Vol 25, no 3, October - The Linnean Society of London

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THE LINNEAN 2009 VOLUME 25(3)
“During so long a residence I witnessed, of course, many changes in the place (the
village of Ega, modern Tefé). Some of the good friends who made me welcome on my
first arrival died, and I followed their remains to their last resting-place in the little
rustic cemetery on the borders of the surrounding forest. I lived there long enough, from
first to last, to see the young people grow up, attended their weddings, and the christenings
of their children, and before I left, saw them old married folks with numerous
families.............
“The people became more ‘civilized’, that is, they began to dress according to the latest
Parisian fashions, instead of going about in stockingless feet, wooden clogs, and shirt
sleeves; acquired a taste for money-getting and office-holding; became divided into
parties, and lost part of their former simplicity of manners............
“Many of the Ega Indians, including all the domestic servants, are savages who have
been brought from the neighbouring rivers; the Japurá, the Issá, and the Solimoens..........
most of whom had been bought, when children, of the native chiefs. This species of
slave dealing, although forbidden by the laws of Brazil, is winked at by the authorities,
because without it there would be no means of obtaining servants......... But the boys
generally run away and embark on the canoes of traders; and the girls are often badly
treated by their mistresses............”
There is a marvellous illustration in Bates’ The Naturalist On The River Amazons
called Masked Dance And Wedding-Feast Of Tucuna Indians. Bates is pictured inside
a Tucuna maloca, graciously and gratefully accepting something to eat from a
handsomely depicted naked Indian woman with long black hair, which he seems to
find delicious. He seems wholly at ease in the huge interior of the maloca, in which is
taking place, without reference to him, a masked dance in costumes very like those
one can see today in ethnographic museums in Manaus or Leticia. The whole scene is
certainly idealized and shaped into a European stylized ‘interior’, but it is also authentic
in its depiction of someone in a hammock, and others up on a typical kind of structure
made of wooden poles, from which also hang animal skins and on which a parrot
perches. The whole scene is warm and convivial, suggesting that Bates’ hosts enjoy
his presence as much as he enjoys their hospitality. And though it is slightly
sentimentalized, the scene somehow resembles very much the indoor life of Amazonian
Indians even today.
POSTSCRIPT
On a retrospective reading of this essay I wondered if I had been hard on Charles
Darwin both in the sense of suspending recognition of the extent to which he, like
anyone else, was a prisoner of his socio-historical context (though I tried to show that
he could have embraced different attitudes), but also in the sense that further reading
undertaken after I had already written the bulk of this essay indicated to me the extent
of his enlightened, liberal, and humanitarian attitudes in certain other situations outside
of his account of the Fuegians, both during the voyage of the Beagle and at other
periods of his life. His argument with Captain Fitzroy in Brazil over slavery – Darwin
against, Fitzroy in defence – which Darwin feared at first might require him to leave
the voyage, is only one rather noble example.
Nevertheless, the central purpose in writing the essay was to show how narrow a
view of the Fuegian Indians even a great genius could have, and how the contrast