Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/61

 The Indians of the Issd-Japura District. 49

especially for a dance, when they also adorn themselves with all the ornaments in their possession, — feather head- dresses if they be men, beaded garlands if women, and as much in the way of necklaces, armlets, and jangling leg rattles as each can muster. This finery is brought out from the storage places on the rafters of the nialoka. Though the women may not wear feathers, they fasten the white down of the currasow duck to the calves of their legs with rubber latex, or some resinous substance. This makes them look enormous, owing to the fact that they wear tight ligatures below the knee and above the ankle to swell out the muscles, after the same fashion that the men wear ligatures on the upper arm. The Indian will never part with his feather ornaments, for they are communal, not personal, possessions ; and I found that they objected extremely to any attempt on my part to secure photo- graphs of them. I have only one of a small boy, the son of a Chief, wearing his feather head-dress. He was also the only boy I ever saw wearing one, as the feathers are supposed to be from birds shot by the wearers, in the same way that the necklaces of tiger, tapir, pig, or other teeth represent the game killed by the hunter who wears them, or therewith decorates his family.

When a dance is to be given, invitations are sent round to all friendly Indians in the vicinity. A piece of tobacco folded in a palm leaf is the 'at home card ' of the Indian. The summons to a dance, however, depends on no formal card. The Chief himself conveys it by means of the jfiaugiiarc, the great signal drums hung from the rafters of the uialoka. He beats out his message in notes that travel for eight or ten miles round. These drums are constructed from two blocks of hard black wood, hollowed by means of heated stones, with a husk of purposely varying thickness to secure the range of notes. The smaller is termed the male, and the larger the female drum, and they are decorated within by designs representative of their sex.