Scoping the Amazon

8/4/2019 Scoping the Amazon

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ANTHRO PO LO G YCULT[ 'NALSTUDI ES

he mage f he Amazonndiansan co n ha tstraddleshe worldbetweenhe professionarnthroporogistnd he popurar edia.Presentedlternatelys he noble rimit ive ndsavior f he environmentor asa savage, issofte , annibal ist icalf-human,t is a representationwellworthexamining.tephenNugent oe sus t hat,cr i t iquinghe claimsof authori tat ivenessnherentn visualmages resentedyanthropologistsof Amazonife n heearly wentieth entury nd omparinghe mwith heimagesound n popular ooks, ovies, ndposters. hi s eavi lyl lustratedbook epictshe ieldof anthropologys ts ow n or mof culturendustryan dcontrastst to othersimilarndustr ies,as tan dpresent. or isualanthropologists,thnographers,mazon pecial ists,ndpopular ultureresearchers,ugent's ookwil lbe enl ightening,ntertainingeading.STEPHEN NUGENT teaches nthropotosyt Gotdsmi ths.Universityf London, nd s director f he centre or Visual nthropology.Hi s ong-trmnterest n Brazilian mazonias representein BigMouth(199O), mhzonian abocto ociety1993), ndSorneOtherAmazonians(2OO4). e s an editorof the ournalCritique f Anthropology.

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rsBN 78-1-59874-177-3


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vnailerTwoflft"Sr, 1A,m*oniats widely perce ivedasa region dominated by nafure,5u"'9, culture,-ithas been part of the modern world systerrror fivejffid fears. t exemplifies wildernes-sregion, yet has een massively"r."_iT -*y wayssince irst invaded by Europeans.2 he main images^-'' to rpresent mazonia, however, tend not to reveal this complexlirv"''ontradiction'Instead,hey nvokea unified, dehistoricized oma:nJri:;1r]'^nllndianljusoul and piranha, and forest canopy and orchid. Theseil,::r.,|..*efacts. of_earlyexploration and natural'history such as theffi::i]l*r""J the Mctorian nahrratistsBates (1892), ,Volt"." (1839),and .i".::-\iruJ - among numerous others _ reinforced by reportage,il.ii,:Ti:: Tod",* ethnographicnvesrigationndconslhdtuay,;;";;':f:]loustry.(e.g., coffee able book, Holywood). The pictoriat-'q ur unazonia s a clichwith deep and interesting historicar roots.g

'l'L..d: t::i l;coping' now usually connotes a particular technical pro_;;;;:",::.,htlg lo"t the lines of an endoscopy hat involves uiewingu aimj""^i.1".Tally inaccessible o scrutiny. Previously, scoping mplied#;::::!:d of invasive view, something akin to rubbe. ,r".i;r,g'_ u,,"' q/ rnrusivegaz .These wo-notionsof scopingshare he dea of"goingi"llil:.P. tsnrmatlyvailableo.ui"l"Uyphysicallyvercomingbs_in;i"'"':'^1u".asef anendoscopy x-tay, rbydefrngcultural *orms- ::. or predatory staring.o"l"l,t^lil: ofthis book drawsn borh connotarions: t is ntrusive,withoutg"|i:llitt alsohasan nvestigativepurpose.The objectof analysiss a;b;;i;:T:_ges thatappears o provide focal referents rprimary otions.h;;::Y,:t:a and its peoples.A characteristic mage s exemphned n:"!r Jacketeproduced bove.

" ,;::':,1 !t954i AnaaonHeadHunters s described by its pubtisher ashiil#:::^::ture. book' and while it looks like a typicat puJp productinr'#_t"itonalist, erotic, perhaps urid), it alsohas claims respect_".krj,;:-:"ver

blurb from the SundayTimes, or example, and a list ofil""::1q:*"nts to generals,politicians, priests,and fellow explorers.hu"^'lllulitg line of the book s ,Why dosa man cut offanothir man,s"nJl,ii.'l1lj,tl,," : size of his fist, and then dance around it?' (1954:T);", il::::"g.,1the subsequent ext doesn't provide an answer as startlingw...T]..u9n, Iacksuseful specialist ocus, and is without much in theunt"1^'-'^tm1 ethnographic dimensions, he conclusions eachedare notpuo.#"lWcally contentious.Jivaro, as the author refers to the Shuarwitt,i."'.J-lt"u tsantsasshrunken heads) for reasons that seem sensiblef'^ --" Lrrelrown culhrrar ogic: 'utitiaja . . . was stirl ranging the forest,'spensingjustice and living the good life of a competent and dedicated

IIIITheHeadHunterClichl._4Jhumanbeing' (1954:255). he message f the text, then, s somewhat todds with the cover image, which reducesJivaroness o a single majoractivi$: head hunting.Cotlow (1954) s further illustrated with a handful of similarly reduc-tionist, authenticating plates, he first showing the author standing witha pair of head hunters, the other three showing shrunken heads (one npreparation and two as finished artefacts,one showing the use of a headasa teachingdevice:hands-on,head-offpedagory). The selectionof headhunting as the outstanding characteristic of the Jivaro is not unusuala,cannibalism and savagerycomprising one of the dominant themes em-ployed by Europeans o typify New World peoples sincecontact, and thescenesetting in AmazonHeadHuntersbrings forward other familiar andrecurringtropical suspects:the half-breed'; damp rotting vegetation';streamingsweat; swarming nsects;and so on.The cover of Michael Harner's (1973) Theuaro: People f the SanedI,faturfalk s superficially similar to that of AmazonHead Hunters, houghbasedon a photograph rather than illustration. This book, however, isa respectableanthropological monograph with chapterson historicalbackground,material culture, social relations, and law,/feuding,/waras well asJivaro cosmologT.The book has 22 photographs and variousfigures, only one of which includes tsantsasand theseare not artefactsof Harner's fieldwork, but specimensheld by the American Museum ofNatural History in New York). The other photographs are landscapesand portraits, or showJivaro engaged n various daily tasks.Text andphotographs convey, in conventional ethnographic manner, the con-textualization of thisJivaro culture feature,yet the focal image s still thedramatic, decorative tsantsa.sOne reason o contrast hese wo takeson head hunters - the populistand the specialist is to point toward anthropological self-consciousnessabout the way in which the meanings of certain conceptsare in dangerof escapingcontrol. Anthropologists typically try to avoid usages,or ex-ample, that conjure up unreconstructedversionsof their subjectmatter -'savage'and 'primitive' and so on6 and are careful o qualify usages hatare subject o highjacking.TThe acceptability of 'head hunter' (orJivaro,for that matter) is questionable,8 et the focal image - the full-haired.tsantsa-etains he sameexpressivepower. In fact , he dominant mageryof the region as a whole (Amazonian green hell) has been remarkablystableacross oth public and specialist ultural domains thoseaddressed,for example, by Cotlow and Harner.eThat relative stability characterizes he separategenealogiesof bothpopular and scholarly traditions, but is recurrently challengedby inter-pretationsof the magesused o llustrate hepointsso orcefully establishedin the written accounts.There are paradoxical aspects o this challenge:


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Fgure .2 O Michael arner.

TheHeadHunterClichin a field in which detailed written documentation and argument havelong prevailed over the use of images o representanthropological know-ledge, he power of 'mere'images to provoke disputesabout nterpretationis undeniable.An example of disputed nterpretations of Amazonian anthropology sprovided by Gow and Harris's (1985) commentary on HiddenPeoples ftheAmazon, n exhibition on Amazonian Indians mounted at the BritishMuseum in 1985.The reviewers ake issuewith the inclusion of a photo-graph of a native man astridea motorbike. Their objection s not that thejuxiaposition of the modern and the traditional is transgressiveron thatit trivializes or in some other way diminishes an unfettered anthropo-logical subject,but that the image s incapable of expressing he historicaldepth of contactbetween Amazonians and Buropeans- in other words,that the motorcycle is tokenistic (which is also to say, in this context,misrepresentative).While it is true that the exhibition did not provide much material ofhistorical depthrr - and this was not its goal - it i. th. motorcycle imagethat offends (misrepresents), ot the overall exhibition. There are twoissueshere. The first is the power of an image itself to bear such nter-pretive weight. The second s specialistanthropological intervention inorder to correct a public misrepresentation.One of the recurring featuresin comparing specialistand popular portrayals of Amazonia, however, sconvergence ather than divergence.

