The old masters of Arnhem Land

Landscape of Arnhem Land

     Arnhem Land, the Top End of Australia, is an unwelcoming country. It is a country where for three months of the year it rains constantly, rivers burst their banks and carry away cars and when the drivers try to get out of the vehicles, they see grinning crocodiles waiting for a snack. It is a country where for nine months it doesn't rain at all and the once mighty rivers become chains of billabongs in whose stagnant waters grinning crocs wait for tourists who come too close to the shore. It is a country where above those billabongs raise rocks of incredible shapes, rocks that are perhaps pretty but one cannot even graze cattle properly between them. It is a country which the white owners of Australia consider hostile and useless. Or rather it has been decided that it is useless for white settlers but could be used as a reservation for Aborigines.

     The Aborigines of course lived there already and and had some input in its reputation as a hostile country. In the beginning of the 20th century it was a country where war never ended. It was a war fought with spears which - when thrown with a spear-thrower - could pierce a man from more than a hundred yards. Although sometimes a war between two particular groups ended and there was a peace ceremony - a most peculiar one, as many of their customs. As a sign of peace the chiefs exchanged their wives and this exchange was consumed on the spot, with everybody present. Nobody needed to take their clothes off for this as everybody walked around naked anyway. However, neither walking around naked nor this peculiar sign of peace meant that the people were promiscuous. Everybody knew who was whose spouse and one could be speared for running away with somebody else's wife. The runaway wife would be treated more leniently, only her tigh would by run through with a spear. She wouldn't complain, on the contrary, if she was denied the punishment, she might think that she wasn't attractive enough. Funeral rites were no less astonishing. If a respected clan member died, his body was roasted and eaten by the family, afterwards his bones were placed in a coffin made of a hollow log. This coffin was afterwards carried for years everywhere wherever the family moved, which was constant, as the Arnhem Land inhabitants were nomads.

Billabong

     Who would want to live in a country like this? Perhaps some adventure-seekers, like Paddy Cahill, who in 1906 set up a cattle station in Oenpelli, on the western edge of Arhem Land. He had problems of finding white workers and employed Aborigines as stockmen. Paddy Cahill knew Aborigines well, he had lived among them before and even learned a few of their languages.

     Another kind of people attracted to places like Arnhem Land were anthropologists. For them meeting people who had such strange customs was worthy of all the inconveniences of visiting such an inhospitable country. In a way the anthropologists were unusual among the white people as they saw these naked Aborigines not as wild people without culture but as people with a very different culture. But how to talk to them? Perhaps with help of an uneducated farmer like Paddy Cahill, who can speak some of the native languages?

     Baldwin Spencer, an anthropologist and a professor of the newly created University of Melbourne, did exactly that. He arrived at Oenpelli in 1912. He noted that the Kakadu people of Arnhem Land lead a nomadic life during the dry season but in the wet they stayed put in one place, built shelters from eucalyptus bark and painted strange creatures on their walls. He noted also that these figures painted on bark are quite similar to paintings in ancient caves in the area. He wanted such pictures in his museum in Melbourne and asked if somebody could paint them for him on a specially prepared piece of bark. Thus the precedent was created: bark paintings were made for people from an alien civilisation. Later a few more expeditions visited this mysterious land and collected bark paintings. The biggest one was made in 1948, after a war that was short, only a few years, but the weapons used were not spears but flying machines and bombs, some even atomic bombs. After that war ended the white owners of Australia decided they have to learn something about the country they had fought such a fierce war for. An expedition was sent there, led by C. P. Mountford. This expedition acquired the biggest collection of bark paintings before the market for Aboriginal art appeared. Thanks to these collections we can now observe how this art evolved.

Mother goddes in Arnhem Land rock painting

     The anthropologists noted that the bark huts and also the portable coffins were painted but it was by no means insignificant what was painted on them or who painted it. Only a member of a particular clan could paint particular patterns, the patterns were owned by a clan and nobody else was allowed to paint them. It was the same with body painting. One had to be adequately painted for a particular occasion in exactly the same way as in other civilisations people have to be dressed in a particular manner depending on where that are or what they do. In exactly the same way as in other civilisations somebody's social class can be guessed after the clothing that person wears, in Arnhem Land the Aboriginal people know who is from which clan seeing their body painting. The coffins and dwellings also have to be painted in a correct manner.

     But this is not all. The Arnhem Land Aborigines created bark paintings to illustrate myths (in Australia usually called "dreamings"). Those paintings were used for instruction during initiation ceremonies for boys. Each of those paintings had more than one meaning, the outer meaning was explained to boys and the inner meaning only to mature men. After the ceremony those paintings were destroyed (unless there was an anthropological expedition in the vicinity). Some of these pictures showed mythical progenitors with extra large genitals. One may think it logical that the mother goddess is pictured with her labia bigger than anything else but strangely for some of the white visitors this was totally unacceptable. Not just the labia but the very fact that somebody believed in a mother goddess.

Bark painting collected by Mountford

     This was because not only adventurers and anthropologists travelled to Arnhem Land. This country, where people wandered naked having never heard about Jesus, was a fertile land for missionaries. In 1925 the Anglican Church sent missionaries to Oenpelli, ten years later the Methodist church set up a mission on the east coast in a place called Yirrkala. Soon these two centres became the main points of contact between civilisations.

      For the first missionaries the initial challenge was the fashion because the natives favoured their birthday suit. A brave missionary can go to a wild place and build a church but could he let naked people enter it? Of course not! However, fashion tends to change everywhere, even in Arnhem Land. Wilbur Chaseling, the missionary in Yirrkala, wrote that in 1930ties there was a fashion among the young people for wearing clothes. Of course a naked man from the bush cannot just go to a shop in Darwin and buy a suit. The clothes worn by the Blackfellas of Arnhem Land in the 1930ties were acquired in other ways and varied immensely. Reactions to this fashion varied also, depending on the point of view. Tribal elders thought the old morals were breaking down because youngsters tried to hide something whereas a missionary was astonished to see a muscular warrior dressed in a Japanese ladies pyjama. It was only the youngsters, though, that were following this new fashion, the older people claimed that an honest person has nothing to hide and preferred their birthday suits.

