Blond Indians of the Darien Jungle

Blond Indians of the Darien Jungle

from The World's Work magazine, march 1925. Digitized by Doug Frizzle, Feb. 2014.

A Legend of Centuries Brought to Reality by the Discovery of a Tribe of Indians as White as. Ourselves, and Speaking a Language Related to Ancient Sanskrit. They May Be Descendants of the Early Norwegians

BY R. O. MARSH

TWO years ago, in the jungle of Darien, at a little frontier settlement named Yavisa. I was bargaining with the Negroid Indian chief of the village for a crew to take me up t he Chucunaque River, when I saw three Indian girls appear from behind a hut, cross the village street, and disappear behind another hut on the other side. My sensations were those that a scientist would have if he were melting some lead and saw it suddenly change into gold, for I had as unexpectedly seen a legend of centuries become a reality before my eyes. These girls had white skin and golden yellow hair!

That was my first view of the now famous White Indians. A year later, following a second expedition, I came out of the same jungle, having seen four hundred of them, and bringing back to civilization two boys and a girl as living specimens for the scientists to study. For the last six months they have lived part of the time at my camp in Canada and part of the time in a home in Washington, D. C. where government experts and scientists in anthropology, biology, and genetics have been trying. to decide whether they are biological "mutations” from brown Indians or are descendants of Norwegians who came to America long before Columbus's voyage. When this article is published, I shall be in that region again, with several of these scientists, equipped to study these strange phenomena in their native land, and to explore their country, where they promise me we shall find stone ruins of cities their ancestors inhabited.

My astonishment at my first view of White Indians may be better imagined when I explain that Yavisa is at the head of navigation of the Chucunaque River in Darien, or Eastern Panama, and the farthest outpost of anything like civilization. in an unexplored tropical wilderness. Yavisa is peopled by Negroid Indian half-breeds, and is a trading post to which "tame" jungle Indians come to barter. The only white men that ever visit the place are a very occasional trader, or, as in my case, an engineer looking for rubber. I had as little reason to expect to see a white woman in Yavisa as David Livingstone would have had to meet Queen Victoria in equatorial Africa. And I had seen three! And savages, at that; for they wore only loin cloths, and stepped the jungle path with the free, natural grace of the Indian.

They had come and gone so quickly that I had only the one glimpse of them. But that glimpse was enough to excite my eager interest, for the legend of the White Indians is as old as American history, and in twenty years as a civil engineer, practising my profession up and down both hemispheres. I had heard it on many occasions and in many lands from frontiersmen and natives. Columbus himself declared that he had seen them. Cortez found a hundred of them imprisoned in Montezuma's palace in Mexico City and venerated as "the children of the sun." Vancouver saw them on Vancouver Island in 1792, and Commander Stiles of our own Navy claimed to have seen the remnants of the same group in 1848. Humboldt saw about a hundred White Indians in Colombia.

STRANGERS MAY NOT ENTER

BUT like every one else. I did not really believe in White Indians. I attributed the stories to hallucination, or to the mistaking of albinoes or half-breeds for really white people. But the girls I had seen were not, I was convinced, any of these. I have seen thousands of half-breeds, of many mixtures, and there is an unmistakable something about them that reveals their hybrid origin. These girls gave no such impression. I asked the village chief about them, and he told me they lived in a hut outside his village, with a man of the same appearance. They did not mingle with his people, and he explained that no one would dare molest them, for fear of the vengeance of their tribe. They came, he said, from far inland, up the Chucunaque River, where no Negro or tame Indian dared to go, for the savages there had forbidden it and were warriors of such prowess that their edict was respected. No white man, even, had ever gone into that country and returned. A detachment of the Panamanian army had tried it and had been exterminated. The White Indians were a numerous tribe, he added, and were allies of the savage Wallas, Mortis, and Cunas Bravos.

I resolved to call upon the strangers. I followed the path the chief indicated, and in half a mile came on a little clearing, in which was a pole-and-palm hut. with its floor several feet above the ground and its "doorsteps" a log with notches cut in it for a foothold in ascending to the entrance. After much calling in English and Spanish, the three girls appeared; and after many signs of my good intentions, they ventured to the ground and accepted the present of a handful of freshly minted ten-cent pieces. They let me look at their golden locks closely enough for me to be certain they were not dyed, and I was equally sure that the whiteness of their skin was not an artificial calcine. Their eyes were not black, but a light brown, proving that they were not the usual kind of Indian, nor, on the other hand, albinoes either. It was growing dusk, but I managed to get some snapshots of them. They spoke neither English nor Spanish.

Returning to the boat, in which I had come from Panama to Yavisa, I told my two comrades of my find, but found them unimpressed. I might think what I pleased, but no White Indians for them. My invitation to join me in a visit to the clearing after dinner, to call on the man of the family, was greeted with emphatic refusal. I might go and get myself killed if I liked. And, indeed, their judgment on that point was better than mine. I went to the hut in the moonlight and called, and the man came out, not to greet me but to rush into the jungle. A little reflection convinced me that he would probably circle behind me and put an arrow into my back, so I lost no time in returning to the boat, no wiser than I had left.

BEAUTY OF PHYSIQUE

THE next morning, we made a one-day journey up the river beyond Yavisa. By noon we had come into a region that promised to disclose just such a valley of rubber lands as I had dreamed was there. I urged my companions to go farther. But they had had enough of jungles, and we turned back.

And, then, rounding a bend in the Chucunaque, we came head-on upon the most startling apparition I have ever seen. A canoe came toward us, and in the bow stood a naked savage with a white body, whose yellow hair, falling to his shoulders, was held in order by a gold chaplet two inches wide encircling his head at the brow. He was of medium height, but magnificently developed about the chest and arms; and he stood as erect as a king. Behind him were a girl of ten and a boy of four, and in the stem his wife wielded a steering paddle. Not one of the four gave a start when they came suddenly upon us, and the man and woman did not vary a heart-beat in the rhythm of their strokes as they plied the canoe to pass directly by us. The man eyed us with a truly regal pride and disdain, and passed us by without troubling to turn his head to see whether or not we intended to follow. His whole manner said more plainly than words: "I am king here; what are you doing in my domain?"

This uncanny vision settled any doubts my companions had about exploring further. The tales of the Negroid chief, about the savages upstream, had been given a most startling confirmation. They had seen enough. "We are no jungle rats." they exclaimed, "and we didn't come down here to get ourselves struck in the back with a poisoned arrow. Our business is law and rubber. There's neither here, and we're going home—to-night!"

And homeward we headed. It was a bitter disappointment to me to have my Panama rubber lands remain undiscovered, after such an incomplete exploration. And my disappointment was doubled at my inability to follow the trail of the White Indians who, I now felt sure, were no mirage of fanciful pioneers but a scientific fact.

I lingered in Panama after my companions had gone on to the States. I told my friends in the Canal Zone Government about my White Indians, and I got the incredulous sympathy usually paid to a respected citizen who has gone a little off his head. They all believed that I honestly thought I had seen them, but they thought it was cither "a touch o' sun" or that I had seen albinoes or half-breeds. The only exception to the chorus of doubt was General Babbitt, of our Military Service at the Zone. He said he was inclined to believe me, because one of his aviators had brought back a similar story. Lost in a fog bank south of the Canal, this flier had swung low to get his bearings and had come out of the cloud right above a big village in the jungle, and had seen dozens of white savages scurry to cover when this roaring monster from the skies had emerged into their sight. The General had always doubted the aviator's story until be heard mine confirm it.

