Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/74

62 argument can hardly be pressed in face of Dr. Rivers' Dundee paper on the Decadence of Useful Arts. In any case it is a fascinating subject, and, so far as the Indians of the Issá-Japurá district are concerned, not one that can be set aside for a more convenient indefinite future to solve. Their solitudes have been broken. There was only piá, our custom, to keep tribal law and legend from an obliteration no research can remedy. An alien culture,—I cannot call it a higher one,—has intruded. Even now the Boro and Witoto as I knew them are exceedingly hard to find. It may be that I was the first and last white man to meet them unaffected by outside influences.

Author:Thomas Whiffen