Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/425

 work frame, are worn at these holidays. The biggest and ugliest mask represents the Juruparí. In these festival habiliments the Tucúnas go through their monotonous see-saw and stamping dances accompanied by singing and drumming, and keep up the sport often for three or four days and nights in succession, drinking enormous quantities of caysúma, smoking tobacco, and snuffing paricá powder.

I could not learn that there was any deep symbolical meaning in these masked dances, or that they commemorated any past event in the history of the tribe. Some of them seem vaguely intended as a propitiation of the Juruparí, but the masker who represents the demon sometimes gets drunk along with the rest, and is not treated with any reverence. From all I could make out, these Indians preserve no memory of events going beyond the times of their fathers or grandfathers. Almost every joyful event is made the occasion of a festival: weddings amongst the rest. A young man who wishes to wed a Tucúna girl has to demand her hand of her parents, who arrange the rest of the affair, and fix a day for the marriage ceremony. A wedding which took place in the Christmas week whilst I was at St. Paulo, was kept up with great spirit for three or four days; flagging during the heats of mid-day, but renewing itself with increased vigour every evening. During the whole time the bride, decked out with feather ornaments, was under the charge of the older squaws, whose business seemed to be, sedulously to keep the bridegroom at a safe distance until the end of the dreary period of dancing and boosing. The Tucúnas