Chapter 35 - The Grand Bear Hunt by Mayne Reid
Eating a Negro’s Head
According to their usual practice, they had hired one of the native hunters of the district to act as a guide, and assist them in finding the haunts of Bruin. In Napo they were fortunate in meeting with the very man in the person of a mestizo, or half-blood Indian, who followed hunting for his sole calling. He was what is termed a “tigrero,” or tiger-hunter—which title he derived from the fact that the jaguar was the principal object of his pursuit. Among all Spanish-Americans—Mexicans included—the beautiful spotted jaguar is erroneously termed tigre (tiger), as the puma or couguar is called leon (lion). A hunter of the jaguar is therefore denominated a “tiger-hunter,” or tigrero.
There are no puma or lion-hunters by profession—as there is nothing about this brute to make it worth while—but hunting the jaguar is, in many parts of Spanish America, a specific calling; and men make their living solely by following this occupation. One inducement is to obtain the skin, which, in common with those of the great spotted cats of the Old World, is an article of commerce, and from its superior beauty commands a good price. But the tigrero could scarce make out to live upon the sale of the skins alone; for although a London furrier will charge from two to three guineas for a jaguar’s robe, the poor hunter in his remote wilderness market can obtain little more than a tenth part of this price—notwithstanding that he has to risk his life, before he can strip the fair mantle from the shoulders of its original wearer.
It is evident, therefore, that jaguar-hunting would not pay, if there was only the pelt to depend upon; but the tigrero looks to another source of profit—the bounty.
In the hotter regions of Spanish America,—the Brazils as well—there are many settlements to which the jaguar is not only a pest, but a terror. Cattle in hundreds are destroyed by these great predatory animals; even full-grown horses are killed and dragged away by them! But is this all? Are the people themselves left unmolested? No. On the contrary, great numbers of human beings every year fall victims to the rapacity of the jaguars. Settlements attempted on the edge of the great Montaña—in the very country where our young hunters had now arrived—have, after a time, been abandoned from this cause alone. It is a well-known fact, that where a settlement has been formed, the jaguars soon become more plentiful in that neighbourhood: the increased facility of obtaining food—by preying on the cattle of the settlers, or upon the owners themselves—accounting for this augmentation in their numbers. It is precisely the same with the royal tiger of India, as is instanced in the history of the modern settlement of Singapore.
To prevent the increase of the jaguars then, a bounty is offered for their destruction. This bounty is sometimes the gift of the government of the country, and sometimes of the municipal authorities of the district. Not unfrequently private individuals, who own large herds of cattle, give a bounty out of their private purses for every jaguar killed within the limits of their estates. Indeed, it is not an uncommon thing for the wealthy proprietor of a cattle-estate (hacienda de ganados) to maintain one or more “tigreros” in his service—just as gamekeepers are kept by European grandees—whose sole business consists in hunting and destroying the jaguar. These men are sometimes pure Indians, but, as a general thing, they are of the mixed, or mestizo race. It need hardly be said that they are hunters of the greatest courage. They require to be so: since an encounter with a full-grown jaguar is but little less dangerous than with his striped congener of the Indian jungles. In these conflicts, the tigreros often receive severe wounds from the teeth and claws of their terrible adversary; and, not unfrequently, the hunter himself becomes the victim.
You may wonder that men are found to follow such a perilous calling, and with such slight inducement—for even the bounty is only a trifle of a dollar or two—differing in amount in different districts, and according to the liberality of the bestower. But it is in this matter as with all others of a like kind—where the very danger itself seems to be the lure.
The tigrero usually depends upon fire-arms for destroying his noble game; but where his shot fails, and it is necessary to come to close quarters, he will even attack the jaguar with his machete—a species of half-knife half-sword, to be found in every Spanish-American cottage from California to Chili.
Very often the jaguar is hunted without the gun. The tigrero, in this case, arms himself with a short spear, the shaft of which is made of a strong hard wood, either a guaiacum, or a piece of the split trunk of one of the hardwood palms.
The point of this spear is frequently without iron—only sharpened and hardened by being held in the fire—and with this in his left hand, and his short sword in the right, the hunter advances with confidence upon his formidable adversary. This confidence has been fortified by a contrivance which he has had the precaution to adopt—that is, of enveloping his left arm in the ample folds of his blanket—serape, roana, or poncho, according to the country to which he belongs—and using this as a shield.
The left arm is held well forward, so that the woollen mass may cover his body against the bound of the animal, and thus is the attack received. The jaguar, like all feline quadrupeds, springs directly forward upon his prey. The tigrero prepared for this, and, with every nerve braced, receives the assailant upon the point of his short spear. Should the jaguar strike with its claws it only clutches the woollen cloth; and while tearing at this—which it believes to be the body of its intended victim—the right arm of the hunter is left free, and with the sharp blade of his machete he can either make cut or thrust at his pleasure. It is not always that the tigrero succeeds in destroying his enemy without receiving a scratch or two in return; but a daring hunter makes light of such wounds—for these scars become badges of distinction, and give him éclat among the villages of the Montaña.
Just such a man was the guide whom our young hunters had engaged, and who, though a tiger-hunter by profession, was equally expert at the capturing of a bear—when one of these animals chanced to stray down from the higher slopes of the mountains, into the warmer country frequented by the jaguars. It was not always that bears could be found in these lower regions; but there is a particular season of the year when the black bear (ursus frugilegus) descends far below his usual range, and even wanders far out into the forests of the Montaña.
Of course there must be some inducement for his making this annual migration from his mountain home; for the ursus frugilegus, though here dwelling within the tropics, does not affect a tropical climate. Neither is he a denizen of the very cold plains—the paramos—that extend among the summits of eternal snow. A medium temperature is his choice; and this, as we have already stated, he finds among the foot-hills, forming the lower zone of the Eastern Andes. It is there he spends most of his life, and that is his place of birth, and consequently his true home. At a particular season of the year, corresponding to the summer of our own country, he makes a roving expedition to the lower regions; and for what purpose? This was the very question which Alexis put to the tigrero. The answer was as curious as laconic:
“Comer la cabeza del negro.” (To eat the negro’s head!)
“Ha, ha! to eat the negro’s head!” repeated Ivan, with an incredulous laugh.
“Just so, señorito!” rejoined the man; “that is what brings him down here.”
“Why, the voracious brute!” said Ivan; “you don’t mean to say that he makes food of the heads of the poor negroes?”
“Oh no!” replied the tigrero, smiling in his turn; “it is not that.”
“What then?” impatiently inquired Ivan. “I’ve heard of negro-head tobacco. He’s not a tobacco chewer, is he?”
“Carrambo! no, señorito,” replied the tiger-hunter, now laughing outright; “that’s not the sort of food the fellow is fond of. You’ll see it presently. By good luck, it’s just in season now—just as the bears fancy it—or else we needn’t look to start them here. We should have to go further up the mountains: where they are more difficult both to find and follow. But no doubt we’ll soon stir one up, when we get among the cabezas del negro. The nuts are just now full of their sweet milky paste, of which the bears are so fond, and about a mile from here there are whole acres of the trees. I warrant we find a bear among them.”
Though still puzzled with this half-explanation, our young hunters followed the guide—confident that they would soon come in sight of the “negro’s head.”