UNKNOWN INDIANS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19269, 5 September 1924, Page 5

UNKNOWN INDIANS.

DISCOVERED IN THE ISTHMUS OP PANAMA. The British Museum has acquired a remarkable ethnographical collection of objects used for domestic, religious, and warlike purposes by a tribe of Indiana living in a remote part of the Isthmus of Panaraji, of whose' existence, it appears, nothing has hitherto been known (says The Times). The tribe was discovered by Mr F. A. MitchellHedges and Lady (Richmond) Brown, who have been engaged for two years in exploration and deep-sea research work in the Caribbean Sea to the north of Panama. Landing from their yacht at the Gulf of San Bias, about 200 miles east c£ the Panama Canal, they had been engaged for some days giving medical aid to sick San Bias Indiana (a comparatively well-known tribe), when the nows of their magical powers, penetrating inland, brought to the coast four men of a different tribe 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 obscurity of the tribe is that few while people visit San Bias, as* the unchartered waters of the gulf are difficult to navigate, and that the habitation of the Chucunaques is separated from San Bias by about 30 miles of dense and almost impenetrable forest and bush. If the Chucunaques had been heard of at all in Panama proper the talk was so vague and uncertain that their existence was regarded as mythical. The purpose of. the visit, of the four men of the tribe to San Bias was to invite the two explorers, as “magic wonkers,” to visit the tribe, among which, it was said, sickness was very rife. The men and women of the tribe number about GOOD, 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 theiir -bahts and customes resemble, to some extent, their more civilised neighbours at San Bias. Among the objects brought back 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 i's 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 (he tribe. All (head are about the same size, and no more than a foot and a-half long.