A SCIENTIFIC SEARCH

RETURNING to the States, I interested new capital in a second expedition—the backers of my first one were polite but skeptical. I was now determined not only to prove that there were good rubber lands in Darien, but also that there were White Indians there. I am not a scientist, and I did not intend to have the credibility of this discovery rest upon my own unscientific observations. I therefore made the following proposition in identical terms to the University of Rochester, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian Institution: "If you will detail a scientist to accompany me on a thorough trip of exploration of interior Darien. I will deposit cash to your credit, before I start, sufficient to pay his salary and expenses for the entire time we are gone, and you will pay him yourselves from this fund. He will then be solely responsible to you. Furthermore. I will guarantee that he may leave the party at any moment that he feels the results of the trip do not justify him in continuing, or if he feels that any deception is being practiced."

All three institutions declared that this was a proposal that could not be refined. Especially so, because Darien is a sort of "missing link" in the scientists' knowledge of American fauna and flora. The animal and vegetable life of North and Central America is sharply differentiated from the corresponding life of South America, and scientists have long hoped that unexplored Darien would some day reveal the transitional forms that would bridge this gap in natural history. The University of Rochester, therefore, detailed Prof. H. L. Fairchild, to study the geology and biology of this region; the American Museum of Natural History sent Dr. C. M. Breeder, to study the snakes, fish, and invertebrates; and the Smithsonian Institution sent Prof. J. U. Baer, to study the men and apes from the viewpoint of the trained anthropologist.

I secured also the cooperation of the War Department and the Department of Commerce at Washington, the Canal Zone Administration, and the Panama Government. These connections added to my party Major Omer Malsbury, topographer; Major H. B. Johnson, naturalist; Lieutenants Townsend and Rosebaum; and Dr. Raoul Brin, botanist and soil expert, detailed by President Porras of Panama. I took along also a newspaperman, and Mr. Charles Charlton, representing the Pathé motion picture people. Altogether, my party numbered eleven whites and thirteen Negro laborers obtained at Panama.

The War Department placed at my disposal two airplanes, with which I made a reconnaissance flight from Panama City, ascending the Bayano River to its headwaters, and descending the Chucunaque River to a point near its mouth. In less than one day I covered in the air more territory than the expedition later covered in four months through the jungle. I traveled in the first plane as pathfinder, and the second plane followed about half a mile in the rear. When I saw something I wished to base photographed. I got my pilot to sweep low and circle over the spot, which was a signal for the second plane, containing the photographer, to follow our example and take the pictures. An army topographer, in my plane, made notes of the geography of the country as we raced along. In this way we got a very fair record of the mountain ranges and water systems of the whole region.

The first fruit of this flight delighted me very much, for it proved my surmise about the nature of the interior to be correct. There were two mountain ranges, one paralleling the Atlantic coastline and the other the Pacific. Between them lay a level valley, twenty-five miles wide and nearly one hundred and fifty miles long.

But I was even more excited by the evidences of human habitations of a much higher type than those of any Indians I had ever seen before. Time after time we would see a village below us, not a few huts carelessly huddled together but many dwellings set in orderly rows upon a geometric pattern and dominated by a great communal house big enough to foregather all the hundreds of inhabitants of the village. Some of these tribal assembly places were built on hillsides, so that they were in effect three stories high. In several villages, the inhabitants appeared much fairer than Indians I had known; though we never got a close view of them, for when we swooped from a thousand feet to two hundred above ground, they disappeared like gophers into their holes, going doubtless into the jungle to escape this fearsome apparition from the skies. Months later. I talked to inhabitants of these villages, whose recollection of my aèrial visit was still a fresh memory of terror.

A HAZARDOUS JOURNEY

I SHALL only sketch the long, disheartening, toilsome journey that led at the very end to the White Indians. We made friends with the Chocoi Indians near Yavisa, and learned much about their customs. We also learned that our coming on this second expedition had been broadcast by word of mouth throughout the interior, and that we should be opposed at every step of the way. The reason for this antagonism is a high tribute to the character of the Indians. Except for the Chocois themselves, all the tribes of Darien are monogamous, and they have, besides, quite the highest standard of sexual morality I have encountered anywhere in the world. When I say this, I do not except the white men of the United States. These savages rigidly apply the "single standard" of morals, and the only punishment for infidelity is death. Proof, or even reasonable circumstantial evidence of it, is invariably followed by the punishment. The result is that the offense is very rarely given. The story that had preceded us into the jungle was that we were coming to kidnap their women; and the opposition that dogged us all the way through the country was based on this report. After we left the friendly and polygamous Chocoi, no member of our party saw a single native woman until after we had reached the Atlantic Coast, and then only after all but three of us had gone on back to Panama and I had proved to the head chief that I was genuinely interested in the welfare of his people.

After we left Yavisa for our plunge into the jungle, we were subjected to continual surveillance of the most trying kinds. Every night our ears were filled with weird forest cries from upstream and below—whistlings that we mistook for bird-calls until we observed that they came in mathematical combinations which clearly proved their human origin and that they were signals between unseen observers. In the morning, we would find their footprints on the river banks, and we would also find wild turkey feathers stuck in patterns in the mud, as witchcraft magic to hinder our progress.

At the mouth of the Tuquesa River, we surprised a party of Cunas Bravos who had camped there to ambush us, and of whom we had received warning from a friendly Chocoi chief.

DEATH IN THE EXPEDITION

THEN we had sickness to contend with, Dr. Brin got malaria and I sent him back to Yavisa with one canoe and its crew. He returned to Panama and died the day after his arrival. Farther upstream, Dr. Baer was infected by flies that bit his arm after they had settled on a tumor in a monkey he was disecting. We were now too far inland to send him back, and for weeks his sufferings were a drain on our sympathies and his helpless weight an additional burden to be carried across portages in the tropical heat. Often the shallow water and the fallen tree trunks across the stream made travel so difficult that two miles was a hard day's journey. Our difficulties daily increased. and our store of supplies fell lower. When we pitched camp at the mouth of the Sucubti River, we decided that we must strike across the mountains to the Atlantic Coast and end our travels as soon as possible. We established relations with a native sub-chief, who spoke English. His one anxiety was to get us out of the country. If we had not been so heavily armed, we learned afterward. we should have been rushed and massacred; but the natives knew every detail of our equipment, even to the dynamite we carried, and were afraid to try it. He guaranteed safe conduct to the coast if we would promise to leave. I sent a scouting party of three men under native escort, to the coast to explore the trail and to telegraph Panama for medical aid and supplies. One of these men deserted at the coast. The others came back, and led us over the trail. Dr. Baer died soon after we sighted salt water. The Government ordered the soldiers with me back to the Zone, and I was left at Caledonia Bay with only Charlton and Johnson. Not one White Indian had we seen, and we were regarded with suspicion and hatred by the natives. Except that I had pretty well assured myself that the interior was suitable for rubber plantations, and that Dr. Baer's and Dr. Breeder’s researches had been productive, the expedition was a pretty sad wreck.

But from this point on, the luck turned. I had learned from the sub-chief of the Sucubti that all the tribes of Darien held allegiance to a head chief whose title, in their language, is Ina Paguina. He is the latest of a long line of hereditary overlords who have ruled the country as feudal chiefs for many centuries. His seat of government is at Sasardi, an island on the San Blas coast. I got word to him that I wanted an audience with him. This was arranged, and accompanied by Charlton and Johnson. I sailed over to his island.

