Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/417

Rh of war on a supreme chief, and in time of war, too, has under his orders a series of officers bearing the titles of teniente (or lieutenant), sarjente (sergeant), and cabogrades (corporal). But in time of peace these grades imply no authority. The whites inspire a respectful fear in them, and while in their relations with us—which they rather avoid having—they behave honestly, the honesty is the result of dread of the white man's presence.

Recognizing the value of the protection of the white man, they would more frequently have recourse to him for defense against the Tupi, but that they would have to pay for that protection by the servitude into which they would fall. Now they avoid, the white man too, and it is only the desire of exchanging labor for objects of prime necessity that prompts them to give their services in the collection of yerba or maté, and the getting out of building timber.

Their tapuis or villages are situated in the depth of the forest in a clearing, or on its edge near a stream. When they are a short distance from a navigable river, the people make a path that leads to the place on the shore where the canoe used in fishing is moored. These villages generally contain only a very limited number of families, each of which has its own house. At a shorter or longer distance away, in an artificial clearing, are small plantations of manioc, yams, and maize, which are reached by paths cut through the thicket.

The house of the Cainguá is smaller, but better built, than the Paraguayan ranch. The frame of roughly hewn trunks of trees supports a thatched roof and bamboo walls covered with a layer of mud mixed with plant stalks. These houses have no windows; the low and narrow roof is usually furnished with a large palm leaf as a portière. The floor of the cabin is made of beaten earth, and the furnishings are simple and rude. A single piece of furniture that is never wanting is the tatou, a kind of seat made out of a rudely shaped piece of wood which in form resembles the animal (the armadillo) after which it is named.

The Cainguá have no beds, but usually sleep on the ground. The few hammocks they have, formed of a bundle of leathern strips bound together by transverse knots, are considered objects of luxury reserved for the men. Antonio, a young Indian whose guest we were for about five days, found it quite natural to rest in the hammock from fancied fatigues, while his poor little wife, hardly a dozen years old, lay upon the bare ground at a nearly freezing temperature, although she was in a delicate condition. Some bamboo bundles, set a short distance above the ground, were not beds, like those we saw among the Toba Indians in the Chaco, but supports on which provisions were piled in anticipation of the heavy rains. Large