IATransformedmazoniaThe misrepresentative powers of ethnographic photography are not new.Levine (1989:92-3) writes with respect to Im Thurn's (1893) early essayon anthropological photography that:

[s]ome anthropologistsspoke out againstsuch degrading portrayals,but tolittle avail. Everard E. im Thurn,g who used photography as part of his fieldresearch n Guiana, addressed he Anthropological Institute after returningto London, complaining that posesof native people taken by outsiderswer'merely pictures of lifeless bodies,' and stating that the ,ordinary photo-graphs of uncharacteristically miserable natives seem comparable tothe photographswhich one occasionallyseesof badly stuffed and distortedbirds and animals.Levine (1989:31) also notes, however, that the preference fo r un -imaginatively posed photographs did not merely reflect a crude ideo-logical bias - not that that was inconsequential by any rneans - butalso reflected technical limitations such as long exposure times and. thepractical burden of heavy cameras. Success n te emergent, international


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ChapterTwocarte-de-aisitendustry did not seem o be impaired by stylistic crudity inrepresentations fstrange peoples rom strange ands.In the particular caseof Amazonia, however (albeit hardly uniquely),it is sometimesdifficult to ascertaina baseline against-fric one ^mlgtrtmeasure he accuracyof representations,whether imagesor not. In orderto appreciate he reasonsunderlying the apparent stabiliry of the clichdAmazonian mage set, t is worth looking at standardand revisedaccountsof Amazonia as a more or lessuniform culture area.

MigrationThere is no seriousalternative to the view that Amazonia was occupied,like the rest of the New world, by peoples rom Asia who crossedaiand

Figure2.3 Miranhandians. lbertFrjsch a. 1860.

The lementsfClich:Whore mazonians?

bridge (at he Beringstraits)during the previous ce age.Assertions f trans-Pacific migration or more outlandish origin myths (Nazca) have littleserioussupport. Earlier dates or humans n Brazil (i.e.,prior to ca. 10,000BP) associatedwith the researchof Guidon (Bahn lggl), and which com-plicate the standardaccount, emain in confirmation/refutation limbo.Despite he strengthof the Bering Straitsmigration theory and the sub-stantialbody of supporting empirical material (linguistic, archaeological,mitochondrial, ecological) and absenceof any plausible alternativeaccoun! there s still a persistentsenseof mystery surrounding he originsof Amazonians,one reinforcedby the recurrentof thenotion of losthibe'.r3In contemporary Brazil, he mystery of the 'lost tribe' is now mainly repre-sented n the ournalistic coverageof the activitiesof the former direitorof the National Indian Foundation,Sidney Posuello seeBeilos2000 or arecent example)with the collaboration of NationalGeographic.u

TheHead HunterCliche

Figure2.4 Kayap.M. Schmidt 926.Other mazonans

While Indian Amazonians - First Nations Amazonians - have an un-rivalled iconic status as real' Amazonians, the history of their contact with


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ChapterTwoEuropean interlopers dramatically illustrates the general disdain inwhich they have been held and the systematicpersecution,neglect, andviolence to which they have been and continue to be subjected.t5 hedisparity between Indians' high symbolic capital and their impoverishedcircumstances is part of the construction of Ramos's (1992, 1998)afore-mentioned'hyperrealndian'.This contradictory representation that is, the simultaneousover- andunder-valuation of Indians - is mirrored in the representation of non-Indian Amazonianswho, despite ive hundred years of occupation/resi-dence, are typically describedas settlers, rontier folk, peoples of theforest, or haphazard nterlopers. While it is true that the commencementof development projects associatedwith the tansamazon Highway (ca.1970)prompted an unprecedentedwave of immigration,r6 rom the timeof Cabral's laying of PorLuguese laims on Brazil in 1500 and t}re lS42descent by Orellana of th e Amazon River, the region has supported acosmopolitan population - Dutch, English, French,Japanese,Moroccan(Sephardic), ebanese,Africans, and Caribbeans amongmany others).

Figure .5 Postcard, ororo irl.The actual diversity of Amazonians, however, does not often disruptthe characterizationof the region as a social as well as natural frontir.

'i;; t'"

TheHeadHunterClich/Lorimer's (1989) detailed account of various English and Irish colonialenterprises n the l6th century gives a flavour of the early internationa-l-izattonof the region,rT ut while Brazil's nation-building project based oneclecticsources ontinues o command much attention,rs mazonia s pre-sumed o standoutside he mainstream of neo-tropical syncretism.

DemographyndEnvironmentAn underlying reason or the widely held belief in Amazonia'sbeingendurably 'Indian territory' is the belief that in the profoundly non-/anti-socialspaceof the hideous tropics (see urther discussionbelow), no oneelsewould tolerate t - or, in a modern recapitulation of the Rousseaueansavage-in-harmony-with-nature quation, the belief in a primordial andexclusive ndian integration with nafure.Early accountsof the denselypopulatedbanksof the Solimoes/Amazonledid not inspire much investigation until very recently and the notion of'lost cities of the Amazon' lay in the world of fiction rather than fact.Wiihthe rejection of the implications of early travellers' accounts, estimatesof pre-colonial Amerindian poplrrlationspresented n authoritative workwell into the last quarter of the 20th century are significantly owerthan contempora"ryestimates 500,000 versus 15 million cf. Hecht andCockburn1989).Denevan's 1976)nfluentialcollection revisedn 1992)establisheda new, much higher baseline estimate, and in recent yearsthere hasbeen convergencearound the figure 5-10 million.These revisions have had provocative and in many respectsstill notfully realized implications for long-establishedviews of pre- and post-colonial Amerindianszo.Centrally, they challenge he almost sacredas-sociation between rigid environmental constraint and the possibilily forthe emergenceof social complexity that has been a keystone of muchAmazonianist researchand, crucially, they give pause o the notion thatthe predominant form of contemporary Amerindian societies s typicalof pre-Conquest ocieties i.e., mall scale, pland orest,etc.).

In the face of growing scepticism about the established deal typifi-cation of 'Amazonian' and Arnazonia', there has been little transform-ation of the basic mage set. The significant modifications take the formof novel, allocthonouspathologies marginals with chainsaws, esperategoldminers, multinationals, bulldozers, soya farrr.rers a familiar set ofjournalistic tokens.Thesepathologiesare unquestionably eal,yet they aregeneraJlynot presented as integral o Amazonia but as disruptive factorsthat may individually be mollified ('stop he oggers'; retain biodiversity'),thereby maintaining the conventional separationof biological systems ndsocial systemsaswell asdenying the long history of human modificationof the terrain.ztThe tropical forest so represented s not dissimilar from


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Chapter woRamos's'hyperrealndian'. Both Indians and the dealized,pristine forest-river ystem ark back o someauthentic,pre-modern original condition,butthatrepresentations ncomplete and bears ew of the tracesof historyevenn e faceof substantialdocumentation and recognition of thoseshortcomings.

TropicalastinessIn his analysis f what he calls the doctrine of tropical nastiness',Blaut(1993)llustrates ow certainconceits egarding geographical deter-minism ersist n the face of compelling empirical refutation - anargumenthat has considerable earing on Amazonia.22 he claim thatthis ind of nahrralistic ropicalism epresentsan intrinsic and rigid obs-tacleo sociocultural omplexity is a long establishednotion althoughconhadictedy the archaeological nd historical records, as well as thecurrent hase f agribusinesssoyaproductionm).The burdenof pathological ropicalism falls mainly on two groups inAmazonia Indianswhoseallegedly stunted socioculhrraldevelopmentisclaimed o be causallyinked to featuresof the natural landscape e.g.,protein hortage; f. Gross1975and Beckerman 1979 or critiques); andsmall-scaleolonists/peasantshose predatory swidden agriculture s sooftenncorrectly ighlightedas he ultimate, rather than proximate, causeof deforestation.While hese ausal, eographically eterministic claims are not as wellsupportedy evidence sproponents laim, they are key elementsof folkwisdom nd rom the perspective f the focal set of imagesof Amazonia

Figure.6 Postcard, alesianunand ndians.

TheHead HunterClichand Amazonians, what is crucial is that clichd Indians and peasants/farmers represent before' (stateof nature./society race)and 'after' (stateof rupture), espectively.

PhasesfAmazonianevelopmentMichael Heckenberger 2005),who employs he notion'deep tempor-ality' to describe he syntheticproject earlier outlined by Roosevelt 199+1to combine history, archaeology,and ethnography, draws attention o t hediscontinuities n Amazonian history that have given rise to a selectiveportrayal of Amerindian response o colonialism (2005:xiii-xi) such hatthere is unwarranted 'durability of the false notion that the present s aversion of the past n Amazonia'.Of particular mportance n terms of the establishmentof receivedviewsabout and imagesof Amazonian Indian societiesare wo facts.First s thelong gap between early European penetration ofthe region and the onsetof serious scientific nquiry (from the early l6th century to the late 18thcentury).zrSecond s the belated recognition of the extent of demographiccollapse of Amerindian societies.Even if one takes a conservative esti-mate of the indigenous population at the time of conquest five million,say - the contrastwith the estimated ndigenous population provided bythe Aborigine Protection Society n 1973 Brookset at. 1973) f ca. 50,000is dramatic.25To put this into context with respect to the representativeness f theimages of Indians (and Amazonia) that form the focal set, he majorityof them had certainly disappearedbefore the 'Mctorian age' of nahrralhistory in the region (which was responsible or establishing ome of thekey images).By the time professionalanthropology arrived in strength nAmazonia (and anthropology is one of the major sourcesof knowledgeabout Amazonians for the general public), the representativeness f ex-tant Amazonian Indians was highly questionable.

