Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/59

 The Indians of the Issd-Japind District. 47

as moma. Women are givavo (mother), taiigali (sister), in Witoto ; einyo (mother), or inuije (woman), in Boro. The white man may call himself or his Indian companions what he pleases. As he does not know their real names he cannot harm them by the use of fictitious ones. If he runs the risk in his own case of giving power to any hostile magic-worker to do him harm, through knowledge of the name that represents his essential ego, that is his affair. This secrecy of name applies also to the tribes. Indians call their tribe only by a word equivalent to 'our own people,' and bestow a nickname for general purposes upon their neighbours. This all makes for difficulty in the way of any classification.

The name given, the couvade period at an end, the little Indian ceases to be of any particular tribal importance for the next few years. From earliest childhood the youngsters share the lives of their parents. Nothing is hidden from boys or girls ; nor is there any great ceremony over the formal admission of a youth to tribal rank. He has been taught to hunt and fish ; he is allowed to attend a tribal tobacco palaver and to lick tobacco, after he has declared he will bear himself bravely. There are no such trials for the novice as the northern tribes impose in ceremonial whipping and Jurupari observances. Girls on the verge of maturity are segregated in secret lodges in the bush, in part for pro- tective purposes, — where tribes are in the vicinity of the raiding Andoke or other enemies, — but there is always some communication between the lodge and the tribal house and, when it can safely be done, the girls will be brought in for any tribal festivities. But they remain in the lodges till they are married.

The marriage ceremony is simple. A man who desires to take a wife must have won a certain reputation as a hunter, to show he could support a wife and family, or no girl would take him for her husband. He must clear a plot of forest land for a plantation ; obtain permission from the