IDNO

LS.26716.WHI

Description

On catalogue card: "N.W. Amazon. 175.21.
Some of Capt. Whiffen's 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 clothing with animal-teeth necklaces, the larger of which are probably jaguar. [TC 09/06/1999]

Place

S America; Colombia; North West Amazon

Cultural Affliation

South American Indian; ?European

Named Person

Photographer

Whiffen, Thomas William

Collector / Expedition

Date

1908 - 1909

Collection Name

Whiffen CollectionTeaching Slide Collection

Source

Whiffen, Nöel H.

Format

Lantern Slide 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]

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]

Source: In MAA Correspondence Box 1934 is a letter from Noel Whiffen donating his "brother's collection of lantern slides" to the museum, on behalf of the Whiffen family. Louis Clarke replied. The gift is also noted in the annual report for that year in the list of accessions (UCMAA 1934: 3), which mentions that "the collection of lantern slides has also been increased by gifts from ... Mr N. H. Whiffen ... "
For full details see Whiffen Collection record. [TC 09/06/1999, updated, JD 02/10/2019]