Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/139

 wooden steps. There were four other houses in the neighbourhood, all filled with people. A fine old fellow, with face, shoulders, and breast tattooed all over in a cross-bar pattern, was the first strange object that caught my eye. Most of the men lay lounging or sleeping in their hammocks. The women were employed in an adjoining shed making farinha, many of them being quite naked, and rushing off to the huts to slip on their petticoats when they caught sight of us. Our entrance aroused the Tushaúa from a nap; after rubbing his eyes he came forward and bade us welcome with the most formal politeness, and in very good Portuguese. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, well-made man, apparently about thirty years of age, with handsome regular features, not tattooed, and a quiet good-humoured expression of countenance. He had been several times to Santarem and once to Pará, learning the Portuguese language during these journeys. He was dressed in shirt and trousers made of blue-checked cotton cloth and there was not the slightest trace of the savage in his appearance or demeanour. I was told that he had come into the chieftainship by inheritance, and that the Cuparí horde of Mundurucús, over which his fathers had ruled before him, was formerly much more numerous, furnishing 300 bows in time of war. They could now scarcely muster forty; but the horde has no longer a close political connection with the main body of the tribe, which inhabits the banks of the Tapajos, six days' journey from the Cuparí settlement.

I spent the remainder of the day here, sending Aracú and the men to fish, whilst I amused myself with the