Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/223

 1851.] A NIGHT IN THE MALOCCA. 193

ceived during our passage among the bushes on the river-side. In the afternoon we reached another village, also situated up a narrow igaripe, and consisting of a house and two maloccas at some distance from it. The inhabitants had gone to a neighbouring village} where triers was caxiri and dancing, and two women only were left behind with some children. About these houses were several parrots, macaws, and curassow-birds, which all these Indians breed in great numbers. The next day we reached Ananarapicdma, or " Pine-apple Point," the village where the dance was taking place. It consisted of several small houses besides the large malocca, many of the Indians who have been with traders to the Rio Negro imitating them in using separate dwellings.

On entering the great malocca a most extraordinary and novel scene presented itself. Some two hundred men, women, and children were scattered about the house, lying in the maqueiras, squatting on the ground, or sitting on the small painted stools, which are made only by the inhabitants of this river. Almost all were naked and painted, and wearing their various feathers and other ornaments. Some were walking or conversing, and others were dancing, or playing small fifes and whistles. The regular festa had been broken up that morning; the chiefs and principal men had put off their feather head-dresses, but as caxiri still remained, the young men and women continued dancing. They were painted over their whole bodies in regular patterns of a diamond or diagonal character, with black, red, and yellow colours ; the former, a purple or blue black, predominating. The face was orna- mented in various styles, generally with bright red in bold stripes or spots, a large quantity of the colour being applied to each ear, and running down on the sides of the cheeks and neck, producing a very fearful and sanguinary appearance. The grass in the ears was now decorated with a little tuft of white downy feathers, and some in addition had three little strings of beads from a hole pierced in the lower lip. All wore the garters, which were now generally painted yellow. Most of the young women who danced had besides a small apron of beads of about eight inches by six inches, arranged in diagonal patterns with much taste ; besides this, the paint on their naked bodies was their only ornament ; they had not even the comb in their hair, which the men are never without.

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