     The fashion nevertheless appeared and to follow it one needed some purchasing power. How to acquire this power, though? Maybe selling bark pictures to anthropologists? The anthropologists are a very restricted market, their expeditions are not every day occurrences. The idea was, however, picked up by missionaries, they bought the paintings from their potential congregations and sold them in the cities on the coast. But how to pay the artists for their work? Some missionaries decided to pay depending on time needed to create a painting and how elaborate it was. If the buyer wants more elaborate pictures, then the artists will of course comply. Modern critics note the number of tiny strokes that was dramatically increased in Arnhem Land pictures around this time. Animals painted with just a few strokes on paintings collected by Spencer and Mountford from 1950ties on are covered in a net of minute strokes.

Modern mythical figure

     There was also another influence by the missionaries: the disappearance of the enlarged genitals. In the old days the labia of a mythical mother of a clan were painted bigger than anything else in the picture because they were holy. For a Christian missionary no labia can ever be holy. Anyway, how can one hang a picture with extra big labia in an art gallery? It would be difficult to find a buyer for such a picture therefore the mythical mother cannot have extra-large labia. In fact it would be best if she could wear knickers. Equally, an artist who claims he has nothing to hide and therefore walks around naked cannot be taken to an opening of an exhibition in Sydney. However, the trends in fashion among the inhabitant of Arnhem Land helped, the old morals were forgotten and the Blackfellas started wearing clothes.

     To be true, this particular change of fashion might have been a little forced. The anthropologists were an exception, most of the white owners of Australia thought that on the other side of the civilisational barrier is not another civilisation but no civilisation at all. Walking around naked was an obvious sign of a complete lack of civilisation. What was more, according to Australian law walking around naked in public places was illegal. Not sending children to schools was also illegal so schools were organised for the Blackfella kids. In the first half of the 20th century the missionaries ran those schools so the recent nomads congregated around missions like Oenpelli and Yirrkala.

     There was one more kind of Whitefellas who wanted to go to Arnhem Land: the miners. The land may be unwelcome for farmers but there can always be something worth digging. Some areas of Arnhem Land were considered haunted by Aborigines, entering there was a taboo and spirits would kill anybody who broke this taboo. No such taboos for white miners, however. In 1950ties uranium was found in those haunted places and mining companies were given government license to dig it. It was the time when the British needed uranium to build their atomic bombs.

     Having been to schools the Aborigines understood the world of the white people. They understood what courts were for. Perhaps the courts could be used to prove that the owners of Arnhem Land are its original inhabitants. For the clans the proof of ownership (always of clans, never of individuals) were ancient tales retold with the aid of bark paintings. Other clans of Arnhem Land respected this ancient law but would the courts of white owners of Australia respect this? In 1963 the clans around Yirrkala mission decided to check it. They sent to the Australian Parliament in Canberra a petition protesting against mining activity on clan lands. The government gave companies the licence but nobody asked the clans who owned that land. The petition, known as The Yirrkala Bark petition, was written in English but around the English text the history proving the clan ownership was painted on bark. In this case the ruling was against the Aborigines but the medial noise around it caused more friendly decisions later.

     Australian law could not accept a claim that a clan owned some land from times immemorial because the law of the white owners of Australia was based on constatation that nobody owned any land there when the first white people came. There were some nomadic hunters there but they walked around naked so it was obvious that they could not own land. They didn't have Australian citizenship anyway. They were considered too primitive to understand what "citizenship" meant and were considered "wards" of the state. They had to be taught how to wear clothes. But 1960ties was the time of revolutionary changes. In Australia there was a referendum among the white owners of the country whether the Aborigines can be given citizenship and as a result they are now citizens of their own country.

     The revolutionary changes were felt not only in Australia. The first half of the 20th century was the time of cubism, expressionism, abstractionism and other avant-garde artistic movements. For the cubists art of exotic peoples was not just worthy of note, it was an example to follow. It is well known that the cubists followed African sculpture but there is also an anecdote that Picasso himself, seeing some pictures of the Arnhem Land bark painter named Yirawala, said that he himself would like to paint like this. If Picasso himself says things like this, then it must be proper art, not just specimens for museum of anthropology. Yirawala paintings appeared in art galleries and museums and he himself even received the Order of the British Empire.

Painting of Yirawala

     It is interesting how different things interest people from different civilisations. For the inhabitants of Arnhem Land it is important whose bones are in a coffin painted in a certain pattern or who lives in a hut thus decorated. For the new arrivals, members of a civilisation that developed overseas, such things were not important. They wanted to know the name of a person who painted a coffin or a hut, or a stylised animal on a piece of bark especially cut for the purpose. To be more precise - as long as the bark painting was treated as an object in a museum of anthropology, nobody was really interested in the name of the artist. The anthropological specimens were created by "a people". But if the same specimen was hanged in an art gallery, then it was a different matter, then the name of the artist had to be known. Actually it shouldn't be just a name, it had to be a first name and a surname. If an artist doesn't have both, then either of the two had to be added. This was the case of Yirawala, who had only one name, but in some catalogues appeared as "Billy Yirawala". He himself protested but the creators of the catalogues decided that one name is not enough. It would be as if he appeared naked at an exhibition in Sydney.

     Yirawala is the best known artist from Arnhem Land. He had exhibitions in the cities on the coast and even in Europe. His paintings were treated like works of art, like those of Picasso. For the white public this may sound like an honour but Yirawala himself protested saying that his paintings are really religious in nature. They are in his view comparable to the Bible, a compendium of spiritual knowledge of Kuwinjku people. He said that missionaries came to tell the Blackfellas what they believe, so he - a Blackfella - wanted to teach the white people what the Kuwinjku believe. He said that each of his pictures had several levels of meaning, the deepest meanings would only be told to those initiated. He sang sacred songs when he painted in the same way as the icon painter prays when painting a holy image. Yirawala's paintings could be compared to icons of the Orthodox Church, both are supposed to lead the viewer towards the unseen world. Just like the icons, in the modern world Yirawala's paintings became just goods to buy and sell. However expensive they might be, for a white buyer they are just this, nothing else.

