and for fires in the middle, and on one side is an elevated stage (girao) overhead, formed of split palm stems. The Tucúnas excel most of the other tribes in the manufacture of pottery. They make broad-mouthed jars for Tucupí sauce, caysúma or mandioca beer, capable of holding twenty or more gallons, ornamenting them outside with crossed diagonal streaks of various colours. These jars, with cooking-pots, smaller jars for holding water, blow-pipes, quivers, matirí bags[1] full of small articles, baskets, skins of animals, and so forth, form the principal part of the furniture of their huts both large and small. The dead bodies of their chiefs are interred, the knees doubled up, in large jars under the floors of their huts.
The semi-religious dances and drinking bouts usual amongst the settled tribes of Amazonian Indians are indulged in to greater excess by the Tucúnas than they are by most other tribes. The Juruparí or Demon is the only superior being they have any conception of, and his name is mixed up with all their ceremonies, but it is difficult to ascertain what they consider to be his attributes. He seems to be believed in simply as a mischievous imp, who is at the bottom of all those mishaps of their daily life, the causes of which are not very immediate or obvious to their dull under-
- ↑ These bags are formed of remarkably neat twine made of Bromelia fibres elaborately knitted, all in one piece, with sticks; a belt of the same material, but more closely woven, being attached to the top to suspend them by. They afford good examples of the mechanical ability of these Indians. The Tucúnas also possess the art of skinning and stuffing birds, the handsome kinds of which they sell in great numbers to passing travellers.
