BOLD JOURNEY: INDIANS OF THE ANDES

[Music] bold journey your television passport to the exciting colorful world of adventure as seen through the eyes of real people here to present the actual films of tonight's journey is john stevenson [Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen tonight we welcome from south america mr eric pavel was born and raised in brazil together with his charming wife mr pavel sets out to find and photograph two of the major indian tribes of the northern andes the pavels make friends with the supposedly notorious hebrew headhunters and they're also made welcomed by the rapidly vanishing indians known as the colorados who incidentally derived their name from the spanish word for the color red the color with which they paint their bodies from head to toe it's indians of the andes and will meet our guest on the campus of ucla in just a moment and here in this academic setting is mr eric pavel from sao paulo brazil and we welcome to this program with a great deal of pleasure how are you mr pavel hello you know it's a long way from sao paulo to westwood so i'm naturally prompted to ask what brings you here and especially to this campus my present work is doing research and studies of the primitive tribes of central and south america mr pavel what compels you to concentrate so much of your time on these indians well as you may know the indians of south america are the largest group of uh primitive indians still left in the world today and with the advance of the white people they are compelled to retreat into the jungles and are disappearing at the same time and if they are not studied and recorded on film within the next generation there won't be any indians to be studied anymore well that sounds very interesting thank you mr vivel we'll have more questions for you after we see your very fine film so now let's begin your journey to meet the indians of the andes here now ladies and gentlemen my special film recording is mr eric pavel to describe his journey to the indians and the andes of ecuador this john is not a natural history museum but the living room in our home in san clemente in california adorned with all the trophies and souvenirs we have brought back from latin america from our different trips to the primitive tribes some of these are figures others are masks that's my wife of course this is a little train my little son is playing with i'm going to take my wife to the western part of south america to the andes of ecuador which you see on this map we are going to visit two indian tribes each one living on another side of the andes first we drop down towards the west coast we are going to visit the indian tribe called colorado's in order to breach their habitat their jungle village we have to leave the jeep and follow the trail on mule bank down the andes in the back you see our mule driver following on foot i asked him why don't you write him you always said who me that's much too dangerous i would never do that i can understand his sentiments and soon we met our first indians a colorado colorado means red and there is no more appropriate word for these type of indians because they not only paint their faces red but they even put red painted clay in their coifures in their hairdress and cut it in a concentric circle making a sort of a visit-shaped cap which is so hard that the rain will drain off i actually thought there was a cap he was wearing you mean that's hair that is hair which is cut in a circle and pasted with mud the woman do not use this clay in their hair however they paint their faces with black lines and black dots and if you look from fire you have the impression they have a veil in front of their eyes they also chew the leaf of a plant which makes their teeth black and this is supposed to prevent cavities although it doesn't look too much like a two-space smile do you mean mr pavel that the colorado woman when she arises in the morning uses this as standard makeup yes she will first take a bath in the river and she'll paint her face and sew through the leaves and then she'll go down to the daily chores which are preparing food and taking care of children and she's ready for her day the amazing thing is when you see indian babies they don't look really indian most of the indian babies have features like the white men and only when they get to be around five or six do they get the typically indian features of the high cheek bones and relatively narrow eyes the children have no toys so they play with pets and if they can find the dog which is not too common in the jungles then they will have other animals like little red for instance this girl is playing with people ask me often how do you get to indians in the jungles well you can sit under elephant's ear leaf like my wife does here on a trail and wait till some indian gives you a lift or else you could reach the indians the hollywood way by fighting your way through the jungles being attacked by jaguars bitten by a snake covered with mosquitoes until you finally reach some indian tribe however of course the truth is somewhere in the middle between these two extremes the horse in the jungle is this a pretty common possession of the indian in the jungle mr pavel it depends on the tribe if they live close to some white settlement they may be able to get a horse and use it and the colorado's live very close to a white village only about a hundred miles