First published in 1909, this classic true-life adventure tale is a thrilling account of Walker’s travels in the South Seas archipelagoes: Borneo, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Philipines. His encounters with the primitive pagan tribes still makes for captivating reading.

Bearded women, headhunters and cannibal tribes, Flat-Footed Lake Dwellers, tattoos, strange customs, gruesome accounts of cannibalism feasts and rituals, black magic, headhunting raids.... the fearsome Dayak people: gripping first encounters between European and Stone Age cultures.

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Head Hunters of the Amazon: Seven Years of Exploration & Adventure, by Fritz W. Up de Graff, 1923

Graphic, often gruesome account of Up de Graff's exploration of the Amazon and his encounters with Indian head hunting tribes such as the Jivaro. Snakes, alligators, robbers, blow pipes, supernatural rituals, war dances, massacres, shrunken heads, gold mines... The original text, illustrated with period prints, maps & photos of Ecuador & Brazil, plus background links. 

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"The enemy having left their dead and dying behind them in their flight, the victors dashed forward to seize the most highly treasured of the spoils of battle -- the heads of the enemy slain. With stone-axes and split bamboo knives, sharpened clam-shells (rubbed to a keen edge on sand-stone), and chonta-wood machetes, they went from corpse to corpse, gathering and stringing their gruesome emblems of victory.
    I must mention that no delicate considerations of sex are allowed to interfere with these rites; a woman who fights, or a woman who refuses to accompany the victorious war-party to their homes and serve a new master, exposes herself by the acknowledged code of warfare among these people to the risk of suffering the same fate as her men-folk. Indeed I myself happened to watch the fate of a Huambiza woman who had fallen in the fight wounded by three spears. Little did we imagine what the ultimate issue might prove to be, when we attacked that morning.
    The woman lay where she had been borne down by the spear-thrusts. The Aguarunas, eager to collect her head, went to work while she was still alive, though powerless to protect herself. While one wrenched at her head another held her to the ground, and yet another hacked at her neck with his stone-axe. Finally I was called upon to lend my machete, a far better implement for the work in hand. This was truly an act of mercy, to put the poor creature out of her misery as soon as possible. It was a truly hideous spectacle. But it must be remembered that had we attempted interference, we were but five in a horde of fiends, crazed by blood and lust. When at last the head was severed, it was strung with the one other which had fallen to the lot of our party.
    This stringing of the heads is in itself an art, the object of which is to facilitate their transportation. They are strung on thin lengths of pliable bark stripped from some nearby sapling, which make a first-rate substitute for the hempen cord of civilization. These bark-ropes are passed through the mouth and out at the neck."