Credit: © The Royal Society
Image number: RS.10912
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Portrait of Cumántiara
Date
21 August 1852-28 June 1853
Creator
Richard Spruce (1817 - 1893, British) , Explorer
Object type
Archive reference number
Material
Dimensions
height (drawing): 221mm
width (drawing): 134mm
width (drawing): 134mm
Subject
Geography
> Exploration
Politics & Government
> Political doctrines
> British Empire
Politics & Government
> Political doctrines
> British colonialism
> Exploration
Politics & Government
> Political doctrines
> British Empire
Politics & Government
> Political doctrines
> British colonialism
Description
Portrait of the left profile of the head and shoulders of young Indian woman annotated by Spruce as 'No. 4. Cumántiara = Phimagem de pato (= Duck's down) (Baptized Maria) Tariana Indian. Daughter of Bernardo of Urubu-coara. 17 years old. (Panuré, Rio Uaupés)'.
Reproduced as Figure 22 in Notes of a botanist on the Amazon & Andes: being records of travel on the Amazon and its tributaries, the Trombetas, Rio Negro, Uaupés, Casiquiari, Pacimoni, Huallaga, and Pastasa; as also to the cataracts of the Orinoco, along the eastern side of the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, and the shores of the Pacific, during the years 1849-1864 edited by Alfred Russel Wallace, volume I (London, 1908).
In the aforementioned work Spruce describes Cumántiara and Paramháada (also figured in the same work) as being 'fair examples of the better types of young Indian women', though Spruce states that 'some of the younger and prettier ones were too shy and frightened to allow themselves to be de-lineated by the white stranger'.
Richard Spruce (1817-1893) British botanist was not a Fellow of the Royal Society. He spent fifteen years collecting in the Amazon of Brazil and the Andes of Peru and Ecuador between 1849-1864, and observing the indigenous people and their cultures, learning 21 different languages while away.
Spruce was already in South America when he was employed by a Kew Gardens-India Office project to secure seeds of the cinchona tree, whose bark yielded the antimalarial drug quinine. In 1860 he shipped around 100,000 dried seeds and over 600 young plants out of Ecuador. A year later, Ecuador adopted laws to protect its cinchona trees from mass exportation.
The Tariana or Taliaseri are an indigenous people of the Uaupés River in the Amazon region of Brazil and Colombia.
Reproduced as Figure 22 in Notes of a botanist on the Amazon & Andes: being records of travel on the Amazon and its tributaries, the Trombetas, Rio Negro, Uaupés, Casiquiari, Pacimoni, Huallaga, and Pastasa; as also to the cataracts of the Orinoco, along the eastern side of the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, and the shores of the Pacific, during the years 1849-1864 edited by Alfred Russel Wallace, volume I (London, 1908).
In the aforementioned work Spruce describes Cumántiara and Paramháada (also figured in the same work) as being 'fair examples of the better types of young Indian women', though Spruce states that 'some of the younger and prettier ones were too shy and frightened to allow themselves to be de-lineated by the white stranger'.
Richard Spruce (1817-1893) British botanist was not a Fellow of the Royal Society. He spent fifteen years collecting in the Amazon of Brazil and the Andes of Peru and Ecuador between 1849-1864, and observing the indigenous people and their cultures, learning 21 different languages while away.
Spruce was already in South America when he was employed by a Kew Gardens-India Office project to secure seeds of the cinchona tree, whose bark yielded the antimalarial drug quinine. In 1860 he shipped around 100,000 dried seeds and over 600 young plants out of Ecuador. A year later, Ecuador adopted laws to protect its cinchona trees from mass exportation.
The Tariana or Taliaseri are an indigenous people of the Uaupés River in the Amazon region of Brazil and Colombia.
Associated place