Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/385

 OF THE AMAZON. 345

At festivals and dances they decorate themselves with a complicated costume of feather head-dresses, cinctures, armlets, and leg ornaments, which I have sufficiently described in the account of their dances (p. 202).

We will now describe some peculiarities connected with their births, marriages, and deaths.

The women are generally delivered in the house, though sometimes in the forest. When a birth takes place in the house, everything is taken out of it, even the pans and pots, and bows and arrows, till the next day ; the mother takes the child to the river and washes herself and it, and she generally remains in the house, not doing any work, for four or five days.

The children, more particularly the females, are restricted to a particular food : they are not allowed to eat the meat of any kind of game, nor of fish, except the very small bony kinds ; their food principally consisting of mandiocca-cake and fruits.

On the first signs of puberty in the girls, they have to undergo an ordeal. For a month previously, they are kept secluded in the house, and allowed only a small quantity of bread and water. All relatives and friends of the parents are then assembled, bringing, each of them, pieces of " sipo " (an elastic climber) ; the girl is then brought out, perfectly naked, into the midst of them, when each person present gives her five or six severe blows with the sipo across the back and breast, till she falls senseless, and it sometimes happens, dead. If she recovers, it is repeated four times, at intervals of six hours, and it is considered an offence to the parents not to strike hard. During this time numerous pots of all kinds of meat and fish have been prepared, when the sipos are dipped in them and given to her to lick, and she is then considered a woman, and allowed to eat anything, and is marriageable.

The boys undergo a somewhat similar ordeal, but not so severe ; which initiates them into manhood, and allows them to see the Jurupari music, which will be presently described.

Tattooing is very little practised by these Indians ; they all, however, have a row of circular punctures along the arm, and one tribe, the Tucanos, are distinguished from the rest by three vertical blue lines on the chin ; and they also pierce the lower lip, through which they hang three little threads of white beads.