     Yirawala is considered the main painter of the so-called "school of Oenpelli". Modern critics recognise two clearly recognisable schools of Arnhem Land painting, the "school of Oenpelli" in the west and the "school of Yirrkala" in the east. Painters from Oenpelli paint their figures on a background of one colour. Painted animals are often shown with their inner organs, like intestines or bones, clearly visible. Such x-ray paintings of animals are often seen in rock paintings which can be found in the western part of Arnhem Land. Bark painting from Oenpelli area are considered a direct continuation of rock painting. There is one significant difference, however: the animals painted of bark are filled with intricate network of lines called rarrk.

Painting of the Yirrkala school

     The paintings of the Yirrkala school may look superficially similar but stylistically they are very different. They are also covered with an intricate network of tiny strokes in four colours of ochre, but in Yirrkala paintings these strokes form a pattern covering the background whereas the figures appear on that background painted in one colour, usually black. The patterns are property of particular clans and only the clan members may paint them, so seeing a picture one can tell to which clan the artist belonged. Often a painting is an illustration of a dreaming in several scenes in neighbouring squares, comic-like. An interesting process can be observed here: in the 1940ties some anthropologists collected such illustrations of dreamings made on paper with pencils of all colours, blue, green and others. Having access to new technology the artists used new possibilities. The art market, however, did not like this sort of development, only the "authentic" pictures made on bark with the four colours of ochre were accepted.

     From the 1950ties the individual artists are known. Probably the best known painters of Yirrkala school are the members of the Marika family: Malawan, his younger brother Mathman, Malawan's son Wantjuk as well as their friend Narritjin. Apart from creating individual works they are known for paintings they made together as a team. The famous Yirrkala petition to the Parliament was such team creation. Another famous picture created by this team were two panels for Yirrkala church. They were painted in 1963 and illustrated dreamings of Yolngu people living in the area. They were created at a time when the resident pastor was sympathetic to the Aboriginal culture and placed the panels in the church. A pastor who came later decided that they are illustrations of pagan myths and removed them from the church. At the time it was a well known case and possibly these panels could be the best known picture of Yirrkala school if not for the fact that they are now exhibited in a special place in Yirrkala and to see them one has to travel there. And to be sure, this is not a simple matter.

     This is because Arnhem Land is still a wild country. The inhabitants nowadays are fully dressed and send their children to school but they still prefer to live in small distant outstations where there are no roads. There are only a few dirt tracks in the whole of Arnhem Land and no tarmac roads at all. Perhaps the easiest place to reach is Oenpelli, which is only 16 kilometres from Ubirr, where tourists drive on tarmac to see the famous rock paintings. There is a dirt track from Ubirr to Oenpelli, but one has to cross croc infested East Alligator River. There is a concrete sealed ford there but the current is sometimes quite rapid and takes cars with it. I know this because I stood there and decided not to cross.

Road to Oenpelli

You will find this article, and many others, in my book "ART ETHNO".

Walking into Clarksdale

THE Crossroads

If you walk into Clarksdale along the highway 49 you will come to a crossroad with what used to be highway 61. Today highway 61 goes around the bypass but it was here when one day Robert Johnson came to the crossroads one night with his guitar on his arm. He met the Big Black Man, who said in unearthly voice: “Gimme your guitar Robert, I'll tune it for you”. The Big Black Man turned a few keys, gave it back and said: “Now no woman can resist you, man. See you again at The Three Forks.” Then he vanished in thin air, one could only smell something like burning brimstone and hear barking of hounds, very deep as if from underground.

These days you are much more likely to drive into Clarksdale, even if you are just a musical pilgrim wanting to see the place. There is a monument made up of guitars on that famous crossroads. And if you have a car and are a blues pilgrim there, you can also visit Dockery Farm, where an information board says that it is there that blues music was born. Charlie Patton – its earlies recorded performer – worked here for some time. Charlie Patton taught Willie Brown how to play and Willie Brown taught Robert Johnson, who, as is well known (to some) was THE blues singer.

Nobody knows exactly when the blues was born but it is assumed that it was sometime at the beginning of the 20^th century. Nobody before that time had written this kind of music in musical score (clearly nobody thought music of the black ghettos was worthy of that honour) and the earliest recordings date from 1920ties. It soon turned out that there is some demand for those recordings and there is some money to be made there. Consequently quite a number of them were made and not for any ethnographic collection but for a real audience. There are recordings of the blues in Dixie jazz style, like those of Louis Armstrong, there are so called “classic blues” recordings, which meant a voice (often female, like that of Bessie Smith) accompanied only by a piano, there also are recordings of the so called “country blues”, which meant a voice (this time usually male) accompanied only by a guitar. The guitar on those recordings is played in a most unusual way, which didn't have much in common with the way the white men played it. It was played with a bottleneck, which was a metal or glass tube (sometimes a real neck knocked out of a bottle) put on a little finger of the left hand, which made possible the characteristic blues glissando. It was played with the strings tuned “out of tune”, or rather in tunings different to that of the classic guitar. In 1920ties a resonator steel guitar was invented and used by the blues bottleneck players and in 1930 first electric guitars appeared. The electric guitar was quickly picked up by blues players from Chicago and Memphis, who developed the style known as “city blues”. It was usually played by a four-piece band: drums, bass guitar, electric slide guitar and a harmonica. In the 1950ties a young musician from Memphis (a non-Black, which was important) picked up this style, sped up the tempo, called it “rock and roll” and sold it to non-Black audience. From then on the blues started to conquer the world.

Birthplace of the blues?

The new music quickly became fashionable on the other side of the ocean, especially in London (from where mentally is much closer to New York, which after all is only “over the pond”, than to Paris, which is “overseas”). In the 1960ties completely white blues bands were created in London, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, The Rolling Stones, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. These musicians wanted to get to the source so they travelled “over the pond” to visit the places where the country blues was played, to listen to the tales of the old musicians, to collect the old records.

It soon turned out that among those old scratchy records there are some that had some unusual qualities. One could listen to them and never get bored, like listening to Bach. They had one thing in common: they were all recorded by one Robert Johnson. Some people started looking for him. Perhaps he still played in an old tavern forgotten by everybody? Or perhaps he stopped playing and occupied himself with something else buy could be persuaded to do some recordings? The search ended when people who knew him well were found and the story of Robert Johnson came to light.

