IDNO

P.9273.ACH1

Description

On Catalogue Card: “Whiffen with Nonuya tribe note doorway behind him.”.

Captain Whiffen standing at the centre of a row of Nonuya, men to the left and women to the right. Whiffen has his hands on the shoulders of a young boy and girl who stand in front of him. The men are wearing loin-cloths and the boy is wearing a neck-ornament. The women are wearing leg and ankle ligatures and some of them are wearing necklaces with discs. The group is standing in front of a malokas (Indian communal house). [TC 01/06/1999]

Place

S America; Colombia; North West Amazon

Cultural Affliation

South American Indian; Witotoan; Nonuya [Achote; Achiote; Nanuya]; British; English

Named Person

Thomas William Whiffen

Photographer

None

Collector / Expedition

Whiffen, Thomas William

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. VII with the caption “Self, with Nonuya tribe (Note doorway behind me)”.

Related Image: A duplicate print is at the RAI, reference 36131, and annotated by Whiffen in pencil on the reverse with: “Self with a Nonuya tribe.”
Photocopies of Whiffen prints at the RAI are held 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]

Bibliography Reference: The discs on the women's necklaces are probably coins. Whiffen explains that "smelting, or any description of metallurgy, cannot be looked for among the inhabitants of a country so singularly devoid of all metalliferous deposit or formation...their only method of working metal when obtained is to heat and hammer it into various forms and shapes for ornaments" (Whiffen, T. W., 1915: 93-94). He states that "the pendants...are mostly coins, depreciated Chilean dollars as a rule...either given to the wearers by me or had filtered through from the Rubber Belt; a few...through the medium of intertribal barter". He notes that "they are always the most rare and cherished possessions" (ibid: 80-81). [TC 01/06/1999]

Context: 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]

Bibliography Reference: Whiffen discusses Indian communal houses (malokas) at length (Whiffen, T. W., 1915: 40-48). He notes that in the homestead "there is but one great house, thatched and ridge-roofed like a gigantic hay-rick ... this is the home of some three score Indians" in which "there are no divisions for each family" (ibid: 40). He notes that the house is a temporary dwelling which falls into disrepair and is burnt every two to three years, at which point the inhabitants move to new location (ibid: 41-42). He then discusses how the site is chosen and the building constructed (ibid: 42-44). He notes that "the far end of the house - where there is usually another small entrance - is the portion reserved for the chief and his family" (ibid: 46) and that "each family has its own fire" (ibid: 47), with their hammocks slung around it and possessions slung in the rafters above. He explains that "at ordinary times there will be possibly from fifty to sixty people in the tribal house, but on the occasion of any festivity as many as two hundred will crowd in" (ibid: 48). He also provides plans and diagrams of the house (ibid: 41, 43, 45,46) and an illustration of the type of palm used for thatching (ibid: pl. VI). Menimehe houses, he notes, are "more open" than those of other groups (ibid: 51). [TC 01/06/199]

Bibliography Reference: Steward also discusses Witotoan villages and houses, explaining that "the typical Witotoan community consists of a single large multifamily house, though some villages have several large houses" and that these are built on "a dry site ... some distance from the river" (1963: 752). Plate 81 depicts a "Witoto communal house" similar to those depicted in the Whiffen Collection photographs. Steward notes that "the sociopolitical unit is the exogamous, patrilocal community which usually occupies a single large house and is divided into family groups. Local exogamy seems to prevail even when the community has several houses" (ibid: 755). Steward and Faron (1959: 314) also discusses Witotoan houses. More recent analyses, such as that by Hugh-Jones on Barasana cosmology, demonstrate that the Indian house can be interpreted structurally as a significant metaphorical representation of the cosmos, myth and society (Hugh-Jones.S. 1979). [TC 01/06/199]

See also LS.26734.WHI record for additional sources of information about this image.

N.26835.WHI is a copy of this image with another tree in the background. In N.26736.WHI, the sky and tree are masked. In LS.26734.WHI, P.9273.ACH1 and the published version, the tree is missing.