Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

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turn their backs.
NOTES OF A BOTANIST
" These women appeared to be
very tall, robust, and fair, with long hair twisted
over their heads, skins round their loins, and bows
and arrows in their hands, with which they killed
seven or eight Spaniards." This is all that they
profess to have seen with their own eyes
of those
warlike women; and, as Herrera remarks on it, "it
was no new thing in the Indies for women to fight,
and to use bows and arrows, as has been seen on
some of the Windward Islands and at Cartagena,
where they displayed as much courage as the men."
In the account of the return of Columbus from
his second voyage we read that when he arrived
at Guadeloupe (having started
numbers of women, armed with
from Hispaniola),
bows and arrows,
opposed the landing of his men. This is one
instance, of many such, recounted by the Spanish
historians.
I have myself seen that Indian women can fight.
At the village of Chasuta, on the malos pasos of
the river Huallaga, which in 1855 had a population
of some 1800 souls, composed of two tribes of
Coscanasoa Indians, the ancient rivalry of those
tribes generally breaks forth when a large quantity
of chicha has been imbibed during the celebration
of one of their feasts. Then, on opposite sides of
the village, the women pile up heaps of stones, to
serve as missiles for the men, and renew them
continually as they are being expended. If, as
sometimes happens, the men are driven back to and
beyond their piles of stones, the women defend the
latter obstinately, and generally hold them until the
men are able to rally to the combat. At that epoch
there was no permanent white resident at Chasuta,