Robert Johnson was brought up in the area known as Mississippi Delta. The name is misleading because this is not the actual delta of the great River but the flat area on its left side between cities of Memphis and Vicksburg. It is a fertile plain where cotton is grown. It is here that the country blues was played. His white enthusiasts nick named Robert Johnson “King of the Delta Blues”, but he was actually more than this. All of his track (only 29 of them are known) have been recorded like “country blues”, with an acoustic guitar as the only accompaniment, but in his style all elements of Chicago “city blues” are present. One can almost say that this musician brought up among cotton fields is the grandfather of all rhythm and blues and rock and roll. And scores of guitarists from all over the world making pilgrimages to the famous crossroads seem to confirm that this is the source.

Mural of Robert Johnson in Clarksdale

Robert Johnson lived for some time in Clarksdale but The Three Forks used to stand outside the town of Greenwood, some distance away. Since the fateful meeting at the crossroads he had a lightning career, travelled around the Delta and sometimes beyond. People say that his music was enchanting, that indeed no woman could resist him. In some songs he bragged about having a woman in every town from Vicksburg to Tennessee. Indeed when he eyed a woman in The Tree Forks, where he played together with Honeyboy Edwards and Sunny Boy Williamson, it seemed that she wouldn't resist either. However, she happened to be the woman of the tavern owner. Both musicians that were there at the time recall the event. Somebody gave Robert an opened bottle of whisky but Sunny Boy sensed something suspicious and knocked this bottle out of his hand saying: “Never drink from an open bottle!” Robert got very angry with Sunny Boy, somebody gave him another bottle. The next day Robert Johnson was dead.

Today many guitarists travel to Clarksdale just to see the crossroads. Some of those guitarists are quite famous, like Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, who even recorded an album entitled “Walking into Clarksdale”. Some of those musical pilgrims also go to Dockery Farm, where next to the board informing about the birthplace of the blues there is a button, pressing of which will cause some recordings of Charlie Patton to be played. Nobody goes to The Tree Forks, though. Some people tried to find the place but couldn't. Honeyboy Edwards in his autobiography explains why this is so: sometime after the famous event a tornado came and took the whole building, so that nothing remains today.

Cigar box guitar

You will find this story, and many others, in my book "ASK A GLOBETROTTER".

Indians of the Amazon - where have they gone?

Travel in the Amazon

“Buy yourselves hammocks before you get on the ship.”

This is the Amazon, more different from the rest of Brazil than the rest of Brazil is from Europe or America. There are no roads here, only rivers, one has to travel by ship. Ships have a few cabins but most of the passengers just hang their hammocks from the ceilings above the decks. This is what one sees most of the time when one travels in Amazon – hammocks dangling everywhere. Everybody brings their own hammocks and we – just arrived from Europe – have to buy them before we go. In Manaus there is a whole street of shops where one can buy hammocks. Various hammocks: expensive and cheap, heavy and light, made of different materials and of all possible colours. They are folded on shelves or hanging from the ceiling, one can check whether they are nice to touch. We have been advised to buy big and comfortable hammocks because we'll be dangling in them for several days.

Finding a ship that goes in the right direction is another problem. Timetables don't exist here, one has to go to the right quay (one has to know which one is the right one) and ask around: which of the ships moored there goes where, on which day, at what time. Tickets are purchased an a table standing at the quay. Having purchased the ticket one gets a band around the wrist and can board the ship. Having entered one has to find a place to hang a hammock. Decks on Amazonian ships are spacious and always have a roof under which there are rails and hooks especially for hammocks. During holidays before the New Year ships are especially crowded and only with difficulty we find room for our hammocks on the uppermost deck. All around us people with copper coloured skin, whole multi-generational families. Amazing how young some of the mums are, they seem to be teenagers, but they look after their babies as they should. They breastfeed in their hammocks taking no notice of the people around.

Almost all the passengers have copper coloured skin and Indian features but officially they are not Indians. Officially there are no Indians living on the shores of the Amazon River. They are not called “Indios” but “caboclos”, or “river people”.

Our journey from Manaus to Tefé lasts three days. This could be shortened if someone is in a hurry and has a lot of money. This applies to the Western tourists who have short holidays and want to visit Mamiraua National Park. This is the park that covers the part of the jungle regularly flooded by rising waters of the river and tree trunks stand in the water. This is the habitat of the famous uakari monkey that has white fur and red face. For those tourists in a hurry a special floating hotel has been built. The tourists fly to Tefé, from the airport they go by taxi directly to the port, from which speedboats take them to the floating hotel and local guides show them the secrets of the jungle. After a couple of days they speed back to the airport without stopping at Tefé.

Inhabitants of Boca de Mamiraua

The local guides are caboclos who lived there for generations. They have copper-coloured skin and Indian features but they arenot Indians. They not daft either. They figured out that if they can work as guides for tourists who pay a lot of money to stay in a floating hotel, they probably can welcome other tourists, who have a little less money but a little more time. They can welcome these tourists in their own casa de caboclo, or “caboclo home”. This is exactly what the inhabitants of a village called Boca de Mamiraua decided to do. And this is where we decided to go.

Boca de Mamiraua lies at the very edge of an inland delta between Japura and Solimoes rivers. This inland delta is a flat area full of canals and islands that are flooded every year but are covered in dense forest. Houses in the village have to stand on high stilts as here nobody can say they didn't expect the flood. Sometimes there is more water than usual and the first floor of the houses are flooded, too. Only some houses have a second floor and in times of exceptionally high water they have to house not just one family but also the neighbours. The church standing in the middle of the village is of course also on stilts. In Boca de Mamiraua it is an evangelical church where music is accompanied by electric guitars. It must be interesting to hear a reading about Noah when the church is up to its neck in water. Kitchen gardens with onions and dill are in boats filled with soil and placed on stilts, high above the ground. There is a little manioc field behind the village but it has to be harvested before the next flood, not as in other Amazonian villages, where manioc is harvested whenever needed, all year round. Fish, on the other hand, are plentiful always. And what fish! A pirarucu can be as big as a grown man. It cannot be eaten at once, it has to be cut into sheets and dried like washing in the sun, which is also plentiful. Later the dried fish-sheets can be sold in Tefé. Fish of this size cannot be angled, it has to be speared and still jumping in anger pulled into a canoe. This is the Indian way of fishing, although the inhabitants of Boca de Mamiraua claim they are caboclos, not Indians.

