Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/424

 standings. It is vain to try to get information out of a Tucúna on this subject; they affect great mystery when the name is mentioned, and give very confused answers to questions: it was clear, however, that the idea of a spirit as a beneficent God or Creator had not entered the minds of these Indians. There is great similarity in all their ceremonies and mummeries, whether the object is a wedding, the celebration of the feast of fruits, the plucking of the hair from the heads of their children, or a holiday got up simply out of a love of dissipation. Some of the tribe on these occasions deck themselves with the bright-coloured feathers of parrots and macaws. The chief wears a head-dress or cap made by fixing the breast-feathers of the Toucan on a web of Bromelia twine, with erect tail plumes of macaws rising from the crown. The cinctures of the arms and legs are also then ornamented with bunches of feathers. Others wear masked dresses: these are long cloaks reaching below the knee and made of the thick whitish-coloured inner bark of a tree, the fibres of which are interlaced in so regular a manner, that the material looks like artificial cloth. The cloak covers the head; two holes are cut out for the eyes, a large round piece of the cloth stretched on a rim of flexible wood is stitched on each side to represent ears, and the features are painted in exaggerated style with yellow, red, and black streaks. The dresses are sewn into the proper shapes with thread made of the inner bark of the Uaissíma tree. Sometimes grotesque headdresses, representing monkeys' busts or heads of other animals, made by stretching cloth or skin over a basket-