CONVINCING THE HEAD CHIEF

THROUGH an interpreter, he asked me why I had come to his country. I determined to drop all effort to be diplomatic and to try the effect of blunt frankness. I told him that I had come to look for rubber lands in the interior and that I had been opposed at every step. I told him I was the friend of his people and would treat them fairly, but that he was mistaken in trying to keep the white men out of his country, because when they got ready to come nothing could stop them.

I had learned to admire the high intelligence and character of his people, and if he would cooperate with me in the scientific work I wanted to do, I would do my best at Panama and Washington to have his country set apart as an inviolate home of the Indians, under the protection of America and Panama. He liked my frankness, and explained why I had been opposed. The Panama Government had seized some of his islands nearest the Zone, and had instituted "schools” and local "government.” under Negroid police supervision, that were really cloaks to enslave the men and debauch the women. He resented the degradation of his people, and he and they had resolved that all white and black men were evil and to fight their coming to the death.

After long negotiations, he became convinced of my good faith, and called a congress of his chieftains to discuss my plan for an Indian sanctuary. The chieftains came from all parts of the Atlantic coast of Darien, and I was astonished to learn of the high level of political organization they had achieved. Not only did they have an hereditary feudal government, but courts of law with a recognized code of precedents. Every tribe also sent at least one young man forth to see the world, and these youths had traveled as sailors to New York, San Francisco, London, and some of them, around the world. The Ina Paguina even had a secret service in the City of Panama that kept him advised of the intentions of the Panamanian Government toward his people. He knew all about the progress of the white men in the arts of war and peace, and had foreseen the approach of the day when his own domain would face exploitation and his people the common fate of the Indian. The congress of chiefs approved my plan to enlist aid for the preservation of their country.

Then I asked to see the White Indians. At first they denied their existence, but I proved to them that I knew better. I also explained their scientific importance, and their value in creating American interest in all the Indians, by their demonstration of the reality of the links connecting the Indian to the white man by the ties of blood. This argument won them, and word was sent out to bring them in.

OUT OF THEIR FASTNESSES

WHITE Indians now appeared, to see us by the score. They came from the mountains of the San Blas coast, from the interior, and some even from the islands themselves. Within a few weeks I had seen four hundred of them—men, women, and children. I talked to them through interpreters, photographed them with the motion picture camera, examined them carefully and assured myself that they were neither painted nor dyed, and learned a good deal about their customs, local status, and biological character. Like all the Indians of the San Blas coast, brown as well as white, they proved far superior in intelligence and character to any other Indians had ever encountered, either in North or South America, and not excepting the Pueblos of our own Southwest. Their civilization was far more advanced, and their political practices, ethical standards, and practical arts more perfected. Their treatment of women and children alone would set them apart. I never saw a woman or child among them who did not look happy. They speak of their women as "flowers," and their manner toward them is as gentle and considerate as one would expect from that poetical idea. When I persuaded an old chief to be photographed, he insisted that I wait till his little granddaughter could be brought to stand with him, and the picture of his affectionate pride in her and of her happiness to be beside him would do credit to the heart of any people in the world.

The White Indians occupy a peculiar status among their brown kinsmen. They are as proud and war-like as the San Blas themselves, and they maintain their feudal independence with as savage fearlessness. Both races try hard to maintain the integrity of the racial strains. Where propinquity over-rides the racial barrier and a White Indian marries a Brown Indian, the children are light brown and the grandchildren sometimes are white and sometimes are brown—apparently following the Mendelian Law of inheritance in this respect, by which the normal expectation would be that one child in two of such a union would be white, if any occur at all. But at the age of puberty, the white children of these mixed unions are required to go to the tribe of their white parent and are there raised as White Indians, while the brown children are raised with the brown tribe. This practice explains why the White Indians have persisted down the ages as a homogeneous white race in the midst of the overwhelming preponderance of reds and yellows and browns that numerically dominated the Western Hemisphere.

In the next article I shall deal more at length with the fact that the White Indians have always dominated the other Indians intellectually, and have created all the real civilizations that flourished in prehistoric times in Mexico, Central America, Peru, and Brazil. Incidentally, these Indians speak a language which, I am told, is closely related to the ancient Sanskrit.

In appearance, the White Indians duplicate the characteristics of the three I first saw at Yavisa. Their skin is a true white, and shows the pink glow of the blood beneath, as no pigmented skin of any colored race does. Their hair is literally the yellow of yellow gold. It would give a wrong impression to describe it as red or as tow. It is the true blond of the northern Caucasian. Their eyes are hazel, which means that they show light brown on a blue ground.

These positive characteristics dispose of the old theory that they are albinoes. The eyes of albinoes are pink, because they have no pigment in the iris or retina, and consequently the blood in the capillaries of the retina shows through. The hair of albinoes is white, because here again all pigment is absent.

One characteristic of the White Indians does immediately suggest the albino. This is the squinting of the eyes. But any American who has traveled our own Western deserts knows how quickly he himself adopts this habit to protect his eyes from the glare of the unclouded sun. And in the tropics, the actinic rays, which provoke the irritation of the eye nerves that causes this habit, are much more intense than they are in Arizona. Even a black-eyed Caucasian finds them distressing, even when he wears a helmet. It is no cause for surprise, then, that the hazel-eyed White Indians, living near the Equator and going about bare-headed, should develop a drooped head and a squint of the eyes to protect them from the sun. When I took my three specimen White Indian children to Canada last summer, they soon got rid of the habit and showed no more evidence of it than do the natives of Canada.

VISITORS TO AMERICA

FOLLOWING the congress of Indian chiefs on my plan to help them form an Indian sanctuary, they provided me with three children to bring back to America for scientific study. These are a girl of sixteen and two boys of ten and fourteen. They provided also an adult couple of brown Indians to act as their guardians, an English-speaking San Blas Indian to act as interpreter, and two leading young chiefs. This is the party I brought back with me to Washington. The Ina Paguina himself planned to come, but the Panamanian Government refused him a passport on the ground that his resistance to the "pacification" of the San Blas islands made him legally an outlaw.

Next month I shall have a second article in the WORLD'S WORK. In that I shall describe the language and traditions and music of the San Blas Indians, and the reasons for the two theories the scientists advance to explain their origin.

I shall also describe more fully my plan to persuade the American Government to acquire by purchase the territory occupied by the White Indians, the San Blas, the Cunas Bravos, the Mortis, and the Wallas, and to have it set aside as a permanent and inviolate sanctuary for these remnants of the most advanced aborigines of the Western Hemisphere. Their lands are of little industrial value, so that no loss to the economic progress of the world will be entailed by segregating them from exploitation. These Indians, on the other hand, offer the most promising field yet opened up for finding the answers to two of the most fascinating mysteries of science: first, how white men evolved from the primeval brown race, and second, what the facts are behind the still undeciphered remains of at least two great white-influenced civilizations that once flourished in our continents, the early Mayan of Central America and the Pre-Incan of Peru. It behooves us to keep intact these few tribes whose culture marks them as probably the only remaining inheritors of the traditions that can unravel the mystery. If, as now seems possible, we can work out the answer through a study of them, we shall be able largely to write the authentic story of those prehistoric Americans, who wrote hieroglyphics as complex as the Egyptian, who were astronomers of the first order, who built walled cities, practiced mummification, performed delicate surgical operations on the skull, had a systematic science of pharmacy, originated the use of quinine, cocaine, valerian, and a dozen other standard drugs, wrought gold into beautiful ornaments, cut and polished and wore diamonds and other precious stones, and altogether were a people of as high development as were the ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians.