Fish hung out to dry

Fish and manioc are staple foods in Amazonia. In Tefé on the market square one can eat a freshly fried piranha in an open air kitchen. Whole families work in those kitchens, including teen-age children. In one of them a teen-age helper sat to eat with us. She looked wide-eyed at Justyna and asked: “Where do such beautiful people come from?” I am of course flattered when somebody speaks like that about my daughter but I guess there is deeper meaning here. Justyna with her North-European features and blond hair looks like a model from a fashion mag, whereas the inhabitants of Tefé are of course not Indians at all, but they do look like Indians.

Somebody told me that there is a Polish priest in the cathedral of Tefé so I went to the office there, started talking Polish and somebody answered; this was father Piotr. Poles are not a common sight in Tefé, so we were immediately invited for dinner. It was served by a lady of dark complexion and clearly Indian features. Father Piotr told us that she came from a village of Ticuna Indians but she is ashamed of it and says that she is not an Indian. After all everybody in the town looks like that.

A couple of days later father Piotr took us to the village of Ipapuku on the other side of the Lake Tefé. The village stands on higher ground, houses don't need to be on stilts. The inhabitants say the are caboclos, which means they consider themselves ordinary civilised Brazilians, not Indians. They even have a flush toilet in one of the houses, which is where I am led (quite far) when the need arises. The central building of the village is a little church, neatly maintained even though a priest comes only sometimes, once a few months. “I'll have to come here once to celebrate a mass for them” said father Piotr seeing the neat church. When we arrived the villagers were busy producing granulated and roasted manioc. The procedure is exactly the same as described by travellers who visited Indian villages deep in the jungle, although here some mechanical implements were used to make the work easier. Raw manioc was grated in a mincer and then pressed into characteristic socks weaved from palm fibre. I have seen socks like that in pictures from Indian villages in old travel books. Manioc's poisonous juice is squeezed out in those socks. Afterwards granules are formed inside a cylinder turned by hand. Later, the granules are sieved to sort various sizes and finally roasted on a huge pan.

Clearing the jungle in Ipapuku

We were also shown a manioc field. This is on a spot where forest was burned out a few years earlier. Nearby, another spot is being burned out to make room for another field when the present field becomes less productive. This has been a time honoured economy of Amazonian Indians – a plot of burned out forest was used for some years but when it became less fertile – it was left fallow, then the forest returned while another plot was burned out for agriculture.

Another day father Piotr took me to a town called Alvaraes. He said that in the 18^th century this was a famous slave market and actually this is what the name means. This name is a witness of an important aspect of history of this part of the world.

The Portuguese didn't come to the New World to seek gold, as Spaniards did. The Portuguese wanted to cultivate sugar which could be sold in Europe for gold. They wanted to cultivate it but it does not mean they wanted to do all the physical work themselves. The plantations were to be worked by slaves. Some of the slaves could be brought from Africa, bought from African princes on the coast of Guinea. The earliest Portuguese sugar plantations were started on uninhabited islands like Madeira and Cape Verde and were worked only by slaves bought on African coast. The African slaves were also taken to Brazil but considering costs of transport across the ocean, they weren't cheap. On the other hand there were natives in Brazil, too. They didn't have their own slaves to sell, as the African princes did, but they had war prisoners which were captured in order to be tortured and – if they proved that they were brave enough while tortured – eaten, so some of that bravery would enter those who ate them. This was of course a barbarous custom in the eyes of the Portuguese who thought saving lives of these prisoners was a good deed. It wasn't difficult to persuade the captors to part with their prisoners because all Indians desired certain metal that the Portuguese possessed. To obtain this metal they would not only part with their prisoners but they would gladly go again on the war path to capture some more.

Roasing manioc in Ipapuku

The metal they so badly desired had almost miraculous properties. With an axe made of it one could cut a tree in almost no time at all, or split somebody's head in a second. A knife made of it could easily cut meat or go right into a heart of an enemy. Those who possessed this metal could much easier win a war and bring some more prisoners whose lives could be then saved in exchange of some more axes and knives.

Some of those prisoners sold to white settlers were women. One can guess that quite a lot of them were women as it was more difficult to catch men because men tended to defend themselves. It was much simpler to attack a village, kill men, bind women and children and take them away. One can also guess that the white purchasers used those women not only for hard labour. The result was a population of people of mixed race and rooted in both cultures, who felt in the bush just as much at home as in the white man's town. Soon it was those people who organised expeditions into the interior to catch more prisoners. In the 17^th century those expeditions, called bandeiras, were organised on a regular basis and their participants, called bandeirantes, are today considered discoverers of Brazilian interior. And the Amazon was an open waterway into the interior.

It is of course terrible that people who considered themselves “Christians” behaved so badly. One has to remember, however, that the people who considered “Christianisation” as a pretext of a conquest are only one side of the story. In history of any country there is a tension between gangsters who have power and independent pressure group who tries to restrict the power of those who rule. In the 16^th century Europe this taming pressure group was without doubt the Church, both in Spain and Portugal it was the Roman Catholic Chuech. In those days there was no police who could be called if a husband mistreated his wife, but there was a priest who had no sanction but the penance given at confession. There were no parliaments which could restrict the power of kings but there were priests who who reminded the kings that their power has to respect the message of Gospels. The message of Gospels was that all people are children of God and therefore cannot be enslaved and treated like animals.

A street in Tefe

Priests followed conquerors into colonies. The conquerors wanted to get rich but the priests who followed were often members of of religious orders committed to poverty, like Dominicans, Franciscans and Jesuits. These people did not go to the colonies to get rich. They went there to persuade the natives to stop practices which in Europe were not considered appropriate, like torturing and especially eating prisoners of war, or having more than one wife. They went there also to protect the natives from the excesses of white colonisers. The most famous of those was a Dominican friar, Bartolomeo de las Casas, who wrote a book that was much discussed at the time. The most influential missionaries in Brazil were the Jesuits. They were influential at the highest levels of power, sometimes they even managed to persuade kings to ban or at least restrict slavery. It depended on the period because the sugar-planters were also influential and at times managed to persuade the king to revoke the anti-slavery laws. For most of the colonial period in Brazil it was lawful to enslave prisoners taken in defensive wars or those who were “ransomed” and thus saved from torture and death.

