Colorado Technical University
Jerome M. Singleton IT106-1301A-07
13 January 2013
To most people the idea of shrinking heads is something of a science fiction movie or horror flick, I know I did for the majority of my life. Who could actually believe that a human can brutally and savagely cut the head off another human head But as we know there is a culture that is known for taking trophy heads of their defeated enemy and these are our tribal communities throughout the Americas. But there is only one tribal community that went one step further and these mystical and most feared tribal communities in world, the Shuar Warriors. These warriors located deep in the northern Amazon jungles in a region on the Pastaza River between Peru and Ecuador. For thousands of years in pre-Columbian years the jivaro (savage) Indians are the only tribe to take head hunting one step further. Not only did they cut off the head of their enemy, through ritual and celebratory tradition shrunk their victims head. The jivaro Indians as part of the ritual held raids in large numbers against neighboring jivaro communities and individual as part of the celebratory ritual in order to show dominance, and a boy into adulthood. As soon as the Shuar raids was over the Jivaro would take their trophies straight back to their tribe to complete the ritual of the shrinking of the heads. They quickly return not to waste any time in order to prevent the avenging spirit of the tsantsa from ravaging its revenge, by destroying their crops along with the warrior village. During the process of shrinking the victims “face was literally peel off the skull before being sewn up into a neat pouch of skin. This was steeped in hot water for a few minutes. Hot pebbles were then placed in the pouch causing it to shrivel and shrink taking great care not to damage the features when the head was too small for pebbles hot sand scooped from a riverbank was carefully swished about inside. Next the lips were sewn tightly shut with a strand of twine. A machete blade was heated and pressed against the lips to dry them.” There were several more steps to this process for example, filling the holes beneath the eyelids with seeds in order prevent the Musiak (the avenging angel) from seeing. Once celebratory ritual was done, the Tsantsa was of no value to the shuar it then discarded into the jungle(Shah 2001). As this may seem savagely brutal however the United States has engaged in hierarchical scenarios for decades if not centuries. The difference between the Shuar Warriors and United States of America is the Shuar warriors in the name of spirituality as well as power. The U.S did it to gain dominance and power. But the civilized world of the United States does not want to mix religion and politics. The Shuar Warriors face their enemies at hand to hand combat, the U.S uses atom bombs nuclear weapon and all the technology it can muster up to rain over its enemies from a far. Although very misunderstood and feared A Shuar Warrior would have no cause to shrink a foreigners head because they don’t believe that outsiders have souls. Therefore all the horror flicks and science fiction flicks where the group of foreigners goes into the Amazon jungles to never return it’s not because their heads was shrunk, maybe they got lost, or never wanted to go home. Whatever may be the case, which of these super warriors are the Jivaro.
