ECUADOR HEAD-PEDLARS
By SYBIL VINCENT
" EXPLORERS in Ecuador never vanish," everyone tells you in Quito, " they just disappear for a time and then they return as shrunken heads to be sold to the tourists." It sounds a complete traveller's tale unless you happen to be in Ecuador. Then even the legend that always accompanies the first statement makes you think. It concerns an enter- prising young anthropologist who determined to make a name for himself by discovering the unknown process by which the Indians shrink a human head to the size of a medium grape fruit without taking out the skull, at the same time preserving the flesh indefinitely.
..He disappeared in the Oriente, unexplored eastern Ecuador, where the little-known Jivaro Indians who possess the secret live. A search party was organised, but looking for anyone in that endless jungle is a hopeless task. The party returned to Quito, and down the zig-zagging mountain railway to Guayaquil. They Were already on their boat ready to sail for England when a pedlar came on board with a collection of Ecuador's particular gifts for the tourist, llama hair rugs, iguana skins, gigantic stuffed frogs, and shrunken heads. They recognised their unfortunate friend by a peculiar scar.
Of course the innumerable shrunken heads I was offered in Ecuador may have all died natural deaths. It may merely be the Jivaro Indians' method of securing a legacy from beloved and much lamented relations. The tales of white heads may be untrue, but the shrinking process turns the light brown skinned Indians as black as a full blooded negro as well as altering the features somewhat. It would naturally do the same thing to a white man, and you could easily buy a long-lost friend as you sit at dinner in an otherwise civilised Quito hotel.
One could imagine strange things happening even along the ancient but little-used route over the high Andean passes from Colombia. For days up there a white face had been a rarity.. Something like ninety per cent. of Ecuador's popula- tion in developed regions alone is Indian, while nobody has any idea about the wild tribes. Everywhere along the route the Indians seemed completely cowed by four centuries of cruelty and semi-starvation. While they have every reason to detest anyone white, your head is perfectly safe. Still, in some of the isolated mountain villages where the men all wear the traditional pigtail, there were faces one prefers not to dream about. Not far from. where I had been live a tribe or tribes no white man has ever seen, but who from hiding places in the jungle have killed a dozen oil prospectors recently with well-aimed arrows.
You possibly think that you can stand up to the blandish- ments of curiosity sellers of every nation. You may have resisted fake scarabs in Egypt or tooled leather in Tangiers, but the chances are that you will still leave Ecuador with a head. I only escaped by an accident. Not only do the head- pedlars haunt every public place, they even follow you to your hotel bedroom. One day in Quito I had to stop in bed with a temperature. Three times I was awakened from a feverish doze by heads being thrust into my face. Enter- prising pedlars had entered noiselessly on bare feet. Turning the key in the curious old Spanish lock was an impossibility unless you had your full vigour.
This experience and the feverish nightmares that followed definitely put me off shrunken heads, but the night before I had nearly fallen for one as I sat in Quito's one night club. It was the head of a young girl, and her youthful charm had somehow survived the shrinking process. I might have fallen if the man with whom I was sitting had not just been telling me how he had once only just escaped a similar fate. This time the story is undoubtedly true. My friend is an accurate Englishman not given to enlargements. Some years ago, before he settled down to manage a large estate out there, he had done some exploring in the Oriente.
Part of the jungle he went through had never, as far as was known, been visited by a white man. One tribe he came to was more than unfriendly. He had almost given up hope when there was a consultation between the chief and his wise men. They demanded the white man's magic. A tradition had come down for centuries that white men had once visited them and performed a peculiar form of very powerful magic, my friend discovered with the aid of the few words of Indian dialect he knew. And the magic he also made out, was Christian baptism. It may have been sacrilege for a layman to perform the sacrament but it was a question of life or death. As reverently as possible he repeated what he could remember from the Prayer Book. The Indians were so impressed by the ceremony that they insisted upon the whole tribe numbering over three hundred being baptised, before they let my friend go. The only possible explanation of the story is that he had been following much the same route as Gonzolo Pizarro's great army that set out in 1541 to discover El Dorado. Deserted by Orellana, who, instead of bringing back provisions, preferred to be the Amazon's. first navigator and sail the famous ship built in the jungle to the Atlantic, only a tattered band returned to Quito. Lost parties may have wandered anywhere. At any rate my friend believes he owes his life to the zealous missionaries known to have accompanied the expedition, whom the Indians chanced to remember long after the rest of the Spaniards and their crimes had been forgotten.
After that story the girl's head appeared more sinister. Still it was interesting to note that in shrunken heads, like old-master portraits, attractive women fetch more than men. She cost over five pounds. You can get a genuine man's head for thirty shillings or two pounds. I say genuine because with shrunken heads like any other form of art there are fakes. Skin is stretched over a padded lamb's skull and hair grafted on which gives quite a good impression of shrunken human features. Still it is easy enough to tell these fakes if you look carefully and see the stitching where the skin has been sewn together down the back of the neck.
It is only fair to say that the Ecuadorian Government has passed a law forbidding the export of shrunken human heads, under penalty of a heavy fine. Curiosity shops in neighbouring republics never forget the smuggling danger when they try to sell you a head at treble Ecuadorian prices. All I can say is when entering Ecuador every piece of luggage I possessed was taken off the, car and thoroughly examined at three separate customs stations. When I left Guayaquil they only opened one bag. Even if that had contained a head and they had taken it away from me I could still have replaced it. A few minutes before we sailed my cabin door opened. There was a man with yet another selection of shrunken heads.
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