The Trumai of the sources of the Xingu are, on the contrary, short (1 m. 59) and mesocephalic (ceph. ind. 81.1), and they have convex noses and retreating foreheads.
The Bororos (Fig. [173]), scattered from the upper Paraguay to the upper Parana, are hunters; they have great bows and arrows of bamboo or bone. Polygamy exists among them, and there are also cases of polyandry. They are tall (1 m. 74) and mesocephalic (ceph. ind. 81.5).[667]
FIG. 172.—Aramichau Indian (Tupi or Carib tribe of French Guiana).
(Coll. Mus. Nat. Hist., Paris.)
In spite of the diversity of language and race, several of the tribes of the central region, living side by side, have the same manners and customs, and the same kind of existence, as a result of mutual borrowings.[668] The best example of this is furnished by the Caribs, Arawaks, Ges, Tupis, and Trumai of the upper Xingu. They all go naked, the women sometimes wearing the triangular palm-leaf which plays the part of the fig-leaf; their huts are grouped around the “house of flutes,” or the dwelling of the young men—a Carib importation—in which are preserved symbolic masks, which, like the pottery, are of Arawak invention. The tools are primitive, frequently of stone.[669] One might almost say that these tribes in ploughing imitate the movements of burrowing animals, for in this operation they make use of the long claws of the front paws of a great armadillo (Dasipus gigas), two of them attached together. The throwing-stick and blunt arrows are used by the Trumai, as by the Tupi tribes. They have no domestic animals, but keep some wild animals in captivity—parrots, lizards (to hunt insects), etc. The custom of the couvade and the existence of witch medicine-men are common to all these tribes.
3. The Tupi-Guarani.—In South America there exist a great number of tribes scattered from Guiana to Paraguay, from the Brazilian coast to the eastern slope of the Andes, who speak the different dialects of the Tupi linguistic family.[670] They may be divided into two groups: on one side, to the east, the tribes speaking the ancient Tupi language, which, in imitation of Quechua, was a “lingua geral,” and on the other, the numerous tribes to the west, speaking different dialects which have only a vague resemblance to Tupi, according to L. Adam. At the time of the conquest the Tupi tribes, called Tupi-namba Tanuyo, who were cannibals, occupied not only the whole of the Brazilian coast from Para to Santos, but also the valley of the Amazon as far as Manaos. These primitive Tupis have mostly been exterminated by the Portuguese, but their language, which has become that of the converted Indians, has spread as far as the valley of the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon, where there have never been any Tupi tribes.
