Authors: Wade Davis
Peter Buck’s classic book is
Vikings of the Sunrise
(1938; reprint, Christchurch, N.Z.: Whitcombe
& Tombs, 1954). Andrew Sharp presented his views in
Ancient Voyagers in Polynesia
(London: Penguin Books, 1957). His controversial
notions of accidental drift prompted a fascinating gathering that yielded a
collection of essays: Jack Golson, ed.,
Polynesian Navigation: A Symposium on Andrew
Sharp’s Theory of Accidental Voyages
(Wellington, N.Z.: A. H. and A. W. Reed for the
Polynesian Society, 1963).
Ben Finney, among the pioneering anthropologists
at the University of Hawaii, wrote an account of the first experimental
voyage of the sacred canoe:
Hokule’a: The Way to Tahiti
(New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1979). Much more
about this complex and inspiring history can be found on the excellent
website of the Polynesian Voyaging Society,
http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/aboutpvs.html.
Thor Heyerdahl expressed his misguided
interpretations of the history of Rapa Nui and Polynesia in
Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island
, appropriately published by Rand McNally
(Chicago, 1958). His
Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1964),
originally published in 1950, remains available as a mass-market paperback,
and has appeared in sixty-five languages. Heyerdahl’s ideas about Easter
Island were thoroughly dismantled by Thomas Barthel,
The Eighth Land: The Polynesian Discovery and
Settlement of Easter Island
(Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1978). The
best single archaeological source, based on more than thirty years of
research by a remarkable team of Chilean scholars, has unfortunately yet to
be translated into English: Patricia Vargas, Claudio Cristino, and Roberto
Izaurieta,
1000 Años en Rapa Nui: Arqueología del
Asentamiento
(Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, Universidad
de Chile, 2006). Edmundo Edwards, who with Patricia and Claudio has
excavated some 25,000 sites on the island, is about to publish his life’s
work. Although Edmundo and his colleagues conducted the pollen studies that
unveiled the character of the endemic flora at the time of the arrival of
the Polynesians, they reject the notion of a sudden collapse of island
civilization that has been widely published and become almost a fable of the
environmental movement. Their work suggests a culture in transition, with
the Bird Man Cult representing not a sign of decadence and decay, but of
reinvention and transformation that was interrupted crudely by the arrival
of disease and other dire consequences of European contact.
Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard have written
Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The
Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press,
2008). It is a book as bitter as it is uninformed. For fine biographies of
Bronislaw Malinowski and Franz Boas, see: Douglas Cole,
Franz Boas: The Early Years, 1858–1906
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999),
and Michael Young,
Malinowski: Odyssey of an Anthropologist,
1884–1920
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004).
Malinowski’s classic work on Kula is:
Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of
Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New
Guinea
(Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1984). First
published in 1922, it is one of the great classics of anthropology. He wrote
several other books, including
The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western
Melanesia: An Ethnographic Account of Courtship, Marriage, and Family Life
among the Natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea
(London: George Routledge & Sons, 1932). For
Malinowski’s controversial field journals see:
A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term
(1967; reprint, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1989). For an excellent book on the symbolic
representations of the Kula see: Shirley Campbell,
The Art of Kula
(Oxford: Berg Press, 2002).
Chapter Three: Peoples of the Anaconda
For an engaging account of Orellana’s encounter
with the Amazon women see: Alex Shoumatoff,
In Southern Light
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986). Gaspar de
Pinell was based at the Capuchin Mission at Sibundoy, at the headwaters of
the Putumayo. His report
Excursión Apostólica por los Ríos Putumayo, San
Miguel de Sucumbíos, Cuyabeno, Caquetá y Caguán
was published by Imprenta Nacional in Bogotá in
1928.
Green Hell: A Chronicle of Travel in the Forests of Eastern
Bolivia
, by Julian Duguid, appeared in London in 1930, published by
George Newnes Ltd. There were many such books. My own comments about
tropical ecology and the fragility of the Amazon rainforest appeared in a
collection of essays,
The Clouded Leopard
(Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1998). But we
had all been reciting this by rote for more than twenty years.