WHITE INDIANS with YELLOW HAIR

While he was bargaining with a native chief in the Darien jungle, R. O. Marsh had his first astounded glimpse of a white skinned girl with golden hair, an Indian girl. Half incredulous, yet hopeful, he headed an expedition to confirm the legend of centuries. In the following pages are his photographs.

Sorry about the quality of the images; it was the best I could do with my sources. There are more stories about the White Indians on this blog; use the search tools. I will be adding Marsh's second story about these Indians at a later date; it's on order!/drf

Indians of Panama 1927

Panama of Today was published first in 1927. It is essentially a revision of Panama, Past and Present, dated 1921. The major differences being the addition of many new pictures and chapters. Those include: 7-Cristobal and the Canal Zone; 10-Through the Interior by Motor Car; 14-The Indians of Panama. There appear to have been six issues of these books.

It is apparent that the chapter on Indians of Panama is based on Verrill's research notes from the Museum of the American Indian. The photographs are by the author as are the paintings which may also have been intended for MAI before Verrill's fateful dismissal from his ethnological research assignment. MAI became branch of the Smithsonian Institute, titled the National Museum of the American Indian./drf

The Indians of Panama

Chapter XIV from Panama of Today, 1927.

by A. Hyatt Verrill

Prehistoric inhabitants. Remains. Ancient cultures. The Garden of Eden of America. Indians of Balboa’s day. Indians of today. Number of tribes. Languages. Relationships. The San Blas tribes. The Kunas or Chuçunaques Juarros. The Chokois. The Coclé Indians. The Yalientes or Boorabbis. The Shayshans. The Tisingal mine. The Guaymís. Aztec influence or blood. The Bogenahs.

To many persons, the aborigines of Panama are one of its most interesting features. That the Isthmus has been inhabited for countless thousands of years and was, perhaps, the birthplace of prehistoric American civilizations, makes the present-day Indians all the more interesting, both from a popular and a scientific viewpoint.

Throughout Panama, vestiges of a vast population of historic races are found, and as these are obviously of many different races and cultures, and of many distinct periods, we know that the Isthmus was inhabited for countless centuries, and that the prehistoric inhabitants reached a high state of culture in Panama long before the Mayas, the Aztecs or the Incas.

In Chiriqui and elsewhere are countless graves or “guacas,” as I have mentioned in a previous chapter, and the stone work and the pottery, as well as the golden ornaments found in these, show a high degree of artistic and cultural development. In Veraguas, a wholly distinct culture and a different race existed, while in Coclé prehistoric Panamanian culture attained its highest development. Strangely enough, very little in the way of prehistoric remains have been found further east and south than Coclé, and apparently the entire areas now known as Panama and Colon provinces were uninhabited by cultured races. Who the long dead races were, whence they came or what their fate, we cannot state positively. In certain ways some of their arts show a marked similarity to both Mexican and South American cultures, but the bulk of the material is wholly distinct. No one can yet say definitely whether the more northerly and southerly peoples influenced those of Panama or whether the better known civilizations of Central and South America had their beginnings in Panama. But recent discoveries in archeology, made by the author in Panama, seem to indicate that Panama may have been the Garden of Eden of America, the spot where the most ancient inhabitants of middle America had their beginning, and, developing a high state of culture, migrated north and south and laid the foundations for the highly advanced civilizations of Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia and Peru.

Unfortunately, the prehistoric races of Panama left no hieroglyphs, no inscriptions that can be deciphered, and they left no great stone buildings or pyramids as far as known. What we learn of them, we must learn from studying their carvings, their ceramics, their graves, their implements and the massive stone monuments they left.

And we have little more in the way of reliable records regarding the Indians of Panama when the Spaniards first arrived on the Isthmus. The Dons were far more interested in looting the natives and destroying them than in studying their customs, relationships and languages. Here and there, in the old writings, we find mention of certain tribes; some of their dialects were recorded, and occasionally some priest or more scientifically inclined person recorded items of interest regarding the Indians. But as a whole, the Spaniards looked upon the natives as inferior pagans and either enslaved them or slaughtered them at every turn. Of the several hundred tribes which inhabited the Isthmus in the early Spanish days, over one-half were completely exterminated within a quarter of a century, and today only those remain who managed to hold their own against the Europeans and who maintained their tribal independence.

Later, came the buccaneers, and these Englishmen, finding the Indians ready allies in any attempt against the hated Spaniards, always treated the aborigines well and were friendly with them. Moreover, among the wild and lawless corsairs were many men of education and scientific attainments. Such men as Esquemeling, Wafer, Ringrose, and more especially Dampier, the buccaneer naturalist, left long and accurate accounts of the Indians of their day, and from these we know that many of the tribes have changed but very little in customs, language or life since the days of the buccaneers.

But despite the efforts of the Dons to exterminate the Indians, despite four hundred years of Spanish and Spanish-American dominion, there are still fully one hundred thousand Indians of pure blood within the Republic of Panama.

To most people this will come as a distinct surprise, and it is still more surprising to learn that there are at least fifteen distinct tribes living on the Isthmus, many of them as primitive, as aloof and as wild as in the days of Balboa.

Of all the Panama Indians the best known and the ones about which the greatest amount of misinformation has been circulated are the so-called San Blas. In Colon especially, one hears hair-raising tales about these people. It is said that they never allow a stranger to pass a night within their territory, and that they kill all outsiders who attempt to penetrate their district. One writer has gone so far as to describe the San Blas Indians as maintaining a constant vigil about their country with sentries posted on guard with Mauser rifles. Another wrote a book and many magazine articles relating the most thrilling experiences and hairbreadth escapes encountered in visiting these Indians, while still another tried to convince the public, and scientists as well, that among the San Blas was a huge colony of “white” Indians. As a matter of fact the San Blas are a peaceful, semi-civilized (and many wholly civilized), people who dwell upon the islands and the adjacent mainland of the San Blas gulf, and who are in constant communication with Panamanians and Americans. They visit Colon regularly, and a number may always be seen about the streets of that city. There are trading stations on the islands; a large banana estate is in the heart of the San Blas district, and a large proportion of the Indian men have served on American whaling and merchant ships and on vessels of all nations.

The majority speak English more fluently than Spanish, and many are equally proficient in other tongues. Indeed, one Indian whom I employed had traveled all over the world and spoke at least ten European languages. Many have resided in New York and elsewhere in the United States, and, with few exceptions, they welcome visitors and have no objection to any one staying a day or a week among them. In fact many of the islands are model up-to-date settlements with straight, well-kept streets which are cleaned and swept daily, with village improvement societies, club houses dance halls, schools, street lights, phonographs and all other appurtenances and ideas of civilization. And it is a common thing for parties from Colon, Cristobal and Panama to visit the Indians and secure curios, souvenirs, photographs etc. During a recent carnival at Colon I saw two San Blas chiefs with their wives and children driving about in an automobile and thoroughly enjoying the merrymaking, which, it must be confessed, savored far more of primitive savagery than any of the customs of these Indians. And today, scores of San Blas boys and girls are attending the various schools in Panama City and are proving the most intelligent and ambitious of scholars.