' RegionalismThe way in which Amazonian history articulateswith Brazilian colonialand national history conhibutes o the mystifying aspects f the setof focalimages.Until the rrd-19thcentury, Amazonia was- and n many respectsstill is - 'the interior' and offered ittle in the way of remuneration withina colonial export economy.With the rising demand for rubber,26 large-scale extractive ndustry emerged and wasto prevail as a virfual globalmonopoly until the second decadeof tlie 20th century. This industry,which grew and remained profitable for almost 100 years, ends to be


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viewed as one of a seriesof boom-and-busteconomies hat character-ized the economic history of the,colony and early Republic, The factthat its transformative powers within the region (in terms of the wide-spreadpromo{g: gf i t*s." of petty commodity production, urbanization,and inks with Nrth America and Europe)were considerable s subsumedunder a national boom-and-bust diom of economic growth that is notreally accurate.Despite he intensity and duration of rribber exploitation,Amazonia was not u.*1t]-*"Tingfully integrated.The rubber'e.o.royremained overwhelmingly regional, and national (and i"t.r;;i;;conceits- bout the region (miserablesource of mere drrg ;;;;;;; _exotics rom the interior) prevaired, onry to be partia'y iisrodguJ -,r.hlater in the 20th century when exotic exactivisiproducts were"redefinedi: ty elements n the ,green harvest' and othr scrlpts oisust;;;"develoDment.z

ChapterTwo

Figure 2.7 Parakuta amily.R. C. Humphrev

TheHeadHunterClicheIt is no novelty to argue that Amazonia (and ts history) occupiesa mar-ginal position within Brazil and Brazilian studies,but that marginalityis qualified: quite a lot is known about Amazonia and its peoples,yetthat knowledge tends to be sequestered.Complementing that seclusion,however, is the high visibility and plausibility of certain longstandingand convenient mages,what have been referred to thus far as belongingto a focal set/clichs.These mages are inaccurate n an absolutesense,but they are indicative rather than representative.The predominance ofthese ndicative images mpedes an adequateappreciation of the state ofBrazilian Indians past and present.The images, n other words, may beworth thousandsof words, but someof them are the wrong words.

I totesThe Brazilian Amazon is the focal - but not exclusive area consideredhere.Amazonia refers to a social landscape that frcludes indigenous and non-indigenous peoples and a natural landscape of river/forest (and savannah)typically referred to as humid neo-tropics.In recent years, there has also been increasing attention to the extent ofprehistoric human modification to the landscape.See Bale (1994)andHeckenbergef (2005) or overviews.Redfern observes hat "[t]he study of clichs s inescapablya study of know-ledge (arrd of ignorance), of how we transmit or acquire it, and of whatdifference t makes o us" (1989:5).It is probably the shrunlcen spectofJivaro head hunting that makes t an out-standingexample (lotsof peopleshunt heads the Munduruc, for instance)that is, its artefacfual, ransformed character (Jivaro shrunken heads end tobe polished and the facial features ntentionaliy distorted). Stirling (193g:76)notes that most heads in private collections are counterfeits - attesting tononJivaro fascinationwith the artefacts a tendency dating from at east hemid-l9th century.Jivaro alsoshrunk the headsof the sloth, aguar, and condor(1938:73-a).Conklin's (2001) ConsumingGriefpresents sirong example of ameasuredanthropological approach o the issueof anthropophagy.Noteworthy recent contributions toJivaro/Shuar studies by Descola 1994,1997)and Taylor (2003), or instance signally do not exploit the head-hunting issue.Note, for example, the disappearanceof the subtitle TheFierce eople fromChagnon's celebrated Yanomamo.or some reason, he expressionThe )therescapeswide condemnation and indeed appears or many to be a preferredusagedespite ts dehumanizing connotations.Whitehead and Wright's recent (2004) n DarhnessndSeoeE:TheAnthropotogof AssaultSorcery nd Witchnafi n Amazonia rovides an inieresting example:


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' : ;

ChapterTwowhile the 'sorcery' and 'witchcraft' usagesare relatively unproblematic ina south American context, many Africanists would think twce before em_plolng them. In the introductory pagesl however, the editors g";;;lengths o specify/qualifi what they mean by ,shamanism,in riglrt rthu *iJ"_lFread misappropriation of the term by New Age therapists.As is the display of suchartefacts.l"T"r, being the core figr:re in The Foundation for Shamaric Studies,hasforsaken he latter for the former.l0 That is to say not ethno-appropriate.There is widespread overvaruation_ notleastby many anthropologists of the potuting/transgressive effectsof cu-ture contact' whire for some curture contactees-the,"iirrg "r " i ,""rrir,. may well indicate cultural pathology, for others t may only"rep."."rri" pi...of clothing.1l Quite different from a successorexhibition at the same museum (when theMuseum of Mankind had been incolporated into the main site of the BritishMuseum).SeeMcEwan, Barreto,and Neves 2001).12 In,some publications,,thesurname s Thurn; ., oth".s, lm Thurn. The know_ledgeable Rosalind poignant, among other things ; r".*., fi""g,.;hr.rchivist at the the Royal Anthropololcar Institute, nsistson Im Thurn - theconvention followed here.13 The answer to 'Lost in reraton to what?' remains ambiguous.There is theconnotation of ,without known origin, as well as fru .orrrr"otuUo" ;;;;;; ""_ountered by European,/whitemanl.14 This is hardly a uniquery Amazonian phenomenon. The Mormon church,for example, representsa powerful inteest group committed to completelyunsubstantiated lost tribesi craims.A trvo-tield -od"l h; ;;;"p"irr',rr"Philippines: the 'Thsady'represent the crassicio., oiu.' (Nance 1975),whireJapanesesoldiers gnorant of the end of WordWar ll"prur"rrt Jrrpu"aversion. wauchope (1962) s a classicdiscussionof speculation ,r.roirrarrgAmerindian origins.15 Hemming (1979, 1gg7a,1gs7b,2003) provides an autrroritative overview ofthe decline of Amerindian societies.se croJy (1972,19g6) or an analvsisof macro-ecological dimensions. The comissao pro-yanomami (htt:ttwww.proyanomami.org.br) and Instituto Socio_Ambientd (;ttp,)r;;rv., ^ ,:.]o"*.biental.orgl) provide_ ngoing coverage.16 Although t shouldbe noted hat suchwas heemographic olrapseo'owingconquest hat t wasonry n the post{iansamaro' de-.ad"s h"t th: A_-;;*population (Indian and non-Indian) achieved ts pre_conquestevels.17 see Bethetl (2003) or a discussionor sriti.rr "nd irirr, ,o**. io. ,r-r"p"toa.18 For an interesting anthropological analysisoi " ""rty raciarizedpolitics of,lir ongoing debate,seeSchwarcz t999).19 Above Manaus the river has historically been referred to as the sorimoes.For a discussionof the(lgg4, 1996). hrst accounts fthe peoplesofthe Amazon, seePorro20 se'eRoosevelt (1994)and Heckenberger (2005) or overviews and Roosevelt(1989) n the specific uestionofrepr'esentatirr"rr.

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TheHeadHunterClicheTo bear down on an obvious - if insufficiently - explored poin! Amazonia-the-natural-systemclearly tolerated large societiesof some complexity forsome millennia; Amazonia (post-l6th century) has significantly regressedsince ts incorporation into the modern world system.One familiar index isdeforestation, taken by experts and non-experts as an important indicatorof system health. Under pre-capitalism, deforestation eading (as arknow, and megafauna,probably, excepted) to significant subversionoverall viability of the forest-river biome was negligible; deforestationsince1970approaches20 per cent of the areaof Legal Amazonia.Inparticular, Blaut(1993)challengeshenotionsthathumansarephysiologicallyill adapted to tropical existence(hence, n part, the ,lazy native'thesis); that'poor soils' are an absolute rather than relative limitation on agriculturaloutput; and that the 'diseasesof the tropics' are inhinsic to the tropics andnot more usefully perceived as correlatesof poverty and poor public healthorovision.SeeBrown (2005),especidly Chapter g The Brazilian Dilemma'. It remains obe seenwhether soyaproduction will escape he fate of its predecessormono-cultures n Amazonia.SeealsoNugent (2004).Ribeiro (1967)provides a widely cited and now, it appears,overly pessimisticprediction of the complete demise of the Brazilian Indian. current estimates(300,000-400,000) epresent something of a turnaround, but it is not clearhow much of the increase s due to nahrral growth and how much is due tothe (qualified) advantages of Indian identity under revised demarcationstatutes and here s by no meansa consensushat demarcation s a panacaea).Indians represent ess han 0.25 per cent of the Brazilian population of ca.180million.The major commercial specieswas heaea rasilienslr. ee Dean (1987)andWeinstein (1983) or standardaccountsof the period.A label or extractive roduce.For a pointed discussion, eeT.rmer 1995).

as weof the

22

23cr l25

262728


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Missing eoples ndTheTropic f Amazon:

Lingeringetaphors' clich s not a half-deadmetaphor,t is one hat efuseso die.'[Lerner 956:250,uotedn Redfern 989:102]

