A few weeks ago a friend borrowed one of the books with my blog entries that my daughter had printed, and when she returned it, she was curious about one entry that mentioned the Jivaro tribe in South America that was “famous” for shrunken heads.
For reasons I can’t go into here, one of my more interesting “adventures” a number of years ago involved the Jivaros.
In case your haven’t been keeping up with this blog, the Jivaros were the famed head-shrinkers that lived in the rain forest in the southernmost part of the Amazon jungle. When this adventure took place, the area was virtually untouched by civilization. My “guide” periodically visited the rain forests for some reason that was never explained to me. I was familiar with the stories about the Jivaro tribe and their unique technique used to shrink heads. Before we left, my guide told me that they only shrunk the heads of monkeys, because missionaries had convinced them that it was wrong to use humans. I guess maybe I was young and naive enough to have bought that story, but the shrunken heads I saw didn’t look like monkeys. But to be fair, they didn’t really look very human either — they were very small and grotesque, and if I remember, they almost all had long hair. I’m not an expert, but I don’t remember seeing many long-haired monkeys.
Anyhow, my very knowledgeable guide said that the Jivaros didn’t shrink just anybody’s head — it had to be an enemy that they had defeated in battle. The shrunken head was then worn around the waist as a warrior’s trophy. I kept thinking about what could make the Jivaros that mad at monkeys…. so I think I didn’t really buy the missionary story. But just to be on the safe side, I remember smiling a lot — I wanted to appear to be friendly. But I’m pretty sure they just thought I was retarded, or strange — they didn’t smile back.
But obviously I survived because here I am blogging about it. I’ve always heard that when you’re in a difficult or strange situation, you should keep your head about you…. I kept my head.
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