For a sweeping and insightful survey of the
Americas and the Amazon in particular before European contact see: Charles
Mann,
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus
(New York: Vintage Books, 2006). For Charles
Marie de la Condamine see:
Viaje a la América Meridional por el Río de las
Amazonas
(1743; reprint, Barcelona: Editorial Alta Fulla,
1986). For the consequences of contact, see: Ronald Wright,
Stolen Continents: The Americas Through Indian
Eyes Since 1492
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992). Paul Richards’s
classic book is
The Tropical Rain Forest: An Ecological Study
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1952). For
my own travels in the Andes and Northwest Amazon, the work with Tim Plowman
on coca, and subsequent botanical explorations see:
One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the
Amazon Rain Forest
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
For the dispute between Betty Meggers and Anna
Roosevelt, see Charles Mann’s excellent discussion in
1491
(cited above), as well as: Betty Meggers,
Amazonia: Man and Culture in a Counterfeit
Paradise
(Arlington Heights, Ill.: AHM Publishing, 1971);
Anna Roosevelt,
Moundbuilders of the Amazon: Geophysical
Archaeology on Marajó Island, Brazil
(San Diego: Academic Press, 1991); and Anna
Roosevelt, ed.,
Amazonian Indians from Prehistory to the
Present: Anthropological Perspectives
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994). For
new thinking on the Amazon, see several publications of Bill Denevan: W. M.
Denevan,
Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and
the Andes
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); W. M.
Denevan, ed.,
The Native Population of the Americas in 1492
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976);
“The Native Population of Amazonia in 1492 Reconsidered,”
Revista de Indias
62, no. 227 (2003): 175–88; “The Pristine Myth:
The Landscape of the Americas in 1492,”
Annals of the Association of American
Geographers
82 (1992): 369–85; and “Stone vs. Metal Axes: The
Ambiguity of Shifting Cultivation in Prehistoric Amazonia,”
Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society
20 (1992): 153–65. For Robert Carneiro on the
efficiency of stone tools, see: “Tree Felling with the Stone Axe: An
Experiment Carried Out Among the Yanomamö Indians of Southern Venezuela,” in
Carol Kramer, ed.,
Ethnoarchaeology: Implications of Ethnography
for Archaeology
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1979),
21–58. The classic account of the exchange of technology and agricultural
products in the wake of the Conquest is: Alfred W. Crosby,
The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural
Consequences of 1492
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972). See
also Crosby’s
Ecological Imperialism: The Biological
Expansion of Europe, 900–1900
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
Over the past forty years a small but remarkable
cadre of anthropologists, among them some of the most highly regarded
ethnographers in the profession, have worked among the peoples of the
Northwest Amazon of Colombia. The pioneer was Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, a
close friend and contemporary of my professor Richard Evans Schultes, who
himself devoted the better part of twelve years to the study of the
ethnobotany of the region. Schultes was the author of 10 books and 496
scientific papers. His most important books are
The Healing Forest:
Medicinal and Toxic Plants of the Northwest Amazonia
,
with Robert Raffauf (Portland, Ore.: Dioscorides
Press, 1990);
The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens
, with Albert Hofmann, 2nd ed., rev. and enl.
(Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1980);
Plants of the Gods
,
with Albert Hofmann (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979). There is a vast
literature on ayahuasca, much of it written by Dennis McKenna. For the best
single collection of papers, including contributions from Schultes, McKenna,
Jean Langdon, Bronwen Gates, Luis Luna, and Anthony Henman, see:
América Indígena
46(1) (1986): 5–256.
Reichel-Dolmatoff’s books include:
Amazonian Cosmos: The Sexual and Religious
Symbolism of the Tukano Indians
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971);
The Forest Within: The World-View of the Tukano
Amazonian Indians
(Foxhole, England: Themis Books, 1996);
Rainforest Shamans: Essays on the Tukano
Indians of the Northwest Amazon
(Foxhole, England: Themis Books, 1997); and
The Shaman and the Jaguar: A Study of Narcotic
Drugs Among the Indians of Colombia
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1975).