It is itself a clich to say that'images of Amazonia are stereotypicalandin some respects he origins of key relationshipsbetween clich andstereotype are far from obscure.They are revealed in a literature,beginning in the mid-l9th century, when long-term field researchbythe Mctorian naturalists Bates,Spruce, and Wallace (and others esscelebrated) irst provided detailed - if hardly complete - descriptionsofsignificant portions of the basin, flora, and fauna (and, to a much lesserdegree, ts human occupants).The essence f their depicbions,einforcedby Conan Doyle's (1912)widely disseminatedLost Worly'have held swayuntil the present,severaldecades fter he science- nd modernization-led'conquestof the tropics,'r the implementation of the TiansamazonHigh-way, and associated evelopment projects n ca. 1970.Throughout thatperiod, there has been a significant immutability of representationsofboth the natural and social spheres, he persistent magery of green hell,natural exuberance,and culhrral parsimony such hat the cenhality of theimage of the forest-dwelling hunter-gatherer s coherent in terms of anauthoritative, detailed ethnographic iterature, but is also compatiblewitha crudely stereotypical'noble savage'/'stone-age eople' characterizationthat prevails n public culture.This coexistenceof more and less accuratenotions of 'AmazonianIn{ian' or Amazonian sociefy' is hardly controversial - the samecouldbe said of most ethnographic areas- and what is also shared n these

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ChapterFour

Figure .1 Andokeouple. .Whiffena. 1904: opyrightf h eRoyalAnthropologicalnstitute f GreatBritain nd reland.two views of Amazonia is a curiously ahistorical place, a prace n whichthe idioms of naturalism still serve o provide the basic refrences or thesocial,as hey still do for many hunting and gathering societies.In a crucial respect, however, the ahistoricism and persistent natur-alism are surprising.Amazonia may yet appearasone of he last rontiers.

IIIt ^^L-:Y.he Troocof Amazonbut since the ear liest phasesof Newbeenpart of the modern world. World colonization, Amazonia has

Even as a narrowly defined anthropological object Amazonia is frag-mented,but ther e is a general notion - especially among Indianists whdtend to provide the f ocus for sociocultural anthropological research ofa division of labour among symbolists, strucfuralists, and cultural eco-logists.2Such a classification s not exhaustive of the socioculturalanthropology of the region as t little acknowledges he anthropology ofnon-Indian Amazoniansor the appeals o multidisciplinary synthesesseeBale 1994;Heckenberger2005; Roosevelt 1994),but the core ethno-graphic literature is unquestionably centred on a highly recognizable'Amazonian Indian subject'.Alongside this fairly unambiguous anthropological object s a traditionof Amazonian sfudies hat converges,however awkwardly at times, with

frgure4.2 Chamacocco omanand child.M. Schmidt1926.


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ChapterFour

Figure .3 Bates ersushe oucans. .Bates gg2.theofficial anthropologicar iterature.3 here are key erements f this trad-ition egularlynvokedfo_,proyide,ay",:rl backgroundilhrghlil;both natural (tnfernouerde) nd curturat (Manuas pera house) flar,r"res.Against his background,are actors generally desigrratedwith no greatsubtletyas Indians, caboclos,r whites (from an ingenist,s pur.p".li*rulor Indians,mestigos,nd nationals (from a national pu?.p..ti"i;.rTi.." i;a relativeand significani absenceof autochthono.r. hi.to.i."l fig";;;,;;analoguesf Sitting Bull, Geronimo, or Black EIk.i Instead,out.ii" ".ior.

l t l::&,::'1+,;', 'l'

TheTropicofAmazonsuchas Colonel Fawcett, Henry Ford, and Euclides da Cunha provideiconic eference'6For the purposesof this book, there are roughly five phasesof docu-mentation of Amazonia (both natutal and social landscapes) n whichthere is an intermixing of anthropological and non-anthropologicalstereotypes.Obviously, an ofifrcialanthropological diom only emergesnthe 20th century,but that idiom inevitably drawsheavily - if selectivelyon earliersources.The first phase s associatedwith accountsprovided by religious chron-iclers who accompanied, respectively, the first descent and first ascentof the river: Carvajal who documented the voyage of Orellana (1542),and Acuna who documentedTeixeira's expedition a century later (1637).La Condamine (1737), on Humboldt (1799), on Spix and von Martius(1817) and, subsequently,Agassiz represent he explorer/scientistphase.Thase hree s closelyassociated ith Wallace 1889), ates 1892),and Spruce 1908),ndependentscientistss hosework was mainly fundedthrough the sale of collections. Phase our is the official ethnographic,uco.d,effectively ommencingwith Curt Nimuendaj 1939,1942,1946,1949,1952).And the fifth phase commenceswith the so-called'opening'of Amazonia via the projects associatedwith - and supersedingthe construction of the TiansamazonHighway.There is a sixth phase, hough perhaps not so much a stageof the se-quenceas t is an accumulationand aggregationof images hat representi stereotypical Amazonia, one whose mythic elements - challengedbynew research are not so much displacedasenhanced.An earlyexampleof this is the myth of Amazon warriors, an image of dubious reliability,yet still a centerpieceof folkloric accounts,kept alive as much throughits repeatedlybeing cited as naccurate as hrough its being ascribedanycredibility. Henry Hoyt's (2001 1925])LostWorld based n ConanDoyle's1912 ovel) is undoubtedly one of the most nfluential in terms of popularperceptionsof Amazonia, reihforced by updatessuchas Crichton's novelandfilmJurassicPark (1990and Spielberg 1993)and feature ilms suchasAnacondaLlosa 1997) and Relic(Hyams 1996) (seeChapter 7). A moretime-bound, but still significantly influential, litetature also dates fromthe declining yearsof the rubber industry (early20th century; see, or ex-arnple, Woodroffe and Smith 1915).eAs this sketch of phases ndicates,Amazonia has ong been he subjectof serious scrutiny from diverse quarters, but the guiding images- themelange of tropical associations seeStepan2001) - tend to repeat hem-selves.The net effect is of an Amazonia repeatedly re-invented underthe terms of the current prevailing researchprogramme (anthropology,economic botany, mineral extraction, non-timber forest products, etc.),but with continued deference to the fundamental immutability of the


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ChapterFourso-called hyleiqt, a nature yet to be brought to bear under the force ofcivil society, a frontier laboratory settingout limitless researchand socialengineering possibilities.Granted that between the l6th century dis-covery of 'Amazon warriors' and the 20th century discoveryof ,wisefolf-m_a1agers,'rr.there have been significant changes n the pubric per-ception of the region and its peoples (witness he ientrality r trr" ,uir,forest n contemporary eco-discourse), ut there is still a strong senseoftime suspensionn Amazonian shrdies.

Amazonia was first explored by Europeans n the early l6th centuryO5_4J-?)._Thatoyage.*1r^1g.9-"nted by Friar Gaspir de Carvajal,published-in spanish in 1855 (complete version, tg'95) and reviJedand published in English (Heaton 1954).A closely following descentofthe river (replete with hostile encounterswith Arnerindians)-found cine-matic representation n the form of Aguirre:wrath of God Herzog lg72),an impressive, ow-budget, didactic costume dram. Arthough ii manyrespects exhrally accurate, t fails to convey a controversial eatureoftheAmazonianlandscape oJ the 16th cenhrry that has come to prominencein recent debates seeMeggers 1g96)about the characterof prehistoricalAmazonian social ormations: the Amerindian adversarieswre not bow-wielding hunter-gatherersdiverted from their normal task of procuringfood fo r dinner, bu t were armed representativesof complex an dlarge societies.The ocietiesWhat Carvajal document"! l:r been slighted for two quite separatereasons.The first is that orellana's voyage failed to consolidaie thegold-driven aims of spanish cottqrreto.s.purruge down the river didnot reveal monumental societies hat could pro'nidu the material wealthlought by the spanish. second, carvajal documented kinds of societiesthat so rapidly dlsappeatred lder the impact of conquest hat by the timeone could_speak f colonial society n Amazonia,'indigenous peopleswere largely represented by mere fragments of their "it"c"aerrtr; Laby the time seriousanthropological investigation was undertaken, ndi-genous Amazonian societieswere representative of pre-conquest soci-9li9yi1a manner so slight a.s9^{l9w only piecemealspeculation Lathrap1968;Porro 1994;Roosevelt1994).The first ascentof the. iver did not take place until the early lTth cen-tury' Led by PedroTeixeira, he expedition d-ocumented socii hndscape

