive-looking things—like the dead bodies of grotesque hairy dwarfs, for of course the hair doesn't shrink and the skin looks actually wooly.
But I saw one trophy that was really beautiful. Don't laugh. It was the head and upper portion of the torso of a young woman. The features had been perfectly preserved. And it hadn't been smoked black like the heads—just a deep rich brown. Looked as if sculptured from some rich dark wood. It was a unique thing—Lord what a specimen for a museum—and I asked about it. The Indians regarded it as a great fetish, for the woman had been a real Amazon, a female warrior, who had led her tribe to battle and had a bigger collection of heads than any chief in the Pajonal.
But I'm getting off the track again. All this is an old story to you. Well, after the head-shrinking ceremonies were over, and the village settled down to a normal existence again, I talked to the chief. He was a crafty rascal and I could see that he wanted my rifle. But he was honest. He could have killed me or had me killed any time, and could have taken my gun and my head at the same time. But he didn't. He wanted to trade for it. And the only thing that I wanted was to get to the settlements, so I promised to give him the rifle if he would send some of his men to guide me out. He was willing to agree to that, but he had had dealings with white men and didn't trust them. He was frank about it, too. Told me he couldn't feel sure I'd stick to my bargain. That after I reached the white men's villages I might not send back the gun, and insisted on having it handed over before I left. Anyway, I decided, I wouldn't need the rifle if I had the Indians with me. There wouldn't be any necessity of my shooting game, and if we should run into hostile Indians shooting would only make matters worse. Besides, I didn't have many cartridges left. I had to smile when I though of that. After he had used up the ammunition the gun wouldn't be much use to the chief. But he didn't want it to use as a weapon—just as a sort of sceptre or talisman. Well, the upshot of it all was that I agreed. And I thought it the best bargain any man ever made.
I started off with two Indians—the same two who had found me asleep. I thought all my troubles were over, that in ten days or so I would be back among white men. Everything went well for the first two or three days. The Indians carried food—dried meat and fish, manioc meal, corn, and they had an uncanny
