DRIED HUMAN HEADS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 2502, 6 September 1890, Page 6

DRIED HUMAN HEADS.

GUAYAQUIL CORRESPONDENT WASHINGTON STAR.) There is another article of Ecuador’s commerce which, though not reckoned in any market reports, Ls worthy of especial notice, viz., human heads, dried ana pressed to about tho size of your fist., each wearing tho most life-like expx*essiDu upon the perfectly preserved features. Most of the faces are elaborately tattooed, and all have long biark hair, tho lips sown together with fibres twisted into coarse twine hanging down over the chin in heavy fiinge like that in a macrara’s lambrequin. Centuries ago a tribe of Indians living near the northern border' of Ecuador used to prosex-ve the craniuma of their dead in tliLs manner. Nobody now living knows how it was done, but it is suppovsed that the bones were all drawn out bit by bit through the neck, and then the head was buried in the hot, dry sand until it shrank away to one-fourth its former sii«3 and became perfectly preserved. As household adornments the gruesome recuordos of dead folk are certainly not handsome, but they are very curious, especially since the urt of preparing them has long been lost, and the sewed-up lips tell no secrets. They used to bring about lfidol. apiece, but now command all the way from ltfodol. to 500d01., and. are very scarce at that. Years ago the Ecuadorian Government put a stop to this sale, as it was learned that some modem Indians, instead of dealing exclusively in the brainpans of their defunct ancestors, actually made a bushmss of preparing fresh ones for the market. Since long-haired ones sold for the highest price, they took especial care of tho capillary adornments of their wives and daughters/ with a view to cutting their heads off, one by one. There is no doubt that this traffics in dried heads cost many lives, for the price paid by museums aud curio-hunters was enough to set an Ecuador Indian up in affluence for all the rest of his days, could he manage to judiciously market his' superfluous children and relatives.