Strictly speaking, there is no San Blas tribe. The Indians so-called belong to the Towali, or as it is sometimes called, Tule, confederation made up of the four sub-tribes of the Kuna race. The four sub-tribes are the Kunas, the true Towalis, the Tupi-towalis and the Tegualas. Although, through intermarriage and admixtures, there is no hard and fast line drawn between the four, and in one settlement representatives of all may be found, still certain islands and certain districts are occupied wholly by one or another of the sub-tribes. So, too, all speak and understand the common Towali tongue, although the Kunas adhere to their own dialect among themselves, and the older people of the various sub-tribes still retain a knowledge of their own original tongues. The emblem of the confederation is a four pointed star, each point representing one of the tribes and its relative position, the Kunas to the south, the Tupi-towalis to the east, the Towalis to the north and the Tegualas to the west.

In many customs and habits the four subtribes vary considerably, and, with few exceptions, all the tribesmen still retain their ancient rites, dances, decorations and traditions. At dances they wear feather crowns, elaborate bead, bone, teeth and other decorations, and paint their faces as in days of long ago. The medicine man or “Lele” still holds sway and is regarded with implicit belief and faith, and the various wooden and terra cotta idols or fetishes are still used. These, however, are not worshiped or regarded as sacred, but are merely proxies which, under certain conditions, are supposed to have the power of taking the place of living persons, becoming, so to speak, possessed of a spirit. Thus a so-called “god” placed at the doorway of a hut is supposed to keep guard and prevent unwelcome persons or evil spirits from entering during the owner’s absence. Likewise, a medicine man visiting a patient will place a wooden image under the sick person’s hammock so that it will act in the doctor’s stead until he comes again. And if an image proves inefficient the Indian does not hesitate to chop it to bits or to mutilate it and make another to take its place.

The men, when not attending dances or ceremonials, dress in conventional trousers, ready-made shirts, or more often shirts of San Blas make with tucks at shoulders and sleeves and chest, and for head gear don straw or palm-leaf hats many sizes too small for them. A battered Derby is a great favorite, but no matter what the head gear, the San Blas prefers to have a hat that balances precariously on the top of his occiput. No doubt this is a relic of old days when the feather crown was the universal headdress of the Indians, for the feather crown invariably perches on the top of the head. When at home, the men also wear huge diskshaped or crescent-shaped earrings of thin gold. The women, however, still adhere tenaciously to their national costumes,—except on the thoroughly civilized islands, which is far more picturesque and attractive than any European dress. The costume consists of a loose smock-like blouse or “mola” of brilliant hued cloth beautifully fashioned in elaborate designs in a sort of appliqué work, or rather, one might say, intaglio. In making these, a number of layers of vari-colored cloths are stitched together. The patterns or designs are then cut away through one, two or more layers, thus exposing the colors beneath, and the edges hemmed down with stitches so fine as to be scarcely visible. The patterns are more or less heraldic although so conventionalized as to be scarcely recognizable, the central motif representing the totem or clan mark of the woman’s family. Often, too, all manner of odd patterns will be embodied in the design. Arabic and Roman numerals, letters of the alphabet, Chinese characters, airplanes or, in fact, anything that strikes the maker’s fancy. The sewing on these molas is so fine and even that it seems incredible that it is all hand work. But, more remarkable still, the sewing is all done at night by the uncertain light of flickering oil dips.

In addition to the mola a short knee-length, skirt-like garment is worn consisting of a hand-dyed and stamped strip of heavy cotton cloth wrapped about the thighs. When fully dressed, or when not working, the woman wears a second strip of gaudy cotton or calico wrapped about the hips and falling to the ankles and exactly like the sarong of the Javanese. About the neck are draped dozens of strings of beads, shells, teeth, fishbones and coins; immense gold disks are worn in the ears; a heavy gold nose ring of triangular shape hangs over the upper lip, and a brilliant red and yellow bandana handkerchief is draped, in Egyptian fashion, over the head and shoulders, while legs and arms are tightly bound with ligatures of beads so wound on as to form elaborate patterns of many colors.

Among some of the sub-tribes the women’s hair is close cropped when married, whereas among others it is worn long through life. In all cases, the woman rules among the San Blas tribes. She is law unto herself; even the chiefs have little control over the female members of the community; all descent is by the female line, and mere man amounts to very little. When a man marries he is virtually the slave of his father-in-law until a female child is born of the union, and I knew one old fellow nearly sixty years of age who was still working for his father-in-law, for although he had half a dozen boys no girl had arrived in the family. Moreover, a man owns practically nothing outright. All his possessions are, legally, so to say, the property of his wife or mother, and he cannot trade or sell them without feminine permission. For students of the woman suffrage and feminine emancipation problems, the San Blas offer a remarkable field for investigation.

Although today peaceful and quiet, desiring only to be left to themselves and to work out their own problems and salvation in their own way, yet in times past the Towali tribes were fierce and savage fighters. They are of Carib stock, and, like all the Caribs, were noted for their warlike tendencies, their superb skill in building and using boats (they are still marvelous sailors, especially in small craft) and their cannibalism. Indeed, the nose rings of the women are survivals of the old cannibal days.

In ancient times, when these Indians raided another tribe, the men were killed, and usually eaten, while the younger women were carried away as prisoners. In order to handle their captives more readily and yet not hinder their movements, the prisoners’ noses were pierced and they were strung together like unruly bulls. In this way the pierced nose became the mark of an alien woman in the tribe, and it was but a step to the nose ring, which, originally a badge of servitude, later became a mark of distinction, for from slaves the women became rulers. Very probably the San Blas women originally possessed a distinct dialect unintelligible to the men, as do the women of other Carib tribes, but today this no longer exists. In the San Blas tribes the early buccaneers found ready allies, for the Indians, who had suffered at the hands of the Spaniards, were ready to join anyone who might help them wipe out old scores against the Dons. To the Indians’ help, much of the buccaneers’ success was due, and without their aid many of the most famous piratical exploits on the Isthmus would have been impossible.

Even today, the San Blas people cherish anything but friendly feelings for the Panamanians or any race of Spanish blood. Several uprisings have occurred, usually, I am sorry to say, due to the overbearing or short-sighted policy of the Panama government, while the last revolt was incited and fostered by an ill-advised and wholly irresponsible American who was later deported, and the unfortunate misunderstanding, during which several Panamanians were tortured and killed, was smoothed out without further bloodshed. At the commencement of this trouble I was conversing with a Teguala chief who was in some doubt as to the wisdom of joining forces with the malcontents and came to Panama City to ask my advice. His reply to my query as to why the Indians were about to rise was as amazing as it was amusing. “We don’t want to be civilized,” he stated. “We want to live like Americans!"

Why, it may be asked, have so many tales been told of these Indians if they are so well known and so closely in touch with civilization? All the misinformation and fiction circulated about the San Blas are due to the popular confusion of these people with their relatives the Kunas. Although so closely related, and members of the same confederation, yet the true Kunas of the Interior of Darien are very different in customs, temperament and life. But even among the Kunas there is a vast amount of variation. The so-called “tame” Kunas dwell in harmony with their neighbors, and are as friendly and peaceful as the Towalis or Tegualas, whereas their neighbors the “wild” Kunas of the upper Canazas and Chucunaque valleys are aloof, semi-savage and do not welcome visitors, either white, black or colored. But they are not one-half as dangerous or as savage as they have been painted.

