UNKNOWN INDIANS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 1 September 1924, Page 7

UNKNOWN INDIANS.

DISCOVERED IN THE ISTHMUS OF, - PANAMA, >

The British -Museum' has acquired a remarkable ethnographical collection of objects used for domestic, religious, and warlike purposes by a tribe of Indians living in a remote part of the Isthmus of Panama, of whose existence, it. appears, nothing has hitherto been known, says The Times. The tribe was covered by Mr. F. A. Mitchell-Hedges Lady (Richmond) Brown, - who ha-VG been engaged for two years in exploration and deep-sea research work in the Carri Dean Sea to the north of. Panama. Landmg from their yacht at the Gulf of San Bias, about 200 miles east of the Panama Canal, they had .been engaged for several days giving medical aid to San Bias Indians (a comparatively well-known tribe), when the news of their magical powers, penetrating inland-, brought to the coast four men of a different tyibe of Indians. They are known to the San . Bias. Indians as “Chucunaques,” but, according to the explorers, not even the white population of the Panama Republic,.the territory within which they live, know anything of them. The explanation given of the seclusion and of the ti ibe is that few white people visit San Bias, as the uncharted waters of the gulf are difficult to navigate, and that the habitation of the Chucunaques is separated from San Bias by about 20 miles of dense and almost impenetrable forest and bush. If f the Chucunaques had been heard of at all in Panama proper the talk was so 1 vague and uncertain that their existence was regarded as mythical. The purpose of the visit of the’ four men °f the tribe to San Bias was to invito the two explorers, as “magic workers ” to visit the tribe, among which, it was said, sickness was very rife/ The men and women of the tribe number about 6000, and there are numerous children. The average height of the adults is 4ft. 6in. They live in the open huts and wear the ' scanty clothing common among the Indians of the Panama, and in their habits and customs resemble, to some extent, their more civilised neighbours of San Bias. /

Among the. objects brought hack by Mr. Mitchell-Hedges and Lady Brown, and presented to the museum, are earthenware braziers, necklaces made of bones and teeth of rodents and sharks, also of quills and shells, and such weapons as wooden clubs, bows, and arrows.

A most interesting part of the collection is a large number of vividly coloured cloths of applique work, with intricate (patterns, purely formal or representative of human beings, beasts, birds, and reptiles. The collection also includes some human figures rudely carved in wood which, no doubt, are the gods of the tribe. All these are about the same size and no more than a foot and a half long.