Foundingtereotypes

IITheTropic tnmazon rccomparable n scale o that encountered by Orellana (i.e., high density,riverine chieftainships,proto-states),but the benchmarks of pillageablewealth established y the conquestof Andean societieswere still notapproachable.uSubsequentexploration and colonization of the region (seeHemming1978,1987a,1987b)onductedby private, crown, and religious groupsdidresult in unsteady commercial exploitation of the region (seeAnderson1999)and the decimation and further fragmentation of indigenous soci-eties. Scientific exploration by Condamine, von Humboldt, Agassiz,von Martius, and Spix - lSth until early l9th centuries and by Spruce,Wallace, and Bates n the mid-to-late l9th cenLury was conducted n ahighly truncated social andscape.The Amazonia that presented tself totheseVictorian naturalistswas a wildernesspreviously occupied by manyhumans. The relative absenceof a social Amazonia was not an originalcondition but the outcome of hundreds of yearsof contact.There are many reasons or highlighting the contributions of the trio ofVictorian naturalists and for setting them apart from their predecessors.They were neither gentleman-scholars f private means nor direct em-ployees of church or crown, but freelance/independentscholarshired asconsultants,and they had much greater exposure o the lives of diverse,ordinary Amazonians.The images of Amazonia in the 19th centurythat emerge from the work of Bates,Spruce, and Wallace are based onextended periods in the field (their tenures perhaps only exceededbySchultes n the mid-20th century; seeDavis 1996),models for the kind ofethnographic ieldwork subsequentlyemployed by anthropologists.While Spruce'saccountof his time in Amazonia is mainly limited to anedited edition of his notebookscompiled by Wallace 190'8),oth Bates(1892)and Wallace (1889)are illustrated accounts hat athacted argepopular audiences Stepan2001:34) and were reviewed n periodicalsfor the educatedpublic (e.g.,Dial, Academy). hese accountscarried theauthority of a new scientific culhrre representednot only in such iguresas Darwin (who with Wallace shares credit for introducing the notionof natural selection),but also institutions such as the Royal GeographicSociety and the Royal Anthropological Institute of England and Wales.Unlike earlier woodcuts and engravingsof more sensationalist scenes fcannibalism feature prominently; seeMason 1990)and religious hemes,those of Bates's and Wallace's llustrations that included depictions ofhumans - relatively few - showed a savagenature (aggressive rocodiles,vengeful toucans, towering forest) and anticipated the structure of thedioramaspopularized by the American Museum of Natural History.Bates's 1892) he Naturaliston heRiaerAmazuv- 470 pages n length -includes four maps (the Amazon basin, the upper Amazon River andSolimoes River, the lower Amazon River, and the Amazon estuary).


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ChapterFourThere are nine landscapes including the widely reproduced ,Adventureswith Toucans'; see above) and prints of twenty-two animal speciesandsix plant species.Wallace's 1889) 4 Nanatiaeof Iiaueh on theAmazon ndRio Negro ncludes three maps (Rio Negro, Vaupes River, the Amazonbasin), six landscapes,en charts (e.g.,annual rainfall), and illustrationsofdomestic articles (e.g.,manioc grater) and geological ormations.Photography was then only an emerging technology and not, in anycase,suited to the regime of solo collector,Band Batesand Wallacewerenot members of large teams,but more like freelanceoperators.Althoughthe scientif ic goal of providing basic nventories was pararnount,all threenafuralistswere dependenton the salesof their collections or their liveli-hoods and this was he priority.Despite the natural history focus, Bates'sand Wallace's texts includeaccounts of ncounters with many different kinds of Amazonians:although not systematic, the ethnographic content is substantial. It isimportant to recognize that in this period, there is no ethnographictradition with which to compare theseaccountsof field stays hat are un-precedented n terms of the depth and length. The antecedentsof theseaccountsare of very different.character,either official reports to imperialsponsors and r eligious authorities or quasi-heroic explorer accounts 1agenre that persists oday and still constitutesa significant portion of theAmazonianist iterature).Bates'sand Wallace'saccounts not to over-look entirely Spruce'snotebooks)were not the only contributionS o thiskind of narrative literature, but even though they comment extensively funsystematicallyabout the new Amazonian social landscape,rahe mainfocusof their attention wason flora and fauna.An explicitly ethnographicand photographic counterpoint to the illustrative aims of the naturalistsis provided by their contemporary E. Im Thurn who, although initiallyhained as a botanist, pursued an explicitly anthropological project.lmThurnnAnthropologicalsesf heCameraIm Thurn, probably best known for Among he ndiaru of Guiana(1889),provides two crucial links between the explorer/natural history Ama-zonianist literature (which is to say "."orrri, of the period betwlen themid-16th cenhrryand he mid-tolate lgth century) und t*o modern bodiesof Amazonian literature and images, those of academic anthropologyand those of the culture ndustry (and,centrally, Hollywood feature ilms).In the first case,he brings to bear the documentary,/classificatorympulseof modern ethnography (embodied in the Torres Straits Expedition, forexample). n the secondcase,his accountof his ascentof Mount Roraima(near he Guyanese/Venezuelan/Brazilian orders) s the sourceof ConanDoyle's 'lost world' representationof Amazonia (Conan Doyle lg12) - a

ItheTropicof Amazon

Figure .5 Macusi ancingutft. . mThurn 893.version that not only continues o encapsulateeceivednotions of tropicalAmazonia and Amazonians, but is also the basis for other continentalmodels (cf. Bond 1992a,1992b)as well as modern mufationssuch asJurassic ark II $ohnston 2001).

Figure4.4 Riverbank. . m Thurn1883.


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,alhapterFour

Figure .7 Macusi oy.E. mThurn 8g3.Im Thurn's 1893 arricle on anthropology and photography is basedon his considerable field exp-erience n Goy".r",iu his iarnilarity withemerging rends within an anthropology representedby a newly ormedprofessionalassociation the Royar Anthropological Inutute oEnglandand wales) and on the verge of becoming a unlversity discipline, ird ac.oncem o document 'primitive phasesof life [that] are fast fading fromthe world in this age of restlessravel and explo.aon'(1g98:rg4i. Des-pite his criticism of the restricteduse of photography only for the accuratemeasuringof 'mere bodies of primitive fotk' (iaob:ia4) and his claim thatthe photographing of living beings shourd be a priority - another swipeat anthropometry - the position-he espousess sUU reavlty flavoured tyraciological preoccupations and archic notions about the relationshipbetweengenotype- nd phenotype. Although more than mere physiologyis to be captured by the carnera,according to Im Thurn -oi" u..rr.""t.than even the detailed drafumanship of a -catlin can achieve,he argues

Figure 4.6 Vtlarrau afuzo.E. m Thurn1g93.

iTheTropicof Amazon | 77(more mportantly) that the camera can record under natural conditions(1893:196), claim somewhat nderminedby the images see bove)heuses o illustrate his case'It takesconsiderable aith to recognize n the carte ostale/cartee aisiteformat of these mages he lifefulnessclaimed. Im Thum writes:

Just as he purey physiological hotographs f the anthropometristsremerelypictures flifeless odies, o heordinaryphotographs funcharac-teristicallymiserable atives, uchas hat which havejustdescribed,eemcomparableo the photographs hichoneoccasionallyees f badlystuffedanddistortedirdsandanimals.1893:187)His commentary on each photograph makes clear that the step from'stuffedanimal' to 'living being' is ess han it first appears, or eachphoto-graph - according to his commeniary - is of interest becauseof the wayit provides a context {or the material culture displayed by each of themodels.Hence, the first photograph (Pariomonaman in palm leaf dress) sof nterestbecausehe dress tself s brought o if e bybeingworn: '[W]henseenoff the body of the wearer it would look like nothing in the worldbut a small bundle of withered palm leaves,and would to t}le uninitiated

seemsupremely uninteresting' (1893:195).Similarly, the photograph ofthe Macusi lad in full dancingdress'has merit becausethesearticlesseen,as n this photograph, n situ" cqttitenew nterest' (1893:195). he captionto the photograph of Gabriel reverts o a raciological diom, being an llus-hation of the offspring of a 'red-skinnedmother' and 'black father'.The initial claims or accuracyand lifefulnessto re uly relegated n ImThurn's own summary of what the photographs show: 'In short, a goodseriesof photographs showing each of ihe possessions f a primitive folk,and t s use,would be far more instructiveand far more interesting hat anycollectionof the articles hemselves'1893197).These are rather modes t claims for the advantagesbrought to anthro-pology by the use of photography, and far from making a case or thesuperior accuracy of photography over textual or figurative accounts,Im Thurn's essay s basically an encomium to the forensic superiority ofphotography in deconstructing the racial elements to be found amongvarious Guianesepeoples. Ordinary illustrations make difficult'discern-itg. . .the realbodily appearrnce f uncivilised olk'(1893:189).With reference o imagesscreenedduring the presentationof thispaperto the Royal Anthropological Institute of England and Wales, but notreproduced in the published version, Im Thurn comments on what iscrucially revealed n photographs: though not tall, area fine people n thepoint of physical and muscular development'; 'the ordinary conceptionof thes e people as dull and expressionless hould give place o the kueridea that . . . there is a great deal of life and even n some cases f beauty


