I took Genny and our four children to the jungle more than 50 years ago. What I discovered was not a culture of a mere 50 years ago. It was the culture as it was 500 years ago. Nothing much had changed in those 500 years. I did not go as an anthropologist – I went as a missionary. I have since taken university courses in anthropology and discovered that there was not one anthropological work published about the Aguaruna Indians before 1960. It wasn’t until several years after World War II that any interest was taken to study the Indian culture of the Upper Amazon.
During the years I lived at the Cusu I saw only one Anthropologist. He spent two days at our house. I shared with him what knowledge I had of the Indians and he seemed delighted to talk with me. Whatever that German anthropologist was going to write never got published. Word got back to me a few weeks later that the Indians he was studying murdered him. He may have done such a trivial thing as having taken a picture on a Polaroid camera and showing it to them. I lived there with those people when they were as primitive and savage as they had ever been.
Our neighbors considered us to be intruders, and we were. We had not been invited to invade their territory. Those Indians did not welcome strangers. I was aware of the shaman’s threats to kill my family – and he could have made good those threats.