See also: Jean Jackson,
The Fish People: Linguistic Exogamy and
Tukanoan Identity in Northwest Amazonia
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983);
Kaj Arhem,
Makuna Social Organization
(Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International,
1981); and Irving Goldman,
Cubeo Hehénewa Religious Thought
, posthumously edited and published by Peter
Wilson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
Stephen and Christine Hugh-Jones first lived
among the Barasana in 1968. Both wrote seminal monographs. See: Christine
Hugh-Jones,
From the Milk River: Spatial and Temporal
Processes in Northwest Amazonia
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979),
and Stephen Hugh-Jones,
The Palm and the Pleiades: Initiation and
Cosmology in Northwest Amazonia
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
Christine went on to study and practice medicine, but they have returned to
the Río Piraparaná as a family on numerous occasions, and the Barasana and
their neighbours clearly view them as revered elders. Both Graham Townsley,
who directed
The Magic Mountain
, and Howard Reid, who directed
The Windhorse
and
Heart of the Amazon
, earned their
doctorates under Stephen’s direction at Cambridge.
Arguably the finest contemporary book on the
beliefs and traditions of the Piraparaná was one written by the indigenous
peoples of the river. See: Kaj Arhem, Luis Cayón, Gladys Angulo, and
Maximiliano García,
Etnografía Makuna: Tradiciones, relatos y
saberes de la Gente de Agua
(Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e
Historia, 2004). Kaj Arhem and photographer Diego Samper collaborated on an
exquisite illustrated book,
Makuna: Portrait of an Amazonian People
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press,
1998). For the work of the Fundación Gaia Amazonas, see: Martin von
Hildebrand, “Gaia and Culture: Reciprocity and Exchange in the Colombian
Amazon,” in Peter Bunyard, ed.,
Gaia in Action, Science of the Living Earth
(Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1996). The website is:
www.gaiaamazonas.org.
Chapter Four: Sacred Geography
For information concerning the Sacred Headwaters
and the efforts of the Tahltan to protect their homeland in the Stikine,
visit the following websites: www.skeenawatershed.com and
www.sacredheadwaters.com. I spent a year in a logging camp on Haida Gwaii
and wrote of the experience in the essay “In the Shadow of Red Cedar,”
published in
The Clouded Leopard
(Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1998).
For two fine books on the cultural importance of
coca see C. J. Allen,
The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity
in an Andean Community
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press,
1988), and Anthony Henman,
Mama Coca
(London: Hassle Free Press, 1978).
There is a vast literature on the Inca and
contemporary Andean ethnography. For history of the Inca, see Louis Baudin,
Daily Life in Peru Under the Last Incas
(New York: Macmillan, 1968); Brian Bauer’s
The Development of the Inca State
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992) and
Ancient Cuzco: Heartland of the Inca
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004); B. C.
Brundage,
Lords of Cuzco
(1967) and
Empire of the Inca
(1963), both reprinted (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1985); R. Burger, C. Morris, and R. Matos Mendieta, eds.,
Variations in the Expression of Inka Power: A
Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, 18 and 19 October 1997
(Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research
Library and Collection, 2007); G. W. Conrad and A. Demarest,
Religion and Empire
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); T.
D’Altroy,
The Incas
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); J. Hemming,
The Conquest of the Incas
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970); C.
Morris and A. von Hagen,
The Inka Empire and its Andean Origins
(New York: Abbeville Press, 1993); M. Moseley,
The Incas and their Ancestors: The Archaeology
of Peru
(London: Thames & Hudson, 1992); K.
MacQuarrie,
The Last Days of the Incas
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007); A.
Métraux,
The History of the Incas
(New York: Schocken Books, 1979); J. H. Rowe,
“Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest,” in J. H. Steward, ed.,
Handbook of South American Indians
, Bureau of American
Ethnology Bulletin 143, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1946), 183–330; and R. T. Zuidema,
Inca Civilization in Cuzco
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).