IDNO

P.9295.ACH1

Description

On Catalogue Card: “Muenane dancing”.

On Catalogue Card for duplicate image LS.26733.WHI: "N.W. Amazon. 175.46.
Muenane dancing."

An elevated view of a Muenane dance with large groups of men with arms linked dancing in rows at the left and right. In the centre between the men is standing a large group of women, with smaller groups standing to left and right of men. The men are wearing moh-hen (loin-cloths), and/or a combination of jaguar? teeth neck ornaments, head bands, arm ligatures, and carrying bags. The women are wearing body paint, leg ligatures and personal ornaments, of either large bead necklaces, bead girdles, and/or wrist ornaments. Some women are carrying young children in bark-cloth slings, or carry empty slings. [TC 09/06/1999, updated JD 23/10/2019]

Place

S America; Colombia; North West Amazon

Cultural Affliation

South American Indian; Witotoan; Muenane [Muinane; Muename; Muinana; Muinani; Moenane; Menekateno]

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: Image reproduced in Whiffen, T. W., 1915 as Pl. XLVI with the caption “Muenane Dance”. [TC 09/06/1999]

Related Image: A duplicate print is at the RAI, reference 36145, and annotated by Whiffen in pencil on the reverse as "Muenane."
Photocopies of Whiffen prints at the RAI are now in the UCMAA archive, reference W19/1/3. See Whiffen Collection record for further details. [TC 09/06/1999, updated, JD 02/10/2019]

Bibliographical Reference: Referring to one image depicting Boro women at a dance, Whiffen points out that "the white appendage round the woman's neck is made simply by stringing a few pounds of white beads together" (Whiffen, T. W., 1915: 80). The women in this dance scene are probably also wearing this type of bead necklace, although at first glance the white objects around their necks have the appearance of bark-cloth slings which are worn over the head and used for carrying children. [TC 01/06/1999]

Bibliographical Reference: Whiffen discusses the dance girdle (Whiffen 1915, pp.79-80) noting "The women of the Issa-Japura tribes wear a broad girdle for a dance. It is worn on no other occasions, and removed immediately the dance is at an end. These dancing girdles are made by the women of seeds or Brummagem beads if such can be had. These are strung in about two-foot lengths, and so arranged that when two or three dozen strings are fastened into a broad flat band the varying colours make a bold and definite design. Like all these Indian ornaments, they evince a fine artistic sense of colouring and pattern. Beads are passed inwards from the Rubber Belt from tribe to tribe. On account of the isolation of these peoples, they cannot aspire to have fashions direct from Birmingham, and novel patterns hardly seem to come to them. Designs must be symmetrical, and they are quite content to copy the old-established ones. The colours vary, but dark beads are the most sought after, dark blue being more favoured than red. Black and white ones are the
most prized, but red and white is the combination usually seen. Any woman may possess a girdle, and it is an individual, not a tribal, possession, the reverse of the custom as regards the men's feather head-dresses. These girdles are exceedingly handsome and wonderfully well constructed." [JD 21/10/2019]

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]