The oddity of shrinking the head of Jivaro warrior

A man named Gustav Struve said that he was the only survivor victim after a "fateful herb discovery trip". Struve said he was arrested by the "headhunters" , forced to marry the daughter of the chief, and the hair of his neck when he discovered 'the secret of shrinking one's head or shrinking the whole body ' , call them Shrunken .

Mr. Struve showed a picture of a large human head that fit his palm. In 1993, after studying two miniature men on display at the Museum of American-Indians in New York, writer of natural history Caroline Alexander decided to learn about the origin. of these two.

Little clues

A Shuar tribe warrior who lives in the Amazon jungle, this tribe specializes in making human heads miniature from the corpses of murdered enemies.

The material from the museum gives a little clue: 'A doctor named Gustav Struve from Ecuador, sold to the museum of two victims' bodies in the early 1920s.' Alexander had discovered the son of Dr. Struve, who now lives in Quito (Ecuador), and said, "My father created these mummies."

Alexander tells of his grandson David Brown of Struve, working for a functional food company in Boise, Idaho. During a visit to his parents' basement in Idah in 2003, Brown happened to see a box containing his grandfather's papers.

A few months later, David Brown went to the Adventure Club in Chicago to check out the 'miniature boy' that Gustav Struve had donated since 1935. This new specimen seems to stand out from mysterious man of writer Alexander.

But, both Alexander and Brown were denied access to two mysterious corpses at the New York-American Museum in New York, which had not been shown to the public since the late 1970s. 2 years for Brown to complete the call "Doctor Gustavo Struve's Life Survey".

David Brown is 57 years old but looks younger. After lunch, Brown took the key to open the glass case in front of him and pulled out many jars containing many miniature heads.'He is a kid,' Brown said. The Shuar - an Amazon tribe of the early shrines of the enemies believed that killing a man would create a resentful soul leaving the corpse through the mouth. To prevent this, the lips were sewn and then performed tsantsas rituals - taking the rub on the body to make the skin dark and black to prevent the victim's souls from being 'visible'.

David Brown said: 'Mr. Gustav said he brought these heads when he defected from the Shuar tribe. He never acknowledged himself making these heads. ' Brown opened his laptop and clicked on the photos from the family photo album. There was a photo taken in 1955 about Dr. Struve and his wife Gertrude, having lunch at a restaurant in Los Angeles.

'He is very friendly, loves children'. The most memorable story of many of Dr. Gustav's stories involves the jungle with the miniaturized bodies and heads of Jívaro people - a Spanish term for two Shuar and Achuar tribes .

A miniature head resting in the palm of the Jivaro with two notorious "headhunters" of Shuar and Achuar.

The business is disgusting

Shuar warriors often attack the enemy and retreat quickly, but fast enough to 'cut the heads up from dead corpses ' , then force the 'heads' with the bark, or tie around their head lanyard. If someone intends to pull a corpse - even a corpse of a child - can also slow the retreat and make it easier for the warrior to lose his life.

So where does the mummy child at the Adventure Club come from? Did Dr. Gustavo Struve do that the way the female writer Caroline Alexander expressed doubt? But why do you have to do that? Who has shrunk the baby? Doctor Gustavo Struve was born in Ecuador in 1893 and has German parents.

In 1918, he graduated from surgery at the University of Gua-yaquil (Western Ecuador), after marrying an Ecuadorian woman. Dr. Struve has 6 years traveling around South and Central America. Struve settled in Lima (Peru), then Panama and Amazon, and because they were separated from their wives, the two became completely confident.

Mr. Brown showed a letter from June 1937, a response letter from the Fleishhacker Zoo in San Francisco, the unit that Dr. Struve contacted offered to sell 'Jívaro booty heads '; Dr. Struve sold a head to the Adventurers' Club in 1933 for $ 52.50 (today worth $ 860).

Mr. Brown recalls, his grandmother said that her husband went to Jívaro land to provide medical care. Mr. Brown checked the mummy of a boy in Chicago and saw a glue, not stitches. Through research on Jivaro people, it has been shown that the miniature bodies have formed a lucrative business.

The gallery features miniature heads at the Adventure Club in Chicago.

The ethnographer MW Stirling in an article in 1938 emphasized: 'Most of the miniature heads have left Jivaro, never in their hands. There are also unidentified corpses that have been stolen and then turned to miniatures, then sold to tourists who want to play "poisonous goods".

MW Stirling also concluded that counterfeit mummies have been conducted in parts of Ecuador, Colombia and Panama since 1872, when 'white people live near the border with Jívaro' land and they are 'learning'. Profession 'from Aboriginal tribes. The period from the late 1800s to the early 1900s was the time to "spawn" an extremely cruel business that was the digging of graves, the theft of dead bodies that were not long dead, and then sold to schools. Forensic surgery in the UK and the United States.

The fake mummies were also created, the culmination of fake acts were hair, lips that were tied up rather than stitched, and fake heads without holes that normally Shuar warriors still used. to hang the rope hanging around their necks during festivals and festivals.

Even Shuar people are skilled trade speculators. From the mid-1940s, they sold miniature heads in exchange for pistols. Around the same time, anthropologist John Patton said the Shuar had a tactical advantage over the Achuar enemy.

The Achuar tribe has long controlled rivers, approached maritime routes, had the opportunity to exchange weapons produced in Brazil and trade through Peru and Ecuador. So the headhunters of the Shuar people were faced with retaliation from the more well-armed Achuar enemy, the "sharpening" cases were dramatic and very careful.

Later, the border line was closed, cutting off the commercial access road and the Achuar tribe's weapons. Anthropologist John Patton explains: 'The Shuar suddenly prevailed. Shuar warriors went to the east and cut off an Achuar family, and when the Achuar warriors rarely used the spear because the supply was broken, it was even more beneficial to the Shuar. '