The Jesuits also organised missions far from white settlements. In those settlements they gathered the baptised peaceful Indians. In theory this was to protect those Indians from slavers because the baptised Indians weren't aggressive (so there could not be a “defensive” war against them) nor did they eat any prisoners who could be “ransomed” and saved from death. Unfortunately it did not always work because for the bandeirantes the fact that Indians were God-fearing was of little importance. What was more important was that many of them were gathered in one place and if they weren't aggressive, they wouldn't fight back. At certain periods the Jesuit missions were the main targets of the bandeirantes. To justify their actions the bandeirantes, as well as the planters, spread the word of the supposed abominable behaviour of Jesuits in their missions. They kept repeating their accusations so persistently that somebody in the end believed them and as a result the Jesuits were banned from Brazil after several centuries of work.

Is it surprising then that in this situation the Indians preferred to say that they are not really Indians? Whatever their origin, they preferred to claim that they weren't Indians and should not be enslaved. Especially if they were good Catholics, had a church in the middle of the village and looked after it even though there was no priest enywhere near.

Indians of Nova Esperanza

The Indians who lived by the Solimoes in the old days were called Cambeba by the Portuguese and Omagua by the Spaniards. Early travellers noticed that the unlike other Amazonian tribes the Cambeba did not walk around naked but wore cotton clothes. They are also credited with the discovery that hugely influenced the motor industry – they were the first to find use for the juice of rubber trees. However, when the Portuguese hunted slaves on the Solimoes the Cambeba moved upriver, to the missions of Spanish Jesuits from Peru. So the sources say, anyway. Other tribes found refuge in the upper courses of other rivers, avoiding any contact with white people. They don't want any iron tools and just to drive the point home they shoot poisoned arrows at anyone who turns up in the vicinity of their villages. All Indians vanished from the Solimoes, only a few caboclos stayed, and caboclos, as everyone knows, are not Indians.

There was one more person invited to dinner at father Piotr's when we were there. This was brother Marius, a Polish Franciscan who lived in Tefé. He also showed us around the town. He took us to the part of the town which is regularly flooded and therefore all houses and the paths leading to them are on stilts. He also took us to CIMI, or Conselho Indigenista Missionário, which means Indian Missionary Council. There we were welcomed by a group of young people who do missionary work in this area. They were of dark complexion like all other inhabitants of Tefé but unlike the others the young people at CIMI admitted they were Indians. They said that since the leftist government of Brazil found some funds specifically for Indians, for example for education of their children, some groups suddenly remembered that they were descendants of this or that tribe. Sometimes they don't remember their tribal language, but so what? If they are accepted as Indians, their village is declared an Indian reservation where strangers can only enter with permission from the government agency that is supposed to deal with Indians and make sure they are safe. This is the case even if the village is no different from a neighbouring caboclo village.

One day we went with brother Marius in a Franciscan Land Rover to visit a few villages in the vicinity. One of those villages stood on a high shore over the Solimoes. A village as any in this area. Houses had low floors because the land they were built on was well above the regular floods. There was an impeccably maintained church in the middle of the village. As we came there, some young people were gathering, beautiful dark skinned girls, boys in sunglasses, they were about to practice something. As we came, somebody ran to call the touchan. Brother Maruis said that if they are calling a tuchan, this must be an Indian village, otherwise that person would be called “a president of the village council” or something of the sort. The church is Catholic and the villagers look after it but a priest only comes once a year. Brother Marius asked of what tribe they were. They said they were Cambeba and the village is called Nova Esperanza, which means New Hope.

As we were leaving the village I noticed a board at the entrance which stated that this is an Indian Reservation and to enter one has to apply for a permit from a government agency.

Fishing in Boca de Mamiraua

How do Indian artists make money?

Totem pole carved by Mungo Martin

There is a place in Stanley Park in Vancouver where you can see some Indian totem poles. They are quite nicely presented with a background of tall trees. Grotesque faces smile at passers by. Boards in front of them inform the styles of which tribe they were carved by and who was the carver of each pole. Bill Reid created the pole in the Haida style. Doug Cranmer carved the Kwakiutl pole. They bring a little climate of old Indian cultures into a modern city, a little presentation of what the Indians of this area do. Few people realise that the culture that created totem poles is a thing of the past and what we see today in city parks is just wooden echo of that past.

It is true that Indians of British Columbia have carved totem poles for a long time. The totem poles are mentioned by the first European sailors who visited that coast in the 18^th century. Captain Cook was most famous of them but there were Russian and Spanish sailors before him. One Russian captain even bragged that when he entered a village he chopped down all the “pagan idols”. He was later surprised that the Indians didn't like Russians except when there were some Russian heads to be chopped off. Alejandro Malaspina, a Spaniard, showed more understanding, his book published in 1791 had illustrations showing huge wooden sculptures. John Webber, a painter on board one of Cook's ships, painted interiors of Indian houses with roof posts sculpted as grotesque faces.

The Spaniards claimed the whole coast north of California as theirs but they weren't interested in trade. Russians wanted to trade but they had problems getting friendly relations with the natives. Captain Cook was very friendly towards the natives and one of the effects of his visit was an explosion of the trade in furs. The Indians had furs of sea otters which were very common in that area. Cook knew that the sea otter fur was considered a luxury item in China. The Indians not only didn't know how much they could get for those furs in Canton. They didn't know that China existed. They knew how to build beautiful boats that could go to sea, but they didn't go very far, they had no idea that there was another continent far beyond the horizon. They knew, however, that Cook (and the sailors that came later) had iron tools, which were much more useful than their own stone tools, so they exchanged their furs for iron tools. The sailors later sold these furs in Canton for huge profits.

