NECKLACES OF HUMAN AND TIGER TEETH
PLATE XVII.
1. NECKLACE OF POLISHED NUTSHELLS. 2. LEG RATTLES OF BEADS AND NUTSHELLS. 3, 4, 5, 6. BEAD NECKLACES. THE ‘BLACK BEADS’ ARE BITS OF POLISHED NUTSHELL, THREADED BETWEEN WHITE BEADS.
A favourite ornament among the Boro and Witoto, and also with some of the Napo tribes, is a bracelet of iguana skin. To make these, a circular piece is cut off the creature’s tail, the ring of skin, varying in width from half to three inches wide, is removed and drawn over the hand when fresh and damp. This band dries tightly to the skin of the arm, and will remain there in spite of frequent washings for years. These lizard-skin bracelets can hardly be seen in any of the photographs reproduced in these pages. They are supposed to have certain magical properties, and to endow the wearer with special strength and vigour. For the same purpose children wear a black ring cut from a nut. The diameter of the ring—1½ inch outside and quite a quarter of an inch less within—does not permit it to be worn when the child grows up; the arm always swells round it, and obviously it must eventually be cut off, but I cannot speak with any certainty as to how or when this is done. The women’s bracelets are made of beads when they can be obtained, or of gay-coloured seeds. Those worn by the Resigero woman in the illustration by page 80 are made of threaded seeds, or of beads, wound round and round the forearm with a turn or two of white beads at either end. The central beads are usually dark red.
Rattles and feather ornaments are festooned on the legs for a dance, but only the women wear the tight ligatures that swell out the calf. Both men and women among all these tribes wear ligatures, the men on the upper arm, just below the shoulder, the women on the leg, below the knee and again above the ankle. These ligatures are worn extremely tight, and result not in atrophy of the limb, as might be expected,[79] but in an enormous swelling of the muscles above or below them. The ankle ligatures sometimes reach half-way up the leg. They all vary greatly in breadth, but this I consider to be a matter of personal taste—or possibly personal skill—and not a tribal fashion or distinction, except in so far as that the Witoto knee ligatures are narrower than those of other tribes, and are never so well made. But this confirms the idea of personal skill deciding the pattern, for all Witoto work is cruder than Boro or Okaina. Even the roughest of these ligatures, however, is a marvellously neat piece of workmanship, the more surprising when one discovers that only the fingers are used in its manufacture. A ligature band is made of a very fine fibre thread, and on the reverse side has the appearance of a knitted or crochetted fabric; on the right side it looks rather like a woven tapestry ribbon, with a slightly raised pattern. But so far as I could ever see no implement of any kind is employed in the making of these bands.[80] The fibre string is interworked and knotted with extraordinarily skilled finger-work only. Sometimes the band is decorated by a pattern of coloured lines, diagonals, and diamonds slightly raised. In nearly every one that I saw closely enough to examine the edge was corded, and the end finished with a kind of buttonhole looping. The ligatures shown in the illustration are Witoto and Boro-made ones.[81] The ends are finished with a line of open-work stitches and a buttonholed or twisted edge. Through the open spaces twisted fibre cords are run, and these pull the band together exactly on the principle of a lady’s silk purse. They are tied in two knots. A tuft of cords, or occasionally a bone or wooden disc, finishes off the man’s ligature, which is knotted in front. The women lace their ligatures on, and fasten them very securely. I had to cut those shown in [Plate XIV.] to get them off the wearer’s legs. The Yahabana and other Kuretu-speaking tribes wear their armlets very tight, and the skin underneath is lighter in shade than it is on the exposed portion of the limb, according to Koch-Grünberg. This lighter skin will blister in the sun if unprotected.
PLATE XVIII.
BORO LIGATURES