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ChapterFourin their appearance'(1893:190);from the first instant hat the strongerEuropean influence meets and tquches the weaker native Americanrace, it is absolutely unavoidable that a change should begin in thelatter ' (1893:l9 l ) .Once launched on this line of speculation and virtually abandoningthe idea that photography can lift anthropolory beyond the crude goalsof anthropometry and allied conceits Im Thurn is submerged n racio-logical dross (see,n particular, pp. 192-3), concluding with the damp re-commendation that'the Instifute should make t its business o collect andarrrnge n somesuitablemanner all photographsof the kind here alludedto, which the travelling anthropologistmay secure'(1893:203).Im Thurn's contribution to early analysisof the role of photography inmodern anthropology is undeniable, but equivocal n key respects.Oneaspecthasalreadybeen noted: the predominanceof a forensic approachridiculed by Im Thurn as akin to taxidermy - makes any alternativeapproachappearamore radical departure han tmay actuallybe.WhatImThurn takes o be naturalistic epresentationsof Indians look contrived -stiff studio fare. Second,despite his enthusiastic,programmatic espousalof photography, Im Thurn himself seemed o lose nterest n pursu ing hiscraft. His prominence as a public figure (and promoter of anthropology)and associationwith the long-term study of the peoplesof British Guyanaresulted only in a very small number of prints held by the Royal Geo-graphical Society, he Royal Anthropological Institute, and the Pitt RiversMuseum (Ayler 1994).t Third, images of native peoples provided byseriousscholarsand explorers (often merged categories n this period)$representedan extremely small portion of imageproduction of that epoch.The successof international trade fairs and theatrical exhibitions thatincluded humans n native dress seePoignant 2004 for a compelling his-torical casestudy of Australian travelling exhibits/subjects); he umblingof categoriesof the exotic, as n the exhibition of pygmies, polar bears,arrd Scottishdancerscited by Street(1994:122);and the fashion ot cartesposnle - of which 866 million were posted in the United Kingdom in1909-10 (Street 1994:122) all overshadowedethnographically nspiredimagesas core representations f exotic natives.The emergenceof a substantialbody of ethnographic mages of Ama-zonians was delayed for several decadesand the popularization of theclichd image set was consolidatednot only by the cartes e aisite/tavelimage ndustry, but also hrough expressionvia other genresand medi4 amajor examplebeing The ostWrldnovel (ConanDoyle 1912) nd featurefilm (Hoyt 2001 [1925]).P m Thurn appears o have tried to -minimizethe associationbetween the account of his ascent of Mount Roraimaand Conan Doyle's fictional re-rendering, but despite his attempts toemphasize the scientific and practical aspectsof his ascent and the fact

TheTropicof Amazonthat t was a first ascent],possibly to counteractConan Doyle's sensation-alising transfoffnation of his achievement . . . his efforts were in vain'(Dalziell 2002:l5l). Only two years after his death, even his friend theanthropologistR. R. Marett and his widow Hannah would refer to the'lost world' in their introduction to a commemorative set of essays@alziel l 002:151).

In her comparisonof the parallel creersof Im Thurn's Mount Roraimaand Conan Doyle's 'lost world',ro Dalziell shows how Conan Doyle'srendition is not only obviously fashioned after Im Thum's account, butalsohow it blatantly distorts key points. While the contentsof the MountRoraimaplateauare mainly of botanical nterest,and quietly odd, the con-tentsof the 'lost world' plateau are rather more exotic.Im Thurn'speaceful ummit,with dwarf,alpinelike vegetation nd strangerock formations,s not the stuffof an mperialadventure tory. . . Beforenighfall the dinosaur potting asbegun, nd as heplot unfolds,he heroesare pursuedby primevalcarnivores, isturb a pterodact yl lock,are cap-tured by hostileape-men,riggera war and rescue grateful ndian ribe.(Dalziell 002:148)The scientific mpulse of Im Thurn (e.g.,collecting specimensor Kew

Gardens) s overwhelmed by the appeal of dinosaurs on Tower Bridge,a tendency reflected as well in the contemporary discrepancy n sym-boic weight between befeathered-Indian-with-blowpipeand geneticallymodified soya the former a focal clich, he latter a pedestrian, f poten-tially cataclysmic, ootnote.A similar example of the easy coedstence of contradictory empiricaland mythical content n Amazonianist iterature and imagery of that timeis provided by Colonel Fawcett,an English explorer who disappeared nMay 1925 presumed killed by Indians - during a search or an ancientAmazonian city. His disappearance as continued to prompt speculation(intensity evel: that of the Loch Ness monster ot yeti rather than UFO)a lot ofwhich has appeared n print2r and despite he absence fconclu-sive evidence, here is a folk attribution of responsibility to the KalapaloIndians of the upper Xingu region. Basso(1973:4), he most assiduousstudentof the Kalapalo, recounts heir denial of responsibility,yet

during he period of my own researchmid-1960s], met several ersonsvisiting he Upper Xingu who were willing to pay for informationaboutColonel Fawcett. his was particularly rue of Englishmen eekingosolve he mystery whichapparently s still alive (at east n somecircles)nGreatBritain.Im Thurn's work and reaction to it provide an example of folk know-ledge prevailing over an emerging scientific iter ature, but it is importantto note the very different dynamics characteristic of the sc ientific and


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iChapterFourfolkloric bodies of the knowledge. The latter tends to be cumulative oriterative_,he contemporary'wise forest manager'being a clear ransform-ation of the 'noble savage', and gives the impressiJn of stability. Theformer, however, has an illusory stability despiie the rigour provied byan ncreasinglysophisticatedanthropology.The main reason or this s thefact that in terms of demographic collapse,by lzsT the ,worstwas alreadyover in most areas' (Heckenberger2005:10) and that the move towardethnography , by the Victorians, for example - took place against animpoverished backdrop of fragmented knowiedge, and e phoigraphicrecord of this period consistsmainly of posedstudio prodrrcs.

Figure .8 Postcard,acuchindian. .HuebnergO3_04.There were sound reasons or studio dependence,suchascumbersomeequipment and the need for long exposure imes, but it's also true that adocum_entarylobservational pproacL oward ordinary life scenes ad yetto challenge he idealized photographic object (Levin tOaS,SZ;.

The Tropicof AmazonThe simple contrastbetween the idealized and the ordinary, howevet,doesnot seem o capture he actualvariety represented n collectionssuchas hat of Kroehle and Huebner (Schoepf2000). The photograph of theMacuxi youth above, and that of the couple below, are unambiguousyposedstudio mages.

Figure4.9 Amerindian ouple.G. Huebner 90H5.


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ChapterFourAs an alternative to the clinical/forensic style derided by Im Thurn,there s a female Xipibo couple posed against drop cloth.

Figure4.10 Xipibowomenon the Ucayali. . Huebner g8g. Figure4.11 Okaina irls. .Whiffen a. 1904:Copyright f the Royal nthropologicallnstituteof GreatBritainand lreland.


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ChapterFour

Figure4.12 Yekuanaman.M. Schmidt1926.

Figure4.13 Kobeua otter.M. Schmidt1926. Figure .1 Tukuyanuffaker.M.Schmidt 926.

The TropicofAmazon

Figure4.14 Kobeuawoman and childrenusing rpt o squeezeuice rom maniocoulp.M. Schmidt 926.


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86 | Chapter our

Figure4.16 Postcard,Carajbasketmaker.

Figure4.17 Serrado Araraquara, io Branco.G. Huebner 904.^ In termsof thephotographicconventions hat came oprevail oncea pro-fessional-ethnographiciterature could be recognized,king the *ori-orNimuendaj 1939,1942,.1946, 949,1952)asoundauonallthe u,'g" ofs.ubjectm{t9r represented n Huebner's work22 s transgressive.Not onrydoes t include Amazonianswho are not indigenes,but it alsoshowsa so-cially more complex amazonia than is typicJ of 'green/vegetationher,.

The TropicofAmazonIrn Thurn's dual role as a contributor to a maturing anthropology and,however inadvertently, contributor to a competing repertoire of Ama-.,4)rf1anlich' might seem curious, but it accurately reflectskey changeslhen occurring n the region. Firs! the rubber industry that had-heldswayou", thu regional economy of the Brazilian Amazon (and significantpartsof orh". Amazonian countries) apidly declined n the first decades f the

20th century, and in the absenceof a substitute ndustry, the region wasundergoingan involution later characterizedas economic stagnation''Secnd, his relegation of the region from its previous position in theworld economy coincided with the emergenceof a new kind of anthro-oology that emphasized - in departing from the dominance of diffu-ionii*, evolutionism, or raciology - a Boasiancultural relativism and theintegrity of different kinds of pre-capitalist social systems as well asthe structure functionalist notion of a self-contained systefn. m Thurnflags heseshifts n his references o the shortcomings of anthropometricntit"ti.lr in represenling native peoples and in being caughtup in thenew projections of imperial culture. The losf Worldphenomenon wasnot only literary, but also reflected a new kind of scientific culturewithincosmopolitancircles and n which the Darwinian revolution and the rolesof learned societies eatured prominently). Additionally, there were im-portant political dimensionsespeciallywith regard to the high visibility ofcertain colonial and imperial practices.The South American hinterland depicted by Im Thurn and the enter-prising Conan Doyle was explicitly colonial Guiana (thenBritish Guyana)lor go*retnmentemployee and scientist m Thum, but a generic tropics'for Conan Doyle. This generic depiction and the ascendancy f a naturaldomain over a more political one is not unrealistic. Brazilian Amazoniahad, after all, been initially claimed by Spain and de facto absorbedbya motley set of interests n the corner of the Portuguesecolony. Effect-ively administered by the Jesuit order until Pombal's interventions inthe mid-18th centur/, it was, (until the rubber boom) a not particularlydesirable colonial territory. Borders between and among Brazil, Peru,Bolivia, Venezuela,Colombia, and the Guianaswere uncertainly drawnand certainly permeable, a situation maintained in some subregionstoday; significantboundary re-drawing had taken place (e.g.,Acre's shiftfrom Bolivian to Brazilian control; the resolution of the Venezuela/BritishGuyana border dispute); and Colombia and Peru had tried to use thePutumayo scandalas he basis or pursuing a new set of territor ial claims.The fact that travel in the region was mainly restricted o river routes cer-tainly reinforced the perception of the interior as uncharted space.This generic tropical forest - the lost world - was also aid before thepublic eye in other ways. Casement's eport on Belgian abour practiceson Congo Free State rubber estates n 1904 had drawn international


