IDNO

P.9296.ACH1

Description

On Catalogue Card: “Centre of dancing group, Muenane.”

On Catalogue Card for duplicate image LS.26732.WHI : "N.W. Amazon. 175.45.
Muenane tribe: dancing group."

A group of Muenane women and girls standing at the 'centre of dancing group'. Two of the girls at the centre are wearing large bead girdles hung around their necks. Some of the women are wearing ligatures, wrist-ornaments and/or necklaces. At least four of the women are carrying children.
The women and girls have been heavily over-drawn to provide detail, and background details have been removed. [TC 09/06/1999, updated JD 02/10/2019]

Place

S America; Colombia; North West Amazon

Cultural Affliation

South American Indian; Witotoan; Boro [Bora; Meamuyna; Meamuina; Miraña; Miranya; Mirane; Miranha; Miragua; Miraño; Mirania]

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. XIII with the caption “Centre of Dancing Group - Muenane”. [TC 09/06/1999]

Related Image: A duplicate print is at the RAI, reference 36163, and annotated by Whiffen in pencil on the reverse as "Centre of dancing group (enlargement), Muenane."
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 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]