PLATE XIII.
CENTRE OF DANCING GROUP—MUENANE
Inset.—Chief’s son wearing feather head-dress
Having laid down the rough generalisation that all the women of these tribes wear nothing, one has to begin the list of various exceptions that go to prove this rule. It is true that they are nude to the extent of wearing no garment of any description, but though naked they do not appear to be so; and it is a qualified nakedness after all, qualified with a variety of ornament, and, above all, of paint.
The Indian woman’s ideas on the subject of clothing are well illustrated by the behaviour of those women who were of my own party. I gave them djibbehs, but, unless I happened to be present and they feared my anger, they never would wear them. For this attitude they advanced five excellent reasons. If the sun shone the bright light would damage the garment by causing the colour to fade.[74] If it rained the djibbeh would get wet. If they were out in the bush the thorns caught and tore the material. If they were dancing the useless encumbrance of a dress would hide all their carefully-executed adornments of paint. If they were in the house a covering of any sort would be merely ridiculous. There were obviously, then, few or no opportunities left to wear their new, but cumbersome and useless, finery. Not that the Indian man or woman has no desire for finery, quite the contrary, their ornaments are more important than their dress, in fact their ornaments are their dress.
The women of the Issa-Japura tribes wear a broad girdle for a dance.[75] It is worn on no other occasions, and removed immediately the dance is at an end. These dancing girdles are made by the women of seeds or Brummagem beads if such can be had. These are strung in about two-foot lengths, and so arranged that when two or three dozen strings are fastened into a broad flat band the varying colours make a bold and definite design. Like all these Indian ornaments, they evince a fine artistic sense of colouring and pattern. Beads are passed inwards from the Rubber Belt from tribe to tribe. On account of the isolation of these peoples, they cannot aspire to have fashions direct from Birmingham, and novel patterns hardly seem to occur to them. Designs must be symmetrical, and they are quite content to copy the old-established ones. The colours vary, but dark beads are the most sought after, dark blue being more favoured than red. Black and white ones are the most prized, but red and white is the combination usually seen. Any woman may possess a girdle, and it is an individual, not a tribal, possession, the reverse of the custom as regards the men’s feather head-dresses. These girdles are exceedingly handsome and wonderfully well constructed.
Beads are especially treasured by the Karahone women, and they will wear chain upon chain, amounting in the aggregate to a considerable weight. The number worn by a Boro woman may be judged from the illustration (p. 154), where the white appendage round the woman’s neck is made simply by stringing a few pounds of white beads together. Both men and women wear necklaces. Besides those made only of beads, they are made of tiger—that is to say jaguar—teeth, and pig, tapir, marmoset, and cat provide ivories that may be strung on curána thread, besides the necklace of accomplished vengeance, the string of human teeth. With the exception of the latter, the teeth are bored through the fang, and threaded at regular intervals, interspersed with beads, bone, or Brummagem, tiny discs of bone or shell, or brightly-coloured seeds. The pendants on the necklaces seen in the illustrations are mostly coins, depreciated Chilian dollars as a rule.[76] Those shown in the various photographs were either given to the wearers by me or had filtered through from the Rubber Belt; a few may have reached these primitive folk through the medium of intertribal barter. In any case, they are always most rare and cherished possessions. The pendants generally worn are thin, flat, triangular pieces of beaten metal, obtained either from coins or old brass cartridge cases. The rarity of metal in these parts is marked by the small quantity allowed for any one ornament, which is invariably of extreme thinness, and hardly more than a featherweight. They are not grooved, incised, or beaten into any design, but have merely a smoothed surface. The edge is rounded, not sharp. They are hung by a small beaded fibre string to the necklet or more generally to the ear-plug.
PLATE XIV.
BORO COMB OF PALM SPINES SET IN PITCH AND FINISHED WITH BASKETWORK OF SPLIT CANE, FIBRE STRINGS, AND TUFTS OF PARROTS’ FEATHERS