(3 of 3)
Tame and Yellow. Returning from his third season in the Orinoco Valley, Dr. Herbert Spencer Dickey, staff member of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, described 50 more previously unexplored miles of the Orinoco River. He had stories to tell of unusually small ducks, jet black parrots, red morning glories as big as saucers. Dr. Dickey called upon the Guaharibos Indians who, someone had told him, were white and mean. Instead he found them yellow and sweet-tempered. They wear no clothes, live in the Stone Age manner. Dr. Dickey had taken harmonicas with him for gifts, discovered they needed agricultural implements more. While the rest of the party went farther up the river, Mrs. Dickey, who accompanies her husband, stayed on shore with the Guaharibos. The tribe has an unusually high infant mortality rate. Mrs. Dickey said the women wailed all night for their dear children, while the men slept. She liked the Guaharibos men, described them as sensitive, friendly. Said she: "I never saw finer instincts in any white men than in those savages."
Head-Hunters. Dr. Ralph Franklin Barton, school teacher, lived in the Philippine Islands for eight years, had Ifugao headhunters for neighbors. He watched carefully to see how they lived, wrote a book about them.† Only a few of the most accomplished warriors are allowed to go on a head-hunt. As soon as a lucky group is chosen, the rest of the tribe dances, prays to hundreds of gods to send them many heads. When the warriors arrive in enemy country they construct a small hut for ambush. The first victim to appear has a spear thrown at him. Ifugao etiquet demands that the one who throws the fatal spear gets the head. Other warriors are supposed to stand by and watch while the killer dances over the fallen body, slashes the neck with his long knife, wets his fingers in the spurting blood and tastes it. Actually headhunters often become too enthusiastic, turn the ceremony into a free-for-all. Head-taking, like scalping among American Indians, adds war-glory to the individual warrior. In addition, heads bring soul-stuff into the tribe, which benefits everyone by increasing crops, making women and cattle more prolific, driving away pestilence.
*Not to be confused with the late Henry Payne Whitney of Long Island and Manhattan, financier-sportsman (TIME, Nov. 3).
†THE HALFWAY SUN — Brewer & Warren ($5).