This is another post in our series on Armando Vivante's article* (Online here - Spanish) about pygmies in America. In it we will look into the section on "Little Black Men" (section 13, p.250 of his article).
* Vivante, A. (1963). Estado actual de la discución sobre los pigmeos americanos. 1. El primer contexto de este problema. Revista del Museo de La Plata. Nueva Serie. Sección Antropología, Artículos, Vol 5, No 28.
Little Black Men
Vivante cites Lehmann, who in turn cites Nordenskjöld who mentioned a book (Geografí de Colombia - See p. 878) that included a reference about these black pygmies in the Darien, in the border region between Panama and Colombia, which features a thick jungle.
This article was written at the time that Panama was still a province of Colombia (1901) shortly before the U.S. president Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt promoted the independence of Panama (1902) in order to build the transoceanic canal there and exert direct control over it. Below is the text on the Darien people:
"According to reports from one of their main chiefs, in those mountains there existed ten years ago remains of an aboriginal population, small in stature, with black skin, very scarce in my region (100 to 200) and entirely savage: he reported that the Cunacunas took from that people the land they occupy today, after a great massacre, and they fear finding any of those who remained, believing them to be sorcerers and even demons."
The Debunked Negrito-Tasmanian Theory
Vivante then mentions that Italian anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi who studied cranial forms and concluded that America had been populated in different waves, one came from Western Africa, and was comprised by Negrito people, "we can certainly affirm that, besides those of the Tasmanian type, another human branch entered America, this one of short stature, which is usually called pygmy with a short cunciform skull Sphenoidis brevis." (from Gl'indigeni Americane: ricerche antropologiche, Rome, 1928 p.164).
Despite living under Mussolini's fascist regime, Sergi was a pacifist, anti-German, and not at all racist. Unfortunately his theory on "Mediterraneanism" was co-opted by the fascists to back their racist ideology.
These racialist Tasmanian-Negrito-Pygmy migration theories were in vogue in the late 1800s and early 1900s (see, for instance, an article on Pygmies in the U.S. from 1896). Since the mid 1900s, they have been debunked. Closer to Patagonia, Argentine anthropologist José Imbelloni supported a similar notion where South America was populated by several waves of people, and the first were pygmies, ancestors of both the Tasmanians and the Fuegian Yamana people (see Imbelloni, J. The peopling of America. Acta Americana. vol. I, No 3, Jul.-Sept. 1943).
Vivante states that he mentions these theories as potential evidence of an "ancient pygmy layer or layers then fragmented and liquidated, leaving behind reduced nuclei and tiny islands" when the later Amerindians arrived and wiped them out.
Nowadays the ancient Lagoa Santa remains from Brazil, and the Australasian genetic imprint suggest that the original inhabitants of Southeastern Asia somehow played a role in the peopling of America.
Mythical Dwarfs
Vivante's paper also mentions the mythical dwarves across America, and he also mentions some Patagonian examples, such as a reference from 1863 by Cox about the "peuquenes" close to Puerto Blest in Neuquén, the "'pichuchu', tiny men" (citing Daniel Hammerly Dupuy, 1953. Nahuel Huapi. Panoramas, Leyendas, Historias, Soc. Geogr. Americana, B. Aires, pp. 72-74) and several authors about the "Anchimallén".
Below is an excerpt from my book, on Cox and the Peuquén (also posted here):
"“Peuquen” – the Patagonian gnome
Guillermo Cox is the only reference that I have found regarding the Peuquen. He wrote about them in 1862, calling them “mountain genies […] small men that are clothed in avellano [Gevuina avellana, a native Chilean tree] leaves […] they also have a hat made from its bark, and an axe made of its wood.” Like Trauco, it lives in the forests of Chiloé, chopping trees. Yet like Yosi, it does not use its wood to light fires. Those who come across him face a nasty fate: their heads are turned backward for the rest of their lives. Like Yosi and Trauco, he is a lewd creature and seeks sexual intercourse with women. The children conceived during these trysts are born with their skin like the bark of an avellano, that is, rough and light brown.
I cite his work: Cox, G., (2006). Expedición de la Patagonia Norte: un viajero en el Nahuel Huapi: 1862-1863. B. Aires: Continente-Pax. pp.67-69
I also mentioned Kossler-Ilg, Francisco Moreno, Gregorio Álvarez, Father Mascardi, and Parodi regarding the Anchimallén (also posted here). However, this is the first time I hear about "pichuchu" the name applied to a dwarf. The word is used as a friendly, affectionate diminutive for tiny, sounding tender or childlike. But I have never encountered it in the Patagonian dwarves context until now.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
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