How to Prepare a Shrunken-Head

After an attack on the enemy, the victim or victims were killed and immediately decapitated. Sometimes the decapitation process occurred while the victim was still alive.

The head is cut off below the neck with a section of the skin from the chest and back is taken with it. The killer removes his woven head-band and passes it through the mouth and neck of the head and ties it over his shoulder to facilitate a rapid retreat from the victim's camp. Should the killer have no head band, the warrior will utilize a section of vine. The head shrinking process occurred in the following way:

With the immediate fighting over, the warriors assemble back at agreed upon camps alongside a river away from the enemy's territory. It is here that the head shrinking process begins.

Now safe, the killer begins to work on the head. A slit is made in the neck and up the back of the head, allowing the skin and hair to be carefully peeled from the skull. The skull is then discarded into the river and left as a gift to the pani, the anaconda.

Carefully, the eyes are sewn shut with fine native fiber. The lips are closed and skewered with little wooden pegs, which are later removed and replaced with dangling strings. From here the tsantsa goes to the sacred boiling pots or cooking jars. The head is simmered for approximately an hour and a half to two hours. If the heads were left for any longer, the hair would have fallen out. On removal from the pots, the skin is dark and rubbery, and the head is about 1/3 its original size. The skin is turned inside out and all the flesh adhering is scraped off with a knife. The scraped skin is then turned right side out and the slit in the rear is sewn together. What remains is similar to that of an empty rubber glove.

The final shrinking is done with hot stones and sand collected nearby in order to sear the interior and to shrink the head further. These stones are dropped one at a time through the neck opening and constantly rotated inside to prevent scorching. When the skin becomes too small for the stones to be rolled around within the head, sand is heated in a food bowl and substituted for the stones. The sand enters the crevices of the nose and ears, where the stones could not reach. This process is repeated frequently. Hot stones are later applied to the exterior of the face to seal and shape the features. Surplus hair is singed off and the finished product hung over a fire to harden and blacken. A heated machete is applied to the lips to dry them. Following this procedure, the three chonta are put through the lips and the lips are then lashed together with string.

This entire process would last for approximately one week, with the head being worked on daily while en route back to their own village. The last day of work on the trophy is spent in a forest a few hours away from their village where the first tsantsa celebration will take place. Here, the warriors will make a hole in the top of the head and a double kumai is inserted and tied to a shirt stick of chonta palm on the inside, so that the head can be worn around the warrior's neck.

The Jivaro Indians were preoccupied with realism, which is clearly shown in the careful preparation of the head. Due to the meticulousness of the tribesmen, the warrior tries to prepare the tsantsa with utmost care in order to maintain the original likeness of a the slain victim's face.

Authentic and Counterfeit Shrunken-Heads

As the white man began to infiltrate the Jivaro region in the 1850s, spurred on by tales of the head-shrinking practices of the Shuar tribes, a lively trade in human head trophies began. Due to the macabre nature of the shrunken head, many "curio-hunters" have sought out the tsantsa as collectibles, thus generating a sizable business in the manufacture of counterfeit tsantsa.

Imitation tsantsa are classified under two categories, being either non-human or human but prepared by someone other than the Jivaro tribesmen. As the most common non-human fakes are often made out of goat or monkey skin, one must pay particular attention to distinguishing between authentic and replicas. Indications of counterfeit tsantsa are characterized by looking for nasal hairs which is a notable distinction between identifying authentic heads and non-human replicas. In addition to this, it is also quite difficult to duplicate a shrunken human ear. The ear should remain in its original form only smaller. Fakes generally cannot match the intricate details of the human ear. (see photo)

Counterfeit heads prepared by someone other than the Jivaro Indians are usually, much more skillfully prepared through the use of superior equipment, than the actual work of the Jivaros.

Hoping to cash in on the sale of imitation tsantsa, taxidermists are largely responsible for the production of counterfeit trophies. Taxidermists were also known for producing tsantsa by using corpses of the unclaimed hospital dead and fraudulently obtained from morgues.

In order to identify genuine shrunken heads, careful inspection is required. The following illustrates the most common characteristics of how to distinguish between authentic Jivaro shrunken heads and counterfeit shrunken human heads.

The head is less thoroughly shrunk and tends to exude a certain amount of oil The lips show no sign of perforation which results from the "chonta-wood" pins used by the Shuar during the preparation, as well as the lips are sewn with light threads instead of a heavy cotton string The top of the head is not pierced for the suspending cord The facial hair has not been singed off, or the skin polished ( G. E S. Turner. Counterfeit Tsantsa in the Pitt Rivers MuseumMan: A Record of Anthropological Science 1944 p.57 ) Tourism is largely responsible for the creation of the demand for shrunken heads, either human or fake .

Listed below is a 1897 account which details a counterfeit head-shrinking process as explained by adventurer F.W Up De Graff :

It has come to the author's attention that there is in Panama a man who makes a business of preparing and shrinking heads, and who has even shrunken two entire bodies, one of an adult, the other evidently of a child; the body of the latter only ten by twelve inches. These heads, human or otherwise, are much more skillfully prepared than the legitimate work of the Jivaros. The slit in the legitimate Jivaro head is drawn together with a very coarse fibre, while the work of this expert is so neatly done that the incision can hardly be noticed. The heads are those of white men, black men, Chinese men and natives, probably selected from unclaimed hospital dead.

In Europe the author has also run across these heads which evidently must have come from the same source. In Panama, where tourists have created a brisk demand for these uncouth curios, heads, either human or monkey, are made to order or sold for $25.00 each. ( F.W Up de Graff p.283)

Remarkably, there are in existence two shrunken human bodies at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian located in New York City, which have been prepared by counterfeiters. These bodies are not however on display due to the stringent laws which prohibit the exhibiting of native human remains in federally funded institutions but they do exist in their collection.

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