away where they got this horse now when you reach an indian village you'll have to bring a lot of gifts and the indian will judge your visit by the amount of gifts you have then after distributing the gifts to the man and woman and then giving some toys to the children you'll start studying the way of life you'll see the woman coming in where's the so-called platinum platinum is a banana-like fruit which they grow because it is their stop of food one platinum can weigh over one pound and you see the little child here opening one however it cannot be eaten raw like a banana it always has to be cooked and it is not only the main food of the indians they also use it to sell the banana flower to the white traders by drying these platinums the soup they are preparing here on the open fire will be boiling all day long because the colorado indians have no regular meal hours whenever some indian is hungry he'll go down and help himself a bowl of soup the men are working in the sugar plantations however this is not an industry for them it's just for their own use to make sugar and mainly to make an alcoholic drink they prepare this in a very primitive sugar press maybe a model which dates back to the 16th century used by the early spanish and portuguese it consists of two hardwood logs and the women are feeding the sugar cane between these logs while the men are turning them the children have an old candy they chew the sugar cane while the men prepare an alcoholic drink which is also served to visitors and i myself was offered some and i was told i shouldn't take more than one sip then i was supposed to hand it to my neighbor he will take a sip then he will hand it back to me and i will take a sip and i'll hand it to my neighbor and that will go on until you have no idea how many neighbors you have anymore after a while well you seem to enjoy was that part of the act that's supposed to be the red paste which they use on their bodice and face and hair comes from the so-called achote seed and they plant these at choti's around their villages when he needs fresh makeup he'll pick some of their chowder fruit and inside we find the seeds which when pressed between the fingers like my wife is showing here give that red dye which mixed with clay will be used in their makeup their hairdo or to paint their bodies which is not only to make them better looking but also to protect them from mosquito bites the colorado is using marimba to make music and we made an original recording here and you may have a chance to listen to a few notes while they play after a while dancing will start the older people are a little bit shy at the beginning and therefore the children start to dance in the meantime the man and woman are having some of that alcoholic drink and it will get into their system and soon they will start dancing too and when the older people start dancing that will not be a dance which will last for a few minutes or a few hours it may go on a whole night or even two or three days these people mr pavel seem like a very hardy race is this true they live in the jungles they have to work for a living they have to catch animals when it rains they have no other protection except a large palm leaf or a leaf of the elephant's ear they have to be hard in order to survive well that's a very sensible answer thank you leaving the colorados in order to visit another tribe which are the head hunting heroes we have to cross the andes we have to cross passes leading up to 11 000 feet and then down again on the other side of the end is well this perpetual snow will melt and flow down into the mighty amazon river system here the rivers flow in a precipitated flight down the mountainside because within less than 30 miles they will drop 10 000 feet here there are very few roads and there is only one road in ecuador leading to the amazon jungle a road down along the pasta river however this road is open only very few weeks every year whenever a hard rain hits this place the road will be completely covered with mud and the tractor has to open it again like we see the jeep crossing here through a big washout any four-wheeled vehicle certainly takes a beating on this trip doesn't it they do but it's the only way to get to these places unless we want to go on mule back which we will have to do when we come to a place like this where a bridge is broken down and here again we take our mules crossing primitive bridges down towards the amazon river system once we have left the andes behind the rivers will become more peaceful and from here on we will be able to continue our journey on canoes the army controls the indian country in ecuador and it is not possible to travel here without the permission of the army they will also supply use as necessary canoes and guides and after my wife and i said goodbye to the officers and they wished us a good trip down the river to visit the hebrew indians some 200 miles below this last outpost of civilization after leaving the last outpost of white man's civilization we hit the first rapids and you really have to know your river in order to shoot these rabbits with a wooden canoe and of course these soldiers are indians themselves indians that have been baptized by the missionaries and then went into the army they're used as pallets whenever you hit the rapid they'll tell you that there may be only about a foot or two feet of space between the rocks where your