TIEFFENTALLER
722
TIEFFENTALLER
the hair cut across the forehead and hanging down
full length behind. They wear armlets of bright-
coloured feathers and paint and tattoo their faces in
various patterns. They live by hunting and fishing,
and the preparation and sale of the curari poison,
here called from them the "Ticuna" poison, for use
upon blow-gun arrows. In this manufacture they are
recognized experts and hold the process a secret,
although it is known that Strychnos caslelneana and
Cocculus toxicofera are among the ingredients. The
poison is kept in
cane tubes or clay
pots of their mak-
ing, and is the chief
objectof intertribal
trade throughout
the upper Amazon
region. They also
gather the forest
I)roducts, as wax,
rubber, gum, and
sarsaparilla, for
sale to the traders.
They believe in a
good spirit, Nanu-
ola, and a dreaded
evil spirit, Locasi.
There is a sort of
circumcision and
baptismal cere-
mony in connexion
with the naming of
children. They are
!'i md of elaborate
masked dances.
(iirls on arriving at
puberty are closely
secluded for a long
period, terminat-
ing with a general
feast and drinking orgy, the liquor being the masato,
or chicha, prepared from chewed and fermented corn
or bananas. Wives are obtained by purchase. The
dead are buried in great earthen jars, together with
food and, in the case of a warrior, broken weapons,
the ceremony concluding with a drinking feast.
Some effort at the conversion of the Ticuna was made by the Portuguese Carmelites from Brazil about the middle of the eighteenth century, but without result, owing to the Indian dread of the Portuguese slave-hunters. About 1760 the Jesuit Father Fran- ciscus, of the neighbouring mission of San Ignacio among the Peva, friends and allies of the Ticuna, succeeded in gathering some of the latter into a new mission village which he called Nuestra Senora de Loreto (now Loreto, Peru), one of the "lower mis- sions" of the Jesuit province of Mainas. At the time of the expulsion of the Jesuits in 17GS it was in charge of Father Segundo del Castillo and contained 700 souls, being one of the largest of the province. After the withdrawal of the Jesuits the missions were given over to the Franciscans, under whom the work was continued until interrupted by the long Revolu- tionary struggle beginning in 1810. Under the new republican government the missions were neglected and rapidly declined, but the Christian Ticuna are still served by resident priests at Loreto and Taba- tinga, including the auxiliary villages. Marcoy gives a vocabulary of the language.
From the American officer, Lieut. Herndon, we have the following interesting account (condensed) of the Ticuna mission village of Caballococha near Loreto, as he found it in 18.51: "The village is situated on the amn (river inlet), about a mile and a half from the entrance and at the same distance from the lake. It contains 275 inhabitants, mostly Ticu- nas Indians. These are darker than the generality
From :i Narrative of the Lxplo
of Smyth and Lowe, published i
of the Indians of the Maranon, though not so dark
as the Marubos, and they are beardless, which frees
them from the negro look that these last have. Their
houses are generally plastered with mud inside, and
are far neater looking and more comfortable than the
other Indian residences that I have seen. This is
however entirely owing to the activity and energy of
the jiriest. Father Flores, who seems to have them in
excellent order. They are now building a church for
him, which will be the finest in the Montana (forest
region). The men are all decently clad in frocks and
trousers; and the women, besides the usual roll of
cotton cloth around the loins, wear a short tunic
covering the breast. Father Flores keeps the Indians
at work, sees that they keep themselves and houses
clean, and the streets of the village in order, and I saw
none of the abominable drinking and dancing with
which the other Indians invariably wind up the Sun-
day. " Through the kindness of leather Flores he
was able to witness a heathen incantation over a sick
man. On approaching the house they heard a num-
ber of persons singing inside, and, says Herndon, "I
was almost enchanted myself. I never heard such
tones, and think that even instrumental music could
not be made to equal them. I have frequently been
astonished at the power of the Indians to mock ani-
mals, but I had heard nothing like this before. The
tones were so low, so faint, so guttural, and at the
same time so sweet and clear, that I could scarcely
believe they came from human throats, and they '
seemed fitting sounds in which to address spirits of
another world." When they entered, the singers
fled, and they found only two men sitting by a fire
of blazing copal gum, filling an earthen pot with the
juice of chewed tobacco, and plainly showing by their
manner that the ceremony was not intended
for strangers.
Brinton. American Race (New York, 1891); C.\STELN.in,
Expedition dans V Amerique du Sud (6 vols., Paris, 1850-1) ;
Chantre y Herrera, Historia de las Misiones de la Compafiia de Jesus en el Maranon Espafiol (written before 1801) (Madrid, 1901) ; Hehndox. Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon (Wash- ington. 1S.>1); Marcoy, Voyage d travers V Amerique du Sud (2 vols.. Paris, 1869); von Martius, Ethnographic und Sprachen- kunde Amerikas. I (Leipzig, 1867); Raimoxdi, El Peru, II (Lima, 1876); Idem, Apuntes sobre la provincia litoral de Loreto (Lima, 1862) ; Markham, Tribes in the Valley of the Amazon in Jour. Anthrop. Institute. XXIV (London, 1S95).
James Mooney.
Tiefientaller, Joseph, Jesuit missionary and note<l geographer in Hindustan, b. at Bozen in the Tyrol, 27 August, 1710; d. at Lucknow, 5 July, 178.5. He entered the Society of Jesus 9 October, 1729, and went in 1740 to the East Indian mission where he occupied various positions, chiefly in the empire of the Great Mogul. After the suppression of the So- ciety he remained in India, and on his death was buried in the mission cemetery at Agra, where his tombstone still stands. He was a fine scholar with an unusual talent for languages; besides his native tongue he understood Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Hindustani, Arabic, Persian, and Sanscrit. He was the first European who wrote an exact description of Hindustan. A brief list of his works is the best proof of his extraordinary power of work and his varied scholarship.
In geography, he wrote a "Descriptio Indiae", that is a circumstantial description of the twenty-two provinces of India, of its cities, fortresses, and the most important smaller towns, together with an exact statement of geographical positions, calculated by means of a simple quadrant. The work also contains a large number of mai)s, |)lans, and sketches drawn by liimself, and the list of geographical positions fills twenty-one ((uarto pages. He also prepareil a large book of m;ips on the basin of the (ianges, entitled: "Cur.sus Oanga> fluvi Indiip maximi, inde Priaga seu Elahbado Calcuttam usque o])e acus magnet ica? ex- ploratus at que litteris mandatus a J. T, S. J." (1765).
