Unspoiled Primitives

In the jungle valleys, back from the southwest shore of Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, live the world's most determined isolationists: the celebrated Motilon Indians. They are naked, few in number and disunited. Airplanes fly over their territory; the modern machines of U.S. and British oil companies clank around their borders. But the Motilones, not budging an inch, go right on in the old ways: slipping through the tangled jungle, invisible as the wind, silent as their heavy arrows that can slam through a grown man's chest and out the other side.

Anthropologists are fascinated by the Motilones, whose customs, language and origin are unknown. When the American Museum of Natural History offered Anthropologist Preston Holder the job of snooping on them, he accepted eagerly. Last week, back in New York, Holder told how he, too, had drawn a blank.

Taking along his attractive young wife and colleague, Joyce Wike, Holder set out for the tangled jungle where for 400 years the Motilones have defied all comers.

Guide Hunt. The standard anthropological procedure for making friends with offish primitives, Holder explains, is to skirt their territory looking for an "acultural individual"--i.e., a person from outside who has learned their primitive ways, or a primitive who has deserted to civilization. He can teach you the language, and is often eager to introduce you to his reluctant friends (it makes him look big).

The Holders circled the Motilon territory, visiting towns in Venezuela and Colombia which had been close and nervous neighbors of the Motilones for several hundred years. heard enough Indian tales to fill a dozen pulp magazines, but they could not find a single "acultural individual." The Spanish-speaking frontiersmen, many of them outlaws, are tough characters themselves. But none had been tough enough to take up life among the Indians. No Motilon deserter to the out side world was ever found.

Deep in the jungle on the southern fringe of Motilon territory, Holder did find one Indian who lived with an old woman, presumably his mother. His house was of hardwood poles with attic loopholes for last-ditch defense. Around it were three concentric palisades. Holder crawled through small holes in the defenses and interviewed the Indian, who was friendly enough not to shoot him.

The anthropologist learned ten words of an unknown tongue, but concluded that his host was not a genuine Motilon.

Task Force. The Holders spent months in jungle villages and oil camps, picking up bits of information. All the neighbors of the Motilones, even the well-armed oilmen, suffered from Indian jitters. They told of fearsome raids, with 40 or 50 Indians bursting out of the jungle. The raids were real enough, and they happened constantly. But after studying the tracks of the raiders, Holder decided that the aver age party consisted of one adult Indian, one woman or adolescent and one small child. Such a primitive task force, he thinks, slips at night through a village or oil camp, picking up tools or bits of metal

or cloth. When the raiders have enough booty, they loose a few arrows and vanish into the jungle, followed by a fusillade of panicky gunfire from the victims.

The Holders eventually made a frontal attack. Fitting a small launch with heavy metal screening to ward off arrows, they pushed boldly up the rivers leading into Motilon territory. Indian settlements were not hard to find; the big communal houses had .been accurately mapped from the air. Most stood a mile or so back from the rivers, with banana and vegetable patches on the flats below.

Indian Gift. At one of the gardens the Holders left presents of knives, tobacco and red calico. Some days later a flight of arrows slammed out of the jungle. One of them was tied with red thread from the calico. The Indians had accepted the presents, but not in the hoped-for spirit.

There were many more arrow attacks. After each, Holder would shout hopefully at the silent jungle in various Indian languages. He never got an answer. Often he smelled the smoke of the Indians' cooking fires, but he never saw a Motilon.

Holder returned to the U.S. a frustrated but undiscouraged anthropologist. Even without seeing Motilones, he had learned a good deal about them. To judge from the size of their footprints, they are fair-sized men, about 5 ft. 8 in. They are probably the only people in the world who have no dogs. Their houses, about 15 miles apart, are self-contained communities, most likely at war with one another as well as with the white man. There are only about 1,500 Motilones. Except for tribes in the deep interior of New Guinea, they are the most "unspoiled" primitives left on earth. Why they have held themselves isolated so long on the doorstep of civilization is still a mystery,

As soon as he can, Holder is going to try again. Mrs. Holder will go too. They will camp in Motilon territory, patiently set out presents. In two or three years, Holder hopes, the Indians will stop pegging arrows at him, show themselves and perhaps even regard him as a friend. He wants to hear from their own lips the tale of their battle against the World.

* The arrows are "gifts" from the Motilones. The long, barbed heads are of hard palm wood which can be sharpened almost like steel.

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