WHITE INDIANS

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXVII, Issue 91, 21 April 1939, Page 4

WHITE INDIANS

AN EXPLORER’S DISCOVERY. LONDON, March 25. A tribe of White Indians, in a palaeolithic stage of development, live in the hinterland of Dutch Guiana, according to a discovery made by the recent Dutch-French boundary commission and revealed in London this week by an English explorer. Cut off from the rest of the world by a range of mountains, whose summits even are hidden in dense jungle, they cannot read or write, they have no metals and they hunt with bows and wooden arrows. They are probably one of the most primitive tribal groups on earth. For generations there has been among the Red Indians of the American continent a legend of White Indians. It has been regarded as just another myth, but now it is proved, declared Mr Ivan Sanderson this week in London. With his wife, one assistant and two boys, Mr Sanderson has just completed a year’s exploration of the virgin jungle of Dutch Guiana, seeking specimens for the British Museum. “I am not an anthropologist,” Mr Sanderson said, “but I can tell you of what Dr. Stahel, in charge of a European settlement, told me.

“We now know that the White Indians, rvhom we have all read about as ‘traveller’s tales’ exist, for one of them —a girl—has emerged from the unseen country in the jungle where they live. The girl ran away from her tribe in consequence of a family feud, was enslaved by other Indians, ran away again and eventually reached a European settlement, where Mrs Stahel took her into her house, trained her and established some sort of communication with her.”