Aboriginal trephining in Bolivia / [Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier].

  • Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier
Date:
[1904]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Aboriginal trephining in Bolivia / [Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    by Drs Muftiz and McGee?’ furnishes many data on this interesting custom among the ancient Quichua of Peru. None of the sixty-five trephined crania mentioned above shows quadrangular trephining by incision, as in the case of most of those from Peru described and illustrated by Muftiz and McGee. It may be that the Aymara performed this same method of trephining, but such did not come under our notice. While at Umayo, near the northwestern shore of Lake Titicaca, the administrator of the hacienda informed me that some twenty- five years before he had known a man near Cuzco who had been trephined for skull-fracture and who wore a piece of gourd inserted in the orifice. I inferred from his conversation that both the oper- ator and the man on whom the operation was performed were Indians. This was the first intimation we received that trephining was practised by Indians at the present time. Inquiry among the Aymara of Bolivia convinced us that some of them knew about trephining, but were unwilling to impart any information concerning it. When we showed them perforated crania, the usual remark was that they neither knew what it meant nor how it was done. Medicine-men of high standing were some- times numbered among our laborers, but they were seldom approach- able, and in the rare cases, when it was possible to question them, they invariably declared the trephined crania to be those of priests and the perforation the result of tonsure. On the peninsula of Huata, however, we were fortunate enough to find mestizos who held intimate intercourse with the Indians and who gave us infor- mation which was subsequently corroborated. Trephining is today practised in Bolivia, and probably also in the Peruvian sierra, by Indian medicine-men. The operation is performed with any available cutting instrument, such as a sharp pocket-knife or a chisel, and the process is one of incision and scrap- ing. We heard of one case—that above mentioned —in which the aperture, although irregular, was covered by a piece of gourd; but this, if true, would appear to be exceptional. The Indian lived, _and possibly still lives, about twelve miles north of La Paz. 2 Primitive Trephining in Peru, Sixteenth Rep’t of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1894-95, pp. 3-72.
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