IDNO

P.9259.ACH1

Description

On Catalogue Card: “Bridge, N. W. Amazon district”.

View of bridge across a stream, “the trunk of a small tree”. A South American Indian man and a woman are crossing the bridge, carrying trunks or boxes on their backs. The man is wearing what appears to be “European” style clothing.

Place

S America; Colombia; North West Amazon

Cultural Affliation

?European

Named Person

Photographer

Whiffen, Thomas William

Collector / Expedition

Date

1908 - 1909

Collection Name

Mounted Haddon CollectionWhiffen Collection

Source

Format

Print Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

See also additional information on catalogue card for lantern slide.

Related Image: A duplicate print is at the RAI, reference 36177, and annotated by Whiffen in pencil on the reverse as “Carrying baggage across a stream."
Photocopies of Whiffen prints at the RAI are in the UCMAA archive, reference W19/1/3. See Whiffen Collection record for further details on RAI collection. [TC 09/06/1999, updated JD 02/10/2019]

The people depicted are probably Whiffen’s “carriers”, as described in Whiffen, T. W., 1915 (pp. 2-4). He explains that at the beginning of his expedition he “collected eight Indian carriers, two half-castes, and eight “rationales”, or semi-civilised Indians, armed with Winchesters, together with three Indian women, wives of three of the rationales” (ibid: 3).

Steward (1963: 754) notes that Witotoan bridges "consist of trees felled across a stream". The bridge in this image, then, would appear to be European in style.