Once their daily food is provided and they have prepared a good supply of poisons and darts what remains for them to do in the depth of the forest, where there is no thirst for riches (because unknown to them), for honours (of which they have no idea at all), or for power (which their individual independence repudiates)?
Manufacturing poisoned arrows.
p. [123].
There is no race for wealth, position or fame in their parts, no struggle for life which amongst us is the inexhaustible source of progress as well as the incentive to crime and corruption.
The desire expressed by Henry IV that each one of his subjects might boil his own fowl in his own pot is more than realized amongst the Sakais.
They do not cook their fowls because they are only reared as a means of barter, but it seldom happens that they cannot enjoy a choice bit of monkey, snake, deer or wild boar, which they like much better. If (a very strange case) somebody should be without, he goes to the nearest hut, enters without speaking, and sits down without being greeted. Some food is placed before him that he devours without being invited to do so and then departs as he came without any one saying a word beyond perhaps (in an excess of courtesy) a muttered "abor" (meaning "very good" and used as "good-bye" by the Sakais), from the visitor as he leaves.
The Sakai does not understand the reason of working when there seems to be no need, but what he finds strictly necessary he does with alacrity and good will. Whatever they have to do they all work together, the head of the family, the elder, the young men, the boys, everyone gives a hand to the best of his capacity. When they have finished, the oldest of the company lie down to doze and chew tobacco or sirih, the other men squat themselves about to chat and prepare poisons or make blow-pipes and arrows, whilst the children play and the women busy themselves over the cooking.
The terms of indolent and lazy as erroneously applied to these savages might be used with the same force in speaking of many who live in the vortex of civilized society.