[398] Of the chief’s daughter.
[399] This may be a folk-tale of the monkey-people stealing Indian women for their mates. Cf. Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 185; Clifford, Studies in Brown Humanity, p. 243.
But it should not be overlooked that the Boro depile most carefully, while the Andoke medicine-man does not depile at all, and the Andoke are mortal foes of the Boro. The Karahone also are said not to depile, and on this score would be regarded by the Boro as no better than brute beasts. So this story may be a traditional account of the actual rape of a chief’s daughter by a hostile tribe, the Amazonian version of Helen and Troy.
[400] Simson, p. 168.
[401] Spruce, i. 332. im Thurn relates of the Arawak Indians that “each family is descended—their fathers knew how, but they themselves have forgotten—from its eponymous animal, bird, or plant” (im Thurn, pp. 184, 376).
[402] The general principle is well known, and is now used both by the authorities of the United States and of Great Britain. It consists in giving to the vowels in native words their Italian significance, and to the consonants that which they have in the English language.
[403] Notes and Queries on Anthropology (1912), pp. 187-96.
[404] Simson, p. 94.
[405] Tylor, p. 25.
[406] Koch-Grünberg transliterates it as ingetā, or ingétā; and gives marā for good, maringetā, marinyetā, bad; faréti, fat; faré ingetā, thin (Die Uitóto Indianer, pp. 10-11).