A silver bracelet made by Charles Edenshaw

European sailors who wanted to trade with those Indians had to communicate with them somehow and they quickly found out that they don't speak just one single language, even though they build similar houses and carve similar totem poles. European travellers always classified ethnic groups they met. This wasn't too difficult in they encountered countries with more or less clear borders, a capital and a ruler who would be obeyed throughout the country. In British Columbia there were no countries in this sense, there was no political organisation bigger than a village. A single village could even have more than one chief because each clan would have their own chief. The Indians inhabiting the coast from Alaska to Oregon shared a similar way of life, similar beliefs and art but they spoke several different languages. The European explorers classified those languages, gave them names and groups of Indians that spoke one language they called tribes. Thus the Indians living along the southern coast of Alaska were named Tlingit, those living on the Queen Charlotte archipelago were called Haida, those from the northern coast of British Columbia were called Tsimshian, farther south lived the Kwakiutl, on the western coast of Vancouver island lived the Nootka. Farther south, in what is now the United States, lived the Chinook, whose language for some reason became a lingua franca used in trade in the region. However, these people themselves didn't feel any special solidarity even if they spoke the same language, sometimes the neighbouring villages fought bloody wars of extermination.

On the other hand the Indians of British Columbia didn't fight the white newcomers. There were no wars of extermination or indeed any other wars between the whites and Indians in the North-west. The Indians nevertheless almost became extinct as a result of diseases brought from overseas by friendly traders. The most lethal of them was smallpox which in 1860s killed nearly 90% of the population. The children of those who survived went to school and there they learned that in the old days the Nootkas, Kwakiutl, Haidas and others lived there. They kind of accepted it even though the languages mentioned were quickly disappearing. I wrote “kind of accepted it” because today some of those people question the names given to them by the explorers. Thus the Kwakiutl (at least some of them) say they should be called Kwakwak'awakl, the Nootkas prefer the name Nuu-chha-nulth. The Haida didn't change the name but they ceased to fight one another and created the Council of the Haida nation.

Miniature argilite totem pole

The great epidemics took place in 1860s but the preceding decades were the golden age of totem pole carving. There are 19^th century photographs of villages full of totem poles but deserted as a result of the terrible epidemics. Totem poles had clearly defined functions, they weren't just sculptures standing anywhere. They were always erected in winter villages. The Indians of this region lived in several places, depending on the season. When salmon came up the rivers to spawn they lived in temporary villages near the river, during a whaling season the villages were near an open beach, whereas the winter villages were located deep in fiords that sheltered them from gales and blizzards. The 18^th century sailors already noticed that some totem poles adorned tombs of great chiefs, others formed part of the front wall of houses whose entry was through a gaping mouth of a carved creature, still others stood indoors and served as pillars supporting the roof. According to legends each clan descended from an animal and a totem pole represented the mythical ancestor of the clan living in that house. To complicate matters clans often overlapped and not only more than one clan could live in a house, but one person could be a member of more than one clan. Consequently totem poles often represented not just one animal but several, one on the top of the other. Sometimes a totem pole illustrated a mythical history of a clan. One can say that a totem pole played a role similar to a coat of arms hanging over agate of a mediaeval European castle – declared who the owners were and informed visitors about their glorious past.

An erection of a totem pole was accompanied by a great feast called (in Chinook language) a potlatch. Similar feast was also a part of funeral celebrations after passing away of a great chief. The body of the chief was cremated and with him a few favourite slaves, who were killed for the occasion. A wooden box with the ashes was placed on the top of a carved pole. This pole was a sepulchre which was supposed in time to decay and fall. A year after the great chief's death another potlatch was held and a new free standing pole was erected. Thus there were four types of totem poles: the ones that stood indoors and supported the roof of the house; the ones that were a part of the front wall and sometimes (though not always) formed the entry; the sepulchres of great chiefs and free standing memorial poles. But this was not all. Bas-reliefs that decorated partitions inside the houses or wooden chests, painted decorations on boats or walls, masks used in dances performed during potlatches – all this impressed the white visitors. Some of them wanted to take a souvenir with them. They could not take the whole totem pole but perhaps somebody could carve a miniature? The white visitors were prepared to pay in silver coins. Some carvers did carve such miniatures for the purpose. But what can one do with a silver coin in a country, where Indians have enough salmon to be completely self-sufficient? The answer is simple – one can use it to make a silver bracelet, decorate it with Indian design and sell it to some other white visitor for two silver coins. Contact with white people was responsible for appearance of a new art genre – silver jewellery (Indians of that region did not know silver before) as well as miniature totem poles. Especially the tiny totem poles carved in argilite – black slate quarried only on Queen Charlotte Islands. One 19^th century Haida artist, Charles Edenshaw, became so famous carver of argilite, as well as a silversmith, that today his monographic exhibitions are organised in famous museums.

Totem poles carved by Bill Reid and Doug Cranmer

This art thrived until mid-19^th century, when the epidemics of 1860s brought a dramatic halt. Epidemics worse than the European Black Death or even the Jewish Holocaust. Carvers who could teach the next generations died out and storytellers who remembered old legends also died out. The epidemics facilitated work of missionaries, some of whom thought that totem poles were pagan idols and wanted to destroy them or at least advised their converts to ignore them. Moreover, the Canadian authorities decided that a potlatch was a barbaric custom and banned it. Last but not least Canada introduced universal education, all Indian children were sent to school and later they wanted to live like all other Canadians. They rejected their traditions, nobody wanted totem poles any more. Even if there were carvers who survived the epidemics, there was no work for them. In the beginning of the 20^th century the art of totem pole carving all but died out. In the villages deserted after the epidemics old totem poles slowly disintegrated and disappeared overgrown by the returning forest.

Half a century later, in 1950s, some white people from Vancouver decided to come to the rescue of the rotting heritage. According to the European approach, works of art should not fall and rot, if they do so they should be rescued, taken to a museum and conservation should be undertaken. A society for saving totem poles was created and the University of British Columbia organised expeditions to distant islands to find the rotting sculptures and take them to the anthropology museum in town. They also found a carver who could carve a brand new totem pole because he did this when he was young. His name was Mungo Martin and he lived on a Kwakiutl reservation of Fort Rupert at the northern tip of Vancouver Island. He was asked to carve a totem pole for a museum in Vancouver He did so and his totem pole is still standing on the hill behind the museum. It was a precedent, a little snowball that moved slowly at first but in time it changed into an avalanche.

