They were all good swimmers. When the river was too deep to ford they merely swam across; or else, if the river were too broad and swift, they improvised a kind of temporary raft with fascines or bundles of dried burity leaves, to which they clung, and which they propelled with their feet. These fascines were quite sufficient to keep them afloat for a short time, enabling them also to convey a certain amount of goods across the water.
In other countries, such as in Central Africa among the Shilucks and the Nuers of the Sobat River (Sudan), and the natives on Lake Tchad, I have seen a similar method adopted in a far more perfected fashion. The Shilucks, for instance, cleverly built big boats of fascines—large enough to carry a great number of warriors. Such was not the case with the bundles of burity of the Indians—which merely served for one or at the most two people at a time, and then only until the bundle became soaked, when it went to the bottom.
CHAPTER XV
Bororo Superstitions—The Bororo Language—Bororo Music
Bororo Indians.
The Bororos were superstitious to a degree. They believed in evil spirits. Some of these, they said, inhabited the earth; others were invisible and lived "all over the air," to use their expression. The aerial ones were not so bad as those on earth. It was to the latter that their invocations were made—not directly, but through a special individual called the barih, a kind of medicine man, who, shouting at the top of his voice while gazing skyward, offered gifts of food, meat, fish and grain to the boppé or spirits invoked. There were two kinds of barih: a superior one with abnormal powers, and an inferior one. The barih eventually pretended that the spirit had entered his body. He then began to devour the food himself, in order to appease the hunger of his internal guest and become on friendly terms with him. The wife of the barih, who on those occasions stood by his side, was generally asked to partake of the meal, but only after the barih had half chewed the various viands, when he gracefully took them with his fingers from his own mouth and placed them between the expectant lips of his better half. She sometimes accepted them—sometimes not. All according to her appetite, I suppose, and perhaps to the temporary terms on which she was that day with her husband.
