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Richard Cochran Gill and the Search for Curare

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The Richard C. Gill Curare Collection was donated to the Guedel Center by the wife of the famous ethnobotanist for whom it was named. The collection includes crude curare, the utensils for its production and the containers for its use and storage. It also has blowguns with darts and arrow cases as well as personal adornments made from beads, feathers, hair and beetle wings.

Bead & feather necklace

Beetle wing necklace

Ceremonial hair & feather necklace
Rio Corriente Oriente

Wood flute

Ceremonial feather crown

Gourd
Gourds of various sizes for tubocurare

quiver
Cylindrical wooden quiver holding many arrows attached to a gourd filled with kapok for the arrow ends and a piranha-teeth arrow cutter. For use in hunting the sharpened end of an arrow was tipped with curare while the opposite end was wrapped in kapok (a cotton-like fiber from a kapok tree) and shot from a 9 foot long blow gun.

pouch
Detail of woven pouch with strap. Tag: "Cocopouch. Container for Beetle Nuts. Stimulant chewed by Jivaro Indians.