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ChapterFouratiention to a shocking evel of barbarism (indeed, an African ,heart ofdarkness'cognateof 'green hell'). In Amazonia, shortly afterward, allega-tions of the enslavement and torture of rubber estate workers in theNorthwest Amazon (Putumayo region) were investigatedby casementlrand the casewaspublicized by the Anti-slavery and Aborigines protectionSociety_andntensely coveredby the London periodical rhe riuth, whoseeditor Sydney Paternosterpublished a bookJngth account (rhe LordsoftheDeail'sParadise) n l9l3.z+The turn-of-the-century Amazonia depicted in literary, journalistic,and - to a limited degree photographic accountswas not in any simplesense n occidentalist' constructionof greenhell, and while it is clearwiatelements were employed in the clich assembryof ,the lost world/greenhell' complex achievedby conan Doyle (and many other lesserwiterswho alsoprovided - and continue to provide - a deep ungle fix), many ofthe elements engagedwere based, a the cinematii quficauon hus it,on 'real events/a rue story'.zsThe caricature of Amazonia as a lost, nterior spacepopulated by semi-mic features and peoples was hardly confind to-nn-Brazilians, al-thoug-h n the caseof Brazilian commentators (such as da cunha 1944[1902])'much more emphasiswas placed on the national issueof theethnic melting pot (and fears of the mongrelization of Brazil; schwarcz1999) han it was on Indians per se.In looking at some of the photographic imagesavailable rom late lgthcentury Amazonia, Im Thurn's criticism of what he clearly regards as adominant mode (or genre)of representation s difficult to interp"ret.First, the swipesat taxidermic photography seemdirected a a generalanthropological practice, not specifically an Amazonian one; y.i u, *overtly anthropological practice (aspursued, or example, by vers andhis associateson the Torres straits Expedition), phoographic anthro-po-*"try was only really emerging at the time Im Tirurn ias^writing. Thereference may well be to the criminat identification system of Berullon(1882-83)or to Lombroso (1876), ur that s not crear.it is more likelv areference to the way ph_otographyhad overtaken painting - ".g., h"'Comp_anySchool' (Landau lggg:l) - in providing . ,..oil of umantypesdisappearingunder various colonial regimes.second, t is difficult to recognize he distiictive advanceof an anthro-pologically informed photography over what was being achievedby, say,Frisch.Early photographsof Amazonians adherequite well to Im Tirurn'sprescriptions, endering his critique a bit lifeless.It is known that an American photographer based n Belm in lg4+,charles Deforest Frederick, spent almosi a decadephotographing inthe region and along the Brazilian coas! but no worl.s ."" t ,rrriit"(Ferrez and Naef 1976:24).Among the earliest photographs available

The TropicofAmazon^,o rhoseof Albert Frisch.26Aside from Frisch's photographs, the only?r.r,n^uonian' image n Ferrezand Naef's [1976]Pioneer hotographers#nr*t- by Fidanza showsDom Pedro I arriving n Belm n 1867')It "r " ,ho* Indians in poseshardly dissimilar rom those of contem-oor-y port..tds, and, as noted above,not at all dissimilar from what Imhhu- *u. later to achieve.

Figure4.18 AlberiFrisch a. 1860.

Figure .19 Albert rscha.1860.


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ChapterFour

Figure4.20 AlbertFrisch a. 1860.

Figure 4.21 AlbertFrisch a. 1860.

The Tropicof Amazon

Figure4.22 Indians n Solimoes. lbertFrisch a, 1865

Figure 4.23 Indianon Solimoes.Albert Frischca. i 865,


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ChapterFourAlthough these are all of the cartes eaisitestyle, hey are neither pure'portrait' nor 'view' - as the two prevalent types of the late lgth centurywere designated.Although clearly posed, prints l-3 (Figures4.lg-4.2)in particular show what was to become an ethnographic photographicconvention in subsequentdecades:a sceneof daily life that showedhuman actor s andmaterial culture (and/or spatial setting).There are important similarities and differences between Amazoniananthropology of this period and photographic developments n othercolonial setlings.Landau (1999)observes hat arnong the roles assumedby photography were reportorial and documentary (including anthro_pometric) functions,providing tokens fo r raciologists 1g99:2)and as-sisting colonial administration (as n watson and Kaye's [rg6g-zs] r'ltePeople f ndia).The documentary importance of the Indian phenotype in Brazil wasmodest, perhaps overshadowed n the context of late-l9th/20th centurynational debatesabout race and identity in which a discourseabout whiteand black dominated seeRamos1998;schwarczTggg; kidmore 1998).In terms of administration,2T owever, documentary photography ratherthan ethnography featured n the state'spromotion of a nationj Indian

bureaucracy initially the sPI (society or the protection of Indians), aterFUNAI (National Indian Foundation).zrThe three volumes published under Rondon's name and entitred zhaIndiansof Braail (1946, 1953a,1953b) nclude 1,515 mages, he vast ma_jority being of human subjects rather than material .nlto." objects orlandscapes.2eolume r - Indians of the centre,of theNortheast, d of thesouth of Mato Grosso is comprised of reports on 36 Indian groups andincludes 573 mages,a number of which are frame grabs fro th flmsof colonel rhomaz Reiswho accompanied he expeditions as he officialarmy cinematographer.Volume II, on Indians of the Xingu, Araguaia,andOipoque rivers, ncludes four hundred imagesof sixteen gro,rpr. Volumerrr - IndiansNorth of heAmapn Riuer includes accountsrnt"".r groupsand 540 images.This is a formidable set of official images,and as Landau (19gg:6)ob-servesof a different setting (colonial Africa):The orceshat marshalled nddistributedmages, erealso hose hatpro-qagatedhedominantnterpretationsf what he mages ere aken oman.From he 1890shrough he 1930s,he Zulu ,warrior,,the Maasaimunan.the 'hunter' in Duggan-croriin's,beautifulhotographs, Jlmetony.rnicallyidentified heir'tribes'in various ooks,antemslide ndpostcard.

_ Muchthe samemight be claimed for Amazonia with the important dif-ference hat a generic ndian (later o becomeRamos's 6yperrd Indian')took precedenceover named tribes. In fwo senses,his generic tendency

The TropicofAmazonis not surprising. On one hand, the extermination of Amazonian Indiansduring th firsltwo hundred years of contact was so extensive hat it isnw convincingly established if not necessarilywidely conceded thatin general erms contemporary Indian groups are very poorly represen-htive of the situation ust prior to and at the time of contact. On the otherhand, by the time that photographic documentation emerges n the late-19thcentury, there is not a single example of the kind of large,possiblyproto-state ociety hat dominated the barksof the Amazon (Porro 1996).What the photographic image of an Amazonian subject has come to re-present s (likely) at oddswith what it is widely thought to represent.This tension betrveen he adequacyof what is representedby the imageof the Indian, however, has its own history, and one that is sharply in-formed by the fact that the existenceof any Indians - by whatevercriteriaof typicality - is precarious. When the development of a professionalanthropology of Amazonian Indians did emerge, he consideredview (ifperhaps he dominant one) was hat the collectivity of Indian groups wasin such a fragile state hat the processof modernization would rapidlycomplete he processof assimilation and cultural decline (Ribeiro 1967);thus, much emphasis n the field of Indian studies - indigenism - wasplaced on what little wa s still representedat all by Indians rather than re-presentativenessn the longer term. The consolidation of indigenism asa clear position within the anthropology of Brazil and the Amazon borewith it the effect of creating a necessa,ryndian, a conception that mightadvance he causeoflndian rights even at the expense ofprecision. Thedesignation Xirgo Indian', for example, which has a high recognitionfactor, doesn'tactually refer to an ethnos,or even meaningfully o the vari-ous ethnic groups (or fragments of) that live in or near the Xingu Riverand Reserve.3oOne of the reality trade-offs is that classificatory simplifications arepolitically strategic n helping to identif a constituency hat is recogniz-able within national and international political discourse:of course.however, hat strategy s alsoenhanced y the clichheritage.Again, acom:parison with Africa (Landau 1999:8) s instructive: whereas n Africaphotography relied on a number of stereotypes albeit a small number),which is to say so-called tribes', colonial:r photography in Amazoniawas not so directly a reflection of administrative prerogatives.AlthoughRondon's heavily photographed expeditions were clearly part of a stateproject to extend and consolidate ts influence in the more remote re-gions of interior Brazil, it was hardly either systematic or closely tiedto a comprehensive administrative apparatus. The 67 tribes identifiedand photographed in the course of the Rondon expeditions provides apartial yet compelling collective portrait, an inventorysz hat ncludesandreinforces the key elements of the long-lasting aggregated cons -naked,befeathered,spearwielding, forestdwellers, etc.