canoe can get through suddenly you will find yourself in the midst of the jungle if you fly over this territory you will have the impression that this is just a big green mossy carpet a river occasionally crosses cut through the jungle winding itself towards the amazon river and you have the feeling there is no life down there until you leave your airplane and travel into the jungles where you find small animals like the termites and here we have cut open a termite hill and we see the white eggs in the center we also see the two different kinds of termites the smaller brown ones are the worker termites and the larger white ones the soldiers the soldiers never leave the termite hill their job is to protect the queen the queen we see here that is almost two inch long and has to be fed because she never leaves the termite hill my wife is playing here with a toucan bird the toucan being characterized by its large beak sometimes as long as the bird itself the less pleasant animal found in the jungles is a centipede we were able to photograph the fight between the centipede and a little white mouse the centipede may not have a hundred legs as its name implies but it has quite a few and it also has a poisonous sting and once little mouse is struck by that poisonous sting it will die within a few seconds there are also small kinkajous here which look like a bear they make wonderful pets and my wife adopted the small kinkajou and we took it along on part of our trip all you have to do is give him a few bananas every day and he'll be perfectly happy and stay with you here he is taking dinner on his back well relaxing it's very hot everybody takes a siesta after lunch so does this little monkey the monkey which is called very good or large tummy monkey because of its odd shape we also find a huge amazon purpose it can live 500 years and weigh up to one ton its real size can only be appreciated if we see it close to something we know like this 11 year old boy riding this amazon purpose however they're not only animals and birds in the jungles we also find people living here and the most interesting tribes in this part of the world are the head hunting heroes oh wait a minute did you say headhunter indians i said headhunter indians because the hebrews are known not only for their head hunting practices but they are the original head shrinkers that would take the enemy's head and shrink it to the size of a baseball this in recent years has been outlawed and the army is looking after it that it's enforced the government is punishing very severely any killing however there is little change in the life of the hebrews today except for the head hunting practice which has disappeared well i'm happy to hear you say that mr pavel whenever a hero visits another tribe he will stand in front of his post and greet him a greeting that may last for as long as half an hour the host will sit the visitor will tell about his trips about the rivers he has crossed the jungles he has passed and everything that has happened to him the reason for his visit how long he wants to stay and so on while this very long introduction goes on we will follow the woman out of the plantation with the heroes have around their houses a plantation of yucca or maniac a potato-like root which you know in this country under the name of tapioca they will grow these roots around their homes and whenever the soil is exhausted they will have to leave their homes and build a new one a few miles further away they cut this maniac and make a soup out of it after peeling the maniac they will fill large urgent jars and they will boil for several hours here is our visitor still talking to the host telling him about the wonderful trip and we made a recording of the two heroes talking which we are playing now for you to listen while they are talking the women have finished peeling the manioc have covered it with banana leaves they have gone down to the river and taken a bath the men are repainting their faces using small bamboo sticks and the same red each other dye we have seen used by the colorados and of course they also keep their children clean to typically hear away using a live faucet well of course is there any other way well water is water after all and after the child has been sorely washed it will be handed over to his father whether he's a hebrew or whatever he still doesn't like water or a bath does he certainly doesn't and he doesn't like to be painted either however already at five or six years he has to be painted with a tribal marks oh by the way here are our visitor and host again they are still telling about his wonderful trip the many rivers he has crossed of course this is not just plain talking the idea behind it is that the host wants to know his visitor know a little bit about his background before he asks him into the house the maniac has boiled now for about half an hour and has become soft a paste will be made out of it with these wooden poles mashing it like mashed potatoes the indians have wild chicken however this would not be enough for their daily food so they still have to go out and hunt doing this with blow gun and arrows this young indian is preparing splitting bamboo cutting it to lengths of about 10 inches then making one end pointed the other end will be wrapped with the silk of the silkwood tree this will give the pressure which is needed when introduced into the blogger the other