weeks after we left Merced that we came to an Indian village beside a small stream. They were a subtribe of the Campas, I think, head-hunters of course, but friendly and peaceful enough. But as usual they didn’t have any too much food for their own use. Still, the chief agreed to trade, and all was going pretty well when Matson happened to see the shrunken head of a white man among the old chief’s trophies. He flew into a terrible rage, knocked the chief down, and seizing all the shrunken heads threw them into the fire. Then he declared he would take all the food in the village and pay nothing for it. For a space I thought there would be a fight, but instead, the Indians slunk off into the jungle and left their village to us.
I tried to conciliate Matson, pointed out that the head might have been there for years, that it might have been captured from some other tribe, and that, anyway, his high-handed actions could do us no good and in all probability would result in trouble; that the Campas would carry word of the incident to other tribes, and that even if they did not unite against us they would refuse to supply food. Matson merely laughed at me.
“You may know a whole lot about Indians—scientifically,” he said. “But you’re an ass when it comes to handling them. Beat ’em, kick ’em about, put the fear of God into ’em. I’ve manhandled a lot of ’em in my time and I know how to treat the devils. Think I’m afraid of a few lousy savages? Not much. And if they refuse to trade we’ll just help ourselves, see? Now I’m running this outfit, and if you don’t like the way I’m doing it, just turn around and hoof it back to Merced—or to some of your pet Indians.”
We stayed in the deserted village that night, had the first good meal we’d had in weeks, and no signs of the Indians. But the next day, as we were marching single-file through the forest, Biddle and McGuire were killed by poisoned blow gun darts, and Johnson, the surgeon of the party, was fatally wounded by an arrow; yet we never saw nor heard an Indian. That was the worst part of it. You know how it is. No sign of a human being; just the jungle, silent, green, steaming; all of it mysterious shadows with just a trickle of sunlight here and there; gigantic trees, great fantastic buttresses, twisted, twining vines; a tangle of lianas (vines) overhead, damp soggy earth under foot; perpetual twilight. And then a sharp startled cry and a tiny sliver of palm wood sticking in some one’s skin—and five minutes later, a dead man.
Cremation of the Victims—Foiling the
Head-Hunters
WHY they didn’t kill every one of our party is a mystery. Perhaps they thought they had evened scores, or maybe we got beyond their tribal limits before they had time to kill more of us. But I guess it was because we carried the dead men with us, so they couldn’t get the heads. We couldn’t bury them—eyes were watching us we knew, and the bodies would be dug up and mutilated the moment we left. So we carried them along until we came to an open space beside a river. The river bank was out of blow gun range from the forest, and we didn’t fear arrows very much, so we camped there. We didn’t intend to let the Campas get our friend’s heads, and we didn’t like the idea of sinking them in the river for the crocodiles to eat, so we decided to cremate them. We built a big fire and placed the bodies on it. Then Elwin read a burial service—he was a religious youngster—studied to be a parson, he told me—and always carried a Bible. Perhaps cremation is all right—when done properly in a crematory. But that funeral pyre was a nightmare. God, it makes me sick to think of it now! Every few moments the fire would slump down on one side and the bodies would slide off—blackened, scorched, the flesh dropping from the bones! Horrible! Ghastly! And we’d have to get hold of them—Lord, will I ever get the stench of burning flesh from my nostrils!—and put them back in the flames. But at last it was over. Only the ashes remained. And then we had to sit there through the night. We didn’t dare to sleep. We didn’t dare to let the fire go down. I can’t tell you how terrible it was. Sitting there with the black forest a few rods away, knowing lurking savages were watching, waiting, for a chance to put an end to one’s life with a poisoned dart, expecting every instant to feel the twinge of pain that meant swift, terrible death, imagining a creeping naked Indian in every flickering shadow, and with the odor of burned human flesh still in the smoke of the fire.
But morning came at last. And with daylight we found our Chunchos had gone. I couldn’t blame them for slipping away during the darkness, though how they ever managed it without some one seeing them is a mystery, I can’t explain. But, however, they did it, they were gone. And we were alone—twelve white men in the heart of the Gran Pajonal, with vindictive head-hunters in the jungle about us, with no supplies, no porters to carry what equipment we had, no doctor in case of illness or injury, no guides.
To have pushed on through the jungle would have been suicidal. Our only hope was to take to the river. It was wide enough so we would be safe from blowgun darts if we hugged the opposite shore. But we would have to build boats, or a raft. It would have been easy to have made woodskins, the name for canoes, if our Chunchos had been there and if the jungle hadn’t been filled with the Campas. But we couldn’t even approach the edge of the forest to cut trees without exposing ourselves to the darts. We talked it over for hours. Even Matson realized the predicament we were in, though he wouldn’t admit it was all his fault. At last we decided to try to swim the river, and if we made it, build some sort of a raft on the farther bank. Of course it was an awful risk. The stream swarmed with caymans (alligators). There were probably cannibal fish, and the current was swift. But it was better than staying there to starve or being shot down by poisoned darts.