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ChapterFourOf the 437 peoples/tribescurrently identified and documented by theBrazilian Social-Environmsgtal Institute (Irctituto Socioambientall,i aJsoappearon the ist of67 proVided n Rondon (1946,1953a, gs3bj, and ofthesesixteen were initially (i.e., by Rondon) cited with different names(e.g.,Rondon Massac ppearson the ISA list as a subgroup of Tuberao).Given the greater sizeof the ISA list, it is not surprising that some of trreRondon names are duplicated - as in the caseof the Nambiquara, forexample, with a singlJ entry in Rondon but 35 entries on th ISA list(e.g.,Anunsu, Halotesu, Kithaulu, Wakalitesu,Sawentesu,Negarot,Mamaind, Latund,Sabane Manduka, Tawand,Hahaintesu,Altt"su.Waikisu,Alaketesu,Wasusu,Sarar).There are a number of ways to read the comparisonbetween theRondon and ISA lists. The proportion of Rondon enkies that recurs al-most one hundred years ater is only about 55 per cent, a decline not outof line with the well-known pessimisticpredictions of authorities such asRibeiro (1967).while the ISA survey is obviously more comprehensivein terms of both Amazonian and non-Amazonian Brazilian Indians,and the Rondon list reflects a far narrower explorer's brief, in both casesthe imagesof Indians are different from thosehighlighted by Landau inhis analysisof imagesof Africans, and different in ways thai reflect fun_damental differencesbetween the colonial regimes.Just as the labellingand depiction of African natives were in part functions of the ways theywere administered, so in Amazonia does the consolidation of a genericIndian reflect a particular political regime.sg

Figure4.24 Patamonagroup.J. F.Woodroffe19.|4.

It""v vhe Tropicof AmazonI rtotes

Heroic metaphors have been characteristicof colonial discourse n Amazoniasince he first entry by Europeans,and in the 21st century the region is stillbeing 'conquered'. The idea of a systematic elationship between the regionand the nation-and-world-systems obscured by repeated ecourse o an epi-sodicnotion of history.See he overview by Viveiros de Castro (1996).Many of these,especiaJly f the 'havelier/adventurer'.genre, make only fleet-ing reappearances, ut others have well-established oles - e.g., he abovewidely reproduced engraving of Batesbeing attackedby toucans.The classificationof Amazonians s not straightforward.Aa.nong ndianists ashort-hand evolutionary model tends o prevail: Indians - assimilated ndian(caboclo)white man. For a detailed and nterestingdiscussion f aspects f themodern politics of Indian identity, seeOakdale (2005).Post-Thansamazonia,his situation has changed; cf. Raoni, Davi Yanomami,Chico Mendes.In the very recent past, however, named Amazonian representativeshaveemerged (e.g.,MarioJuruan, Davi Yanomami, Raoni, Paulo Payakan).SeeSmith (1990).Although t}tey maintained some kind of affiliation with such bodies as theRoyal Botaaical Gardensat Kew.Excluded from this discussion s the 'coffee-table' and reference iterature.This would include, for example, Cousteau and Richards's (19Sa) acquesCousteau's magn Journey;Ricciardi's (1991) Vanishing magn; H. and F.Schreider's 1970)National Geographic SocietyExploring heAmagn;Bates etal.'s (1964)TIME-UFE Intemational TheLand and Wildlife of SouthAmnica;Bishop's (1962)Sunday Times World Library Bragl arrdWillis's (1971)JungteRiuersandMountain Pealcs.A term first usedby von Humboldt - 'forest' in Greek (Kricher 1989:16, itingRichards 1952).A reference o an upward re-evaluationof native scientific capacity hat fol-lowed the political mobilization of Amazonian peoples in response o thedevelopment assaulton the region post-1970.There is seriousdispute aboutthe degree to which this re-evaluation of native science reflects anythingmore than a front for new forms of commercial exploitation, trading on thebranding value Indian authenticity.SeeTurner (19g5)and Corry (1g93).Smith (1990)provides a concise account of exploration from ihe early l6thuntil the early 20th centfies.The Amazonian photographic record of this period is very slim. For an un-usual and recently revealed archive, seeSchoepf 2000)on Georg e Huebnerwho worked with Koch-Grunberg and maintained a studio n Manaus.The rubber industry of the late lgth century represented he apex of Ama-zonian integration in the world economy to date.Im Thurn was curator of the British Guyana Museum (1877-82),governmentagent n Guyana (1891-99),and later governor of Fiji (lg0a). He was he firstpresidentof the Royal Anthropological Institute (1919-20).

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ChapterFour16 Views on the degree 9-whfch Im Thurn departed from the forensic anthro-pological^approachdiffer. Ayler (1994), or example, claims that the photo_graphs of the subjectsp-ofng-on palm thatch (abve) invorve ,ro r.mri"t ."lposes or contortions of the body, or anthropometric devices, 1g94:1gg).The last clause s correct (if we excrude he camera tself from consideraton),but the basisof Ayler's core craim s not wrolry convincing, namely that tnenatives aren't actually posing becausesuch manners of piesentatin of serfcome naturally to them: ,Most tropical_forest ndians ,."i i., .r,y .*p".i"rr"",extraordinarily graceful while still in the prime of life'.77 Among he ndiansof Guiana lgg3), ht mst durabre conhibution, incrudes58_ illustrations - ten platesarid 43 woodcuts _ but no photographs.18 And photographerssuch as Huebner (Schoepf oo; wlJ niaintained a com-- Trr:ir] studio output aswell asproviding documentary facfities for explorers.19 Anthropological documentary^_ or ethrograptric fih _ "_".;;Ji;;".regardless f whether one classifiesNanookiafanre or documeni"o "*rxtensive early observational ootage of Amazonian Indians was take' bycolonel rhomaz Reis wro estabrish the photographic and cinema Depart-ment of the Rondon commission in 1912.eiott ", .uruti""ry ".gl"ituamazonian image pioneer is Hercules Florence, credited with ie.relJpins a- lloloq"phic processbefore Daguerre and Fox iulbot (."e C*"fft fffi "20 Bleiler (1996)notes hat c91an Doyle's novel was one of many of that periodthat exploited the ,lostworld'theme.21 SeeOrcutt (2000)who citesFawcett (1958),Dyott (1930),Fleming (1933),andChurchward (1936).Huebner, that is, and his various Manaus collaborators.Casement,.who subsequently came to support the Irish Republican move-ment -_and was hanged for treason _ y*_;" acquaintanceof Conan Doyle,who offered somesupport in Casement'sdefense.Tirussig 1987)provides a celebrateddiscussionofthe curtureofviorence in thePutumayo region.Boorman's (1985a)memoir about the making of rhe EmeraldForasl escribeshow the attention to accurate ethrrographic'detail provided by consurtantanthropologistson the production finally Lecameunsupportable.'such iderityexceededwlat was required in order to establish, fr a cinema "rrdierr.thnographic authenticity.

1..-":d]"S to the catalogueentry for,Nineteenth_Century Brazilian Views, ofthe university of New Mexico'j center for SouthwestResearchpictorial col_lections,Frisch'sare the first known photographs of Amazonian Indians.The 'colonial administration' in Airica i"a'r.raiu referred to by Landaudgparts n many respects rom what was encountered n Brazil. Intialv, theadministration of Brazilian Indians was split among (fought;;. ;;t;;;c19wn' and religious interests,a system ormalizeiunder the Directrate in1757AJthoughSPI wasnot o-stensibly ithin the military sectorof the govern-ment,.Rondon's headship orged a durable link between Amazonia andrne mrrrtary' an association graphicauy reveared throughout the modern-ization process commencing with the construction oi th" t".,r"*.ro'Highway (1970).

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IILezheTropicofAmazonHemming's (2003) Die If YouMust races he development of Brazil's IndianbureaucracY'Compare this with Steward (1948a, 1948b), which ha s a high proportion ofobject mages.There are more than a dozen ethnolinguistic groups on the Reserve.This is a very imprecise designation. Late colonial' in Brazil, for example, sreckoned o refer to the secondhalf of the l8th century (cf.AJden 1987). {hatthe adjective means in the current context is pre-Republican (roughly latel9th/early 20th century).Of course, his s not an Amazonian inventory much lessa national one, yet itorovides an indicative baseline.Although the Jesuit administration of Indians until 1750 bears strikingsimilarities the situation outlined by Landau for'Africa'.

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