I would ask the reader to refer back to Fig. [52], p. 97, although this motive is not a zoomorph, in order to show that triangular designs, or resulting zigzags, may have various origins.
Only one tablet represented a plant. (Fig. [69].) It indicates the leaves of a small “cabbage”-bearing wild palm.
The bulk of the motives for the decorative art of these people, the Schingú tribes (the Xingu tribes of Ehrenreich), are drawn from the animal world; Fig. [103] A, H, I, K, are Bakaïri patterns, and Figs. [103] B-F those of the Auetö.
The pattern to the right in Fig. [103], H, indicates a kind of ray, the characteristic rings and dots which ornament the skin of this fish are here represented.
Fig. 103.—Patterns from Central Brazil, after Von den Steinen. A. Bakaïri paddle; B-E. Mereschu (fish) patterns of the Auetö; F. Locust design, Bakaïri; G. Fish-shaped bull-roarer, Nahuquá; H. Sukuri (snake) and ray patterns; I. Jiboya (snake); K. Agau (snake); H-I. Bakaïri tribe.
Common to all the tribes of the Schingú stock is the employment of conventionalised representations of the mereschu. This is a small compressed lagoon-fish, about 19 cm. (7½ inches) long, and 9.5 cm. (3¾ inches) deep; its colour is silver-grey with brown spots. The mereschu belongs to the genus Serrasalmo or Myletes; the figure on p. 260, given by Von den Steinen, looks as if it were drawn from a badly-preserved spirit specimen, and one fails to see how Fig. [103], C, for example, could by any stretch of the imagination be considered to suggest that fish. On p. 613 of Dr. Günther’s Introduction to the Study of Fishes (Edinburgh, 1880) is an outline figure of Serrasalmo scapularis; the contour of this fish is approximately rhomboidal, the head, the dorsal fin, and the tail fin occupy three of its angles, and the anal fin practically runs up to the fourth angle. Von den Steinen points out that in most cases representations of these animal-forms are incisions, not paintings, and the diagrammatic rendering of curved lines by angles is due to this fact. The patterns which I am about to describe are common to numerous allied tribes, and everywhere these patterns bear the name by which this kind of fish is locally known.
Sometimes the mereschu fish is employed singly, but most frequently a number of them are evenly distributed over the decorated surface, and between the fishes single, double, or even several lines may be drawn, as in Fig. [103], B, C, E; these latter represent the net by means of which these fish are caught. Thus we may have a fish-pattern or a fishes-in-net pattern. These patterns are delineated on masks, posts, spinning-whorls, and other objects. Fig. [103], B, is a pattern of the mereschu fishes-in-net group, but the fishes themselves are entirely filled up with black, and not their angles only.