In 1957 Mungo Martin worked in Victoria, carving totem poles for a museum there. He was approached by a young man from Vancouver, who was interested in Indian art because his mother was a Haida. This young man was Bill Reid who in time became the main catalyst of the rebirth of Indian art. He grew up in the city and worked as a radio presenter but he also had been trained as a silversmith. The jewellery he produced was very European in style until his first visit to the Queen Charlotte islands, where his mother came from. There he saw old silver bracelets made by his mother's uncle, Charles Edenshaw. These aroused the interest of the young silversmith, who later became interested in Indian art in general. He found Mungo Martin and helped him carve totem poles. Later it was Bill Reid himself who received an order from the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver not only to carve a totem pole, but to reconstruct a whole Haida village, with houses, totem poles and all.

Bill Reid's bronze cast at Vancouver Airport

The Museum of Anthropology can claim that a Haida Indian carved totem poles for them. Bill Reid mother was an Indian after all. Does it matter that Bill was brought up in town without any contact with Indian culture? He was over twenty when he first travelled to Queen Charlotte islands, where the Haida people live and the first totem pole he carved in his life was the one for the museum. He carved his pole in Haida style, unlike the poles carved by Mungo Martin, which were in Kwakiutl style. He knew the styles of various tribes because he studied them for several years. He was a member of the team that went to rescue the rotting totem poles from deserted Indian villages. Several poles from Skedans village were taken to the museum for conservation but it turned out they were too rotten to be conserved. It was then decided that copies should be made. All other members of the team were white Canadians, only Bill Reid was of Indian origin and he was given the job.

Doug Cranmer was a Kwakiutl Indian who also lived in Vancouver at the time. His father, chief Dan Cranmer of Alert Bay, was famous for organising potlatches despite the official ban and going to prison as a result. Bill Reid asked him to help carve the totem poles for the museum. Doug as a young man had worked as a tree feller so he knew what to do with huge tree trunks. Bill and Doug worked for several years and produced two longhouses and several totem poles which still can be seen on a hill behind the museum On the other hand the original rotting poles brought from the islands ceased to rot in the dry museum air and can be seen there as well.

This is how the fame of Bill Reid started, the fame of an Indian sculptor. The Haida Indians, those who still lived in their islands, began to be interested in their own tradition. If white people from the city come to look for totem rotting totem poles, then perhaps there is something in that tradition. Those white people didn't just come to pick those totem poles up, first they found the original owners and paid them, so there must be something in that tradition that can be measured in money. Unfortunately the tradition among the Haida had been interrupted and there was nobody like Mungo Martin, who would remember how to carve totem poles. Young people who wanted to learn the art of carving travelled to Vancouver to Bill Reid. Robert Davidson, a grandson of the great Charles Edenshaw, did exactly that. Today Robert Davidson is the most famous living Indian carver but when in 1960s he wanted to erect a new totem pole in his village of Masset, he was viewed askance by the villagers. Unlike Bill Reid, who grew up in the city, Robert Davidson grew up in the village of Masset where he lives today. Bill Reid socialised with white anthropologists and other enthusiasts who were interested in a tradition exotic to them. Robert Davidson grew up among the people who rejected this tradition, for him interest in it was an act of rebellion. For the people of Masset erecting a new totem pole was a strange thing to do, but this attitude changes when it turned out that totem poles are a magnet for tourists. Today any booklet about Haida villages at Queen Charlotte islands is full of totem poles and in a village of Skidagate (the one where Bill Reid's mother was born) a museum of old Haida art has been built.

Bill Reid's bronze cast in front of Vancouver Aquarium

But it wasn't just the Haida who lost their tradition, other tribes also turned to Bill Reid, famous by then, for help in rebuilding theirs. This was the case of Gitksan people who live in the valley of the Skeena river in the Rocky Mountains. By coincidence the town of Hazelton by that river has a number of well-preserved old buildings from the wild west era and is itself a tourist attraction. The Indians who lived there noted that there is demand for Indian handicraft but the tradition in that area had died out. Somebody came with an idea of creating a school of Indian carving. Bill Reid was asked to teach in this school. He could not accept it because he was engaged in another project but he recommended Robert Davidson in his place. Doug Cranmer also taught in this school for some time before moving to Alert Bay to teach Kwakiutl youth in U'mista craft centre.

In those schools created in 1960s young Indians could learn again the forgotten art of carving. Helpful also were books that analysed this art and classified styles of various tribes. Especially important was a book published in 1965 by Bill Holm, a curator of a museum in Seattle. He introduced the term “ovoid”, which is neither a rectangle nor an oval but something in between. It is a very common shape in Indian art, mythical figures in painting and bas-relief are built from such ovoids. Thanks to those books young Indians know in which style their tribe produced their carvings in the old days. They could produce authentic Indian sculpture and sell it to tourists. They could also carve authentic totem poles if there was demand.

This is not simply recycling of old forms; Indian art uses old forms but is not static. The most creative artists introduce new forms. Doug Cranmer experimented with an abstract totem pole; he never finished it but this unfinished pole can be seen in the U'mista Centre at Alert Bay. Bill Reid used new techniques not known to Indians before, for example bronze cast. This way he wasn't restricted by the shape of a tree trunk. His best known bronze sculpture is “The Spirit of Haida Gwaii”, which stands in the Vancouver Airport's departures hall. The legendary figures in that sculpture are the same as in totem poles but they don't have to sit one on the top of the other. They sit in an Indian boat around a central figure in a woven Indian hat.

The totem poles in Stanley Park stand in a charming corner of the park but they are not visible from afar, somebody who lives in Vancouver might never go there and so never see them. Totem poles standing in front of banks may also be overlooked, one can glance at them not knowing what they are. However, no Canadian can say that he has never seen the Bill Reid sculpture because it is reproduced on Canada's 20 dollar bills. Thanks to this reproduction the banknote looks good so it can be said that Bill Reid made good money.  

Canadian 20 bucks

You will find this article, and many others, in my book "ART ETHNO".