Their so called “forbidden district” is more of a myth than a reality, and there is no evidence to prove that they have ever killed or injured a white man, although strangers entering their territory are warned off and are threatened. No one with any sense of justice can blame the Indians for this, for wherever civilized man has entered Indian territory the Indians have suffered and have lost all. Very wisely the Kunas have decided that to permit one white man to enter their land means the entry of more, and they have no intention of letting gold and rubber seekers exploit their country and destroy their independence, their lives and their moral code. But once their confidence has been won, and they are sure the stranger seeks neither gold, lands nor other riches, they are friendly, hospitable and peaceful. Moreover, like all Indians I have met, once they are friends they are friends for all time. During the past year, while in Panama, three of the Kuna chiefs from the headwaters of the Chucunaque journeyed all the way to Panama City to see me, having heard of my presence through San Blas tribesmen whom I had visited. Constant communication is maintained between the Kunas and the San Blas tribes, and in the homes of the most remote Kunas one may see sewing machines, alarm clocks, and other articles of civilization which have been brought in by the San Blas. Indeed, several of the San Blas chiefs are also high officials of the Kuna tribe, while Kunas of the Chucunaque are not infrequently to be seen among the Indians of the San Blas villages, for it is a short, and, for an Indian, an easy journey from the coast to the Kuna country.

In color, the Kunas are lighter than the average San Blas tribes, although the latter vary from a coppery brown to a pale olive, according to tribe, and many of the women, and especially the young girls, are no darker than a brunette Caucasian, a fact that was noticed and dwelt upon by Dampier, Ringrose and others. The Kunas also average taller and are better proportioned than the coast Indians, which is to be expected as forest tribes are usually larger than seacoast tribes. Also, among the Kunas and San Blas, as among their neighbors and all Central and South American Indians I have studied, albinos are not unusual.

It is probable that the percentage of these freaks is no greater among these tribes than among others, but owing to conditions and customs they appear to be more numerous. Today, albinos among these tribes are not destroyed at birth, if indeed they ever were, and, in the case of the island Indians, the albinos are more in evidence as every individual of a settlement or village may be seen by a visitor. But that anyone at all familiar with biology or with Indians could ever have been deluded into mistaking these abnormal beings for a distinct race seems preposterous. Brown fathers and mothers may have tow-headed, white-skinned, partially albino children, and they are most repulsive freaks. Owing to lack of pigment in the skin they do not tan but burn in patches or blotches; their eyes are weak and squinting, their skins are rough and pimply and they may be best described in the words of one observer who stated that they resembled “peroxide Swedes with barber’s itch.”

Not far from the Kuna country, and even wilder and more feared by the natives than these tribesmen, are the Juarros, a nomadic, brown-skinned tribe of which very little is known. They are in no way related to the Kunas, the San Blas or the Chokois, and speak a dialect wholly distinct from all other Panama tribes. They are strictly a hunting race, use extremely long blow guns and powerful bows and arrows and have seldom been seen by white men. Three individuals whom I met in the jungle, were peaceful but shy. But they gladly exchanged a blow gun, a bow and arrows and a feather headdress for beads and tobacco. They could not or would not give much information regarding their homes or their habits, stating merely that they were on a hunting trip, and that their country was somewhere about the headwaters of the Savanna River.

Most numerous of all the Darien tribes of the interior are the Chokois, a good natured, peaceful brown race which extends far into Colombia and in Panama has spread as far westward as the lower Bayano River. Though even more in contact with civilization than the Kunas, yet the Chokois in many respects are far more primitive. Both men and women are practically nude, the men wearing merely a breech doth, or at times a ragged shirt, and the women a strip of calico about the waist and falling to the knees. To the visitor who has never seen primitive savages at home the Chokois will prove most interesting, especially as their villages are easy of access and they welcome strangers. Short, thickset, with slender limbs and wonderfully developed chests and shoulders; with coarse hair falling to their shoulders; with brown skins painted; with huge earrings of beaten silver, the Chokois completely fulfill one’s ideal of the primitive Indian. But nearly all speak Spanish, they have adopted most of civilized man’s vices, and they are far from over cleanly in habits or persons. Their houses, raised on posts ten feet or more above the earth, are reached by notched logs, and their home life is of the simplest. Scattered about, or hung on rafters, are baskets, earthen pots, dried corn and bundles of rice, and rolls of the soft bark cloth which the Indians use as beds and blankets. Squatted on the split cane floors are the women, cow-eyed, stupid-faced, and surrounded by their naked youngsters. In one corner of the hut a slow fire burns and beside it an ancient, shriveled hag cooks food in a huge earthen pot. Fastened to posts, standing in corners and tucked into crevices of the thatch, are queer figures carved from wood and gayly painted, the household gods or fetishes of the Indians. There are gods for everything; gods of the hunt, of crops, of the house, of the children, of the dance, of fertility, of weather, of sickness, of health and of marriage. But it is when a dance or a feast is in progress or preparation that the Chokois are seen at their best. Then they are decked out to rival Solomon in all his glory and the lilies of the field as well. Fathoms of bright colored beads are draped over their shoulders and across their breasts; broad belts of beadwork encircle their bodies; gaudy bead head bands are about their black hair; on their heads are immense crowns of painted wood or bamboo strips; their arms and legs are weighted down with silver ornaments; necklets of mother-of-pearl and silver are about their throats, and their skins are painted with every color of the rainbow.

In sharp contrast to these primitive tribes of Darien are the Coclé Indians of the province of Coclé. Of a very different race from either the Chokois or the San Blas tribes, the Coclé Indians are the most highly civilized of all Panama tribes, despite the fact that for years they fought relentlessly against Spain and managed to hold their own at that. Today, as I have already mentioned in another chapter, they have forgotten their own tongue and live in a far more civilized manner than their Panamanian neighbors. They are the most industrious inhabitants of the province and the only ones who till the soil, raise crops and gather rubber and other forest products. All profess Christianity, but they still retain some of their ancient beliefs and customs. They weave excellent hats, baskets and “chakaras” or bags, make bridles, saddle-pads and ropes of fiber and horsehair, manufacture splendid baskets and earthenware, and are adepts at wood carving. Once a year they don weird dance costumes of bark cloth with grotesque masks fitted with horns and the jaws and teeth of wild animals, and take part in the tribal “Kukwa” or devil dance. This dance, which has its counterparts in Peru, Boliva and elsewhere in South America, is supposed to exorcise all evil spirits for the ensuing year. The idea seems to be to out-devil the devil, to frighten him and his satellites by the dancer’s horrible appearance, and to drive out any lingering spirits by beating and lashing everything animate and inanimate wherein the spirits might have sought refuge.

Prancing and shouting, waving their arms, striking to right and left with long-handled whips, the dancers are truly enough to put any self-respecting devil to flight. And, oddly enough, the Coclé Indians have selected the Catholic feast day of Corpus Christi as the most propitious date for their devil chasing, thinking no doubt that no devil could withstand both their antics and the Christian Holy Day.

Further west and north, in Bocas del Toro province, and especially about the shores of Almirante Bay and the Valiente Peninsular, are the so-called Valiente Indians, or more properly the Boorabbis. These Indians, while still retaining their tribal integrity and independence, as well as their ancient customs and their own tongue, are partially civilized and are quiet, peaceful and industrious. They dwell in neat huts placed here and there in the jungles near the shores of bays and rivers, and live mainly by hunting and fishing, though all raise enough fruits, vegetables, rice, etc., for their needs. They belong to the Guaymí race, but differ in many ways from the true Guaymís and are wholly distinct from the Darien tribes. Ordinarily both men and women dress in more or less conventional clothes, though the dresses of the women are usually typically Indian in gaudy colors and ornamentation. But at dances, ceremonials, and when among themselves, the men wear feather headdresses and beautifully woven bead collars and breast ornaments, as well as plumes on arms, necklaces of teeth, girdles of human hair and numerous charms or fetishes. Both sexes paint their faces, the tribal mark being a line extending from the cheek to the bridge of the nose on both sides of the face, and both sexes sharpen their teeth. This custom, common to many tribes, is supposed to preserve the teeth. Perhaps it does, for the sharpened teeth prevent particles of food lodging between them and causing decay, and I have observed many very old Indians whose sharp-pointed teeth were in perfect condition. The teeth are not, however, filed to points, as is usually thought, but are chipped off by means of a stone and are then rubbed or filed smooth. In color, the Boorabbis are a light ochre, the women often pale olive, and they are better proportioned and larger than the San Blas tribes.