end will then be cut and dipped into corona poison the cut is necessary because whenever a monkey is hit for instance he will try to pull the diet out of his body but the tip with the poison will stay in the poison will soon paralyze the monkey and he will fall down the tree and be picked up by the indians he certainly handles this arrow this dart very deftly they are preparing hundreds of them and of course they play around all day long to train because once he is out in the jungle he has to use it he may kill a small bird at a distance of over a hundred feet they used spears however in order to kill larger animals like wild pigs or ocelots our greeting in the meantime is over the women have come along and served chicha chicha is an alcoholic drink prepared by the same yuca which was boiled before and the first drink is served to the host is there any reason for her running her hand or fingers through this drink mr bevell yes because she has no thief so she has to make sure that no solid yucca has been left and she will do that by running her fingers through and picking out in lieu of a sieve she uses her fingers exactly [Music] and then after the host has shown that there is no poison that the visitor can drink it safely he will be served some chicha the houses of the heroes have two entrances one is exclusively used by the man the other is only for the woman [Music] and when they get together it might be to reenact the dance which was danced around a shrunken head this head where i was told is over 30 years old is this some relative or an enemy that was an enemy of the tribe which was killed before killing was prohibited and the chief has kept his head head shrinking has disappeared in recent years however all the world has been shocked some time ago when we heard of the five american missionaries being killed by the alkas in ecuador a tribe that lives only 50 miles away from this particular place which we see in this film i've been often asked since what is a reason for this killing how come that after weeks of friendly relations suddenly the indians turn to kill the white man well a reason probably lies in the medicine man the indians soon find out that penicillin and other drugs work much better than whatever the medicine man will brew up and so we find that the medicine man is a real enemy of the white people and of the missionaries and if something has happened in the indian tribe while the missionaries were there probably the medicine man blamed it on the missionaries and told the indians you have to go and kill the missionaries in order to get peace again in your tribe [Music] the heroes will dance around his head for many hours it's time for us to go john leaving these indians and this small south american nation ecuador against the background of the mighty andes thank you mr pavel i can understand your concern for these indians life for them must be pretty grim i noticed that you got into the same headhunter indian country as those five missionaries who met such a tragic fate did you happen by any chance to know these men not only did we know them john but we actually traveled with them they helped us reach these indian tribes you saw in the film and the plane and pilot which took us there was the same that were killed by the aoka indians a few months later oh it's very interesting do you think sir that the alkas will ever become pacified i am very sure of it because the missionaries wherever they have started to do some work pacifying indians or other primitive tribes they have always succeeded in the end and the setback they have had last year will probably not stop them to do their wonderful work well i see it's interesting to notice that your wife also accompanies you into your with your trips into the jungle and she isn't here today to speak for herself could you tell us a little about her please well my wife is a french girl and uh strange enough we met in uh uruguay and what is even more strange my son was born right here in burbank well it sounds like an international romance and an international family will you pavel stick to the indians or do you have plans to visit other countries we certainly have we are finishing our work with the indian this year and we hope to go to the seven thousand islands of the philippines next year studying the primitive uh people there seven thousand islands yes over seven thousand you have your work cut out for you mr pavel thank you so very much we're grateful you for your appearance in our program we hope you get to a good number of those philippine islands goodbye and good luck sir thank you john it was a pleasure [Music] from the brilliant pen of the immortal edgar rice burroughs came the legendary king of the african jungle tarzan to thrill all the generations of our time throughout the world now the fascinating behind-the-scenes story of making the newest tarzan movie in africa it's the journey to the dark continent by mr mickey carter to photograph the cartoon king in his own land tarzan comes to life in the person of the handsome young actor mr gordon scott who braves the danger of riding the back of a live rhinoceros mr carter safari's in to find exotic happenings we only read about a sacrificial ritual is re-enacted for his cameras and he sees that scourge of africa fire on the velt that's next week in cartoon king in africa until next week then john stevenson saying thank you and good night you