ABSTRACT
The practice of shrinking a decapitated head to the size of a fist or large orange appears first in the literature among the Spanish accounts dating from the 16th century expeditions into South America. Although head hunting has been practised in many parts of the world, head shrinking appears to be confined to the 25 000 square miles between latitudes 2°–5° and longitudes 76°–79° in South America. This dense tropical jungle, supplied by the Tigre, Pastaza, Morona, Marañon, and Santiago rivers, forms part of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil. The gold-bearing waters of the Santiago attracted the Portuguese and Spaniards, who finally established cities in this land of the Jivaro or Jebero (hé vä Rô) Indians. The repeated cruelties of the conquerors resulted in revolts, which, by 1599, destroyed the Spanish rule, and thereafter made the governors despair of subjugating these savages—and to ask for help from the missionaries. For 150 years, these devoted churchmen were sent to preach and explore—and were usually murdered by the very savages they came to humanise. The final insurrection occurred when the Jivaros were required to bring gold tributes for the coronation of Phillip III. The rebels overcame the garrison, bound the governor, and, having melted down the gold they had brought, they poured the molten gold inside his mouth ‘and his bowels burst within him’. As late as the mid 1920s, the Jivaros were still attacking Peruvian garrisons on the fringes of their lands. Most of their fighting, however, was intertribal, carried out for plunder and for revenge. Among the items prized were the women of the enemy, and it is remarkable how readily they accepted and were accepted by the very groups which slaughtered their husbands.
