IDNO

P.9263.ACH1

Description

On Catalogue Card: “Some of the carriers.”

Portrait of large group of Captain Whiffen’s “carriers”, standing outdoors. The carriers are men, mainly South American Indians. Some are wearing loin-cloths, others are wearing “European” style trousers, shirts and caps. They are holding rifles. The men at the far left, right and foreground are wearing “European” style clothing with animal-teeth necklaces, the larger of which are probably jaguar.

Place

S America; Colombia; North West Amazon; Putumayo River; ?near Iça River; ?near Japura River [Iça River; Issa River; Caqueta River]

Cultural Affliation

South American Indian; ?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

Publication: Reproduced in Whiffen, T. W., 1915 as PL. VIII with the caption “
“Some of my carriers”.
Whiffen, T. W., 1915 (pp. 2-4) describes his “carriers”. 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).

Related Image: A duplicate print is at the RAI, reference 36173, and annotated by Whiffen in pencil on the reverse as "Some of my escort and carriers."
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]

Bibliographical Reference: Whiffen explains that "the men wear little or nothing but what the Witoto call a moh-hen, that is, a strip of beaten bark-cloth carried from front to rear between the legs and tucked in at either end over a string or strap of bark-cloth bound about the waist" (Whiffen, T. W., 1915: 72). He informs us that "the Amazonian boy is first provided with a breech-cloth when he is five years old. His earliest lesson is in its manufacture, for every Indian fashions his own clothing" (ibid: 73). He then describes how the loin-cloth is manufactured and notes that it is never removed "in the sight of man or woman" and is buried with a man when he dies (ibid: 74). Steward notes that boys and men "wear a bark-cloth breech-clout after the age of five or six years (1963: 753). [TC 01/06/1999]

See also LS.26716.WHI record for additional sources of information about this image.