rolling in a mat; coca chewed and mimora seeds snuffed; tobacco used for ceremonial drink only; curare and other poisons; blowgun, throwing spear, bows, paddle clubs; fish caught by poison, also with hooks, nets, traps, and a trident spear; clay eaten; cannibals, eat prisoners; drum signalling; drums in pairs, male and female, phallic decorations; palm fiber rolled on thigh and hammocks made; pottery; basketry; no metal, little stone, tools of wood; dug-out canoes, sprung into shape when hot from burning out; trees felled by holes and wedging; large wooden mortars for coca, tobacco, and maize; habitations and fields shifted often; whole community in one house, large and square, four posts inside, thatched, no smoke hole; clearing around house, but all concealed in jungle by maze-like path; no clothing except bark breechcloth for men; combs of palm splints for women; human tooth necklaces; ornamental ligatures, nose pins, leg rattles, elaborate body paint; palaver with a kind of black drink of tobacco for all important undertakings of war or peace; the couvade; women not permitted to join in serious ceremonies and not to see boys' initiations, not allowed to join a cannibal feast; personal names not spoken, even true names of mythical characters are whispered; shamanism (paye) important, tricks crude except "voice throwing," sucking for disease, but detecting evil spirits the chief function of a shaman; two serious harvest ceremonies, manioc and pineapple; boys cruelly whipped in puberty ceremonies; ordeals of stinging ants; many social dances; formal recital of one's grievances and a kind of riddle dance; pan pipe, flute, castanet, drum, gourd rattle; each house group exogamous, paternal descent; monogamy, each house has a chief, all adult males the council; many tales resembling European folklore and many animal tales reminding one of African lore; sun and moon venerated; grave burial.
In Guiana[1] we find most of these same traits, but what seems to be a higher culture, since here we have cotton cultivated and spun and the typical cassava squeezer. The Arawak peoples also have a clan organization, maternal descent. None of the Guiana peoples see coca, but smoke
- ↑ Im Thurn, 1883. I.