They make excellent dug-out boats, use cleverly designed harpoons and fish spears, as well as powerful bows and arrows, but do not use knowledge of English and adopted English names. And throughout the years that have passed, the Indians have handed down their knowledge of English and their English names with many if not all the old-time obsolete words and expressions. And to this district also, came many of the refugees from the ill-fated Walker filibustering expedition to Nicaragua. Settling among the friendly, English speaking Indians, these American adventurers also left their influence. Once, in a remote spot, I came upon an aged woman, apparently white, living, except for her servants, alone in a tiny but neat house in a clearing in the jungle. She spoke perfect English, and to my amazement informed me that she was Mrs. Smith and an American. Inquiry elicited the information that her grandfather had been one of Walker’s men and that the family had never left the little farm and home he had established in the jungle.

Besides the Borrabbis, another and wholly different tribe dwells within the confines of Bocas del Toro. These Indians whose territory is about the head waters of the rivers along the Costa Rican boundary, are the Shayshans, also known as Palenques or Terribis. Formerly a large tribe, the Shayshans, at the time I visited them in 1924, had been decimated by influenza, and the tribe then numbered but forty-five individuals. As nearly all of these were suffering from the malady, or from tuberculosis which followed in its wake, the tribe may by now be practically extinct. The Shayshans are very different in every respect from all other Panama tribes. Many words of their tongue are distinctly Maya, their feather headdresses, worn on the forehead, are very similar to the headdresses depicted in Maya sculptures, and their noses are strongly aquiline.

Perhaps they are of Maya ancestry, or again the tribe may have been greatly influenced by the Mayas who had outlying colonies as far southward as Costa Rica. In color the Shayshans are copper-brown, varying to ochre-brown in the women. They are short, sturdy but well proportioned race, far quieter and more taciturn than the other tribes, and, in many ways far more intelligent than the average Central American Indian. They are strictly a forest dwelling people, their neat houses raised a few feet above the earth being built here and there on high bluffs near the mountain streams. They are ruled by a chief or cacique who appoints a number of ministers or councillors, each representing the chief in a certain district, and all records, accounts and other data are kept by means of knotted strings. Although excellent hunters, using powerful bows and arrows, and blow guns in which clay pellets are used in place of darts, yet they depend largely upon forest fruits and vegetables for food. A wild potato, dwarf bananas, the nuts and flowers of the “piva” palm, native almonds, cacao and some corn and rice are their mainstays. In preparing cacao, the beans are roasted and ground and are boiled, the liquor being used like coffee. Their arts are comparatively few and their handicraft is rather crude. Baskets, chakara bags and some pottery, as well as grass or palm hammocks, are made, and they possess a wide variety of cleverly designed flutes, thistles and other musical instruments. Nearly all of the tribe speak some Spanish, and, with few exceptions, all wear, at ordinary times, clothing obtained through trade with the Indians nearer the Bocas del Toro or Costa Rican settlements.

They are a friendly, peaceful, hospitable race, although in times past they were valiant fighters, and they strongly discourage strangers who wish to penetrate the interior of their district. Rumor has it that this is because they know the location of the famous lost Tisingal Mine and do not wish to have it rediscovered.

This ancient mine was, if we are to believe the old records, the richest gold mine the world has ever known. Having been destroyed by the Indian slaves, who revolted and massacred their Spanish masters, the Tisingal has been lost to man, and almost to memory, for centuries. Time and time again, some wanderer has reported finding it, and expedition after expedition has gone forth to locate it. But in every case they have failed. Some have been destroyed by sickness and some by hostile Indians. Some have never been heard from, and the lost mine still remains hidden deep within the mountain forests. Whether or not the Shayshans know the secret of Tisingal, I cannot state. But, during my stay among these Indians, a chief who had become very friendly guided me far into the jungles to a spot where there were the ruins of an ancient Spanish fort, a paved road and two antique bronze cannons half buried in the earth. These, he insisted, were the outlying fortifications that guarded the old mine. But he insisted that the “Doraks,” whom I later suspected were synonymous with the Shayshans, would destroy any stranger who attempted to locate Tisingal. How much of this was truth and how much fiction or imagination I do not know, but I am thoroughly convinced that I was nearer to Tisingal than any other white man has ever been and that I really looked upon the Spanish guns that once guarded the fabulously rich mine.

By far the most independent, the most superior and the least known of all Panama tribes are the mountain Guaymís of the unexplored interior of Chiriqui province.

Although the Guaymís of the outlying Indian district are in constant communication with the Panamanian settlements, and are familiar figures in David, Remedios, Tole and other towns, which they visit for the purpose of disposing of their wonderful pita-hemp bags, their coffee and their other products, yet their fellow tribesmen of the interior mountains are almost unknown to the outside world. Few strangers have ever attempted to enter far into their territory, and tales wilder than those related of the San Blas and Kunas are told of these mountain Indians. Weird stories are told of cities of strange people buried in the heart of the mountains, of head hunters, of cannibals, and of how the Guaymís kill all who have the temerity to try to enter the Indian zone. The majority of such tales are, of course, purely imaginary, but there is no doubt that the average stranger is far from welcome, and that many men have been warned out of the country with threats of dire results if the warnings were not heeded. Within the past few years a party of ornithologists from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City were driven out of the Guaymí district when, after having received permission to enter, a member of the party was seen panning the sand in a stream. Suspecting that the bird collecting was merely a ruse to enter the country, and that the Americans were really searching for gold, the Indians promptly took measures to insure the strangers’ hurried departure.

During my stay of many weeks among the Guaymís of the most remote and inaccessible districts I found them a splendid lot, far superior in every way to all other Central American Indians I have met, and in many ways much like our own southwestern tribes. Being strictly mountain Indians, and wholly unfamiliar with boats, and possessing excellent horses, the Guaymís are muscular, well built and proportioned and are tireless mountaineers.

They are dignified in manner and have the erect, free and independent appearance of an unconquered race. In color they vary from a dark olive to an ochre-brown, but average lighter-skinned than the other Panama tribes.

Like the Boorabbis, who are of the same parent stock, the Guaymís sharpen their teeth. In many other habits and customs the two tribes are similar, and there is constant communication between the two tribes, although each speaks a distinct dialect. Both tribes take part in the stick-dance or “balsaria,” and many of the headdresses and other adornments are common to both tribes; but aside from such similarities the two are wholly distinct. There are no Guaymí villages, the houses being isolated and often several days’ travel apart, and as they are usually well hidden in the mountains it is difficult to believe that there are fully twenty-five thousand Guaymís under the rule of the three head chiefs, each of whom is supreme in his own district, although all the tribe and the two lesser chiefs acknowledge the sovereignty of the king or high-chief known as Montezuma. This name in itself would suggest either Aztec blood or Aztec influence. But, in addition, about forty per cent of Guaymí words are distinctly Aztec; the insignia of the chief is the feather crown of the long green tail feathers of the Quetzal,—sacred bird of the Aztecs, and the spear throwing-stick still used by the Guaymís, and which, among the Aztecs was called “Atlatl,” is known by the Guaymís as " 'Natdlei." Personally I am convinced that the Guaymís are of Aztec lineage, perhaps the descendants of an ancient Aztec colony or outpost.

