PLATE XX.
1 & 3. BORO. 2. WITOTO’ LIGATURES.
Note contrast of texture
Among the Tuyuka the boys at the age of puberty burn scars on their arms, but I have never seen scarification among the Issa-Japura tribes;[83] nor is there much tattooing. The Menimehe, both men and women, tattoo the face and breast. The designs show little artistic skill, and are all done in straight lines. The patterns on the cheeks are simply tribal marks.[84] The breast patterns vary. On the arms of these people I have seen rough representations of a lizard tattooed as here illustrated. The incision is done with the spine of a palm, and the black residue from burnt rubber is rubbed into the puncture. This results in a blue mark. None of these tribes have such a practice as that described by Crevaux of making chevron marks on a woman’s thighs to record the number of her male children.[85] I know nothing of this or any similar custom, but some of the Boro living on the north of the Japura have borrowed the idea of tattooing from the Menimehe, and wear—both men and women—a tribal mark below the cheek-bone, and sometimes a pattern on the breast. These are the only two groups of tribes among whom I ever saw any people tattooed.
Fig. 8.
But, if very few tattoo, all paint. The Karahone women are as fond of paint as they are of beads, and use more colours than other tribes. Their particular colour is purple. As a rule the colours are red, yellow, black—a bluish black—and white. The latter is secured from certain fruits. A bright red, the commonest paint of all, is made from a prickly burr, or nut, that is full of seeds and red matter.[86] Black paint is obtained by using charcoal, or the juice of a fruit,[87] and a species of Cissus has a fruit from which the Indians get their blue paints. Ochre gives them yellow, but the source of the purple paint I was unable to discover.
Red is a favourite colour with all the tribes, and many women daub their whole faces over with scarlet. This will quite content them, and no further attempt at a design will be made. A blue-black is also very often seen smeared on in the same fashion, the juicy stain apparently being merely squeezed over the skin. Robuchon mentions a custom among some Witoto tribes of covering the body with latex and then sprinkling it with black ashes. Hardenburg also mentions the use of a resinous matter which is daubed on by the Witoto.[88] The reason for the former Robuchon declared he could not divine. It was one of the secrets of the dressing-table of the Kinene girls that he was not prepared to fathom. Sometimes black ashes are so used, and at other times yellow clay. The secret is not so profound as the French traveller seems to have imagined. It is evidently done for protective purposes, as babies in arms are invariably treated in this fashion, women but seldom. Occasionally a black juice is smeared over the face and neck, under the jawbones. This I never thought was meant to be decorative paint, but always concluded it was some manner of skin tonic.
Among the Orahone, and also some of the Issa and Japura Indians, the women cover their teeth and their finger-nails with a black pigment.