The Guaymí houses are strongly built with walls of split timber and high peaked roofs of thick grass thatch, and are very large, often over sixty feet in length by thirty feet in width. Along one or more of the walls are a number of small platforms raised a few feet from the floor and partitioned or screened off by palm mats. Each of these is occupied by a family or an individual, so that the main building is, in effect, an apartment house and may contain as many as thirty or forty Indians. Unlike most Indians, the Guaymís are cleanly and enforce sanitary regulations. The houses are always built in such a position as to prevent drainage from reaching the drinking water supply, and all washing and bathing are done below the point where the drinking water is obtained and down stream from it.

No domestic animals, except the dogs, are allowed in the houses; the earth floors are swept and cleaned constantly; food and water are kept in receptacles on platforms or suspended from hooks overhead and out of reach of dirt and dogs, and latrines are maintained at some distance from the house.

Ordinarily the women wear loose Mother-Hubbard-like dresses of bright colored cloth obtained through trade with the Boorabbis or with the outlying Guaymís, and decorated with appliqué designs in contrasting colors. The men wear short blouse-like shirts of the gaudiest hues elaborately decorated with appliqué work; and trousers of home-spun cotton or cloth with red, white, blue, green and yellow appliqué designs down the seams of the legs. Both sexes, however, strip to a loin cloth when traveling in rainy weather or when in their homes, and both sexes at times wear palm-leaf hats closely woven in attractive designs of black and white. About the crowns of these, bands of feathers are worn, thus giving the effect of a feather crown. As a matter of fact, the Guaymí hat is a direct evolution from the feather crown, for, by adding a top, the palm-leaf framework of the crown became a hat. Very often, too, the band of feathers is worn without the framework, and for certain dances and ceremonials this is always the case. Although feathers of various colors and of many species of birds are used, those of the great egret and the Quetzal or resplendent trogan are confined to the use of chiefs, the Quetzal feathers indicating a tribal chief whose rank is indicated by the number of feathers and the admixture of feathers from other birds, while the egret plumes denote that the wearer is a dance chief. In addition to these, headdresses of hair from the tail of the giant ant-bear are used by the medicine-chiefs. Often, however, a man may combine the ranks of tribal chief, dance chief and medicine-chief, and thus he may wear any one of the official headdresses, according to the occasion and the capacity in which he is acting.

Both sexes paint or rather decorate their faces with black and red designs, and as all the designs used have a special significance and it is important that they should always be the same, carved wooden stamps are used for imprinting the patterns on the skin. When fully dressed for state occasions, for a dance or a ceremonial, the Guaymí man is a brilliant and strikingly glorious barbaric figure. Upon his head is the feather crown of brilliant feathers; his face is half hidden under elaborate patterns of red and black paint; about his neck, and covering his chest, are collars of magnificent beadwork; hanging from his headdress over his shoulders, and about his waist as well, are braided scalplocks; his prowess as a hunter is shown by the strings of jaguar, puma and peccary teeth about his neck; his highly decorated blouse and trousers are ablaze with color; an almost priceless chakara bag of red, yellow and black,—so tightly woven as to hold water, hangs at his side and, if a ceremonial dance is to take place, he carries a painted drum, a cow-horn trumpet and a gourd rattle, while on his back is strapped the stuffed skin of an ocelot, a jaguar, an otter or some other creature, decorated, like the wearer, with bead collars, feathers and scalplocks.

These stuffed animal skins serve a very useful and necessary purpose in the dance. The favorite dance is the stick-dance compared to which our foot ball is a gentle game. As one Indian prances and leaps about to the shrilling flutes, the sonorous horns, the shaking rattles and the throbbing drums, another Indian strives to bowl him over by throwing a seven-foot pole, sharp at the end and about three inches in diameter. If the dancer dodges the missile, the thrower exchanges places with him, but in case he is struck or knocked down the poor rascal must continue to serve as a target until he succeeds in dodging the stick. At such times the stuffed animals serve to protect the wearer’s spine from injury. Broken limbs and bruised and cut bodies count for little, and, as the back and spine are protected—the dancer’s back always being turned to the stick thrower—serious injuries and fatalities are rare.

During my stay among the Guaymís a special ceremonial and dance was arranged for my benefit and in my honor. At this ceremonial, which was held in a special “temple” or ceremonial house erected on a mountain top, nearly two thousand Indians were present, and the head chief, Montezuma, attended in person. All these tribesmen had been summoned by means of knotted strings of braided palm fiber. These were of white, or black, and of various black and white patterns, the colors and designs indicating the class of message, while the knots conveyed the details. Not only was I permitted to witness the entire ceremonial, which was of a most sacred nature, but I was also initiated as a member of' the tribe with the rank of medicine-chief. Having been rechristened “Cubiboranandi” which, freely translated, means the white man-who-came-over-water-and-became-a chief, I was decked with all the insignia and regalia of my new station. Thus having become a full-fledged Guaymí I took part in the ceremonial dance which followed. And all because I had cured the old dance chief who was suffering from colic!

I have already mentioned the throwing-stick used by the Guaymís. With this a Guaymí can hurl a six foot throwing-spear with incredible force and accuracy, and although they have excellent bows, they prefer the spear and throwing-stick whenever possible. Living as they do, among the most broken and rugged of mountains, and at an altitude of from four to five thousand feet, the Guaymís, as I have said, are born mountaineers. At dead of night they will traverse their country, afoot or on horseback, covering enormous distances and following trails, which, in the daytime, make one’s head swim. But the Guaymís think nothing of moving in stygian darkness over crumbling hogbacks less than two feet in width and with yawning thousand foot precipes on either side.

Although excellent hunters yet the Guaymís depend mainly on agriculture and possess well cultivated fields of rice, corn and vegetables, groves of coffee and cacao, and numerous halfwild cattle and tough, wiry mountain ponies.

Last of the more interesting tribes of Panama are the Bogenahs, a strange, almost unknown race totally distinct from all others on the Isthmus, and, perhaps,—indeed probably,—the most ancient and primitive of all. They are undersized, with long arms and slender limbs; orange-brown or copper-brown in color; with thick lips, flat noses, oblique eyes, narrow foreheads and with the lackluster eyes and unintelligent expressions of apes. Their hair is extremely thick, and coarse, and the men have straggling beards and mustaches which give them the appearance of Tibetans or other Mogols. They have no fixed homes, roaming here and there, subsisting on any game they can secure, and eating grubs, beetles, lizards or any living thing as readily as fish, birds or other game. Their houses, erected only as shelters during the rainy season, are rude shacks of palm-leaf thatch; they have no arts or industries, and they are as inveterate thieves and as mischievous as monkeys.

Today the tribe is almost extinct and numbers but a few hundred individuals who live in the heart of the Guaymí country. Here they are kept in almost complete subservience by the Guaymís. They can have no chiefs of their own and are regarded as little better than animals by the Guaymís. But, despite this, they have managed to retain their tribal integrity, as well as their own language, their own customs, life and weapons. Indeed, so firmly fixed are these that, instead of the Bogenahs acquiring a knowledge of the Guaymí tongue, the superior Guaymís have been forced to learn the Bogenah dialect in order to communicate with their inferior neighbors.